Sometimes, you just have to get up in the morning.
Even though it was cold, and he almost felt like an old man again the way his body protested to sitting up on the creaking bed. Shivering, he rubbed his hands over the smooth skin of his arms and walked over to the bathroom.
He washed his face in what felt like ice. He didn't look in the mirror. He didn't look out the window. The sun hadn't risen yet, and the pane was covered with a thick layer of frost. When he got back to the bed his toes were freezing and it was so cold.
She was warm, though, and he slid back under the blankets, but it was like trying to put the wrapping back on something you'd already undone or like trying to put an orange back into its peel; he didn't put his body next to hers to try to warm himself. The frigidity of him would wake her. He didn't want that to happen because he liked the way she looked when she slept, how it almost made the lines disappear and almost made him forget them. Something in him hoped that she forgot her lines, too (on her face and in different places), when she was sleeping- at least for a little while. Nothing lasts forever. Except for the red of her hair, which seemed perpetual, a constant rippling sea over the white pillow: she changed far less than he did.
Her breath came sharply. Her eyes opened suddenly and latched onto his. 'I was having a dream.' Lips parted softly, only a breath of a voice, raspy with the chill of the early day.
'What was it?' he said, voice stronger, lilting whiles hers wilted.
'We were on the porch of your house. I was old.' Oh, a nightmare: he didn't move to comfort her. He didn't know the horror she felt at growing old. A mere sigh escaped his mouth. There were tears in her lashes, he knew it, even though he didn't look at her because he couldn't understand.
'We were both... we were old together.'
Something in that clicks like a fine clock's cogs working as one and his hand moves closer to hers beneath the sheets, not touching. Even though he can feel the heat coming off her. He sits up, singularly, and stares across the room, and in the bathroom he can see the mirror. Twin ideas rise in him. As he watches his own image the dawn comes, filtered through the pale glass, painting itself on him. Each day is born, same as the rest, and it always passes in the same way, light dying into ancient darkness. The face reflected is his but it is not. He has never known anything else but maybe he should. This is normal. This is him. This is not how he feels.
And he lies back down while she whispers in his ear, but he wasn't listening and didn't hear. He just wished he could get back to sleep.