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fellowshippers2004-09-03 10:43 pm
elfellon111.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2004-09-03 10:43 pm
Meet Confusion - 7
Oooooh yes, here we are again. More Confusion. More Angst. The pretty boys are even prettier when I put them through stuff like this, I think you'll agree with me...
So...
EW/DM are at it again, in an
R-rated chapter (can't have smut all the time)and I
Disclaim everything!!!! Only the computer I wrote this on is mine, and the kinky ideas and that's about it. Maybe Dom and Elijah own each other, but even *that* is still up for debate... Just enjoy!
This will be x-posted at DomLijah Lovers and my own journal
CHAPTER 7
Dom opens his eyes and stares at his front door for the longest time, trying very hard to understand what the fuck just happened.
Shaking his head, he forces himself to take in the situation. He is sitting on the floor of the hallway, back against the wall, legs stretched out, wearing an old pair of boxers. It’s still raining because he can hear the drops ticking against the window in the kitchen, and it makes him feel so unbelievably fucking cheated.
Rain is Manchester, not sunny LA. Rain is connected to his family, connected to all the things he understands but chose to leave behind. Leave them behind for this incredible, unfathomable city; to search for direction, for purpose, for its angels, one of which he knows is the love of his life. LA made him give up familiarity and rain, expecting some sort of gratitude, but finding that, really, LA doesn’t give a shit. It offers him no direction, no purpose, and maybe not even that love he is so desperately waiting for. Rain is no longer familiarity, rain is a hole in his heart.
He briefly wonders if he should go back home. Back to where rain at least makes sense to him. Leave the Los Angeles palmtrees and beaches and its fucking rain, because it has only become a reminder of Elijah’s tears, and, as the front door closed, his own.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Dom,” is all he says as he tries to pry Dom’s fingers away from his arm. “Don’t be mad at me.” His tears have started rolling down again.
* * *
Mad? Mad?? What the fuck are you talking about? Just don’t let go, baby, I know how it is. You just need to be held, to be reassured. Don’t cry, Elijah. Confusion will leave you, I’m sure of it, just give it a little bit more time. I will help you, I promise. Just let me hold you, and listen to you and comfort you. I’m good at it too, trust me, just please don’t cry. I’ll make your pain go away…
* * *
But Elijah is stepping away from Dom, who is desperately searching for the right words to say, the right moves to make. He is taking small steps backwards, his hands struggling to hold his jacket and keys and cigarettes together. “I’m sorry, Dom,” he keeps repeating through his tears. “I’m so sorry.” He stretches his arm behind his back, reaching for the doorknob, finding it and slowly turning it, but still looking into Dom’s eyes. “I can’t do this anymore - I can’t hurt you anymore.” The door is open now, and while he is still searching Dom’s panic-stricken eyes for a flicker of understanding or forgiveness, Elijah steps outside. “Don’t be mad at me, Dommie,” he sobs. “Please try to understand…”
The door falls into its lock with a soft thud. Dom stumbles backwards until he bumps into a wall and sinks to the floor, thinking of nothing but Elijah’s warm body in his arms this morning and his fucking beautiful smile last night on the couch. Two stray tears roll down his face. He closes his eyes.
* * *
Elijah is walking. He has put on his jacket, has jammed his keys and cigs into his pocket and is walking. It’s raining pretty hard, but he doesn’t seem to care. At least it deftly conceals the tears that are still falling, hurting his eyes, staining his cheeks. His mind is blank, and he is grateful for that. He just concentrates on the cold wind and icy gusts of rain hitting his face, the steady soaking of his clothes and shoes, and the blurred vision of the next yard of pavement in front of him. He isn’t even sure whether he is heading in the direction of his appartment or not. He is just walking, managing to stay ahead of Confusion and the memory of Dom’s devastated face, both of which are alarmingly close on his heels and hurrying to catch up with him.
He reaches his block, recognises it as such and unconsciously heads for his building. He pushes the door open and practically runs across the large hall, leaving the concierge in a bewildered flash of recognition, up the stairs, taking two steps at the time until he is completely out of breath and forced to slow down. Fourteen floors, and he fucking refuses to take the elevator, where mirrored walls will erase the blankness from his mind and Confusion and Dom will no doubt join him on his way up. When he barely feels his legs anymore and his heart and ears pound with the blood that is frantically pumping through his veins, damn those cigarettes, he reaches his front door and collapses against it, violently gasping for air, closing his eyes.
* * *
Dom opens one of the kitchen cupboards and pulls out a mug. He pours himself some of the coffee Elijah made this morning and sits down at the table. He has stopped crying. It made his eyes itch and his nose run and it wasn’t getting him anywhere anyway. He enjoys the coffee, not because it is so terribly fresh – it isn’t – but because it is connected to Elijah.
Still, Dom cannot believe this is the end of it, but only because that concept is too much for him to grasp. He puts the mug down and tries to stare off into nothingness, yet he is immediately haunted by memories of the fucking fantastic night they spent together. The memories hurt, but Dom tries to analyse them anyway, to see if he missed something, made a mistake somewhere.
Only he didn’t, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. He frowns. They really connected last night. Elijah definitely wanted to be with him, offered himself to Dom so willingly and so beautifully, no fears, no doubts, just the two of them weaving an everlasting spell of friendship, understanding, trust and passion. He knows, is damn sure, because he could see it in Elijah’s eyes and – fuck…
He couldn’t. Not completely.
So it *was* guilt he saw, a fraction before he came, a fraction before Lij closed his eyes and did not open them again, not even when he asked him to. He couldn’t go all the way with him, he left him the moment it mattered, deciding to ride his high alone, in his own world, shutting Dom out. Out. Out of his life.
* * *
So what do you do when you have basically told your best friend you cannot see him again? That you have to work the incomprehensible mess in your fucked up brain out your own way, without him being around? What do you do when you have hurt that person so much it will be difficult to face him ever again, when all you wanted to do was stop him from hurting even more?
Do you pick up the phone to call him and tell him things will be all right? No, because you’re not sure they will. Do you contact him anyway to at least let him know how much you care about him and that you are so fucking sorry for what you have done to him? No, because you cannot trust yourself not to break right then and there and run back to him, begging for him to forget everything you said and continue the easy lie you have lived before. Do you drink yourself into a stupor, effectively erasing all pain and Confusion? Tempting, but no, not anymore. The hangover will be hell, and the moment you regain consciousness the nightmare will start all over again, and the very second that realisation hits you will be far worse than the way it now simmers while you remain awake and aware. Besides, you did decide to face your fears for once, instead of running away from them…
So what do you do?
You just breathe. You close the door. You sit down. And you breathe.
But Confusion and Dom must have slipped under the door, because the moment you let your guard down, you see Dom’s eyes, so full of hurt and panic and incomprehension. You hear the words you spoke and you remember your fear that he might not understand and the knowledge that you were twisting a knife in his heart. You remember how terrible you felt when you closed his door behind you, and how relieved you were that the icy rain outside kept you occupied while you walked away from his house as quickly as you could bear.
* * *
Elijah pushes himself up from the floor, pads into his bathroom and starts pulling off wet clothes for the second time in twenty-four hours. He runs a bath, lowers the lid on the toilet seat and sits down on it, naked, waiting for the tub to fill. He is horribly cold, but it’s okay. The shivering and the pain in his fingers and toes briefly take his mind off things. He switches the tap off and lowers himself gingerly into the hot water. It’s painful at first, but his frozen limbs adjust and after a few minutes it actually feels quite nice.
The phone rings. It startles the shit out of him. He doesn’t move to answer it, however, and lets the machine take a message. He wonders if it could be Dom. It would be so like Dom to try and contact him, even after all the shit he just pulled. But talking to him now is dangerous, he has to be strong, and do this alone.
He still wonders when everything changed so undeniably. He used to be so strong, he used to be in control. If ever people tried to analyse him or his professionalism as an actor, it always came down to the fact that he was such a balanced person, never one to be easily thrown off. He is well aware of this and has come to rely on it – ask New Line - and for too many months now he has seemed to have lost that quality. It feels unnatural and uncharacteristic and it scares him.
He learned early on that those things that scare you the most can teach you the best lessons, but he’s had enough of this one. He needs to regain his stability if he ever wishes to see things clearly again. Things being who he is and what Dom means to him and if he is really ready to throw his life upside down for both.
This morning, when he walked out of Dom’s house in search of cigarettes, it suddenly hit him. Confusion has been living his life for the past months. No one has ever lived Elijah Wood’s life apart from Elijah himself. So with a strange mixture of arrogant self-preservation and overwhelming guilt and utter fear in his heart, he decided he would no longer allow Confusion to continue like this. And now, in his bathroom, concealed from the world outside his head by thick clouds of steam curling up from the tub, he is hit once again by how much he must have hurt Dom, and it fucking tears him up, but it had to be done.
God, how he craves a cigarette.
Instead he just closes his eyes and breathes.
* * *
When the bottle slips from his numbing fingers he knows he has probably had too much, but he doesn’t give a fuck. He tries to stand up, only to find the world turning upside down immediately, so he stumbles to the floor again. He hasn’t been this plastered in a long, long time. He pats the floorboards in search of the bottle he just lost, and, crawling on all fours, locates it under the coffee table where it is laying in a pool of its own contents. He holds it up in front of his face for closer inspection, and, pleased with his findings, swallows the remaining amount. “Cheers, Lij, baby,” he mumbles, slamming the empty bottle down onto the floor. He wants to add something, but doesn’t remember what exactly, and settles for a frustrated grunt. He crawls over to the cabinet where he usually keeps his liquor and blindly pulls out another bottle, a fine single malt whisky Billy once gave him. He couldn’t care less, he’ll drink until he passes out, and there’s no arguing that. Trying to unscrew the cap from the bottle he means to sit down against the back of the couch, but doesn’t quite make it that far. Dom collapses against the small cabinet, the unopened bottle rolling away from him, a pathetic smile on his face and Elijah’s name on his lips.
* * *
And we’re all so strong – when nothing’s wrong
and the world is at our feet
But how small we are – when our love is far away
and all you need is you
20,000 seconds – K’s Choice
TBC
So...
EW/DM are at it again, in an
R-rated chapter (can't have smut all the time)and I
Disclaim everything!!!! Only the computer I wrote this on is mine, and the kinky ideas and that's about it. Maybe Dom and Elijah own each other, but even *that* is still up for debate... Just enjoy!
This will be x-posted at DomLijah Lovers and my own journal
CHAPTER 7
Dom opens his eyes and stares at his front door for the longest time, trying very hard to understand what the fuck just happened.
Shaking his head, he forces himself to take in the situation. He is sitting on the floor of the hallway, back against the wall, legs stretched out, wearing an old pair of boxers. It’s still raining because he can hear the drops ticking against the window in the kitchen, and it makes him feel so unbelievably fucking cheated.
Rain is Manchester, not sunny LA. Rain is connected to his family, connected to all the things he understands but chose to leave behind. Leave them behind for this incredible, unfathomable city; to search for direction, for purpose, for its angels, one of which he knows is the love of his life. LA made him give up familiarity and rain, expecting some sort of gratitude, but finding that, really, LA doesn’t give a shit. It offers him no direction, no purpose, and maybe not even that love he is so desperately waiting for. Rain is no longer familiarity, rain is a hole in his heart.
He briefly wonders if he should go back home. Back to where rain at least makes sense to him. Leave the Los Angeles palmtrees and beaches and its fucking rain, because it has only become a reminder of Elijah’s tears, and, as the front door closed, his own.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Dom,” is all he says as he tries to pry Dom’s fingers away from his arm. “Don’t be mad at me.” His tears have started rolling down again.
* * *
Mad? Mad?? What the fuck are you talking about? Just don’t let go, baby, I know how it is. You just need to be held, to be reassured. Don’t cry, Elijah. Confusion will leave you, I’m sure of it, just give it a little bit more time. I will help you, I promise. Just let me hold you, and listen to you and comfort you. I’m good at it too, trust me, just please don’t cry. I’ll make your pain go away…
* * *
But Elijah is stepping away from Dom, who is desperately searching for the right words to say, the right moves to make. He is taking small steps backwards, his hands struggling to hold his jacket and keys and cigarettes together. “I’m sorry, Dom,” he keeps repeating through his tears. “I’m so sorry.” He stretches his arm behind his back, reaching for the doorknob, finding it and slowly turning it, but still looking into Dom’s eyes. “I can’t do this anymore - I can’t hurt you anymore.” The door is open now, and while he is still searching Dom’s panic-stricken eyes for a flicker of understanding or forgiveness, Elijah steps outside. “Don’t be mad at me, Dommie,” he sobs. “Please try to understand…”
The door falls into its lock with a soft thud. Dom stumbles backwards until he bumps into a wall and sinks to the floor, thinking of nothing but Elijah’s warm body in his arms this morning and his fucking beautiful smile last night on the couch. Two stray tears roll down his face. He closes his eyes.
* * *
Elijah is walking. He has put on his jacket, has jammed his keys and cigs into his pocket and is walking. It’s raining pretty hard, but he doesn’t seem to care. At least it deftly conceals the tears that are still falling, hurting his eyes, staining his cheeks. His mind is blank, and he is grateful for that. He just concentrates on the cold wind and icy gusts of rain hitting his face, the steady soaking of his clothes and shoes, and the blurred vision of the next yard of pavement in front of him. He isn’t even sure whether he is heading in the direction of his appartment or not. He is just walking, managing to stay ahead of Confusion and the memory of Dom’s devastated face, both of which are alarmingly close on his heels and hurrying to catch up with him.
He reaches his block, recognises it as such and unconsciously heads for his building. He pushes the door open and practically runs across the large hall, leaving the concierge in a bewildered flash of recognition, up the stairs, taking two steps at the time until he is completely out of breath and forced to slow down. Fourteen floors, and he fucking refuses to take the elevator, where mirrored walls will erase the blankness from his mind and Confusion and Dom will no doubt join him on his way up. When he barely feels his legs anymore and his heart and ears pound with the blood that is frantically pumping through his veins, damn those cigarettes, he reaches his front door and collapses against it, violently gasping for air, closing his eyes.
* * *
Dom opens one of the kitchen cupboards and pulls out a mug. He pours himself some of the coffee Elijah made this morning and sits down at the table. He has stopped crying. It made his eyes itch and his nose run and it wasn’t getting him anywhere anyway. He enjoys the coffee, not because it is so terribly fresh – it isn’t – but because it is connected to Elijah.
Still, Dom cannot believe this is the end of it, but only because that concept is too much for him to grasp. He puts the mug down and tries to stare off into nothingness, yet he is immediately haunted by memories of the fucking fantastic night they spent together. The memories hurt, but Dom tries to analyse them anyway, to see if he missed something, made a mistake somewhere.
Only he didn’t, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. He frowns. They really connected last night. Elijah definitely wanted to be with him, offered himself to Dom so willingly and so beautifully, no fears, no doubts, just the two of them weaving an everlasting spell of friendship, understanding, trust and passion. He knows, is damn sure, because he could see it in Elijah’s eyes and – fuck…
He couldn’t. Not completely.
So it *was* guilt he saw, a fraction before he came, a fraction before Lij closed his eyes and did not open them again, not even when he asked him to. He couldn’t go all the way with him, he left him the moment it mattered, deciding to ride his high alone, in his own world, shutting Dom out. Out. Out of his life.
* * *
So what do you do when you have basically told your best friend you cannot see him again? That you have to work the incomprehensible mess in your fucked up brain out your own way, without him being around? What do you do when you have hurt that person so much it will be difficult to face him ever again, when all you wanted to do was stop him from hurting even more?
Do you pick up the phone to call him and tell him things will be all right? No, because you’re not sure they will. Do you contact him anyway to at least let him know how much you care about him and that you are so fucking sorry for what you have done to him? No, because you cannot trust yourself not to break right then and there and run back to him, begging for him to forget everything you said and continue the easy lie you have lived before. Do you drink yourself into a stupor, effectively erasing all pain and Confusion? Tempting, but no, not anymore. The hangover will be hell, and the moment you regain consciousness the nightmare will start all over again, and the very second that realisation hits you will be far worse than the way it now simmers while you remain awake and aware. Besides, you did decide to face your fears for once, instead of running away from them…
So what do you do?
You just breathe. You close the door. You sit down. And you breathe.
But Confusion and Dom must have slipped under the door, because the moment you let your guard down, you see Dom’s eyes, so full of hurt and panic and incomprehension. You hear the words you spoke and you remember your fear that he might not understand and the knowledge that you were twisting a knife in his heart. You remember how terrible you felt when you closed his door behind you, and how relieved you were that the icy rain outside kept you occupied while you walked away from his house as quickly as you could bear.
* * *
Elijah pushes himself up from the floor, pads into his bathroom and starts pulling off wet clothes for the second time in twenty-four hours. He runs a bath, lowers the lid on the toilet seat and sits down on it, naked, waiting for the tub to fill. He is horribly cold, but it’s okay. The shivering and the pain in his fingers and toes briefly take his mind off things. He switches the tap off and lowers himself gingerly into the hot water. It’s painful at first, but his frozen limbs adjust and after a few minutes it actually feels quite nice.
The phone rings. It startles the shit out of him. He doesn’t move to answer it, however, and lets the machine take a message. He wonders if it could be Dom. It would be so like Dom to try and contact him, even after all the shit he just pulled. But talking to him now is dangerous, he has to be strong, and do this alone.
He still wonders when everything changed so undeniably. He used to be so strong, he used to be in control. If ever people tried to analyse him or his professionalism as an actor, it always came down to the fact that he was such a balanced person, never one to be easily thrown off. He is well aware of this and has come to rely on it – ask New Line - and for too many months now he has seemed to have lost that quality. It feels unnatural and uncharacteristic and it scares him.
He learned early on that those things that scare you the most can teach you the best lessons, but he’s had enough of this one. He needs to regain his stability if he ever wishes to see things clearly again. Things being who he is and what Dom means to him and if he is really ready to throw his life upside down for both.
This morning, when he walked out of Dom’s house in search of cigarettes, it suddenly hit him. Confusion has been living his life for the past months. No one has ever lived Elijah Wood’s life apart from Elijah himself. So with a strange mixture of arrogant self-preservation and overwhelming guilt and utter fear in his heart, he decided he would no longer allow Confusion to continue like this. And now, in his bathroom, concealed from the world outside his head by thick clouds of steam curling up from the tub, he is hit once again by how much he must have hurt Dom, and it fucking tears him up, but it had to be done.
God, how he craves a cigarette.
Instead he just closes his eyes and breathes.
* * *
When the bottle slips from his numbing fingers he knows he has probably had too much, but he doesn’t give a fuck. He tries to stand up, only to find the world turning upside down immediately, so he stumbles to the floor again. He hasn’t been this plastered in a long, long time. He pats the floorboards in search of the bottle he just lost, and, crawling on all fours, locates it under the coffee table where it is laying in a pool of its own contents. He holds it up in front of his face for closer inspection, and, pleased with his findings, swallows the remaining amount. “Cheers, Lij, baby,” he mumbles, slamming the empty bottle down onto the floor. He wants to add something, but doesn’t remember what exactly, and settles for a frustrated grunt. He crawls over to the cabinet where he usually keeps his liquor and blindly pulls out another bottle, a fine single malt whisky Billy once gave him. He couldn’t care less, he’ll drink until he passes out, and there’s no arguing that. Trying to unscrew the cap from the bottle he means to sit down against the back of the couch, but doesn’t quite make it that far. Dom collapses against the small cabinet, the unopened bottle rolling away from him, a pathetic smile on his face and Elijah’s name on his lips.
* * *
And we’re all so strong – when nothing’s wrong
and the world is at our feet
But how small we are – when our love is far away
and all you need is you
20,000 seconds – K’s Choice
TBC
NNNNOoOOOOOOOoooo
nice, tha line about Lij's steadiness, and "Just ask New Line."
Carried them, didn't he?
couple spelling and one or two construction things-email me or something, and I'll point 'em out *really just >pushing< for more of the story*
Re: NNNNOoOOOOOOOoooo
You have a really 'pushy' way of getting more chapters coming your way. And yeeesss, I certainly can stop here, hehe, it's called suspense. *snorts*
Spelling and construction? Blast, yeah, point them out to me. Just email me at elfellon111@yahoo.com and shoot, it'd be appreciated!!
Elfie~