When I'm Gone
Title: When I’m Gone
Pairing: Domlijah
Rating: G
Summary: This is a weird’n. They meet, basically, that’s it, but there’s so much more to it then that. They’re both odd characters… just go for it, you may like it ^^ Ok. There are two endings to this fic. One is two lines long and one is extended, you may take your pick. If you like being freaked out the first is for you, and WARNING if you choose it. The second is much more normal - try and ignore the first completely if you prefer it because it changes Dom completely.
Note: Inspired by the song of the same name by Three Doors Down.
Warning: Character death either way.
Feedback: Please! I’d really like to hear what you think of this one.
When your education X Ray,
Cannot see under my skin.
I won’t tell you a damn thing,
That I could not tell my friends.
Roaming through this darkness,
I’m alive but I’m alone.
Part of me is fighting this,
But part of me is gone.
“Sorry.” Someone coming out of an isle bumped a trolley into Elijah’s hip. He glanced down from stretching up to get a bottle of ketchup from a shelf; Leather trench coat. Eyeliner. Trilby. Gold scarf. Nail polish. Black tank.
Gay. He comes down off his tiptoes (feeling stupid and short) and waved it away.
“No worries.”
“Want me to…?” He pointed up casually. Elijah blushed then gave an embarrassed laugh and nodded. The blonde took the bottle down and handed it to him. Looking down, he saw the man was probably little taller then he, but he had thick black platform boots, black leather and chains snaking up to his knees. Rock boots he thought they were called. He felt very boring in his jeans and fake converses.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. You don’t sound like a local boy…” It was more a question then a statement.
“Not; Rapid Falls, Iowa. Moved here when I was nine cause of family proble-” It had just sort of slipped out. He waited for a ‘I didn’t ask for you life story.’ He had a habit of going too much with instincts of people, he often came out the worst when they were wrong. But nevertheless, he had a feeling he could talk to this guy. Bizarre.
“Hmm. Care to tell me more about yourself over a drink?” Elijah blanched.
“Oh no I’m not-” He said hurriedly.
“I know. C’mon.” He smiled.
~
So he did. In the pub around the corner, supermarket bags stowed beneath the table, he was chatting animatedly to Dominic. He gathered he was an artist two years out of collage and topping up funds illustrating children’s books.
“I want to know more about you.” He told Elijah, sipping his beer.
“Oh, well…” Elijah was suddenly a lot less keen. “I’m, not so interesting. I work in here; I help arrange the bands and stuff. I’m still in sixth form.” He blushed.
“Cool.”
~
Several drinks later and the sun had set outside, leaving them in soft evening gloom. Dom had lent around the bench to talk, which he was doing faster and with more hand involvement the more he drank. Elijah sat back and listened, stowing everything he could catch to memory. He liked listening to Dom talk, it sounded so different to all the Londoners that surrounded him, he was fresh and strange. His friends were frankly boring. Like him…
“Come on!” Dom pulling his sleeve interrupted him. He got up without argument and was taken out the door, bags left under the table. He suddenly felt a lot more drunk for having stood up and he wobbled on the pavement. Dom strode with a tipsy swagger and laughed, helping Elijah right himself.
“Where we goin’?” He coughed out.
“I don’t know.” Dom swung round extravagantly, beaming. “Take me somewhere. Somewhere I’ve never been, somewhere exciting, exotic!” He chewed on the words as he said them, like someone tasting wine, like someone enjoying life. Elijah smiled at this. He was infectious. “Ok!” Said Dom, as if Elijah had agreed. “Where are we going?”
He was silent and stood still to let Elijah think. Only then did he notice they were in a small park. It was dark, the streetlamps glow long since falling short and allowing the high trees to cast their thick shadows uninterrupted.
“I want to go in there.” And he began to walk into the woods. Dom strode beside him and Elijah had a peculiar urge to hold his hand. He folded his arms to have something to do with them, and must have looked ridiculous. Dom jumped onto a log and spread his arms.
“Good choice.” He said softly. “I like it here.” He breathed in, long and slow. “Smell it. Smells like… water, and graveyards, and fire.” He was the strangest, most eccentric person Elijah had ever met, and he longed to be like him. To be noticed. To have people stop and stare yet not care what they thought.
“Come here.” Dom held his hand out, but Elijah climbed up onto the log unaided; he didn’t want to touch him. Well… he sort of, did. That’s what made him not want to.
He stood beside Dom.
“Look.” He pointed up. “The leaves leave a star shaped bit of sky, with one star in it. Looks pretty but it’s the Wicca symbol. Things that look good are usually bad for the soul.”
Usually Elijah would laugh at a statement like that, but now it made sense. Too much sense. He looked at Dom for a long while while he looked at his Wicca sky. After a minute Dom looked back.
“You know what people say about me? That I don’t let anything shock me.”
“Wish I had that luxury-”
“I tried to raise Satan when I was fourteen. Had the candles and everything, even this bit of road kill I found on the way home from school. I didn’t actually try to find out what I was meant to do, obviously it was wrong, but I just did it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“For me, this is just conversation, these aren’t secrets you only tell the closest person in the world to you. When I was little I used to sit with a mirror on my lap and try to put my hand through. When I touched the reflection I would pray for warm skin instead of cold glass. Once I did put my hand through…got a lot of cuts and blood for my trouble.”
“Why?”
“I hated being alone. Even when people surrounded me I was alone. So I’d sit with a mirror for hours on end, not being alone. My mum thought I was just vain. But when I realised people didn’t like me, just automatically, I stopped trying altogether. So when I did look in the mirror I would see another person I liked. I dressed and talked the way I wanted, and it made me happy.”
Elijah’s brain had been on temporary standby, but in the silence that followed it snapped back on. He had just been told the weirdest things anyone had ever said out loud; it was poetry, the kinds of things that go on inside his head, bouncing off the walls and crying, until they die and his headaches stop. More would simply take their place. But just hearing this… creature, say them made him feel better. They weren’t his exact words but it was poetry nonetheless.
“I… I’ve always wanted to say things like that. And now I can, and I can’t. I mean, someone will listen, and I don’t know what to say.” Dom smiled knowingly.
“Such is the way of the world. Try?” Elijah sat and sighed; Dom joined him and watched patiently, like a puppy.
“I… I used to lie under my bed, I could move the skirting so no one could see me, then let my mom and sister run around for hours looking for me then come out and say I fell asleep. I was a stupid kid.”
“No, no that’s not stupid. You wanted to see what would happen, how much they’d panic.”
“Yes.” He said pointlessly. “And I’d paint things on the wall I didn’t mean, like ‘I hate myself’ and ‘I want to die’ just so my mum would pay someone to listen to me talk; it fascinated me. But he actually cared so I stopped going.”
“Honestly Lij, I think we’re just two fucked up people in a shitty world of cynics and stock-brokers. Two people who feel too much when most are willing to sell their emotion for a billboard and fifteen minutes of fame. We’re a rare breed nowadays.” He finished this impressive perspective and took a deep, unconcerned drag on his cigarette.
“Well then, I guess us rare-breeds have to stick together.” And Lij grinned then yawned; it was late. He closed his mouth and had not yet unsquinched his eyes when something brushed his lips. His eyes snapped open but Dom was sitting back, staring up, and smoking.
“Did you just…?” Lij’s brows furrowed and he dragged a hand across his mouth.
“Did I what?” Asked Dom lightly. Lij was suddenly annoyed, and sure he had but if he were wrong that would be mortifying.
“I told you I wasn’t… I did say…” As he stuttered in a mildly outraged manner Dom simply smiled.
“Wishful thinking my friend. If I had you’d know.” And to demonstrate why he stuck out his tongue and Lij noticed for the first time the shining piercing in it. Lij was still disgruntled.
“Well, don’t, please. I might be impressed by you but I’m no little boy to be taken advantage of.”
“Ok, picture gotten, I’m sorry. Like I said, I just kinda do my own thing. I’ll go if you want.”
“No, please. But it’s late. I’ll be working in the pub tomorrow if you wanna come by for a drink though, yeah?”
“Sounds like a plan. Six-ish?”
“Cool.” And they stood, shook hands, and went their separate ways.
“Evening.” Said a quiet voice in Lij’s ear as he pored over a schedule.
“Hi.” He grinned and fetched them pints (on him; he got a great discount). Then they talked, for almost the entire evening, the occasional interruption from some roadie wanting a file or schedule. Dom began:
“I moved down here when I was eighteen to study art, and my roommate got me hooked on uppers for about a year until I scraped out my A levels and never saw him again. But not before he also broke my heart, pretty savagely actually, and my mum had to move down here for another year to pay my rent and keep me generally alive. Well, by alive I mean breathing. I was dead for a lot of that time and put up more barriers then your average prison has; no one could touch me, not my mum, or my brother Matt, and we were always like that.” He crossed his fingers in demonstration.
“I let no one in so there was no one there in the end to drag me out, so I had to, and I came kicking and screaming. He took my heart, my virginity, my spirit, and my body, returning all of them in pieces. All because I tried to come off his little friends. Then one day I just sat up, probably for the first time in days and thought ‘fuck this. I have nothing left to give, so no one can take, therefore I have nothing to fear.” He nonchalantly sipped his drink. “And that was that, I went back to my life. That was a year ago nearly.”
All that had come, quite at random, from between the most inane banter you expect to come between two men drinking lager and munching crisps. His little monologue left Elijah quite stunned. No one talked like that, it was beautiful. Dom was raw with emotion and life, and so young. He felt like a baby, let out into the world, and faced with a war-torn warrior, telling him great tales of valour that he could aspire to. In short, he felt quite pathetic.
“I… I know this is going to be incredibly offensive but you’re lucky.” He carried on before Dom could interrupt, though he didn’t try. “At least you’ve felt it and it’s gone. People like me live in constant fear of our first experience like that, then that’s exactly the reason we fall into it when it comes; we’re so desperate to get it out of the way that the first chance we get we’ll fall of the cliff with a smile on our face, no matter how much we can’t trust them, or how much they might hurt us.”
“Elijah.” Dom had an unusual expression on his face; sheer awe. “That’s genius. That should be on a billboard and less people might do that. That kind of sentiment saves lives Lij, really!”
“No.” He said sardonically. “Not really, I said it and I’d still do it. We all know it really Dom, but when the time comes it’ll fly out of my head and I’ll never know it was even there.” Sad but true, he knew Dom wasn’t stupid and he sounded like he’d been more or less shredded by it. It being that little old cunt called love.
“If you don’t mind me saying, if you hadn’t pointed it out - more then once” He added with a grin. “- that you weren’t gay, I would completely assume you were. I mean, you can spell ‘emotion’ which leaves you effeminate at best. Not that all of us walk around in lip gloss and heels.” He said thoughtfully. “Though I will say I’ve had my moments, but no, I just mean a straight laced one of us if much more common then an understanding and thoughtful one of you.”
“You talk like we’re from different planets.”
“Venus and Mars?” Dom smirked. Lij sighed.
“You know what I mean. You don’t think the lines blur at all?”
“Do you?”
“Not for me.” Lij attached this to the end of the question without a beat being missed; he felt he already knew Dom well, he’d known he would come back with that and was ready for it. Dom laughed, exasperated.
“You really think I’m gonna forget and come onto you don’t you? I’m gay, not just horny, ok? Let’s clear that up.” It was a joke but he did sound secretly annoyed, and Lij supposed that was a bandied prejudice, that they would do it whoever and whenever.
“Sorry, I don’t think that. Anyway; blurry lines?”
“Sure. We’re all people; we just lump and bump a bit differently on the outside don’t we? Depends whether you can see past the lumps and bumps or not. Just imagine how many people haven’t met their natural and only real other half; their soul mate, even if they walked past them in the street, just because they were what they assumed was the wrong gender. ‘We’re heterosexual by default, not by decision.’ like Rents says.”
“Who?” Dom had put on a decent Scottish accent to quote something Lij had never heard. Dom looked scandalised.
“Mark Renton; Trainspotting.”
“Missed that one, I think I was too busy riding a trike when that came out.” Lij joked. Dom was not impressed.
“No excuse, none at all! I must enlighten you ASAP my friend. May I kidnap you and educate you on good film?” Lij could not really resist this request so strangely put, so before he knew it he was being shown into a very small flat with scuzzy carpet and hand painted walls bearing people and scenery that he stopped at length to stare at. Some wore pink kaftans and smoked cigarettes in long jade holders, while some crouched behind the beaten sofa in obvious mental torment. Even his home showed the extremes in which this man felt, and Lij suddenly, - staring at a black man curled up inside himself and bleeding from the head while shadows overtook him and plucked out his eyes - had a huge urge to back-pedal, make excuses, run home and never see Dom again.
He suppressed it; he was tired to death of people who barely felt at all, but he had fallen in with them and now had to dig and kick himself out of them. So he dug, and sat defiantly on the sofa while Dom rifled through a cupboard, emerging with a video. And this was stuck in the video machine, a six-pack plonked on the coffee table.
Elijah loved the film, but Dom had to rewind it from time to time because the accents had fogged the dialogue to Elijah’s ears.
They had finished the beer and it was weak stuff so it affected them only mildly.
“Hey, any objection to cigarettes of questionable legality?” Dom asked slowly.
“If you mean pot then quite the opposite.” Lij smiled, staring tiredly into middle distance. So Dom rolled one up and handed it to him. “Thanks.” He dragged on it.
After they had passed it back and forth a while and it was nearly down to the roach, Dom spoke. “Know what shot gunning is?”
“Nuhuh.” Lij barely enunciated, slack jawed, and transfixed by the still rolling black and white film credits.
“T’s cool. You put the lit end in your mouth and blow it out the roach.” He gingerly opened his mouth wide and put the burning nub inside, lips closing slowly round it, ready for the burn. But it didn’t come, and he blew a thick, globular puff of smoke out.
He beckoned to Lij who lent forward a little and he blew it to his mouth, Lij taking it in his mouth and grinning before exhaling from his nose. Dom chuckled, breathing in a mixture of smoke, ash and heat. He choked and spat and spasmed, the end of the spliff bouncing away into the carpet. Lij passed him a forgotten can of beer and he took a long drink, then they both laughed until they cried and slumped back on the sagging sofa.
“If you weren’t a guy I’d be in love with you by now.”
“Then you’re a homophile my friend.”
“M not.”
“How many people, not parents or sibs or whatnot, have you loved?”
“Three.”
“Including me?”
“I’m not in love with you.”
“No, ok, then you’re one quarter homophile. You say, wrongly, that you’re boring; there’s an interesting fact about you.”
“I’m no fraction at all any kind of ‘phile. Makes me sound sick.”
“True, it’s a bad word. I mean, it means you love the same sex but not in a sexual way, that’s a nice thing, so dunno why it got such a horrible name. Shoulda called it… a homo-amour.”
“What?”
“Amour, love. You’re one quarter homo-amour. Congrats.” He chuckled.
“I can’t be bothered to get annoyed with you.”
“Ever tested it?”
“What, if I can be bothered?”
“No, if you’re a hundred per cent straight.”
“Don’t even go there.” Dom sighed.
“Mate, please get over thinking I’m gonna try and rape you, it’s no basis for a friendship. Unless maybe you’re secretly hoping I’ll come onto you if you bring it up enough? Hm? ‘The lady doth protest too much.’ and all that?”
“I’m not a lady asshole.”
“That’s it?”
“What?”
“All you can find to argue with about that is you’re not a lady?”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I can see that fool, I mean… never mind.”
“I wasn’t dedicating the rest with an answer.”
“Dignifying.”
“T’s what I said.”
The quick fire conversation died, opening the floodgates for thought: Lij was feeling more unstable and unsafe with every passing second. If you talk enough about something you can’t help but think it so flashes of Dom kissing him had come into his mind and now he sweated with paranoia and shame. But why; he couldn’t help but think. Car crash syndrome; now this was happening he couldn’t leave it be.
He was ashamed because it was wrong. Why? The annoying child who was stuck on that word to get his attention, the way we all used to do to our mothers, kept at it. Because it was. That was no answer that was the kind of answer that told the child it had won.
He had been wishing to be more like Dom, do what he pleased. If he wanted to kiss him, why shouldn’t he? Who was watching, who was judging? No one was here, but himself and this fascinating, obliging person. A person could be either gender. That was a dumb thing to think. He had been staring a the ceiling in silence and now closed his eyes, making a gamble; if Dom had fallen asleep in the five minutes he had been thinking silently, he would ignore this impulse and never have it again. If he was awake he had to act on it, now.
He turned blindly to Dom and on three in his mind he opened his eyes. Shite. Dom was watching him. Well, if you can’t keep promises to yourself what could you do? Not much.
“If I did something, then afterwards say I never want to do or talk about it ever, ever again, would you agree?”
“Depends what it i-”
“No, no it doesn’t. Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
Elijah sat forward on the sofa and pressed his lips to Dom’s. Dom put an encouraging but not pushy hand to his upper arm.
After some unnamed measure of time between seconds and years, he broke away. Then he punched Dom in the chest.
“That wasn’t fair’ I’m stoned.”
“Don’t do that Lij.” Growled Dom, stomach muscles smarting. “I won’t let you. You did that all on your own.”
“You should have stopped me.”
“Why?”
“You might seem special to me, like no one talks that way and so it means something, But I’m a stranger; you didn’t tell me anything you don’t tell everyone, friends and anyone.
“That’s true. But you weren’t my friend, really, and I told you those things.”
Lij closed his mouth again. That was true. He felt stupid.
“Sorry.”
“No need. I can knock people a little sideways sometimes. If you want to go I don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
“Ok.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
((Right, multiple choice time. Take your pick, both pick up from the lines above.))
-------------------------------------------------------------
He didn’t. He never left that flat, and the next day Dom was sat on his floor, painting a new person on his wall. Someone ghostly, translucent, but inside they were a riot of colour that seemed to hurtle towards you, but never reaching. Never reaching.
-------------------------------------------------------------
“Well that’s fine then.” Dom sat back, and there amicable silence, until Elijah broke it.
“Do it again.” Dom had his eyes shut and merely raised an eyebrow.
“Ey?”
“Do it again.” They had been so much on the same wavelength, could Dom please not choose now to make him spell it out? He coloured at the mere thought.
“You, my friend, did everything. I’ll let you though. Just don’t hit me again.” Elijah didn’t say anything, just slid over a little. But now that he had actually said it, and thought about it, he was too nervous. He’d asked for it to never be mentioned again; why do it twice? He’d liked it, that’s why, his drug-addled mind retorted.
Dom saved him further internal debate by sitting up and doing it for him. Stubble brushed his jaw, and it was hot and soft as Dom invaded his mouth.
He suddenly pulled back and Lij snapped his eyes open. “Lij, promise, no matter how much shit I put you through, don’t stop being my friend. I don’t want to have to talk to myself in the mirror anymore. I want to talk to you instead. I want this part of me that’s gone, that you woke up, to stay.”
From anyone else he’d known two days, at any other time, this would be insane and creepy and Lijah would get out of there and never look back. But somehow he couldn’t. Because he didn’t want this part, as Dom called it, that everyone had, the part in him to ever go to begin with. It sounded to painful to bear. He could trust Dom not to break anything in him.
Dom was still looking at him, sincerely and a little desperately. Elijah nodded, just once.
He was looking at the photographs with tears in his eyes. It pained him in a way he could not fathom. It was an early photograph, very early - Dom still had vestiges of one broken hanging around him. He, Elijah, had never been broken. Dom had taken care of all of him, every hidden want and grievance looked after. And did he regret it, not knowing what heartbreak felt like, after seventy-two years, fifty-four years of Dom? Not for a single moment.
But now Dom was gone, and his heart was quite, quite broken.
So hold me when I'm here,
Right me when I'm wrong,
Hold me when I'm scared,
And love me when I'm gone.
Pairing: Domlijah
Rating: G
Summary: This is a weird’n. They meet, basically, that’s it, but there’s so much more to it then that. They’re both odd characters… just go for it, you may like it ^^ Ok. There are two endings to this fic. One is two lines long and one is extended, you may take your pick. If you like being freaked out the first is for you, and WARNING if you choose it. The second is much more normal - try and ignore the first completely if you prefer it because it changes Dom completely.
Note: Inspired by the song of the same name by Three Doors Down.
Warning: Character death either way.
Feedback: Please! I’d really like to hear what you think of this one.
When your education X Ray,
Cannot see under my skin.
I won’t tell you a damn thing,
That I could not tell my friends.
Roaming through this darkness,
I’m alive but I’m alone.
Part of me is fighting this,
But part of me is gone.
“Sorry.” Someone coming out of an isle bumped a trolley into Elijah’s hip. He glanced down from stretching up to get a bottle of ketchup from a shelf; Leather trench coat. Eyeliner. Trilby. Gold scarf. Nail polish. Black tank.
Gay. He comes down off his tiptoes (feeling stupid and short) and waved it away.
“No worries.”
“Want me to…?” He pointed up casually. Elijah blushed then gave an embarrassed laugh and nodded. The blonde took the bottle down and handed it to him. Looking down, he saw the man was probably little taller then he, but he had thick black platform boots, black leather and chains snaking up to his knees. Rock boots he thought they were called. He felt very boring in his jeans and fake converses.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. You don’t sound like a local boy…” It was more a question then a statement.
“Not; Rapid Falls, Iowa. Moved here when I was nine cause of family proble-” It had just sort of slipped out. He waited for a ‘I didn’t ask for you life story.’ He had a habit of going too much with instincts of people, he often came out the worst when they were wrong. But nevertheless, he had a feeling he could talk to this guy. Bizarre.
“Hmm. Care to tell me more about yourself over a drink?” Elijah blanched.
“Oh no I’m not-” He said hurriedly.
“I know. C’mon.” He smiled.
~
So he did. In the pub around the corner, supermarket bags stowed beneath the table, he was chatting animatedly to Dominic. He gathered he was an artist two years out of collage and topping up funds illustrating children’s books.
“I want to know more about you.” He told Elijah, sipping his beer.
“Oh, well…” Elijah was suddenly a lot less keen. “I’m, not so interesting. I work in here; I help arrange the bands and stuff. I’m still in sixth form.” He blushed.
“Cool.”
~
Several drinks later and the sun had set outside, leaving them in soft evening gloom. Dom had lent around the bench to talk, which he was doing faster and with more hand involvement the more he drank. Elijah sat back and listened, stowing everything he could catch to memory. He liked listening to Dom talk, it sounded so different to all the Londoners that surrounded him, he was fresh and strange. His friends were frankly boring. Like him…
“Come on!” Dom pulling his sleeve interrupted him. He got up without argument and was taken out the door, bags left under the table. He suddenly felt a lot more drunk for having stood up and he wobbled on the pavement. Dom strode with a tipsy swagger and laughed, helping Elijah right himself.
“Where we goin’?” He coughed out.
“I don’t know.” Dom swung round extravagantly, beaming. “Take me somewhere. Somewhere I’ve never been, somewhere exciting, exotic!” He chewed on the words as he said them, like someone tasting wine, like someone enjoying life. Elijah smiled at this. He was infectious. “Ok!” Said Dom, as if Elijah had agreed. “Where are we going?”
He was silent and stood still to let Elijah think. Only then did he notice they were in a small park. It was dark, the streetlamps glow long since falling short and allowing the high trees to cast their thick shadows uninterrupted.
“I want to go in there.” And he began to walk into the woods. Dom strode beside him and Elijah had a peculiar urge to hold his hand. He folded his arms to have something to do with them, and must have looked ridiculous. Dom jumped onto a log and spread his arms.
“Good choice.” He said softly. “I like it here.” He breathed in, long and slow. “Smell it. Smells like… water, and graveyards, and fire.” He was the strangest, most eccentric person Elijah had ever met, and he longed to be like him. To be noticed. To have people stop and stare yet not care what they thought.
“Come here.” Dom held his hand out, but Elijah climbed up onto the log unaided; he didn’t want to touch him. Well… he sort of, did. That’s what made him not want to.
He stood beside Dom.
“Look.” He pointed up. “The leaves leave a star shaped bit of sky, with one star in it. Looks pretty but it’s the Wicca symbol. Things that look good are usually bad for the soul.”
Usually Elijah would laugh at a statement like that, but now it made sense. Too much sense. He looked at Dom for a long while while he looked at his Wicca sky. After a minute Dom looked back.
“You know what people say about me? That I don’t let anything shock me.”
“Wish I had that luxury-”
“I tried to raise Satan when I was fourteen. Had the candles and everything, even this bit of road kill I found on the way home from school. I didn’t actually try to find out what I was meant to do, obviously it was wrong, but I just did it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“For me, this is just conversation, these aren’t secrets you only tell the closest person in the world to you. When I was little I used to sit with a mirror on my lap and try to put my hand through. When I touched the reflection I would pray for warm skin instead of cold glass. Once I did put my hand through…got a lot of cuts and blood for my trouble.”
“Why?”
“I hated being alone. Even when people surrounded me I was alone. So I’d sit with a mirror for hours on end, not being alone. My mum thought I was just vain. But when I realised people didn’t like me, just automatically, I stopped trying altogether. So when I did look in the mirror I would see another person I liked. I dressed and talked the way I wanted, and it made me happy.”
Elijah’s brain had been on temporary standby, but in the silence that followed it snapped back on. He had just been told the weirdest things anyone had ever said out loud; it was poetry, the kinds of things that go on inside his head, bouncing off the walls and crying, until they die and his headaches stop. More would simply take their place. But just hearing this… creature, say them made him feel better. They weren’t his exact words but it was poetry nonetheless.
“I… I’ve always wanted to say things like that. And now I can, and I can’t. I mean, someone will listen, and I don’t know what to say.” Dom smiled knowingly.
“Such is the way of the world. Try?” Elijah sat and sighed; Dom joined him and watched patiently, like a puppy.
“I… I used to lie under my bed, I could move the skirting so no one could see me, then let my mom and sister run around for hours looking for me then come out and say I fell asleep. I was a stupid kid.”
“No, no that’s not stupid. You wanted to see what would happen, how much they’d panic.”
“Yes.” He said pointlessly. “And I’d paint things on the wall I didn’t mean, like ‘I hate myself’ and ‘I want to die’ just so my mum would pay someone to listen to me talk; it fascinated me. But he actually cared so I stopped going.”
“Honestly Lij, I think we’re just two fucked up people in a shitty world of cynics and stock-brokers. Two people who feel too much when most are willing to sell their emotion for a billboard and fifteen minutes of fame. We’re a rare breed nowadays.” He finished this impressive perspective and took a deep, unconcerned drag on his cigarette.
“Well then, I guess us rare-breeds have to stick together.” And Lij grinned then yawned; it was late. He closed his mouth and had not yet unsquinched his eyes when something brushed his lips. His eyes snapped open but Dom was sitting back, staring up, and smoking.
“Did you just…?” Lij’s brows furrowed and he dragged a hand across his mouth.
“Did I what?” Asked Dom lightly. Lij was suddenly annoyed, and sure he had but if he were wrong that would be mortifying.
“I told you I wasn’t… I did say…” As he stuttered in a mildly outraged manner Dom simply smiled.
“Wishful thinking my friend. If I had you’d know.” And to demonstrate why he stuck out his tongue and Lij noticed for the first time the shining piercing in it. Lij was still disgruntled.
“Well, don’t, please. I might be impressed by you but I’m no little boy to be taken advantage of.”
“Ok, picture gotten, I’m sorry. Like I said, I just kinda do my own thing. I’ll go if you want.”
“No, please. But it’s late. I’ll be working in the pub tomorrow if you wanna come by for a drink though, yeah?”
“Sounds like a plan. Six-ish?”
“Cool.” And they stood, shook hands, and went their separate ways.
“Evening.” Said a quiet voice in Lij’s ear as he pored over a schedule.
“Hi.” He grinned and fetched them pints (on him; he got a great discount). Then they talked, for almost the entire evening, the occasional interruption from some roadie wanting a file or schedule. Dom began:
“I moved down here when I was eighteen to study art, and my roommate got me hooked on uppers for about a year until I scraped out my A levels and never saw him again. But not before he also broke my heart, pretty savagely actually, and my mum had to move down here for another year to pay my rent and keep me generally alive. Well, by alive I mean breathing. I was dead for a lot of that time and put up more barriers then your average prison has; no one could touch me, not my mum, or my brother Matt, and we were always like that.” He crossed his fingers in demonstration.
“I let no one in so there was no one there in the end to drag me out, so I had to, and I came kicking and screaming. He took my heart, my virginity, my spirit, and my body, returning all of them in pieces. All because I tried to come off his little friends. Then one day I just sat up, probably for the first time in days and thought ‘fuck this. I have nothing left to give, so no one can take, therefore I have nothing to fear.” He nonchalantly sipped his drink. “And that was that, I went back to my life. That was a year ago nearly.”
All that had come, quite at random, from between the most inane banter you expect to come between two men drinking lager and munching crisps. His little monologue left Elijah quite stunned. No one talked like that, it was beautiful. Dom was raw with emotion and life, and so young. He felt like a baby, let out into the world, and faced with a war-torn warrior, telling him great tales of valour that he could aspire to. In short, he felt quite pathetic.
“I… I know this is going to be incredibly offensive but you’re lucky.” He carried on before Dom could interrupt, though he didn’t try. “At least you’ve felt it and it’s gone. People like me live in constant fear of our first experience like that, then that’s exactly the reason we fall into it when it comes; we’re so desperate to get it out of the way that the first chance we get we’ll fall of the cliff with a smile on our face, no matter how much we can’t trust them, or how much they might hurt us.”
“Elijah.” Dom had an unusual expression on his face; sheer awe. “That’s genius. That should be on a billboard and less people might do that. That kind of sentiment saves lives Lij, really!”
“No.” He said sardonically. “Not really, I said it and I’d still do it. We all know it really Dom, but when the time comes it’ll fly out of my head and I’ll never know it was even there.” Sad but true, he knew Dom wasn’t stupid and he sounded like he’d been more or less shredded by it. It being that little old cunt called love.
“If you don’t mind me saying, if you hadn’t pointed it out - more then once” He added with a grin. “- that you weren’t gay, I would completely assume you were. I mean, you can spell ‘emotion’ which leaves you effeminate at best. Not that all of us walk around in lip gloss and heels.” He said thoughtfully. “Though I will say I’ve had my moments, but no, I just mean a straight laced one of us if much more common then an understanding and thoughtful one of you.”
“You talk like we’re from different planets.”
“Venus and Mars?” Dom smirked. Lij sighed.
“You know what I mean. You don’t think the lines blur at all?”
“Do you?”
“Not for me.” Lij attached this to the end of the question without a beat being missed; he felt he already knew Dom well, he’d known he would come back with that and was ready for it. Dom laughed, exasperated.
“You really think I’m gonna forget and come onto you don’t you? I’m gay, not just horny, ok? Let’s clear that up.” It was a joke but he did sound secretly annoyed, and Lij supposed that was a bandied prejudice, that they would do it whoever and whenever.
“Sorry, I don’t think that. Anyway; blurry lines?”
“Sure. We’re all people; we just lump and bump a bit differently on the outside don’t we? Depends whether you can see past the lumps and bumps or not. Just imagine how many people haven’t met their natural and only real other half; their soul mate, even if they walked past them in the street, just because they were what they assumed was the wrong gender. ‘We’re heterosexual by default, not by decision.’ like Rents says.”
“Who?” Dom had put on a decent Scottish accent to quote something Lij had never heard. Dom looked scandalised.
“Mark Renton; Trainspotting.”
“Missed that one, I think I was too busy riding a trike when that came out.” Lij joked. Dom was not impressed.
“No excuse, none at all! I must enlighten you ASAP my friend. May I kidnap you and educate you on good film?” Lij could not really resist this request so strangely put, so before he knew it he was being shown into a very small flat with scuzzy carpet and hand painted walls bearing people and scenery that he stopped at length to stare at. Some wore pink kaftans and smoked cigarettes in long jade holders, while some crouched behind the beaten sofa in obvious mental torment. Even his home showed the extremes in which this man felt, and Lij suddenly, - staring at a black man curled up inside himself and bleeding from the head while shadows overtook him and plucked out his eyes - had a huge urge to back-pedal, make excuses, run home and never see Dom again.
He suppressed it; he was tired to death of people who barely felt at all, but he had fallen in with them and now had to dig and kick himself out of them. So he dug, and sat defiantly on the sofa while Dom rifled through a cupboard, emerging with a video. And this was stuck in the video machine, a six-pack plonked on the coffee table.
Elijah loved the film, but Dom had to rewind it from time to time because the accents had fogged the dialogue to Elijah’s ears.
They had finished the beer and it was weak stuff so it affected them only mildly.
“Hey, any objection to cigarettes of questionable legality?” Dom asked slowly.
“If you mean pot then quite the opposite.” Lij smiled, staring tiredly into middle distance. So Dom rolled one up and handed it to him. “Thanks.” He dragged on it.
After they had passed it back and forth a while and it was nearly down to the roach, Dom spoke. “Know what shot gunning is?”
“Nuhuh.” Lij barely enunciated, slack jawed, and transfixed by the still rolling black and white film credits.
“T’s cool. You put the lit end in your mouth and blow it out the roach.” He gingerly opened his mouth wide and put the burning nub inside, lips closing slowly round it, ready for the burn. But it didn’t come, and he blew a thick, globular puff of smoke out.
He beckoned to Lij who lent forward a little and he blew it to his mouth, Lij taking it in his mouth and grinning before exhaling from his nose. Dom chuckled, breathing in a mixture of smoke, ash and heat. He choked and spat and spasmed, the end of the spliff bouncing away into the carpet. Lij passed him a forgotten can of beer and he took a long drink, then they both laughed until they cried and slumped back on the sagging sofa.
“If you weren’t a guy I’d be in love with you by now.”
“Then you’re a homophile my friend.”
“M not.”
“How many people, not parents or sibs or whatnot, have you loved?”
“Three.”
“Including me?”
“I’m not in love with you.”
“No, ok, then you’re one quarter homophile. You say, wrongly, that you’re boring; there’s an interesting fact about you.”
“I’m no fraction at all any kind of ‘phile. Makes me sound sick.”
“True, it’s a bad word. I mean, it means you love the same sex but not in a sexual way, that’s a nice thing, so dunno why it got such a horrible name. Shoulda called it… a homo-amour.”
“What?”
“Amour, love. You’re one quarter homo-amour. Congrats.” He chuckled.
“I can’t be bothered to get annoyed with you.”
“Ever tested it?”
“What, if I can be bothered?”
“No, if you’re a hundred per cent straight.”
“Don’t even go there.” Dom sighed.
“Mate, please get over thinking I’m gonna try and rape you, it’s no basis for a friendship. Unless maybe you’re secretly hoping I’ll come onto you if you bring it up enough? Hm? ‘The lady doth protest too much.’ and all that?”
“I’m not a lady asshole.”
“That’s it?”
“What?”
“All you can find to argue with about that is you’re not a lady?”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I can see that fool, I mean… never mind.”
“I wasn’t dedicating the rest with an answer.”
“Dignifying.”
“T’s what I said.”
The quick fire conversation died, opening the floodgates for thought: Lij was feeling more unstable and unsafe with every passing second. If you talk enough about something you can’t help but think it so flashes of Dom kissing him had come into his mind and now he sweated with paranoia and shame. But why; he couldn’t help but think. Car crash syndrome; now this was happening he couldn’t leave it be.
He was ashamed because it was wrong. Why? The annoying child who was stuck on that word to get his attention, the way we all used to do to our mothers, kept at it. Because it was. That was no answer that was the kind of answer that told the child it had won.
He had been wishing to be more like Dom, do what he pleased. If he wanted to kiss him, why shouldn’t he? Who was watching, who was judging? No one was here, but himself and this fascinating, obliging person. A person could be either gender. That was a dumb thing to think. He had been staring a the ceiling in silence and now closed his eyes, making a gamble; if Dom had fallen asleep in the five minutes he had been thinking silently, he would ignore this impulse and never have it again. If he was awake he had to act on it, now.
He turned blindly to Dom and on three in his mind he opened his eyes. Shite. Dom was watching him. Well, if you can’t keep promises to yourself what could you do? Not much.
“If I did something, then afterwards say I never want to do or talk about it ever, ever again, would you agree?”
“Depends what it i-”
“No, no it doesn’t. Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
Elijah sat forward on the sofa and pressed his lips to Dom’s. Dom put an encouraging but not pushy hand to his upper arm.
After some unnamed measure of time between seconds and years, he broke away. Then he punched Dom in the chest.
“That wasn’t fair’ I’m stoned.”
“Don’t do that Lij.” Growled Dom, stomach muscles smarting. “I won’t let you. You did that all on your own.”
“You should have stopped me.”
“Why?”
“You might seem special to me, like no one talks that way and so it means something, But I’m a stranger; you didn’t tell me anything you don’t tell everyone, friends and anyone.
“That’s true. But you weren’t my friend, really, and I told you those things.”
Lij closed his mouth again. That was true. He felt stupid.
“Sorry.”
“No need. I can knock people a little sideways sometimes. If you want to go I don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
“Ok.”
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((Right, multiple choice time. Take your pick, both pick up from the lines above.))
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He didn’t. He never left that flat, and the next day Dom was sat on his floor, painting a new person on his wall. Someone ghostly, translucent, but inside they were a riot of colour that seemed to hurtle towards you, but never reaching. Never reaching.
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“Well that’s fine then.” Dom sat back, and there amicable silence, until Elijah broke it.
“Do it again.” Dom had his eyes shut and merely raised an eyebrow.
“Ey?”
“Do it again.” They had been so much on the same wavelength, could Dom please not choose now to make him spell it out? He coloured at the mere thought.
“You, my friend, did everything. I’ll let you though. Just don’t hit me again.” Elijah didn’t say anything, just slid over a little. But now that he had actually said it, and thought about it, he was too nervous. He’d asked for it to never be mentioned again; why do it twice? He’d liked it, that’s why, his drug-addled mind retorted.
Dom saved him further internal debate by sitting up and doing it for him. Stubble brushed his jaw, and it was hot and soft as Dom invaded his mouth.
He suddenly pulled back and Lij snapped his eyes open. “Lij, promise, no matter how much shit I put you through, don’t stop being my friend. I don’t want to have to talk to myself in the mirror anymore. I want to talk to you instead. I want this part of me that’s gone, that you woke up, to stay.”
From anyone else he’d known two days, at any other time, this would be insane and creepy and Lijah would get out of there and never look back. But somehow he couldn’t. Because he didn’t want this part, as Dom called it, that everyone had, the part in him to ever go to begin with. It sounded to painful to bear. He could trust Dom not to break anything in him.
Dom was still looking at him, sincerely and a little desperately. Elijah nodded, just once.
He was looking at the photographs with tears in his eyes. It pained him in a way he could not fathom. It was an early photograph, very early - Dom still had vestiges of one broken hanging around him. He, Elijah, had never been broken. Dom had taken care of all of him, every hidden want and grievance looked after. And did he regret it, not knowing what heartbreak felt like, after seventy-two years, fifty-four years of Dom? Not for a single moment.
But now Dom was gone, and his heart was quite, quite broken.
So hold me when I'm here,
Right me when I'm wrong,
Hold me when I'm scared,
And love me when I'm gone.