Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy (Call Me By Your Name)
BE MY REST, BE MY FANTASY
Fandom: Call Me By Your Name
Summary: Elio is reading poetry. Of course.
Characters: Elio/Oliver
Words: 1,600
Notes:
A Yuletide treat for two recipients, because I ended up inextricably inspired by both of you.
Ghostcat’s guidelines for writing Elio and Oliver were a delightful encapsulation of these two characters:
“1. Elio and Oliver are always intelligent.
2. They are always Jewish.
3. Elio is always inclined towards boldness and
4. Oliver always loves it.”
And
lionessvalenti’s prompt for “UST-filled teasing and roughhousing” was so evocative that it slipped in and declared its place in this fic before I even knew it! That combination of intelligence, boldness and physicality seemed just right for Elio/Oliver.
The title is - but of course - from Sufjan Stevens, from the song “Should Have Known Better.”
Thank you to Karios for above-and-beyond betareading!
Read on AO3, or here below:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“What are you reading?”
Elio looks up at him, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He tilts his book so Oliver can see the cover: Nineteen Poems by Paul Celan.
“Poetry,” Oliver says. “You’re reading poetry. Of course.”
He kicks off his shoes and settles down next to Elio, who’s stretched out on the stone border of the pool. Oliver places himself near where Elio’s head rests; close to him, but not too close. They’re careful, out here where anyone could see.
The warmth of the stones seeps into Oliver’s skin, and with it a sense of rightness, of being exactly where he wants to be. “All right,” he says. “So, read me something.”
“In English or in German?” Elio’s smile is mischievous. He trails one foot in the water, wriggling his toes.
“Show-off. You know I don’t speak German.”
Elio gives Oliver an arch look and begins to read, in a pretty passable accent as far as Oliver can tell: “Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde. / Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn: / die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.”
Oliver flicks water at Elio’s face, though he’s careful to avoid getting any on the book. “You want to try that again in a language I can understand?”
Painstakingly deliberate, Elio flips the page to what is presumably the English translation, casting Oliver portentous little glances as he does so. Then he starts again: “Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. / From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: / then time returns to the shell.”
Oliver tips his head up to the sun, letting Elio’s words roll through him, all the way through to the poem’s end: “We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: / it is time they knew! / It is time the stone made an effort to flower, / time unrest had a beating heart. / It is time it were time. // It is time.”
As he reads, Elio’s hand sneaks across the surface of the stone until he rests his palm against the side of Oliver’s thigh, just below the edge of his bathing suit, concealed in the shadow of the space between their bodies.
Anyone could come by; but in this moment no one does. They are alone together in the great open expanse of the summer day, with the water splashing gently in the pool when the wind ripples it, the sun beating down on their bare shoulders. Oliver can smell the faint sweat on Elio’s skin, the aliveness of him.
“Let me see that,” he says, hearing his voice come out deep and rough. Elio willingly offers up the book, and its smooth paperback cover is cool and inviting to Oliver’s hand. He flips the pages, not knowing what he’s looking for, only knowing somehow that he’ll know it when he comes to it.
“Your Hand Full of Hours,” he murmurs, reading the titles. “The Years from You to Me.”
Every word feels weighted with significance, here with Elio’s palm pressing warm against his leg, here with the birdsong overhead in the apricot trees.
Oliver finds himself reading snippets of the poems, out of order, words that catch him from the page and won’t let him continue on until they’ve been spoken aloud.
“Your hair waves once more when I weep. With the blue of your eyes / you lay the table of love; a bed between summer and autumn,” he reads. And then, with a shiver that wracks all the way through him: “And you: / you, you, you / my later of roses / daily worn true and / more true -: // How much, O how much / world. How many / paths.”
And Elio answers, his voice slow, almost sleepy: “Wieviel, o wieviel / Welt. Wieviel / Wege.”
Against all sense, against all propriety, Oliver marks his place in the book with one finger and reaches out the other hand to touch Elio’s hair, caressing those dark curls with the tips of his fingers. The book, held in his other hand, casts a shadow over Elio’s head. Dark upon dark. No one will see.
Elio arches up into Oliver’s touch. Then, quick as a lightning flash, he swivels his head to catch Oliver’s palm with a kiss.
When Oliver starts to pull away, Elio catches his hand with both of his own and holds him there.
“You should come for Hanukkah,” Elio says, a grand non sequitur. “When we come here in the winter, Mafalda makes a big feast on the first and last nights of Hanukkah. Sometimes we have the neighbors over. And we light candles, of course, all the nights.” He grins up at Oliver, still refusing to let his hand go. “We may be Jews of discretion, but we’re not very discreet about Hanukkah.”
Oliver thinks about holidays when he was a kid, his dad sternly enunciating the blessings, his mom lighting the candles, making sure everything was just right.
He imagines the Perlmans gathered around the menorah, singing, laughing together, in their beautiful warm house transformed under snow. Of course he wants to be there. It’s not a question of wanting.
Elio sits up suddenly and butts his head under Oliver’s arm. He flicks a gaze up at Oliver, a challenge and an invitation. As if Oliver could ever resist. He grabs Elio’s torso with both arms, getting leverage and height against him, grappling with him until they’re both sweating and laughing.
Eventually, Oliver’s got his legs dangling into the pool and his back arched, putting up easy resistance as Elio pushes ineffectually at him, clearly lamenting their difference in body mass. Then Elio stops and reaches over to set the Paul Celan book aside on the ground, far enough away to be out of range of the water.
Which Oliver should have taken for a sign, because the next moment, Elio is leaping at him, wrapping both arms around his waist and lunging into the pool so that Oliver tumbles in with him, both of them hitting the water in a tangle of limbs and sending up a tremendous splash.
Oliver comes up spluttering, laughing, water streaming from his hair and into his eyes. “I’ll get you for that,” he says. “I will get you.”
Elio strokes away, as far as he can go within the confines of the pool, then sticks out his tongue and waggles it at Oliver in open challenge.
“Oh yeah? Is that the way you’re gonna play it?” Oliver launches himself at Elio, three strokes and he’s caught up to him at the other end of the pool. He gets his hands around Elio’s upper arms, sleek now and wet, and dunks him completely under the surface.
Instead of resisting, Elio goes easily, his head sliding under the water with the grace of a seal. Then he twists and lunges, grabs Oliver around the waist and rears up to bite his shoulder. Oliver yelps.
Elio splashes wildly about, laughing, trying to get his teeth on Oliver again, nipping at any part he can reach, hand, ribs, knee. Oliver needs both hands to fend him off, and even then it takes some doing.
“You - are - a wild thing -” he growls, holding Elio away from him with one hand pressed firmly against his forehead, as Elio treads water and waggles his eyebrows at Oliver, smirking and unrepentant.
Elio turns his head and tries to lick Oliver’s hand, so Oliver grabs for him again, pulling Elio in and wrapping both arms around his torso so he can’t get away.
They’re pressed together now, Elio’s back to Oliver’s chest, Elio’s ribs rising and falling against Oliver as he pants, his skin cool and sleek from the water. Now Oliver knows all too clearly the urge to bite, to taste, to lap his tongue over the smooth skin of Elio’s shoulder.
He doesn’t. He doesn’t bite, taste, lap.
But he leans close and whispers in Elio’s ear, “Tonight, all right? Not here.”
He feels how Elio shivers against him. Then Oliver releases him, giving him a little push forward through the water.
Elio spins to face him, eyes wide, but still smirking.
“Nights,” Elio murmurs, his words a whisper across the water, his eyes locked on Oliver, “when the pendulum of love swings / between always and never.”
Wind skitters through the branches above them. The water laps, laps, laps against its stone border. From opposite ends of the pool they stare at each other: Elio and Oliver, Oliver and Elio.
Elio’s dark hair is unruly, plastered down on one side of his head and curling wildly up from the other. Lately he’s started wearing a Star of David, and the thin gold chain clings to his skin just above the exquisite wings of his collarbones.
“You should come for Hanukkah,” Elio says again, serious now. His eyes never let Oliver go. They dare him and they invite him. They speak of a boldness Oliver has never dreamt of possessing, has never even tried.
The water rippling back and forth between their bodies in the stillness of the pool, Oliver lets instinct answer. “Maybe I will.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
The first Celan poem quoted is “Corona”; the English translation used here is by Michael Hamburger, from 1972. The following poems are from the same 1972 set of translations. (Yes, I was looking for what editions of Celan poems Elio and Oliver might reasonably have been reading in 1983.) :-) The last poem quoted, though, isn’t part of that collection: “Nachts, wenn das Pendel der Liebe schwingt” (the source of the “between always and never” line used in the novel).
…And no, I suppose in the film Elio didn’t speak German…but he also didn’t not speak German, right? I’m choosing to imagine him being able to somewhat read it, in a literary way, though not speak it conversationally.
This is part two of the series "He Thinks of Elio". Part one was Sweetly, Before the Mystery Ends. Continue to part three, Wasted My Life Playing Dumb.
.
(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)
Fandom: Call Me By Your Name
Summary: Elio is reading poetry. Of course.
Characters: Elio/Oliver
Words: 1,600
Notes:
A Yuletide treat for two recipients, because I ended up inextricably inspired by both of you.
Ghostcat’s guidelines for writing Elio and Oliver were a delightful encapsulation of these two characters:
“1. Elio and Oliver are always intelligent.
2. They are always Jewish.
3. Elio is always inclined towards boldness and
4. Oliver always loves it.”
And
lionessvalenti’s prompt for “UST-filled teasing and roughhousing” was so evocative that it slipped in and declared its place in this fic before I even knew it! That combination of intelligence, boldness and physicality seemed just right for Elio/Oliver.
The title is - but of course - from Sufjan Stevens, from the song “Should Have Known Better.”
Thank you to Karios for above-and-beyond betareading!
Read on AO3, or here below:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“What are you reading?”
Elio looks up at him, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He tilts his book so Oliver can see the cover: Nineteen Poems by Paul Celan.
“Poetry,” Oliver says. “You’re reading poetry. Of course.”
He kicks off his shoes and settles down next to Elio, who’s stretched out on the stone border of the pool. Oliver places himself near where Elio’s head rests; close to him, but not too close. They’re careful, out here where anyone could see.
The warmth of the stones seeps into Oliver’s skin, and with it a sense of rightness, of being exactly where he wants to be. “All right,” he says. “So, read me something.”
“In English or in German?” Elio’s smile is mischievous. He trails one foot in the water, wriggling his toes.
“Show-off. You know I don’t speak German.”
Elio gives Oliver an arch look and begins to read, in a pretty passable accent as far as Oliver can tell: “Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde. / Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn: / die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.”
Oliver flicks water at Elio’s face, though he’s careful to avoid getting any on the book. “You want to try that again in a language I can understand?”
Painstakingly deliberate, Elio flips the page to what is presumably the English translation, casting Oliver portentous little glances as he does so. Then he starts again: “Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. / From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: / then time returns to the shell.”
Oliver tips his head up to the sun, letting Elio’s words roll through him, all the way through to the poem’s end: “We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: / it is time they knew! / It is time the stone made an effort to flower, / time unrest had a beating heart. / It is time it were time. // It is time.”
As he reads, Elio’s hand sneaks across the surface of the stone until he rests his palm against the side of Oliver’s thigh, just below the edge of his bathing suit, concealed in the shadow of the space between their bodies.
Anyone could come by; but in this moment no one does. They are alone together in the great open expanse of the summer day, with the water splashing gently in the pool when the wind ripples it, the sun beating down on their bare shoulders. Oliver can smell the faint sweat on Elio’s skin, the aliveness of him.
“Let me see that,” he says, hearing his voice come out deep and rough. Elio willingly offers up the book, and its smooth paperback cover is cool and inviting to Oliver’s hand. He flips the pages, not knowing what he’s looking for, only knowing somehow that he’ll know it when he comes to it.
“Your Hand Full of Hours,” he murmurs, reading the titles. “The Years from You to Me.”
Every word feels weighted with significance, here with Elio’s palm pressing warm against his leg, here with the birdsong overhead in the apricot trees.
Oliver finds himself reading snippets of the poems, out of order, words that catch him from the page and won’t let him continue on until they’ve been spoken aloud.
“Your hair waves once more when I weep. With the blue of your eyes / you lay the table of love; a bed between summer and autumn,” he reads. And then, with a shiver that wracks all the way through him: “And you: / you, you, you / my later of roses / daily worn true and / more true -: // How much, O how much / world. How many / paths.”
And Elio answers, his voice slow, almost sleepy: “Wieviel, o wieviel / Welt. Wieviel / Wege.”
Against all sense, against all propriety, Oliver marks his place in the book with one finger and reaches out the other hand to touch Elio’s hair, caressing those dark curls with the tips of his fingers. The book, held in his other hand, casts a shadow over Elio’s head. Dark upon dark. No one will see.
Elio arches up into Oliver’s touch. Then, quick as a lightning flash, he swivels his head to catch Oliver’s palm with a kiss.
When Oliver starts to pull away, Elio catches his hand with both of his own and holds him there.
“You should come for Hanukkah,” Elio says, a grand non sequitur. “When we come here in the winter, Mafalda makes a big feast on the first and last nights of Hanukkah. Sometimes we have the neighbors over. And we light candles, of course, all the nights.” He grins up at Oliver, still refusing to let his hand go. “We may be Jews of discretion, but we’re not very discreet about Hanukkah.”
Oliver thinks about holidays when he was a kid, his dad sternly enunciating the blessings, his mom lighting the candles, making sure everything was just right.
He imagines the Perlmans gathered around the menorah, singing, laughing together, in their beautiful warm house transformed under snow. Of course he wants to be there. It’s not a question of wanting.
Elio sits up suddenly and butts his head under Oliver’s arm. He flicks a gaze up at Oliver, a challenge and an invitation. As if Oliver could ever resist. He grabs Elio’s torso with both arms, getting leverage and height against him, grappling with him until they’re both sweating and laughing.
Eventually, Oliver’s got his legs dangling into the pool and his back arched, putting up easy resistance as Elio pushes ineffectually at him, clearly lamenting their difference in body mass. Then Elio stops and reaches over to set the Paul Celan book aside on the ground, far enough away to be out of range of the water.
Which Oliver should have taken for a sign, because the next moment, Elio is leaping at him, wrapping both arms around his waist and lunging into the pool so that Oliver tumbles in with him, both of them hitting the water in a tangle of limbs and sending up a tremendous splash.
Oliver comes up spluttering, laughing, water streaming from his hair and into his eyes. “I’ll get you for that,” he says. “I will get you.”
Elio strokes away, as far as he can go within the confines of the pool, then sticks out his tongue and waggles it at Oliver in open challenge.
“Oh yeah? Is that the way you’re gonna play it?” Oliver launches himself at Elio, three strokes and he’s caught up to him at the other end of the pool. He gets his hands around Elio’s upper arms, sleek now and wet, and dunks him completely under the surface.
Instead of resisting, Elio goes easily, his head sliding under the water with the grace of a seal. Then he twists and lunges, grabs Oliver around the waist and rears up to bite his shoulder. Oliver yelps.
Elio splashes wildly about, laughing, trying to get his teeth on Oliver again, nipping at any part he can reach, hand, ribs, knee. Oliver needs both hands to fend him off, and even then it takes some doing.
“You - are - a wild thing -” he growls, holding Elio away from him with one hand pressed firmly against his forehead, as Elio treads water and waggles his eyebrows at Oliver, smirking and unrepentant.
Elio turns his head and tries to lick Oliver’s hand, so Oliver grabs for him again, pulling Elio in and wrapping both arms around his torso so he can’t get away.
They’re pressed together now, Elio’s back to Oliver’s chest, Elio’s ribs rising and falling against Oliver as he pants, his skin cool and sleek from the water. Now Oliver knows all too clearly the urge to bite, to taste, to lap his tongue over the smooth skin of Elio’s shoulder.
He doesn’t. He doesn’t bite, taste, lap.
But he leans close and whispers in Elio’s ear, “Tonight, all right? Not here.”
He feels how Elio shivers against him. Then Oliver releases him, giving him a little push forward through the water.
Elio spins to face him, eyes wide, but still smirking.
“Nights,” Elio murmurs, his words a whisper across the water, his eyes locked on Oliver, “when the pendulum of love swings / between always and never.”
Wind skitters through the branches above them. The water laps, laps, laps against its stone border. From opposite ends of the pool they stare at each other: Elio and Oliver, Oliver and Elio.
Elio’s dark hair is unruly, plastered down on one side of his head and curling wildly up from the other. Lately he’s started wearing a Star of David, and the thin gold chain clings to his skin just above the exquisite wings of his collarbones.
“You should come for Hanukkah,” Elio says again, serious now. His eyes never let Oliver go. They dare him and they invite him. They speak of a boldness Oliver has never dreamt of possessing, has never even tried.
The water rippling back and forth between their bodies in the stillness of the pool, Oliver lets instinct answer. “Maybe I will.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
The first Celan poem quoted is “Corona”; the English translation used here is by Michael Hamburger, from 1972. The following poems are from the same 1972 set of translations. (Yes, I was looking for what editions of Celan poems Elio and Oliver might reasonably have been reading in 1983.) :-) The last poem quoted, though, isn’t part of that collection: “Nachts, wenn das Pendel der Liebe schwingt” (the source of the “between always and never” line used in the novel).
…And no, I suppose in the film Elio didn’t speak German…but he also didn’t not speak German, right? I’m choosing to imagine him being able to somewhat read it, in a literary way, though not speak it conversationally.
This is part two of the series "He Thinks of Elio". Part one was Sweetly, Before the Mystery Ends. Continue to part three, Wasted My Life Playing Dumb.
.
(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)