inexorable.

We’ve slipped easily into the comfort of the years, aided both by how many there have been and the distance between tonight and the last time we were together. It’s easy- we’ve always been easy- and before it ever occurred to me to count, hours have slipped by.

It’s late- too late- but we were once nocturnal creatures, most ourselves in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn. I have no idea what we’re talking about. We’ve traveled a thousand different roads by this point in the conversation. But I feel the moment we change directions. It’s uncharted territory for us, but for some reason it doesn’t feel foreign. It was a journey, but wasn’t it always inevitable we’d end up here?

I think I’m making sense. But I’m not entirely sure. My words feel thick and heavy, and I’m slowly losing my thoughts. I’m trying to think through the craving. I’m failing.

I blink a second too long and he’s covered the space between us. His hands are on my face, tilting it up towards him. He’s never looked at me the way he is now, and yet it, too, is familiar. Intimate. Urgent. All these years later and there still isn’t a face he’s made that I haven’t seen, even when I haven’t.

We don’t bother with a timid first kiss. There’s no need. We’re past that, beyond needing to get to know each other or feel each other out. We slink into an easy rhythm. We’ve never danced this terpsichore before, but the choreography is solely ours. We move together easily, effortlessly. It never occurs to me to hold back.

I wonder how long it’s been since I’d kissed someone, and it actually meant something.

And that’s the last thought I remember having.

Hours later we’ve greeted the opening strains of the sunrise, our coda performed. I am in that warm drift between waking and sleeping, not wanting to fall asleep but losing the fight.

“Babe,” he says, and I smile at the way it holds both familiar chords and new melodies I don’t know I ever believed I’d hear from his lips. I slip into sleep with a soft smile on my face, our adagio fading but still playing under my skin.