Wanting something you can't have.

Sometimes Rome had nightmares. They wasn't all that often, and mostly he could drown them in Miami's streets and the heat and the noise of the city that never quit.

Sometimes they lingered, made him twitchy, restless, wandering out to the porch at three in the damn morning and thinking of shit he'd rather forget. The set of Brian's mouth when he'd said he was going pig. The sound of his own voice telling him not ever to come back. What it had felt like to hate him, to need him so goddamn *much* and know he wasn't gonna be there -- right then, he'd have given up his pretty, shiny car to have Brian back.

When he'd been arrested, bruised and tasting blood from resisting it, he'd been glad. Laughing in holding, shaking with it, because if *this* didn't bring Brian back, nothing ever would, and at least Rome would know where he stood.

He hadn't quite believed he'd really lost the punk until Brian hadn't come.