Sea Lion Caves in the Dark (Call Me By Your Name)
The final part of a series I wrote kind of accidentally, for Yuletide, not having expected to write Call Me By Your Name fic at all...
SEA LION CAVES IN THE DARK
Fandom: Call Me By Your Name
Summary: It’s the last night of Hanukkah, and Oliver returns to B.
Characters: Oliver, Elio, Annella, Samuel, Anchise, Mafalda, Vimini (Elio/Oliver)
Words: 4,700
Notes:
The title is (once again and always!) from Sufjan Stevens - from the song “The Only Thing.” It’s a song about finding reason to live, in the world’s small moments of astonishing beauty. “Sea lion caves in the dark” are one of those moments.
This fic again draws a bit from book canon in addition to film canon, for example that the Perlmans’ villa is directly by the sea, instead of inland. Also, Vimini exists. :-)
Thank you to Karios for betareading!
Previously in this series:
Sweetly, Before the Mystery Ends
Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy
Wasted My Life Playing Dumb
Read this fic on AO3, or here below:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Anchise is there waiting, when the bus deposits him on the piazzetta in B.
Stepping down from the wheezing bus with his bag over his shoulder, Oliver looks around at this familiar place, now unfamiliar under snow. There’s the bar and the bookstore; here’s the memorial to the Battle of Piave, now a mountainous landscape of white.
Elio had explained, during their breathless last phone conversation arranging the details of Oliver’s arrival, that his parents had already made plans that would take them out of town today, but Anchise would meet Oliver with the car.
He’d thought Elio might come as well, but it’s only Anchise who emerges from the small car and hurries forward to take Oliver’s bag and stow it in the trunk. It’s all Oliver can do to keep himself from throwing his arms around the taciturn man. Anchise has always been the unspoken herald of this place that was, so briefly, a home to Oliver.
He satisfies himself instead with expressing, in cobbled-together Italian, how very glad he is to be back.
“Si, si,” Anchise says, nodding as he steers them away from the piazzetta. He explains where Pro and Mrs. P have gone for the day, but Oliver only catches about a third of it. Seeing friends? Or colleagues? In N., possibly. Anyway, they’ll be back by evening, when all the neighbors will be coming over. A celebratory feast for the last night of Hanukkah, just as Elio said there would be.
Oliver watches the landscape unfurl outside the car window. These are the same country roads he bicycled with Elio in the summer, in another world. Those once-green fields are hidden now under snow, dormant and dreaming.
It’s so different from before, and yet it’s perfect, too.
Soon, they’re sweeping into the drive, and then around the house to coast to stop under bare branches adorned in white. When the car’s engine cuts out, the snow-muffled silence is sudden and absolute.
Anchise gets out and goes around to open the trunk; Oliver unfolds himself from the passenger seat. The car is far too small for his legs in that European way that is, by now, very familiar.
And then he looks up, and Elio is standing in the doorway.
Now Oliver understands why Elio didn’t come to meet the bus in B. That would have been public, even mundane, the moment of their meeting lost in other people’s shopping bags and parcels, in the wheezing and clattering of the bus.
Whereas this moment has already announced itself as one that Oliver will never forget: Elio framed in the doorway in a voluminous sweater, his hair even more tousled than usual, one hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he watches Oliver climb out of the car.
Anchise carries Oliver’s bag to the house, and Elio steps back from the doorway to let Anchise through. Oliver follows, Elio reemerges, and suddenly they’re both there in the middle, met inside the door’s embrace.
Oliver looks down into the faint smile on Elio’s upturned face.
“Hey,” Oliver says. It’s the first word he’s spoken to Elio in months, other than down a tinny, long-distance line.
Elio doesn’t say anything, just smiles. His hand darts across the narrow space of the doorway to rest for just a moment against Oliver’s hip. A promise for later, a sentiment more clearly expressed than words.
Then Elio’s hand is gone again and Anchise is back from the depths of the house, having deposited Oliver’s bag somewhere within. Anchise raises a hand in greeting and they both step aside to let him pass, on his way back outside to tend to mysterious wintertime tasks of his own.
“È Ulliva?” Mafalda’s voice comes from the direction of the kitchen. She emerges, wiping her hands on her apron, takes hold of Oliver’s shoulders and cranes up to plant kisses on both of his cheeks.
“Buon giorno, Mafalda,” he says.
She beams, expressing in rapid fire her delight at the sight of Oliver and promising as many latkes tonight as he can eat. Then she bustles off again toward the kitchen, still declaring her delight at his presence.
Oliver’s glance catches on Elio, who’s rolling his eyes at the spectacle of the entire household already fawning over Oliver again. And with that look, all at once they’re them again, just as they were, Elio and Oliver.
“Hey,” Oliver says again. The joy that froths up inside him is almost more than he can contain. How did he get here? How did he get this fortunate? “We have some time before your parents’ party, right? Where can we go?”
“Not here,” Elio says, and surely it must be Oliver’s imagination, but his voice sounds even a little deeper than when they last spoke, just a week ago. “My cousins have taken over the living room, and Mafalda’s got some women from town coming over soon to help with the cooking.” He grabs Oliver’s hand again, and this time he doesn’t let go. “Let’s go down to the beach.”
Elio finds a jacket; Oliver finds the scarf he’d abandoned on the passenger seat of the car in his haste to disembark. With the giddiness of children playing truant, they slip out of the house and across the snow-covered grounds.
Elio leads the way through the little gate in the balustrade at the top of the bluff, then down the narrow stone stairway to the sea. They tread carefully, but the wind has blown the steps largely free of snow, and it’s easy to reach the rocky shore.
The winter sea is glorious. Waves crash against the rocks where Oliver used to sit and look out over the water, waves that in summer only lapped against the land. Now the water is the color of slate, and the sky is wide and white. Elio turns to face him, grinning and glorious as the sea itself.
Elio flings his arms out in both directions, encompassing the sea and the sky, a wordless gesture of welcome. Oliver laughs, the excitement infectious.
“You came back,” Elio says.
“I came back,” Oliver agrees. “Do you know why?”
Elio shrugs, his most boyish gesture.
Oliver bites back the urge to say, Of course you don’t. He’s biting back a smile, too. They’ve had this conversation, or something much like it, many times. And yet it’s never been like this one, a conversation about something that could last.
“I came back,” Oliver says slowly, stepping closer to Elio over the uneven pebbles of the shore, “because I was in New York, and even though my life was the same as before, something was missing. Do you understand?”
“Because of - me?” Elio’s pulse beats visibly in his throat, where his jacket gapes open. His eyes are wide and his expression is so guileless. This is the Elio who tries so hard to appear nonchalant, but he isn’t, not at all.
That’s all right. Oliver isn’t nonchalant about this either.
He closes the last distance between them, reaching out with just his fingertips to trace Elio’s lips, the sensuous mystery of them that dares, that demands, to be desired. And Oliver does, oh, he does, just as he did in summer, in the long grass and sunlight of Monet’s berm.
Elio shivers, and his mouth drops open. He is all instinct.
“Can I kiss you?” Oliver whispers. He can barely hear his own voice over the sound of the surf against the rocks.
“Please,” Elio whispers back.
Oliver pulls Elio to him until they’re pressed tightly together, chest against chest. Elio’s mouth is still open like a hungry bird’s, but Oliver doesn’t kiss him there just yet. He presses his mouth first to Elio’s hair, feeling the wildness of those curls against his lips. He kisses Elio’s temple, that delicate skin between his hairline and his eye. He breathes against the warm skin below Elio’s ear, then lets his tongue trace down along the sharp angle of his jaw. Elio shudders against him.
“Oliver,” Elio breathes. And then, with a hitch in his voice, “Elio.”
“Oliver,” Oliver murmurs into the smooth skin of Elio’s throat, his own name on his lips without hesitation. It still astonishes him, how he responds to Elio without any need to stop and think. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.”
Elio turns his head and then his mouth is on Oliver’s, hungry and burning hot. He kisses so hard he’s almost biting.
Desire flares so fiercely that all Oliver can do is pull Elio towards him tighter, and still tighter, until they’re both gasping for breath.
“I missed this,” Elio whispers ferociously into Oliver’s neck, his hands locked tightly around Oliver’s back. “I missed you.”
“Well, I came back, didn’t I?”
Elio cranes his neck back just enough to fix Oliver with a very unimpressed stare. This is not the time for being flippant, Elio’s gaze says, and Oliver very well ought to know that.
Oliver tries again, breathing the words into Elio’s temple, feeling how his exhalation ruffles Elio’s hair. “I missed you, too. You can’t know how much. You’ll never be able to imagine how much, and I wouldn’t want you to be able to. But I’m here now, all right?”
Elio does something complicated with his hands and with the hem of Oliver’s shirt, and then he has one ice-cold palm pressed against the bare skin of Oliver’s torso.
Oliver yelps. “You’re freezing!”
Elio grins a wild grin, and leans in to nuzzle the side of Oliver’s neck. His nose is cold, too.
Oliver finds Elio’s other hand, the one that’s still clenched behind Oliver’s back, and pulls it forward to cradle between both of his own. “You goose,” he admonishes, “don’t you wear gloves?”
Elio shrugs, still grinning. He looks so wild and young and free and beautiful, with the winter wind whipping his hair up into the air and his cheeks flushed. Oliver presses close, hungry again to kiss that smiling mouth.
To think he almost walked away. That he had this, he knew this, and still he almost walked away.
Elio wriggles his cold fingers further up Oliver’s chest, smirking at how it makes Oliver shiver. “What am I going to do with you?” Oliver wonders aloud, shaking his head. Elio shrugs, unrepentant.
Oliver slips one hand free of Elio’s so he can reach up and trace a finger along the curve of his cheek. Elio arches into his touch like a cat. His eyes on Oliver are every bit as adoring as that night when he got so drunk he had to lean on Oliver to walk, and stumbled along gazing up into Oliver’s face like he would never grow tired of the sight.
Oliver will never grow tired of this sight.
He leans in to press against Elio’s lips, and again, and again, until they’re both laughing, drunk and giddy on the marvel of this, together in Italy again with the winter sea crashing at their feet.
They find a rock to lean against, one of the large ones that stand just clear of the waterline. Oliver wraps Elio in his arms, shaking his head at his too-thin jacket. Elio’s hands slip up under Oliver’s shirt again, and Oliver sucks in a breath at the cold.
Then Elio’s hands dance lower, teasing their way nearly, not quite, to the top of Oliver’s jeans. Elio glances up into Oliver’s face, mischievous, and says, “But let’s not do anything else until tonight.”
Now Oliver sucks in a breath for a whole different reason. They’ve played this game before, deliberately driving each other wild and then keeping their hands off each other until the air between them sparks with it.
“Will you come to my room tonight?” Elio asks.
“I’ll come to your room tonight.”
“And the next night, and the next?”
“Yes, and yes, and yes.”
“And the next and the next and the next and the next…”
Oliver laughs. “You know I’m only here for two weeks.”
Elio looks away, out over the sea, his face overtaken by heartbreak at those mere few words.
Oliver catches Elio’s chin in his hand and draws him around so they’re facing each other again. “And then we’ll figure it out from there, all right?”
“Will we, though?” In Elio’s face, defiance mixes with fear, a desire to demand answers with a dread of what he might learn if he dares to ask.
“We will,” Oliver says firmly. “There are other academic breaks, there’s the summer. And in half a year you’ll be done with school anyway. Speaking of which, you haven’t told me anything about what you’ve been doing these last months.”
Elio rolls his eyes. “You don’t want to hear about my life at school.”
“Says who?”
“Says the person who has to live through it. You really want to hear about math quizzes, and literature teachers who don’t know one tenth as much as my parents?”
“You know I do.”
Elio laughs. “You’re just saying that.” He slides his hands low, almost to Oliver’s hips, coming to rest teasingly above the ridge of his hipbones.
“I’m ‘just saying that’. You think I ever don’t want to know everything about you?”
Elio grins again. “I could tell you about every single day. Every place I was when I missed you. Everything I thought about before I fell asleep at night.”
“Oh yeah? You’re going to let me in on what goes on in that beautifully sick mind of yours?”
Charmingly, Elio blushes at that and ducks his head. But then his gaze comes up again, strong and certain, and he says, “Everything, Oliver. I want you to know everything.”
Oliver wraps his arms around him even tighter. He wishes they could climb inside each other. Every bit of him wants every bit of Elio, his warm skin and his dark curls and his mischievous mouth. He murmurs it into Elio’s ear. “I want you.”
Elio presses his mouth to Oliver’s throat, hot and wanting. “Tonight,” he whispers.
“Tonight,” Oliver agrees, the word a long sigh. Like a breath he’s been waiting for months to let go.
They stay like that for a while, wrapped in each other’s arms and in the sound of the surf. The air tastes of salt, coming in crisp and cold from the sea. One dark-winged bird swoops overhead. And Elio is warm in Oliver’s arms, so alive that he seems to vibrate with it, his energy that can’t be contained.
Oliver murmurs, “And you: / you, you, you / my later of roses / daily worn true and / more true.” A line of Celan’s poetry they read together, one afternoon in summer.
And Elio - predictably, impossibly brilliant Elio - speaks the next lines without hesitation. “How much, O how much / world. How many / paths.”
It’s clear he, too, remembers that day, quoting poetry to each other in the languorous hours of a summer afternoon, splashing in the pool, wanting to touch each other but trying not to let anyone see.
“You told me that day that I should come back here for Hanukkah,” Oliver says. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“I thought it was a wild dream. Something I could wish for but never really do.”
Elio’s hands slide up again to Oliver’s chest, ever questing. “What changed your mind?”
Oliver stares out at the waves, deep gray and pure white, never ceasing in their rush to embrace the shore. He thinks about these last months of his life in New York: torturing himself with thoughts of this thing he thought could never be, living inside his own head and so lonely there.
“A lot of things,” he says. “But mostly, how much I thought about you, and how I couldn’t stop even when I tried.” Because turnabout is fair play, Oliver finds his way under Elio’s shirt and runs light fingers along the graceful curves of his ribs. Elio shivers gratifyingly. “And,” Oliver adds, “I made a new friend who helped me think things through.”
Elio wiggles his eyebrows. “A new friend? Should I be jealous?”
Oliver laughs out loud. “She’s 82 years old, and her name is Esther. I don’t know, should you?”
Elio darts his head in and nips a kiss at Oliver’s collarbone, where the collar of his coat has flopped open. “She sounds nice. I’d like to meet her.”
“Maybe you will.”
In New York is the thought that hangs unspoken between them. If, next time, we meet in New York.
There are possibilities. And there is time to figure them out.
“You know, we do have to go back up to the house sooner or later.” Oliver has to say it, despite how gladly he could stay exactly like this, with Elio in his arms, not minding the wind in his face or the cold rock pressing against his back. “Your parents are going to get home at some point, and anyway, you’re shivering.”
“No, I’m not,” Elio protests, even though he clearly is. Oliver laughs, and then Elio laughs too, not too proud to admit when he’s being so obviously absurd.
“Besides, Mafalda is making latkes. And all your neighbors are coming over. And I’d be a terrible guest if I didn’t get back there to say hi to your parents.”
He’s always tried to be a good guest for Pro and Mrs. P, who are the best hosts Oliver can imagine. And he’d be a terrible guest indeed if all he did was spirit their son away and not bother to spend time with them, too.
Which raises the question, actually, of how much Pro and Mrs. P know, how much he and Elio can show in front of them. A lot, on both counts, Oliver suspects. It still stuns him that there are parents who could be so okay with this.
Those questions, though, can wait until tomorrow. Let today be their private world, something that’s only for the two of them, even when they’re in the middle of a crowd. Their own secret spark in the air.
“Come on,” he says to Elio. “Try and tell me you don’t want some latkes.”
Elio laughs, then grudgingly nods. “Yeah. I could go for some latkes.”
“That’s what I thought.”
They climb the stairs back up from the beach, Elio following just behind Oliver and reaching out occasionally to let their fingers brush. At the top, Oliver vaults the balustrade gate, then reaches back to haul Elio over.
They land in an inelegant stumble, both laughing.
There’s a small figure waiting in the doorway as they approach the house. Her face is still too far away to see from across the lawn, but she has the unmistakable skinny arms and legs of a child, and a dark sweep of hair Oliver would recognize anywhere.
“Vimini!” he calls, and runs the last distance to the house. He sweeps her up in his arms and spins around and around until she’s laughing. Elio arrives behind them, shaking his head.
Oliver sets Vimini down again. “You look well,” he tells her. That’s not always a predictor of whether she also feels well, but he hopes this time it is.
“I am well,” she tells him solemnly. Then, “You didn’t write to tell me you were coming.”
It’s true, in the rush to make plans and leave New York, he didn’t manage to answer the latest of Vimini’s sweetly devoted letters.
“I had to find out from him,” she adds, pointing at Elio with her chin.
Oliver laughs, because Vimini has always taken this attitude of superiority towards Elio, and he can’t help but find it delightful. Both because it’s so incongruous, coming from a diminutive ten-year-old who doesn’t even come up to Oliver’s armpit, but also because she’s right: in many ways she surpasses them all, not only in intellect but in what she sees and understands.
Vimini knew all about Oliver and Elio, probably long before Oliver or Elio did.
Contrite, he tells her, “I should have written, I know. I’m sorry. It all got decided very fast. But I’ll try to make it up to you while I’m here, okay?”
She cocks her head at him, her gaze assessing, and says, “If it ‘got decided very fast,’ that’s only because you took a long time to make up your mind. You’ve had months and months since you left here, and you always knew you wanted to come back.”
Oliver rests a hand on her shoulder. He’s so fond of this weird, smart, wonderful kid. “Hey, go easy on me, I just got here. Tomorrow you can berate me all day long if you want to.”
Still looking at him with her head to one side, like a bright-eyed bird, Vimini says, “Yes, I think I will berate you tomorrow. If only because you really should have known that Elio would pine if you didn’t come back. It’s not hard to figure out.”
She gives them both a wave, then turns around and goes inside.
Elio is leaning against the outside wall of the house, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” Oliver says. “I just got schooled by a ten-year-old. Is this really any surprise to you?”
“Come here,” Elio says between gasps of laughter. He reaches out and grabs Oliver’s wrist, pulling him toward him.
Oliver thinks Elio is going to tease him for how thoroughly Vimini has him wrapped around her finger, or maybe complain about how she’s clearly set on claiming so much of Oliver’s time while he’s here, although Elio’s never been jealous of that before.
But Elio only says fervently, “I’m so glad you came back.” He drags Oliver up against him and kisses him, hard. Then he’s away and through the door, calling, “Andiamo, Americano! Your latkes are waiting!”
Inside, every corner of the house seems full of cousins and neighbors, though Oliver knows this is probably nowhere near the numbers who will show up by evening.
Voices call out to Oliver as he and Elio pass the open door of the living room. The room holds a congregation of neighbors around Elio’s age, most of whom Oliver vaguely recognizes. Oliver lifts a hand in greeting as they go by and casts his smile all around.
The kitchen is a noisy, happy bustle of chatter and elbows and people wielding large cooking implements. Oliver asks Mafalda if he can help, and is summarily instructed to go enjoy himself instead. But when he demonstrates that he’s actually quite good with a potato grater, she acquiesces and makes space for him at one of the counters, where she sets him up with clean-scrubbed potatoes and an absolutely massive bowl. Then, holding aloft a second grater, she waves Elio over with instructions to do the same as Oliver.
“Thanks a lot,” Elio mouths at Oliver across the counter, but he’s grinning.
Eventually, Oliver is up to his elbows in grated potatoes and the pinkish, starchy liquid that always drains from them. He pretends to flick some of the potato liquid at Elio, who pretends to hate it but gives himself away by smiling the whole time, like his face has settled on grinning as its new default and now can’t ever go back.
And then a voice from behind Oliver says, “Il cauboi!”
Annella’s arms come around his shoulders, and the citrus of her perfume envelopes him. Oliver breathes and sighs.
Her hands stay there, warm on his shoulders, as she pulls back and turns him to face her, so she can properly study him. “Did you have a good flight, caro?”
“As good as can be expected.” Oliver shrugs and laughs. “Long and tedious, but it doesn’t matter. I was just looking forward to getting here.”
She smiles and squeezes his shoulders once more before releasing him. Oliver never noticed before how clearly Elio gets his smile from her. “We’re so lucky to have you back,” she says, and for an instant her eyes flick over to Elio.
She knows, she definitely knows, but the kitchen in this moment is so warm and full of easy happiness that Oliver can’t bring himself to mind.
“I see they’ve put you to work already.” This voice belongs to Pro, who comes up behind Oliver and claps him on the back. Oliver turns to hug him instead, trying not to get potato juice on everyone. Meanwhile, Mrs. P has leaned over to ruffle Elio’s hair and kiss him on the cheek.
Oliver glances across at Elio, to see if he’s rolling his eyes again at everyone making such a fuss over Oliver. But Elio’s face is a kind of hunger, like he wants to swallow this moment whole. With a dizzy soaring in his chest, Oliver feels it too: this moment, all of them here together again, and this time with the possibility of more than a six-week summer idyll.
The afternoon whirls by in cooking and chatter, in the sizzle and snap of batter hitting hot oil in the two massive skillets atop the stove, in the arrival of neighbors to further fill the house.
As evening draws in, Annella calls everyone to the dining room.
A dazzling array of dishes awaits them on the dining room table. There are piles of golden latkes, a platter of sufganiot, and the chocolate gelt Oliver himself brought from New York. There’s a profusion of Italian dishes as well, and many of Mafalda’s pastries. Jugs of local wine stand squeezed into whatever small spaces remain.
But first, a menorah stands on a small table against one wall, its candles ready but not yet lit. All of them, Perlmans and friends and neighbors and cousins, squeeze in somehow around the little table.
Once they’re all gathered, Annella retells the story of Hanukkah for anyone present who isn’t Jewish, which is nearly everyone. Oliver doesn’t catch everything from the flow of her Italian, but key words leap out at him, like freedom and light, and he’s pretty sure he even catches rededication.
“And so for eight nights we light candles, and tonight is the last night,” Annella concludes, in English now. She smiles over at Oliver, who’s wedged between Elio on one side of him and Vimini tucked up against his elbow on the other. “And we celebrate our joy that we have survived this long, and that we are still together.”
She strikes a match to light the shamash, the helper candle. Then she leads the blessings, first the one over the candles, then the one in thanks for miracles.
With the shamash, Annella lights the newest, eighth candle, then she hands the shamash to Pro, who lights the next candle in the row. Elio lights the next one, then Oliver accepts the shamash from his hand and lights the next. He glances at Annella for approval, then hands it on to Vimini to light the one after that. And on it passes, the shamash going hand to hand between friends and neighbors, until all eight lights are kindled.
Annella settles the shamash carefully back into its place in the middle. “Normally, we say the Shehecheyanu only on the first night of the holiday,” she says. She switches into Italian to explain the significance of this blessing that’s recited upon doing something for the first time, or for the first time in a new year. In English again, she says, “But since Oliver has rejoined us tonight, perhaps he would like to say it for this, his first Hanukkah here in Italy?”
Everyone around them makes appreciative noises as Oliver nods, feeling suddenly shaky at the rush of feeling that accompanies those words: his first Hanukkah here.
The gathered friends and neighbors listen in respectful silence as Oliver chants the blessing through to its end: “…shehecheyanu, v’kiyimanu, v’higiyanu la’z’man ha’zeh.”
Who has given us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
Within the crowd, hidden by the press of bodies around them, Elio’s fingers find Oliver’s, and Oliver squeezes Elio’s hand in return. It’s a gesture, and a promise: of tonight, of now, of tomorrow, and of more than all of those.
Pro smiles wide and spreads his arms to encompass everyone in the room, and the table laden with holiday food, and the whole snow-filled world outside. “Welcome, friends,” he says. “Let’s eat.”
The End
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
The lines of Paul Celan’s poetry are from “Rauscht der Brunnen” (“Plashes the Fountain”), the 1972 translation by Michael Hamburger. (Yes, chosen as the most likely/current translation for Elio and Oliver to be reading in 1983!) The afternoon of reading poetry that’s referred back to here is in “Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy.” The other three fics in this series, I’ve written so that they can also work as stand-alones, but this final one has little references back to all of the previous three. :-)
Updated to add! This series now has a fifth story, a coda set once they're both together in New York: Will Wonders Ever Cease.
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)
SEA LION CAVES IN THE DARK
Fandom: Call Me By Your Name
Summary: It’s the last night of Hanukkah, and Oliver returns to B.
Characters: Oliver, Elio, Annella, Samuel, Anchise, Mafalda, Vimini (Elio/Oliver)
Words: 4,700
Notes:
The title is (once again and always!) from Sufjan Stevens - from the song “The Only Thing.” It’s a song about finding reason to live, in the world’s small moments of astonishing beauty. “Sea lion caves in the dark” are one of those moments.
This fic again draws a bit from book canon in addition to film canon, for example that the Perlmans’ villa is directly by the sea, instead of inland. Also, Vimini exists. :-)
Thank you to Karios for betareading!
Previously in this series:
Sweetly, Before the Mystery Ends
Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy
Wasted My Life Playing Dumb
Read this fic on AO3, or here below:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Anchise is there waiting, when the bus deposits him on the piazzetta in B.
Stepping down from the wheezing bus with his bag over his shoulder, Oliver looks around at this familiar place, now unfamiliar under snow. There’s the bar and the bookstore; here’s the memorial to the Battle of Piave, now a mountainous landscape of white.
Elio had explained, during their breathless last phone conversation arranging the details of Oliver’s arrival, that his parents had already made plans that would take them out of town today, but Anchise would meet Oliver with the car.
He’d thought Elio might come as well, but it’s only Anchise who emerges from the small car and hurries forward to take Oliver’s bag and stow it in the trunk. It’s all Oliver can do to keep himself from throwing his arms around the taciturn man. Anchise has always been the unspoken herald of this place that was, so briefly, a home to Oliver.
He satisfies himself instead with expressing, in cobbled-together Italian, how very glad he is to be back.
“Si, si,” Anchise says, nodding as he steers them away from the piazzetta. He explains where Pro and Mrs. P have gone for the day, but Oliver only catches about a third of it. Seeing friends? Or colleagues? In N., possibly. Anyway, they’ll be back by evening, when all the neighbors will be coming over. A celebratory feast for the last night of Hanukkah, just as Elio said there would be.
Oliver watches the landscape unfurl outside the car window. These are the same country roads he bicycled with Elio in the summer, in another world. Those once-green fields are hidden now under snow, dormant and dreaming.
It’s so different from before, and yet it’s perfect, too.
Soon, they’re sweeping into the drive, and then around the house to coast to stop under bare branches adorned in white. When the car’s engine cuts out, the snow-muffled silence is sudden and absolute.
Anchise gets out and goes around to open the trunk; Oliver unfolds himself from the passenger seat. The car is far too small for his legs in that European way that is, by now, very familiar.
And then he looks up, and Elio is standing in the doorway.
Now Oliver understands why Elio didn’t come to meet the bus in B. That would have been public, even mundane, the moment of their meeting lost in other people’s shopping bags and parcels, in the wheezing and clattering of the bus.
Whereas this moment has already announced itself as one that Oliver will never forget: Elio framed in the doorway in a voluminous sweater, his hair even more tousled than usual, one hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he watches Oliver climb out of the car.
Anchise carries Oliver’s bag to the house, and Elio steps back from the doorway to let Anchise through. Oliver follows, Elio reemerges, and suddenly they’re both there in the middle, met inside the door’s embrace.
Oliver looks down into the faint smile on Elio’s upturned face.
“Hey,” Oliver says. It’s the first word he’s spoken to Elio in months, other than down a tinny, long-distance line.
Elio doesn’t say anything, just smiles. His hand darts across the narrow space of the doorway to rest for just a moment against Oliver’s hip. A promise for later, a sentiment more clearly expressed than words.
Then Elio’s hand is gone again and Anchise is back from the depths of the house, having deposited Oliver’s bag somewhere within. Anchise raises a hand in greeting and they both step aside to let him pass, on his way back outside to tend to mysterious wintertime tasks of his own.
“È Ulliva?” Mafalda’s voice comes from the direction of the kitchen. She emerges, wiping her hands on her apron, takes hold of Oliver’s shoulders and cranes up to plant kisses on both of his cheeks.
“Buon giorno, Mafalda,” he says.
She beams, expressing in rapid fire her delight at the sight of Oliver and promising as many latkes tonight as he can eat. Then she bustles off again toward the kitchen, still declaring her delight at his presence.
Oliver’s glance catches on Elio, who’s rolling his eyes at the spectacle of the entire household already fawning over Oliver again. And with that look, all at once they’re them again, just as they were, Elio and Oliver.
“Hey,” Oliver says again. The joy that froths up inside him is almost more than he can contain. How did he get here? How did he get this fortunate? “We have some time before your parents’ party, right? Where can we go?”
“Not here,” Elio says, and surely it must be Oliver’s imagination, but his voice sounds even a little deeper than when they last spoke, just a week ago. “My cousins have taken over the living room, and Mafalda’s got some women from town coming over soon to help with the cooking.” He grabs Oliver’s hand again, and this time he doesn’t let go. “Let’s go down to the beach.”
Elio finds a jacket; Oliver finds the scarf he’d abandoned on the passenger seat of the car in his haste to disembark. With the giddiness of children playing truant, they slip out of the house and across the snow-covered grounds.
Elio leads the way through the little gate in the balustrade at the top of the bluff, then down the narrow stone stairway to the sea. They tread carefully, but the wind has blown the steps largely free of snow, and it’s easy to reach the rocky shore.
The winter sea is glorious. Waves crash against the rocks where Oliver used to sit and look out over the water, waves that in summer only lapped against the land. Now the water is the color of slate, and the sky is wide and white. Elio turns to face him, grinning and glorious as the sea itself.
Elio flings his arms out in both directions, encompassing the sea and the sky, a wordless gesture of welcome. Oliver laughs, the excitement infectious.
“You came back,” Elio says.
“I came back,” Oliver agrees. “Do you know why?”
Elio shrugs, his most boyish gesture.
Oliver bites back the urge to say, Of course you don’t. He’s biting back a smile, too. They’ve had this conversation, or something much like it, many times. And yet it’s never been like this one, a conversation about something that could last.
“I came back,” Oliver says slowly, stepping closer to Elio over the uneven pebbles of the shore, “because I was in New York, and even though my life was the same as before, something was missing. Do you understand?”
“Because of - me?” Elio’s pulse beats visibly in his throat, where his jacket gapes open. His eyes are wide and his expression is so guileless. This is the Elio who tries so hard to appear nonchalant, but he isn’t, not at all.
That’s all right. Oliver isn’t nonchalant about this either.
He closes the last distance between them, reaching out with just his fingertips to trace Elio’s lips, the sensuous mystery of them that dares, that demands, to be desired. And Oliver does, oh, he does, just as he did in summer, in the long grass and sunlight of Monet’s berm.
Elio shivers, and his mouth drops open. He is all instinct.
“Can I kiss you?” Oliver whispers. He can barely hear his own voice over the sound of the surf against the rocks.
“Please,” Elio whispers back.
Oliver pulls Elio to him until they’re pressed tightly together, chest against chest. Elio’s mouth is still open like a hungry bird’s, but Oliver doesn’t kiss him there just yet. He presses his mouth first to Elio’s hair, feeling the wildness of those curls against his lips. He kisses Elio’s temple, that delicate skin between his hairline and his eye. He breathes against the warm skin below Elio’s ear, then lets his tongue trace down along the sharp angle of his jaw. Elio shudders against him.
“Oliver,” Elio breathes. And then, with a hitch in his voice, “Elio.”
“Oliver,” Oliver murmurs into the smooth skin of Elio’s throat, his own name on his lips without hesitation. It still astonishes him, how he responds to Elio without any need to stop and think. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.”
Elio turns his head and then his mouth is on Oliver’s, hungry and burning hot. He kisses so hard he’s almost biting.
Desire flares so fiercely that all Oliver can do is pull Elio towards him tighter, and still tighter, until they’re both gasping for breath.
“I missed this,” Elio whispers ferociously into Oliver’s neck, his hands locked tightly around Oliver’s back. “I missed you.”
“Well, I came back, didn’t I?”
Elio cranes his neck back just enough to fix Oliver with a very unimpressed stare. This is not the time for being flippant, Elio’s gaze says, and Oliver very well ought to know that.
Oliver tries again, breathing the words into Elio’s temple, feeling how his exhalation ruffles Elio’s hair. “I missed you, too. You can’t know how much. You’ll never be able to imagine how much, and I wouldn’t want you to be able to. But I’m here now, all right?”
Elio does something complicated with his hands and with the hem of Oliver’s shirt, and then he has one ice-cold palm pressed against the bare skin of Oliver’s torso.
Oliver yelps. “You’re freezing!”
Elio grins a wild grin, and leans in to nuzzle the side of Oliver’s neck. His nose is cold, too.
Oliver finds Elio’s other hand, the one that’s still clenched behind Oliver’s back, and pulls it forward to cradle between both of his own. “You goose,” he admonishes, “don’t you wear gloves?”
Elio shrugs, still grinning. He looks so wild and young and free and beautiful, with the winter wind whipping his hair up into the air and his cheeks flushed. Oliver presses close, hungry again to kiss that smiling mouth.
To think he almost walked away. That he had this, he knew this, and still he almost walked away.
Elio wriggles his cold fingers further up Oliver’s chest, smirking at how it makes Oliver shiver. “What am I going to do with you?” Oliver wonders aloud, shaking his head. Elio shrugs, unrepentant.
Oliver slips one hand free of Elio’s so he can reach up and trace a finger along the curve of his cheek. Elio arches into his touch like a cat. His eyes on Oliver are every bit as adoring as that night when he got so drunk he had to lean on Oliver to walk, and stumbled along gazing up into Oliver’s face like he would never grow tired of the sight.
Oliver will never grow tired of this sight.
He leans in to press against Elio’s lips, and again, and again, until they’re both laughing, drunk and giddy on the marvel of this, together in Italy again with the winter sea crashing at their feet.
They find a rock to lean against, one of the large ones that stand just clear of the waterline. Oliver wraps Elio in his arms, shaking his head at his too-thin jacket. Elio’s hands slip up under Oliver’s shirt again, and Oliver sucks in a breath at the cold.
Then Elio’s hands dance lower, teasing their way nearly, not quite, to the top of Oliver’s jeans. Elio glances up into Oliver’s face, mischievous, and says, “But let’s not do anything else until tonight.”
Now Oliver sucks in a breath for a whole different reason. They’ve played this game before, deliberately driving each other wild and then keeping their hands off each other until the air between them sparks with it.
“Will you come to my room tonight?” Elio asks.
“I’ll come to your room tonight.”
“And the next night, and the next?”
“Yes, and yes, and yes.”
“And the next and the next and the next and the next…”
Oliver laughs. “You know I’m only here for two weeks.”
Elio looks away, out over the sea, his face overtaken by heartbreak at those mere few words.
Oliver catches Elio’s chin in his hand and draws him around so they’re facing each other again. “And then we’ll figure it out from there, all right?”
“Will we, though?” In Elio’s face, defiance mixes with fear, a desire to demand answers with a dread of what he might learn if he dares to ask.
“We will,” Oliver says firmly. “There are other academic breaks, there’s the summer. And in half a year you’ll be done with school anyway. Speaking of which, you haven’t told me anything about what you’ve been doing these last months.”
Elio rolls his eyes. “You don’t want to hear about my life at school.”
“Says who?”
“Says the person who has to live through it. You really want to hear about math quizzes, and literature teachers who don’t know one tenth as much as my parents?”
“You know I do.”
Elio laughs. “You’re just saying that.” He slides his hands low, almost to Oliver’s hips, coming to rest teasingly above the ridge of his hipbones.
“I’m ‘just saying that’. You think I ever don’t want to know everything about you?”
Elio grins again. “I could tell you about every single day. Every place I was when I missed you. Everything I thought about before I fell asleep at night.”
“Oh yeah? You’re going to let me in on what goes on in that beautifully sick mind of yours?”
Charmingly, Elio blushes at that and ducks his head. But then his gaze comes up again, strong and certain, and he says, “Everything, Oliver. I want you to know everything.”
Oliver wraps his arms around him even tighter. He wishes they could climb inside each other. Every bit of him wants every bit of Elio, his warm skin and his dark curls and his mischievous mouth. He murmurs it into Elio’s ear. “I want you.”
Elio presses his mouth to Oliver’s throat, hot and wanting. “Tonight,” he whispers.
“Tonight,” Oliver agrees, the word a long sigh. Like a breath he’s been waiting for months to let go.
They stay like that for a while, wrapped in each other’s arms and in the sound of the surf. The air tastes of salt, coming in crisp and cold from the sea. One dark-winged bird swoops overhead. And Elio is warm in Oliver’s arms, so alive that he seems to vibrate with it, his energy that can’t be contained.
Oliver murmurs, “And you: / you, you, you / my later of roses / daily worn true and / more true.” A line of Celan’s poetry they read together, one afternoon in summer.
And Elio - predictably, impossibly brilliant Elio - speaks the next lines without hesitation. “How much, O how much / world. How many / paths.”
It’s clear he, too, remembers that day, quoting poetry to each other in the languorous hours of a summer afternoon, splashing in the pool, wanting to touch each other but trying not to let anyone see.
“You told me that day that I should come back here for Hanukkah,” Oliver says. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“I thought it was a wild dream. Something I could wish for but never really do.”
Elio’s hands slide up again to Oliver’s chest, ever questing. “What changed your mind?”
Oliver stares out at the waves, deep gray and pure white, never ceasing in their rush to embrace the shore. He thinks about these last months of his life in New York: torturing himself with thoughts of this thing he thought could never be, living inside his own head and so lonely there.
“A lot of things,” he says. “But mostly, how much I thought about you, and how I couldn’t stop even when I tried.” Because turnabout is fair play, Oliver finds his way under Elio’s shirt and runs light fingers along the graceful curves of his ribs. Elio shivers gratifyingly. “And,” Oliver adds, “I made a new friend who helped me think things through.”
Elio wiggles his eyebrows. “A new friend? Should I be jealous?”
Oliver laughs out loud. “She’s 82 years old, and her name is Esther. I don’t know, should you?”
Elio darts his head in and nips a kiss at Oliver’s collarbone, where the collar of his coat has flopped open. “She sounds nice. I’d like to meet her.”
“Maybe you will.”
In New York is the thought that hangs unspoken between them. If, next time, we meet in New York.
There are possibilities. And there is time to figure them out.
“You know, we do have to go back up to the house sooner or later.” Oliver has to say it, despite how gladly he could stay exactly like this, with Elio in his arms, not minding the wind in his face or the cold rock pressing against his back. “Your parents are going to get home at some point, and anyway, you’re shivering.”
“No, I’m not,” Elio protests, even though he clearly is. Oliver laughs, and then Elio laughs too, not too proud to admit when he’s being so obviously absurd.
“Besides, Mafalda is making latkes. And all your neighbors are coming over. And I’d be a terrible guest if I didn’t get back there to say hi to your parents.”
He’s always tried to be a good guest for Pro and Mrs. P, who are the best hosts Oliver can imagine. And he’d be a terrible guest indeed if all he did was spirit their son away and not bother to spend time with them, too.
Which raises the question, actually, of how much Pro and Mrs. P know, how much he and Elio can show in front of them. A lot, on both counts, Oliver suspects. It still stuns him that there are parents who could be so okay with this.
Those questions, though, can wait until tomorrow. Let today be their private world, something that’s only for the two of them, even when they’re in the middle of a crowd. Their own secret spark in the air.
“Come on,” he says to Elio. “Try and tell me you don’t want some latkes.”
Elio laughs, then grudgingly nods. “Yeah. I could go for some latkes.”
“That’s what I thought.”
They climb the stairs back up from the beach, Elio following just behind Oliver and reaching out occasionally to let their fingers brush. At the top, Oliver vaults the balustrade gate, then reaches back to haul Elio over.
They land in an inelegant stumble, both laughing.
There’s a small figure waiting in the doorway as they approach the house. Her face is still too far away to see from across the lawn, but she has the unmistakable skinny arms and legs of a child, and a dark sweep of hair Oliver would recognize anywhere.
“Vimini!” he calls, and runs the last distance to the house. He sweeps her up in his arms and spins around and around until she’s laughing. Elio arrives behind them, shaking his head.
Oliver sets Vimini down again. “You look well,” he tells her. That’s not always a predictor of whether she also feels well, but he hopes this time it is.
“I am well,” she tells him solemnly. Then, “You didn’t write to tell me you were coming.”
It’s true, in the rush to make plans and leave New York, he didn’t manage to answer the latest of Vimini’s sweetly devoted letters.
“I had to find out from him,” she adds, pointing at Elio with her chin.
Oliver laughs, because Vimini has always taken this attitude of superiority towards Elio, and he can’t help but find it delightful. Both because it’s so incongruous, coming from a diminutive ten-year-old who doesn’t even come up to Oliver’s armpit, but also because she’s right: in many ways she surpasses them all, not only in intellect but in what she sees and understands.
Vimini knew all about Oliver and Elio, probably long before Oliver or Elio did.
Contrite, he tells her, “I should have written, I know. I’m sorry. It all got decided very fast. But I’ll try to make it up to you while I’m here, okay?”
She cocks her head at him, her gaze assessing, and says, “If it ‘got decided very fast,’ that’s only because you took a long time to make up your mind. You’ve had months and months since you left here, and you always knew you wanted to come back.”
Oliver rests a hand on her shoulder. He’s so fond of this weird, smart, wonderful kid. “Hey, go easy on me, I just got here. Tomorrow you can berate me all day long if you want to.”
Still looking at him with her head to one side, like a bright-eyed bird, Vimini says, “Yes, I think I will berate you tomorrow. If only because you really should have known that Elio would pine if you didn’t come back. It’s not hard to figure out.”
She gives them both a wave, then turns around and goes inside.
Elio is leaning against the outside wall of the house, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” Oliver says. “I just got schooled by a ten-year-old. Is this really any surprise to you?”
“Come here,” Elio says between gasps of laughter. He reaches out and grabs Oliver’s wrist, pulling him toward him.
Oliver thinks Elio is going to tease him for how thoroughly Vimini has him wrapped around her finger, or maybe complain about how she’s clearly set on claiming so much of Oliver’s time while he’s here, although Elio’s never been jealous of that before.
But Elio only says fervently, “I’m so glad you came back.” He drags Oliver up against him and kisses him, hard. Then he’s away and through the door, calling, “Andiamo, Americano! Your latkes are waiting!”
Inside, every corner of the house seems full of cousins and neighbors, though Oliver knows this is probably nowhere near the numbers who will show up by evening.
Voices call out to Oliver as he and Elio pass the open door of the living room. The room holds a congregation of neighbors around Elio’s age, most of whom Oliver vaguely recognizes. Oliver lifts a hand in greeting as they go by and casts his smile all around.
The kitchen is a noisy, happy bustle of chatter and elbows and people wielding large cooking implements. Oliver asks Mafalda if he can help, and is summarily instructed to go enjoy himself instead. But when he demonstrates that he’s actually quite good with a potato grater, she acquiesces and makes space for him at one of the counters, where she sets him up with clean-scrubbed potatoes and an absolutely massive bowl. Then, holding aloft a second grater, she waves Elio over with instructions to do the same as Oliver.
“Thanks a lot,” Elio mouths at Oliver across the counter, but he’s grinning.
Eventually, Oliver is up to his elbows in grated potatoes and the pinkish, starchy liquid that always drains from them. He pretends to flick some of the potato liquid at Elio, who pretends to hate it but gives himself away by smiling the whole time, like his face has settled on grinning as its new default and now can’t ever go back.
And then a voice from behind Oliver says, “Il cauboi!”
Annella’s arms come around his shoulders, and the citrus of her perfume envelopes him. Oliver breathes and sighs.
Her hands stay there, warm on his shoulders, as she pulls back and turns him to face her, so she can properly study him. “Did you have a good flight, caro?”
“As good as can be expected.” Oliver shrugs and laughs. “Long and tedious, but it doesn’t matter. I was just looking forward to getting here.”
She smiles and squeezes his shoulders once more before releasing him. Oliver never noticed before how clearly Elio gets his smile from her. “We’re so lucky to have you back,” she says, and for an instant her eyes flick over to Elio.
She knows, she definitely knows, but the kitchen in this moment is so warm and full of easy happiness that Oliver can’t bring himself to mind.
“I see they’ve put you to work already.” This voice belongs to Pro, who comes up behind Oliver and claps him on the back. Oliver turns to hug him instead, trying not to get potato juice on everyone. Meanwhile, Mrs. P has leaned over to ruffle Elio’s hair and kiss him on the cheek.
Oliver glances across at Elio, to see if he’s rolling his eyes again at everyone making such a fuss over Oliver. But Elio’s face is a kind of hunger, like he wants to swallow this moment whole. With a dizzy soaring in his chest, Oliver feels it too: this moment, all of them here together again, and this time with the possibility of more than a six-week summer idyll.
The afternoon whirls by in cooking and chatter, in the sizzle and snap of batter hitting hot oil in the two massive skillets atop the stove, in the arrival of neighbors to further fill the house.
As evening draws in, Annella calls everyone to the dining room.
A dazzling array of dishes awaits them on the dining room table. There are piles of golden latkes, a platter of sufganiot, and the chocolate gelt Oliver himself brought from New York. There’s a profusion of Italian dishes as well, and many of Mafalda’s pastries. Jugs of local wine stand squeezed into whatever small spaces remain.
But first, a menorah stands on a small table against one wall, its candles ready but not yet lit. All of them, Perlmans and friends and neighbors and cousins, squeeze in somehow around the little table.
Once they’re all gathered, Annella retells the story of Hanukkah for anyone present who isn’t Jewish, which is nearly everyone. Oliver doesn’t catch everything from the flow of her Italian, but key words leap out at him, like freedom and light, and he’s pretty sure he even catches rededication.
“And so for eight nights we light candles, and tonight is the last night,” Annella concludes, in English now. She smiles over at Oliver, who’s wedged between Elio on one side of him and Vimini tucked up against his elbow on the other. “And we celebrate our joy that we have survived this long, and that we are still together.”
She strikes a match to light the shamash, the helper candle. Then she leads the blessings, first the one over the candles, then the one in thanks for miracles.
With the shamash, Annella lights the newest, eighth candle, then she hands the shamash to Pro, who lights the next candle in the row. Elio lights the next one, then Oliver accepts the shamash from his hand and lights the next. He glances at Annella for approval, then hands it on to Vimini to light the one after that. And on it passes, the shamash going hand to hand between friends and neighbors, until all eight lights are kindled.
Annella settles the shamash carefully back into its place in the middle. “Normally, we say the Shehecheyanu only on the first night of the holiday,” she says. She switches into Italian to explain the significance of this blessing that’s recited upon doing something for the first time, or for the first time in a new year. In English again, she says, “But since Oliver has rejoined us tonight, perhaps he would like to say it for this, his first Hanukkah here in Italy?”
Everyone around them makes appreciative noises as Oliver nods, feeling suddenly shaky at the rush of feeling that accompanies those words: his first Hanukkah here.
The gathered friends and neighbors listen in respectful silence as Oliver chants the blessing through to its end: “…shehecheyanu, v’kiyimanu, v’higiyanu la’z’man ha’zeh.”
Who has given us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
Within the crowd, hidden by the press of bodies around them, Elio’s fingers find Oliver’s, and Oliver squeezes Elio’s hand in return. It’s a gesture, and a promise: of tonight, of now, of tomorrow, and of more than all of those.
Pro smiles wide and spreads his arms to encompass everyone in the room, and the table laden with holiday food, and the whole snow-filled world outside. “Welcome, friends,” he says. “Let’s eat.”
The End
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
The lines of Paul Celan’s poetry are from “Rauscht der Brunnen” (“Plashes the Fountain”), the 1972 translation by Michael Hamburger. (Yes, chosen as the most likely/current translation for Elio and Oliver to be reading in 1983!) The afternoon of reading poetry that’s referred back to here is in “Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy.” The other three fics in this series, I’ve written so that they can also work as stand-alones, but this final one has little references back to all of the previous three. :-)
Updated to add! This series now has a fifth story, a coda set once they're both together in New York: Will Wonders Ever Cease.
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)