The Trouble With Rumnog, or The Night Elijah Hated Christmas Just A Little Less
Recipient: anyothergirl415
Author: shanalle
Pairing: Orlando/Elijah
Rating: PG
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It wasn’t that Elijah hated Christmas. It wasn’t the lights (so many lights, strung about the small flat like it was a goddamn Christmas tree itself, and Elijah was wondering if anyone would make fun of him if he put his sunglasses on indoors) or the tofurkey Orlando insisted upon cooking (crazy vegetarians, what was Christmas without a ham?) or even the fact that Dom had decided that eggnog was only “right proper eggnog” if it was one shot of eggnog and about seventeen shots of rum (ill, he was going to be so ill tomorrow).
No, it wasn’t any of those things. It wasn’t even that it was about 80 degrees outside (Elijah still couldn’t think in terms of Celsius to save his life) or that the smell of the tofurkey and the mass quantity of rum was slowly making him queasy. All of these things were acceptable.
It was that he didn’t trust Dom and Billy. He didn’t trust them with a secret and he certainly didn’t trust them now that they knew.
Elijah took another slug of his rumnog (as Dom had thus deemed it) and sighed. He hadn’t meant for them to find out. It had just sort of…happened. Or, perhaps, it had less “happened” than spewed from his mouth like a tidal wave in a rather long and utterly embarrassing night of drinking. At least, Elijah thought, Orlando hadn’t been there.
Orlando. Elijah gulped down more rumnog and sighed again. The root of all his problems, really. The guy was just too attractive to be natural. It wasn’t as though Elijah had any choice than to fall completely, inexplicably, wholly and entirely in love with him. It was surprising no one else was, if you looked at it logically.
But Elijah, with his eighteen years of inexperience, was in love with Orlando, and it was quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened to him. At least, until Dom and Billy had found out. That was so many kinds of worse.
This called for more rumnog.
*
“So…Elijah?” Dom was lying upside down on the couch, his legs upright and his back pressed against the bottom, so that his head was nearly hitting the floor, his hair brushing against the carpet as he swayed. He was, as Billy would say, blotted.
“Ngh?” Elijah looked up from where he was lying on the floor, fiddling absently with a CD case. He, additionally, was somewhat “blotted,” but in good spirits. Jolly, even. They’d gotten through the dinner and gift exchange without any major incident and, thankfully, Elijah was starting to think that he’d underestimated his friends’ ability to keep quiet when they needed to be. It was turning into a rather peaceful Christmas Eve after all.
“Get some more biscuits from the kitchen, yeah?” Dom stretched, waving his arms about slowly, his fingers dragging on the floor and (Elijah giggled to himself) looking rather like a monkey.
“Sure.” He stood and stretched a bit himself, his stomach full of food and his mind happily buzzed.
“Oi, Orli, can you grab some more nog, too?” Billy called from his own spot on the couch.
Orlando sat up halfway and rolled his eyes. “You can’t possibly want more of that crap. Besides, Elijah can grab it.”
“Elijah’s getting biscuits,” Dom responded, as though Elijah didn’t have two hands. “Just do it?” He batted his eyes, which looked pretty amusing (and kind of strange) from upside down.
“Fine, fine.”
Elijah and Orlando shared a look as they both walked toward the kitchen (Elijah’s stomach flip-flopped in a way that had nothing at all to do with rum or tofurkey) and the two of them walked through the narrow doorway together.
And then it happened.
“Oooooooooooh, look, Bills!” Dom’s voice was suddenly high-pitched and right there and Elijah’s heart froze in a way that could only mean something terrible and nefarious had been plotted against him. Dom was pointing above Orlando and Elijah’s heads and, sure enough, there was mistletoe that had not been there an hour before. Those utter, stupid bastards.
“Gotta snog now, go on!” Billy laughed and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Orlando snorted.
“Go watch a porno,” he smirked at Billy and continued to walk into the kitchen.
“Ah-ah-ah!” Dom reached forward, holding Orlando in place by the shoulder. “You’ll make Santa cry if you don’t adhere to tradition.”
“Dom, seriously,” Orlando rolled his eyes again, pulling his arm away. Elijah, for his part, didn’t say a word. About thirty-seven thoughts were running through his mind (kissing Orlando, I’m gonna kill them, oh God, I can’t move my feet, fucking murder them, I hate Santa, oh shit kissing Orlando) but he didn’t say any of them. He simply stared, watching the exchange between Orlando and Dom and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Orlando had apparently given up (you could only fight with a blotted Dom for so long, after all) and he leaned forward slightly. “May as well, eh?” he raised his eyebrows at Elijah before closing the distance between their mouths.
Elijah was fairly certain his legs were going to give out. Luckily, instinct (and, likely, his vast experience in kissing) caused Orlando’s hands to move to Elijah’s back and he held him upright, softly moving his lips against Elijah’s. The kiss itself was rather chaste; just a soft meeting of mouths, the tiniest flicker of tongue, and then Orlando pulled back, his mouth quirking into a smile.
“Happy?” he turned to Dom, who was biting his bottom lip so hard to keep from laughing, Elijah was almost afraid he’d bite right through it (though it’d serve the bastard right to be all lip-deformed, after doing this to him). Elijah’s mouth, on the other hand, was tingling, and he touched his hand to it gingerly, as though the feeling might disappear if he touched too hard.
“Quite,” Dom nodded, getting a hold of himself. Billy ran from the room, snickering.
Orlando shook his head and hugged Elijah gently. “Can’t expect much less from these two, eh?” he said into his ear. Elijah shivered.
“Er, yeah,” he croaked back. Orlando, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice the frog that had taken residence in Elijah’s throat and he made his way back to the living room, hollering at Billy.
Elijah’s mind, in the absence of Orlando’s lips, suddenly cleared and he turned to Dom with murderous eyes. Dom (the bastard) had the decency to look contrite. “The amount,” Elijah said through gritted teeth, “that I am going to kill you is vast, Monaghan. Vast.”
*
They were sleeping. Well, all of them except Elijah. Predictably, they’d never left the comfort of the living room, and Elijah rolled over on the soft carpet, contemplating the evening. He couldn’t stop running that damned kiss through his mind (Orlando’s lips, so soft; Orlando’s tongue, oh God) and he groaned to himself. He was so fucked.
“Lighe, you awake?”
Orlando’s voice pulled Elijah back to reality. Or, maybe it wasn’t reality (was he still daydreaming?) and he rolled to look over to where Orlando was lying.
“Yeah,” Elijah tried to say. The frog was back.
“Happy Christmas,” Orlando whispered, crawling a bit so that he was closer to him. Elijah blinked. Must be well past midnight now, he thought. Happy Christmas, indeed.
“Yeah,” he repeated, completely aware that he was being a moron, but unable to speak past one-syllable responses. Great, it was a frog with an inadequate vocabulary.
Orlando looked at him strangely. Or, he seemed to be in the dim lighting of the room, Elijah couldn’t tell (but he wouldn’t be surprised, considering he was being a moron).
“You okay?” Orlando crawled even closer (as if that was going to help Elijah’s speech impediment) so that their bodies were touching. Elijah squirmed.
“Yeah, just uh,” Elijah shrugged a bit. “Feeling a bit off, I guess.”
“How come?” Orlando was playing with a frayed bit of the carpet (he had such nice hands) and Elijah swallowed thickly, still tasting rum and (impossibly) Orlando’s lips.
“Just uh…feelingweirdaboutthekissIguess.” Well, he hadn’t meant to say that. God, he should never be allowed near alcohol again.
“The kiss?” Orlando looked up from the carpet. “Don’t worry about it, mate. “S’just a kiss, right?”
“Just a kiss. Right.” Of course, Elijah thought. Just a stupid kiss, because of stupid mistletoe. Nothing more. Of course.
“Was rather nice, anyways,” Orlando continued quietly. Elijah’s head jerked up, quickly, in a way that was highly unnatural. His neck protested with a sharp pain. He coughed.
“Yeah, um. Was. Nice, I mean.”
Orlando smiled at him then (apparently he was okay with monosyllabic Frog-Elijah) and moved to a half-sitting position. He ducked his head down, close to Elijah’s, and swept a hand through Elijah’s hair.
“I’m off to a real bed,” he whispered. And then, in a swift movement that Elijah never would have expected, Orlando pressed his mouth to his.
Elijah didn’t know what to do (kiss him back, you idiot, his brain said, kiss him back) and he froze momentarily before his lips kicked into gear and opened for Orlando’s tongue, which was less of a flicker and more of a sweeping, fucking wonderful slide into his mouth this time. They kissed quietly for a few seconds until Elijah felt Orlando smile against him and then pull away.
“Night, Lighe.”
He stood and walked from the room, leaving Elijah lying on the floor, stupefied. He licked his lips and slowly broke into a wide grin. “Happy Christmas,” he whispered to himself.