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fellowshippers2004-03-25 01:20 am
queen-geek.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2004-03-25 01:20 am
One Headlight
Written for the Unapologetic Challenge.
The third rule of the challenge runs thus: the song must be an integral part of the plot. "person x woke up to the radio blaring [song name] .. *fic unrelated to song in any way*" is not acceptable and that fic will be disqualified. save us the time & don't submit. I hope that my story qualifies. I hope that the themes of death and driving, and using lyrics to convey thought will be enough to qualify me.
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queen_geek
Title: One Headlight
Rating: PG-13 for some swearing.
Characters: Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, mentioned Billy Boyd
Genre: Angst
Summary: Dom and Elijah are driving back from Billy's funeral.
Warning: Late night deathy angst.
Feedback: Anything you can give me--from a simple 'guh' to a blaze of constructive criticism--would be appreciated.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea mused Elijah as Dom shifted in his seat and sighed. Elijah watched from the corner of his eye as Dom’s finger extended, E.T.-like, towards the preprogrammed buttons on the car’s dashboard. The song that they’d been listening to cut out as Dom began channel-surfing.
“Dude. D’you think that you could just pick a fucking song and stay with it for more than one verse?” The question came out more sharply than Elijah had intended, and he wished that he hadn’t quit smoking two weeks ago. The tension in the car was killing him. Not literally, of course, because…well…there’d been enough of that lately. “Sorry. I’m just…If you don’t want to listen to the radio…”
“No, whatever. ‘S’your car. I’m just along for the ride.”
There was more to it than that, but neither of them could acknowledge it just then.
---
Five small cities later, Elijah was about ready to scream. He’d be driving for just under six hours with nothing but fragments of songs and commercials to keep him company. Sure, Dom was in the passenger seat, but a part of him--the part that was usually constant motion and a blur of hands and drawled Britishisms--was in a hole six feet underground. Elijah removed his hand from the ten o’clock position to briefly scrub at his eyes. Night was falling and his contacts were starting to itch.
“It cool if we pull over? I need to stretch.” I need to breathe. I need coffee. I need to get out of this fucking car with it’s third passenger.
“Yeah. Want me to take over? Drive a little?”
“No, I’ll be ok.” You should never drive when you’re experiencing any emotion to an extreme Elijah remembered from driver’s ed, aeons ago. Hell, this morning had been aeons ago.
The greasy spoon they pulled up in front of had a neon sign that blazed OPE, the N flickering like a spastic strobe light. Inside, Elijah inhaled deeply, taking in the stale second-hand as though it were the elixir of life. Dom shuffled towards the unisex washroom while Elijah walked to the counter. After ordering two breakfast specials, Elijah paid and sat down with a cup of coffee that smelled like it could remove the paint from his Jetta. Dom found him there moments later, looking out the window, humming along to the love song piping tinnily from somewhere above their heads. They sat in silence until their meals arrived, and then ate without speaking, not tasting the bacon, eggs, and hash browns, simply consuming the food to keep their bodies in motion. Within fifteen minutes they were on the road again. The radio played softly, and Elijah sang along with Jakob Dylan.
“Well this place is old, it feels just like a beat up truck. I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn. It smells of cheap wine and cigarettes, this place is always such a mess, sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn. I'm so alone, I feel just like somebody else, man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same…But somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams-” Elijah’s voice trailed off, as he realized what the next words were, and he coughed to cover “I think her death it must be killin' me.” A guilty glance at Dom showed his feet on the dash, right elbow on one knee, fingers pressed to his lips. Elijah reached out and changed the station.
---
“I’m cold.” Elijah looked over at Dom, surprised that the first words he’d spoken in an hour were ones that didn’t need to be said. Dom was familiar enough with the controls on the dash to simply adjust the heat himself. However, even his cursory glance at his friend’s face convinced him that there was more meaning behind the words than Elijah could know without giving his full attention over to Dom. A scan of the landscape revealed bare highway, but Elijah put on his turn signal anyway, and coasted to a stop on the gravel shoulder. He turned the engine off, but put the key in the ‘accessory’ position so that the heater still worked. This he cranked as warm as it would go before unbuckling his seatbelt and shifting sideways. Dom avoided his gaze, gazing out the window at the end of the sunset through sparse clouds. The colours of the sunset come from pure light reflecting off dust particles in the ozone layer. Or was that what happened with rainbows? Elijah couldn’t remember.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know.” Elijah wasn’t going to force Dom to speak. He knew the other man well enough to know that Dom would only speak when he was ready. He also knew that Dom was thisclose to being ready. Breath filled the space between them, and Elijah found himself counting one-thousandths. After twenty-three, Dom opened his mouth.
“Not s’posed to be like this.” His voice was flat, controlled. Elijah wondered how hard Dom was working to keep it that way. “Blaze of glory, yeah. Death by orgasm, Bill wanted. Told me that two weeks ago. ‘It’d be great, would’nit, Dom? Best way to go.’ Shite.” And now Dom’s voice and the shell he’d maintained all day cracked simultaneously and crumbled on a tear. “Fuck.”
Elijah was aware of his own tears even as Dom inhaled, a long shuddering breath. Suddenly the constant-motion-blur-of-hands Dom was back, unbuckling his seatbelt, throwing open the door, running down the slight incline into a dusty field with seedlings just poking their innocent green heads above their protective brown blanket. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” Dom’s screams shattered the night, making the crickets cease their songs, and propelling Elijah into motion. By the time he reached Dom’s side, the other man was shaking with tears and rage. Sobs tore through his frame, and he kicked the ground futilely. Angry, heartbroken, primal screams issued forth from Dom’s throat, wordless cries that Elijah’s soul understood. When the storm of emotion had vented itself out, Dom sunk helplessly to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and let the tears take over. Elijah joined him on the dry ground, crumbling dirt clods between his fingers Nothing is forever, rocking back and forth slightly. Like a Jew at the Wailing Wall and Elijah understood why those men cried and swayed. It helped, somehow, to ease the pain.
---
“Fucking cancer.” It became a mantra that Dom clung to, kneeling in that field. When the sobs had subsided, and only a dry throat and burning eyes and the bone-deep clutch of anguish remained, Dom whispered those two words over and over. “Fucking cancer.”
When the words ceased to mean anything, Dom kept saying them. He hadn’t been ready. None of them had. Except Billy. But Dom…Dom still wasn’t ready. And now it was too late.
Elijah couldn’t tell how long they knelt in the dryness of that field, in the drainedness of their bodies, emotions spent and yet still filling them. He couldn’t remember when he and Dom had shuffled closer together for warmth and comfort. He couldn’t recall standing, and walking to the car and continuing to drive home. It was only later, when he did his laundry, that he realized he hadn’t even brushed the dirt from his jeans, and that he’d left it there intentionally. He didn’t wash the pants.
He did remember, however, that when he restarted the car, darkness had fallen completely, and his left headlight was burned out.
They drove home anyway.
The third rule of the challenge runs thus: the song must be an integral part of the plot. "person x woke up to the radio blaring [song name] .. *fic unrelated to song in any way*" is not acceptable and that fic will be disqualified. save us the time & don't submit. I hope that my story qualifies. I hope that the themes of death and driving, and using lyrics to convey thought will be enough to qualify me.
Author:
queen_geekTitle: One Headlight
Rating: PG-13 for some swearing.
Characters: Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, mentioned Billy Boyd
Genre: Angst
Summary: Dom and Elijah are driving back from Billy's funeral.
Warning: Late night deathy angst.
Feedback: Anything you can give me--from a simple 'guh' to a blaze of constructive criticism--would be appreciated.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea mused Elijah as Dom shifted in his seat and sighed. Elijah watched from the corner of his eye as Dom’s finger extended, E.T.-like, towards the preprogrammed buttons on the car’s dashboard. The song that they’d been listening to cut out as Dom began channel-surfing.
“Dude. D’you think that you could just pick a fucking song and stay with it for more than one verse?” The question came out more sharply than Elijah had intended, and he wished that he hadn’t quit smoking two weeks ago. The tension in the car was killing him. Not literally, of course, because…well…there’d been enough of that lately. “Sorry. I’m just…If you don’t want to listen to the radio…”
“No, whatever. ‘S’your car. I’m just along for the ride.”
There was more to it than that, but neither of them could acknowledge it just then.
---
Five small cities later, Elijah was about ready to scream. He’d be driving for just under six hours with nothing but fragments of songs and commercials to keep him company. Sure, Dom was in the passenger seat, but a part of him--the part that was usually constant motion and a blur of hands and drawled Britishisms--was in a hole six feet underground. Elijah removed his hand from the ten o’clock position to briefly scrub at his eyes. Night was falling and his contacts were starting to itch.
“It cool if we pull over? I need to stretch.” I need to breathe. I need coffee. I need to get out of this fucking car with it’s third passenger.
“Yeah. Want me to take over? Drive a little?”
“No, I’ll be ok.” You should never drive when you’re experiencing any emotion to an extreme Elijah remembered from driver’s ed, aeons ago. Hell, this morning had been aeons ago.
The greasy spoon they pulled up in front of had a neon sign that blazed OPE, the N flickering like a spastic strobe light. Inside, Elijah inhaled deeply, taking in the stale second-hand as though it were the elixir of life. Dom shuffled towards the unisex washroom while Elijah walked to the counter. After ordering two breakfast specials, Elijah paid and sat down with a cup of coffee that smelled like it could remove the paint from his Jetta. Dom found him there moments later, looking out the window, humming along to the love song piping tinnily from somewhere above their heads. They sat in silence until their meals arrived, and then ate without speaking, not tasting the bacon, eggs, and hash browns, simply consuming the food to keep their bodies in motion. Within fifteen minutes they were on the road again. The radio played softly, and Elijah sang along with Jakob Dylan.
“Well this place is old, it feels just like a beat up truck. I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn. It smells of cheap wine and cigarettes, this place is always such a mess, sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn. I'm so alone, I feel just like somebody else, man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same…But somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams-” Elijah’s voice trailed off, as he realized what the next words were, and he coughed to cover “I think her death it must be killin' me.” A guilty glance at Dom showed his feet on the dash, right elbow on one knee, fingers pressed to his lips. Elijah reached out and changed the station.
---
“I’m cold.” Elijah looked over at Dom, surprised that the first words he’d spoken in an hour were ones that didn’t need to be said. Dom was familiar enough with the controls on the dash to simply adjust the heat himself. However, even his cursory glance at his friend’s face convinced him that there was more meaning behind the words than Elijah could know without giving his full attention over to Dom. A scan of the landscape revealed bare highway, but Elijah put on his turn signal anyway, and coasted to a stop on the gravel shoulder. He turned the engine off, but put the key in the ‘accessory’ position so that the heater still worked. This he cranked as warm as it would go before unbuckling his seatbelt and shifting sideways. Dom avoided his gaze, gazing out the window at the end of the sunset through sparse clouds. The colours of the sunset come from pure light reflecting off dust particles in the ozone layer. Or was that what happened with rainbows? Elijah couldn’t remember.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know.” Elijah wasn’t going to force Dom to speak. He knew the other man well enough to know that Dom would only speak when he was ready. He also knew that Dom was thisclose to being ready. Breath filled the space between them, and Elijah found himself counting one-thousandths. After twenty-three, Dom opened his mouth.
“Not s’posed to be like this.” His voice was flat, controlled. Elijah wondered how hard Dom was working to keep it that way. “Blaze of glory, yeah. Death by orgasm, Bill wanted. Told me that two weeks ago. ‘It’d be great, would’nit, Dom? Best way to go.’ Shite.” And now Dom’s voice and the shell he’d maintained all day cracked simultaneously and crumbled on a tear. “Fuck.”
Elijah was aware of his own tears even as Dom inhaled, a long shuddering breath. Suddenly the constant-motion-blur-of-hands Dom was back, unbuckling his seatbelt, throwing open the door, running down the slight incline into a dusty field with seedlings just poking their innocent green heads above their protective brown blanket. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” Dom’s screams shattered the night, making the crickets cease their songs, and propelling Elijah into motion. By the time he reached Dom’s side, the other man was shaking with tears and rage. Sobs tore through his frame, and he kicked the ground futilely. Angry, heartbroken, primal screams issued forth from Dom’s throat, wordless cries that Elijah’s soul understood. When the storm of emotion had vented itself out, Dom sunk helplessly to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and let the tears take over. Elijah joined him on the dry ground, crumbling dirt clods between his fingers Nothing is forever, rocking back and forth slightly. Like a Jew at the Wailing Wall and Elijah understood why those men cried and swayed. It helped, somehow, to ease the pain.
---
“Fucking cancer.” It became a mantra that Dom clung to, kneeling in that field. When the sobs had subsided, and only a dry throat and burning eyes and the bone-deep clutch of anguish remained, Dom whispered those two words over and over. “Fucking cancer.”
When the words ceased to mean anything, Dom kept saying them. He hadn’t been ready. None of them had. Except Billy. But Dom…Dom still wasn’t ready. And now it was too late.
Elijah couldn’t tell how long they knelt in the dryness of that field, in the drainedness of their bodies, emotions spent and yet still filling them. He couldn’t remember when he and Dom had shuffled closer together for warmth and comfort. He couldn’t recall standing, and walking to the car and continuing to drive home. It was only later, when he did his laundry, that he realized he hadn’t even brushed the dirt from his jeans, and that he’d left it there intentionally. He didn’t wash the pants.
He did remember, however, that when he restarted the car, darkness had fallen completely, and his left headlight was burned out.
They drove home anyway.
Thank you!!
This strikes me more than any other image in the story. That feeling of loss and abandonment, that feeling of wanting the world to stop so badly and knowing that it won't just comes rushing back for me when I read this. It makes me want to cry.
I'm sorry, I can't seem to feedback worth a damn here tonight. But there are so many things going through my head, I can't seem to figure out how to put them down in a coherent order.
Is it enough to say this piece makes me want to cry? They say that the loss gets easier, but does it? Two weeks later you're still expecting them when you come home; two months later you're going through the closet and find a note from them and fall apart all over again; two years later you find yourself smiling at the sight of a robin pulling a worm and out of nowhere the thought of the missing person springs to mind and the pain is still there...
You wonder if you will ever run out of tears to cry and still they come.
This makes me want to cry. It's beautiful, truly. I can completely associate with Dom here and yet I can clearly see how each person's grief is different and how everyone has a different view. No, it doesn't make me want to cry, it's making me cry.
Truly a beautiful piece. Thank-you for sharing.
-K
Re: Thank you!!
Bollocks. Your words made me remember moments like that in my own life, which started me crying, too. I kinda went into a numb trance when I wrote this and didn't let my own emotions cloud Dom and Elijah's, but reading your comment brought everything to the surface.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me. *hugs and hobbit-kisses*
no subject
seedlings just poking their innocent green heads above their protective brown blanket
I loved this.
Um. Yeah. *hugs*
no subject
I loved the bit in the diner, it was full of the right kind of detail that had you sitting in silence with them. And I loved the clods of dirt. Don't know why, but I did.
Thanks for sharing this.
no subject
congrats! the rest of the winners are up at the site (http://unapologetic.crypticblue.net).