If I take you tonight,
Is it making my life a lie?

Sean was sitting on the couch with his chin resting on the arm. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but the dog hadn't moved in all that time--it was inside, now that Christine was gone and he was lonely. A second knock sounded before it registered and he went to answer.

Of course he knew it would be Lij.

That didn't stop his reaction. There was that kind of clear hollow sun that hurts your eyes without making the sky particularly bright, all around. The blinds were closed in the living room, so when he opened the door Elijah was outlined in brilliant white, making it harder to see his face. He stepped into the hall and to the side, and kicked the door closed.

He didn't smile. His lips were just parted, damp and pink, and his eyelashes were wet. His nose was red with cold or with crying. Sean couldn't move; Elijah fell forward and hugged him, gathered him close in his slender arms, clutching him tightly and murmuring words Sean didn't hear.

Elijah. It hurt to touch him suddenly, even though he filled Sean's arms perfectly as they curled automatically around him, hugging him close. Dreamy pain-edged pleasure, tangling in Sean's thoughts so he had a headache already.

A hot hand, stinging like acid, had clenched around his throat when he'd seen Elijah looking at him uncertainly with his eyes full of sympathetic grief, and his body'd been drawn taut suddenly on invisible strings in a shock of realization.

He had never seen anything so deathly beautiful, couldn't imagine it--and it wasn't going away. Now his lips trembled. Was his body filling with something or draining of it? God!

An eternity of the familiar scent of Elijah filling him, taking up residence there, touching nerves all over Sean's skin so he nearly moaned with the perfection. His stomach--thin and liquid, stumbling inside him with dazed heat.

How long had he been in love with Elijah?

And he couldn't bear to let him go. Elijah was making no move to pull back, fortunately. How had he been stupid enough to call, to let him come? He was too weak. Sean thought, I can't do this.

But he would.

What else was there to do?

Speak?

Hardly. He would survive.

I won't leave
I can't hide
I cannot be

The second day he was there, Elijah made a cake. For one whole day he'd trailed Sean around the house, though admittedly, they'd hardly moved. He'd planned to lure Sean into the kitchen or the living room so he could keep an eye on him, but no luring was required. When he got up and went into the kitchen to rifle through cookbooks, Sean followed him after only a few seconds.

"Do you know how to make a cake?" Sean asked doubtfully, when he saw what Elijah was reading in the cookbook.

"More or less," Elijah shrugged. "I can cook. How hard can it be?"

This actually made Sean laugh, and he propped his head on one hand and watched bright-eyed as Elijah flipped the page. "You might be surprised. But then again, that could be entertaining..."

Elijah stuck out his tongue, and Sean laughed for a moment before a jagged shiver of memory slid slimy-cold across his face. Elijah could see it, his eyes closing tight, and an odd twitch in his cheek. Sean took a deep breath before he opened his eyes again, and Elijah couldn't tear his eyes away, back to the cookbook.

"Look, make a plain chocolate one," Sean said after a too-long silence, "it's not that hard."

"Right." Even though he'd known how to break eggs since he was a little kid, and scrambled them expertly, Elijah cracked one too hard on the edge of the mixing bowl. It broke entirely in half and crumpled in his hand. A shard of shell stabbed into the fleshy base of his thumb, and the viscous yellow-tinted egg white oozed between his fingers like cold blood. He shook it into the trash, making a face, and scrubbed the mess off the palm of his hand with soap and warm water.

His thumb still hurt. When he raised it to his mouth to suck cautiously, there was another little sting before the feeling quietened. It was awkward, the hand in his way with every move he made, measuring vanilla and milk, pouring the batter into a cake pan, scraping with a spatula with his fingers clasped strangely around it like it was a pencil. Elijah opened the oven to a wave of hot air and pulled his face back. He poked the cake in with one hand, squinting a little, and moved out of the way quickly so he could close the door again. Then he stood up, resting his hands on his hips. The dog glanced up from its spot, curled on the floor in front of the sink, and wagged its tail, always hopeful.

Elijah laughed and put the bowl in the sink. His spine pricked and he turned swiftly to find Sean's eyes on him, his mouth sober, his eyes level and deep. There was something about his face--Elijah thought he might throw up, the ground was slipping out from under him so fast. Behind him, his hand trembled and the under-edge of the counter bit into the pads of his fingers. If it left a red line that would be real. Flashes of pain interspersed with all the wrong parts of the past that he wished he hadn't stored up now, because they exploded with sharp-sweet little bursts all over him, burning-cold, upside-down-inside-out in his guts, squeezing and pulling. His mouth was dry, his eyes were wet--oh, he thought, what is this?

Sean starting, clumsily surprised, his hands on Elijah's back to steady him. Elijah didn't remember crossing the room; now he was in Sean's lap, face on his shoulder breathe deeply and breathe again--he smells like Sean--it was wrong to want the stale smell of Sean's shirts now still when he was so alone, though his arms were so warm going around Elijah's back, slow and confused, halting. But they wrapped around him and neither of them spilled onto the floor. Elijah fit easily in Sean's lap. He always had. When they filmed The Two Towers and The Return of the King, carrying him had never made Sean tired. Muffled sob on Sean's shoulder, for what he saw in Sean, hurting, when he couldn't read it and couldn't soothe it.

Why hadn't he realized that coming here would make him hurt just as much as Sean?

Elijah had always been unusually blind when it came to Sean. Now he hugged him too tight, and Sean didn't complain but hugged him back. "Stop doing that," he whispered.

"What--looking at you? Or breathing on your ear?"

No, Elijah thought, don't stop that. "Looking so pitiful."

Sean laughed shakily, "I'm sorry. You don't have to look at me."

He obviously didn't understand. Was there any way to explain something like that? So Elijah just said, "Um," because he'd meant to say "you're right" but it wouldn't come out. Then he said brightly, "Have you lost circulation in your legs yet?"

"I don't know." Voice warm with amusement, but if you listened, you could still hear all that terrible emptiness like snags in his throat. "Let's see."

Elijah breathed in and out.

"Elijah?"

Get up. Get up. He did, reluctantly, and gave Sean his hand.

"Hm--they still work," said Sean with an air of revelation.

"Guess I don't need to go on a diet," Elijah smiled. All their humor was thin, but it was a game they played to reassure each other.

Sean frowned at the thought. "Don't scare me like that, Lij."

He laughed, and walked into the living room. "I feel useful," he said, "let's light a fire."

They both sat on the couch, watching it, until the timer went off, and Elijah shot to his feet and went to check the cake. It looked done, and he didn't know where the toothpicks were, so he took it out of the oven.

Sheet cakes look much more impressive with icing on them. Without, it was just a swell of dark brown laced with the fine cracks it had made as it rose in the oven. "Do you have icing?" He wondered, looking critically at it with his head tilted.

"You can make it," said a voice right next to his ear, and Elijah's stomach froze and melted at once, and his blood was almost loud enough to hear--he hadn't felt Sean come up behind him.

Now he had to wait, no question. Sean was heartbroken, still grieving, and confused, and besides, he wasn't offering anything.

No matter how it had felt, coming back to yourself on his lap with his arms rising around you with a little endearing pause as if he didn't quite know what to do with an armful of Elijah, his breath on your ear and the side of your face.

Take these tears that you've cried
And trust them to me

He couldn't stop looking at Elijah, gorging himself on the sheer sensuous luxury of it. Pain and pleasure--Christine's face when they'd bought the house and she'd smiled and turned in a little circle in the guest room. Elijah's when he'd walked into it for the first time, flung himself on the bed and bounced emphatically a few times, that gorgeous smile and his mischievous baby-eyes. Memory and loss, the unfamiliar absence of her that still had him off-balance. Memory and regret, because standing in the door of the guest room watching Lij's sleeping face, he knew he'd fallen in love with him a long, long time ago.

Sean couldn't believe the elegant beauty of Elijah's long white throat in the darkness, his slender-fingered hands curled up, one over his head and one on his stomach. The blanket draped over him outlined the jut of a hip bone, the bend of his leg. Sean didn't have to see under the blanket, didn't have to have recent memory to draw on for his eyes to construct a map of Elijah's body. He could no more stop this need than he could have let himself love so long ago when it had first happened to him.

And now it was late. Lij was old; he was older, and his house was dark and cold. Better, wasn't it, to have met Christine, to have loved once, than to have yearned consciously for Lij for all these years?

He knew he would have.

If he could just cross the room and touch him. His mouth was open, the daring temptation of it, ripe and full, the soft curve of the lower lip. What would his skin feel like? Would it be hot under the blanket? His mouth.

Lij's hands, pale and fragile with their broken, bitten nails. The gentle curve of his spine. His hips would fit in Sean's hands, and when they slid down, his sweet ass would. And maybe if Sean touched the soft skin where his thighs met he'd whimper in his sleep, and he could wrap his hand around his flushed silken shaft and taste him.

All Sean could remember of his last dream was scoring Lij's back with his nails as he crushed him, coming hard buried deep inside him, Lij's mouth open as he screamed "Sean!", and biting Lij's neck. He'd woken up alone on his side of the bed with an erection leaking with readiness. His legs had felt too weak to go to the bathroom so he'd pumped himself a few times, deliberately, and come shuddering and crying, thick and hot. He had washed the sheets in the middle of the night and changed them, but when he went in his room now he could still smell sex.

The worst part was the guilt.

He'd still been in love with Christine for nearly fifteen years after he met Lij, and in fairness he'd done nothing to hurt her that he could prevent. It had really been over with. But to know that he'd been waiting all that while was...

Waiting for the end of his marriage, so he could devote himself entirely to unrequited longing for his best friend?

Oh, God. Elijah. He wanted.

They'd had lunch the day that they'd met in a little coffee shop, and he'd thought Elijah was very pretty, and a charming kid. He'd always had a smile even bigger and brighter than his unbelievable eyes.

But he hadn't thought of Elijah as a kid for very long, and he couldn't remember anymore when it had stopped. Had it been when they'd accidentally walked in on Orli and Viggo kissing and Lij, with amazing presence of mind, had shoved him back through the door, raising one eyebrow? Outside he'd been smiling softly though, a silly look on his face that was too old for it.

Filming in New Zealand had lasted two years, and at least once there, Sean had dreamt the dream that had told him it was over, the dream of Lij's smell and the raging force of physical desire as he thrust repeatedly into the welcoming warmth of his friend's body. All his dreams seemed to be almost too hot, uncompromisingly erotic, fast wanton passionate sex that swiped his mind blank of everything but Lij. The waking fantasies he was starting to fail to repress now were slow, soft, endlessly tender in comparison.

That dream must have come after he'd fallen in love. The question was, when in the two years had it been? He remembered waking up and smiling every day, and not having to look for Lij when he showed up on set because he knew where he was right away. He remembered looking at Lij first, whether he already knew where he was or not.

He didn't remember when it had started, but he kept trying.

Days passed when Elijah didn't leave his sight, except when one of them was in the bathroom. Nights passed that way too, and Sean got used to feeling his skin had been stripped away to leave raw flesh and nerve endings. The only night he slept without dreaming was when he and Lij fell asleep under the afghan from the couch, both of them lying on the floor in front of the fireplace with heat licking over them. He woke up once with Elijah's arms wrapped around him and closed his eyes against the burning to go back to sleep.

In the morning, he found them still tangled together, with Sean curled protectively around the slender frame of his best friend. His neck was damp, and it took him a moment for that to penetrate his pleasure-fogged mind. Then he realized the dampness was tears, and whispered, "What?"

Elijah shook his head, embarrassed. "It's nothing."

"Lij--"

"I'm so sorry, Sean. And there's nothing I can do."

Just the sound of your voice. "You're doing fine."

Will we burn in Heaven
Like we do down here?

"Thanks," Sean says again. Elijah has stopped replying to this. What should he say, "you're welcome"? But he smiles, because he can't help it. The surreality of this midnight walk has brought them to the eye of a storm of emotion, and other than being quiet, the feel of them is normal. The threads binding them together have eased. There is room to breathe. Sean seems so possessed and wise, but he gets anxious about little things like letting Elijah know that he hasn't forgotten he's there.

"Sean, I wanted to," Elijah insists finally. There's the hum of a car approaching, and they step up into the grass of someone's yard. Headlights pool yellow on the black and white of the road. The car passes slowly, red light fanning behind it from brake lights as it turns a corner ahead.

Still they don't move. Wind darts playfully among the leaves of a sapling tree roped to the ground in a circle of short fence behind them, and Elijah's fingers are cold in his pockets. "Let's get out of the road." Sean looks at Elijah for approval when he says this, but Elijah is already moving. He meets the cool question of Sean's eyes with the same open look that has been on his face since they let go of each other in the road at the end of Sean's block.

The houses are a poor windbreak. They barely speak, but it's hardly silent in the midst of the wind's soft whistles, the occasional distant rush and beep of the busier streets. Turning away from the noise takes them through yard after yard, walking on the line between storm gutters and asphalt, white and black. "The shadows are shaped differently in the day," Sean says quietly. Trees cast uneven blotches on the street. Moon and stars silver it like a river, but they're not bright enough to make images sharp-edged. They soften the age in Sean's face, tease his mouth into a smile, perhaps.

"That one looks like a cloud," Elijah jokes.

"Storm cloud," Sean mutters, but he's smiling. Now they turn another corner, and they reach a dead end where three sides of curb cut off an eroded red mud embankment rising between houses facing each other across the street. There's a wash of rust-colored dirt and sand over the black, and the embankment is sprinkled with pale smooth river stones. They climb up it to stand on grass above the street, and walk up a more gradual slope towards a line of trees.

Sean lives in one of those neighborhoods that comes with its very own wilderness, complete with a stream. They can hear the stream when they've moved through enough dark trees to leave behind the sound of cars and the light of streetlamps entirely. They can't see it yet.

The sound of running water starts to make Elijah thirsty. "Should've just filmed Lothlorien here," he says, glancing up at a tangle of vines arching between two trees over the narrow path.

"Mm," says Sean, "it's an idea." He looks over his shoulder, meets Elijah's eyes, smiles, takes Elijah's breath away.

Goddammit.

Twigs crack underfoot, and bushes and weeds rustle. Elijah has to duck under branches more than once, and the path gets smaller as the wood gets denser. "Are you sure we can get through here?" he says nervously.

"Yeah--" Sean says, "--ew. Spider web. Watch out."

On the other side of a screen of moon-frosted shadow-green he stands, making a face. Elijah steps between the trailing ends of gossamer; a thin branch slaps against his cheek, and he can feel it forming an angry red line. Sean still hasn't gotten all the spider web out of his face.

"Shit," he groans.

Elijah laughs through his cheek's stinging and steps closer, raises his fingers. It's snagged on Sean's eyebrow, trailing on the edge of his cheek on a path Elijah's fingers trace as they slowly turn to fire. Then his nose--chin--and the last thread goes in the corner of his mouth--no wonder Sean was gagging! His lips part and Elijah catches the thread between two fingers, pulls it away, his fingertips still damp from Sean's mouth. "There," he says, and thinks he probably should have cleared his throat and definitely should look away from Sean.

But then Sean's fingers are on his cheek, where there's no spider web. They trace a line on his cheekbone, so it must be red by now where the branch cut.

"I'm okay," he says huskily, and Sean nods. "Sean?" He hardly has any voice left, only a whisper, because moonlight's grazing the back of its hand on Sean's face when his eyelashes dip to catch stars in them. Night has rooted him to the spot, shivering up and down his legs and his back with a slow release of something.

The forest sighs when he kisses Sean. He presses himself close, slides his cold hands around his waist under the edge of jacket and shirt. Sean's mouth opens at once, velvety, to admit his tongue, and he's gone. If he could get closer to Sean he would. Through clothing their bodies mold together, and when Sean pulls Elijah down on top of him on the ground, Night laughs throatily.

Elijah's lying between Sean's thighs, fumbling with the fastenings of their jackets, then their pants, and they push their shirts up with hasty hands. A shudder of denial washes through him when he feels the skin of Sean's belly, the searing press of his naked arousal. The silencing song of his mouth, sculpted lips and deep wet heat that makes Elijah forget all his fantasies, leaving him unable to compare. Sean moans into his mouth and grips Elijah's hips to pull him close, grinding them together, all impatience and dark demand.

Elijah answers, rocking against Sean, and he puts a hand between it to wrap it around both their cocks, increasing the friction as they rub together.

His jacket has ridden up in the back, exposing a crescent of flesh to the air in shocking contrast to the burn of Sean's lips on his neck. Elijah says, "Sean."

The lips slide down another inch, and Sean bites at the tender skin of his throat--

"Oh."

If he could think, Elijah would think that they're going to thrust blindly against each other with his hand wrapped around them and come soon. But Sean's mouth has left Elijah's neck. It's wet and slick and the wind on it is rapidly making it cold. Sean's head has fallen back, his eyes closed, and his back arches, hips straining up against Elijah. Both of his hands slide down from Elijah's waist, under the waist of his pants. They're cold at the top of the cleft of his ass, and before he knows it the pants are being pulled open, shoved back, the cold air like a jittery caress, sweeping against him and arousing him even further. "Please," Sean sobs, "Let me--"

Elijah's throat seizes and his mind whites out with blank urgency, so he can't move or breathe

anything but kiss, and they struggle together, pushing his pants down, past his knees. "Yes," he hisses into Sean's mouth, nibbling on his bottom lip.

It's terribly awkward. He tries to kick the pants away, can't brace himself properly without pulling back from the kiss. "You--" Sean is breathing. They have it, pants and boxers somewhere among the crumbled remains of brown leaves, forgotten, Sean's pants slithered down his hips, his cock springing free, and Elijah bends down in time to his heartbeat without losing contact with Sean's fevered eyes.

The taste is not what he had imagined, but it is much, much realer, like the slice of blood welling in a cut compared to the welt on his cheek. He takes Sean deeply in his mouth all at once, laves the swollen length with a quick tongue and moves up quickly. Sean's eyes are closed again. Breath heaves his chest, tears his throat, escapes parted lips while his face is damp with sweat or tears. Elijah lies back on top of Sean, still incongruously wrapped in his jacket. He takes Sean's hand and guides it between his legs.

There's wonder in the gentle caress of the careful fingers, tracing a path to the puckered opening to Elijah's body, throbbing with anticipation.

Elijah stiffens at the first invasion, then abruptly subsides into wild arousal, soft relaxed yielding around the push and thrust of one, then two fingers. "Now," he begs, kissing nastily with his tongue deep in Sean's mouth.

Hands steady his hips and he puts his hands on the ground by Sean's sides, holding himself up as he carefully pushes backward. Gentle probing, and Sean bites his lip. Then he finds it and it's a swift plunge into insanity.

Tearing heat, pain that ebbs and flows around him and vanishes before he can catch hold of it. He's gasping with pleasure, Sean driving into him with powerful thrusts. The wind is chilled, the leaves gritty biting into his palms, dirt everywhere. Awkward kissing, far from perfect, sloppy but determined.

Elijah doesn't know what he begs for in the grip of that wet dream brought to life. If he could separate each sensation and slow each of them to store in memory, he would. It's not possible, though, to think of anything. If he remembers it will be in a similar confused maelstrom of yes and cold/heat dark/wet grunting-panting-sobbing, coming long and almost painfully with the muscles of his thighs seizing tight. Sean's hands are resting there, rubbing carefully, and he pulls Elijah down into his arms, rolls them over, curling around him.

Fantasy runs lazy circles around him; the present bleeds into years of dreams. When he gets cold, Sean finds his pants and he puts them on again. They don't bother with his underwear. When he's wearing them he's still a little chilled, but Sean drags him back down on his chest and wraps him up again in warmth.

He wakes up at dawn with a stick digging into his back. He's dressed and Sean's pants are fastened again--when did that happen? They're a mess, littered with twigs, and Elijah knows his stomach and thighs are sticky under his clothes with dry-crusted come. Sean's arm is around him like it's been a thousand times before.

Elijah could almost imagine that nothing happened.

He waits for Sean to wake, to open his eyes and look straight up at the sky, expressionless until his lips firm.

They will pretend nothing happened, then. Elijah's too numb for pain.

Darling, you don't know
The power that you have

Sean has thought several times that his dreams of sex with Elijah are exaggeration. Sean is forty-four. He doesn't have the kind of sex that twenty-nine-year-olds dream about. He has thought of making love, kissing the whole time, awake all night, bathing Lij's face with his tears. He has indulged himself with picturing a scene of confession, and somehow it will be alright, somehow Elijah will love him too.

Then, in the damned forest in the middle of the fucking night, Elijah touches his face--eyebrow, his cheekbone. His mouth. And that's the end. He can't control himself--it's like he's raped by the dream, his eyes closed and moonlight kissing him and Elijah all over, fast sex like blood and breath, like a hot rain of scalding color on parts of him that twist away from it even as they drink it, absorbing Elijah and unfolding hungry addictions.

When it's over, that's only the beginning. Sean's shivering with heat, cuddling Lij close for as long as he'll be allowed to. His lips ache for that kiss. He falls asleep restless, but he sleeps well with Elijah there. His body is happy--it doesn't know what he knows.

Now, alone in the shower in the master suite, he puts his hands on the wall and lets the tears come. They mix with the water, hot, then warm, then cold. He is in the shower for a long time. Sean rubs himself all over with a towel that can't erase the marks of Lij's lips. When he looks in the mirror, and runs his hands over his chest, Sean is almost surprised that he can't see some visible sign everywhere they touched. He's pretty sure he can still remember. His fingers card through the hair on his chest, rest on one nipple, there, that spot on his collar bone, his ribs, the side of his neck.

Elijah, what are you thinking? Does Elijah regret? Sean can't imagine that he does. He would have followed Sean anywhere last night, as long as he could sense this pain, however little he understood it. Elijah would do anything to comfort him, and grudge none of it. He'd have suffered far more than that red slash across his beautiful cheekbone, the strained trembling in his thighs, and whatever he finds in the memory.

If it's the price for peace of mind, Elijah will pay it. But--what has it bought them? Sean doesn't know how he'll speak when he comes out of the bedroom, so he doesn't. He crawls into bed naked, wraps himself in a blanket and presses his face into the pillow. He can remember Lij's taste, his smell, and it's almost stronger than the scent of his own hair, shampoo, and laundry detergent.

He will have to face Elijah.

When he wakes up. God. Lij. Can you heal me of this?

The hours of the day
I close my eyes

Elijah didn't realize there was anything more painful. He didn't know that something you wanted could hurt so fucking much, a pain that mocks him because he still wouldn't give it back.

He's surprisingly good at pretending nothing happened. Okay, maybe it shouldn't be surprising. But Sean knows him inside out, and he's worn out, beyond acting. He'd never be able to fool Sean if they weren't in a conspiracy to forget: they both pretend, and they both pretend not to notice the other's slip-ups.

And meanwhile, Elijah's not ready to leave. He doesn't know how Sean will get better now when it's hard to imagine his presence is a good thing anymore, but he won't leave when he's not confident Sean is okay. So he's not going anywhere, but time is trickling through his fingers just the same. He walks into the living room the next day and Sean is reading, but he looks up and meets Elijah's eyes at once.

Elijah thinks, later, that this must have been an accident. At the time he thinks nothing at all, just loses himself in Sean's gaze. His eyes are so--inexpressible. Brown is not the word. Color isn't even what makes them look the way they do--if beauty had a color, though, that would be it. Exquisite, soft-bright-brown-black, they swallow the light and shadow and Elijah's turbulent thoughts with equal ease.

When he can wrench himself away Elijah turns and leaves again, not sure where he's going or what he was doing there in the first place. Part of him wants to tell Sean to stop tormenting him, but Sean can't help being Sean, and he's the one who won't leave. Besides, Sean wouldn't know what he meant. He buries his face in his hands, propping his elbows on the kitchen table. Then he makes coffee, and he takes the first cup to Sean.

The book is nowhere in sight, but Sean's in the same chair. He must have been watching Elijah, but when Elijah looks at him he looks down quickly, and smiles, taking the coffee carefully. "Thanks."

"No problem." Elijah settles on the couch and thinks that he's small enough for both of them to sit in that chair, though not without him being mostly on top of Sean.

He wakes up on the couch the next morning, and the first thing he does is look at the chair. Sure enough, Sean is still there, curled a little, turned to his side, head slumped sideways. It doesn't look comfortable. He will have a crick in his neck. Elijah makes another pot of coffee, returns to the living room while it's brewing.

When he touches the side of Sean's neck, pressing gently with three fingertips, Sean winces and starts. Elijah drops his whole hand to the curve at the back of his neck, a vertebra fitting in the palm of his hand. It's tight and stiff, strained. He moves his hand a little, then lifts the other hand and begins a gentle massage in earnest.

This is a very bad idea.

"Mmm," is the first thing Sean says when he wakes up. Finally he tips his head back and looks up at Elijah. Keep your eyes closed, Elijah wants to tell him, Don't you know what you do to me? He drops his hands quickly so Sean won't sense them clenching into fists.

"Coffee," he squeaks with difficulty and tries not to bolt into the kitchen.

Every time he looks at Sean's mouth--which is much more often than it would be if he had an ounce of self-control--Elijah remembers the kiss. When his gaze lingers on Sean's fingers he remembers them digging into his waist as Elijah's thighs closed around Sean's hips. Sean's simply graceful, and it emerges at odd moments. When he arches his back and stretches, when he reaches across the table for the salt, when he sinks to a heap on the top step of the stairs and buries his face in his hands--Elijah sees the muscles in his stomach, his back arching, mouth open and gasping.

He supposes he should be glad Sean isn't going to kick him out, apparently.

They go to the grocery store together and Elijah walks behind Sean with his hands in his pockets, pinching his lips together to keep from speaking: Won't you look at me?

"What do you want?" Sean asks, scanning a shelf of salad dressing.

You, Elijah almost says.

"I can cook spaghetti," Elijah offers hopefully, when they're in the pasta.

Sean slides an amused look at him. "We have spaghetti."

Oh. Smile at me again. "What are we getting, then?"

At the checkout, the checker in her turquoise smock tells him to have a good day, and Sean has to nudge him because he hasn't heard. "Are you alright?" She asks.

No, he thinks, but he summons a smile. "Yeah. Sorry."

A shy smile, "That's okay," and that's when it occurs to him they might have been recognized. Or he might have been.

It's started raining while they were inside, and you can hear it perfectly well on the roof, but it's not the kind of sound you notice. It's still slow, the pavement covered with small black circles. Elijah can hear individual little noises as it falls to the ground and pings against their plastic shopping bags. He stops beside Sean's car and tilts his chin up high, closing his eyes, for the kiss of cold water. It slips down his cheeks so slowly that by the time it reaches his temple and catches in his hair, it's tear-warm.

As I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

"It's a little cold for catching rain in your mouth," says Sean.

Elijah finishes running his fingers through his wet hair. It stands on end as it always has, much the way it would when he was twenty. "I didn't catch it in my mouth," Elijah protests.

"You caught it on your face. Including your mouth."

Lij gives him a playful glower. "It was a little cold."

Sean laughs, turns on the windshield wipers and backs out of the parking space. "So. Was it everything you'd expected?" He's grinning, but he curses himself when the words are out for saying them.

Elijah says carefully, "I think so. Maybe more."

Now what--let them still be talking about the rain. "There's a towel in the back seat," says Sean, his mind whirling.

They weren't supposed to talk about this.

And if they did, Elijah wasn't going to say that.

He doesn't want Elijah to protect him. He knows he can't stop him, but he doesn't need protected--and where was he when Lij fell apart two years ago?

"Thanks," says Lij from the folds of the towel, drying his face. His hair is even more messed up when he tosses it back over his shoulder.

Sean is surprised to feel disappointment when he doesn't say anything else.

Water slicks the windshield between creaks of the wipers and sifts down around them, glittering silver. It's grown faster since they left the store, and by the time they reach Sean's house it is a lot closer to pouring. The yard will be one big soupy mess, with spongy grass that sucks at the bottoms of your shoes.

Sean slides out of the car and walks around it. He takes one of the bags of groceries from Lij, takes a step back, and looks up. He tips his head back all the way until all he sees is dizzy blue fringed with green treetops. The car door slams: "wait," he tells Lij, holding out one hand, gesturing him to stop. What is it about the rain on your face that made Lij--?

The drops give him vertigo racing towards him and Sean closes his eyes, and then they feel like tears, cold tears. They smooth out, though, and slip down the sides of his face, tickling through the hair on his cheeks.

Sean looks up. Elijah is watching him and--

Crying, his lips trembling, eyes brimming, unmistakable tears mixing with the cold weeping of the sky on his face. Sean gasps. "Lij?"

He shakes his head. Vertigo, as Sean's moving forward again but doesn't register taking any steps until he's holding one arm in each of his hands, getting wetter and wetter.

"What is it? Are you--"

Elijah shakes his head again, harder. "I can't," he chokes, turning his face away, looking down miserably. "I didn't mean to. I can't help it--I--if you want me to leave..."

Sean's eyes widen. Not in the broken babbling, but in the tone, the movement of his mouth, the eyes that turn away, lashes dropping, when Sean's finger reaches for his chin... his breath catches. "Do you--?" He starts to say urgently, finding the chin again with gentle fingertips and turning the pale face. Elijah's eyes lift to meet his, glazed over with anguish, and something flashes between them in the instant before he closes them again with a little sob.

The answer.

"Elijah," Sean breathes, and he doesn't move until Sean's lips find the curve of his cheek, under his eye, above his cheekbone, where the skin is translucently fragile. The ghost of a kiss. "Why," he whispers, "Didn't you tell me?"

Only then does Elijah look up, stricken and fearful, to confirm the knowledge in Sean's voice. "I--" Before he can flinch away, Sean's hand tightens inexorably on his arm, draws him forward off-balance.

Their lips meet with rain running between, and it's easy to pull Lij closer till body heat flies back and forth and multiplies, keeping back the cold clamminess of the water on their necks.

If they both cry, it will be easy to deny with the whole world swimming wet, silver on their faces and in their eyelashes. The sky bends down over them, periwinkle-gray that can't compete with Elijah's eyes and doesn't try, and they forget the groceries as they rediscover the astonishing perfect match of their mouths, the sweetness bearing them up and dragging them under. It's easy to lose themselves in this kiss, and not so easy to forget days of silent pain, but they can keep trying.

If they both drown--in the rain, making the air and the ground and everything waterlogged and heavy, or in the sheer rain-wet gray-sky cool-hot-wet gasping-smiling solemnity of the moment--it won't matter. Elijah bends closer, pliant and fluid, and their wet shirts, pressed between their torsos, can't stay cold. He might be bruising Lij's arm, Sean thinks vaguely, because he's squeezing it very hard. How can he help it when Lij makes those little noises in his throat?

Say my name and I can't
Fight it anymore

There had been moments in the beginning of it all when he'd sort of liked the idea. To nineteen-year-old Elijah it had all seemed unbearably romantic, even though of course he'd never been happy with it.

Even now everything is colored with memories of New Zealand. Elijah can still remember when he first recognized the feeling that he couldn't live without Sean. He hadn't said it, of course (not seriously, and not then). He'd known the idea was silly. He'd known that filming would end eventually (though a year had seemed like a long time, then, in an abstract way, even though they'd all said it was short).

It hadn't taken him long at all to grow dependent on Sean, though, and he'd realized that he was in love with a feeling of incredible awe without quite realizing, at first, what he was in for. He'd been sitting in his trailer after a hard day, all dressed again and just too tired to get up, too tired to move. Then there had been a knock, because he and Sean had planned to go back to the hotel together. Elijah'd hauled himself up with a groan, all of a sudden, strength coming from nowhere. From the thought of Sean's face, he guesses. He'd opened the door and stood there looking down at a sunlit smile on Sean's face. "Think you can make it?" Sean had joked, gently. "Or do I have to carry you?"

Elijah'd laughed. "As attractive as the offer is, I'll manage." He'd been tired enough, but he wouldn't've trusted himself, even if Sean had been serious.

And then he'd slipped on the step, just barely, and stumbled. Before he could catch himself on the wall of the trailer, Sean had been there. "Well, I was joking," he'd said, "But if you want to take me up on it..."

My God, Elijah had thought, leaning on Sean's arm. What am I going to do when I'm not with him anymore? He'd realized that he literally would rather be where Sean was pretty much all the time. It had not seemed really bad, then. That had come later, when the thought of leaving had become much more real. Then it had really started to suck.

The waiting, though, had sucked more. Fifteen years of it.

Elijah has no intention of sleeping that night. "Never again," he promises himself, watching lamplight and his fingers play on Sean's spine, and Sean can't, can't know what he's talking about, but he echoes:

"Never again." He rolls onto his back and tugs Elijah down on top of him. Elijah lets his body blanket Sean's sturdier one and stares seriously at him. At least, it starts that way, but he can't stare long without smiling.

Sean closes his eyes and sighs. Elijah can't catch his breath before he's being hugged as tightly as he's ever wanted to hug Sean, with convulsive, sudden strength. Tears on his cheeks not his own, and he knows instinctively.

"I'm sorry," he manages to say, though his throat is tight.

"You won't leave," Sean whispers, and Elijah knows this is an answer to what he said though it doesn't sound like it.

Elijah lifts his head to look into Sean's eyes, and cups his hands along the sides of Sean's face. Soft hair on his fingertips, the corner of Sean's gorgeous mouth in easy reach of the pad of his thumb. He makes Sean look at him until his eyes clear and focus, and then he deliberately bends his head, eyes open, lips still parted, for a deep certain kiss like years of supercoiled longing. "All you ever had to do was ask," he says.

Sean asks huskily, his thumbs making slow spreads of flame where they caress the sides of Elijah's neck: "Don't ever leave." He turns them again, his weight pressing Elijah into the mattress, and lets his mouth settle over Elijah's again before he has an answer.

"I won't," Elijah gasps, in between shallow, teasing kisses that sting his lips with a sharp persistence like champagne. "I won't."

Sean's knee slides between Elijah's thighs and presses against his erection. Elijah rubs himself against the pressure, rising to meet it, and lets his legs fall apart in silent invitation.

"Yes," says Sean, shivering a little.

Elijah lies stretched on his stomach, his eyes closed, making the disorientation complete. It is just like a dream--Sean's hands stroking his back soothingly, each kiss on the back of his neck and down the length of his spine giving him another little shock of pleasure. Sean reaches the base of his spine and strokes apart Elijah's trembling thighs to kneel between them. There's movement, a rustle, a brush that he might have imagined, it was so light, on the inside of his thigh.

The whisper of air, and, with no other warning than that, Sean's lips and the hot slick penetration of his tongue. Elijah cries out and lifts his hips encouragingly. When the tongue is replaced by oil-slicked fingers he's biting Sean's pillow. When the fingers go he's on fire, lying open and blind on Sean's bed, melting and trembling with arousal. He can't sort out the feeling of his body's weight on the bed; he feels suspended in time.

He opens his mouth to say "Now," but before he does his words are cut off on an open-mouthed gasp. Brief heat and pressure give way to a slow burning glide as Sean goes carefully deep on one breathless stroke, and Elijah's swallowed in starlight. He can't say "Oh God," so he only whimpers, nearly voicelessly. Fucking incredible, brimming with fiery ecstasy of touch, the tight taut pressure of Sean filling him amazingly--and then satisfaction ebbing, need rising in a tidal wave. But Sean doesn't move, just lies still, breathing gently on the back of Elijah's neck while sweat blossoms all over him and awareness narrows to his swollen cock, trapped against his stomach, and the feel of Sean inside.

Then--Sean's weight lifts a little, as he props himself on his elbows. His hips stir, and the friction sets off tiny chain-reactions of sparks all over Elijah's body. He withdraws deliberately, pauses again, and pushes slowly back in. Elijah can't breathe, can't cry, can't gasp Sean's name. It is exquisite torture. More. Again.

Sean seems intent on making love as long as he possibly can. Elijah is incoherent with desire, pleading, before long, and Sean laughs and kisses his hair and gives him three forceful thrusts, each powerful enough that they seem to go deeper than before, and Elijah shouts something, Sean, as he comes, like something breaks and spills him full of wave after wave of pleasure, light and dark and clingingly poignant. It flows from the center of his body, where Sean still takes his pleasure in short emphatic thrusts, and pulses through him down his arms, skipping from his fingertips, evaporating like magic.

Kiss me twice
Then once more
That makes thrice
Let's make it four

They've been kissing in the rain for so long, clasping each other in the rain next to Sean's car, that they've almost forgotten about going into the house. When they do, they leave careless shiny footprints in the hall. Sean's shoes start to slip on the wood, and Lij moves to catch him. A sway in the air, and Lij's hand on his chest burning through his shirt. Lij dips his head--Are you okay? hovering on his lips unsaid--and meets Sean's eyes. Wet hair, drips falling in front of his eye to echo the susurration of rain on the windows, his eyes open and frank and slightly vulnerable with a flash of fierce worry. His lips are slightly chapped, pale pink, open around what he didn't say.

And Sean thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than Elijah when he arrived.

He smiles, and doesn't look away. Lij is confused. He smiles back automatically, and starts to drop his gaze, but changes his mind. Sean wouldn't be surprised if Lij vanished when he moved. He doesn't move.

"Tell you what?" Elijah finally whispers, his gaze scattered all over Sean's face, nervous and restless.

Sean sighs and lets Elijah pull back. "We'll get dressed." There are crisp, fresh towels and clothes in the dryer to dress in. Sean lets Elijah go into the guest room to dress alone only because he's confident he'll see him again in a few minutes, if he has to break down the door. Of course, he knows he won't have to.

In fact, it's he who opens his door at a knock, still getting his arms through the sleeves of a rugby shirt. Elijah's wearing what Sean handed him, which happened to include a flannel shirt of Sean's. It dwarfs him, the cuffs hanging loose down around his delicate hands, his neck rising damp and scrubbed pink from the open collar. "Tell you what?" Elijah asks more strongly, meeting Sean's gaze levelly, and he takes a step forward before Sean takes a step back.

Sean just smiles and reaches up. His fingertips push Elijah's messy hair up off his forehead and then follow his hairline down the side of his face--amazing, his square fingertips against the delicate beauty of Elijah's face. "You..." Elijah whispers. His eyes have drifted shut, his lips imploringly open, and he takes in an unsteady breath.

So Sean leans forward to claim the breath, steady the lips with the press of his mouth. "I know why you didn't tell me," he says when he pulls back and Lij is still looking at him in wonder. His turn to breathe deeply, looking for reassurance in the scent of Elijah standing so close. He expected to say this calmly, but he's choking, his eyes misting. "I'm sorry," he says, and

he's in Elijah's arms. "You know," Elijah is murmuring over and over again, his voice breaking, "you know."

"You waited--," Sean explains brokenly, and Elijah kisses him.

"Shhh."

"I'm sorry," says Sean again, against the forgiveness of Lij's kiss.

"No, it's not your fault," he whispers.

They're having two different conversations, by now. Sean's hands under his flannel shirt, measuring the width of Elijah's narrow waist, "--And you're here--"

"--It's not what you did or I did; it happened to us--" Elijah's lips under Sean's ear.

Stumbling steps, eyes closed, mouths meeting with awkward smiles. They reach Sean's bed. "Thank you..."

"Sean," Elijah breathes.

Sean says, "and you're in love with me." Elijah leans over to kiss a tear from his cheek, and lets his lips rest there, bending over Sean on the bed. It's like a blessing, like the kiss of sun or moon or rain.

"It's fucking incredible, isn't it?" He whispers, laughing a little, but his eyes demand nothing less from Sean than the desperate crush of his arms pulling Lij so close they can't meet each other's eyes anymore, rolling them over in a cloud of warm clothes and the smell of laundry detergent and Lij's hair.

"I've been in love with you--so long." The hush of fabric parting as they push it back, toss flannel to the floor.

"I know." A sob's struggling oddly to emerge from his chest, but Elijah kisses him again, so hard it takes his breath away and he forgets--

Sean's shirt has slid up over his head, and he pulls Elijah back into his arms, and they're lying together skin-on-skin. Sean reaches for the blanket and tugs it over them, soft and warm, and Night wraps around protectively. Maybe they are close enough for their eyelashes to tangle in the new wonder of darkness. Maybe they hold still for a long moment while heat washes burning through them. "Come here," Sean mumbles, tangling his fingers in Lij's hair, and pulling his face down--

Then silence.

I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

End

Lyrics, in order of appearance: "Tear In Your Hand"/Tori Amos; "I Love You"/Sarah McLachlan; "I Wanna Be With You"/Mandy Moore; "It's Late"/Queen; "Here With Me"/Dido; "Somewhere Someday"/NSYNC; "Witness"/Sarah McLachlan; "Tear In Your Hand"/Tori Amos; "Onde Estas"/Nelly Furtado (trans. from Portuguese); "Kathy's Song"/Simon and Garfunkel; "The Right Kind of Wrong"/LeAnn Rimes; "How Long Has This Been Going On"/G & I Gerschwin; "Kathy's Song"/Simon and Garfunkel. Additional disclaimer: I'm pretty sure sex in the woods without lube is a bad idea. You can't constrain romance with realism, though!

This is a companian story to [tennessee].