Quartz in the Rough

They met in the greenhouse that night. Outside it was chilly, pavement slick with freezing rain, and his one live-in nurse had warned him to stay in. "Remember your condition," she rebuked, but she wasn't getting paid enough to enforce her advice.


The nurse, admonishing in her starched whites, didn't need to worry. Inside it was warm, tropically balmy, pent up searing air making the duo sweat like dew on freshly-watered roses. They slid against each other like slick soap, or courting fish, making love languorously, dreamily, breaking apart for intermission now and then like the night could prolong itself until the end of time. They couldn't stay apart for too long, though, irresistible in their fusion, like mercury droplets.


"Did you notice there weren't any purple roses?" Shiori looked up from where she was nestled against Ruka's chest, looking like a terribly little girl. "There's blue, and green, and even orange; but no purple." She pouted petulantly, endearingly.


"You're the purple rose." Ruka smiled down and petted Shiori's humid tresses, crowning her face in uncultivated disarray. "You're the rarest rose of all. You grow in the wild."