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crack_van2004-04-06 11:22 am
kraken-wakes.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2004-04-06 11:22 am
Entry tags:
Delirium: Half-Mad, Taste Of Want, Fever by Cimorene (NC-17)
Fandom: Lotrips
Author: Cimorene
Author website: Cimorene's Sordid Fancy
Author on lj:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cimorene111
Pairing: Dominic/Elijah
Rating: NC-17
Why this must be read:
Ages ago, over in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fellowshippers someone asked why all the Dom/Elijah stories seemed to have Dom pining over Elijah and why it was never the other way around. One answer to that question is that everyone who was planning to write Elijah-pines-over-Dom had read this story and given up.
I came across this story early in Jan 2003 when I started reading Lotrips and although I've read a hell of a lot since then, it's still firmly in my top five. To be honest, I think I rate it in my top ten fanfiction stories of all time. This was the story which made me interested in Dom and Elijah - up to that point, I'd been reading Orlando/Viggo almost exclusively. Cimorene is a superb writer. Everything on her site is worth reading - there's
not one weak piece of writing there at all and she writes in a variety of fandoms so chances are you've already come across her work.
Delirium is split into three parts; Half-Mad, Taste of Want and Fever. A very basic summary goes something like this: Dom's staying with Elijah in LA. Elijah's been crushing on him for some time and promptly manages to make himself ill while Dom's staying. And then he gets better. And things get more interesting. During the course of the story beer is drunk, advice is given over e-mail, Sean is scolded for failing to give proper sympathy and Billy has some very enigmatic advice. Oh, and hankerchiefs are dropped.
Everyone's been where Cimorene puts Elijah in this story - unrequited love is a bitch and despite the fact that he seems to be the underdog, you can't help rooting for Elijah as he tries to come up with ways to get Dom - who remains charmingly oblivious. Or does he? The story is remarkably dense; there is more going on than there seems to be and although the action is viewed via Elijah, you have to wonder if he's really getting everything that goes on.
The writing is beautiful and more than packs a punch to the gut in some places. It's also sensual and extremely hot and Cimorene doesn't sacrifice description for action.
Elijah had this odd hallucination-fantasy. Thing. In it he was lying down, in bed, on the edge of sleep (in the dream--dreaming about being asleep, which is. Odd. In an inside-out and paradoxical way, but Lij was too lazy to think much about that). Mostly on his back, tired in a good, long-day, drinking-but-not-drunk kind of way, his legs flung carelessly apart on his back head on pillow eyelids oh-so-heavy. Head turned sideways: you want to catch the breeze from the open window, even if it presses intrusively cold on your cheek, because you can't replace the feel of it on your face in the middle of the night. Lethargy.
And it was in those long months before--maybe, he thought fuzzily, maybe it really was before Dom came, and he dreamed it more than once and now he was just remembering it?
...It was before Dom came and he was in bed, alone in the house, ready to sleep the sleep of the virtuous, buzzing with vague happy thoughts which, in real life, would have meant talking to a friend, probably Dom, but in the dream were rather background noise. Realistic, so far, no? And in the dream there was a whisper of disturbance--no sound, no air, just--it.
The huskily-whispered word, "Lijah." The way you talk in the middle of the night, in a darkened bedroom, if you are Dom. His face shrouded in shadows bending over Elijah, who felt a stippling hard wash of pleasance all over him, cool and warm at once, but not surprised.
Sleepy and languid, dream-Elijah lifted a hand and gripped his friend's wrist, the most natural thing in the world, and tugged him off-balance, down into a hug. Dream-Dom might have made some kind of startled tensing movement, or that was just what Lij expected. He arrived, unannounced, at Lij's house halfway around the world--in the dream--and let himself into Lij's bedroom in the middle of the night, magically, and was surprised to be hugged? But that was Dom, as startlingly contradictory as the fresh soap and stale airplane smell on his neck which Elijah's subconscious conjured with dismaying clarity and a tickling cool whiff of moving air.
"Come here," Elijah dreamed that he murmured. In the dream he didn't have to wait--in the dream, he could ask.
Even in the dream he had to acknowledge it would be awkward, Dom clambering onto the side of the bed without being allowed to stand up, as Lij's arm was looped around his neck and, far from loosening, drawing him slowly closer. He wasn't satisfied until he had a rather heavy sprawling armful of bemused Dom.
He thought he was--but then there was a soft "Ummm" sound, or a string of them, from Dom, and the Dream-Lij, practically already asleep, felt it curling around him in a long liquid stream of murmuring and warm breath on his neck as he curled against Dom, and then it was darkness and warmth and an impossible tangle of arms and legs. You'd have thought he'd never been cuddled before; it was almost as if he never had, this innocent, heady--okay, well, not entirely innocent--tumbling trembling shower of dream. In the dream or out of it, it was wish-fulfillment. That Dream-Lijah, though, was the first Elijah to realize as much.
It was funny that he hadn't realized it before the dream--although again, if he'd had the dream more than once. Before Dom came to LA and after. Elijah kept trying to get a grip on the hazy thought that was drifting away from him--why was he remembering the dream now, whenever he'd had it--but it was no use. He was happy enough to simply remember it, uhm, and the soft mm of Dom's mouth, where? Near his ear, he thought. He would have frowned if he could, then, because--he was forgetting again? He had been awake for too long.
And when he thought of it, how long was that?
Pressing intrusively cold on his cheek, the hard floor, and the sweet slice of blood on the back of the sides of Elijah's tongue, sticky and rapidly cooling, he could feel it, on his lip. It was the doorsill digging into his back, not an elbow or knee or any other part of Dom. There was also, unfortunately, the very unwelcome presence of pain radiating and pulsing from his hip, which felt as though it might be bruising, and he thought, since he was on the floor, that it had--
Why was he on the floor?
Delirum by Cimorene
Author: Cimorene
Author website: Cimorene's Sordid Fancy
Author on lj:
cimorene111Pairing: Dominic/Elijah
Rating: NC-17
Why this must be read:
Ages ago, over in
fellowshippers someone asked why all the Dom/Elijah stories seemed to have Dom pining over Elijah and why it was never the other way around. One answer to that question is that everyone who was planning to write Elijah-pines-over-Dom had read this story and given up.I came across this story early in Jan 2003 when I started reading Lotrips and although I've read a hell of a lot since then, it's still firmly in my top five. To be honest, I think I rate it in my top ten fanfiction stories of all time. This was the story which made me interested in Dom and Elijah - up to that point, I'd been reading Orlando/Viggo almost exclusively. Cimorene is a superb writer. Everything on her site is worth reading - there's
not one weak piece of writing there at all and she writes in a variety of fandoms so chances are you've already come across her work.
Delirium is split into three parts; Half-Mad, Taste of Want and Fever. A very basic summary goes something like this: Dom's staying with Elijah in LA. Elijah's been crushing on him for some time and promptly manages to make himself ill while Dom's staying. And then he gets better. And things get more interesting. During the course of the story beer is drunk, advice is given over e-mail, Sean is scolded for failing to give proper sympathy and Billy has some very enigmatic advice. Oh, and hankerchiefs are dropped.
Everyone's been where Cimorene puts Elijah in this story - unrequited love is a bitch and despite the fact that he seems to be the underdog, you can't help rooting for Elijah as he tries to come up with ways to get Dom - who remains charmingly oblivious. Or does he? The story is remarkably dense; there is more going on than there seems to be and although the action is viewed via Elijah, you have to wonder if he's really getting everything that goes on.
The writing is beautiful and more than packs a punch to the gut in some places. It's also sensual and extremely hot and Cimorene doesn't sacrifice description for action.
Elijah had this odd hallucination-fantasy. Thing. In it he was lying down, in bed, on the edge of sleep (in the dream--dreaming about being asleep, which is. Odd. In an inside-out and paradoxical way, but Lij was too lazy to think much about that). Mostly on his back, tired in a good, long-day, drinking-but-not-drunk kind of way, his legs flung carelessly apart on his back head on pillow eyelids oh-so-heavy. Head turned sideways: you want to catch the breeze from the open window, even if it presses intrusively cold on your cheek, because you can't replace the feel of it on your face in the middle of the night. Lethargy.
And it was in those long months before--maybe, he thought fuzzily, maybe it really was before Dom came, and he dreamed it more than once and now he was just remembering it?
...It was before Dom came and he was in bed, alone in the house, ready to sleep the sleep of the virtuous, buzzing with vague happy thoughts which, in real life, would have meant talking to a friend, probably Dom, but in the dream were rather background noise. Realistic, so far, no? And in the dream there was a whisper of disturbance--no sound, no air, just--it.
The huskily-whispered word, "Lijah." The way you talk in the middle of the night, in a darkened bedroom, if you are Dom. His face shrouded in shadows bending over Elijah, who felt a stippling hard wash of pleasance all over him, cool and warm at once, but not surprised.
Sleepy and languid, dream-Elijah lifted a hand and gripped his friend's wrist, the most natural thing in the world, and tugged him off-balance, down into a hug. Dream-Dom might have made some kind of startled tensing movement, or that was just what Lij expected. He arrived, unannounced, at Lij's house halfway around the world--in the dream--and let himself into Lij's bedroom in the middle of the night, magically, and was surprised to be hugged? But that was Dom, as startlingly contradictory as the fresh soap and stale airplane smell on his neck which Elijah's subconscious conjured with dismaying clarity and a tickling cool whiff of moving air.
"Come here," Elijah dreamed that he murmured. In the dream he didn't have to wait--in the dream, he could ask.
Even in the dream he had to acknowledge it would be awkward, Dom clambering onto the side of the bed without being allowed to stand up, as Lij's arm was looped around his neck and, far from loosening, drawing him slowly closer. He wasn't satisfied until he had a rather heavy sprawling armful of bemused Dom.
He thought he was--but then there was a soft "Ummm" sound, or a string of them, from Dom, and the Dream-Lij, practically already asleep, felt it curling around him in a long liquid stream of murmuring and warm breath on his neck as he curled against Dom, and then it was darkness and warmth and an impossible tangle of arms and legs. You'd have thought he'd never been cuddled before; it was almost as if he never had, this innocent, heady--okay, well, not entirely innocent--tumbling trembling shower of dream. In the dream or out of it, it was wish-fulfillment. That Dream-Lijah, though, was the first Elijah to realize as much.
It was funny that he hadn't realized it before the dream--although again, if he'd had the dream more than once. Before Dom came to LA and after. Elijah kept trying to get a grip on the hazy thought that was drifting away from him--why was he remembering the dream now, whenever he'd had it--but it was no use. He was happy enough to simply remember it, uhm, and the soft mm of Dom's mouth, where? Near his ear, he thought. He would have frowned if he could, then, because--he was forgetting again? He had been awake for too long.
And when he thought of it, how long was that?
Pressing intrusively cold on his cheek, the hard floor, and the sweet slice of blood on the back of the sides of Elijah's tongue, sticky and rapidly cooling, he could feel it, on his lip. It was the doorsill digging into his back, not an elbow or knee or any other part of Dom. There was also, unfortunately, the very unwelcome presence of pain radiating and pulsing from his hip, which felt as though it might be bruising, and he thought, since he was on the floor, that it had--
Why was he on the floor?
Delirum by Cimorene