MY fandom's not quite dead yet...
Aug. 12th, 2004 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaydeefalls
Er. Fic. Yes. It happens occasionally.
Title: Local Haunt
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dom-centric, vague Dom/Orlando and Dom/Elijah
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened, total bullshit.
Summary: AU, ghost story.
Notes: Huge thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msilverstar for the beta!
Sometimes, Dominic likes to dance with other men at clubs. He doesn't remember exactly when he first decided to pass up that girl with the orange and red fire halter top and sparkling blue-sliver tight jeans in favor of the boy with wide blue eyes and striped button down shirt with the top few buttons unbuttoned leaving bare tantalizing cream skin – doesn't remember exactly when, but remembers why. The boy was the club DJ that night, taking a break for a few minutes to join the dance floor, and Dominic saw him and wanted him. They danced close for one pulsing sweaty song, until the boy went back to spin and Dominic moved on. He didn’t go back to that particular club again, because it was the first time he'd danced with another man and he didn't want to ruin the memory of the moment by overuse. Maybe someday he'll go back looking for the DJ with the wide blue eyes. Maybe. Someday.
But there are many more clubs in New York. Dominic had come to the city for the film school at NYU and stayed for the nighttime club scene. He likes clubs. He can be anonymous there, in grungy jeans and a black T-shirt advertising some obscure band or another and silver rings and just a touch of black eyeliner. No one's really paying any attention to who he is or how bad a filmmaker he's turning out to be, just how well he can dance and how well his arse looks in these tight jeans. And what else matters, really?
Friday night in his current favorite East Village haunt, he's pressed against a girl in a blue tube top and very short skirt, grinding his hips against hers even as he surreptitiously scouts the crowd for his next partner. And, there, like a flash in the corner of his eye, a young man in an iridescent blue-green-black shirt with dark hair tumbling in waves to his shoulders, unnaturally pale skin practically glowing in the dimly lit club. He's dancing with another man, a good-looking dark-skinned boy of the sort that Dominic would usually target for the night and early morning, press and grind against on the dance floor and perhaps again in bed – but tonight Dominic scarcely notices him in favor of his pale companion.
The pale man glances over his shoulder, meets Dominic's eyes. He smirks. There's a hungry, feral light in his eyes.
Dominic swallows hard, blinks, and the young man is gone. Dominic's never actually seen someone vanish into thin air before, but this bloke seems to have done it. By the time Dominic pushes his way through the gyrating mass of people to the attractive black man, his partner with the iridescent shirt and hungry eyes has disappeared. Dominic catches the black man's sleeve. "Who were you dancing with?" he shouts over the music.
The man looks at him curiously. "What?"
"Just now. The guy with the wavy hair and shiny shirt. Who was he?"
"Man," the guy says, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been dancing with a lot of people."
"No, seriously, who—"
"Look," he says, "I don't think I've seen anyone like your friend here tonight. You wanna dance or not?"
Dominic turns away and shoves his way out of the club, confused and frustrated. He walks home and tries to fall asleep, but the image of the man floats behind his closed eyes and into his restless half-dreams, smirking and glowing and taunting him, and Dominic doesn't know why.
*
Dominic goes back to the same club the next night, and the next night, and the next, but there's no sign of the pale hungry young man. He tells himself that he's being ridiculous and obsessive, and tries not to think about it. But he keeps going back to that club.
A week after the first glimpse, Dominic leaves the club around four in the morning, drunk enough to forget why he came. He walks alone down the dark abandoned city streets, in that empty hour too late for most clubbers and too early for the sanitation workers to come out or for the graveyard shift workers to head home. One of the streetlights is out, leaving puddles of shadow across the pavement. Dominic hears footsteps pacing with him, and it takes him a few long seconds to realize they aren't his own.
He stops and swivels around, nearly throwing himself off balance. The street is empty.
After a beat, he turns back and starts walking again. The footsteps follow him, treading heavily on the rough cement. He walks faster. They keep pace. The street starts swimming around the edge of his vision, glowing lights behind his eyelids like the spots left after staring into a camera flash.
Too much to drink, Dominic thinks. "Too much to drink," he informs a streetlight. The streetlight flickers and he reels away from it, stumbling over the curb.
"Stop it," he tells the footsteps. They pause, considering, then pick up again, hot on his heels. He half runs, half staggers the remaining few blocks to his apartment.
He fumbles with the key to the front door of his building. His hand is shaking as he unlocks the door – from nerves and from cold. The night air must be cooler than he thought. He drops the key as he pushes the door open, and bends over to pick it up with numb fingers, bracing the door with his foot. When he straightens back up, swaying slightly, there's a pale man leaning casually against the streetlight outside.
It's the young man from the club, with the shimmering shirt and hungry eyes. "Hey," the man says. The streetlight flickers violently.
Dominic stares at him for a second, then turns and throws himself inside the building, slamming the door shut. When he falls into bed and closes his eyes, the pale man's smirk is imprinted in his mind, stark white against the darkness of sleep.
*
When Dominic wakes up in the morning, he's nagged by a sense that something is missing. He prowls through his small apartment, searching through every drawer and on every shelf for evidence that something has been moved or taken.
Everything is exactly where it should be, and somehow that only makes it worse.
*
At the club that night, Dominic doesn't bother dancing, just sits at the bar nursing a vodka martini. The air feels colder than usual – stupid Yanks, always turning the air conditioning up too high. He senses rather than feels a presence behind him and turns.
"Sorry if I scared you," the pale young man says. He speaks with a faint accent, which Dominic can't quite place.
"I've been looking for you all week," Dominic replies, and wonders why this conversation doesn't feel strange at all.
"I know."
"And then you followed me home."
"So I did."
"I didn't see you following me."
"I didn't want to be seen."
Spanish, Dominic decides. That's what the accent is. It's very faint, though. "This doesn't make any sense."
The man smirks. "Isn't it fun?"
Dominic isn't entirely sure how to respond. "What's your name?"
"Orlando." Orlando runs a hand through his dark hair and winks. "You can stop looking for me now."
Before Dominic has a chance to say anything else, Orlando turns away and melts into the crowd on the dance floor. He doesn't appear again for another two weeks.
*
Addictions are unhealthy. Dominic has seen several of his friends addicted to cigarettes, and learned to recognize the little quirks and tics they develop when they need another fag. He's watched Sean, his closest friend here in America, lose sleep over that Christine girl in their Comparative Cultures film class. Or some of the other film students, whose obsessions with filming their two minute long, incomprehensibly profound shots of the Washington Square fountain bubbling both frightened and confused Dominic with their passion. And there was that one boy back home who everyone whispered about, the one with the heroin problem, and he looked fucking scary when he needed a fix – which was pretty much all the time. Dominic's never had an addictive personality, though. He sometimes lights up a cigarette with his friends, or follows a girl (or boy) around for a few weeks, but he never craves a smoke or obsesses over a crush.
But he's pale and shaky from night after night at that one lousy club, going home drained and often drunk at ungodly hours and waking up almost too exhausted to drag himself to film class. He quits his part-time job at the supermarket because he needs more sleep, but still can't get enough. Orlando's pale face is always hovering in the back of his mind. He can't escape it.
He opens up his kitchen cupboards. They're empty. Well, he didn't really need dinner, anyway.
He thinks maybe he'll have a cigarette instead.
*
"Where have you been?"
It takes Dominic a few seconds to recognize the voice on the phone. "Billy?"
"Who else?" Billy says. "Seriously, Dom, I haven't heard from you in weeks. You vanish off the face of the earth or something?"
"Not exactly." Dominic carries the phone back into the bedroom with him. He flops down on the bed.
"What's up?" Billy asks. "You sound like you just woke up."
"I did."
Dominic can practically hear Billy blink at him. "Isn't it around three in the afternoon, your time?"
"Yeah."
"And you just woke up?"
"It happens. How's London?"
"Significantly less interesting without you. Since when do you sleep until three in the afternoon on Thursday?"
"I was out late," Dominic says, swallowing back an irrational wave of irritation. "Clubbing. You know."
"On a Wednesday night?"
"It happens," Dominic repeats. He rubs at his eyes. Smudges of black eyeliner stain the back of his hand.
"What about your classes?"
"What are you, Bill, my fucking father?"
"Okay," Billy says softly, sounding hurt. "I'm just trying to catch up with my best friend, who happens to be living an ocean away. Calm down."
Dominic doesn't fucking need to be told what to do. He hangs up, and hates himself for it afterwards. His face in the bedroom mirror is too pale, exhausted. He wonders if Orlando will be at the club tonight.
*
Tonight's the night. Dominic knows it. He's spent the entire day (two days after Billy's call) with a feeling of certainty of Seeing Orlando At The Club tonight. In front of the mirror in his room, he dresses in all black, then adds a few silver rings and black eyeliner. The dark clothes suit him, complementing his unnaturally pale complexion - which in any other context just makes him look sick and sleep-deprived. But now he looks good. He knows he looks good. Tonight's the night.
At the club, he heads straight for the dance floor and throws himself in. He doesn't bother looking around for Orlando. Orlando will be here tonight. Orlando will find him. He's sure of it.
A couple of girls dressed like Goths are dancing together in the middle of the floor, ignoring the faintly hostile glances of a few trendier dancers. Dominic considers joining them – he hates it when trendy clubbers come to a dive like this and then expect the rest of the clientele to be just as wealthy and uninteresting as they are – but someone else cuts in between them first. A pale man with dark, curly hair in an iridescent dark green-blue shirt.
Dominic's breath catches in his chest, and his heartbeat becomes wild, erratic. The music pulses through his body, a vibration so low it hums in his bones. Everything around him is hazy, out of focus, as all his perception becomes honed to Orlando, sharp and glowing white in between the Goth girls. He's dizzying to watch.
Dominic closes his eyes for a second to steady himself. When he opens them again, the Goths are dancing alone.
And suddenly there's a hand on his shoulder, ghostly light and cold through the cotton of his T-shirt. "Dance with me," Orlando whispers in his ear, and Dominic feels a shiver run up and down his whole body.
They dance. Orlando's body gives off an unnatural chill like most bodies give off heat, frost against Dominic's neck and arms and chest, and it's the most erotic thing Dominic's ever felt.
A few minutes later, Orlando vanishes as suddenly as he came, and Dominic is left alone and shivering in the middle of the dance floor.
*
That night, back in his bedroom, Dominic tries to wank off, but has an absurd amount of difficulty even accompanied by the sensual mental image of Orlando dancing. Finally, he gives up and goes to the kitchen for a drink of water. As he drops ice into the glass, his body remembers, and a minute later he comes right there in the middle of the kitchen, his hand on his cock cold from the melting ice cube.
*
"You come here more frequently now," Dominic comments, leaning against the bar.
"Not really," Orlando replies, sipping a martini. "I've been here pretty much every night."
Dominic's brow furrows. "I didn't see you."
Orlando smiles. There's something cold and sharp in his eyes. "You see me when I want you to see me."
"I don't understand."
"This is my favorite club. My local haunt, if you will. I know it pretty well." He makes no further attempt at explanation, and Dominic doesn't ask again.
"Why this place?" he asks instead. "It's kind of a dive."
Orlando shrugs with a loose-limbed elegance that makes Dominic's heart skip a beat. "I don't know. Something about it. Don't you have a favorite sort of club? Not the place you go the most often, but the one you save for really special occasions, for the nights you feel great and know you're going to get lucky. Not because it's the trendiest or most popular, but because there's something there, a certain magnetism you can't quite put your finger on. You know?"
Dominic thinks about that one club with the DJ with the wide blue eyes, and nods. "Yeah."
"Well, that was this place for me." He set his martini glass back down on the bar. It looks frosted from the outside in.
Dominic nods again. It makes sense. The special club for only a few absolutely fantastic nights out, the one you're scared to go to too often, in case it suffers from the overuse and loses that certain whatever. Wait. What? "But I thought you said you came here every night, so how could this place be…?"
He trails off, letting the words fade away into empty space. Orlando is gone.
When he exhales, his breath mists in the chilly air. The remains of Orlando's martini are frozen to the glass. Air conditioning must be up too high again, Dominic thinks, but something cold and unsettling twists in his gut.
*
Dominic sleeps, and dreams of the blue-eyed DJ from the special club. They're dancing, bodies pressed together, Dominic's hands tight around the other man's hips, a flowing maelstrom of the DJ's creamy skin and unbuttoned shirt and Dominic's paleness and black eyeliner and silver rings. The DJ's breath is hot in Dominic's ear, and Dominic feels a shudder of arousal dance down his spine.
He leans in to kiss the DJ, and suddenly they're in Dominic's bed, not the club, which makes perfect sense in the uncanny flexibility of dreams. Clothing is hastily discarded, and the kiss becomes harder and more passionate, until Dominic is panting against the DJ's lips. Their bodies twist together in a different form of dancing, making Dominic groan in pleasure.
Dominic traces kisses along the DJ's collarbone, but something's off. The boy's skin, so hot under the touch of Dominic's fingers, is icy against his lips. Dominic pulls away, startled, only to see Orlando sprawled beneath him, smirking. "Well?" Orlando purrs. "Don't stop now."
Dominic is just as turned on as ever, but he hesitates. This isn't what he wanted. He wanted the DJ with the wide blue eyes and creamy skin, not Orlando's unnatural paleness and hungry gaze. He shakes his head.
Orlando's smile widens. "You can't stop now," he says, and reaches up to Dominic. His hand is cold at the base of Dominic's neck, pulling him down. "It's too late for that," Orlando whispers in Dominic's ear, and kisses him.
When Dominic wakes up, he's drenched in a cold sweat, and for a few long moments, he's certain there's someone else in his bed. He sits up, breathing heavily, and looks around. He's alone, of course, but there's an odd indentation in the pillow next to his, as though someone else has been resting their head there.
Dominic shivers, and gets out of bed. He walks over to the window and yanks it open, letting the muggy May air fill the room. He stands there a long time, but can't seem to get warm.
*
I'm not going to that club tonight, Dominic tells himself. He's walking down that street, but that's just a coincidence, he's not going in. In fact, he's going to turn this corner, right here, and...
He doesn't turn. His body refuses to listen to his brain, following an instinctive route, taking him back to the club.
I'm not going inside, Dominic thinks. I'm just going to walk right past it.
He pushes the door open and walks in. Orlando is waiting at the bar.
*
"You're seeing someone, aren't you?" Billy asks. His tone is light, but it sounds like an accusation, all the same.
Dominic shifts the phone from one hand to the other, uncomfortable. "I'm not sure."
"What do you mean, you're not sure? Are you or aren't you?"
"Well, there is this bloke at this club, but we're not really--"
"You stalking him, then? Like that incident with the red-haired bird in Chelsea?"
"Her name was Madeleine, and I was not stalking her!"
Billy snorts. On the phone line, it sounds like a burst of static. "Right. So you say."
"And no, this is a bit different, anyway," Dominic hedges. He's not sure what to tell Billy. He's not sure about anything in this whole bloody business. He should've never crossed the fucking Atlantic.
"So who is this bloke, anyway?"
"His name is Orlando."
"Right, brilliant, but who is he? What's his story?"
Dominic opens his mouth, then pauses. He doesn't know. All this time -- the sleepless nights and uncomfortable dreams, the obsession, night after night at that one lousy club -- and he doesn't know the first thing about the man he's been inexplicably drawn to. Nothing but a name and a hint of a Spanish accent.
"Dominic? You still there?"
He can't think of a single thing to say.
*
Dominic goes to the club much earlier than usual, around six in the evening, before anyone is there except the bartender and a few other management types. The place looks small when it's empty, lonely, hollow, like a ghost town or something. The bartender is starting to set things up behind the counter, and looks up in surprise when Dominic walks over to him.
"Can I help you? The bar doesn't open for another hour."
"Yeah, I know. I just wanted to ask..." Dominic hesitates. This is ridiculous. How can he expect this bartender to remember the name of a random bloke in a crowd? "There's a guy who comes clubbing here a lot, his name's Orlando. Do you know him?"
The bartender raises an eyebrow. "Who's asking?"
Dominic considers lying, but figures it's not worth the effort. "I've chatted him up a few times. Just curious, you know?"
"Understandable, I guess," the other man says. He frowns, thinking. "I don't know everybody who comes in here, of course, but that name sounds familiar, and it's not a common one. Gimme a moment."
"It's all right," Dominic says hastily, feeling foolish. "I didn't really expect--"
"Got it!" the bartender says, smiling smugly. "Orlando Bloom, yeah?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"Yeah, he used to come in here every now and then. Popular guy, you know, with the ladies mostly, although I've seen him work another guy or two. The neighborhood fags couldn't get enough of him, I think it amused him."
"Sounds like Orlando," Dominic agrees blandly. He can imagine people being attracted to Orlando, anyway. Drawn to him.
"Too bad, really," the bartender continues. "An old flame, were you? You shouldn't be wasting your time on him. Sorry if I'm the first to tell you, but he passed a few months ago."
Dominic blinks. He feels frozen, immobile, as though icy hands are clamped down on his shoulders, holding him in place. "That's not possible."
"Sorry," the bartender says again. He doesn't sound all that sympathetic. "If you knew him, I'm surprised you didn't hear. It made the tabloids when it happened. Really bizarre. He died right in this club, you know? Just dropped dead in the middle of the dance floor. No one knew what happened, no one saw anything. It's like his heart just stopped, just froze up or something. We had to close the place for almost a week while the cops swarmed all over it, trying to figure out how he died. Someone as young and healthy as Orlando, it just didn't make sense, you know?" The bartender shrugs. "Can't remember what they finally decided happened. Makes a cool story though, right?"
Dominic doesn't respond, just turns and walks out the door, joints unnaturally stiff. The sudden glare of the setting sun after the dimly-lit coolness of the empty club makes him squint. He shivers violently, teeth chattering, as the sun's fading warmth slowly seeps into his icy limbs.
*
Dominic resists going to the club that night, or tries to. He locks himself in his apartment and picks up a book, determined to distract himself. But the words blur together and his body itches to dance, to feel the beat, to get his fix of the music and the pulse and Orlando. He turns on the TV next, but that fails to distract him, either. He tries to go to sleep, but the image of Orlando dances behind his eyelids, taunting him, tempting him. In desperation, he even tries calling Billy, but all he gets is the answerphone.
"Come dance with me," Orlando whispers in his mind, and finally, not long before dawn, Dominic gives in.
The club is starting to empty out, but Orlando is waiting in the middle of the dance floor, gyrating slowly around himself. When he sees Dominic, he stops. A wide, hungry grin spreads across his face. "There you are! I've been waiting."
Dominic flinches away from Orlando's touch. "Have you."
"Indeed," Orlando says. The familiar feral light sparks in his eyes. "You've been holding out on me," he adds, delightedly. "I love it when they do that. It makes the chase so much more exhilarating."
"You're not real," Dominic tells him, trying to hide his surprise. He half expected Orlando to be angry, but this almost childlike delight is unnerving.
"Am I not?" Orlando lays a very cold, very real hand on Dominic's shoulder, then twists it up to twine around the back of Dominic's neck, sending a shiver down Dominic's spine.
Dominic tries to pull away, but he's caught, mesmerized by the light in Orlando's eyes. "Who are you?"
"La Llorona," Orlando whispers, the Spanish syllables rolling off his tongue. "And in a moment, mi niño, you will join me."
He leans in as if to kiss him, but just as his cold lips brush Dominic's, the first rays of dawn creep in through the club's two small windows.
"Ah!" Orlando breathes, and smiles. "You came a little too late today, Dominic, but I'll see you tomorrow night." The sunlight reaches across the floor, and Dominic is alone, his lips numb, his arms twisted in front of him in an aborted gesture, trying to push away the empty air.
*
"Billy," Dominic says urgently, clinging to the phone like a lifeline, "you've got to help me."
"What's wrong?" Billy's voice sounds worried, an ocean away.
Dominic opens his mouth to explain, but then stops. Hey, Billy, I think I'm being haunted. No seriously, there's this ghost I met at a club and I'm worried he might be trying to kill me. "Er," he says.
"Dommie?"
"Have you ever heard of something called La Llorona?" Dominic tries not to stumble over the foreign words.
"That's Spanish, right?"
"I think so. You know more about the world history stuff than I do."
If Dominic listens hard enough, he might be able to actually hear Billy thinking. "It sounds familiar, actually. I don't speak Spanish, but I took that world lit course back at school, and I think I can remember talking about something like that."
World literature. Sure, maybe. "I don't know what it means."
"La Llorona," Billy muses. "Hold on, I think I got it. We didn't cover Spanish lit much, just one Gabriel García Márquez book, but we did a folklore unit, and there were some really interesting bits about Mexican legends. I think your La Llorona came up then. Don't ring off, I'm going to go see if I kept any of the books from that course."
Dominic waits, twisting his rings around his fingers nervously. He glances out the window. The sun is sinking lower and lower in the sky, and the urge to go out dancing is just beginning to gnaw at the edges of his consciousness. Stop that, he thinks, and clutches the phone tightly.
Finally, Billy comes back. "Got it!" he says excitedly. "I couldn't find the book, but I looked it up online. La Llorona. The weeping woman. According to Mexican legend, she's this lady who went mad and drowned her kids, then went madder and threw herself in the river after them. After she was buried, her ghost started appearing at the riverbank, calling for her dead children. She would lure other kids to their deaths, stuff like that. Pretty popular ghost story, mainly used to scare Mexican children away from the river at night. Why did you want to know?"
Oddly enough, Dominic feels a surge of relief at this news. "So she wouldn't, say, leave her river and go hunting elsewhere or anything, would she?"
"Not according to the legend," Billy agrees. "Why? Do you think you've bumped into her, or something? New York's an odd place, I'll grant you, but I doubt it counts a Mexican ghost among its crazies."
"Yeah," Dominic says. "Yeah, probably not. Thanks, Billy. Hey, when are you coming out to visit me?"
"Soon," Billy replies. "I'm trying to surprise you, though, so expect me when you least expect me." Dominic can practically hear his grin.
*
Dominic does go out that night, but not to Orlando's club. He feels free, happier than he's been in weeks. Orlando is nothing special, just a figment of his imagination or something. No dead Mexican woman would find her way to New York, after all, and anyway, there's no such thing as ghosts.
Tonight's the night, Dominic decides gleefully, and makes his way back to the special club. To his disappointment, the DJ is an unfamiliar face. "Do you know the other DJs that work here? I'm looking for the one - well, he's kind of short, like me, and he's got big blue eyes..."
"Who, Elijah?" the strange DJ asks. "Yeah, he's off tonight, I think he'll be back on Friday."
"Thanks," Dominic says. He'll be sure to be back on Friday, then, but in the meantime, there's no reason not to dance. He's safe here, and Orlando doesn't really exist, and everything's fine.
So he dances. He feels good tonight, and looks good, too, he knows. All black clothing and eyeliner and silver jewelry, a dark flash in the dim lights, and the floor is his.
His, until a cold hand on his arm pulls him away from the young Indian man he was pressing up against.
"No," Dominic says flatly. "You're not real. You don't exist. La Llorona is in Mexico, not New York. Leave me alone."
"La Llorona has been dead for three centuries," Orlando replies with a hungry smile. "She has learned a lot in that time. She has learned that the villagers are too good at scaring their children, that she must go to her prey, not wait for her prey to come to her. She has learned that she can take on the appearance of those whose spirit she has taken. She has learned that all the world is her children, her lost children, and that they need her as she needs them." He wraps his arms around Dominic's neck, and Dominic can only stare at him in cold terror. "Mis niños!" Orlando cries, a strangled, eerie sound.
"No," Dominic whispers. "I'm not..."
"Mi niño," Orlando repeats, and kisses him.
Dominic falls, frozen from the inside out.
*
When Billy comes to New York, Dominic's flat is empty. Unaccountably nervous, he inquires at the police station, and is told an unbelievable story about a man who just dropped dead in the middle of a dance floor, like his heart just froze up or something. Billy shakes his head in disbelief, too shocked to cry.
*
Sometimes, Elijah likes to let one of the other guys DJ for a bit, so he can take a turn on the club floor. He doesn't dance so much as weave between the clubbers, absorb some of that pulsing energy, rejuvenate himself. Sometimes he lets a dancer pull him close for a brief grind, girl or boy, it hardly matters to him. He just likes to feel the music through someone else's body. It's such a different sensation than spinning, where the sound comes through heavy headphones and constantly calculated song selections. The music is so much more vibrant from the floor and the people and the beat.
He doesn't seek out people to dance with, but tonight there's a flash in the corner of his eye, a blink of silver and black through the crowd. He turns and it's gone, hidden behind the ever-changing crowd. Elijah looks around, still in the midst of so much motion, and there, there it is again, a strangely familiar-looking young man in a black T-shirt and silver rings and black eyeliner, pushing against a girl dressed all in green. The black and silver man is oddly pale, almost luminescent in the pulsing mass. He glances over his shoulder at Elijah and smirks. His eyes are raw and hungry and sparking with energy.
Elijah swallows hard, blinks, and the man is gone again. Elijah spends the rest of the night searching through the crowd for the pale black silver man with the hungry eyes, but doesn't find him. The room flickers at the edge of his vision, taunting him, as he continues his feverish search. When he goes home that night, the figure of the young man will hover behind his eyelids, haunting him.
Sooner or later, Elijah will find that man again. He's certain of it. He has to.
Title: Local Haunt
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dom-centric, vague Dom/Orlando and Dom/Elijah
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened, total bullshit.
Summary: AU, ghost story.
Notes: Huge thanks to
msilverstar for the beta!Sometimes, Dominic likes to dance with other men at clubs. He doesn't remember exactly when he first decided to pass up that girl with the orange and red fire halter top and sparkling blue-sliver tight jeans in favor of the boy with wide blue eyes and striped button down shirt with the top few buttons unbuttoned leaving bare tantalizing cream skin – doesn't remember exactly when, but remembers why. The boy was the club DJ that night, taking a break for a few minutes to join the dance floor, and Dominic saw him and wanted him. They danced close for one pulsing sweaty song, until the boy went back to spin and Dominic moved on. He didn’t go back to that particular club again, because it was the first time he'd danced with another man and he didn't want to ruin the memory of the moment by overuse. Maybe someday he'll go back looking for the DJ with the wide blue eyes. Maybe. Someday.
But there are many more clubs in New York. Dominic had come to the city for the film school at NYU and stayed for the nighttime club scene. He likes clubs. He can be anonymous there, in grungy jeans and a black T-shirt advertising some obscure band or another and silver rings and just a touch of black eyeliner. No one's really paying any attention to who he is or how bad a filmmaker he's turning out to be, just how well he can dance and how well his arse looks in these tight jeans. And what else matters, really?
Friday night in his current favorite East Village haunt, he's pressed against a girl in a blue tube top and very short skirt, grinding his hips against hers even as he surreptitiously scouts the crowd for his next partner. And, there, like a flash in the corner of his eye, a young man in an iridescent blue-green-black shirt with dark hair tumbling in waves to his shoulders, unnaturally pale skin practically glowing in the dimly lit club. He's dancing with another man, a good-looking dark-skinned boy of the sort that Dominic would usually target for the night and early morning, press and grind against on the dance floor and perhaps again in bed – but tonight Dominic scarcely notices him in favor of his pale companion.
The pale man glances over his shoulder, meets Dominic's eyes. He smirks. There's a hungry, feral light in his eyes.
Dominic swallows hard, blinks, and the young man is gone. Dominic's never actually seen someone vanish into thin air before, but this bloke seems to have done it. By the time Dominic pushes his way through the gyrating mass of people to the attractive black man, his partner with the iridescent shirt and hungry eyes has disappeared. Dominic catches the black man's sleeve. "Who were you dancing with?" he shouts over the music.
The man looks at him curiously. "What?"
"Just now. The guy with the wavy hair and shiny shirt. Who was he?"
"Man," the guy says, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been dancing with a lot of people."
"No, seriously, who—"
"Look," he says, "I don't think I've seen anyone like your friend here tonight. You wanna dance or not?"
Dominic turns away and shoves his way out of the club, confused and frustrated. He walks home and tries to fall asleep, but the image of the man floats behind his closed eyes and into his restless half-dreams, smirking and glowing and taunting him, and Dominic doesn't know why.
Dominic goes back to the same club the next night, and the next night, and the next, but there's no sign of the pale hungry young man. He tells himself that he's being ridiculous and obsessive, and tries not to think about it. But he keeps going back to that club.
A week after the first glimpse, Dominic leaves the club around four in the morning, drunk enough to forget why he came. He walks alone down the dark abandoned city streets, in that empty hour too late for most clubbers and too early for the sanitation workers to come out or for the graveyard shift workers to head home. One of the streetlights is out, leaving puddles of shadow across the pavement. Dominic hears footsteps pacing with him, and it takes him a few long seconds to realize they aren't his own.
He stops and swivels around, nearly throwing himself off balance. The street is empty.
After a beat, he turns back and starts walking again. The footsteps follow him, treading heavily on the rough cement. He walks faster. They keep pace. The street starts swimming around the edge of his vision, glowing lights behind his eyelids like the spots left after staring into a camera flash.
Too much to drink, Dominic thinks. "Too much to drink," he informs a streetlight. The streetlight flickers and he reels away from it, stumbling over the curb.
"Stop it," he tells the footsteps. They pause, considering, then pick up again, hot on his heels. He half runs, half staggers the remaining few blocks to his apartment.
He fumbles with the key to the front door of his building. His hand is shaking as he unlocks the door – from nerves and from cold. The night air must be cooler than he thought. He drops the key as he pushes the door open, and bends over to pick it up with numb fingers, bracing the door with his foot. When he straightens back up, swaying slightly, there's a pale man leaning casually against the streetlight outside.
It's the young man from the club, with the shimmering shirt and hungry eyes. "Hey," the man says. The streetlight flickers violently.
Dominic stares at him for a second, then turns and throws himself inside the building, slamming the door shut. When he falls into bed and closes his eyes, the pale man's smirk is imprinted in his mind, stark white against the darkness of sleep.
When Dominic wakes up in the morning, he's nagged by a sense that something is missing. He prowls through his small apartment, searching through every drawer and on every shelf for evidence that something has been moved or taken.
Everything is exactly where it should be, and somehow that only makes it worse.
At the club that night, Dominic doesn't bother dancing, just sits at the bar nursing a vodka martini. The air feels colder than usual – stupid Yanks, always turning the air conditioning up too high. He senses rather than feels a presence behind him and turns.
"Sorry if I scared you," the pale young man says. He speaks with a faint accent, which Dominic can't quite place.
"I've been looking for you all week," Dominic replies, and wonders why this conversation doesn't feel strange at all.
"I know."
"And then you followed me home."
"So I did."
"I didn't see you following me."
"I didn't want to be seen."
Spanish, Dominic decides. That's what the accent is. It's very faint, though. "This doesn't make any sense."
The man smirks. "Isn't it fun?"
Dominic isn't entirely sure how to respond. "What's your name?"
"Orlando." Orlando runs a hand through his dark hair and winks. "You can stop looking for me now."
Before Dominic has a chance to say anything else, Orlando turns away and melts into the crowd on the dance floor. He doesn't appear again for another two weeks.
Addictions are unhealthy. Dominic has seen several of his friends addicted to cigarettes, and learned to recognize the little quirks and tics they develop when they need another fag. He's watched Sean, his closest friend here in America, lose sleep over that Christine girl in their Comparative Cultures film class. Or some of the other film students, whose obsessions with filming their two minute long, incomprehensibly profound shots of the Washington Square fountain bubbling both frightened and confused Dominic with their passion. And there was that one boy back home who everyone whispered about, the one with the heroin problem, and he looked fucking scary when he needed a fix – which was pretty much all the time. Dominic's never had an addictive personality, though. He sometimes lights up a cigarette with his friends, or follows a girl (or boy) around for a few weeks, but he never craves a smoke or obsesses over a crush.
But he's pale and shaky from night after night at that one lousy club, going home drained and often drunk at ungodly hours and waking up almost too exhausted to drag himself to film class. He quits his part-time job at the supermarket because he needs more sleep, but still can't get enough. Orlando's pale face is always hovering in the back of his mind. He can't escape it.
He opens up his kitchen cupboards. They're empty. Well, he didn't really need dinner, anyway.
He thinks maybe he'll have a cigarette instead.
"Where have you been?"
It takes Dominic a few seconds to recognize the voice on the phone. "Billy?"
"Who else?" Billy says. "Seriously, Dom, I haven't heard from you in weeks. You vanish off the face of the earth or something?"
"Not exactly." Dominic carries the phone back into the bedroom with him. He flops down on the bed.
"What's up?" Billy asks. "You sound like you just woke up."
"I did."
Dominic can practically hear Billy blink at him. "Isn't it around three in the afternoon, your time?"
"Yeah."
"And you just woke up?"
"It happens. How's London?"
"Significantly less interesting without you. Since when do you sleep until three in the afternoon on Thursday?"
"I was out late," Dominic says, swallowing back an irrational wave of irritation. "Clubbing. You know."
"On a Wednesday night?"
"It happens," Dominic repeats. He rubs at his eyes. Smudges of black eyeliner stain the back of his hand.
"What about your classes?"
"What are you, Bill, my fucking father?"
"Okay," Billy says softly, sounding hurt. "I'm just trying to catch up with my best friend, who happens to be living an ocean away. Calm down."
Dominic doesn't fucking need to be told what to do. He hangs up, and hates himself for it afterwards. His face in the bedroom mirror is too pale, exhausted. He wonders if Orlando will be at the club tonight.
Tonight's the night. Dominic knows it. He's spent the entire day (two days after Billy's call) with a feeling of certainty of Seeing Orlando At The Club tonight. In front of the mirror in his room, he dresses in all black, then adds a few silver rings and black eyeliner. The dark clothes suit him, complementing his unnaturally pale complexion - which in any other context just makes him look sick and sleep-deprived. But now he looks good. He knows he looks good. Tonight's the night.
At the club, he heads straight for the dance floor and throws himself in. He doesn't bother looking around for Orlando. Orlando will be here tonight. Orlando will find him. He's sure of it.
A couple of girls dressed like Goths are dancing together in the middle of the floor, ignoring the faintly hostile glances of a few trendier dancers. Dominic considers joining them – he hates it when trendy clubbers come to a dive like this and then expect the rest of the clientele to be just as wealthy and uninteresting as they are – but someone else cuts in between them first. A pale man with dark, curly hair in an iridescent dark green-blue shirt.
Dominic's breath catches in his chest, and his heartbeat becomes wild, erratic. The music pulses through his body, a vibration so low it hums in his bones. Everything around him is hazy, out of focus, as all his perception becomes honed to Orlando, sharp and glowing white in between the Goth girls. He's dizzying to watch.
Dominic closes his eyes for a second to steady himself. When he opens them again, the Goths are dancing alone.
And suddenly there's a hand on his shoulder, ghostly light and cold through the cotton of his T-shirt. "Dance with me," Orlando whispers in his ear, and Dominic feels a shiver run up and down his whole body.
They dance. Orlando's body gives off an unnatural chill like most bodies give off heat, frost against Dominic's neck and arms and chest, and it's the most erotic thing Dominic's ever felt.
A few minutes later, Orlando vanishes as suddenly as he came, and Dominic is left alone and shivering in the middle of the dance floor.
That night, back in his bedroom, Dominic tries to wank off, but has an absurd amount of difficulty even accompanied by the sensual mental image of Orlando dancing. Finally, he gives up and goes to the kitchen for a drink of water. As he drops ice into the glass, his body remembers, and a minute later he comes right there in the middle of the kitchen, his hand on his cock cold from the melting ice cube.
"You come here more frequently now," Dominic comments, leaning against the bar.
"Not really," Orlando replies, sipping a martini. "I've been here pretty much every night."
Dominic's brow furrows. "I didn't see you."
Orlando smiles. There's something cold and sharp in his eyes. "You see me when I want you to see me."
"I don't understand."
"This is my favorite club. My local haunt, if you will. I know it pretty well." He makes no further attempt at explanation, and Dominic doesn't ask again.
"Why this place?" he asks instead. "It's kind of a dive."
Orlando shrugs with a loose-limbed elegance that makes Dominic's heart skip a beat. "I don't know. Something about it. Don't you have a favorite sort of club? Not the place you go the most often, but the one you save for really special occasions, for the nights you feel great and know you're going to get lucky. Not because it's the trendiest or most popular, but because there's something there, a certain magnetism you can't quite put your finger on. You know?"
Dominic thinks about that one club with the DJ with the wide blue eyes, and nods. "Yeah."
"Well, that was this place for me." He set his martini glass back down on the bar. It looks frosted from the outside in.
Dominic nods again. It makes sense. The special club for only a few absolutely fantastic nights out, the one you're scared to go to too often, in case it suffers from the overuse and loses that certain whatever. Wait. What? "But I thought you said you came here every night, so how could this place be…?"
He trails off, letting the words fade away into empty space. Orlando is gone.
When he exhales, his breath mists in the chilly air. The remains of Orlando's martini are frozen to the glass. Air conditioning must be up too high again, Dominic thinks, but something cold and unsettling twists in his gut.
Dominic sleeps, and dreams of the blue-eyed DJ from the special club. They're dancing, bodies pressed together, Dominic's hands tight around the other man's hips, a flowing maelstrom of the DJ's creamy skin and unbuttoned shirt and Dominic's paleness and black eyeliner and silver rings. The DJ's breath is hot in Dominic's ear, and Dominic feels a shudder of arousal dance down his spine.
He leans in to kiss the DJ, and suddenly they're in Dominic's bed, not the club, which makes perfect sense in the uncanny flexibility of dreams. Clothing is hastily discarded, and the kiss becomes harder and more passionate, until Dominic is panting against the DJ's lips. Their bodies twist together in a different form of dancing, making Dominic groan in pleasure.
Dominic traces kisses along the DJ's collarbone, but something's off. The boy's skin, so hot under the touch of Dominic's fingers, is icy against his lips. Dominic pulls away, startled, only to see Orlando sprawled beneath him, smirking. "Well?" Orlando purrs. "Don't stop now."
Dominic is just as turned on as ever, but he hesitates. This isn't what he wanted. He wanted the DJ with the wide blue eyes and creamy skin, not Orlando's unnatural paleness and hungry gaze. He shakes his head.
Orlando's smile widens. "You can't stop now," he says, and reaches up to Dominic. His hand is cold at the base of Dominic's neck, pulling him down. "It's too late for that," Orlando whispers in Dominic's ear, and kisses him.
When Dominic wakes up, he's drenched in a cold sweat, and for a few long moments, he's certain there's someone else in his bed. He sits up, breathing heavily, and looks around. He's alone, of course, but there's an odd indentation in the pillow next to his, as though someone else has been resting their head there.
Dominic shivers, and gets out of bed. He walks over to the window and yanks it open, letting the muggy May air fill the room. He stands there a long time, but can't seem to get warm.
I'm not going to that club tonight, Dominic tells himself. He's walking down that street, but that's just a coincidence, he's not going in. In fact, he's going to turn this corner, right here, and...
He doesn't turn. His body refuses to listen to his brain, following an instinctive route, taking him back to the club.
I'm not going inside, Dominic thinks. I'm just going to walk right past it.
He pushes the door open and walks in. Orlando is waiting at the bar.
"You're seeing someone, aren't you?" Billy asks. His tone is light, but it sounds like an accusation, all the same.
Dominic shifts the phone from one hand to the other, uncomfortable. "I'm not sure."
"What do you mean, you're not sure? Are you or aren't you?"
"Well, there is this bloke at this club, but we're not really--"
"You stalking him, then? Like that incident with the red-haired bird in Chelsea?"
"Her name was Madeleine, and I was not stalking her!"
Billy snorts. On the phone line, it sounds like a burst of static. "Right. So you say."
"And no, this is a bit different, anyway," Dominic hedges. He's not sure what to tell Billy. He's not sure about anything in this whole bloody business. He should've never crossed the fucking Atlantic.
"So who is this bloke, anyway?"
"His name is Orlando."
"Right, brilliant, but who is he? What's his story?"
Dominic opens his mouth, then pauses. He doesn't know. All this time -- the sleepless nights and uncomfortable dreams, the obsession, night after night at that one lousy club -- and he doesn't know the first thing about the man he's been inexplicably drawn to. Nothing but a name and a hint of a Spanish accent.
"Dominic? You still there?"
He can't think of a single thing to say.
Dominic goes to the club much earlier than usual, around six in the evening, before anyone is there except the bartender and a few other management types. The place looks small when it's empty, lonely, hollow, like a ghost town or something. The bartender is starting to set things up behind the counter, and looks up in surprise when Dominic walks over to him.
"Can I help you? The bar doesn't open for another hour."
"Yeah, I know. I just wanted to ask..." Dominic hesitates. This is ridiculous. How can he expect this bartender to remember the name of a random bloke in a crowd? "There's a guy who comes clubbing here a lot, his name's Orlando. Do you know him?"
The bartender raises an eyebrow. "Who's asking?"
Dominic considers lying, but figures it's not worth the effort. "I've chatted him up a few times. Just curious, you know?"
"Understandable, I guess," the other man says. He frowns, thinking. "I don't know everybody who comes in here, of course, but that name sounds familiar, and it's not a common one. Gimme a moment."
"It's all right," Dominic says hastily, feeling foolish. "I didn't really expect--"
"Got it!" the bartender says, smiling smugly. "Orlando Bloom, yeah?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"Yeah, he used to come in here every now and then. Popular guy, you know, with the ladies mostly, although I've seen him work another guy or two. The neighborhood fags couldn't get enough of him, I think it amused him."
"Sounds like Orlando," Dominic agrees blandly. He can imagine people being attracted to Orlando, anyway. Drawn to him.
"Too bad, really," the bartender continues. "An old flame, were you? You shouldn't be wasting your time on him. Sorry if I'm the first to tell you, but he passed a few months ago."
Dominic blinks. He feels frozen, immobile, as though icy hands are clamped down on his shoulders, holding him in place. "That's not possible."
"Sorry," the bartender says again. He doesn't sound all that sympathetic. "If you knew him, I'm surprised you didn't hear. It made the tabloids when it happened. Really bizarre. He died right in this club, you know? Just dropped dead in the middle of the dance floor. No one knew what happened, no one saw anything. It's like his heart just stopped, just froze up or something. We had to close the place for almost a week while the cops swarmed all over it, trying to figure out how he died. Someone as young and healthy as Orlando, it just didn't make sense, you know?" The bartender shrugs. "Can't remember what they finally decided happened. Makes a cool story though, right?"
Dominic doesn't respond, just turns and walks out the door, joints unnaturally stiff. The sudden glare of the setting sun after the dimly-lit coolness of the empty club makes him squint. He shivers violently, teeth chattering, as the sun's fading warmth slowly seeps into his icy limbs.
Dominic resists going to the club that night, or tries to. He locks himself in his apartment and picks up a book, determined to distract himself. But the words blur together and his body itches to dance, to feel the beat, to get his fix of the music and the pulse and Orlando. He turns on the TV next, but that fails to distract him, either. He tries to go to sleep, but the image of Orlando dances behind his eyelids, taunting him, tempting him. In desperation, he even tries calling Billy, but all he gets is the answerphone.
"Come dance with me," Orlando whispers in his mind, and finally, not long before dawn, Dominic gives in.
The club is starting to empty out, but Orlando is waiting in the middle of the dance floor, gyrating slowly around himself. When he sees Dominic, he stops. A wide, hungry grin spreads across his face. "There you are! I've been waiting."
Dominic flinches away from Orlando's touch. "Have you."
"Indeed," Orlando says. The familiar feral light sparks in his eyes. "You've been holding out on me," he adds, delightedly. "I love it when they do that. It makes the chase so much more exhilarating."
"You're not real," Dominic tells him, trying to hide his surprise. He half expected Orlando to be angry, but this almost childlike delight is unnerving.
"Am I not?" Orlando lays a very cold, very real hand on Dominic's shoulder, then twists it up to twine around the back of Dominic's neck, sending a shiver down Dominic's spine.
Dominic tries to pull away, but he's caught, mesmerized by the light in Orlando's eyes. "Who are you?"
"La Llorona," Orlando whispers, the Spanish syllables rolling off his tongue. "And in a moment, mi niño, you will join me."
He leans in as if to kiss him, but just as his cold lips brush Dominic's, the first rays of dawn creep in through the club's two small windows.
"Ah!" Orlando breathes, and smiles. "You came a little too late today, Dominic, but I'll see you tomorrow night." The sunlight reaches across the floor, and Dominic is alone, his lips numb, his arms twisted in front of him in an aborted gesture, trying to push away the empty air.
"Billy," Dominic says urgently, clinging to the phone like a lifeline, "you've got to help me."
"What's wrong?" Billy's voice sounds worried, an ocean away.
Dominic opens his mouth to explain, but then stops. Hey, Billy, I think I'm being haunted. No seriously, there's this ghost I met at a club and I'm worried he might be trying to kill me. "Er," he says.
"Dommie?"
"Have you ever heard of something called La Llorona?" Dominic tries not to stumble over the foreign words.
"That's Spanish, right?"
"I think so. You know more about the world history stuff than I do."
If Dominic listens hard enough, he might be able to actually hear Billy thinking. "It sounds familiar, actually. I don't speak Spanish, but I took that world lit course back at school, and I think I can remember talking about something like that."
World literature. Sure, maybe. "I don't know what it means."
"La Llorona," Billy muses. "Hold on, I think I got it. We didn't cover Spanish lit much, just one Gabriel García Márquez book, but we did a folklore unit, and there were some really interesting bits about Mexican legends. I think your La Llorona came up then. Don't ring off, I'm going to go see if I kept any of the books from that course."
Dominic waits, twisting his rings around his fingers nervously. He glances out the window. The sun is sinking lower and lower in the sky, and the urge to go out dancing is just beginning to gnaw at the edges of his consciousness. Stop that, he thinks, and clutches the phone tightly.
Finally, Billy comes back. "Got it!" he says excitedly. "I couldn't find the book, but I looked it up online. La Llorona. The weeping woman. According to Mexican legend, she's this lady who went mad and drowned her kids, then went madder and threw herself in the river after them. After she was buried, her ghost started appearing at the riverbank, calling for her dead children. She would lure other kids to their deaths, stuff like that. Pretty popular ghost story, mainly used to scare Mexican children away from the river at night. Why did you want to know?"
Oddly enough, Dominic feels a surge of relief at this news. "So she wouldn't, say, leave her river and go hunting elsewhere or anything, would she?"
"Not according to the legend," Billy agrees. "Why? Do you think you've bumped into her, or something? New York's an odd place, I'll grant you, but I doubt it counts a Mexican ghost among its crazies."
"Yeah," Dominic says. "Yeah, probably not. Thanks, Billy. Hey, when are you coming out to visit me?"
"Soon," Billy replies. "I'm trying to surprise you, though, so expect me when you least expect me." Dominic can practically hear his grin.
Dominic does go out that night, but not to Orlando's club. He feels free, happier than he's been in weeks. Orlando is nothing special, just a figment of his imagination or something. No dead Mexican woman would find her way to New York, after all, and anyway, there's no such thing as ghosts.
Tonight's the night, Dominic decides gleefully, and makes his way back to the special club. To his disappointment, the DJ is an unfamiliar face. "Do you know the other DJs that work here? I'm looking for the one - well, he's kind of short, like me, and he's got big blue eyes..."
"Who, Elijah?" the strange DJ asks. "Yeah, he's off tonight, I think he'll be back on Friday."
"Thanks," Dominic says. He'll be sure to be back on Friday, then, but in the meantime, there's no reason not to dance. He's safe here, and Orlando doesn't really exist, and everything's fine.
So he dances. He feels good tonight, and looks good, too, he knows. All black clothing and eyeliner and silver jewelry, a dark flash in the dim lights, and the floor is his.
His, until a cold hand on his arm pulls him away from the young Indian man he was pressing up against.
"No," Dominic says flatly. "You're not real. You don't exist. La Llorona is in Mexico, not New York. Leave me alone."
"La Llorona has been dead for three centuries," Orlando replies with a hungry smile. "She has learned a lot in that time. She has learned that the villagers are too good at scaring their children, that she must go to her prey, not wait for her prey to come to her. She has learned that she can take on the appearance of those whose spirit she has taken. She has learned that all the world is her children, her lost children, and that they need her as she needs them." He wraps his arms around Dominic's neck, and Dominic can only stare at him in cold terror. "Mis niños!" Orlando cries, a strangled, eerie sound.
"No," Dominic whispers. "I'm not..."
"Mi niño," Orlando repeats, and kisses him.
Dominic falls, frozen from the inside out.
When Billy comes to New York, Dominic's flat is empty. Unaccountably nervous, he inquires at the police station, and is told an unbelievable story about a man who just dropped dead in the middle of a dance floor, like his heart just froze up or something. Billy shakes his head in disbelief, too shocked to cry.
Sometimes, Elijah likes to let one of the other guys DJ for a bit, so he can take a turn on the club floor. He doesn't dance so much as weave between the clubbers, absorb some of that pulsing energy, rejuvenate himself. Sometimes he lets a dancer pull him close for a brief grind, girl or boy, it hardly matters to him. He just likes to feel the music through someone else's body. It's such a different sensation than spinning, where the sound comes through heavy headphones and constantly calculated song selections. The music is so much more vibrant from the floor and the people and the beat.
He doesn't seek out people to dance with, but tonight there's a flash in the corner of his eye, a blink of silver and black through the crowd. He turns and it's gone, hidden behind the ever-changing crowd. Elijah looks around, still in the midst of so much motion, and there, there it is again, a strangely familiar-looking young man in a black T-shirt and silver rings and black eyeliner, pushing against a girl dressed all in green. The black and silver man is oddly pale, almost luminescent in the pulsing mass. He glances over his shoulder at Elijah and smirks. His eyes are raw and hungry and sparking with energy.
Elijah swallows hard, blinks, and the man is gone again. Elijah spends the rest of the night searching through the crowd for the pale black silver man with the hungry eyes, but doesn't find him. The room flickers at the edge of his vision, taunting him, as he continues his feverish search. When he goes home that night, the figure of the young man will hover behind his eyelids, haunting him.
Sooner or later, Elijah will find that man again. He's certain of it. He has to.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2004-08-12 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 01:46 pm (UTC)Thank you.
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Date: 2004-08-12 02:59 pm (UTC)scaredhad that effect on you. ;)no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 05:01 pm (UTC)Oh. My. God.
Date: 2004-08-12 04:18 pm (UTC)Nice Work!!
Re: Oh. My. God.
Date: 2004-08-12 05:01 pm (UTC)were creeped out byliked it!no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 08:16 pm (UTC)Chrissy.
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Date: 2004-08-14 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 10:30 pm (UTC)This fic was amazing, and the fact that you used an established legend for it made it even better. And how Orlando's cold froze the glass he had picked up.. hee. Awesomeness.
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Date: 2004-08-14 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 09:35 am (UTC)Seriously, this is one of the most well thought-out and carefully constructed stories I have read in a long time. Every section takes it one step further, at the perfect pace...the introductions to the characters, their gradual connections, and then the feeling of slowly spinning out of control, never being able to go back. It's over from the moment it begins, and all we can do is watch helplessly as it plays itself out.
The tie-in with Elijah was brilliant, especially the ending, because it shows that it's not over, it won't end, it can't be stopped. And the fact that they want it so badly just makes it sweeter. I love the tiny nuances of Orlando's character...the cold, the accent, the look in his eyes that transfers to Dominic when Elijah sees him again. It's just...oh, god. Incredible. This piece takes my breath away.
Don't you dare stop writing. <3
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Date: 2004-08-14 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 06:22 pm (UTC)I can't even formulate a response to this.
Except.
Except.
SWEET FANCY MOSES.
I adored this. Let me think about it a bit, and maybe I can say something more.
*buys you a drink omg*
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Date: 2004-08-14 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 07:05 pm (UTC)and the Coupling journal layout is marvelous too!
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Date: 2004-08-14 04:52 pm (UTC)And, yes, whee Coupling! ;)
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Date: 2004-08-13 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 04:53 pm (UTC)Heh, thanks! And, sure, friend away, although I should warn you that I haven't been writing much lately... *sheepish smile*
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Date: 2004-08-14 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 05:44 pm (UTC)In other news, evil!Lij-icon is...um...I need a moment to myself now. ;)
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Date: 2004-08-15 05:21 am (UTC)this was chilling and so well written, i have goosebumps. beautiful
*adds to memories*
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Date: 2004-08-15 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-23 01:04 am (UTC)Worst of all, it looks like Elijah is going to suffer the same fate. If only they'd acted on their first impulses sooner! Then it would have been a very short and dull story indeed.
So yeah, everything that makes it creepy and devastating, also makes it interesting and well, haunting.
This was excellent reading to accidentally stumble across after having missed it months ago when it was actually posted.
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Date: 2004-12-28 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 06:25 pm (UTC)oh yeah.. *sigh* not first time I´m reading this. So glad I found it and read it again. But mostly I´m a bit sad that I waited 5 years to say thank you.
*FACEPALM*