Elijah often sleeps badly in New Zealand.

Strange, maybe. You’d think he’d be sleeping the sleep of the dead after the schedule he and the others have been required to follow, and he sees how the others slip into unconsciousness so easily each night. Elijah never thought he’d want to be a narcoleptic so badly. After weeks of nearly tying his sheets into knots and counting the panels on the ceiling, he’s finding himself unaccountably envious of any disorder in which slipping into REM is more effortless than breathing.

Even his old time-tested device for nodding off has failed him lately, but this doesn’t keep him from trying. He glances at the clock--nearly 4am. He idly slides his hand inside his boxers and begins to work his way toward the release that used to ensure sleep soon after, but which now only serves as a way to pass the time. He’s no longer alarmed by the images that rise unbidden before his mind when he does this: Orlando dancing. Vig practicing swordplay. Dom napping in the sun during a break in filming, shirt riding up and revealing a flat stomach, tattoo peeking out from the waistband of his jeans. Elijah has long since dismissed concerns about his sexuality; he’s quite sure that this attraction is transient. And regardless, he no longer has the strength to fight this new reality.

The same could be said for his insomnia, really.

He does sleep, occasionally. But his dreams are moving murals, live paintings on which Middle-Earth is illustrated in all its detail. He dreams of the set. He dreams of hobbit feet and golden rings. He dreams of Legolas and orcs, of Gondor and Peter Jackson, of dwarves and scripts and pointed ears. There is no escape from this reality for Elijah: he lives it, breathes it, smells it in the air, and it follows him into his dreams. He’s submerged, and oftentimes, he wonders if he might be drowning. And on nights like this, when sleep eludes him entirely, these dreams almost become reality. His long nights become almost trancelike; occasionally, after a bad run of sleeplessness, he’ll hallucinate, or hear things which he’s quite sure no one else can. This is one of those nights. The moon is full outside, and the room is bathed in a blueish cast. Lij drifts.

His hand moves faster. He delves into a montage of familiar scenes and selected memories which guide him to a logical conclusion--he flips through these images like a card shark handling a familiar deck, sorting by touch and intuition. He’s deep in memory and fantasy, the two blending together in his mind, when he hears the door to the room he shares with Dom open. He quickly pulls his hand back. He’s less concerned about being caught jerking off than he is about being caught awake at 4am--he jealously guards the secret of his insomnia from the others, mostly because they mother him enough as it is.

He hears whispering, and raises an eyebrow in the dark. Who’s come in? He’d assumed it was Dom, who’d spent a late night out with Billy, Sean A, and Orlando, but he can definitely hear two people whispering. Two British accents--Dom and Orlando, then. He lies as still as possible and tries to breathe regularly to give the impression of being deep asleep. He’s had considerable practice at this.

“Shhhh,” Dom whispers as Orlando breaks out into a round of swears after slamming his shin into the coffee table. “Lij is sleeping. Shut up!” Orlando is still swearing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck!” he hisses, and Dom snorts laughter. Orlando quickly follows, and they both titter madly in the corner, clearly more than a bit drunk. If Lij hadn’t already been awake, he certainly would be now.

Eventually the laughter dies, and is replaced with silence. Lij strains his ears, but can hear nothing. He immediately wonders if this was another hallucination. He slowly turns over so that he’s facing the door, attempting to do so in a way that a sleeping person might: quietly and unobtrusively. He wants to know if they’re really there, and if so, what they’re doing. His crotch is starting to ache, and he resents being interrupted in the middle of the only pasttime he has on these long nights.

He slowly opens his eyes, hoping they won’t reflect the moonlight streaming in through the open blinds and give him away. As his eyes adjust to the light of the moon, he thinks, for a moment, that he is indeed hallucinating, or that he has actually fallen asleep and is in the midst of a vivid and unnervingly realistic dream. There’s certainly a dreamlike quality to what he sees, and his arousal colors everything in his view, much as a red stained glass window casts a warm glow over the light that filters through.

Dom and Orlando are silhouettes against the blue light cast by the moon, but Elijah does not need to see more than a silhouette to be able to tell what they’re doing. He gazes unblinkingly as Orlando stoops slightly, deepening the kiss that undoubtedly replaced the laughter that might, in theory, have woken Elijah up. Orlando’s arm is raised, hand cupping the back of Dom’s head in a way that suggests that he’s initiated this.

Elijah swims in a sea of melting and shifting sensation. The time seems to have stopped and yet simultaneously be flying--he glances quickly at the clock, out of some bizarre urge to prove to himself that the hour hand is not sweeping the clockface in fast-forward. He somehow hears the kiss, even from across the room; hears the soft sound of lips and tongues meeting, parting, returning. His nerves and senses seem raw, oversensitive--these sounds assault his ears; the moonlight is blinding; the throbbing below his waist pounds with the blood in his ears. His breathing is drawn out. His heartbeat slows. His muscles feel stiff, his limbs heavy.

The kiss becomes less innocent, more intense--Orlando’s hands are moving, almost questioningly, at the front of Dom’s jeans, lightly touching his waistband, hesitating. Dom places his hands on top of Orlando’s, and all hesitation, or pretense thereto, disappears. Orlando slowly undoes the button and pulls the zipper--the sound is harsh to Elijah’s ears, and he resists the urge to cringe. Orlando pulls Dom’s jeans and boxers down and kneels, trailing his lips down over Dom’s chin, neck, and the material of his t-shirt. Elijah’s stopped breathing entirely; he watches, unable to turn away.

Dom’s breath catches, and his head falls back. Even if Lij wasn’t able to see what was happening, he would certainly be able to hear it; he can hear the sounds Orlando’s mouth is making, sounds Lij has heard coming from girls doing the same thing to him. After less than a minute, Dom pushes his hand into his mouth and cries out, the sound muffled somewhat by his fist, his body shuddering.

For a moment there is silence, and stillness.

Dom is breathing quickly. Orlando is still kneeling. Elijah remembers to let his breath out, and does so carefully, to avoid whooshing it out in one loud exhale that they would certainly hear. Apparently he’s successful, for neither Dom nor Orlando give any indication that they’ve heard anything amiss. Orlando stands in front of Dom, neither of them speaking. They share a kiss: light, chaste. Orlando whispers something in Dom’s ear, so quietly that even Lij, with his temporarily heightened sense of hearing, can’t tell what has been said. Then Orlando leaves, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.

Dom remains standing for another minute, head hanging, beginning to breathe normally again. After a moment, he looks up, and Elijah quickly closes his eyes--now is no time to reveal himself. He lies as still as possible. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. After a moment, he hears Dom undressing and climbing into bed, tossing and turning as he often does in an attempt to get comfortable. Soon, his breathing evens out, much like that of one who sleeps deeply--or one who merely pretends.

Elijah’s world solidifies, and then shifts back into its former trancelike state. It alternates between the two, between reality and dreaming. He slides his hand under the waistband of his shorts again, and not long after, he finds his release, closed eyes fluttering before an imagined scene of moonlit silhouettes.

Not long after, Elijah sleeps. And on this night, his dreams have changed.