delirium - half-mad
by cimorene
Elijah had this odd hallucination-fantasy. Thing. In it he was lying down, in bed, on the edge of sleep (in the dream--dreaming about being asleep, which is. Odd. In an inside-out and paradoxical way, but Lij was too lazy to think much about that). Mostly on his back, tired in a good, long-day, drinking-but-not-drunk kind of way, his legs flung carelessly apart on his back head on pillow eyelids oh-so-heavy. Head turned sideways: you want to catch the breeze from the open window, even if it presses intrusively cold on your cheek, because you can't replace the feel of it on your face in the middle of the night. Lethargy.
And it was in those long months before--maybe, he thought fuzzily, maybe it really was before Dom came, and he dreamed it more than once and now he was just remembering it? ...It was before Dom came and he was in bed, alone in the house, ready to sleep the sleep of the virtuous, buzzing with vague happy thoughts which, in real life, would have meant talking to a friend, probably Dom, but in the dream were rather background noise. Realistic, so far, no? And in the dream there was a whisper of disturbance--no sound, no air, just--it.
The huskily-whispered word, "Lijah." The way you talk in the middle of the night, in a darkened bedroom, if you are Dom. His face shrouded in shadows bending over Elijah, who felt a stippling hard wash of pleasance all over him, cool and warm at once, but not surprised. Sleepy and languid, dream-Elijah lifted a hand and gripped his friend's wrist, the most natural thing in the world, and tugged him off-balance, down into a hug.
Dream-Dom might have made some kind of startled tensing movement, or that was just what Lij expected. He arrived, unannounced, at Lij's house halfway around the world--in the dream--and let himself into Lij's bedroom in the middle of the night, magically, and was surprised to be hugged? But that was Dom, as startlingly contradictory as the fresh soap and stale airplane smell on his neck which Elijah's subconscious conjured with dismaying clarity and a tickling cool whiff of moving air. "Come here," Elijah dreamed that he murmured. In the dream he didn't have to wait--in the dream, he could ask.
Even in the dream he had to acknowledge it would be awkward, Dom clambering onto the side of the bed without being allowed to stand up, as Lij's arm was looped around his neck and, far from loosening, drawing him slowly closer. He wasn't satisfied until he had a rather heavy sprawling armful of bemused Dom.
He thought he was--but then there was a soft "Ummm" sound, or a string of them, from Dom, and the Dream-Lij, practically already asleep, felt it curling around him in a long liquid stream of murmuring and warm breath on his neck as he curled against Dom, and then it was darkness and warmth and an impossible tangle of arms and legs. You'd have thought he'd never been cuddled before; it was almost as if he never had, this innocent, heady--okay, well, not entirely innocent--tumbling trembling shower of dream. In the dream or out of it, it was wish-fulfillment. That Dream-Lijah, though, was the first Elijah to realize as much.
It was funny that he hadn't realized it before the dream--although again, if he'd had the dream more than once. Before Dom came to LA and after. Elijah kept trying to get a grip on the hazy thought that was drifting away from him--why was he remembering the dream now, whenever he'd had it--but it was no use. He was happy enough to simply remember it, uhm, and the soft mm of Dom's mouth, where? Near his ear, he thought. He would have frowned if he could, then, because--he was forgetting again? He had been awake for too long.
And when he thought of it, how long was that?
Pressing intrusively cold on his cheek, the hard floor, and the sweet slice of blood on the back of the sides of Elijah's tongue, sticky and rapidly cooling, he could feel it, on his lip. It was the doorsill digging into his back, not an elbow or knee or any other part of Dom. There was also, unfortunately, the very unwelcome presence of pain radiating and pulsing from his hip, which felt as though it might be bruising, and he thought, since he was on the floor, that it had--
Why was he on the floor?
That was it; Elijah felt the last ribbons of the dream escaping him and gave a sigh of regret. Blood, cold and hard, the unforgiving pressure of tile on the back of his head. Ow. His eyes itched; he was too tired and blurry to lift his hand and rub them.
But it probably would be a good idea to get up from the floor.
He was afraid he was not going to be able to recapture the dream later. He summoned strength to stand with reluctance.
And stopped, and summoned again. He had to lean on something to stand up, and when he was up all the way and came to himself leaning heavily against it realized it was the doorframe of the bathroom. Again, he didn't remember standing up all the way, and his vision was clearing, but he didn't remember the blackout.
Apparently he was pretty fucking sick.
He was at the bathroom, so he thought he'd just--why was he here? There'd been hot and cold prickles all up and down Elijah's arms, he knew now, when he'd first woken up in bed, and that had made him decide not to get up at all. Then he'd realized he was going to throw up, and--ah.
Stumbling towards the toilet, tumbling down on his hands and knees and landing, face pressing against the cool ceramic of the seat and his eyes closed on another dream image as if it'd been a cobweb he'd fallen through. Dom's face buried in his neck in the dream. Dreaming Dom, out of nowhere, nuzzling against his ear. Snuggling into Dom's arms because it was so fan.fucking.tastic.
Kiss. Had there been a kiss?
Oh, God, he wanted so hard and had for so long that sometimes the sheer weight of it made his head hurt, crushed the air from his lungs. Elijah felt his stomach clench up in a pang of need--or possibly that was illness and unrelated--and start to turn inside out, with a weak lurch. He managed to lift his face a little. He had turned the light on, or left it on, maybe. It was too damned bright. He braced his hands on the floor and closed his eyes and leaned over the toilet, but he couldn't seem to throw up. After a while he realized this must be because he'd hardly eaten anything the day before.
Or if that had been Wednesday maybe he hadn't eaten anything yesterday--which had been Thursday--hadn't it?
Help, he thought dizzily. Oops, sitting up too fast. Or maybe he shouldn't sit up at all.
Huh.
It certainly wasn't out of the ordinary to dream about Dom, even if you discounted the fact that his state of mind, with relation to Dom, was sort of like a lovesick puppy. Even without that Dom was his best mate, though, and it wasn't like he had never slept cuddled up in a heap with someone he didn't fancy--huh? Lost himself there. Licking. Fancy in general but especially licking. The perfect flat snub of his little puppy nose and his bright brilliant eyes. His long, long neck. Had there been licking in the dream? Lij wasn't sure. Should have been, though. Maybe when he put his face in Dom's hair. Dom was oddly fastidious, his little British accent, washing his hair multiple times in one day if it "felt" dirty. Frowning in distaste ostentatiously, now, at Elijah's smokes, where early he'd tried not to look too disgusted, so as not to offend, but of course it didn't really matter--he was quite fuckable either way.
Elijah tried to groan and couldn't. Which was when he remembered the toilet and realized he was lying on the floor. It took him another five seconds, count 'em, five, to sit up and lean against the shower stall. Maybe the help was a good idea. He tried to call for Dom, whose room was right around here. Voice came out in a pathetic tinny croak. EW.
He closed his eyes again to gather his strength for crawling and wondered what was wrong with him.
Pretty soon he was going to have to start crying. Like a fucking girl! Or, well, like a very sick hobbit. Aaaaaaah.
There was dirt on the floor, and where his legs were folded under him awkwardly he realized dumbly the pressure of his weight was making its cool grit dig into flesh gone suddenly tender, like his skin was as paper-thin as it looked in the hollows of his hips. He wondered if when he moved the dirt would be embedded there. Red ugly splotches with dirt in them. Dom would think they were cool, if he could manage not to cry. Elijah tried to take more of his weight on his hands and felt his eyes closing. Fuck, no. But if you can't move, you can't.
It was a long way to the bathroom door--at least five or six scooting-sliding laborious movements. His legs hurt and his hands hurt where the floor pressed up on them. He wanted to curl up--not touching anything. In the middle of the fucking air, floating. Warm. Naked. Uhhhh. Dark. Darkness sounded really, really good. He wanted to lie down and think, because before on the floor he'd been having a pretty good time with his dreams of Dom.
God, he was a fucking mess.
If he lay down on the floor now he might not get to Dom, and the tireder he got, the more that seemed like it might not be such a bad thing. "Dom," he tried to say again, and swayed dizzily into the door, banging his head on it.
A solid thud of impact, and he was just glad to have something to lean against. It didn't hurt. Dom's room was only one door down.
Maybe he'd better not stand up, though.
He thought about lying on his stomach, flat, but his stomach put up a protest at the idea and he felt nauseated again.
Fucker, he told his stomach smugly through the choking grip of hot revulsion around his throat: there was no way he was going to throw up on such an empty stomach. Falling to the floor, therefore, happened sort of sideways, and thank God this time his elbow was on the carpet. Carpet. Soft. Elijah allowed himself to rest for just a minute, with his face in it smelling dust and dirt--ew, increasing the nausea again and he couldn't get up. Good thing he hadn't decided to slither--like a snake. He almost giggled. A snake in crackling underbrush in the forest! Dry, slithery snake-Lijah, with his skin burning up and prickling like sweat, only he wasn't sweating. And his hair was dirty. Dom would think that was gross.
Dom.
Closing his eyes and sitting up at once: not the best idea he'd had even since the onset of this whatever-the-fuck-it was, back in bed an eternity ago. Dom's door was not as far away, after all, as it had seemed from in the bathroom. And thank God it was closed, because that way he could knock on it. "Dom!" He called, and tried to sit up. Cleared his throat and said it again like English and not the Black Tongue, leaning on the wall. Hard, too hard, dusty carpet on his hands. He wasn't moving but it felt like rugburn. All of his skin turned fucking-inside-out with ouch. And where was Dom? Maybe he could just slide down the wall onto the floor without--
"Lij?" Light and steps and a thud on the floor, Dom on his knees, that jarred Lij's head on the wall and made him wince. "Lij!" Again, electric with panic.
"Mmh," Elijah mumbled protestingly.
"What's wrong?"
Please, Dom, touch me. He opened his eyes and blinked at Dom silhouetted against Too Much Fucking Light. "I don't--feel--" his face was hot, and he was discovering that he didn't like to talk either.
Luckily, Dom seemed to have heard his thought, because hands were wrapping around his upper arms, tugging him off-balance. He closed his eyes; he knew he would land against Dom's chest. "Can you stand?"
"No," he said. "I--passed out, in the hall. Once. Or, no. Maybe twice. Once in the bathroom. Three times?"
"I'm calling an ambulance."
He would have clung if he'd had any energy. He didn't, so Lij settled for whimpering, "Don't leave me."
Dirty hair stroked off his hot-dry forehead with no sign of a wince, and Dom said, "I won't," and picked him up like a baby. Whoa, dizzy! He closed his eyes. How nice, the smell of clean Dom and soap and sweat, and almost like in his dream, except for the feeling like shit. He wanted to kiss, or lick, but that would probably be a bad idea. "Just a friendly, germ-laden, platonic heterosexual lick." Riiiiiight.
Then a little swoop that made Elijah frown, but at least they were in darkness again, and he landed in softness. Bed?
He'd been going to the hospital.
But no, this must be Dom's bed. And Dom was picking up the phone next to it one-handed--as Elijah seemed to, surprisingly, still have hold of the other (hold, death grip...).
Lij, for some reason, thought about sex for the entire ambulance ride, while a pleasantly chubby motherly lady fluttered over him and made bracing jokes. "This isn't going to hurt," she said of an IV, "except a little stick right at first."
Five minutes later it was still pinching and pulling. Lij thought about saying "my arm still hurts" in a brief hiatus from plotting moving-ambulance-sex.
See, the cots are really small and narrow. And it's all uncomfortable because it jolts when it goes over bumps. Which could, you have to admit, make for some really hot sex. Getting Dom into the ambulance alone might be tough, and then there'd be getting him to agree to have sex, but hey. Lij was hot, right? Heterosexuality would fall before him.
So. The ambulance would be tootling merrily along and go over a bump--like that one--ow motherFUCKER, as the IV jerked in his arm and he gritted his teeth--and they'd be naked and sweaty with the sheet coming off. Lij would wrap his legs around Dom's hips. They'd be panting. "Fuck me," he'd say, and Dom would laugh because he laughs at random things when he's not so much amused as, oh, nervous (although in this case, hopefully turned on).
Unfortunately, the arrival at the hospital interrupted his musings, and Lij was forced to answer questions again, when all he wanted to do was sleep. And drink some water, and stop hurting, and lick Dom, and, well, maybe he wasn't so easily satisfied after all.
While he was wondering vaguely if he should ask about Dom, they stopped him in the middle of a hallway somewhere, and the motherly lady and the ambulance driver seemed to be involved in some kind of fucked-up-edly cheerful banter with the nurses. "Where should we put him?"
"There's 3C," said a grasshopper-like tall thin doctor, and
"2D," offered a nurse in some kind of flower-patterned scrubs that were not exactly confidence-inspiring.
"Maybe you'd better leave him in the hall," said the receptionist, and Elijah thought idly that that was a lame idea, except maybe if they left him there long enough, and she moved her head a little to the right, he could see out the window into the waiting room and see Dom.
"No," replied the doctor jauntily: "I can't examine him in the hall." Greeeeeeeeeeeat. Where was Dom? Lijah almost whimpered. He was cold, the fucking IV was pulling and burning at his arm, and he'd landed in the Emergency Room from Hell. All it needed now was the country music video channel on TV and maybe a long string of knock-knock jokes.
"Flip a coin," said the ambulance driver. He and the motherly lady were leaving. Elijah thought he heard her say as the door closed behind them that coins didn't have three sides.
So they left him in the hall, not even long enough to go to sleep, which was moving up on his list of desired things, even though he was still cold, with a sore arm from the stupid fucking needle and whatever was in the IV. It wasn't salt or water or whatever, either, because it was like his whole arm was... high. And it wasn't at all cool. Meanwhile he was freezing, and the blanket the nurse put on him was folded in half and still too fucking thin, and plus it didn't cover him up all the way. If he moved at all--and the cot was uncomfortable--he got drafts of cold air.
All alone would be good, and darkness, yes, and quiet. And cuddling. He wouldn't say no to a nice cuddle from Dom. It was getting to the point where he wouldn't refuse one from Orli if it warmed him up, despite the risk of jokes.
Before he could even pretend to go to sleep--while he was still settling down to decide what he would say, when they finally let him see Dom, to extort a cuddle--a nurse came up with a clipboard and wanted a million little bits of information that Dom could easily have told them. What did he weigh, did he have insurance, was he 18 (he almost snapped at her).
Elijah was too tired for smart-ass comments, although he did think vaguely of informing her, when she asked if he'd been feeling strangely lately, that there was no way he could be pregnant. Too apathetic, though.
If they'd just let Dom the fuck in, he would entertain Lij--even without being asked, because that was something he always seemed to know, as soon as he should, and sometimes before Elijah thought of it himself.
Fuck.
Sleep?
It's not the beginning and it's not the end but he'll never stop remembering it. Elijah on the floor on his knees in a version of his living room bleached sepia and gray by drawn curtains and late morning sun stretched thinner than it can go. His mind, though, had been a thousand miles away, in England, on the other side of the world--caught in bemused contemplation of the things Dom said to him, casual morsels of affection dropped so carelessly. And maybe, just maybe, he'd thought a few times about the round soft "O" of Dom's mouth, too.
His face hurting had been what made him realize that he was smiling, and when he realized that it had been a short step to the bitter wonder of knowledge he lived with now. He'd been on the phone in the kitchen the last he'd remembered, and when he came to himself he'd realized only dully that it must have been some time since then--some time of his hand gripping the short pile of the carpet, his head bent, his eyes wet and his mouth unable to contain the curve of its own smile.
Eyes wet, and he hadn't known it, until now--it had been the smile that made him cry. It was because, he thought, he could still smile around the odd hurt of it, like the sweet addictive rush at the end of tonguing a loose sore tooth when you're little, a thick cord of feeling that you love because of its sharp edges, not in spite of them.
Now, months later, now that Dom was here, and he could hardly remember what it had been like before that day when he knew, he couldn't even be sure that it hadn't happened before the day he remembered without him noticing. He knew he was dreamy and tended a bit to go off in a haze of thought to his own little world, drifting in and out of memory and daydream and reality and smiling with stubborn pleasure in the face of grief, without ever knowing it.
Remembering it even now in the hospital bed. Couldn't stop smiling, and Dom was out there somewhere in the waiting room or something, probably trying to remember Elijah's address. The phone number wouldn't be a problem, of course. Such strength and such feathery wondering heat on the back of his neck, wrapping in a low necklace around to his collarbone, that he'd thought he'd never felt it before, then. Of course every time, every scandalous forbidden warm thought, felt the same, but you never get used to it--every one was still a revelation.
That was not the end, which hadn't come yet. It was not the end of the beginning, because that must have happened in New Zealand, or maybe at one of the premieres. But it was something, something important, the beginning of knowledge. That was when he'd been thoroughly and utterly caught, tangled in the sticky tragedy of irony and nostalgia and tenderness and pure, simple lust. Too late to struggle. The sunlight had stretched around the edge of the curtains, a narrow heavy bar on the floor, not yet white in the dim gloom, and he had had no desire to move and none to stop smiling.
He didn't know how long he lay there, but he didn't come close to sleeping. He stayed about the same distance from it, actually, which is that place where he was pettish and snappish and he didn't really want to move but he kept moving anyway because he couldn't get comfortable.
A nurse came in with what looked like a kindergarten teacher's art supply tote, purple plastic and covered with holographic stickers, and pulled out of it little glass vials and a syringe.
Could the day get any better, he thought sarcastically?
"They told me the IV wouldn't hurt," he said conversationally, staring straight through the ceiling, which was composed of periodically pierced pasteboard tiles, white, and each one had thirty little perfectly circular holes in it.
"It doesn't really, does it," said the small fluttery nurse without looking at him. It didn't seem to be a question, but Elijah answered anyway.
"Well, no, it just burns and itches and pulls and... creates pain."
The nurse laughed dutifully and said, "I just have to draw some blood."
So that's what the syringe and vials were for. He bit back the retort and said instead, "Okay. They had some trouble finding my pulse when they took my blood pressure."
"Hm," she said, bustling around the head of the bed with some alcohol wipes and other various things. He closed his eyes. For God's sake.
Her hair was dyed, dark fake auburn which was really more maroon, with rich chestnut roots showing, a much prettier color. A long mass of it in a low ponytail, with little baby curls loose around her face. She had a bit of a snub nose, too, and some freckles, but her face was too delicate, and he wanted Dom.
"This isn't going to hurt for but a second," she said reassuringly, misinterpreting whatever expression had taken hold of his face.
"My friend," he replied before he could stop himself, "I think he's in the waiting room--can I see him?"
The prick came before the sentence was finished. "They should let him in in a bit," she soothed.
"It just seems like I've been here for so long, and most of it with nothing to do."
"Almost done. --I'll see about it, how's that?"
"Thank you," he said, listening to the click as she changed vials.
So now, thanks to Nurse Kindergarten, he had no arms remaining without pain, and that was on top of being so weak he had to think hard before he picked one up. A different nurse, the blood pressure one, breezed in to give him a paper cup of water and tell him to drink it, and breezed out again before he could ask about Dom or about anything else. Elijah shifted his head irritably in the bed and wondered why hospital beds didn't have pillows and where the thermostat was, and why there wasn't a tv. He would have settled for just about anything. Sleep, of course, would have been the nicest, but he could hear the grasshopper doctor in the hallway, the door open and antiseptic neon light licking across the foot of his bed.
The nicest after Dom.
Now, Dom would be nice: he wouldn't even probably need extra blankets, then, because he could just look pitiful and get Dom to warm him up. Dom wouldn't want to climb into a hospital bed, but there was no saying (Lij thought a bit hysterically) that there wasn't plenty of extra room, as thin as he was. The IV was in his right arm, and his left was stinging a little still at the elbow from the bitchiness of the needle and those narrow evil little tubes of his blood, jewelled ruby when they'd caught the light.
He'd lie about the left arm, though, and look pale and sad and tired (thereby imperilling his friend's blithe heterosexuality even further, no doubt. Haha), and scoot over and say no one would notice and shiver. Dom would climb in cautiously. Elijah was small, but he was pretty sure they'd discover that the narrowness of the bed made for close quarters anyway and they'd have to curl up around each other. Maybe with Dom against Elijah's side, since he couldn't move his right arm without setting off waves of pulsing tingling heat and prickles. It seemed to be more or less in a state of equilibrium, as long as he didn't move it, --or as long as nothing happened in the room, or as long as he didn't breathe too fast and the IV wasn't possessed by the devil. So, it wasn't that predictable.
But--surely he'd forget that if Dom were there--he couldn't imagine not. And it wasn't as though he'd never been cuddled against Dom before, in the back seat of a Jeep in New Zealand (and it still drove him insane that he hadn't paid more attention, then), on the couch in their hobbit cabin or in Elijah's house or any number of other times, but a real, in-bed cuddle was different. Especially when you're sick and miserable and getting so terrified of your own body and not knowing what the fuck is wrong with you that you second-guess everything--the hot, the chill, the shivers, the prickles--and you only want to forget. Dom would be so close, maybe he would be able to feel Dom's breath on his face. He hoped he would. Suddenly he was sure there was no other way in the universe he could sleep.
However, the daydream itself was almost enough to soothe him to sleep. He spared no attention to detail in conjuring the feel of Dom's arms around him and the warmth and the way he would press wantonly back and burrow closer, and twine their ankles together. The thought made him quite giddy. Ankles getting tangled! It seemed so, so permanent. So much so that it made his eyes start to sting again and he sighed and blinked a few times.
And that was when Dom's voice broke into his reverie from the door. "Are you asleep?"
His eyes flew open. Had he ever been happier to see anyone? God knew what kind of imbecilic smile he was producing. "Dom." Oops, nice try. Clear throat. Try again. "Dom." Keep the eyes wide. He needed to start on pitiful now to coax Dom into bed.
Dom was walking towards the side of the bed, staring at him with a kind of horror that was actually a little funny (especially in a state of mind like this), picking up his feet as slowly as if they'd been stuck in flood of honey on the floor.
Honey... the thought made his stomach turn over. Had he eaten yesterday? He couldn't decide if it made him hungry or not-hungry, or thirsty, or all three. Nauseated, definitely; that wasn't in question. A nausea that was just as tired of the rest of him, limp and listless while his arm was eaten up with the quick-moving cold of whatever-the-fuck it was in that plastic IV bag
"Are you alright?" Dom said quietly.
Elijah nodded a little, as the safest answer, and paused to lick his lips. "But--" an artful shiver.
"Are you cold?" Dom's eyebrows drew down and together. His pissed-face never looked very scary so much as funny or cute or both, with the little point of his round nose, his deep-curved lips and glistening soft eyes. "I can't believe they--it is cold in here. I'm gonna get a nurse. Wait--" He dove at a metal chest that looked more like a file cabinet stretched out of shape than like anything else. "--Maybe in here."
Damn. What if he found the blankets? Not that Lij didn't want blankets, but he was getting very very fixated on the idea of touching, here. Would he be able to handle the disappointment? He watched Dom anxiously and couldn't prevent his face from doing whatever pitiful things it wanted to when his friend (hahaha) turned around with a flannel sheet in his hands. From Dom's suddenly alarmed face, that had probably been a good thing.
Another shiver, for good measure. They might not have long! Into bed as quickly as possible. "I'm really cold," he tried, "and the sheet is cold too! It's like I'm, I dunno, cold from the inside," he explained. Cold from the inside--that was sort of deep, actually, especially if you thought about the loneliness, because hadn't he been so--well, cold--inside for weeks? Wow.
Dom was looking even more worried, standing there frowning and saying, "Did you tell them--shit, Lij!"
"No, not like sick-cold, really cold, just very, very cold, so much that it's inside too, you know, and, and tired and..." whoa, he was making himself cry. Take that, Mr. I'm-Straight-Monaghan.
Dom was starting to look frantic, eyes wide, deer-in-the-headlights. Perfect! Elijah pounced. This was okay to ask for, surely? But I was desperate, guv.
"Could you--get in the bed too? For a minute? I think I might feel better--I just feel so." And that was really all he had to say, because instead of arguing or glancing at the door, Dom blinked a few times and drifted closer to the edge of the bed to take his hand, and said,
"If I'll fit."
Lij had to remember to act tired and cold as opposed to eager while wriggling over sideways in the bed.
"And if the nurses don't like it," Dom grumbled, "they can suck my dick, because I'd like to know how else I'm meant to get you warm!" Elijah was cheering silently. It was getting to be harder work to look tremulous when he smiled, he was afraid, but then again, he had no idea what he looked like. He might look just as pitiful with a real smile, and he was so tired. Maybe relaxing his face was the best bet. And snuggling up with Dom, but not going to sleep, at least, not at first, because he certainly didn't want to miss any of it.
Dom clambered up onto the bed rather awkwardly and lay on his side, and Elijah offered him the edge of the blanket, which reminded Dom of the flannel sheet. Soon that was spread over both of them, and under its shelter in a confusion of limbs they eased gingerly closer together until Lij felt a chin in his hair and a chest against his back and his shoulderblade--he was really turned only about halfway on his side. Flexing the fingers of his left hand idly made little twinges at the elbow, and he tucked it back against his side and found some more of Dom--a muscular forearm leading to a solid, finely-shaped square hand. It didn't take long at all before he was too warm and blissful to sort out what shape was what, and it wasn't even too long after that before the excited racing of his heart settled down to an even rhythm.
He nestled back against Dom, trying to be both innocent and suggestive, when really, he was probably too tired for both. Mmmm. It was working, then. And maybe he really would be able to sleep.
He woke up alone but feeling rather rested, disoriented and thirsty and weaker than a kitten, with no idea how long it had been. He had to blink at the clock a few times before its numbers resolved out of fuzziness and into a time in his head--it was already noon. And when had he woken Dom this morning?
A long fucking time ago.
He still didn't know how long he'd been asleep, and was just starting to emerge from the drifty-end-of-sleep phase into the where's-Dom-what's-going-on phase when the blood pressure nurse leaned around the door again.
"If you're feeling alright," she said, like that was a complete sentence that Elijah could understand. He scrubbed his hand across his eyes and frowned and nodded.
Then he dared to try a "better." It didn't come out as croaky as he'd expected.
"Well," said the nurse, coming the rest of the way into the room and displaying a manila folder full of colored papers and small print, "like we said before--" (they did?) "--you've been pretty dehydrated. We've given you an IV to take care of that, and you should be able to walk now. Did you drink that water? Good, let's try to walk..."
"Have you been vomiting?" Asked the nurse solicitously as they were walking. Elijah was nonplussed until he realized she was trying to find out why he was dehydrated.
"Uh, no, I just..."
"Have you had diarrhea?"
He had a vague memory of telling people this already--but maybe it was another nurse. Or a doctor? Anyway. "No, I just really haven't been. Uhm." And everytime he said it, it somehow got stupider. Maybe now would be a good time to trip--except the floor looked hard and very far away, and he still wasn't feeling so great. "...I haven't been eating or drinking a lot," he finished in a reluctant mumble.
"You know everyone needs 8 to 10 glasses of water a day," chirped the nurse.
"Oh really?" Said Elijah politely, thinking privately that the entire medical profession was fucked. Right, one serving of dessert, ten glasses of water, and 6 vegetables and 11 whatsits, grains, per day? Nooooooo thank you.
The nurse was dragging the bag of IV fluid after him on its little pole and letting him lean on her arm. Not that he wanted to, but it seemed like a pretty good idea considering his fainting problem earlier. And considering the way the lights overhead were spinning a bit dizzily. They took the IV out, taped a bandaid on the crease of his elbow so he wouldn't bleed too much, and gave him a pen to sign some colored papers. ...His firstborn and his kidneys, for all he knew, as he didn't even glance at them. Then they made him go out into the waiting room, when Dom still hadn't appeared, yet, and Lij hadn't had time to wonder where Dom was in all that time but that hadn't stopped him from wondering.
Nothing could have.
He slumped with relief when he pushed through the door and Dom's head snapped up from over a magazine open in his lap. The magazine was a slick black heap on the floor--glossy pictures, you know, with the light from the window, bright and summer-hot, turning a big square of it to white. His eyes snagged on the shape of it on the floor for long enough that Dom almost swept him off his feet before they'd even made eye contact. Okay, well, not swept him off his feet, but eased up next to him with supernatural speed and taken all Elijah's weight on his shoulder and arm, somehow.
Which felt nice. He gave a little sigh and relaxed, and when Dom said, "Ready?"
The first thing he said was "Get me the fuck out of here" with a glowing smile. It didn't occur to him until they were in the parking lot to ask if Dom had driven his car.
Dom gave him an innocent look.
"You don't have a driver's licence," Elijah said, trying not to laugh for fear his knees would give out. Dom unlocked the passenger door.
Dom shrugged. "You just have to remember to drive on the right, and everything's fine."
When the door cracked open and he slipped--or more like slid, really, like a limp puppet--into the passenger seat, Lij was still a little worried about riding with Dom. He strapped in easily enough, thinking it was odd how normal he felt--the same as always, only maybe a bit hollow, or thin-stretched.
He was asleep before the car was out of the parking lot.
Dom was determined that Elijah wasn't getting out of bed until he felt better, but Elijah could do nothing in his own bed but quiver and feel stupid--certainly not sleep. He was so wired that Dom finally picked him up--blankets and all--and walked briskly across the hall with him. Elijah was too weak to tense up, or he would have. As it was, it was an effort to keep his head erect with the smell of Dom teasing his nose.
He was put pretty unceremoniously in the center of Dom's rumpled bed and left alone long enough to untangle his blankets and burrow shamelessly into the spare sheets, breathing deeply.
Damn, and he'd thought he was too tired to get turned on?
Only Dom.
Lij tucked a blanket more securely around himself and closed his eyes. The whole room was awash in a dim gray light, sun spilling in from his room across the hall, mostly, as the window on this side of the house faced the wrong way. The door to the hall'd been left open, and there was a big slanted square of white painted on the floor leading from it like a royal carpet. The whole feel of the room was wet--Lij's skin too-sensitive, rubbery, the sheets around him in warm swathes and when he closed his eyes, the black wasn't still, and he could lose track of where his arms and legs were--mm.
And daydream a better source for the smell of Dom than the rapidly-warming sheets, if, for instance, the origin of the faint sweaty musk happened to slide back into the bed with him, and he could bury his face in Dom's neck and press his nose at that little tear-drop hollow between his collarbones.
When Dom asked if he was going to have to sit on Elijah to keep him still, the answer was "Probably" with the kind of face that Dom had been known to call "cheeky." He said it jokingly, but Dom understood that it was essentially true. Well, of course sitting on Elijah wasn't exactly necessary--staying near would work just as well. Like, say, a few centimeters, ideally. (Elijah had nothing better to do for almost a week while Dom would hardly let him move but watch the shadows move on the wall and on Dom's face, and think, and imagine, and wonder, and just generally drive himself crazy.)
He knew things about Dom that he had never been told, things he didn't even tell himself until it was time for him to need to know them, when they sparkled on the tip of his tongue and made him blink. He knew that he could whine and bitch and still get Dom's attention, partly because Dom felt guilty but mostly just because he was nice and it was in his nature to worry. He knew the fastest way to get Dom's attention was to be too tired to try to get it. When he heard a song sometimes he knew Dom would like it, and he knew that because he remembered what kinds of pictures Dom liked and what movies made him make faces. Sometimes Dom made this blank still face--only rarely, and certain times, like lying on the couch in their hobbit-house in New Zealand once when the wind was whistling on the windows--and Lijah knew that it meant he was homesick. He knew automatically what would make Dom angry and why and if Orli told him that Dom had not apologized for something he knew that it was because Dom's feelings wouldn't have been hurt, so he didn't think the new makeup girl's would be either. He knew, when Dom stayed gone and stayed gone and stayed gone some more, that it wasn't because he forgot.
There was no question that getting Dom to do what Lij wanted was easy. Lij was sick, even if only because he'd made himself that way sweating and brooding and not eating over Dom. Then it was Lij's house, and Dom wasn't too happy with driving on the right side of the street, and he was friendly and sweet, and basically, if you wanted it you only ever had to ask when he couldn't guess what it was before you got around to it. Unless, of course, he thought it would be funny to tease you, but who minded that, with Dom's round little nose above a tremendous crooked smile, too large for his cheeks?
If he whined and begged, he could get an antsy Dom--and he knew this even though he hadn't done it yet in almost a week of being sick--to sit in bed with him, but wouldn't it be the I'm Sitting In Bed kind of sitting then, the kind you do to answer the question will you do this for me? And Elijah didn't want that. He was willing to ask Dom, yes, he thought in the middle of the night, alone in Dom's bed while Dom slept in Elijah's across the hall, pushing his face further under the pillow, seeking out Dom's scent in the crevices of the bed.
When you can't get it any other way, you ask; but he didn't want what Dom wouldn't give.
Which was why he devoted so much attention to it: it had to be perfectly, utterly casual. First there was pretending to be bored, and of course he had to sit through some books and part of the newspaper in preliminary attempts to solve the problem before Dom would bring in the TV.
And even then it took hours before Dom was on the bed with him watching it.
Finally. Re-runs of Friends on TV, because it was on, and a loose cocoon of blankets peeling back around them, as it wasn't particularly cold in the room, and Dom next to him and their arms touching even before Lijah got tired and let himself slump over against the thick solid cording of Dom's arm.
There's only so long you can watch Dom eat without getting accidentally hypnotized. Luckily, for the sick week, Elijah didn't really have anywhere else to go, and Dom didn't have much to do other than watch TV. Actually, Dom never had much to do, he mused--he was the one who had to adjust to the change in lying in bed all day. Not that he minded, of course, lounging against the headboard in a nest of blankets that smelled of Dom still, even if not as much, and watching Dom rather than the TV set.
By the time three days had passed, Elijah thought he might even be getting worse from never moving--the days growing long and surreal and nothing to do but think, and think, and dream--and oh, the dreams. But Dom, perched in the blankets next to him with his eyes fixed perfectly on the TV with utter concentration, had cotton boxers riding up his thighs over a dusting of sandy curls that were making Lij's mouth water more than the crisp crunch of white teeth in the white flesh of the apple and the sticky trickle at the corner of Dom's ripe lips.
His mouth was never quite closed, and there was always the red shadow of it on his lower lip and in its corners, and his mouth wrapped so gracefully around the apple, his tongue flicking out to catch juice, and when he sucked his thumb clean, still without looking away from the TV, Elijah was starting to feel light-headed. He knew there was something he should have been thinking about other than Dom's mouth, and that there were a million reasons for--things, but for now all he could hold on to was a "no" with sharp cutting little edges. He clung stubbornly, and wanted, and watched, and tried very, very hard not to blink.
There was a sort of lurking consciousness of crying, waiting to happen. He had cried over Dom before, though not quite in that manner, not in front of Dom, and certainly not when there were so... oh... much better things to look at, like Dom, licking his lips, and the little tip of his nose and his eyes when he blinked. And his mouth. What about his mouth? Ummmmm. So no matter how odd it was--he felt a bit like a bubble or a balloon stretched too big, too thin, too fast, trembling and uncertain and confused--he couldn't quite cry, because there was too much of Dom to drink up, to lap up. A feast of him, succulent to the last morselish bit, and this kind of thinking was starting to make his eyes glaze over. Ohhhh, eating, the apple in Dom's hand, sticky and glistening sugared lips. And Dom himself, sticky and glistening. Elijah couldn't decide which piece he'd like to devour first. When he was done licking there wouldn't be a drop of salt or sugar to glisten on his mouth.
Blink. Refocus. "Lijah? Liiiiiiijah?" Dom was glancing at him, his sticky mouth all twisted up at the corner, crooked and amused. Elijah almost panted. "You're really no' paying attention at all, ya tosser."
"Sorry."
Dom just grinned and turned back to the TV, but in a minute--right after Elijah had gone back to mentally undressing him, right, of course--he said, "We can turn the TV off?"
"No," Lij stammered, "uh, no. I'm fine."
"Okay," said Dom doubtfully: "You don't wanna sleep or anything?"
"I'm not that sick," Elijah said. Maybe not that sick, but he was still, evidently and unfortunately, just sick enough to make him incapable of thinking of more than one thing at once. When Dom licked his lips a minute later Lij was still watching him, and discovered, at once, that his mouth was dry.
And then said it.
D'oh.
"You're supposed to be drinking a lot," said Dom, his brows snapping scruffily together over his round nose and his uneven pink mouth. The unfortunate part came when he got up and left, and Lij somehow managed to fall asleep while he was gone.
When he woke up, Dom was sitting in a chair by the window reading a book, and there was a glass of water on the table. Lij eyed it doubtfully, but when he caught Dom's eyes on him he downed it all in a few gulps and managed a wan smile.
Time had stretched out with his sickness, and he'd spent so much time in Dom's bed in the guest room that he remembered the stuff before it mostly in a foggy haze. As though Dom had always been at his house, and that was a mistake, he knew, because part of him believed that things that have always been will always be, and Dom wasn't going to always stay; Dom was British, and Dom, unlike Elijah, wasn't utterly obsessively devoted. It was all impossible.
The impossibility was funny, putting itself up in front of him--maybe down the middle of him--like a sheet of thick wavy glass. Sometimes Lij thought there were two universes for him, the one where he ought to fall in love with Dom but he never would, never could, because, just because. It was impossible. --And then the other one where it was too late because he'd fallen in love already a long time ago.
And now Elijah had a foot, as it were, in each of them. As it were: what a Dom thing to say. He'd say that on the phone and then send a text message and somehow manage to misspell "hi," or his own name, or possibly both.
Dom had been living in Elijah's LA house now for the scant eternity of three weeks, counting all the sick time, which Elijah counted as pretty much over even though Dom didn't believe it. It was Thursday now, Thursday afternoon, and Dom had shown up on Saturday morning, so it was close enough. Elijah remembered the day Dom had come because he had not known until that Friday that Dom was coming, and that Wednesday (and, yes, Wednesday, because he had been having lunch and that had been the soup of the day) he had gone for a drive and ended up a lot further from Hollywood than he'd thought he was going to, someplace where you'll suffocate if you stay in your car another second. He'd got out and scuffed his feet across a brown-dust-white-gravel patch of ground with the grass worn away, rocks, hills. A dusting of hills and a panorama of after-midday-but-not-night sky. A drifting, slow lowering of dusk like a veil over all of it, light gossamer, a blush of indigo on the blue.
It had been so, so pretty, too fucking gorgeous for words or thoughts, with the grass turning blue and turquoise from the light reflecting off of it, but only if you stared for long enough.
Sometimes something just takes your breath away so you don't even want to move or speak for a while--that had happened a lot in New Zealand, really, and a lot more since then, as if he'd learned how or something.
And when you do want to think again, you wish you hadn't thought at all, because the first fucking thing that comes to your mind is I want to kiss him here and the second thing is sometime. Who knows, sometime I might be able to-- and then you want to scrub your brain out with a wire brush, because once you have that thought, it's too late to make it go away.
Now that Dom was there Elijah tried not to think about that place--another on the list of no-Dom things, along with excessive amounts of alcohol (what would he say?) and whipped cream (a fantasy that he was afraid would still make him blush, but God, it had been hot, and he might never eat it again without shivers of heat). He could not take Dom there, now, because the image was so firm in his mind of Dom's arms closing around him tightly and his mouth pushing down and opening on Elijah's. Who knew what he would do?
In the end, it turned out to be the thought of the kiss itself and not the thought of the location that was most dangerous. Of course, without the alcohol, it probably would have been fine, but just after Lij had graduated to the living room couch, Dom wandered in with a sweating beer and said, "You should be drinking--have some beer," and offered it without thinking.
Elijah had swiped at it.
It had been visible on Dom's face when he remembered, and he said, "Uh! No, water, have some water," and snatched his hand back.
"No, c'mon," he'd whined. Beer. He wanted beer. And to feel like a grown-up. (Hence the whining.)
Dom had looked doubtful.
"You know I'm not sick any more," Lij had said. "You know, fuck it, I'll get my own." He'd been mad enough, too. That was probably why Dom had given in.
Getting drunk and drinking aren't quite the same. Elijah didn't mean to get drunk, and Dom probably hadn't wanted him to either; but nonetheless, it had happened.
It had taken him a little while to twig to it that he was tipsy--not totally gone, of course, just a little, uh--tipsy. Right. Just tipsy enough to stare at nothing but Dom like someone under a spell after half an hour or so, and then to suggest a drinking game. Riiiiiight. So there they were, watching Elijah's video of a cast party and drinking at all the inside jokes, and then--oh! imagine that--there was Dom.
Dom. His pretty open mouth, wet with beer, and the smell of his breath, and his neck, kinda sweaty, even, sticking out of the rumpled collar of a shirt. Dom was always rumpled. It looked right. It made Elijah horny as hell--but maybe, that drunk, it didn't matter what Dom looked like for him to feel this way.
Dom much closer than he'd been a minute ago. Maybe that was Elijah's fault and maybe not. Who cared.
He licked his lips and looked at Dom's shirt where it touched his neck in the middle, the unfastened top button. And before he knew it, he was saying "Can I lick you?" And he was even closer than he'd been before.
A startled, charming little jerk. Surprised. Why was he surprised? "Unh," said Dom, his eyes as round as, as something really fucking round.
Oh. Maybe, because Dom was moving back. Yeah. No. And he'd known there was something he was forgetting, and that must have been it: he wasn't supposed to lick Dom: Lij nodded to himself. Yes, he remembered now, because it was impossible, and that was unfair.
He wasn't sure, later, how much of that he said out loud, but however much it was, a moment later he was looking down stupidly at Dom's hand around his wrist.
"No--Wait! Lijah. Unh. Please do--"
And so he did: he leaned close to smell and taste the hot salt of Dom's neck and feel the prickle of that roguish beard on his tongue. Why hadn't he done that before, he thought fuzzily. His brain popped and fizzed around the edges, beer or Dom, he couldn't t--
Ah. His pants had been really too tight, for a minute, there, until he figured out where to put his legs (on the sides of Dom's), and sat down in Dom's lap, and there were--mm--a pair of square warm hands sliding inside his jeans on his ass. Elijah wriggled, a little, the bulky seam of the denim pressing against his crotch teasingly. Dom took pity on him and somehow managed to undo the zip and get Elijah's face turned up to kiss his mouth (finally!) at the same time.
Mmm. Elijah let his mouth come open too fast, maybe. He had a feeling his kisses were too fast and clumsy. They felt wet and sloppy, like he didn't know how to, which he did, really. He hadn't kissed enough, maybe. He had never wanted to this much, though, even though he, uhm, liked it, and it was very very nice of course.
Dom, on the other hand, wetness aside (well, kisses were supposed to be wet) clearly did know how. He was pretty damn good at it, in fact. Pretty fucking fantastic, Elijah thought, opening his mouth a little more and twisting pitifully on Dom's lap, grinding closer, his ass against Dom's erection trapped in his sweatpants. Dom gasped and laughed at the same time, and Lij thought of biting his lip then, so he did, bit it hard, scraped over it and worried it with his teeth and sucked on just the tip of Dom's tongue while Dom moaned and made feeble closing motions of his hands on Elijah's hips.
Through his drunkenness--or tipsiness--came a last gasping thought, a sudden floundering thread of sanity. "We can't," he whispered with his mouth moving over Dom's, his lips pulling over them, catching damp and longing on the swell of Dom's lower lip.
Dom didn't seem offended, just gripped Elijah's hips firmly and pulled him closer. "Too late, innit," he whispered back matter-of-factly, and twisted his hips up from the floor with a little arch. Elijah's mind whited out, and okay, yes, it was too late. There might have been some stopping before, before the drinking, or at least before the cuddling--before the sickness? Um.
But now, no.
He thought about the bed, but it would have taken too long to say "Do you want to--" whatever, and even longer to get up and go there. Instead he knelt up and scrambled backward and sideways, sort of, onto the edge of the couch, closing his hand awkwardly on Dom's shoulder, just like, he thought later, he didn't know how to speak English and say just Come here even if he couldn't think of anything clever and urbane like I never thought I'd be a top as he lay down shivering on his back, but it didn't matter, because he opened his legs anyway when Dom went to lie on top of him and closed them satisfyingly around Dom's hips and clutched them tight, there, curling his waist and pressing the small of his back down and curving his ass up, trying to rub his aching cock on Dom or get just some pressure, some sensation, some relief.
"Let's get these--" Dom said, pushing at the denim so the waistband scraped Elijah's thighs, with a voice as concentratedly British and generally hot as fuck and sexily unsure as all of Dom, with maybe a little tremble in it.
"Fuck," Elijah said, and then "Fuck" again, because they could not get the damn pants off him without him unwrapping his legs. He let Dom push/tug them off, not being really very helpful at all.
Sex on the couch. Haha, they were really going to do it. Not that it was funny so much as unbelievably hot. Sex at all, really, was--he couldn't imagine a universe in which he'd have the strength to say no to Dom levered above him on his elbows with his lips scraped up and his brows beetled together with his sweatpants tenting over the jut of his cock before Elijah pushed them down, partly with his hands, partly by clamping his thighs around Dom and pushing with an odd wriggling motion that also, incidentally, made Dom growl and bite his neck. Which. Ohhhh, yes.
And then there was nothing between them, and when Dom let his full weight down it was like he was swallowed in it, sweat-slick skin and the smell of his leather couch and the burning length of Dom's dick on his stomach, hard and hot and eager. Lij whimpered and tried writhing again, as that had seemed so successful before--maybe, if he was lucky, he wouldn't have to say anything, or ask. Fuck me. It sounded hot in his head, but he'd rather just keep his mouth occupied sucking Dom's tongue rhythmically into and out of it, thank you.
He didn't know it, at first, when they'd started thrusting--the frustration penetrated first, because his lust-fogged brain couldn't fail to notice how they slipped and slid and couldn't get good purchase. Elijah put a hand between them, tentative on the living velvet leaping eagerly against his fingertips. He tried wrapping his hand around them both and Dom made a choking noise and pushed down, crushing him in the couch and maybe bruising his fingers. But little sparks were flying behind his eyes, because it'd got his cock too.
Elijah had to moan--he was always vocal, of course, not just with sex, not that that mattered. But he could hardly stop himself, so it didn't matter. He didn't do that on purpose, although certainly, the slick little lithe twists he gave, spreading his legs further apart and grunting a little. Of course that was on purpose. He was half-mad before he felt calluses on Dom's thumbs snagging the too-smooth skin on the inside of his thigh, high up near the crease of it, trailing backward, where Elijah felt dizzy desire making his pulse pound. If every nerve end in his body had moved to his ass he couldn't have felt more the diffident brushes of Dom's fingers.
He gave up on not asking all at once and entirely bypassed the asking in favor of demanding hoarsely "forGOD'SsakeDomfuckme." He was entirely willing, furthermore, to fuck himself, if Dom'd give him more than one finger (fresh from Dom's flushed mouth--wasn't that something to look at) to work with. He could do this well on his own, and had, more than once, sweating and naked alone in his bed with tears on his face and "Dom" on his lips. Better if Dom did it, though, so he made the first soft noises he could think of--more a matter of not being able to stop, again, than any clever plan--and thrust his hips down on the damp digit, twisting.
"Fucking HELL yes, Lijah," breathed Dom in that broken way that made Lij think every dirty thing at once that had ever made him blush. He made another little inquiring sound--beyond words, now, but he thought it meant something like pleasewouldyoufuckmeNOW?
Yes, Dom would--after the slow invasion of a second finger, pressing and seeking for so. goddamned. long. you'd think he didn't know where Elijah's fucking prostate was, and wasn't that enough of that, now, for God's sake. "Fuck you," Elijah exclaimed, and he would have said "tosser" back, but under the circumstances it was maybe too funny.
And Dom was grinning ferally down at him and saying raspily over his mouth, "But I'd rather fuck you." And oh shit. Yes. That was his stomach evaporating or melting away, entirely. Hi. Elijah Wood, from The Lord of the Rings, I look like a girl and I beg for it--ah. Dom's dick, flushed rose and dark in a nest of curls, jutting toward Elijah, jumping when he circled the head with his forefinger to the sound of Dom's breath hissing between his teeth. Then he dove in at once for a kiss that was more like a fucking bite. Just eat me up, Elijah thought, wildly but not at all reproachfully. Dom could nibble on his lip all he wanted, bite his tongue, push him apart with hot licking, lascivious and melting slow and wet. And Elijah licked Dom's hand when it was presented, as carefully as he could that fast. Maybe too eagerly, but he was beyond noticing and Dom was beyond caring. Dom slicked himself with the spit--hm. Somehow you never think about that bit when you think about sex on the couch, spit and Dom's grip slipping, and his fingernails biting into your hips. The second that stretched out forever with the blunt head of his cock, maybe too big, prodding between Lijah's legs, slipping against the crack of his ass--the pressure of it, thick and hot and tantalizing, against the opening while Lijah arched up and gasped before it slipped again, Dom still holding back.
"Over," he gasped. So Elijah flipped over, or rather, Dom flipped him over and he went, spreading his legs apart for Dom to settle between, his knees pushing up, his ass in the air. Biting the couch cushion, which tasted like leather and smelled like sex, or maybe that was the whole room. Fuck.
"Baby," Dom might have muttered, but that was about the point where his grip on Elijah's hip steadied, one-handed because the other must have been guiding his cock because that time there was a more even resistance in the circle of muscle, tense and then a slick give, the blunt head slipping past in fiery little infinitesimal increments. Then Dom, God knew howthefuck how, paused for half a second, which was a whole second longer than Elijah could wait to have that lip-biting stretching whisper of flame a little higher, a little deeper, where he felt a screaming gnawing need. He pushed back, pushed again, rocking, and felt Dom involuntarily take the rhythm. He arched his back, and Dom's hands were wrapping firmly around his hips and pulling his ass higher, Elijah's arms folded under his forehead, but they could have lost all their blood for all he cared. The angle changed, with that little movement, and when Elijah slid obligingly into the movement Dom's next thrust went almost, it felt, all the way, setting alive sparks where he didn't know he had nerves, but now he was going to scream if he didn't get another--or gasp. Or. Cry. Meanwhile the burning damp stretch of it all was shorting out circuits in his brain, snarling the nice orderly melted slag of his stomach into a nasty confusion of coils again.
He might have bitten his own arm at this point, um, hard enough to draw blood, what with the incredible thick tight heat of it, the force, the rough excruciating power behind the pleasure with Dom squeezing too hard at his hips, biting the back of his neck. "Lij-uh," Dom grunted, pulling back so slowly that Lij burned and moaned with the painful damning emptiness.
"Faster, you fucking--" He got another sharp nip on his shoulder and a throaty laugh for his trouble, but then, oh, yesss, the punishing even push of another deep stroke, and if Elijah arched his back in the middle it scraped against his prostate at a new angle. His mouth was open with some kind of crazy noise coming out.
More grunts, Dom's thighs slapping stickily with sweat on Elijah's ass, the unsynchronized dirty choreography, pushing and pulling and harsh prickly tenderness and each thrust, he thought--he imagined, but no, he knew--a little deeper and still never deep--enough--
Dom chuckled and whispered, "Do you want--" a little incoherent, maybe, Lij thought smugly, because he broke off there and seemed to forget he meant to say anything at all, when Lij rolled his hips up into the next thrust with a loose-vibrating moan that clawed up the inside of his chest. And that, it seemed, was Dom's clue to lose control. Elijah's neck went damply spongy, his head insupportable, sweat rolling off him and not cooling fast enough and his couch was going to be almost as thoroughly fucked as he was. There were only a few more very deliberate, very fast thrusts--the third also very deep, as Elijah, on a flash of inspiration, spread his legs a bit further apart--before he was gasping, his eyes closing involuntarily and a fresh wash of blood flooding his face and neck, trembling as his spine went to liquid sparks and his stomach seemed to turn inside out, hot and cold and tight, unravelling with the fierce wickedness of an orgasm that closed his throat.
He didn't want it to ever end, and the aftershocks were still making his muscles clench lazily as Dom, his breath a hot audible gust on the nape of Lij's neck, thrust emphatically in again with a hard short flex of his hips and withdrew just as quickly. Again, and... mmm, oh, another languid shiver unfurling like feathery fingernails up his back, making him shiver all over, making his knees suddenly uncertain while his body, now soft and welcoming, closed around Dom again and clutched him close. Lij pressed back, a little, desultory with still hot pleasure, at the deep point of the thrust, and said a long string of "Mmm"s; Dom whimpered and came, pressing close, biting at Lij's neck, pulsing hot and wet and deep.
They collapsed together on the sexy sweaty smelly couch, drunk and limp and boneless and (in Elijah's case) in some previously unimagined form of Heaven.
When they woke up, he had a vague knowledge a few minutes later as Dom withdrew and they curled up together gingerly, it was going to be just as smelly and even stickier. But that didn't by any means make him want to move, because there would be something satisfyingly real about waking up glued to the couch with your come and Dom's slender-shaped blunt-fingered hand on your stomach, nestled peaceably together. And there was definitely, he decided fiercely with the force of determined pretence, something much better about cuddling after the hottest sex of your life when that was the consummation of a thick stormy passionate mutual infatuation than when it was a steamy buddy-fuck. He closed his eyes and cuddled, and when Dom's hand settled on his collarbone, he bent his head to kiss the back of it.