Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

a snake was eating me."
    "Sounds like a bad trip."
    "Yeah."
    Sebastian pumped up the cuff. The scar looked old and was mostly faded into Daren's pale skin. He didn't ask what Daren was doing in any kind of malaria-prone area. He'd save that question for later, along with Who's trying to kill you? and What's your last name?
    "It's still low. Try to rest while those pills kick in. I'll be in the next room."
    Daren nodded, and his eyes fluttered shut. Sebastian tried not to freak out about the fever as he squirreled away the groceries. The options were either an infected internal injury that would be slowly killing him or an infected external injury that was probably in a dangerous and unpleasant place. He wasn't sure how he was going to get Daren to let him even look. Daren had trusted him so far, but he was also basically unconscious most of the time.
    Sebastian grabbed all the new cleaning supplies and headed for the bathroom to tackle the mildew and soap scum. If there was one thing his time in the military taught him, it was how to clean things until they sparkled. He let his mind wander as he scrubbed. It ran through scenarios concerning the real identity of Daren. It considered calling Agent Kim. It thought about knocking Daren out and just dropping him at an emergency room. He had handled plenty of serious injuries in bad situations, but it was always with the knowledge that reinforcements were on the way. The longest he had ever had to care for one person was seven hours, and that had been a very unusual case. Treating someone for days or weeks on end through serious, complication-prone injuries had been outside his pay grade.
    These thoughts all ran through his head as he scrubbed. It took nearly an hour, and he was sure he was about to asphyxiate on the bleach fumes, but his bathroom could pass inspection for the first time since he moved in. He set up the shower bench he'd bought and then headed back to the bedroom.
    Daren was still asleep. Sebastian didn't want to wake him. He looked relaxed, and the swelling in his face might have been going down a bit. He rolled the chair over and sat down by the bed. He put his fingers to Daren's forehead. There was some perspiration on it, but it felt like Daren might be cooling down.
    "Daren?" he whispered. "Daren." Daren's eyes pulled open. "Hey there. Me again. Feeling better?"
    "Little." Daren's voice was soft but rough, as if he'd been screaming.
    "Good." Sebastian drew a deep breath. "We need to talk about something. Think you can stay awake for a bit?" Daren nodded. "Good. You are running a fever, almost certainly because something is infected. I wasn't able to properly check you over last night. I just slapped some quick bandages on the worst I could see. I was too worried about you dying from shock or internal injuries. But you've gotten through the night and that's good. I can still take you to a proper doctor."
    Daren shook his head.
    "If not, I need to look you over properly. I need to clean and tend to every injury on you. Even the ones you'd rather I didn't."
    Daren froze up, and Sebastian could see the fear in his eyes.
    "I know you don't know me from Adam, but until you let me call someone, I'm all you've got. I don't want to see you die."
    "Why not?"
    Of all the responses Sebastian was preparing for, that was not one of them.
    "Because I don't like watching anyone die."
    Daren's lips pulled up. Sebastian was sure that it would be a sneer if half his face wasn't swollen. "Watched a lot of people die?"
    Sebastian resisted the urge to just get up and walk out, leave this dumb-ass kid to his fate. "My first year in the Navy, I was assigned to an aircraft carrier. And aircraft carriers are weird things. They're like small cities, and the guys who pilot the planes have balls of titanium. To land on one of those things means hitting a very small moving target with a smaller moving object going at full speed without crashing and burring. The pilots we had were the best, but even with the best, there are accidents. I was on deck when this jet came in. The weather wasn't great, and there was a gust of wind just as the wheels touched. The jet spun off sideways and crashed into some choppers that were parked on deck. Everything went up in flames. The fire crews and the medics all went running towards it. I was farther down the deck, and it's a big deck, but I went sprinting as well. I was maybe halfway there when I ran past some feet sticking out from behind some