Chapter Eleven
He's made it a point not to look at Elijah, who is driving too fast as usual and started chainsmoking the minute the windows went down, but has given off very clear signals that he doesn't want to be bugged about either. In fact, he has barely spoken at all this morning - apart from their usual exchanges at breakfast about coffee and smoking and who can read what section of the newspaper - and Dom knows Elijah well enough by now to sense that he wants to be left alone.
This morning, when Elijah was in the shower, he had thrown some food together, went over to Debbie's to ask for a bag or basket of some sort to put it all in, and was given some more goodies when she found out what the plan was. He had watched her looking thoughtfully at the bottles of wine lying in a rack in the kitchen and had thrown him a questioning look. Dom had shrugged, giving her a look that told her he didn't really know what to expect from her son. In the end, she had chosen one and put it in the basket as well. "Either way, you can celebrate with it or drown yourself in it," she had joked and they had both grinned with the blackness of it.
Before he had left the big house with their additional provisions, she had hugged him tight. "Hang in there, honey," she had said, with an encouraging smile on her face. "My son is many things, but he's not stupid." He had given her a quick peck on the cheek in appreciation and hurried back to the guesthouse.
It's oddly silent in the car. CDs are scattered everywhere - between the seats, in the glove compartment, in a thick book under the passenger seat - but Elijah has not made any move to pick one, which worries Dom a bit as it is very much unlike Lij. Besides, Dom would really like some music right now. Preferably loud. For once, he feels the need to fill the awkward silence, and that is so unlike him that he shrugs involuntarily and blames it on his nerves. He stares out of the window again, enjoying the warm wind in his face and closes his eyes, trying to forget it all for a few minutes.
Elijah is driving west, away from the crowded beach cities, away from LA. He needs to get out, go where he can breathe. And he needs to be outclassed by something really fucking big, something that tells him he is nothing but a tiny little detail in the grand scheme of things, something that puts this whole bloody mess back into perspective. And really, the biggest thing around LA - bigger than LAX and traffic jams and ten-lane freeways - is the fucking ocean.
Elijah's driving north now, to this place he knows just south of Ventura. He has his sunglasses firmly in place and it gives him the chance to take an unnoticed look at Dom. His eyes are closed and his hair is mussed from the wind and his barely buttoned shirt shows his nicely tanned chest adorned with the famous necklace, and suddenly Elijah has to look away and focus on the road again, swallowing intensely, shaking his head slightly at his own gawking. He cannot help the small smile that starts to curl around his lips.
* * *
"Ah!" is the eloquent statement coming from Lij's mouth as he plops down on a big flat rock, kicking off his shoes and socks immediately and stretching his body languidly in the sun. He folds his arms under his head and when his t-shirt rides up and uncovers part of his stomach, one hand comes down to rest peacefully on the exposed skin.
Dom sits down too, crossing his legs. He wants to watch Lij, wants to stroke his cool, tender flesh, but he checks himself and looks at the beautiful blue ocean instead. This spot that Elijah knew how to find in a heartbeat is indeed remarkable, completely sheltered, and with a fantastic view. The ocean is lapping at the foot of the flat rock they're sitting on, and apart from the sound of the water and a few stray gulls, it is uncharacteristically quiet.
Dom stretches himself out next to Elijah and blindly reaches for the hand on his stomach. When he finds it, he takes it in his own, and kisses it. "Come on, Lij," he says quietly. "Spill it."
Completely in line with Dom's expectations, Elijah doesn't speak on command. Dom grins inwardly; Lij never does. So instead, he listens to the soothing sounds of the ocean, and gives Elijah's hand a reassuring little squeeze, knowing that something will be said eventually.
"It's hard for me to talk about this, Dom," Elijah ventures softly and shifts his head so he can look at Dom, lying next to him. "Sometimes it feels like I have it all figured out in my mind, and I know exactly what I want to say to you," he takes a deep breath, "And the next minute it doesn't make any sense at all anymore and I have to start thinking all over. It's so fucking confusing." He turns his head to the sun again, and tries to compose himself.
"Do you remember when we gave this Confusion of mine an actual name, after we started having sex together and I could freak out completely at times and we had a serious talk about that? Well, this is probably going to sound totally weird, but Confusion has somehow turned into a real person for me, and I am actually living with this Confusion-person, even though I am completely on my own."
He pauses, thinks for a while, then continues. "In fact, Confusion is stronger when I am on my own. It keeps me from seeing other people. It keeps me from seeing you. Everything I do, or feel, or even think, I have to run by Confusion first. When Confusion agrees with me, I always doubt that decision, simply because it isn't mine; and when Confusion disagrees with me, it just makes me fucking angry. Either way, I always end up exhausted trying to understand, and I have come to realise that Confusion is stealing me away. I don't listen to me anymore..."
Elijah sits up and fumbles for a cigarette. He lights it, pulls up his knees and rests his cheek on top of them. Dom has shifted onto his side and has taken off his sunglasses, so he can look at Elijah. Heavy words are coming out of Lij's mouth and Dom wants to show him he is there every step of the way.
It takes half a clove for Elijah to continue. He looks up.
"Sometimes I tell myself that I should just ignore Confusion, and there are times when I actually succeed in doing so. Sleeping with Franka was one such time, even though sleeping with a woman confuses me in a different way than sleeping with you does... When I sleep with you and I look in the mirror the next morning and it's Confusion talking back to me, I am angry at it for sticking its ugly nose into my business. After I had slept with Franka, I was just mad at myself for resorting to that. Confusion was there when she left my house that afternoon, but only to make sure I remembered that with sending her away, my being straight was open for questioning once again, and do I want that?"
A second clove finds it way blindly to the first and is lit by it. A few nervous drags and Elijah looks at Dom. He takes his sunglasses off too, and for the first time that morning they really look at each other.
"Dom," he says and his voice is fragile. "I can't stand Confusion anymore. It exhausts me beyond belief. I should have been filming these past three days but I called in sick..."
Dom's mouth threatens to drop open but he checks himself in time. "Mom made me do it," Lij smiles apologetically, noticing Dom's surprise. "And she was right. Dom..." his voice drops to a whisper. "Everytime she or Hannah mentioned your name, I just started crying. And not just a bit of pouting and some pathetic tears and that's that... Entire floods have threatened to wipe the kennel off the face of the earth."
Dom smiles softly while he sits up and scoots close to Elijah. He wraps his arms around Lij's bent knees, and rests his chin on them.
"I thought that banning you and everybody else out of my brain would give me some rest, at least for a couple of days. So, I didn't bother to come pick up my cell, I disconnected the other phone, I never once spoke to my mom the first three days she put me back into the guesthouse... I even shut Hannah out."
"Did it work?" Dom asks, and his voice sounds oddly out of place after all the words Elijah just spoke. Lij gives him a wry smile.
"Somewhere deep inside of me I felt like a jerk for behaving like I did, and it was increasingly more difficult to keep it up, but yes... Those first few days in my apartment felt okay." An angry cough escapes his lips and he pauses for a bit, catching his breath.
"Yet the stupid thing is, I cannot remember much from those days... Don't really know if I slept - don't know if I ate - although I have my sincere doubts about both, because I think I gave mom a heartattack when I finally opened the door to her after a week of steadily ignoring any noise coming from the corridor. I am really ashamed of the fact that it took mentioning Hannah and not her own desperate voice for me to open that fucking door..."
His eyes unfocus and stare off into nothingness for a while.
"So that's where I have ended up... Hurting the people that I love the most, neglecting myself and my job, being an over-emotional wreck, and, despite all of that, still trying to convince myself that that is what I need."
"It isn't , then?" Dom asks, aiming kicks at open doors.
Another wry smile. A deep breath. A fixed stare.
"Dom... Yesterday I said I feel like a fool. But I am no fool. I know damn well that I am completely and utterly in love with you."
It is said so matter-of-factly that Dom nearly misses it. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a washed up fish, only to accept he doesn't know what to say after so much honesty. He exhales and closes his mouth and tightens his grip on Lij's knees.
Elijah raises his free hand and gently strokes the nape of Dom's neck, over and over again. Dom moans softly and crawls even closer to Elijah, revelling in the delicious feeling of Lij's cool hand on his skin.
They're both silent for a while but when he feels his stomach rumble, Dom thinks he should get the food out. "Hungry?" he asks and gets up. Elijah unsurprisingly shakes his head but Dom trods off towards the car anyway.
After a couple of minutes he strolls back to the beautiful little spot between the rocks, carrying everything he and Debbie thought fit for a day at the beach, even though Dom still has trouble calling it a picnic...
When he rounds the huge boulder that hides them from any other visitors, Elijah is gone. He puts the basket down and looks around, just in time to see Elijah coming up for air in the water. He waves and, smiling, Dom waves back.
"Nice?" he calls.
"Try it," Lij answers, but Dom laughs and shakes his head.
"Maybe later, Sandy," he says, loud enough for Lij to hear, and demonstratively flops down to unpack some of the food. He is hungry. Ah, apples...
Using Elijah's clothes as a pillow he stretches his body out onto the flat rock and turns his face so that he can look at Elijah's bobbing head in the enormous blue of the ocean. He takes his surroundings in once more, and realises that they have chosen a beautiful day and a beautiful place to have such a difficult conversation together, and suddenly he understands Elijah's need to be here, instead of back home.
There is space here; room to think, room to breathe, room to just be honest and not be immediately confronted with honesty's often harsh consequences. The vastness of the ocean, the blueness of the sky, the neverending warmth of sun on skin... Dom realises it's a comfort to know they're all here when needed, that they won't let you down, or walk out of your life. When everything else is a mess, they provide something stable, and they don't require thinking about or talking to.
Then Dom remembers Elijah's little drives to a spot overlooking the ocean just outside of Wellington. He would go there every once in a while, when things were getting too overwhelming or hectic or confusing. There was this pathetic, weather-beaten bench on which he would sit, have a thoughtful smoke, fall asleep - whenever hectic was the reason for him to go there - and it always brought him back recharged, full of energy, complete with his trademark bounce, ready to fucking take on the world again - or even Peter Jackson having a day of "good, good, let's do just one more" instead of "excellent, let's print that".
Dom had come with Lij a few times and thought it to be a nice spot, really, but nothing special. Only now he understands that it doesn't have to be special, it just has to be there whenever you need it. He understands that Elijah needs a spot like this to let his guard down and be small in the face of something so big, realising that it's actually comforting at times to allow yourself to be small.
With a start, Dom realises he needs a place like this, where losing Elijah seems less frightening all of a sudden. Being small here makes him understand that he would survive losing him. Because there is always the ocean and the sky and the sun.
He is once more astonished at how subtly Lij sometimes teaches him shit, too. It always seems something Lij does unconsciously, but Dom knows him better than that. Over the years, he has learned never to underestimate Elijah.
He looks at the bobbing head in the ocean and despite his worries and the tears that are threatening to fall, he smiles.
Living on your breath
Feeling with your skin
Will I always be here
In Your Room - Depeche Mode
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