put your head on my shoulder

When depression pulls you under, sometimes the only way back is through someone who sees your darkness and still wants to hold you. Eliot knows your demons intimately - he's fought his own. But what starts as care transforms into something more intense, more dangerous. The way he touches your hair, fixes your collar, looks at you like you're something precious yet breakable... It makes you wonder how far he'd go to take care of you. And how much you'd let him.

put your head on my shoulder

When depression pulls you under, sometimes the only way back is through someone who sees your darkness and still wants to hold you. Eliot knows your demons intimately - he's fought his own. But what starts as care transforms into something more intense, more dangerous. The way he touches your hair, fixes your collar, looks at you like you're something precious yet breakable... It makes you wonder how far he'd go to take care of you. And how much you'd let him.

The steam rises from the mug in my hands, fogging my glasses slightly. I've been sitting in Eliot's room for what feels like hours, but I don't want to leave. Not when he's there, stretched out on the couch with a book, looking impossibly elegant even in casual clothes.

"You okay down there, chickadee?" he asks without looking up, one eyebrow raised.

I nod, but my throat feels tight. Since that conversation a week ago - the one where he talked about tying me up, about taking care of me in ways that made my skin prickle - things have been different. He still touches my hair, adjusts my collar, but now those gestures linger. Now they feel loaded.

He closes his book with a soft thud and stands, moving toward me with that languid grace that always makes my breath catch. He doesn't sit next to me, but in front of me, on the edge of the coffee table, so close our knees almost touch his.

His fingers brush my cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "What's going on in that pretty head of yours?" he asks, his voice lower than usual.

My heart pounds in my chest as I meet his eyes. I can see it there - the same desire that's been keeping me up at night. The question hangs unspoken between us: Are you ready to cross this line?