Repost of Time Waste Me part 1 & new part 2

[green-queen.livejournal.com]

Title: Time Waste Me (1&2/8)
Pairing: Dom/Elijah
Rating: R
Summary: Elijah is kidnapped.
Archive: Once You Pop (You Can't Stop)
Author's Notes: My first and probably only WIP, thanks to my wonderful beta di0nne.

Part 1

Life has some kind of fucked up sense of irony wherein the days on which truly terrible things happen tend not to be very notable at all. Just another day, sunny and boring, publicity work to be done in the morning and scripts to read over lunch with his sister. He signed an autograph for a German tourist while walking along the street to his car, posed for a photo with her and smiled his thanks at her praise. In the afternoon he had an interview with a woman who sweated under her thick makeup but had an honest laugh, an infectious one, so that even though the questions were nothing new he couldn't help being cheerful. He drove himself home. It wasn't a stormy night and he wasn't apprehensive when he stopped at a red light, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and humming.

When the passenger's side door opened he furrowed his brow, confused, but when he saw a gun in a black-gloved hand his heart leapt into his throat. He did his best not to panic, cursing himself silently for not locking the door. He thought of grabbing the gun while complying with demands, and realized with a jolt that all that sword training he did and all Orlando's archery lessons couldn't prepare himself for this. He wished for a moment that he was as strong as Orlando, or that he knew some kind of self defense, like Dom. He wished he was home with Dom. And as he pulled into a driveway and another gun was shoved in his face, he had only one thought, bizarre and out of place. He wondered what Dom had cooked him for dinner.

____________

Dom sighed angrily and threw himself down into a chair. He'd cooked a nice dinner, nothing special, but heartfelt. Meat and two veg, England-style to show Elijah how it was done. He'd even put out candles, fucking candles, for fuck's sake, which were now only about an inch high, with hot wax caught by a glittering gilded tray. He dipped his finger in the wax experimentally, then cursed.
"Hot, genius," he mumbled to himself as he picked the wax off morosely. It fell onto his dinner plate almost silently. He felt the presence of the cold meat in front of him, staring at the flickering reflection of the candle in the metal edging on the plate, and sighed again. He stood up listlessly and turned on the TV, but it didn't hold his attention. Mentally, he cursed Elijah and his propensity for forgetfulness. Then he sat down once more and cursed it aloud.

He tapped his fingers on the table to something loosely translated as music on MTV and unwillingly ran through the possible causes of Elijah's tardiness in his mind. A party at the Osbournes'? No, he would have been invited. Some hot-shot new director who wanted, no, needed Elijah for a great new role in his movie, something undoubtedly Indie and violent? A bird in a short skirt and long boots with eyeliner dark around her eyes the way Elijah liked it? A ditch somewhere with an overturned mini-Cooper and light fading in blue eyes...

Dom stood up abruptly at this thought to pace. Elijah wasn't in a ditch, he was fine, he'd just forgotten about dinner. About Dom. Again. ‘90% of anger is fear, though,’ Dom told himself, and the niggling worry was catching up with him. Cell phone off and his agent hadn't seen him since 6 pm. He'd definitely left the studio alone. So where the fuck was he? The image of the upturned mini-Cooper appeared in Dom's mind again, this time with added smoke and sirens rapidly approaching. Dom gave an involuntary shudder at the thought and flung himself on his back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, his overactive imagination embossing Elijah's face into it. He heard a car slow down as it approached the house and lifted his head slightly from the ground, his ears perked, but the car drove on and Dom was still alone at home, MTV on in the background and Elijah off partying somewhere without him. He imagined Elijah coming home just before dawn, reeking of drink and smoke and rambling about the fantastic younger up-and-coming actor he'd met that night. Dom smiled in spite of himself. He was all ready to forgive Elijah when the phone rang.


Part 2

“Jesus fucking Christ, Carl, what did you do?"
Elijah looked up from the floor where he lay, shivering and bleeding
from the lip, to see a heavily built figure towering
above him.
The man's foot came crashing into Elijah's side and he groaned and
rolled over, casting his face into the light.
"It was a nice car, Al, you told us--"
"This is fucking Frodo. Jesus fucking Christ, Carl, you
kidnapped Frodo. People are gonna miss this kid, Carl, you stupid
fuck," Al said. He paced for a moment, then stopped less than a foot
from Elijah's head.

Elijah heard a loud crack, saw a spark, heard the sound of a bullet
against flesh and bone. Carl fell on top of him and, losing all
pretension of bravery, Elijah screamed. Al kicked the presumably dead
body of Carl off him and yanked him up, almost tearing his arm out of
its socket in the process. They walked for what seemed like hours,
Elijah too dizzyingly sick with pain and shock to take much notice of
where they were going despite the voice in his mind that told him to
watch everything. He was limp and shaking when they tied him up and
threw him against a wall where he crumpled, sobbing, to the ground. He
looked up through his tears to see Al grinning at him, and was lucid
enough to notice an actual gold tooth glinting from Al's mouth. Who
the hell had gold teeth?

"You're a fucking goldmine, kid," he heard Al proclaim as he left the
room, locking the door behind him.
Left in the cold dark with the sensory memories of the murder he'd just
witnessed, Elijah lasted what was probably only a few minutes before he
passed out.

________________________________________________

The day of the splinter was the day that Dom first imagined, really
properly imagined he knew something of hell. In his mind hell was a
wooden floor that stretched for all eternity, covered in sharp
splinters that invaded your skin as you were forced to crawl across it
on hands and knees. A sharp stinging followed by the dull throb that
reminded you of its presence.
Billy had been teasing him the entire time, so he didn't mention his
feverish and probably somewhat stupid vision. Sean had been arranging
a medical team while Elijah laughed, a high-pitched giggle that
betrayed his worried state of mind. Dom had been sweating profusely
from the pain, his teeth gritted together, yet he distinctly remembered
trying to smile at Elijah, to alleviate his fears. He remembered also
being relieved when Sean had come over and put his arm around Elijah,
who was rocking slightly, and telling him Dom would be fine.

Now Dom drove. In the back of his mind, the thought arose that he
wasn't really driving, that if a kid chased a ball onto the road he
wouldn't notice, wouldn't stop in time, would be responsible for
another horrible event that night. Not that he was responsible for Elijah.
It was about 3 am anyway, no kids playing ball, and the thought
vanished quickly as a leaden feeling in him stomach reminded him of
what he was doing, where he was going. His Elijah had been kidnapped.
Hannah had gotten the phone call from them, the people who had Elijah
right now instead of him. Dom replayed her call in his mind, the tears
in her panicked voice and the repeated assurance that she'd called him
straight away, right after calling the police. Her desperation for a
word of comfort Dom couldn't provide was vivid in Dom's mind. For a
moment the reflection of a light in the passenger's side window
reminded Dom of the flicker of a flame, and he imagined the car to be
hell, this eternity of the pain of not knowing. The questions of
Elijah's whereabouts and well-being ran through his troubled mind as he
checked the clock on the dashboard for about the fortieth time since
he'd started the car.

Realising the luminous red numbers hadn't changed since the last time
he looked, he swore loudly and slammed his hand down on the steering
wheel.

Tears pricked the back of his eyes and he willed them not to fall,
running a light that had been orange when he'd first looked at it.
He didn't much care. He was almost there now, he could see the
street he had to turn into to get to the police station where he
wouldn't find Hannah, who was waiting at home for the phone to ring.
For a split second he pictured himself pulling in at the station to
find Elijah standing there, grinning, and learn that it was all a kind
of sick practical joke that they were pulling on him; imagined Elijah
in his arms, giggling in his ear like he used to when Dom forgot to
appreciate him. When he got there, however, the street in front of the
station, though well-populated, was empty of Elijah. Dom was alone. A
tear slid down his cheek as he parked.

_________________________________________________

There was a crack in the door to the bathroom at the police station Dom
had been sent to. It was barely perceptible, a slightly darker line
going against the grain of the wood, a diagonal gash in the door's
face. Every so often somebody would make a noise that didn't fit in
with the dull rustling of ordinary operations in the station, or walk
in front of Dom across his eyeline, and he would have to find the crack
again, a little way in from the top corner. The sun was rising slowly
and the station was gradually filling with a bluish light against the
dim orange of the lightbulbs inside.

Occasionally he thought someone might have been coming to talk to him
and his head snapped around, but all too soon he'd realise it was
nothing, and go back to waiting. Sitting and waiting, trying to think
of what the detective might say to him, what Sean or Billy would do
when they got there. He wondered whether they'd handle it better or be the same, lost and terrified, the rush of his heartbeat in
his ears distorting the noises around him like drowning.
He noticed a rubber plant in the corner and tried to remember a joke
he'd once heard about them, but as always his thoughts were interrupted
by Elijah's face, scared and pained as he cowered in the dark. Dom
cursed himself and the terrible clear pictures that seemed to infest
his brain.

"Mr Monaghan?" It took Dom a while to realise he was being addressed,
and when he finally turned around a shadow of the crack in the bathroom
door appeared on the white of the detective's face. "Ms Wood's been
contacted again," the detective, Holder, said, not unkindly but with a
practiced indifference. Dom swore. He'd blindly followed
instructions, hadn't thought for himself, and now he'd missed something
important. "I should have been there," he said angrily, getting to his
feet. "What did they say? Is Elijah okay?" "She says she spoke to
your friend, he's okay. If you hold on a second we can both head over
and I'll fill you in on the way," said Holder calmly, nodding to
another officer as he collected his jacket. Dom stormed out ahead of
him, his legs carrying him halfway down the hallway before Holder's
voice stopped him. He stopped and whirled around to see him heading in
the other direction. "My car's downstairs, Mr. Monaghan. Why don't I
drive you, and I'll have someone take your car over" he said, taking
the keys from Dom's hand. He passed them to a much younger woman,
muttering a few words into her ear, then motioned for Dom to come with
him. Dom hesitated a moment before following, the image of Elijah
burned into his vision as he walked.

Green Queen