Title: Too Much
ORIGINAL STORY: Memories on the Wind by Viktoria Angelique v_angelique
PAIRING: Viggo Mortensen/Elijah Wood
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Angst-ridden phonecall
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.
If he'd given it more thought, Elijah would have avoided Idaho, would have skirted down and around the state and seen a little bit of Utah and Nevada. Maybe, if he had really been thinking straight, he might have just driven straight through to New York and lost himself in the multitudes milling around 24 hours a day on the busy city streets. He had been avoiding Idaho for months. His thoughts might have strayed there, short clips of a soundless film, colours muted by time flashing through his head, but his body always said something different.
When Elijah had gotten into the car so many hours ago (was it only just yesterday?), he'd just done it to get away from the too-bright, too-fake glitter that coated the plastic city of LA. He shouldn't have left. Even as he'd cruised up I-5, heading north towards some nebulous goal, he knew he should turn around, go back, grit his teeth and think of Dominic.
Yet here he was, somewhere in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in some hicksville town in some state somewhere. Drunk. Idaho, the bartender had told him. That was where he was, Idaho. And he was drunk with nowhere to stay, unsure of what he was doing. Elijah blamed his subconscious. He'd known, even deep in his cups when the clock had struck midnight, and when that day had come. He called it the Not-Anniversary, because how could something be an anniversary when the relationship it marked had ceased to exist?
The black plastic of the payphone receiver felt heavy against his shoulder, and the number he pressed out on the keypad seemed alien and familiar to him all at once. When the low rumbling voice answered, all the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fell back into place again, and in that moment of singular clarity, Elijah remembered what he was there for. His mouth opened, and sounds came out of his throat, and he answered the question put to him, though his brain hadn't consciously registered it. He left the 'and' dangling at the end of the answer, and then finally, hesitantly, tacked on four words that teetered on the knife-edge of an almost- plea. "...can I see you?"
Even as he said it, he knew it would be a mistake. Obsessed, Dom had told him. He was obsessed. Get over it. He's over you. It's been six years. It's been a long fucking time. Get over it. Yet he couldn't.
Once those words were spoken though, it was as if the dam within him had buckled, and everything else he wanted to say tumbled out unbidden. "I've been driving, I... God Viggo. I'm not nostalgic, you know. I know it's our anniversary and all, but that's not why... I mean it is, but ten years. Fuck. I just thought, maybe..."
He was drunk; it was easy to tell from the incoherent jumble, and Viggo cut him off and went straight to the matter at hand. It would have been so easy to lie. "No, Viggo, I'm not drunk at all. Oh no. No, Viggo, I wouldn't drink today, not at all. I'm not even thinking about it being our Not-Anniversary. I've completely forgottten about it. Today was a coincidence." Except it wasn't, and he hadn't, and Viggo could read him like a book, could cut through his lies like a carving knife through softened butter.
He could feel the awkwardness in the silence, the uncertainty in the pause and the unsteadiness in Viggo's breathing. The eventual offer of help is not unexpected. Viggo's too good a guy to leave a buddy (an ex-lover? an old fling?) hanging.
"I'm fine, Vig." Elijah knew it was a lie even as he shaped the words. He wasn't fine. He was drunk on cheap beer, wasn't he? He was in the middle of god only knows where, wasn't he? "I just..." He paused to grope around for words he didn't want to give voice to, but said them out loud anyway. "I need you to fuck me. I need you to make it go away." His words grew softer and softer as he spoke, as if he didn't want to need this much.
Too much.
The welcome words came then. Elijah had always known that Viggo would always be there for him, no matter what. He could hear the guilt, the pain, the heaviness, and somehow couldn't bring himself to care. Later, after he'd been fucked raw, after he was coated in their combined fluids, he would regret it, feel guilty enough to runaway again, but right now while he was emotionally numbed with cheap watered down swill, Elijah found himself unable to even dig up a sense of shame.