Title: Like Chocolate
ORIGINAL STORY: Pants by yueni
PAIRING: Billy/Elijah
RATING: NC17
SUMMARY: "I mean, unbutton, unzip, and slide your jeans to your thighs," Billy said. "Not that complicated, trust me."
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.
Billy unfolded himself from the sofa the three of them were sprawled on, and stretched his arms; his fingers brushed Dom's shoulder on one side, and Elijah's on the other. Elijah jerked slightly, giving him a quick look -- if Billy hadn't already been paying attention, he would have missed it.
On the TV screen tires screeched as the car took a ninety degree turn, and sped down the narrow road, chased by ear-piercing gun fire.
"Elijah, be a doll and get me a cold beer?" Dom unfolded his legs from underneath him to rest them on the coffee table.
"Get your own beer," Elijah said, his eyes on the screen.
"You're the host, you should take care of your guests. And you're closest to the kitchen."
"Fuck off, Sblom."
With a deliberate movement Billy stretched again, making a little mhmm sound. "I could use another one, too," he said.
Elijah let out an exaggerated sigh. "What am I, your personal server?" But he pushed himself off the sofa, and headed for the kitchen. "No need to pause the movie while I'm getting your beers, you cunts," he threw over his shoulder before disappearing into the small hallway.
"You've seen it a dozen times," Dom called after him, then raised his eyebrows at Billy.
Billy stood. "Won't be long," he said.
Dom laughed. "By all means, take your time."
When Billy entered the kitchen, Elijah was half-hidden behind the fridge door. He let the door fall shut, with two bottles hanging from the fingers of one hand, and a third one in the other hand.
"Hey," Billy said, and took a few steps across the floor toward Elijah.
"Hey." Elijah's face -- his eyes, his mouth, everything -- lit up when he smiled at Billy. "Here." Elijah handed him a bottle with the distinctive brown label. "This one's for you."
The only place that carried this particular microbrew, they had once accidentally discovered and to which Billy had taken an immediate liking, was all the way across town. Even Billy himself didn't go there often.
He weighed the offered bottle in his hand for a few seconds, then took another small step which brought him well within Elijah's personal space. "Thanks." He reached around Elijah to set the bottle on the counter behind him. His shoulder brushed Elijah's chest. His knee bumped into Elijah's. His thigh pressed against Elijah's thigh.
The smile slipped off Elijah's face, replaced by a question in his eyes. Elijah stilled, all hard, inflexible angles against Billy. Heat seeped through two layers of jeans and cotton, coiling inside Billy's belly.
"Billy..."
It was neither a question nor a statement, and Billy responded to it by reaching out and slowly running his hands down Elijah's arms. When his palms found bare skin beneath the t-shirt sleeve, Billy felt goose bumps prickling under his fingers. One hand closed around Elijah's wrist, while the other relieved Elijah's of the two bottles.
Elijah's eyes opened wider. "What... what the fuck are you doing?" He sounded as if he was chocolate melting in the sun.
"What do you think I'm doing?" If Elijah was chocolate, then he was going to be Elijah's sun. At least for the next -- he twisted his wrist to steal a glance at his watch -- eight minutes.
Elijah didn't venture a response. Billy gathered both Elijah's wrists behind his back. His thigh found little resistance when it slipped between Elijah's thighs. Elijah's chest heaved in uneven breaths when Billy leaned in and brought his mouth close to Elijah's ear.
"I want you to take your jeans off," Billy said, his lips brushing Elijah's skin.
"What? Billy... what do you mean?"
Elijah made a move as if to draw away from him, but Billy pushed him against the counter and held him there with his hands and his hips and his thighs. He inhaled, deep and slow, his mouth moving against Elijah's neck. All those times the hobbits piled up on top of each other, for filming or in drunken fun, and Billy had never noticed the way Elijah's skin smelled -- of sweat and skin and faintly, of ever-present cloves. Or maybe he had noticed, but it had never been significant before. It was a good smell, a bloody great smell, which coursed through his body, teasing it into awareness.
"I mean, unbutton, unzip, and slide your jeans to your thighs," he said. "Not that complicated, trust me."
Elijah's "But why?" came out from somewhere in his throat, all breathy, almost a whisper against Billy's cheek.
Billy shivered.
"Because it'll be a wee bit hard for me to blow you with your jeans up." He shifted, pushing his hips against Elijah and things came into focus: Elijah was hard, and not in the I'm interested, tell me more way hard, but in the I fucking want it way hard. He was up for it, and so was Billy.
Which didn't surprise him much -- Elijah was pretty, and even if he wasn't the kind of bloke Billy would normally go after, he was right, right now. Smelling bloody great and spilling sex all over, with his wide-open eyes, and his flushed cheeks, and most of all... wanting Billy. Billy suppressed a grin.
When Elijah spoke, his voice was deliberate, as if he'd put a great deal of effort into the sentence: "You're fucking with me, right?"
Billy pulled away, enough to look at Elijah's face. "Elijah. I would never do that to you."
He freed one hand -- the other was still clasped around Elijah's wrists -- to brush the pads of his fingers along Elijah's jaw.
"You guys always fuck with me," Elijah said, holding Billy's gaze.
"No, we don't." Billy's fingers swept over Elijah's lips, barely touching. "Well... not always, only sometimes." He let Elijah experience the full force of his smile.
Elijah didn't look comforted by that smile. "And this time?"
"This time..." Billy teased his hand down Elijah's chest and stomach, and pressed it against Elijah's erection. "...is different."
He almost believed it, too. It felt different. And, technically speaking, blowing Elijah in his kitchen, with company in the next room, was different from coming up with a complicated, ever-changing set of Tig rules, or stealing all his boxers and replacing them with pink knickers.
"How the fuck is it different?"
Billy's fingers squeezed Elijah's cock; it jumped and grew even harder under the touch. When Billy had thought about it, earlier, he hadn't anticipated resistance from Elijah, no, but neither had he anticipated how good and fitting Elijah's cock would feel in his hand.
"It's different, because this time I'm going to make you feel good. And when I say, good, I mean really fucking good, Elijah. Really. Fucking. Good."
His fingers kept stroking Elijah's cock through the fabric. The few inches of air that separated Elijah's face from his grew hot and desperate between them.
For all his years of acting, Elijah couldn't hide the raw and open need, one that added deeper, darker undertones to the blue of his eyes, one that turned his body simultaneously hard and yielding against Billy -- Billy liked the combination, fucking loved the feeling. Or maybe Elijah didn't want to hide it, maybe he chose to give it all to Billy -- the thought sparked hot through Billy's mind, dragging a silent moan out of him.
"But why -- " Elijah started, before Billy cut off the words with his mouth.
Just a touch of dry lips against lips, a quick way to shun the question. Billy didn't underestimate people often, but he had apparently underestimated Elijah, who opened his mouth and licked at Billy's lips, urging Billy's mouth to open to his tongue, arching his body against Billy. He caught Billy off-guard and Billy gave in to his tongue, let it in, let it chase and catch his own tongue, before he pulled away.
Elijah tried to follow him, but Billy ducked his face to the side, making a point of holding Elijah in place with his hand on Elijah's hip.
"Billy," Elijah said, a protest and want and need and a demand, all wrapped around this one word.
"Shhh..." Billy pressed his thumb to Elijah's mouth. He licked his own lips, tasted Elijah, identified -- beer and cloves, and Elijah -- and, against his better judgment, committed to memory. "No more talking."
With one hand he worked Elijah's jeans open. He let go of Elijah's wrists to hook his thumbs behind their waist and pull them down. They got stuck half-way down Elijah's buttocks, but Billy tugged harder and forced them down.
Elijah's hands, now free, gripped the edge of the counter.
Judging from the hard angle of Elijah's jaw and his clenched teeth, no more questions or protests were forthcoming in the near future.
Billy curled his fingers around Elijah's hip bones to steady himself and went down to his knees.
Elijah's erection, still trapped in his boxers, was right in front of his face. He rubbed his face against it, breathing in Elijah's scent, so much stronger here, less of skin, more of sex, much more of sex. He wanted to tease, to make Elijah beg for it -- and he was sure Elijah would, given time, and it would be beautiful and addictive -- but he didn't have the time.
He slipped his fingers behind the elastic of Elijah's boxers and dragged them out of the way.
"Billy..."
Elijah's cock sprang free of the underwear, hard and heavy and silky-smooth, offering itself to Billy in a shameless invitation. Heat was coming off Elijah's skin like tidal waves, crashing against Billy, pulling him in, untangling something inside him only to twist it right back into a jumble of excitement and uneasiness.
Elijah... Elijah....
He reached around and grabbed Elijah's arse to bring him closer. He dipped his head and, without using his hands, took Elijah in his mouth.
"Oh, fuck," Elijah breathed out. "Fuck, Billy. Fuck."
The hem of Elijah's t-shirt was getting into his face, so he dragged it up; it stayed bunched up under Elijah's armpits, revealing hard, pink nipples. Elijah's stomach -- pale from not being exposed to the sun enough, and smooth, with only a promise of hair disappearing into thick, dark curls below -- rippled with muscles tensing and relaxing under the skin. Billy opened himself to Elijah, pulled him in past his teeth, past his tongue, past his gag reflex.
His hands encouraged Elijah to move and Elijah didn't need an engraved invitation: he shoved his hips forward, thrusting his cock into Billy's mouth like this was something he did every night before bedtime. Billy groaned. He didn't choke, but his hands gripped Elijah's hips to keep at least some control over how deep and how fast.
He tried to find a rhythm of pulling and sliding, of licking and swallowing, but it was all useless. Elijah knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was to fuck Billy's mouth on his own terms, so Billy just let him. This wasn't quite how he'd planned it, but what did it matter?
Clearly, it didn't matter to Elijah either -- with his fingers fisted into Billy's hair, he was repeating his mantra of "Billy" and "Yeah" and "Fuck" and "Billy," slamming in and out of Billy's mouth.
Billy's mouth was full of spit, full of heat, full of Elijah, and when Elijah came, with a grunt that translated itself into one final jerk of his hips, Billy swallowed, swallowed it all.
He held on to Elijah, enjoying the shiver of Elijah's body, unwilling to let go of him, until Elijah stilled. When Billy fell back onto his haunches, Elijah's legs gave out and with his back against the counter, he slumped to the floor.
"Oh, fuck."
Billy watched Elijah's face, now at the same level as his own and framed by the V of Elijah's splayed knees. With his eyes falling shut and his mouth still open around his orgasm, Elijah looked every bit the teenager he still was. Not innocent -- it would be hard to argue innocence if you'd just come down one of his best mates' throat -- but vulnerable.
Elijah rarely let them see his vulnerable side. Maybe because he didn't want them to think of him as a kid, or maybe because it helped him not fall apart from pressure and being home-sick, but he hid it well behind working hard and partying even harder. On those few occasions when he did, it brought out Billy's protective instincts -- "hobbit instincts" as Dom called it -- and Billy had never thought twice about hugging Elijah close to his chest or brushing soothing fingers through Elijah's hair.
This, though, this was different. Billy's instincts whispered to him to reach out and touch Elijah, not to wrap him in a hug, but to run his hands between Elijah's thighs, to lick the sweat off him, skin on skin, to make him want again.
Billy didn't trust his instincts.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were swollen and his mouth tasted of Elijah's come.
"We should go back," he said, when he was sure he was capable of speaking in a normal voice again. "You don't want Dom to come looking for us, eh?"
Elijah answered by wrapping his arms around Billy's neck and dragging Billy back to him. His mouth found Billy's mouth, and it was the second time in as many minutes that Billy was caught off-guard by Elijah's mouth, sweet and hot and unrestrained in the best possible way. It didn't take a lot of effort to kiss Elijah back.
Elijah moaned when Billy bit his lip, went pliant when Billy's tongue assaulted his mouth, started folding when Billy inched closer. Billy made himself stop before the next logical step became pushing Elijah onto his back on the floor and crawling on top of him.
"Go, wash your face or something, hm?" he said, unhooking Elijah's arms from his neck. "You look a bit" -- used, he thought -- "flushed," he finished.
"Billy," Elijah said, regaining his ability to speak, "what the fuck? Can you fucking tell me what the fuck just happened here 'cause I didn't get the fucking memo."
For one crazy moment Billy thought about coming clean, and maybe, maybe they both could write it off, move on and never mention it again, other than while ragging each other or sharing a drunken laugh over it. But Elijah didn't look like he was in a forgiving mood, so Billy chose the easiest way: run.
"See you back there?" he said, nodding toward the living room. Before Elijah had a chance to say anything more, he walked out of the kitchen, feeling like a right bastard.
Being back with Dom in the living room was like stepping into a parallel universe, one where things were normal and expected, where he didn't just blow Elijah -- in under nine minutes -- and then leave him on the kitchen floor, where he didn't feel like it had meant something.
Dom turned his head away from the screen and tapped his watch. "And right on time," he said. A knowing grin spread on his face as he craned his neck to look past Billy, toward the hallway. "Where's Elijah?"
"He's coming." Billy sank into the cushions of Elijah's sofa.
"Did you wear out our poor Frodo?"
"Knock it off, Dom."
Dom punched him lightly on the shoulder. "You know I won't. What happened?"
Billy scrubbed his hands over his face and wished he'd remembered to bring the beer from the kitchen. The beer he'd coaxed Elijah to get for him. The beer he'd taken out of Elijah's hands and put on the kitchen counter, before he trapped Elijah against it with his body.
"You must tell me what happened," Dom said, leaning in. "That's the rule, you agreed."
"Not now." Billy rested his head against the back of the sofa. He was bone-tired, and ready to go home and pretend this evening never happened. "We'll talk later."
"But what -- oh, fuck, Bill!"
Billy dug his fingers into Dom's knee. "Later."
Dom looked as if he was about to protest, when he glanced above Billy's shoulder and grinned. "Lij! Where've you been? I was worried that something happened to you in that kitchen." He winked at Billy.
Dom was his best mate and Billy loved him, but right now Billy wanted to smother him with a cushion.
Elijah ignored Dom's question. "Here." He dropped one of the bottles into Dom's lap, then turned to Billy and offered him the other one. "You forgot this," he said in a flat voice.
Billy's hand reached out and closed around the neck of the bottle without his conscious involvement. Condensation blossomed on the glass -- Elijah must have taken out a new one from the fridge.
"Thanks," Billy said, but his gaze didn't reach Elijah's eyes, stopping somewhere half-way up his chest. A flashback of Elijah's pale, smooth stomach sent Billy's nerves tingling.
Elijah stood there for another second or two, as if waiting for Billy to say something more, before he slumped into his corner of the sofa and fixed his eyes on the screen.
They watched the rest of the film in silence -- not counting Dom's running commentary, which Billy had no trouble ignoring. Even faced with a death squad, he wouldn't be able to say what was happening on the screen. In his thoughts, he was back in the kitchen, with Elijah's cock down his throat, Elijah's body tight against his own, licking Elijah's skin, pushing against him, feeling Elijah push back, feeling him fall apart under Billy's hands and Billy's mouth.
It wasn't a chronological memory, but rather like zooming in and out of disconnected images, each charged with a texture -- silky-smooth -- or a smell -- sweat and skin -- or a taste -- beer; Elijah -- and each shocking Billy with a new wave of heat through his belly.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Elijah's arms folded over his chest, white knuckles clamped over his elbows, stubbornly staring at the screen. He wondered what was going on in Elijah's head.
As soon as the closing credits began to roll, he was getting up, swiping his jacket off the chair, and waiting for Dom by the front door, chattering about how late it was, and how they had to get up early tomorrow, and would Dom get his arse off the sofa some time this week. He managed it all without looking at Elijah even once.
He would have managed to escape from Elijah's flat without ever facing him, but Elijah followed Dom to the door.
"Night, Dom. See you tomorrow." Elijah accepted a hug-clap-on-the-back-headbutt from Dom. Then he turned to Billy and his arms dropped to his sides as if suddenly deflated. "Billy."
In his imagination, Billy wrapped his arms around Elijah, rested his chin on Elijah's shoulder. Elijah's heart thudded against his own, and Elijah's hands snaked around his back, slipped under his jacket, under his t-shirt, pressed against the naked skin of Billy's back, warm and confident. Elijah... Billy whispered into Elijah's hair, and he knew Elijah was smiling.
In his imagination.
In reality, Billy's heart thudded against his rib cage, but his arms felt as if they were glued to his sides.
The tension was broken by Dom who shrugged into his jacket, opened the door, and dragged Billy outside. "Night, Doodle."
As soon as the door closed behind them, Dom manhandled Billy into a one-armed hug. "All right then, spill."
Billy shrugged him off and started down the stairs.
"Billy!" Dom followed him. "Don't be a wanker! Come on, Bill!"
Billy didn't stop until he reached Dom's car parked across the street. He stuck out his hand to Dom. "Your car keys. You're too pissed to drive."
Dom had one beer on him, maybe, but he didn't argue. He dug the keys out of his pocket and dropped them into Billy's hand. "What happened?"
Not like Billy expected him to drop the subject, of course not. He opened the driver's door. "Get in the car, Dom."
Dom shook his head and walked around to the passenger side. Inside, Billy put the key into the ignition but didn't start the engine. He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, counted out two twenties and a ten, and handed them to Dom.
"Nothing happened. I didn't do it. Now will you bloody leave me alone?"
He almost expected Dom to ask him, "So what were the two of you doing in the kitchen the whole time?" but Dom didn't.
They regarded each other for a long while, with no words to fill the silence, before Dom's eyes flickered with something Billy realized was understanding. Dom was a wanker, sometimes, but he was a perceptive wanker when he wanted to be.
"Hullo, my drinking fund," Dom said, and stuffed the money in his jacket pocket. "You're invited, of course." He treated Billy to a grin, the special Dom grin, full of teeth under a wrinkled nose. Then he threw an arm across Billy's back and hugged him, touching their foreheads together. "It was a stupid bet, anyway."
In spite of the fact that his stomach felt as if it was being wrung inside out, Billy couldn't resist Dom's grin and his lips curled up in a smile. "Yeah, it was."
Apology offered and accepted.
Dom rubbed his fingers against the back of Billy's head. "If you want to talk, you know where to find me."
"Aye."
Billy had never been more grateful for the friendship they shared, the friendship which understood without words, and which could survive without words, no matter what.
"All right, let's get you home." He started the car and pulled out of the parking space.
He dropped Dom off at his house with a promise to return the car tomorrow, but he didn't head home. He sat there with his head against the window, chill of the night seeping through the glass, and images of Elijah drifted out of his memory: the taste of his mouth -- beer -- the smell of his skin -- clean and just Elijah -- and how much Elijah had wanted this.... Trying to sort out his own emotions was like trying to untangle a knot while he couldn't even find the ends of the string.
Fifteen minutes later he parked in the same spot in front of Elijah's house he'd vacated earlier. The lights in Elijah's flat were out, but that didn't stop him. He knocked on the door, then knocked again until he heard the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. The door pulled open revealing a dark hallway with a narrow sliver of light coming from Elijah's bedroom.
"Billy?" Elijah blinked against the fluorescent light in the corridor.
"Hi."
Elijah gave him a tired look. "What do you want?"
Billy wasn't good at acting on impulse, and here he was, standing in Elijah's doorway at one in the morning, with no bloody idea how to answer the simple question. What did he want?
"I didn't say good night." It was the first thing that came to his mind, the first after I want to lick your belly.
"You fucking woke me up to say good night?" Elijah scrubbed his hand over his face. "You're an asshole, Billy," he added in a quiet voice.
"So I am," Billy said. "I'm sorry for what happened earlier."
Elijah gripped the edge of the door. "Yeah, whatever."
"No, that was stupid and -- "
"What's a blowjob between friends, Billy. Fucking happens all the fucking time," Elijah said, his face twisting into a tight grimace. "But next time you want to suck my dick, drop me a note first and save me a jerk-off session."
"Elijah -- "
"What?" Elijah snapped. "What is it, Billy? You weren't in the mood for explanations an hour ago, so why don't you fucking spare me now."
Billy didn't have an answer to that.
They stood facing each other -- Billy with his hands stuffed in his pockets, Elijah holding on to the door as if it would fall apart without his support. The silence between them stretched, awkward beyond everything that had ever been awkward between them, but at the same time strangely intimate. Like first-time sex, Billy thought.
If he wanted to go, the stairs were a few steps away; all he had to do was to turn around and leave. If Elijah wanted him to go, all he had to do was to slam the door in his face. Neither made a move.
"Well then, good night, Billy," Elijah finally said.
Billy swallowed. "G'night."
There was no script here, nothing to fall back on so that later he could say, it wasn't my idea; whatever happened, whatever didn't happen -- it was all up to them. Billy didn't know what he was going to do when he took his hands out of their hideaway in his pockets. He still didn't know, when he stepped over the threshold and reached for Elijah. He thought Elijah must have known what they were doing here because it took him only a fraction of a breath to pull himself off the door and into Billy's hug. Billy hadn't been aware that his arms had shaped themselves into a hug.
And just like that, he had his arms full of Elijah. He rested his chin on Elijah's shoulder, molding his body to Elijah who was clinging to him as if Billy was the last safe place on Earth. Elijah's heart thudded against his own, and Elijah's arms locked around Billy's back. They slipped under Billy's jacket, under his t-shirt, and stroked the naked skin there, warm and undemanding, just touching, touching, touching.
Billy felt the way he always did a split second before a wipeout, when his feet were still on the board, but he knew that this was it, that in the next moment the world would be tumbling, and he wouldn't be able to figure out where was up and where was down, and if up and down even meant anything anymore, and his stomach cramped because what if he didn't make it this time, but then he knew he would, and things would be all right. So he took a deep breath and...
"Elijah..." he said with his face buried in Elijah's hair.
Elijah squirmed against him, as if he was trying to crawl inside Billy's jacket, inside Billy himself.
"You're such an asshole, Billy."
"I know."
With his thumb Billy brought Elijah's chin up. He rubbed his jaw against Elijah's; his stubble scraped Elijah's smooth skin, and their mouths almost touched, but not quite yet, and there was nowhere to run, but Billy didn't want to run, not this time. He shifted his head and found Elijah's mouth right there, wet and burning and welcoming. Elijah's tongue slipped inside Billy's mouth and it was nothing like those kisses back in the kitchen.
Nothing at all.
This was like falling slowly into melting chocolate, hot and sweet and rich, and tasting so bloody good....
"I want to lick your belly," Billy said, the most honest thing he'd said all night.
Elijah's laughter rumbled against his skin. "I think I could let you, since you've already licked my dick...."
"You'd better watch your mouth there, Frodo." Billy pressed their hips together, so now Elijah's erection jammed right against his own.
He knew where this was inevitably going. Some part of Billy's brain -- the one labeled "responsible" -- protested that Billy was the adult here, that this wasn't right after what happened earlier, that they had to talk first, that this could become complicated, and how exactly did Billy think --
"Do you want to stay here tonight?" Elijah asked against Billy's mouth.
Billy thought about going back to his empty flat and wanking to the fantasies of Elijah, while Elijah was right here, his tongue licking and tasting and teasing with promises, and Billy kicked the doubts to the curb. There would be time to talk, and they would talk, he promised himself, just not tonight.
"Yes, I want to stay."
***