Faint grey dawn light was filtering in through the shutters of the room's single window.
Jane and Gunther been sleeping face to face, sharing a pillow, and they woke at nearly the same time.
She opened her eyes first, but only by a few seconds. She'd barely had time to focus on him when he opened his own, slowly, drowsily. They settled on her face and then started to drift closed again, as though he'd only been assuring himself that she was still there before sinking back into sleep once more.
Then, suddenly, those incredible slate-grey eyes opened wide. She watched him come back into himself, watched him realize that she had come back into herself.
"H'lo." Her voice was a cracked whisper.
"Jane," he breathed. Shifting position slightly, he reached out and brushed her hair back from her forehead, pressing his palm to her skin, gauging her temperature. Then he cupped the side of her face, opened his mouth as if about to say more – but no words came, just a little, double-hitching gasp, and he slammed his eyes shut again, but not before Jane saw them fill, almost instantaneously, with tears.
It rocked her right down to her foundation. "Gunther –"
But she didn't have a chance to say any more than that, because in the next instant he was pulling her to him, crushing her to him, with desperate intensity – and burying his face in her hair, right at the place where her shoulder met her neck, and crying like a child. One who's been lost in the cold for far too long.
Her aching ribs protested fiercely – but Jane had a high tolerance for pain and it would have taken a lot more than that to compel her to break this contact.
So she wrapped her own arms around him and held him right back, stunned by the intensity of his sobs, feeling suddenly like she couldn't get him close enough, there needed to be more contact, total contact, contact along the entire length of their bodies. So she hooked a leg over his hip and used it to yank him against her even harder, frantic for that connection, thinking crazily, incoherently, we can stay like this forever – I am never going to let him go.
For his part, Gunther responded by tightening his arms around her still more, something that a few seconds ago she would not have thought possible. It was as if he were trying to somehow meld them into a single being.
They stayed that way for a very long time.
Finally Gunther pulled back a little. Only a very little, though. They were still practically forehead to forehead. His hand, which had been cupping the side of her face, moved just slightly to begin stroking her hair.
Jane moved one of her hands too, pressing it to his chest, suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to see if she could actually feel his heart beating. She could; it was pounding. And fast.
"I thought I had lost you." He spoke the words raggedly, in a voice that was little more than a croak. "I was so sure. I thought that would be my – that I would have to – because I deserved to lose you after what – Oh my God, Jane, oh God, I love you so much. Why did you – why did you do th–"
He broke off and swallowed hard; swallowed back a sob.
"You would have done the same," she whispered.
"Yes! God, yes! In a heartbeat! But that is because you deserve to be saved! You deserve it, but me!? I just… I just…"
This was not a sentence she could allow him to finish. She moved her hand again, sliding it around to the base of his neck, yanked his head forward, and kissed him.