DISCLAIMER: The author makes no claims or inferences to reality or truthfulness. Moreover, this story is based upon the work of another author and recognises their creation.

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I

Elijah had everything he wanted.

His friends gathered around, spilling into the backyard-the night of his twenty-second birthday warm enough to sit on the chilled grass and look up at the stars, bright flickering made harder to focus on by a great quantity of sweet wine.

Easier to pick out Orion than to look overlong at Orli, however. Seated nearby, but not too near, his voice carried across the distance like soft constellation light as he spoke to Liv.

Elijah took another long pull from the Tokay-Bean's gift-and laid back, letting starshine and desire roll over him.

1

Elijah turned twenty-two on the twenty-eighth of January 2003. He threw a party in his backyard and allowed his mother to cater it on the understanding that she'd stay for so long, then go. He loved his mother very much. He liked having her around. He wanted, however, to celebrate with his friends and do things he would have liked to have done in New Zealand, but hadn't. He'd been a different man in New Zealand.

His mother left. Hannah arrived. Zack was out of town. Bean brought Tokay. Elijah drank it, cradling the bottle possessively. He looked at Orli.

II

Orlando had enough, for the moment.

The air was warm with congeniality, good spirits of all natures assembled to bring happiness, wrap Elijah in satisfaction and contentment. Celebrating him was easy. Even the night sky was taking part, scattering star-candles overhead, ones that couldn't be blown out.

Orlando was careful to stay on the periphery. Safer to chat with Bean, simpler to sit with Liv. He tried not to study Elijah, quiet and ethereal in his own orbit.

Drawn in despite himself, Orlando leaned over, arm outstretched, eyebrows raised questioningly, small smile-curl. His hand moved toward Elijah's on the bottle.

2

The stars were out - in the skies and down on the grass, in Elijah's backyard. A warmish evening; still, people huddled in blankets and pulled their jackets close, wondering why Elijah hadn't just booked a club somewhere.

Orlando shivered. He was English, used to the cold, and LA was a hell of a lot warmer this time of year than Kent. Still, it was January. Elijah swigged from the bottle and Orlando made the connection that any hot-blooded man would make: oh, to be a Tokay bottle. Or rather, to be Orlando with Elijah's generous wet mouth around Orlando's cock.

III

Cool glass below, warm hand above. Elijah startled when Orli leaned over, closing up the vacuum of space with his outstretched arm and his fingers covering Elijah's, splayed long paeans to the architecture of flesh. Orli eased the bottle away, sliding up towards the neck, and Elijah let it go, gave in easily to the music-warm smile, relinquishing the golden fire that twisted inside now, hisscrackling at the longed-for contact and its sudden loss.

He wondered for a moment if Orli had lingered a bit longer than was strictly necessary. Dismissed the idea as wishful thinking, a winedream. If only.

3

Orlando took the bottle from Elijah, fingers touching as the exchange was made. He looked into Elijah's eyes and smiled.

He wanted Elijah, had wanted him for as long as he'd known him. Tonight, beneath the stars, the want became somehow more real and as earthy as the soil beneath the grass beneath the blanket on which they sat. He wanted to have sex with Elijah. He wanted to sweep away the ambiguity and have him there and then on the blanket, with all their friends watching. His blood soared with wanting Elijah.

He wanted Elijah to want him, too.

IV

Orlando knew it was a mistake as soon as Elijah twitched, but by then it was too late. Knew he shouldn't have given in. The skin he'd brushed over wasn't waiting for him. He'd encountered no contrived resistance that would have prolonged the contact. Stupid of him to have hoped. He'd had to pull back before it looked like his desire had been for anything else.

Wine of kings, this was. Orlando felt no better than a pauper, having nothing more to bring to his lips than glass. Grimly, he resigned himself to tasting the only sweetness he'd be allowed.

4

Elijah watched Orlando drink. He wondered how a thing as beautiful as that could be here in his backyard, on his blanket, with him. Orlando belonged in a museum on a plinth. He watched obliquely from beneath while from above he was grinning and enjoying some horseplay unfolding between Bean and Liv over by the potato salad. He heard the soft chug of the liquid as it made the journey down Orli's throat. He wanted to be Tokay, wanted to be transported down the length of Orli's throat.

He cursed whatever constellation made him want what he could not have.

V

Elijah shifted, vaguely aware that he was dreaming.

Bits of the party replayed in his drugged brain-Liv tripping over the hose, laughing-but reason and reality warped, Escher-like. Dom was there, too, and he hadn't been. He whispered something to Elijah about stars and there wasn't time to decipher, Orli's fingers were on his again, but this time Elijah held the bottle tightly. Pulled, bringing Orli in, gravitational.

Easy, now, to kiss him, to share amber heat with tongues. Elijah opened his eyes when Orli arched above him, the wine forgotten. Orli's perfect silhouette blotted out the night sky.

5

Dom was there? When did he arrive? Elijah shook his head to evict the Tokay haze that had cast a Daliesque sensibility over proceedings, and waved at his mate, who was standing with Bean and Liv. Dom winked.

Next to him, Orlando had finally stopped chugging and was shifting on the blanket. Elijah was aware of the proximity of him, the nearness, the maleness of Orlando so close.

He could turn a little, bring his knees in a bit, raise his head and look at Orlando and whisper "Want to fuck?"

Or he could just eat his own hand. Right.

VI

Orlando unknowingly kicked at the blanket over him.

He was back at the party, but somehow Viggo was there, not fitting in with the déjà vu. He drew Orlando aside, murmured something to him about the king's hunter, then pushed him in Elijah's direction. Orlando stumbled slightly, looked back in confusion, then Elijah was below him.

So easy, to fall into alignment. No effort, to drift with the heaven beneath. Until his hand held nothing but smooth glass and his opened eyes only found Elijah staring at him, his head cocked quizzically. Orlando fell back, pierced by the king's arrows.

6

Orlando had drunk too much of the Hungarian wine, too fast. For a moment he'd had the weirdest feeling that Viggo was in his brain, telling him to just go fuck Elijah already. Either fuck him, or shoot him with arrows. He knew which he'd prefer.

"You all right?" he heard Elijah say. Orlando looked into eyes that made artificial stimulants redundant.

"Yeah," Orlando replied weakly. He saw Viggo eating cheesecake, silhouetted in the moonlight. Viggo winked, much as Dom had winked at Elijah. Maybe they were in cahoots.

Orlando kissed Elijah then. It seemed the practical thing to do.