Four AM, His Breathing

He breathes in. He breathes out. Slow and even, the way it only gets after midnight, when he is somewhere she can't follow.

She has been awake since four. The bungalow holds the specific silence of pre-dawn Los Angeles — no birds yet, no traffic, just the faint settling of old wood and the slow tide of his breath beside her. She has been lying still for twenty minutes, not because she planned to, but because the dream left her somewhere she didn't want to leave. His hands. The way they were in the dream — unhurried, certain, knowing exactly where. She had woken reaching and found only the sheet, cool against her palm.

That was twenty minutes ago.

The bullet is small in her hand. She'd taken it from the drawer without sound, without thought, the way you reach for water in the dark. She is on her back now, knees together, the thin cotton of her sleep shorts a single warm layer across her thighs. The waistband sits low on her hip. She is aware of the weight of the sheet over her, and of him three inches to her left, and of the small hard cylinder resting against the heel of her right hand.

She does not turn it on yet.

There is something she wants to do first, which is simply to be here — in the wanting, in the not-yet. The dream is still close. She can still feel the specific pressure of it, not his hands exactly but the idea of them, the version her sleeping mind constructed. She is aware of a warmth low in her stomach that has nothing to do with the room temperature, and of the way her thighs are pressed together with a small deliberateness she didn't decide on.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

She presses the button once. The hum is almost nothing — she has slept through louder — but in the silence it arrives like a second heartbeat, and she holds it against her palm for a moment just to feel it there. Then she moves her wrist, slowly, guiding the vibrator down through the loose waistband of the shorts, not rushing, her left hand flat and still against her own stomach.

The sound that comes out of her is less than a breath. Shorter than she meant. She closes her mouth and holds the next one in, and her thighs shift — not apart, not yet, just a small involuntary acknowledgment, the knees loosening their press against each other by a single degree.

This one is hers. She decided that in the dark before she reached for the drawer, and she is still deciding it now, one slow wrist movement at a time.

He breathes in. He breathes out. She listens, and builds, and does not wake him.