Coming Home.

Fingers folded gently over the precipice of the grayed paper. He had memorized the lines; committed them to memory, in fear that he would lose his only tether to her. The man imagined the silhouette of her face, the remnants discarded from his wistful dreams. He had seen so many faces, a multitude of different shades; all a replica of the original. The original was the one he loved, the one he wanted. The one that danced like ash throughout his memories, sliding through his fingertips whenever he grasped for her velvet skin.

He moved like a shadow. Each step longer than the next, each one more desperate. Cigar, usually stored within the clenches of his ivory teeth, was positioned safely in his pocket -- forgotten, for now. He pawed restlessly, boots clicking unevenly against the rough stones as they compacted under his touch, shaded optics searching nervously for familiarity. He was lost for only a moment (perhaps an hour, a day, a month), when suddenly he found her, and she found him.

He sought her, anxiety remedied by her presence. The previous perilousness that had boiled within his stomach, twisting and turning and churning him into a seemingly bottomless pitt (or the recesses of his mind, wondering where she could be, hidden underneath the makeup and her own obscurity) had faded into a murmured moan. Tumbled toward her, broken and desperate, the shade of a man empowered by his own desperate passion. He loved her, loved her, loved her; and perhaps if he murmured it enough, she would too.

Ivoried tendrils wandered from his bruised, battered sides to the curves of her arched, golden cheeks. He grasped them; rough enough that it would be enough to shake her into the present (to remind her that he was real  and they were not), but soft enough so that his touch would not spring purple flowers from her casket. Archetype brought his forehead to her own, perilously close. So close, in fact, that his breath was hot against her own, causing waves of guttural longing to 
shiver through his aching bones.

"You've been gone so long," the man murmured through lucid lips, dreary portals brought downward to avoid her own. It was, perhaps, that he didn't want to ruin the moment, retch it off it's insidious plans. Parted lips brushed over tender skin with a passionate remorse; filled with instead of lust,love, generic and pure in origin. It was finally that his arduous, worn portals brought to her own, and the emptiness returned. How long would he have her for now? A week? A day? An hour? The rarity of the situation was, that she was not his, but he was her's indefinitely.