Chapter Two
Hi there.
Meet Confusion.
This case with Franka, however, Dom's not too sure about, and he knows that Elijah knows, and he aches for his best friend's repeatedly broken heart, his mutilated pride, and his fear of facing the mirror tomorrow morning.
They sit in silence for a couple of minutes and Elijah grabs his wet jeans from the floor to wrench his cigarettes out of them. He lights one nervously. Dom notices the violent shaking of his hands, and not until he's taken maybe three or four drags from the clove do they settle a bit.
His strained features finally smooth into something that somewhat resembles the Elijah Dom has come to love so much. And to Dom it doesn't matter that Elijah is currently living together with Confusion, who prevents him from figuring out whether he is straight or gay, who repeatedly makes him try to forget the loaded issue for weeks, hell, even months at a stretch, who slowly but steadily lured him into smoking at least thirty cigarettes a day.
Still, Elijah is not stupid. He knows Confusion is messing with his head. Therefore, he told Dom that if he would ever decide on the matter, he would always make sure Dom is included in the deal somehow.
And for now, Dom has decided to settle for that, because Dom loves Elijah. Dom loves Elijah so much it hurts in his head, in his fingers, in his stomach, in his heart. Elijah is what makes him see the sun and touch the stars. Elijah makes him brave and vulnerable. Elijah makes him grow strong and remain a child forever.
Elijah makes.
Him.
He cannot stand to see Elijah's bright blue eyes to be so overcast with guarded and angry frustration. Seeing him all fucked-up like this, makes him want to forever shackle Elijah to his bed and make sure he never gets hurt by anyone ever again.
However, Dom understood a long time ago that Elijah needs to figure all this sexual shit out on his own, at his own pace. So he has resigned himself to the sideline for now, watching Elijah explore and venture and crash and hurt and scar. Comfort is Dom's trump card; he will be there to glue the beautifully bruised Elijah back together every time his faceless lovers shatter him to pieces. Because Dom knows that Elijah is smart enough to ultimately reach the conclusion Dom reached ages ago, back in a New Zealand trailer.
Patience was never Dominic Monaghan's middle name, but this prize is worth the effort, and so he finds himself picking up the jar of glue and he squeezes the shattered boy softly.
"And now you regret it?" he starts and locks onto Lij's gaze. "Or is that a question that I am not even allowed to ask?" Elijah takes another drag of the clove and, exhaling, turns his head slightly to look at Dom.
"I am not even sure about that." He inhales deeply once more. "I told you I liked it, I hated myself briefly for caving in under her touch, but I have never been so quick at forgetting that feeling of self-loathing. I just wanted to melt into her again, like I used to do."
* * *
She is on all fours, grabbing a bedpost, bracing herself against the repeated forceful impacts. "Fuck, Lij, is that all you can do?" she hisses at him, deliberately fuelling his anger, making sure he drops any remaining inhibitions, blocking out his rational thinking, making sure he switches to auto-pilot so he will fuck her full-force.
The very moment he bucks into her again, she knows she made a mistake. His 'full-force' levels have apparently gone up a couple of notches since she left him three months ago, because he's pushing her to the edge of straight pain.
It resembles an ominous night she had with him once , when he had told her about his indecisiveness over his sexual preferences. That evening when he had confessed to her that he and Dominic Monaghan had fucked each other senseless for an entire weekend when she was away filming. She had been upset, but also slightly aroused by the idea, and since she was notorious for dropping one guy to be with the next she could hardly point the accusing finger at Elijah, who, up until that weekend, had proved to be the prime example of monogamy. That night he had fucked her, but with so much more force, so painful, and his orgasms had been so overpowering, that the wonder crept in.
And tonight is worse. So Franka is afraid. Afraid of that raging devil behind her, and afraid of her own deceiving perceptions that are informing her brain that she is actually enjoying the onslaught. She closes her eyes, tries to inhale deeply, and all of a sudden, nothing.
Nothing?
Only Elijah's heavy breathing behind her. "You like?" he copies her line from a few minutes ago. She tries to turn her head to look at him, but he grabs her hair and pushes her face hard against the headboard. She collapses against it.
"You want me?" again he borrows her words, breathing erratically down her neck. She feels his strength falter for a second and she quickly flops onto her back to look Elijah in the eyes. He is dangerous. Frightening.
"Is this how you fuck Dom?" it's out there before she can stop the words. His breathing's still ragged. "Why?" he asks, barely audible. "You care?"
She casts her eyes down and they're silent for a long time.
"Gonna finish this, Lij?" she finally asks. "Turn over," is all he says and she obliges. "Lijah?" it comes out barely more than a whisper. "Please, be careful..."
And for a minute she thinks he has been listening to her plea, as he carefully eases into her once more, only to see that hope shatter on the polished hardwood floor, when he picks up his former pace and strength again in one-two-three short thrusts. She hates the fact that she cannot see his eyes, see his flushed face and get a kick out of that. Because she involuntarily likes what he is doing to her, and although he's fuelled by all the wrong reasons, she knows that Elijah enjoys this too.
She remembers him being awfully good at their many oh-so-slow fucks, ending exhausting days of filming back in Canada. Always really good at foreplay. He had her weak spots figured out in no time and had proceeded to abuse this knowledge so expertly she had seriously started to wonder where all that experience came from in the diminutive twenty-one year old. But when foreplay was over and done with, he always meant business. Straight-to-the-fucking-point business. He possessed the weird capacity of literally fucking her into oblivion, when she temporarily forgot just who or where she was, floating on nothing but her own uncoiling body and the sound of Elijah coming.
Yet this morning, she thinks, he is rather obviously fucking himself into oblivion.
* * *
Dom stands up, offers Elijah his hand, and when he takes it, he leads them out of his bedroom, on to safer territory which is the livingroom. Lij falls down in the big soft couch and fumbles a second cigarette from the crumpled pack. He lights it with practised ease and rests his head back, closing his eyes, taking in drag after drag.
"You want to discuss this, or want me to drop it and make us some tea?" Dom offers. Lij opens his eyes, takes in the sight of Dom and exhales. "I don't think I could possibly make sense out of this now," he starts, coughs, croaks, giggles. "You really should quit," says Dom, laughing a bit as he sees Elijah's face change into all kinds of emotions. Then they're both laughing loudly, and the thick cloud of tension in the room gradually lifts.
Dom heads for his guestroom, returns, throws a blanket at Elijah and goes off into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Returning with two steaming hot mugs, Lij, who is now sitting on the floor against the couch, has draped the blanket around his barely clothed, pale body and has started on his third cigarette, using a discarded saucer as an ashtray, in which previous evidence lies stubbed out. Dom glares at the makeshift ashtray first, then turns to Elijah.
"I know - I know," he mumbles against the fag. "You hate it when I smoke in your house."
"Would it stop you?" Dom asks, briefly smiling, putting the mugs down. "Not today," comes the muffled reply. Dom rolls his eyes and gives in. He doesn't feel like pestering Lij more than the small man is already pestering himself, also well aware of the fact that either biting his nails to the quick or smoking like a chimney are probably the only two things keeping him together at this moment.
"Drink," is all he says and points at the mug. But Elijah doesn't until he has reached the end of the third cigarette which he uses to light the fourth one with.
They sit still for a while again, Elijah staring at the tip of his cigarette, quietly drinking his tea, Dom staring at Elijah.
"Are you hungry?" Dom asks softly. "I can fix you something..." Elijah looks at him. He frowns. "Please. Don't..." he whispers. "Stop mothering - I couldn't eat a bite now, and I really just want to sit here, or maybe I really should go, since I am not much company to you anyway, so I might as well go home again and brood there, and watch TV and pretend nothing happened and listen to some really ear-splitting loud music while having far too much beer and fall asleep plastered on my own fucking couch and wake up in the middle of the night throwing up in the bathroom since the whole bloody world knows I cannot hold my fucking liquor and stumble to bed and reach a new day and still pretend nothing happened and maybe then Confusion will have left and..."
But Dom has kneeled beside him now and has wrapped both of his arms around Elijah's trembling body, kissing his face where tears are finally falling, straight into the folds of the blanket. He's crying hard and his body is shaking so severely now that Dom has trouble holding onto him. He shifts so that he can pull Elijah closer to his chest and holds him there, all the while making soft comforting noises, stroking his hair out of his face, and landing small kisses on his cheeks and hair and lashes.
Chapter Three
Meet Confusion Index