Victorian Vampire Boyfriend |MxM|

Chapter 7

Orsino's laptop is a thin, dinged up macbook covered in stickers. He bought it used because having one was required for his art program, and he wasn't about to shell out a thousand dollars on top of his already pricey tuition. He was always a little scared of losing it, but he never imagined he would be so scared of someone else finding it.

It looks bizarre in Elliot's pale pianist's fingers.

Orsino flounders. "That's um... that is...I don't know."

"You don't know?" Elliot raises an eyebrow.

"I have no absolutely no clue what that could be." Orsino doubles down, trying not to cringe. Better commit or this already shaky lie is going to crumble.

"Really? Because it has your name on it." He points to one of the several stickers Orsino has slapped to the top, that reads "Hello My Name Is:" and then "Orsino" scrawled in his handwriting. Orsino groans and hides his face in his hands. The sticker is from his orientation for his job at the school's library cafe. The in-between-class rushes that seemed to blend into each other left him completely fried and dead on his feet, and now this shit job is still coming back to bite him even in another time period.

"Alright, yeah it's mine," sighs Orsino.

Elliot smiles, "You're not a very good liar. I don't mean to press, if you really don't want me to know. But I must admit I'm very curious as to what it is."

"Here, hand it over," Orsino takes the laptop from Elliot and tries to boot it up, but nothing-- It's dead, probably for the best. "It's like a... typewriter, kind of. I need it for class."

"It doesn't look like any typewriter I've ever seen." Elliot eyes it, his head propped in his hand.

"Well it's electrically powered, and it can do a few other things besides typing. Like... calculations and stuff." All Orsino's energy begins to leave him and he sinks further into his chair. What a mess everything is. How can he possibly explain what happened to Elliot? Should he explain it? Keeping it a secret is really beginning to weigh on him, though.

Orsino sighs again. Elliot pulls his gaze away from where Orsino's fingers hand been tracing the corners of the laptop. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, it's just," Frustration begins to chew on Orsino's insides. "I'm so far from home and everything is different here. 'Home' isn't even a place I care about, but I wish I understood what was happening at all."

Elliot's brows pull together and a concerned frown tugs at his lips. "I thought you said you lived in Michigan?"

"I do, but that's not the kind of 'far' that I meant." You know what, screw it, he thinks. "Elliot, do you believe that strange things can happen that no one can explain?-- I mean like really strange, like maybe even magic?"

After a short pause he replies, in a light tone, "Whatever do you mean?" But his body betrays his feelings towards Orsino's question. Elliot's eyes widen and he reigns in his curious lean, into a more cautious pulled-back posture. One hand shifts to the grip of his cane, as if he intends to jump up at any moment.

"Uh, well," Elliot's nervous energy is infectious. Orsino kicks his legs as he tries to explain in a way that won't put Elliot more on edge. "It's just that I can't explain how I got...here. I mean, not here in your house, exactly, I mean, 'here' as in where you found me on the side of the road."

"You experienced a gap in your memory?" asks Elliot tentatively.

"No, at least, I don't think so." Orsino tucks his laptop into the chair, wedging it between the arm and the seat cushion for safekeeping. But his hands feel empty so he starts to fidget with the glass of water on his dinner tray, the cool surface is grounding, and keeps him talking. "I remember where I was just before. I was opening the door to the-- to a building at the school and then all of a sudden I was standing next to a road in the rain. It wasn't raining before, also it wasn't night."

"You were already at the school? But the semester shouldn't have started yet... and the time of day and weather were different too." Elliot taps on his chin, more relaxed now and engrossed in Orsino's mystery. "This will sound unsavory, so I apologize in advance, but are you certain that you weren't in  some way accosted? Perhaps made unconscious and dragged away?"

"Uhh," Orsino doesn't know what to say to that. He hadn't really considered it, but maybe he was magically kidnapped, by a time traveler? That's probably not what Elliot was thinking at all. "Why, though? I still have all my things, so I wasn't mugged. And I didn't have any injuries, no headache, or anything."

Elliot hums, "That is strange." Orsino spins the glass on the tray like atop, watching the dancing firelight refract in the facets.

"Yeah." Orsino shifts in his seat so he's facing Elliot more than the fire, determined to make earnest eye contact, which Elliot returns. The man's eyes suddenly seem to contain incredible depths to Orsino. It's like looking into a lake that you're swimming in and realizing the lakebed drops off into an underwater cavern rich with plant life and creatures. Orsino clears his throat, "Elliot, I appreciate your attempts to understand this, but if I'm being honest I don't think there's a rational explanation."

"What makes you so certain?" Orsino could swear he sees Elliot's eyes flash.

"This," He points down to where he stuck his laptop, "I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm literally from-- Shit!" Orsino shoots his arms down, but Crash. Before he could catch it the glass that Orsino set spinning hit the rim of the dinner tray and fell off shattering into a thousand little daggers. There's a sting at his cheek, where a shard bounced up and cut him, but he ignores it falling to his knees instead to try and clean up his mess, "Elliot, I am so sorry. I don't know what I was thi--"

One moment he's carefully reaching for pieces of glass caught between the floorboards and between the fibers of the rug in front of the fireplace, the next he's flat on his back with Elliot over him. The winds been knocked out of him, but Orsino doesn't dare breath. Elliot is panting over him, nostrils flared, disheveled hair falling into his eyes, one hand pressing into Orsino shoulder. Orsino flushes at the proximity. Elliot's face slowly gets closer to his right cheek. His pupils are blown wide, Orsino notices absently. He becomes mesmerized watching the tiny muscles in Elliot's jaw clench. He begins to squirm when he feels Elliot's breath against his cheek and ear, and finally he gets the mental capacity back to whisper, "Um, Elliot?"

Elliot meets his gaze slowly and for a moment Orsino feels like he's being hunted by a far older and wiser creature. Then Elliot blinks, and scrambles backwards as if startled. Orsino winces from the sudden pressure applied to his shoulder.

"I- I am-" Elliot stutters as he pushes himself further back frantically. His back hits the chair he'd been sitting in, his cane falls over and he jumps. But he recovers quickly, grabs his cane, pulls himself to his feet and is out of the room in an instant.

Orsino is still on the ground trying to figure out what the hell just happened when the ringing of a small bell somewhere else in the house reaches him. Slowly, he stands back up, dusting himself off. He looks at the shattered mess on the floor, but no longer has the energy to clean it up. Blankly he puts the dinner tray over it as a compromise, that way at least no one will step on the glass by accident, right?

Eventually, he wanders, dazed, back up to his room.