That night Orli took me home.  With him.  Unbidden.  Or maybe I'd asked with my eyes.  Or maybe I had asked him out loud.  Maybe it had been a hot whisper in the smokiness of the club, a hotly panted, "Take me, Orli, take me home with you."  I couldn't remember, but I doubted I'd asked.  Desires as deep as what I wanted from Orli just didn't get voiced by me.

Because I never learned how to ask.

It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted -- God, I knew what I wanted and what I wanted was him, his quick and quirky-awkward grace -- but because people were always guessing at my desires, always trying to read my mind, always trying to be one step ahead of me, voicing what I wanted on my own was something I'd never learned how to do.

If I wanted something, say, Orlando Bloom, for instance, it came out in a pant-breath that sounded like "Orli" as he groped me in the blurry darkness.  My desires were wishes and prayers but never straightforward questions.

Never.

Had that night been an exception?

And did it matter?

In the taxi on the way to Orlando's place, we sat still.  I'm fairly certain I was giving off "grope me!" vibes, but either Orli had decided he'd done enough mind reading for the night, or he wanted to be discreet within the view of the taxi driver -- which I doubted -- or he was lost in his own thoughts.  I came up with no other alternatives.

In the quiet of the car, his fingers stroked lightly over the back of my hand, which rested in the fraction of space between us in the backseat.  I looked away from him, out the cab window.  My head was still abuzz from the alcohol and the heat of the club and Orli's kiss, and I watched the city flash by, still no more than a blur.  The thump of the bass from the club still assailed my ears, mirroring the thump of my heart.  I wondered absently if Orli could hear it, too: the bass and my heartbeat.

Still looking out the window, I refocused my gaze, and in the glass of the cab window I could see my own eyes.  Mirrored.  I swallowed the urge to shut them and looked instead.  In their swirling blue depths I saw Orli.

And then we were there, and he was tugging me by the hand out of the cab and up the stairs and to the door of his room, where he stopped me.  "Lijah," he whispered.  He was close to me, and hot, and he smelled of smoke and sweat like the club but it suited him.  The dark scents clung to him, clouding him in mystery, overshadowing his dimples and quick grin.  The smoky smell of him fueled the fire in my heart.  I wanted to fall into his eyes again.  Hard.  Forever.  But he was still whispering into my ear.  "Lijah, close your eyes.  Wait here.  Just a sec."

I did.  He kissed my temple and then was gone.

In the dark of my mind, with him away from me, the cold and lonely came back.  My mirrored fear.  I scanned the darkness for the warmth I'd felt, the fire of the kiss not half an hour old, but it was elusive.  The unknown swallowed memory quickly.

But then he was there again, with an arm curled around my waist again, and he was holding me and claiming me and making me me again.  The darkness vanished as I opened my eyes.  Standing behind me, arm still around me, Orli nudged me into his room.

There were candles everywhere, glowing faintly, flickering warmth and spreading light and everything was soft and brown and warm -- but there were also mirrors.  Everywhere.  Magnifying and spreading the light and the softness and the warmth of the candles, but also swallowing me whole.  I could see my fear-filled blue eyes in a thousand places at once.  Orli nudged me.  And I closed my eyes tight.

Eyes still shut, I felt Orli move around me, catching my hands and pulling me to him, into what should have been a warm embrace.  I was freezing cold.  "Lijah," he breathed.  And I shook with unshed sobs.  The alcohol was gone.  Its brave facade had faded.  It was me and my fears alone in the arms of the man I loved.

"Lij," he breathed again, and my name had never sounded warmer or more inviting, but still, the tears, the tears that needed shedding, they wouldn't come and they kept me cold.  Orli touched his lips to the hollow of my throat, a kiss that would have made me moan had the compartments of my mind not been so God damn fucked up, but this time, the gesture sent me over the edge.  I only sniffled once before the floodgates opened.

Orli didn't even question why, he just led me to his bed and lay me down on it and curled his long, coltish body around my small frame and God did I cry.  All of it.  Me.  Worthlessness.  Fear of melting away into nothing.  Non existence.  And he kissed away the tears.  And when the tears had subsided and I was left feeling drained and exposed and embarrassed and like I had to make up excuses for my ridiculously childish inability to hold it together, I started to talk.  Orli never asked, I just started in.

"Mirrors, Orli, it's the mirrors.  It's so cold and I'm alone and in my eyes there -- and I can't run.  Can't run from myself.  So I shut it out.  Don't want to see what I can't understand.  Can't find myself, Orli, that's who I'm looking for, and in the mirrors, I see my soul reflected, flat, lifeless.  It's me that I want to find, myself, the real me, and in mirrors it's not me, it's a stolen me, a me owned by everyone but me, the filmmakers the press my mom everyone but me.  I want me back, Orli, I want me back and..."

Orli interrupted only long enough to say my name: "Elijah."  I stopped, snapped out of my recitation.

What? I asked him with a glance.  My fear was creeping in again, surrounded by all of those God forsaken mirrors.  Orli turned my face to his and held my blue eyes with his dark brown ones.  In his eyes I looked into the only mirror I didn't fear.

"Shhhh," he whispered, and he kissed me quiet to be sure I didn't start in on another outburst.  When I'd been good and subdued by his kiss, he finished, "I will teach you to love mirrors, Elijah."

I dared to catch his eye, and by the fire I saw there, I didn't doubt that what he said was true, though by the pounding of my heart, no one else would have known I believed him.

He nudged me over onto my back and whispered, "Look up."  I did, and found myself looking at myself in the mirror suspended over Orli's bed.  A shudder went through me, but Orli placed his hand on my stomach and rubbed there, in small circles, still whispering to me, "Lijah, don't worry.  In this mirror you'll never be alone."  I gulped and nodded, uncertain but willing to trust him.  I could feel the fear creeping in along the edges again, but Orli's hands were chasing those shadows away as they drew patterns across my sweater-covered chest.

As I slipped under the spell of his soothing touch, I let my eyes slip closed, but Orli said, "No, Lij, watch."  Warily I opened my eyes again and watched in the mirror above as Orli grasped the hem of my sweater and the t-shirt under it and rolled both shirts up over my stomach.  When he had the material bunched midway up my chest, he stopped.  I watched as Orli scooted down and began to lick around my belly button.

The sensations of sight and touch were at once deliciously incongruous together.  I watched myself thread my hands through Orli's dark brown mop of hair as he licked little circles around on my tummy, pausing only once.  I think he looked at my face, but my eyes were glued to us in the mirror above.

"Don't you want to see yourself?" he asked, his voice no more than a husky whisper.  I could only nod as he helped me tug my sweater the rest of the way up and over my head.  When I collapsed back onto the pillows, my face was flushed and my eyes were sparkling.  In the mirror, I thought I was beautiful.

Orli rolled over next to me and looked up into the mirror as well.  "You're beautiful, Lij," he told me, and I looked away from the mirror only long enough to smother him with a searing kiss.  Orli quickly rolled me over onto my back again, but he proceeded to keep at the kiss, licking his way around my mouth.  Fire shot through me as he eased his mouth down my body again, capturing first one swollen pink nipple and then the other between his lips and teeth.  He let one hand stray down to my denim-clad crotch as he licked at me, and I watched his long fingers stroke mercilessly over my hidden erection.  I arched into his hand, never taking my eyes off of my own aroused body in the mirror above.  With his mouth still claiming a nipple, I felt Orli smile.  He removed his hand, but not his mouth, and I let out intermittent whimpers as I watched myself being devoured.

Orli eventually tired of teasing my nipples and moved down my body, taking his time tasting me.  When he reached my jeans, he unbuttoned them with his teeth.  I panted as I watched, and I tried not to scream when he licked me through my dampened boxers, once: a long lick from the base of my cock to its tip.  Then Orli pulled back and tugged my jeans down off of my hips, over my thighs, past my knees and ankles and off of me entirely.  I watched the whole show.  As more and more of me was exposed to the soft candlelight of Orli's room, and as Orli kissed back up the path he'd just removed my pants by, my breath caught in my throat.  I was beautiful.  And he was beautiful with me.

Then Orli was licking me again and I was shaking with want but I was still watching.  He started along the inside of one thigh with teasing strokes of his tongue and nips with his teeth, then he did the same thing along the other side.  I whimpered uncontrollably, but I did not close my eyes.  I watched.  I couldn't tear my eyes away.

I watched as his hands slipped from my hips down to cradle my ass.  I watched as he licked over my balls, capturing first one then the other in the damp heat of his mouth, tugging at them and sucking and making my whimpers turn to full-fledged cries.  I watched as he sank his mouth down over my cock, marvelled at the white heat of his mouth as I buried my hands in his hair again, swooned when he licked teasingly along the underside, tried not to buck my hips up as he swallowed me deeper, and came when he backed off and flicked his tongue over the head, once, twice, three times.  I came hard, crying out for him, for more, for us in our beauty in the mirror, and he drank me in.

I lay there, panting, shining with sweat, my eyes locked on my eyes in the mirror.  Orli gave a soft sigh, and I tore my eyes away from their reflection to watch as he sat up and rocked back on his heels, dark eyes glittering in the candlelight.  "You like to watch," he said to me, and I made no reply because the fire was blazing in his eyes again, the fire from the shadows of the club, the fire which I knew would consume me.

"You like to watch, Lij," Orli said again as he stepped away from the bed, "then watch."  He began to undress.  I watched.  Off came his shoes and socks, his black t-shirt, his dark jeans, and his black boxer-briefs.

He stood there in my gaze, naked and aroused, dark eyes smoldering, until I whispered, "Orli," and he came back to the bed.  As he knelt over me, I reached out to touch him, make sure he was real, that this was all real, but he pushed my hands away, saying only, "Watch."

I looked up and watched.  He cupped my ass with his hands again, and I watched him kiss down my body once more, but this time, he went past all the places he'd kissed me before.  He licked down over my hardening cock, past my balls to the secret entrance to my body and he paused there, letting me watch as he licked me open.  I arched up into him again, and he slid a pillow underneath me.  I watched him lick me there though there were stars in, around, and behind my eyes.  I watched as a condom seemed to appear from out of nowhere, and I watched Orli rock back on his heels again and roll the condom onto himself.  I watched Orli nudge at my entrance with his sheathed cock, and I heard him ask me, "Lijah?  Do you want this?"

I whimpered a variety of assents and watched as he slid into me, past the tightness and into the heat of my body.  I swallowed screams and tears and instead watched him slide ever deeper, inch by inch as slowly and tenderly as he knew how to, and as he filled me inch by inch slowly pain gave way to pleasure and fear evaporated and I screamed loud and long when he hit the right spot, the spot that made not only stars but rockets go off in my head and I whimpered and mewled and arched up into him, never taking my eyes off of us above us and I panted for "more" and "harder" and "now!"

When I came again it was with a look of pure ecstasy on my face.  And I saw the whole thing.

My screams of joy coupled with the bucking of my hips brought Orli to climax right along with me, and he panted "Lijah, baby Lijah," as he emptied himself into me.  As the last of my whimpers echoed through Orli's room, he withdrew from me, tossed away the condom, and curled his lanky form around my sweaty, slick, and satisfied body.

I lay there, watching my own breathing return to normal, watching Orli's fingers drawing circles in the mess I had made on my stomach, watching him close his eyes, the eyes that were the mirror not only to his soul, but to mine as well.

I lay there, warm next to Orli, thinking.

The mirror before had always been cold and unforgiving.  It was me, alone, and small, that it reflected, nothing else.  But now Orli had taught me that it didn't have to be that way.  In the mirrors of his bedroom, we were one.  More importantly, though, I learned that the mirrors of Orli's eyes were warm and inviting and the version of myself that I saw there, buried deep in passionate flames, was one I could love.  Did love.  And I loved the man who saw me that way.

I could live in Orli's reflected glory, love the glory he saw in a blue-eyed boy from Iowa -- me.