"Ok. Dinner for two, yeah? Japanese, Thai or Indian?" Sean stuck his head around the door of
the study, his phone flipped open in his hand.
The figure standing by the window didn't answer immediately, and Sean frowned.
"Lij? Did you get the e-mail you were waiting for?" The dark head bobbed slightly, and Sean's
gaze slid from his friend's shadowed face and dropped to the small fists clenched tightly on the
window sill. Too tightly to be a casual need for balance, and the tiny lines around Sean's eyes
deepened.
He glanced away, toward the desk pushed to the wall of the tiny room, and the bright square of
the computer monitor. But it wasn't an innocuous message confirming Elijah's flight to Paris
the next day that he saw; instead, it was a brightly colored scan of a clipping from some tabloid,
zoomed in to fill the screen. He crossed to the desk and read silently for a few minutes; then he
thumbed his phone off and laid it gently down on the polished wood.
When he looked up, Elijah was staring at him, unblinking. The soft white light of the nacre
lanterns suspended from the old oak outside gleamed richly on the pale skin and laid a liquid
sheen over the blue eyes, now dark and unfathomable.
"Who sent it to you?" he asked quietly.
"Ahhhh – just Charlie, taking the piss outta me as usual." Elijah shrugged and moved toward
the door. "Thai okay with you?" His voice was even and unhurried.
"Lij." The slim figure tensed, and Elijah turned, eyebrow quirked questioningly. "Fuck dinner."
"Huh?"
"Sexually immature, my friggin' ass," Sean said softly, holding the dark gaze in a vise-like grip.
Emotion seared through him, feelings held in check since those magical days in Middle Earth,
and he smiled wryly, and watched his barriers burn. Not for nothing did he know and cherish the
man standing in front of him, and the real pain behind the calm facade reached out to him and
sucked him in. Like it always did.
When someone who owns a part of your soul hurts, you can't help hurting too, can you?
"Sean... it's nothing – really it..."
"Do you know what you do to me, just standing there?" Sean cut in, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the knowledge confirmed in the softening of the blank blue eyes. "You make me feel
alive, and complete – you ground me, and you make me feel as light as air. You make me want
to dance, and to fucking sing. You... ahhh..." He gave up; strangely for him, words didn't seem
to matter anymore – and crossed the span of the room between them in a few quick steps.
"Fuck, Seanie – it doesn't matter. I –"
"It matters to me." Sean lifted a thumb to stroke the deep furrow on the smooth forehead and
smiled. "You're mature in every damned way that counts, Lij. Here..." and his hand brushed soft
stubble on its way to the slight hollow between rapidly hardening nipples, visible through the
thin shirt, "here...
"And here..." His fingers skated lightly down the flat stomach to trace the heat rising toward
him with a lingering touch. The dense lashes fluttered shut and Elijah gasped softly, his hips
jerking forward involuntarily.
"No..." he moaned. "Chris..." But his hands came up to twist into the fabric of Sean's shirt,
holding on with a desperate hope.
"She knows what we did," Sean admitted ruefully. "And while she doesn't exactly approve of it,
she understands. Which makes this a vote from both of us, incidentally."
"Damn. Does she know how I feel?" Fingers busy at buttons stilled, and Elijah looked up with
wary eyes.
"Yeah. It was kinda hard to hide, Mr. Frodo. Under the circumstances. You know." Elijah
sighed and dropped his head to the muscled swell of Sean's shoulder. Sean hugged him close,
and they stood silently for a moment, arms wrapped around each other, and the heat between
them building. Flaring hot and bright.
Finally Elijah raised his head, and the kiss that followed was everything Sean thought a kiss
ought to be; hot, sweet and tender, not given nor received, but dredged out of everything they
were. A slow, thorough exchange of self, a communion.
"If it makes you feel better, you could look at this as therapy," Sean offered unsteadily, when
they came up for air. Elijah slid his hands down Sean's back, slipping past the waistband of his
pants, down to where the swell of his ass began, and slipped a teasing finger into the warm
damp of his crack. Then he rolled his hips languidly, and Sean groaned. It was getting very
difficult to think.
"And does the therapist have a couch available?" Elijah grinned back through swollen lips.
"That... can be easily arrgh...arranged." And they made it, by slow degrees, to bed.
~~~~~
Sean buried his nose in the soft hair and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with a heady
cocktail; the spicy scent of cloves, the sharpness of sweat and the pungency of sex. It almost
served to distract his mind from that other thing he hadn't mentioned - the second half of that
damned article. Hurt and betrayal. And it took a real effort to quell the wave of anger that the
thought always provoked in him. Because that so-called expert had inadvertently hit the fucking
nail right on its sensitive head.
Elijah's father.
Betrayal, yeah, and no matter how he tried, Sean could never understand how anyone could
abandon Elijah, push him out of their lives. He had tried, out of a sense of duty to his family,
and it had half killed him. He felt his heart begin to race, and took another breath to calm
himself. He fervently hoped that Elijah hadn't noticed his agitation.
The object of his somewhat distracted affections stirred against his shoulder, and remarked, "I
love you, you know." He chuckled sleepily, "It bears repeating. Occasionally."
"Ditto."
Elijah snorted, and Sean chucked his chin up with a knuckle and kissed him. "I say it to myself
a hundred times a day, and occasionally, yeah, I allow myself to feel it. It's enough, for now."
"Is it? What if I said I wanted another round?" Elijah reached down to caress the thick column
of muscle nestled in damp coppery curls. It twitched at his touch. "You're still hard," he
observed with satisfaction, and not a little surprise.
"And you are insatiable."
"Be glad. Be very glad."
Later that night, over a late snack of pizza and beer, Sean gave voice to his thoughts. "Lij, you
really ought to stop doodling that sad little thing. You don't need it anymore, you know."
"It's the only thing I know how to draw, babes."
Sean glanced at the artwork covering the brushed steel of the fridge door. "Ally would be more
than happy to give her Unca Lijah some lessons," he grinned. "And come to think of it, even
Lizzie could."
His lover shouted with laughter, spraying pizza crumbs over the kitchen table. "I may take you
up on that, you bugger, I just might."
"Good." And Sean smiled contentedly.
END
| DOODLEBUG |