Beauty;Spiral;Down (1/1)

Title: Beauty;Spiral;Down (1/1)

Author: blankverses

Rating: NC-17 (some BD/SM)

Pairing: VM/EW

Warning: Angst and SM stuff, be warned.

Feedback: sure thing.



He was beautiful.

Not just beautiful in the superficial way, with his perfect skin and his deep blue eyes that went on into forever. He was beautiful beneath that, the trembling boy-man that knew more of life than most of his older co-stars. He was beautiful because he was so innocent, yet so experienced that it sometimes made even Viggo blush to hear him speak. He was beautiful when he smoked, clove dangling between his fingers, eyes closed against the turmoil that was roiling, almost tangible, beneath the surface of his skin.

And Viggo knew that there was beauty inside, as of yet untapped, and he wanted to find it.

Break him open, piece by piece, so he could understand what was there, take him apart only to put him back together again, build him up from all of his beautiful parts into a whole that only he knew completely.

And Elijah seemed to need that sort of understanding, because he came to Viggo’s
waiting arms and bed all too willingly.




Elijah lay on his stomach, eyes closed, fingers tracing a pattern on the sheets of Viggo’s bed. Viggo was, by now, familiar with the contours of Elijah’s back, and the way that the candlelight would play over his skin, sheened with sweat, after they had made love. He knew Elijah’s moans and cries as though they were his own, and he knew that if he reached over and stroked a finger gently down his spine that Elijah would shiver.

“Viggo,” Elijah breathed.

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Viggo whispered into his ear.

“No,” Elijah murmured in reply. “I’m not.”

Viggo frowned, his brow creasing, and reached forward, running his fingers down Elijah’s back. “You are beautiful, Elijah. You must know that.”

Elijah rolled over onto his side. His blue eyes bored into Viggo’s, trapping him with their intensity.

“People tell me that, they tell me that I’m beautiful and that I’m talented, and then they use me, use me up until there’s nothing left in me except for darkness, and ugliness.” Elijah bit his lip. “They’ll lie to get what they want, they tell you what they know you want to hear, and then they expect you to do whatever they say.”

“Do you think that I would lie to you?”

“No,” came the reply after a moment’s hesitation, a moment that froze Viggo’s heartbeat. “No, I don’t think that you’re lying to me. But I also don’t think that you really see me as you should, Viggo. You’re an artist, you should be able to tell when something is beautiful, and when something is worthless. But with me, I think that you’re blinded, and have lost your perspective. I think you see me as you want me to be, not as I really am.”

Viggo wrapped his arms around his young lover, cradling him tightly. “I can see you just fine,” he said.

Elijah allowed himself to be comforted for a moment, and when he drew back his eyes were wet. “I wish that I could believe that, but I know that it’s not true. You mean it, and you want it to be true, but it just isn’t. There’s nothing of beauty left in me.”

Elijah kissed Viggo quickly, gave him a sketchy smile, and then hurriedly dressed and left. When Viggo saw him the next day, hobbit feet and ears applied, it didn’t seem appropriate to continue the conversation, and he pretended as though everything was normal and just fine indeed. But that little glimpse into Elijah, the inner being that lived beneath that amazing shell, had both scared him and peaked his interest.



It was just a short time after that when Elijah began to express an interest in the rougher side of sex. He would rip claws down Viggo’s back in an invitation for the same to be done to his own fair skin, and he would plead for Viggo to thrust harder, deeper, the lines between pain and pleasure blurring until they were indistinguishable for both of them. Viggo wanted to give his lover what he asked for, and so he complied with the younger man’s requests, and in time he found that he enjoyed eliciting the whimpers and tears almost as much as the moans, and began to push the boundaries of their relationship, always trying to find that point where Elijah would stop, saying that it was too far.

But that point never seemed to come.




The first time that Elijah asked to be tied up was a turning point. He liked it so much that he was almost bored with sex when he could move about and escape. Viggo liked having the blue eyed boy at his mercy, liked being able to tickle and lick his way all over the younger man’s body at his leisure, liked being able to do whatever he wanted with him. But he couldn’t understand the appeal of it for Elijah.

“It’s about control,” Elijah told him finally, smoking on the back porch one night just after dinner. “It’s about choosing to give up control. It’s about knowing that I can trust you enough to let go of myself, and knowing that when you let me free that I will still be me – maybe not unchanged, but still myself, and still in my own hands.”

And when Viggo blindfolded him, tied him to the bed, and fucked him with everything that he had to give, Elijah seemed, for one brief moment, completely within himself and alive.

No artist could resist the opportunity to experiment with a blank canvas, and for Viggo there was no canvas more ready and willing than Elijah. He would tie the young man down on the bed, lying on his stomach, and paint his skin for hours, trying his hardest to let the inner Elijah come through in the colors and patterns. Viggo posed and photographed him obsessively and in an endless variety of ways – crouching in the snow, poetic and all in black, naked and contorted clad only in intricately tied ropes, painted and sprawled across the floor of his studio. But that wasn’t enough, it seemed, to let the inner Elijah through. The experience wasn’t visceral enough for the younger man, and Viggo labored to set him free from the confines of his skin.

Viggo would mark him with teeth and nails, bruise his arms from holding tightly while he thrust away inside. Using red, blue, green, yellow candles Viggo would paint swirls over Elijah’s body in hot wax, watching with utter fascination as he writhed and moaned, hissing when the wax coated a particularly sensitive spot. He would bite Elijah’s nipples until they bled, listening to the sounds that his lover made, pain and pleasure so intertwined that he could no longer experience one without the other.

No one seemed to notice the marks, the rope burns, the welts from the candle wax, and at first Viggo didn’t worry. What they did was their own business, and Sean and Dom and Billy didn’t notice the scratches or the bite marks because they were hidden. Orlando didn’t notice how Elijah had taken to sitting down gingerly, because he had convinced Viggo to spank him until he cried the night before. Ian didn’t notice how Elijah had started smoking more frequently, in an effort to stop biting his nails, because Viggo didn’t like it and would withhold punishment from him in an effort to get him to stop.

One morning the make-up artists did notice the handprint on his cheek from where Viggo had slapped him the night before, but he made up a story about offending an exchange student at a bar, and told it so well that he had them laughing along instead of worrying, but his eyes shone at Viggo with a naked lust when he saw him later on set that sent a warning bell off in the older man’s head.

Viggo was afraid that the game had gone too far, that Elijah’s need to redirect his issues of control had moved beyond the boundaries of a good idea and into the dangerous realms. But he was almost addicted to Elijah now, as addicted to the boy as the boy was to his damn cigarettes.

The first burn was small, administered by Elijah himself when Viggo wouldn’t do it for him. A small burn into his inner thigh with the butt of a cigarette, that had him crying silent tears as Viggo stared, appalled. It was as though he was giving Viggo permission to find new ways to break through and into him, and Viggo couldn’t hold out for long. He would lay between Elijah’s thighs, flicking a lighter on and off, trailing the flame just along the edge of the skin, enough to redden it but not enough to blister, Elijah panting all the while, his cock hard. Viggo would trace elf runes with the lighter, watching them well up like magic.

And it was Elijah who brought home the scalpel, small and sharp as the devil’s tongue, and who convinced Viggo to use it.




Viggo dipped the paintbrush into the jar or rubbing alcohol, continuing the design on Elijah’s back that had been haunting his vision all through the day’s filming. He finished the last stroke, and stared down as the alcohol reflected back in the candlelight.

“Are you sure, lover?” he murmured, reaching for the scalpel.

“Hurry, Viggo.”

Viggo held the scalpel for a moment, head cocked to the side, moving it back and forth as it glowed.

“Hurry,” Elijah whimpered.

Viggo settled himself into a comfortable position on the floor next to his canvas, and began to gently trace the design with the blade, pressing oh so lightly into the skin. Elijah hissed, then moaned. His fingers and toes curled up in pleasure.

Viggo ignored that for the moment, watching as a thin line of blood welled up from the cuts, the pattern delicate and almost holy looking. He took his time finishing, varying the pressure slightly as he moved to fleshier parts of Elijahs’ back. The boy was panting by the time he finished, and out of the corner of Elijah’s eyes Viggo saw him lick his lips and sigh.

Viggo stood and reached for his camera, and took a series of photographs of Elijah. When he was down he gently wiped Elijah’s back with a warm, wet washcloth.
Elijah stood up, a happy smile on his face, and hurried to the bathroom to see the design for himself in the mirrors.

“Oh Viggo, it’s lovely!” he exclaimed, his voice delighted and childlike.

Viggo looked at the bloody knife and the washcloth, at the beautiful young man standing naked in his bathroom, back a riot of spirals and lines, all etched into his skin and outlined in blood, and shut his eyes tightly. There would never be enough, never deep enough, never far enough. Elijah would never find the limits of himself, and Viggo was afraid that he was going to spiral down into madness with him. And even for all of that, Elijah smiled happily at him, kissing him deeply and tenderly.

“I love you, Viggo,” he whispered. “And I’ve never loved anyone else.”

“Why?” Viggo asked, full of confusion.

“Because you’re you, and because you’ve shown me the way to myself.”

“I love you, too,” Viggo murmured, taking Elijah into his arms, knowing that it was the truth but so much less than all of the truth, but that it was all that he could give as he felt Elijah’s blood warm and wet on his hands. “And you are beautiful.”