It's dark.

It's cold.

It's warm in her hands, however, as her fingers wrap around mine, pulsing with spirit and the glowing sparks running through her skin.

It's dark, cold, three in the morning, and I am being pulled along, through the gentle silence of the city streets, by the person I love the most.

She turns back to me as she runs, her well-worn shoes tapping a rhythm against cool asphalt. Her eyes are beautiful, catching the slightest hint of light from the clouds and reflecting the alluring - breathtaking, heartwarming, spellbinding, every single one - mischief behind her pupils.

"Where do you think we're headed for?" she whispers against the wind that brushes past my ears.

I smile.

"I don't know, but I trust you to not lead me to a ditch and dump me there."

She turns around and throws back her head in a shout of laughter.

"Like I'd ever do that," she says, tilting her face back to reveal the smirk on her face. "I love you too much to dump you anywhere."

I cannot help but return the grin.

There is a comfortable silence that follows, lingering, but not cloying. Her hair sways in the currents; much like the soft roll of waves lapping into the shore, wanting more - more, to find its way into the embrace of the city and curl itself into its kiss.

Even if it's been told its entire life it's meant for just the shore, and the shore alone.

We stop at the top of a hill.

"Wow," I breathe, feeling the glitter of the city lights seeping into my skin. She really knows where the most beautiful parts of the city are.

"Cool, huh?" she says and steps next to me, fingers still tangled in mine.

We stay like this for a bit.

"You know, my mum was fooling around a bit yesterday." By yesterday, she means a few hours ago, when we were still in our homes, eating warm dinners and watching television with the family. "She gave me a little talk, you know how mothers are like."

I know too well. She's lucky to have accepting parents. Even if they still think a bit in the old-fashioned way.

"So, she was telling me about how she's fine with me dating girls like you, but, y'know, she also told me that I should really open up my perspective and see if I liked any other people."

She lifts her foot and nudges a stone.

"Which means, basically, she wants me to rethink what I see my relationships as."

The stone is kicked off the hill, and we watch it tumble into the quiet night of the city.

She turns to me, the light in her eyes seemingly no longer as bright. "Then I was thinking," she tells me, "why is there a label for everything?

"Why must people stick labels on each other just to show how much we care for each other? Each relationship is just about caring for each other, so why does everyone need to make it so complicated?

"Labels are placed on everything. Personality, likes, dislikes, interests, sexuality, relationships. If one person cares about the other, so be it. It isn't a crush, nor is a phase. If they don't care for each other, so be it. It isn't hatred, breaking up, or indifference.

"So what if we're boyfriend and girlfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend, girlfriend and genderqueer, or boyfriend and genderqueer?

"Feelings and sexuality aren't meant to have labels stuck on them. They're meant to be something honest, something true and pure, untainted and beautiful."

She lets go of my hand to step into the light of the city, staring into the glow like it might just envelope her and pull her in.

"Like the marks that stickers that are peeled off leave after being left on a surface, labels leave an ugly stain on those feelings and identity. The care and trust is now tainted. There is uncertainty in its beauty."

She turns back to me. I catch the glint of tears on her face; they are reaching for her chin, reaching for the ground, dragging themselves into the pull of gravity.

"So why must there be a label for every single thing? Why must there be labels for feelings, relationships, identities?"

The truth is like a little blade, slicing through layers of tissue to find the heart, and when it does, it digs into the pulsing muscle, staining it with the pain of the flesh it has already cut into.

I lift a hand and wrap it around her cheek, brushing away the traces of tears in her eyes.

"Such is life, Marlene," I whisper. "We cannot avoid having labels stuck on us, and no matter how much we struggle, we can't get it off.

"But what people see of us is just our packaging, Marlene - we are presents wrapped in paper; it is not the wrap that defines us, Marlene, it is what we understand we are on the inside.

"We could be a box of toy bricks on the inside, but if we are wrapped on the outside with delicate, fancy tissue, people assume that we are a box containing precious porcelain dishes. We know fully well, however, what we truly are on the inside.

"So does it really matter, Marlene, does it really matter what those labels are, as long as we know we care for each other, as long as we know who we really are?"

She looks at me, dazed for a second, before her eyes shift to accommodate the light cast on them.

"You're right," she sniffs. She buries her face into my chest and I hold her tight, breathing in each other's scent. "You're right - we don't need to care, as long as we know we love each other. You do, right?"

"I do, I do love you, you must know that."

I feel her smile against the cotton of my sweater.

"I do, too."