“This is Something Fletcher.”

Elijah cast him a sidelong glance, an eyebrow quirked. It was hard to tell if Dom was kidding or not. He blinked and looked at the tall bloke with frizzy orange hair nursing the bottle of dark beer. “I’m Elijah,” he said, sticking a hand out. Once Fletcher had shaken his hand and then gone back to watching some sort of sport on television, Elijah turned back to Dom, who was leaning casually against the wall, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You can’t even remember your own friend’s name? Are you that drunk?”

Dom looked at him blankly for a moment and then kicked himself off the wall; he clapped a hand on Elijah’s shoulder and steered him out of earshot. “His name is Something,” Dom said confidently. “As in ‘Oy, you there, go get me a beer or something!’”

“You’re kidding,” Elijah replied, clearly perplexed. “Who would do that to their child?”

“Parents who’ve had ten kids and don’t want to bother coming up with any more names.” Dom grinned and gestured to where Something Fletcher was engrossed in conversation with a rather tough looking bloke with broad shoulders and very little hair. “He gets along just fine,” Dom continued briskly. “Something’s really something, ya know?” He tipped his head to the side, a wry smile on his lips.

Elijah snorted, then coughed so hard that he thought for sure he’d pass out; Dom hit him hard on the back, and after a moment, Elijah’s breathing steadied. “Doesn’t it ever get confusing?”

Dom glanced at him curiously. “No, why? Don’t your mates have odd names?”

“No,” Elijah answered truthfully. “I have mates who are named Pete, and Dan…normal things like that.”

He shrugged his slender shoulders and wrapped his long fingers around a mug of beer. “To each his own, I ‘spose. Life would be rather boring if we were all named Bob.”

Elijah thought this was quite true, and a reasonable assumption that if everyone were named Bob, the world would be a boring place to live. Not to mention, incredibly confusing. “I don’t like the name Bob,” Elijah stated bluntly, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his blue t-shirt.

Dom looked over at him, his face stoic for a moment until he burst out laughing. “I like you, Elijah.” He shook his head fondly and took a drink from his glass.

Elijah had known Dom for just a month, and in that time he hadn’t really seen much of Dom’s personal life. He didn’t know why, but before tonight Dom hadn’t introduced Elijah to any of his other friends. It seemed strange to Elijah somehow, that someone so charming in open could turn out to be so shut off from the world. Something Fletcher proved that Dom had a life outside what Elijah had seen, but for some reason this didn’t comfort Elijah in the least.

They sat down at a scrubbed wooden table and ordered some hard liquid that Elijah, being underage in the states, wasn’t used to. Dom chugged it down like it was water, and when Fletcher wandered over, he did the same; they both looked at Elijah expectantly, probably wondering if The Yank could hold his liquor.

Elijah downed the strong liquid in one gulp, and managed not to cough and sputter like he suspected he would. His eyes burned, and tears formed, but he refused to let them see his weakness.

“So,” Elijah said conversationally, breaking up the heated soccer/football talk. Dom and Fletcher looked at him curiously. “You’ve got ten siblings, Dom said?”

Fletcher laughed, a deep booming laugh that made Elijah grin. “Yeah, mate, I’ve got meself nine sisters, and one brother.”

“So you’re the youngest?”

“I’ve got a younger sister, Manchester.”

Elijah’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “Why are you calling me Manchester?”

Dom snorted so hard that drink came out of his nose. “That’s his sister’s name,” Dom explained, taking the napkin Elijah held out to him.

“Yank’s a bit slow, ‘innit?” Fletcher laughed at his own words, and then clapped a hand on Elijah’s back, nearly making him fall head-first into the table. “Me mum and da are a bit lax,” he explained as slowly as possible so Elijah could understand his thick accent, which seemed to be a strange cross between Cockney and Irish. “When they got to me sister Dublin, they gave up trying to think up suitable names.” He shrugged his large shoulders. “Name ‘em after cities they were conceived in, and with me, they just gave up altogether.”

Dom watched Elijah’s reaction to this carefully. It seemed to Elijah that this was the easy way out in parenting, and if he had been Something Fletcher, he’d have changed his name when he hit 18. Even Bob would be better than being called ‘Something.’

“It’s okay, Lighe,” Dom said quietly, a knowing and mischievous smile on his lips.

Elijah looked at him fondly. He’d never been called Lighe before in his entire life. Lijah, and Eli, among other less savory names, sure, but never Lighe. He quite liked it. Especially coming from Dom’s mouth.

“Want another round?” Dom questioned, breaking Elijah out of his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Elijah said, sounding faraway. “I’ll get this one.”

He returned to the table to find Something Fletcher gone, and Dom sitting by himself, playing with a silver ring on his thumb. Setting down the two pints of beer, Elijah sat opposite Dom and waited while Dom’s eyes skirted around the bar, which was no longer overflowing with people.

“Where’s Fletcher?” Elijah asked after a few moments of silence; Dom hadn’t looked at him, and Elijah was thinking that perhaps Dom had forgotten about him altogether.

“Something left,” Dom replied hoarsely, wrapping a hand around the mug and pulling it closer to him. His ring clinked against the ceramics, making Elijah look at Dom more intently. He was fidgety and no longer at ease, sitting there like he owned the place; now he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere but there.

Elijah leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Are you okay, Dom?”

Dom looked up, his gray eyes unreadable. “Yeah,” he said, forcing a smile.

Elijah sat back in his seat, surveying Dom for a moment, while collecting his thoughts. Though he’d only known Dom a short time, he could already tell that something was bothering him, and Elijah figured it had nothing to do with Something, but everything to do with Elijah.

“Okay,” Elijah said fiercely. “Just say it.”

Dom looked up, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”

“I like you. A lot. So just tell me to leave and go to hell if you want nothing more to do with me. Because I won’t sit here while you mull it over in your head, how best to let me down easy.” He sighed heavily and added as an afterthought, “However you let me down, it won’t be easy on me.”

A smile curled Dom’s lips up at the corners, and Elijah felt himself involuntarily smiling back because suddenly he didn’t feel like he was about to be kicked to the curb.

“Something said he thought I was in love with you,” Dom said, his eyes straying away from Elijah’s, and resting on the tabletop. “It got me thinking,” he said to his glass.

Elijah waited, barely breathing, for Dom to continue. It took him several minutes of agonizing silence before he spoke again. “I realized he was right. He usually is, you see. He’s really perceptive and I just knew if he met you, he’d be able to tell me what it is about you that makes me unable to sleep at night.”

Dom looked up, his eyes shining brightly beneath the yellow glow of the lights. “And he did. He said it was because I was in love with you.”

Elijah let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and then leaned across the table, pressing his lips to Dom’s in a quick, nearly chaste, kiss. But it was a kiss with a promise of something more to come.

They were both smiling, even as their hearts beat dangerously fast against their ribcages.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dom said, cocking his head to the side and grinning.

Elijah nodded and jumped to his feet, ready to move ahead and not look back.

Being with Dom was like breathing…Elijah couldn’t live without it.