Big Thanks to esorlehcar for tips on what to write; to her again and telesilla and cindyjade and matildabj and kyuuketsukirui for reassurance, hand-holding and cheering; to diamona for the same and very appreciated beyond-the-call beta notes. Dedicated to both msilverstar & angstslashhope, for it wouldn't have been written without their promptings, though distant in time.
Summary: Elijah's cranky and petulant, and looks to Viggo for comfort.
Everybody knows that shit doesn't always smell the same. Shit has many many various smells, but there's always this one common thing that enables you to identify it as shit.
Right. It's normal after all. Shit's only those dead bacteria, plus these things you don't digest, and there's always the same er, chemical element or something, if you go down to the molecules-- The Ice Storm was right about that, sadly, poor Mikey, and Elijah doesn't want to think about this anymore. There's no way in hell he'll be able to eat the scrambled eggs cooling on his plate if he does, and he's already abnormally slow this morning. Late morning. Whatever.
]]> Because yeah, today fucking smells like shit, even with his stuffed nose from the head cold, and why did he have to say yes to this brunch invitation anyway? It's never good for him to go hang with those two right after they've hooked up for the night, yet again. It never fails to make him vaguely sick to his stomach, Dom's cat-like satisfied grin around the straw in his Tom Collins, urgh, how can he; and fuck, could he be any more fake rock star annoying?Two years ago, hell, even one year ago, Dom sniggered when anybody invited him to 'do lunch', and now he calls up drawling happily to ask if Elijah wants to do brunch with me and lil' sis'. Lij had to clench his jaw to make sure Dom didn't hear the disgusted recoil in his voice when he agreed, hating himself for ever introducing him to Dieselsweeties. Even if it only lasted a second, the feeling left a bad taste in the back of Elijah's throat.
Two years ago, Hannah wouldn't have missed class to spend a long weekend in LA to see him, either, and now she leaves the snow behind for this, this stupid almost heatwave here that makes everything smell like fucking shit, and the dumb palm-trees, and she spends the night with Dom before she even goes to Mom's.
New York doesn't smell like shit, not this shit at least, and Elijah breathes in deep and tries to calm down, seeing in his mind's eye the blank smoothness of freshly fallen snow covering a quiet side street in the Village.
Hannah giggles at some joke Dom makes from behind his latest idiotic sunglasses; she nudges Lij's elbow as he gears up to stab a piece of egg, and when his fork skids across his plate and the ceramic shrieks the calming thought shatters completely. Elijah sighs and fidgets, gulps his coffee down.
It tastes like shit.
Viggo smells like shit too, but it's horseshit-- Saturday afternoon, he's got reasons, and it makes Elijah feel better right away. Steadier. Viggo flings the door wide open and pads back across to his kitchen, barefoot, not waiting to see if Lij will cross the threshold; he doesn't invite him in with words he knows are useless, and that's good, too.
Lij follows him there, sits down at the table while Viggo putters around, water sloshing in a plastic bucket as he finishes cleaning one of the many weird implements he uses to paint, or is it some part of TJ's tack? With Viggo, you never know, esoterism is the rule. And yet it's easy to feel included, with him, to feel like a part of. Of a greater something or of Viggo's something, it doesn't matter, it's something, it's cool.
"I'm sorry I'm just barging in like this, Vig," Lij says, extracting a cigarette from the pack and patting his pocket for a light. "Hope you don't mind."
He plays with his matches, nervousness spiking again until Vig shrugs and grunts, and peace returns. He knows Vig doesn't mind the unprompted visit, he does. Any other day he wouldn't have had to apologize for it, but now things just are.
"It's just shit today, I-- I dunno. How're you?"
Elijah sniffles, takes a drag, looks around for tissues to blow his nose into. It's hopeless, half his head and all of his sinuses full of concrete, but he'll go nuts if he doesn't try.
"Good," a Viggo rumble comes from just behind him, and a warm heavy hand settles on his shoulder. "You sound like you have a cold."
Lij nods. "I do. It sucks."
Viggo nods towards the living-room, living-space rather, with all his art stuff scattered around, the huge bench-like farm table thing he spreads photographs onto, and lifts his hand again, headed for the sink.
"Tissues on the coffee table," he waves the same hand, vaguely. "I had a box out, take some."
The open space is airy and flooded with warm sunlight. Elijah looks around and fails to identify a coffee table; it looks like Vig's rearranged the furniture since last time Lij drove up here to see him.
Finally he spots the cardboard box. He pulls a sheet out and folds it before lifting it to his nose. No dice, it's just the way he thought; his efforts amount to nothing but dislodging his lingering pressure-headache from the right part of his forehead to somewhere middle-ish and in the back.
"Fuck this," he mutters, and sprawls inconsiderately on the low-slung couch, feet dangling and kicking the air. It's not often he feels this petulant, this aimlessly restless. Good thing he came here, best thing he could've done.
Viggo comes in two minutes later, carrying mugs; steam is wafting from the sloshing liquid and curling up in the air, slashed through by beams of sunlight.
Elijah giggles, "Are you crazy, hot drinks now?" but he doesn't resist, takes his when Vig pushes it into his hands with a purposeful stare and a waggle of his nearly non-existant eyebrows. The left one is smeared with a streak of lime green, small enough that Lij hadn't seen it before. Now Vig's face fills his vision behind swirls of scented fog, Vig's kindness, his focus, and Lij can only smile back. He inhales the new-- strong!-- smell and chokes on heat, splutters.
"Fuck, what d'you put in there?"
Viggo gives an enigmatic smile and a half-shrug, bringing his own mug to his mouth for a quiet sip. Elijah mimics him and drinks. Whiskey, it tastes like, poured in some kind of lemon tea maybe. Fuck, it's really strong.
After a second gulp of the concoction the room is suddenly alive with the smells of paint, photography chemicals, charred firewood and, yes, horse shit.
"Shhh, Elijah," Viggo murmurs in Elijah's hair, against tense skin at the back of his skull. His lips are tender and so is his voice, trying to soothe the increasingly frantic beating of Elijah's heart. "Breathe," Viggo says, but his hand around Elijah's cock and balls is rubbing narrowing circles of heat, a massage more likely to invite all of Lij's blood to pool down there than to calm him down.
Elijah snickers helplessly, strained, thinks of a half-hearted protest and wiggles on Viggo's lap. Viggo's other hand smears up under his t-shirt and Elijah's spine unfurls against Viggo's chest. Elijah wants to say something and can't: his gratitude is a hard lump in his throat that threatens to split into shards, his breath stolen as Viggo's fingers circle his erection to pump up and down in a slow, practiced stroke.
Viggo flips them with a smooth combination of moves, tightening his arm across Elijah's chest and heaving Lij's body with the strength of his thighs. His hand doesn't leave Elijah's dick, gathering precome with the pads of his fingers and spreading it around to moisten the whole head.
Viggo settles, knees between Lij's knees, unable to spread them wide as Elijah's thighs are tethered by his hastily lowered jeans, and he bends over Elijah's back until Lij lowers on his elbows, trembling.
Elijah moans in the leather cushion as Viggo tongues the back of his neck with small licks and a ripple of sensory lightning travels to the tip of his toes. Everything smells earthy and thick now; Elijah's tongue is numb from alcohol and cloves, blindly pushing up the roof of his mouth.
Half-high, drugged up, Elijah hasn't felt this good in ages; he's so very safe in Viggo's arms, every time, like magic. With the building orgasm gathered behind his balls, where Viggo hasn't touched him yet-- not ever-- Lij feels the noose of his bad, petty mood go slack. "Ah," he says, "ah, shit," and Viggo's hand stills on him and then leaves altogether, and Elijah bites back a would-be sob at the loss.
"There, there," Viggo drawls softly. His hand returns, wet and warm with spit, palming Elijah's cock more firmly this time as he thumbs a nipple under the t-shirt with the other, fabric bunching up under Lij's chin. The embrace and the sure caress turn Elijah's insides to lava. His jeans are still holding his legs together, and provide even more friction as the muscles of his ass contract spasmodically in sync with Viggo's rhythm.
Viggo holds fast when Elijah starts bucking and humping his fist; Lij whimpers and drools on the cushion, scrabbling for purchase in the leather. It's useless to resist when he came here to let go but there's always a concern at the back of his mind that he's too quick, pathetically teenage, shooting his load with undignified haste--
All ideas dissolve in a rush of heat as the world blurs; Elijah soars and comes, and comes, months of frustration and days of pettiness and every minute of jealousy melting into pleasure and pulled out of him by Viggo's tender care.
"Oh God," he mumbles after a long stretch of white nothing. His cheek is damp, sliding on dribbled saliva; his limbs are lead, his whole body so pleasantly dead that the awkward position only feels natural. "Thank you." Even his headache seems to have cleared, that's how good it was.
Gathering Elijah to himself and rolling them on their sides on the sofa, Viggo chuckles hotly in his neck. "Don't thank me yet," his voice is gravelly and deep, "not for the antipasto." He hums low, fingers trailing lazy on Lij's skin, twisting his nipples one after the other to feast on the breathless whines and squirming action coming as a result. "In two minutes I'll make you another cup; when you're done drinking it I have something else for you. Thank me then, half-love."
The endearment used to not sit well with Elijah, a reminder of his selfishness. Hard to say when it became a, a default, falling back on Viggo to put him right, and Lij didn't like to think of it. But that was before Viggo patiently explained and taught him, along with better techniques for jerking off to make it last and how to build then light a fire, his personal approach to these things.
Now that Elijah gets it, the words please him, fitting comfortably like a pair of well-worn jeans or shoes, smooth and warm. Like Viggo's hands spanning his ribcage.
He's drunk now, mellow and drowsy and mmmm, naked in Viggo's bed. Unresisting, he drank the second mugful of whatever it was, even more loaded this time; he hardly remembers stripping out of his clothes. He drifts off, elated, just savoring the contact of Viggo's coarse hair and slightly sweaty skin against his back, spooned once again in his arms. Something good is coming-- they don't always end up in bed, but Viggo hasn't come yet either, and Elijah guesses it means doubles for him.
"Wake up, sleepy," Viggo lets his hand fall down to nudge at Elijah's softened dick, dropping kisses on his shoulders.
"'M not," Elijah mumbles with a grin, shimmying his ass briefly against Viggo's groin. He's always privately wondered why Viggo won't fuck him, when he knows Elijah's not a virgin anymore-- That Dom has, used to, sometimes.
Elijah made sure Viggo knew a while ago, fumbling with the words like a red-cheeked débutante; he made sure on purpose. It seemed only normal to share the information, when Viggo did so much for his, um, initiation, yeah, the word is right. Dom's casual ease with talking about it all hasn't been contagious though, and despite his profuse use of swearwords in every day conversation Elijah still can't say these things easily. Not when it counts. He hopes in silence, wishing with a kiss or an insistent press of his hips; he tilts his ass upwards wantonly when Viggo's got him horny enough that shame drops away beneath the horizon. Maybe today's the day.
"Good," Viggo rumbles, "you can move then." He rolls them over, plastering his larger body to Elijah's back; Lij spills face down on the mattress, legs parting in invitation. Viggo levers up on elbows and descends, planting tiny kisses on Elijah's shoulder blades at first, changing to fast licks of his tongue across ticklish spots on his flanks.
"Elijah," he whispers, warm breath rasping at the back of Lij's hips. Elijah's skin tingles with muted sparks of pleasure, just enough to make the muscles of his back flex and relax in anticipation. "Shh," Viggo soothes again, tracing the dips in the small of his back with wetness, kneading Elijah's ass gently with his fingers splayed over both cheeks.
Viggo's mouth slides down and Elijah shivers as air insinuates in his cleft, Viggo's thumbs spreading him open. His ass clenches reflexively and there's another shhhh, warm and damp and pervasive and oh-- what's that, no-- an impossible hot wriggling sensation stretches down between Elijah's cheeks and freezes him, breathless.
"Vig, Viggo, don't, what--"
There's a low slow laugh, muffled against the fleshy convex curve of his ass and raising the hair over his back; Viggo's fingers spiderwalk upward to pet Elijah's sides gently. "Quiet, don't worry," he murmurs after a last chuckle, "everything's okay, just let me do this."
Elijah closes his eyes again, shamed to think he'd selfishly stop Viggo doing something he wants-- shamed to want to be touched-- but God, not like this, it's so-- shamed again when the word dirty unfurls behind his eyelids on a red velvet background and his belly twists with untamed want. Elijah starts, then tentatively stills his stupid body, rebelliously trying to rub a newly-sprung hard-on on the sheet below.
He's heard of it of course, Dom, that one time he'd listed everything he learned from watching amateur gay porn. Elijah had made a shocked and disbelieving ewface, and Dom had laughed, and that was that. He knows the name for this, somehow stuck in his brain; rimming, firmly wedged next to its brother felching-- another bit of unwanted knowledge dispensed by Dom-- in the mental drawer for Weird and Kinda Gross. Elijah doesn't like gay porn, anyway.
"But Vig--" he tries to say, interrupted when Viggo's stubborn tongue sweeps down there again, a blissfully slick hot thing, finishing right over the ring of tense muscle with a circling flourish. "Oh God."
His head swims; Viggo's hand rubs wide slow patterns on his back, the other sneaking under Elijah's hip to hold him and lift him up minimally.
"Fuck, fuck," he's thisclose to begging Viggo to fuck him just to make him stop, one type of shame eclipsing the other-- But he can't even speak anymore as Viggo keeps on licking luxuriously, drawing what Lij's intoxicated brain interprets through the haze as paisley shapes, or maybe the Elvish alphabet, Jesus, so warm.
Elijah gasps, his brows knotting up tight; the wet artistry has given way to something even weirder, a repeated sweet stabbing of Viggo's tongue against his hole, is that it, is that for real-- "Viggo?" he asks, hearing the plaintive troubled note in his voice and resenting the helplessness. His hands are fisted in the sheets.
It's good though, the part of him drunk enough to admit whispers, so good, relax, and Viggo says much the same thing with his mouth open wide on Elijah's flesh, breathing pleasure into him in tiny quiet increments. Elijah lets go, opening his hands, flattening his palms on the bed and forcing his eyebrows down, taking a deep stuttering breath.
Yeah.
Viggo must have felt him relax. There's a swift shifting of his weight dipping the mattress, then a spread and a gust of air cooling the stripes of spit in Elijah's-- a shove, oh God, Viggo's shoving his whole face in his crack and Lij arches and tenses but Viggo's tongue stabs forward again and gets in, it's in and too late and so wrong, soso--
He cries out, "Vig," but Viggo only moves his hands to cover Elijahs' on the sheet and smooth them down with warmth, his nose bumping against Lij's tailbone, his tongue busily turning inside, deeper, and the whole of Elijah quivers and crawls in his skin, sinfully good, making his cock jerk between his legs.
Elijah's dizzy, "Nngh," his nose mashed against the pillow and full of the overpowering smell of sweat and whiskey on his own exhalation. Viggo keeps up the assault, but he eases away a little and somehow his tongue turns gentle and soft, more slick, soothing over Elijah's hole in small strokes, dipping back in easily when Lij stopped expecting it. Elijah finds his breath again; he hears himself begging incoherently, "Don't stop, oh," his voice all thin and reedy with something, dismay, desperation, then shimmering acceptance as his thighs go gradually slack with bliss and he moans in the cotton. Nothing that feels this good can truly be wrong, and why didn't he know, why didn't anyone tell him?
Viggo lets out a rumbling laugh that shoots shivers straight down from Elijah's asshole to his balls, and Lij opens his eyes wide when he understands that he's asked out loud. Drunken, incredulous laughter bubbles up in his throat; he clamps down on it with a renewed sense of mortified confusion, pushing weakly despite himself on his elbows and knees to arch back into the feel of it.
"Perfect," Viggo says, the sound muffled by Elijah's flesh. He moves a hand to curl around Lij's hip again, and helps him lift up closer.
He dives in, insistent tongue and clever fingers parting Elijah wider wetter hotter, and Lij sighs unconsciously, "Aah," letting his eyes fall close again. Viggo's hand moves to find his erection, heavy and swaying with blood, gives it a brief squeeze that fills Elijah's vision with bright sparks.
"Fuck, ohfuck," Elijah whines, unable to believe what his senses tell him. It seems to go on forever, the hand around his cock stroking him so slowly he can hardly be sure of it, half-out of his mind from the overload as Viggo goes on and on, his tongue burrowing deeper in an ever-changing flow of pointed curled up digs and broader flat sweeps.
Lij writhes, rumpling the sheets beneath his chest, sweating like mad, equally wishing for it to end right now in a glorious blaze and for it to never, ever stop. Elijah's never been under the delusion that he's that good in bed-- maybe average, sometimes carried away all the way to good in the moment but oh, if he'd known that this kind of erotic madness was possible, if he'd known this much pleasure could be inflicted on someone, that it could last like this, go on for fucking ever... It's better than a blow-job somehow, or it's because he's drunk, there's got to be an explanation but he can't find it now when he's about to die, his whole body over sensitized, swept into this storm of lust and pierced ceaselessly by lightning.
Viggo speeds up his pumping strokes and brings his free hand to rub Elijah's balls, humming a tuneless, broken song of gratified relish. It's all so much, Lij's bones turned to jelly, his muscles uselessly liquid and suddenly-- there, ah, everything gathers and burns up and Elijah sees spots as he comes again, hard and still unspeakably sweet, mouth opening on a keening cry.
It takes him a while to come back into his intoxicated, exhausted body. Breathless with disbelief and shaken with shudders, Elijah lets Viggo roll him on his side. Trailing the back of his hand on Lij's sweaty forehead, Viggo smiles. "Told you you'd like it," he settles down, lying face to face with him.
Elijah croaks, "You said no such thing," unable to help his wide smile back. "Damn, Viggo," he starts to say, battling with a shyness he thinks is misplaced now; with a start he realizes he's done nothing for Viggo, shame returning with a vengeance and reddening his cheeks. He rushes a murmur, "I'm sorry, you--" but when he tries to grasp Viggo's hard-on his hand is swatted away as Viggo moves closer to slide between Elijah's thighs.
"Let me do this too, won't take long."
His cock glides easily forward in a wet mess that Lij identifies with another flash of embarrassment as a mix of semen and spit, and weirdly enough both the thought and the sensation lend strength to the last of the ripples coursing under his skin. Elijah looks at Viggo's face, his eyes half closed, his small secret smile in this obscenely intimate moment, and is overwhelmed with gratitude.
"Sure," he breathes on Viggo's mouth, "yeah, go ahead," winding a trembling hand in the grey-blond strands of his hair; he tugs gently to pull Viggo's forehead against his own, hesitating to kiss him.
He's been there, his mind provides, unclean, don't, but then Viggo's eyes open and fix on his as Vig starts rocking his hips with a sigh and Elijah's lips part, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, entranced.
Viggo moans and hitches in a stammering breath, looking Elijah deep in the eye; his smile widens and widens madly, his hand on Elijah's thigh digs deeper grooves... and then the smile changes into an O and Viggo goes briefly rigid, and then slack, all without one more sound.
"Oh," Elijah whispers, surprised that it's so soon over, so anti-climatic in a way. There's no time to think or say anything else as Viggo's head turns the crucial quarter inch necessary not to bump their noses and kisses him deep.
Lij clutches at him, unconsciously pulling on his hair, starting to kiss back before the hesitation can return-- there's nothing to fear, though, it's a fucking great kiss, nothing more than the faint remains of the taste of lemon and alcohol and maybe, maybe, pungent soap and a little something else, something that could be him or could be Viggo, utterly unrecognizable to Elijah.
"Thank you," he says when Viggo pulls away, chuckling a bit at his own solemnity, his head full with light, "thank you, really."
Viggo only smiles and kisses him again; it feels like the world has been remade just for Elijah to enjoy, his sinuses clear, his tongue nimble again in Viggo's mouth, all of him buzzed and sleepy and alive all at once.
That's the shit, man, he thinks with stupid awe, and Viggo pinches him when his drunken giggles spill in their kiss.
-- Siva, The Smashing Pumpkins
*
Many thanks for their encouragements to Undone, Jenn, and Dutch_Eowyn; for precious beta comments to Sumbitch, Princessofg, Bunnie, and especially Kyuuketsukirui. In hopes that Soph. can find it in her to not keep this savage... compression, I guess, against me. :)
Summary: Enter Dom.
Elijah's rotting away doing nothing. He's grown damp and weak inside, at the core, and meanwhile all sorts of toughening-ups bruised his outside. "Loneliness," they say, and try to draw him out more, barbecues and brunches and festivals for work and festivals for fun. Music is still cool but he's kinda looping the same loud sad songs at home.
He goes, manages, schmoozes, smiles for any and all cameras. He even has fun sometimes. And comes back to slump down. His skin covers up scales, rubbing against each other with a white noise he hears in his dreams.
]]> Elijah's stuck rigid, like an old wooden trunk on his couch, heavy, waterlogged. When the porn tapes play more static than flesh he doesn't replace them with shiny new DVDs. The phone doesn't ring much and—even when that happens he doesn't often feel like picking it up. There's no more chocolate or cereals in the house after only a week of being there, and scripts gather dust on second-hand shelves. Moving changed nothing but the where; the flare of enthusiasm Elijah felt watching the truck carry all his stuff away faded to an ashen taste in his mouth as the movers unloaded said truck here. How could he have been excited when he's barely three miles away? Same old same old, except there's nothing on the walls yet. It's a yet that lasts.
The empty house could feel uncluttered, bright and new; instead it feels naked and abandoned. Elijah scrapes vertical lines on a piece of plaster that's still a little soft behind the kitchen door, like a prisoner in a cell. It's reassuring. Viggo's too busy for a visit; and anyway Elijah feels vaguely threatened by the greeting on Viggo's voicemail, an odd tam-tam song and the crazy sounds of Vig's whispers. Enter Dom.
Telling Dom the pathetic truth is easy, in so many words (I miss you, and though the sentence never forms in his mind the meaning is crystal-clear); there's only to laugh along and Dom thinks it's a joke. If Elijah hides that this—Dom—is what he's been waiting for, that's because he isn't convinced it really is.
He dislikes the cold-blooded creature he thinks he's become, that prehistorical snake with its hidden thickness, but talking to Dom already something is uncoiling in him. There's genuine humor trickling back, mixing with the padding of verbal fucking around Elijah uses to keep the world at bay.
Dom comes close, moving in his faded jeans with a pleasant swish; Dom touches and kisses; Dom's bold—he's Dom.
Elijah kisses and touches back and finds that Dom responds just right to truth and jokes alike; he's so amazed his hand thrashes around for something to hang onto. It finds Dom's own tempting snake naturally enough.
Together they make porn, all right. Just the way Elijah remembers, the thing he missed—this joyous purposeful flailing and that manly competition all healthy like, their own private physical metaphor for sport, almost.
It used to be like that: weather too rotten for a surf, why not fuck? Pornographic, up close but maybe not so personal, when you get down to it. Glossing over the times when it was more for comfort than hygiene... home away from home, yes. Surely if they managed to hide it from themselves then, Elijah can pick it up in the same way now. He tries and then succeeds, driven out of memory and strategy altogether by Dom's cock drilling into him, shoving curses out of his mouth.
The scales underneath shift, a tremor deep and unforeseen like tectonic plates rearranging. His blood's warmed up, currents of lava pushing at them from within, his breath volcanic like a dragon's.
When sleep's current carries him away Dom's still there in bed with him, snuffling against his shoulder. They didn't even drink to the new house nor to seeing each other again; Dom's stone-sober and staying. He's dug a groove for himself in the mattress, adopted a pillow. Elijah's too breathless to note it aloud but he sinks with his mouth curved into a smile.
Something happens to him in the night, something big.
All Elijah remembers is a metallic glimmer, cool spreading after a brazen flame, peace. The dragon lying down happily over his golden treasure, all laid out in a fresh new cave... It's not what he dreamt of, he knows; the impression lingers all the same. He's warm in his bones, warm in his guts. He'd forgotten the world contains warmth like this one.
Elijah thinks Dom, and blinks in the new day; treasure, he thinks. He feels softer than he's been in ages, his chapped hide more supple this morning. Then the sleepy haze dissolves and the images vanish, forgotten like sloughed skin. He scratches his balls and finds his dick, still small but growing steadily, soft and glued to the sheet with dried jizz that wasn't there before. Oh.
Next to him Dom pants as he works his morning erection and Elijah smiles, rolls over to play again.
The imagery knocking in his head earlier comes back as Dom slithers against him, and smirks, and something on Dom's face challenges him. Elijah pushes, for the first time maybe in this way, laying his hands on him to press, and Dom yields wide open.
In his own mouth Elijah feels alligator teeth, larger and sharper, more eager, stretching his face open just as wide to wrestle with him for more, more. They have sex, not porn; there's a definite distinction in Elijah's mind.
They lie still in their own puddles afterward, the climate inside the room African with heat and the scent of sweat. Elijah blinks heavily, his blood unsettled, stirred, his heart pounding like a great drum. This new thing—this difference—they talk about it some, with veiled layered words both revealing and vulnerable, with new jokes. Why didn't we earlier?
It doesn't make sense but it does, and then they do it again, half for checking perhaps, half-unable to help it once their eyes lock and their bodies slick against each other again.
Elijah gives Dom venomous bites and shoves inside him, spreads and stretches the boundaries of the golden body smoothed and shined for television first, all his now. He fills up on it, the whispers of acceptance and the mirrored greed; he tests the quality of their skins by rubbing them both raw, spends precious moisture licking Dom clean.
Whichever creature they make together, two-headed and mystical, it wields more power than each of them could ever dream of alone. The entire day gets devoted to it, their strengths mingling and sacrificed on the mattress for a filthy animal baptism in spunk and slurps. Endless kissing, twisty fingers trailing bruises, stuttered and grunted pleas; the more control Elijah uses to bend Dom the more he receives of willingness in exchange. Depletion, repletion, completion, both caught in a positive feedback loop that can't be made of anything but love. He thinks.
He doesn't say it out loud.
Elijah drags himself to a shower finally, smiling on the way to disguise a faint anguish; their skins don't unstick easily.
No need to worry; Dom joins him in the bathroom before he's done towelling off. There's enough joy in Elijah to fly. It's not an issue for them to mix clean and gruff, same as this morning when Dom took Elijah's mouth with its bitter wake-up taste.
Do animals ever worry about their mates' cleanliness? Elijah wonders, and more faintly underneath, Do snakes mate forever?
But the truth is he feels more bird-like now, risen and reborn covered in smooth down, a phoenix—that would match the heat, yeah—and the kissing goes on way longer than the vague line of thought.
They step in the kitchen nearly a full twenty-four hours later and the dry dusty heat is nothing like the slick furnace fire their bodies made in bed, nothing like the dampness of fresh kissing in the bathroom either. It's desertic heat, caked in the corners of the shelves and around the feet of the table; an aphid would love to live here.
Elijah's grateful and resentful at once for the boxers protecting his skin—thinner and unguarded under the cloth, unmistakably yearning too. Their arms slither against each other; he moves to futz around with food and coffee with a bit of difficulty.
Dom's watching him, doing nothing else but that, he feels it, and there's a thrilling little prickle centered between Elijah's shoulder blades from it. It's like Dom can see the newborn wings Elijah imagined in the mirror and is looking at them unfold, a glorious feast of feathers; surely Dom knows that Elijah went from bile-filled adder to—which, buzzard, eagle? But Dom's no jettisoned carcass, and Elijah's as small as before...
Red-shouldered hawk, he decides, grinning secretly at the coffee machine, remembering the flush on his own where Dom's fingers rubbed and rubbed with a feverish supplicant's grip to pull him in deeper.
He's nearly dizzy just remembering, remembering with Dom watching, remembering with Dom watching knowing Dom remembers too. And then he's dizzy and smiling and hard, talking and watching Dom in return, and they can't stop this, powerless, it's all very much beyond them, how oddly magic—Elijah curls his tongue around this new peculiar ineptitude and savors its taste.
Dom comes closer, moving in his fashionably clingy shorts; Dom touches him softly; Elijah kisses him this time.
He finds the same taste in Dom's mouth, and that of want, and the song of sex and surrender and desire and more—he has Dom; the boldness is his.
*
It's past hot and well into sweltering in the warehouse, midday sun beating on the cheap corrugated iron roof as Dominic presses on the clammy red plastic button to activate the bell and ring the signal for lunch.
When the hundred machines stop at once, a wave of relief passes through him, blessed relative silence for two seconds, replaced too fast with the multiplied scrape of chairs on the concrete floor, the unbearable babble of the women chatting as they file out and ping the timeclock one by one.
]]>It's unfair, maybe, but Dominic doesn't care. Somehow it gives him another reason to get up in the morning, beyond the meagre pay cheque, the need to eat; he gets there before them and relishes the few minutes of silence before they come inside and start the racket, precious time to polish his resentment and sneer.
He needs the sneer to keep them all in check, which he does all day, walking up and down the too narrow aisles between the stuttering sewing machines. Dominic walks and throws dark looks at those who lift their eyes away from their work to glance back, dispensing the same glower to the flirty and the sheepish.
Today, while Dominic tries to cool it off just a little in the small filthy den right off the control station, slugging from a tepid beer and wiping a streak of mustard off his chin from a cardboard-tasting sandwich, the boss appears, blocking the door frame, bulky in his ill-fitted suit. You'd think he could do better, after all, he runs a fucking sweatshop, the place is positively full of clothes, but the idiot's got no taste. Dominic has some, he just doesn't have the dosh it'd take to pull off the style he fancies for himself.
He's brought a new one, the boss says, to replace that sickly cunt they booted Thursday last - Lydia, Dominic provides; he hates them but he knows their name, every silly last one of them, Paki, Turkish and Eastenders alike - and Dominic nods. Not a day early: he was getting worried about being scorned for reduced performance, even though hiring's not in his capacity. Blame, when it falls, always falls on him and the girls.
The boss steps to the side and pushes the new girl into the den, right in front of the greasy desktop, then throws off an injunction at her to behave and leaves without a backwards glance to parts unknown (off to count his money or get yelled at by his fat wife, as usual). Dominic puts his beer down and asks her for a name, lifting his eyes to gauge her, to make his mean first impression with the sneer sliding in place, and.
Not a girl.
Dominic feels suddenly squiffy, dizzy at the sight of deep green eyes and a tidy pink mouth, the defined face of the boy-- man?-- standing in front of him almost demurely. He knows not to blame the beer for the feeling.
Billy, the new one says with a lilting voice, I'm Billy, and he extends his forearms, lithe and muscled, uncovered, showing his hands; I've got small hands, 's why I'm in sewing, he adds, like he's used to having to offer up excuses. Dominic blinks, unbidden images of those hands on him already flashing in his brain, the dirty but neatly trimmed nails digging in his thigh, his shoulder; he sighs and shakes his head to dispel the pictures.
I'm Dominic, you're on 37, third row, near the window. Lucky lad, Dominic says, the mockery in his tone dampened by the unconsciously gentle curve of his mouth, his sneer melted off without him noticing, you'll get a bit of sun.
Billy frowns, and the fine lines around his eyes settle the question: man, not boy. The thought drills deep in Dominic's belly.
It's uncomfortable the way new images keep coming to Dominic, falling one on top of the other in his stomach like stones, piling up hot and heavy. He waves Billy off, tries to plaster a scowl on his face, then on second thought rises from his creaky chair to lead the way to 37.
In the warehouse proper it's far too hot to think, like slugging through fetid vapour with the mixed stenches of human sweat, flowery perfume and the dusty taste of fabric rolls, and Dominic can hear the new one almost choking on an intake of breath as he catches up. He almost pities him, briefly, and it turns into a flare of uncontrolled anger. Nobody gets special treatment, same hell for everyone.
Billy glances at what Dominic called the window, three square inches of thick glass smudged with grease, and his face stays blank. Turns out he knows the machine already, gets settled in fast and finishes his trial run without a hitch.
The afternoon passes slower than a snail and Dominic grows restless, unhappy with the way he can't stop walking row 3, sweating too much. Billy looks back when Dominic does, each time the same little darting up of his eyes away from the work. They're assembling women's underwear, lacy, tiny tricky seams, but his deft fingers never trip. Dominic's always hated lingerie weeks (they seem to reinforce his troops' feeling of superiority somehow, their antagonism); he didn't expect to be so turned on at the view of this unknown bloke handling the lewd, ugly garments with bored features and careful hands. Billy's looks aren't bored, though. Sizzling, Dominic thinks, mouth practically opening to speak the word out loud, and he tries hard to believe he was only thinking of the temperature in there.
Dominic's kept his fantasies well away from work; it's never been difficult considering he's surrounded by women, spending his days in a place too uncomfortable and crass to feel any good. He can't even have a wank in the den, regardless of the fact it'd be bad form getting caught off his post, it's just too... sad. Tasteless, too, and he couldn't get it up. His magazines are at home, not under the mattress but on the coffee table, one of the (rare) advantages of living alone.
That evening he takes them to bed with shaky hands, a deep trembling in his guts since green eyes turned around after punching his time card, mouth delicately curled in a small smile around a murmured goodbye. The guy almost looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he shrugged and took off, swept away in the pressing rush of the women's bodies, leaving Dominic unsettled.
Dominic has eaten quickly and showered long, forbidding his soapy hands to wander more than necessary in the sensitive - the tensed, heavy-feeling - region of his groin, determined to make the most of his new material. He stretches on the uncomfortable mattress, legs parted and bent with his feet resting flat, knees poking up. Time to himself, alone with anticipation, with the smallest circle of light off the nightstand's lamp shining right on some twink's purple cock and the puzzling buffed nails of his handler.
Soon he closes his eyes on swirls of green, visions of healthy pink lips and their neat little arc parting to take him in, so much better than the manufactured charms of nameless, sordid corporate porn. His wrinkled thumb (from the long shower) makes repetitive slow passes over the head of his cock as he feels himself swell impossibly hard, grow impossibly hot; it's over sooner than it should, shooting sparks of electricity traveling to the last corner of Dominic's body, the fine hair at the nape of his neck and on his forearms raised in shock.
Dominic swallows his disappointment as he comes down from the rush, too fast, all of it, too bloody fast, and he pushes the magazines off the bed with a scowl and an angry foot, happy when they fall and make a loud smack in the dark. Shortly after he passes out more than falls asleep, one hand close to his sternum and gnarled tight around half a fistful of come, knees drawn together and tucked in over it. He dreams of a weird world in which he feeds off the marrow of posh folks, who hang uselessly around in the lobby of a decrepit opera house. Most of them are pale replicas of the boss and his wife in one way or another. It all plays out like ancient television, blurry grainy pictures in dirty shades of grey.
*