He's still not used to being looked at.  He knew the first time he went to the theatre with his mother, yes even as long ago as that, that he wanted to act, to be on stage, to perform, but still -- he's still not used to always having someone's eyes on him.

Even with all the Harry Potter hype and his brand-new worldwide fame -- he doesn't really know what that means, yet, other than the fact that girls who don't even speak English seemingly want to be his best friend -- Daniel isn't used to being looked at.

At least not the way Elijah Wood is looking at him.
 

"...Be back in a tick," his mother is saying.  Daniel blinks, nods, smiles, and she smiles back.  Then she leaves, and Elijah Wood saunters over.

Daniel knows he should say something.  He wants to know what Elijah wants from him, he wants to know why Elijah has been looking through him.  Pulling on some of Harry Potter's courage, he swallows, smiles, stands up, and says, "I ... I saw you watching me.  Your eyes ... Er, well..."  He looks down, feeling ridiculous.  When he looks up again, Elijah is still studying him intently.  Daniel gives in to his curiosity and spits it all out: "You look as if there's something you want to tell me.  Is there?"

A curious look passes over Elijah's face, and Daniel wants to ask him if he's feeling all right, but he thinks that might not be polite.  Instead, he smiles again, in hopes that it might encourage Elijah to tell him what he's been thinking about, why he's been looking at Daniel like that.

But Elijah, who seems to have regained his composure, just smiles and says, "This is a wonderful pub.  We don't really have anything like this in America.  Do you come here for lunch a lot?"

Daniel thinks he heard that line -- or something quite like it -- in a movie once, but he doesn't tell Elijah that.  Instead he says, "Mum and I do, yeah, the food is good.  What are you drinking?  Dad says the porter's fantastic, but I'm too young to drink, still.  Awful thing, that, age limits, don't you think?"

Daniel watches Elijah turn a pit pale, but then the sparkle in those blue eyes is back brighter than before.  "Yeah, the porter is excellent.  Can't get beer like that back home."  He doesn't say anything about Daniel's age, and Daniel lets it go.

Elijah continues to look at him the way he had been from across the pub.  From this close, though, Elijah's eyes are almost hot.  Daniel's stomach feels a little bit funny, so he asks Elijah, to distract himself, "How long will you be staying in London then?"

"Two more weeks," he says.  There is a measure of wariness in Elijah's eyes, which Daniel thinks is almost cute.  Still, he finds himself wanting to calm the older boy, to ease that wariness out of him.

"Good," he says confidently, "then we have time to see more of each other."  He's not sure where those words came from exactly, but he knows they are the right ones when Elijah's face breaks into a wide grin.  As Elijah smiles at him, Daniel notices the small gap between Elijah's front teeth.  For one unguarded moment, he wonders what that gap would feel like under his tongue.  This simple, unobtrusive thought brings with it other, more complicated ones: What would it be like to kiss another boy?  What would it be like to kiss this boy, Elijah Wood?  What would his mother say?  What would Rupert and Tom think if he told them?  Did he want to kiss Elijah?  What would it feel like, to have Elijah touch him?

"...A cell phone?"  Elijah's voice brings him back to the present.  He's asking Daniel something, and Daniel hasn't been listening.

"Pardon?" he asks, embarrassed both by his inattentiveness and by where his thoughts were wandering.

"Do you have a cell phone?"  Daniel is still confused.  When he doesn't respond right away, Elijah modifies the question.  "I mean, a mobile.  Do you have a mobile?"  This time Daniel catches on and stifles a giggle.  Elijah looks both bewildered and amused.  Daniel thinks again that Elijah is cute like that.  "Isn't that what you Brits call cellular phones?" Elijah asks, smiling a little bit awkwardly.

"We do call them that, yeah, but I'm not old enough to have one, Mum says.  We do have a regular phone, though, and Mum and Dad are good about giving me my messages."

"So I could call you sometime this week?  We could do a little...."  Here Elijah pauses and Daniel feels Elijah's eyes searching his face.  He doesn't know what phrase Elijah is going to finish his sentence with, but the possibilities give him goosebumps. "...Shop talk?"

Daniel can't keep the smile off his face.  "Sure, I'd like that."

He gives Elijah his number just as his mother returns.  He introduces the two of them, and his mother fawns over Elijah for a moment before saying good-bye and taking Daniel's elbow in her hand, directing him toward the door.  As they turn to go, Daniel fixes Elijah with his eyes one last time, still trying to figure out what the older boy wants to tell him.  He knows there's something there.  Elijah is wearing the same look that he wears when there's something big to be said.

Elijah gives no further verbal clues, but, as he turns to head back to his own booth, he does give Daniel's shoulder a squeeze.  The contact leaves Daniel feeling slightly dizzy and his shoulder tingles where Elijah touched him.
 

In bed that night, Daniel thinks about his lunch with his mother.  She wants him to go to America to audition for American films when his Harry Potter contract is up.  He wants to talk to Elijah about that, about what it's like to work in Hollywood, and ...  and he wants to talk to Elijah about other things, too.  His mind wanders a bit into those other things, the stirrings he felt in his stomach that afternoon when he felt Elijah's ocean-blue eyes locked on him; the silly, tingling feeling he got all over when Elijah had touched his shoulder; the way Elijah makes him want to giggle, even just thinking about him.  He'd felt like that once before, when one of the neighbor girls at the family summer cottage had pinned him down by sitting on him and had tickled him all over.  She was pretty, but not as pretty as Elijah.  That had been a year ago.  It had been a funny sort of feeling, low in his belly, that time lying there under the neighbor girl, and even just remembering her soft weight on him sort of makes him ache.  He thinks that maybe he'd like Elijah to sit on him and tickle him.  That might be nice.  He likes thinking about Elijah touching him.

He feels like he could probably talk to Elijah about all of it, that Elijah wouldn't make fun of him for not knowing what these feelings were right away.  He likes that about Elijah, whom he has just met, Elijah who is going to call him this week.

Daniel rolls over and tries to go to sleep.  As he closes his eyes, he sees Elijah looking at him from across the pub.  Daniel smiles.
 

An hour later Daniel opens his eyes again.  He can't sleep.  He feels funny, sort of everywhere, but funniest between his legs.  He can't pinpoint exactly what's going on, but he knows that when he thinks about Elijah and about Elijah touching his shoulder, it gets better and worse all at once.  He knows he has to do something if he's going to get any sleep at all.

He rolls over onto his back and splays his hands across his stomach under his pajama shirt, thinking.  He's heard boys on the set talking about things like this, talking about touching themselves in a way that felt spectacular -- that's what they said about it.  Daniel's never tried it before, and he doesn't really know what he's doing, but he thinks, if it feels good, well, then it'll be right.

He takes a deep breath, and slowly, almost as if he were trying to hide his actions from himself, he slides his hands down into his pajama pants.

He's not wearing anything else under the light cotton, and his lower stomach is hot under his fingertips.  He keeps moving his hands down, eyes squeezed shut, until they reach--

Daniel gasps.

He doesn't even really know what to call it as he lightly runs his fingers over himself, taking in all the new wonderful sensations.  He's heard the boys on the set call it lots of different things, and the words always sort of excited him, though he's never thought about his own ... cock that way.  There.  Cock.  That would work.  It's a good word, he decides, mostly because when he touches his cock, it feels fantastic.

Eyes still tightly closed, Daniel rubs at the tingling in his cock, sort of wanting it to stay, sort of wanting it to stop.  He's a little frightened, not really knowing what he's doing, and he makes a mental note to ask Elijah about all of this, too, when he sees him later that week.  The thought of Elijah makes his cock twitch in his hand, so Daniel thinks about him again, about Elijah's hands, the one that squeezed his shoulder, except this time, in Daniel's mind, the hands brush lower, travel down his back, give his bare bottom a rub and a squeeze.  Unconsciously, Daniel licks his lips and speeds up his strokes.  Elijah's hands slip around Daniel's slim hips and then -- pow! -- it's Elijah's hands touching his cock, making him see stars, making him want it to never stop.

"Elijah!" he pants, squeezing himself again, stroking himself faster.  "Yessss!"  And he comes.

It's like an explosion, Daniel thinks, his mind clouded by pleasure but still wanting to catalog every detail.  It's like standing on top of a mountain and feeling the wind in his face and seeing the world all at his feet and it is that exhilarating and ... and ...  it's lasting for long, glorious moments ... oh god ... but no, now it's starting to fade.

Daniel squeezes himself again, runs his fingers teasingly here and there, wanting the long beautiful rush to still be there, willing the pleasure to continue, not to dissipate, but it doesn't stay.  As his breathing slows, he slowly opens his eyes and finds his hands, stomach, and pajama bottoms sticky with a milky fluid.  He furrows his brow, uncertain as to what has happened.  He hasn't heard about this part.  Curiosity gets the best of him, though, and he brings one sticky finger to his lips and licks, tentatively.  It's a little salty, a little sweet.  He doesn't know what it is, or what it is supposed to taste like, but he doesn't think it's bad.  He kind of likes it.  He wonders what Elijah tastes like.

As he slips his finger, now clean, out of his mouth, Daniel suddenly feels the weariness he could not find before overtake him.  Without cleaning himself up, Daniel slips off to sleep thinking about all the things he would ask Elijah, then thinking only about seeing Elijah again.