Hime's hair, sunlight spun in silk, is heavy in his hands as they thread on through, sliding the strands of her perfection through his all too human hands. He knows there are other things to touch, but he cannot bring himself to chance these things. As always, Hime is the daring one, soft and supple hands wandering, leaving electric patterns on his chest.

He wonders if she's feeling his heartbeat, loud as thunder and threatening to break his heart, a heart that can only and does only beat because of her.

For her.

He presses his lips against the pale, perfect ivory of her shoulder, the skin unmarred and downy, and murmurs a promise that it will never have even the slightest imperfection, the barest scar. Hime only smiles and works her hands farther south, as her lips trace a gentle run down the side of his neck, her hot breath tickling against the tiny hairs of it, her fangs tracing a groove down his neck that only she will know about, in one more way marking him as her own.

Hiro does not know why he met this woman, this perfect, unnatural woman who can kill with a smile and bears the weight of all out war against her own family on her shoulders.

He does know other things however. He knows that when she turns her heel after a battle and looks away, it's because she's feeling some deep melancholy that he cannot understand. That when she flips her hair, exposes the nape of her neck, and smiles at him, he cannot help but know that he will serve this woman forever.

He will never say it, of course, because that is not how this works. Hime is too perfect and too graceful and not human for murmured affections and promises of everlasting devotion and material tokens of admiration.

Hime does not need these things, and so Hiro gives her what she does need- a pillar, a protector, one to stand by her when the world stands its ground against her and denies her existence. He gives her his blood and his pain and even his death, all so that she can smile for another day.

And she in turn will give him this, these all too brief moments, stolen in dark moments where no one sees but them. Hime is not a human girl, and does not blush or stutter or confess. Hime is a creature of action, and it is only in action that she lets him know her heart.

Thank you is in a smile when he stands up to fight despite his fear, I trust you is in a touch given freely and fleetingly, I need you is in a glance in the heat of battle when she gives her life to his hands, I love you is in the pressing of her blood stained fingers against his mouth granting him the gift of living again.

Because that is how she is, how they are.