The movie had ended somewhere around midnight, though neither of them could have said exactly when. What stayed lit was the menu screen, patient and pale blue, putting the same question to the dark room every couple of minutes: Are you still watching?
One blanket covered both their laps. Between them on the cushion sat a measured six inches of couch that neither of them had discussed and both of them were keeping — the kind of gap a person maintains on purpose, the way you hold your breath before saying something you've already decided to say.
The remote lay on the coffee table exactly where he'd left it after the last episode, near enough that either of them could have taken it without unfolding an arm. Neither did. Picking it up would have meant answering the screen honestly, and she wasn't ready to let a menu prompt decide what the rest of the night was for.
"You still watching?" he asked, tipping his chin at the glow, and she heard the second question riding inside the first before he'd even finished it.
"Depends what's on," she said, and didn't look at the television when she said it.
The prompt dimmed itself out, then came back brighter, counting down toward an autoplay neither of them would be in the room to notice.
His hand was the one that moved. Not toward the remote — across the gap, palm up on the middle cushion, an offer made in the plainest terms available and dressed as nothing at all.
She let it sit there through one more countdown before she covered it with her own. His fingers closed around hers and finished what the six inches of couch had been holding open.
The television asked its question again, dutiful, into a room that had stopped listening. Some other clock was keeping time now, and it was the only one either of them meant to answer to.