When John broke contact, Harlow pulled his hands away from the bars, bringing his arms down to cross over his stomach instead. It was all he could do once that connection was broken, feeling the loss of it just as powerfully as he felt the relief. It seemed as if John was always making him feel things in extreme polar opposites, all at once and all profoundly intense. Sometimes he wondered if it would cause some kind of brain damage to have so much emotion all shoved up in his head at once. Sometimes he wished it would, but there was no relief.
Harlow hated that statement out of John's lips. At the time, the fire had seemed like the only choice. He wasn't going to leave those terrible things to keep feasting on the people he loved, wasn't going to risk any of them rising and becoming perversions of themselves. Couldn't stand the thought of leaving John's remains-- wherever they were-- to rot out smeared across the floor of a discount grocery store. It was the best he could do to give his friends something like a burial, and he had hoped it would kill the zombies who had taken everything away from him. But then, in retrospect, knowing John was still alive... he knew what it looked like. It looked like he had given up on it all, set fire to it and left everyone behind. He felt foolish, and nothing infuriated him more than to feel like a fool.
"They're talking about killing you," Harlow told John stiffly, refusing to respond to his revelation about the fire. "Probably would have already if I wasn't so good at making a scene."