uncertainty spilling out

The sex stays slow.

There is no scramble for another load, no race to the edge. You kiss more than you thrust. When you do move it is small—a roll of your hips, a twitch of hers, the kind of friction that exists only because neither of you wants to be even an inch apart. Tired bodies do what they can. It is enough. Her mouth stays on yours. Your hands stay on her. The world outside the bed might as well not exist; for a while it does not feel cold, or large, or like something you have to face alone.

You do not last long. The week has taken its toll again, even on this gentler version of you. When you finish it is quiet, held deep, her arms around your neck and her breath shaking against your cheek. Neither of you reaches for more.

You turn her and pull her back into you, big spoon, trying to cover as much of her as the position allows. One of your hands settles low on her belly without a speech attached to it. You stroke there lightly, absent and certain at the same time, as if your body already voted. Sandra’s hand finds yours and stays, fingers fitting over your knuckles, holding the contact in place.

You lie like that until the kisses taper off into stillness. Her spine against your chest. Your mouth against her hair. The pack of pills still on the shelf, unburned, unopened, and suddenly irrelevant to the way you are holding her.

You catch it a little late.

The hitch in her breathing is not afterglow. Sandra is crying—quiet, messy, the kind that sneaks up when her brain comes back online after sex and she has nowhere left to hide. It is not sadness. You can feel that immediately. It is relief so big it has nowhere to go but out: she is not alone in how hard she feels this. She can want your seed, want the future she just named, and not have to treat it like a dirty secret she will be punished for.

You turn the adorable crying thing in your arms so her face can soak your chest instead of the pillow. She goes without a fight, curling in, fists lightly bunched in whatever part of you she can reach. You do not ask her to talk. The way you are holding each other is already doing that work. Her tears run warm across your skin. Your hand stays in her hair, the other still low on her back, keeping her together while she lets the intensity drain off.

It takes a while.

Watching her settle is like watching a younger version of her you have known forever: the girl who used to lock everything down until it spilled all at once, too much and too late and completely honest. You wait it out. When the sobs thin into shaky breaths, you kiss her hair and start pulling every blanket within reach over her, tucking her into a ridiculous nest until she is only a flushed face and a pair of wet lashes in a pile of fabric.

Then you get up.

“Water,”
you murmur. “You spent it all. I’m refilling you.”

Sandra makes a muffled protest into the blankets, a small unhappy sound at the sudden loss of your chest, hunched like a kitten that has been put down for one second too long.
“you could just refill me like always” She added shyly as you are about to turn the corner.

“Hah, ... no, you need water girl, i make it quick”
The house is quiet in a way that only happens after midnight.

You walk the familiar path toward the kitchen and the memories come whether you invite them or not. This hallway. That corner of the living room rug. The exact board that has always creaked. You and Sandra have been running through these rooms since you were small enough that the counters looked like cliffs. Hide and seek. Summer sleepovers. Two kids treating the place like it belonged to them because, in practice, it did.

You pass the living room and the old Wii is still there, shoved beside the newer consoles like a relative no one has the heart to throw out. Dust on the sensor bar. A remote with the rubber grip half peeled. Monster Hunter Tri was the first game you really played together. She always grabbed the biggest weapon she could on screen and refused to dodge on principle. You ended up on healing duty every hunt, shouting at her to move while she swung at something three times her size and laughed when it worked anyway.

Smash sits in the same pile of memory. Kirby. The way she beat you with him so consistently you started to hate the character on sight. Pink, floating, smug. She would look over from her side of the couch with that same grin she still has and say it was your fault for leaving yourself open.

The smile on your face is wide and a little stupid. Satisfied. The expression of someone talking about glory days that are not even that old, except they feel like they belong to a different life—one that somehow led here, to a glass of water and a girl crying happy in a nest of blankets down the hall.