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fellowshippers2004-09-06 10:37 pm
elfellon111.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2004-09-06 10:37 pm
Meet Confusion - 8
Here it is, the stuff that happens after Dom drinks himself into a stupor and Lij decides to *not* pick up a phone. I love the boys in this chapter... beautiful.
Rating:R
Pairing:EW/DM
Feedback: I love it
Disclaimer: This is a lie, it's not true, I made it up. If I really owned these pretty boys I would never put them through all this shit. Enjoy.
This will be x-posted at DomLijah Lovers and my own Journal
CHAPTER 8
A cough. “Hmmm?” Another cough. “Hello?” Scratchy voice.
“Billy?”
“Hmmm… what time is it?” Stifling a yawn. Some rustling. “Hell…”
“Sorry.” Small voice. “I woke you.”
“Dom?” More rustling, stumbling. “What’s going on, mate? You okay?” Footsteps, the sound of glasses clinking together, water running.
“Bill… Can we talk for a minute?” Dom sits down on the couch after pacing restlessly around the coffee table. “I really need to talk… I’m going insane here…” He lets his head rest against the back of the couch, his left hand limp in his lap, the other cradling the phone.
“Okay, I’m awake now,” Billy says, sounding as bright as he can manage at three in the fucking morning. “Now you sound like shite, mate. What’s going on? Tell me.”
Silence.
“Dom?”
“Dom?”
Silence.
“Dom?! Don’t wake me up in the middle of the night saying you need to talk and then fucking clamp up on me.”
More silence.
“For fuck’s sake, Dom, you’re scaring the shit out of me. You’re *never* at a loss for words.”
Dom swears he can hear the click and see the lightbulb flash all the way across the Atlantic.
“Dom…” Billy stretches his name a little longer than necessary. “This has *not* got anything to do with Elijah, has it?”
Dom can’t help it. The crying takes over again. It had crept up on him so many times during the past two weeks, he stopped counting. He knows it doesn’t do him any good, it doesn’t solve anything, but he feels like he’s lost a leg, or an arm – or maybe both. And his heart’s gone too. So he cries for their loss and the terrible ache it leaves in the rest of his ravaged body.
“Dom?” Billy sounds worried. “Dom…Do you want me to come over?” Billy’s soft voice and the offer it’s making are soothing and Dom tries to swallow all the other sobs he still had in store.
“You… you don’t have to,” he whispers. “I can’t ask you to do that… It’s not like I live round the corner.”
They’re both silent for a bit.
“How long since you’ve spoken to the lad?”
“Two weeks.”
“He walked out?”
“He walked away – don’t know if it’s the same thing.”
“And anyway, there wasn’t anything between us to officially walk out on.”
Dom tries to compose himself, takes a deep breath and goes into the kitchen to fetch himself something to drink. Opening the door of the fridge he briefly eyes the beer, but decides against it. Too many hangovers this past fortnight have made him cautious, doesn’t want to wash up a sad alcoholic in the process, although at times – mostly at night, alone, in his bed – he couldn’t give a rat’s ass if he does. He grabs the jug of fruit juice and a glass and pads back to the couch.
They haven’t said a word.
“He forgot his cellphone…Never even bothered to come pick it up… It’s still on the nightstand in the bedroom. I turned it off, though…”
“Two weeks? And he never came to collect the thing?”
Both are silent for a while.
“Dom… that borders on the impossible.” A thoughtful pause. “In fact… it’s insane.”
They chuckle, the both of them. A more comfortable silence - steady breathing.
“Are you eating?”
“Yeah…”
“Sleeping?”
“Could be better… But I guess I’m okay…”
“Good.”
Long pause.
“God, I miss him Bill… If he doesn’t want me as his boyfriend, I hope to God that he still wants me as his friend, ‘cause I really miss him. At night, here on this couch, nicking my beer, choking on it while I tell my worst jokes, molesting my games controller whenever I come close to beating him, watching movies, talking shit, spilling wine on the carpet…”
Silence again. Dom swallows hard and pours more juice, trying to keep himself in check.
“I miss that ridiculous giggle, Billy.”
“You’re insane.”
“I know.”
“Have you told him?”
“What? That I’m insa-”
“No, you fuckwit – he *knows* that. Have you called him and told him all this you just told me?”
“Don’t dare to.”
“Why?”
“He’ll hang up on me.”
“And that’s more painful than this silence between you?”
“I guess…”
“Come on, Dom… Lij does – as a rule – not hang up on people. He’s too polite…” Billy grins softly. “What happened that you’d say a thing like that?”
“You haven’t seen him leave this place, Bill… He was crying, but he had this ‘don’t-touch-me-I’m-fucking-sure-of-myself’ mode switched on. It scared me, man. I’m still not sure as to what the fuck happened. One minute I’m still enjoying the afterglow of a fantastic night and the next I see him stumbling out of here, incoherent, small, in tears…”
His own tears start to gather again, and Dom wipes at them impatiently.
“I could see in his eyes that he felt so fucking sorry for what he was doing to me, Billy, but he went ahead and did it anyway…”
“Lijah’s iron core…”
“So that’s what it looks like…”
“I told you this before, Dom, I know you’re not a patient man, but pushing him is only gonna drive him away.”
More silence, tense this time.
“That’s the thing, Bill. I *never* pushed him. His own fucked up brain did.”
* * *
“Elijah! Open the door!”
No response. She is standing there waiting for some sound from inside, anything to let her know that Elijah is in there. “Please, Elijah…” Her voice trails off, resting both hands against the wood of the doorframe. “Don’t shut me out, honey, I love you…” Still nothing.
“I know something is going on, and you’re making me stand out here in the corridor calling your name, for every last neighbour to hear. For heaven’s sake, open this *door*!” It’s the second time this week she has tried to get a response from the appartment which she is sure keeps her son hidden. The first time she had heard a faint voice say something she could only interpret as ‘go away’ and it was the only thing keeping her from calling the police to break the door down. Now she just sighs and turns her back. “Could you at least pick up the phone? *Any* phone?!” She grabs her purse from the floor and starts walking away, only to add: “Your sister back home is worried sick about you, you know that?”
The sound of the bolt makes her stop halfway down the dimly lit corridor and she turns around slightly. Elijah’s head peers around the corner, and in three or four unhumanly large strides she is back at the door again with every intention of embracing her son, but stopping short at the sight of him. “Oh, baby…” is all she can say and pushes him back into the house, shutting the door behind her.
* * *
She just sits there, watching how her son, the middle one, the bouncy, electrifying, beautiful one, sleeps with an exhausted expression on his face. It had been a week since she brought Elijah back to her house and set him up in the guesthouse again, and still he had not opened up to her, or to anybody for that matter. She knows Dom is somehow involved, and she wishes she has the nerve to call him. So apart from a few random, incoherent thoughts coming from his mouth, Elijah has been painfully quiet all week, going through her motions of sleeping, waking up, eating, and hanging around until he politely but resolutely makes his way back to his little house at the edge of her pristinely kept garden, where – she is sure – he sinks back into his misery, freaking her and Hannah out every single time. And now, almost two weeks since she had had a normal discussion with him on the phone, the bounce and electricity and beauty are completely gone from him. Looking at Elijah hurts her eyes and her heart, now that there is nothing left of him but a distant shadow of his vibrant sunshine.
She stands up, closes the curtains and turns around again. “I am going to call him, honey,” she says to the sleeping form. “I need to know what this is all about.” She fumbles with the bedsheets a bit, gently covering his body some more. “I’m sorry to interfere, but this is becoming ridiculous. And I won’t stand around passively to see you do this to yourself. I miss my beautiful Elijah. I miss your laughter and your banter. I even miss the sight of you smoking on the porch after dinner with that alarmingly content look on your face.” She bends down and kisses his cheek, lingering briefly, stroking his hair away from his forehead. “I love you, honey. I wish I could take your pain away, whatever it is.” She straightens and walks out of the room, wiping her eyes.
* * *
She jabs the number into the phone nervously, a glass of wine in front of her on the table of the open kitchen, Hannah staring up at her from her crouched position on the livingroom floor. “Mom…” she starts saying, but decides against anything else, seeing the strained determination on her mother’s face. She had watched her come back from the kennel, pace around the house, tidying things that needed no tidying, poking at random objects in the kitchen, rearranging them without any sense of purpose, and finally preparing dinner in a highly unusal hurry, eating it with her - without him – yet constantly looking over her shoulder towards the garden house where the only movement had been the small bugs circling in the porchlight.
After what seems like forever, she angrily slams the phone down, startling Hannah. “Damn,” she hisses, and Hannah realises she has rarely heard her mother curse.
* * *
She closes the backdoor, leaving the kitchen, walks across the garden, plucking a leaf from one of the plants bordering the lawn, mushing it between her deft fingers. There are no lights on in the small house, only the one bathing the porch in a warm yellow glow. The bugs are still there, oblivious to Hannah’s growing anxiety with each step that brings her closer to Elijah. She remembers the night she had secretly cried after he had moved out, as she felt she had never really had the chance to say a proper goodbye to him.
And why was that?
Yet now that he is temporarily living here again, she realises that, to her, it is still *his* little house, he still belongs there. It sends a smile to her face and a warm feeling up her stomach. Then she grins as she suddenly realises the crazy fact that the garden she now walks in and the main house she just left are also his.
She takes the three steps onto the small wrap-around porch and moves to knock on the door. She is stopped short, however, by the soft cough she hears coming from that part of the deck that is hidden from the main house, and, still smiling, she rounds the corner quietly.
He coughs again. It’s a raw, grainy rasp, deep down his throat, angrily racking his lungs. He is sitting on the deck, back against the wall, his bare feet stretched out in front of him, cigarette dangling from his right hand. His hair is a mess, flat on one side, his face a collection of reddish blotches from which his huge, dark eyes eerily stand out.
She makes a deliberate move and his head yanks sideways, facing her. They say nothing. At times like these, it is never necessary. She lowers her body and moves to sit opposite him, cross-legged. Her hand picks the packet from his lap and moments later, she lights a cigarette, her eyes never leaving his.
They sit like this for the best part of an hour, blowing smoke in each other’s direction, aiming to finish off the already half-empty packet, watching each other closely. It eases her anxiety, being so near to him and not having to break the spell with words. She scoots even closer until her knees brush against his thigh. He looks at her - almost at ease - and pries the last cigarette out of the packet, lights it, takes a drag and offers it to her. They share for another ten minutes, and when Elijah crushes the glowing filter in the ashtray, Hannah cleverly twists around and curls her body against him, placing her head in his lap, watching the stars.
“We love you, you do know that, don’t you?” she asks, almost whispering. Lij’s head falls back against the wall and he idly strokes his thumb across his sister’s cheek. He nods. “Then bloody talk to me,” she adds. She turns her head slightly so she can look into his eyes, and she can see him searching for the right words, for the guts to say them, for the encouragement in her face.
“I think I love Dom.”
“I know you do.”
“I mean I’m in love with him.”
“So do I.”
“It confuses me.”
A pause.
“Why?”
“That’s the trouble, I’m not exactly sure.” He looks at her questioningly, as if his sister’s face is holding all the answers, yet finding only quiet understanding. “I think I still like women too.”
“Is that so wrong?”
His snort comes out of nowhere.
“Who ordered you to be so fucking wise all of a sudden?” he grins, and squeezes her arm. “Going around lying in my lap here and asking all kinds of Zen questions and smoking all my fucking cigarettes?”
She laughs out loud. “I’m not wise or all about Zen, Lij, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. When you returned from New Zealand and Dom crossed the pond a little later, it was just so fucking obvious. You’d have to be blind not to notice that there was *something* going on between the two of you. Whatever it was, or is…”
His face turns dark again. “I guess I have been pretty blind.”
He cradles her body and they stare off into the night again. She turns her face and pushes her nose against his stomach, snuggling up for warmth and comfort. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
At the other end of the garden the porch light switches off and Debbie closes the backdoor behind her, stepping into the dark of the kitchen.
TBC
Rating:R
Pairing:EW/DM
Feedback: I love it
Disclaimer: This is a lie, it's not true, I made it up. If I really owned these pretty boys I would never put them through all this shit. Enjoy.
This will be x-posted at DomLijah Lovers and my own Journal
CHAPTER 8
A cough. “Hmmm?” Another cough. “Hello?” Scratchy voice.
“Billy?”
“Hmmm… what time is it?” Stifling a yawn. Some rustling. “Hell…”
“Sorry.” Small voice. “I woke you.”
“Dom?” More rustling, stumbling. “What’s going on, mate? You okay?” Footsteps, the sound of glasses clinking together, water running.
“Bill… Can we talk for a minute?” Dom sits down on the couch after pacing restlessly around the coffee table. “I really need to talk… I’m going insane here…” He lets his head rest against the back of the couch, his left hand limp in his lap, the other cradling the phone.
“Okay, I’m awake now,” Billy says, sounding as bright as he can manage at three in the fucking morning. “Now you sound like shite, mate. What’s going on? Tell me.”
Silence.
“Dom?”
“Dom?”
Silence.
“Dom?! Don’t wake me up in the middle of the night saying you need to talk and then fucking clamp up on me.”
More silence.
“For fuck’s sake, Dom, you’re scaring the shit out of me. You’re *never* at a loss for words.”
Dom swears he can hear the click and see the lightbulb flash all the way across the Atlantic.
“Dom…” Billy stretches his name a little longer than necessary. “This has *not* got anything to do with Elijah, has it?”
Dom can’t help it. The crying takes over again. It had crept up on him so many times during the past two weeks, he stopped counting. He knows it doesn’t do him any good, it doesn’t solve anything, but he feels like he’s lost a leg, or an arm – or maybe both. And his heart’s gone too. So he cries for their loss and the terrible ache it leaves in the rest of his ravaged body.
“Dom?” Billy sounds worried. “Dom…Do you want me to come over?” Billy’s soft voice and the offer it’s making are soothing and Dom tries to swallow all the other sobs he still had in store.
“You… you don’t have to,” he whispers. “I can’t ask you to do that… It’s not like I live round the corner.”
They’re both silent for a bit.
“How long since you’ve spoken to the lad?”
“Two weeks.”
“He walked out?”
“He walked away – don’t know if it’s the same thing.”
“And anyway, there wasn’t anything between us to officially walk out on.”
Dom tries to compose himself, takes a deep breath and goes into the kitchen to fetch himself something to drink. Opening the door of the fridge he briefly eyes the beer, but decides against it. Too many hangovers this past fortnight have made him cautious, doesn’t want to wash up a sad alcoholic in the process, although at times – mostly at night, alone, in his bed – he couldn’t give a rat’s ass if he does. He grabs the jug of fruit juice and a glass and pads back to the couch.
They haven’t said a word.
“He forgot his cellphone…Never even bothered to come pick it up… It’s still on the nightstand in the bedroom. I turned it off, though…”
“Two weeks? And he never came to collect the thing?”
Both are silent for a while.
“Dom… that borders on the impossible.” A thoughtful pause. “In fact… it’s insane.”
They chuckle, the both of them. A more comfortable silence - steady breathing.
“Are you eating?”
“Yeah…”
“Sleeping?”
“Could be better… But I guess I’m okay…”
“Good.”
Long pause.
“God, I miss him Bill… If he doesn’t want me as his boyfriend, I hope to God that he still wants me as his friend, ‘cause I really miss him. At night, here on this couch, nicking my beer, choking on it while I tell my worst jokes, molesting my games controller whenever I come close to beating him, watching movies, talking shit, spilling wine on the carpet…”
Silence again. Dom swallows hard and pours more juice, trying to keep himself in check.
“I miss that ridiculous giggle, Billy.”
“You’re insane.”
“I know.”
“Have you told him?”
“What? That I’m insa-”
“No, you fuckwit – he *knows* that. Have you called him and told him all this you just told me?”
“Don’t dare to.”
“Why?”
“He’ll hang up on me.”
“And that’s more painful than this silence between you?”
“I guess…”
“Come on, Dom… Lij does – as a rule – not hang up on people. He’s too polite…” Billy grins softly. “What happened that you’d say a thing like that?”
“You haven’t seen him leave this place, Bill… He was crying, but he had this ‘don’t-touch-me-I’m-fucking-sure-of-myself’ mode switched on. It scared me, man. I’m still not sure as to what the fuck happened. One minute I’m still enjoying the afterglow of a fantastic night and the next I see him stumbling out of here, incoherent, small, in tears…”
His own tears start to gather again, and Dom wipes at them impatiently.
“I could see in his eyes that he felt so fucking sorry for what he was doing to me, Billy, but he went ahead and did it anyway…”
“Lijah’s iron core…”
“So that’s what it looks like…”
“I told you this before, Dom, I know you’re not a patient man, but pushing him is only gonna drive him away.”
More silence, tense this time.
“That’s the thing, Bill. I *never* pushed him. His own fucked up brain did.”
* * *
“Elijah! Open the door!”
No response. She is standing there waiting for some sound from inside, anything to let her know that Elijah is in there. “Please, Elijah…” Her voice trails off, resting both hands against the wood of the doorframe. “Don’t shut me out, honey, I love you…” Still nothing.
“I know something is going on, and you’re making me stand out here in the corridor calling your name, for every last neighbour to hear. For heaven’s sake, open this *door*!” It’s the second time this week she has tried to get a response from the appartment which she is sure keeps her son hidden. The first time she had heard a faint voice say something she could only interpret as ‘go away’ and it was the only thing keeping her from calling the police to break the door down. Now she just sighs and turns her back. “Could you at least pick up the phone? *Any* phone?!” She grabs her purse from the floor and starts walking away, only to add: “Your sister back home is worried sick about you, you know that?”
The sound of the bolt makes her stop halfway down the dimly lit corridor and she turns around slightly. Elijah’s head peers around the corner, and in three or four unhumanly large strides she is back at the door again with every intention of embracing her son, but stopping short at the sight of him. “Oh, baby…” is all she can say and pushes him back into the house, shutting the door behind her.
* * *
She just sits there, watching how her son, the middle one, the bouncy, electrifying, beautiful one, sleeps with an exhausted expression on his face. It had been a week since she brought Elijah back to her house and set him up in the guesthouse again, and still he had not opened up to her, or to anybody for that matter. She knows Dom is somehow involved, and she wishes she has the nerve to call him. So apart from a few random, incoherent thoughts coming from his mouth, Elijah has been painfully quiet all week, going through her motions of sleeping, waking up, eating, and hanging around until he politely but resolutely makes his way back to his little house at the edge of her pristinely kept garden, where – she is sure – he sinks back into his misery, freaking her and Hannah out every single time. And now, almost two weeks since she had had a normal discussion with him on the phone, the bounce and electricity and beauty are completely gone from him. Looking at Elijah hurts her eyes and her heart, now that there is nothing left of him but a distant shadow of his vibrant sunshine.
She stands up, closes the curtains and turns around again. “I am going to call him, honey,” she says to the sleeping form. “I need to know what this is all about.” She fumbles with the bedsheets a bit, gently covering his body some more. “I’m sorry to interfere, but this is becoming ridiculous. And I won’t stand around passively to see you do this to yourself. I miss my beautiful Elijah. I miss your laughter and your banter. I even miss the sight of you smoking on the porch after dinner with that alarmingly content look on your face.” She bends down and kisses his cheek, lingering briefly, stroking his hair away from his forehead. “I love you, honey. I wish I could take your pain away, whatever it is.” She straightens and walks out of the room, wiping her eyes.
* * *
She jabs the number into the phone nervously, a glass of wine in front of her on the table of the open kitchen, Hannah staring up at her from her crouched position on the livingroom floor. “Mom…” she starts saying, but decides against anything else, seeing the strained determination on her mother’s face. She had watched her come back from the kennel, pace around the house, tidying things that needed no tidying, poking at random objects in the kitchen, rearranging them without any sense of purpose, and finally preparing dinner in a highly unusal hurry, eating it with her - without him – yet constantly looking over her shoulder towards the garden house where the only movement had been the small bugs circling in the porchlight.
After what seems like forever, she angrily slams the phone down, startling Hannah. “Damn,” she hisses, and Hannah realises she has rarely heard her mother curse.
* * *
She closes the backdoor, leaving the kitchen, walks across the garden, plucking a leaf from one of the plants bordering the lawn, mushing it between her deft fingers. There are no lights on in the small house, only the one bathing the porch in a warm yellow glow. The bugs are still there, oblivious to Hannah’s growing anxiety with each step that brings her closer to Elijah. She remembers the night she had secretly cried after he had moved out, as she felt she had never really had the chance to say a proper goodbye to him.
And why was that?
Yet now that he is temporarily living here again, she realises that, to her, it is still *his* little house, he still belongs there. It sends a smile to her face and a warm feeling up her stomach. Then she grins as she suddenly realises the crazy fact that the garden she now walks in and the main house she just left are also his.
She takes the three steps onto the small wrap-around porch and moves to knock on the door. She is stopped short, however, by the soft cough she hears coming from that part of the deck that is hidden from the main house, and, still smiling, she rounds the corner quietly.
He coughs again. It’s a raw, grainy rasp, deep down his throat, angrily racking his lungs. He is sitting on the deck, back against the wall, his bare feet stretched out in front of him, cigarette dangling from his right hand. His hair is a mess, flat on one side, his face a collection of reddish blotches from which his huge, dark eyes eerily stand out.
She makes a deliberate move and his head yanks sideways, facing her. They say nothing. At times like these, it is never necessary. She lowers her body and moves to sit opposite him, cross-legged. Her hand picks the packet from his lap and moments later, she lights a cigarette, her eyes never leaving his.
They sit like this for the best part of an hour, blowing smoke in each other’s direction, aiming to finish off the already half-empty packet, watching each other closely. It eases her anxiety, being so near to him and not having to break the spell with words. She scoots even closer until her knees brush against his thigh. He looks at her - almost at ease - and pries the last cigarette out of the packet, lights it, takes a drag and offers it to her. They share for another ten minutes, and when Elijah crushes the glowing filter in the ashtray, Hannah cleverly twists around and curls her body against him, placing her head in his lap, watching the stars.
“We love you, you do know that, don’t you?” she asks, almost whispering. Lij’s head falls back against the wall and he idly strokes his thumb across his sister’s cheek. He nods. “Then bloody talk to me,” she adds. She turns her head slightly so she can look into his eyes, and she can see him searching for the right words, for the guts to say them, for the encouragement in her face.
“I think I love Dom.”
“I know you do.”
“I mean I’m in love with him.”
“So do I.”
“It confuses me.”
A pause.
“Why?”
“That’s the trouble, I’m not exactly sure.” He looks at her questioningly, as if his sister’s face is holding all the answers, yet finding only quiet understanding. “I think I still like women too.”
“Is that so wrong?”
His snort comes out of nowhere.
“Who ordered you to be so fucking wise all of a sudden?” he grins, and squeezes her arm. “Going around lying in my lap here and asking all kinds of Zen questions and smoking all my fucking cigarettes?”
She laughs out loud. “I’m not wise or all about Zen, Lij, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. When you returned from New Zealand and Dom crossed the pond a little later, it was just so fucking obvious. You’d have to be blind not to notice that there was *something* going on between the two of you. Whatever it was, or is…”
His face turns dark again. “I guess I have been pretty blind.”
He cradles her body and they stare off into the night again. She turns her face and pushes her nose against his stomach, snuggling up for warmth and comfort. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
At the other end of the garden the porch light switches off and Debbie closes the backdoor behind her, stepping into the dark of the kitchen.
TBC
no subject
Thank you so much for writing this.
no subject
Thank you, that comment means the world to me.
Elfie~