You said seven. The buzzer went at ten to six, and I was still dripping, one towel, hair not even close to dry.
I could have let you wait on the stairs. I never even considered it.
The buzzer that rang an hour too soon
I stood in the hallway with water running down my spine onto the floorboards and looked at the little screen by the door. You, in the stairwell light, jacket zipped to the chin, that look a man gets when he has rushed on purpose. Early is never an accident. I know the difference between a man who is early because he is polite and a man who is early because he couldn't stand the waiting.
I pressed the button. Then I walked back to the bathroom and left the door open behind me. Not a word, not a hint. I just put the choice on the floor between us and let you decide whether to pick it up.
I heard the front door, then your keys hitting the shelf, then a pause. You counted to five, I'd bet on it. I was already back at the mirror, in no hurry at all.
Steam on the mirror, you in the doorway
I wiped a clear stripe through the fog with the flat of my hand, so I could watch you arrive behind me. Towel low on my hips, one arm stretched up against the tile, the whole room warm and slow and smelling of cedar soap. You filled the doorway and forgot what you came in to say.
Then you started talking anyway. Something about the tram, something about a meeting that ended early. I let you finish. I like watching a man run out of sentences. It tells me exactly how much of him is left over for me.
I said your name once, quietly, and you stopped. That's all it takes. I have never needed to raise my voice.
What I do when you show up early
I don't hurry, and I don't apologise for the towel. I picked up my toothbrush like the evening had all the time in the world, and I made you stand there and take it. I watched you in the glass while your eyes went exactly where you had promised yourself they wouldn't.
When I was done, I turned and leaned back against the sink, arms crossed, water still gathering in the hollow of my collarbone. Come here, I said. Not loud. You crossed the tiles in two steps like you'd been waiting all week for permission.
I took the zip of your jacket between two fingers and pulled it down, slowly, all the way, and I felt your breathing lose its rhythm against my wrist. Funny. I'm the one who teaches breathing for a living.
The moment the calm turns deliberate
This is the part people misread. They hear quiet and they think soft. Quiet is only me having decided. Once I have decided, the asking is over. My hand went to the back of your neck, not gentle, not cruel, just sure, and your shoulders dropped like they'd been waiting to for weeks.
You tried to say something else. I turned your face to mine and told you to stop thinking, and you did. Forehead against forehead, my thumb along your jaw, the mirror fogging up again behind me because we were both a little warmer than the room had any right to be.
I didn't ask what you wanted. I could feel it in the way you leaned into my grip. I walked you backwards out of the bathroom, one slow step at a time, and I knew exactly which door I was walking you towards.
Down the hallway with the light still on
Wet footprints on the floorboards, your shoes abandoned somewhere near the coat hooks, my phone buzzing on the kitchen counter and nobody caring. The late sun came flat and orange down the corridor and turned everything it touched the colour of skin. You kept looking at me like you'd walked into the wrong flat and the right one at the same time.
At the bed I sat you down on the edge and stood over you for a while. Just long enough for you to feel it. Then I pushed you back into the sheets, harder than you expected and precisely as hard as you wanted. The grin you gave me told me I had read you correctly. I usually do.
What happened after that is where the towel stopped mattering, and where I stopped being the man who teaches slow breathing to a room full of strangers.
Ten past six, then seven, then nobody watching the clock
The clock said ten past six, and then it said seven, the hour you were supposed to ring my bell like a polite guest. Your phone lit up on the nightstand with a friend asking where you were. I reached over, turned it face down and let it buzz itself quiet.
The window went from orange to rose to a deep blue. The pipes ticked as the flat cooled down. Somewhere in the kitchen the tea I never drank went cold in its cup, and I didn't care, and neither did you.
Around nine you asked what would happen the next time you turned up early. I told you early is a habit I could get used to, and that next time I'd take even longer to open the door.
That part I keep off a public page. If you want more of me, unfiltered, the rest of the evening is waiting for you on OnlyFans.