Sunburn
by Trianne
David Wenham/Elijah Wood
Summary: David has wanted Elijah since New Zealand. This could be his time...
Feedback: Always appreciated - perhobfan@yahoo.co.uk
Disclaimer: Sadly I do not know any of these actors. No offence is intended, nor profit made.
I'm standing here in the Bee Gees section and leaning a little against the wall, conscious of my height in the confined space and even more so of the fact that I must look as if I have a thing for Barry Gibb, which simply isn't true. Now Robin, that's a different matter…
Two girls enter the shop; they're wearing cut-offs and halter tops, thonged sandals and cute little retro caps. One has love beads strung around her slender neck, the other has a U2 bandana draped around hers. They give me a passing glance, maybe thinking I look out of place, which I do. Then they move on. The guy behind the counter watches them move among the merchandise as they giggle their way from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix via the ubiquitous-for-Venice-Beach Jim Morrison aisle. I wait for it, the reaction. It comes.
"Oh. My. God!" one exclaims, coming to a dead stop and her friend barrels into her and starts to curse but then she sees, too, and they both stand and stare and he has to move out of the corner and away from the obscure section he'd been orgasming over and acknowledge them.
"Hi", Elijah says, and he catches my eye and looks a little embarrassed and I shrug and he talks with them for a minute or two and then agrees to step outside into the sunshine for an impromptu photo op. I follow them out and take the camera from Girl One and she looks at me and screws up her eyes as if she's trying to recall me and then gives it up and goes to stand next to Elijah, Girl Two on the other side so they are flanking him, and he smiles for the camera and only he and I know he's really smiling at me and he looks so beautiful and alive that I want to kiss him right there but I don’t. Instead, I hand the camera back to Girl One and after Elijah's signed something for each of them – a scrap of paper for one, a Hello Kitty diary for the other – they leave us, waving and still trying to work out who I am, their heads together and arms around each other's waists, giggling…
He doesn't go back into the record store but decides to light a cigarette and we stand there in the sunshine and he smokes and I watch him smoke and wonder if I will ever tire of doing this. He's wearing jeans and boots and a skinny t-shirt that rides up a little as he moves from one foot to the other, beating a funky tattoo on the sidewalk.
"Sorry about that," he says between drags. He's not wearing his sunglasses, and his lashes show up long and silky against the sharp light that surrounds him like a corona.
"'S'allright," I reply, easily. And it is. I've seen it before. Hell, I've even experienced it myself a time or two. But never like he does. Nobody'd ever have to wonder who he is. They come to the sun and touch it and go away a tiny bit burned and it takes them a while before they realise they're changed forever. Have I always talked like this? No, course not. That's him for you.
He stubs out the butt of his ciggie and starts to walk away from the store, replying to my enquiring gesture with a "nah, not in the mood now – besides, Tuesday is not their best day" and I follow him back along the street to his house. We hear the sounds of street musicians and entertainers performing for the tourists on the promenade, can smell the incense a good two blocks away, and as we cross the little bridge over the canal, I'm reminded of seaside places in Australia when I was growing up, and this is just the same, only the emporiums here are full of anti-Bush t-shirts and empanadas.
"You like it here?" I ask him, and he looks over his shoulder and nods enthusiastically.
We reach his little house and he opens the door and politely stands aside for me. I feel old when he does that.
"I'll make tea," he says, closing the door after us and he pads across the cool tile to the kitchen. I stand and look around me; my bag is still by the couch and I wonder where he intends it to go. It's kind of pivotal to the way the visit will pan out.
I'm admiring family photographs when he returns with the tea and he sits cross-legged on the floor and sips from his mug, steam rising to caress his face. He's thinner than the last time we'd met, much thinner. The planes of his face have become sharper and even smoother, as if the real Elijah has been waiting to break free and this is him in all his glory, the finished article. I sit on the couch and drink tea I don't care about and try not to stare at my bag and wonder where its final destination will be. I take nothing for granted. If it happens, then great. If it doesn't, then it wasn't meant to be. I want it to happen though, that's the problem. I may seem philosophical but I'm anything but. Inside, I'm a raging torrent of suppressed sexuality and I want to launch myself at him and ravish him here in his little house with the sun slanting through the windows and the tourists all drinking margaritas at the Sidewalk Café (very good nachos) just five minutes away.
He puts down his mug and uncrosses his legs and crawls over to the couch and I mirror him by putting my mug down, too, remembering to plant it on the coaster so as not to mark the veneer of a side table that looks rather like one his Mum might have donated. I am Australian, after all, and we have manners, which is one reason I've not pushed him, not made him go faster than he needed to go and as he comes to a stop right before me, stopping right there in the vee of my open thighs, I think I'm glad that I took it slowly because if it happens it will happen right and last longer because of it and I'm still thinking fucking rubbish like this when I lean down and take his face in my hands and lower my lips to his. He reacts to my mouth on his with the tiniest of recoils and I pull away and look into his eyes and ask the question with mine. I know the answer I want to – need to – hear but I wait for it and decide if he doesn't like my kissing him, if it’s all too weird and he's made a mistake and this isn't what he wants after all, then I'll find some way to make it all right again, some way to put us right back to friends-only, and nothing will be spoiled because I really don't want to lose his friendship just because I can't squeeze his bare buttocks and thrust my tongue in his arsehole.
"More?" he says and I think that'd be a pretty good epitaph. Must remember that one.
He reaches up and we kiss again, light brushing kisses that break like waves on the beach we walked along an hour ago. I pull him up so he's straddling me and this way we can kiss deeper and longer and our bodies come together at last and now there's no recoil and his skin is softer and more welcoming than I'd hoped for, his thick hair beneath my fingers even fuller, and he smells good and I tentatively begin to move my hand down and find the edge of his tee and pull it up just a fraction, then wait for his reaction. He's murmuring into my mouth and he's stroking my back and he never breaks contact but sort of leans back, arching, so I can shuck up the tee and then I'm touching his stomach and it's soft and rippled where he's bending and there's a trace of fine hair about the navel and all this I'm thinking while our mouths never once break apart and my tongue and his are sliding together like leopard slugs copulating and I want to get him down on his back on the floor or on the couch or better still on the bed and then I can really show him my quality and I can't believe I could think of that line as I'm making love to him because we'd sniggered every time it came up back in Welly and it just popped into my head and he's opening his eyes and looking into mine as we kiss and finally we have to pull away and take a quick breath.
"Fuck," he says, and his face is flushed and radiant and his hair is sticking to his forehead and my hand is still flat against his stomach and itching to descend. I'm hard as hell and I really could do with getting out of my jeans and into something more comfortable, like his arse, but really, French kissing is more than a good enough start and if it's all there is, then I can cope with some more of that. He looks drunk and I feel proud of myself because I've done that, I, David Wenham, have done that to him and he's kind of out of it and I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to come and I hope so but if I end up wanking alone in the shower when he's asleep, then at least I've got some nice memories to do it to, now…
He's shifting on my lap, opening his legs and leaning forward and now his cock and mine are lined up and the only obstacle to Nirvana is the denim of two pairs of jeans. He's got his arms about my neck and he's nuzzling me and sort of gyrating back and forth and my thighs are on fire and my cock is confused because usually by now it's out and enjoying the fresh air but then again it hasn't had a virgin for quite some time and it's going to have to bloody well hold its horses. I find myself being pressed back into the couch and then his hand is down there between our lumps and he's tugging at the top button and I breathe in as much as I can so as to make a little more of a gap for his fingers to work in and this is when I think fuck this and decide that going slow is one thing but he's not that innocent, is he? He's had girls before; he's what? Twenty-three, twenty-four? He seems pretty okay with everything so far and besides, if I don’t move soon I might do myself an injury, so I push him forward and use my superior manly strength to lower him onto the rug and he makes a funny little noise that sounds like nothing I've ever heard a man or a woman make before but it sounds erotic as hell and I want to hear it again so I straddle him and pull off his tee and throw it sexily into the corner and look down at him and let my eyes fuck him thoroughly from nipples to navel and he opens his mouth and reaches up his arms and then we're chest to chest, groin to groin, though not feet to feet because he's a good six inches shorter than me and that wouldn't work. We rub and slide and kiss a lot more and now he's demanding and knows exactly what he wants out of this man-snogging and he goes for it and I let him because he's a natural and besides, while he's taking charge of that area, I'm numero uno in the frottage department and he's making that noise again.
"Want to take this to bed?" I ask, pulling away from his greedy mouth. He frowns and blinks and I see for the first time the contacts in his eyes reflecting the sunlit window and it's all in the little details because I think it's that moment, that precise moment, when the world is centred on his eyes like that and everything is moist and liquid and mobile and blue like a great surf wave… that's when I know I'm in love and deflowering the gay cherry doesn’t mean a thing anymore because if it's all over with the first mixing of body fluids, then what's the point? He smiles then and it's the first smile in the world, the only smile in the entire world - in fact, outside, in Venice and California and the Pacific Coast and the United States, the Western Hemisphere, it's all frozen and faded to nothing and all that matters is a twelve-foot square patch of rug where my boy lies, open and waiting for me.
"No. Take me here, Davey," he says. He's never called me anything but Dave or David before. Davey. Davey.
"Take you? You mean, as in take you?" I say, just to be sure. He laughs then, the sound vibrating through his slender chest and up through my groin.
"Yeah," he says, seriously this time. "I want you."
I think of the first time I saw him in Wellington. And the second time. The third time. Every time I saw him, it was like fireflies in a jar. I never thought he'd let me touch him, let me love him like this. And now it's going to happen and I'm going to be a god for him.
"Just one thing?" he says as I reach to pull off his jeans.
"Yes?" I reply, hoarsely.
"Close the drapes, Davey. I want this to be just me and you, you know."
I couldn't agree more, so I pull up and off of him. I reach for the drapes and glance outside just once, into the street, into the outside world - maybe even right at you - and pull them all the way across the window, blocking out the light from the street, and our first time from any passers-by…
The End