what a beautiful face i have found in this place.
finally it is done! *breathes*
the misfits: elijah
dom/elijah
notes: first of a three-part series. billy does come into this eventually. beta'd by the lovely, endlessly patient wolfsage. strays from canon. partly an excuse to properly utilize my tinted icon series. *smirks*
It is upon returning to LA that Elijah notices something is different.
In New Zealand it had been a quiet thing, a shadow that faded when he blinked his eyes. An easy thing. He had ignored the silent parts of him spreading and spreading like spilled liquid. He had ignored the way he clutched at his cigarettes and cried whenever he smoked the last of the pack.
But in LA, with no one around to drag him out of his apartment or make him laugh, the silent parts take hold. He wanders through his mother’s guesthouse, in which he has taken up residence, and trails his fingers over the plaster until they ache and bleed. He creates pyramids of beer bottles. He renounces ash trays and begins dropping his ashes on his kitchen floor until he can’t even see the tiles anymore.
After the first few months his mother and sister begin to avoid his door. Not because they don’t love him but because they do, their only contact with him whispered phone conversations consisting of ‘can’t stand to see you like this’ and ‘maybe you need to be alone’. His friends too: Viggo slipping photos of Elijah’s closed door into the mail, Orli leaving notes on the windshield of his car like ‘come out’ and ‘I know you’re not dead.’ But they don’t come in, and they don’t call, and though Elijah can’t be sure because he’s stopped checking his mail, the notes and photos have probably stopped too.
And then Dom shows up on Elijah’s doorstep bearing so many suitcases he is almost falling over with the weight.
And everything changes, because that is what, Elijah supposes, things do.
*
One week later and Elijah’s apartment is sparkling clean, Dom having had, as he so titled it, an obsessive-compulsive attack. Ashtrays have been reinstalled on all the proper surfaces; Elijah’s pyramids dismantled. Until there is nothing left of the sagging, sulking apartment he had inhabited for so long. Until there is nothing left of the apartment he had created.
Elijah, quietly, prefers the way it was before. He had liked it sinking with despair, capsizing from the weight of all his refuse. It had felt better than this neurotic cleanliness, although, it must be admitted, Elijah hadn’t really liked cleanliness in the first place.
Dom bustles into the living room. “Well!” he says. “How does it look, do you think?”
Elijah, unused to the presence of ashtrays, knocks off his ash. And watches it fall onto the carpet.
Dom’s eyes follow it too and darken as they do. Going colder and darker as they track the ashes’ fall.
After a few moments they both open their mouths to say something. Elijah trying to say Look, Dom, I didn’t mean to but Dom beating him to the punch.
“For fuck’s sake, Elijah,” Dom snaps, “Couldn’t you at least try?”
And then Dom is gone and Elijah’s words don’t matter anyway, so he doesn’t say them. He swallows them back down, and adds them to the cold parts there, and takes another drag because that is all he has left to do.
*
Later that night a warm body slides into Elijah’s bed and for a second he is confused, his brain addled by sleep, his eyes not fully open. All he can feel is the pane of a hipbone against his own and the way the mattress encompasses two rhythms instead of just one.
Finally the thinking processes take hold and he mutters, “Dom?”
“You’re a fucking cunt, Elijah Wood,” Dom says, and rolls onto his side.
“I know,” Elijah says, and goes back to sleep.
*
For months it goes on like this. Dom talking for hours to fill Elijah’s silences. The only voice in the house for weeks at a time. Elijah smoking so furiously sometimes it is hard to see him through the thick smoke.
It becomes some sort of communication, their imprints in the mattress. Dom’s imprint saying At least I am still here. Elijah’s saying You have put your faith in the wrong thing. The mattress creaks every night in tune to their heartbeats and sometimes Elijah thinks of reaching over and taking Dom’s hand, only he never does, because he has learned not to touch the things he loves.
One day Elijah begins to form bottle pyramids and Dom watches him with eyes that say he is too tired to stop him. So Elijah takes them down himself and throws them all away, a trashbin full of swallowed dreams, all glittering green glass in the sunlight.
*
One night they are watching The Trip and Elijah begins to cry. He does it silently and he does it well, not even moving to brush away the tears, practiced at the art of collecting tears in his collarbones.
It takes awhile for Dom to notice but when he does he stops the movie and asks, “Why are you crying?” Not horrified or even really worried, because he has seen this before, of course he has seen this before, he has been living here for months. He has only seen Elijah cry twice before this but still the sight does not shock him. He has been preparing for it since the day he arrived.
“No one will ever love me like that,” Elijah says quietly, and because he is not looking he does not see Dom’s face change. He does not see Dom’s face collapse in on itself and unfold again, seething and smoking with rage.
Then suddenly Dom is upon him; he has launched himself onto Elijah and pinned him to the couch. He clutches at Elijah’s shoulders so hard it makes his own hands hurt.
“Don’t say that,” Dom hisses.
Elijah snarls and tries to throw him off but they end up both being dragged off the couch and onto the carpet. “Don’t say that,” Dom repeats, over and over, “Don’t say that, don’t ever fucking say that.”
For some reason they are both filled with fury and kick and scratch and bite. As if they are school boys and have no other ways of expressing animosity. Dom saying the words so many times that Elijah’s ears stop making sense of them.
Elijah fights him but Dom clings. Dom clings and clings until there is nothing left for Elijah to do but cling back. So he does.
the misfits: elijah
dom/elijah
notes: first of a three-part series. billy does come into this eventually. beta'd by the lovely, endlessly patient wolfsage. strays from canon. partly an excuse to properly utilize my tinted icon series. *smirks*
It is upon returning to LA that Elijah notices something is different.
In New Zealand it had been a quiet thing, a shadow that faded when he blinked his eyes. An easy thing. He had ignored the silent parts of him spreading and spreading like spilled liquid. He had ignored the way he clutched at his cigarettes and cried whenever he smoked the last of the pack.
But in LA, with no one around to drag him out of his apartment or make him laugh, the silent parts take hold. He wanders through his mother’s guesthouse, in which he has taken up residence, and trails his fingers over the plaster until they ache and bleed. He creates pyramids of beer bottles. He renounces ash trays and begins dropping his ashes on his kitchen floor until he can’t even see the tiles anymore.
After the first few months his mother and sister begin to avoid his door. Not because they don’t love him but because they do, their only contact with him whispered phone conversations consisting of ‘can’t stand to see you like this’ and ‘maybe you need to be alone’. His friends too: Viggo slipping photos of Elijah’s closed door into the mail, Orli leaving notes on the windshield of his car like ‘come out’ and ‘I know you’re not dead.’ But they don’t come in, and they don’t call, and though Elijah can’t be sure because he’s stopped checking his mail, the notes and photos have probably stopped too.
And then Dom shows up on Elijah’s doorstep bearing so many suitcases he is almost falling over with the weight.
And everything changes, because that is what, Elijah supposes, things do.
*
One week later and Elijah’s apartment is sparkling clean, Dom having had, as he so titled it, an obsessive-compulsive attack. Ashtrays have been reinstalled on all the proper surfaces; Elijah’s pyramids dismantled. Until there is nothing left of the sagging, sulking apartment he had inhabited for so long. Until there is nothing left of the apartment he had created.
Elijah, quietly, prefers the way it was before. He had liked it sinking with despair, capsizing from the weight of all his refuse. It had felt better than this neurotic cleanliness, although, it must be admitted, Elijah hadn’t really liked cleanliness in the first place.
Dom bustles into the living room. “Well!” he says. “How does it look, do you think?”
Elijah, unused to the presence of ashtrays, knocks off his ash. And watches it fall onto the carpet.
Dom’s eyes follow it too and darken as they do. Going colder and darker as they track the ashes’ fall.
After a few moments they both open their mouths to say something. Elijah trying to say Look, Dom, I didn’t mean to but Dom beating him to the punch.
“For fuck’s sake, Elijah,” Dom snaps, “Couldn’t you at least try?”
And then Dom is gone and Elijah’s words don’t matter anyway, so he doesn’t say them. He swallows them back down, and adds them to the cold parts there, and takes another drag because that is all he has left to do.
*
Later that night a warm body slides into Elijah’s bed and for a second he is confused, his brain addled by sleep, his eyes not fully open. All he can feel is the pane of a hipbone against his own and the way the mattress encompasses two rhythms instead of just one.
Finally the thinking processes take hold and he mutters, “Dom?”
“You’re a fucking cunt, Elijah Wood,” Dom says, and rolls onto his side.
“I know,” Elijah says, and goes back to sleep.
*
For months it goes on like this. Dom talking for hours to fill Elijah’s silences. The only voice in the house for weeks at a time. Elijah smoking so furiously sometimes it is hard to see him through the thick smoke.
It becomes some sort of communication, their imprints in the mattress. Dom’s imprint saying At least I am still here. Elijah’s saying You have put your faith in the wrong thing. The mattress creaks every night in tune to their heartbeats and sometimes Elijah thinks of reaching over and taking Dom’s hand, only he never does, because he has learned not to touch the things he loves.
One day Elijah begins to form bottle pyramids and Dom watches him with eyes that say he is too tired to stop him. So Elijah takes them down himself and throws them all away, a trashbin full of swallowed dreams, all glittering green glass in the sunlight.
*
One night they are watching The Trip and Elijah begins to cry. He does it silently and he does it well, not even moving to brush away the tears, practiced at the art of collecting tears in his collarbones.
It takes awhile for Dom to notice but when he does he stops the movie and asks, “Why are you crying?” Not horrified or even really worried, because he has seen this before, of course he has seen this before, he has been living here for months. He has only seen Elijah cry twice before this but still the sight does not shock him. He has been preparing for it since the day he arrived.
“No one will ever love me like that,” Elijah says quietly, and because he is not looking he does not see Dom’s face change. He does not see Dom’s face collapse in on itself and unfold again, seething and smoking with rage.
Then suddenly Dom is upon him; he has launched himself onto Elijah and pinned him to the couch. He clutches at Elijah’s shoulders so hard it makes his own hands hurt.
“Don’t say that,” Dom hisses.
Elijah snarls and tries to throw him off but they end up both being dragged off the couch and onto the carpet. “Don’t say that,” Dom repeats, over and over, “Don’t say that, don’t ever fucking say that.”
For some reason they are both filled with fury and kick and scratch and bite. As if they are school boys and have no other ways of expressing animosity. Dom saying the words so many times that Elijah’s ears stop making sense of them.
Elijah fights him but Dom clings. Dom clings and clings until there is nothing left for Elijah to do but cling back. So he does.