I stumble as the guard pushes me into the dark cell.
I hear the clang of metal as the door slams behind me, a key turns, but as I turn to look I catch the last shimmer as the door vanishes leaving the wall smooth and unmarked.
Getting to my feet in the dark, my hands and knees stinging from the impact, my eyes slowly adjust. The room is only lit from the small amount of light coming through a high window, a storm is raging outside, the wind rattling the glass. Otherwise silence
Perhaps he's not here.
Then a pile of previously un-noticed clothes moves in the corner, he rolls over to face away from me.
He's taken his jacket off and folded it into a pillow, long black hair tumbles over it, he's wrapped in his dark green cloak. He's shaking. I can't see his face.
From nowhere a candle is burning next to him, on the floor.
I sit on the floor beside him, between him and the candle. The only light and warmth in the otherwise freezing cell. Listening to the storm outside. Listening to him breathing.
Rain beats against the window pane.
Shivering, I pull the nearest edge of the cloak across my legs. His hand takes a fold of the cloak, pulling it back over him, pulling my fingers with it. Wrapping me round him like a part of the blanket, like he hasn't noticed I'm there.
I gently move his hair, and put my head down on the edge of the folded jacket, wrapped under his cloak.
He's crying.
Maybe he's been crying silently to himself the whole time I've been here, even before the guards threw me in here.
I pull the blanket tightly round him, curling round the warmth of him in the ice cold room. Holding him tight. Something gives inside him. I hold him while he sobs, as though his heart would break from it.
There's no way to measure the passing of time.
He says nothing.
Gradually he quietens, his breathing slows, eventually I realise he's fallen asleep there, in my arms, under the cloak on the floor in the dark cell.
The candle goes out
I wake up, I hadn't realise I'd fallen asleep.
A shaft of sunlight is coming through the high window, catching the edging on the leather jacket under my head, falling on the green cloak.
I must've moved in my sleep, turned over. He's behind me now, curled round me, somehow his feet have tangled one of mine, he's lying on my hair. I'm pinned, If I move I'll wake him.
I can feel him through my clothes, pressed hard against the small of my back.
He shuffles in his sleep, his arm round me pulls me in tighter.
I realise he's awake.
How long has he been awake, wrapped round me like this.
I turn my head to look at him properly for the first time since I got here. He lifts his head. Sunlight moves in the curls of his sleep-crumpled hair, a lock of it falls across his face.
The sound of my own heartbeat seems to fill me head.
Despite his crying last night, his eyes are beautiful. Time stops as they meet my gaze.