I love him, and in loving him I learned that love wasn't what I thought it was. It's not the soft-strict affection I get from Mom, or the manipulative impulsiveness that Molly leaves scattered in her bedroom for me to trip over when I visit. No, with him love is words written in blood on the edge of a dagger; unsentimental and unadorned. Naked but for the subtext I'm free to read into and write over and paint on. Loving him is a bouquet of flowers tied with barbed wire, cutting with the sweetest fragrance and silken petals. I cry red tears of joy and wail in ecstatic grief.

Perched on the edge of the bed as I am, I long to touch what I know is warm, perfectly masculine skin. I'm too far away, however, and that's the point. His body is unreachable now, like his fractal soul is all the time. I used to want to grab that soul and put it back together, back when I thought love was hearts and flowers and cinnamon candles.

He'd like to say that he taught me otherwise; that it was him who showed me that romance is a myth, love a fallacy and all you can count on is yourself.

That's not what I learned from him. Love is real, it's just not pretty. It's leather and granite, cutting into my wrists and scraping my knees, leaving me bloody and bruised and sweaty. Romance? True romance is constancy; waking up covered in dried semen and not bothering to get annoyed by the itch, sharing--knowingly or not--pecadilloes like eating hamburgers upside down and loving Ayn Rand even though he knows full well her philosophy is immature and he doesn''t actually follow it although he pretends he does, massaging away the cramps in my drawing hand even as he ignores the fact that he bothered to notice my pain. I can count on him, and he knows it. It took too much pain and idiocy on both our parts for me to see that and I'm damned grateful he let me back in. As if I was ever really gone.

Before he taught me what love really is, I had this vision, sketched in ink and charcoal. Contrary to his ranting, it wasn't some hetero fantasy of a bungalow with a white picket fence, dog, children in tow. It was a fantasy, nonetheless, and like most fantasies it was contingent on me changing him to fit the picture I'd drawn.

My hand's damaged now, and my drawing will never be the same. Somewhere between ditching my consolation prize and crawling back onto his altar, I figured out what love is. Love isn't changing someone to suit you. Instead, it's changing yourself... not to be what someone else wants you to be--but to be what you yourself want to be. Love makes you want to shine, to glitter and glimmer in the sunlight, to glow in the moonlight and blend in with the shadows. I'm in love with him and that makes me want to change; not into a doormat who won't complain about his tricking and his emotional frigidity, but into a person who understands his pain management techniques and has the patience to wait for him to grow up--all without losing myself in him.

Will he change for me? I don't know; I certainly don't expect him to. I can't; it's not my place to ask him to do that. No one has that right, and my worst betrayal wasn't Ethan. It was demanding that he be someone he isn't. I won't make that mistake again.

He's stirring now, probably because he's finally missing the warmth of my body--the one thing that keeps his nightmares at bay. In this, I'm better than liquor, e, pot and tricking all put together. The perfect drug to smooth out the wrinkles on his forehead when the vindictive parts of his memory dredge up reminders of a childhood he'd sooner burn than remember...

So I'll join him in the moonlight, my alabaster a nice contrast to his honey, and we'll catch a few more hours of sleep before someone calls and demands His Royal Highness be present in the throne room. Sad King Brian, ruling a court of fools and syncophants. I mind, but not enough to say anything about it. I don't like it, but I love him and it's part of him and now that I've learned about love, I know that it's one of the warts I get to love along with the rest of him.

The moonlight doesn't warm me the way sunshine does, but the press of our bodies makes the chill meaningless.