Chapter 3: Post-appointment desperation turns raw as Jasper takes Elias in the shower, their coupling equal parts passion and anguish over their fertility struggles.
Jasper had insisted on meeting the financial coordinator alone. "My biology, my bill," he'd said, a hard edge in his voice that brooked no argument. The silence he returned in that evening was a living thing, heavy and spiked. He’d tossed the itemized breakdown on the kitchen island—the same granite they’d fucked on just days before—and opened a beer without a word. The number on the total line seemed to suck the warmth from the room.
Elias didn't ask.He waited. He made pasta, something simple and grounding, the routine of chopping garlic a temporary meditation.
Over dinner, Jasper finally spoke, his eyes on his plate. "They want half up front. The day of the procedure. The rest... payment plans. High-interest, because it's 'elective'." He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, chewed mechanically. "It’s more than we thought. It’s... it’s the down payment on a house. It’s a year of our lives, gone, just for a maybe."
"We have the savings," Elias said quietly.
"It’s everything we have. Every emergency fund, every cushion. We’ll be raw. If something happens—the car dies, the roof leaks, if one of us gets laid off—we’re fucked. Utterly fucked."
"We’ll manage."Will we?" Jasper looked up, his brown eyes haunted. "What if it doesn’t work, Eli? What if we pour this... this monumental thing into a hole and get nothing but a receipt and a scar?"
Elias put his fork down. There were no platitudes left. The kitchen island was a silent witness. "Then we'll be broke. And sad. And we'll start over. We've started over before."
"We were twenty-four and broke over a shitty apartment," Jasper laughed, a hollow sound. "This is different. This is hope-money. It’s the most expensive kind."
The conversation circled the drain until there was nothing left but the hum of the dishwasher. The weight of the decision, now quantified, was a physical yoke. Elias cleaned up. Jasper disappeared.
Elias found him in the bathroom, already in the shower. The glass was fogged, a silhouette moving behind a veil of steam. Elias undressed quietly, his clothes falling to the cool tile floor. He slid the shower door open.
The heat enveloped him, a wet, fragrant blanket. Eucalyptus oil from the shower steamer Jasper loved. Jasper stood under the rain showerhead, head bowed, water cascading down the muscled planes of his back. He didn't turn.
Elias moved in, the water instantly plastering his brown hair to his skull. He pressed his chest to Jasper’s back, sliding his arms around his waist, feeling the solid warmth of him. Jasper’s breath hitched. He covered Elias’s hands with his own, his grip tight.
“It’s just money,” Elias murmured against his wet shoulder, though the words felt like a lie.
“It’s not,” Jasper said, turning in his arms. His face was flushed, water beading on his lashes. “It’s the cost of wanting something too much. It’s the fucking price of admission to a room we might get kicked out of.”
He looked furious.And terrified. It was a potent mix. He backed Elias up until his shoulder blades hit the cool, slick tiles beside the showerhead. The contrast was sharp: hot water on his front, cold tile at his back.
Jasper’s mouth found his, a desperate, searching kiss. It tasted of mint toothpaste and the salt of impending tears he wouldn’t shed. His hands weren’t gentle. They slid down Elias’s sides, over his hips, gripping the swell of his ass, fingers digging in.
“We’re gonna do it,” Jasper growled against his lips. “We’re gonna be stupid and reckless and spend our goddamn house on a maybe.” He lifted Elias’s thigh, hooking it around his own hip, opening him up. “And before they cut into me, before they take their fucking sample, I’m gonna put a baby in you the old-fashioned way.Just once more. For luck. For the hell of it.”
His words were a rough fantasy, a defiance of the clinic’s cold statistics. They lit a fuse in Elias’s gut.
“Do it,” Elias gasped, his head thudding back against the tile. “Fucking do it, Jasper.”
Jasper reached for the shower caddy, fumbling for the bottle of silicone lubricant they kept there. He didn’t bother drying his hands; he just poured a generous slick into his palm, the water making it froth. He reached between Elias’s legs, his fingers pushing in without preamble, two at once, a sharp, stretching burn.
Elias cried out, the sound swallowed by the roar of the water. Jasper scissored him open, his other hand braced against the tile by Elias’s head, his body caging him in. His eyes were dark, focused.
“You want it?” Jasper’s voice was raw. “You want me to fill you up with my busted, million-to-one-shot shit and just pretend?”
“Yes,” Elias hissed, pushing down on the fingers, wanting more. “I want it. All of it.”
Jasper withdrew his fingers, lined up the thick head of his cock, and slammed home.
The force drove the air from Elias’s lungs. It was brutal, perfect. Jasper set a furious pace, each thrust a piston-driven claim. The water sheeted over them, making their skin glide, the sounds filthy and wet: slap of flesh, guttural groans, the spray hitting the tile.
Jasper buried his face in Elias’s neck, biting at the tendon there. His hips were relentless. “You feel that?” he panted. “That’s me. That’s all I’ve got. You take it. You take every fucking drop.”
“I will,” Elias choked, his own cock trapped between their slick stomachs, leaking and desperate. The stretch, the burn, the sheer ownership of it was unraveling him. This was not making love. This was branding. A primal, futile stamping of identity against a biological decree.
Jasper shifted, hiking Elias’s leg higher, changing the angle. On the next thrust, he hit something deep, a bright spark of pure, electric sensation that made Elias see white.
“There!” Elias screamed. “Right there, oh God, don’t stop!”
Jasper hammered that spot, each impact sending shockwaves through Elias’s core. His rhythm broke into shorter, harder jabs, focused and devastating. Elias could feel the coiling tension in Jasper’s body, the tremble in the muscles of his back.
“Gonna come,” Jasper warned, his voice shattered. “Gonna fucking empty myself in you. Useless or not.”
That was all it took. The crude, beautiful truth of it snapped the last thread. Elias’s orgasm ripped through him, violent and silent, his mouth open in a soundless cry as his come streaked hot between their bodies, washed away instantly by the shower spray. The rhythmic clenching of his body milked Jasper over the edge.
Jasper let out a broken sob as he pushed deep and held, pulsing inside him. It felt like a surrender. A offering. Every shuddering release was a plea whispered into Elias’s skin.
They slumped together, the water slowly cooling. Jasper’s forehead rested against Elias’s shoulder, his breaths ragged. Elias held him up, his hands stroking the taut, wet muscles of his back.
When Jasper finally pulled out, it was with a slow, tender care that contradicted everything that had just happened. He reached up and turned off the shower.
The sudden silence was deafening. Drips echoed in the stall. Steam swirled around them.
Jasper looked at him, his eyes cleared of some of the fury, leaving only a naked vulnerability. “We signed the papers today. I gave them the date for the biopsy.”
Elias simply nodded, pulling him into a tight embrace under the residual steam. The decision was made. The money was spent. The path was set.
They were all in. And standing there, dripping on the tile, Elias had never felt so terrified, or so certain, in his entire life.