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Hard.

From the moment she first sees him, this is how she thinks of him.

Hard.

Hard eyes. Hard expression. She more than learns about his hard knuckles and hard boots. Like all of his kind, he has the hard points of his teeth and the hard ridges of his brow. This is the way nature intends him to be.

Hard.

With each further meeting, she finds there is plenty more of him that is hard. Hard cheekbones and tightly corded hard muscles behind hard punches. A hard ass that she feels through her own hard kicks, and hard words that he drives into her not-so hard heart. And if asked to describe his heart? That is easy. One word.

Hard.

Much, much later, she learns that he is hard everywhere, from the helmeted hair he so ruthlessly slicks back to even his hard damn toenails. He has hard kisses and a hard chest, hard abs and hard thighs, hard fingers and a hard grip. And most importantly, a hard cock. It is the hardest thing about him whenever she is near. And yet, by now, she also knows that single word will no longer do. If others were to ask how to describe him, she would still answer the same way.

Hard.

But she knows it is a lie. He has a hard shell that he presents to the world, and that is not the lie. He is hard, both on the inside and the outside. It is simply that he is not only hard. Mixed in with all the hardness, he is also…

Soft.

The first time she sees a part of him that is soft, she does not even realize it. She is engaged in her own brand of hard, threatening the life of the one he holds dear in order to save the lives of innocents, and he relents. It does not occur to her that in order for her ruse to have worked, his heart cannot be hard. At least, not hard like she has assumed. But it is many, many years before this understanding comes to her. Their whole relationship is been based on the immutable fact that he can only be described in one way.

Hard.

It is the sense of touch that first alerts her to the contradictions he holds. When they exchange hard blows and harder jibes, she feels the softness of the silk shirts he prefers under her fingers, the softness of the supple black leather gripped in her palm. To her, these sensations in no way dispel the ultimate reality of who he is. Soft wrapping does not change what lies beneath.

Hard.

When he is crying over his lost love, this is the moment she sees how soft he can be. It makes her sick. This softness is pathetic, a weakness. An aberration. She cannot properly hate him when her feelings are tinged with pity and disgust, and she prefers him the other way.

Hard.

Which is how he is when he returns the next time. The knuckles and the boots are as hard as she remembers, harder even, as are the words he drives into her under the bright sun. Her own heart has hardened over the years, but it is still not hard enough to withstand the brutality of his attack. Nevertheless, it drives her to be what she needs to be.

Hard.

So when he turns soft with his lips and his fingertips and his murmured endearments, and she does too, she cannot help but be surprised. Even after the spell is over, she remembers that softness, and fancies that she catches an occasional gleam in his eye that can only be described in one way.

Soft.

She sees it more over the months and years, and she does not understand it or like it. She knows what he is. Or what he is supposed to be. It was simple and easy, before, and now it is not. Not when it seems as though they have traded places, and she is the one who is hard, who has to be hard to survive. She kisses his torn lips at the same time that she hardens her heart to the injuries he has sustained for her sake. As she walks out of his crypt, she knows she has, just for a moment, reached into what should be his soul and touched it. It is not what she expects. Not hard at all.

Soft.

It throws her world out of order, and when she returns from her warm, peaceful, rest into this harsh, bright existence, she finds she wants his softness, to counteract how hard she herself feels. But like before, she does not understand, and while she wants it, it disgusts her, scares her, even as it draws her in. And although his kisses are hard and his fingers are hard and his body is hard, when she thinks of his lips or his touch, there is only one word.

Soft.

She finds more parts to describe as soft. His curls after a shower, both above and below. The line of skin that demarks the transition from the underside of his jaw to his neck. His earlobes. The space between the crack of his ass and heaviness of his sac. The inside of his cheek as she caresses it with her tongue. All of these.

Soft.

There is more beyond the physicality, but she doesn't think on it. She cannot think of him as soft, and she does not believe he would want her to, but she doesn't know, and the more she tries to lose herself in him, the harder it makes her. When things end, as they must?

Hard.

When he reacts in a way neither of them ever suspected he would be hard enough to do?

Hard.

When she discovers he has left, and then realizes he has returned, different?

Hard.

For the first time, she begins to understand there is so much more to him than hard or soft. She begins to accept the softness, and in turn, he teaches her to be soft again, even as she continues to be as hard as she needs to. When he leaves her in a blaze of glory, it is hard, but his softness remains behind, held tightly in her heart. Only she knows there are two words that describe him completely, and that they are opposites, and that she loves them both.

And because of him, she can choose which one she will be. Of course, she makes the choice that would have made him happy, because it is her at her best, just like him.

Hard and soft. Both.

Her flesh is beginning to experience the softness of age, even as his remains as hard as it always has been. As it always will be. She doesn't mind the contrast, because the contrast means that he is here, with her. He wasn't for a long time, too long, not until they learned to balance their hardness and their softness and fit together just so.

She has not found any new parts of him to label, not for a very long time. He is well known to her, both his hardness and his softness, as she is to him. They fight demons and they are hard; they love each other and they are soft; they fall into bed and they are both hard and soft. But most importantly, they are happy.

One night there is a demon, and it is harder than any she has ever known, harder even than she had thought himto be when she first met him, now decades ago. It is too hard for her soft flesh, and he dives in with his hard knuckles and hard boots, but even he is not hard enough. In a single moment he is gone, floating around her, and she realizes there is one last aspect of him she has not categorized.

Soft.

It is not meant to have happened this way, and she cannot be soft, not any part of her, not now. She takes all of his hardness into herself, and she kicks and punches and tears with a ferocity none of have ever seen, until all that is left is a big pile of soft demon parts at her feet. She moves then, to where the soft ash has drifted, and she lets go, her own overly-soft flesh collapsing into what would have been his soft caress.

As she fades, he is waiting, in that place where everything is warm and safe and at peace, and because he is already there she finally knows the true answer to how to describe him.

Soft.