Her hands are ivory, clean linen, clearness in the face of dusk. She paints across his face as he sleeps, writing out dreams on his arms so he'll remember them as his own and wish to hold her once again.

XxX

She had seen a large man walking the streets of Paris the other day, and he's clear in her mind. His tattoos tell his story and she reads him like a book, flipping the crisp, unused pages with every step she takes. She used to pick old novels off of her grandmother's shelves in London, even after the disappointment of the first. Gone With the Wind. With every page she'd turned, another piece of golden paper had fallen out. The same for every one after it; she never finished those books. She only got ten or twenty pages into any of them before getting up and brushing off the dust and tape it had shed.

She needed a new book to read.

xXx

His hand is brushing against his chest, the way that it always does when he speaks in public. It's as if he's trying to find his heart and pour it out into his words. It must be buried deep.

XxX

His manner of speaking used to be so eluding; it's what had attracted her in the first place. Now, there's none of the original attraction. Every word seems like one that he lost years ago, and then picked back up when he tried to find something better; he's lying through his teeth, searching for a beat. It's biblical how layered his voice sounds in the August air.

xXx

She's hardly paying attention to him as he talks. She doesn't much, not anymore. She sees his eyes flit over the tattooed boy, though, and she can almost taste the delicious enlargement of his eyes.

He's finally found his heartbeat, then.


A/N: Oh, it's biblical how fucked my sleep can be . . . Really, guys, if you find anything I say offensive, do tell me. I'm not really in my own head lately . . . And I feel sorry for the bloke whose head I am in. A brief warning; I'm about to type up some major self pity to make myself feel better. You don't need to read it.

My dog just died five days ago. She was only five. And I just found out that my mum has cancer, and she has for a while. That was . . . a nice thing to find out after fifteen years. I'm in rather desperate need of summer.

On the bright side . . . I taught myself Spanish Romance on the guitar.

Disclaimer: I don't own. Summary words belong to Silverstein. Great band. Check them out. Title, per usual, is to My Chemical Romance.