Disclaimer: I don't own Once and Again or Eli and Grace and I'm not making any profit from writing this story. The poem at the end is Ad Finem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox so I don't own that either.

Author's note: Thank you guys so much for your lovely comments! It's so nice to hear from the E/G shippers still in existence, and I'm ridiculously happy that you actually like what I'm doing here. A lot of people have mentioned the lamentable lack of new E/G fic, with which I'm in total agreement, and I absolutely have to recommend this story - That's how years roll away by lowriseflare which I apparently can't link to, but which you can find easily if you type that into google - which is beautiful and perfect and pretty much the reason I started writing this one. It's the best E/G fic I've ever read. No Jokes. I thought you all should know :)

I hope everyone enjoys the new chapter!

Kissing Grace is an experience, he's decided, he's been thinking about it all day. Which is strange for him because they did a lot more than kiss last night and it was all pretty amazing and he's never really been much for kissing anyway, it was more of a prelude than the fugue itself, and he's always just been more focused on the main event.

But kissing Grace is just, wow. It's like, seriously intense, which doesn't really surprise him because she always was intense, and overwhelming, the Grace he knew then. And he knows in some ways that the Grace he is kissing is that one, the younger Grace who had worn his sweater for three days on end and brushed his hand off her shoulder when he walked in from the rain. The Grace he has now would never kiss him with this much passion, this much, for want of a better word, zeal. She throws herself into it, feeling every moment like it's not supposed to be there and she's just getting a glimpse of the life she would have wished for herself. The Grace he has now would never kiss him at all.

But Grace Manning (because when he thinks of her then it's always her full name), Grace Manning would have kissed him for all she was worth, would have wrapped her arms tight around him and tugged on his bottom lip and run her tongue along the roof of his mouth in a way that he never even knew could be sexy, because objectively that's kind of weird, and savor it like an ice cream in the desert.

And that's the Grace that he's all wrapped up in, standing in their tiny kitchen, swaying awkwardly and clinging desperately to as he tries not to fall over. These are the kisses that have kept his day going, kept his mind from the inevitable, the guilt, the shame, the fear that he's just broken everything. He knows he'll have to stop, they'll have to stop, but he thinks with just a few more of these kisses he can make himself stronger, build himself up to resist them, like inoculation almost. Just a few more kisses before they have to leave each other.

No one ever really told him a definition of the word few. More than three, less than a lot. It's subjective really. He kisses her for twenty minutes before pulling away.

When he does pull away it's not very far. She's warm beside him and he wants to keep her there, but he also wants to talk to her. She's got her eyes closed and her mouth open against the side of his chin and it's so…something…intimate, he thinks, that his chest hurts a little and his throat kind of spasms, watching her like this is just beautiful.

"Grace." He whispers, half because he doesn't want to say it, and half because it was the only sound he could manage to make. He whispers it into her temple, and hopes she won't hear him. She does. She always does.

"Don't." She says back, quiet and breathy. She squeezes her eyes closed, he can feel her lashes against his cheek, feel her fingers against his throat, fingertips clutching at his skin, he can feel her, and it's making this so much harder.

"I have to." He says, regretfully, pulling away from her and picking up his beer. He takes a long swig and replaces it on the counter, it gives him a moment, a beat, to focus on anything but her, to get himself together and say what has to be said.

When he looks at her again she's smiling, her lips curling upwards on one side in a motion that's half secret, and half sadness. He can't help but smile back at her, her open face warming his heart, pulling at something in the depths of his stomach. This was so hard. Harder now, now that he knew how she felt, how she moves beneath him, harder now that he's had her to give her away.

"Soo." He says and blows out a rush of air, sticking his hands in his pockets to stop them from doing something else with them.

"Yeah." She says back, her arms wrapping around her middle again, protecting the most vulnerable parts of her from what she knows is to come.

They both laugh a little, and it feels easier, even if it's not.

"This is a bad idea right?" He makes it a question because he wants to be sure, and he is, he almost is, but she's Grace and she knows things and understands things better than him and if she says that it's a bad idea then he'll be certain that it is. He always trusted her judgement better than his own.

"Yeah." She says, and his heart trips over itself by trying to beat too fast and not at all both at the same time, because secretly, his heart, his horrible, treacherous heart was hoping that she'd deny it. That she would tell him a way for it to all be ok. That she would make it work. She was so smart, there must be a way. How could she not think of it? How could she not have a plan for them? She was Grace, she had a plan for everything. "Yeah, it really is."

He scrubs a hand over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose. He hadn't really planned out this conversation, he'd kind of been hoping she'd cut him off and lay out some wild, romantic, magnificent plan where they move to Paris and live in secret and that he'd never have to have the second half of the conversation at all.

Obviously that wasn't going to happen.

"So what now?" He asks her, he needs another drink. There's cold beer in the fridge and scotch in the top cupboard and he wants them both, he goes for the beer because there's less chance that he'll end up needing that. He pops the cap on one and passes it to her before pulling another for himself. She hops up onto the countertop and swings her legs aimlessly into and away from the cupboard doors., taking a long gulp from her drink.

"Now nothing." She finally says after a few more gulps of her beer, shoulders shrugging, legs still swinging in and out. "We draw a line under it and go back to how we were."

"You can do that?" He asks, and he's kind of angry, even though he knew that was what they were supposed to do.

"We have to." She says shrugging again and finishing her beer. He misses the Grace from yesterday, from ten minutes ago, the Grace who grabbed onto him and couldn't let go, the Grace who would have said to hell with everything else, I need this feeling. This Grace, grownup Grace, is practical and reasonable and everything he wishes she weren't at this moment. If she weren't then he wouldn't have to be, and he could keep believing for a little while longer.

"Maybe not." He says, and she laughs, and he hates her. Literally hates her for that. "What! Why couldn't we just- just- Why couldn't we?" She's still laughing, but it's humorless and sour, she swings her legs out and hooks her ankles around his knees where he's leaning against the fridge and pulls him into her. His hands land on either side of her thighs and his forehead falls on hers. He can feel her hands cradling his cheeks and she dips her head to meet his eyes.

"You know why not, E, you know you do. We have parents and sisters and aunts and friends and consciences and you know why we can't do this. It's not real, not really. We're here and we're together and there's nothing else and we've gotten lost in it, but it's not real, it wouldn't survive and we'd lose each other. I don't want to lose you Eli, you're kind of the only friend I have." He laughs, and she kicks him gently in the shins, and then laughs herself, her head tipping back and her hands coming down to rest on his shoulders, and he feels something that he thinks is relief.

"Yeah, I know." He manages to say, and then he smiles at her before pulling away. "I know." He says again and he turns away from her as he feels his face start to crumble. A few deep breaths are all he needs. A few deep breaths and another beer, and maybe half a bottle of scotch.

He hears her, somewhere behind him, jumping down from the counter and moving across to him. Her arms come around his middle from behind and rest on his chest, her nose digs into his back and she smoothes her face across the plane of his shoulder blade.

"To know for an hour you were mine completely-
Mine in body and soul, my own-
I would bear unending tortures sweetly,
With not a murmur and not a moan.
A lighter sin or a lesser error
Might change through hope or fear divine;
But there is no fear, and hell has no terror,
To change or alter a love like mine."

It's muffled, she's speaking into his back. But he hears it, feels it in his veins. And then she's gone, the front door slipping closed quietly as he stands there, silently breaking and trying to rebuild himself in the shape of something else.