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monaboyd Apr. 10th, 2010 07:13 pm)
sema427.livejournal.com posting in monaboyd Apr. 10th, 2010 07:13 pm)Author: Sema
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower). In this chapter, Dom has a memory and Orli and Elijah plan a party.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51; Chap. 52; Chap. 53
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 54
Dom's brooding a bit, listening to Orli and Elijah move in and out of the house, their whispers and giggles, murmured exclamations of, "Careful, careful now!" and, "Get down from there, you'll fall off the fucking table!" He wishes he could be with them, doing whatever it was they're doing, laughing as they're laughing, which is something he hasn't done properly for months now--he, who was once the most unrepentant prankster and clown of them all. He wonders if that will come back to him one day, that lightness of spirit that was once the core of himself.
Perhaps, he thinks, it'll return with his memories.
There's one memory in particular that's bothering him, one he can't get out of his head no matter how hard he tries to think of other things. Dom has a feeling it's meant to be hazy--the particulars, at least, if not the message--but it's not. It's the most vivid memory he's ever had, and it scratches away at the inside of his brain until he's nearly mad with it.
It's one the rational part of his mind would like nothing better than to deny, but hard as he tries to disbelieve, it still sticks with him: it's the memory of what happened between the time he touched Billy and the time when Viggo's rough CPR, that bruised his sternum and cracked two of his ribs, brought him back into the ordinary world.
The thing was, when he'd started in he was only thinking about Billy, only about Billy, with no thought about the pain that would follow, or his own well-being. He'd half-expected to die--he'd told Billy as much, but what he hadn't realized was that dying was such a terribly hard thing, like climbing up a hill of broken glass, slipping down again, clawing oneself back up. The body was tenacious; it didn't let go easily.
It wasn't until Viggo laid him down by Billy's side, that Dom realized it was over, he'd gone too far, that he could try to claw his way back as much as he liked, but eventually the slipping would take over, and there'd be no way up, only the falling, and falling, into what he couldn't say.
The only satisfaction he had--and at the moment he didn't suppose it was as much as it should be, was that he'd healed Billy. Billy would survive, there was no question that he wouldn't. What Dom healed, he healed well, that was how the so-called bloody gift worked. If one put one's mind to it, it got the job done.
He felt he was standing outside his body, watching himself lie so peacefully in the soft green grass, whilst inside he screamed and screamed, the agony of Billy's injuries, added on to everything else, multiplying itself into something so far beyond unbearable it couldn't begin to be described. It was the way he been taught hell would be, when he was a boy--burning forever, alive.
He found, in that moment, that he remembered everything of who, and what, he'd been.
Dom was glad they couldn't hear him screaming. For one thing, bloody as he was, Billy looked peaceful too, almost smiling, with that look he had, the one Dom loved so much that was almost unbearable, too. Just then the truth of things hit him: dying meant being parted from Billy, and whether they'd be together again someday, in a different place or different forms, or whether this was just the end altogether didn't matter to him. Where Billy was concerned, someday was too far off. Ever since he'd known him, one minute not knowing Billy was there, in the world where he lived, would be too much.
Sometimes, at the start of the past terrible summer, when Billy'd been in London and he was in Los Angeles, he'd had to ring at what he knew were awful times of the night, just to hear Billy's voice, even to hear Billy's voice sounding slightly cross and barely awake, because he'd been woken up for the twentieth time that month and desperately needed his sleep.
At the end, though, even that didn't matter. At the end, the only thing that mattered was the pain. He couldn't see Billy anymore, he couldn't see any of them anymore, all he could do was feel, and what he felt was so terrible that he was ready to let go, and fall, so ready that when he did release himself, it came as a relief.
First it was dark where he was, and then there was a soft, diffuse light. Dom felt the way he'd felt as a child, coming out of a fever, nearly well, and so utterly relaxed as to be nearly boneless, tucked up safe and warm in his own bed. The sense of well-being was nearly as overpowering as the pain had been. He thought of Billy, but the sense was that Billy would be there in a moment, he only had to wait, that it was no more than if Billy'd gone to the supermarket, or to the shops to get a new set of guitar strings, or off on some other inconsequential task. He'd be back presently, and their reunion would be sweet, as it was always sweet, even when they'd only been parted for a short time.
He hoped it wouldn't seem too long to Billy. Lovely as he felt, he hated the thought that Billy would be sad.
After a long while, he rose to his feet, wandering along a road that unfurled before him as he went. Along with the diffuse light, things had a swirled, almost pixilated quality, as if he was moving through a Turner landscape, like the one he'd seen in the Whitworth Art Gallery when he was a schoolboy, only in three dimensions. The colours were amazing, colours he wished he could have painted during his occasional bursts of artistic endeavor.
He wished Viggo could see this. Vig would have been amazed too, and would have had something wise to say, that might have summed up the whole experience. Dom knew he could have scribbled in his journal for a thousand years and still not found the words.
As he walked, though, something seemed to change. For one thing, the Turner landscape seemed less real, growing flatter and flatter until it seemed more like a stage set, and then it was a stage set, the old familiar one with the fake rocks and the painted moon. He kept moving, hoping to walk out of it again somehow, if there was some sort of escape, but his body began to feel heavier and heavier, then his bones started to ache, then his belly, until he was holding himself, staggering along, still hoping against hope that he could still carry himself out of this place.
It wasn't to be. At last he fell, unable to go any further, unable to do anything but lie on the rough ground of painted sackcloth and weep, because all the pain had come back to him now, and because he'd had the very slightest taste of something brilliant and it had faded away to no more than this.
"Poor little English boy," a familiar voice said. A weathered hand raised his head, offering him water to drink from what looked like a hollowed gourd. Dom drank from it thirstily, but couldn't keep it down, so that afterward he felt worse than before. "Poor English boy," the voice crooned again.
"I suppose you're here to tell me something," Dom said, in too much pain for graciousness. He guessed he should consider himself lucky that he was still able to see in this place, but as there wasn't much to look at, it didn't seem a great consolation.
She raised his head again gently, then his body, setting his back against one of the faux stones. Dom couldn't help but cry out when she touched him; he could feel blood running in small, hot trickles down his belly.
"Dominic," she said. "Look at me."
It was as it had been before: she was Mother Abigail and not Mother Abigail; young and old all at the same time. She wore a gown that brushed her bare feet, of indigo like a night sky, set with tiny jewels that looked exactly like stars. He loved and resented her all at once.
"I have to go back, don't I?" Dom said.
"You're given a choice. There's always a choice."
"Which is?"
"You live, and when you're able you go to Boulder, and you tell them what you've seen, all that happened in Los Vegas." She touched his cheek, her eyes full of sympathy. "In the springtime will be soon enough."
"I'd imagine," Dom told her, "That they'll laugh in my face. They'll think I'm mental."
Mother Abigail inclined her head. "Some will."
"But I get to do it anyway."
She nodded again--but it was more than a nod. It was a command.
"But you don't-" Dom had a hard time catching his breath. His guts cramped and he had to feel with his hand to make sure they hadn't spilled out, as Billy's had done. Everything was still inside, but felt like a near thing, because the cuts were deep and vicious, and he could feel infection spreading from them already, moving into his blood, throughout his body, making him feel hot and prickly. "You don't know what it's like."
"I walked in the desert," Mother Abigail reminded him.
"Yeah, but you haven't done this. Besides which, I walked in a bloody desert too. I healed two people who'd walked in the desert. If we're playing suffering one-upsmanship, that is."
She laughed softly.
"You mentioned a second option?"
She took his hand, holding it tightly between her own old-but-young hands, "You can see, English Boy. You can see for yourself."
Dom closed his eyes, and saw--and the vision was terrible: there was Billy leaving the others, existing on his own. There was Billy living a long, hard, bitter life, altogether alone, cut off from his friends, cut off from humanity, killing…
He saw Billy not coming to where he was after all.
Dom ripped his hand away from Mother Abigail's. "Okay. Enough. Point Taken."
She looked at him again with her great dark eyes--sadly this time.
It's true? It's not just to coerce me?" Dom considered his own Billy, who was funny, gentle and fiercely protective of those he loved. He'd always thought that Billy, without him, would be just fine. He was the one who needed Billy, not the other way around. Billy never called him at two in the morning just to hear the sound of his voice. Billy was always loving, but he only rang at reasonable times.
But he'd known, hadn't he, when he'd almost died before? He'd known that Billy would have gone south, if he'd died from the flu, overwhelmed by his own anger and bitterness.
It's just that Dom couldn't reconcile his image of Billy, his love for Billy, with these harder possibilities.
There really was no choice at all, given those options.
"Can you…" Dom felt foolish asking, but it was worth a try. "There's no way… It can't be made a bit easier for me, can it?"
Sadly, she shook her head. "It is what it must be, Dominic."
"All so I can go to Boulder in the spring and have the good citizens laugh their arses off at the crazy man?"
"Not only for that."
"Okay, for Billy, too. But that could be stopped, couldn't it? If you… they… I dunno. If it was wanted. If it was seen as a good thing."
"It has never worked that way," she answered, with the slightest note of impatience in her voice.
Dom leaned his head back onto the artificial rocks. They were hard and lumpy, and he felt so sick, and so in pain. He didn't know how he could take any more, but he also knew his decision was already made. He shut his eyes on the artificial world and fell again.
So far as Dom can reckon--all time seems more or less the same these days--that day of his fall, the day of his memory, was better than a month ago. It's now the 19th October, the night before Viggo's birthday, but he only knows that because Orli and Elijah have been planning surprises, plans that include Orli standing on the table, and taking the SUV out at night (which Dom considers wildly dangerous) in order to perform some series of mad tasks, among them the acquisition of the flock of black balloons now hovering like storm clouds against the lounge ceiling--only, because Orli's more aesthetically minded than his partner-in-crime, there are also a few silver ones, mixed in, and a handful of fluorescents with patterns of moons and stars. Dom knows the colours because Orli's told him.
He's enlisted the pair in a plan of his own, a surprise for Billy, since he's made Billy sleep in his own bed upstairs, rather than drifting off in the big chair, or camping out on the cot across the lounge. He's insisted, in fact, that they take out the cot altogether, and bring the other sofa back in, that the lounge become a proper lounge again, where everyone sits in the evening, so that they can be together. He's tired of being on the edges of things, of all the distant voices in other rooms, his family moving so quietly and gently when they're around him. Perhaps he can't bear a great deal, but he'll take as much of it as he can stand.
In aid of this, for the past few days, he's had Elijah and Orli come down to him when the others are sleeping, because he knows both of them sleep very little (Elijah having totally lost his old ability to nap anywhere, at any time) and sit him up in the chair. He only lasted five minutes the first time, but now he's nearly up to ten, and it seems both a small accomplishment and a great one at the same time--at the very least, when they have Viggo's cake, he'll be able to sit with the others for a bit at the table, even if the thought of the cake itself turns his stomach.
It makes him think of that old Eddie Izzard bit, the Spanish Inquisition as done by the Anglican church, "Cake… or death." At the moment, Dom couldn't say which is less appealing to him.
He hopes Eddie Izzard is alive somewhere, making people laugh, even when there's not much to laugh about.
Dom's managed to convince both Elijah and Orli that they not be the ones to actually bake the cake, that they leave it for Toni or Sean, their more competent cooks, and they've agreed, after the thought of what might happen otherwise sent them both into fits of giggles.
Something about cake--raw cake, and a broken oven--stirs a thread of memory within him. It's a New Zealand memory, he knows that, and one that makes him smile, but he can't catch hold of more than that. That moment of total clarity, during which he knew everything, has long since slipped away. Sometimes he wonders if it will every come again, or if all the sweet, small memories will remain wisps for him to grasp at but never quite catch hold.
"Why so serious?" Orli bounces into the lounge, dropping bonelessly to the floor by Dom's side. After a moment Elijah drops down beside him. Orli's much happier now, with fewer bad dreams, Dom knows, since he and Elijah started shagging, though he also knows it's more than that, that there's actual love growing between them, more than the love of friends and brothers they shared before. He can feel them shifting below, Orli's arms going round Elijah, Elijah's head dropping onto Orli's shoulder. They'd be lovely together, Dom thinks, and wishes he could see them.
Orli's head leans back against Dom's arm, and Dom strokes his soft hair. It's grown very long, longer even than when he played Will Turner, and a picture pops into his mind of Orli, several years younger, with a perfectly ridiculous haircut. "You had a Mohawk," he blurts out, and both his friends laugh.
"It was awful!" Elijah says.
"It was," Orli admits. "Don't know what I was thinking."
"We were young." Dom thinks that's right, but a moment later he's not entirely sure. "Isn't that right?"
"We were young," Orli agrees. "Hell, we're still young!"
"I'm still pretty fucking young," Elijah agrees.
"The youngest!" Orli assures him, and it comes to Dom that both their voices are faintly slurred.
"You've been sampling the champagne." Dom's more amused than anything else.
"Had to make sure it's drinkable, right?" Orli laughs. For a moment, Dom can hear the two kissing, then Elijah's soft murmur of pleasure, and in that instant it makes him feel lonely. He wishes Billy weren't all the way upstairs where he can't climb, even though he'd been the one to tell him to go, unable to bear the tiredness in Billy's voice, that he'd tried so hard to hide.
"Go," Dom tells them, laughing a little, even though it's hard to laugh sometimes. "Upstairs with you, before you start shagging on the carpet and making me glad I'm blind after all."
"Oh, Dom." He can hear Elijah twist around, until he's on his knees by the sofa. Elijah's hand caresses his cheek, followed after a few seconds by a kiss. Orli kisses his forehead, then the two are gone; Dom imagines them climbing the staircase hand in hand, pausing for a good, long snog halfway up. He's lonely for that sort of contact, being able to give a Billy a proper kiss without needing to catch his breath, able to touch Billy, to hold him--to have Billy shag him into the mattress until afterwards he can scarcely move.
He holds tight to his wedding ring, on its chain around his neck, and thinks of Billy, and tells himself, "It will all be right. It will all be right again."
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower). In this chapter, Dom has a memory and Orli and Elijah plan a party.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51; Chap. 52; Chap. 53
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 54
Dom's brooding a bit, listening to Orli and Elijah move in and out of the house, their whispers and giggles, murmured exclamations of, "Careful, careful now!" and, "Get down from there, you'll fall off the fucking table!" He wishes he could be with them, doing whatever it was they're doing, laughing as they're laughing, which is something he hasn't done properly for months now--he, who was once the most unrepentant prankster and clown of them all. He wonders if that will come back to him one day, that lightness of spirit that was once the core of himself.
Perhaps, he thinks, it'll return with his memories.
There's one memory in particular that's bothering him, one he can't get out of his head no matter how hard he tries to think of other things. Dom has a feeling it's meant to be hazy--the particulars, at least, if not the message--but it's not. It's the most vivid memory he's ever had, and it scratches away at the inside of his brain until he's nearly mad with it.
It's one the rational part of his mind would like nothing better than to deny, but hard as he tries to disbelieve, it still sticks with him: it's the memory of what happened between the time he touched Billy and the time when Viggo's rough CPR, that bruised his sternum and cracked two of his ribs, brought him back into the ordinary world.
The thing was, when he'd started in he was only thinking about Billy, only about Billy, with no thought about the pain that would follow, or his own well-being. He'd half-expected to die--he'd told Billy as much, but what he hadn't realized was that dying was such a terribly hard thing, like climbing up a hill of broken glass, slipping down again, clawing oneself back up. The body was tenacious; it didn't let go easily.
It wasn't until Viggo laid him down by Billy's side, that Dom realized it was over, he'd gone too far, that he could try to claw his way back as much as he liked, but eventually the slipping would take over, and there'd be no way up, only the falling, and falling, into what he couldn't say.
The only satisfaction he had--and at the moment he didn't suppose it was as much as it should be, was that he'd healed Billy. Billy would survive, there was no question that he wouldn't. What Dom healed, he healed well, that was how the so-called bloody gift worked. If one put one's mind to it, it got the job done.
He felt he was standing outside his body, watching himself lie so peacefully in the soft green grass, whilst inside he screamed and screamed, the agony of Billy's injuries, added on to everything else, multiplying itself into something so far beyond unbearable it couldn't begin to be described. It was the way he been taught hell would be, when he was a boy--burning forever, alive.
He found, in that moment, that he remembered everything of who, and what, he'd been.
Dom was glad they couldn't hear him screaming. For one thing, bloody as he was, Billy looked peaceful too, almost smiling, with that look he had, the one Dom loved so much that was almost unbearable, too. Just then the truth of things hit him: dying meant being parted from Billy, and whether they'd be together again someday, in a different place or different forms, or whether this was just the end altogether didn't matter to him. Where Billy was concerned, someday was too far off. Ever since he'd known him, one minute not knowing Billy was there, in the world where he lived, would be too much.
Sometimes, at the start of the past terrible summer, when Billy'd been in London and he was in Los Angeles, he'd had to ring at what he knew were awful times of the night, just to hear Billy's voice, even to hear Billy's voice sounding slightly cross and barely awake, because he'd been woken up for the twentieth time that month and desperately needed his sleep.
At the end, though, even that didn't matter. At the end, the only thing that mattered was the pain. He couldn't see Billy anymore, he couldn't see any of them anymore, all he could do was feel, and what he felt was so terrible that he was ready to let go, and fall, so ready that when he did release himself, it came as a relief.
First it was dark where he was, and then there was a soft, diffuse light. Dom felt the way he'd felt as a child, coming out of a fever, nearly well, and so utterly relaxed as to be nearly boneless, tucked up safe and warm in his own bed. The sense of well-being was nearly as overpowering as the pain had been. He thought of Billy, but the sense was that Billy would be there in a moment, he only had to wait, that it was no more than if Billy'd gone to the supermarket, or to the shops to get a new set of guitar strings, or off on some other inconsequential task. He'd be back presently, and their reunion would be sweet, as it was always sweet, even when they'd only been parted for a short time.
He hoped it wouldn't seem too long to Billy. Lovely as he felt, he hated the thought that Billy would be sad.
After a long while, he rose to his feet, wandering along a road that unfurled before him as he went. Along with the diffuse light, things had a swirled, almost pixilated quality, as if he was moving through a Turner landscape, like the one he'd seen in the Whitworth Art Gallery when he was a schoolboy, only in three dimensions. The colours were amazing, colours he wished he could have painted during his occasional bursts of artistic endeavor.
He wished Viggo could see this. Vig would have been amazed too, and would have had something wise to say, that might have summed up the whole experience. Dom knew he could have scribbled in his journal for a thousand years and still not found the words.
As he walked, though, something seemed to change. For one thing, the Turner landscape seemed less real, growing flatter and flatter until it seemed more like a stage set, and then it was a stage set, the old familiar one with the fake rocks and the painted moon. He kept moving, hoping to walk out of it again somehow, if there was some sort of escape, but his body began to feel heavier and heavier, then his bones started to ache, then his belly, until he was holding himself, staggering along, still hoping against hope that he could still carry himself out of this place.
It wasn't to be. At last he fell, unable to go any further, unable to do anything but lie on the rough ground of painted sackcloth and weep, because all the pain had come back to him now, and because he'd had the very slightest taste of something brilliant and it had faded away to no more than this.
"Poor little English boy," a familiar voice said. A weathered hand raised his head, offering him water to drink from what looked like a hollowed gourd. Dom drank from it thirstily, but couldn't keep it down, so that afterward he felt worse than before. "Poor English boy," the voice crooned again.
"I suppose you're here to tell me something," Dom said, in too much pain for graciousness. He guessed he should consider himself lucky that he was still able to see in this place, but as there wasn't much to look at, it didn't seem a great consolation.
She raised his head again gently, then his body, setting his back against one of the faux stones. Dom couldn't help but cry out when she touched him; he could feel blood running in small, hot trickles down his belly.
"Dominic," she said. "Look at me."
It was as it had been before: she was Mother Abigail and not Mother Abigail; young and old all at the same time. She wore a gown that brushed her bare feet, of indigo like a night sky, set with tiny jewels that looked exactly like stars. He loved and resented her all at once.
"I have to go back, don't I?" Dom said.
"You're given a choice. There's always a choice."
"Which is?"
"You live, and when you're able you go to Boulder, and you tell them what you've seen, all that happened in Los Vegas." She touched his cheek, her eyes full of sympathy. "In the springtime will be soon enough."
"I'd imagine," Dom told her, "That they'll laugh in my face. They'll think I'm mental."
Mother Abigail inclined her head. "Some will."
"But I get to do it anyway."
She nodded again--but it was more than a nod. It was a command.
"But you don't-" Dom had a hard time catching his breath. His guts cramped and he had to feel with his hand to make sure they hadn't spilled out, as Billy's had done. Everything was still inside, but felt like a near thing, because the cuts were deep and vicious, and he could feel infection spreading from them already, moving into his blood, throughout his body, making him feel hot and prickly. "You don't know what it's like."
"I walked in the desert," Mother Abigail reminded him.
"Yeah, but you haven't done this. Besides which, I walked in a bloody desert too. I healed two people who'd walked in the desert. If we're playing suffering one-upsmanship, that is."
She laughed softly.
"You mentioned a second option?"
She took his hand, holding it tightly between her own old-but-young hands, "You can see, English Boy. You can see for yourself."
Dom closed his eyes, and saw--and the vision was terrible: there was Billy leaving the others, existing on his own. There was Billy living a long, hard, bitter life, altogether alone, cut off from his friends, cut off from humanity, killing…
He saw Billy not coming to where he was after all.
Dom ripped his hand away from Mother Abigail's. "Okay. Enough. Point Taken."
She looked at him again with her great dark eyes--sadly this time.
It's true? It's not just to coerce me?" Dom considered his own Billy, who was funny, gentle and fiercely protective of those he loved. He'd always thought that Billy, without him, would be just fine. He was the one who needed Billy, not the other way around. Billy never called him at two in the morning just to hear the sound of his voice. Billy was always loving, but he only rang at reasonable times.
But he'd known, hadn't he, when he'd almost died before? He'd known that Billy would have gone south, if he'd died from the flu, overwhelmed by his own anger and bitterness.
It's just that Dom couldn't reconcile his image of Billy, his love for Billy, with these harder possibilities.
There really was no choice at all, given those options.
"Can you…" Dom felt foolish asking, but it was worth a try. "There's no way… It can't be made a bit easier for me, can it?"
Sadly, she shook her head. "It is what it must be, Dominic."
"All so I can go to Boulder in the spring and have the good citizens laugh their arses off at the crazy man?"
"Not only for that."
"Okay, for Billy, too. But that could be stopped, couldn't it? If you… they… I dunno. If it was wanted. If it was seen as a good thing."
"It has never worked that way," she answered, with the slightest note of impatience in her voice.
Dom leaned his head back onto the artificial rocks. They were hard and lumpy, and he felt so sick, and so in pain. He didn't know how he could take any more, but he also knew his decision was already made. He shut his eyes on the artificial world and fell again.
So far as Dom can reckon--all time seems more or less the same these days--that day of his fall, the day of his memory, was better than a month ago. It's now the 19th October, the night before Viggo's birthday, but he only knows that because Orli and Elijah have been planning surprises, plans that include Orli standing on the table, and taking the SUV out at night (which Dom considers wildly dangerous) in order to perform some series of mad tasks, among them the acquisition of the flock of black balloons now hovering like storm clouds against the lounge ceiling--only, because Orli's more aesthetically minded than his partner-in-crime, there are also a few silver ones, mixed in, and a handful of fluorescents with patterns of moons and stars. Dom knows the colours because Orli's told him.
He's enlisted the pair in a plan of his own, a surprise for Billy, since he's made Billy sleep in his own bed upstairs, rather than drifting off in the big chair, or camping out on the cot across the lounge. He's insisted, in fact, that they take out the cot altogether, and bring the other sofa back in, that the lounge become a proper lounge again, where everyone sits in the evening, so that they can be together. He's tired of being on the edges of things, of all the distant voices in other rooms, his family moving so quietly and gently when they're around him. Perhaps he can't bear a great deal, but he'll take as much of it as he can stand.
In aid of this, for the past few days, he's had Elijah and Orli come down to him when the others are sleeping, because he knows both of them sleep very little (Elijah having totally lost his old ability to nap anywhere, at any time) and sit him up in the chair. He only lasted five minutes the first time, but now he's nearly up to ten, and it seems both a small accomplishment and a great one at the same time--at the very least, when they have Viggo's cake, he'll be able to sit with the others for a bit at the table, even if the thought of the cake itself turns his stomach.
It makes him think of that old Eddie Izzard bit, the Spanish Inquisition as done by the Anglican church, "Cake… or death." At the moment, Dom couldn't say which is less appealing to him.
He hopes Eddie Izzard is alive somewhere, making people laugh, even when there's not much to laugh about.
Dom's managed to convince both Elijah and Orli that they not be the ones to actually bake the cake, that they leave it for Toni or Sean, their more competent cooks, and they've agreed, after the thought of what might happen otherwise sent them both into fits of giggles.
Something about cake--raw cake, and a broken oven--stirs a thread of memory within him. It's a New Zealand memory, he knows that, and one that makes him smile, but he can't catch hold of more than that. That moment of total clarity, during which he knew everything, has long since slipped away. Sometimes he wonders if it will every come again, or if all the sweet, small memories will remain wisps for him to grasp at but never quite catch hold.
"Why so serious?" Orli bounces into the lounge, dropping bonelessly to the floor by Dom's side. After a moment Elijah drops down beside him. Orli's much happier now, with fewer bad dreams, Dom knows, since he and Elijah started shagging, though he also knows it's more than that, that there's actual love growing between them, more than the love of friends and brothers they shared before. He can feel them shifting below, Orli's arms going round Elijah, Elijah's head dropping onto Orli's shoulder. They'd be lovely together, Dom thinks, and wishes he could see them.
Orli's head leans back against Dom's arm, and Dom strokes his soft hair. It's grown very long, longer even than when he played Will Turner, and a picture pops into his mind of Orli, several years younger, with a perfectly ridiculous haircut. "You had a Mohawk," he blurts out, and both his friends laugh.
"It was awful!" Elijah says.
"It was," Orli admits. "Don't know what I was thinking."
"We were young." Dom thinks that's right, but a moment later he's not entirely sure. "Isn't that right?"
"We were young," Orli agrees. "Hell, we're still young!"
"I'm still pretty fucking young," Elijah agrees.
"The youngest!" Orli assures him, and it comes to Dom that both their voices are faintly slurred.
"You've been sampling the champagne." Dom's more amused than anything else.
"Had to make sure it's drinkable, right?" Orli laughs. For a moment, Dom can hear the two kissing, then Elijah's soft murmur of pleasure, and in that instant it makes him feel lonely. He wishes Billy weren't all the way upstairs where he can't climb, even though he'd been the one to tell him to go, unable to bear the tiredness in Billy's voice, that he'd tried so hard to hide.
"Go," Dom tells them, laughing a little, even though it's hard to laugh sometimes. "Upstairs with you, before you start shagging on the carpet and making me glad I'm blind after all."
"Oh, Dom." He can hear Elijah twist around, until he's on his knees by the sofa. Elijah's hand caresses his cheek, followed after a few seconds by a kiss. Orli kisses his forehead, then the two are gone; Dom imagines them climbing the staircase hand in hand, pausing for a good, long snog halfway up. He's lonely for that sort of contact, being able to give a Billy a proper kiss without needing to catch his breath, able to touch Billy, to hold him--to have Billy shag him into the mattress until afterwards he can scarcely move.
He holds tight to his wedding ring, on its chain around his neck, and thinks of Billy, and tells himself, "It will all be right. It will all be right again."
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I felt the reason for Dom's return needed to be adequately explained. That part wasn't in the original draft, but it needed to be said.