Fic: Dance Steps, Monaboyd, DM/BB/EW

[nakannalee.livejournal.com]

Fic:  Dance Steps
Author:  Nakanna Lee
Pairings:  Monaboyd, DM/BB/EW
Rating:  PG-13, soft R for suggestion maybe
Word Count:  1500
Disclaimer:  None of this is true.
A/N:  Working on a longer fic but this couldn't quite find it's place within it.  So it's being sent off as a stand-alone.

Elijah flipped through his bulky CD holder.  The plastic pages flopped softly one after the other, the CDs glinting under the light.  In just a couple minutes, they’d have to leave the respite of the trailer and makeup would be fussing around them.  He tugged out a music selection and popped it into the player, forgetting about wig applications for at least a little.

The remnants of breakfast still laid on the table—scrambled eggs and energy bars and orange juice, which had been subject to out-of-the-carton-drinking enough times to make it the new unsanitary tradition.  Right up there with mud-flinging and boxer-tackling.  One day, Dom thought, Pete was going to wise up and realize that if ever someone came down ill, he’d have lost his entire cast to the same thing thanks to the blatant lack of personal space.

Everyone loved it now.  It made it feel like home.

“Compensating for his shortcomings,” Billy called from the other side of the room, flopped down on the sofa.  Dom leaned close and whispered something in his ear that provoked a smile.

“What?” Elijah half-turned.

“Your music.  All of it.”

“What am I compensating for?” Elijah asked genuinely, and Dom read his thoughts immediately:  Dom and Billy always seem to have secrets about someone who never know they have one.

“You mix because you can’t dance,” Dom announced.  He did a ridiculous shimmy around the side of the couch.

“Dude, maybe I can’t dance because I’ve been too busy mixing.”

“He’s got a point there.”  Billy turned to Dom.  “D’you think we’ve underestimated him?”

“Hardly.”  Dom sat on the arm of the sofa and dangled his bare feet near Billy’s.  “As endearing as your flailing about on the floor is, I’ve half a mind to think you should learn at least some rhythm so you don’t feel the need to hide behind a DJ table the rest of your life.”

“Yeah...?” Elijah’s eyebrows rose and met above his nose, crinkling the skin in the middle.  His mouth tugged half in a smile, half in skepticism.  Dom loved that he’d provoked that look again.

“Come here,” Billy said suddenly, and weaseled his way close to grab Elijah’s wrists.  “Be just a second,” he added to the protesting.  The music suddenly leapt to a throbbing decibel level, and Dom, looking impish as he stepped away from the player, joined them near in center of the trailer.

Sean groggily wandered in, spilling the cool early morning light onto the trailer steps.  He stood barely there for a second before he covered his ears with his hands and pulled the most distressing look possible.  He shouted something but there was no competing with Wu Tang Clan when cranked.

“Oi, come on!” Dom yelled an invitation, but Sean shook his head and slipped back out the door.  Elijah’s eyes followed him disappointedly.

“He’s not a very good bodyguard,” Elijah said, but beneath the pounding bass, his words sounded clippy, static and hollow.

Billy, still grasping Elijah’s wrists, began tugging him side to side.  Dom settled in a couple inches away from Elijah’s back and touched his shoulder to let him know he was there.

“Relax.  Respond to the beat, don’t pre-create something atrocious in your head,” Dom instructed loudly in his ear.  He felt a rush of embarrassed heat radiating off of Elijah’s face.

Billy laughed and released his hands, instead running them quickly along Elijah’s sides as if trying to kindle something.

“Loosen up there!  You’re not hardly moving at all!”

“I dance better with girls,” Elijah answered, and for a second his eyes dipped out of the way and showed the joke threadbare.

“Course you do,” Dom replied.  He leaned in closer and blew in Elijah’s ear.  “But you’re too pretty to just stick with them all the time, aren’t you?”

“Wanker,” Elijah shot back and shook his head free.

Dom grinned and grimaced simultaneously.  Another word butchered at the hands of an American accent.  He’d swiped “mate” as well and had—unintentionally or not—started softening some of his vowels.  The language would be in tatters by the time Elijah got done with it.  Smirking, Dom slipped his hands down to Elijah’s waist and pinched him.

“All right, enough, let the git be,” Billy said and swatted Dom away.  Dom watched Billy’s face as he turned his eyes back to Elijah.  “We’re only trying to help you.  If you don’t want to learn, ‘Lijah, we’ll let you wander on off to your wig and makeup, aye?”

Dom couldn’t fully see Elijah’s face but wished he could.  His head fell back slightly as if he’d closed his eyes and sighed, and Dom’s nose touched the back of his hair.

He inhaled deeper than he should have.  Six months in and they’d all already started smelling like each other—swiping one another’s shampoo, switching colognes, stealing clothes and sharing blankets.  Elijah smelled like the Fellowship now, a new scent shared by everyone.  Dom took another sniff before backing off again.

He detected the slightest amount of sway in Eljiah’s body too, enough to suggest he was willing to continue the lesson.  Surprisingly he stayed restrained, not taking the opportunity as usual to joke, fling himself widely around and draw more attention to his two-left-footedness.

Again Dom positioned his hands on his waist but didn’t provoke him this time; only helped guide his hips on the strong emphasis of the rap pulsating through the room.

He glanced over Elijah’s shoulder to Billy, who returned his gaze with a crinkling smile and moved his arms around Elijah’s neck.  Grinning, Dom pecked a kiss on each of Billy’s wrists that had crossed in front of his face.

The beat swiveled up to Dom’s shoulders; it tugged him back and forth and made his hips follow suit.  His brain buzzed and vibrated at the hardcore, aggressive sound, the rhymes weaving in and out of each other, much the same way he, Elijah, and Billy were linked now.

Still Elijah’s body was tense enough to throw things off.  Dom checked with Billy briefly and then tightened his grip on Elijah’s hips, spinning him around so they stood finally face-to-face.  Billy removed his locked arms from Elijah’s shoulders.  His fingers skimmed down his pale neck until they overlapped Dom’s.  Dom then slipped his hands out from beneath to let Billy take over at the waist.  His own grasp fell in Elijah’s hands, slightly smaller than his own, clammy and spread.

Dom peered uninhibited into Elijah’s eyes.  They’d become arcane and drugged blue much more quickly than he’d expected—though he wasn’t supposed to have been musing about expectations in the first place.

Elijah’s half-parted mouth appeared as dark inside as the lashes framing his eyes, and suddenly Elijah looked just like a wiry glimpse of light peering out from between dark leaves.

“You gotta move everything, Lij,” Dom said.  He raised their hands together above their heads and let his grip go, although their fingertips and palms continued brushing.  Elijah glanced around himself quickly as if pieces of sky were falling and he has to adjust, but Dom’s eyes steadied and never left his face.

“Better,” Dom heard Billy say.  When he glanced back, he saw Billy had either closed his eyes completely or was glancing down between them to watch their bodies meet and part again.  A hot chill ran centrally through Dom.  He turned away.

Elijah dropped his hands a second later and squeezed out from between them.  The song had just about ended, but Billy fell right into dancing with Dom, and neither broke the rhythm previously established until the lengthy silence between tracks overruled.

An excitement still coiled in Dom’s stomach, but the disorientation of minutes before had begun to dissipate with the music’s absence.  To his right, Elijah stood with his calves back against the couch, watching them with a wide, transparent expression.

Everything floats to the surface with ‘Lijah, Dom thought.  He’s still too young and open—and much too open for an actor who’s been around as long as he has.  With time, maybe, he’ll be able to disguise his thoughts as something else.  He’ll be able to joke like Billy and I do.

“Is it safe?” Sean called abruptly from outside the trailer.  He rapped on the door a couple times.  “I don’t hear the world ending anymore, but it will if you guys don’t get your asses to makeup.”

“Fucker of a bodyguard,” Dom told Elijah.  He grinned, well-aware of his flushed face dwelling too long on Elijah’s blinking and disorganized features.

Billy walked stride-for-stride with Dom, occasionally touching him.  Elijah hesitated behind them but he did call after.

“Hey, are we gonna practice later?” he asked.

Billy held the door open for him and Dom waited at the bottom of the trailer for the others.  The three met up with Sean before anyone replied, and when they did, it was only a wordless glance between Dom and Billy, one that Dom knew Elijah hadn't learned to read.  Yet.

end

Comments

[daydreambeleevr.livejournal.com]

Hi, I haven't read your work before but I quite liked this piece. I enjoyed the way you showed their closeness and familiarity with one another. I really like the dom/billy communication without words, and the hope that elijah will catch their drift, too.

If there ever becomes more, I'd like to read it.

thanks for posting this.

Kerry =)

[owlgrey.livejournal.com]

Loved this!

I particularly adored this line:

Six months in and they’d all already started smelling like each other

[nakannalee.livejournal.com]

Thank you, especially for saying specifically what you liked! That always helps. :)

Very glad you enjoyed it. I've written House/Wilson far more extensively, so most of my lj is that. But Monaboyd has won the muse over extremely quickly. What I've written so far can be found here:

http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/tag/monaboyd

Thanks again for reading and commenting. Hope you find more things to enjoy!

[nakannalee.livejournal.com]

Thanks, very glad you enjoyed it--especially that part. It was added in about the third edit and I'd hoped it would work and stand out. :)

[foxrafer.livejournal.com]

and suddenly Elijah looked just like a wiry glimpse of light peering out from between dark leaves
Great line. This is a very quietly sensual piece. Very nice.

[nakannalee.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Happy that you picked up on that line; description is so essential. Glad that it also didn't strike you as over the top--I'd hoped it would be underplayed yet intense. Thanks again for reading and commenting!

[cordeilla33.livejournal.com]

Great Fic - just by chance I was listening to 'JC Chavez's Blowing me up with her love' - while reading and it made this piece HOT! lol

Loved all of it! I will definitly check out your other stories...
BTW if you love MONABOYD - check out my vids http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePQuU41PpF4 (my latest)

[nakannalee.livejournal.com]

Very happy you enjoyed...and had a little soundtrack going as you read. XD

Will check out that vid, too. Thanks for commenting!