I don’t remember choosing, and that’s the mercy of it, that there’s no hinge-moment, no bright click of decision, only the room tilting and her already there, Sorcha-close, Sorcha-solid, the air bent around her like it’s been waiting its turn, and my body answers before my head gets a vote, traitor-body faithful-body doing what it’s always done best, saying yes early and often and without apology.

     She smells like sleep and smoke and that faint iron-tang of the city still clinging to skin, a leftover weather, and when she touches me it isn’t tentative, no testing of waters, no shy rehearsal, just contact, sure and warm and claiming, fingers at my wrist then sliding up, up, shoulder, throat, everywhere-at-once, and it lands heavy, full-stop, like punctuation after a night of run-on thoughts, and the room shrinks, and the city drops to a low bass hum behind the walls, a distant drumline I don’t need to follow anymore, and her mouth is close enough for words and refuses them, and I’m grateful, because language would only get in the way now, because the kiss comes hard and open and hungry, not pretty, not careful, but urgent, mouth-on-mouth like she’s pulling something loose in me, like she knows exactly where to press to make the whole structure sway, and I’m gone, fully, gladly, hands clumsy and certain all at once, jackets slipping away, fabric abandoning the argument, skin meeting skin with that first shock—too warm, too real, too much and somehow still short.

     Time loosens its grip, slides off the table, rolls away under the bed, and there’s movement now, rhythm finding rhythm, breath breaking and tangling, her weight, her strength, the way she doesn’t vanish into the moment but drives it, pulls me where she wants me, against the wall, then down, then closer still, heat building in waves that don’t ask permission and don’t wait their turn, and I register things in fragments—her breath at my ear, the scrape of skin, the press and release, the way my name almost happens and doesn’t, the way want curls low and tight and bright all at once, holy and filthy and utterly human.

     Somewhere a floorboard creaks, somewhere pipes murmur their old-song complaints, and the city listens and pretends not to, and there’s a stretch of time where everything narrows to sensation, where thought becomes a rumour, where the only grammar left is pulse and pressure and the soft violence of closeness, her hands steady and insistent, mine learning as they go, the two of us writing something temporary and undeniable across each other. It’s not tender exactly, but it’s not careless either—there’s attention in it, an awareness, a sense that this is being taken seriously even as it burns, and when it crests—when the moment breaks open and spills—there’s no triumph in it, no neat ending, just that stunned quiet afterward where the body lies to the mind and says this mattered, where laughter ghosts the edges and breath comes back slow, heavy, earned. I’m emptied and full at once, a contradiction I don’t bother trying to solve, sweat-cool and pulse-loud and briefly, wonderfully untheorised.

     She settles against me without asking, arm flung across my chest like a claim, like punctuation again, possessive even in sleep, and I let myself be held there, anchored to mattress and morning and whatever this is becoming, and her hair brushes my jaw, and her breathing evens out, and the world resumes its proper distance.

     The light has shifted, it’s less forgiving now, it sharpens corners, but I don’t move, I don’t test it yet, I let the aftertaste linger, let the quiet soak in, let the city wait its turn, because outside, Morningside wakes careful and proper, and kettles click on, and doors open with their polite restraint, but inside, the night stays, and I stay with it.