69. Are you satisfied?
This is not gentle. It is not soft. But it is real and it is happening: they are not the sort of people to kiss lightly, all lip and sweetness, every moment some saccharine promise of tomorrow. Their kisses have depth and bite, teeth clacking against each other, scraping skin. They are harsh and unyielding and neither one is willing to surrender because this is a war, which is the same thing as love, a crime of passion. Hawkeye has twenty-eight teeth and Roy knows the grooves of each one. There is a puncture wound above the bone of his right hip that has wept for nearly a week. It won't heal soon, if at all in a place like this, and only Hawkeye knows that secret. She does not coddle him because this is not a battle of give-and-take. There is no life free from pain.
They come together like waves in a storm, with increasing violence. They are the only true constants, battling a false North and this cannot go on, but it must, it will, and unceasingly it does.