Her hair wasn't like feathers.

It was more like silk, sliding across his fingertips. Her fingertips were cold to the touch, pressing insistently against his feverish neck. And her mouth, the mouth that created stories and worlds beyond imagination, was pressed harshly against his own.

For the life of him, Max couldn't remember how they had gotten here. It was the second time he had been able to visit Leslie since their tearful reunion; she had once again pressed about where he had gone after he fled Himmel and he had once again evaded her questions. She didn't need his nightmares added to her own. Instead of questioning him further or letting her eyes fall to the ground in defeat, she became furious. The word shaker's body shook with vexation, fury, and pent up frustration and she was yelling, her harsh words shaking the air. He was determined not to fight with her, to not raise his voice and match her harsh words. Her arms flew at him; his old fighting instinct caught her slim wrists in his calloused hands. She struggled to hit his chest and he struggled to calm her shaking soul and then…

He kissed her, pressed his lips so suddenly to hers that the pure shock of it stilled her instantly. Time was frozen, just his lips pressing against her unmoving ones. And then she was no longer still. She moved her lips against his, sliding her arms from his grasp and moving them around his neck. And it was everything Max wanted in that moment. He had loved her for so long, since her voice and words had pulled him from the darkness, had kept the fever from taking him. It had hurt him more to leave her than it had hurt to leave his mother, a fact which he had never stopped feeling guilty over. He whispered her name every night in his sleep as her face and words filled his dreams. When he had finally returned to Himmel, only to find that what once was heaven was now a pile of rubble, he felt a pain worse than anything Hitler himself could have inflicted upon him. And then when he had found her alive…

Now his hands slid to her small, defined waist and he was kissing her over and over again. When her hands slid into his hair, she smiled against his lips, pulling back just long enough to tell him that his hair was as soft as feathers.