Tales of daring abandon

Elijah

Wednesday:Elijah did an abundance of things on Thanksgiving. It started, of course, by hiding.

He'd gotten into Louisiana the night prior, and the first visit he made while in town wasn't to see his family, it was to see a dealer on the outside of town. He remarked, mentally, on the state of things, if it made him a crappy son because he traded some xanax he didn't need for some stuff that he wanted. It wasn't what Megan normally dealt in. Normally, she worked with things a little harder than club drugs and pot, but Eiijah didn't know that. He didn't know that his friend Megan had territory now, territory she guarded fiercely like she was some kind of goddamned drug pedaling wolf. He could have found the stuff anywhere, but he liked Megan.

"Hey, fucker, you coming back for longer than a weekend?" she asked. Her blond hair pulled back in a top knot. The trailer was surprisingly clean. She didn't shit where she ate, so to speak. Elijah had no idea he was friends with a much prettier Heisenberg.

"Probably not, I have another few years to go," he told her.

"Isn't it cheating to be a French major when you already speak French?"

"Is it cheating to be an English major when you speak English?"

They bantered for awhile longer, set times to meet up, because Megan was convinced she needed to throw a party before he left because Thanksgiving needs more god damned booze, that's why, she'd told him in her lilting Southern belle voice. They kept it short, though. Jenn didn't much care for Megan after their senior year. Maybe Jenn was a good judge of character that way.

The second stop he made was at home, where Jenn dropped him off and bid him adieu, suitcase packed and ready for what he was fairly certain was going to be an incredibly long, long weekend.

Thursday:It started with Aunt Mel, who came with his uncle George. He remembered George because of his own fascination with Willie Wonka as a child, in that he had three out of four relatives pinned. George, Josephine, and Joe. But Josephine and George were just regular aunts and uncles and not the appropriate relation. Someone had to explain that, despite the fact that she was much, much older than he was, Josephine was actually his cousin and not his aunt… which prompted calling everyone his cousin in his younger years and he didn't actually work to get it right.

Joe's wife, Martie, was in attendance. Elijah was the only person that could hear her. She went through the rituals she always went through, hanging close to her husband Joe as best she could. Nobody had ever met Martie- she was his first wife, one he'd acquired back in the second World War while he was stationed in Osaka. Brought her to the US and she tried her damnedest to make it in a place that didn't want her. She hung herself. Joe never got over something like that. Neither did Martie.

Madeline, Elijah's mother, did her level best to stay out of the kitchen. Dinner went on with an entire horde of Poirots. Some of them being uncomfortable with one another. Some of them being living, most of them being living, but even the dead were in attendance.

-----

Conversation rolled on, stilted and awkward and it remained primarily focused on school work. Stilted, strained, but well meaning.

"Hey, I'm gonna go grab a nap," he lied, "I ate way, way too much."

---

From the top of the roof of a two story house, Elijah took out his phone and dialed Ian.

Ring ring.

Ian

It was the eve of Thanksgiving, a holiday that Ian did not celebrate and, in fact, had only one really good memory of (a memory that, in hindsight, was more bittersweet than anything.) Growing up, his family had celebrated a mix of both Chinese and American holidays, but Thanksgiving hadn't initially been among those that they'd adopted. Eventually they came around to a sort of bastardized version of it that basically just amounted to copious amounts of food - most of which bore little to no resemblance to the standard Thanksgiving fare. Not that Ian ever minded. Even back then, it wasn't a day that held any meaning for him.

Now it was just another day where he had to dodge questions about his family.

Maybe Elijah called him because he assumed (correctly) that Ian wouldn't be busy. Maybe Ian was just the person he most wanted to talk to right then. In either case, he called. Back in Denver, Ian was sitting in his living room watching a movie. Barefoot in jeans and a t-shirt, with both feet propped up on the sofa. A couple of half-empty takeout containers sat on the glass coffee table in front of him, along with a mostly-consumed glass of pinot gris. The movie was Days of Heaven.

When his phone lit up, Ian glanced at the screen. After a few rings, he paused the movie and picked up.

"Hey Elijah."

Elijah

"Oh damn," he starts, and it sounds like damn has two syllables instead of one. There isn't any chatter going on outside but there is the slow hum of crickets and the occasional passing car. In the distance, someone laughs, but it's distant enough that it barely warrants mentioning in terms of the background noises around him, "I was tempted to leave you a racy voicemail, but you answered the phone and it's different when it's not in voicemail."

Ian can no doubt hear the grin on his face.

Ian

There was a brush of air against the receiver. Something like a breathy laugh, light and momentary. "I can hang up and let you call back if you want."

Ian unfolded from his position on the couch and tucked the phone against his shoulder as he started to clear the leftover Thai food off of his coffee table.

Elijah

"Nah, it has too much hype now, I've got performance anxiety," he laughed, and it fell into the air and he leaned back against he roof and stared at the sky. There was a grin on his face, "I can safely say that I was not the first person to abandon ship and hide this holiday, I feel like I've achieved something."

Ian

"Congratulations?"

There may have been a note of subtle sarcasm there. Ian wandered into the kitchen with his leftover food, and Elijah might be able to pick up the sound of the refrigerator door being opened as Ian closed up the plastic containers and stored them away. Then he grabbed the open bottle of wine off the counter and brought it back with him to the living room.

"Why go at all if you need to hide?"

It was kind of a self-evident question really. Why does anyone put up with family drama and tedium? Because they're family. Maybe Ian didn't actually understand that, or maybe he just liked to foster the impression that he never did anything he didn't want to do.

Elijah

"Sometimes you do things because you love people, even if you don't necessarily like them all the time," it felt strange, sitting on the roof, hiding from his extended family on a rooftop, wishing he was high and wishing he was anywhere other than here, "it means a lot to my dad that I'm actually here and trying."

It felt strange, it felt… it felt almost wrong talking about his family, having a family to talk about, and how it felt strange saying something to Ian of all people. It was like rubbing it in, complaining about something that he couldn't obviously experience because of tragedy. Elijah patted himself down, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one up with practiced ease.

They weren't his. His had gone stale and his mother had smoked them all by the time the morning came about. She owed him a new pack, which meant she went out and bought him something actually worth smoking.

"Plus this is the first year I've actually been able to see my aunt Martie instead of just listening to her."

Ian

Ian didn't respond much to Elijah's explanation, other than to utter this low, subvocal sound that might have been either acknowledgment or quiet dismissal. He didn't quite understand at first what Elijah meant when he said that he'd seen his aunt for the first time. That a person's spirit might linger on to haunt their family during holidays was not a thing he'd ever thought to consider, and Elijah spoke of ghosts in much the same manner he spoke of the living. (Perhaps for him there was little difference.)

Then again, what difference was there, really, between a ghost and a memory? Not much.

"I feel like I'm missing something."

He sat down on the sofa and re-filled his wine glass, taking a long drink from it.

Elijah

There's a reason his family thinks there is something wrong with him, and a stint in the state hospital only served to further emphasize the truth of what had actually been happening for most of the young man's life. He remembered being young, spending time with his uncle Joe- not "bonus Grandpa" as Elijah had called him before. Explaining to him that Miss Mae at the barber shop really took a liking to him, and Miss Martie liked her too.

They were New Orleans natives, only displaced because a hurricane scattered them. They had family affairs at Chuck and Madeline's place because it was, hands down, the largest. People slept in various bedrooms and it was a halfway point between that and Joe's retirement community. Joe wasn't going to be around much longer- everyone living and dead knew that. Joe had been pretty explicit, that there weren't nothin' wrong with that boy but an imagination and a good set of ears. Gonna ruin it listening to all that damn rock music.

"Oh," he said, "okay… so… Aunt Martie died in eighty… three? Eighty-four? Anyway, my uncle Joe gets drunk and sits on the back porch and when he doesn't think anyone's listening he likes to ask what Martie's doing right now and if she has anything to say, and then he laughs at me because she keeps trying to get him to move on and get married again and he keeps saying he's a one-woman man."

Ian

"Maybe that's why she's still there."

(Indeed, the differences were almost nonexistent.)

Ian set his glass down and leaned back, stretching out on the sofa with his feet crossed at the ankles and one arm curled beneath his head on the armrest. There was a pause as he let out a long, soft breath. Maybe it felt awkward. Maybe not.

"Did you really just call to leave me a message?"

Elijah

"It's probably part of it, when people stick around it's for a number of reasons. The things I know I can help fix, or at least try to fix? Is Uncle Joe. I'm not good at it, though. I figure on Friday I'm gonna commandeer the little old man and have a come to jesus meeting with the three of us."

Because playing supernatural marriage counselor was clearly something that he was qualified to do.

Did he really call to leave him a voicemail message?

"Nah, I'd actually hoped to talk to you, because I wanted to have a conversation with someone this week that was normal."

There was the hint of mirth in his voice. He was either oblivious to what may feel awkward, or he purposefully powered through it, though there was something to be said. He'd called Ian because he wanted to feel like a normal person, not a crazy person or some divine gift or some kind of freak or any combination of all those facts. "Besides, I'd kind of rather just tell you what I was thinking but there tends to be a little more in the realm of verbal foreplay. What are you up to right now?"

Ian

That time, Ian actually laughed. "I'm your baseline for normal?" Almost, he wanted to object to that. Except, upon further consideration, he probably was one of the more stable people that Elijah knew. And they were both Awake. That counted for a lot. Even for someone like Ian, who probably spent more time hanging around Sleepers than he did other mages.

Elijah wanted to know what he was up to.

"Eating Thai food and watching a Terrence Malick film. At least I was, until you interrupted me."

The implication there was that he was alone. And probably at home.

Elijah

"You are," he replied, there was ever-so-clearly a grin on his face. "You don't spend most of our conversations trying to convince me that you're not normal, either, which is a pretty big plus."

He listened along, crossing his legs and feeling the texture of the shingles on his back and the cooling, heavy air in his lungs.

"Do you want me to let you get back to the movie? I don't think I've seen a Terrence Malick film."

Ian

Ian made a quiet noise of protest. Something like what one would imagine an artist would make upon discovering that one of their friends had never seen anything by a particularly renowned and talented painter.

"You should rectify that. But don't watch any of his recent stuff. Days of Heaven and The New World are his best films. Badlands too, but he hadn't quite gotten his style down yet. The Thin Red Line is... overrated. In my opinion. He does films that are basically long, cinematic poems. Can be kind of heavy-handed with the religious symbolism though."

After a pause, he added. "Anyway, it's fine. I can talk for a while."

One would imagine that Ian probably wouldn't have picked up if he wasn't in the mood to talk.

"Where are you at right now?"

Elijah

"Now, when you say heavy on religious symbolism, is this heavy on religious symbolism for a normal, reasonable group of people or heavy on religious symbolism in comparison to southern sensibilities, because there is a vast threshold of religiosity-" he pauses when he says the word, like he isn't really sure if it's a word at all before continuing "-between normal religious symbolism and crap out get in the south."

He pauses for a moment, "I'm on the roof of the house. Not a lot of people climb up here, plus most of the doors in the house don't lock," on account of the fact that for awhile people were concerned he may well kill himself and a locked door was not the best of signs.

Ian

"Well, I normally try to avoid anything with Christian overtones. You probably wouldn't find it very overbearing."

There was The Tree of Life, of course, but Ian seemed to have lumped that one into the category of newer and thus better avoided.

"That sounds pretty unpleasant," he commented on the lack of privacy. "How are you supposed to watch porn?"

As though this was a basic necessity that one needed to accommodate for. Ian was joking, of course. He had a dry sense of humor, but you could hear a slight upturn in his voice when he said it.

Elijah

It made him laugh, a genuinely pleased sound, and laughter none the less. It came easily to him, came naturally and sounded natural. "I don't know," he mock-whispered. "I'm pretty sure a week without porn is going to kill me."

Ian

"I guess you could jerk off in the shower."

Like high school, all over again. (Which was generally what visiting home was like, as an adult.)

"Or not at all, if you want to be a monk."

Elijah probably had better solutions to these kinds of problems though. Like, say, leaving the house. Or going up on the roof to call Ian.

Elijah

"Jerking off in the shower is just part of the normal showing ritual, it's what you do while you wait for your conditioner to set."

Ian

"True," Ian conceded. "Well. Depends on the day."

He had a chance here to change the subject. Swing the conversation back to something a little less X-rated. Maybe ask Elijah what his family made for Thanksgiving or if he had any drunk relative stories. But those things were all markedly less easy for Ian to talk about right now. (And anyway, Elijah had sort of started it.)

"What were you going to say to me in that voicemail?"

This time, when he asked, his voice dipped to a quieter register. Not so much teasing as inviting.

Elijah

"Originally, I had been thinking about what happens when we find a person attractive.. that we fixate on pieces of them instead of the entirety. But frankly, there is not a goddamned part of you that isn't sex incarnate, so I was tempted to remark on how rare that was."

His eyes drifted to the street below and Elijah sat up. He could tell when he was being invited to share. His lips upturned and that mischievous grin came forth, "and I was halfway tempted to trade tawdry tales but a voicemail only gives you sixty, maybe ninety seconds tops, and if I was going to subject you to stories of glory days and fantasies and escapades I'd need to call at least two more times, and calling a guy three times in a day says either I'm desperate or something is wrong.":

Ian

Ian laughed softly at that, giving a long stretch of his spine and pulling his arm out from under his neck. For a moment, the phone almost slipped off his shoulder, but he caught it and pressed it back to his ear.

"You've clearly never looked too closely at my feet."

Truth be told, the damage was almost unfairly minimal compared to what other ballet dancers had to contend with. He took injuries, but they never really stuck. Life magic was rather useful in that sense. And he wasn't a woman, so he'd avoided the mangled toes common among point-dancers. But if one were to give them close inspection, they'd likely find a few bruises and rough patches along his skin. Maybe a broken blister that he hadn't bothered to heal (because that kind of willworking wasn't always worth the effort.)

The actual look of his feet was perfectly tolerable though. Elegant, just like the rest of him. If that was his version of imperfection, it probably deserved an eye roll.

"You know you'll have to get pretty creative to top me if we're trading sex stories."

Elijah

"When you say pretty creative," he starts, and there is a grin on his face. He still has a grin on his face, something that lingers after laughter and the joke about feet because, truthfully, Elijah didn't think much about feet. They were just kind of… well… feet. Like elbows. Useful,  but not something he regularly fixated on unless he was high and flying and oh god gravity wasn't working anymore, we're going to crash, we're going to crash-

There are things he thinks about, there are things he thinks about when people are around and there are things he thinks about when people are not around, and… well… it was what it was. He ran a hand through his hair, observed the street as the occasional car passed down the street.

" When you say pretty creative," he reiterates, to resettle himself as to where he was headed and what his thought process was taking him towards, "is this going to end up with another situation like I've never, because I'll be honest, I wasn't exactly honest for part of that and I don't remember which part."

Elijah crossed his legs at the ankle, "any particular story you'd like to hear? Tales of daring abandon?"

Ian

"I think I remember feeling vaguely suspicious once or twice. Was it the bit about never tying anyone up?"

They'd all been fairly drunk by that point in the evening, but Ian had a good memory for details. Particularly if sex was involved. After a moment of consideration, he unfolded from the couch and walked into the bedroom, where he'd left his bluetooth earpiece sitting on the dresser.

"Hang on a second..." The call went to mute, and a few seconds later Ian's voice returned. "Okay, sorry. I had to switch to my headset." Ian set the phone down on an end table beside his bed. When he lay back, the mattress cushioned his weight, and he stretched one arm out to play the tips of his fingers over the slightly rough surface of the wall behind his head. He was lying the wrong way across the bed, one leg bent at the knee while the other hung over the side.

"Where's the most unusual place you've had sex?"

Elijah

"Yeah, I never actually figured that one out," he said, "that is honestly way too damn much pressure for me. I get drunk and lose my keys all the time and the next thing you fucking know you've got someone handcuffed to your headboard for who knows how long until you can find the keys and if you're using rope you have to worry about circulation."

You'll untie me, right? was a rallying cry in his mind. A concern from one of the few times he'd actually let someone tie him up. A genuine concern because he wasn't always certain that, if he asked, someone was going to let him up and the only memory that stuck out was foggy and sedated and hospital sterile, because Elijah wasn't necessarily a model patient when he was first admitted and apparently you can only fight with an orderly and throw furniture so many times (once- twice maybe) before you're a threat to the general population. We digress, and frankly it was one of the furthest things from his mind at that juncture.

He grinned. A challenge, and he did have to search for somewhere unusual, somewhere that was the most unusual.

"Bathroom at the county court house. I had a friend who was there with his girlfriend at a drug hearing and I'd decided that I needed to be supportive because, y'know, you're supportive when people are facing possible jail time. So, to make a long story short Jared wasn't facing time and Lydia was pretty relieved so we slipped off to wherever and nabbed an out-of-order sign from the ladies' room, locked the door, and celebrated accordingly."

a beat.

"What is the classiest place you've had sex?"

Ian

"Mm, I suppose that counts. Public restrooms are kind of a big turn-off for me. Not that I haven't done it."

Elijah's question was a somewhat different variation and Ian actually had to think about it for a moment, pressing his lips together as he drummed his fingers against the wall. He made a small sound - thoughtful, considering.

"I don't know. Depends on what you consider classy, I guess. I had sex backstage at the Met once. A friend gave me Opera tickets and I ended up staying to hang out with one of the sound techs. But I think one of my favorites was Yù Yuán - Yù Garden - in Shanghai. That place is absolutely stunning. The girl I was with was gorgeous, too. We were in there after dark. I went down on her on this little stone bridge next to a pagoda."

(The way he said the name of the garden - the silky ease with which the words flowed off his tongue - implied that he at least had a passing familiarity with Mandarin.)

"I've been in a lot of high end lofts and big houses, but that doesn't make for a very interesting story." He paused a moment to consider his next question. "How'd you lose your virginity?"

Elijah

[manip+sub, because]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[per+empathy?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

"It's mostly the courthouse bit. I've been in a lot of public restrooms, but never in a place that was full of cops- any port in a storm."

He made Mandarin sound like something he wanted to hear over and over again. There was a smile on his face, a moment where there was a bit of joy. A bit of pleasure, "okay, that's way classier than a public rest room."

Though the next bit of question, the question about where he lost his virginity. Whether or not it meant something, because that was a question people asked, a question people implied. For young men, it is often heralded as the transition into manhood. Into being somebody instead of a boy. It was something that he had to really think about. Half a decade was a long time to recount, even in his limited scope of existence.

"I was at a party," he said, "I remember that it was a house party because some chick's parents were out of town and it was the second house party I'd actually been to but the first party that I didn't actually have a ride to. I snuck out the back window and hitched a ride to this nice place outside of town- one of those real nice gated communities without street lights and a country club in the back yard.

"Anyway, if you dress nice enough the guards will take you where you need to go, so I got dropped off at this girl's house and it was full of seniors and I was just floored that people would have invited me in the first place. I had debate with our gracious hostess. So I got there, played beer pong for the first time- lost- and ended up chatting up this girl with turquoise hair and brown eyes because she was usually a bleach blonde thing. So, we talked, and she took me out in the back yard after the sprinklers had finished going off so the grass was wet and I could hear the fucking ostentatious waterfall going over the rocks to churn the pool water.

"And I told her that I didn't know what I was doing, and she kissed me. She kissed me and she tasted like SoCo and lime and I remember thinking fuck, she's a senior because I remembered seeing her buy her own cigarettes and the ID wasn't fake or anything. So, she kissed me, and I'd made out with girls before but we'd never gotten anywhere further than, like, second base and my head was swimming and the moon was a waning crescent and the only thing I could hear was the sound of crickets and her breathing and I tried so fucking hard to be quiet and to think of- fuck- I don't know, baseball or cold showers or the fact that my fingers were freezing when I wasn't touching her.

"She went back inside when we were done and I remember just laying in the grass and staring at the sky. I didn't come back in until the sprinklers went off again."

There were things he didn't' say, things that hinted in his voice, things he tried to avoid, that he didn't avoid her name based on modesty, but rather, because he didn't actually remember it. Because he'd never actually learned her name. That there were things to be said, that maybe he needed the time outside to decompress. There were pieces that he left out of the story, things he left out when talking to Ian, but one thing was clear. It wasn't perfect. It's never perfect. He'd settled for adequate.

Ian

Elijah talked about it like he was telling a story. All of these stark sensory details. And Ian grew still as he listened, gazing up at the shadowed ceiling (he hadn't bothered to turn on the light) of his bedroom.

"How old were you?" he asked quietly.

Elijah

"Fifteen," he replied, as though this detail hadn't been terribly important.

Ian

Moments like that... they usually weren't what you expected them to be. Especially not at fifteen, when sex was more fantasy than reality.

"You beat me by a year." The tone of his voice was quietly observational, but there was a hint of some distant melancholy. He shouldn't have asked that question, really. The memory lay too close to other things in his mind.

And yet, he had asked.

"Sex can be kind of a mess when you're a kid. Sorry if it's not a good memory."

Elijah

"It is what it is," he said, "it wasn't bad? It just… wasn't what I expected it to be. You build things up in your head, like that's gonna usher you off into fucking manhood and you'll be different, but I woke up the next morning and I just had a headache. If being a man meant being hung over then fuck being a man."

He had to laugh at that, but then there was mischief in his voice, "the first guy I fucked was a little more interesting, at least. And probably a slightly more worthy story."

Ian

Ian gave a quiet laugh at that. At the idea that having sex somehow equated to being an adult. (Or, more specifically, a man.) "Yeah, that part's bullshit."

But there was another story to be had, and Ian seemed content to listen. Curious, in the way people often were about these things. And Elijah was a good storyteller, when he wanted to be.

"Alright, let's hear it then." There was a note of resumed interest in his voice, playful and warm. Something shifted next to the receiver, a soft rustle of fabric as Ian got a little more comfortable on the bed.

Elijah

"It seems like all of my good stories start out by me showing up to a party. Any party, really, but the more I think about it, the more I realize I spent a lot of time at parities-" still spent a lot of time at parties, but that was neither here nor there, he wasn't done with college. Wasn't done wasting almost a quarter million dollars on his education to just master a language he already spoke at one of the more expensive private schools in the United States. His parents put up with a  great deal of things, the least he could do was show up and be present… sometimes.

"Anyway, it was at a frat party at LSU. I remember that it was Rush and I got invited because I was doing something with concurrent enrollment. It was a Pike party- Phi Kappa Alpha, anyway, they had at least fifty, sixty people shoved into their house on top of the brothers there on top of the pledges, and initiation was supposed to happen the next week. So, it was the last hurrah before Hell week.

"I never actually rushed, but I got to go to all the parties because nobody fucking checks these things and there's never a real official guest list. If you look like you belong then you belong. So, I was talking to this guy- big butch thing everybody was calling Moose for some unknown reason that I didn't really give two shits about. His name was actually Michael, hated people calling him Mike. I did not know this.

"So, I didn't actually start by talking to this guy, Moose, I only got his attention because I was talking to his girlfriend Tabitha. So, he was pissed, or at least I thought he was pissed, more on that later. So, I'm there flirting with Tabitha, who has legs that go on forever, and i do literally mean forever. She was as tall as I was and built like a runway model, Jenn said she ended up modeling for the art department, and she was practically the only other GDI person there-" a beat, "-GDI being god damned independent."

He switched ears on the phone, laying back on his back and wearing the barest of playful grins on his face.

"Anyway, Mike-Michael-Moose was graduating the next semester and was the pledge master. Used to be on LSU's football team until his grades slipped, got kicked off, joined the frat after that. All the guys in the frat said he had a temper, especially when it came to his girlfriend. I find out all of this shit after . So, I'm talking to this supermodel of a woman and I can't believe that she's actually talking to me and the next thing I see is this big guy show up and fucking hover like he is a spectre."

Ian

Elijah talked, and as the story unfolded Ian slid his hand down to rest on the soft dip of his stomach, drumming his finger gently against his abdominal muscles. He craned his head back to gaze out the window for a long moment, then resettled with his eyes on the ceiling. A light smile touched the edges of his mouth now and then.

Of course, Elijah couldn't see any of that.

"I feel like I know where this is going," Ian mused, his voice wry.

Elijah

"So, the next thing I know is that this gigantic guy is pissed off that I'm apparently flirting with his girl, like he completely failed the history part where women weren't property, so I can't help but tweak the guy and he is getting livid. He's a clean shaven sort, dark hair, blue eyes- and I remember that, didn't have a single tattoo and he made eye contact for too long and looked at me like he's expecting me to back down and fuck backing down for talking to people, I'm three sheets to the wind and he's not much better.

"The next thing I know the guy is dragging me upstairs and telling off his frat brothers like he's gonna knock some goddamned sense into me and, frankly, it's fucking terrifying and I'm pretty well convinced that this is how my life ends. This guy is going to pummel the shit out of me and we get up stairs and he's got his hand in my hair and I remember pushing him. And he pulled me into the fucking ritual closet.

"Okay, so thing you have to know, fraternities have all of their high muck amuck ritual shit all stored in one place, so you walk in and it's all robes and stacked candles and you feel like you're in the middle of Virgin Sacrifices R Us, so I'm freaking out because I just got pulled into a fucking closet and he's fuming and I'm pretty sure he's going to kill me but his eyes were so fucking intense, but something… something told me he was holding back and I couldn't figure out why. I'd never actually kissed a guy before. I mean, I've never kissed a guy in anger before, but I ran my hands through his hair and pulled him in and he let out this sound that was somewhere between anger and surprise and he shoved me again and said "Look, I don't fuck guys," like this is supposed to be some big affront to his masculinity.

"And the next thing I know I'm kissing him again and he's pushed my back against a wall full of old exams and he pulled my head back and kissed my neck and collar bone and I couldn't help but fucking laugh at the guy because he's so pissed off and he can't keep his damn hands off me, like I'm some golden idol and then he pushes off like I seduced him.

"And I swear the next thing that came out of my mouth was that my middle name was Renee. Which it is, and then he's practically falling over himself to get his pants unzipped and get me on my knees and the guy is conflicted because he can't stop fixating on the fact that my hair is soft and he told me I was pretty, not handsome, but pretty. And he wasn't easy with me, I swear, I might have been on my knees for a total of five minutes before he was fumbling through his wallet for condoms and he doesn't even have the manual dexterity to get the thing on and I don't know what I was expecting from a guy who went by Moose, but jesus. He had my chest pressed against a wall full of robes and his hand was on my throat and the most elegant thing that came out of his mouth that I was an exquisite little whore and it was fantastic."

A beat.

"To make a long story short, there was a rumor that Moose was fucking around on Tabitha with someone named Renee for a couple months."

Ian

Ian was quiet while Elijah told the rest of his story. Truthfully, his reaction was... complicated. There were things that Elijah didn't see: micro-expressions and softly tensing muscles. But none of that registered over the phone. Instead what he got was silence, and then this brief, quiet laugh at the end.

"I'm tempted to call bullshit on that, but your life is just weird enough that I almost believe it." There was a beat before he added, "Is rough sex kind of a thing for you?"

Elijah

"Almost believe it?" he laughed at that, eyes on the sky and that grin clearly on his face. Elijah wore it often, wore it well, wore it in a fashion that hinted that he could be carefree when he damned well pleased. "If I were lying I would have thrown something in about Tabitha. Maybe she wasn't so supermodel gorgeous as I'd originally described but in my defense I was at a party and the lighting was the kind of lighting that makes everyone look spectacular."

True story, that. Though, there was the question.

"It is, actually. It's not a bad thing by any means, but there is something about rough sex that reminds you that you're alive, that you can feel anything- everything. It's intense, you don't have to be lit to be in the moment."

Ian

"Mm." Ian pressed his lips together and made this low, quiet sound. He hadn't only asked because of the story. There were, after all, memories of his own that he could go back to.

"Sex is always like that, if it's good." A beat, and he trailed the tips of his fingers over his stomach. "Our first time wasn't bad."

Wasn't bad, he said. And it might have sounded underwhelming, except that his voice had this kind of slow-burning heat to it. Like maybe wasn't bad actually meant pretty fucking good.

"Don't know if I can compete with a guy named Moose, though."

Elijah

"Wasn't bad," he repeats, and the grin on his face has the hints of mischief in it, "you are the worst critic, god damn."

The expression stayed on his face, hinted in his voice, "I'll be completely honest, I was five minutes away from trying to blow you in the car. I'm pretty sure I've told you before that you're the living incarnation of oh god, yes please. And besides, if I were to make comparisons, I would certainly say you're a lot more giving. Besides, his name was Moose not Elk or Mastodon, let's not build him up too much."

Ian

Giving wasn't a word that people typically used to describe Ian. More often, it was the opposite. For a moment, after he heard it, his eyebrows went up. Like maybe he wasn't sure if he ought to object. But given the context, it wasn't an inaccurate thing to say. Inherently self-centered people didn't do things like wax nostalgic over getting to go down on someone in a park.

"I'm pretty sure that moose are bigger than elk. But if we're going for animal metaphors..."

He paused, and you could almost hear him grin through the phone. He didn't actually finish the sentence, but whatever he meant to imply probably had something to do with tigers.

"Anyway, you know I like to downplay things. I love fucking you. You don't hold anything back. And rough sex is kind of a thing for me too."

(More than kind of, if he were being honest.)

"Really a shame you aren't here right now, actually."

Elijah

"Why hold things back? If you're not committed to the moment then don't fuckin' do it, ya know?"

Then? There was that line. That remark, and Elijah felt his breath catch in his throat and his imagination started to drift ever so slightly.

"Oh really? Not to say that I don't agree… I would rather be somewhere bent over a coffee table than stuck on a rooftop any day," though he did pause and he grinned a little wider, hand grazed the shingles on the roof, "though frankly, I don't own a coffee table anymore so a rooftop may have to do at some point."

Ian

"Well, you already sucked me off in a park, so why stop there? It's probably a bit cold though. I'd have to get creative."

(As if that ever stopped him.)

"Lucky for me, I have an actual bed. And indoor heating. And wrist cuffs, if you ever feel like getting tied up again." There was a pause. And then, "I love the way you talk when you're turned on. And I really want to fuck you right now."

But he couldn't, of course. And maybe half the reason he was even talking about it was because he didn't want to think about his family, but it was also getting late, and he was home alone with two and a half glasses of wine in his system. And it was so blissfully easy to slip into this kind of talk. Especially with Elijah.

Elijah

"You brag, you brag, with your fancy indoor meeting and bed-having," and he had to think about it, had to have a moment where he reflected and wondered, perhaps, what would happen if he let Ian tie him up again- did he trust him enough for that? And, in a second, Elijah confirmed that-

"And you know, I don't think I'd really mind getting tied up again, so long as you don't leave me stuck to your headboard, we're golden," he did trust him enough to try it again.

"And to think, every time we fuck you get a French lesson," his hands wandered from the shingles to his chest and it was getting late and people didn't bother to check for him on the roof because whatever Elijah did on the rooftop when he needed personal time was his own damn business. The stars were bright and the young man continued, "I think my favorite part of you fucking me, though, is the point where je suis un cochonne chanceux turns into wordless fucking approval- like when you render a person speechless and the only thing I can focus on is the feeling of your cock and the heartbeat of the universe."

Like they were interrelated. Because, in Elijah's mind, they were.

Ian

There was a quiet breath as Ian exhaled. The mic on his earpiece was pretty high quality, and it picked his voice up clearly. He slid his hand down to play at the top button of his jeans, opening it slowly. His other hand brushed across his chest. For a moment he closed his eyes.

"Yeah."

It might have been either agreement or encouragement.

"When everything's right, I can feel when you're about to come and it's like... I can't breath, because it's so good. Because you're so fucking tight and you're making those sounds and your heart is beating so hard..."

He rolled his tongue over the edge of his teeth and smiled softly.

"Next time, I'll tie your hands behind your back and just... touch you, until you go fucking crazy from it. Then I'll flip you over and fuck you with your head buried against the bed. Maybe I'll leave a mark somewhere. From my fingers on your hips, or my teeth on your shoulder." His voice dipped to a gentler register when he added, "If you want me to."

Then he asked, "Are you hard right now?"

Elijah

His attention is rapt, held up and Elijah has always been blessed with an active imagination, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill and he can feel his heartbeat catching up with his mind and he closes his eyes and gives the stars a rest for a moment because he knows that what matters is the sound of Ian's voice and the feeling of the night air and whatever the future might hold.

"You're so precise," he says the word precise like it's something to be admired, something that rolls off his tongue and is exactly the word he was looking for, "there's not a damn thing about the way you touch me that's sloppy or unplanned, so I suspect any mark you made or any time you laid hands on me it's because you know exactly what you're doing. Like when your hand tenses in my hair and I can feel every inch of you.

"As for whether or not I want you to- Ian, I want you to take me, hard and fast or so achingly slow that it's damn near torture. I think I'd like it if you had to tease and touch and ride that edge of satisfaction until I can't take it."

Then, there was that question, and Elijah's reply?

Was he hard right now? "As fucking diamonds," Elijah replied with a breathless laugh, "the only reason I haven't laid hands on myself as of yet is because I keep wondering what you'll say next, if you've got any other plans for the next time we fuck or if I'll have to ask politely for what you'd like to do."

Ian

Here's the truth: Ian made mistakes. Not everything he did was flawlessly executed. And not every action he took was planned (he was, after all, a creature of instinct.) He'd left marks on Elijah's skin both times they'd slept together, and none of them had really been... intentional, in that controlled, precise way that Elijah spoke of. But precision was certainly a quality that Ian possessed, and this is how people often saw him - for better or worse.

But see, Elijah was hard as fucking diamonds, and it was difficult to focus on the rest of what he'd said when there was that... picture. Grounding Ian's head back in reality. (That was always the thing that got his attention. Not fantasies. But something as basic as knowing that a person he was talking to was turned on right now.)

Ian actually laughed a little, the sound warm and breathy against the receiver. "You talk like a Southerner."

Which, well. Made sense.

"I want to listen to you jerk off."

There was a sound of rustling fabric as Ian sat up and pulled his shirt off.

Elijah

"Je suis ce que je suis," he told Ian, though that laugh was breathless and there was more of the south in his voice on account of being home than there was anything else. His hands wandered, Ian wanted to listen to him jerk off and, frankly, there was a sort of joy in that. In performance. In the fact that he was on his goddamned rooftop and even if his neighbors weren't close there was the prospect that someone might be outside, that someone might notice, that he might get caught and there might well be a damned audience.

He knew what he liked, and was it exhibitionism if the person you were putting on the show for was miles upon miles away?

It didn't take much, the intentional and quick unzipping of his pants, freeing himself and inhaling sharply once his fingertips hit his member because- "Jesus, I wish it were warmer here," not that it wasn't warm, certainly warmer than Denver, but the evening air on his skin and the barest chill on his fingertips against hot, hard flesh. Elijah slowly ran his hand over his length, his breathing clearly a forced easy, but there was that catch, that movement as his hand traveled across his own skin.

"Did you just take something off?" he asks, though the sound was playful but distracted.

Ian

"How cold can it be in Louisiana?" Ian teased lightly, but there was an airiness to it that suggested his mind was elsewhere. When he lay back down, he brushed the flat of his hand across the bedspread slowly. The comforter was soft Egyptian cotton, and it slid silkily beneath his skin.

Did you just take something off?

"I didn't want to get cum on my shirt."

But he wasn't actually touching himself just yet. Instead he listened to the sound of Elijah's breath on the receiver. To the way his voice changed when he started to jerk off. Hitching, maybe. Uneven.

"Do you ever think about fucking me?"

It was almost a taunt, that question. Because they hadn't done that yet, and maybe Elijah was fine with that. Maybe Ian was fine with that too. But he asked - as much out of curiosity as anything. And when he said it, his hand settled on his stomach and slid down to finish unzipping his jeans.

Elijah

"I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who cums on the shingles up here," he said with a breathless laugh, but his attentions were clearly elsewhere. "Of course I think about fucking you. It's funny the way that we compartmentalize people we find attractive, but fucking you might be damn near heavenly. I wonder what you sound like when you're getting fucked, I think about the way your body might tense and relax and the lines of your shoulders and I think about whether or not you close your eyes after that first initial push or if your attention goes fiery."

It had almost been a taunt, and he was focused, but his breathing was growing shallow and his eye stayed closed. There were hints of what was going on around him, like being blindfolded without the actual act of losing one's sight.

"I'm as much visual as I am tactile, fucking you would be a sensory experience. Je n'ai pas vas te faire encule comme tu es une poup e de porcelaine, you're real and solid and magnificent."

Ian

Ian closed his eyes as he listened to Elijah talk, and when he started to touch himself it was in this slow, measured way. Just the tips of his fingers trailing over the curve of his erection through the soft barrier of his underwear. His skin felt warm. Flushed, a little. When he opened his eyes, there were streaks of ambient streetlight painted across the ceiling.

Elijah thought about fucking him. Wanted to know how he'd react when...

"I think it depends on what mood I'm in," Ian answered quietly. Then he made this sound... soft and throaty. A little frustrated. "I want to see you. You have such a gorgeous cock."

He pushed the line of his jeans down a little on his hips, finally pulling his erection free so he could wrap his hand around it.

Elijah

"Can you wait for a video?"

His breathing was a little uneven, it was a struggle, he wondered if he would be able to work the camera on his phone at all. Careless, unafraid of sending pictures or videos or whatever there well may be to Ian.

"You know, I've completely interrupted your movie."

Ian

"Jesus Elijah, I could give a fuck about the movie right now." He laughed a little. "Anyway, don't. That shit isn't safe. And I'm not going to send you one back."

Though if Elijah ever felt like digging up Ian's old modeling portfolio, he'd probably find at least a few nude photos. But those were professionally lit, artistic and high quality. It wasn't quite the same thing as having a spiteful ex-fling post bad video feed of your erect cock on x-tube (which... was actually a legitimate concern for someone like Ian.)

He exhaled and closed his eyes. "Just keep going."

--------------

[Author's Note: There was supposed to be a fade here, but things happened and it didn't get done. Oh well. I think we all know where this scene was going.]

9:00 PM