Fade Out
Title: Fade Out
Pairing: EW/DM
Rating: NC-17
Website: Catalyst
Content/Warnings: Slightly rough and unprotected sex.
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Notes: For the furorscribendi ‘haunting’ challenge. Dedicated to beccaming and untitled06, for slightly different reasons, but with the same sentiment. Inkled by mcee. Beautifully beta’d by impasto and mdbfan.
10. Elijah has always believed in ghosts.
It was never a question of ‘did they exist’, or ‘what if there were’, because he’s always known, somehow. Maybe not the stereotypes - the seaweed-drenched-drowning film ghosts, or the sheet-covered trick-or-treaters on Halloween night who take the easy way out - but he’s always known they existed. There has to be somewhere for people to go after death, and it stands to reason that some of them might not want to go there.
He’s never had one in his house before, though.
It takes him a while to figure it out; the keys that always go missing, the doors left unlocked, the fact that sometimes he comes home and the stereo is on. He’s absent-minded, he knows that, remembers nights in New Zealand with Sean to the rescue and him playing it cool even though he was so terribly, terribly embarrassed. Remembers feeling like a child, every time. Every time he forgot something, said something, fucked something up. He had been a child.
It’s not him this time, scattering papers on the floor and leaving the front door open, but it takes him a while to realize that, because it used to be him. For a while he thought it might still be.
But no. This is something else.
He knows for certain when he looks into the bathroom mirror one day, in the middle of a shower. His showers are hot, scalding…he likes them that way, likes to feel the water boiling against his skin as it cleanses him. The steam is so thick that it nearly chokes him, sweat seeping through his pores only to be sluiced away, hot and painful and so, so brief. He has trouble breathing, sometimes, when it’s this hot; he’s never felt dizzy before, though, and that’s what throws him, makes him turn off the water with shampoo suds still clinging to his hair and half-rinsed lather running in rivulets down his back.
When he opens the shower door, the cold air rushes in, chills him instantly and raises the hairs on his arms. He squeezes his eyes shut and fumbles blindly for a towel, unwilling to risk the sharp sting of shampoo in his eyes, burning his vision. The terrycloth is rough and welcome, like the air scraping its way into his aching lungs, and he drags it over his face before he opens his eyes.
And sees his own reflection.
For a moment he simply stands, blinking at the face looking back at him, and tries to understand what has happened. The steam is still heavy, smothering, curling around him as it leaks out from the shower cubicle. But he can see his own reflection in the mirror, can see the foam-lather of shampoo clinging to his flattened hair and the curve of his left shoulder. He can see clearly.
That’s when he knows. When the thought jumps into his head, unexpected but surprisingly solid, I have a ghost. He doesn’t know what to do next, so he just stands there, naked, dripping water and soap-suds onto the bath mat. The air is much colder than it should be, especially against the claustrophobic heat of the steam that presses against his back, and there is a scent hanging in the air that he can’t quite identify. He thinks about speaking, about introducing himself, about asking why are you here? …but he doesn’t. He can’t think of a reason why it would care.
Eventually the steam dissipates, and the room cools to the point that he’s shivering, shaking on the mat, and that’s when he finally stops waiting - for something, for someone, for an answer - and gets dressed.
9. His house shouldn’t have a ghost. He’s quite certain of that; he knows the house and its history and its past inhabitants well enough to know that there shouldn’t be a ghost here.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is one.
He starts thinking of it as a ‘she’ because he doesn’t like thinking of a person, even a deceased person, as an ‘it’, no matter how incorporeal. He doesn’t give her a name, though. He thinks that it’s too personal, him giving her a name, when she hasn’t chosen to share one with him. He tries talking to her a few times, but ends up feeling silly. He goes to the library and reads about hauntings, and supernatural occurrences, and communication with the dead, and every so often he convinces himself that he’s imagining things. Then he comes home to find lights on all over the house, and the bedroom door locked from the inside.
He thinks about telling Orlando, one day when he goes to meet him for lunch at a trendy bistro just outside of the city. When he sees Orlando, though, he decides not to, knows that Orlando has his own ghosts. Orlando is pale beneath the tan, vacant-eyed and jittery, sharp around the edges. He smiles too-bright and starved, but only picks at his salad and twitches away from Elijah’s offered embrace.
When the check arrives, Orlando hurries to take it; ends up knocking over his wine - his third? fourth? - and scooting back from the table, metallic screech of protest from the chair legs as they scrape the pavement. Elijah pushes back as well, alarmed more by the sudden panic of the movement than by the spill. Relax, he says, but Orlando smiles again and laughs, high and shrill, in a way that grates on Elijah more than the scream of the chair legs, and tells him that everything’s fine.
The wine soaks into the napkins and stains the check and slides over the smooth white surface of the table, and when it reaches the edges it drips, slowly, onto the concrete pavement. Orlando looks away, says something about his new project being very demanding, and sorry for the mess, and we’ll do this again soon, yeah? Don’t, let me, I’ve got it. He waves a platinum card at the waiter and hides his eyes behind night-dark L.A. sunglasses.
Elijah finishes his glass of water, stands beside the table while the waiters clean up the mess - just a moment, sir - and watches the shadows disappear from the ground, shrinking into themselves until they vanish. He leaves a tip, although he’s sure that Orlando already did, and drives home with the windows rolled down, L.A. air whipping through his hair and not helping him to feel any cleaner.
He can’t tell Orlando; that much is clear.
He doesn’t think that he can tell Dom, either, because with Dom the words end up coming out all wrong and there are too many other words that always get in the way.
After several minutes of thought, of music played too loud to drown out the songs blaring from other cars and the incessant honking that accompanies driving anywhere in the city, he decides to call Billy. Billy might laugh, but at least he’ll hear Elijah out. Billy won’t laugh until he finishes.
Elijah smiles, breathes in polluted air that smells of melted tar and rubber and sour metal, and turns up the radio.
8. Billy doesn’t laugh. Billy listens silently while Elijah explains about the shower and the lights and the keys, and then Billy poses a question.
So what are you going to do?
It’s a question that Elijah has thought a lot about, and he hasn’t really come up with a solution. I don’t know, he answers. Nothing, I suppose.
Billy makes sympathetic noises, and they talk about their friends and their lives and how much they miss New Zealand, and then Billy says, You know Dom’s heading to L.A. today, right?
Elijah didn’t know, actually. He says as much while his brain runs in little circles and he wonders how to hide his bad habits and his porn and his feelings and his ghost from Dom all at once.
Yeah. He said he’d ring you before he came over.
That’s somewhat reassuring. At least then he’ll have some time to prepare; although knowing Dom, he’ll probably call from the plane as it touches down at LAX. Elijah thanks Billy for telling him, and they make small talk for another few minutes before Elijah excuses himself and sets out to clean the house.
He turns on the radio, but after it turns off for the third time, he puts in some CDs instead, and that seems to be permissible. He works with the odd feeling that someone is looking over his shoulder, faint floral odour clinging in his nostrils, but he sings determinedly off-key along to the music and ignores it.
He finds a box of old mail hidden inside his paperwork drawer and becomes engrossed in sorting it, pulling out year-old birthday cards and letters from friends and offers for Visa check cards as the shadows creep across his floor and pool around him, smudging the white envelopes with the onset of twilight.
He doesn’t notice until he feels the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, until he whips around, and his eyes take a moment to adjust to the light still leaking in from the windows on that side of the room.
Hey, Dom says, hands rising defensively as he takes a step back. Hey.
Elijah blinks, pinches the bridge of his nose hard against the sudden squeeze of a headache. You should have called, he says, and takes a deep breath because he stood up too fast, and the headache is joined immediately by the dazzling glimmer of spots behind his eyes, blotting out Dom’s silhouette in shades of purple and green.
I did, Dom answers, and Elijah can hear the tight, feral-toothed grin in his voice even if he still can’t see it clearly. And I knocked, but you didn’t answer. What’s up with your stereo?
That’s when Elijah hears it; the thin, thready sound of a song-line repeating itself, over and over. He doesn’t recognize the song, can only hear the angst-filled wail of the singer and the aching whine of a guitar, and then the brief snatch of silence before it repeats.
Nothing, he says quickly, and crosses to turn the music off. The metal is chillingly cold beneath his hand, and the lights flare at him, dying-bright, before the machine is silenced.
So, Dom says behind him, and this time when Elijah looks he can see the smile, Dom’s hands jammed in his pockets, threadbare jeans held up by the wrinkle of his exposed boxers. Want company?
Elijah forgets and stares for a moment, then shrugs, smile creeping out to answer Dom’s. Okay, he says. Sure.
7. The ghost doesn’t do much when Dom’s around. At least nothing obvious, and with two of them in the house it’s easier to explain away misplaced wallets and water left running, a thin stream of liquid spilling into the sink before Dom cocks his head and asks What’s that noise? and Elijah goes to check.
He tries not to leave Dom alone in the house, not to tempt fate. If there were a way to take her with him when he left, he would do it. But real ghosts haunt places, not people, so she remains behind when he goes out to the market, to screen tests, to interviews, and he ends up being distant and half-distracted, unable to focus on anything the entire time he’s away. Worrying about Dom and wondering if he’s found out yet why the toilet paper keeps unrolling onto the floor.
Dom is curious enough as it is, poking through Elijah’s things and asking questions, always questions. Sometimes questions that Elijah doesn’t know how to answer.
Why does your house smell like wood violets? Dom asks one day.
Air freshener, Elijah says, and the scent sharpens, thick with dust and decay.
He wishes he could take her with him, wishes she would come to premieres and interviews and all-star celebrity parties, and maybe then he wouldn’t always feel so alone. He wonders if she was young when she died; if she was his age, or even younger, and if she knew what was going to happen to her when she finally stopped breathing.
He wonders if being trapped in the house hurts her as much as it hurts him, and whether she understands his need for freedom on the days that he grabs his car keys and doesn’t look back, just drives for hours and tries to stop thinking so much.
She likes Emo music, he finds out. He gets tired of changing the CD every three minutes when she decides that she doesn’t like it, so he buys a 200-disk changer and loads an assortment of musical styles, and sets it on shuffle so that she can listen to whatever she wants. She plays Saves the Day and Braid and The Weakerthans, and he doesn’t mind as long as it keeps her happy.
After a while, he moves some of his CDs out to the car; the ones she doesn’t like and won’t let him play inside. He can’t release emotion except through music; it’s just the way he is, and three days of thin-voiced melancholy have him on the edge of depression in a way that he doesn’t know how to combat.
Dom doesn’t say anything about it. Dom touches his arm sometimes, and says soft, friendly things, and Elijah can’t summon up the energy to respond. There’s something going on, something that he isn’t sure he doesn’t want, and it grows a little stronger every time he and Dom do the dishes together in Elijah’s tiny kitchen and end up just a little too close, hands brushing over stone crockery and silverware and solid-oak cabinet doors.
There is one night when he thinks that it can’t possibly go on any longer, that one of them has to say something before they both go mad, and he finds himself staring into clear gray eyes, inches apart, lips parting to form a word that he doesn’t know how to say…a moment broken by the slam of a shutter against the windowpane outside, even though it isn’t that windy, and Elijah goes to shut the windows in case of a storm.
They never quite get that moment back again, but Elijah doesn’t lament its loss. He doesn’t know what it was, anyway. It’s easier to let it go.
6. The problem with friends, Elijah thinks, is that once you become aware of them, they remain physical-romantic-emotional possibilities. They don’t come and go the way crushes do, transitory and variant; they stay, and leave you constantly conflicted, and spill beer on your carpet.
He calls Billy, one day when the silence starts to get to him and the house is hollow, empty, because Dom has gone out clubbing and probably won’t return until the sun comes up, with alcohol and perfume and sex clinging to his skin and his unwashed clothes.
She’s been quiet lately, he says.
So have you, Billy answers.
Elijah curls the phone cord around his finger loop-by-loop, watches the flush of blood as circulation is impeded, and listens to the foreign and yet familiar lilt of Billy’s voice. He doesn’t answer at first, which makes Billy sigh and ask him about trivial things, about work, and social events, and eventually Dom.
Elijah opens his mouth to answer, and suddenly he lets all of the random thoughts he’s been having pour out at once, into an anonymous phone line to a friend thousands of miles away. He talks about how he and Dom spend their evenings, and where they went to dinner last week, and the way Dom hogs the bathroom in the mornings, and how he doesn’t think Dom has figured out, yet, about the fact that Elijah’s house is haunted.
He stops when he runs out of words, when his throat itches from lack of moisture and he has to swallow, twice, to clear it. There is a pause which stretches until Elijah can barely stand it, when he would speak but he has nothing left to say, and he counts Billy’s breaths until the pattern changes and he hears Billy’s voice, slow and measured.
I think you should tell him.
No, Elijah says. Immediate and reflexive, and the word banishes all possibility; banishes even the words that have come before. Billy sighs, and Elijah shakes his head stubbornly, even knowing that Billy can’t see.
I can’t, he insists, and his voice is higher than it should be, strained with panic that he can feel pressing out from the inside of his throat.
Billy hushes him, makes soothing sounds that hiss like static in Elijah’s ears. All right, all right. It was only a suggestion.
I can’t, Elijah repeats, and this time his voice is steadier, and it comes out more like a statement.
Thankfully, Billy doesn’t ask why not. I’ll talk to you later, he says instead. I have to go. Elijah?
Yes, Elijah says.
Call me, if you need to talk. About anything. Everything. I’m here.
I know, Elijah says politely. Thank you.
Elijah… Billy says again, but then Elijah can hear the resignation in his next inhalation, the admonitions and offers and pleas that die unspoken on Billy’s lips. Take care.
Goodbye, Elijah says. And hangs up the phone.
5. They are sharing drinks on the couch when Dom slips out of the realm of possibility, into a more present reality, in a way that Elijah can’t ignore. They have bottles of liquor spread all over the coffee table, most of them only three-quarters full, and at least a dozen glasses of various sizes and shapes holding different combinations of those ingredients.
The book of mixed-drink recipes lies open on one corner of the table, balanced precariously on the raised edge between a rather tamely oscillating tequila sunrise and the shrill tranquility of a more startling kamikaze that glitters a brilliant shade of blue. Both of them have sampled nearly everything in the book, and while they aren’t the most drunk they have ever been, they are at least fairly close.
Dom tries to taste Elijah’s drink, the one currently clasped loosely in Elijah’s left hand, brings it to his lips by folding warm fingers over Elijah’s numb hand. Elijah attempts to get to Dom’s in the same manner, but his coordination is slightly off and the liquid spills over the brim, splatters into his lap, and he is laughing in spite of the cold bite of freezer-chilled alcohol seeping through his pants.
Elijah, Dom says, and Elijah’s laughter dries up at the look on Dom’s face, at the slow, lazy blink of his eyes as they struggle to focus. Elijah has thought about this moment, about what he would do if it ever came to be, but now that it’s actually happening, he just goes pliant and soft and passive, waiting for Dom to take him.
Dom’s kisses are sloppy, and Elijah is jarred once by the clack of their teeth as Dom’s weight presses him back into the couch; stretches him out and pushes him down until he is swallowed by the plush give of the cushions. Elijah responds as well as he can, encouraging Dom with little noises and movements and the fluttering brushes of his hands against Dom’s back.
The bedroom has never been so frightening, never looked so menacing as it does now, a gaping black portal at the end of the hallway. Elijah closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to see, follows Dom blindly by the pull of a hand around his wrist and the sound of slightly ragged breathing.
They are awkward together, and the alcohol isn’t helping, it makes their movements clumsy and Elijah’s thoughts cloudy, the smell of stale sweat and the taste of Dom briefly in his mouth and the too-hard jab of bones into flesh, and a couple of times he nearly panics and says no, stop. He knows the mechanics of this well enough, is familiar with how A is supposed to fit into B; but sex isn’t mechanical, it’s stumbling and messy and painful, and dear god but he wasn’t prepared for this, and it’s too late now.
He thinks that maybe he should say something, when his body feels like it’s being cauterized and he bites his lip until it bleeds to keep from screaming and pulling away…but this is what he wanted, after all; the details really aren’t important.
He sees a vague glow in the corner, wavy lines of light that possibly don’t quite mesh with the moonlight, and it distracts him enough that Dom’s first real thrust catches him off-guard, and he screams. Dom mumbles something incoherent against his shoulder, evidently mistaking Elijah’s cry for one of pleasure, and pain prickle-stings the corners of his eyes until he can relax enough to move with Dom, and then it finally starts to feel good; enough so that he can reach between his own legs with one hand to bring the aching pressure inside him to some sort of completion.
Dom grunts as he comes, and Elijah’s body shudders through the last few erratic thrusts, and then Dom rolls away and lies still. Elijah struggles briefly to stay awake, his mind insistently repeating a thousand variations on the theme of what happens now? but the heavy weight of alcohol and sex combine to force him into sleep. The last thing he is aware of is the sound of the stereo turning on, softly, in the living room.
4. When he wakes up, it is still dark and silent; he wakes with the musty scent of cobwebs tickling his nose and the sour taste of semen heavy on his tongue. The air is so thick that he gags, rotted violets in his nose and mouth and eyes. He rolls over onto his side to breathe, and the enclosing cocoon of anoxic air that seems to surround him vanishes, just like that, leaves him cold and gasping and in pain.
It takes him a minute to realize that Dom isn’t there, because he’s used to Dom not being there, in his bed; but the pull of skin and muscle when he moves reminds him that Dom should be, because last night was different.
He gets up carefully, cringing a little against abused muscles as he stands, and holds onto the bedpost for support, swaying slightly as his legs threaten to give out.
All of the windows are open; he can hear the sound of traffic outside, even in the early hours of the morning, can feel the cool dry California air, sticky and clinging, through the windows. He’s fairly certain that he left them shut, but right now that doesn’t seem important enough to matter.
He makes it to the bathroom, slowly and carefully, and turns on the cabinet light. It flares bright and dies with a pop, so he turns on the overhead fluorescent and winces away from the wash of clinical colour.
He expects himself to look a lot worse than he actually does, which should be a relief but somehow isn’t. He likes scars because they prove something, shows off his bruises and cuts because they mean that he has fought a battle, however small the scale. After last night, he feels as if there should be marks, displaying his rite of passage. Of something.
After some careful probing and washing, wringing moisture from the warm-wet cloth to trickle over his skin, he discovers that he’s bleeding. The taste of regret is tangy, sharper than cobwebs and less salty than Dom, and he bites it back in his throat along with the bile that rises at the sight of his blood staining the washcloth.
He should have spoken up at the time, should have said slow down, should have said use a condom, should have said it’s my first time, should have said…something. Anything.
When he’s finished cleaning up, he throws the washcloth on the side of the tub and checks the couch, sees Dom curled up asleep, naked beneath the coverlet he evidently took from the foot of Elijah’s bed. It’s frigid in the living room, much colder than it is in the bedroom, and Dom is shivering in his sleep beneath the thin blanket. Elijah goes to the closet for another one, drapes it over his - friend? lover? mistake? - visitor and returns to bed.
He curls up tight, in a ball, with the sheets soft but still scraping against his skin, the sound of car horns and screeching tires lulling him back into a fitful sleep.
3. In the morning, it becomes immediately apparent that they are not going to be able to move on from here. Dom is half-packed by the time Elijah wanders out to the living room sometime just before noon, still water-slick from a hot shower that turned cold before he was ready to get out, and Elijah sees his own nightmares reflected in the dark circles under Dom’s eyes. His eyes aren’t clear anymore, they’re cloudy and murky and tainted, and Elijah keeps his own lowered for fear of what Dom will see.
Elijah wonders if Dom is bleeding now, if Dom saw Elijah’s blood on the cloth left on the side of the tub and is bleeding inside, where Elijah has never been able to see. He doesn’t really care; doesn’t have the energy left for regret or apology. And bloodstains are another kind of battle scar.
They try to smooth things out with guy-speak, through manly posing and half-sentences, and when Dom claps him on the shoulder, Elijah nearly staggers, folds up in half and breaks in two. There is no guy-speak appropriate for this situation, though, and eventually they run out of words and grunts and Dom’s taxi pulls up outside.
Elijah doesn’t offer to take him to the airport. He’s sure that if he steps outside, the sunlight will strip him bare and lay open all of his secrets to the world, flood him with emotions no longer his own. Outside is an escape, and it’s a route not open to him at the moment.
Just before Dom leaves, Elijah looks up and meets his eyes, and they stay frozen for endless milliseconds before the taxi horn beeps again and whatever words Dom looks ready to say die before they reach Elijah. Take care, he says instead, and the leftover word mate that used to follow hangs silently between them like a jagged wound.
Elijah doesn’t say anything. Elijah watches him leave, watches the taxi drive away the way it does in the movies, and then goes inside to curl up on his couch, cocooned in blankets that smell like Dom’s body. Elijah can’t find any traces of himself in the fabric, only an overwhelming sense of Dom that permeates the cloth.
He doesn’t cry. Many years ago he started saving his tears, bottling them up until he needed them for a role. He can’t seem to kick the habit, even when he feels the dry ache of unshed tears, building pressure against his lacrimals. He stares at the back of the couch, at the thousands and thousands of tiny threads that make up the weave, and separates them with his eyes, peels them apart.
The stereo clicks on after an unknown amount of time, and it’s almost enough to make him smile, to laugh watery at the thought that no matter how alone he feels, he never is. He swallows a small handful of aspirin for the pain that still hasn’t faded, and she plays him Radiohead softly until he sleeps, dreamless.
2. After two days of silence and solitude, he feels like he’s losing his mind. He does what he always does in these situations, like a default: he calls Billy.
Elijah, Billy says in surprise when he picks up. Hey, hang on a minute.
And in the background Elijah hears another voice, a muffled exchange, and quite clearly recognizes the person talking to Billy. And it makes sense. Perfect sense, that Dom would go to the same person that Elijah goes to when he needs to talk; only it’s not really fair to Billy, to be in the middle of things like this, and Dom just might need a confidante more badly than Elijah does.
Billy, never mind, he says clearly, loud enough that Billy’s attention returns to him immediately - No, ‘Lij, wait - but he hangs up anyway.
He doesn’t bother to take the phone off the hook, because the trill-warble of the ringer doesn’t bother him much, even when it repeats on-and-off for the better part of an hour. The answering machine clicks on and he thinks, quite clearly, No. He closes his eyes and curls up on the couch again, and wonders how he fucked things up so very badly, and wishes to go to sleep for a few days, to wake up and find the world is normal again.
The stereo whirrs, and the lights in the kitchen flicker uncertainly, and after a moment a solitary piano melody starts to play, loud enough to reverberate through the house and echo in the empty rooms. The vibrations thrum through Elijah’s ribcage, a low-end hum that shakes and settles, remakes him. He is barely aware of the power in the kitchen going off completely, the recorded message on his machine dying out mid-greeting. The soft-sharp musk of violets surrounds and drowns him.
When the string section begins to play, he thinks that he vaguely recognizes the song. It’s something by the Cure, but he would swear that he doesn’t own this album. He knows that it’s not one of the ones in the machine, whirring and clicking against each other to the accompaniment of blinking red-green-yellow lights.
The song plays for a couple of minutes, solo instrumental, and then hums low in the bass and repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
Elijah wishes, for a moment, that he remembered how to cry for himself.
1. Fade out, he thinks during one crystallized moment in time, as a cold gust of violet-scented air sweeps through the room and rustles the papers lying untouched on his desk. Fade out.
Pairing: EW/DM
Rating: NC-17
Website: Catalyst
Content/Warnings: Slightly rough and unprotected sex.
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Notes: For the furorscribendi ‘haunting’ challenge. Dedicated to beccaming and untitled06, for slightly different reasons, but with the same sentiment. Inkled by mcee. Beautifully beta’d by impasto and mdbfan.
10. Elijah has always believed in ghosts.
It was never a question of ‘did they exist’, or ‘what if there were’, because he’s always known, somehow. Maybe not the stereotypes - the seaweed-drenched-drowning film ghosts, or the sheet-covered trick-or-treaters on Halloween night who take the easy way out - but he’s always known they existed. There has to be somewhere for people to go after death, and it stands to reason that some of them might not want to go there.
He’s never had one in his house before, though.
It takes him a while to figure it out; the keys that always go missing, the doors left unlocked, the fact that sometimes he comes home and the stereo is on. He’s absent-minded, he knows that, remembers nights in New Zealand with Sean to the rescue and him playing it cool even though he was so terribly, terribly embarrassed. Remembers feeling like a child, every time. Every time he forgot something, said something, fucked something up. He had been a child.
It’s not him this time, scattering papers on the floor and leaving the front door open, but it takes him a while to realize that, because it used to be him. For a while he thought it might still be.
But no. This is something else.
He knows for certain when he looks into the bathroom mirror one day, in the middle of a shower. His showers are hot, scalding…he likes them that way, likes to feel the water boiling against his skin as it cleanses him. The steam is so thick that it nearly chokes him, sweat seeping through his pores only to be sluiced away, hot and painful and so, so brief. He has trouble breathing, sometimes, when it’s this hot; he’s never felt dizzy before, though, and that’s what throws him, makes him turn off the water with shampoo suds still clinging to his hair and half-rinsed lather running in rivulets down his back.
When he opens the shower door, the cold air rushes in, chills him instantly and raises the hairs on his arms. He squeezes his eyes shut and fumbles blindly for a towel, unwilling to risk the sharp sting of shampoo in his eyes, burning his vision. The terrycloth is rough and welcome, like the air scraping its way into his aching lungs, and he drags it over his face before he opens his eyes.
And sees his own reflection.
For a moment he simply stands, blinking at the face looking back at him, and tries to understand what has happened. The steam is still heavy, smothering, curling around him as it leaks out from the shower cubicle. But he can see his own reflection in the mirror, can see the foam-lather of shampoo clinging to his flattened hair and the curve of his left shoulder. He can see clearly.
That’s when he knows. When the thought jumps into his head, unexpected but surprisingly solid, I have a ghost. He doesn’t know what to do next, so he just stands there, naked, dripping water and soap-suds onto the bath mat. The air is much colder than it should be, especially against the claustrophobic heat of the steam that presses against his back, and there is a scent hanging in the air that he can’t quite identify. He thinks about speaking, about introducing himself, about asking why are you here? …but he doesn’t. He can’t think of a reason why it would care.
Eventually the steam dissipates, and the room cools to the point that he’s shivering, shaking on the mat, and that’s when he finally stops waiting - for something, for someone, for an answer - and gets dressed.
9. His house shouldn’t have a ghost. He’s quite certain of that; he knows the house and its history and its past inhabitants well enough to know that there shouldn’t be a ghost here.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is one.
He starts thinking of it as a ‘she’ because he doesn’t like thinking of a person, even a deceased person, as an ‘it’, no matter how incorporeal. He doesn’t give her a name, though. He thinks that it’s too personal, him giving her a name, when she hasn’t chosen to share one with him. He tries talking to her a few times, but ends up feeling silly. He goes to the library and reads about hauntings, and supernatural occurrences, and communication with the dead, and every so often he convinces himself that he’s imagining things. Then he comes home to find lights on all over the house, and the bedroom door locked from the inside.
He thinks about telling Orlando, one day when he goes to meet him for lunch at a trendy bistro just outside of the city. When he sees Orlando, though, he decides not to, knows that Orlando has his own ghosts. Orlando is pale beneath the tan, vacant-eyed and jittery, sharp around the edges. He smiles too-bright and starved, but only picks at his salad and twitches away from Elijah’s offered embrace.
When the check arrives, Orlando hurries to take it; ends up knocking over his wine - his third? fourth? - and scooting back from the table, metallic screech of protest from the chair legs as they scrape the pavement. Elijah pushes back as well, alarmed more by the sudden panic of the movement than by the spill. Relax, he says, but Orlando smiles again and laughs, high and shrill, in a way that grates on Elijah more than the scream of the chair legs, and tells him that everything’s fine.
The wine soaks into the napkins and stains the check and slides over the smooth white surface of the table, and when it reaches the edges it drips, slowly, onto the concrete pavement. Orlando looks away, says something about his new project being very demanding, and sorry for the mess, and we’ll do this again soon, yeah? Don’t, let me, I’ve got it. He waves a platinum card at the waiter and hides his eyes behind night-dark L.A. sunglasses.
Elijah finishes his glass of water, stands beside the table while the waiters clean up the mess - just a moment, sir - and watches the shadows disappear from the ground, shrinking into themselves until they vanish. He leaves a tip, although he’s sure that Orlando already did, and drives home with the windows rolled down, L.A. air whipping through his hair and not helping him to feel any cleaner.
He can’t tell Orlando; that much is clear.
He doesn’t think that he can tell Dom, either, because with Dom the words end up coming out all wrong and there are too many other words that always get in the way.
After several minutes of thought, of music played too loud to drown out the songs blaring from other cars and the incessant honking that accompanies driving anywhere in the city, he decides to call Billy. Billy might laugh, but at least he’ll hear Elijah out. Billy won’t laugh until he finishes.
Elijah smiles, breathes in polluted air that smells of melted tar and rubber and sour metal, and turns up the radio.
8. Billy doesn’t laugh. Billy listens silently while Elijah explains about the shower and the lights and the keys, and then Billy poses a question.
So what are you going to do?
It’s a question that Elijah has thought a lot about, and he hasn’t really come up with a solution. I don’t know, he answers. Nothing, I suppose.
Billy makes sympathetic noises, and they talk about their friends and their lives and how much they miss New Zealand, and then Billy says, You know Dom’s heading to L.A. today, right?
Elijah didn’t know, actually. He says as much while his brain runs in little circles and he wonders how to hide his bad habits and his porn and his feelings and his ghost from Dom all at once.
Yeah. He said he’d ring you before he came over.
That’s somewhat reassuring. At least then he’ll have some time to prepare; although knowing Dom, he’ll probably call from the plane as it touches down at LAX. Elijah thanks Billy for telling him, and they make small talk for another few minutes before Elijah excuses himself and sets out to clean the house.
He turns on the radio, but after it turns off for the third time, he puts in some CDs instead, and that seems to be permissible. He works with the odd feeling that someone is looking over his shoulder, faint floral odour clinging in his nostrils, but he sings determinedly off-key along to the music and ignores it.
He finds a box of old mail hidden inside his paperwork drawer and becomes engrossed in sorting it, pulling out year-old birthday cards and letters from friends and offers for Visa check cards as the shadows creep across his floor and pool around him, smudging the white envelopes with the onset of twilight.
He doesn’t notice until he feels the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, until he whips around, and his eyes take a moment to adjust to the light still leaking in from the windows on that side of the room.
Hey, Dom says, hands rising defensively as he takes a step back. Hey.
Elijah blinks, pinches the bridge of his nose hard against the sudden squeeze of a headache. You should have called, he says, and takes a deep breath because he stood up too fast, and the headache is joined immediately by the dazzling glimmer of spots behind his eyes, blotting out Dom’s silhouette in shades of purple and green.
I did, Dom answers, and Elijah can hear the tight, feral-toothed grin in his voice even if he still can’t see it clearly. And I knocked, but you didn’t answer. What’s up with your stereo?
That’s when Elijah hears it; the thin, thready sound of a song-line repeating itself, over and over. He doesn’t recognize the song, can only hear the angst-filled wail of the singer and the aching whine of a guitar, and then the brief snatch of silence before it repeats.
Nothing, he says quickly, and crosses to turn the music off. The metal is chillingly cold beneath his hand, and the lights flare at him, dying-bright, before the machine is silenced.
So, Dom says behind him, and this time when Elijah looks he can see the smile, Dom’s hands jammed in his pockets, threadbare jeans held up by the wrinkle of his exposed boxers. Want company?
Elijah forgets and stares for a moment, then shrugs, smile creeping out to answer Dom’s. Okay, he says. Sure.
7. The ghost doesn’t do much when Dom’s around. At least nothing obvious, and with two of them in the house it’s easier to explain away misplaced wallets and water left running, a thin stream of liquid spilling into the sink before Dom cocks his head and asks What’s that noise? and Elijah goes to check.
He tries not to leave Dom alone in the house, not to tempt fate. If there were a way to take her with him when he left, he would do it. But real ghosts haunt places, not people, so she remains behind when he goes out to the market, to screen tests, to interviews, and he ends up being distant and half-distracted, unable to focus on anything the entire time he’s away. Worrying about Dom and wondering if he’s found out yet why the toilet paper keeps unrolling onto the floor.
Dom is curious enough as it is, poking through Elijah’s things and asking questions, always questions. Sometimes questions that Elijah doesn’t know how to answer.
Why does your house smell like wood violets? Dom asks one day.
Air freshener, Elijah says, and the scent sharpens, thick with dust and decay.
He wishes he could take her with him, wishes she would come to premieres and interviews and all-star celebrity parties, and maybe then he wouldn’t always feel so alone. He wonders if she was young when she died; if she was his age, or even younger, and if she knew what was going to happen to her when she finally stopped breathing.
He wonders if being trapped in the house hurts her as much as it hurts him, and whether she understands his need for freedom on the days that he grabs his car keys and doesn’t look back, just drives for hours and tries to stop thinking so much.
She likes Emo music, he finds out. He gets tired of changing the CD every three minutes when she decides that she doesn’t like it, so he buys a 200-disk changer and loads an assortment of musical styles, and sets it on shuffle so that she can listen to whatever she wants. She plays Saves the Day and Braid and The Weakerthans, and he doesn’t mind as long as it keeps her happy.
After a while, he moves some of his CDs out to the car; the ones she doesn’t like and won’t let him play inside. He can’t release emotion except through music; it’s just the way he is, and three days of thin-voiced melancholy have him on the edge of depression in a way that he doesn’t know how to combat.
Dom doesn’t say anything about it. Dom touches his arm sometimes, and says soft, friendly things, and Elijah can’t summon up the energy to respond. There’s something going on, something that he isn’t sure he doesn’t want, and it grows a little stronger every time he and Dom do the dishes together in Elijah’s tiny kitchen and end up just a little too close, hands brushing over stone crockery and silverware and solid-oak cabinet doors.
There is one night when he thinks that it can’t possibly go on any longer, that one of them has to say something before they both go mad, and he finds himself staring into clear gray eyes, inches apart, lips parting to form a word that he doesn’t know how to say…a moment broken by the slam of a shutter against the windowpane outside, even though it isn’t that windy, and Elijah goes to shut the windows in case of a storm.
They never quite get that moment back again, but Elijah doesn’t lament its loss. He doesn’t know what it was, anyway. It’s easier to let it go.
6. The problem with friends, Elijah thinks, is that once you become aware of them, they remain physical-romantic-emotional possibilities. They don’t come and go the way crushes do, transitory and variant; they stay, and leave you constantly conflicted, and spill beer on your carpet.
He calls Billy, one day when the silence starts to get to him and the house is hollow, empty, because Dom has gone out clubbing and probably won’t return until the sun comes up, with alcohol and perfume and sex clinging to his skin and his unwashed clothes.
She’s been quiet lately, he says.
So have you, Billy answers.
Elijah curls the phone cord around his finger loop-by-loop, watches the flush of blood as circulation is impeded, and listens to the foreign and yet familiar lilt of Billy’s voice. He doesn’t answer at first, which makes Billy sigh and ask him about trivial things, about work, and social events, and eventually Dom.
Elijah opens his mouth to answer, and suddenly he lets all of the random thoughts he’s been having pour out at once, into an anonymous phone line to a friend thousands of miles away. He talks about how he and Dom spend their evenings, and where they went to dinner last week, and the way Dom hogs the bathroom in the mornings, and how he doesn’t think Dom has figured out, yet, about the fact that Elijah’s house is haunted.
He stops when he runs out of words, when his throat itches from lack of moisture and he has to swallow, twice, to clear it. There is a pause which stretches until Elijah can barely stand it, when he would speak but he has nothing left to say, and he counts Billy’s breaths until the pattern changes and he hears Billy’s voice, slow and measured.
I think you should tell him.
No, Elijah says. Immediate and reflexive, and the word banishes all possibility; banishes even the words that have come before. Billy sighs, and Elijah shakes his head stubbornly, even knowing that Billy can’t see.
I can’t, he insists, and his voice is higher than it should be, strained with panic that he can feel pressing out from the inside of his throat.
Billy hushes him, makes soothing sounds that hiss like static in Elijah’s ears. All right, all right. It was only a suggestion.
I can’t, Elijah repeats, and this time his voice is steadier, and it comes out more like a statement.
Thankfully, Billy doesn’t ask why not. I’ll talk to you later, he says instead. I have to go. Elijah?
Yes, Elijah says.
Call me, if you need to talk. About anything. Everything. I’m here.
I know, Elijah says politely. Thank you.
Elijah… Billy says again, but then Elijah can hear the resignation in his next inhalation, the admonitions and offers and pleas that die unspoken on Billy’s lips. Take care.
Goodbye, Elijah says. And hangs up the phone.
5. They are sharing drinks on the couch when Dom slips out of the realm of possibility, into a more present reality, in a way that Elijah can’t ignore. They have bottles of liquor spread all over the coffee table, most of them only three-quarters full, and at least a dozen glasses of various sizes and shapes holding different combinations of those ingredients.
The book of mixed-drink recipes lies open on one corner of the table, balanced precariously on the raised edge between a rather tamely oscillating tequila sunrise and the shrill tranquility of a more startling kamikaze that glitters a brilliant shade of blue. Both of them have sampled nearly everything in the book, and while they aren’t the most drunk they have ever been, they are at least fairly close.
Dom tries to taste Elijah’s drink, the one currently clasped loosely in Elijah’s left hand, brings it to his lips by folding warm fingers over Elijah’s numb hand. Elijah attempts to get to Dom’s in the same manner, but his coordination is slightly off and the liquid spills over the brim, splatters into his lap, and he is laughing in spite of the cold bite of freezer-chilled alcohol seeping through his pants.
Elijah, Dom says, and Elijah’s laughter dries up at the look on Dom’s face, at the slow, lazy blink of his eyes as they struggle to focus. Elijah has thought about this moment, about what he would do if it ever came to be, but now that it’s actually happening, he just goes pliant and soft and passive, waiting for Dom to take him.
Dom’s kisses are sloppy, and Elijah is jarred once by the clack of their teeth as Dom’s weight presses him back into the couch; stretches him out and pushes him down until he is swallowed by the plush give of the cushions. Elijah responds as well as he can, encouraging Dom with little noises and movements and the fluttering brushes of his hands against Dom’s back.
The bedroom has never been so frightening, never looked so menacing as it does now, a gaping black portal at the end of the hallway. Elijah closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to see, follows Dom blindly by the pull of a hand around his wrist and the sound of slightly ragged breathing.
They are awkward together, and the alcohol isn’t helping, it makes their movements clumsy and Elijah’s thoughts cloudy, the smell of stale sweat and the taste of Dom briefly in his mouth and the too-hard jab of bones into flesh, and a couple of times he nearly panics and says no, stop. He knows the mechanics of this well enough, is familiar with how A is supposed to fit into B; but sex isn’t mechanical, it’s stumbling and messy and painful, and dear god but he wasn’t prepared for this, and it’s too late now.
He thinks that maybe he should say something, when his body feels like it’s being cauterized and he bites his lip until it bleeds to keep from screaming and pulling away…but this is what he wanted, after all; the details really aren’t important.
He sees a vague glow in the corner, wavy lines of light that possibly don’t quite mesh with the moonlight, and it distracts him enough that Dom’s first real thrust catches him off-guard, and he screams. Dom mumbles something incoherent against his shoulder, evidently mistaking Elijah’s cry for one of pleasure, and pain prickle-stings the corners of his eyes until he can relax enough to move with Dom, and then it finally starts to feel good; enough so that he can reach between his own legs with one hand to bring the aching pressure inside him to some sort of completion.
Dom grunts as he comes, and Elijah’s body shudders through the last few erratic thrusts, and then Dom rolls away and lies still. Elijah struggles briefly to stay awake, his mind insistently repeating a thousand variations on the theme of what happens now? but the heavy weight of alcohol and sex combine to force him into sleep. The last thing he is aware of is the sound of the stereo turning on, softly, in the living room.
4. When he wakes up, it is still dark and silent; he wakes with the musty scent of cobwebs tickling his nose and the sour taste of semen heavy on his tongue. The air is so thick that he gags, rotted violets in his nose and mouth and eyes. He rolls over onto his side to breathe, and the enclosing cocoon of anoxic air that seems to surround him vanishes, just like that, leaves him cold and gasping and in pain.
It takes him a minute to realize that Dom isn’t there, because he’s used to Dom not being there, in his bed; but the pull of skin and muscle when he moves reminds him that Dom should be, because last night was different.
He gets up carefully, cringing a little against abused muscles as he stands, and holds onto the bedpost for support, swaying slightly as his legs threaten to give out.
All of the windows are open; he can hear the sound of traffic outside, even in the early hours of the morning, can feel the cool dry California air, sticky and clinging, through the windows. He’s fairly certain that he left them shut, but right now that doesn’t seem important enough to matter.
He makes it to the bathroom, slowly and carefully, and turns on the cabinet light. It flares bright and dies with a pop, so he turns on the overhead fluorescent and winces away from the wash of clinical colour.
He expects himself to look a lot worse than he actually does, which should be a relief but somehow isn’t. He likes scars because they prove something, shows off his bruises and cuts because they mean that he has fought a battle, however small the scale. After last night, he feels as if there should be marks, displaying his rite of passage. Of something.
After some careful probing and washing, wringing moisture from the warm-wet cloth to trickle over his skin, he discovers that he’s bleeding. The taste of regret is tangy, sharper than cobwebs and less salty than Dom, and he bites it back in his throat along with the bile that rises at the sight of his blood staining the washcloth.
He should have spoken up at the time, should have said slow down, should have said use a condom, should have said it’s my first time, should have said…something. Anything.
When he’s finished cleaning up, he throws the washcloth on the side of the tub and checks the couch, sees Dom curled up asleep, naked beneath the coverlet he evidently took from the foot of Elijah’s bed. It’s frigid in the living room, much colder than it is in the bedroom, and Dom is shivering in his sleep beneath the thin blanket. Elijah goes to the closet for another one, drapes it over his - friend? lover? mistake? - visitor and returns to bed.
He curls up tight, in a ball, with the sheets soft but still scraping against his skin, the sound of car horns and screeching tires lulling him back into a fitful sleep.
3. In the morning, it becomes immediately apparent that they are not going to be able to move on from here. Dom is half-packed by the time Elijah wanders out to the living room sometime just before noon, still water-slick from a hot shower that turned cold before he was ready to get out, and Elijah sees his own nightmares reflected in the dark circles under Dom’s eyes. His eyes aren’t clear anymore, they’re cloudy and murky and tainted, and Elijah keeps his own lowered for fear of what Dom will see.
Elijah wonders if Dom is bleeding now, if Dom saw Elijah’s blood on the cloth left on the side of the tub and is bleeding inside, where Elijah has never been able to see. He doesn’t really care; doesn’t have the energy left for regret or apology. And bloodstains are another kind of battle scar.
They try to smooth things out with guy-speak, through manly posing and half-sentences, and when Dom claps him on the shoulder, Elijah nearly staggers, folds up in half and breaks in two. There is no guy-speak appropriate for this situation, though, and eventually they run out of words and grunts and Dom’s taxi pulls up outside.
Elijah doesn’t offer to take him to the airport. He’s sure that if he steps outside, the sunlight will strip him bare and lay open all of his secrets to the world, flood him with emotions no longer his own. Outside is an escape, and it’s a route not open to him at the moment.
Just before Dom leaves, Elijah looks up and meets his eyes, and they stay frozen for endless milliseconds before the taxi horn beeps again and whatever words Dom looks ready to say die before they reach Elijah. Take care, he says instead, and the leftover word mate that used to follow hangs silently between them like a jagged wound.
Elijah doesn’t say anything. Elijah watches him leave, watches the taxi drive away the way it does in the movies, and then goes inside to curl up on his couch, cocooned in blankets that smell like Dom’s body. Elijah can’t find any traces of himself in the fabric, only an overwhelming sense of Dom that permeates the cloth.
He doesn’t cry. Many years ago he started saving his tears, bottling them up until he needed them for a role. He can’t seem to kick the habit, even when he feels the dry ache of unshed tears, building pressure against his lacrimals. He stares at the back of the couch, at the thousands and thousands of tiny threads that make up the weave, and separates them with his eyes, peels them apart.
The stereo clicks on after an unknown amount of time, and it’s almost enough to make him smile, to laugh watery at the thought that no matter how alone he feels, he never is. He swallows a small handful of aspirin for the pain that still hasn’t faded, and she plays him Radiohead softly until he sleeps, dreamless.
2. After two days of silence and solitude, he feels like he’s losing his mind. He does what he always does in these situations, like a default: he calls Billy.
Elijah, Billy says in surprise when he picks up. Hey, hang on a minute.
And in the background Elijah hears another voice, a muffled exchange, and quite clearly recognizes the person talking to Billy. And it makes sense. Perfect sense, that Dom would go to the same person that Elijah goes to when he needs to talk; only it’s not really fair to Billy, to be in the middle of things like this, and Dom just might need a confidante more badly than Elijah does.
Billy, never mind, he says clearly, loud enough that Billy’s attention returns to him immediately - No, ‘Lij, wait - but he hangs up anyway.
He doesn’t bother to take the phone off the hook, because the trill-warble of the ringer doesn’t bother him much, even when it repeats on-and-off for the better part of an hour. The answering machine clicks on and he thinks, quite clearly, No. He closes his eyes and curls up on the couch again, and wonders how he fucked things up so very badly, and wishes to go to sleep for a few days, to wake up and find the world is normal again.
The stereo whirrs, and the lights in the kitchen flicker uncertainly, and after a moment a solitary piano melody starts to play, loud enough to reverberate through the house and echo in the empty rooms. The vibrations thrum through Elijah’s ribcage, a low-end hum that shakes and settles, remakes him. He is barely aware of the power in the kitchen going off completely, the recorded message on his machine dying out mid-greeting. The soft-sharp musk of violets surrounds and drowns him.
When the string section begins to play, he thinks that he vaguely recognizes the song. It’s something by the Cure, but he would swear that he doesn’t own this album. He knows that it’s not one of the ones in the machine, whirring and clicking against each other to the accompaniment of blinking red-green-yellow lights.
The song plays for a couple of minutes, solo instrumental, and then hums low in the bass and repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
Elijah wishes, for a moment, that he remembered how to cry for himself.
1. Fade out, he thinks during one crystallized moment in time, as a cold gust of violet-scented air sweeps through the room and rustles the papers lying untouched on his desk. Fade out.