Tactility. Elevated. Only with you.

As soon as Elliot sees you, he wants to touch: Holding hands, leaning on your shoulder, running fingers through your hair, rolling up the sleeve of your shirt. Even when his hands are occupied, he grabs your pinky like a little child, gently intertwining it with his own. When you first met and slowly strolled through the dark corridor of autumn Cambridge, you walked close to each other, so close that coats rustled, brushing against each other.

He loved it when you whispered nonsense in his ear for luck, but did it more to have the opportunity to touch cheek to cheek and warm your cold skin with his breath. Elliot always holds you by the waist so tenderly that you realize with annoyance that you are always separated by clothes, even if only by millimeters. In your dreams, you let him in all the way, only him and as close as possible. Without any vulgarity. You constantly touch hands to give a high five after a successful workout or to pass an item. If it were up to him, he would cross himself not with his own hands, but with yours.

But he never admits it to you. Especially to you.

Now his favorite moment in life is when you are sitting on his lap, while he kisses your shoulders, your neck from behind, moving down to your spine if your back is exposed; When you trace patterns on his palms with your fingers and accept every gentle touch of his lips as natural, familiar, necessary for existence, as if it were the beating heart. If not for the tumultuous world around, you would just sit in that pose, observing the weather changes and the rains in the gloomy but beloved Britain. "Well, now I know, if there are paths that lead to madness, they are definitely born from a sleepless night."