There was a war inside his body when she touched him over and over again. In his head.

Chiko lost to both of them.

How does the monster her parents warned her about when she was little little end up in her bed?

Now that he's not dying, he seems to just realize what they just did, because he rolls off her like she burns him and grabs his clothes.

"You don't get to leave," Patch snaps, sitting up and hugging the covers to her chest. "You don't get to just leave after that."

"Fine." Chiko turns around to face her, his face blank and still sweaty, his lips bruised and swollen. God. "What?"

Patch searches his eyes and finds nothing in them but anger. She hugs herself. "Why didn't you tell me you were dying," she whispers, and it sounds so fucking loud in her room.

"What good would that would've done? You left."

"You made me leave." Patch grits her teeth. "And I told David you can come find me, I was only home for a week."

"Yes, well, I was already dying two days after you left. I thought it might as well do us both good if I made it to the finish line."

She stares at him. "Two days after?"

Chiko's jaw tics.

Patch's eyebrows furrow. "You...Dyers need daily physical contact with their person to live?"

Chiko doesn't answer.

Patch's hands fall to her sides.

She thought...she thought he just wanted touch. Just craved it after being deprived of it. She thought he just wanted to have his hand held at night, that he just liked the sensation of being able to finally touch someone without killing them.

Chiko doesn't just want it. He needs it.

"Why didn't you call me back?" Patch demands, feeling white-hot tears prick at the back of her eyes once more. "Ordered Ricci to come after me? Why didn't you—"

He only stares at her, and Patch inhales sharply.

He wanted to die.

"You despise me so much that you'd rather die than touch me," she whispers, her tears finally rolling down.

"What we just did?" Chiko finally says, voice low and raspy and angry—"You said it was your choice, but you're fucking wrong. You have no choice in this, Isolde. I'm tying you down to me, I need your fucking hands and mouth and skin to fucking live, you're the only one I can touch and I die when I don't get my daily fucking dose of opium—"

"And you loathe that," Patch chokes out, swallowing thickly. "You loathe that it's me—"

Chiko growls, frustration clawing at his chest, and he shoves the blankets aside and crawls over her. "I would tear my own eyes out if I could for even looking at you. I would cut off my hands for even daring to touch you. Loathe that it's you? Isolde, I loathe that it's me, a fucking Dyer, a monster, chained to you."

Her breath stutters against her lips when she exhales, staring into his eyes.

He's telling the truth.

Is that...is that why he wishes he never found her? So he doesn't chain her to him?

Patch feels her chest crack. "You're not a monster."

The corner of his lips twitches. "Maybe I'm just good at playing human."

Her heart shatters.

Patch's shaking hand reaches up, and on instinct, Chiko turns his face away, shutting his eyes, eyebrows furrowed, and his hand on the sheet fists.

She touches his face and whispers, "Stop trying to fight me, Chiko. I'm here, I'm your person, you can touch—"

"I can't touch our kids," he says flatly, pushing her hand away. "I can't hug your parents when I meet them, or shake the hands of your fucking friends. Go to bars and beaches, walk to the park holding hands. I can't sit in a movie house with you, I can't go to restaurants or cafes or dates or parties. I can't."

Patch is...oh, God. A sob almost wracks its way out of her chest. "You...even parents? And kids? You can't even touch Myc? Another Dyer? Any other Dyer?"

He looks at her. She gets her answer.

Chiko Dyer is deadly—to everyone except her.

Chiko can't hug his sister. Wasn't—can't be touched by his parents. He's been alone his whole fucking life.

Isolated from the second he was born.

"You are," he says, teeth baring, like he's disgusted with himself to even say it, "my only person."

It's so loud.

His voice, the truth in it...it bounces off the walls. Echoes.

"A Dyer's person..." Chiko swallows thickly, and he turns away from her, looking down at his hands, his back hunched over. "They enjoy that power at first. Having control over us—knowing we can't touch anyone else and that we depend on them for love, for care, affection, a fucking handhold, for oxygen. And then they get sick of it, suffocated from the weight of the pressure that we need them to live, from being tied down to someone like us."

Chained. "Is that..." Patch pushes down her fear. "Is that what happened to your parents?"

Chiko still doesn't look at her. "She couldn't hold us. Couldn't touch us. She blamed my father, so she drowned herself. And then he followed not even a day later."

The Dyer line...every Dyer person must have met the same fate.

Chiko and Myc don't have family. They're the only Dyers left.

He finally turns his head ever so slowly, and Patch almost breaks at his face. "I don't want to do that to you. I don't fucking want to do this to our kids. I don't want to pull them back with a fucking rope when they're about to touch someone while playing, I don't want to isolate them in this fucking manor for decades. I don't want them to live with the guilt of killing someone."

Patch's lips part.

Chiko waits, waits for something to show in her face, eyes roaming all over her—

Chiko's touch killed someone. Someones.

"I burned our previous manor down," he says, still staring at her. "I locked Myc and I in. I wanted to end the Dyer line. I ordered David to kill her when I died."

Patch stares at him.

"I can't find it," he growls, and the bedsheets rumple as he fists them again, his fingers shaking, and he leans closer, breath fanning her face to look at her—

"Can't find what?" Patch whispers.

"The fear on your face. Eyes." He growls in frustration again, sneering, like he's begging to find it—"Show it to me, fucking show me—"

"I'm not scared of you," Patch whispers, and it's the truth, and she touches his face and strokes his skin, and Chiko shuts his eyes and makes a sound of pain in his throat. "You were alone your whole life, Chiko. You don't want to hurt anyone. You never wanted to." She presses their foreheads together and breathes in. Breathes him in. "But now you have me. You can't hurt me—you need me. Like a drug."

"Yes." The laugh that comes out of his mouth is humorless. "Like a fucking drug."

He kisses her, and she feels metal on her wrists.

The chain.

Patch doesn't struggle.