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Title: When It Settles
Author: kiltsandlollies
Pairing: Dominic Monaghan/Elijah Wood
Rating: NC-17
Note: For the 2005 Lotrips Remix challenge. A remix of Missed by inbetweens, which blew me away a little bit.

Anonymous hotel rooms don’t suit Dominic very well, he’s found, but they sure as hell seem to suit Elijah. He prowls around the perimeter of the room, tracing his finger through dust on the windowsill, while Dominic pretends to be nonchalant about this, pretends not to care that this is the first they’ve seen of each other in weeks.

He’s inching back on his hands up the bed, keeping his eyes on Elijah’s hair, on the flush of Elijah’s cheeks and neck and now bared chest as he thinks about what he wants Dominic to do or what he wants done to Dominic. Dominic is for once more dressed than Elijah, and that, Dominic thinks, should be rectified soon. Will be rectified soon, if the look Elijah throws him when the bed creaks is to be taken seriously. Which it is.

How do you measure how much you are missed and how much you in turn miss someone or something else? Dominic thinks Elijah measures it in the dust on his fingertips—on the pressure those fingers use as they drag across hundreds of windows and balconies and bar tops and come up filthy—and in the marks those fingertips leave behind. Dominic thinks Elijah’s missed him—would like to think Elijah’s missed him—and neither the streaks on the windowsill nor those on his own body tell him otherwise.

“Elijah,” he says, harder than he means to, and Elijah comes back to the bed, where they were a few moments ago, happily, Dominic believed, before Elijah had moved away and begun to pace, leaving Dominic already hard and breathing shallowly (all impressed and half–undressed, Dominic singsongs to himself), his jeans midway down his thighs and good shirt torn in two places, exposing the raised red mark of Elijah’s teeth just above the coarse brown hair between Dominic’s legs. “Elijah,” he says again, this time reaching for Elijah’s neck to bring him closer.

He’s rewarded for the repetition he knows Elijah hates by the feeling of the cheap mattress giving slight way beneath them, turning up at its sides and full of broken springs, Dominic notices, fascinated by their groaning set against his and Elijah’s own. Elijah takes a little hissing breath before he goes back to work, tugging at Dominic’s shirt until it comes away from him, raising Dominic’s hair into messy spikes and sparking more dust that gets into Dominic’s eyes and makes them water. He shakes the feeling off and meets Elijah’s stare with one more narrowed, much more focused.

“What —?"

“Did you miss me?” Elijah murmurs, and it’s so soft, so unlike what Dominic is accustomed to that all he can do is inhale a bit—more of that dust, and fuck, it’s awful, with the stinging already in his eyes. “Did you, Dom? Cause I’m thinking you haven’t, not that much.”

Everything’s blurry now, even the sharp edges of Elijah’s chin and teeth. Dominic swallows, coughs, pants for breath again, and Elijah takes his shot, pushing Dominic back down again and leading his hands up and back to the headboard, and that's when it hits Dominic what Elijah wants to do, what he wants done.

It would be so fucking easy to just give it up, just say I did, I did, alright, and can we not go through this again this time? They don’t always—sometimes finding each other again is a slow, perfect thing, set to good music and good beer and the sound of friends leaving them alone after a long night. But more often it’s just like this, and Dominic knows it makes things easier for Elijah and maybe (though you won’t catch him admitting to Elijah or anyone else) for himself as well. There’s no such thing as—and no time for—that fight–or–flight shit in their lives. It’s fight–and–fuck, and it works. Or it’s supposed to.

Dominic reaches around the spindles Elijah’s led him to, his focus clearing again and his breathing slower. A corner of Elijah’s lips turns up in acknowledgment of the only surrender he expects from Dominic at the moment, and he kicks off his own jeans easily, eager to yank Dominic’s off with less care.

“What do they taste like, Dom?” Elijah says, and his voice is louder now, more confident. “The girls. The drinks. Are they good? Are they worth it? Do you even remember afterward?”

“You’re such a fuck,” Dominic breathes, closing his eyes at the feeling of the denim ripped from him, the feeling of cold air in the room surrounding him before the wet heat of Elijah takes over. “You don’t know—“

“You forget I’ve been doing this longer than you have,” Elijah smiles, actually smiles at Dominic and lowers his hands slowly down Dominic’s chest and stomach before they curl at Dominic’s hips. “And I’m better at it.”

Dominic doesn’t argue; he’s too busy registering—memorizing, cataloging, framing and keeping forever—the burn of Elijah’s fingernails digging into his skin. Fuck, fuck, he actually went through with it, those are real, those are his. His hands twist around the spindles, fingers sweating and palms aching from the pressure of burled wood.

“You won’t miss any of it when it’s gone,” Elijah says, watching Dominic’s shift around beneath him. “Not like you did me. Not like you do.” His fingers splay to move underneath Dominic’s ass, and Dominic lets his legs fall open and his breath rush out before he clenches his teeth and wishes he’d fought harder, just another few minutes more.

“You’re still ready,” Elijah sighs, actually sighs in what Dominic thinks is the most fucked up form of approval he’s been privileged to receive. The fingers of Elijah’s left hand dance around Dominic’s ass, pressing and twisting in slick heat, in the work Elijah had begun both not long ago and yet much too long ago, before Elijah was even fully undressed, before the mood shifted on both of them. “Didn’t take you any time at all to open up for me, did it? You were ready to take it dry, Dom; I’m not gonna promise this’ll be much better. You missed that, too, I’m guessing.”

“Shut it, shut the fuck up,” Dominic gasps when Elijah’s fingers curl up inside him and then disappear. He’s inhaling again, ready to curse Elijah into paralytic ill–health, when Elijah moves forward and shoves inside. The headboard bangs against the wall, releasing another cloud of dust, and Dominic closes his eyes tight against that and Elijah as well. No point in pretending to relax and allow for any adjustment, and no point in thinking Elijah would give him time in any case. Elijah’s already bought the only time he wanted spent anywhere and anyway but like this.

Even the touch of Elijah’s hand wrapping around his cock and pulling and twisting roughly isn’t that much of a relief until he hears Elijah beginning to break as well, his words splitting apart into their syllables as they reach the air, like the dust. “You missed this. You missed me, you missed—"

All of it, Dominic thinks, and his hips rise and his body tenses and his arms ache and his eyes burn violently. Elijah’s thumbnail slips, scratches over the head of Dominic’s cock, and Dominic bites off Elijah’s name twice before he’s coming, clenching around Elijah and listening for the words to finally fucking stop. It takes nearly nothing from Dominic after that, and yet everything from Elijah. Just before Elijah recovers, takes a breath and raises his head to blink and breath an apology just as fucked up as the rest of this, Dominic slips one hand from around the spindles and shoves Elijah to his back beside him, moving like a cat to curl around Elijah and sink his hands, his own ragged fingernails, into Elijah’s hair and hold Elijah’s sweaty, overheated forehead to his lips. There will be a mark there, the scrape of damp stubble marring that expanse of white, and Dominic breathes gently over the site of his fierce kiss as if to make it right, if not particularly better.

Elijah smiles underneath the heat and weight of Dominic and just nods, several slow times in succession me, too. Dominic gathers up Elijah’s right hand in his own, moving their fingers together and between each other and watching the dust settle around them. There’s hardly a trace of the windowsill’s dirt and age left on Elijah now, but Dominic feels it all over himself.

If that’s all the damage Elijah ever does to him, Dominic can live with it.


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