Grey Dawn, Drawer Slowly

He's still breathing the way he breathes when he's deep under — slow, a little uneven, the kind of rhythm that won't break for another hour. I know this rhythm. I've been awake inside it for twenty minutes already, lying on my back in the grey light, listening to the rain come off the mountains and drag itself across the window glass, and knowing.

The drawer opens two inches before it catches. I stop. He shifts — one shoulder rolling, one exhale longer than the others — and then settles back into the slow uneven pull of sleep. I wait. The rain fills the silence he leaves behind.

The silicone is cool when my hand closes around it. Cooler than I expect, even though I always expect it. The weight of it sits in my palm for a moment while I watch the ceiling, while I listen to him not wake.

This is not about him.

That's the part I needed to understand before I could be easy about it. He was enough last night — he was, I'm not telling myself that to be kind. What I want now is a different thing, a thing with no room for his wanting in it, a thing that belongs entirely to the six inches of space between my hip and the edge of the duvet where my right hand is resting and he cannot see.

The cotton of my shorts is thin enough that I can feel the warmth of my own thigh through it. That warmth has been there since before I opened the drawer. Since before I was fully awake, maybe. The body keeps its own schedule.

I shift, just slightly. The hem rides up and the cooler air finds the inside of my left knee, and the contrast — that small cold stripe against all that waiting heat — pulls a breath out of me that I catch before it becomes anything. I hold it in my chest, a knot of air, and let it out through my nose while he goes on sleeping.

His shoulder is two feet from mine. The warmth coming off him is different from my warmth — heavier, less urgent, the warmth of someone who has already had what he needs.

I have not yet had what I need.

My right hand moves from my hip to the flat of my stomach, then lower, resting on the outside of the cotton. Not moving. Just present. The weight of my own palm, the slight give of the fabric, the knowledge of what is underneath it — that knowledge is its own specific pressure, separate from touch, and I stay inside it for a long moment while the rain drags across the glass and he breathes his slow uneven breath beside me.

The silicone in my left hand is warming now. Almost ready.

I press my knees together once — a small, deliberate thing, feeling the resistance — and then I let them part, just slightly, just enough to feel the difference in the air between my thighs.

Just enough to know what comes next.