mostly what i need from you 4
You can blame westmoon that I dragged this one out and dusted it off and had another go at it. I'm not posting it to almoststories yet because the other three parts aren't there. I guess it'll all go there when I finish it, which at this rate will be 2012.
Mostly What I Need From You
Dom & Elijah
Part Four ( One. Two. Three.)
"Time for another film?" Dom, apparently a glutton for punishment, asks as he folds himself into some yoga type position on the sofa.
Elijah puts on The Bumblebee Flies Anyway and sits next to Dom, resigned. He's definitely going to get it for this one. He wasn't a kid any more when he made it; he was well into his teens and more or less choosing his own roles by then.
He tries to watch the movie through Dom's ultra-critical eyes, and concludes pretty quickly that it's a punishingly boring movie, and he's boring in it.
Like... really boring. He thinks of himself as more of a craft-oriented actor, not the charisma-oozing star type, and usually he's okay with that, but-- wow, he's really dull in this, and he's in it a lot. Ten minutes in, he has to break out some microbrews just to keep from booing himself on screen.
Dom nurses a bottle and watches attentively without comment until Elijah's character steps into a shower.
"Ah, shower scenes," Dom says. "I've done one or two of those."
"Oh?" Elijah says blithely, just as though he hasn't found the stills from Hetty Wainthropp Investigates online and squirreled them away in his "Recipes" folder. Thank God for internet fans, seriously.
"Mm-hm. Clammy, eh?"
"Fuck, yeah."
When it's over, Dom says, "Nice. Did they cast Janeane Garofalo just cos she made you look tall?"
"No one can make me look tall," Elijah sighs.
Dom snickers and bumps Elijah's shoulder with his own. "Chin up. Never know, Doodle, you could still have a growth spurt."
"Asshole," Elijah mutters, but he can't keep in a grin.
They've emptied a six-pack or two by midnight, when Elijah's phone rings. Fortunately he has the presence of mind to answer from the line in another room; his caller ID shows Viggo's number.
"You too?" Elijah blurts as soon as he picks up the receiver.
Viggo takes it in stride, replying with tranquility, "Me too."
"It's kind of late for a call, isn't it?"
"I knew you'd be up. I'm painting, and the more I painted the more I saw this conversation between the lines. You need to talk to him, Elijah."
"Why do I have to do it?"
"Because you're his friend and you care about him."
"So? He seems pretty happy being a jerk. You're the ones who're all upset about it."
"For now. But I think ultimately it's bad for his relationships and it's bad for him, you know? Dom's been very active about maintaining these ties and these friendships, we all appreciate that," Viggo says in his mesmerizing raspy drone, "but he's also sabotaging things with this negativity. It's bad energy, and I think it comes from his frustration with his situation. Until he understands that, he's just going to be viewing everything through this distortion. He's walking around blindfolded and knocking into other people because he can't see his own way."
"Why can't you tell him, Vig? He respects you."
"I can't get anything across to him from the other side of the blindfold."
"And I'm, what, inside the blindfold?" Elijah doesn't think the metaphor's holding up, here.
"Seems that way."
"But if he gives me shit over my work, I'll be outside the blindfold, right? And off the hook. So-- fine, okay, I'm working on it." Elijah takes a stab in the dark. "What'd Dom say about Hidalgo, anyway?"
Viggo laughs softly. "He said the people around me were trying to turn me into Gary Cooper, and it wouldn't work because I'm a weird guy and I do my best work in weird roles."
"That's not so bad."
"Also that he'd decided to quit smoking weed and he thought I should too because he's convinced it shows up in your acting. Then he named off some of my projects where he thought my performance was affected. That felt a little intrusive."
"Was he right?" Elijah asks, curious despite himself.
"That doesn't really make a difference, does it? We all built up a lot of trust between us, and a lot of goodwill. I don't think Dom realizes that he's abusing that. We need you to act on behalf of the Fellowship, just like you did as Frodo. Just like then, we're all behind you. I know you can find a way to make him understand."
"But how the fuck--"
"The turpentine's eating through the drumhead, Elijah, I have to go. Held og lykke."
*
One of the best things about having Dom as a houseguest is his cooking. The next day, he spends hours working on some kind of homemade pasta thing, using stuff in Elijah's kitchen that Elijah didn't even know he owned. Elijah "helps", mostly by performing the useful function of standing around gawking.
"Hand me the tomato knife?" Dom asks.
"I have a knife just for tomatoes?"
"It's just there, the one looks a bit like a balloon. No, not-- next to it. To the left, the left."
"This one?" At Dom's nod, Elijah brings it to him. "Right, looks just like a balloon. If balloons were flat, and made of metal. With a sharp edge. I mean, just for future reference? Balloons-- pretty much the opposite of knives. Even funny-shaped tomato knives." Usually Dom is fairly talkative, so it's kind of novel for Elijah to have the floor while Dom beetles his brow and puckers his mouth in a frustrated yet appealing way over his tomato slices. "If you told me it was round on one side, I probably would have got it," Elijah goes on, enjoying the moment. "Maybe if you'd said it looks like a puddle. I mean, at least a puddle is two-dimensional, mostly. Balloons, not so much."
"Shut your face, Elijah, you'll bring down my souffle."
"You're making a souffle too?"
Dom peers into the oven and pulls a face. "Not any more."
Elijah believes him for a relatively quiet ten minutes, til he moves out of Dom's way and ends up near the oven. It's not even warm, and when he checks, it's empty. "You fucking liar!"
"As if I'd bother," Dom sniggers. "Be a bit wasted on you, Twinkie the Kid."
"I keep telling you, I grew up with them! They're good if you've been eating them all your life. You eat fuckin'-- blood sausage and shit."
"Black pudding is proper food. Twinkies are petrol leavings and sugar, spun into evil, crap little cakes. Can you get me the garlic press?"
"Uh." Elijah forages in the indicated drawer. "This thing?"
"That's a vegetable chopper. It's a press, it has a hinge and a lever."
"This?"
"Nah, that's a potato ricer."
"Rice is made of potatoes? Wait. That can't be right, they grow rice in paddies. Right?"
"Oh, I'm holding my breath to see where this is going."
"You're messing with my head again, this thing isn't a 'ricer', is it."
"It is actually, but Lijah, stay on target, eh? Garlic press. Looks a bit like the ricer but it's smaller and-- there, that! Cheers." Dom crushes innocent garlic cloves between the jaws of the press. The room is starting to smell delicious, in an overpowering kind of way. "Remind me sometime to give you a tour of your kitchen."
"You can start with this monster here," Elijah turns the crank of a big metal contraption on the counter.
"Pasta machine."
"Why do I even have a pasta machine?"
"I bought it for you for your housewarming," Dom says. "So that when I visited, I could make pasta."
"What made you so sure I'd invite you back?" Elijah smirks, baiting him, but Dom doesn't rise to it, busy scowling into the maw of yet another shiny device Elijah's never seen before. "Hey, if I buy a souffle pan, does that mean you'll make a souffle next time you're over?"
"Maybe." Dom drops a few hapless tomatoes into the twirling blades of the whatever-it-is and smiles as they're shredded to pulp. "Worth a try."
*
The dish turns out to be some kind of super-triple-duple lasagna that's light and million-layered and stuffed with cheese and baked vegetables and bits of sausage; it basically lays Elijah out in stunned wonder after two bites. He eats more of it than his stomach can comfortably hold and eyes the rest of the pan wistfully, finally understanding what the Romans were up to with that whole vomitorium idea.
"That was incredible," he says, more than once, and rapturously, and insists on cleaning up by himself since Dom made the meal. Dom looks smug and goes to slouch on the sofa with one long-fingered hand resting contentedly on his gut.
Elijah almost doesn't have the heart to torture Dom with more bad movies after such a fantastic dinner. But then again, after such a fantastic dinner, he really doesn't want to confront Dom about annoying the rest of the Fellowship.
It's time to bring out the big guns, Elijah decides. "I was thinking about watching two movies tonight, try to get through them a little quicker. Up for a double header?"
"There's more beer, yeah?"
"Oh yeah."
"Then, by all means."
"Okay, so... double bill, The Ice Storm, and Black and White." Elijah's sure this is going to make Dom crack-- The Ice Storm is so good, and Black and White is so bad, that the contrast will force Dom to finally go off on Elijah and tell him how bad he sucks in Black and White as even a wannabe badass, and how disastrous he is at improv.
"Uhm..." Dom sits up. "Maybe I should give it a miss tonight, actually."
"Oh. Sure, well. Duh. I should've figured you'd want to go out," says Elijah. Last time Dom was living in LA, he ended up hitting every open bar in town. It was silly of Elijah to think this visit was going to be like those early days of low-key hanging out-- there are parties out there just waiting for Dom with open arms and freebie bags. "Had enough relaxing, huh?"
"No, I could still use the downtime... I'll probably make an early night of it, do some reading. You can give us a shout after the first one, actually, I'm up for the second round."
"Wait, you want to skip The Ice Storm? Why?" Elijah flusters. "That one's actually good."
"It's brilliant!" Dom says with conviction. "But I don't want to see it again, you know? It's one of those films where the first time seeing it is so-- good, you don't want to spoil it with a second one. You know. Like Jaws, or Star Wars, or sommat. You never want to dilute that first exposure, like."
"You've seen Star Wars a jillion times. You've seen it like twenty times just with me, man."
"Like other people are with Star Wars," Dom amends hastily, "that's how I feel about this."
"Well, don't worry about it then, we'll just forget that one," Elijah says.
"Is that okay? I thought you had to see them all."
"I'll catch that one another time, when you're busy. They're not in any special kind of order or anything."
"Ah. I wondered why we were skipping some. That's all right then. If you don't mind."
"No, no, it's fine," Elijah says, feeling a little guilty as he slots in Black and White. "It's cool enough that you're keeping me company while I do my homework, man. Thanks."
"No bother," says Dom, settling back.
Black and White is different than Elijah remembered. He managed to somehow block out how long the opening interracial threesome goes on, which has him squirming a little, and he forgot that a ton of the movie is kind of a crime thing, and that a bunch of the rest of it is just a big soup of every famous person Jim Toback could cram in there.
Robert Downey Jr. is funny in it, and Elijah passes some time wondering if he'd be forgiven as many fuckups as Downey has. Considering that he's just watched three and a half of his worst performances ever, he's not inclined to think the public would be too merciful. He'd probably get a pass for having weed once or twice on the strength of playing Frodo, but no way would he get away with it if he were caught with cocaine, let alone heroin. He'd just go straight onto the heap of damaged former child actors. Depressing. Good thing he doesn't do drugs.
The movie meanders and drags. In one scene his younger self floats around in a crowd, more or less hiding from the camera; he's not sure if he should be embarrassed by that, or glad. He's definitely glad when the movie peters off to its end.
Sure, it's going to hurt when Dom tears into him for how bad he was, but it'll be a relief at this point, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
"I forgot what a mishmash that movie is," he says, just to get the ball rolling.
"Yeah, quite a lot going on in it," says Dom. "I liked the energy it had all through it."
Elijah pushes, "It didn't really make a lot of sense, though. Or have an ending. A lot of it was improvised."
"Yeah, which is great, everyone's on their toes. You couldn't get a bit like Robert Downey Jr. making a pass at Mike Tyson if you scripted it, that was fab. I liked what you were doing as well, you could really sort of see that Wren was trying to define himself in the middle of all those influences."
"That wasn't the character trying to define himself! That was me trying to create the character and not fucking pulling it off."
"It works for who he is, though," says Dom. "Maybe you did it without thinking it through, but I think it comes across really well."
"Dom-- it's all right," Elijah says in desperation. "I know it's a bad movie. I know I wasn't good in it. Just say it. It's a bad movie. I did a bad job."
"Not a bit of it," Dom says. "You know what it was missing? Popcorn. We should've had popcorn." He pats Elijah's hand. "Tomorrow we'll make some before we start the next film."
*
Mostly What I Need From You
Dom & Elijah
Part Four ( One. Two. Three.)
"Time for another film?" Dom, apparently a glutton for punishment, asks as he folds himself into some yoga type position on the sofa.
Elijah puts on The Bumblebee Flies Anyway and sits next to Dom, resigned. He's definitely going to get it for this one. He wasn't a kid any more when he made it; he was well into his teens and more or less choosing his own roles by then.
He tries to watch the movie through Dom's ultra-critical eyes, and concludes pretty quickly that it's a punishingly boring movie, and he's boring in it.
Like... really boring. He thinks of himself as more of a craft-oriented actor, not the charisma-oozing star type, and usually he's okay with that, but-- wow, he's really dull in this, and he's in it a lot. Ten minutes in, he has to break out some microbrews just to keep from booing himself on screen.
Dom nurses a bottle and watches attentively without comment until Elijah's character steps into a shower.
"Ah, shower scenes," Dom says. "I've done one or two of those."
"Oh?" Elijah says blithely, just as though he hasn't found the stills from Hetty Wainthropp Investigates online and squirreled them away in his "Recipes" folder. Thank God for internet fans, seriously.
"Mm-hm. Clammy, eh?"
"Fuck, yeah."
When it's over, Dom says, "Nice. Did they cast Janeane Garofalo just cos she made you look tall?"
"No one can make me look tall," Elijah sighs.
Dom snickers and bumps Elijah's shoulder with his own. "Chin up. Never know, Doodle, you could still have a growth spurt."
"Asshole," Elijah mutters, but he can't keep in a grin.
They've emptied a six-pack or two by midnight, when Elijah's phone rings. Fortunately he has the presence of mind to answer from the line in another room; his caller ID shows Viggo's number.
"You too?" Elijah blurts as soon as he picks up the receiver.
Viggo takes it in stride, replying with tranquility, "Me too."
"It's kind of late for a call, isn't it?"
"I knew you'd be up. I'm painting, and the more I painted the more I saw this conversation between the lines. You need to talk to him, Elijah."
"Why do I have to do it?"
"Because you're his friend and you care about him."
"So? He seems pretty happy being a jerk. You're the ones who're all upset about it."
"For now. But I think ultimately it's bad for his relationships and it's bad for him, you know? Dom's been very active about maintaining these ties and these friendships, we all appreciate that," Viggo says in his mesmerizing raspy drone, "but he's also sabotaging things with this negativity. It's bad energy, and I think it comes from his frustration with his situation. Until he understands that, he's just going to be viewing everything through this distortion. He's walking around blindfolded and knocking into other people because he can't see his own way."
"Why can't you tell him, Vig? He respects you."
"I can't get anything across to him from the other side of the blindfold."
"And I'm, what, inside the blindfold?" Elijah doesn't think the metaphor's holding up, here.
"Seems that way."
"But if he gives me shit over my work, I'll be outside the blindfold, right? And off the hook. So-- fine, okay, I'm working on it." Elijah takes a stab in the dark. "What'd Dom say about Hidalgo, anyway?"
Viggo laughs softly. "He said the people around me were trying to turn me into Gary Cooper, and it wouldn't work because I'm a weird guy and I do my best work in weird roles."
"That's not so bad."
"Also that he'd decided to quit smoking weed and he thought I should too because he's convinced it shows up in your acting. Then he named off some of my projects where he thought my performance was affected. That felt a little intrusive."
"Was he right?" Elijah asks, curious despite himself.
"That doesn't really make a difference, does it? We all built up a lot of trust between us, and a lot of goodwill. I don't think Dom realizes that he's abusing that. We need you to act on behalf of the Fellowship, just like you did as Frodo. Just like then, we're all behind you. I know you can find a way to make him understand."
"But how the fuck--"
"The turpentine's eating through the drumhead, Elijah, I have to go. Held og lykke."
*
One of the best things about having Dom as a houseguest is his cooking. The next day, he spends hours working on some kind of homemade pasta thing, using stuff in Elijah's kitchen that Elijah didn't even know he owned. Elijah "helps", mostly by performing the useful function of standing around gawking.
"Hand me the tomato knife?" Dom asks.
"I have a knife just for tomatoes?"
"It's just there, the one looks a bit like a balloon. No, not-- next to it. To the left, the left."
"This one?" At Dom's nod, Elijah brings it to him. "Right, looks just like a balloon. If balloons were flat, and made of metal. With a sharp edge. I mean, just for future reference? Balloons-- pretty much the opposite of knives. Even funny-shaped tomato knives." Usually Dom is fairly talkative, so it's kind of novel for Elijah to have the floor while Dom beetles his brow and puckers his mouth in a frustrated yet appealing way over his tomato slices. "If you told me it was round on one side, I probably would have got it," Elijah goes on, enjoying the moment. "Maybe if you'd said it looks like a puddle. I mean, at least a puddle is two-dimensional, mostly. Balloons, not so much."
"Shut your face, Elijah, you'll bring down my souffle."
"You're making a souffle too?"
Dom peers into the oven and pulls a face. "Not any more."
Elijah believes him for a relatively quiet ten minutes, til he moves out of Dom's way and ends up near the oven. It's not even warm, and when he checks, it's empty. "You fucking liar!"
"As if I'd bother," Dom sniggers. "Be a bit wasted on you, Twinkie the Kid."
"I keep telling you, I grew up with them! They're good if you've been eating them all your life. You eat fuckin'-- blood sausage and shit."
"Black pudding is proper food. Twinkies are petrol leavings and sugar, spun into evil, crap little cakes. Can you get me the garlic press?"
"Uh." Elijah forages in the indicated drawer. "This thing?"
"That's a vegetable chopper. It's a press, it has a hinge and a lever."
"This?"
"Nah, that's a potato ricer."
"Rice is made of potatoes? Wait. That can't be right, they grow rice in paddies. Right?"
"Oh, I'm holding my breath to see where this is going."
"You're messing with my head again, this thing isn't a 'ricer', is it."
"It is actually, but Lijah, stay on target, eh? Garlic press. Looks a bit like the ricer but it's smaller and-- there, that! Cheers." Dom crushes innocent garlic cloves between the jaws of the press. The room is starting to smell delicious, in an overpowering kind of way. "Remind me sometime to give you a tour of your kitchen."
"You can start with this monster here," Elijah turns the crank of a big metal contraption on the counter.
"Pasta machine."
"Why do I even have a pasta machine?"
"I bought it for you for your housewarming," Dom says. "So that when I visited, I could make pasta."
"What made you so sure I'd invite you back?" Elijah smirks, baiting him, but Dom doesn't rise to it, busy scowling into the maw of yet another shiny device Elijah's never seen before. "Hey, if I buy a souffle pan, does that mean you'll make a souffle next time you're over?"
"Maybe." Dom drops a few hapless tomatoes into the twirling blades of the whatever-it-is and smiles as they're shredded to pulp. "Worth a try."
*
The dish turns out to be some kind of super-triple-duple lasagna that's light and million-layered and stuffed with cheese and baked vegetables and bits of sausage; it basically lays Elijah out in stunned wonder after two bites. He eats more of it than his stomach can comfortably hold and eyes the rest of the pan wistfully, finally understanding what the Romans were up to with that whole vomitorium idea.
"That was incredible," he says, more than once, and rapturously, and insists on cleaning up by himself since Dom made the meal. Dom looks smug and goes to slouch on the sofa with one long-fingered hand resting contentedly on his gut.
Elijah almost doesn't have the heart to torture Dom with more bad movies after such a fantastic dinner. But then again, after such a fantastic dinner, he really doesn't want to confront Dom about annoying the rest of the Fellowship.
It's time to bring out the big guns, Elijah decides. "I was thinking about watching two movies tonight, try to get through them a little quicker. Up for a double header?"
"There's more beer, yeah?"
"Oh yeah."
"Then, by all means."
"Okay, so... double bill, The Ice Storm, and Black and White." Elijah's sure this is going to make Dom crack-- The Ice Storm is so good, and Black and White is so bad, that the contrast will force Dom to finally go off on Elijah and tell him how bad he sucks in Black and White as even a wannabe badass, and how disastrous he is at improv.
"Uhm..." Dom sits up. "Maybe I should give it a miss tonight, actually."
"Oh. Sure, well. Duh. I should've figured you'd want to go out," says Elijah. Last time Dom was living in LA, he ended up hitting every open bar in town. It was silly of Elijah to think this visit was going to be like those early days of low-key hanging out-- there are parties out there just waiting for Dom with open arms and freebie bags. "Had enough relaxing, huh?"
"No, I could still use the downtime... I'll probably make an early night of it, do some reading. You can give us a shout after the first one, actually, I'm up for the second round."
"Wait, you want to skip The Ice Storm? Why?" Elijah flusters. "That one's actually good."
"It's brilliant!" Dom says with conviction. "But I don't want to see it again, you know? It's one of those films where the first time seeing it is so-- good, you don't want to spoil it with a second one. You know. Like Jaws, or Star Wars, or sommat. You never want to dilute that first exposure, like."
"You've seen Star Wars a jillion times. You've seen it like twenty times just with me, man."
"Like other people are with Star Wars," Dom amends hastily, "that's how I feel about this."
"Well, don't worry about it then, we'll just forget that one," Elijah says.
"Is that okay? I thought you had to see them all."
"I'll catch that one another time, when you're busy. They're not in any special kind of order or anything."
"Ah. I wondered why we were skipping some. That's all right then. If you don't mind."
"No, no, it's fine," Elijah says, feeling a little guilty as he slots in Black and White. "It's cool enough that you're keeping me company while I do my homework, man. Thanks."
"No bother," says Dom, settling back.
Black and White is different than Elijah remembered. He managed to somehow block out how long the opening interracial threesome goes on, which has him squirming a little, and he forgot that a ton of the movie is kind of a crime thing, and that a bunch of the rest of it is just a big soup of every famous person Jim Toback could cram in there.
Robert Downey Jr. is funny in it, and Elijah passes some time wondering if he'd be forgiven as many fuckups as Downey has. Considering that he's just watched three and a half of his worst performances ever, he's not inclined to think the public would be too merciful. He'd probably get a pass for having weed once or twice on the strength of playing Frodo, but no way would he get away with it if he were caught with cocaine, let alone heroin. He'd just go straight onto the heap of damaged former child actors. Depressing. Good thing he doesn't do drugs.
The movie meanders and drags. In one scene his younger self floats around in a crowd, more or less hiding from the camera; he's not sure if he should be embarrassed by that, or glad. He's definitely glad when the movie peters off to its end.
Sure, it's going to hurt when Dom tears into him for how bad he was, but it'll be a relief at this point, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
"I forgot what a mishmash that movie is," he says, just to get the ball rolling.
"Yeah, quite a lot going on in it," says Dom. "I liked the energy it had all through it."
Elijah pushes, "It didn't really make a lot of sense, though. Or have an ending. A lot of it was improvised."
"Yeah, which is great, everyone's on their toes. You couldn't get a bit like Robert Downey Jr. making a pass at Mike Tyson if you scripted it, that was fab. I liked what you were doing as well, you could really sort of see that Wren was trying to define himself in the middle of all those influences."
"That wasn't the character trying to define himself! That was me trying to create the character and not fucking pulling it off."
"It works for who he is, though," says Dom. "Maybe you did it without thinking it through, but I think it comes across really well."
"Dom-- it's all right," Elijah says in desperation. "I know it's a bad movie. I know I wasn't good in it. Just say it. It's a bad movie. I did a bad job."
"Not a bit of it," Dom says. "You know what it was missing? Popcorn. We should've had popcorn." He pats Elijah's hand. "Tomorrow we'll make some before we start the next film."
*