Morning came differently in his house.
Quieter.
Not empty—but contained.
The kind of silence that didn’t need filling.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
I simply existed in it.
No schedules.
No notifications.
No structure demanding immediate response.
Just awareness.
And then—
Reality returned.
Not abruptly.
Not violently.
But with precision.
Because nothing about what had happened last night was separate from the world we operated in.
It was part of it now.
Integrated.
Irreversible.
⸻
Shawn was already awake.
Of course he was.
I found him in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, preparing coffee with the same efficiency he applied to everything else.
Measured.
Exact.
Unchanged.
If not for the shift between us—
He would have looked exactly the same as he did in the office.
Bu
