There is so much that’s new, under her hands, and her eyes aren’t telling her much, fluttering shut, long blinks somehow held shut for a stretched moment, feeling the flush even in her eyelids as they meet the equal warmth and shudder in her eyes. Moments are being lost, memory flicking on and off. The moment where confusion was politely acknowledged with a friendly smile, pulling or drifting away, where was that, now that her hands were admitting the map of hard-crafted striations in his muscles? Where is she? Sitting on her couch, still. Sitting next to this man, still. Sitting, but now pressed to him, arms wrapped around each other. She can hear her breaths now, through her mouth, her mouth opened to breathe, and open for him. The damp of breath, the wet of their tongues. A trickle of sweat out of her armpit and rolling down to the press of cloth at her waist. Elements gathering. Air is uncertain. Is she still breathing, when her mouth was opened only to join his, even though slowly paced? She’s not aware of much below her. Is she still leaning on the back of the couch? The air supports her enough to yield slowly. Through the hum of blood in her ears, below the tick of the mantel clock and faint garden sounds, she can hear cloth shifting and brushing against the worn velvet of the couch. Still aligned perfectly with him she is leaning back, not falling or dropping, his body her only point of reference in space.