Gant: The new season is definitely about relationships - what works and what doesn't. Family - what makes a family. Much less drugs - and Babylon-centric.

Paige: I'm hardly ever in Babylon these days. It's rare I ever shoot [on that set]. It's a little bit - and not because Dan and Ron are kowtowing to anyone - the season that the critics have all been asking for. You can't watch this third season and say, "Nobody's in a relationship!" Everybody is in a relationship!

Including your character, Emmett, and his best friend, Ted. Is the notion of gay male best friends becoming lovers a realistic one? Does it happen, in your opinion?

Paige: More than we think. If you actually ask people in long-term relationships how they met, half of them might say, "We met in a bar" or "at the baths," and the other half will tell you, "We were really good friends, and we woke up one day and said, ‘You're hot!’" My best friend only dates within my circle.

Have you done it yourself, though?

Paige: I'm addicted to chemistry - that spark that happens when you meet someone and you're in awe of how attracted you are to them. No, I've never dated one of my friends.

Ben and Michael are the only visible example of an HIV-positive-negative relationship on TV. Do you have a sense that you're exploring a taboo?

Gant: It's another level of discrimination. It's a phobia within the culture.

Paige: It runs both ways, I have to say. I know plenty of positive guys who won't date negative guys. The prejudices around positive-negative issues are just more ways we keep each other separate and alone and isolated.

Gant: It's about fear, and the greatest fear is fear of death. In no other situation is the contemplation of living and dying so intertwined with love and sex. And it's more of a taboo within our culture than anywhere else because of the devastation we've endured.