Dream of maybe waking up someday, and wanting you less than I do

She couldn’t take much more; she was close. Her hands shot out to clutch the bedpost, knuckles white from a grip tight enough to cling to stability as her lover drove her to tremors. Her chest heaved with haggard breaths, and the small pools of perspiration in the recesses of her clavicles sloshed as though actually being blown about by the woman’s squalls. She uttered a plea and cried out to an unspecified deity before all words escaped her and language gave way to moans. In the kitchen, warming water found itself equally close to climax, and it too broke the stillness of the air with hot and noisy breath. Accumulated condensation dripped down the ceramic pot as steam whistled louder. Rivulets of sweat streamed down quivering flesh as moans amplified in volume. The shrill screams of each pierced the air, each demanding relief, each threatening explosion, shattering the delicate fabric of morning’s dark and early hours. The culminating crescendo peaked, suspended in the ether like a clash of swords flash-frozen, and for a crippling moment the world paused. Then, she with less of a bang than a whimper, and it with more of a wheeze than a whoosh, the pair found release.

With satisfaction hanging heavily overhead, silence once more fell on their surroundings. Not in the same house, not in the same town, not in the same country or even continent, the two banshees shrugged off the residual shivers of suspense. Each slid to the side, the woman with a stiff and shaky arm pressing against the bulk of a man’s body, and the tea pot by the guidance of jittery hands belonging to a man yet to have his first cup of caffeine. And as they departed the heat of their respective burners, a simultaneous sigh marked the conclusion of their ordeals – one from the chafed lips of the woman in America striking up a match, and one from the chapped lips of the man in England pouring his tea. Isabelle and Maxwell. Izzie and Max. Husband and wife. Separated by more than just a distance of 3,000 miles. Their lives more in sync when apart than when together. Smoke trailed from her cigarette as she stared at the ceiling, and vapor wafted from his mug as he stared at the wall. And behind those blank gazes, in that moment which follows the storm - eerie in its sudden, sullen stillness - their thoughts were of each other.