Fic: Me Neither (PG)
title: me neither
by: sparcck and blythely
[part of an evolving little universe. more sex will come.]
Somehow, they end up incredibly late. Elijah attributes the itchy feeling in his belly to the unexpected lateness, combined with his usual convention anxiety. Sean holds the door open for him when they get to the restaurant and Elijah flutters his lashes at him, giggling.
Sean rolls his eyes and smacks Elijah's hand down when he looks at his watch for the eigth time since leaving the hotel. "He's probably not even here yet. Stop it."
:
There are six white wines on offer: two from France, two from California, one from Chile and the other from Australia. Dom is just deciding to start memorising the reds--including the syrah he's half-drunk--when he hears Sean telling Elijah off, voice distinctive even from the bar, and he stands up on the stool to wave his hand in the air.
And spills the remainder of his wine on his jeans.
:
Convention anxiety, Elijah reminds himself when his stomach does a weird rollercoaster flip at Dom's blonde-streaked head, popping up at the far corner of the room.
Elijah waves back, but Dom doesn't see him, sitting down quickly, disappearing again. He turns to smile at Sean, to drag him along, and Sean is looking at him oddly. "C'mon," he says, before Sean can say anything, "before Dom drinks all the wine."
:
"Shitty fuck." Dom sighs to no-one in particular, and leans over the bar to grab some napkins to mop up the damage, trying to catch sight of Elijah and Sean as they disappear from the open space around the door and get lost in the throng of tables.
He's still blotting the worst of the wine with the tails of his shirt when Sean slips an arm around his shoulder and laughs. "Can't take you anywhere, still?"
"Your fault," Dom mutters, but he's embraced in a hug that makes him smile, and he turns to look for Elijah.
Elijah feels something warm in him at seeing his two best friends together - it's been such a long time since they were all in one place. Dom turns, still wrapped firmly in half a Sean-hug, and Elijah wonders what Dom's looking at when his eyebrows get all knotty over a deep crease that forms between his eyes.
Elijah laughs a little, runs one hand over his head. "You said you liked it," he offers and tilts his head forward, making like he's going to rub the crown of his head on Dom's shoulder.
Dom puts his hand on Elijah's bent head, doesn't press, just rubs the fuzz into the creases in his palm. "It's becoming a thing, though, innit?" and he slides his hand down Elijah's back so they're all clumsily hugging. Dom thinks about kissing Elijah, a smacky one on his cheek, but the moment is gone.
"For the record, I spilt wine," he gestures at the dark splodge on his jeans, "so don't say a fucking thing, alright?" He's grinning, residual weirdness gone with the wine (not supposed to drink, but fuck that) and just seeing them, his mates, brothers still. Them, him.
"Of course not," Elijah says solemnly and he inhales, and--convention anxiety, he tells himself again, although it's okay, right, that he just likes the smell of Dom, pressed in under his armpit, the smell of deodorant and wine and Dom, something spicy almost, not that he ever really thought about the way Dom smelled except for that he smelled like Dom.
Who was looking at him, an eyebrow quirked, which meant Elijah had missed a question.
"Hello? Lij? Please? Eating?"
Dom frowns, because Elijah's gone all spacey, and he looks a bit faraway, but that normally means he's thinking too much about something insignificant, and what's significant is food, and lots of it. And sitting, without his arms around Elijah--Sean is squinting around for a waiter--because, well, it's all a bit bizarre.
"Uh. Can we eat, now, before I spill anything more, or fall over weak from hunger?"
"Hypocrite," Elijah snorts and pinches Dom's belly. "I thought we weren't supposed to talk about your Cro-Magnan eating habits."
Dom pushes him away and Elijah is the first to sit; his stomach rumbles and he realizes he's hungrier than he thought. "Is this dinner or supper?" he asks, an old joke, and Sean and Dom answer together, oppositely, as always.
"Dinner."
"Supper."
Elijah giggles and snaps open a menu.
A bubble of sheer glee pops brightly in Dom's stomach--probably hunger--but for a moment he's just so happy and it's stupid, because Elijah just made a crap joke, nothing more, but it seems like old times, the good kind of old times.
He looks at Elijah looking at the menu, squinting, and he can see him blink a couple of times to wet his contacts, and then when he looks at Sean, Sean has his eyebrows drawn together in a way that signals mischief, only for a second, but, okay.
"I'm going to have risotto," Dom proclaims, "and I want the ten-point highlights of the last months, stat."
He points at Sean, because he's not ready for Elijah yet, and besides, he takes forever to decide.
Dom catches his eye as Sean closes his menu and starts talking, and he winks, grinning and baring all his teeth. Elijah grins back and almost reluctantly lets his gaze slide to the menu as Dom and Sean get into some political thing, not that he doesn't care about the state of the world, but right now his two main thoughts are food and Dom.
He frowns. In the, best mate haven't seen him in forever he doesn't seem to be pissed or uncomfortable, sort of way. He nods a little to himself and looks back at the menu, because the pull of Dom's shirt against his shoulder isn't going to help him decide what to order.
Steak, he thinks, I'll have steak, maybe the filet mignon, and he starts making lists of possible entree/side dish combinations as he watches Dom tap some rhythm on the table as Sean leans across, jabbing his finger into his napkin, stressing some point.
"Ah, but no political system is perfect, mate," Dom says, and he smiles a deflecting kind of grin, because he can see Sean starting to make a bullet-pointed list in his head, and he really doesn't want to go there tonight, interesting though it may be.
Bingo. Sean turns his head for the waiter, and so Dom turns his head and chuckles because Elijah is biting his lip over the menu, still.
"Just get something dead and bloody, Lijah," he whispers conspiratorially while Sean makes a deal out of the wine, "you know you want to. Then it'll rot pleasnatly in your gut tomorrow in front of hundreds of people."
Elijah's eyes narrow into his Evil Face.
He snaps the menu closed, making Dom's hair ruffle a bit, and he smiles pleasantly at him. "You know me too well."
"Elijah?" Sean asks, his menu already tucked under the waiter's arm.
"I'll have the strip steak." He does not look at Dom, who coughs to cover what he's sure is a snicker. "Rare. And the scalloped potatoes. And, oh, Sean, did you order wine?" Elijah leans a little closer to the waiter, but pitches his voice so people at other tables can probably hear him.
"Could you bring a tumbler to the table for my friend's wine," he gestures to Dom, who has gone very still. "He's still getting used to sitting at the adult table."
The waiter just looks at him, trying not to smile, and Elijah grins full-tilt, making the waiter blush a little when he turns to Dom to get his order.
There. Is Elijah's thigh. Dom's hand hovers while he smiles sweetly at the waiter and turns to Sean.
"He wouldn't take his lithium, huh?"
Sean rolls his eyes and puts his hands up. "Play nice, kids."
"I'll have the risotto, thanks, no mushrooms. And could we have some bread and olives first?" The waiter nods, and Dom pinch-grips Elijah's thigh, just above the knee.
Elijah yelps and jerks his leg up, making the table wobble for a second, before Sean grabs it, then grabs at Dom's glass of wine which is nearly horizontal. "Jerk," he mumbles, pushing Dom's hand away, which then comes back to pinch at him again.
"Stop!"
Sean thanks the waiter, ignoring them, them uses Elijah's napkin to sop up the water that's dribbled out of their glasses in the table quake.
Elijah grabs Dom's wrist, squeezing to keep his fingers still. "Dominic," he says very seriously, turning to look at him.
"Elijah," Dom says back, grinning, and then they both go still just for a second.
Dom's grin softens and Elijah's belly turns over gently and he's still holding Dom's wrist under the table.
"It's your turn, Elwood," Dom says, resolutely not moving his fingers or his hand or his arm one little bit.
"My turn what?" Elijah cocks his head, and for a second it's like the movies, one of those weird circle tracking shots where everything spins and the only thing in focus is the two main characters and their pivotal moment that probably has a term in French, but the point is that Dom feels exactly like that.
"To tell me what's going on," Dom says, and of course it's broken because his throat is dry and he has to cough.
And then his nose itches, and he doesn't think about it, and he pulls his hand away to scratch.
Elijah feels oddly bereft when Dom pulls away and then he just feels clammy; he wipes his sweaty palm on his jeans.
"Going on?" He shrugs, and draws little patterns in the condensation on his water glass. "Nothing much. Caught some shows, I think three more after we saw each other at the Clinic one, remember? And I was back in New York, hanging out with Hannah and a few people from the Sunshine set. I really like it there, the people are just."
Dom's looking at him weirdly, his jaaw jutting out a little. Elijah goes back to see if he's said anything wrong. "I dunno. Different." He smiles a little, thinking about the last girl he slept with and how cool she was when he said it was good, but, the next morning, then he blinks and rubs a hand over the top of his head. "Hannah loves this, by the way. She says hello."
Dom blinks a bit. Of course Elijah likes New York, why the fuck doesn't he move there? He's just about to say so, to add on something about doing some theatre, when he realises it would come out whiney and old, and that's not what he wants.
"How is Hannah then?" Dom says, but it's out of habit, and he's tapping his fork while Elijah tells him a story about one of her friends and a stuffed-toy orca, and he has to breathe out slowly because he's feeling fidgetty and uncomfortable all of a sudden and maybe Elijah won't notice but Sean will, and he doesn't know if he can cope with that.
"OLIVES!"
Dom's shout cuts him off almost mid-story, and he shoves the little bowl away when the waiter sets it too close to him, curling his lip. Dom spears one with his fork and pops it in his mouth and while he chews silence settles over the table. Elijah doesn't really think anyone was listening to his story anyway, or rather, Dom wasn't listening and Sean had already heard it, and he has a vauge feeling that he should have just said "fine" when Dom asked after his sister.
"Oh, oops, forgot you don't like them." He had forgotten, which was weird, because they'd had this conversation about a million times, and it always ended with Dom trying to compare olives to other salty things, and invariably got a bit crude. But the look on Elijah's face didn't seem to be going down that track, at all, so Dom spat out the stones and asked if Elijah had heard from any of the real estate agents in New Zealand.
"Um." Elijah forces himself to not look at Sean when Sean folds his napkin and casually annouces that he has to find the restroom.
"So?" It comes out a bit interrogatory, but Dom is really interested in what Elijah plans to do, his own feelings on moving across the world fairly jumbled as it is. They were all (Lij, Bill, him - even Viggo at one point) so keen on buying homes in New Zealand, and each time they went back that enthusiasm had renewed itself, only to drop away with the flight across the Pacific.
"You're not keen anymore?" Dom picks up another three olives, pops them in his mouth and sucks the brine off, resisting the temptation to grab Elijah's chin and make him look at him.
"No!" Elijah feels his face heat and he can't bring himself to look at Dom, which is stupid because it's Dom. If anyone would understand it's him. "It's not that. It's just, like." He scratches at his head just over his ear again, which prickles with Dom's stare. "Last month, I think, Hannah and I just got really excited about both of us living in the same place, and I just put in my application for this place in Hell's Kitchen in New York."
"You would like it," he says lamely while Dom nods, rolling an olive around in his mouth.
"But we can still totally look for a place in New Zealand. I mean, I want to. I just got." He shifts in his chair, knowing this time he was a total asshole, and he can't believe he didn't tell Dom this last month when it actually happened. "Caught up. You know."
Dom's not sure what makes him flush with sudden irritation more: that Elijah's doing this thing, or that he didn't mention it. Too hard to pick up the phone and tell me? is on the tip of his tongue, before he thinks, well, I don't have any proprietary rights there, anymore. Besides. That's why Sean excused himself, isn't it?
"Hmm." Dom picks up another olive, squishes it between his fingers. "Well, that's exciting for you, isn't it?"
"Dude." Elijah leans forward and manages to not shudder when he takes the squashed olive from Dom and puts it on his bread plate. "Seriously. Call me an asshole, I know you want to."
"Take anymore of my olives and I'll call you an asshole, Lij, but you can do what you like. " Dom shrugs, smiles, and really, he does mean it, "it's just kindof weird, you know? Everyone doing things. Their own things."
"You didn't have to tell me. I'm just as bad as keeping up as you are. Especially--" The waiter hovers with the wine. "We're busy, you know?"
"Just leave it," Elijah says, smiling at the waiter, and he smiles weakly back, putting it in front of Sean's setting.
He disappears again and there's a moment of silence, and the smile on Elijah's face feels frozen and fake; there's this knot of anger and frustration lodged in his throat and he doesn't know why it's such a big deal, doesn't know why he feels shamed and shut out, when he did the thing, he fucked up, he's making a big deal out of it. He wants to make Dom snap at him, he doesn't understand why Dom doesn't care. Because if it had been the other way around, you could bet good money Elijah would be furious.
"I should have told you," he says eventually. "I'm really sorry."
Dom scrubs his hand over his face, trying to rearrange his features into something calm and unbothered, because any second now he's going to lose the tenuous thread of adult behaviour he's been working on, and say something nasty to Elijah.
"Honestly, mate, it's cool. I mean, yeah, nice to know, and everything, but it's fine." He looks right at Elijah, stresses the fine, and after a few seconds Elijah nods in that imperceptible manner of his; the smaller the movement, the more serious the intention, or something, Dom never quite figured that one out.
There's a little smile starting to play around the edges of Elijah's eyes, and Dom leans forward and props his chin on his hand, unable to stop stupidly staring.
This feels a little better, Elijah thinks, this feels suddenly more comfortable, and Dom is so familiar, leaning across the table, long, ringed-fingers cupping his chin. His mouth is twitching on one side, and it's making the convention-anxiety feeling coil around in his belly, and he knows he's about to grin and suddenly he breathes out and doesn't feel the need to breath back in.
Just sit. With Dom.
This is nice, he wants to say.
Instead he picks up Dom's squashed olive, gingerly, managing to not stick out his tongue at the feel of the slimy skin against the pads of his fingers, and holds it out to him, propping his elbow on the table.
The grin spreads across his face. "Truce?"
"Only if," and Elijah is holding the olive at that annoying height where he'd have to bend his head to get it with his teeth, so of course he does anyhow, baring incisors to slice into the fruit while Elijah still holds it.
"Only if what?" Elijah smirks before letting the olive go and Dom lets it loll on his tongue for a second until Elijah winces.
"Only if you spill the beans on all other important life developments in Elwoodland." It's not hard to guess what Dom's asking, he thinks, should be bloody obvious, but sometimes Elijah can be so blithe about the most blindingly straightforward things, so he stares hard.
"Well? Now is your chance to prove yourself a good and true friend by informing me of all the juicy details." Stare, and eyebrows raised. Come on, Elijah.
"Juicy details?" Elijah laughs. "Yeah, I've turned into a real pussy-hound, you know me."
Dom smiles, but is waiting.
There hasn't been anyone, is on the tip of his tongue. No one exciting, I haven't been seeing anyone, no, I haven't slept with anyone since you.
But that's stupid. Why shouldn't Dom know? Elijah's sure Dom hasn't exactly been celibate. Except that it doesn't seem to matter so much, sitting here with him. He can barely remember what any of those girls looked like, although he still talks to Matthew almost every day and he's kind of the default when they go out and he needs to get off.
Because he's safe. Because there's no way Elijah would ever feel anything more than friendship and a slight attraction for him.
He shifts under Dom's stare. He can't say that. He doesn't want to say that. And now he's been silent so long that of course Dom knows what he's been thinking about.
"It's boring. I met a few girls through Hannah, and there's, there was this one guy, nothing serious, anyway. Not since."
He definitely hadn't meant to say that out loud, but it's out there now. And Dom is still just looking at him.
It's almost hollow, the feeling of hearing what he wants to hear. Which is bizarre, really, but Dom had steeled himself for The New Girl (or Guy, but that just hadn't figured) for so long that he can't quite grasp what Elijah is saying, even while he's saying it, and he knows he's just staring and nodding and smiling, but what the fuck?
What about meeting new people and discovering himself and youthful experimentation and breaking free and all that other utter bollocks that was underneath Elijah's careful, reasoned break-up speech? What was, exactly, the bloody point?
"Oh." That's all he can manage above the buzz in his brain, because apart from the sheer annoyance that Elijah hasn't been slutting around town like he seemed to want to do, there's this small, beady-eyed hope. And that can just go back to the corner and shut the fuck up, thank you very much.
Dom shakes his head slightly, a bit lost. "Ne meith--Me neither," comes out garbled and whispery, and at that moment, Dom feels like he's never been so thankful to see Sean in his life.
"Sorry, guys," Sean says, clearing his throat when he's still ten feet away from the table, tactfully giving them time to sit back. And Dom does, settling back into his chair, crossing his legs under the table -- Elijah feels his foot knock against his shin. "There was a line," Sean continues, smiling bright and wide and unassuming.
Elijah wants to glare at him, telepathically tell him he needs to go back to the bathroom for the rest of the night; he messed up, but, fuck, there was nothing he could have said that would have been okay, he knows that. He should have just said, New York is great, I love it there, I love the people and I feel like myself and not like Elijah Wood, like I felt when we first met, like you made me feel.
Don't let me hold you back, Dom had said, months ago, when Elijah said he felt restless. And Elijah had felt relief, felt anticipatory, couldn't wait to just fucking get out there.
Elijah watches Dom's face melt from this half-miserable grimace into a wicked grin. "You haven't been doing your job, mate," he says to Sean as Sean settles in, pours himself a glass of wine. "Elwood should be getting tons of women."
Sean raises an eyebrow. "Well, you know our little modest boy."
Something flickers in Dom's face, something Elijah can see only because he knows Dom almost better than he knows himself, and now he really wants Sean to leave again because the important conversation wasn't I'm moving to New York, I fucked some people but you don't need to hear about it, it's: how are you, tell me what's going on, I miss you.
"The famous Wood charm," he says instead, still looking at Dom. "The ladies can't get enough."
Maybe there's more that Elijah wants to say--and Christ, why did it feel like this was the only time they were going to get, a few furtive minutes to say the Important Stuff--but Dom feels cold all of a sudden, because the obvious conclusion is not that Elijah had his romp as a single superstar babe magnet and found it wanting, but that he had his time away from Dom and he--still didn't want to go back. And that seems indefensibly to be the case, what with the lack of contact and all, doesn't it?
And so when Sean sits down, Dom wills up every small grain of acting ability and slips into a brittle, happy voice, keen to tease Elijah about his love life.
It works for a second, but then Dom has to fucking go and look at Elijah again, and what he sees there is not dismissal but some kind of confusion and thoughtfulness, and Sean has such a kind smile, and Dom is heartily pleased that the food arrives, because he wants to think.
Elijah's stomach lurches at the sight of his steak, and he looks hard at Dom for one more second--we're not done talking about this, he hopes is clear on his face--before picking up his fork and knife and cutting into it anyway. He's made up his mind about this; it's the only way either of them will ever really move on.
The steak is like rubber in his mouth, too thick and buttery and almost making him gag. You've moved on, he reminded himself, forcing his throat to work to swallow. It's the only way Dom will move on.
Right.
Dom does an admirable job of digging into his risotto, but Elijah can see the slight tremble in his hand and he nods to himself, and the next piece tastes a little better now that he's back on familiar ground, now that he's remembered it never would have worked between them because Elijah needs his best mate.
Right.
He hears Sean sigh quietly before launching into a story about Ally and Dom smiles a genuine smile at this, but Elijah is far away, planning the call to his agent to rebook his flight so he can go back a day later, no, to check with Dom and find out when his flight back is and work from there.
He chews steadily and watches Dom not-watching him and he thinks, we'll fix it, Dom, don't worry.
by: sparcck and blythely
[part of an evolving little universe. more sex will come.]
Somehow, they end up incredibly late. Elijah attributes the itchy feeling in his belly to the unexpected lateness, combined with his usual convention anxiety. Sean holds the door open for him when they get to the restaurant and Elijah flutters his lashes at him, giggling.
Sean rolls his eyes and smacks Elijah's hand down when he looks at his watch for the eigth time since leaving the hotel. "He's probably not even here yet. Stop it."
:
There are six white wines on offer: two from France, two from California, one from Chile and the other from Australia. Dom is just deciding to start memorising the reds--including the syrah he's half-drunk--when he hears Sean telling Elijah off, voice distinctive even from the bar, and he stands up on the stool to wave his hand in the air.
And spills the remainder of his wine on his jeans.
:
Convention anxiety, Elijah reminds himself when his stomach does a weird rollercoaster flip at Dom's blonde-streaked head, popping up at the far corner of the room.
Elijah waves back, but Dom doesn't see him, sitting down quickly, disappearing again. He turns to smile at Sean, to drag him along, and Sean is looking at him oddly. "C'mon," he says, before Sean can say anything, "before Dom drinks all the wine."
:
"Shitty fuck." Dom sighs to no-one in particular, and leans over the bar to grab some napkins to mop up the damage, trying to catch sight of Elijah and Sean as they disappear from the open space around the door and get lost in the throng of tables.
He's still blotting the worst of the wine with the tails of his shirt when Sean slips an arm around his shoulder and laughs. "Can't take you anywhere, still?"
"Your fault," Dom mutters, but he's embraced in a hug that makes him smile, and he turns to look for Elijah.
Elijah feels something warm in him at seeing his two best friends together - it's been such a long time since they were all in one place. Dom turns, still wrapped firmly in half a Sean-hug, and Elijah wonders what Dom's looking at when his eyebrows get all knotty over a deep crease that forms between his eyes.
Elijah laughs a little, runs one hand over his head. "You said you liked it," he offers and tilts his head forward, making like he's going to rub the crown of his head on Dom's shoulder.
Dom puts his hand on Elijah's bent head, doesn't press, just rubs the fuzz into the creases in his palm. "It's becoming a thing, though, innit?" and he slides his hand down Elijah's back so they're all clumsily hugging. Dom thinks about kissing Elijah, a smacky one on his cheek, but the moment is gone.
"For the record, I spilt wine," he gestures at the dark splodge on his jeans, "so don't say a fucking thing, alright?" He's grinning, residual weirdness gone with the wine (not supposed to drink, but fuck that) and just seeing them, his mates, brothers still. Them, him.
"Of course not," Elijah says solemnly and he inhales, and--convention anxiety, he tells himself again, although it's okay, right, that he just likes the smell of Dom, pressed in under his armpit, the smell of deodorant and wine and Dom, something spicy almost, not that he ever really thought about the way Dom smelled except for that he smelled like Dom.
Who was looking at him, an eyebrow quirked, which meant Elijah had missed a question.
"Hello? Lij? Please? Eating?"
Dom frowns, because Elijah's gone all spacey, and he looks a bit faraway, but that normally means he's thinking too much about something insignificant, and what's significant is food, and lots of it. And sitting, without his arms around Elijah--Sean is squinting around for a waiter--because, well, it's all a bit bizarre.
"Uh. Can we eat, now, before I spill anything more, or fall over weak from hunger?"
"Hypocrite," Elijah snorts and pinches Dom's belly. "I thought we weren't supposed to talk about your Cro-Magnan eating habits."
Dom pushes him away and Elijah is the first to sit; his stomach rumbles and he realizes he's hungrier than he thought. "Is this dinner or supper?" he asks, an old joke, and Sean and Dom answer together, oppositely, as always.
"Dinner."
"Supper."
Elijah giggles and snaps open a menu.
A bubble of sheer glee pops brightly in Dom's stomach--probably hunger--but for a moment he's just so happy and it's stupid, because Elijah just made a crap joke, nothing more, but it seems like old times, the good kind of old times.
He looks at Elijah looking at the menu, squinting, and he can see him blink a couple of times to wet his contacts, and then when he looks at Sean, Sean has his eyebrows drawn together in a way that signals mischief, only for a second, but, okay.
"I'm going to have risotto," Dom proclaims, "and I want the ten-point highlights of the last months, stat."
He points at Sean, because he's not ready for Elijah yet, and besides, he takes forever to decide.
Dom catches his eye as Sean closes his menu and starts talking, and he winks, grinning and baring all his teeth. Elijah grins back and almost reluctantly lets his gaze slide to the menu as Dom and Sean get into some political thing, not that he doesn't care about the state of the world, but right now his two main thoughts are food and Dom.
He frowns. In the, best mate haven't seen him in forever he doesn't seem to be pissed or uncomfortable, sort of way. He nods a little to himself and looks back at the menu, because the pull of Dom's shirt against his shoulder isn't going to help him decide what to order.
Steak, he thinks, I'll have steak, maybe the filet mignon, and he starts making lists of possible entree/side dish combinations as he watches Dom tap some rhythm on the table as Sean leans across, jabbing his finger into his napkin, stressing some point.
"Ah, but no political system is perfect, mate," Dom says, and he smiles a deflecting kind of grin, because he can see Sean starting to make a bullet-pointed list in his head, and he really doesn't want to go there tonight, interesting though it may be.
Bingo. Sean turns his head for the waiter, and so Dom turns his head and chuckles because Elijah is biting his lip over the menu, still.
"Just get something dead and bloody, Lijah," he whispers conspiratorially while Sean makes a deal out of the wine, "you know you want to. Then it'll rot pleasnatly in your gut tomorrow in front of hundreds of people."
Elijah's eyes narrow into his Evil Face.
He snaps the menu closed, making Dom's hair ruffle a bit, and he smiles pleasantly at him. "You know me too well."
"Elijah?" Sean asks, his menu already tucked under the waiter's arm.
"I'll have the strip steak." He does not look at Dom, who coughs to cover what he's sure is a snicker. "Rare. And the scalloped potatoes. And, oh, Sean, did you order wine?" Elijah leans a little closer to the waiter, but pitches his voice so people at other tables can probably hear him.
"Could you bring a tumbler to the table for my friend's wine," he gestures to Dom, who has gone very still. "He's still getting used to sitting at the adult table."
The waiter just looks at him, trying not to smile, and Elijah grins full-tilt, making the waiter blush a little when he turns to Dom to get his order.
There. Is Elijah's thigh. Dom's hand hovers while he smiles sweetly at the waiter and turns to Sean.
"He wouldn't take his lithium, huh?"
Sean rolls his eyes and puts his hands up. "Play nice, kids."
"I'll have the risotto, thanks, no mushrooms. And could we have some bread and olives first?" The waiter nods, and Dom pinch-grips Elijah's thigh, just above the knee.
Elijah yelps and jerks his leg up, making the table wobble for a second, before Sean grabs it, then grabs at Dom's glass of wine which is nearly horizontal. "Jerk," he mumbles, pushing Dom's hand away, which then comes back to pinch at him again.
"Stop!"
Sean thanks the waiter, ignoring them, them uses Elijah's napkin to sop up the water that's dribbled out of their glasses in the table quake.
Elijah grabs Dom's wrist, squeezing to keep his fingers still. "Dominic," he says very seriously, turning to look at him.
"Elijah," Dom says back, grinning, and then they both go still just for a second.
Dom's grin softens and Elijah's belly turns over gently and he's still holding Dom's wrist under the table.
"It's your turn, Elwood," Dom says, resolutely not moving his fingers or his hand or his arm one little bit.
"My turn what?" Elijah cocks his head, and for a second it's like the movies, one of those weird circle tracking shots where everything spins and the only thing in focus is the two main characters and their pivotal moment that probably has a term in French, but the point is that Dom feels exactly like that.
"To tell me what's going on," Dom says, and of course it's broken because his throat is dry and he has to cough.
And then his nose itches, and he doesn't think about it, and he pulls his hand away to scratch.
Elijah feels oddly bereft when Dom pulls away and then he just feels clammy; he wipes his sweaty palm on his jeans.
"Going on?" He shrugs, and draws little patterns in the condensation on his water glass. "Nothing much. Caught some shows, I think three more after we saw each other at the Clinic one, remember? And I was back in New York, hanging out with Hannah and a few people from the Sunshine set. I really like it there, the people are just."
Dom's looking at him weirdly, his jaaw jutting out a little. Elijah goes back to see if he's said anything wrong. "I dunno. Different." He smiles a little, thinking about the last girl he slept with and how cool she was when he said it was good, but, the next morning, then he blinks and rubs a hand over the top of his head. "Hannah loves this, by the way. She says hello."
Dom blinks a bit. Of course Elijah likes New York, why the fuck doesn't he move there? He's just about to say so, to add on something about doing some theatre, when he realises it would come out whiney and old, and that's not what he wants.
"How is Hannah then?" Dom says, but it's out of habit, and he's tapping his fork while Elijah tells him a story about one of her friends and a stuffed-toy orca, and he has to breathe out slowly because he's feeling fidgetty and uncomfortable all of a sudden and maybe Elijah won't notice but Sean will, and he doesn't know if he can cope with that.
"OLIVES!"
Dom's shout cuts him off almost mid-story, and he shoves the little bowl away when the waiter sets it too close to him, curling his lip. Dom spears one with his fork and pops it in his mouth and while he chews silence settles over the table. Elijah doesn't really think anyone was listening to his story anyway, or rather, Dom wasn't listening and Sean had already heard it, and he has a vauge feeling that he should have just said "fine" when Dom asked after his sister.
"Oh, oops, forgot you don't like them." He had forgotten, which was weird, because they'd had this conversation about a million times, and it always ended with Dom trying to compare olives to other salty things, and invariably got a bit crude. But the look on Elijah's face didn't seem to be going down that track, at all, so Dom spat out the stones and asked if Elijah had heard from any of the real estate agents in New Zealand.
"Um." Elijah forces himself to not look at Sean when Sean folds his napkin and casually annouces that he has to find the restroom.
"So?" It comes out a bit interrogatory, but Dom is really interested in what Elijah plans to do, his own feelings on moving across the world fairly jumbled as it is. They were all (Lij, Bill, him - even Viggo at one point) so keen on buying homes in New Zealand, and each time they went back that enthusiasm had renewed itself, only to drop away with the flight across the Pacific.
"You're not keen anymore?" Dom picks up another three olives, pops them in his mouth and sucks the brine off, resisting the temptation to grab Elijah's chin and make him look at him.
"No!" Elijah feels his face heat and he can't bring himself to look at Dom, which is stupid because it's Dom. If anyone would understand it's him. "It's not that. It's just, like." He scratches at his head just over his ear again, which prickles with Dom's stare. "Last month, I think, Hannah and I just got really excited about both of us living in the same place, and I just put in my application for this place in Hell's Kitchen in New York."
"You would like it," he says lamely while Dom nods, rolling an olive around in his mouth.
"But we can still totally look for a place in New Zealand. I mean, I want to. I just got." He shifts in his chair, knowing this time he was a total asshole, and he can't believe he didn't tell Dom this last month when it actually happened. "Caught up. You know."
Dom's not sure what makes him flush with sudden irritation more: that Elijah's doing this thing, or that he didn't mention it. Too hard to pick up the phone and tell me? is on the tip of his tongue, before he thinks, well, I don't have any proprietary rights there, anymore. Besides. That's why Sean excused himself, isn't it?
"Hmm." Dom picks up another olive, squishes it between his fingers. "Well, that's exciting for you, isn't it?"
"Dude." Elijah leans forward and manages to not shudder when he takes the squashed olive from Dom and puts it on his bread plate. "Seriously. Call me an asshole, I know you want to."
"Take anymore of my olives and I'll call you an asshole, Lij, but you can do what you like. " Dom shrugs, smiles, and really, he does mean it, "it's just kindof weird, you know? Everyone doing things. Their own things."
"You didn't have to tell me. I'm just as bad as keeping up as you are. Especially--" The waiter hovers with the wine. "We're busy, you know?"
"Just leave it," Elijah says, smiling at the waiter, and he smiles weakly back, putting it in front of Sean's setting.
He disappears again and there's a moment of silence, and the smile on Elijah's face feels frozen and fake; there's this knot of anger and frustration lodged in his throat and he doesn't know why it's such a big deal, doesn't know why he feels shamed and shut out, when he did the thing, he fucked up, he's making a big deal out of it. He wants to make Dom snap at him, he doesn't understand why Dom doesn't care. Because if it had been the other way around, you could bet good money Elijah would be furious.
"I should have told you," he says eventually. "I'm really sorry."
Dom scrubs his hand over his face, trying to rearrange his features into something calm and unbothered, because any second now he's going to lose the tenuous thread of adult behaviour he's been working on, and say something nasty to Elijah.
"Honestly, mate, it's cool. I mean, yeah, nice to know, and everything, but it's fine." He looks right at Elijah, stresses the fine, and after a few seconds Elijah nods in that imperceptible manner of his; the smaller the movement, the more serious the intention, or something, Dom never quite figured that one out.
There's a little smile starting to play around the edges of Elijah's eyes, and Dom leans forward and props his chin on his hand, unable to stop stupidly staring.
This feels a little better, Elijah thinks, this feels suddenly more comfortable, and Dom is so familiar, leaning across the table, long, ringed-fingers cupping his chin. His mouth is twitching on one side, and it's making the convention-anxiety feeling coil around in his belly, and he knows he's about to grin and suddenly he breathes out and doesn't feel the need to breath back in.
Just sit. With Dom.
This is nice, he wants to say.
Instead he picks up Dom's squashed olive, gingerly, managing to not stick out his tongue at the feel of the slimy skin against the pads of his fingers, and holds it out to him, propping his elbow on the table.
The grin spreads across his face. "Truce?"
"Only if," and Elijah is holding the olive at that annoying height where he'd have to bend his head to get it with his teeth, so of course he does anyhow, baring incisors to slice into the fruit while Elijah still holds it.
"Only if what?" Elijah smirks before letting the olive go and Dom lets it loll on his tongue for a second until Elijah winces.
"Only if you spill the beans on all other important life developments in Elwoodland." It's not hard to guess what Dom's asking, he thinks, should be bloody obvious, but sometimes Elijah can be so blithe about the most blindingly straightforward things, so he stares hard.
"Well? Now is your chance to prove yourself a good and true friend by informing me of all the juicy details." Stare, and eyebrows raised. Come on, Elijah.
"Juicy details?" Elijah laughs. "Yeah, I've turned into a real pussy-hound, you know me."
Dom smiles, but is waiting.
There hasn't been anyone, is on the tip of his tongue. No one exciting, I haven't been seeing anyone, no, I haven't slept with anyone since you.
But that's stupid. Why shouldn't Dom know? Elijah's sure Dom hasn't exactly been celibate. Except that it doesn't seem to matter so much, sitting here with him. He can barely remember what any of those girls looked like, although he still talks to Matthew almost every day and he's kind of the default when they go out and he needs to get off.
Because he's safe. Because there's no way Elijah would ever feel anything more than friendship and a slight attraction for him.
He shifts under Dom's stare. He can't say that. He doesn't want to say that. And now he's been silent so long that of course Dom knows what he's been thinking about.
"It's boring. I met a few girls through Hannah, and there's, there was this one guy, nothing serious, anyway. Not since."
He definitely hadn't meant to say that out loud, but it's out there now. And Dom is still just looking at him.
It's almost hollow, the feeling of hearing what he wants to hear. Which is bizarre, really, but Dom had steeled himself for The New Girl (or Guy, but that just hadn't figured) for so long that he can't quite grasp what Elijah is saying, even while he's saying it, and he knows he's just staring and nodding and smiling, but what the fuck?
What about meeting new people and discovering himself and youthful experimentation and breaking free and all that other utter bollocks that was underneath Elijah's careful, reasoned break-up speech? What was, exactly, the bloody point?
"Oh." That's all he can manage above the buzz in his brain, because apart from the sheer annoyance that Elijah hasn't been slutting around town like he seemed to want to do, there's this small, beady-eyed hope. And that can just go back to the corner and shut the fuck up, thank you very much.
Dom shakes his head slightly, a bit lost. "Ne meith--Me neither," comes out garbled and whispery, and at that moment, Dom feels like he's never been so thankful to see Sean in his life.
"Sorry, guys," Sean says, clearing his throat when he's still ten feet away from the table, tactfully giving them time to sit back. And Dom does, settling back into his chair, crossing his legs under the table -- Elijah feels his foot knock against his shin. "There was a line," Sean continues, smiling bright and wide and unassuming.
Elijah wants to glare at him, telepathically tell him he needs to go back to the bathroom for the rest of the night; he messed up, but, fuck, there was nothing he could have said that would have been okay, he knows that. He should have just said, New York is great, I love it there, I love the people and I feel like myself and not like Elijah Wood, like I felt when we first met, like you made me feel.
Don't let me hold you back, Dom had said, months ago, when Elijah said he felt restless. And Elijah had felt relief, felt anticipatory, couldn't wait to just fucking get out there.
Elijah watches Dom's face melt from this half-miserable grimace into a wicked grin. "You haven't been doing your job, mate," he says to Sean as Sean settles in, pours himself a glass of wine. "Elwood should be getting tons of women."
Sean raises an eyebrow. "Well, you know our little modest boy."
Something flickers in Dom's face, something Elijah can see only because he knows Dom almost better than he knows himself, and now he really wants Sean to leave again because the important conversation wasn't I'm moving to New York, I fucked some people but you don't need to hear about it, it's: how are you, tell me what's going on, I miss you.
"The famous Wood charm," he says instead, still looking at Dom. "The ladies can't get enough."
Maybe there's more that Elijah wants to say--and Christ, why did it feel like this was the only time they were going to get, a few furtive minutes to say the Important Stuff--but Dom feels cold all of a sudden, because the obvious conclusion is not that Elijah had his romp as a single superstar babe magnet and found it wanting, but that he had his time away from Dom and he--still didn't want to go back. And that seems indefensibly to be the case, what with the lack of contact and all, doesn't it?
And so when Sean sits down, Dom wills up every small grain of acting ability and slips into a brittle, happy voice, keen to tease Elijah about his love life.
It works for a second, but then Dom has to fucking go and look at Elijah again, and what he sees there is not dismissal but some kind of confusion and thoughtfulness, and Sean has such a kind smile, and Dom is heartily pleased that the food arrives, because he wants to think.
Elijah's stomach lurches at the sight of his steak, and he looks hard at Dom for one more second--we're not done talking about this, he hopes is clear on his face--before picking up his fork and knife and cutting into it anyway. He's made up his mind about this; it's the only way either of them will ever really move on.
The steak is like rubber in his mouth, too thick and buttery and almost making him gag. You've moved on, he reminded himself, forcing his throat to work to swallow. It's the only way Dom will move on.
Right.
Dom does an admirable job of digging into his risotto, but Elijah can see the slight tremble in his hand and he nods to himself, and the next piece tastes a little better now that he's back on familiar ground, now that he's remembered it never would have worked between them because Elijah needs his best mate.
Right.
He hears Sean sigh quietly before launching into a story about Ally and Dom smiles a genuine smile at this, but Elijah is far away, planning the call to his agent to rebook his flight so he can go back a day later, no, to check with Dom and find out when his flight back is and work from there.
He chews steadily and watches Dom not-watching him and he thinks, we'll fix it, Dom, don't worry.