[burn - ashes]

burn - ashes

You don't know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live yet never dies
Until you've faced each dawn with sleepless eyes
You don't know what love is

He feels Elijah coming before he can hear him or see him, like prickling on the back of his neck, before he has moved away from the window completely, before the intention has formed in his mind--before he stands with his hand on the door.

He is not surprised. He knew Elijah would follow him.

He hesitates for a moment in shadow with his hand on the door, looking at his feet and fighting something, he doesn't know what.

Then he opens it, and he half expects Elijah to call after him. Elijah is worried, and has been for days, but there are things you don't speak of. In their case, far too many of them. Sean swallows. If Elijah calls after him he will just say his name, just "Sean," and nothing else. All the other words that could come are more dangerous, from Elijah's point of view, until he understands why Sean is silent.

He doesn't know that "Sean," the way he says it, is one of the most dangerous things he could say.

Perhaps he does know--he doesn't say anything, just appears in the door on a little draft of warm air and closes it behind them. It is cold outside, cold and dark, and a brittle jagged ribbon of starlight is caught glimmering in the black of the road ahead of him. When Sean pushes his hands deep in his pockets, his fingers find a piece of paper that has probably been through the washing machine and he is gripped, through his numbness, with another shudder of grief--Christine checked all his pockets when she did the laundry, carefully, and rescued pens and twenty-dollar bills and important phone numbers. She made fun of him when he did the laundry and forgot that step--except when a blue pen left a bright ink stain on her favorite pair of khakis. Ten years after the incident, she still mentioned it when she was really angry.

Elijah has been walking a half-step behind him, making no noise but the noise of his feet on the ground, but now he catches Sean up and puts his hand on his arm to stop him. Sean pauses, turns his head to look at Elijah. He doesn't try to hide any of what he's feeling. He doesn't know entirely. Elijah opens his mouth, and then lets out a deep, shaky breath whose force carries him into Sean's arms, instead of speaking.

Sean's arms wrap slowly around Elijah's back, but when he has them around his friend he can't let go and suddenly he's clutching at the still-slim body with all the force of any of Lij's infamous death-grips. These have been a running joke since the first Thanksgiving after the end of filming, more than fifteen years ago. Sean has always laughed about it, but he could never find it funny in the first few moments of Elijah's body pressed against his, his face on Sean's shoulder, in his neck. Now Elijah has followed him outside, not knowing where they're going, ready to stand beside him in silence if that's what he wants and ask nothing--his very own Sam, perhaps.

Christine would not have followed him outside in the middle of the night.

He's not sure he would have wanted her to.

Sean dares to lean forward a little until the short softness of Lij's hair brushes his nose and his cheek and the biting clean smell of soap enfolds him, sparking in his temples and somewhere along the back of his neck. He sighs, unsteadily, and holds Elijah tighter, and for a long time, they don't move.

The hours of the day
I wait for the night
I watch the stars cry out your name
Where are you?

Elijah had spent Thanksgiving with Sean every year for nearly as long as he could remember. It wasn't that he didn't remember any Novembers before he was twenty so much as that remembering before Sean was different from remembering after him. When he had been just eighteen, fresh and green and wide-eyed, ready to start filming in New Zealand, he'd been a baby who'd felt a little nervous but overall, Elijah reflected, very grown up. He had not been very grown up, and when he'd seen Sean across that hotel lobby for the first time--he'd known him, and they'd fallen into each others arms as they would so many times later, a big, easy soft brotherly hug--and something had happened, but he had not known. Elijah couldn't believe he hadn't known then.

When he had been eighteen, there had been the simple difference between recent memories and memories of his childhood. The difference was similar, now, but not quite the same; how can you remember something that happened to someone else? --Which was what Elijah had been, before filming had begun--before he had caught Sean's eye from a distance and seen the smile spread across his face.

He had never been uncomfortable or out-of-place in Sean's house, but he couldn't say he'd never been unhappy there. He didn't see Sean often enough by far--by the end of filming he'd gotten to the point that he had to see him every day, and for months he found himself turning around, looking for him, whenever he had a thought, a joke, one of those brief flashes of an urge that made him seek Sean's face before he quite knew why he'd looked up.

For years, he had walked a very narrow line with Sean, between holding back his affection, which he couldn't do, and being so rawly open with everything that he bled. He had known it was not the time. He had hugged Sean every year and snuggled into his embrace, breathing deeply, and imagined. He had lounged on his couch, carried his daughter on his shoulders and been a "horsey" for his son, watched football and movies with him, and sat outside at night with him, and not smoked, sometimes, because Sean didn't like it, but wouldn't say anything about it. They had talked as infrequently as Elijah could stand, which sometimes had stretched almost six months; there had been years when they'd only seen each other that once, at Thanksgiving.

He had slept in Sean's guest room, alone.

He had often wondered if Christine suspected anything, and he had sometimes thought she did and sometimes not. As long as Sean didn't know, and Elijah waited, it didn't matter.

And he waited for a long time.

Then there was Anna, his wife. A mistake he'd made in his late twenties, when his idealism, stretched too long and too thin, had started to fray and he'd made a desperate attempt to snatch it back and convince himself that he'd been wrong for his eight years of waiting, that he could still find love elsewhere, or make it, if he'd just try hard enough.

It had lasted almost five years, far longer than it should have. He had gone to Sean's house for Thanksgiving without her the last two; she and Sean had never gotten along, not even as well as he did with Christine, who he couldn't help loving for her matter-of-fact sweetness, though they operated for all the years of their friendship on an unspoken wary truce.

He had let his marriage grow brittle and slowly fracture, and had watched it fall apart with little more feeling than a sense of relief. He had not said anything until Anna had--and he had let her end it, and had found that after so long it hurt after all, and he'd caused so much damage that at the time he thought they might never speak again.

It had taken Orli and Viggo nearly a month to patch him back together, a silent month on the beach in Florida. Elijah had never been able to be entirely happy around the two of them; he could bask in their nearness and the real affection they had for him, and the content that spilled over from the simple beauty of their love, but he could not stop the envy he felt.

As many times as Elijah had decided he couldn't wait anymore, he'd lost himself and found himself again, somewhere, alone as ever, with nothing to cling to but what he had always known and always been. He had waited because there was no alternative; he would wait still. He renewed that promise silently thousands of times, with tears leaking down his cheeks, alone in the snow or the pitiless weeping of a cold shower, the hearth at their cabin in New Zealand, the front porch of Sean's house, with Sean at his side.

He loved, and he would wait. It never stopped hurting, but he learned that he was never really alone when that determination burned in him, as though it had a life of its own.

It's always best
When speaking of two
To begin with one alone

Sean had been thinking of Elijah when the phone had rung, and he'd been smiling a little, thinking of seeing his friend again. It'd been one of those days when you melt if you stand too close to the window, in the sun, no matter what your air conditioner is set at (and Christine usually insisted on setting it at 70 or 68 in the summer), so Sean had been feeling sort of tired and lazy. He and Elijah had been in the habit of seeing each other two or three times a year, but the last couple of years they'd only met at Thanksgiving. Elijah had said they should meet this summer somewhere, though, and they hadn't planned anything yet, but Sean had been comfortably content in his vague anticipation.

He'd caught the cordless from its cradle, almost whistling. "Hello?" He'd said, and wondered with that prickly feeling of half-premonition whether it could be Lij.

"Sean," had said a soft voice, in a British accent that hadn't faded in seven years of living more or less in the States.

"Orli?" Sean had exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah, it's me." His voice had been subdued, though there'd been a slight smile in it.

"Orli, how are you?"

A sigh. "I'm alright, and before you ask, so's Viggo. But--" But. More stabs of premonition like icy needles, like vicious little shocks.

"Lij?" He'd whispered.

"Yeah." No. Sean had felt his fingers going numb with panic and wondered if he was going to drop the phone, like in a slightly overdone TV-movie (Christine had been fond of those Lifetime originals).

"What--" He'd choked.

"Oh, no," Orli had said, "He's--well--not okay. He's not injured." Sean had been so dizzy with blood returning to his head and his fingers that he'd almost not heard, "It's Anna." And that had been the most terrible moment of all, because the relief scalding through him had been tremendous, and he'd felt faintly pleased before the first rush of sympathy for Elijah, and before he'd even thought that Lij would be upset, he'd thought I never liked her with a kind of horrifying satisfaction.

"Is she alright?" He'd made himself say, relaxing weakly on the counter.

"She left him," Orli had said rather quietly.

Seconds of blankness, when he couldn't even assimilate it. That was all. The end of the marriage. They'd always been wrong--she'd always been wrong, selfish, because she hadn't really understood Elijah--

Then: Oh, God. Lij... "Oh." Sean had had to clear his throat before he could continue, "I guess he's--"

Orli had sighed, "We're in Florida."

"What?"

"We came down here to meet him. This tiny little town on this little cape, with these beautiful beaches. But we thought you should know. And it seemed, after a while, like he wasn't going to call you. He said something about seeing you this summer?"

It had taken him a full several seconds to realize what Elijah must be feeling, but whatever had been between him and Anna, it didn't matter--it was the end of something, and Elijah was soft and vulnerable when and where it seemed like he wasn't. He'd often thought Anna didn't really know that. "Yeah, later this month."

Then had been a pause. "Listen, Sean."

"He's not coming." Sean's eyes had been closed. When had that happened, he'd wondered.

"I wasn't sure if he was going to call you, at least, not before whenever it was it was supposed to happen. But look, honestly--he hasn't called anyone. I mean, don't worry. We're taking care of him. But don't take it personally."

Christine had found him in the kitchen hours later and asked what was wrong, with, thank God, no idea of how long he'd spent in there hardly moving. He'd shaken his head, "Anna left Elijah," and she'd said a soft

"Oh" and come to give him a hug.

He'd patted her back slowly, closed his eyes and buried his face in her shoulder, lost and hardly feeling her embrace.

Orli and Viggo had had to call him--

Elijah had called them.

"Don't take it personally," Orli had said. Sean should have been the one saying that, on the beach, taking care of Lij if he needed taken care of.

Why?

He'd felt something beyond panic, a kind of yawning grief, that he'd failed and somewhere along the way stopped being Lij's best friend. And Thanksgiving--he would have to wait for Thanksgiving now, months more, but maybe it would be better, and he and Lij would be able to talk about it by then.

He'd known he should call Lij, but it had taken him several days to do it.

Viggo had answered Lij's cell phone, which he'd half expected anyway. "Hello."

"Hi, Viggo," he'd murmured.

There'd been a break as of drawn breath before Viggo had said, "Sean," sounding pleased. "You called back. I thought you would."

"You won the bet?"

Viggo had sounded very amused, but as though he were trying to hide it: "Sometimes I think he loses on purpose."

Sean had laughed unexpectedly, a bit of easing in the hollow cavity of his chest. "What are the stakes here?"

Viggo'd said, "Don't worry about it," and gone serious again: "I'll get him. Do you want me to tell him it's you?"

Sean had been surprised at first, but then he'd thought, humiliated, What if he doesn't want to talk to me? And then the same anguished Why? Pride had declared he wouldn't talk to Elijah then, but it had been pushed aside. Lij needed to talk to him, and he needed to talk to Lij. "Don't tell him," he'd said firmly, feeling fragile.

"Alright," Viggo had said, and he'd heard footsteps and "Elijah."

Then a break. Then a dull: "Hello?" that had taken his breath away though he'd expected it.

He'd been poised on the edge of greeting, awkwardly uncertain, and in the end what had come out was a simple "Lij."

"Oh," before the name was even out of his mouth. "Sean. Hi."

It had hurt to hear Elijah so distant, but he'd been able to get hold of himself and remember all that was going on, and that Elijah probably didn't mean it. He could have no idea of what was running through Elijah's mind. "How are you?" He'd said softly.

Elijah had said, "Not too bad. It's--you know." Sean hadn't, but he'd been able to hear it in Lij's weariness.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, feeling helpless and somehow guilty, though of course that hadn't made sense.

Elijah had sighed and said, "I'm sorry too. It's just been--I don't know. But I should have called, I know that. I'm glad you did."

"If there's anything I can do," Sean had said.

Silence. "Just the sound of your voice," Lij had answered, and he hadn't been able to breathe with the shattering poignancy of that moment of relief.

Whisper to the wind
And say that love has sinned

Elijah had never been sure that Orli or Viggo knew or suspected. Orli had always been deliberately mysterious, he thought, and he would say things that might mean one of any number of things, and you'd never know if he was joking. Viggo had always seemed pretty cool, especially after he'd seen them kissing in the hall, and Viggo had just met his eyes, and cupped Orli's face and pulled him into his room and shut the door. It was sort of shocking--Viggo had, until then, seemed like an older, hippie-ish person. It was then that Elijah had realized he was really kind of a bad-ass.

Then it had happened, six years after the end of filming: Viggo had had the Viggo-equivalent of a nervous breakdown, which meant he invited Sean and Elijah to his aunt's cabin for New Year's and adopted a stray cat, because he and Orli hadn't spoken for a long time, and he had apparently just then realized what he was missing. Elijah had not given them much thought after the end of filming, except to wonder if he was as obvious as they were, and hope not.

He'd seen Sean just a few months before, but the thought of seeing him again for New Year's had seized hold of him with such terrifying longing that he had mentioned on the phone feeling over-worked and as if he thought he should get away. Then he'd said, "Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't want to come, and Christine would be even more insanely selfless and wonderful than she already is to let you go"--which, of course, had guaranteed Sean's presence.

Elijah had not counted on the effect of being practically alone with Sean in the cabin, everything reminding him of filming in New Zealand, and then the alcohol he drank at New Year's--mixed drinks until he stopped counting, and a glass of champagne at midnight that he inhaled without tasting, as his lips still tingled from kissing Sean's cheek. He had been drunk enough, he knew, to have done much worse than just lie with his head in Sean's lap, and was lucky that the feel of Sean's fingers in his hair had been so mesmerizing.

In fact, he had done much worse.

It hadn't been like he was trying to mess up, trying to have Sean guess, although he thought there must be an element of that in it. No, it had been that he was young and kind of selfish and he just couldn't wait, and he'd been getting more used to restraining himself all the time than he wanted to be.

Sean wouldn't have guessed no matter what, Elijah thought later, as long as he didn't want to.

The firelight had made Sean look like Sam again--the way it flickered over his face and caught in the little lines at the corners of his eyes, and made his lips shine when they were wet with alcohol. Elijah had never deceived himself that Sean was extremely good-looking, but by then he'd long stopped thinking about it at all. In the firelight Sean had looked carved out of light, red and gold and brown, with tiny flames reflected dancing in his eyes. Then there had been the soft careful sculpting of his face that you could only see when he smiled, and his mouth made its most perfect curve, and his cheeks became full, and you could see these dimples.

There had been the smell of him, so warm and real.

"I'm glad I came," Elijah had said once.

"I'm glad you talked me into it," Sean had said.

Elijah had looked up at him and done his best to look elaborately innocent, but he'd already been pretty far gone by then. He didn't remember completely clearly, but he thought Sean had said something or raised an eyebrow and suddenly Elijah had just burst out laughing, unable to stop it, and laughed himself breathless, until his sides hurt and he half-curled up in a protective ball and turned sideways, trying to catch his breath, with his head still lying on Sean's thigh and his nose in the wrinkles where his legs joined his body. It had been suggestive enough that he'd been both afraid to move and very reluctant to, and had spent some time thinking about blowjobs before Sean had tried to touch his hair (he realized later) and missed and gotten--the side of his face, the curve of his ear, the edge of his eyelashes--the corner of his open mouth, suddenly dry, his mind blank with nothing but a tearing clamor of want.

It had been a casually affectionate touch, and then Sean's fingers had been combing through Elijah's hair again as he'd chuckled, and Elijah had breathed again and closed his eyes.

And then, later, Sean had fallen asleep, stretched out on the couch in the warmth left by Elijah's body, lying on his back with one hand curled on his chest, his eyelids innocent of little dream-twitches, his lips just barely open, a tiny black gap between them. Viggo had gone somewhere and when Elijah had looked up, the aloneness of the room had pressed close around him, years of it wrapping him up like stifling dusty blankets. When the fire had popped, it had been the most palpable presence in the room--besides the presence of a kiss Elijah was holding in with the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, though he didn't tear his eyes from Sean's sleeping face. Sean had been unmoving for so long, though, that he started to think, that maybe--

And then, he had been drunk.

He had braced himself very carefully, one hand on the cushion on the other side of Sean's head while he leaned clumsily forward, slowly, and left himself the luxury of open eyes as he erased the last remaining distance and felt the warm shape of Sean's lips against his at last.

It hadn't been the first kiss ever--there'd been another time when Sean had been asleep, and a time when a kiss on the cheek had missed. But it had felt like a first kiss.

It had been the New Year's kiss he had thought of, and would have given if he could: close-mouthed, nearly, but not chaste, a gentle yielding sweet pressure full of all the frustrated temptation he'd ever bottled up, trickling through him like blood. He had moved his lips the tiniest bit, near the last, and sucked gently on the undercurve of the upper lip, before he'd pulled back.

He had been able to imagine that Sean's lips, though they'd remained unresponsive, had clung to his when the kiss had ended.

Elijah had been nearly blind when he sat up and turned away, and it had taken some time for the movement of the fire to penetrate his thoughts. And he had heard Viggo clear his throat, and turned to see him in the door.

They hadn't said anything.

But Viggo had seen.

You don't know how lips hurt
Until you've kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you've loved a love and you have lost

He had fallen in love with Christine at first sight, long ago when he'd been very young and innocent, and it hadn't taken him long to convince her to marry him. She'd been so charming, quietly pretty, perhaps, but radiant with life. He'd been delighted with her mischievous smiles and lost when he saw her frown and bite her lip in concentration. He hadn't been able to get over the tenderness he felt for her when he thought she might be upset, or this sort of air of innocence about her though she was very practical and intelligent.
You couldn't believe she wasn't innocent when you saw her smile.
Christine was a wonderful person, the kind who you smile just to be around, who makes everyone laugh and everyone like her without trying to.
She'd been adorable, and completely unaware of it. Sean had spent years trying to show her, and then to convince her. All she would ever admit was that she certainly could believe he thought so. She'd always thought he was adorable, and she would say so, too, which was even better.
She'd invited Elijah to stay with them the first Thanksgiving after the filming was over, not just to make Sean happy, either, though he was sure that was part of it. No, Christine and Elijah really had always liked each other, though they hadn't seen too much of each other during filming, when Christine's hands had tended to be full of child. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" She'd asked Elijah at one of several farewell parties, coming up behind him and Sean, giving Lij a cup of spiked punch and a kiss on the cheek and tucking her hand through the crook of Sean's arm.
Sean had looked at her, totally surprised, and she'd just grinned at him.
Elijah had said, "Well,... eating Thanksgiving dinner with my Mom?"
She'd given Lij one of those mischievous little smiles and a dimple, and a wink that made Sean want to kiss her breathless, and she'd said, "Think we could talk you out of it?"
Lij had laughed, "Are you trying to?"
She hadn't said anything, so Sean had picked up her cue: "I think she's trying to start one of those Family Holiday Traditions--having Thanksgiving at our house with guests. Are you feeling alright, dear?"
She'd said to Elijah, not looking at Sean, "You're more than welcome to come--we'd be delighted to have you. Especially Sean, despite his poor behavior."
"Sean doesn't want me to come," Lij had said. "I'll just have to monopolize you, Christine. You'll talk to me, won't you?"
"Honey, you're too cute. Anyone would talk to you."
Sean had wrapped his arm around Christine's waist and tugged her closer against his side, and kissed the top of her head, mock-glaring at Lij. "Of course I want you to come--but only if you don't monopolize my wife."
"Hey, don't be so selfish. You get her for the rest of the year!"
And Christine had laughed, and despite what they'd said, it had been Sean who had monopolized Elijah--or maybe it had been the other way around. But what Lij had said was true; he was with his family all year. He hardly ever saw Lij, so at Thanksgiving they hardly spent any time apart. Of course, there were other people there--the kids, Christine, other couples who'd come over to eat.
Sean remembered years by the Thanksgivings, though. "And Eileen and Herb got a divorce the year Lij spent an extra week before Thanksgiving." "We had three pies that year we thought the heat was broken in the dining room, and everyone was wearing a sweater except Lij--he was wearing two sweaters." "No, Chris, you were wearing that red dress the year we got the dog, because you were standing next to Lij and he was wearing that ugly black shirt he was complaining about, and that was the day he walked the dog for us in that shirt."
And then there had been the Thanksgiving after Lij's divorce, and the long, long summer when they hadn't seen each other after all. Sean hadn't happened to answer the door; he'd been in the backyard raking leaves and Lij had arrived a day and a half earlier than his custom, looking pale and ragged, as Sean discovered later.
The first he'd known Elijah was there had been the thin arms snaking around his ribs from behind under his arms, and he'd dropped the rake at once in shock, as if Elijah had stepped out of memory, conjured by his brooding about the divorce. "Lij!" he'd said, and tried to turn around, but Lij had been clinging to him too tightly.
Sean had looked over his shoulder and not been able to see anything but the dark top of Elijah's head, hair in unruly spikes of brown, his face tucked down against Sean's shoulder blade. The patio doors had been closed behind Elijah and the blinds were turned half-opaque; there was no one to witness Elijah's tears slowly wetting first the back and then the front of Sean's shirt, except the dog.
"Hey," he'd coaxed, "Come here--oh--" catching one of Elijah's hands in each of his and unwinding the arms, then turning and gathering him up close. Elijah had gone limp in his arms and come obediently, and fallen against Sean's chest, face vanishing again. The "oh" had been startled out of him, torn out, really, when he'd seen the frightening pale misery staring in Elijah's face, rimming his eyes with red. He'd looked small and fragile, and like a child, but so old at the same time.
"I'm sorry," Elijah had whispered close to his ear as Sean had slowly rocked them back and forth, and for answer, Sean had just run a hand slowly down the shuddering length of his slim back. "I should've--" Elijah'd tried, and the words'd broken off in a spate of uneven, uncertain breath.
"No," Sean had said, "It's alright, I know."
"But I should have called, I should have come--something. I just--it was--"
"Sh," Sean had murmured, wishing he could say something magical to make Lij happy and make this uncomfortable twisting in his chest go away.
"But it wasn't you," Lij had whispered at last, rather subdued. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted to call you. I just couldn't think straight and I didn't know if you'd--you know. I just don't want to be such trouble, and I know you already--"
Oh, it had hurt, and Sean had had a hard time figuring out quite what he thought about that at first, let alone what to say to it. It was too late for apologies or regrets, far too late for anger, and he was long past hurt--he didn't know what to do, and he wasn't sure, somehow, that it was better knowing.
That something in his chest had unknotted, but it hadn't made the strange tight-trembly feeling go away--something rising in his throat that must stay back, a kind of panic that was in the wrong place, and he'd been confused, knowing no more than Lij, or less. "Oh," Sean had said, "Elijah..." and that had been all for awhile, because he hadn't known what else to say; just "I love you," maybe, but he hadn't said it.
He did love Elijah. He'd wondered, then, when it had become something he wouldn't say.

Oh, God, why am I here
If love isn't forever?

Frodo had fallen in love with Sam before Elijah had fallen in love with Sean. There'd always been that sense in the books. Well, the goddamned things revolved around how much the two of them loved each other, but they weren't necessarily in love just from reading it--it was something you could read either way, and they'd walked the same fine line acting it that Tolkien had walked writing it.
They say that practice makes perfect, and Elijah had been a child star. He'd had a lot of practice acting. He wasn't sure if it was really the practice that was responsible. After all, there were people who couldn't act, and there were people who were very good, and there were people who were only good with a lot of preparation and a lot of work. Oh, acting was very hard work, and it was awfully emotionally draining, of course, but Elijah had been acting for as long as he could remember.
The basic mechanism of it--putting yourself inside someone else, and becoming them--had long ago become as natural to him as breathing.
Peter's way of filming had been designed to put them very firmly into their characters, to make it stay with them. They'd created Middle Earth in New Zealand. They'd gone out in the middle of nowhere sometimes, just them, in costume, gotten really disgustingly grimy on top of their clothes and makeup, and spent so long around campfires and fields and trees and holes in the ground they might as well have been the real fellowship.
And he might have been Frodo and Sean might have been Sam, and for a lot of that time, they were.
Elijah wasn't sure, but he thought Frodo must have fallen in love a little before the end of the first movie, after Lothlorien. Of course, they'd filmed everything out of order and the boat scene--Frodo and Sam's defining moment in a lot of ways--had been finished before a lot of the rest of the movie, but to the character, that didn't matter so much. It was when he was Frodo, in the boat, and Elijah saw Sam (/Sean) sinking under the water, and got ready to deliver his line: "Sam!"
Frodo was in love when he said it. The way his voice went high, stretched thin, and tore wickedly at his throat--Frodo's world narrowed so far in that instant that all he saw was Sam vanishing under the water, and he forgot the Ring and everything else and would have gone back and given up anything to have stayed, to have had Sam safe in the boat with him or safe anywhere.
Elijah had thought about it, but it had crystallized in the on-site rehearsals of that scene, in the first take. My God, he'd thought, and he'd felt Frodo's panic, and his fingernails had dug into his hands. And when Sam had been up in the boat again, sopping streaming soaking wet and white light glinting in the water, his tousled hair, shining in the little drops trapped on his eyelashes--Frodo had never seen anything more beautiful.
He'd followed the script, but Elijah had often thought afterwards that that scene was playing very close to the edge of a kiss. He'd almost been able to feel it; when he'd watched the movie, he'd almost been able to see it.
Sean could become Sam, just as Elijah could become Frodo, and he became Sam very thoroughly, perfectly, inside and out. His wig became his hair--there was no Sean showing through the cracks. And Elijah could become Frodo. Coming out of character was harder, but there was a definite difference. Sean wasn't Sam and Elijah wasn't Frodo. When Frodo'd fallen, Elijah had been doomed for a long time, but he hadn't fallen yet then.
Maybe it had been when he found out that Sean wrote poetry, and he'd asked to read it and Sean had looked uncertainly at him, as if to see if he was serious, before he'd said "yes"?
For a long time Elijah had not thought of that afternoon, but had pinned the moment a week or so after that. He'd been looking for Sean; he couldn't remember why, anymore, but he'd thought it had been to apologize for some random fuck-up in the filming. He'd gone to Sean's trailer as soon as he'd gotten out of his costume and makeup, thrown on the first sweater and pants that had come to hand, and he'd walked quickly through sparse trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot. It had been silent, and he'd knocked and heard something--muffled words he couldn't quite decipher--so he'd opened the door and stepped in.
Sean had stiffened and turned quickly and warily, but when he saw Elijah he'd relaxed and said softly, "Oh, hi."
Oh, but the way he'd done it. It had been--like acting or breathing, as natural as Sam and Frodo, the way they were sweetly at home only with each other, no one else, and no matter where they were. But it hadn't been Sam and Frodo, it had been them. Elijah had been, clearly, not just acceptable, easy to be with where others, for some reason, were not, but welcomed. From the way Sean had smiled alone--and he'd flashed on Sam and Frodo again.
"What's up?" Elijah had asked, concerned and forgetting whatever had been on his mind.
"Oh," Sean had said, "nothing," with a rueful smile.
"No, really," he'd insisted, moving closer.
Sean had smiled and sat down on the edge of his cot, and Elijah had come to sit by him, leaning back on hands braced behind him. "I don't know," he'd said, "Just--stress."
"Missing your family?" Elijah had said.
"Mm, that too, I guess," Sean had said, and dropped his eyes to his fingers twisted together in his lap. He'd sighed. "It's just--I haven't been getting enough sleep, and I'm really not looking forward to the next scene, and--my mother called to pick a fight today."
"Oh no," Elijah'd said sympathetically. He had had the occasional disagreement with his mother, as good as she generally was, and despised them heartily. He'd already known Sean's was much worse. His eyes had widened, and he'd said, "So really sort of general stress."
"It might be the sleep more than anything," Sean had admitted, and then he'd lifted his hand and before Elijah had known what was happening, had put a hand on the curve between Elijah's neck and shoulder. "Oh," he'd said at once with a wince, "awful," and started to carefully knead the muscles of Elijah's shoulders with both hands.
Elijah had been conscious that he ought to have protested. He'd come to apologize and discovered Sean depressed, and here he was, claiming Sean's attention for himself--even if he hadn't asked. But his shoulders'd been tense, and he'd had a shitty day too, and Sean's hands had been very warm. Also, he'd been noticing for the first time that his hands were big and yet gentle, deft and delicate of touch.
So, with an involuntary sigh, Elijah's head had fallen forward and his back had bent, and he'd leaned unconsciously towards Sean's magical touch. "Mmm," he'd said, and Sean had laughed.
And when Elijah had been melted into deep contentment, relaxed and so easy and rested he thought he should glow, he'd tipped over and put his head on Sean's shoulder, and Sean had laughed again and sighed, "Thanks for coming over."
As if he'd asked, or Elijah had done him a favor. When he was stressed, and Elijah sat close next to him on his cot, the first thing he thought of was giving Elijah a backrub? And then Elijah laughed and said, "I'll come a lot more often if this is what I get every time."
Sean had seemed surprised that he mentioned it. "It's no problem," he said.
Elijah had taken a slow deep breath and let himself grow even more contented, though he wouldn't have thought he could. He could have slept with his head on Sean's shoulder, but he'd made himself sit up and turn Sean around and rub Sean's shoulders, though he wasn't nearly as good at is as Sean was.
When his hands had cupped the muscles of Sean's shoulders, Sean had swayed back gratefully, and he'd bent easily under the firm pressure of Elijah's thumbs and gasped once or twice. "You're even better at getting backrubs than at getting them," Elijah had joked: Sean was easy to please, and he made it clear that he liked it. He'd also had a sort of lump in his throat as the awareness of what was happening to him crept closer, like sunlight on closed eyelids or the sweet tang in the back of your mouth before you take the first bite of dinner.
Sean had said, "We have a mutual admiration society."
Like Frodo and Sam, as both of them had thought, probably, but neither had said. "No, I admire you more," Elijah had joked, but he hadn't really been joking.
Sean's laughter that time had been incredulous, though, and he'd looked over his shoulder at Elijah with one eyebrow up and his mouth curled up on one side, with a dimple, but not the other, and the light coming through the blinds on the trailer's little window over the cot had reached out its long fingers greedily, clutching at him and missing, casting long narrow shadows on his face. "You admire me more, Lij?" He'd said with a self-deprecating tone, rocking Elijah to the core with surprise. "There's no comparison. You're much better."
Then his face had straightened mostly, pulling into a solemn look, but with those laugh lines still there, still traced with sun and dusky shadow. And Elijah hadn't been able to look away from his eyes--and that had been when it had happened, he thought. It had all just been too much. He'd been frozen, breathless, caught like a rabbit in the snake's glare and ready to go willingly to his doom.
And he had.
For a long time, Elijah had thought of that as the moment when he fell in love; but later, he thought perhaps that was just when he realized it, because when he tried to remember why he'd gone to Sean's trailer more exactly, he hadn't been able to come up with the reason, and he thought it might not have been very important.
Then there had been that morning when Elijah had asked to read his poetry--all the same realizations as the other day had been buried there, and if he'd really fallen then, it could explain the vagueness of the weeks in between and the full-fledged, determined quality of the feeling when it had finally hit him, caught him and swept him up dizzyingly and carried him along since then, never letting him go.
Sean had always been--something that happened to him beyond his power to express, and his thoughts became thick and clumsy when he tried to define it, or define him. It hadn't been the way the light shone on Sean's face or the way the shutters of his soul had folded back involuntarily when Sean touched his shoulders. It hadn't been the gentleness of Sean's fingers, or his simple selflessness in thinking of Elijah first, and not understanding what Elijah meant when he said so, because that made it sound like something had made him love Sean, or as if it had had more to do with him, as if he'd fallen in love when he realized how good Sean could be, because he wanted it for himself--
He did want it; there's selfishness in love, but he didn't just want it for him. He wanted Sean for Sean, and nothing had made him want, though he often felt helpless. It was one of the most marvelous paradoxes of love, that he'd done it himself, fallen, if not with his eyes open, with some part of himself very much aware of what he'd done. He'd never change it, for all the bruises it left him over the years.
It was all worth it for Sean's smiles and the sound of his voice.
Elijah had never been free of doubt, in one way. He'd questioned himself constantly, scoffed at himself, living his whole life frozen in the moment when the sun had reached over Sean's face from the window of his trailer and touched Elijah's face with a warm questing spread of revelation. He had never been able to change his mind, but he had been able, sometimes, to submerge himself so completely in chilling solitude that even Sean's "Lij!" couldn't pull him out.
Sean had called him in Florida the year Anna had left him--Viggo and Orli had called Sean, and he'd really known that they would, but he hadn't talked about it with them.
He hadn't been wrapping himself in fantasies of Sean, other wounds still too fresh to bear the price of waking to the distant glory of sunset on water, the soft wells of pity in Viggo's eyes. "Sean," he'd said numbly. "Hi." What else had there been for him, but trying to send his memories out with the tide every morning only to have them return to torment him every night?
Elijah had not been too weary to read Sean's voice--he'd known then, when Sean had hesitated before speaking and he'd felt a stab of regret for causing that pain, that he never would be. "How are you?"
He had wanted to reassure, but he'd been unable to summon the strength to protect Sean. "Not too bad," he'd said slowly, not really lying--it all depended what you wanted to compare it to, after all. He'd taken the phone with him to be alone, finding the door of the bathroom with a shaking hand, not looking, and ducking into it, leaving the light off. When he'd looked in the mirror a nightlight plugged into the outlet near the light switch had lit his face from beneath, drawing harsh lines of age. "It's..." he'd said, and words had failed him again. "You know."
The gentle rush of breath over the mouthpiece, Sean's soft sigh, had drawn a shiver--he'd almost been able to feel it on his face, his blood rushing and pounding with sudden painful, soul-draining arousal at the sound. His eyes had fallen shut and he'd turned away from the mirror. His flushed lips, white face, wide eyes--obscene. "I'm sorry," Sean had said, and his voice had been husky enough to hook talons in Elijah's scalp, drawing blood, scrabbling up and down his spine with shivers. Elijah had lost too many tears to cry more--he'd thought, until he felt pricking under his eyelids. One hand had fumbled for the support of a solid wall; he'd ended up leaning against the edge of the shower stall.
He'd covered his face with his hands, trapping hot breath to gust up along his damp cheeks and tickle his nose. To speak, he'd had to remove them. "I'm sorry too," he'd replied quietly, and his hands had hung in the air like broken-winged birds, fluttered--
--Their touch on his skin warm but eerily inhuman and clinical, and he'd shivered again with loathing when he touched himself. "It's just been," he'd said, hardly knowing what words came, "It's been--I don't know. But--" And it had been so difficult to say. "I should have called," he'd made himself admit, "I know that. And I'm glad you did."
He'd turned in the shower stall, slumped with his back on the wall, keeping his eyes on his feet to avoid the black mirror. Elijah had picked up one hand to dash tears away from his eyes while the other ghosted down his chest. He'd felt as if he was watching from a distance as his stomach went hollow and empty under his fingers, tensing agonizingly, and his breath shortened. "If there's anything I can do...?" Sean had asked, and Elijah had dropped his head, too affected by the concern, the--tenderness--in the familiar voice. His hand had fumbled with his fly, but it closed over his erection through cotton when Sean said that.
He'd stifled the impulse to laugh, and said, "Just the sound of your voice." The words had formed themselves in his mind with bitterness, but they'd come out honest and unadorned, with nothing out of the ordinary to be read in them.
It had only taken seconds, when they'd hung up, for Elijah to be sitting in the shower, feet braced apart, one of his hands wrapped around the aching hardness between his legs. The phone had clattered slightly when he'd set it down next to him, skittering on the white linoleum. Oh, his imagination had always been a minefield, filled with bittersweet memories and half-buried hopes.
Elijah had not stopped picturing Sean when he jerked off when he'd been married.
Now he'd laughed a little at himself, cold and alone in the darkened bathroom of a beach house in the middle of summer. Orli and Viggo, for all he'd known, were wrapped in each other's arms that way they had as if they'd already melted together long ago, and standing apart was what was strange.
He'd closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and relaxed those mental walls that weakness had always toppled. He'd let himself imagine a forbidden future or an alternate past--and the click of the door and the whisper of air as Sean followed him in here. He'd conjured phantom touches to match the caress of his own hands. If Sean had found Elijah like this, he'd have fallen to his knees without a thought for anyone else, and whispered Elijah's name, gathered him into his arms. He'd have breathed Sean's scent and buried his face in his neck and his arms would have gone around Sean, and he'd have clutched him oh, so tightly, as though he'd never let go...
Until Sean would have said something, maybe "What is it?" or just a gentle, "Elijah."
Elijah's eyes would have opened, and of course, Sean would have been so close, as he'd been so often before. This time would have been different, of course--with the wan benediction of the nightlight sliding through his hair from behind and glazing the backs of his hands gold in the dark, Sean'd have hugged Elijah closer and dropped his head to kiss him.
In the dreams it had always been Sean who had kissed him.
It wouldn't have been like those sleeping kisses, or like that time they'd been so giddy Elijah had been able to turn sideways and catch what had been meant for his cheek full on his lips before he'd pulled back and turned away.
He'd have opened his mouth with a little shudder of longing and let go of everything to claim Sean, dancing tongues, seeking lips, his hands on the smooth muscled expanse of Sean's back under his shirt. They would have been in too much of a hurry to pause to take off their clothes; Sean would have sobbed something against Elijah's neck and pushed his own hand under the flap of cotton boxers where Elijah's was now. His fingers would have been slow, careful and gentle like he was with backrubs, but different, too, diffident. Sean sometimes lacked confidence, though it didn't show through too often--it made Elijah want to crush him in his arms till he couldn't breathe, kiss him until he couldn't think, couldn't doubt--couldn't but want.
Sean's hand would have wrapped around Elijah and he'd have moved it slowly, careful stroking, and his touch would have washed over Elijah and through him and taken all his too-deep, too-serious thought away. Elijah had known then that he'd been thinking too much, and for all his concentration, he was certain he hadn't once thought the right thing. Falling slowly asleep in the bottom of a well of darkness, choked and caressed by seductive icy fingers--but the phantom touch, the remembered husk of Sean's voice, burned it away.
Sean would have been patient--it was his way. Elijah had exhausted his store of patience. His head had fallen back, lips forced back around hoarse gasps as he'd slowly, slickly pumped himself with the images drifting around him like leaves in a windstorm--hot, wet--warm--eyes black in the dark, pinpricks of light reflected in them, endless brown in the golden sun--kiss--Sean's hands, his lips, a tear on his cheek that Elijah could reach up and catch in his hand, kiss away.
Sean. He'd come then, a sweaty, sticky mess, shredding him inside out like salt.
And it had ended as it had begun, with Elijah wrapped tightly around himself in the darkness, alone with his desire.

Feel the sun on your face
And tell me what you're thinking
Catch the snow on your tongue
And show me how it tastes

There had been one of those moments that turns around, from peaceful introspection, and all the edges in the world become cutting-sharp and diamond-hard and twist themselves into your mind before you escape. Sean had watched with a kind of awe as it had worked its spell on him, the darkness, the flickering of the fire, the knowledge of Lij's, Dom's, Orli's, Billy's silent presences near him, though he couldn't see them. He'd stared at the fire and wondered why it wasn't bright enough to brand itself into his eyes--the smoke had been the lightest thing around, wisping into the air from the gusting spires of orange flame, curling around itself in a miasmous plume blotting the moon.
Sparks had flung themselves into the icy air, ever-higher, always winking out before Sean had had to tilt his chin up to see them, but never fearing their death as they went. A moment of vertigo and he'd been able to invert the world, see them falling from the dangling gauze of flame through the black water of night. Perhaps they settled somewhere in the sky, which would become a cradling silk bed, like the bottom of a fantasy ocean.
When the fire had been just dry white and gray wood in a circle of stones and Orli's or Lij's ever-present lighter, the world had not yet been pitch black, as his adjusted eyes had found the different shades of darkness, feathery pine needles and clawlike branches against a wash of night like water mixed with India ink.
Lij's hair, short and soft without the wig, brown cloaked in shadow to become one with the air around him. Now, in the light of the fire, and the cool of the New Zealand evening, Sean had known his nose to be pink with cold and his cheeks pink with the flush of flame. When he'd turned his head at last it had been to see the copper picked out in Lij's hair as he'd expected, because Lij's hair was not black at all, but a rich, dark brown laced with russet. And there had been an innocent smile--a laugh, really, at one of Orli's jokes, with his mouth open and the firelight flashing off his teeth. You hadn't been able to see his eyes because they'd fluttered closed in a moment abandoned to the kind of laughter that made him cover his face, if he was in public, as if embarrassed. Wracked with laughter, Sean's best friend, still so young and looking younger by far than his nineteen years. Sean hadn't been able to stop laughter from welling up in him either, at the sight, but it had been more the kind of laughter that came from smiling too much, and he hadn't heard the joke.
That night had been filled with the kinds of images that could come back to him years later, still as perfect as they'd been then, pregnant with the mystery of life, like when he'd stopped paying attention and Dom and Billy had thrown their arms around him and messed up his hair horribly, tumbled them to the ground, wrestling in the uneven red light and sitting up breathless with leaves in their hair, and Orli's and Lij's giggles.
He'd felt a kind of grief for the fire when they'd let it burn down to ashes and blackened logs in among the stones, and had to go to sleep. Lij had slung a careless arm around Sean's neck and pressed his cold cheek to Sean's, and said, reading his mind: "It was pretty."
Sean had laughed at himself, feeling silly, but the fire had been almost alive, consuming the logs so delicately in shifting transparent slides of amber and electric orange. He'd watched it rise and then die for hours, but when he closed his eyes its imprint had already faded.
Lij had laughed too, and let go of Sean. "It was beautiful," he'd corrected himself, and gone into their cramped tent without waiting for Sean's response. In the morning he'd woken before dawn had finished struggling out of its cocoon of hills and trees to more than breathe rosy life onto the edges of the sky. Orli had already been up when he'd risen, and just then he'd appeared with a bucket of water, startling Sean because he'd never known Orli to be awake so early, let alone up and doing useful things.
Embers had still glowed under the burnt logs, until Orli had tossed the bucket over them. Then steam had billowed in place of smoke with an angry hiss. When the steam had dissipated completely the logs had still been wet. The fire had looked desolate, slimed with silver water over its withered bones. And then the sun had threaded determined fingers through the tops of the trees and flung itself over the horizon, and long rays had sluiced down through pine needles, turning them from gray to green. They'd fallen one after the other onto the ground, spreading out in the dirt and freezing freckles of dust in their midst. The water on the logs had been lying in wait for the light, and they'd met with a still moment of pleased completion, silver catching fire with day and making the circle of ground glow amber and gold and pink again.

You try to feel me
But I'm so out of touch
I won't be falling
You won't have to pick me up

"You're not walking away from me, Elijah Wood," Anna had said fiercely, spinning him around at the door with her fingernails biting into his upper arm.
He'd met her eyes and wondered what had made her so much angrier about this than about any of a thousand other complaints. "I'm listening, then," he'd said, hating the sullen note in his voice.
Anna's lips had firmed and she'd stepped closer, though she'd loosened her grip. "This is important to me," she'd said tightly. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that. I thought you knew. I need you to--" she'd broken off and bit her lip.
Elijah, watching her, had forced his eyes to drop so she wouldn't see what he felt about her manipulation and given in with a little twist of his mouth, "I'm sorry too, Anna. I'll go." He'd sighed, and he hadn't had to act to make the sound. "I should listen more closely. Sometimes..."
"I know," she'd muttered, voice oddly half-pitched between familiar tones, but Elijah hadn't bothered to listen more closely. Her mouth on his had taken him by surprise with a soft assault of sweet breath and sweeter yielding, opening to invite his tongue to explore as she stepped closer still and pressed their bodies together, unbound breasts nestling against his chest under her nightgown.
This he could handle. Elijah didn't have to act in bed, as long as there was a spark between them to be breathed on. It would flare up and take hold of him. By then he'd lost his ability to forget everything else in it, and the narrow span of her waist in his hands, slippery under black satin, was too familiar to give him a thrill of demanding, spine-tingling discovery as it had used to. He could cup her ass and feel the soft curves, and follow the path of the dress slipping up her slim thighs as she lifted her legs around his hips, but he couldn't lose himself, any longer, in the excitement. Elijah had buried his face in her hair and let her breathless little cries fill his ear as his fingers had willingly pushed satin up to pool around her waist, tracing the warm moist cleft under lace panties.
Later he'd knelt between her thighs on the bed, one hand toying with her gently as his tongue had pushed into her. He'd been wrapped in the scent of her cum, overpoweringly feminine and like pure sex, but his head hadn't been spinning. Her thighs had clenched around his shoulders, but pleasure hadn't closed over his head. Elijah had been accustomed, by then, to sex that came and went and sort of washed through him, tightening his gut and making his cheeks hot and red without touching the part of him deep inside that ached for it, which had used to stir, at least, when he'd buried himself in Anna's wet warmth. She'd gasped again and made encouraging moans, arching off the bed, legs braced, then wrapped around him, pulling him closer as she'd sobbed. They'd fucked until Elijah was nearly breathless, and when he'd spent himself in her and rolled just to the side, he'd been completely exhausted, like nothing more than an Elijah-shaped smudge on Anna's no-longer-clean sheets.
Anna had stroked his hair as if her attention were elsewhere and said "Thank you," probably for the sex and for agreeing to go with her to the party.
"Mm," he'd said in the pillow, too tired for acting, too tired to pretend he was happy.
They'd gone to the party, and that night when she'd thought he was asleep Anna had kissed the top of his head and dampened his hair with tears, and whispered, "I tried," and then a minute later, "I'm too tired for this anymore."
And the next morning she'd told him she was leaving.

A thousand years and a thousand more
Would be long enough for love
If you think of me
You know that I still wait for you

It had only been two years since Anna had left Lij in pieces, a ghost who smiled over Thanksgiving dinner and stuffed himself with Christine's turkey without regaining a flush to his round cheeks or a sparkle to his sad eyes.
Sean was restless and nervous after the dream, and got up in the middle of the night, rubbing his arms against the chill and struggling to push it away, to forget it again. It had been a dream of memory--very bad, because if he'd really had it before as it had tried to convince him, that--he couldn't think it.
He found a robe on the bedpost and left the room barefooted, quietly. Christine, curled fetally in isolation on her side of the bed, didn't stir. The carpet muffled his steps but didn't do much to warm his feet. Sean stopped at the head of the stairs, where he'd found Elijah far too early in the morning the first day he'd woken up there, two years in the past. Elijah had been dressed, in socks and pants and a sweatshirt, with his hair wet. There had still been a damp, slightly sticky-looking pinkness to his cheeks and his neck. His hands had been white, clamped around the banister, his eyes not really fixed on the fireplace in the living room below. His back had stiffened at Sean's approach--so he'd felt it, but he hadn't turned, hadn't said anything until Sean had stepped to the rail next to him and slid a solemn, quizzical look at his face. Then Lij had said softly, "I'm sorry."
"You didn't wake me," Sean had said reassuringly, and hugged Elijah gently. He'd been resistant for a moment, then loosened his hold on the banister and let himself be pulled off-balance into Sean's shoulder. He hadn't relaxed, though.
"'M sorry anyway," Elijah had said.
"What? For not being able to sleep?" Sean had said, half-joking, and pulled back to see that Lij was smiling too.
"Wouldn't want to hurt your feelings, insult your hospitality."
"I'm not insulted."
"Then I won't tell Christine if you won't," Lij had bargained, his smile widening almost to a grin. He'd been looking down into the living room again, though, at the dark fireplace and the brooding dimness draped over the corners of the couch.
"Deal," Sean had said, squeezing Lij's shoulder and only then realizing he still had his arm around him. Then he'd said, following Lij's gaze to the living room, "I think the couch missed you."
Lij had been smiling again. "Oh, really? Well, it's always good to feel needed."
"It gets pretty cold with no one to lie on it all day."
"Maybe," Lij had said, "you could work something out with one of the kids."
"They don't stay around very much anymore," Sean had replied cheerfully. "You're its best bet. Sure you don't want to stick around?"
"And be your couch warmer?" Lij had said dryly. "I'm flattered--and tempted, of course--but..."
Sean had said, wide-eyed and earnest, in the old accent, "Of course you know I'd never ask for my sake, Mr. Frodo. It's just for the poor couch."
Lij had burst out laughing. "For a little while, anyway, Sam," he'd said, grinning for a moment with Frodo's eyes, and led the way down the stairs. He'd settled on the couch as if it had been made for him while Sean had lit a fire, and they'd been sitting in the living room, Lij sipping coffee cradled in two hands nearly as pale and translucent as the porcelain, Sean sprawled in his armchair with the newspaper unread in his lap, when Christine had come down.
Sean walked slowly down the stairs as if he were still dreaming (though the dream had been of New Zealand, and the contrast was still faintly chilling). He stood to the side, taking half of each step as though making room for Elijah next to him. The brief space of hardwood floor was like ice on the soles of his feet. He walked quickly into the living room and stopped behind the couch, facing the fireplace. His hand dropped to caress the slightly worn corduroy--Christine was tired of it, but they kept it because Sean insisted and because every Thanksgiving, when he saw it, Lij's eyes lit up. Even that year, when they'd come in from their long greeting in the yard, he'd brightened somewhat to see it, and fallen into it rather the way he'd fallen into Sean's embrace as Frodo.
Christine had followed to the kitchen doorway and stood there looking at his closed eyes, frowning with concern. "Can I get you something?" She'd asked after a long while of reluctance to speak, and Sean'd looked up, almost surprised to see her there.
Lij had smiled bravely, but he hadn't opened his eyes. "Coffee?" He'd said hopefully, and she'd vanished without another sound. Sean had stood for much longer, behind the couch where he stood now, looking at Elijah until he'd thought his friend long since asleep.
Then the eyes had opened all at once, alert, brilliant cobalt. Then he'd smiled and reached up to catch Sean's hand where it rested on the back of the couch. "Thanks," he'd murmured, for what, Sean hadn't known. He'd closed his eyes again, and when Christine had come in with coffee he'd been really asleep with Sean's hand in his. Christine had sighed, and handed the coffee to Sean instead.
He could almost see Elijah there--his eyes closed, his mouth pale and pinched, his free hand tucked down along his side, one of his knees bent. So small and vulnerable, like a child lying on Sean's the couch, but with fine lines beside his eyes now. He'd been thirty-three when Anna'd left, thirty-four when the divorce had gone through--too young, but lying there he'd looked frighteningly old. Sean didn't sit.
When he went to the kitchen and stood looking out the sliding glass doors across the yard, twitching aside the blinds, the dog, sleeping curled in a tight furry ball on the welcome mat, woke with a little grumbling snort. It stood up, glanced at Sean, then pawed at the mat in an irritated manner before it turned around two and a half times and laid down again. He put his nose on the cold glass; his breath misted a circle around his chin. He turned around, blinds swaying behind him, and sat at the kitchen table, for lack of anything better to do. Sean didn't think he'd sleep more that night, not with the dream lurking, waiting for him. It might be awhile before he slept. He considered the coffeepot, wiggling his toes on the tile to keep them warm, and didn't get up yet.
When they'd gone to get his daughter, home from college, at the airport the next day, she'd seen Elijah before she'd seen him and thrown herself at her "uncle" with a happy little gasp that was almost a squeal. She'd wrapped her arms around him and tucked her face down in the shoulder of his jacket. "Are you okay, Lij?" She'd asked softly,
And he'd said, petting her hair awkwardly, "Well, now I am for sure."
Her brother, thirteen and predisposed to being scornful, had not made a face or a single noise.
Christine had gotten the next hug after Elijah, and only then Sean, who'd pretended to have his feelings hurt. She'd laughed a little and hugged him tighter and called him "Daddy" in the same tone she'd used when she was five and they were filming The Lord of the Rings, if a somewhat older voice. When Sean had looked up over her head he'd seen Lij smiling at them with his hands in his pockets, maybe a little misty-eyed. Sean had winked and he'd looked away.
Sean was no more happy now, in the kitchen at 3:40 am, then he had been in the bedroom at three. He got up to make coffee and stood, resting his hands on the counter. The wind, outside, was loud enough that he could hear it pushing against the glass, stumbling through the trees, hissing at the window. Water gurgled with a sucking noise in the coffee pot and subsided back into the tiny bubbling whistles of a miniature radiator.
Whenever Lij had been able to wake before one of them, he'd made the coffee, and by two years ago Christine had long ago given up arguing with him about it. Sean had chastised him once, but he'd always known there were things you couldn't argue with Lij about. That year, Lij had made coffee every morning except that first day when Sean had had to pry him from the banister.
The two of them had been late to Thanksgiving dinner, because Lij had gotten up abruptly in the middle of a game of "Life" on the living room floor around noon and vanished. Sean's head had whipped up and he'd followed him with his eyes only, at first.
Minutes had passed and he hadn't returned. Sean had gone out the back door first, slipping through the door and sliding it shut behind him. The back yard had been empty, gray with rain and chill. He'd gone through the gate, walked all the way around the house, found Lij sitting on the curb next to the mailbox trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. A flood of something nameless and frightening had crippled him, and he'd been choked with worry and a low insidious current of tenderness when he knelt and cupped his hands around Lij's to steady them.
"Thanks," Lij had said, releasing the word small and scared into the cold air on a puff of smoke. Sean had only sat beside him, their knees bumping, eyes squinted against the wind.
"Wanna get out of here?" Sean had asked gently after a little.
Lij had looked quickly at him, turning his head as if he were suspicious, his eyes full of a question Sean couldn't quite pick apart. So Sean had just nodded, and then Lij had nodded too, slowly.
Sean had opened the door again, stuck his head in and grabbed two jackets from the hooks in the entry, closed it gently, all the while with Elijah hovering, hands in his pockets, squinting inscrutably at the dull, grainy sky. They'd each put on one of the jackets, and started walking. "Maybe if I walk long enough," Elijah had said with dark humor, when they'd gone a few blocks. "That's something I haven't tried yet." He'd looked sideways at Sean, and added: "Thanks. I seem to say that a lot to you. I guess I'll probably never be able to stop."
The unfairness--because Sean had felt a swelling rebellion, swift and certain, at the words, but he hadn't known how to argue, so he'd just gripped Lij's arm to stop him in mid-step. They'd looked into each other's eyes searchingly for a minute, and then Sean had said, "No thank you's--for either of us. We're friends, and we're equal. And--just feel better," he'd added gruffly. Look like you used to, Lij. Laugh at me.
Lij hadn't laughed at him, but after another instant of frozen contemplation, his eyes unmoving and nearly lifeless, his face'd been touched with a hint of warmth, and then he'd smiled. They'd walked on.
It hadn't been that Sean didn't know the time; he'd been wearing a watch. He'd have been willing to bet, though, that Lij didn't know the time, and he'd said nothing. It had started to rain again while they walked, a slow rain, nearly freezing-cold, that slicked the streets and dampened Lij's hair till it clung to his skull. That was why they'd finally turned around--Lij had started to shiver, ducked his head and raised his shoulders, but Sean had said, "Hey."
Lij had turned to look at him, raising dark brows over wide eyes like a mockery of the sky, which had been, that day, just their pale shadow. "Huh?"
"Let's go back now. If you want to freeze your ass off later when it's not so wet, I'll be happy to come with you, but we should really eat first." It had already been too late to make it back in time, by then. But what was more important?
Lij had smiled reluctantly and fallen into step with him.
By the time they'd made it back--the walk had been much shorter on the way out--they'd been soaked through, and Sean had been cold too. Lij had been shivering uncontrollably, by then, for nearly twenty minutes, a constant jangling cacophony of movement under Sean's arm wrapped around his shoulders. Every now and then he'd be wracked with another violent bout of shaking, ripping through the milder trembles, and Sean's throat would tighten in alarm.
They'd had to walk past the dining room door to creep up the stairs and change; Sean had caught Christine's eye and she'd given a short nod.
She'd been upset about their being late, but she'd tried to camouflage it, still gracious and polite as ever. Sean had thought at the time that she was mad at him and not Elijah, to whom she'd been just as solicitous as ever even after he completely warmed up, what had seemed like hours later.
Now, Sean wondered.
The coffee finished brewing and he took it into the living room, leaned back on the couch and pushed his cold feet under a cushion. The memories were creeping up on him, now, and he was getting lost. He couldn't resist the pull of twice-dreamed sensations for much longer, feelings with no basis in reality that ghosted over his skin raising goosebumps, collapsed his diaphragm, reached into his guts and twisted them into a hot, tangled mess.
Elijah.
He could hardly bear to think that the dream... explained things.
Hot, slippery, tight in his stomach. Sean wanted nothing more than to be alone, without even the thoughts. His head hurt, and he drank more coffee. It chased the cold, but the headache and the persistent burning of arousal remained. The feeling had become unfamiliar. It had been a long time since he and Christine had made love, longer since it'd consumed him as he remembered. He couldn't remember the last time she'd slept snuggled close against his side, and he couldn't recall whose fault it was.
It had taken a lot of work, but for some time Sean had been practicing not noticing it. The dream--the dream had broken down some illusions. Another sip of coffee, his head throbbing. Oh, God...
Young Elijah had been lying in Sean's arms in the dream, wrapped so tightly in them neither of them could move, with their legs tangled. He'd been drifting in a sea of pleasure and contentment, as if slowly waking up.
There had been kissing, Elijah's mouth open over his and his tongue thrusting deep in Sean's mouth. Sean had been gasping, whimpering, moaning. He'd writhed in the onslaught of touch, Lij's hands sliding smoothly up his ribs and behind his shoulders, curving over his hips and dipping down to touch him where all his body's aching need centered. Sean had felt like something stretched too thin, taut with wonder, tormented with the hot wet of Elijah's mouth. It stained him, bathing his throat, fastening over a nipple and painting a lazy path down his stomach. Ripples of blinding-white desire, all of Sean going dark and dissolving in a hoarse, crumbling cry, in an agony of desperate want and tender touch.
Then Elijah had been rising over him, covering Sean's mouth with cool fingers, and there'd been a low laugh as he lowered himself and took Sean into the heart of his heat. Thrusting helplessly, his mouth open, gasping or crying, no relief from an inferno of devouring completion. His eyes must have closed in the dream, because he could smell and taste and feel Elijah--God, he must have dreamed it before, and who'd have guessed he could conjure the taste of Elijah's sex--but everything else had been a blur, his body shredding on seeking shivers, blossoming to a ripe fullness of panting and throbbing blood and the undulation of Elijah on him, around him, sweet and wickedly tight. Colors bleeding from the soles of his feet, suffusing him, burning red and indigo. His spine arching.
He'd woken up achingly hard, cheeks wet, breath horrifyingly uneven. And now, Sean knew: it was a New Zealand dream, he was certain, because the feel of it--it didn't feel new. He supposed he should be glad he'd forgotten it for so long.
It was when he remembered the dream, and had to put the cup down on the table so he didn't slosh scalding coffee over his hands, that he realized what it meant, this erotic fantasy coming back to him after so long and squeezing all his breath out--when Christine hadn't done that for--years?
It hadn't released him yet. He was hard again.
It meant it was over.
Lyrics in order of appearance: "You Don't Know What Love Is"/Don Raye/Gene DePaul; "Onde Estas"/Nelly Furtado (trans. from Portuguese); "Inevitable"/Shakira (trans. from Spanish); "Willow Weep For Me"/Ann Ronell; "You Don't Know What Love Is"/Don Raye/Gene DePaul; "Leather"/Tori Amos; "Take My Hand"/Dido; "Let Me Be"/Britney Spears; "Estoy Aqu�"/Shakira (trans. from Spanish)
[burn - catch fire with day]