Chapter 20
ELIAS
It took three months to cross the distance between "coffee tomorrow" and "here are the keys."
Three months of tentative, terrifying courtship.
We didn't jump back into where we left off in Barcelona.
We couldn't. Those people—Elder Price and Elder Vance—were gone, burned to ash in a disciplinary council room in Spain.
We were strangers with shared memories, circling each other warily in the Seattle rain.
Our coffee dates turned into walks around Green Lake, hands buried deep in our own pockets, maintaining a careful distance that had nothing to do with mission rules and everything to do with fear.
We were terrified of breaking the fragile thing growing between us.
We talked about safe things: art history, microeconomics, the weather.
We avoided the big things: God, families, the two years of silence.
But the gravity was still there. It was inevitable.
It broke on a Tuesday. Sam had come to my tiny studio apartment to help me stretch canvases for my capstone. It was late, raining hard, and the buses had stopped running.
"You should stay," I’d said, trying to sound casual while my heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "I have a couch."
Sam had looked at me, holding a staple gun in one hand, his hair dusted with gesso powder. He didn't look at the couch. He looked at my bed—a mattress on the floor in the corner.
"I don't want the couch," he’d said quietly.
That night, we didn't have sex. We just slept. Fully clothed, on top of the duvet, facing each other. We held hands like we were afraid the other would dissolve into smoke if we let go. It was the most intimate night of my life.
The next morning, Sam didn't leave. He made coffee. He sat in the corner and read while I painted. And slowly, over the next few weeks, his things started migrating into my space. A textbook on the desk. A toothbrush in the cup. A stack of sweatshirts that smelled like him instead of turpentine.
We didn't have a conversation about moving in. It just became a fact. One day, I came home to find him organizing my chaotic bookshelf by colour and subject, humming under his breath. He looked up, caught me staring, and shrugged. "It was driving me crazy," he said.
"You live here now, don't you?" I asked.
Sam smiled—a real, easy smile that reached his eyes. "Yeah. I think I do."
That was six months ago.
Now the scent of garlic and basil hung in the air, a warm cloud that clung to the canvas drop cloths and mingled with the sharper smells of turpentine and linseed oil.
Our apartment was chaos, a controlled explosion of our two lives colliding.
Sam’s economics texts sat in neat, intimidating stacks on a small desk a city planner would admire, while my own work was a beautiful disaster.
Canvases leaned against every wall, studies of the Seattle skyline and the grey wash of the Puget Sound sky tacked over cracks in the plaster.
A half-finished portrait of Sam, caught in the act of laughing at something I’d said, sat on my easel, the charcoal ghost of his smile waiting for colour.
I stirred the tomato sauce, the rhythmic scrape of the wooden spoon against the bottom of the pot a familiar, comforting sound.
On the couch, Sam had his feet kicked up on a pile of my old sweatshirts, a thick book resting on his chest. The late afternoon light, filtered through the drizzled-on windowpane, caught the gold in his hair and the sharp line of his jaw.
He was a composition I never tired of studying.
The furrow of concentration between his brows, the way his thumb traced the edge of a page, the relaxed slope of his shoulders.
He looked peaceful. He looked home. Two years ago, that peace was a costume he wore, stretched thin over a framework of panic.
Now, it was real. It was something we had built together, board by board, in this small, damp apartment.
I turned off the burner, wiped my hands on a paint-stained rag tucked into the waistband of my jeans, and walked over to him.
He didn't look up from his book, lost in whatever complex theory of market failure held his attention.
I knelt on the floor beside the couch. His feet were bare, long and elegant, the same feet I remembered from a lifetime ago. A different country. A different world.
I took one of his feet in my hands. The skin was cool. He startled, his eyes lifting from the page. A slow smile spread across his face, easing the thoughtful lines there.
"My feet are still sore from nearly two years in those cheap dress shoes," he said, his voice lazy and warm.
I laughed, rubbing my thumb into the high arch of his foot. I felt the tension there, a phantom ache from thousands of kilometres walked on unforgiving pavement, chasing a god who’d already turned his back. "You're lucky you had me there to, uh, ease the strain, at least for a while."
Sam raised a single, perfect eyebrow, a gesture that still sent a ridiculous jolt through my chest. "Is that what you call it? 'Easing the strain'?"
I grinned, my gaze flicking from his eyes down to his mouth and back again.
The memory was so clear, a forbidden snapshot in the dark of our Barcelona apartment.
The weight of his foot in my lap, the frantic beat of my heart, the sheer terror and rightness of it.
But there was no terror now. Only the soft rasp of his skin against my calloused fingers and the low hum of the fridge.
I trailed a finger from his heel up the sensitive line of his ankle, watching his breath catch.
"It's a very... hands-on... approach to healing. Or, you know. Not always hands."
His playful expression softened into something else.
Something darker, heavier. He closed his book, the soft thud of it landing on the floor breaking the quiet.
He was looking at me now. Really looking.
The banter fell away, leaving a heat that had nothing to do with the radiator and everything to do with the way his pupils had blown wide, swallowing the blue.
“Eli.”
My name. Just my name, but spoken with a wrecking-ball weight I remembered from a dark apartment in Spain.
I didn't kiss him. Not yet. I slid my hands up his calves, feeling the muscle tense under my palms, and hooked his legs over my shoulders. I leaned forward, burying my face in the curve of his neck, inhaling the scent of him—coffee and old paper and the salt of his skin.
"Bedroom," I murmured against his pulse point. "Now."
Sam didn't argue. He scrambled up, his movements losing their usual economic grace in favor of urgency. We stumbled into the bedroom, a tangle of limbs and hands, neither of us willing to break contact for the second it took to walk through the doorway.
The room was small, dominated by a mattress on the floor. It was our sanctuary. No white shirts hanging in the closet, no rulebook on the nightstand. Just us, and the grey Seattle light fading against the window.
Sam reached for me, his hands fumbling with the button of my jeans. "I need—" He cut himself off with a frustrated noise when the denim wouldn't give, yanking me closer until our hips collided.
"Patience," I teased, though my own hands were shaking as I pulled his shirt over his head.
“Screw patience,” he growled.
He shoved my jeans down, his hands hot on my skin, and we tumbled onto the mattress.
The impact knocked the wind out of me, but I didn't care.
Sam was on top of me, his mouth devouring mine, hungry and demanding.
This wasn't the tentative, terrified boy from Barcelona.
This was a man who knew exactly what he wanted and knew he was allowed to take it.
He kissed me like he was trying to breathe for both of us, his tongue sweeping into my mouth, tasting of coffee and desperation. I gripped his hips, grounding him, grounding myself.
"Sam," I gasped, breaking the kiss. "Wait."
I rolled us over, pinning him to the mattress. He looked up at me, his hair a golden mess against the pillow, his chest heaving. He was beautiful. Not statue-beautiful, not holy-beautiful. He was messy, human, carnal beautiful.
I sat back on my heels. I reached down and took his left foot in my hands.
Sam’s breath hitched. He watched me, his eyes darkening, his lips parting. He knew. He remembered.
"You like this," I said. It wasn't a question.
"Eli..."
I ran my thumb hard down the high arch of his foot, digging into the sensitive muscle. His hips bucked off the mattress, a sharp, involuntary jerk.
"You like that I know exactly where you're weak," I whispered. I lowered my head, my eyes locked on his, and licked a slow, wet stripe from his heel to his ankle bone.
He made a broken, strangled sound—a noise he would have bitten back in Barcelona, smothered into a pillow to keep the neighbours from hearing. Here, he let it rip. Loud. Uncensored.
"Please," he begged, his head thrown back, exposing the long line of his throat.
I didn't show mercy. I worshipped him. I took his toes into my mouth, teasing the sensitive webbing, using my tongue and teeth to unravel him from the bottom up.
He writhed beneath me, his hands twisting in the sheets, his gasps turning into ragged moans.
It was a reclaiming. I was taking the thing he used to hate about himself—this specific, "unnatural" desire—and turning it into a sacrament.
When I finally moved up his body, he was trembling, his skin flushed a deep, heated red. I didn't stop to kiss him. I reached for the lube on the nightstand—no longer hidden, sitting right next to his glasses case—and slicked my hand.
I didn't prep him slowly. He didn't need it. He was open, ready, practically vibrating with need. When I touched him, he pushed back against my hand, a desperate, demanding friction.
"Now," he gritted out. "Eli, please, now."
I positioned myself between his legs. I looked down at him. "Tell me what you want."
"You." He reached up, his fingers digging into my biceps. "I want you inside me."
I entered him in one smooth, heavy stroke.
Sam cried out—a sharp, loud yell that rang off the walls. He didn't muffle it. He didn't hide. He arched his back, taking every inch of me, his interior muscles clamping down tight and hot.
"God," I hissed, the sensation nearly sending me over the edge right then.
"Yes," Sam panted, wrapping his legs around my waist, locking his ankles. "Yes. Don't stop."
We moved. It wasn't a slow, loving dance this time. It was a collision. It was the kind of frantic, consuming heat that usually faded after the first few months of living together, but with us, it never seemed to dim. It was as if we were still trying to make up for every single day we’d lost, cramming a lifetime of touch into every hour.
The mattress slid against the floor with our movement, and I braced one hand against the wall to keep us from knocking into it entirely.
The rhythmic thud of my palm against the plaster would probably annoy the neighbours, and I didn't care. Let them hear. Let everyone hear.
Sam was a live wire beneath me. He met every thrust with a snarl of pleasure, his nails raking down my back.
He was fierce. He was alive. He was demanding everything I had, and I gave it to him.
I drove into him, harder, deeper, finding that spot inside him that made his eyes roll back, that made him forget everything but this.
"Eli! Eli!" He shouted my name like a victory.
I leaned down, grinding my hips against his, and kissed him messy and hard. He bit my lip, tasting copper, and the sharp sting of pain was the final straw.
"Sam," I groaned, my control snapping.
I let go. I hammered into him, fast and brutal, chasing the release. He was right there with me, his body convulsing, his hands gripping my hair, pulling me down.
He came with a shout, his body bowing tight as a drawn bowstring, spilling hot between our stomachs.
The sight of him undoing himself—so completely, so without shame—shattered me.
I emptied myself into him with a roar, my vision going white, my entire world narrowing down to the pulse of him around me.
I collapsed on top of him, my lungs burning, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. We lay there in the tangle of sweat-damp sheets, gasping for air, the smell of sex and musk heavy in the room.
For a long time, the only sound was our ragged breathing and the rain drumming against the window. It felt like we had just exorcised the last ghosts of that apartment in Barcelona, replacing the memory of fear with this—this absolute, undeniable ownership of each other.
Slowly, the world came back into focus. The desk. The easel. The life we’d built.
Sam shifted beneath me. I rolled off, pulling him into my side. He was limp, boneless, his skin slick with sweat. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot and wet against my skin.
"Okay?" I managed to wheeze.
I felt him smile against my throat. "Better than okay."
He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me. His hair was a disaster, his lips were swollen, and there was a new bruise forming on his collarbone where I’d been a little too enthusiastic. He looked wrecked. He looked magnificent.
"We're going to have to wash these sheets," he said, his voice raspy.
"We'll buy new ones."
He laughed, a real, bright sound that seemed to clear the last of the shadows from the corners of the room. He leaned down and kissed me, soft and sweet, a stark contrast to the violence of a moment ago.
"I love you," he whispered.
"I love you too."
He snuggled closer, his head finding the curve of my shoulder, his arm draped across my chest. He was home.
We both were. We were free, no longer shackled by the weight of shame or the fear of damnation.
The laughter, the tears, the stolen moments of joy and doubt had sculpted a love that was fierce and unyielding.
In the quiet of our small, cluttered bedroom, where every mark and colour on the walls echoed our journey, we lay surrounded by the dreams we dared to embrace.
Together, we had fought our way through the darkness and emerged into the light, and as we finally surrendered to the sweet embrace of sleep, I knew that this was only the beginning of everything we could be.