Author's Note: Sorry about the wait, everyone! There was a family emergency, so I was out of town with limited e-mail access. Thanks so much to all of those who sent me very nice e-mails. Here is the latest chapter, so enjoy! ;-) And no worries; it'll all be happy in the end.

Elysium Chapter Four

It seemed like it took forever for him to get there, but she knew it must have only been a couple of minutes, just maybe ten for him to get from his apartment to hers. He had taken her home one night a while back, and that was how he knew where she lived. They had been innocent then, once upon a time. She wasn't sure how to be naive and innocent any more. That was what came with realization.

She sat outside her apartment door, her knees pulled to her chest. In that position, no one could get to her. At least, that was the illusion she had. She wasn't scared; she didn't know how to be.

But Martin was coming.

She could hear the door open to the stairway, the darkness of night muffling the sound. Could it be him? Her heart began to pound at the thought of it. She heard the pounding of feet against the stairs, and there was another thought that invaded the sanctity of her mind-- what if it was someone else? The someone who had entered her home, violated her sense of space?

She hadn't picked up her gun since she had been shot with it. If it was someone coming for her, she was unarmed, still injured. Vulnerable. That was how he would want her, anyway.

"Sam?!" she heard.

Martin, her brain cried out, and she struggled to stand as he came around the corner of the hallway. He stopped as he saw her, and she tried to support herself against the doorframe, but her own tired weight was too much for her. She watched him as he came to her, she clinging to the doorknob, he looking tired and weak. He scooped her half into his arms, and she could feel his muscles threading underneath his skin. "Sam, what happened?" he asked her, his voice sounding ragged and hoarse.

"I think I have a stalker," she told him, her own voice mirroring hers. She tried to smile at him, but the smile fell loosely on her lips. His brown eyes looked into hers steadily, watching her, trying to glean what afflicted her, but not even she could have answered that.

"Come on," he said, cupping his left hand underneath her left elbow and supporting her weight with his right arm. "I'm taking you to my place."

*

A visit to the police station and a pint of ice cream later, Samantha Spade was feeling a little more like herself than she had felt in weeks. There was something incredibly natural about being with Martin, something that simply fit between them. He had given her his college sweatshirt, too big for her, but it enclosed her, encompassed her, almost as though his arms were around her.

He was worried about her; she could tell that much. He kept looking up from her from the late-night dinner he was making, just subtle glances, but she could see him in the reflection of the TV screen. With Martin, she could almost forget about it all. Almost, but not quite.

There was the fact that just being around him reminded her of Jack. It wasn't in negative ways, though, which surprised her. She remembered the times when Jack would say something and she and Martin would share looks across the table, tiny inside jokes that they never voiced, because they could just look at each other and that was that. She was always amazed at how well they could communicate without even saying a word.

God, Sam, her inner-voice chided. What is wrong with you? You're not in love with him, are you?

Seated on his long leather couch, he behind her stirring spaghetti, she glanced at the television screen, refocused her eyes so she could see his reflection, the way his muscles played underneath his gray t-shirt, the way he pursed his lips, the way his eyes crunched when he smiled, when she smiled at him. No, she told her inner-voice. I don't think I'm in love with him.

I don't think I know what love is, she realized. I don't think I understand, really.

"Do you want to eat?" he asked her, his voice disturbing her out of her own silent musings.

"I could eat," she told him, and she leaned forward and clicked the television off. She tried to get up off of the couch, but his voice halted her.

"No, no, no," he said. "I'm coming to you." She watched him in the now- darkened television monitor, and she smiled at his concern for her. He came around the couch and placed a plate laden with spaghetti noodles and a rich red sauce on the coffee table where her foot was perched.

There was a silence that hung in the air; it was the inevitable unspoken. She thought about how easy it would be to just lean over and kiss him. She also thought about how incredibly easy it would be for him to just reject her.

Oh, grow up, her inner-voice told her. How old are you? How many relationships have you been in? You were married, Sam! How is this any different?

And that, she told her inner-voice, is the question, isn't it?

"Thank you for coming to the police station with me," she said to him after a moment. She could smell the spaghetti sauce in the air, rich and wonderful, mixed with the smell of his after shave. It was late, she was tired, but fear had made her adrenaline rise. And that was what was keeping her awake and alert.

He smiled as though a little surprised that she had even thanked him for it, as though it was nothing whatsoever. "Sam--" he started, and then he stopped again.

"What?" she prodded him, but he just shook his head.

"I'm worried about you," he finally said, putting his elbow up on the back of the couch, turning to look at her. "You just seem a little . . . disconnected."

"A lot has been going on," she answered quietly, looking ahead at the television. She could see both of their reflections, her in his sweatshirt, covered by an afghan, spaghetti in front of her, him in jeans and a t-shirt, looking tired, rumpled, but still incredibly handsome.

"Yeah," he replied, and then there was a silence. "A lot has been going on."

She glanced at him and smiled, her hair falling into her eyes. His hand twitched, and for a second, he looked like he was going to make a move to brush her hair out of her line of sight. He also looked like he was forcing himself not to do that.

How much have we forced ourselves to do just because we were afraid, she wondered. She knew better than most how incredibly immobilizing fear could be.

"Is . . . is this why you and Danny--?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered quietly. "Yup. No me and Danny. Funny idea, but not happening."

"And Jack?" he asked, and the two words hung in the air, waiting for her to pick them out and hand them back to him in her own form.

"And Jack . . . was something that happened and it's not going to happen any more."

"Mmhmm," he responded gutturally, as though thinking about something else. She glanced at him again and he was looking away from her, intent on something she couldn't see.

"Are you going to eat your spaghetti?" he finally asked her, and she looked down at the plate.

"I think I should get off of your expensive leather couch first."

"No, you're eating here."

"Martin--"

"I don't want you getting up."

"But--"

"No."

"And your couch--"

Then she watched, frozen, as he picked up the plate of spaghetti, took a handful of the noodles and the tomato sauce in his own bare hand and then put it directly onto the black leather of the couch. "Samantha," he said to her, a grin on his face, "the wonderful thing about leather is that it is so easy to clean. And tomato sauce will wash out of almost anything."

He lifted his hand up and held it out for her to see, palm up. A stray noodle still lingered there, languishing in the sauce, and he took his hand and rubbed it along the sweatshirt she was wearing, wiping his hand almost clean. She cried out, laughing, and he said, "You see?"

"Oh, I see," she replied to him, and she leaned forward to the plate of spaghetti and put her own hand in and scooped up a handful of noodles and sauce and delivered it promptly into the lap of his jeans. "I see very well," she told him, unable to suppress the grin.

"Is that how we're going to play it?" Martin asked her, matching her grin with one of his own. She felt her own heart fluttering, pounding in her chest, a reflection of the way he looked at her, at how she felt around him.

She didn't know she could feel like this. She always thought it was supposed to be angry and angsty. It was always supposed to be messy. And this was terrifying, but it was so incredibly natural to her.

Like breathing.

He reached for her, the entire plate of spaghetti poised to attack, and she shot her arm out, knocking it out of his hands, and it went flying into the couch, the spaghetti straight down, spreading all over the place. He looked back at it, an expression of mock-surprise on his face as he looked back at her. "You are not getting away with that," he said to her, and he half-tackled her.

What hit her was a realization that even in his playfulness he hadn't forgotten about her leg, and he was still exquisitely gentle with it, careful to cradle her fall as they both hit the ground, she on top of him. He didn't need to ask if she was okay, she realized, because he had ensured that she was.

The little things took her breath away.

They were only inches apart, and she had seen so many movies where she would have known what would follow after this. He supported her entirely, his elbows pressed into the hardwood floor, and their eyes met, brown and brown, both pairs expectant, excited, cautious, happy, and incredibly terrified.

Terrified. She was terrified. She was so incredibly scared because she recognized how much she had to lose if she screwed this up. Her blond hair fell out from behind her ear and almost into his face, and with his left hand, he gently pushed it back behind her ear. The feeling of his pads of his fingers against her skin sent the obligatory shivers down her spine.

She had never experienced that to her. It was all new. She felt new, not like someone's used sheets. Martin made her feel as though she was sixteen again, fresh, young, inexperienced. No one had jaded her yet, not when she was sixteen.

She watched him lick his lips and she felt her own tongue dart out and wet her own lips. One of his hands moved almost absently up to the small of her back, his fingers splayed against the entirety of her lower back. It was an almost possessive gesture in nature.

She opened her mouth to say something, but her inner-voice stopped her. For once, it had valid advice. Don't ruin the moment, Sam, it told her.

That's what it was-- a moment, stolen between two people. But it wasn't like her and Jack, whose relationship had been nothing but stolen moments. Their time together had been stolen, stolen from their jobs, their friends, Jack's wife. But with Martin she felt like they were claimed moments-- and not stolen. She was just picking up the dress she had dropped off at the tailor's a year ago and forgotten about, but how that she had gone back, she realized that the dress was perfect, fit in all the right places, complimented her.

Martin complemented her. He fit in all of the right places.

And he kissed her. It was surprising at first, not because she hadn't been expecting it, but because he did it so quickly that she almost missed it. Her eyes had been closed, a habitual move, but she opened him when the all- too-brief contact ended, and she looked at him. His eyes were expectant, his mouth slightly open, poised as if to say, 'Is this okay?'

Are you kidding?! she wanted to scream at him.

She was the one who kissed him the second time. She just leaned into him and his own mouth rose to meet hers. She was surprised, constantly surprised by him, by how good of a kisser he was, by how quickly she felt she knew his mouth, by how warm his lips were, by how soft they were, by how he pulled her into him, pressing his hand into her back.

She couldn't say that it was everything she had imagined it to be, because she couldn't have imagined that it would be like this. And what made it so incredibly pure, so absolutely real, was that his heart was beating as fast as hers was, and his hands were shaking, and she realized he was as scared as she was by the whole situation.

But then the phone rang.

And she pulled back.

That was what always happened with her and Jack.

She pulled back, her face flushed, and she sat up and pulled away from him. He rubbed his face, and he got up to answer the phone.

She watched him, and her inner-voice said, Looks like you're in too deep now, Sam.

Yup, she told her inner-voice. Looks like.

To be continued . . .