The first time he sat with Faye was in his apartment in Blue Crow. They sat and talked and had a drink and he remembers in vivid detail how she looked all stretched out on his couch like some Hollywood starlet from a century and a half earlier... but there was nothing particularly seductive about her pose. At the time, she struck him as little more than a frightened girl trying to bluster her way through circumstances out of her control. When she asked him if he was a preacher, he's pretty sure he infused his no with about the most meaning he'd ever given to the word.

Things are so different now for both of them and honestly, he prefers it this way. It's not just because of the sex, although that's a perk he never expected to have again for as long as he... lived? was sentient? Whatever he is now -- he thought he was dead, he assumed he was dead -- whether he's alive, dead, or somewhere in between, he feels like he's been given such a gift. A second chance, the opportunity he always yearned for.

He just never thought the opportunity would present itself with Faye. Reaching across the table, he takes both her hands in his. It's an intimate gesture, a gesture of lovers. He just doesn't want to be not touching her because he spent enough years in solitude.

And then he pushes himself up from his seat, leans across the table, and kisses her like he can't stand not to for one more second, and he lets go of her hands in favor of pulling her closer, his fingertips tangling with her hair at the base of her neck. Eyes closed, he drinks her in: she's his sustenance emotionally, physically, and for the first time he thinks if he ever loses this, well... then it will be time to go. Then it will be time to embrace the abyss of death.

But not yet.