I looked at you, and you were pale alabaster with that black, black hair, and those blue eyes. The folds and hollows of your body, exposed to the overhead lights, were as beautiful and familiar to me as a favorite path that I could walk forever and never tire of.

I said nothing then, because you know your own beauty too well. You don't need another admirer of your good looks, you already have too many of them. All of this was what I thought of after we both fed the ardeur, the day after we'd both made love with Asher together. I hope you don't take the rest of what I say for granted, because I think if I'd said this the first time I thought it, you would have forgotten it too easily. Since it's all on paper now, maybe you won't ever doubt the way I feel about you.

I stared at you, and it wasn't the beauty of you that makes me love you, it is just - you. Ours is a love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, determination to keep the people that depended on us safe at almost any cost, and a certain knowledge that neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I loved you, Jean-Claude, all of you, because if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of your mind, it would lessen you, make you someone else.

I sat on the edge of the tub with my jeans and my jogging shoes soaking in the water, watching you laugh, watching your eyes bleed back to human, and I wanted you, not for sex, though that was in there, but for everything.

I love you, and I always will.

You seem to know nothing about me, Asher. You know nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. If you were scarred or broken, you would be my treasure still. Even in fury, you have a charm for me. I will always receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would have been if you were perfect. I should not shrink from you with disgust as others do: in your pain you should have no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing at your body, though it had no longer it’s past perfection.

What need have I of perfection? All I crave is love; all I crave is the touch of your skin to mine. We will stay with you as long as you welcome us because we love you.

Temperamental idiot. I love you, and I always will.

I am not temperamental.

Never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable! A mere reed you feel in my hand. I could bend you with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed you? Your eyes! I must consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of you, defying me, with more than courage - with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it - the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.

Conquerer I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to Heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit - with will and energy, and virtue and purity - that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: siezed against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence - you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance.