Chapter Three
She listens to his steady inhalations. He has come off his high, and she knows he feels guilty for having been so rough with her. She knows, because that is how Elijah is. And now he is his tender self again, probably lying there with his eyes closed as well, enjoying his smoke, and thinking of a way to apologise to her.
"Don't," she hears herself saying. Elijah shifts a bit, and when he is about to ask her what in the world she is talking about, she says: "Don't make up excuses for how you treated me just now. I don't like you to apologise for anything. It doesn't become you."
Elijah continues smoking his cigarette. "I hurt you though," he says. She lifts her head so she can look at his face. His eyes are, indeed, closed and a trail of smoke lingers just above his dark, damp, stick-out-everywhere hair. He opens his eyes. "I wasn't searching for excuses though," he says. There's an infinite chill in his voice.
"Don't flatter yourself."
She swallows but still crawls to sit upright and scoots as close to Lij as possible. She wraps her arms around his body and leans in close to his face.
She remembers the first time she met him ('those fucking eyes'), the first time she seduced him ('not true, bint, admit it, he seduced you'), the first time they fucked ('hardly innocent despite the eyes, but yet he was so full of youth and life and laughter').
"Still," she ventures. "We were good together just now, right?"
He blindly stubs out his cigarette. There's a full ashtray on the nightstand that's otherwise littered with papers, magazines, CDs and hell, even a filmscript. He inwardly smirks as he notices his own sloppiness and then realises her hands are on him again. He doesn't look at how she is drawing lazy circles on his chest with her fingers. Instead, he lights a new cigarette and then he feels the familiar headache coming on. Fuck.
He silently curses Confusion who is already lurking in the corner of his bedroom. Desperately trying to avoid the confrontation for a moment longer, he takes a deep breath, drops the cigarette in the ashtray and decides to wrap his arms around the older woman once more. He slides down the headboard until he is almost lying down with her, their heads close together. She looks at him expectantly, and he almost feels in control of the situation. When did those fucking tables turn?
"I don't want to see you again, Franka," he whispers against her hair.
She sits up straight and looks at him. Lij stretches out his arm again and reaches for the ashtray to pick up his cigarette. He deliberately stubs the barely started fag out. See this, Confusion? Fuck you.
Franka picks up her clothes and disappears into the bathroom.
Lij is staring at one of the dark corners of his bedroom. Fuck. You.
The front door closes with a thud.
* * *
It's a good fifteen minutes before Elijah is breathing evenly again. "Monsters gone?" Dom asks quietly, loosening his grip on Elijah. He nods weakly, and Dom almost believes him. "Go take a shower or something," he suggests, folding the blanket a bit tighter around Lij's body. "You must be cold." Elijah ponders the suggestion for a second, finishing the last cigarette in the pack he brought. He stubs it out in the makeshift ashtray, and leaves it next to the other ends. Dom recoils at the sight of the saucer, and when Elijah finally gets up to pad over to the bathroom, he grips the filthy thing and tips its contents in the trashcan outside on the deck. He makes his way over to the kitchen to put the saucer into the dishwasher.
He hears the faint sound of a cell phone and moves to where the noise is coming from, apparently his bedroom. He realises that he is hearing Elijah's cell ringing in the back pocket of his wet jeans. Clumsily fumbling for the small phone, he's too late to take the call, so he abandons the thing on the nightstand while in search of Lij's other wet clothes on the floor.
He decides to take them into the bathroom so that they can dry there. He knocks on the bathroom door but receives no answer. He knocks again, but still nothing. As he doesn't hear the water running either, he opens the door, slightly worried, and calls Elijah's name.
Peeking around the door he sees Elijah standing in front of the mirror, completely frozen, locked onto his own sight. Fuck, Dom thinks in a flash. And it's not even morning yet. Elijah has taken his last remaining piece of clothing off but has not bothered to turn on the water. "Lij," Dom tries again, but Elijah doesn't so much as even blink at hearing his name.
Dom walks in, turns on the water, and then carefully places his hands on Elijah's shoulders from behind him and tries to pry him away from the frozen spot in front of the bathroom mirror. Elijah moves, but Dom doesn't feel like he is moving a human being; he could be pushing a shopping cart for all he knows. He starts to worry all over again. What really happened to Lij today?
He opens the glass door and ushers Elijah into the shower cubicle. The water is set at a pretty hot level, but Elijah doesn't wince. He closes his eyes as the hot water starts to pour over his hair onto his face and down to his chest. He tips his head down, stretching his arms out to grip the wall in front of him and slowly crawls out of the dark place that is his fucked up brain.
Arguing with himself that he needs to do something to get through to Elijah, Dom decides to take his clothes off as well and join Lij in the cubicle. He quietly opens the door, and when he gets no objection from Elijah he closes it behind him and takes that one tiny step that separates him from his friend. Lij doesn't move, which means Dom does not get a lot of water, but it is not important. He slides his arms around Elijah's waist and locks his hands over his stomach. Then he rests his head against the back of Elijah's and they just stand there for an age.
* * *
He has never experienced anything like this before. A complete standstill of his thoughts. As if his brain had just frozen and the current thought had stilled with it, like a VCR on hold, or a crashed computer screen. And what an image, there in his brain. He is not too sure if his brain froze and the image with it, or if the image was so powerful that it froze the rest of his mind in the process.
A ring. From her. It wasn't here before. On the kitchen table. He discovers it after waking up much later that day, with her gone - thank fuck. But this, this ring. This messes him up even more. The way his eyesight plays tricks on him when this ring seems to magnify each time he dares to glance at it is highly unsettling, as if his kitchen has ceased to exist and the whole of his world now revolves around this fucking stupid ring.
And, no note, no message, no nothing. Fuck. Just a sodding ring. He's not good with rings. They freak him out. For more reasons than the obvious. And she fucking leaves him one.
* * *
Is he naked? He vaguely feels the cold enveloping his body and wants to hug himself for warmth, but there is still the image of that bloody ring and, like his frozen thoughts, his body, too, is not capable of movement at all. Hands on his back. Water, hot water. Feels nice. Hot water. Good. No need to hug for warmth now, right?
Right.
Ring?
Yep, still there.
He finds himself reaching out for the ring; a nice, intricate silver band, but he never picks it up. Is there really no note? His eyes flash around: kitchen counter, fridge, front door? Nothing. A message? Sure. She'd have left a message on the machine. He stumbles more than walks into the livingroom, only to find the little red light burn steadily and happily away on top of his answering machine.
No flickering; no message.
Panic rises. Has she fucking left him without answers but one hell of a big question? Again? The clenching feeling around his throat he felt months ago when he realised Franka was out of his life surges through him. The exact same feeling of fear, emptiness, rage and panic, all encompassing, like cold, dead fingers around his neck. Again.
Goddammit, when will people stop walking out on him, for fuck's sake?!
With sudden unstoppable tears streaming down his face, he grabs his keys, jacket and cigarettes and flees the apartment.
***
He still has his head bent. Dom wonders at the paleness of Lij's body. White like marble, Sir Ian used to say. It was a mocked expression, but privately Dom agrees with the knight. Elijah's skin is like marble, it is smooth and white and flawless. He remembers the day when Elijah had complained to Pete about the absolute shitload of make-up they had to apply to his face and body while shooting the Mount Doom scenes. Make-up had then explained to them both that it was caused by the simple fact that Elijah had no facial flaws whatsoever, flaws that were normally used to hook an actor's stage make up onto. They first had to create flaws on Elijah's face for fuck's sake, and only then could they proceed with the actual make-up for the given scene.
Pete had looked baffled, Elijah still slightly annoyed at the pancake he was given each day, and Dom... well, Dom had turned it into a joke of course, since his face was far from flawless, but secretly admired Elijah's features even more. And, as he had found out over the months in New Zealand, the rest of Elijah's body looked and felt alarmingly much like his face. Flawless. Now he catches himself glancing at the naked form under his shower, glistening wet, thinking that after all these years the lustre still hasn't worn off. But then again...
He might be biased.
There is still annoyingly little movement from the boy, and Dom argues with himself if he should try and snap Lij out of his apathy. So he slowly unlocks his hands and slides them down towards Lij's stomach, traces small circles, and then moves on to his hips. Slender hips, skinny even, luring Dom towards Lij's ass, not so slender, but beautifully tight. And although he does not seem to elicit any response from Lij so far, his own arousal is obvious, and he steps back a bit, not wishing to destroy the protective bubble that seems to enfold them both.
But when he moves backwards, loosening his grip on Lij's body, he finally gets a reaction. Elijah's head tips up and twists a bit, trying to make eye contact with Dom, speaking with a scratchy voice from too much crying and smoking.
"Don't go."
Chapter Four
Meet Confusion Index