It is not in you to be affectionate, but these moods take him. You lay there in bed, the sun streaming in a waterfall through and around your loose curtains - the curtains that came with the apartment. The light runs in rivers down your legs and pools in stomach lakes; his kisses touch all of them, as if to turn them to holy water. Every touch is a shiver of skin. Your fingers slide over his head, down his neck, around his shoulders until you hold him close enough to feel his breath against your neck and with every inhale his chest presses down against yours.

He makes your heart swell with a hopeless joy.

---

You both wake up without an alarm, the sun and its influence on your body enough to draw your mind from that loving embrace of darkness and into instant wakefulness. You don't separate immediately when he looks up at you with a smile, having fallen asleep with his messy crown of black hair pressed against your chest. There might be an itchy stain of drool there, but it somehow only adds to the beauty of this moment. A beauty you don't often allow yourself.

So now you sit, warm liquid cupped between two hands, as he uses your hardly-functional balcony to go through the practiced motions of his morning routine. You watch the muscles pull and clench, sweat sliding off skin with the effort, his eyes closed in concentration. Every motion is permanent, as fixed as a statue, until he moves. Slow and perfectly alone, this dance.

When he is toweling off the first perspiration of the day he gives you a grin and a thumbs up that makes your heart jump awkwardly, like a love-struck teenager. How can you possibly be so in love with him?

It won't last forever. It's not meant to.

You will live here and now, with him.

---

Your mouth is open and hungry like a newborn chick's when he meets it, sliding and fitting in easily. Hands move up and slide off. Long and languid in your heat, you move slowly.

A thousand little caresses have passed between you two.

A hundred kisses.

And he owns your soul when he smiles that stupid grin and claps you on the shoulder, children watching. It floats and expands until you are both within its confines. Regardless, you tease him with a touch to the cheek that has him flustered and blushing. You contrive a wind to blow up some dust and leaves almost without thinking.

A hundred and one kisses.