"Hey, Harv-uh-ee."

"Yeah, Cleave?"

His fingers, long, spidery, run through my hair. He rests his lips at a strand of auburn hair and nuzzles protectively like a purring cat. I feel overwhelmed when he rests a hand over my heart. There's nothing clear, here, it's a foggy haze.

I can't see clearly.

"Don't leave me, hah, toots?"

I sound far-off and my eyes slide closed. I nod, and exhale.

"Yeah."

XxXxXxXxXx

Safe is the only way to describe this. Secure, safe, warm. The Amazonian Goddess in a green sweater, an outfit the shade of holly-leaves, lies curled against the bathroom wall with me in her arms. I can't help but look up for a moment and catch a glimpse of her jaw. It's undefined though light, feminine in the finest respect. Her eyelashes are the same shiny red as her hair, and her eyebrows are little streaks of copper fire.

And I'm counting down the seconds until my infatuations with two separate people die down a little.

A blonde and a red-head. I guess I'm turned on by recessive traits.

Green-eyed and emerald-eyed, two distinctly different shades.

My cell phone is the first place my thoughts fly. The cell phone with his number. The cell phone that is my very last connection to him. If this battery gives out, if this breaks, my connection severs completely.

"You're warm," there's the slightest sense of a moan in her words, and she adjusts herself to wrap around me a little tighter. I push down the nauseous moment in my gut with extreme difficulty. There's a brief claustrophobia, but I demand it dies down. I have learned that you have to be afraid of things, but do them anyway. "Were you designed to be so unearthly comfortable, or is it a nifty talent of yours?"

I think, you really are a dork. No one says 'nifty'.

I love it when beautiful women are bigger geeks than you are. I feel so ugly next to her, but my nerd-factor is less. She can name the periodic table of elements from the recesses of her mind—I realize that I'm no better. I can quote whole chunks of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon and find me an excuse to figure out why where I feel most at home is with my cheek pressed to her breast and my hand entwined gently in her soft, wild hair.

"I-I'm no warmer than anybody else, last I checked, bu-but I guess it's good that you like the heat."

"He's not dead."

She mutters it, and it's muffled. She ducks her head into my hair and inhales, like the statement is a bitter, uneasy one for her to make. I push the dream I just had into the back of my mind (somehow, I knew, somehow….) and only nod.

I would be a completely unfair son of a bitch to go running back to him. I won't do it, besides, my paranoia for his health loses to my blatant fear of even being in his presence.

"I should have known so much better than to frighten you so distinctly. It was a foolishly vindictive move on my behalf. I allowed my intolerance for him to get the best of me, and in it I unjustly hurt you. For that, I apologize."

Her lips are ruby red when the drop unceremoniously to the tattoo on my neck. The tattoo that no one has ever before noticed; the tattoo that Cleave, Cleave who saw me completely naked didn't even see. It would be a blatant lie to say there isn't a brief swell of arrogant pride inside me when she touches at it. I feel too proud of myself to have someone care enough about me to even see my idiosyncrasies.

"The irony to that character is the fact that it can mean either warrior or pawn. It's an ideal representation, I should think. Combatant, champion, fighter, soldier, warrior, or, perhaps most fitting, 'one who fights'. What do you fight for, Miss Quinn?"

She peppers a delicious little line of tender affections down to my collarbone, still lazily thrown around me like a boa constrictor. My head swims for a few seconds, first in panic and next in pleasure, then I tilt my head to get a look as close to her eyes as I can.

"Survival w-would be corny and untrue, and love would be cliché and even more a li-lie. You could say I fight because it's all I have to do." All I have to do out of what? Boredom? Tedium? Existence? "Quinn isn't m-my last name."

And it's a name I never want to use again.

"You wouldn't adopt it, even for the charm?" She ceases the action and lets her forehead burrow into the back of my head. Too overwhelmed by relief mixed with fatigue, I shake my head and will myself not to argue.

"I shouldn't have anything that close to charming. I'm not the charming type."

"I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

She wasn't kidding about the Japanese fixation. Her bathroom smells like Cherry Blossoms even after I yakked for a good five minutes and I squint to see the little Bonsai tree that lies pathetically beside the finely-furnished sink. The towels are ornamented in the fashions of traditional scrolls, but I note the weird, Japanese character (See: Kanji. See also: My stupidity) is repeated over and over in the fluffy, tan terrycloth.

"What's it mean?"

She unravels a little from me, taken like a silky, green ribbon on the wind, and her interest floats over to where my eyes are fixed. Her lips purse, like she's thinking, and when they relax I find myself wondering dizzily if her lipstick is ruby red or her cherry lips are. I need to see if she left imprints.

"It can actually mean either flower or wild rose. Which is also intriguing—" this is another lesson, I feel it, "—because flowers are associated with domestication and homely comfort, whereas wild roses are linked commonly with the feeling of freedom or indiscipline. Wild roses are usually thought of in more vibrant color. Anything wild is automatically more exotic to the human mind. It's just like every person—everyone's a rose, but, by the same token, their thorns can make them deadly."

Her analogy flies on elaborately shaded wings right over my little head.

Thorns are deadly. So far, we're on the same page.

"Have you never philosophically considered it in such a way, Harvey-flower?"

Harvey-flower is the fondest statement that makes my tummy do a hilarious pancake-flip. I close my eyes again and remember just what it's like to feel like you don't have to impress someone. Like you can make them feel fucking diddly just by being there.

You are calm and reposed, let your beauty unfold, pale white like the skin stretched over your bones, spring keeps you ever close… you are second-hand smoke, you are so fragile and thin, standing trial for your sins…

I look around for my iPod, but the thing is nowhere in sight. When I search around, I catch a look at something on the white tiles.

It's an iPod Nano, it seems, the color a bright, scarlet red and the screen glows a soft white. The headphones are uncoiled and spread clumsily across the floor. The sound against them makes them jump around like silly little animals, the vibrations sending them hopping in weak little springs to drop back down.

Holding onto yourself the best you can… you are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins…

"You are the smell before rain," I echo, humming to myself, enraptured, "You are the blood in my veins…that's some be-beautiful stuff."

"You've got a heart," She murmurs, and strangely enough this déjà vu sends off white-hot flashes behind my eyes. She kisses at my jaw line before replacing her body with the wall, and leaving me cold and dumbfounded and shakily confused. How did she know he told me I didn't have a heart? "It simply takes a bit of patience and the proper coaxing to thaw it out of hiding."

Her iPod seals my deal.

I never fight the power of music.