(Untitled)

[elijah_would]

thursday mid-morning, directly after the audition.There are showers in the DBY bathroom. Two of them, out of sight when you walk in but clearly visible when standing at the sink, peering into the mirror at the room behind you. The sight of the twin squares of tile with their matching shower heads shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise given the

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[billboyd]

For a handful of seconds, Elijah stares at Bill, water dripping off the point of his chin and nose and onto his t-shirt (which is inside out, Bill notes). His eyes are enormous and half-wild, and Bill doubts that the color in his cheeks is due to the water.

Bill stands still and waits to see if Elijah is going to rabbit. After a five count in which he doesn't -- doesn't actually move at all, doesn't so much as twitch, in fact, so he resembles nothing so much as one of those spooky porcelain dolls with the scary enormous eyes -- Bill continues past him toward the urinal.

"You're dripping on the floor, dollface," he says as he passes, and Elijah gives a startled little jerk, and spins around so his hands are over the sink again.

Bill zips down, maintaining the expected eyes-on-the-wall stare all men practice in public restrooms the world round, and after another second, Elijah shuts off the tap and shakes excess water off his hands. He turns toward the paper-towel dispenser, his movement abrupt and almost jerky, nothing like the graceful slouch Bill had observed earlier in the lobby. Then he just stands there, looking at it.

Bill ponders for a moment (and finishes pissing, shakes off, zips up), and says, "You have to actually pull them out,"

"Wha...?" Elijah says (nearly squeaks), spinning half-toward Bill, wet hands still held out in front of him.

"To make them work," Bill says, and pantomimes pulling paper towels out of the dispenser. "You have to pull them out and rub your hands with them."

[elijah_would]

"What?"

Elijah blinks four times while Bill turns on the faucet and lifts his chin to examine his jaw in the mirror.

"Take your time, love, it'll come to you eventually."

Elijah's fingers are dripping onto the tops of his sneakers.

"Oh."

He's pretty sure he should be irritated, but he's too busy trying to fathom the mechanics of the paper towel dispenser. He grabs onto one, looks down, sees the seams of his wrinkled tshirt sticking out along his sides.

"Shit."

He pulls the shirt up and over his head. His wet hands leave splotchy marks across the front when he shrugs back into it, right-side out. The top two buttons of his fly are undone, and the outline of his dick is still clear and heavy under the soft denim.

"Um."

He yanks his tshirt down over the swell and rubs his damp fingers through his hair and across his face.

"Jesus," he whispers.

[billboyd]

"Or you could just use your shirt," Bill says straight faced, and moves to take some paper towels for himself. Elijah steps to one side, his dark brows contracting into a scowl, then relaxing before they complete the expression, so that he looks faintly surprised. He's still sporting some fairly fucking impressive color in his face, too, and Bill bites at the inside of his cheek.

"So, I take it things went well?" he asks, and somehow doesn't laugh.

[elijah_would]

He's pretty sure now he's being made fun of, but he's too frazzled to think up a reply. The tile is cold on his back as he slumps and reaches automatically for his cigs, only to realize he left them back in the studio. Fucknuggets.

"It went... I think he... I guess so," he says, before he realizes the question was as much rhetorical as it was sarcastic.

[billboyd]

Elijah doesn't sound like he's sure about that at all, and Bill feels a kind of mingled amusement and sympathy for the kid.

Bill feels that way about aspects of DBY at least once (or twice or a twenty) times a day, after all, that sort of what the fuck just happened, then?, the feeling of unstable ground beneath your feet (although he guesses not exactly for the same reason that Elijah's feeling it, and almost snorts aloud at the idea).

"'S weird here, I know," he says, and then blinks at Elijah, faintly surprised at himself. Elijah blinks back, and looks just as surprised. Bill frowns -- not really at Elijah, but how's he to know that -- as he has an unsteady moment himself (did he just offer words of comfort to the smirk-y little punk?), and Elijah shrinks back against the wall and drags the white rubber toe of his sneakers across the bathroom floor. It's wet from Elijah dripping everywhere, and makes an unpleasantly high-pitched squeal on the tile.

Bill closes one eye against the sudden pressure in his left temple as Elijah does it again, apparently unconcerned with the horrific noise it produces(honestly, what the fuck is wrong with the little twat, doesn't he hear that). "It get's easier," Bill manages to grate out (half-hoping it'll at least stop the toe-scuffing).

Elijah looks up at him with a questioning kind of frown, and squeals his toe across the tile again.

"Unless you keep doing that," Bill says pleasantly, "in which case I'll fucking kill you and make it look like a bloody accident."

He smiles.

[elijah_would]

Elijah's toe freezes in mid-pass. His foot disappears behind his other leg.

He's positive he's being made fun of now, and that Bill is reaping vast amusement from his discomfort, but something in that fleeting expression on his face (the slight lessening of the scowl between the irritating smirk and the psychopathic smile) is enough to make Elijah take the opportunity along with the bait. He did just offer semi-encouraging words, didn't he? Or at least a polite facsimile thereof? Doesn't really matter, though, because before Elijah can analyze it he's already speaking.

"I just didn't think... I mean I didn't realize he'd... talk, so much. To me." He shrugs a little, feeling the blush creeping up his neck and cheeks again. "I don't know, I just didn't think it would all be so..."

"Pornographic?" Bill offers.

Elijah looks up at him, then closes his mouth and almost returns Bill's wry little grin.

"Yeah."

[billboyd]

Bill shrugs with one shoulder. Elijah, probably unconcsiously, mimics the motion, and then drags his toe across the floor again. It barely squeaks before he stops himself, his eyes skittering up to Bill's face uncertainly.

"Sorry," he mutters, and looks away, his face coloring again.

Kid blushes at the drop of a hat, Bill muses. Johnny'll like that. Then he snorts aloud, amused to find himself even thinking such a thing. Elijah's forehead humps into puzzled little ridges.

"So, now you're all in a huff because it's not what you expected," Bill suggests, and isn't surprised when Elijah flares up, bristly and indigant.

[elijah_would]

"No," Elijah says at once, much more forcefully than he intended. He is irritated, now, -- suddenly, inexplicably pissed off, and at too many people to separate.

Seeing the expression on Bill's face, he amends his outburst. "That's not what I said." He drops his eyes, softens back into the wall, the bizarre flash of anger draining out of him as fast as it had surged in.

"But no, it's not what I expected." He reaches again for the cloves that aren't there, and distracts that hand by scratching his head. "I don't know what I expected," he mutters, and he's not sure when he's felt like more of a first-class tool. Bill just stands there and watches him, seemingly in complete agreement.

A sudden thought enters his mind. He looks up at Bill, trying to read the creases between the layers of frown and smirk.

"What did you... I mean, was it weird when you...?"

[billboyd]

When Elijah doesn't finish, Bill arches both brows, and prompts, "When I...?"

Color floods Elijah's face, and Bill feels his eyebrows continue on up until they're practically encroaching into the space his hair has long since retreated from as he gets it.

For a moment, he hovers on the edge of full-out guffaws.

Somehow, he manages to scale it back to a relatively innocent snort of amusement, though Elijah's face goes all thunder cloudy again (and this kid is like a fucking emotional neon sign, every little thing flitting across his face, yeah, Johnny's definitely going to be madly in love with him for a while), his spine straightening with indignation.

"Do I look like a bloody porn star to you, boy?" Bill asks, honestly fucking gobsmacked.

[elijah_would]

The sheer, painful depth of his error takes a second or two to fully kick in. When it does, he has to hook his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and ball his hands into fists to keep from turning and walking straight the fuck out of that swinging door. But on the heels of his embarrassment comes the return of his annoyance, and he'll be damned if he'll run from this foreign little fucker. Bill isn't the only one who can lift one eyebrow in dry sarcasm.

"Well I didn't think you worked here for the health insurance. You had to do something around here before they retired you to the coffee machine."

[billboyd]

"Now, now," Bill tuts mildly, still half-choking on a laugh that wants to escape his throat. "Lets not go projecting your issues onto me, mate. It's bad form to say the least."

Elijah's brows contract until they nearly touch, leaving a deep verticle furrow of paler than usual (which is pretty fucking pale) skin between them.

"The health insurance is actually quite good here," he says (Elijah's face relaxes for an instant, and then his lips quirk and one brow raises, an expression Bill is coming to understand is prepatory for biting sarcasm -- and fairly good sarcasm, at that), "and we can't all be as pretty and insecure as you, Mr. Wood."

[elijah_would]

Goddamnit, he should have thought up a fake name.

The sharp little cupid's-bow of Bill's mouth is twitched firmly up on one side in what Elijah already knows to be amusment. If that narrow mouth had clamped into the razor-edged M he'd seen in the front lobby, he'd been fully prepared to duck and cover. Wouldn't do to get your jaw broken by your coworker before you've even signed the contract.

Instead, Elijah lets out a sigh, and feels regret creeping up atop the impressive pile of fuck-ups he's collected in the past 10 minutes. He runs a hand through his hair.

"Look man...I just thought..." The gel in his hair is distastefully warm from the studio lights. He drops his hand. "Christ, I need a cigarette."

[billboyd]

Bill digs in his shirt pocket and hands Elijah his pack of Camels. Elijah fumbles at it for a moment before digging one out and jamming it between his lips. Bill hands the kid his lighter, and says, "Technically speaking, it's illegal to smoke in the studio, but..." He shrugs. "I think you're safe enough from police interference in the loo."

The corner of Elijah's lip curls, making the tip of the fag stutter upward. He chases it with the flame of the lighter for a moment, then inhales deeply, his eyes sinking closed for a moment.

"Now, if you're finished antagonizing me, Elijah Jordan Wood, age 23?" Bill arches both brows and Elijah sighs and flips him off. "Are you? Finished antagonizing me?"

"For the moment," Elijah says, and takes another deep drag off one of Bill's Camels.

"You going to take the job, then?" Bill asks, but he already knows the answer, whether this kid knows it yet or not.

[elijah_would]

Elijah sucks at the smoke until his cheeks nearly touch, grateful for the calming wave of warmth in his blood. Even a nasty-ass Camel tastes like fucking manna from heaven right about now. He takes another drag, letting his head rest back against the tile. For a long, steadying moment, he listens to his heartbeat and feels the muscles between his shoulder-blades loosen and spread. Bill's proximity has effectually snuffed all traces of his residual hard-on, and after a moment or two he feels a little more in control. Then he hears Bill's question, and opens his eyes.

You going to take the job? A casual question, for a casual answer.

He thinks of the ripped Reporter page still stuck to his refrigerator with a Speed Racer magnet. He thinks of his SAG card, crumpled in the floorboard of his car, and his mother's voice crackly with concern over the phone. He thinks of the spotlight hot and dry on the skin of his belly, and the weight of his cock in his hand and Johnny's eyes on his face, the wholly new rush still lingering in his blood, tingling somewhere between anticipation and terror. Of what he just did, of what he just felt, and of how very much he wants to feel it again.

"I..."

[billboyd]

The silence rolls out for several seconds, and Bill smiles.

"Welcome aboard, then. I'll get the paperwork ready for you to sign as soon as Johnny's done with you."

Elijah blinks at him, perplexed; for a moment, he looks like he might say something, but in the end he doesn't. In the end he just looks at Bill, and after another stretch of silent seconds, gives a slight nod.

Bill nods back and tosses his handful of wadded up paper towels into the bin on his way to the door. He pauses with it open; Elijah's rubbing at the bridge of his nose with two fingers and smoking with the other hand. Poor little mite'll burn himself if he doesn't have a care.

"For the record," he says, "I think you'll settle in more easily than you can even believe possible."

[elijah_would]

Elijah looks up. Bill is looking at him with an expression open to several interpretations. After a moment, Elijah finds himself smiling.

He straightens, tugs at the hem of his shirt till the wrinkles smooth out. The water splotches are nearly gone. His cigarette has been sucked down to a single gray ash; he raises it to Bill and takes a final drag.

"Thanks," he says, and pulls a paper towel out of the dispenser.