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When Elijah gets back to the motel, Orlando's sitting in the closed-curtain gloom of the smaller room, reading.
"Did Billy get back okay?" Elijah asks, before he's even shut the door behind him.
"Been and gone," Orlando smiles, turning his head in Elijah's general direction. "You all right?"
"Yeah, just beat," Elijah says, pulling his shades off and throwing them on the table. "Mind if I turn the light on?"
"All the same to me," Orlando says, flipping his book closed and dropping it on the floor next to his armchair. "Com'ere."
Elijah palms the switch for the overhead light, and then slouches his way across the room to Orlando. Orlando shifts back in his seat, hooking one denim-clad thigh over the chair's armrest to make a place for Elijah. Elijah folds down into the space between Orlando's legs, leaning back against Orlando's chest and letting his head rest on Orlando's shoulder.
Orlando settles one arm around Elijah, the opposite hand fumbling against Elijah's open shirt collar, then skimming up the side of Elijah's throat, up the curve of his cheekbone, and into the hollow of his temple. Orlando's fingers splay around the bone, thumb and forefinger biting into the thin hot skin. Elijah moans in pleasure.
"Oh yeah, right there."
For a few minutes there's no sound except the hiss-whisper of Orlando's fingers sliding on Elijah's skin, and the two men's breathing running in slow counterpoint to each other, and Elijah's occasional murmured,
"oh, yeah, that's good."
"Better?" Orlando says at last, wiping his fingertips one last time along the curve under each of Elijah's eye-sockets.
"Much, thanks," Elijah says, shifting a little but making no attempt to get up.
Orlando's hand wanders up into Elijah's hair, playing with the kitten tufts sticking every which way on the crown of Elijah's head.
"What are you reading?" Elijah asks idly, stretching enough to snag up the large thin soft-covered book.
"Some thriller. It's not very good."
Elijah opens the book at random, his gaze skimming over the blank white surface and the snow-storm of little embossed dots. He runs his fingers across the surface; his skin hums with the white-noise of the texture, but he can't discern the boundaries between one pattern and the next, let alone the difference in the patterns.
"Look at me," he says abruptly, twisting in Orlando's lap enough to bring them face to face.
Orlando's eyebrows lift a little, but he tips his chin down slightly and turns his head fractionally, aligning himself with the sound of Elijah's voice and the ruffle of Elijah's breath. Elijah stares up at him, at the little golden motes of reflected light in Orlando's brown eyes. Orlando blinks, and his blind gaze drifts just a little off to one side.
"I see you," he says, and it's not a lie, not exactly.
"If we were together," Elijah says very quietly, "it wouldn't have to be in the pitch dark or … with one of us blindfolded."
"Most people would kill for a boyfriend who does kinky shit like the blindfold," Orlando smiles, but when Elijah doesn't answer he lets the expression slip away again. "If we were together, you wouldn't be with Billy," he says very seriously. "Is that what you want?"
Elijah drops his head and rubs his face against Orlando's shoulder, as if trying erase the suggestion and even the feelings that prompted it.
"I love him," Elijah says.
"Yeah, you do," Orlando agrees, and he turns his head and presses his closed mouth against some curve of skin taut over bone that might be Elijah's forehead or temple or cheekbone.
Orlando lets his head fall back against the back of the armchair, and closes his eyes, though the blackness surrounding him couldn't be any denser whether he's open-eyed or not. But sometimes, it's nice to know he couldn't see anything even if he weren't blind.