#eli hewson

Too close, maybe. His leg pressed lightly against yours, neither of you shifting away. The weed had hit (so did the whiskey), mellow and heavy, and your whole body felt like it was floating. But your mind — your mind was doing somersaults.

You could smell him. That same cedarwood-after-smoke scent he always carried, always just barely there. And you shouldn't notice that, shouldn't care. But the warmth pooling low in your stomach said otherwise.

"You're quiet," Elijah said suddenly, voice low like a secret.

You glanced at him. His eyes were red-rimmed and a little glassy, his curls a mess from when he kept running his hands through them. He looked unfairly good. Not even in a rockstar way — just...him. Familiar and infuriating and heartbreakingly safe.

"Just thinking," you said, blinking up at the stars like they could save you from the daydream you were slipping into.

"About?"

You should've lied. You should've said something dumb — the stars, Lucy's nonsense, or how Josh still couldn't roll a proper joint. But you were too high for that kind of finesse.

"You."

He tilted his head, his expression unreadable in the low light. "Yeah?"

You gave a half-shrug, suddenly feeling exposed. "Dunno. Just...It's weird, isn't it? How we've all known each other forever, but sometimes I look at you and it feels like I'm seeing you for the first time."

He didn't answer right away. He just stared, eyes dropping to your mouth for half a second too long, before flicking back up to your eyes.

The air thickened. Like summer heat before a thunderstorm.

"Eli," you said, voice soft, guilty even. "I probably shouldn't say any more."

"Probably not," he agreed.

Neither of you moved.

The laughter in the background faded to a blur, the music distant. Everything felt underwater. Too slow. Too much.

You imagined his hands. On your hips. On your neck. Tangled in your hair. You imagined saying fuck it and kissing him, right there, while everyone else was too stoned to care. You imagined him pulling you into his lap and whispering the things you wanted to hear but could never ask for.

You looked away,

"God," you muttered under your breath. "I need water or I'm going to say something really fucking stupid."

Elijah laughed. Quiet, low, raspy.

"I'd probably say something worse."

Your gaze snapped back to his, and this time you didn't look away.

There was something unspoken hanging there — thick, heavy, humid — suspended in the summer air and the smoke curling lazily around the two of you.

He leaned in just a little, breath brushing your ear as he whispered, "Tell me later."

Your heart stuttered.

And maybe it was the weed. Maybe it was the years of almosts. Maybe it was everything finally catching up with you.

But in that moment, your daydreams didn't feel so far from reach anymore.

—————————————————

The night had slipped into that dangerous kind of blur — too many joints lit at once, whiskey glasses way too full, everyone too relaxed, too loud, too far gone.

Caoimhe was giggling at something Josh had muttered under his breath, their shoulders pressed against yours like bookends holding you up. But across the fire, Elijah hadn't laughed in minutes.

His eyes were on you. Still.

It was relentless. His stare wasn't subtle, wasn't gentle. It burned. Possessive. Heavy. The kind of look that sank into your skin and didn't let go. He didn't care who saw it. His glass was low in his hand, fingers loose, his star ring catching the firelight — and still, all his attention was on you.

You shifted under it, tried to laugh at something Rob said, tried to focus on Martha gripping Rob's arm while she stared at him like he hung the moon just for her. But it was like Elijah's gaze was pulling at the hem of your linen button up shirt, trailing down the slope of your shoulder, setting fire to the inside of your throat.

You couldn't take it anymore.

"I—uh—water. Need some water," you said, voice too sharp, too fast. You were on your feet before anyone could respond, your steps uneven as you practically bolted into your house.

The kitchen lights were too bright. The cold water from the tap hit your glass in a hiss, and you drank it like it might save you. But it didn't. You slammed the glass down harder than you mean to, chest rising and falling like you'd run a marathon.

Head in your hands. Elbows digging into the marble counter. You squeezed your eyes shut.

"Get a grip," you whispered to yourself. "He's your friend. He's always been your friend. Just your friend."

But your body didn't feel like it got the memo. It was still humming, charged. And your mind — your mind was deeper in the gutter, imagining things that you couldn't un-imagine.

The sliding backdoor squeaked.

You didn't need to look up to know who it was.

He didn't say anything at first. Just walked in and shut the door behind him like it was nothing. Like you weren't about to combust.

When you finally looked up, he was leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of his black jeans, curls messy, whiskey eyes locked on yours.

"You alright?" he asked. But he knew the answer. You could see it in his stupid, knowing smirk.

You let out a humourless laugh, still breathless. "Not really, no."

He pushed off the wall and walked toward you, slow like he was giving you a chance to run. You didn't.

"You left in a bit of a hurry," he said, voice lower now, almost careful. "Did I... do something?"

His eyes searched your face, softening just enough to make your stomach flip.

"You know you did," you whispered, too honest, too wrecked to lie. "Back there. What you said — how you said it, about me telling you what I was thinking later. You can't just... do that."

He stepped closer. You didn't move.

"I meant it. I always want to know what your thinking. I always have."

That was it.

That was the thing that broke you.

One second you were staring at him — at his flushed cheeks and parted lips, his chest rising slow like he was trying to keep it together too — and the next, your hands were in his shirt and your mouth was on his.

It was messy, immediate. Years of repressed feelings, passing glances, drunken almosts, and high-stoned fantasies crashing into one kiss that was too much and not enough at the same time.

He kissed you like he'd been waiting. Like he'd thought about it every night on every tour. Like he couldn't believe it was actually happening. His hands gripped your waist, pulled you flush against him, and you gasped into his mouth, already dizzy from everything — the weed, the whiskey, him.

His lips trailed down your neck, teeth grazing just enough to make your knees weaken. Your hand tangled in his curls, the same ones you'd watched him push back over and over, wondering what they'd feel like between your fingers.

You were halfway up on the counter before either of you realised it — clothes still on, but the tension electric, skin burning. It was like every fantasy you'd buried under years of friendship had broken the surface all at once.

When he pulled back, just barely, his breath hit your lips.

"This isn't just the weed talking, right?"

You shook your head, whispering, "No, it's not."

He nodded, like that was all he needed, and kissed you again — deeper this time. Slower.

Letting her fingers trace over his handwriting, the messy letters and crossed out words that she would remember even when he didn't believe them to be worth it.

Settling down in the spot he claimed as his own ever since he came over for the first time, her legs curled underneath herself, face pressed into the cushion that still held the scent of his cologne from the hours spent on the sofa together.

Their last meal together was packed away in Tupperware, left in the fridge to hold on for a bit longer than it normally would. Her heart felt like it was laying there next to it. Frozen up to not suffocate from his departure.

It made her feel insane. How she missed him twenty minutes after he left as if she hadn't seen him in a year. Love was that cruel, she had to admit it to herself at some point. This was love and she felt every bit of it because of him. A single individual that she knew for a few months was now the reason why she carried her head high and looked in the mirror in the morning a bit less critical.

Reaching for the notebook he bought her after she complained about her previous one running out of empty pages on their first date and she couldn't find a good enough looking replacement and the black ink pen she carried around since sixth grade.

Tapping it against one of the pages that were still patiently waiting to be filled, nothing that she thought of felt right. Nothing felt like it conveyed her feelings in the way that reflected her emotions. No words could capture her truth like they were once able to.

Songs had always been her escape. It was the medium she fell back on when her own experiences felt too big to carry them around all alone. They made her understand the world that was spinning without stopping and waiting for her to catch up. They made her understand herself.

Though now, thanks to the guy with messy brown hair and a smile that brightened all her darkest nights, she felt like not even her most trusted strategy could help her out of tragedy this time.

She tried to write it down: his smile, the feelings of his hands on her waist, the racing of her heart when she woke up and saw him still asleep next to her. The image of the sun uncovering the small amount of freckles that liked to hide away otherwise. The reoccurring dreams where he starred as the main role. How her heart felt aflame when he kissed her for the first time and every time after.

It continued like that for weeks.

Every day she sat down, his hoodie or shirt or pants over her body, the coffee his mom send them because he swore on Irish coffee beans, steaming next to her empty notebook. Every day he called and every day she told him that she missed him but never how much he affected her. And every day she gave up on it by noon, walking out into the streets and trying to get herself under control until it got too cold to wander aimlessly. Retreating back into the uncomfortable silence of her apartment, putting on one of his records and telling herself that it brought them closer together.

"Only a few more shows," he reminded her over the phone ever night. Her ear pressed close to the speaker, the sound of his voice treating up to her brain and making itself at home. The memory familiar enough to echo in her dreams like she was standing between two mountains and he was her own voice calling out. But he never came out.

And 'only a few more shows' turned into two shows two hours away. Two shows that she'd seen a million times and that her schedule had no time preserved in for her to take her car keys out of the little ceramic bowl by the door anyway and made her way down the highway. Speeding like a car with no brakes, her eyes focused on the goal. Instead, her goal were a few bearable lyrics on a sheet of paper that wouldn't end up ripped out and crumbled in frustration.

Two hours that felt like eternity as she watched the black of the TV and had to put on a cheap movie that would distract her enough to not image the turn of his keys in the door when she knew for a fact that they only finished the show. Let alone, wrapped up and went on their way, if they even got around to driving back home that day.

Closing night was a pub night that would rein in until the early mornings most times. She knew from experience how keen and eager everyone was for that last night spent together with no other worries ahead. So, she stopped pretending that the hope of his coming home early was occupying her mind more than what time she went to bed and the hours of sleep she would get that night. Staying in her place on the sofa and trying to shake out whatever came to her mind that could make her less wanting.

Dreams had often tricked her into thinking they were real, she had woken up enough times twice a night to find that the first time wasn't her at all but a dream projection of what could happen if she was in another reality. The sound of his voice was in her dreams too often to differentiate it from the real thing these days. The chain of previously imagined actions all aligning too well for her to actually be waking up in reality.

Though the silence felt too real when Eli stopped in his tracks in the living room, his gaze felt too soft to be a dream. And when she rubbed her eyes, pulling her skin down along her cheeks and jaw, the stretch was apparent in her previous state of stillness. Turning to find him staring with a soft smile on his face and approaching her too gently with too quiet feet to turn into something she'd wake up sweating from.

"Are you real?" she asked, her voice too far back in her head to count as a whisper. And when his lips pressed against her temple, they felt too real to not be anything but actually him.

Before he could answer, she was already on her feet. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pulling him down and breathing him in. The feeling of his chest pressed against hers finally making sense. A feeling that she could describe. The rapid beating of his heart against hers feeling like the bass of trumpets etching through a jazz piece. The simple vibration of his laugh setting her aflame. The feeling of his shirt over his shoulders acting like a barrier between their love. The barrier that kept her from writing. The barrier that made her go insane.

Taking his face into her hands, she pulled him into her before he could kick off his shoes. Both their bodies falling into the cushion of the sofa, his spot now theirs. Her blanket now beneath their bodies. The crumbled pieces of paper scratching along his thigh like knives. The danger of disappointment in her words that she didn't want to be true etching through the taste of each other.

"I don't want you to go again without knowing whether you'll come here or go to your own place," she mumbled against his lips, leaving enough space between them to tell him her wish but not enough to hide the tears falling down her face. The prints of her sadness carried over on his own cheeks. "I want us to have one place to go to. I want us to go to the same place."

"I don't want to go anywhere else but where you are," he confessed too. His words coming out wrecked against his heavy breathing.

"I couldn't even write when you were gone," she laughed. Pulling away to pick up a dozen ripped out pages that were mostly blacked out or even destroyed through the tip of the pen. "Nothing was able to describe what I felt. Nothing could ever describe you in the way that I see you."

"It goes both ways, love." Eli's hands moved over her hips, fingers treating beneath her shirt. The endless lines decorating his palm melting into her waist. His warmth transferring over into her chest. "I tried to write something for months and nothing comes out."

Relieved at his assurance, she fell into his chest. Head rested in the crook of his neck, eyes cast down to watch his legs move as he kicked off his shoes. His hands holding her in place as he shifted his position, both legs sprawled out over the sofa. Reaching for the book, turning the light behind him on, they went through past texts. Talking for hours about what they'd written but showed no one else, the texts they found to be too much that actually were everything they felt. Honesty was always the most scary of emotions and all they wanted was to be honest in how they felt.

Eli noticed when her breath settled, he noticed when her lashes grazed his neck and fell shut. Her fists curled into his shirt like she didn't want him to slip away in the middle of the night. Their legs tangled up together. Their hearts beating as one.

Turning off the light, reaching for the blanket abandoned on the floor and tucking her in, he felt like he could finally breath. Kissing her head, mumbling sweet nothings until he fell to exhaustion's feet and met her in dreams again.