The Holy Grail of Dirty Sex ([info]shaenie) wrote in [info]tig_meh,
@ 2004-11-09 21:14:00
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more Elijah/Viggo AU
Elijah wakes up so slowly it's like surfacing in stages, like a deep-sea diver, coming up bit by bit to allow his body to become reacquainted with the lack of tons of pressure.

He feels heavy and a little achey, but otherwise pretty good. Which is weird. Another one of the reasons that he doesn't pop uppers like there's no tomorrow is that there always is a tomorrow, and it's not a very pretty one after he pushes himself past the edges of exhaustion. Usually the insides of his eyelids feel grainy and itchy, and his brain feels sunburned, like it's suffering from overexposure to the elements or like the inside of his skull is lined with razor wire.

None of that is currently apparent. His muscles feel like warm taffy and there's a gentle-good ache in his groin that makes him huff out a breath of satisfaction laced with amusement.

"Best. Dream. Ever." he asserts, his voice coming sludgy and groggy, and he's tempted to just go back to sleep, see if he can recapture it, or at least put off the moment when he has to admit that it's over and it'll probably be a one-shot deal. Dreams that good... Elijah doubts he'll get a repeat performance. God, he's so warm, so tempted to just roll over and bury his head under his pillow.

He doesn't, of course. He never does. He's not built like that, has never been able to drop back into sleep just because he doesn't want to emerge into the harsh-bright day. He's awake so it's time to get up, time to get to work. Time to leave behind the heavy-warm feeling of well-being pressing on his chest.

He lifts one hand to shove the comforter off of him -- thinking vaguely that if he weren't so warm and cozy, he'd be more inclined to get up -- and the backs of his knuckles skate lightly over an expanse of smooth, silky skin that most definitely doesn't belong to him.

Elijah's eyes snap open, but he doesn't look. He isn't sure he wants to see. Or wants not to see. He stares at the ceiling for several long seconds, and ponders the weight on his chest. Not just warm well-being. No. An actual weight. The weight of something.

He moves his hand, lets his knuckles skim across it again, and there is something tight and fearful and hopeful in his chest.

Real, he thinks, not quite a statement or a question either one. He turns his palm down and rests it on top of the weight, and his fingers curl comfortably around the bulk of a relatively thick tentacle, which in turn shifts slightly and curls around Elijah's hand and up his wrist. His pent up breath leaks slowly from his chest, a very quiet sigh, and the fluttering in his belly escalates to something less like hope and more like excitement. Steeling himself, he forces his gaze down from the ceiling.

"Oh," he hears himself breathe quietly, a softly exultant exclamation. Several of Pet's appendages lift up from where they're sprawled against Elijah's chest and belly and sort of quiver in his direction. Elijah feels a laugh bubbling up in his throat, and his eyes are burning suspiciously. His other hand slides up to cradle the creature, and he feels it shift more decisively, tentacles against Elijah's hips and thighs curling up and bunching to push itself up higher on his chest. It takes him several seconds to relate the feeling to the understanding that he's naked, and his head is abruptly filled with the last things he remembers from the night before, the feel of Pet wound all around him and the crushing orgasm and the irresistable langour that had followed it.

"Oh, shit," he whispers, paralyzed with dread. "Viggo." He turns his head before he thinks about doing it, and for a moment he's so shocked at the sight of another guy sleeping beside him in bed that his mind is completely empty of thought. Elijah isn't sure how long he just lays there and stares, but Pet makes a soft squeal and Elijah comes back to himself, realizing he's unconsciously tightened his grip on the creature. He forces his hands to relax, strokes loosely curled fists up a couple of tentacles in apology, and stares at Viggo in his bed.

Elijah has no memory of Viggo coming back. He has no memory of anything after... well, after, but he's naked and in bed, and he definitely hadn't got here under his own power. Oh, man, he thinks, dismayed and uncertain. Last night, Elijah had definitely, um, done things to Viggo's pet, had definitely "played" with it in a thoroughly inappropriate manner, and he doesn't see how Viggo could not know. He has to have come back and found Elijah asleep on the floor with his-- God, his sweats were around his knees, he remembers abruptly, and the blood rushes to his face in a hot flood of wickedly sharp embarassment and shame.

He's still here, the rational part of Elijah's mind observes, but something like panic is roiling in Elijah's belly, and he's not sure what to do. Yeah, Viggo's still here for now, but maybe he'd just been too tired to go last night or maybe he hadn't been able to disentangle his pet from around Elijah's limbs (oh God, would he be angry?) or maybe he'd only stayed so he could scream at Elijah in person this morning.

Elijah wants to scramble out of bed, retreat to someplace that he can think, the bathroom maybe, but he's still got a double armful of smooth, supple limbs, several of which have wound themselves around Elijah's arms and waist, but a couple of which are wrapped around Viggo's sleeping wrist, and Elijah is unwilling to let it go and uncertain of how to get it to let go of Viggo.

"Okay, okay," he mutters, and then bites down on his bottom lip to shut himself up. He talks to himself, he knows it -- he doesn't have anyone else to talk to -- but this is just not a good time. He slowly, by increments, pushes himself upright, trying to hold Pet steady against him. Pet helpfully winds bits of itself (himself? herself? hrm.) up around Elijah's shoulders and neck, anchoring, but it doesn't let go of Viggo's wrist either. Elijah turns his shoulders away from Viggo -- trying to judge how firm Pet's grip is on him -- and notices for the first time that Pet is... well, bigger. Heavier, maybe, it's hard to tell. Elijah hadn't exactly been taking exact specifications on its weight last night, but definitely bigger, yeah, because it had fit comfortably sprawled on Elijah's belly last night, after (he remembers the feel of it rippling against his skin, and has to hastily banish that from his mind lest it cause more than just the semi he's currently sporting, which he's going to blame on having to piss if Viggo wakes up and asks), and now it's overspilling even the expanse of his chest, which admitedly isn't that much broader than his waist, but it is somewhat broader, and besides that, one of it's thickest tentacles is around Viggo's wrist, and Elijah is sure that it's at least as thick as Viggo's wrist, and it definitely hadn't been last night.

Impossible, he thinks, and then chokes out a little snorting sound, because this whole damn thing is impossible, isn't it?

He needs to get out of this bed and somewhere he can think, somewhere he doesn't have to worry about Viggo waking up and catching Elijah naked with Viggo's creature. Elijah slides his hand around the appendage around Viggo's wrist and slides it down until it's fairly close to Viggo's arm, and then carefully, gently tugs.

Viggo shifts on his back, and gives a soft, moaning sigh, and Elijah freezes, holding his breath, not even blinking. When Viggo settles again, Elijah carefully, carefully gives another tug. "C'mon, Pet," he whispers, stroking the tentacle coaxingly with the tips of his fingers, and he feels a little dizzy with relief when it loosens -- Viggo's wrist rolls to one side so that it's resting against his flat, naked belly, and Elijah quickly averts his eyes, blushing, feeling guilty for even looking, which is stupid of course -- and slides itself backward through Elijah's loose fist -- Viggo shifts again, huffs out a breath, and Elijah nearly has a heart attack -- and then upward to curl around Elijah's arm from his elbow to his wrist.

Jesus, he thinks shakily, and eases off the bed slowly so as not to jounce it.

His thundering heartbeat eases a little when he turns into the short hall leading to the bathroom, and he finally feels like he can breathe again when he gets the door shut behind him.

He doesn't know if the creature can sense his agitation, but it seems as good an explanation as any for the way it's rubbing one smooth tentacle (this one is kind of orangish, but not really, Elijah sees in the mirror, it's like the color isn't quite stable, and he's sure once he settles down and figures out what's going on he'll be a lot more curious about that) against Elijah's cheek and making that same crooning sound from last night, except it's sort of intermittent instead of one long sound, so it almost sounds like it's chirping. Elijah smiles in spite of the anxious churning in his belly, and pets at a bundle of tentacles that's slung over his shoulder like the carry strap of some unlikely luggage.

Looking at in in the mirror is weird. Looking at it clinging to Elijah's chest, all curves and smooth lines and rippling color and the pressure of it's limbs locked around Elijah's arms and neck and waist and one thigh...

"Fucking impossible," he says to his reflection, but his reflection doesn't look like it believes it any more than Elijah does. Impossible or not, it is. Incontrivertibly, it exists, pressed warmly to Elijah's chest and smelling so damn good, spice and... a little sweet, he thinks he smells something sweetly familiar about it now, or maybe he's just getting used to it. "Fucking impossible," he repeats, but it's barely a whisper this time.

It is fucking impossible, but Elijah believes.

Eventually, he stops staring at it (in his arms and in the spotty, clouded mirror in the bathroom) and digs around in a pile of laundry until he finds a pair of jeans. Pet is helpfully cooperative while Elijah's getting into them, clinging firmly so Elijah has no problem using both hands. He can't quite bring himself to detach it so he can put a shirt on. Pet covers most of his chest anyhow, he reasons.

And as far as Viggo goes...

Well, there isn't anything Elijah can do about that, is there? Either the guy knows what happened (more or less, anyway, and Elijah hopes less, as thinking of anyone knowing the details makes his face burn), or he doesn't.

Elijah just has to think of a way to calm him down, if it turns out he's pissed. There has to be some way Elijah can convince him not to take Pet and leave.

He can't take Pet.

Eventually, he goes to make coffee because he can't think of anything else he can do.

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-10 01:29 pm UTC (link)
"You're gonna need a name."

Viggo blinks, turning his head sharply in the direction of the voice-- Elijah. He's used to hearing that voice; this isn't an information he needs to grapple for (and anyway Viggo is the type of guy who's awake in a fraction of a second, it comes from too much travel in uncertain areas).

"Or maybe you already have one, hmm? We'll have to ask, later."

Elijah's standing in front of the table at the far side of the room, not the computer table but the makeshift plank-on-cheap-folding-legs table located right under the dirty window, with his back turned. The reason his voice was loud enough to wake Viggo is that he turned his head that way, cheek brushing the tentacles of Pet wound around his shoulder, apparently adressing It.

The beast is plastered to Elijah's back-- it can be amazingly flat when it wants, Viggo notices-- and it's holding itself there by its many limbs, backpack-straps style ones slung over shoulders, a few laced around Elijah's torso and a thicker one around his waist, two little thin tails scrunched up in his hair. It's almost like Elijah carries a baby on his back, like these African women bundling their children in wads of fabric, wearing them in slings. That's it, yeah, the Pet has hung himself from Elijah's body like a sling. Weird sight really, but it awakens heat in Viggo's gut regardless.

And then Viggo feels him, a tactile double-take as his eyes finish taking in the view, and it steals his breath away. The hair on his chest raise up in goosebumps with the phantom sensation of Elijah's own heat and muscles in his arms jump; Viggo's wrapped around him, wrapped up close and clutching-- the pad of his pinky finger tingling from a kind of tickle because one of Pet's tentacle tips rests on Elijah's treasure trail.

It looks like Pet's enough of a blanket that Elijah didn't feel the need to put a shirt on.

Viggo closes his eyes and shifts discreetly under the sheet. Nothing says he has to get up immediately, and it's nice to be able to stay there, to listen and sense and share space with Elijah unnoticed.

When he awakes the second time Elijah's speaking to himself again (himself and not the creature this time), still hunched over the table. Impossible to tell how much time has passed, it looks like it's not much, but Elijah can keep doing the same thing for long stretches of time and his present position isn't enough of a hint.

From his imperfect angle Viggo watches Elijah's precise movements (little measured jerks of his elbows that Viggo's eyes perceive but also the shift of Elijah's skin on his ribcage and the quiet, focused thump of his heart under Pet's hold) and tries to deduct what, exactly, he's doing.

Elijah moves off to the right, reaching for a legal pad and a felt-tip pen to scribble something down, muttering, and Viggo gets a glimpse of the old electronic miscroscope sitting on the table, its white plastic shell yellowed with time. He's never seen it before (Elijah's a theoretical physicist, concerned with equations, working with computers and whiteboards; he's not a chemist or a biologist), Elijah must have dragged it out of the metallic Army trunk, painted over in beige, that he keeps equipment in. There are three tiny petri dishes laid out next to it.

He frowns, reaching out mentally not to make Pet move but to cop an internal feel, trying to determine if Elijah wounded Pet in anyway, maybe sliced a bit of it for an improvised biopsy. He doubts it.

Elijah's already enamoured of it (at least that's what it-- what they looked like yesterday, a couple of improbable lovers curled up together in abandon, and the memory of it runs hot in Viggo's veins and makes him briefly close his eyes), and he's too good a scientist to ever risk something like that-- indeed, Viggo's tentative probing doesn't reveal anything.

"Good day," Viggo says softly, sitting up. Don't scare him yet. He's hungry. He needs to piss.

"I see you two get along."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-10 06:37 pm UTC (link)
Elijah twitches at the sound of Viggo's voice (Good day? What kind of thing to say is that? And last night, it had been Good Evening, like a travelling salesman or something? Weird.), but he doesn't turn. Guilt prickles between his shoulder blades and squirms uncomfortably in his belly.

"Hi," he mumbles, and bends back over the microscope in the hopes that Viggo will see he's busy and won't try to talk to him. The problem is, what's under the microscope can't keep his attention for long, because it's nothing. Nothing at all. Just like the other two dishes, all of which should contain epithelial cells from Pet.

Which doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, of course. The swabs Elijah had taken -- from surface skin, of course, he can't imagine jabbing Pet with a needle -- should at least show something. At the very least, they should show Elijah's own epithelials, as Pet has been in direct skin to skin contact with him for the last ten hours at least.

That's assuming that Pet's epidermis is structurally similar to that of most mammals, which is to say that it's either keratinized or non-keratintized stratified squamous, which seems reasonable as an assumption, since Pet seems comfortable in an environment in which humans thrive. Elijah's considered that Pet might have more in common with aquatic creatures, cuttlefish possibly (the more Elijah thinks about it, the more he thinks the oddly transitory colorations and patterns across Pet's skin is reminiscent of chromatophores, or something similar at least, which is pretty much the province of cephalopods -- which Pet arguably has quite a lot of other characteristics in common with, Elijah has to admit), but that doesn't seem quite right either. Pet has shown no particularly need or affinity for water -- it had poked a tentacle under the faucet while Elijah was filling up the carafe to make coffee, but only for a moment, and Elijah wasn't even sure it hadn't been an accident.

And its body temperature seems to indicate mammalian properties. It's warm-blooded, Elijah sure of it.

So it doesn't make sense.

He braces both palms on the edges of the table and leans, frowning and chewing his bottom lip. Thinking, face tipped up to the meager sunlight that filters in through the dirty window.

He's almost forgotten entirely about Viggo when there's a creaking from the fold out behind him. Elijah turns around, and Viggo's just sitting up, rubbing at his eyes. His hair is a comically tumbled mess, and the scruff on his cheeks is darker than it had been last night. When he lowers his hand from in front of his eyes, though, they are as palely disturbing as they had been the night before.

What had he been doing for the last ten minutes? Something cool and nervous shivers down Elijah's spine? Watching Elijah?

Pet, maybe close enough to feel the not-quite shiver, ripples it's body a little more tightly around Elijah, and emits a soft croon-like hum. All of it's vocal emissions are high-pitched, Elijah notes, and files the information away to consider later. One of Pet's tentacles twitches lightly along Elijah's neck.

Viggo's eyes flicker in the direction of the movement, and Elijah feels his cheeks heat with blood. He turns away quickly, detouring around the end of the couch-bed. "There's, um. Coffee," he offers hesitantly, moving into the kitchen. "Or."

He wrackes his brain for something to add; he doesn't actually have much else.

"Dr. Pepper," he blurts, and then bites his tongue to still it.

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-11 06:51 am UTC (link)
Viggo ho-hums and leaves the sofa bed for the kitchen, stretching lazily. He expected Elijah to be less... polite, more eager to pump information out of him; he's not that asocial after all. Seems like he at least remembers the basics.

He serves himself a cup of coffee, belatedly worries that Elijah might find weird that Viggo went straight for the right kitchen cupboard to find a clean mug (plastic, almost all of Elijah's dishes and cooking gear is plastic). Elijah's not looking anymore though, already back to frowning over his notes, presenting Viggo with his Pet-covered side again.

Elijah has let Viggo's remark about the animal go unanswered, which had to've been deliberate, but it's hard to sort out if it was out of a calculated choice to steer their interaction, or out of a flustered lack of anything to answer.

Added to the whole 'there's some coffee' host-type fumbly spiel, though, Viggo starts to think as the caffeine passes from his stomach to his brain, it indicates a minimum of (possibly unconscious) conversational shrewdness that needs to be noted. Viggo combs his fingers through his hair, finishes the coffee and files it away.

He goes for a piss and ends up making a face at himself in the mirror as he washes his hands, stretching his mouth wide this way and that, rolling his lips against his gums and giving his eyebrows a workout.

There's a subtle difference all over now, receiving gentle warm vibes from Pet's direction and the feel of another human life so close, not just geographically but kinesthetically, intertwined with his own, under his fucking skin. It's good, yes, but it's unsettling and new. Now that he's slept enough (and comfortably) the remnants of the swirling unease from his jump have dissolved, only they're replaced with this.

Viggo splashes water on his face and goes back to the living-room, where Elijah is now seated in front of his computer (the whiteboard that was masking the screen before has been moved to the wall behind it, where it hangs from a bolt). Pet still hanging against his back, Elijah's had to push his deskchair on the side: he's sitting on the kitchen stool.

"I'm hungry," Viggo tells him, and Elijah makes a small sudden movement that it's hard to identify as a shrug or a jerk of surprise, turning towards Viggo and peering, uncurious, from behind his glasses. Possibly it's both.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-11 05:14 pm UTC (link)
"There's--" Elijah says, and flickers his eyes toward the computer screen for a nervous moment, wondering if he should minimize the window, which is currently displaying the chemical breakdown of chromoatomes. Probably not, he decides after a moment's consideration. He doubts Viggo will care about Elijah wanting to know how Pet's color-shifting works. Besides that, the other open page is definitely one Elijah doesn't want Viggo to see. He shifts uncomfortably, and catches a glimpse of one of Pet's tentacles coiled lazily around Elijah's left wrist.

He smiles faintly.

"Theres?" Viggo prompts, and when Elijah glances back toward him, he's smiling slightly, both eyebrows arched in question.

"Oh, um," Elijah says uncomfortably, feeling his cheeks heat. "Sorry. There might be something, um, frozen. In the freezer."

"Indeed?"Viggo asks; he isn't smiling, but Elijah gets the distinct impression that he's amused.

Annoyance flares in Elijah's belly, an uncomfortable smolder. "You know I don't have any money," he snaps without thinking. "It's one of the first things you said when you invited yourself in."

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-12 05:13 pm UTC (link)
"Right," Viggo says, nodding decisively. He waits a beat, convinced Elijah will go from there to a more pointed question, make Viggo justify his irruption in Elijah's life and elaborate on that, but Elijah frowns and scowls; he turns back to the screen in a belligerant manner.

The glow on his cheeks looks nice, not the exact same flush Elijah gets when he jerks off but something softer, that Viggo hadn't yet seen. So young, he thinks, because the whole act has the air of a teenage show of rebellion, and he decides that it's enough needling for now. He is hungry after all.

"I'm thinking I'll breakfast outside."

Elijah doesn't turn, and the ridge of his knotted brow that Viggo can see from the side is still there as he makes the colorful rows of stuff in his window (chemistry symbols? equations?) scroll with an energetic middle finger. Viggo's sorely tempted to make Pet wiggle a bit (or two or three bits), see if Elijah stays stoic and angry then. But he doesn't.

"I'll be gone then. I'll bring some food back."

When even that doesn't get more than a twinge of Elijah's shoulders (and Pet readjusts its grip around them, so Viggo finds his arms going from slack to tense at his sides and his knees bucking slightly), Viggo suddenly needs to be out of there. Out and away and alone.

Lifting his locked shoulder bag on his way to the door, he almost kicks the half-empty can of Dr. Pepper he left there yesterday, picks it up. Pet's carrier sits empty in the middle of the room, the backpack sat in its upturned lid. Viggo wonders if he should says something else, warn Elijah to take care of Pet, act proprietary towards it maybe-- something to make Elijah take a little notice of him or show a bit more respect.

The soda is tepid and flat now, but Viggo empties the can on his way down regardless. Something to do in the elevator.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-12 07:05 pm UTC (link)
As soon as Viggo is out the door, Elijah surges up from his chair and locks it behind him. As soon as he does, it occurs to him that Viggo probably heard that.

"Shit," he mutters, and rests his forehead against the closed door for a moment. It feels like hot coals are squirming in his stomach, and he turns away from the door to brace his palms on the top of the computer table, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself down.

On his back, Pet is rippling soothingly. Elijah wonders if it can sense his tension and recognizes it as a negative emotion. A tentacle brushes lightly against the hinge of Elijah's jaw, and Pet chirps.

"Right," Elijah says, and straightens. He glances at the computer and ponders chromatophores for a few seconds, then decides he can come back to it. He wants to take advantage of Viggo's absence to take a really good look at Pet.

He clambers up into the middle of the fold out and pretzels his legs in front of him. "Okay, you impossible thing. C'mere."

It takes a couple of minutes to unwind Pet from around a Elijah's various limbs; Elijah unwound a tentacle from his right wrist only to find that another had crept around his left while he was doing it. After the third time, Elijah begins to wonder if Pet thinks it's a game (or if it's even capable of it, if it could be playful, like a many-limbed puppy), or if it genuinely doesn't want to lose contact with him.

He isn't actually sure which idea he likes better. He tugs at a tentacle, which promptly twists and wriggles out of his grasp and latches around his wrist. Elijah snickers and sneaks his other hand under one of the larger tentacles around his thigh and twiddles his fingers against it. Those fingers are immediately captured by a half dozen smaller tentacles, pinioning them.

Elijah snorts giggles. "Stop being contrary," he mutters, trying to wrestle his fingers away from the smallish tentacles that are now trying to take over his hand. "I just want to look at your belly."

Pet tugs at the fingers of the hand it's captured, one at a time, but in rapid progression. Elijah snorts again, not quite able to help it. "What are you?" he murmurs.

Tentacles unravel from Elijah's fingers abruptly, and then with that same blinding, startling speed Elijah had noted last night, all the tentacles wound around various parts of Elijah slide away and it spills into his lap like a collander full of cooked spagetti, boneless and loose and warm.

Did it understand him?

Elijah can't begin to guess. Its reactions so far have been hard to track at best. It has responded to his physical reactions to things -- at least that's how it seems -- like tension, but he isn't sure what that means, if anything. It might not be indicative of higher cognition even if those responses had been genuine rather than flukes. It might have basic animal intelligence, like a dog or a cat, and still have the ability to respond to a human being's emotional state.

"Not enough data," Elijah mutters, and gently turns Pet in his hands. It moves only to shift errant tentacles out of the way, and doesn't seem to have a problem with Elijah studying the skin of it's belly. The mass of its body is definitely larger, though it still doesn't seem big enough in relation to the number and size of tentacles. Its belly is indistinguishable from its back in all respects to the point that Elijah isn't actually sure if he's looking at the right bit of anatomy. Does it even matter to Pet? Is it -- he giggles softly -- reversible?

It takes several minutes and a piece of blue electrical tape to figure out that if he flips Pet over, it always turns itself back the same way, and then a few more minutes after that to discover that he can tell its belly from its back by touch, if not by sight.

The skin there is faintly finer, very smooth and sleek, but even then he can't tell by sight.

Pet is remarkably patient about it, Elijah thinks at first, but he eventually realizes pet is crooning very quietly -- he thinks of a purring cat again -- as Elijah handles it, and then he's smiling again, feeling stupid, but also feeling pretty fucking happy.

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-13 05:43 pm UTC (link)
Viggo comes back after an hour and half spent driving and shopping, grumpy as hell. People on the sidewalks and crossing at the wrong light annoyed him. The idiot taking his order at the drive-through annoyed him. The fat girl ringing his purchases (well, scanning and beeping them) downright infuriated him, with her pale flaccid fingers like so many overcooked bratwursts moving too slow, too limp and weak over the frozen goods.

Ninety minutes on his own but never actually alone in his body, those weird flippy floppy sensations staggering along his nerves as though he was swimming in the dark in some other plane at the same time as walking along the grocery store's isles, and Viggo's about ready to take a cheese grater to his skin to make it stop--

Of course the more obvious, handy solution would've been to stop somewhere and open a fucking window, add eyesight to the array of feeling by spying on Elijah like usual... But Viggo was irrationally angry by then, and he sped up back to the apartment instead, letting the waves of ticklish and occasionally glue-ish scrapes build up and provide a solid backing to the rage.

It takes him four tries circling the block to find a handy, long-term free parking spot for the van; two tries with the dumb plastic crate that keeps folding back before he can arrange all of his load in a portable manner; seven different intercom buttons before someone beeps the door to the building open instead of asking him who he is suspiciously (and why didn't he make a copy of those keys yesterday, or take them with him when he left, why?); two full minutes for the elevator to come down. By the time Viggo exits at the right floor his jaw is clenched so tight it hurts, and he's very fucking seriously considering scientific research on his own just so he can make emotions travel along with motor commands on the immaterial leash linking Pet to him.

The beast is probably having fun (whatever fun is for its mysterious species, anyway), palpating and twining and sliding all over Elijah's smooth body, inhaling heated pheromones and musk and getting gentle awed strokes of his fingers in return; Viggo gets sulky stares, silent shrugs and-- a bolted fucking door.

No.

Viggo briefly considers using the Pet; it'd be easy enough to tug it away from Elijah and make it fetch the keys or something, but to work it'd require that Viggo opens that window to see what he's doing and somewhere along the line he apparently decided he wouldn't, not this time, no matter how senseless the promise to himself is. And he has enough anger to melt that cheap security lock himself, thank you very much.

From the depths of his shoulder bag Viggo extracts a powerful magnet and his set of pick locks, and he funnels all his rumbling petulance into intent, stilling his body save for his fingertips, steeling himself against any Pet-induced jerkiness with deep breaths.

The door unlocks with a small click. Viggo puts away his tools in his bag and rolls his neck and stiff shoulders; he can feel a regular back and forth ghosting of what are probably Elijah's fingers on Pet's back. It doesn't stop as he pushes the door ajar, loaded with bag and crate, which must mean that Elijah is too focused to have heard Viggo yet. Good.

He strides in and lets the crate drop from hip-height and clatter to the floor, and then announces, loud (and tonelessly, trying for scary and sure and goddamn booming), without looking around:

"Food. Put it away. Don't ever lock the door on me when I leave you alone with my Pet."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-13 07:15 pm UTC (link)
Elijah jumps when the door slams open with enough force that it bounces off the wall behind it, on which Elijah's whiteboard is currently pegged.

For an instant, he's torn between the desire to hide Pet and jump up to inspect the damage.

It turns out not to be necessary to hide Pet, as evidenced by Viggo roaring his displeasure.

Pet doesn't react to the bellowing, which leads Elijah to believe either a) Viggo does this sort of thing often enough that Pet is used to it, and feels it's nothing to be concerned about, or b) Pet is lacking the auditory facilities to receive the information, which Elijah has to consider, since Pet doesn't have any dermal openings at all that he could locate in his meticulous examination.

Whatever the reason, Pet doesn't start or react in any way, and since there's no need to hide it from Viggo, Elijah feels free to dart across the room, shoving the door shut to examine the whiteboard. "Fuck," he snarls, fumbling blindly for a dry erase marker, vaguely aware of Viggo watching him. One of Pet's tentacles makes a move for the whiteboard, and Elijah brushes it aside absently as he uncaps the marker and quickly writes over the smeared bits of equation.

When he's finished, he jams the lid back on the marker and whirls on Viggo (who looks, Elijah thinks, nearly as surprised as Elijah feels at finding himself doing so), and hisses, "Since you clearly had no problem getting in, I'll thank you not to destroy my work in a fit of ill temper, Mr. Mortensen. Next time you go out, take the fucking keys, because I will lock my goddamned door. I don't dare leave it unsecured in this neighborhood, not if I value my life and the life of your Pet."

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-13 10:22 pm UTC (link)
"This equation has been on this board for months, Mr. Wood, and you would be able to recite it in your fucking sleep."

Viggo says it slowly, articulating, and he's surprised to hear the calm in his own voice, to find his anger deflated. It's almost pleasant knowing that he can provoke reactions. Fuck that, it is pleasant.

He turns to get chips from the crate and goes to sit on the sofa bed with the pack in hand, cracking it open.

"You just spent a whole night with that door unlocked, it didn't seem to bother you then. Do you have a time-sensitive kind of selective paranoia?" Elijah looks at him with his mouth open, and Viggo stuffs his own with chips and chews with loud crackling noises. "Indeed, next time I'll take the fucking keys. Maybe you could have told me I should in advance."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-13 10:42 pm UTC (link)
"Didn't do it on purpose. I fell asleep," Elijah mutters, but he doesn't really want to go into that, so he merely flips the locks on the door (three), arching a brow at Viggo that indicates the improbability of Elijah having three locks on his door if he weren't normally quite conscientious about using them. Viggo says nothing; merely continues to chomp noisily at his chips.

Elijah's belly rumbles loudly enough to be heard in the hallway, and he sighs. It's pointless to snipe at Viggo anyhow. He can't afford to piss him off, and Elijah's pretty sure that's what really has his back up about Viggo slamming in and issuing orders and booming at Elijah.

He hunkers down to take a look in the crate of groceries, pulling items out at random. It isn't until he's pulled out two kinds of bell peppers -- yellow and green -- that he makes the connection that he's got everything he needs to make his standard beef stirfry, and in the correct proportions. Even down to the peppers. Elijah doesn't buy red bell peppers. He knows that they don't taste any different, not really, but he's never liked them in his stirfry.

And then he remembers: "This equation has been on this board for months, Mr. Wood, and you would be able to recite it in your fucking sleep."

He stands slowly, tipping his glasses up with the back of his hand to rub at his eyes.

Marlboro Lights and Dr. Pepper. And.

Elijah's cheeks burn, but. It would be an awful stretch to accept that this man knows these things about him, and doesn't know what Pet would be to him. It would be foolish to believe it, no matter how panicky the idea of it makes Elijah feel.

Once you discover the configuration of a thing, you can manipulate its individual components; it's one of the basics of physics, and the premise under which Elijah has been doing the majority of his research and theoretical application for the last year and a half.

Okay, he thinks, and takes a deep breath. Pet flexes around his torso in a sinuous ripple and the tip of one tentacle pokes into Elijah's belly button for a second.

With immense and concentrated effort, Elijah ignores Pet. It's hard as hell.

Cigarettes and Dr. Pepper and the offer of money for funding had happened last night, and after initial protests, Elijah had barely given any of the three any thought, though they are all things he would've said would tempt him if he'd been asked twenty-four hours ago.

And Pet.

All things designed to placate him. Designed to absorb his attention while a perfect stranger insinuated himself into Elijah's small and relatively orderly life.

And it had worked embarrassingly well. Only one of the four had really been necessary, after all. Elijah hasn't had a soda or smoked a cigarette yet.

Discover the configuration of events, he thinks, and looks at the groceries at his feet, then at Viggo.

"Who are you?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-14 05:47 pm UTC (link)
Viggo's only alarmed for a second-- for some reason he didn't expect that exact question to be the first one, nor did he think Elijah would manage to ask it now.

But the guy is clever, more like a genius really, and Viggo's known that a long time so he can't be totally thrown off when Elijah uses his brain. Plus he's getting what he was looking for, however uncomfortable that turns out to be: direct interaction. Dialogue.

"Viggo Mortensen," he smiles, and Elijah rolls his eyes and Viggo has to laugh. "What, you could've googled it, you know."

He gets up, rolling the top of the bag of chips, and steps closer. "You should cook, now that you can; I can't. Talking's better done over food." And it'll give me time to figure out what to tell you exactly at first. "Maybe get that animal off your back for a while?"

It's a test, kind of, Viggo wants to see how pushy Elijah will get with questionning, and how reluctantly he can let Pet slide off him when it's not just to poke at it in scientific or childish glee-- which Viggo guesses is what Elijah was doing that made his skin fill up and his stomach roil while he went shopping.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-15 06:29 pm UTC (link)
Elijah bristles on Pet's behalf; he knows it's totally ridiculous, but he doesn't like Mortensen's tone. He can hardly do anything about it, however. Elijah doesn't doubt for an instant that his not-so-subtle mention of Pet is meant as a reminder of who it belongs to. A reminder that Pet isn't Elijah's, and that if Elijah insists on being too pushy, Mortensen could always take his toys and go home.

He takes a long moment to consider the situation as objectively as he's capable of, which, he's aware, isn't very objective at all.

The evidence suggests that Viggo wants to be here. For whatever reason, he has deliberately placed himself here, has gone to some lengths to do so, and Elijah doubts very much that Viggo is likely to simply throw up his hands in disgust and leave, that being the case.

He can deliver unsubtle reminders all he likes; the truth is, Elijah has something Viggo values enough to come here.

Elijah supposes it's information on bridge theory. He doesn't have anything else, and that's the God's honest truth. It's vaguely possible that it's not bridge theory itself, but rather Elijah's own understanding of the scientific principles that allow him to formulate it. Or almost formulate it, anyway. Why else offer Elijah money to further the work?

So.

They are both on equal footing, more or less.

They each have something that the other wants.

And Elijah isn't quite willing to be totally controlled by what he wants.

Pet shifts minutely and croon-chirps; one tentacle has slipped very slightly under the waist of Elijah's jeans. Elijah shivers.

At least, not yet.

"I'll cook if you talk," he says flatly. "You can start with how you know what you know."

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-16 06:28 pm UTC (link)
Goddamn. He's too fucking fast.

Viggo shrugs. "I'm not the one who's hungry, I just had tacos for breakfast. You don't have to cook if you'd rather starve."

"I've been watching you for a while," he continues, marching (as much as you can call it marching when it only takes four steps) into the kitchen and plonking down on the second stool, stoically, adding another light shrug to the non-committal sentence. Ultimately Viggo supposes he'll have to share his own secret, and if he's honest with himself he's even looking forward to that. But fuck, it's too soon.

"I was interested."

He rests his elbows on his knees and links his hand under his chin, throwing a pointed look at Elijah. It's going to be like pulling teeth, isn't it?

Viggo ponders manipulating Pet-- would Elijah keep up his sulky teenage tough-guy act if tentacles started softly caressing him all over? Would that bring him to his knees and drive the curiosity out of his mind for another moment, or would he scramble to disentangle himself from the creature, blushing furiously, and try to forge on? The small noise and shift the beast just dispensed have had a noticeable effect on Elijah, even in anger... It's extraordinarily tempting to see what a tenfold version of those would do.

But Viggo decides to wait a bit for that, give Elijah a chance to soften and stop frowning first, if he's willing.

"I'm not a man in black from an unfriendly organization," he says with a smile. "I'm not here to threaten your life, but to enhance it. Can't you recognize a good thing when you see it? If you can get along with It," Viggo points at Elijah's torso, since the Pet and his body occupy the same space, "you can get along with me, too, I'm sure."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-16 09:27 pm UTC (link)
Viggo sounds, Elijah thinks, a bit like a televangelist.

For a low, one time contribution, Elijah's sure Viggo'd be happy to arrange all sorts of 'life enhancement.'

He hunkers down over the grocery bags as much to conceal the curl of his lip as to sort through what's there.

Everything Elijah needs -- even the right brand of malt vinegar, Elijah's secret ingredient -- to feed himself (probably for most of the week, considering leftovers), including fresh garlic and two sixpacks of Dos Equis. A fucking feast.

There's another bag stuffed with junk food, which Elijah dismisses. Viggo's already helped himself to chips from that bag, so it's likely those items were purchased to his taste, rather than to Elijah's.

But the stir-fry. Well. 'Watching you for a while' seems like a hell of an understatement, considering.

Elijah shoves everything back into the bag and hauls it into the kitchen, steering carefully clear of Viggo's knees.

And "interested" in what, exactly.

But it's obvious that Viggo either isn't yet ready to actually answer questions, or has no intention of ever doing so. Which leaves Elijah in something of a predicament.

He bends and retrieves his only decent pice of cookware -- stovetop wok -- out of the cupboard, and uses a damp towel to wipe away a layer of dust. He hasn't actually had much to cook in it lately. Pet rides comfortably on Elijah's back, its weight evenly distributed among Elijah's shoulders and waist; it predictably pokes a tentacle under the faucet as it had when Elijah had made coffee earlier, but this time it flicks the water up into Elijah's face. Elijah snorts and bats the offending limb gently away, and it settles around the top of Elijah's thigh.

Whatever Viggo says, Elijah suspects Pet is a hell of a lot easier to get along with.

He rummages in a drawer until he comes up with an apron and loops it around his neck to cover his chest, securing it in the back with a bow. He's sure he looks ridiculous -- he thinks he can feel Viggo's eyes on him -- but it'll keep his bare chest and Pet both safe from hot spatter.

He doesn't look at Viggo while he chops peppers and seasons raw meat. He has the sneaking suspicion that Viggo is perfectly fine with things just as they are, lack of talking and everything, but he can't figure why. Surely Viggo's chances of learning whatever it is he came here to learn from Elijah are better if they're at least communicating civilly.

Unless.

Viggo has no intention of learning anything from Elijah at all.

The computer, after all, is right there. The files, the whiteboard, the equation...

Elijah frowns. None of it makes any sense.

And the skin of his back is practically fucking crawling with Viggo's eyes.

He turns around abruptly, and sees that he isn't wrong.

Viggo returns his regard mildly, unperturbed at being caught staring.

"Let's start from the beginning," Elijah says carefully. "I'm Elijah Wood. I'm a physicist. I'm studying instaneous physical translocation, in theory and in practice. I'm twenty-three, and I'm living on roughly seven thousand dollars a year. I don't have any friends on any pets, and I only know how to cook maybe six different dishes. And I think you already know all of that."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-16 09:27 pm UTC (link)

Viggo doesn't admit or deny anything, not that Elijah had really expected him to.

"Your name is Viggo Mortensen," Elijah continues. "You're around forty, plus or minus five years. I'm usually better with people's ages, but your eyes look older than the rest of you, and I can't tell whether to believe your face or your eyes. You drive a van, can get through locked doors without breaking them down, and somehow you know things about me that you shouldn't. Also, you own a pet -- or you own Pet -- that appears to be an uncatalogued species or a genetically engineered specimen."

Viggo's lips have curled up on one side, less a smirk and more an incomplete smile.

"How am I doing so far?" Elijah asks.

"Nothing that's totally off-base," Viggo drawls. "What else you got?"

Elijah shakes his head. "Still working up a hypothesis, ask me again in an hour." He sidles past Viggo and snags a six pack off the carpet, carrying it back into the kitchen.

Viggo tugs a beer from the carrier as Elijah walks past, and when Elijah glances up he sees that Viggo's setting the alarm on his watch. He feels a flash of genuine amusement, and snorts, and Viggo glances up from his watch, maybe a little surpirsed, and his smile looks pretty genuine as well.

"Yes or no questions?" Elijah asks. "In turns?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-18 09:21 pm UTC (link)
"Sure," Viggo says, and he twists open his beer and adds with a cheeky smile, "My turn then, that counts as yours."

Elijah tilts his head, pushes around the beers he put on the counter and lifts his knife again, turning the handle in his hand with a snort. Not that he intends to threaten Viggo with that, not seriously at all. He's simply waiting.

Viggo takes a long pull out of his beer and Elijah turns back to the work at hand, having, he feels, waited enough.

"Will you cook for me too? Yes or no," Viggo asks behind him, unperturbed. "I bought for two, presumably. Tried to."

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-18 09:37 pm UTC (link)
"Yes," Elijah says at once, and doesn't elaborate by adding that his mother would murder him if he did otherwise.

He's not exactly surprised at Viggo's first question. After all, the man knows things, Elijah's already aware of that. He won't need to cover the breadth of information that Elijah will, and thus the things he asks are less likely to be designed to gain an overview type perspective on Elijah. It'll be interesting in and of itself -- telling -- to see what questions Viggo chooses.

It might give Elijah some idea of exactly how much the man knows already, anyway.

Elijah doesn't have that luxury. He's going ot have to balance what he needs to know with the one thousand and one things (most of them about Pet) he wants to know in order to maximize this opportunity. He suspects rather strongly that Viggo won't let the exchange go on long enough for the questions to get too potentially damaging (assuming that there are questions out there that he wouldn't want to answer), so he also needs to try and get as much information as possible with as few questions as feasible.

Compound questions are the way to go, using words that are broad enough to encompass several possible contingencies. At least at first.

He finishes cutting a pepper and sets the knife down to take a beer from the cardboard caddy and twist off the top. He takes a sip, and turns to look at Viggo. He hadn't been lying about being a good judge of ages; he's a pretty good judge of people in general, a side effect of an entire high school and college career of watching them. He's aware that he isn't terribly effective at one on one social interaction, but he thinks he's got a solid chance of catching it if Viggo lies.

"Do you intend any harm whatsoever to me or my work?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-19 10:31 am UTC (link)
Viggo waits a beat, pondering that. The answer is no, quite certainly, but then.. Define harm. Is there anyway Elijah might give the word a wider definition than Viggo? There is. Can it, should it make a difference in his answer? Nope. No way to know what Elijah would put into that category...

If he didn't already classify Pet's presence and influence on him as harm (he could have, but then, now'd be a little late for him to cry wolf, isn't it? Not with Pet crawling all over him earlier and now dozing on his back, not when Viggo can see that the mere contact of the animal soothes Elijah and makes his mouth involuntarily smooth out in a quiet half-smile as he cooks), then Viggo thinks none of what he, personally, would love to see unfold after that can be counted as harm either. As for the research, his interest in it isn't malicious in the least.

"No."

Elijah doesn't have a marked reaction to the answer, just a twitch of his eye in his otherwise calm face, as though this semi-blink merely marks the write to disk command of Elijah committing it to memory, nothing more.

Viggo's seen him do that kind of thing several times, but never this close, never head-on. And of course, it was never directed at him. It feels odd.

"Do you like swimming?"

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-19 08:06 pm UTC (link)
Elijah blinks, considering.

Viggo's expression hasn't changed, nothing but mild curiosity. He tips the bottle of beer up to his lips and swallows without taking his eyes off of Elijah. Elijah sees that Viggo's hands are broad and look a little chapped.

Surely the man doesn't know so much about Elijah that he needn't bother with anything more... relevant than that.

Surely not. There's a tight knot in his belly, though, because (although he can't possibly tell from just one question, of course, it's not scientific in the least to draw conclusions from such a shallow pool of data) he's very much afraid that Viggo does. He wants very much to know how Viggo knows what he knows, and spends approximately two minutes attempting to fashion a yes or no question that might address the issue, but it's no use. He doesn't have enough information to be able to even fashion a useful question.

Viggo clears his throat, and Elijah glances up. It occurs to him that he hasn't answered the question, and that he's absently stroking the fingertips of one hand along the material of the apron, exploring the outline of one of Pet's tentacles.

"No," he manages, ignoring his warm cheeks and letting his hand fall to his side. He turns deliberately back toward the counter and resumes work on the stir fry. Then, inexplicably, he adds, "I never learned how. I'm... afraid of deep water."

Then he bites his tongue, abruptly aggravated with himself, and overcompensates by blurting out the first shocking question that pops into his head (regretting it before it's even fully out): "Are you aware that your creature displays every indication of having a sexual appetite?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-20 02:29 pm UTC (link)
Viggo chuckles, a flurry of full-throated sounds evolving into an incredulous higher-pitched peal of laughter. Elijah only turns his head to glance at him from the corner of his eyes, even more annoyed, the regret about his choice of question edging into something like fear.

This shouldn't be so funny, and the laughter can only be that Viggo knows, that his answer will be yes, a resounding yes. Frightening prospect, because... What does it mean about the man's motives and intentions?

"Yes," he says indeed, his voice calm again, and Elijah can see light still dancing merrily in his eyes, can see the skin at their corners crinkled by the outburst, the dimple in his cheek not yet smoothed out.

Viggo takes a deep breath followed by more beer, draining the bottle. Now that was unexpected. Sort of. Explaining that it's not a proper sexual appetite for Pet but more of a, er, feeding thing, explaining what Viggo can (what he knows) about the organism and the metabolism of Pet-- not an option, at this point. Wouldn't be wise, and it's out of the boundaries of the game. Viggo likes the game.

He tries to decide if he needs another harmless question (like him, harmless, like Pet), one that will puzzle Elijah and bring Viggo some piece of getting-to-know-you information he doesn't have (and wants)... Or if it's time to bluff and ask something he already knows, just so it sounds a little more normal.

That feels a little too sneaky.

Oh, here's one. Yeah, Viggo's wondered about that. Elijah's drive.

"Is there any amount of money-- No, wait. Is there anything at all, short of simple survival-- say, a gun to your head or whatever-- that would make you abandon your research?"

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-21 10:48 pm UTC (link)
"N-" he begins, but the word doesn't even fully emerge before Elijah starts wondering if it's even true. Used to be true, yes. True as little as twenty four hours ago.

His work has always been the most important thing in his life. Always. Even before College, even before High School, Elijah had been a scientist.

First chemistry set at seven, first set of encyclopedias the next year for his birthday, first set of control group experiments almost immediately after that, and when he was ten he built a solar powered generator which, as far as he knows, is still being used to power his mom's house, though it had received a substantial systems upgrade when Elijah turned nineteen and made certain (not entirely legal) performance adjustments.

First Place in every science fair ever entered (not as many as you'd think, though, as his interest in being the center of attention waned right around puberty), and so many job offers that he'd stopped opening them after a while.

He still occasionally gets them in the mail, though the ones from the government (three different organizations within) had stopped when they yanked his grant (not because he wasn't making progress, but because he refused to share the details of his progress with them).

His work has always been the defining reason for his existence, and he feels dizzy and faint all the sudden, and has to curl his hand (sticky with meat jusices) around the edge of the counter because his knees feel wobbly and untrustworthy.

Twenty four hours ago, he'd have assured Viggo that even a gun to his head wouldn't be enough to make him abandon it.

There is nothing good about this obsession with this thing, nothing healthy, he tells himself (and in his head he sounds like the therapist his dad had insisted Elijah see when he was fourteen and "failing to develop age-appropriate social skills"), and he would very much like to pretend that knowing that makes the slightest bit of difference.

"Elijah?" Viggo says, and Elijah would have to be deaf or stupid not to hear the concern laced with alarm in the man's voice.

Elijah thinks he should probably be concerned that hearing it comforts him a little, reassures him, because if Viggo is concerned, then probably he isn't dangerous, probably he really doesn't intend Elijah any harm (which isn't the same at all as thinking Viggo's presence won't cause Elijah any harm; quite the contrary, taking into consideration what he's feeling right now, Elijah's certain that enough harm has already been done to change his life forever), maybe he won't steal Elijah's research, and perhaps, when he goes -- which he will, everyone eventually gets exasperated with Elijah in the end -- he might be convinced to leave something behind.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-21 10:49 pm UTC (link)

And Elijah just doesn't want to contemplate what he might give, what he might sacrafice, to make that happen.

"Elijah!" Viggo demands this time, and half rises to his feet. Elijah turns to face him (in the way that a person instinctively turns to face a threat every time, instead of the smart thing, which Elijah knows is usually to run, not that knowing that is helping him implement it), hands out in a warding gesture.

"FINE," he shouts, and then manages to modulate his voice to something more reasonable (not to mention believable), and repeats, "I'm fine, it's fine, please don't touch me."

He only realizes how insulting a thing to say it is when Viggo recoils, dropping back onto the stool like his ass is a lead weight, the vaguest hint of something reproachful flickering in his stranges eyes and thinning his lips.

"I-" Elijah says, and then stops, because he doesn't want to apologize to Viggo, has no obligation to under the circumstances, and turns back toward the counter, head tipped so far down that his chin nearly touches his chest. "I don't know the answer to that question," he says instead of apologizing, and picks up the knife, mechanically returning to chopping, though nothing really needs more chopping.

Viggo doesn't say anything, and fully three minutes pass in silence. Elijah's has begun tossing things into the wok by the time he realizes it's his turn to ask a question.

It takes him another two minutes of struggling to condense extremely complicated questions into something that can feasibly answered with a yes or no, and in the end, all he can come up with is a staggeringly stupid, "Did you ask that question because you want me to abandon my research for some reason?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-24 03:57 pm UTC (link)
"No."

Viggo's tired of the game now, and it takes him some effort to not elaborate on that, provide detailed reassurance. Of course Elijah doesn't trust him totally yet, he wanted it that way. But just a little, no like this... There should be an underlying coat of trust that's enough for Elijah to know he's not truly in danger. If Viggo wanted the research to stop all he'd have to do is wait for the day Elijah's meagre reserves of cash would dry out, soon.

That there isn't is irritating in a way Viggo doesn't even want to consider.

He leaves the kitchen area to go get a cigarette from the pack he brought for Elijah yesterday, lights it up and takes a huge noisy drag. Viggo doesn't smoke very often-- it's hard to be a social smoker when you're not social to begin with, and he's had his fair share of experiences with all sorts of drugs, which made him basically wary of all of them-- but sometimes nicotine is exactly the rush he needs, like now.

Elijah goes on stirring and tossing food in the wok, the mixed juices of meat and vegetable and the flavors of spices rising and spreading in the small apartment and competing with the fragrant smoke Viggo releases in the air, pacing restlessly.

Pet must be asleep now (Viggo's noticed a while ago how it's not a problem for the animal to stay curled tightly in the same position even as it sleeps); the sensation of having Elijah's body fitted between his limbs has faded in the past five minutes to finally vanish completely. Another frustration: as Elijah's reluctance to the mere physical presence of Viggo became so violently manifest, Viggo would've liked to be able to hang on to that vicarious feeling to soothe the wounded prickling.

That Pet fell sleep after Elijah's outburst might have a deep significance, even, maybe a precise reason.. To punish Viggo that way, or to take itself out of the equation? Perhaps it's like a little kid hating fights between its parents. Or it's just a dumb animal and Viggo's reading too much into it.

"I pass," Viggo eventually sighs, stepping back in the kitchen bit and dropping his cigarette butt in the ashtray.

Tension has receded, folded into the back of his neck and the muscles of his shoulders, reduced to a shimmer of headache; lassitude fills the void it left right behind Viggo's forehead, behind his eyelids as he closes his eyes, his back to Elijah. He had it good with the window, observing from afar. His hand twitches unconsciously for the feel of the transmitter, the clicky knob turning by increments, the place where his hold worn the hard plastic smooth over time.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-25 09:42 pm UTC (link)
Elijah has always known that he doesn't deal all that well with other people, even before the therapist. It got worse after that, though, after the questions about what he thought of other people ("Do you know what a sociopath is, Elijah?), about his parent, about Hannah and Zach, about his schoolmates and his teachers. Knowing became a kind of prickling, jagged, ever-present awareness that he is bound to fuck up, and it's obvious that's exactly what he's doing.

Viggo's back is a straight, tense line, and he has every right to be offended.

Not that Elijah doesn't have the right to question him; he believes firmly that he does, that it would be foolish not to. But it's one thing to be uncertain of a person's motives, and another to be rude.

With the guilt, uncertainty comes back, and he doesn't know what to do. There's also the nagging, unworthy fear that Viggo will get sick of Elijah's shit, and when he leaves, he'll take Pet with him. Elijah can't help being a little ashamed of himself that the possibility of that is more motivation for some kind of peace offering than anything else, but there it is.

He chews on his bottom lip and tosses the contents of the wok expertly, adding a splash of soy sauce and a couple of pinches of red pepper when it smells right. He likes to cook, and if he ever had any money, he'd probably buy a cookbook and learn to cook some more things. But stirfry is cheap and fast, and Elijah loves spicy foods.

He wonders if it'll be too spicy for Viggo, and frowns at not having asked before adding the pepper.

Well. Nothing he can do about it now.

He divides the contents of the wok onto two blue plastic plates, and digs around in the kitchen drawer until he finds a couple of forks. One's a salad fork, so he takes that and puts the real fork with Viggo's plate, juggling them slightly so that he can grab his beer, too.

"Viggo?" Elijah says, and it occurs to him for the first time that it's a strange name, interesting. He makes a mental note to look it up online later and find out the origin, see what it means.

Viggo turns slightly, and his mouth is still faintly tense, but his eyes don't look quite as cool.

Elijah's mouth goes dry, and for a minute he fumbles something, stammers a few disconnected syllables with no real meaning, and finally latches on to the yes or no question session, and manages, "D-do you l-like spicy food?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-11-27 10:21 pm UTC (link)
Viggo nods and shakes tension out of his shoulders.

"Yeah," he says, "spicy food's good, I like Mexican a lot."

With his foot he shoves his stool gently across the kitchen linoleum to Elijah, and goes to grab the second one from its spot in front of the computer. Where Elijah used it last because Pet on his back stopped him from sitting on his deskchair, but Viggo's purposefully avoiding to think about that, about how strangely normal Elijah looks with the animal slung all over him and sleeping quietly while Elijah goes about his business. Viggo doesn't think either about the steady little fire the sight fuels in his belly, and he brings the stool back in the kitchen and sits on it quietly, takes up his fork to fig enthusiastically in the stir-fry.

"It does, too," Viggo jerks his thumb in the vague direction of Pet and takes a forkful of food. "Like spicy food, I mean. It likes it on skin."

And he stuffs the food in his mouth and starts chewing enthusiastically.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-27 11:43 pm UTC (link)
It likes it on...

Elijah pauses in the act of putting his own plate down on the bar, peripherally aware that the plate is tilted slightly, and that the contents are very slowly sliding toward the tabletop, but so caught up it the brilliant flashbulb of understanding that sacrificing his lunch seems a small price to pay.

He turns his face toward his own shoulder where several of the creatures tentacles lay heavy and solid against his skin, and inhales deeply, smells the spice and the underlying sweetness that is new, since just this morning.

Viggo reaches across the table and takes Elijah's plate and puts it down, but he doesn't say anything, doesn't interrupt Elijah's train of thought, and Elijah wonders distantly if it's because he's polite, or if it's because Viggo knows better, if he really knows so much about Elijah that he understands not to bother trying to talk to Elijah right now.

But the vague curiosity escapes him, overwhelmed by his considerably more burning interest in it, Viggo's creature, which he calls 'The Pet' and 'Pet' pretty much interchangably, which doesn't breathe as far as Elijah can tell, and which has nothing that Elijah could locate that might be considered a dermal opening, either for intake of nutrients or excretion.

Because it absorbs nutrients through its skin, Elijah thinks, and he's fairly sure that's right, but three swabs under the 'scope tell Elijah it doesn't excrete the same way, and suddenly Elijah very much wants to look at Pet under magnification.

He remembers the ripple of muscle as Pet settled onto his hand, and more vividly (and heat floods his face even as his dick twitches at the memory) the feel of it splayed upon his belly, the slow, tidal pulse of its muscles as Elijah came down, and it hadn't even occured to him when he woke this morning that he hadn't been sticky.

High protein content, Elijah's brain notes, not to mention a high caloric content, lots of good stuff, stuff it would need, but not a lot of excess either, the perfect nutrient really, it makes sense, and it does, intellectually, it makes perfect sense, but Elijah still sits down rather abruptly, not quite managing to land squarely on the stool, so that for a moment it tips crazily, and he's sure he's going over. He sees Viggo, up on his feet an leaning across the surface of the bar, but it's going to be too late, Elijah can tell, though he appreciates the gesture.

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[info]shaenie
2004-11-27 11:44 pm UTC (link)
He doesn't fall, though, because several of the big appendages looped over Elijah's shoulder unwind like chinese yo-yo's, unimaginably fast and Elijah feels the coils of Pet's anatomy shift and tensing, changing, and he is suddenly being supported, cradled, all along his right side. The tipping stops in mid-arc, and for a moment Elijah sort of hangs there, body at a forty-five degree angle from the floor.

Crazily, Elijah remembers reading something about how some scientists had found marks on a sixty foot sperm whale that they insisted could only come from the tentacles of a giant squid, and he wonders how fucking strong a squid would have to be to scar up a goddamn whale.

He glances over -- he isn't afraid of falling, oddly enough, he's just curious -- and sees that several of Pet's tentacles are wrapped around the edge of the bar, the edge of the kitchen counter, and two are wrapped around Viggo's forearm, which he's holding upright, elbow locked and fist clenched. Elijah can see the muscle in Viggo's farm quivering tautly.

It can't be more than two seconds, though it feels longer, and then Elijah's being pulled upright, tipping past the point where he'd lost his balance. He looks down when he feels the stool shift under his ass, and sees a couple of tentacles scooting it into position.

Then he's sitting on his stool like nothing happened. He is still holding his beer, he realizes, and blinks at it dumbly. Pet lets go of bar and counter and Viggo, and settles itself back around Elijah's shoulders.

Viggo looks at Elijah for a moment. He isn't smiling, but for some reason Elijah is sure he wants to. Then Viggo goes back to eating like nothing happened.

Elijah has no idea what to say, so he pretends nothing happened too, and goes back to thinking about the way Pet eats, and the sharp, almost dissonant idea that it had to have eaten before it met Elijah. Which would mean, of course, that...

"How exactly..." Elijah blurts, and then ponders the idea of whamming his face down on the top of the bar. Viggo's eyes flicker up from his plate, both brows arched upward. "I mean, do you...?"

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[info]anatsuno
2004-12-05 09:23 am UTC (link)
It takes a few seconds for Viggo to make any kind of sense of the question. He's still internally shaking from the incident, his heart beating a little too strong and a little too fast, trying to understand and trying not to show it. Semi-hysterical laughter is probably not what Elijah needs to hear at this time.

Viggo hadn't been aware at all that he'd projected his mad scrambling tentative to stop Elijah from falling along the connection with Pet-- which was asleep, anyway. That he did, the impulse from his brain broadcast strongly enough to wake It up, is huge; that Pet reacted this fast to an unvoluntary tugging and left Viggo with immediate and cooperative control of its limbs is quite-- impressive, unsettling. Good to know, certainly.

And then Elijah asked something, and Viggo has had to rewind the last few seconds and think hard to make sense of it, because his first spontaneous understanding of it is that the question has to do with the near-fall, but it doesn't make sense with Elijah's words.

Oh, feeding Pet.

"I do," Viggo says, extremely aware now of Pet's hold on Elijah's chest, a tingling in his arms and legs that he tries to ignore as Elijah shifts on the stool. "There's a form of, uhm, imprinting that takes place, with a creature like that. And I couldn't let it starve, anyway, it might've died before I made it here."

Even as Viggo says it he realizes he's not sure of that, though, not sure what happens to this species when they don't form the bonds they're designed to form with human masters. And he let slip maybe more than he should have... Must be the shock of this impromptu multi-hands athletic save, he's not quite recovered from that yet.

Viggo looks down to his plate and starts eating again, exhilarated still but more than a little nervous.

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[info]shaenie
2004-12-08 07:57 pm UTC (link)
For several seconds, Elijah says nothing. He picks up his fork for something to do with at least one of his hands, and stares at his plate.

He's thinking too hard to actually eat -- he'd probably stab his lip with his fork if he tried, God knows he's done it before, once hard enough to send the time of a rather vicious shrimp fork all the way through his bottom lip, much to his mother's disgust. He taps the edge of the fork against the plastic plate and chews at his bottom lip, ordering bits of information in his mind as well as he can, with all the gaps in his knowledge-base.

"Things he knows" is a distressingly short category, far outstripped by both "Things he thinks" and "Things he wonders." Moving empathetic behavior from "thinks" to "knows" doesn't really balance it out much, as now Viggo's motivations has moved from "wonders" to "thinks" -- or at least in some small respect they had.

"...it might have died before I made it here.

Such a phrase suggests two things immediately.

The first is that Viggo came from either a large distance or via and unsafe path.

The second is that Viggo had obtained pet at some point en route to Elijah. Perhaps getting Pet had marked the beginning of the journey, perhaps it had happened sometime along the way; either way, it seems to indicated that Viggo's feet had already been on the path to Elijah's door when Pet had come into his possession (if that's even the right word, which Elijah highly doubts if the creature is as empathetic as his experience with it seems to suggest).

Which begs a question.

He glances up at Viggo, stilling the hand that's still tapping with his fork. Viggo, a bite raised halfway to his lips, looks up as soon as the tapping stops, his pale eyes meeting Elijah's gaze fearlessly. Elijah shivers -- Viggo's gaze has weight, somehow, is heavy with experience, perhaps -- but doesn't look away.

Pet shifts its weight on Elijah's back, several of the large tentacles anchoring it tightening slightly, and the tip of one of its slenderest limbs tickles the hinge of Elijah's jaw. Viggo's eyes are drawn to the movement for just a moment.

Yes, Elijah thinks, feeling calm, feeling almost distant from this moment. It practically screams a question, in fact. He isn't sure what answer he wants to hear from Viggo; he isn't even sure he cares which it is.

He just wants to know what Viggo will say.

"Which one of us did you find for the other?" he asks, and almost doesn't recognize his own voice, it's so low and intent.

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[info]anatsuno
2004-12-22 09:00 am UTC (link)
Viggo's face splits open with a sudden smile and his fork waves a bit in the air between them.

"Funny you should ask."

He takes the time to finish swallowing his (already chewed) mouthful, clear gaze wandering over Elijah's face and chest, following the winding path of a delicately colored tentacle under his arm.

"I tracked it down first," he says finally, with a low voice, sounding lazy. "I thought you'd appreciate It."

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[info]shaenie
2005-01-05 07:53 pm UTC (link)
"You..." Elijah begins, but his voice doesn't seem to be able to carry out the entire sentence he'd had in mind. Not that he's even sure what that sentence was going to be.

He looks down quickly, even though Viggo isn't actually looking into his face right now. Viggo's attention is fixed firmly on Elijah's chest, on Pet, or at least that's what it looks like, but Elijah doesn't want him looking upward suddenly. It would feel like being caught.

Caught doing what, he isn't sure, but he still doesn't want to feel that way. He can feel his cheeks burning as it is, the suspicion that Viggo knows certain... things turned to certainty, and that's bad enough without feeling caught on top of it.

Pet's long, sleek limbs ripple, just a moment of pressure, like a quick hug, and Elijah wonders how much it understands, what it's level of mentation really is. Is it empathy guiding it, or intellect? Or is it something else?

He sneaks a quick glance at Viggo through his lashes, but Viggo's expression is still as it ever was, still and inscrutable, though his lips are faintly curled into a near-smile.

"Why?" Elijah asks, and his voice half-cracks on the word. Without meaning to, he reaches up and curls a hand around one of Pet's larger limbs, which twists slightly and curls right back. And it isn't in him to wish he hadn't done it, though he knows it's the kind of gesture that's hard to interpret as anything other than what it was, a need for support, for comfort. He doesn't want to display these things, but he doesn't know how not to, and there is some part of him -- the part that is divorced from the scientist, the part that has never been logical or methodical or calm -- that doesn't care what the hell he's showing, doesn't see why it's even a concern, because surely, surely, it's worth it.

Surely this gift is worth everything.

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