Chapter Fourteen
After a couple of minutes, he opens them again and scans the bar. He really craves a cool beer but doesn't think it will agree with the pounding headache that is threatening to accompany him all the way to Auckland.
He stretches and walks up to the lady behind the bar, wearing a plastic smile. More smiles and a Merry-joke later, he returns to his seat with a bottle of water and an orange juice and starts rummaging around in his carry-on in search of aspirin. Two should do the trick, especially in combination with the vitamin C, Lijah's favoured recipe for hangovers. He smiles inwardly, swallows the tiny pink pills and screws the cap back on the bottle. The orange juice is fresh and mixed with a lemon and Dom scrunches up his face when he first drinks from the glass. Yet he downs it in one go, puts it back on the table and then slides down in his chair a bit, once more closing his eyes.
Elijah. How much can you actually miss a person?
Lij had had to fly out two weeks prior to Dom, and, claiming he 'could use the time to think', had decided to make the long trip alone. Dom had picked him up at the guesthouse, stuffed his big suitcase into the boot, promised Debbie and Hannah to return for dinner, and had dropped him off at the same freaking VIP lounge he's currently sitting in. They had hung around each other for a few minutes until Lij had almost ordered him to go home so they could stop their awkward fidgeting.
He had given Dom a quick kiss, nothing special, and Dom had seen him anxiously checking the lady behind the bar for any signs of recognition or disapproval or disgust. "Calm down," Dom had said, giving Lij's arm a little squeeze. "She's probably seen much worse."
He had known Lij would have liked to smirk his agreement, but he'd been too worked up about everything going on in his life right now to give Dom more than a helpless shrug. Dom had taken pity on him by enveloping him in a giant bear-hug, asking him to call as soon as he'd touched down, and made a quick, quiet exit.
Still, Elijah was doing better. He had regained a fragile form of control over his battered nerves, the giggle had shyly returned from captivity, and he had even sat down with Debbie one evening, telling her every last detail of his life and his love and the Confusion that had haunted him all this time.
The crying had become less frequent - and if it happened, it happened over something substantial - even though Dom could sometimes see the battle take place right behind the big blue eyes.
They had talked about him too, Dom thinks. Lij had been enthralled by the realisation that someone could feel so strongly about him, and, newly familiar with the power of that emotion, there were many evenings when he had eagerly asked Dom to tell him everything he wished to share.
Dom had gone from their very first encounter in Pete's livingroom to their pivotal conversation on the beach, including accounts of all the different emotions he had suffered and enjoyed in between. Elijah had listened to him, uncharacteristically quiet, drinking in his words, slowly realising what Dom's life had been like these past months and years.
The night Dom had nothing left to tell, Lij had just kissed him, before informing him with a timid smile that if he wouldn't do just that, he'd cry. They had kissed some more, and had then proceeded to tickle the hell out of each other.
Dom yawns through a smile, opens his eyes briefly to glance at the departure monitor in the corner, and finds that his flight has started checking in. The lady behind the bar is just hanging up the phone and moving in his direction, no doubt to give him the same bit of information. He stands, stuffs the bottle of water in his carry-on and walks out of the VIP lounge, heading for his gate.
Finally. Only twelve and a half hours separating him from Elijah, and he can't wait.
* * *
With a strange sense of pride, Dom digs up the key to Elijah's house in Wellington from his jeans pocket and uses it to let himself in. He pulls his luggage in as well, closes the door softly and rests his back against it with an exhausted sigh. Jetlag is already creeping up on him but he still needs to sort a few things out before he can hit his bed.
Their bed.
Their house.
Dom had not put a new lease on his old pad when he was offered to do so last month, because Elijah had asked him to come and live with him in Wellington. He remembers Lij being terribly nervous about it, not once lifting his eyes to look at Dom's face, but he had ignored that and had answered "sure" in the coolest fashion he could muster while his heart was somersaulting right out of his ribcage. He knew damn well that for four or five weeks this was going to be a testcase to Elijah, but it had not stopped him from feeling elated with the whole development.
Last week he had received the spare key in a Fed Ex delivery and here he was... Their house.
It is early in the morning on a hobbit's workday and he had taken a taxi to get here, not expecting anyone to pick him up from Wellington airport. He adjusts his watch to the clock on the wall, asking himself if he can already let production know he's arrived, but decides against it and heads for the bedroom, picking his carry-on up from the livingroom floor in his stride.
To his surprise the bed's occupied. He checks his watch again, five thirty, Tuesday, hobbitfeet... It can't be. Yet, a dash of dark hair is sticking up from under the duvet and Dom hears the familiar soft snore. He puts the carry-on down as gently as he can and makes his way to Elijah's side of the bed, tugging the duvet down just a fraction, expecting to see Lij's beautiful, sleeping face.
Only it isn't beautiful. Lij's cheeks are strangely hollow and there are grey-purple shadows under his eyes.
Oh fuck.
He sits down on the edge of the bed and Elijah stirs awake, showing Dom a pair of redrimmed, bloodshot eyes. He tries to grab his glasses from the nightstand, but, without a word, Dom stills his hand and presses Lij's painfully slim body against his chest.
"Lijah, what the hell is going on?" he asks gently, nuzzling dark, sweaty hair. "Shouldn't you be on set?" A soft shake of the head. "Then what is this, baby? I don't understand."
"It's just that..." Lij starts in a soft, shaky voice, curling his body against Dom's chest, not meeting his eyes. "I've been feeling so sick, and I couldn't eat anything, throwing everything right back up, and my throat hurts so much..." He stops, swallows hard and forces the words out. "And Sean, talked to Sean and he... I mean... he said... just - he said.... Oh fuck, I missed you so, Dom..." and Dom can see how Elijah is once more struggling not to cry as he disappears inside a head full of Confusion.
Dom looks around the bedroom and sees the silent evidence of Lij's words. The place is a mess, the sheets are crumpled and sweaty and there is a small bottle with prescription pills lying discarded on the floor, threatening to disappear under the nightstand. Dom picks it up and while placing it next to Lij's glasses, he reads the label and understands the pills stop nausea and vomiting.
"Have you been taking these, Lij?" he asks and holds the bottle up for him to see. Elijah doesn't react, seems to be a million miles away. "Lij," he tries again. If he's going to be the male nurse around this place, he sure as hell wants to know exactly what is wrong with his patient.
* * *
"I know you don't want to hear this, but I think you are making a big mistake." Sean folds his arms across his chest and leans back against his chair, stretching his legs under the kitchen table. "Anyway, why commit yourself at all? You're young, good-looking, you've got a lot to offer... Play the field, enjoy yourself."
'Look who's talking' Elijah wants to say, but his chest feels so tight right now that he needs all his concentration to breathe and keep breathing. Something must be wrong with him, he thinks, because discussions like these would normally be his cue to light a cigarette and suck on it frantically, quickly followed by two or three of its brothers. Now, he merely winces at the thought and tries to focus on Sean's words again.
This conversation is not going the way he had expected or wanted it to go at all. He had intended for it to be a simple statement of facts instead of the third degree interrogation he currently feels he's enduring. He wants to scream at Sean and at the same time beg for him to understand, but he doesn't do any such thing, because he is desperately trying to control his angry, frustrated tears.
Angry, because he had not come to Sean's house to be placed under a microscope like a rare bug, and frustrated, because he had wanted for them to have an adult conversation about the rather unconventional choices he is about to make. A raw cough racks his lungs again. God, it hurts...
"Love Dom?!" it leaves Sean's mouth for what must seem the fifteenth time this afternoon, and his words are lined with disbelief and sarcasm and the slightest hint of disgust. "You don't love Dom - you lust after him. Now there are two completely different concepts for you to tell apart."
Furious for dismissing his continuous fighting with Confusion like that, using such careless and patronising words, Elijah gets to his feet. He really wants to hurl a violent curse in Sean's face and leave him to rot in hell, but then again, it's Sean, isn't it? Besides, what if Ali walked into the kitchen? He taps into his very last ounce of self-restraint and sits down again, feeling horribly tired all of a sudden, hiding his shaking hands under the table.
"Plus... think of the day this is ever going to come out," Sean continues, not in the least alarmed by the way Lij jumped up from his chair or how pale he has turned in the last ten minutes. "You realise your career is going to be history?" He rises from his chair and grabs himself a sandwich from the fridge, not bothering to offer Elijah anything, and sits down again.
* * *
Thanks for pointing that one out to me, Astin, and no, I wasn't hungry anyway, the mere sight of it makes me sick...
* * *
"Lij, I love you, mate, but this time I think you have it all wrong."
Elijah watches how Sean's throat works as he is swallowing the bread, almost retching at the sight of it, and tries very hard not to cut Sean off and leave the house. All he really wanted when he got here was for Sean to just listen to him.
"You need to hold tight and sit this one out, man," Sean continues at the other side of the table. "It's only an infatuation, it will pass - mark my words." When Lij opens his mouth to finally say something - anything - to the contrary, Sean smiles at him. "Get off it, Lij. You are so not gay."
* * *
With growing worry and disbelief, Dom had been listening to Lij's mangled words. When Elijah had finished, or perhaps no longer had the energy to continue, Dom had guided him to the couch with a pillow and some spare blankets, and ordered him to rest there until the bed was turned. He had fallen asleep almost instantly.
Now Dom finds himself changing sheets and duvet covers, muttering curses under his breath. Only when he slams the door of the closet a trifle too loudly, he realises what he's doing and tries to relax, sticking his head around the livingroom door to see if he woke Elijah.
Satisfied to find him still sound asleep, he pulls a couple of fresh pillows from the box underneath the bed and, when those have also been covered in new cases, throws them on the bed with too much force.
Strangely out of breath, he collapses on the floor, head in both hands, that fucking ache in his skull returning with a vengeance and the speed of light. He is angry. He is so angry he has trouble seeing straight.
After Debbie and Hannah, Sean would be the next logical person for Lij to go to. He realises that Lij showed a lot of guts for having that conversation without him being around to anchor him afterwards. And for Sean to react like this is so fucking unbelievable and could do so much damage that he might just want to punch him squarely in the face next time he sees him. So much for being 'your Sam to my Frodo'.
* * *
Fuck you, Sean, for fucking up our fucking fragile balance.
* * *
Sean can be a stubborn bastard when it comes to having insight into people's characters. He has seen quite some shit already, thankyou, and it has taught him an awful lot about people and their lives. He has seen his surrogate younger brother fool around with quite a number of people in the past three years and almost all of them were women. In fact, to his knowledge, the only male that ever entered the equation was Dom, and even that never seemed to be more than some fun experimenting to both.
And now Lij is telling him he is in love with Dom. What does the little bugger expect? For Sean to take that seriously? To agree with him that he is indeed the top to Dom's bottom? Or even the other way around? Sean shivers a bit at the thought. Not Elijah. He has been watching and reading Elijah's signs for three fucking years now and it just doesn't add up. Lij likes breasts, he likes long dark hair and soft curves. Sean just knows. There's no debate. Lij likes women.
Not men.
Not Dom.
And besides, there's Mack, his real brother (if only by half), who - together with whomever he is seeing at any given time - is already nicely covering the statistically plausible percentage of gay people in Sean's direct vicinity.
* * *
Dom startles from his jetlag-induced sleep when he hears a knock on the door. Sitting up, he looks around, and shards of everything that happened in the past fifteen hours come back to him. His flight to New Zealand, Lij's house - no - their house, their bed, Lij sleeping there and being so ill, his scrambled report of the conversation he had with Sean...
He looks at Elijah sleeping next to him, uneasy, feverish, mumbling occasionally, sweat standing in tiny beads on his forehead. Dom had actually made him eat a little bit, and Lij, surprisingly, had kept it down. Then Dom had moved him back to the fresh coolness of the bed and had crawled into it himself as well, softly talking to Elijah about his flight, and about using the key for the first time, and the weeks of filming yet to come, until Lij had dozed off again.
More knocking, insistent this time.
Dom gets up and groans with the effort. He stumbles into the hall, his time-warped body playing tricks on him. Wearing nothing but his boxers and stifling an impressive yawn, he opens the front door.
In a flash, two faces light up and then Dom is throwing his arms around Billy, calling out his name, hugging him close, his eyes suddenly unusually bright.
A strange sense of relief washes over him as he feels the tight, familiar body against his chest, arms around his neck and back, and hears the soft soothing sounds from that smiling mouth so close to his ear. Now everything will start making sense again because now he has Billy.
Billy, who knows about the scorching blue gaze and patience and empty jars of glue and Confusion and rollercoasters. Billy, who tends to him and patches him up whenever he trips over Elijah's antics. Billy, who reads him like a book and loves him like a brother.
Dear Billy, who whispers his name and holds him close and gently brushes the tears from his cheeks.
Chapter Fifteen
Meet Confusion Index