(no subject)

[bluetears07]

Disclaimer: Ever so sorry boys…the stuff in here never happened.
Series: Preordained
Paring: Sean A./Elijah
Summary: AU: Some things are just meant to happen while others are simply ripples off of one small mistake that change us forever. (Read AU Description, and also AN; behind cut)
AU Description: Same as before. (Refer to the “Prologue’s” AN for information mentioned previously.)
Rating: R (over-all) Chapter Twenty-Five: PG-13
AN: Please don’t kill me…*hides* (Chapter Title: pun intended)
Guide: ‘Thoughts’
Film Titles
+++++++++++++++

Preordained

Chapter Twenty-Five: Long Overdue

Thick pulses of anxiety were coursing through Sean’s body as he tried to focus on the outline of the custody arrangement being permanently established by the court- appointed judge. However, the words could have been of another language for all that Sean was truly processing them, in a fog of jumbled thoughts. The woman’s painted lips were moving in a slow rhythmic pattern that registered as vowels and consonants but no sound seemed to escape them. All he could feel was the overpowering emotion rip through him in an arsenal of overlapping waves. The sound of them was drowning out all else in the suddenly far too small court room. It seemed like as soon as he would resolve one possible outcome of the judge’s decision another scenario would materialize before him; a never ending struggle to find equilibrium between the two.

He hated himself for it.

Every nervous tick Sean had ever possessed in his life seemed to be culminating to form one radiating entity; a complete and utter lack of control over his own body. The muscles of his right thigh were overexerted and fatigued from continual bouncing while the flesh of his lower lip began to swell as blood slowly rose to the surface beneath his teeth. Despite the temperate of the courtroom, a cool sheen of perspiration was beginning to slick the back of his neck, causing the over-starched and repeatedly ironed collar to cling to his damp skin. Sweat-dampened strands of hair at the nape of Sean’s neck began to gently curl in upon themselves. A few wayward strands of darkened hair had even managed to reach around to curl about his right earlobe.

He began to fumble idly with the gold plated cufflink threaded through the button holes of his left cuff. Metal pressed against his fingertips for a moment before Sean ran the pad of his thumb beneath the French-cut cuff. Pealing the stiff fabric away from his damp skin, the man’s fingers moved next to dip beneath the expensive metal banded watch wound about his wrist. Sean could feel the thrumming pulse beating just under his heated flesh as he pulled the metal links of the watchband away from it. After a moment his fingers stilled, and he dropped his hands so that they lay still upon the table before him, a last attempt to quell his anxious neurosis.

Faux mahogany tables, glazed three times with cheap lacquer for good measure to make up for the poor quality, glinted with a mocking gleam as Sean stared fixedly at the tabletop. If he squinted, he could just make out his own oddly blank face looking back up at him, almost completely devoid of any emotion, save the slight crease between his drawn brows. Behind his shoulder in the reflection, suspended from the ceiling, was a florescent light fixture dangling on four sets of thickly braided steal wires. Just beyond his line of reflected vision from where he sat lay the twin doors, also constructed from fake wood, that he and Christine had entered through two hours ago. One of the doors slowly opened in an attempt at discretion with a dull whistling of compressed air; Sean heard the action rather than witnessed it. Moving so that he could get a lager panorama of the back wall, he saw the indistinct figure slip inside the room. It moved quickly down the aisle before finally coming into his peripheral vision, stopping to sit just behind were his now ex-wife sat listening with a worried expression contorting her natural beauty.

A surge of contempt flared up as he watched his cinematographer’s hand touch Chris’ shoulder, obvious comfort being transferred through the simple contact. The delicate fabric of her dark suit rumpled beneath Viggo’s fingers as he squeezed her shoulder gently and leaned forward to whisper something soothing in her ear. Christine’s initially shocked expression melted into recognition as soon as she saw who had touched her, fading quickly into a small, grateful smile. Even from across the room, Sean saw her face soften as the anxious energy began to drain slowly out of her tense posture. She whispered something back to the man before turning back to listen intently to the judge. As soon as he had noticed the corners of his ex-wife’s lips turn up for the first time all day, something shifted in the pit of his stomach. His gut reaction ebbed; Sean felt a rush of empathy, tainted though it was with an underlying twinge of jealousy.

There was no way he was going to hold it against Christine for having someone there for her when he could not. He knew full well that if Elijah was in Los Angeles instead of Prague, the young man would undoubtedly be there for him. The sentiment resonating in his mind, Sean looked back down at the table beneath his hands. Staring blankly at the reflected light, the writer found himself looking at an apparition of the actor carved in the illuminated surface. Fractions of white light pulled together and mingled with both dark and light tones of the imitation wood. The concerned profile of his younger lover just over his shoulder; all pale skin and shimmering beyond-blue eyes tracing the faint lines of worry creasing the corners of Sean’s eyes and mouth. He watched as those flushed lips parted, silent words of comfort falling from them for only Sean to hear. A phantom kiss was pressed against his cheek as the face leaned closer towards him. Sean was sure he felt the weight of the young man’s head as the vision let its head rest against his shoulder. With just the tip of his index finger, he traced down the sharp line of Elijah’s nose before moving to outline the glossy wood where the younger man’s lips were.

“Mr. Astin?” The judge inquired for the third time when Sean finally heard her through the haze of concern for his daughter’s future. Attempting to keep his neurosis in check, Sean finally pulled his attention away from the strategically place knot in the fake wood. “Is that alright with you, Mr. Astin?” Glancing up at the woman, Sean’s eyes were draw instantly to the shock of vibrant crimson contrasting with both the pale background of her rounded countenance and customary black robes. She had a deceivingly pleasant smile plastered upon her face, curling up the corners of her ruby red painted lips with a slight crook.

+++++++++++++++

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Elijah’s mind screamed as he began to bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, trying to see into the small coffee kiosk. Once getting a better look at the people working in the kiosk, the young man seriously began considering ditching his extra-large mocha and making a dash for gate forty-eight. The three idiots behind the counter seemed as if they were purposely moving at the astounding speed of snails stuck in molasses with the sole intention to cause Elijah to miss his already delayed and long overdue flight home, with the added bonus of pissing him off, after having to go through two weeks of overtime shooting for Illuminated.

An ever-expanding bubble of pent-up energy, one that he knew would run out as soon as he made it safely onto the plane, burst suddenly and sent tendrils of energy coursing through his veins. Nails already bit down to the nub and near bleeding, the young man continued to chew at the callused flesh flanking the bitten fingernails while anxiously fingering his silver ring with his thumb. With one hand clutching the frayed strap of his messenger bag slung across his chest, Elijah glanced anxiously around the crowd of people waiting to place their orders. Many appeared to be much taller than him, the observation more overtly stated in his moment of near-crisis. The small amount of air he managed to breathe was humid and filled his lungs uncomfortably, being so closely sandwiched in line in an attempt to keep from blocking the busy airport concord just beyond.

‘Screw this.’ The young man thought in a fit of sleep-deprived indignation after finally making his mind up. ‘They better have coffee on the plane.’ He reasoned, looking in both directions and trying to decide which would be the best way to make his escape. With a deep breath, he pushed his way towards the busy concord where the stream of people was walking past the line for coffee. Squeezing out of the tightly packed clump, Elijah managed to wiggle his way between a large woman with a gaudy-no doubt imitation-Louis Vuitton handbag and a young kid with a plastic Star Wars backpack with Chez writing scrawled along the straps. The little boy stared up at him with large brown eyes and a bright smile, his front teeth missing. Elijah paused for a short moment and looked at the boy smiling at him. Something odd in that moment he could not place or began to understand made the young actor feel as if he had met the child before. Perhaps it was simply the radiating aura of pure innocence that made Elijah’s mind connect him to the only other child that he knew well. Compelled to be courteous to the poor boy he had just shoved past in order to get to the open walkway to his gate, the young man spoke to him.

“Uhhh,” he muttered, stalling as he tried desperately to remember what little Chez he had been taught by the crew and a few bilingual locals he had met at a bar a few times in the past couple of weeks. “Dobry den;” it was disjointed and pronounced with a horrible American accent that the young actor had a hard time losing when he was nearly asleep on his feet. However, the little boy’s grin grew and he replied back with a similar greeting. “Dovolte prosím.” Elijah murmured with a small smile and a slight inclination of his head, asking to be pardoned for bumping into him. The boy said something that Elijah hoped was along the lines of ‘It’s alright’ or ‘Don’t worry about it’ but his vocabulary was rather limited. He knew the two phrases he had already said and a few other words like yes and no but nothing beyond that. Smiling one last time and waving goodbye to the boy, the young man finally turned away.

‘Twenty gates in fifteen minutes, I can totally do this,’ he thought optimistically, checking his watch and the gate number that was closest to him. As quickly as he could with the cumbersome bag clicking against his hipbone, combined with the slippery soles of his Converse tennis shoes sliding against the cheap linoleum floor, Elijah started running down the concord. For a fleeting moment of nostalgia, the actor saw himself as an eighteen year old boy dashing down the set of The Faculty, slipping and sliding his way down the school’s hallway. Half way to his gate he nearly ran into one rather intimidating man who stood at least a head taller than him. Before he even had a chance to barrel into the larger man a solid pressure collided with his chest. His breath was instantly knocked out of him with the force of the blow. With a push of the man’s hand, spanned across the young man’s entire chest, Elijah’s smaller frame was shoved easily out of the way, but still standing. Pausing for a moment, Elijah regained his breath. Without looking back to see the man continue stalking on as if nothing had happened, the young man continued on down the seemingly never-ending corridor, though this time with much more care.

If he could just get to the gate, everything would be rectified. Just make it back to Sean and it would be end up being okay. Breath coming in short puffs, his lungs began to burn from not being used for exercise in such a long time, and the accompanying overuse of clove cigarettes. A few sporadic coughs covered the sound of his messenger bag hitting his hip and the squeak of his wet rubber soles. However, thanks to Elijah’s co-star messing around with the ringer’s sound levels on his cell phone while he was in the bathroom that morning, the twinkling electronic tune of his cell phone ring reached his ears despite the cacophony of squeaking tennis shoes. Elijah stopped mid-stride and froze, only two gates away from number forty-eight. The haunting melody, contorted by the technological attempt at a symphonic refrain, sent a freezing chill of excitement up his spine, chased closely by a warm sensation of hope.

Frantic, the young man’s pale hands flew to his hips in frenzied search of the singing item. Tapered fingers dug into the tight fabric of his jean pockets with no luck. Patting the material several times, just to make sure it was not hiding somewhere, he remembered that the phone was in fact nestled in his messenger bag. After tearing away the fabric flap and ripping open the zipper of the pocket stitched into the back of the bag, his hand finally collided with the object. Fingertips gliding over the smooth surface of the silver plated flip phone, Elijah grasped it and yanked it out from the pocket. Flicking it open with the edge of his thumb, the young actor pulled it to his ear.

“Sean!” The sound was lost to the sea of static that he chocked up to the high-powered, interfering equipment the airport was using to detect incoming flights. A dull beep was the only thing he could make out over the constant noise. Knuckles turning white, fingers curled around the phone with a sudden death grip upon hearing the strange noise clouding the only connection to home, Elijah tried calling to Sean again but was cut off by the disjointed noise of his own name breaking through the fuzzy static. Breath caught in his throat, Elijah found that the nervous energy that had been building up in the base of hi spine quickly disappeared. Calmed by the composed inflections of Sean’s voice, he remained silent as he strained to put together his writer’s butchered syllables, adding them up to form words.

“Li—mo…pi-ick up…air-ir—port…prem-prem—ier,” was all he had a chance to interpret before another beep bleared in his ear and his cell phone died, flashing a small warning message that it was low on batteries and conserving power by hibernating. A forty second call was all it was, leaving the young man completely alone once more.

“Fuck!” Elijah cursed under his breath, chucking the drained and useless cell into his bag with a ridged flick of his wrist. Aggravation contorting his every movement, he pulled out the boarding pass from the same pocket that his cell phone had been in. Taking a deep breath before heaving a loud sigh, he looked down at the paper in his hands, noting in the back of his mind that he had been placed in an aisle seat. ‘You’ll see him really soon, come on Lij. No more delays, just a straight shot back home,’ he thought with the faintest of smiles. Finally composing himself, taking a small comfort in the mantra of ‘only twelve more hours’ running through his mind, Elijah crossed the short distance spanning from where he had stopped and his gate.

Courteous as ever, and calmer knowing that he did not need to rush anymore, he took the time to smile at the blond flight attendant who passed the boarding ticket through the scanner. She handed the paper back to the young man and wished him a safe flight to L.A. before taking the next ticket from the woman standing behind him. Walking through the small corridor to the plane, hearing the woman say the same sentiment to another passenger, Elijah shoved his hands into the pockets of his torn jeans. Next he found himself being greeted by the stewardess on the plane with the biggest grin he had ever seen. Of course he smiled back in kind before turning to walk down the small, carpeted aisle to find his seat. Face tilted up, looking at the plastic numbers he found the one corresponding to the numbers printed on his ticket. Glancing down to the person already sitting in the window seat he saw a blur of bright orange.

“Elijah!” A feminine voice yelped in astonishment as the seated woman turned around to look up at the actor. Elijah was suddenly staring at the smiling countenance of Orlando’s longstanding girlfriend, though her hair color had once again been altered to resemble a brilliant tangerine shade.

“Julia?” He inquired with a surprised smile spreading across his lips, amused shock resonating in his voice. Sometimes between takes when Sean was busy and Orlando was distracted he would get the chance to chat with her about pretty much anything and everything. She had always been a sweet girl after Elijah had finally broken through the bubble of protective shyness around her. It was strange to see her so out of element, after getting used to seeing her at the Inevitable set every day, though at the same time a feeling of warm familiarity flooded his system. She was something from home that he could latch onto until he reached the real thing.

“Oh my god, this is such a surprise.” Julia said, her voice higher than her natural tone, evidence of her state of shock, but she was grinning happily nevertheless. “Hey,” she began, reaching across the seat to motion to Elijah, who was not putting his messenger bag beneath the seat in front of his. “Is this your seat?” A hopeful undertone bled through as she spoke. He nodded silently as he sat down next to her after putting away his bag. “No way, what a coincidence,” she said, mystified. Elijah nudged her shoulder playfully with a small laugh before searching in the folds of the seat cushion for the other missing half of his seatbelt.

For a while the pair sat in a comfortable silence, getting situated for the long flight while the rest of passengers boarded the plane. Several young children came running by periodically, making nearly impossible for the two to have a conversation. Once the children were harnessed into their seats, the amiable stewardess that the young man had met earlier handed out small pillows and blankets to the passengers. The plane was finally ready to take off after ten minutes of waiting for an opening on the airstrip. Elijah shifted in his seat to look at Julia with a prying smile, tugging the fleece blanket up to his chin and snuggling down to get comfortable in the stiff seat.

“Sooooo,” he drawled with a fascinated grin, exhaustion lacing his voice as he spoke. Finally at ease and with someone who was a physical connection to home, Elijah allowed the fatigue to wash over him. “What are you doing here, anyways?” The young man asked, cocking an eyebrow and shifting the pillow around so that he could lay his head on it and still see Julia’s face as she talked to him.

“Long story,” she replied, glancing down for a moment at Elijah’s face as she distractedly fiddled with the black plastic air conditioning units overhead. A laugh escaped her lips as she saw the young man staring up at her with wide blue eyes, begging her to tell him why she had been in Prague.

“We do have a twelve hour flight…” he reasoned with a cunning grin, though it was interrupted from reaching its full potential by a tell-tale yawn. Covering his mouth in an attempt to be discreet only caused the young woman to laugh, eliciting a half-hearted glare from Elijah.

“Okay,” hands held up in surrender, she gave in to the sleepy scowl. “I’ll give you the short version though, sleeping beauty.” Julia quipped with a facetious grin. “So, Orlando and I were celebrating his being cast in some big epic about the crusades, or something like that.” Waving her hand before her face, clearing the intangible words from her mind she continued, glancing down to see if Elijah was still awake. “Anyway, we decided to go backpacking through Europe and ended up in Prague about a week ago.” She finished with a wistful smile.

“You should have come and visit me.” A murmur from the half-asleep actor was the only response she got.

“We thought you were already back in L.A.” The young woman replied as she furrowed her brow. She suddenly realized that Elijah should not have been in Prague at the same time. Filming for his movie had been scheduled so that he could be back in the states with two weeks until the premier of The Inevitable. “Wasn’t your film supposed to wrap like two weeks ago.” She asked perplexed.

“Yeah…” Elijah mumbled quietly into the sterilized cloth of the tiny pillow beneath his head. “Liev wanted to do some extra things he hadn’t originally planned on, so we ran into a little bit of overtime.” Shifting around, the young man began fiddling with the pillow, molding it into a folded square so that it better supported his sleep-laden head. The fleece blanket had fallen off one shoulder and he tugged it back up so that he was completely covered by its all-encompassing protection.

“Well,” she nudged his shoulder with a small laugh. “It’s a good thing you’re on this flight, ‘cause otherwise you’d miss the premiere.” As her words hung in the air, it really hit him for the first time-the real magnitude of his situation. On a superficial level, thanks to his sleep-deprived mind, the first thing he realized was that when he got back to Los Angeles he would only have about two hours to get ready for the premiere. On top of that, nervous energy stimulating his thoughts, he remembered that it would be Sean’s first Hollywood premiere. And even more importantly, he was going to be there with his writer, really ‘with’ him, for the first time in public. A wealth of emotions bubbled up in Elijah’s exhausted body, far too many than what he could handle in such a drained state of mind. Pushing the overwhelming thoughts from his mind, he focused on a different topic that had popped into his head.

“Speaking of the premiere,” he began, perking up slightly, his fatigue ebbed by the churning emotions mingling in his stomach. “Where is Orli?” Lifting his head, he watched as Julia turned to look at him with a slightly amused expression, muted laughter dancing in her eyes.

“Actually, he left yesterday.” She said with the same glint in her eye, hitting the perfectly square button so that the overhead lights went out. The small section of the plane that was theirs was cast in a dark shadow. “At about four in the morning he realized he didn’t have a tux or anything ready for the first premiere of his career.” A quiet laugh at her boyfriend’s lack of common sense was muted by the fabric of her pillow as she muffled the sound, shaking her head back and forth. However, her demeanor shifted subtly as her laughter died down. Pulling the pillow away from her face, she continued. “And since it was such short notice, it would have been way too expensive for us both to go.” There was a twinge of remorse underlying the tone of her voice as she spoke. Elijah looked up to see her eyes fixed upon the dull glint of her a ring as she spun it on one finger.

“Hey,” she murmured, turning back to look over at the young man seated beside her with his head pressed against the seatback. “Like you said, it’s a long flight and you’re obviously zonked from filming.” Elijah’s mind tried to come up with something witty to retort her comment, but nothing would process. “And you and I both have a big premiere to go to when we land in L.A.” The tip of the young man’s straight nose was tapped gently by the pad of Julia’s index finger. “So how ‘bout you take a nap, and afterwards I’ll tell you all about how beautiful the film looks.” At this promise, Elijah was pulled back from the brink of finally falling asleep after weeks of insomnia.

“What? How did you…?” He trailed off, confused, his fingers anxiously pulling at a piece of fleece that had snagged on his seatbelt buckle. Moving so that he was seated in a more upright position, the young actor stared at his friend with utter perplexity painted on his face.

“I went in a few times to help with the film editing.” She explained, a little surprised by the enthusiastic reaction her comment had earned from Elijah. Knowing full well from the dark circles beneath her friend’s eyes that he had not slept well in a while, she tried to convince him to take a nap before she told him about the finished version of the film. The only thing she wanted was for him to get as much sleep as he could. Using his world-renowned wide blue-eyed stare, silently pleading with her to tell him, he managed to draw out the desired information. After throwing her hands up at the young man’s stubborn resolve and rolling her eyes, she began to describe what she had seen of the finished product. “It looks amazing,” Julia began breathlessly. “The imagery is so…” Pausing for a moment, at a loss for words, she began searching her mind for the right way to describe the vivid style that Sean had chosen to use for the final edit of the brightness and contrast. “I don’t even know the right words to describe it.” She gushed eventually, laughing under her breath at just how speechless the film had left her. “Trust me, Lij; it does beyond justice to Sean’s novel;" the young woman murmured, turning in her seat to look at her friend. “He poured so much of himself into it.” Voice hardly above a whisper, she cast her eyes down, staring fixedly at the silver rings wound about her fingers. There was a long pause as Elijah rolled the sentiment around in his head.

“How is Sean?” The question slipped from his lips without thinking. A small flush rose to his cheeks as he heard the sudden desperation contorting his tone. There was more concern in his voice than what propriety would allot just a ‘close’ friend. However, once the inquiry was hanging in the air between them, Elijah found his stomach tighten as he waited for her to respond. Julia did not answer at first. Elijah reached out to her, touching her shoulder lightly with the tips of his fingers. “Julia?” He asked, concerned with the change in her demeanor.

“I don’t think he slept more that ten hours during the entire editing process;” Julia finally confessed, glancing up at the actor to watch his reaction. The only thing she saw that hinted at his response was a small flinch that drew his eyebrows closer for the blink of an eye. A strange chill ran through Elijah’s body, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Of course, Sean had told him during their phone calls that he was having a little trouble sleeping, both of them were, but the writer had continually told his younger lover that it was really nothing to worry about. In the back of his mind, beneath the overwhelming concern, there was a tiny pocket of hurt that folded in on itself before Elijah could touch it. “When he did sleep, it was always in front of a computer screen;” she continued, wringing her hands idly as they rested in her lap. “Poor guy, I think it was partially because he could use the work as a distraction from the stress from the divorce and other shit.” A sigh slipped from her lips as she leaned against the armrest, looking through the small window at the dark clouds backlit by the rising moon.

She was dead-on.

Halfway into the flight, after a seven hour nap, Elijah woke up to find his friend slumbering quietly in her seat. Without waking the young woman, he unclipped his seatbelt buckle and slipped into the aisle. The carpet made an odd noise as his tennis shoes grated it the wrong way. For a split-second he considered grabbing his unopened pack of cloves he had stuck in his bag. The young man was literally itching for a cigarette, just one little, harmless cigarette. Fingers curled around his belt loops as he debated silently in his head whether he could risk it. He chose against it, not wanting to botch disarming the smoke-detector in his current state. Instead he just decided to walk up and down the plane once or twice to keep the blood circulating in his legs.

The tacky thin line of carpet that looked like a blast from the past continued to complain as Elijah’s rubber soles shuffled along, twisting it back upon itself. After making his way to the very back of the airplane, smiling brightly when he saw the children who had been making the loud commotion during boarding, who were now bouncing restlessly in their seats, he turned back around. On the way back, he casually waved at the stewardess, who was making her way towards his seat with the cheap metallic drink cart. When Elijah reached his seat, sitting back down and re-buckling is seatbelt, he checked to see if Julia was still asleep.

“Would you like something to drink?” The blonde woman asked, pulling the aisle-wide cart up beside Elijah’s seat, locking him completely in.

“No thank you,” he replied quietly, looking at the spindly heels of her shoes, not meeting her gaze. She smiled and turned to the passengers on the opposite side, leaving the young man to his thoughts.

Elijah’s eyes were slowly drawn down to the unconscious, idle movement of his fingers. The pad of his thumb was pressed against the heated silver of his ring, spinning it slowly around the pale digit. He had noticed Julia doing the same thing before when she was obviously thinking about her boyfriend. Glancing over at the young woman, his eyes were instantly drawn to her left hand, where the ring she had been toying with laid wound about her finger. There were no distinct marking, or anything for that matter, but simply tarnished silver. It looked well worn and loved. With a small smile, he turned his gaze back down at his own silver ring as he pulled it off his finger, reveling skin that was both softer and paler than the rest of his hand. The engraving inside the band had tarnished a little from being constantly rubbed against his flesh.

Quickly slipping the ring back onto his finger, he bent down to grab his pillow from where it had fallen on the floor. Folding the object so that it would support his head when he laid his head against the seatback, Elijah let his elbow drop upon the thick metal armrest. He brought his hand, balled in a loose fist, to rest against his chin. As he did so, the warm silver pressed against his lips.

+++++++++++++++

When the plane landed five minutes early, Elijah said a quick goodbye to Julia, not feeling guilty for doing so because he would be seeing her in two hours. Immediately after departing from the plane, he headed straight for the nearest Starbucks kiosk he spotted on the long concord. Once the young actor had finally gotten his hands on a large steaming cup of coffee, he began making his way towards baggage claim. He took a large sip of the auburn liquid as he waited patiently for the elevator. After stepping into the elevator with several other people, he decided to try and turn his cellular phone back on and see if any of the battery had actually been conserved. He pulled the small object from the bottom of his bag where he had thrown it what seemed like hours ago. The short tune echoed in the silent atmosphere as the keypad illuminated with a bright blue light. Stepping out of the crowded elevator, he held down the number one button as he walked towards his flight’s baggage carrousel. He waited for a moment, looking distractedly for his bag, before the short chime reached his ears. The speed dial call to Sean’s cell had connected successfully without the phone dying. Tapping his foot anxiously, Elijah listened to the phone ring three times before Sean picked up.

“Where are you?” Elijah asked with concern filling his voice, worried that his phone would cut out at any moment before he could find where his writer was waiting. The same desperation that had filled his voice before on the plane bled through once again. Unconsciously holding his breath until the answer came, the young man felt a warm, intangible prescience wrap around his entire body from behind.

“Turn around.”

+++++++++++++++
AN: Big thank you to empressaurelius for beta-reading. *hugs tight* Sorry took so friggen long...shall not happen again.

Comments

[lusee.livejournal.com]

Aww. I love the ending of this chapter.

I don't even mind having waited what seems like ages to read this.

[bluetears07.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry about the long wait...Finals at school and all that fun stuff. I promise you that there will never be another break between chapters that long again. Too long. However, I'm so happy that you liked the end. (Was so much fun writing that little bit) :D