You keep your eyes on the ceiling and she keeps hers on you, and it works, more or less.

She is careful in a way that means she has thought about this. She asks before everything. She does not ask why you flinch.

YohHey. You're allowed to say stop.

You don't say stop. You put your hand in her hair and look at the ceiling and let your oldest friend be kind to you.

When she comes she makes a sound you have known for years and it is the wrongness that finally breaks, not the other way round.

Afterwards she holds on. You lie there working out whether what you just did was love or triage.