On the couch waiting for a blood test. Dark outside. Stuck in the stink of this apartment,
listening to Jess ♥♥♥♥ around in the bathroom, probably drawing on the mirror again. Can’t
blame him, kenneled up for so long.
Jess comes out, shaved down to his lonely naked jaw, a careless cut on the neck. He comes
over, touching his teeth compulsively. Touch touch touch.
“Iran.”
“Yeah?”
Iran pulls back but Jess has already knelt by the couch, looking up with wet brown eyes, and a
palpable viral heat.
“What are you doing?”
He puts his hand on Jess’s head, trying to keep the saliva emission away from his face. But the
reality of that touch takes him by surprise, reminding him of the first time he wrestled with his
brother, the difficulty of keeping back the disorganized rolling mass of a human head with its
many flurrying strands that poke and tangle and slide under the fingers, and under it, so
rubbery clefs to sink into, eyes, nostrils, lips, until your defense becomes more of a threat to
the other person, and you stop so you don’t tear their hair or worse.
Jess’s hair feels like the saltwater caught in sun-scorched plastic bottles in the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch.
“Jess. Please.”
Now he’s stupidly sniffing Iran’s armpit. “What?”
“You’re not wearing your guard.”
“I’m not keeping that ♥♥♥♥ on my face.”
“Then go somewhere safe.”
Jess crawls up the couch, each inch burning another heartbeat to cinders.
“Why are you touching me?”
“You’re so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ controlled. And you think I’m weak.”
“I don’t—“
Something breaks the skin on Iran’s hand. He inhales stiffly. Jess’s saliva squirts down his wrist,
running clear, then red.
“You’re so sharp, Jess.” It really is remarkable. Knives in the mouth.
Jess unlocks his jaw and Iran pulls his hand out slowly. It weeps from bloody holes.
“You hurt me.”
Jess laps at the punctures and Iran almost pulls away. But the wound is already there. It doesn’t
matter. And he looks so sorry for what he did. Lick lick, cleaning the wound, with viral saliva that
feels like normal saliva.
Iran was right. He didn’t find a cure. It was too implausible. He found a compromise. An
expensive, temporary compromise. That’s not very sexy. They already let old people get eaten
by maggots in nursing homes, so what happens to difficult, hungry, ambulatory people who can
contribute nothing but an honest and raging heartbeat? It’s like a world where an animal eats
an animal of the same kind. Can’t recall the species.
He goes to the bathroom and rinses the holes in his hand. Then he looks at his face, while he
can still recognize it. Shining wet under the bathroom light. Red veins in his eyes. Like he’s
already infected. But he knows better. It’s just from how stressed he is. Maybe it would be good
to get a break. Cross the Rabiescon. He must be really tired if he’s entertaining that thought.
Just a thought. An illogical thought. The first nip of a rival telos.
Have to get back to work. Every hour that passes, he’ll trust it less.

*
Jess seems a little calmer after dinner. He even tried to use a fork to eat the steak tartare Iran
made, although he ended up shoving his face in it anyways. Now he stares at Iran with those
big, some kind of animal, can’t quite place it, eyes.
“I figure with your autism, you have, uh, twenty percent extra time to fight this thing.”
“Shut up.” Iran scribbles rapidly in his notebook, past a drop of raw pink meat juice.
“Losing it already?”
“I’m not losing it.” Not an undisciplined normie like you. I’ve had years of repression to prepare
me for this.
“Sorry. Haha. Sorry. Really. I just didn’t want you to leave me.”
“I know.”
“If you can't handle me at my...uh. ♥♥♥♥.”
Iran flips the page and keeps writing.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“That is an interesting thought, though. My brain insulating me from the emotional swings. It’s
not like anyone really studies that sort of thing. Not for adults. So I might as well treat it like
magic. I earned that right.”
“Yeah. After my kids stopped being kids, there was nothing for them. I’d sit in that room, you
remember that room, the cozy room, with all the beanbags, all those kids would be looking at
me, or looking at nothing, or looking at me and seeing nothing, and I’d look back, and I’d just
see future adults. But I couldn’t tell them there wasn’t anything out there. Because that would
make it worse. They need hope to move forward. To have any chance at all. Or you develop a
complex.”
“Yeah.”
“Like a time traveler, you know? That’s what an adult is. But you can’t share what you know. Or
the kids will explode, or your job will. No one wants to hear it. ♥♥♥♥.”
Jess’s fingers are bleeding. He bit through the nails and now he’s starting on the skin. It really
bothers Iran. The risk of dermatophagic infection, and the preview of an appetite he doesn’t
want to acknowledge yet, that he can’t accept from a time traveler, because he has serious
work to do before he enters the fever-future.
He finds some bandages. Jess whines as they squeeze around his tender fingertips.
“Hold still.”
By the time the last bandage is applied, Jess is leaning close and dizzy, and Iran isn’t sure if it’s
from crying or hunger or both or everything.
“This must. This must be really traumatizing for you. With what happened to your family—“
What a thing it is for a family to lose their teeth together. Gathered in the bedroom, around a
bloody puddle of teeth. Crying. Louder and louder.
That’s the sound that stays with him. The horrible keening. And his voice, like a traitor, absent
from it.
“I’m not one of your kids, Jess.”
Jess holds him, trembling from trying not to bite him. “I know you’re emotional too. Even if you
don’t show it the same way. They just weren’t looking for it.”
The fever that Iran thought was isolated to his own body is now all around him. He can’t find the
compact shape he made so long ago, squeezed under the sink, in the house his family lost their
teeth in, and squeezing ever since so he could fit in the world of people who don’t want to think
about what it means to lose your teeth, together, or alone, and grow new ones, alone, or
together.
“You don’t really feel this way about me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just the disease. It’s lowering your inhibitions.”
Jess scratches the collar scarring around his neck, concentrating very hard on getting his human
words in order. “Listen. You stupid, serious guy. Life is everything that happens to you. Minerals,
pollen, microplastics, drugs, not doing drugs, music, not listening to music, how much sugar is
inside you, it’s all life, it’s all flipping your variables, billions of little knobs, in ways you can’t
even understand. We’re made of all this ♥♥♥♥ and you don’t get to separate it all out and label it
and make your perfect Iran decision. So tell me to ♥♥♥♥ off and I’ll ♥♥♥♥ off, or—“
Iran kisses him, then goes prey still at how Jess’s teeth cover his like a rockslide, like Jess could
bite Iran’s mouth out like a scoop of ice cream, drooling so thickly that Iran has to swallow so he
doesn’t choke, and then shocking clicks of enamel like cracks in a frozen lake, but he’s not dead,
and he’s still not dead, and he’s still not dead, and now he’s alive, and someone cuts their
tongue, he’s not sure who, they’re burning up together, this guy on top of him with hair like he
was trapped in a closet for months, the guy trying not to chew his face off.