Work Text:
He thinks of water. Waves that rush to greet him, white foam tickling his ankles and sand clinging to his skin. His laughter high and free, salt slick and crisp on warm skin. He is bright as sunlight and his parents smile indulgently as he rambles away, his delight in stringing together words, making stories that loop around and peter out, the sound of his own voice an echo - like it’s coming from far away. Like a memory.
He’s knee deep, the pull of the tide making the water swirl around his legs. His parents aren’t looking, and he knows he shouldn’t go but he wants to - he wants to see how far he can go. Let the waves carry him away so he can swim with the sea creatures. Later there will be worried glances, and hushed arguments but Eliott will only remember the seaweed tickling his feet and the way the sunlight looked dappled beneath the waves.
He thinks of water. It washes away the world and there’s only him. It folds them both in together, until they are both drenched, he can taste the rain on his lips, feel it cool against his skin - the bright burn of something real. Something warm and anchoring in a safe harbour. Lucas gives him such a fierce blazing look, and they crash, like waves. Like a dam unleashed. They are enveloped, rain thundering down around them.
His voice goes in and out like the sea. Siren’s call - hurried breaths and his name sighed into the crook of his neck. The world falls out of focus until he can only feel the way that sweat pools between them, and how Lucas opens, and Eliott can only fall into him like a grave. He licks a stripe down his neck and tastes the salt and thinks of the sea, and how the tide calls to him.
He is being pulled in too many directions. Maybe Lucas was right - an infinite number of Eliotts - maybe that’s why he can never stop moving, stop thinking - he is always being pulled from his centre, caught in a maelstrom. There is violence in loving this much - but he’s no longer afraid. He wants to feel it, wants to prove it. Lucas looks at him with bright eyes and he moves, like a tide. Rises to him, swirling, enveloping.
The steady drip of the sink brings everything into sharp relief. The world is too stark, every line in contrast to the next - no soft blurry skin in warm light, shadows dancing on the walls and the smell of weed and sex in the air. Just the familiar scent of freshly laundered sheets and Lucille’s perfume.
He is too much. He always has been. Swimming too far, too deep - because he likes the way it feels to be drenched. To feel cleansed. But now instead of clean he feels wrung out, heavy limbed and scraped bare. He just wanted to feel everything, no medication slowing his mind, dimming Lucas’ light. He just wanted to have this, but he always goes too far, too much, too eager.
There are voices outside his door. Worried murmurs. “Like last time?” He hears and he turns away, burying himself in his covers.
He thinks of water; how floods can raze a village, how a tsunami can suck the water from the shores and send it, like a wall, to flatten everything it’s path, of poisoned wells and damp basements. Of drowning. He thinks of water, and how destructive it can be.