lalalalotrips
how to disappear completely
billy/elijah, billy/dom
notes: beta'd by the lovely edigo and gypsyjolie. much love in those general directions. quote is from turin brakes, the title is from (obviously) the radiohead song. it's another weird one, folks. for hackthis, because she reminded me that i love fandom.
If things get real
promise to take me somewhere else
-Turin Brakes, ‘Feeling Oblivion’
Billy sometimes closes his eyes and pretends he is invisible.
He does it at odd times, intervals between crises: breathing in after laughter, sitting in Elijah’s rental car, waiting in the ocean for a wave.
He does it delicately, eyes slowly sweeping shut, and when he opens his eyes again, everything is soft-focus. Over-saturated. Like an art house film, strangely beautiful and without substance. And everything is far away: voices, faces, memories.
Afterwards, his friends smile at him with bemused eyes. Elijah claps him on the shoulder, welcomes him back. Orli hugs him with a sort of concentrated exuberance, as if he feels obligated but is not sure why.
And Dom, Dom watches with narrowed eyes. Face tilted towards the light. Saying nothing; learning the art of silence.
Good things come to those who wait.
Billy can wait.
Meanwhile, he practices.
---
Details unfold: Elijah’s strange possessiveness, Orli’s death-wish-turned-adrenaline-rush, Viggo’s fits of kindness and fury. Sean flitting and fluttering, playing the worried mother to the careless sons, as if there is no other role to play. Dom fits himself into place, the bridge between Orlando’s fierce energy and Elijah’s cynicism; six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Billy drifts. Completes everything. Makes cohesive wholes of scattered plots.
But they learn quickly not to ask for anything. Billy is the color black: he absorbs and does not reflect. A trick he learned in Scotland, in cold rains and grey skies, in a house of echoes and his sister’s tears.
Give only what you are willing to part with.
Give only what you can bear people remembering you by.
Billy does not keep things to himself purely out of selfishness.
---
He wakes sometimes with limbs numb, fingertips cold. His pulse slowed to almost a stutter, blood exhausted as it pushes its way through his body.
He stops breathing because he dreams of a darkness where breath is unnecessary.
The vanishing point, the place where light appears and disappears, where sight is born and swallowed.
---
Dom comes to him with hands open, palms facing out, rings sparking in flashes of sun. Asking for peace, begging treaty.
Do I have to fight for you, do I have to struggle for every moment with you, every word I can coax from your mouth?
For every piece of light there must be an eye to behold it.
For every absence there is a possibility of presence.
Billy, tilting his head: No one ever asked you to do anything.
---
It is not, and never has been, a question of forgiveness.
Billy does not go to Elijah for mercy.
He does not go seeking absolution.
He goes to Elijah slowly, and does it with care, because it must be the right person, it must be someone who lets go without question.
Elijah is cold, claims things because he can, not because he wants them. Does not keep them, either; shedding his possessions once their use has faded, ending his obsessions as quickly as he begins them.
It must be someone who can forget. It must be someone who can be forgotten.
Billy needs someone to ground him, or at least tide him over. He needs someone to be there, to bear witness to him, for as long as he is there to be witnessed. Without some sort of spectator, Billy is nothing.
And Billy is not ready to be nothing yet, so he goes to Elijah, hoping those infamous eyes are content to watch, hoping they are too bright and savage to cry.
---
If there is one thing he will miss, it will be this: Dom, slightly drunk, just intoxicated enough for his features to smooth and his consonants to blur. This is Dom at his most vulnerable, at his warmest, at the strange, stripped core of himself.
And this is a Dom who forgets to fight, and instead clings, arms wrapped around Billy’s neck, face buried in Billy’s chest. Whispering can I keep you here, will you stay.
Billy says no, but Dom does not lift his head to hear it.
---
In the end, it comes down to this: this last moment of consciousness, Dom’s limbs wrapped haphazardly around Billy’s own, the heat of Dom’s breath on Billy’s skin.
In the end, it comes down to this: strange and careful darkness, an endless quiet, reluctant numbing of his fingers, toes, legs, arms.
In the end, it comes down to this: something like terrible joy, filling his lungs until they burst and disappear.
billy/elijah, billy/dom
notes: beta'd by the lovely edigo and gypsyjolie. much love in those general directions. quote is from turin brakes, the title is from (obviously) the radiohead song. it's another weird one, folks. for hackthis, because she reminded me that i love fandom.
If things get real
promise to take me somewhere else
-Turin Brakes, ‘Feeling Oblivion’
Billy sometimes closes his eyes and pretends he is invisible.
He does it at odd times, intervals between crises: breathing in after laughter, sitting in Elijah’s rental car, waiting in the ocean for a wave.
He does it delicately, eyes slowly sweeping shut, and when he opens his eyes again, everything is soft-focus. Over-saturated. Like an art house film, strangely beautiful and without substance. And everything is far away: voices, faces, memories.
Afterwards, his friends smile at him with bemused eyes. Elijah claps him on the shoulder, welcomes him back. Orli hugs him with a sort of concentrated exuberance, as if he feels obligated but is not sure why.
And Dom, Dom watches with narrowed eyes. Face tilted towards the light. Saying nothing; learning the art of silence.
Good things come to those who wait.
Billy can wait.
Meanwhile, he practices.
---
Details unfold: Elijah’s strange possessiveness, Orli’s death-wish-turned-adrenaline-rush, Viggo’s fits of kindness and fury. Sean flitting and fluttering, playing the worried mother to the careless sons, as if there is no other role to play. Dom fits himself into place, the bridge between Orlando’s fierce energy and Elijah’s cynicism; six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Billy drifts. Completes everything. Makes cohesive wholes of scattered plots.
But they learn quickly not to ask for anything. Billy is the color black: he absorbs and does not reflect. A trick he learned in Scotland, in cold rains and grey skies, in a house of echoes and his sister’s tears.
Give only what you are willing to part with.
Give only what you can bear people remembering you by.
Billy does not keep things to himself purely out of selfishness.
---
He wakes sometimes with limbs numb, fingertips cold. His pulse slowed to almost a stutter, blood exhausted as it pushes its way through his body.
He stops breathing because he dreams of a darkness where breath is unnecessary.
The vanishing point, the place where light appears and disappears, where sight is born and swallowed.
---
Dom comes to him with hands open, palms facing out, rings sparking in flashes of sun. Asking for peace, begging treaty.
Do I have to fight for you, do I have to struggle for every moment with you, every word I can coax from your mouth?
For every piece of light there must be an eye to behold it.
For every absence there is a possibility of presence.
Billy, tilting his head: No one ever asked you to do anything.
---
It is not, and never has been, a question of forgiveness.
Billy does not go to Elijah for mercy.
He does not go seeking absolution.
He goes to Elijah slowly, and does it with care, because it must be the right person, it must be someone who lets go without question.
Elijah is cold, claims things because he can, not because he wants them. Does not keep them, either; shedding his possessions once their use has faded, ending his obsessions as quickly as he begins them.
It must be someone who can forget. It must be someone who can be forgotten.
Billy needs someone to ground him, or at least tide him over. He needs someone to be there, to bear witness to him, for as long as he is there to be witnessed. Without some sort of spectator, Billy is nothing.
And Billy is not ready to be nothing yet, so he goes to Elijah, hoping those infamous eyes are content to watch, hoping they are too bright and savage to cry.
---
If there is one thing he will miss, it will be this: Dom, slightly drunk, just intoxicated enough for his features to smooth and his consonants to blur. This is Dom at his most vulnerable, at his warmest, at the strange, stripped core of himself.
And this is a Dom who forgets to fight, and instead clings, arms wrapped around Billy’s neck, face buried in Billy’s chest. Whispering can I keep you here, will you stay.
Billy says no, but Dom does not lift his head to hear it.
---
In the end, it comes down to this: this last moment of consciousness, Dom’s limbs wrapped haphazardly around Billy’s own, the heat of Dom’s breath on Billy’s skin.
In the end, it comes down to this: strange and careful darkness, an endless quiet, reluctant numbing of his fingers, toes, legs, arms.
In the end, it comes down to this: something like terrible joy, filling his lungs until they burst and disappear.