Title: Starry-Eyed
Author: Cassandra (airgiodslv)
Original Story: Ember, by lafisher
Rating: R
Pairing: DM/EW
Content/Warnings: Sexual violence, borderline non-consensual.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, and a remix of another author's work, written with her permission.
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New Zealand forests don't smell like the woods at home in Manchester. There's something more earthy about England, older, as if the forests there were full-grown before New Zealand even emerged from the sea. English forests smell like clods of dirt and sap and decaying leaves. With New Zealand, Dom can't separate the place from the memories. New Zealand smells like Treebeard, and film crews, and Elijah under the stars.
He's there now, like he is every night around this time, right after they've been released, changed, and scrubbed until they feel human again. Dom feels more human, at least. Elijah is still something else. Elijah with his clove cigarettes, and his digital watch, and his endless collection of CDs…and the way that, in spite of all that, he refuses to be consumed by the materialistic, hungry world that surrounds him.
Elijah is hungrier than the world, and maybe that's why he hasn't been taken in, why he hasn't yet yielded to the pull of cell phones and agents and backstabbing and guile. Elijah wants, with more power than Dom has to resist, and night after night they end up here, reaching for something that always seems to elude them both.
Through the highlights and shadows of moonlight between tree branches, Dom sees Elijah put out his cigarette - crack-pop of dry sticks underfoot - and check his watch. And that means that they don't have much time, if Elijah doesn't automatically reach for another cigarette, another few minutes of his life spent lost in dreaming.
Dom can't stand Elijah when he's like this, when he drifts away and leaves nothing behind but a body that smiles and nods and says, 'hello, Dom' with vacant eyes. He's doing it now; his posture has altered, pulled his shoulders back and his head up, and he's walking slowly further into the forest as if he's being called by one of the fey folk. Only, Dom isn't willing to let him go.
Elijah barely reacts to the whisper-hiss of his nickname when Dom breathes it to the air, but his body responds when Dom joins their hands; the tips of his fingers resting snug against the webbing between Elijah's, the circle of his thumb and pinkie encompassing Elijah's wrist and squeezing until Dom can feel the sharp bones of his wrist grate.
Elijah blinks at him, like he's forgotten Dom's name, forgotten his own, and then Dom yanks, twists, and Elijah's there again, in a sharp breath that echoes and ricochets against Dom's. And he's so beautiful that Dom loses his momentum, has to stop and wonder at the creature Elijah becomes out here, halfway between this world and the next, in the garden behind the house that serves as the gateway into the dark, tangled New Zealand forest.
Just like that it's too late; he's licked his lips and Elijah is gone, eyes distant and fixed on the woods, silent and menacing beneath cold moonlight. He's alien, shifting into something both enthralling and eerie. His wrist twists, slippery, out of Dom's grasp and then his fingers clamp down hard, and Dom hisses in pain as Elijah bares his teeth in a feral grin.
And then before Dom can catch him, he makes a run for it, hand around Dom's wrist yanking him into motion before releasing him, jumping the low fence and answering the call of the forest. Dom chases, the way he always does, unwilling to lose Elijah to the silence and starlight when there's still a chance that Dom can bring him back.
He catches Elijah just inside the embrace of the waiting trees, tries to hold him and can't, and Elijah's teeth bite down on his arm, enough to draw blood and a sharp cry of surprised pain that turns into a rumble from somewhere deep in his chest when Elijah sucks on his thumb, chest heaving from exertion, eyes wide and guileless. Dom slams him into the trunk of a tree, hard and unyielding, and Elijah's eyes focus and sharpen with hunger.
Dom hates that he can only hold Elijah like this, with pain and force and demand; that it's the only thing Elijah responds to when he's touched by moonlight and madness. It makes him sick to see the blood smeared on Elijah's lower lip: his blood, and probably Elijah's as well, mingled with a swipe of Elijah's greedy tongue. Look at me, Dom wants to beg. Get the stars out of your eyes.
But he can't say the words out loud, so he tells Elijah with his body instead, with his hands, tongue, hips pinning Elijah to the tree, fighting his erratic and uncoordinated attempts to escape. His pelvis rolls against Elijah's, bringing him back to earth, holding him there with promises of the flesh to replace the dissolving wisps of dreaming he sees when he looks into Elijah's eyes.
Elijah scratches at him, and bites, and moans, and Dom feels so full that he wants to weep. He would, if the salt-sting of tears would keep Elijah in his arms, at peace. He settles for kisses, for touches that he hopes Elijah's body will understand, even if his mind is only half-here. Some of his frustration leaks into their frantic grappling, and although he will later regret the welts and bruises on Elijah flawless skin, right now he only feels a hot, triumphant burn when Elijah cries out and arches into him.
Mine, he thinks. They can't have you.
He throws Elijah to the ground and tackles him before he can scramble away, forearms locked around Elijah's elbows and forcing him to his knees. He bites the back of Elijah's neck, tickle in his mouth where the hairs swirl together at the nape, and one of his hands pushes beneath Elijah's waistband while he rubs his own denim-covered groin against Elijah's backside, hard and desperate and furious, until Elijah comes and Dom follows, out of breath and gasping in the cold, strange air of the New Zealand woods.
"Elijah," he whispers into the darkness, seeing the distant glint in Elijah's moonlit eyes as he twines, predatory and sated, around Dom's exhausted body, and Dom can't fight anymore. And he wonders if he ever really held Elijah after all, even for a moment.