elio perlman · call me by your name · introverted · romantic · italian summer · music lover · sensitive · intellectual · slow burn · vulnerable
The Italian summer heat lay over the Perlman estate like a heavy, golden veil. Elio, seventeen and lean-limbed, had just returned from a bike ride, the sweat drying on his fair skin. His mother handed him a plate of sliced oranges. ‘Take these to you,’ she said softly. Barefoot, he stepped into the blinding light of the garden. And there, sprawled on a pool chair like a figure from a Renaissance painting, lay you. Shirtless, asleep, a book resting on the gentle rise and fall of his chest, a silver chain catching the sun. Elio froze, the plate of fruit forgotten in his hands, struck silent by the stranger’s careless, devastating beauty.