One-shot

'To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.' (David Viscott, MD)

A slight shift in position on your side of the bed stirs me from sleep's clingy tendrils

And I awaken stiffly to find you softly smiling down at me.

'Regrets?' you ask.

As if!

Reaching out, I tentatively grasp a stray, wayward lock of your long, dark hair

That has fallen across your face, where a deeply-furrowed, questioning brow tries to hide.

Your normally harsh features are beautiful to me, the angular contours softened by

The tender embrace of the endearing early morning glow.

All around, the careless, rumpled sheets hold last night's moulding of memory -

The subtle evidence of our shared passion.

Indeed, the very air seems charged still with that special infusion of our combined union,

A tangible and aromatic cocktail invading our slowly awakening, sleep-dulled senses.

Fragments of remembrance flit around the perimeters of my embalmed mind ...

Images of heated skin on skin, fanned by flames of unleashed desire, soft words of love.

A sensory overload of mouths, bodies and minds meeting, that culminated in the sensual,

Rhythmic journey to bliss - our own taste of paradise, as practised and old as time itself.

'No regrets, Severus,' I confirm.

Slowly, reverently, you lower your face to mine and place a chaste kiss upon my lips,

Whispered with the momentary gentleness of delicate butterfly wings.

Suddenly, the raw edge of truth no longer cuts my dreams to ribbons

But instead offers the first note of a different music.

Away from the deep, dank depths of our unified darkness

We can now glimpse the shadows of where we will once again dance within The Light.

Our mutual loneliness is over ...

We have found each other at last.

Two souls entwined in the secret melody of lovers, whole once more,

The missing pieces of the jigsaw of our past forever joined in the eternal joy of

Our Newfound Love.

'To get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with.' (Mark Twain)

A/N: OK, I know this is very slushy (and it's still a little too early for Valentine's Day!) but this just seemed to come from nowhere and pour out of me the other day ... Maybe depression and long-term illness have their benefits (or not!) after all! :-)