Chapter Twelve
"For fuck's sake," he starts. "Eat something." He claws inside the basket and produces a sandwich from one of Debbie's containers. "Man, you're nothing but skin and bones." He winces.
Elijah sits down and accepts the sandwich, casting a curious glance inside the basket. "My mom's in on this, huh?" he wants to know as he takes a bite. Dom nods. "Talked to her this morning, when you were in the shower."
A gull starts circling over their heads, apparently catching the scent of the food, but when the bird notices nothing is going to come its way, it goes in search of more fruitful places. The sun is at its highest now, and Elijah's skin and his boxers dry quickly. When the sandwich is entirely gone, he pulls the basket towards him and starts rummaging through it himself. Dom suppresses a satisfied smile when more food finds its way out of Debbie's containers and into Lij's mouth.
Curious as to see what his mother thought fit for a day at the beach, Elijah proceeds to dig up the bottle of wine. "Right," he giggles. "My mom the optimist." The giggle intensifies and Dom, never one to withstand the infectious sound, can't help but laugh too.
Elijah rests the bottle between his thighs and digs in again, in search of glasses and a corkscrew. He expertly works the cork out of the bottle in the blink of an eye and fills two glasses almost to the brim. "We fucking need it, Sblom," he explains and then giggles again, handing Dom a glass and raising his own in a toast, spilling some of its contents clumsily, still grinning.
Dom waits for something to be said, as he doesn't really know how to react to this unexpected outburst, but Elijah's face is expressionless, eyes locked on the glass, not saying a word. Then suddenly he puts it down, out of his way, and crawls over to where Dom is sitting.
"I'm being silly, Dom," he says softly, face close to Dom's. "Sorry. It's hard to be me right now." He strokes Dom's cheek and touches his lips with salty fingers. "One thing's true though..."
A timid, gentle kiss.
"I'm in love with you."
Another kiss, tender, lingering.
"I'm terribly, terribly in love with you..."
More kisses, chaste, eyes closed. "And just as scared to admit it to the world..." He swallows his tears away.
"Hold me for a minute, Dom?"
Dom sets his glass down and folds his arms around Elijah, pulling him close, rocking back and forth slightly, stopping time for a few moments. He looks at Elijah and when Lij looks back, he kisses him once more, eyes open this time - trying to read the brilliant blue eyes.
"You have never said that to me before."
Another small kiss.
"Three weeks ago, right before you walked away, you called me beautiful. You had never said that to me before either..."
Elijah shakes his head and produces a shy smile.
"I have always thought of you as beautiful. You are a fucking miracle, Dom. The way you face the world, being so totally yourself, is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I look at you and I see balance. I know it doesn't come easily for you, but it's there, and it demands respect." Lij picks up Dom's glass and takes a sip. Then he offers the glass to Dom's lips and he takes a sip as well.
"My balance is gone, Dom... And over the past few weeks I have come to realise that it will only return if I start living my own life again." Another sip.
"Admitting to you that I love you is a start, you know. It took me two bloody weeks in the kennel to admit it to Hannah..." They both grin as they both know what that implies. "And all she said was that she already knew... Sometimes I really hate her..." He grimaces and Dom grins some more.
Elijah shifts and looks into Dom's eyes. "I am not sure what happens from here, Dom, but I can no longer deny that I love you. I know because I have hated every moment we've been apart..."
He feeds Dom more wine and then empties the glass himself, staring at it for a while, then shifting his gaze back to Dom.
"But you know, admitting to all this leaves me with so many questions and doubts... There are so many things I still don't know, Dom... Women, for instance. I still like women, and maybe that will never change. It's fucking confusing to realise that I might not be like you, yet still love you. Can you understand that?" He looks away, scanning the ocean, suddenly scared to meet Dom's eyes.
Dom nods, unable to speak for the moment. His face is flushed from the wine and the direction in which their talk is going. He understands perfectly what Lij is getting at, so he struggles to find his voice to tell him, but he fails and resorts to just holding Elijah closer.
Lij turns his eyes away from the ocean and stares straight into Dom's face again, determined to confront them both with all the painful questions that have been milling over and over again in his head. "Can you live with the knowledge that if we get together now there might come a day when I want to leave you for a woman?"
He swallows hard, blinking a couple of times. "Would you hate me then for returning to the things that seem easy at first glance, to the accepted relationship between a man and a woman, to marriage or having children without the legal hassle... Would you call me a coward? Are you going to believe me if I ever tell you that a woman could mean as much to me as you do now?" He lets out a deep shuddery breath. "Am I going to be repulsive to you then?"
Dom is taken off guard when he hears his very own question repeated by Elijah and he realises how much everything that has been going on between them and all they have ever said to each other has affected Lij. It seems he has all their discussions memorised, like a fucking filmscript... Dom really wants to reply to all of Lij's desperate questions, but his mouth is so fucking dry that he has lost the ability of speech. He ends up just gazing at Elijah and his amazing blue eyes, silently trying to assure him that everything is going to be okay.
"And then there is Confusion," Lij continues, barely taking time to breathe. "I have tried everything with that... Ignoring it, facing it full on, listening to it, fighting it, everything... And I have come to realise that what I said just a few minutes ago isn't really true. Of course Confusion is not something existing outside of me. I'd like to treat it as such, but..." He traces Dom's face with his fingers. "It's so much simpler than that..."
Elijah reaches for his own abandoned glass of wine and rather ungracefully swallows almost half its contents in one go. He shivers and curses softly under his breath. He shifts, straddling Dom's lap, both their faces close together, Lij's hands coming to rest on Dom's shoulders.
"I am Confusion, it's all in my fucking head."
He brushes his nose softly against Dom's, hands kneading shoulders.
"I'm allowing myself to go slightly insane, Sblom, and you know..."
His pink tongue darts out and he licks Dom's lips - deliberate, slow.
"I just need to decide on things."
Lij's tongue trails wetly downward, from lips to cheek to ear to neck, sucking at the exposed flesh, softly at first, then harder and longer, leaving tiny red marks everywhere on Dom's skin. Dom gasps loudly and shudders.
"I'm just really scared, Dommie."
Small teeth threaten to break tender skin when Lij struggles to control the urge of biting into Dom's neck.
"Really scared of all the consequences..." He bites again. "But I think I prefer scared to confused..."
A third bite is followed by Elijah's hand pulling Dom's shirt open. Sighing, moaning, he closes his lips around a nipple and bites softly again, making Dom squirm.
"Fuck no, Lij," Dom starts all of a sudden, and grips the pale shoulders a bit more roughly than he had intended, pushing Lij's body away from his own. Elijah's eyes go wide with shock for an instant and then they narrow just as quickly as he is frantically trying to read Dom's expression. He opens his mouth to offer a hasty apology, angry with himself for getting carried away like that, but Dom's raw words come out faster.
"Just fucking tell me, will you?!"
Struggling to maintain a sense of control over his painfully abused emotions, Elijah clumsily moves away from Dom, out of his grasp, away from the suddenly harsh voice. His eyes well up quickly, however, and he turns his back on Dom, not willing to let him be a witness to more of his crying.
They sit there, ocean still lapping at their feet, gulls still circling over their heads, the sun still hot on their bodies. Dom is on his knees, hands resting on the rock before him, bending slightly towards Elijah whose shoulders are shaking softly with his quiet sobs.
Dom lets his head hang for a few seconds, shaking it, trying to force his frustration down, willing himself to snap out of his sudden anger.
"Lij," he tries softly, not moving. "Lijah... I'm sorry I yelled at you."
He stretches out a hand and touches Lij's shoulder, but it is yanked away from his reach. "Okay," he continues, almost whispering. "I won't touch you, I promise, okay?" He stands up and moves to sit next to Lij, a feet or two between them. He steals a quick glance at Elijah as he sits down and sees the tears falling steadily down a face that is once more looking blotchy and unhealthy and Dom sighs, angry with himself.
"Lij," he starts again. "I didn't mean to yell at you... I'm sorry... It's just that..." he falters briefly. "I have been so afraid of losing you for the past three weeks." He pauses for a long time to contemplate his words. "In fact, I think I have been afraid of losing you ever since I first met you." He smiles to himself. "There are moments when I curse that first encounter with you, because from that day on I have been completely lost. Lost in your energy, in your giggle, in your eyes..."
"I fell in love with you so fucking hard back in New Zealand and I still feel the same. It never stops. I think of you all the time. Yet I have been forced to watch you ride this rollercoaster of emotions without me. I have witnessed every fall, every bruise, every scar. I have tried to help you, be there for you. And in a way these things hurt me like they hurt you, because I know what you are going through, baby."
Elijah's shoulders have stopped shaking, but tears are still sliding across his pale cheeks. When Dom risks a glance at him, their eyes meet shyly.
"It's just that you still haven't told me what's going to happen now, Lij. Please try to understand that patience isn't exactly my middle name, and I have fought with myself over the past couple of months to maintain some form of it. I think I lost my cool just now and I am truly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you even more..."
"My life is on hold too, you see, in a strange way. When you walked away last month, for the first time it felt like I had really lost you, and that hit home. I know now that I can't handle something like that ever again. I know I should probably not be saying this to you, but maybe we should both just lay our cards on the table."
Elijah nods slightly, closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath.
"I won't come out."
"I know - I am not asking you to."
"I'm still attracted to women..."
"I can live with that. I don't feel threatened - I know you really love me."
"I am moving back to the kennel. Alone."
"Okay. I take it I can visit you there?"
Elijah opens his eyes and can't help but smile. "On alternating Wednesdays and Jewish holidays only," he smirks, and Dom laughs. "Come here, you daft bugger," he says and Elijah crawls back into Dom's arms, looking at him.
"It's still going to be a rollercoaster, though..." he says softly, as he pulls Dom's face closer to his own, ready to kiss him once more. "I just showed you that."
"That's okay, Lij, as long as it'll be me with you on that ride."
* * *
She turns the doorknob quietly and walks inside the dark guesthouse, clutching a thick yellow envelop, absent-mindedly switching the porchlight on to guide her way out. Everything is quiet and, crossing the tiny hall, she quickly makes for the coffee table, ready to dispose of the heavy papers there and get out again, as her brother has apparently not returned from his trip to Ventura.
When she puts the envelop down, she hears a faint sound, and, slightly alarmed, whips her head around. "What the fuck..." she whispers, sounding uncannily much like Elijah, walking as quietly as possible to where the sound is coming from.
The bedroom door is slightly ajar, and small rays of porchlight fall into the room through the opening between carelessly drawn curtains. She inhales sharply when she realises where the sound is coming from, wanting to turn on her heels and run out but just for a moment being strangely reluctant to do so.
In a sweaty tangle of sheets and limbs she recognises her brother, completely naked, curled around Dom's strong, muscular body. They are moving together in a steady rhythm, and the only sounds she hears are small grunts falling from Dom's lips everytime his body descends on Elijah's, and her brother's slightly louder moans and breathless curses whenever his body rises up to meet Dom's forceful thrusts.
Hannah steps away from the door, no longer able to watch, and falls with her back against the wall, desperately trying to steady her racing pulse. "Get out, Han, get out," she hisses between gritted teeth, and reaches for the doorknob again.
"Christ, Dom, oh fuck!" she hears her brother cry out. She freezes, only two steps away from the dark night air outside the kennel, yet still unwilling to make the necessary moves.
"Fuck, Dom, please," Lij grits out and Hannah hears how their bodies collide, notices the slick sound of generous amounts of lubrication, and she trembles when Dom's grunts turn into short, harsh cries.
"Fucking touch me, Dom," Elijah pleads and Hannah knows Dom is doing something right, judging from the sounds Elijah is making all of a sudden. He is letting out a string of curses, ending in a short, violent gasp, and the sound of her brother coming hard under Dom's hands, finally snaps her back into action.
She grabs the doorknob, turns it, and together with Dom's loud groan of release, she opens the door and gets out.
Chapter Thirteen
Meet Confusion Index