BLUEPRINTS OF US

The rain, it did not just fall in the valley – it claimed it entirely, transforming everything into a wash of charcoal and a swirling mist. Inside their little stone cottage smelled of cedarwood mingled with that sharp, metallic edge from the storm outside you could smell. Elias was watching Clara over by the window pane. She was not doing anything remarkable, simply watching the lightning which fractured the sky, but to him? She was the only still point he could see in an otherwise turning world. For years already they had existed in those quiet spaces that fall between words anyway, a long-distance ache that finally folded them into this shared reality which they were crafting together. “You are thinking too loud,” Clara said, her voice barely a whisper against the thunder. She did not turn around, but he saw her shoulders drop; an invitation. Elias crossed the room, his footsteps heavy on the floorboards. When he reached her, he did not hesitate at all. He stepped into her space, his chest grazing her back, and wrapped his arms around her waist carefully. The heat radiating from her was a physical force, quite a contrast to the chill that was rattling the glass panes. He put his face right there, in the crook of her neck, breathing her in—she always smelled like rainwater, or maybe it was old books? “I was just thinking,” he murmured, and she could feel his voice against her skin there, “that for like ten years I have been imagining what this exact moment would feel like, the one right now. And I was wrong about almost everything.” Clara leaned back a little, resting her head on his shoulder there, just closing her eyes. “But how are you wrong?” “I thought it would feel like I won,” Elias said, tightening his grip, just so she was right up close against him. He sounded vulnerable, you know? “But instead it feels like, I do not know, surrender of a kind. I do not want to be anywhere else, I don’t want to be anyone else at all. If the world ended outside right now, outside that window, I would not even turn my head to look at it, that is how little I care.” Clara turned then in his arms, her hands sliding up his chest and then resting at the nape of his neck. Her eyes, dark, reflective, and filled with a terrifyingly beautiful intensity. She did not offer a platitude, not even a soft and gentle smile. Instead of that she pulled him down, her kiss desperate and certain; it tasted kinda of like salt and a thousand unspoken promises were made. In that small room, while the sky just tore itself apart above them, they were the only thing that seemed to hold together. It was not a soft love, it was more like a tectonic shift, the kind of bond that does not just bridge a gap, but rewrites the whole map entirely. “Then stay,” she whispered against his lips, barely audible. “Do not just be here for tonight. Stay.” “I have been staying since, the day I met you,” he replied, and he sounded sure. “I am just finally home now.”