Fic: The Talk

[silentdescant]

title: The Talk
pairing: Billy/Dom + Elijah
rating: hard R/NC-17
warning: BDSM
summary: Elijah sees something unexpected.
disclaimer: this is completely untrue.

It wasn’t the first time Elijah had let himself into Billy and Dom’s shared flat uninvited. He would often stop by for dinner or drinks afterward or just to play video games on a rare afternoon off. It wasn’t even the first time he’d let himself in after midnight, though usually that only happened after the three of them had been out clubbing.

 

Elijah opened the door quietly, not wanting to wake them if they were asleep, but then he heard the low sound of muffled laughter from one of the bedrooms. Elijah shut the door and locked it again, not bothering to be quiet anymore. He shed his jacket and shoes in the main room and proceeded down the hall to the sound of Billy’s voice.

 

He wasn’t sure which bedroom they would be in, but it wasn’t strange for him to find Billy and Dom curled up together in one of their beds, simply talking in the darkness when they couldn’t sleep.

 

Billy laughed again, but the sound made Elijah hesitate. He was sure they were in Billy’s room, and his hand was on the doorknob, but he didn’t turn it. Billy’s laughter hadn’t sounded… normal. It sounded like the “evil-Billy” laugh that he sometimes did when he and Dom were winding someone up.

 

Then Elijah heard a sharp slap and a shout (Dom’s) and a pained groan (also Dom’s). Elijah felt paralyzed outside the bedroom door.

 

What the hell?

 

Billy murmured something that Elijah couldn’t hear through the door and Dom cried out again. This time, he could distinguish words in the muffled sound.

 

“Billy, no, please no! Don’t do it, Billy, please! Don’t—Billy—No, please!”

 

Elijah reaffirmed his grip on the doorknob and clenched his jaw. In one motion, he turned the handle, swung the door open, and stepped into the moonlit room. What he saw shocked him immeasurably.

 

Dom was face-down on the bed and his hands were straining at the headboard, bound there with thick black leather cuffs. The muscles in his arms bunched as he struggled to move. His ankles were tied to the footboard in the same fashion. Billy was on top of him from head to toe, one hand pressing down on Dom’s back and the other on the mattress beside him. They were both naked and their pale skin was flushed pink.

 

Elijah’s jaw dropped. Dom didn’t notice him right away, but Billy did and immediately stopped thrusting into Dom’s ass.

 

“Bill?” Dom choked out, his face pushed awkwardly into a pillow.

 

“Elijah,” Billy murmured.

 

“What the hell’s going on here? Billy?!” Elijah shouted.

 

“Elijah, give us a minute,” Billy ordered, levering himself off Dom and off the bed.

 

Elijah shook his head stubbornly. “Dom?”

 

Now that Billy had moved, Elijah could see harsh red marks on Dom’s upper back and buttocks. He hadn’t moved (how could he? he’s fucking tied up!) and his breathing was loud and ragged.

 

“Dominic?” Elijah repeated.

 

“’Lijah, go to my room,” Dom finally replied. His voice was rough and he still wouldn’t lift his head from the pillow.

 

Elijah stared at his friends. He blinked once, twice, because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

 

“Elijah, wait in Dom’s room,” Billy said more urgently. He exhaled sharply and moved from behind the bed to usher Elijah out, slamming the door behind him.

 

There wasn’t anything to do but wait in Dom’s bedroom like he was told to. Elijah went in and sat cross-legged on the bed. It hadn’t been slept in. He waited for a moment, then reached over to turn on Dom’s bedside lamp. Beside the lamp was a framed picture of Dom and Billy up in Treebeard, both grinning at whoever had taken the photo.

 

After another minute, Dom nudged open the door. He wore a pair of Billy’s track pants and he was pulling on a t-shirt that Elijah assumed belonged to both of them, because both Billy and Dom wore it with equal regularity.

 

“Hey,” Dom said quietly. He joined Elijah on the bed, but Elijah saw that he seemed to move carefully. Elijah didn’t know whether it was because Dom didn’t want to upset him, or if it was because he was actually in pain.

 

“Dommie. What—? Billy—? Dom, what happened in there?”

 

Dom took a breath and let it out slowly. “Well… Well first, what do you think happened, Elijah?”

 

“Dom! Billy was—what was he—? Why was he doing that to you?” Elijah’s voice grew in both volume and intensity but Dom didn’t recoil. Instead, he held Elijah’s gaze.

 

“D’you think Billy’s a bad person, Elijah? Do you think… Do you think I sleep with everybody?” Dom pressed, the tips of his ears flushing red.

 

“Dom, I’m fucking worried about you and you’re not fucking giving me straight answers! What the fuck happened in there?”

 

“What did it look like?” Dom asked, enunciating every word. “To you, Elijah, what did it look like to you?”

 

“It looked like he was fucking raping you, Dom!” Elijah shouted, waving a hand for emphasis.

 

Dom nodded. Bit his lip. Took a slow, careful breath. “Billy would never force himself on me, Elijah. Not on anyone, least of all me.”

 

“Then what—?”

 

“What you saw, Elijah… I wanted that. That’s how I wanted it to be.”

 

“No, Dom, I fucking heard you. You said ‘no’, I heard you tell him ‘no’. I heard you tell him to stop,” Elijah argued, shaking his head violently.

 

“You don’t understand what I was saying, Elijah. I wasn’t telling him to stop fucking me. I told him not to… well. Besides, if I want him to stop, I wouldn’t tell him ‘no’,” Dom explained quietly.

 

“You were tied to the fucking bed, Dom. There are marks on your back and on your ass, I fucking saw them. Don’t try to tell me he wasn’t hurting you.”

 

“That’s not what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know how to make you understand. I wanted what Billy was doing to me.”

 

“He asked for it,” Billy said from the doorway. He was wearing a pair of jeans and an unbuttoned shirt and he was carrying the black cuff that Dom wore all the time.

 

Elijah looked down at Dom’s wrists; he hadn’t noticed it was missing. But when he looked, he saw that both of Dom’s wrists were rubbed raw and red. Elijah reached down for Dom’s hand to examine the marks. Dom didn’t resist Elijah’s hold on him. Instead, he was looking at Billy, paying no attention to Elijah. Elijah couldn’t decipher the meaning of the looks they gave each other, so he settled for narrowing his eyes at Billy.

 

“Dom.” Billy tossed Dom his cuff, which he caught awkwardly with the hand Elijah wasn’t currently holding.

 

“You should go, Bill,” Dom said, nodding towards the living room. “We’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

 

Billy glanced back and forth between Dom and Elijah, then nodded and left the room. Dom faced Elijah again.

 

“Do you want to ask me anything?”

 

“Yeah. What the hell, Dom?”

 

“That’s not a real question.”

 

“Fine. What—How long—Why do you let him hurt you?”

 

Dom sighed. “God, you started with the hardest fucking question. I don’t think I can explain it. There’s just something that I like about being completely at his mercy. I… I don’t know why.”

 

“But… it can’t be… safe. Healthy. How can getting hurt be a good thing?”

 

“Elijah, we’re safe. Whatever we do, Billy makes sure we’re both safe. He doesn’t do anything that’ll show up on camera or where anyone can easily see the marks. There’s… there’s just procedures for doing this kind of thing. It’s safe enough.”

 

“Take off your shirt.”

 

“What?”

 

“Take it off, I want to see.”

 

Dom hesitated. He grasped the hem of the thin t-shirt and pulled it up over his head, then twisted so Elijah could see his bare back. After a few seconds, he lowered himself down until he was lying on his stomach on the bed. Elijah leaned over him and gently traced with his index finger a long, dark red line that spanned the width of Dom’s shoulders.

 

“Does it hurt?” he asked when Dom hissed quietly. “Am I hurting you?”

 

“No. I mean. It hurts, yes, but you don’t have to stop.”

 

“What did he do?”

 

“That one… that was a leather strap, I think.”

 

“You think?” Elijah chuckled. “How can you not know?”

 

“He used a couple different things tonight,” Dom explained. “It’s alright, really. I do enjoy it. And Billy was right; I do ask for it too.”

 

Elijah ran his fingers over Dom’s back, finally stopping at the waistband of his track pants. He pulled the elastic down slightly, uncovering a sharp line across the top of Dom’s ass.

 

Dom inhaled sharply. “That one stings a bit.”

 

“I don’t understand you, Dommie.” Elijah leaned back.

 

Dom sat up slowly and held out his wrist to Elijah, then handed him the black cuff. “Buckle this for me?”

 

Elijah did so, but he couldn’t stop touching the friction burns around Dom’s wrists.

 

“I’m fine, Elijah. I swear.”

 

“On the precious?”

 

“On the precious, even.” Dom patted Elijah’s knee. “You ready to talk to Billy now?”

 

Elijah nodded and waited for Dom to pull him up off the bed. He led Elijah to the living room, where Billy was waiting with two cups of tea and a bottle of water.

 

“I didn’t think you’d want coffee this late a night,” he explained as they entered the room. He handed Elijah one of the mugs and sipped from his own.

 

Dom sat down on the couch next to Billy. “I don’t get any?”

 

“You get water.” Billy motioned to the water bottle with his steaming mug, then held out the mug to Dom too. “You can have some of mine if you like. It’s too sweet for my taste.”

 

Elijah watched them interact. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except that Dom was shirtless and Billy was nearly so, his unbuttoned shirt hanging loose on his shoulders. They weren’t even touching each other more than usual, Elijah realized; they just touched each other all the time anyway. Elijah sipped his tea. The scalding liquid burned his tongue and he made a face.

 

“Elijah?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“What’s weird about this?” Billy asked. “Is it that Dom and I were fucking, is it how Dom and I were fucking, or is it that you saw us fucking?”

 

“I… I don’t know. All of it, I guess.”

 

“What do you want us to explain?” Dom asked curiously, reaching for the water bottle. “We don’t want this to be weird for the three of us.”

 

“I guess… I guess I can’t make the connection between what I saw and what Dom told me. I can’t really understand that you’re not hurting him.”

 

“He does hurt me, Elijah. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but the things he does to me, they fucking hurt. I don’t know how to explain why I think that it’s a good thing, though. I just like it.”

 

“Dom’s of the type that gets a rush out of doing risky things. Like Orlando, kind of, though Orli takes it to extremes.”

 

Elijah snorted.

 

“Shut it. This isn’t as extreme as jumping off a sodding cliff,” Dom muttered, taking a sip of Billy’s tea. He winced at the burn and put the mug down on the table.

 

“Anyway,” Billy continued, “there’s something euphoric about the rush of adrenaline and having your heart pounding and feeling every little thing that touches your skin. There’s a state that he gets in, most times, where the pain doesn’t even feel like pain. It just feels like another sensation, and most times Dom can’t even tell the difference between pain and pleasure when he gets in that state.”

 

“And it’s not always about the feeling, either,” Dom said, picking up the threads of Billy’s explanation. “It’s about trust. I trust Billy. Enough to be completely vulnerable and know that he wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want. I trust that he’ll put me back in one piece by the end.”

 

“Do you understand what we’re trying to say, Elijah?”

 

Elijah nodded slowly and looked down at his mug of swirling, steaming tea. He looked back up at Dom, then at Billy, then back at Dom.

 

“I guess I just… I’m just worried. But. I guess what it comes down to is, are you happy?”

 

Billy twisted around to look Dom in the eye. Dom stared back at him and smiled. “Yeah. I’m happy.”

 

“We’re happy,” Billy corrected.

 

Elijah sipped his tea. Dom seemed to light up beneath Billy’s steady gaze. He scooted down so he was lying on his side on the sofa with his head in Billy’s lap. Billy stroked the hair from his forehead and rested his other hand on Dom’s bare shoulder. They looked happy.

 

“I guess that’s all that matters, then.”



fin.

Read Dom's version of events in my follow-up fic The Talk (Take 2)!