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monaboyd Jan. 13th, 2005 06:07 pm)
witt444.livejournal.com posting in monaboyd Jan. 13th, 2005 06:07 pm)Mix Tape pt.2
D/E/B
PG-13/Rish
x-posted at fellow_shippers.
Not mine. Not true. Still.
/No time to search the world around
‘Cuz you know where I’ll be found
When I come around/
-Greenday, “When I Come Around”
“Don’t worry so much,” Billy says. He sends the balls spinning around the table and sinks three, all stripes.
“You really are magic with a pool cue, Bills.”
“Anyway it’s not serious.”
“I’m not in love with him. In what way is that unserious?”
The balls clatter uselessly against each other. “It happens all the time. People change.”
“Spoiled so soon. You think it’s me?”
“It’s not spoiled,” Billy says, giving you the stick. “You’re just in different places. I think that’s OK.”
You crouch level with the table. Over the little humps of balls you see Billy’s fingers rubbing the lacquered wood compulsively. You line up a shot and stab at it, watch the ball twirl helplessly into the pocket nearest Billy’s nervous hands. The clatter of balls and felt is soothing somehow, complementary to the way thoughts are ramming around in your brain. You straighten.
“Nice.”
“Too nice. I don’t want to break his heart, Bill. He’s so sweet, and it’s not like I don’t like him, just…”
“You don’t love him. It’s different. And it’s not enough.”
You wander around the table chewing on your lower lip. You go to stand on Billy’s side, shoulder to shoulder to survey the possibilities. You lean across him and he’s warm against your side and hip. He curls an arm between your thighs.
“Don’t goose me, man.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, like. You’re lining up for an A-plus goose there.”
“Am not! A fellah can’t just hold his mate’s inner thigh for no reason?” You hear the high riding laughter he struggles to keep out of his voice. If you looked now his eyes would be bright and his face would be simple. His hand gets tighter on your thigh.
“Trying to cop a feel then?”
You pin the cue ball in the space between word and thought, but you’re not fast enough. The moment the stick shoots between your fingers gravity reverses around your pants, there’s an arm around your chest and you’re in the air, swiping uselessly at Billy and threatening the lighting fixtures. Roaring rhythmically, he swings you away from the table and hurls you down on the nearest sofa.
“Unfair!” you bellow. “Interference! Do-overs!”
“Quit your whinging. Anyway you scratched, so it’s my turn. Give me that.”
He takes the cue and prances to the table. You scramble after him, tugging at your hair and clothes. He’s all concentration but you break it easily by landing on his back. He grunts as his chin connects with the table.
“Bugger, Dom!”
“What? I tripped. Did I hurt you?”
“Fucking well broke my jaw, I think.”
“Want me to kiss it better?”
“Kiss it worse you mean.”
You ride him as he shoots. You like the way the shifting of his shoulders tosses you around. Despite your arms winched about his neck he sinks another two balls with effortless aplomb. You smile and then you feel guilty for having fun. You wonder where Elijah is, what he’s doing. You wonder if he’s thinking about you, and if it makes him sad. You didn’t want to tell anyone, really; you didn’t want to drag your personal stuff all over the place. But Billy is different. Billy is the person you tell these things to.
“It’ll work itself out,” Billy interrupts, strolling around the table. You dig the heels of your sneakers into his belly. They’re green Pumas with yellow stripes and they perfectly match the green of his T-shirt. You wonder if it happened on purpose. “He’ll get hurt but he’ll get over it. The most important thing is to be honest.”
“Stupid honesty.”
“Why do you think you don’t love him?”
“I don’t know. He’s so quiet all the time. And he’s not fun like you’re fun.”
Billy twists his neck to violent angles in order to meet your eyes. You start to blush a little before you realize it.
“Reason enough. I’m going for the eight ball. Hold on.”
Annie waits for the last time
Just the same as the last time
Annie says, “You see
This is why I’d rather be alone”
-Ben Folds, “Annie Waits”
You welsh out of participating in sex again. It’s almost too easy these days. You play it off to exhaustion, though technically Elijah is more tired than you. He bitches and moans through the entire evening routine, but the moment both your heads hit the pillow his arm is sliding across the mattress. You groan inside but you stay still; you pretend you’re asleep or very thoughtful. Elijah spreads his palm so he can get fingertips on both your nipples. He rolls them until they harden. You don’t want to have sex with him. The trouble is that your body can always be convinced.
“Dom…” Elijah purrs softly, mostly to himself. You think. It has the warm, satisfied sound of your name inside his head, the you he has, not the you you are.
You rumble a little despite yourself. Your back arches so slightly of its own accord, thrusting your chest into his hand. And then he’s next to you, breathing heavily across your collarbone. And then his hands are everywhere. Your hands remain pinned behind your head as if your skull has trapped them. And he’s on your mouth and your cock, and you make acquiescent noises but you don’t ever move.
You wonder if he notices that you never get off your back. He seems not to mind but he gives off clues. Little things like rubbing his face against your lips fishing for kisses, or trying to flip you on top of him subtly. You never go. Sometimes you distract him by pretending to get angry and biting, tearing into this throat until groans break from him and you leave ugly, unconcealable red welts. Sometimes this does the trick, or he pretends it does. He continues trying to get you both off at the same time. You tolerate it and struggle to keep your brain from drifting muzzily into dreams. You no longer make any show of participating, and you no longer really feel guilty.
Elijah climbs atop you, straddling your crotch. He begins humping, and you press back roughly. He moans, high and bleating. You bounce him up and down but it exhausts your calves and you don’t want to. He’s moaning and sighing and gasping. He leans forward because he wants to press his forehead against yours, but his forehead gets round and clammy and you hate how it feels. You present him with forearms to hold him back, supporting his chest with your crossed arms. He grabs your biceps and keeps whining.
“Fuck me,” he sighs. “Ooh, fuck me.”
The longing and innocence with which he says it nearly breaks your heart. You bite your bottom lip. Your brain wheels ahead with excuses why you can’t, but the reason is too clear. You encourage his dry-fucking, which is getting quite wet now, and you’re wide awake but you wish you weren’t. You wish you were soundly asleep. You wish you were someone else. One of his screaming fangirls, someone who worshipped him. No: just someone who loved him enough. His smell is claustrophobic in your nostrils, his touch too close to your skin. You want to shove him away but you don’t. You close your eyes.
My fuse is burning out
And all that powder’s gone to waste
-Elvis Costello, “Indoor Fireworks”
Elijah likes to fight because he thinks it represents confidence in the other person’s presence. You like to mouth “break up with me” silently when his back is turned. But since his tactic is more fulfilling, usually you end up fighting.
Your daily lives are littered with landmines and anything can set them off. This time it’s five AM in Feet, and you’ve put on a CD he doesn’t like. He tells you in no uncertain terms that you’re a complete idiot to have put that CD in and you’ll take it out immediately if you know what’s good for you. You reply that it’s just a fucking CD, and he replies that at five AM /nothing/ is just a CD. He throws some insults in there for balance. You refuse to be insulted. Sean and Billy meet each other’s eyes in the mirror.
So you and Elijah, separated by two boxes and four Feet people, scream at each other at the top of your lungs for the next forty-five minutes. When the Feet people tell you you can sit down you both flop gratefully into your chairs, exhausted and silent. The CD, on mute, gives up little electronic buzzes as it whirs around the slot.
“I don’t know why I bother,” Elijah mutters loudly to his mirror.
“I don’t know why you bother either,” you retort to his reflection.
He looks at you from behind Billy’s hair. His eyes are pure terror, water with hurt. You feel that familiar tearing in your chest as your heart rips for him and all the sadness of his putting up with you. The area under his eyes is black. For a moment you want to take him in your arms and be sorry, kiss his forehead, promise to love him. But then you only sort of love him when you’re on the verge of hurting him, and that’s self-protection rather than love, really. That is Not Enough. He loves you and you don’t love him. So then why the fuck is it so hard to let him go?
You reach across and turn up the volume on the CD. Sean exhales sharply. You watch with relief as Elijah’s eyes steadily freeze over into hate.
I may
Take a holiday in Spain
Leave my wings behind me
Drive this little girl insane
Fly away to someone new
-Counting Crows, “Holiday in Spain”
Billy whoops, swings his board onto his shoulder and charges. You and Elijah hang back and watch him scramble into the sunrise, meeting the waves chest-first. The sand is cold on your bare feet but you’re snug inside your wetsuit. Elijah grins at you and his face is formed from the tight lines of morning.
“This was a good idea,” he says. “It’s a really good idea to take some time off. I’m so sick of acting.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Just having to switch so rapidly from myself into someone else, you know? Back and forth, and whose life is it, and what am I carrying around in my head… It gets really exhausting.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’m glad we’re here.”
“Me too.”
He flips his sandals into the tall grasses with an efficient flick of his feet. “You coming?”
“In a minute.”
“OK. See you out there.”
He gallops into the ocean. He tries to vault the whiteheads but trips and goes pitching. Billy’s head bobs with laughter from where he’s splayed on his belly on his board, further out. Elijah slings himself over his board and swims for it, the strong confidence of his strokes easily carrying him past the rough patches. You watch the pale flash of his hands against his black wetsuit and the sparkling darkness of the sea. Elijah reaches Billy and paddles into an about-face, scrabbling about until he mounts his board. He and Billy offer you matching waves. You wave them back to go ahead, flinging your heel into your hand in a pretend stretch. Their arms fall to their sides.
You crouch comfortably into your solitude and the sand. You watch them floating there with their heads turned over their shoulders. Elijah picks a wave, suddenly falling flat as the sea swells to meet him. He starts swimming and for a moment it looks like nothing will happen, but then the back of his board tilts subtly into the air. You watch him waver carefully to his feet, and the whole tenuous situation is flipped on its head. He meets the board and the ocean in complete control, cutting back and forth across the wave’s face, body hunched down in concentration. He’s brilliant to watch, though his surfing itself does not entirely rival brilliance. He’s brilliant because he enjoys it, because his focus goes to it, because he /does/ it. Sometimes he’s the same when he acts. Sometimes when you’re in scenes with him he meets your eyes with a face that is pure Frodo, unable to separate himself from the job. Moments like that and like this you could almost love him, moments when he is other than he is with you.
The wave ends easily and he slides into the wet sand, his board shucking and slowing until he trips off it. He takes a few rambunctious, staggering steps before the leash catches his ankle and he trips, landing in a soggy heap. Out on the ocean Billy claps.
“Nice dismount,” you say.
“Thanks,” he answers, getting up. He stands close to you, the water chill rising off the warmth of his wetsuit. “Kiss me?”
You bite your bottom lip. He stares at your mouth and then at your eyes.
“You don’t want to?” he asks.
“I don’t /not/ want to. It’s just.”
“I know,” he sighs. His eyes shift nervously out to sea. “Is it… Is it sex in general or just sex with me?”
“Lij.”
“Because if it’s me then it’s…”
“Then it’s what?”
He looks at the ocean again. You watch Billy balancing on the very top of a wave, his hair lit by what is now complete daylight in a bright blue sky. Elijah’s smell is strongly saltwater, a little bit sickening and a little bit arousing. You look at him from the corner of your eye, at his sticky hair against his face and the salt crusting on his skin. He looks back to you. He could be crying or he could just be wet.
“Let’s not,” you interrupt him. “Please? We’re here on holiday. I don’t know why everything has to be so serious all the time.”
“It’s OK if you’re not in love with me,” Elijah says. “I don’t mind. I love you, so…” He shrugs, his wetsuit shortening the motion. You wonder how he knew and then you feel daft for wondering. You hear the harsh grate of Billy sliding into shore.
“It’s not OK with me,” you say. “It’s not enough.”
“You’re the one who says it’s not enough.”
“Yeah. I am.”
You tug your board out of the sand and step away. Rage boils inside your belly, and you’re aware of its shaking energy and the sensitive heat it plays across your skin. You walk over to Billy who sparkles when he’s wet.
“Nice one.”
“You weren’t even watching,” he smiles. He looks over his shoulder. “Did you do something to Elijah?”
“Nothing any different than usual. Maybe you should talk to him, Bills. I just don’t want to do this now.”
“You can’t keep stringing the kid along. Make a clean break.”
“How? We work together, we see each other every day… It’s easier to stay together than pick apart the aftermath.”
“Stay together til we wrap, then. It’s only a few more months.”
“That’s so pathetic.”
“Ask him, I don’t know. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“So how come we’re doing it?” He grins. “Get yourself out there, mate. We’re gonna ride some fucking waves and drink some fucking beer and chill some fucking out.”
He shoves you in the chest. The wetsuit buffers the sensation but you get the impact, staggering a little. You shove him back. He shoves you with both hands and you fall, the sand rough on your bare heels. You grab him around the knees and he lets you take him down so he can jam his elbows into your ribs. Your breath leaves you in a strangled laugh. Your face hits the sand and you see Elijah where you left him, staring out to sea with his periphery fixed on you.
“Er, let’s tone it down,” you hear yourself muttering, pushing Billy back. “Can’t have too much fun when Elijah’s in a piss.”
You both stumble to your feet, making enough finishing noise that Elijah finally looks and then comes over. Billy makes a joke and slaps you in the back of the head for good measure. Elijah’s eyes test you both out and eventually he breaks into a smile of his own, then a laugh. Trust Billy to defuse the bomb. He keeps going, slicing through wires of tension, rerouting green envies and red suspicions until you’re there as a trio, on holiday, and you take your boards all together and you head out to have fun.
You cannot express to Billy what a relief it is to just have some fucking /fun/ in Elijah’s presence. For it just to be easy again, touches and looks devoid of deep meaning. You all ride hard and take your poundings. Your body feels like your own, outside of Elijah’s jurisdiction, your own personal frame again. You stand and lie flat, alone and together, and you go in and out of the rented house for drinks and pisses and you flop in heaps or singles in the sand, warming, drying. You catch a few of the sort of waves that remind you why you love surfing, the sort that are broad and caring, floating you up and cradling you for what feels like miles. You take a few tumbles that hurl you to the sea floor, grating and panic and the stomach-turning jerk of the leash that flips you over and drags you helpless and spluttering after your unmanned board. You ride until your muscles ache and the blaring sun is too loud, and you all agree to take what turns into a permanent break.
You peel your wetsuits off on the deck, keeping your eyes averted and your bodies bent. Elijah beats you both to the first shower. You and Billy pad to your individual bedrooms for shorts, and you have to rout through Elijah’s stuff that’s packed in your bag until you can come up with a pair, mottled green and white, hopelessly lame. In the kitchen Billy is wearing a yellow T-shirt that rides up and down over the rim of his green shorts.
“Modesty?” you ask, shoving past him into the fridge.
“Sunburn.”
“You were in a wetsuit.”
“Avoiding it. I get crispy on a moment’s notice. Look- I burned the backs of my fucking hands.”
He offers his hands for your inspection. Sure enough they are red and thin-skinned. You touch them. He winces.
“Wanker.”
“They’re hot.”
“Sunburn, I told you. And the back of my neck too.”
“You need some aloe. Right? That plant you crack open?”
“They’ve planted one on the window.” He gestures to a spiky plant in a sandy pot poking out from behind the faucet. You go over to it and break off one of its points. Colorless ooze spreads across your fingers. “These rental people are lovely; they think of everything. Give me that.”
You give him the tip. He squeezes it studiously and spreads it across his hands, massages it into the back of his neck. His bones crack when he tilts his head. When he lifts his arms his T-shirt raises and his belly is lightly hairy in the thin strip above his shorts.
“Beer?” you ask.
“My hands are full.”
“That’s OK.”
You pick up the plump bottle of Heineken and tilt it to his lips. He smiles at you coyly and opens his mouth to accept it. You monitor the careful attention of his throat as he swallows. When you take the bottle away there’s a sheen of condensation of his lips. You reach for it with a finger, consciously but also not, just invading Billy’s space like you do with him. His lips are freezing on your fingertip. His eyes spark when your finger slips errantly inside his mouth, just touching the hot hard tips of his bottom teeth and the smooth glide of the inside of his mouth. His arms drop to his side.
“Better,” you tell him. You’re still poking him in the mouth. “But now you’re all greasy.”
The shower turns off. You both step back simultaneously, as if caught. When you mirror the fear in each other’s eyes you break into laughter, and you’re laughing when Elijah arrives in the kitchen in a towel.
“Billy you’re all shiny,” he says, kicking you in the calves as he opens the fridge. You wonder if he suspects something, but there is nothing to suspect. You watch him bend forward, his towel slipping low on his ass. You want to slap him because it would be funny, flirtatious, but it’s the idea you’re interested in and not his body specifically. Your stomach curdles and you shove the thoughts aside. “So what are we doing now?”
“Always have to entertain the kids,” Billy cracks, but it takes a minute for his voice to get going and you wonder if you’ve upset him. He’s rubbing the aloe around and around the back of his hands until it looks dry and uncomfortable. “Can I have the shower?”
“Sure,” you say, and he darts by you out the door. His body strikes yours and you stumble. Elijah catches you.
“What happened to him?” he asks.
“Diarrhea. Hungry?”
“Naw. Sea sick. Do I smell like seaweed?”
“Huh?”
“You smell like seaweed.” Elijah’s nose jams into your chest. You touch his hair, clumpy despite washing. His palms hit your bare sides and pave the way for the long slide of his forearms against your skin. His mouth approaches yours.
“Lij, I-” You step back. He does too, even though you’ve stepped away from him.
“Dom… You’re giving up a good thing.”
“Statements like that are absurd. If Hitler said that to you you’d still give him his ring back.”
“Is that how you see me?”
“Elijah.” You squeeze your eyelids. There’s something remarkable about break-up poetics, the simple art of lines untempered and heart-felt.
“So we’re breaking up then?”
“Um… fuck, I don’t know. Yes.” You reach for your beer. It seems to have gone missing. Maybe Billy took it. “Like a radio station. You’re driving out of range.”
“You’re the one driving, Dom.”
Break-up poetry; break-up face. The eyes like water, the mouth and hands mobile. The sudden pathetic gravity of his body drawing all emotion toward it where he’s come to rest in the kitchen, a towel low on his hips, a beer weeping in his hand.
“OK,” you exhale. You start to rub your palms compulsively up and down your thighs until the heat starts burning through your shorts. “OK. Listen-”
“No,” Elijah replies. He walks out of the kitchen.
You stand there for a couple minutes inhaling deeply, smelling aloe and beer and soap and outside. You hear the sand-shuck of Elijah putting on sandals and clunking across the deck. His lighter hisses and then you smell smoke.
The shower goes off so abruptly you wonder if Billy’s been listening. When he arrives in the kitchen you know he has because of the concern dripping off his face.
“Elijah’s naked out there,” he says.
“How do you know?”
“There’s a window in the shower. His towel fell off. You OK?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Is /he/ OK?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care, Billy. Shit.” You grab the back of your hair and pull. You feel pent-up and aggressive, want to /do/ something to someone but what and who. You go into the fridge for another beer. When you close the door Billy is still there, making puddles on the tile. “Get back in your shower.”
“I was done anyway.”
He turns around and for some reason you reach out and rip his towel off. He’s knotted it loosely in the small of his back and it only takes the lightest stroke of your fingers to make the whole thing float gently around his ankles. His shoulders set in shock as you’re presented with the familiar sight of his ass and the backs of his thighs. But then your hand shoots out again and ghosts along the careful indentation at the base of his spine. His skin is hot, damp.
“Dom?” he says without turning around.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just being passive-aggressive.”
He turns around. Slowly, you daresay. And makes no reach for his towel. So that you’re faced with him face-to-face, and you see that his cock is hard and upright against his belly. You start to laugh and point but when you see the little frown on his face you don’t.
“Uhm, this isn’t a come-on, is it?” you attempt to chuckle.
And then the door slams against the wall. You smell smoke strongly before Elijah has his hands all over you, battering your shoulders and head.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he yells. “/What the fuck do you think you’re doing?/”
You raise your arms but he’s already moved on to Billy, who had the brains to head for the other room when Elijah entered. Elijah captures him halfway to the couch and tackles him, sending them both to the floor. Elijah is startled and just sits on Billy’s back, hands clasped loosely around Billy’s neck.
“Elijah cut it out!” you yell, not sure why you sound so shrill and panicked. You grab him by something—the hair, the nape, whatever—and peel him off Billy so hard he almost does a backflip and lands in a painful pile of his own. Billy scrambles to his feet and protects himself with the other side of the couch.
“I fucking knew it!” Elijah is screaming. “I fucking knew you two were hot for each other! How long, Dom, huh? You’ve been doing this since before we started dating, or- or what?”
“Nothing happened,” Billy says, but his eyes are stormy and his face is flushed and something very well /could/ have happened by the looks of him. His cock is deflating, but not quickly enough. “Really, nothing happened.”
“But you wish it did, don’t you?”
Silence. You realize he’s asking you. You look at him and he’s dark and serious. And you realize that, really, you have nothing else to say.
/Don’t blink, everyone’s watching
They’ll think you’re up to something/
-Dashboard Confessional, “Morning Calls”
When he touches you you think you’ll puke. The intimate slide of his palm against the back of your jacket, and how his body notches into yours, and the spikes of his hair jamming you gel-hard in the forehead. You press your cheek against his and you both wear matching grins.
“Great to see you.”
“Aye, been ages.”
The flashbulb pops.
The camera vanishes.
You both leap apart like twin magnets.
He disappears and you wade back across the carpet to Billy. Los Angeles is steadily filling with warm, thick-aired dusk, and you think this is a night to be at a beach and not a premiere. A night for clear air and waves, not the wool press of dress-bodies and the lights and the roar. You wave randomly. You dodge pockets of people in your search.
You find Billy all tangled up with Orlando. Orlando looks like a clown in his bright pink suit, and Billy looks like a turd in his fucking kilt. You’re laughing when you reach him.
“You know a pair of fish-nets would really-”
“So shut up, then,” Billy retorts violently, but he’s smiling. Seems like he always smiles when he looks at you. To be honest you can’t quite work up to it, and he feels like a stranger when you’re with him like this. But you accept his hand on your shoulder and the eventual soft brush of his lips across one of your eyebrows.
“I’ll go,” Orlando giggles, but truth is he’s being dragged away anyway. You curl up into Billy, press your face into the shoulder pad of his jacket and close your eyes.
“Can we go now?” you whimper.
“Not having a good time?”
“It’s just too fucking awkward. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me.”
“He’s not looking at you now,” Billy observes.
“Yeah but he’s doing it on purpose.”
You look up into his eyes and you feel lame for looking miserable, and you know Billy knows you’re a big boy and can deal. You wonder if relationships will always leave you feeling like an irresponsible shite. In the eventual aftermath, when you and Billy were trekking through the sand while Elijah fiercely sorted his things from yours, you told Billy that you were cursed. You said that sooner or later you drop everyone who has ever handed themselves to you, that your fingers open forgetfully and everything shatters. Billy touched your shoulder and it hurt. You realized you were sunburned.
Billy said, “You haven’t dropped me yet. I’ll think we’ll be all right.”
“We” was not the Billy and Dom who were mates. “We” was some new, scary pairing that you knew you would never be ready for. But you let him draw you in, and now you can’t remember the way out. And maybe this is not so bad, but why does it leave you feeling scarred?
Across the carpet Elijah touches the stretched-out fingertips of his fans, a hesitant smile playing tag with his lips. Billy’s palm burns into yours as you clasp hands. You carefully hide your joined fists in your pocket.
D/E/B
PG-13/Rish
x-posted at fellow_shippers.
Not mine. Not true. Still.
/No time to search the world around
‘Cuz you know where I’ll be found
When I come around/
-Greenday, “When I Come Around”
“Don’t worry so much,” Billy says. He sends the balls spinning around the table and sinks three, all stripes.
“You really are magic with a pool cue, Bills.”
“Anyway it’s not serious.”
“I’m not in love with him. In what way is that unserious?”
The balls clatter uselessly against each other. “It happens all the time. People change.”
“Spoiled so soon. You think it’s me?”
“It’s not spoiled,” Billy says, giving you the stick. “You’re just in different places. I think that’s OK.”
You crouch level with the table. Over the little humps of balls you see Billy’s fingers rubbing the lacquered wood compulsively. You line up a shot and stab at it, watch the ball twirl helplessly into the pocket nearest Billy’s nervous hands. The clatter of balls and felt is soothing somehow, complementary to the way thoughts are ramming around in your brain. You straighten.
“Nice.”
“Too nice. I don’t want to break his heart, Bill. He’s so sweet, and it’s not like I don’t like him, just…”
“You don’t love him. It’s different. And it’s not enough.”
You wander around the table chewing on your lower lip. You go to stand on Billy’s side, shoulder to shoulder to survey the possibilities. You lean across him and he’s warm against your side and hip. He curls an arm between your thighs.
“Don’t goose me, man.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, like. You’re lining up for an A-plus goose there.”
“Am not! A fellah can’t just hold his mate’s inner thigh for no reason?” You hear the high riding laughter he struggles to keep out of his voice. If you looked now his eyes would be bright and his face would be simple. His hand gets tighter on your thigh.
“Trying to cop a feel then?”
You pin the cue ball in the space between word and thought, but you’re not fast enough. The moment the stick shoots between your fingers gravity reverses around your pants, there’s an arm around your chest and you’re in the air, swiping uselessly at Billy and threatening the lighting fixtures. Roaring rhythmically, he swings you away from the table and hurls you down on the nearest sofa.
“Unfair!” you bellow. “Interference! Do-overs!”
“Quit your whinging. Anyway you scratched, so it’s my turn. Give me that.”
He takes the cue and prances to the table. You scramble after him, tugging at your hair and clothes. He’s all concentration but you break it easily by landing on his back. He grunts as his chin connects with the table.
“Bugger, Dom!”
“What? I tripped. Did I hurt you?”
“Fucking well broke my jaw, I think.”
“Want me to kiss it better?”
“Kiss it worse you mean.”
You ride him as he shoots. You like the way the shifting of his shoulders tosses you around. Despite your arms winched about his neck he sinks another two balls with effortless aplomb. You smile and then you feel guilty for having fun. You wonder where Elijah is, what he’s doing. You wonder if he’s thinking about you, and if it makes him sad. You didn’t want to tell anyone, really; you didn’t want to drag your personal stuff all over the place. But Billy is different. Billy is the person you tell these things to.
“It’ll work itself out,” Billy interrupts, strolling around the table. You dig the heels of your sneakers into his belly. They’re green Pumas with yellow stripes and they perfectly match the green of his T-shirt. You wonder if it happened on purpose. “He’ll get hurt but he’ll get over it. The most important thing is to be honest.”
“Stupid honesty.”
“Why do you think you don’t love him?”
“I don’t know. He’s so quiet all the time. And he’s not fun like you’re fun.”
Billy twists his neck to violent angles in order to meet your eyes. You start to blush a little before you realize it.
“Reason enough. I’m going for the eight ball. Hold on.”
Annie waits for the last time
Just the same as the last time
Annie says, “You see
This is why I’d rather be alone”
-Ben Folds, “Annie Waits”
You welsh out of participating in sex again. It’s almost too easy these days. You play it off to exhaustion, though technically Elijah is more tired than you. He bitches and moans through the entire evening routine, but the moment both your heads hit the pillow his arm is sliding across the mattress. You groan inside but you stay still; you pretend you’re asleep or very thoughtful. Elijah spreads his palm so he can get fingertips on both your nipples. He rolls them until they harden. You don’t want to have sex with him. The trouble is that your body can always be convinced.
“Dom…” Elijah purrs softly, mostly to himself. You think. It has the warm, satisfied sound of your name inside his head, the you he has, not the you you are.
You rumble a little despite yourself. Your back arches so slightly of its own accord, thrusting your chest into his hand. And then he’s next to you, breathing heavily across your collarbone. And then his hands are everywhere. Your hands remain pinned behind your head as if your skull has trapped them. And he’s on your mouth and your cock, and you make acquiescent noises but you don’t ever move.
You wonder if he notices that you never get off your back. He seems not to mind but he gives off clues. Little things like rubbing his face against your lips fishing for kisses, or trying to flip you on top of him subtly. You never go. Sometimes you distract him by pretending to get angry and biting, tearing into this throat until groans break from him and you leave ugly, unconcealable red welts. Sometimes this does the trick, or he pretends it does. He continues trying to get you both off at the same time. You tolerate it and struggle to keep your brain from drifting muzzily into dreams. You no longer make any show of participating, and you no longer really feel guilty.
Elijah climbs atop you, straddling your crotch. He begins humping, and you press back roughly. He moans, high and bleating. You bounce him up and down but it exhausts your calves and you don’t want to. He’s moaning and sighing and gasping. He leans forward because he wants to press his forehead against yours, but his forehead gets round and clammy and you hate how it feels. You present him with forearms to hold him back, supporting his chest with your crossed arms. He grabs your biceps and keeps whining.
“Fuck me,” he sighs. “Ooh, fuck me.”
The longing and innocence with which he says it nearly breaks your heart. You bite your bottom lip. Your brain wheels ahead with excuses why you can’t, but the reason is too clear. You encourage his dry-fucking, which is getting quite wet now, and you’re wide awake but you wish you weren’t. You wish you were soundly asleep. You wish you were someone else. One of his screaming fangirls, someone who worshipped him. No: just someone who loved him enough. His smell is claustrophobic in your nostrils, his touch too close to your skin. You want to shove him away but you don’t. You close your eyes.
My fuse is burning out
And all that powder’s gone to waste
-Elvis Costello, “Indoor Fireworks”
Elijah likes to fight because he thinks it represents confidence in the other person’s presence. You like to mouth “break up with me” silently when his back is turned. But since his tactic is more fulfilling, usually you end up fighting.
Your daily lives are littered with landmines and anything can set them off. This time it’s five AM in Feet, and you’ve put on a CD he doesn’t like. He tells you in no uncertain terms that you’re a complete idiot to have put that CD in and you’ll take it out immediately if you know what’s good for you. You reply that it’s just a fucking CD, and he replies that at five AM /nothing/ is just a CD. He throws some insults in there for balance. You refuse to be insulted. Sean and Billy meet each other’s eyes in the mirror.
So you and Elijah, separated by two boxes and four Feet people, scream at each other at the top of your lungs for the next forty-five minutes. When the Feet people tell you you can sit down you both flop gratefully into your chairs, exhausted and silent. The CD, on mute, gives up little electronic buzzes as it whirs around the slot.
“I don’t know why I bother,” Elijah mutters loudly to his mirror.
“I don’t know why you bother either,” you retort to his reflection.
He looks at you from behind Billy’s hair. His eyes are pure terror, water with hurt. You feel that familiar tearing in your chest as your heart rips for him and all the sadness of his putting up with you. The area under his eyes is black. For a moment you want to take him in your arms and be sorry, kiss his forehead, promise to love him. But then you only sort of love him when you’re on the verge of hurting him, and that’s self-protection rather than love, really. That is Not Enough. He loves you and you don’t love him. So then why the fuck is it so hard to let him go?
You reach across and turn up the volume on the CD. Sean exhales sharply. You watch with relief as Elijah’s eyes steadily freeze over into hate.
I may
Take a holiday in Spain
Leave my wings behind me
Drive this little girl insane
Fly away to someone new
-Counting Crows, “Holiday in Spain”
Billy whoops, swings his board onto his shoulder and charges. You and Elijah hang back and watch him scramble into the sunrise, meeting the waves chest-first. The sand is cold on your bare feet but you’re snug inside your wetsuit. Elijah grins at you and his face is formed from the tight lines of morning.
“This was a good idea,” he says. “It’s a really good idea to take some time off. I’m so sick of acting.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Just having to switch so rapidly from myself into someone else, you know? Back and forth, and whose life is it, and what am I carrying around in my head… It gets really exhausting.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’m glad we’re here.”
“Me too.”
He flips his sandals into the tall grasses with an efficient flick of his feet. “You coming?”
“In a minute.”
“OK. See you out there.”
He gallops into the ocean. He tries to vault the whiteheads but trips and goes pitching. Billy’s head bobs with laughter from where he’s splayed on his belly on his board, further out. Elijah slings himself over his board and swims for it, the strong confidence of his strokes easily carrying him past the rough patches. You watch the pale flash of his hands against his black wetsuit and the sparkling darkness of the sea. Elijah reaches Billy and paddles into an about-face, scrabbling about until he mounts his board. He and Billy offer you matching waves. You wave them back to go ahead, flinging your heel into your hand in a pretend stretch. Their arms fall to their sides.
You crouch comfortably into your solitude and the sand. You watch them floating there with their heads turned over their shoulders. Elijah picks a wave, suddenly falling flat as the sea swells to meet him. He starts swimming and for a moment it looks like nothing will happen, but then the back of his board tilts subtly into the air. You watch him waver carefully to his feet, and the whole tenuous situation is flipped on its head. He meets the board and the ocean in complete control, cutting back and forth across the wave’s face, body hunched down in concentration. He’s brilliant to watch, though his surfing itself does not entirely rival brilliance. He’s brilliant because he enjoys it, because his focus goes to it, because he /does/ it. Sometimes he’s the same when he acts. Sometimes when you’re in scenes with him he meets your eyes with a face that is pure Frodo, unable to separate himself from the job. Moments like that and like this you could almost love him, moments when he is other than he is with you.
The wave ends easily and he slides into the wet sand, his board shucking and slowing until he trips off it. He takes a few rambunctious, staggering steps before the leash catches his ankle and he trips, landing in a soggy heap. Out on the ocean Billy claps.
“Nice dismount,” you say.
“Thanks,” he answers, getting up. He stands close to you, the water chill rising off the warmth of his wetsuit. “Kiss me?”
You bite your bottom lip. He stares at your mouth and then at your eyes.
“You don’t want to?” he asks.
“I don’t /not/ want to. It’s just.”
“I know,” he sighs. His eyes shift nervously out to sea. “Is it… Is it sex in general or just sex with me?”
“Lij.”
“Because if it’s me then it’s…”
“Then it’s what?”
He looks at the ocean again. You watch Billy balancing on the very top of a wave, his hair lit by what is now complete daylight in a bright blue sky. Elijah’s smell is strongly saltwater, a little bit sickening and a little bit arousing. You look at him from the corner of your eye, at his sticky hair against his face and the salt crusting on his skin. He looks back to you. He could be crying or he could just be wet.
“Let’s not,” you interrupt him. “Please? We’re here on holiday. I don’t know why everything has to be so serious all the time.”
“It’s OK if you’re not in love with me,” Elijah says. “I don’t mind. I love you, so…” He shrugs, his wetsuit shortening the motion. You wonder how he knew and then you feel daft for wondering. You hear the harsh grate of Billy sliding into shore.
“It’s not OK with me,” you say. “It’s not enough.”
“You’re the one who says it’s not enough.”
“Yeah. I am.”
You tug your board out of the sand and step away. Rage boils inside your belly, and you’re aware of its shaking energy and the sensitive heat it plays across your skin. You walk over to Billy who sparkles when he’s wet.
“Nice one.”
“You weren’t even watching,” he smiles. He looks over his shoulder. “Did you do something to Elijah?”
“Nothing any different than usual. Maybe you should talk to him, Bills. I just don’t want to do this now.”
“You can’t keep stringing the kid along. Make a clean break.”
“How? We work together, we see each other every day… It’s easier to stay together than pick apart the aftermath.”
“Stay together til we wrap, then. It’s only a few more months.”
“That’s so pathetic.”
“Ask him, I don’t know. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“So how come we’re doing it?” He grins. “Get yourself out there, mate. We’re gonna ride some fucking waves and drink some fucking beer and chill some fucking out.”
He shoves you in the chest. The wetsuit buffers the sensation but you get the impact, staggering a little. You shove him back. He shoves you with both hands and you fall, the sand rough on your bare heels. You grab him around the knees and he lets you take him down so he can jam his elbows into your ribs. Your breath leaves you in a strangled laugh. Your face hits the sand and you see Elijah where you left him, staring out to sea with his periphery fixed on you.
“Er, let’s tone it down,” you hear yourself muttering, pushing Billy back. “Can’t have too much fun when Elijah’s in a piss.”
You both stumble to your feet, making enough finishing noise that Elijah finally looks and then comes over. Billy makes a joke and slaps you in the back of the head for good measure. Elijah’s eyes test you both out and eventually he breaks into a smile of his own, then a laugh. Trust Billy to defuse the bomb. He keeps going, slicing through wires of tension, rerouting green envies and red suspicions until you’re there as a trio, on holiday, and you take your boards all together and you head out to have fun.
You cannot express to Billy what a relief it is to just have some fucking /fun/ in Elijah’s presence. For it just to be easy again, touches and looks devoid of deep meaning. You all ride hard and take your poundings. Your body feels like your own, outside of Elijah’s jurisdiction, your own personal frame again. You stand and lie flat, alone and together, and you go in and out of the rented house for drinks and pisses and you flop in heaps or singles in the sand, warming, drying. You catch a few of the sort of waves that remind you why you love surfing, the sort that are broad and caring, floating you up and cradling you for what feels like miles. You take a few tumbles that hurl you to the sea floor, grating and panic and the stomach-turning jerk of the leash that flips you over and drags you helpless and spluttering after your unmanned board. You ride until your muscles ache and the blaring sun is too loud, and you all agree to take what turns into a permanent break.
You peel your wetsuits off on the deck, keeping your eyes averted and your bodies bent. Elijah beats you both to the first shower. You and Billy pad to your individual bedrooms for shorts, and you have to rout through Elijah’s stuff that’s packed in your bag until you can come up with a pair, mottled green and white, hopelessly lame. In the kitchen Billy is wearing a yellow T-shirt that rides up and down over the rim of his green shorts.
“Modesty?” you ask, shoving past him into the fridge.
“Sunburn.”
“You were in a wetsuit.”
“Avoiding it. I get crispy on a moment’s notice. Look- I burned the backs of my fucking hands.”
He offers his hands for your inspection. Sure enough they are red and thin-skinned. You touch them. He winces.
“Wanker.”
“They’re hot.”
“Sunburn, I told you. And the back of my neck too.”
“You need some aloe. Right? That plant you crack open?”
“They’ve planted one on the window.” He gestures to a spiky plant in a sandy pot poking out from behind the faucet. You go over to it and break off one of its points. Colorless ooze spreads across your fingers. “These rental people are lovely; they think of everything. Give me that.”
You give him the tip. He squeezes it studiously and spreads it across his hands, massages it into the back of his neck. His bones crack when he tilts his head. When he lifts his arms his T-shirt raises and his belly is lightly hairy in the thin strip above his shorts.
“Beer?” you ask.
“My hands are full.”
“That’s OK.”
You pick up the plump bottle of Heineken and tilt it to his lips. He smiles at you coyly and opens his mouth to accept it. You monitor the careful attention of his throat as he swallows. When you take the bottle away there’s a sheen of condensation of his lips. You reach for it with a finger, consciously but also not, just invading Billy’s space like you do with him. His lips are freezing on your fingertip. His eyes spark when your finger slips errantly inside his mouth, just touching the hot hard tips of his bottom teeth and the smooth glide of the inside of his mouth. His arms drop to his side.
“Better,” you tell him. You’re still poking him in the mouth. “But now you’re all greasy.”
The shower turns off. You both step back simultaneously, as if caught. When you mirror the fear in each other’s eyes you break into laughter, and you’re laughing when Elijah arrives in the kitchen in a towel.
“Billy you’re all shiny,” he says, kicking you in the calves as he opens the fridge. You wonder if he suspects something, but there is nothing to suspect. You watch him bend forward, his towel slipping low on his ass. You want to slap him because it would be funny, flirtatious, but it’s the idea you’re interested in and not his body specifically. Your stomach curdles and you shove the thoughts aside. “So what are we doing now?”
“Always have to entertain the kids,” Billy cracks, but it takes a minute for his voice to get going and you wonder if you’ve upset him. He’s rubbing the aloe around and around the back of his hands until it looks dry and uncomfortable. “Can I have the shower?”
“Sure,” you say, and he darts by you out the door. His body strikes yours and you stumble. Elijah catches you.
“What happened to him?” he asks.
“Diarrhea. Hungry?”
“Naw. Sea sick. Do I smell like seaweed?”
“Huh?”
“You smell like seaweed.” Elijah’s nose jams into your chest. You touch his hair, clumpy despite washing. His palms hit your bare sides and pave the way for the long slide of his forearms against your skin. His mouth approaches yours.
“Lij, I-” You step back. He does too, even though you’ve stepped away from him.
“Dom… You’re giving up a good thing.”
“Statements like that are absurd. If Hitler said that to you you’d still give him his ring back.”
“Is that how you see me?”
“Elijah.” You squeeze your eyelids. There’s something remarkable about break-up poetics, the simple art of lines untempered and heart-felt.
“So we’re breaking up then?”
“Um… fuck, I don’t know. Yes.” You reach for your beer. It seems to have gone missing. Maybe Billy took it. “Like a radio station. You’re driving out of range.”
“You’re the one driving, Dom.”
Break-up poetry; break-up face. The eyes like water, the mouth and hands mobile. The sudden pathetic gravity of his body drawing all emotion toward it where he’s come to rest in the kitchen, a towel low on his hips, a beer weeping in his hand.
“OK,” you exhale. You start to rub your palms compulsively up and down your thighs until the heat starts burning through your shorts. “OK. Listen-”
“No,” Elijah replies. He walks out of the kitchen.
You stand there for a couple minutes inhaling deeply, smelling aloe and beer and soap and outside. You hear the sand-shuck of Elijah putting on sandals and clunking across the deck. His lighter hisses and then you smell smoke.
The shower goes off so abruptly you wonder if Billy’s been listening. When he arrives in the kitchen you know he has because of the concern dripping off his face.
“Elijah’s naked out there,” he says.
“How do you know?”
“There’s a window in the shower. His towel fell off. You OK?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Is /he/ OK?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care, Billy. Shit.” You grab the back of your hair and pull. You feel pent-up and aggressive, want to /do/ something to someone but what and who. You go into the fridge for another beer. When you close the door Billy is still there, making puddles on the tile. “Get back in your shower.”
“I was done anyway.”
He turns around and for some reason you reach out and rip his towel off. He’s knotted it loosely in the small of his back and it only takes the lightest stroke of your fingers to make the whole thing float gently around his ankles. His shoulders set in shock as you’re presented with the familiar sight of his ass and the backs of his thighs. But then your hand shoots out again and ghosts along the careful indentation at the base of his spine. His skin is hot, damp.
“Dom?” he says without turning around.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just being passive-aggressive.”
He turns around. Slowly, you daresay. And makes no reach for his towel. So that you’re faced with him face-to-face, and you see that his cock is hard and upright against his belly. You start to laugh and point but when you see the little frown on his face you don’t.
“Uhm, this isn’t a come-on, is it?” you attempt to chuckle.
And then the door slams against the wall. You smell smoke strongly before Elijah has his hands all over you, battering your shoulders and head.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he yells. “/What the fuck do you think you’re doing?/”
You raise your arms but he’s already moved on to Billy, who had the brains to head for the other room when Elijah entered. Elijah captures him halfway to the couch and tackles him, sending them both to the floor. Elijah is startled and just sits on Billy’s back, hands clasped loosely around Billy’s neck.
“Elijah cut it out!” you yell, not sure why you sound so shrill and panicked. You grab him by something—the hair, the nape, whatever—and peel him off Billy so hard he almost does a backflip and lands in a painful pile of his own. Billy scrambles to his feet and protects himself with the other side of the couch.
“I fucking knew it!” Elijah is screaming. “I fucking knew you two were hot for each other! How long, Dom, huh? You’ve been doing this since before we started dating, or- or what?”
“Nothing happened,” Billy says, but his eyes are stormy and his face is flushed and something very well /could/ have happened by the looks of him. His cock is deflating, but not quickly enough. “Really, nothing happened.”
“But you wish it did, don’t you?”
Silence. You realize he’s asking you. You look at him and he’s dark and serious. And you realize that, really, you have nothing else to say.
/Don’t blink, everyone’s watching
They’ll think you’re up to something/
-Dashboard Confessional, “Morning Calls”
When he touches you you think you’ll puke. The intimate slide of his palm against the back of your jacket, and how his body notches into yours, and the spikes of his hair jamming you gel-hard in the forehead. You press your cheek against his and you both wear matching grins.
“Great to see you.”
“Aye, been ages.”
The flashbulb pops.
The camera vanishes.
You both leap apart like twin magnets.
He disappears and you wade back across the carpet to Billy. Los Angeles is steadily filling with warm, thick-aired dusk, and you think this is a night to be at a beach and not a premiere. A night for clear air and waves, not the wool press of dress-bodies and the lights and the roar. You wave randomly. You dodge pockets of people in your search.
You find Billy all tangled up with Orlando. Orlando looks like a clown in his bright pink suit, and Billy looks like a turd in his fucking kilt. You’re laughing when you reach him.
“You know a pair of fish-nets would really-”
“So shut up, then,” Billy retorts violently, but he’s smiling. Seems like he always smiles when he looks at you. To be honest you can’t quite work up to it, and he feels like a stranger when you’re with him like this. But you accept his hand on your shoulder and the eventual soft brush of his lips across one of your eyebrows.
“I’ll go,” Orlando giggles, but truth is he’s being dragged away anyway. You curl up into Billy, press your face into the shoulder pad of his jacket and close your eyes.
“Can we go now?” you whimper.
“Not having a good time?”
“It’s just too fucking awkward. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me.”
“He’s not looking at you now,” Billy observes.
“Yeah but he’s doing it on purpose.”
You look up into his eyes and you feel lame for looking miserable, and you know Billy knows you’re a big boy and can deal. You wonder if relationships will always leave you feeling like an irresponsible shite. In the eventual aftermath, when you and Billy were trekking through the sand while Elijah fiercely sorted his things from yours, you told Billy that you were cursed. You said that sooner or later you drop everyone who has ever handed themselves to you, that your fingers open forgetfully and everything shatters. Billy touched your shoulder and it hurt. You realized you were sunburned.
Billy said, “You haven’t dropped me yet. I’ll think we’ll be all right.”
“We” was not the Billy and Dom who were mates. “We” was some new, scary pairing that you knew you would never be ready for. But you let him draw you in, and now you can’t remember the way out. And maybe this is not so bad, but why does it leave you feeling scarred?
Across the carpet Elijah touches the stretched-out fingertips of his fans, a hesitant smile playing tag with his lips. Billy’s palm burns into yours as you clasp hands. You carefully hide your joined fists in your pocket.
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hhm
What should happen? ;-)
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Re: hhm
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I love this paragraph, I love the imagery. I've think I've seen your story before, right? That paragraph has stuck with me since then.
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“Dom…” Elijah purrs softly, mostly to himself. You think. It has the warm, satisfied sound of your name inside his head, the you he has, not the you you are.
Makes me all twisty-chest.
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*blush*
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here via