Book 3, Chapter 11: Spiraling (1/2)
Title: Spiraling
Authors: kiltsandlollies and escribo
Characters: Dominic, Elijah
Word count: 3124
Summary: Immediately follows this.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Dominic never expected to be the one to walk away, even though he'd often wondered if doing so would earn him some measure of relief, but he'd never expected to do a lot of things over the past several months, and he's run out of expectations now. Billy hadn't followed him, and hadn't asked him to stay. Dominic hadn't turned and begged to do so. It was done, everything that it was and had been. It was over. The realization hits Dominic in his chest as he nears the bottom of the stairs outside the humanities building, and he fists his shirt as he tries to find breath and catch up to his thoughts. He hadn't planned for this, and so hadn't planned a next step, a Plan B of any kind. He's not sure where to go or what to do, and he can't imagine life without Billy in it, now that Billy has so shaped who Dominic's become.
"Shit," Dominic whispers, closing his hands over and over again on his shirt. "Dammit. Dammit."
Other students pass and move around him as he leans against the building now, trying to just put one foot in front of the other. It's the only goal he can accomplish, and even then it's hard; every step away from Billy echoes with all the steps Dominic had run toward him. But Dominic just needs to get to the safety of his room, and then-then he'll decide what to do next. The thought will present itself, he's sure of that but not much else.
No one stops him on his way back to the residence hall, and the climb to the third floor is relatively undisturbed, too. By the time Dominic stands in the middle of his room, he's made a mental list of smaller goals, things to get him through the next minutes, the next hours and days: things as easy as retrieving his bag from under his bed, stuffing it with whatever he can reach, walking to the train station, calling his mum-escaping. On his hands and knees, Dominic pulls dirty clothes, another pair of trainers, papers and dust from beneath his bed. Snagging the canvas bag, he gives it a hard yank and hears the clatter of glass on the floor-the bottle he took from Billy's home and had mostly forgotten, unwilling to open it again and remember times it had been opened before. Right now he feels little in the way of sentiment for the drink; instead he takes two long pulls from the bottle and finds his will resolved some, his strength returning. He'll leave Baskerville. He'll stay with his mum for a few days to get the rest of his strength back, and then he'll leave again. He'll go to the continent, he decides; he'll use his languages and his passion and the smarts Dominic still believes he has, and he'll find a job. He'll make it clear that he doesn't need anyone.
Dominic's bag is filled now, stuffed tight with the zipper straining. His thoughts-don't fucking need him. don't fucking need anyone-accompany him as he leaves his room for what he's decided will be the last time. What he can't carry he doesn't need or want, and that's what it's about right? Needs and wants? Dominic takes up the bottle again and raises it to his reflection in the mirror before he leaves the room, stumbling down the hall and the stairs. Once outside, he cradles the bottle a little tighter, squinting as he tries to remember which way to the station.
"Doesn't fucking matter," he mumbles. Hearing his name, he turns, stumbling again, to find Kirsten, a German girl he'd met weeks ago during some class meeting or other. She's standing with another girl whose name he's forgotten, though he recognizes her, too. Dominic points at Kirsten with the bottle, and offers her a smile. "Nothing fucking matters," he spits out, pleased when the girls step back from him. He lowers his voice then, whispering but still gesturing with the bottle. "It doesn't matter."
"Dominic?" Kirsten's voice is soft, nervous, and Dominic steadies himself as she looks him up and down. Her gaze is concerned, in a way Billy's wasn't, in a way Elijah's couldn't be, in a way Dominic's not sure he's registered before but doesn't much like. "Do you want me to call someone for you?"
"No. There's no one." Dominic holds the bottle up, swirls the last of the liquid in it, then turns the bottle upside down, letting the drink flow onto the pavement. Dropping the bottle, he walks away, leaving the girls staring open-mouthed at his back. Dominic can feel the weight of that stare and thinks he could outrun it if he tried, but there's not much point; in a few days they'll have forgotten what they saw and heard, and if they don't, well, they can add it to other tales Dominic knows have been told about him recently, tales he hasn't bothered to refute. His reputation hasn't been a priority for months, if he really thinks about it, and maybe it never was.
Halfway to the front gate of the campus, Dominic looks up from the ground beneath his feet to see Elijah scrambling up the stairs into the Science building, hidden behind sunglasses and weighed down by his everpresent rucksack. Dominic’s stomach churns with anger and energy, and he takes the steps two at a time to catch up, reaching for Elijah before he can begin his walk to whatever class he argues his way through in here.
“Hey-” Elijah snaps, the snarl on his face only lessening a little when he sees it’s Dominic who has him, and he pulls off the sunglasses. “Dom. Not now, okay? I’ve got a class-”
“You can miss this one.”
“Dude, no. I’m kind of invested in this, even if you’re not-hey-” Elijah actually winces this time as Dominic turns them around what’s a new corner of the building to Elijah but one all too familiar to Dominic. “We can’t go down there, Dom.”
“There’s pretty much nowhere we can’t go anymore, Elijah.” Dominic keeps his eyes and pace steady as he marches Elijah down the basement stairs he’d walked with Billy, and with his free hand he wrenches open the door to the first room he sees, pushing Elijah inside and letting the door creak shut behind them. Elijah's eyes go wide for a moment, but then narrow, the rest of him just as ready for a fight.
"Let me guess, Dom. We need to talk. Just like you and your professor. What happened? Did he finally call you out for missing classes?"
"You fucking told him."
"About ...?" Elijah raises his eyebrows and almost breaks into a smile before Dominic's hands land on his shoulders, shoving him back against a desk. Elijah's own hand shoot out at his sides, bracing him as he holds back anything louder than a small grunt of pain. "Look, I didn't tell him anything he shouldn't have been able to figure out on his own, right? If you two were really that close."
"You're fucking insane, Elijah."
"Me? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"What exactly is your game?" Dominic hears his voice rise, and he takes a deep breath, not wanting them to earn an audience down here but too furious to shut up and walk away like his mind warns him to do. "You just like to fuck with people? Is that it, Elijah? You didn't have any questions for him. You don't even speak to him unless you absolutely have to. You went in there to mess with me. Because you haven't done enough already, yeah?"
"I'm pretty sure you're not about to blame me for how fucked up you are at the moment, Dom," Elijah says almost kindly. "And nobody forced you to walk back into that office. It's like you wanted to get smacked around. Again."
"Don't-you don't know what you're talking about, Elijah. As usual. And I'm not fucked up. Not," Dominic throws a hand angrily. "Not nearly as much as I could be or will be if-if-"
"Okay, so you're not. Not yet." Elijah shrugs and pushes off the desk gingerly. "You're not gonna pass any straight line walks either, though."
"Just. Tell me why, okay?" Dominic looks up and doesn't move away from Elijah's slow approach. "I get it, you think Billy-you think the professor's got it in for you or something, but he just doesn't, Elijah. He doesn't care. Not about you, not about me, not about any of us, okay? Talk about fucking investment; why the fuck are you even bothering? You don't need the class, you don't need the grief, you don't need him-"
"Neither do you, Dom." Elijah's only inches from him now, and finally Dominic backs away, moving around the other side of the desk while Elijah shakes his head. "He definitely doesn't think so; now it's your turn to catch up. Look." Elijah steps closer again, leaning on his hands on the desk and tilting his head to meet Dominic's eyes. "Fuck this place, okay? Let's get off the campus for a while-"
"'m already gone," Dominic murmurs. "I'm going. I'm going home."
Elijah barks out a laugh that makes Dominic flinch and his stomach churn again. "Home. Like, to your parents? What makes you think they won’t send you right back here? And by then, you’ll have already missed so many classes that you’ll fail without even needing to fuck up on your exams. Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Elijah sighs. "Or if you're gonna be one anyway, don't go that far. The last place you need to be is somewhere your actual fucking family can see you, man, because-"
"Shut it," Dominic shouts, allowing himself the sound for the first time in months and smacking the desk before he stumbles backwards from it, hands in his hair again. "Fuck off, Elijah. Just. Everyone, all of it. Fuck you, fuck Billy, fuck this school."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"And that's what I don't need to fucking hear from you. I don't want to talk anymore," Dominic bites out, his upper lip curled in anger, and his eyes glassy with everything he's barely keeping in check. "I don't want to listen. I don't want to feel anything anymore. D'you understand, Elijah? I just want to get as far away from here as I can."
Elijah nods and reaches out, slowly, flexing his fingers a little in the air until they find Dominic's shoulder. "Okay. Okay. That's what you want, we'll get you out of here. But not home, Dom; I am telling you that is not where you want to be, and they're not gonna-okay, I don't know your parents, man, but something tells me it would be the worst fucking idea in the world-"
"You'd know, wouldn't you."
"Yeah." Elijah's grip on Dominic tightens for a moment then relaxes. "You're right, I would. And it's not me who'd be out on his ass this time, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the experience before it happens to you, okay, because that's what friends do." Dominic opens his mouth to speak, but Elijah shakes his head quickly. "You think whatever you want about me, Dom, but who else is telling you the truth right now? Friends do that, too. Not my problem if you haven't experienced much of that either."
Dominic can feel himself sinking against Elijah and can't fight it; it's easier than pushing him away at this point, and Dominic figures he can maybe survive another night, sober up and leave in the morning maybe. Elijah's right about Dominic's parents at least; they'd be shocked and furious if he darkened their door in the middle of the night looking, feeling, and sounding like this, and Dominic's not prepared to face that-especially not prepared to face his mother, who'd be more frightened than anything else, frightened and disappointed and perhaps not strong enough to intervene between Dominic and his father.
"Let's get something to eat," Elijah's saying, his tone completely conversational again, as if he and Dominic are in halls where they belong, as if they're just another pair of students waiting out the end of just another day. That's how Elijah must see it, Dominic thinks, and he'd give just about anything now to feel the same way. "We'll go back to my room," Elijah continues, and Dominic shakes his head.
"Don't want to. Do that. No more rooms."
"Not to stay, man. I just need to grab some stuff."
"You own something that's not already in your bag?"
Elijah cracks a smile and chucks Dominic's shoulder. "There you go. See? If you can do that take-the-piss thing then you're halfway better already."
"Elijah," Dominic sighs, but it feels like it's too late to argue again. Elijah nudges him to his feet and then moves them back out of the room, Elijah looking this way and that as they find their way back up the stairs. Dominic stumbles once more, and Elijah catches his arm and pulls him up, not a trace of the pity Dominic fears in his eyes.
"It's gonna be okay, Dom. I think we need to just get you out of this little fucking town for a while."
"Don't want to go to the city."
"Which is a good thing, because I'm not buying a train ticket, am I? I'm not talking about a long weekend. We'll just hitch with some people I know. They've got one of those magical things you people don't seem to understand all that much. It's called a car, and it gets you the fuck out of town with just these little things called keys-" It's Dominic's turn to push at Elijah's shoulder, and Elijah laughs. "Well, c'mon, it's not like we see a lot of them here, do we? And hey, if we're not driving, that means we get to do other things."
"Which is why you need to go back to your room."
"Got it in one." Elijah sighs and shields his eyes from the sunset, not bothering with his sunglasses for once. "It's gonna be good, Dom. We'll call it a night to fucking remember."
Elijah takes surprisingly little time in his room to gather what he needs and wants, while Dominic stands by the window and stares at the evening falling on them like heavy curtains. It's going to rain, he can feel it, and more, it'll be cold, the perfect weather to fight with something warm and heady from a warm and heavy glass. Wherever they're going, Dominic's drinking, he's already decided; he's drinking until he can see something behind his eyes that looks kinder than what he can see everywhere now.
"You're not ... being a complete bastard, like," Dominic says quietly as Elijah moves around him, pulling open desk drawers and perusing their contents. Elijah looks up from his search with raised eyebrows again, and Dominic laughs. "You haven't gone on one of your you're being stupid, Dom runs. Don't know what to do with you when you're actually being-"
"Helpful?" Elijah offers, as gently as if he's not being insulted himself here. "Friendly? Fuck that, Dom; you don't know what to do with me, period. But we manage, right? It's all good. And everybody's stupid at one time or another. That doesn't mean we run off home and think that'll make it any better. It really, really won't. You know that poem, Dom? They fuck you up, your mom and dad,-"
"Oh, god, please Elijah, not poetry, not from you."
"Whatever. Point is they do fuck you up, and you just get more fucked up when you walk back inside their lives. That's why you've gotta make your own. Nobody's gonna live yours for you. Anyway." Elijah throws his bag onto the desk, the sound of it loud and destructive against the wood. "We've both had more than enough fucking philosophy for one day."
Dominic watches Elijah unpack and repack the bag, thinking of what Elijah's said and surprised by what had sounded like bare honesty in it. He wants to defend himself, to say that his parents had never sent him away and that he would be welcomed back, that they would understand. But he can't speak that lie to Elijah's truth, and the one other person who'd come to represent home-Billy-had sent him away. An uglier truth Dominic recognizes is that at the moment he has no one except Elijah, and that thought is not a reassuring one, however much of a friend Elijah calls himself or thinks he could be.
Reality is what keeps Dominic beside Elijah nonetheless. If he were to go home, Dominic's father would yell and his mother would cry. They would wonder where they had gone wrong with him, before deciding they'd given him every opportunity and he'd still failed. He'd end up behind the counter of a filthy chip shop, and he'd be alone. Again.
Dominic squeezes his eyes shut before opening them to a new clarity. When Elijah moves to hoist his bag over his shoulder, Dominic reaches for him, and licks his lips. "Before we go-"
"Hmm?" Elijah's distracted, but he follows Dominic's glance at the side pocket of the bag, and tilts his head again. "You sure?"
"Just give me one," Dominic says tiredly, and Elijah nods, neither happily nor irritably; it's as if they both recognize that tonight is not the time to question anything, not after today.
Swallowing the pill is easy, leaning against Elijah afterward easier still. Dominic pushes his nose against the short hairs at the nape of Elijah's neck, letting rambling words become puffs of warm breath. The smell of Elijah's cigarettes assaults his nostrils, but he inhales deeply anyway, letting the sting make his eyes water. Elijah stays still for possibly the longest Dominic's ever seen him do so awake, until impatience finally gets to him, and he nudges Dominic backward.
"Hey," Elijah murmurs, and then releases a little noise of laughter. "Not so much in a hurry to get the hell out of here now?"
"More in a hurry than I was before," Dominic sighs. "Just. I just needed that."
"I know." Elijah's hand drifts up into Dominic's hair and he tugs, almost affectionately, Dominic thinks. "Let's go meet some people, Dom. And then you can get whatever else it is you need, and we can both get as fucked up as we want, for real."
To be continued.
Authors: kiltsandlollies and escribo
Characters: Dominic, Elijah
Word count: 3124
Summary: Immediately follows this.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Dominic never expected to be the one to walk away, even though he'd often wondered if doing so would earn him some measure of relief, but he'd never expected to do a lot of things over the past several months, and he's run out of expectations now. Billy hadn't followed him, and hadn't asked him to stay. Dominic hadn't turned and begged to do so. It was done, everything that it was and had been. It was over. The realization hits Dominic in his chest as he nears the bottom of the stairs outside the humanities building, and he fists his shirt as he tries to find breath and catch up to his thoughts. He hadn't planned for this, and so hadn't planned a next step, a Plan B of any kind. He's not sure where to go or what to do, and he can't imagine life without Billy in it, now that Billy has so shaped who Dominic's become.
"Shit," Dominic whispers, closing his hands over and over again on his shirt. "Dammit. Dammit."
Other students pass and move around him as he leans against the building now, trying to just put one foot in front of the other. It's the only goal he can accomplish, and even then it's hard; every step away from Billy echoes with all the steps Dominic had run toward him. But Dominic just needs to get to the safety of his room, and then-then he'll decide what to do next. The thought will present itself, he's sure of that but not much else.
No one stops him on his way back to the residence hall, and the climb to the third floor is relatively undisturbed, too. By the time Dominic stands in the middle of his room, he's made a mental list of smaller goals, things to get him through the next minutes, the next hours and days: things as easy as retrieving his bag from under his bed, stuffing it with whatever he can reach, walking to the train station, calling his mum-escaping. On his hands and knees, Dominic pulls dirty clothes, another pair of trainers, papers and dust from beneath his bed. Snagging the canvas bag, he gives it a hard yank and hears the clatter of glass on the floor-the bottle he took from Billy's home and had mostly forgotten, unwilling to open it again and remember times it had been opened before. Right now he feels little in the way of sentiment for the drink; instead he takes two long pulls from the bottle and finds his will resolved some, his strength returning. He'll leave Baskerville. He'll stay with his mum for a few days to get the rest of his strength back, and then he'll leave again. He'll go to the continent, he decides; he'll use his languages and his passion and the smarts Dominic still believes he has, and he'll find a job. He'll make it clear that he doesn't need anyone.
Dominic's bag is filled now, stuffed tight with the zipper straining. His thoughts-don't fucking need him. don't fucking need anyone-accompany him as he leaves his room for what he's decided will be the last time. What he can't carry he doesn't need or want, and that's what it's about right? Needs and wants? Dominic takes up the bottle again and raises it to his reflection in the mirror before he leaves the room, stumbling down the hall and the stairs. Once outside, he cradles the bottle a little tighter, squinting as he tries to remember which way to the station.
"Doesn't fucking matter," he mumbles. Hearing his name, he turns, stumbling again, to find Kirsten, a German girl he'd met weeks ago during some class meeting or other. She's standing with another girl whose name he's forgotten, though he recognizes her, too. Dominic points at Kirsten with the bottle, and offers her a smile. "Nothing fucking matters," he spits out, pleased when the girls step back from him. He lowers his voice then, whispering but still gesturing with the bottle. "It doesn't matter."
"Dominic?" Kirsten's voice is soft, nervous, and Dominic steadies himself as she looks him up and down. Her gaze is concerned, in a way Billy's wasn't, in a way Elijah's couldn't be, in a way Dominic's not sure he's registered before but doesn't much like. "Do you want me to call someone for you?"
"No. There's no one." Dominic holds the bottle up, swirls the last of the liquid in it, then turns the bottle upside down, letting the drink flow onto the pavement. Dropping the bottle, he walks away, leaving the girls staring open-mouthed at his back. Dominic can feel the weight of that stare and thinks he could outrun it if he tried, but there's not much point; in a few days they'll have forgotten what they saw and heard, and if they don't, well, they can add it to other tales Dominic knows have been told about him recently, tales he hasn't bothered to refute. His reputation hasn't been a priority for months, if he really thinks about it, and maybe it never was.
Halfway to the front gate of the campus, Dominic looks up from the ground beneath his feet to see Elijah scrambling up the stairs into the Science building, hidden behind sunglasses and weighed down by his everpresent rucksack. Dominic’s stomach churns with anger and energy, and he takes the steps two at a time to catch up, reaching for Elijah before he can begin his walk to whatever class he argues his way through in here.
“Hey-” Elijah snaps, the snarl on his face only lessening a little when he sees it’s Dominic who has him, and he pulls off the sunglasses. “Dom. Not now, okay? I’ve got a class-”
“You can miss this one.”
“Dude, no. I’m kind of invested in this, even if you’re not-hey-” Elijah actually winces this time as Dominic turns them around what’s a new corner of the building to Elijah but one all too familiar to Dominic. “We can’t go down there, Dom.”
“There’s pretty much nowhere we can’t go anymore, Elijah.” Dominic keeps his eyes and pace steady as he marches Elijah down the basement stairs he’d walked with Billy, and with his free hand he wrenches open the door to the first room he sees, pushing Elijah inside and letting the door creak shut behind them. Elijah's eyes go wide for a moment, but then narrow, the rest of him just as ready for a fight.
"Let me guess, Dom. We need to talk. Just like you and your professor. What happened? Did he finally call you out for missing classes?"
"You fucking told him."
"About ...?" Elijah raises his eyebrows and almost breaks into a smile before Dominic's hands land on his shoulders, shoving him back against a desk. Elijah's own hand shoot out at his sides, bracing him as he holds back anything louder than a small grunt of pain. "Look, I didn't tell him anything he shouldn't have been able to figure out on his own, right? If you two were really that close."
"You're fucking insane, Elijah."
"Me? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"What exactly is your game?" Dominic hears his voice rise, and he takes a deep breath, not wanting them to earn an audience down here but too furious to shut up and walk away like his mind warns him to do. "You just like to fuck with people? Is that it, Elijah? You didn't have any questions for him. You don't even speak to him unless you absolutely have to. You went in there to mess with me. Because you haven't done enough already, yeah?"
"I'm pretty sure you're not about to blame me for how fucked up you are at the moment, Dom," Elijah says almost kindly. "And nobody forced you to walk back into that office. It's like you wanted to get smacked around. Again."
"Don't-you don't know what you're talking about, Elijah. As usual. And I'm not fucked up. Not," Dominic throws a hand angrily. "Not nearly as much as I could be or will be if-if-"
"Okay, so you're not. Not yet." Elijah shrugs and pushes off the desk gingerly. "You're not gonna pass any straight line walks either, though."
"Just. Tell me why, okay?" Dominic looks up and doesn't move away from Elijah's slow approach. "I get it, you think Billy-you think the professor's got it in for you or something, but he just doesn't, Elijah. He doesn't care. Not about you, not about me, not about any of us, okay? Talk about fucking investment; why the fuck are you even bothering? You don't need the class, you don't need the grief, you don't need him-"
"Neither do you, Dom." Elijah's only inches from him now, and finally Dominic backs away, moving around the other side of the desk while Elijah shakes his head. "He definitely doesn't think so; now it's your turn to catch up. Look." Elijah steps closer again, leaning on his hands on the desk and tilting his head to meet Dominic's eyes. "Fuck this place, okay? Let's get off the campus for a while-"
"'m already gone," Dominic murmurs. "I'm going. I'm going home."
Elijah barks out a laugh that makes Dominic flinch and his stomach churn again. "Home. Like, to your parents? What makes you think they won’t send you right back here? And by then, you’ll have already missed so many classes that you’ll fail without even needing to fuck up on your exams. Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Elijah sighs. "Or if you're gonna be one anyway, don't go that far. The last place you need to be is somewhere your actual fucking family can see you, man, because-"
"Shut it," Dominic shouts, allowing himself the sound for the first time in months and smacking the desk before he stumbles backwards from it, hands in his hair again. "Fuck off, Elijah. Just. Everyone, all of it. Fuck you, fuck Billy, fuck this school."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"And that's what I don't need to fucking hear from you. I don't want to talk anymore," Dominic bites out, his upper lip curled in anger, and his eyes glassy with everything he's barely keeping in check. "I don't want to listen. I don't want to feel anything anymore. D'you understand, Elijah? I just want to get as far away from here as I can."
Elijah nods and reaches out, slowly, flexing his fingers a little in the air until they find Dominic's shoulder. "Okay. Okay. That's what you want, we'll get you out of here. But not home, Dom; I am telling you that is not where you want to be, and they're not gonna-okay, I don't know your parents, man, but something tells me it would be the worst fucking idea in the world-"
"You'd know, wouldn't you."
"Yeah." Elijah's grip on Dominic tightens for a moment then relaxes. "You're right, I would. And it's not me who'd be out on his ass this time, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the experience before it happens to you, okay, because that's what friends do." Dominic opens his mouth to speak, but Elijah shakes his head quickly. "You think whatever you want about me, Dom, but who else is telling you the truth right now? Friends do that, too. Not my problem if you haven't experienced much of that either."
Dominic can feel himself sinking against Elijah and can't fight it; it's easier than pushing him away at this point, and Dominic figures he can maybe survive another night, sober up and leave in the morning maybe. Elijah's right about Dominic's parents at least; they'd be shocked and furious if he darkened their door in the middle of the night looking, feeling, and sounding like this, and Dominic's not prepared to face that-especially not prepared to face his mother, who'd be more frightened than anything else, frightened and disappointed and perhaps not strong enough to intervene between Dominic and his father.
"Let's get something to eat," Elijah's saying, his tone completely conversational again, as if he and Dominic are in halls where they belong, as if they're just another pair of students waiting out the end of just another day. That's how Elijah must see it, Dominic thinks, and he'd give just about anything now to feel the same way. "We'll go back to my room," Elijah continues, and Dominic shakes his head.
"Don't want to. Do that. No more rooms."
"Not to stay, man. I just need to grab some stuff."
"You own something that's not already in your bag?"
Elijah cracks a smile and chucks Dominic's shoulder. "There you go. See? If you can do that take-the-piss thing then you're halfway better already."
"Elijah," Dominic sighs, but it feels like it's too late to argue again. Elijah nudges him to his feet and then moves them back out of the room, Elijah looking this way and that as they find their way back up the stairs. Dominic stumbles once more, and Elijah catches his arm and pulls him up, not a trace of the pity Dominic fears in his eyes.
"It's gonna be okay, Dom. I think we need to just get you out of this little fucking town for a while."
"Don't want to go to the city."
"Which is a good thing, because I'm not buying a train ticket, am I? I'm not talking about a long weekend. We'll just hitch with some people I know. They've got one of those magical things you people don't seem to understand all that much. It's called a car, and it gets you the fuck out of town with just these little things called keys-" It's Dominic's turn to push at Elijah's shoulder, and Elijah laughs. "Well, c'mon, it's not like we see a lot of them here, do we? And hey, if we're not driving, that means we get to do other things."
"Which is why you need to go back to your room."
"Got it in one." Elijah sighs and shields his eyes from the sunset, not bothering with his sunglasses for once. "It's gonna be good, Dom. We'll call it a night to fucking remember."
Elijah takes surprisingly little time in his room to gather what he needs and wants, while Dominic stands by the window and stares at the evening falling on them like heavy curtains. It's going to rain, he can feel it, and more, it'll be cold, the perfect weather to fight with something warm and heady from a warm and heavy glass. Wherever they're going, Dominic's drinking, he's already decided; he's drinking until he can see something behind his eyes that looks kinder than what he can see everywhere now.
"You're not ... being a complete bastard, like," Dominic says quietly as Elijah moves around him, pulling open desk drawers and perusing their contents. Elijah looks up from his search with raised eyebrows again, and Dominic laughs. "You haven't gone on one of your you're being stupid, Dom runs. Don't know what to do with you when you're actually being-"
"Helpful?" Elijah offers, as gently as if he's not being insulted himself here. "Friendly? Fuck that, Dom; you don't know what to do with me, period. But we manage, right? It's all good. And everybody's stupid at one time or another. That doesn't mean we run off home and think that'll make it any better. It really, really won't. You know that poem, Dom? They fuck you up, your mom and dad,-"
"Oh, god, please Elijah, not poetry, not from you."
"Whatever. Point is they do fuck you up, and you just get more fucked up when you walk back inside their lives. That's why you've gotta make your own. Nobody's gonna live yours for you. Anyway." Elijah throws his bag onto the desk, the sound of it loud and destructive against the wood. "We've both had more than enough fucking philosophy for one day."
Dominic watches Elijah unpack and repack the bag, thinking of what Elijah's said and surprised by what had sounded like bare honesty in it. He wants to defend himself, to say that his parents had never sent him away and that he would be welcomed back, that they would understand. But he can't speak that lie to Elijah's truth, and the one other person who'd come to represent home-Billy-had sent him away. An uglier truth Dominic recognizes is that at the moment he has no one except Elijah, and that thought is not a reassuring one, however much of a friend Elijah calls himself or thinks he could be.
Reality is what keeps Dominic beside Elijah nonetheless. If he were to go home, Dominic's father would yell and his mother would cry. They would wonder where they had gone wrong with him, before deciding they'd given him every opportunity and he'd still failed. He'd end up behind the counter of a filthy chip shop, and he'd be alone. Again.
Dominic squeezes his eyes shut before opening them to a new clarity. When Elijah moves to hoist his bag over his shoulder, Dominic reaches for him, and licks his lips. "Before we go-"
"Hmm?" Elijah's distracted, but he follows Dominic's glance at the side pocket of the bag, and tilts his head again. "You sure?"
"Just give me one," Dominic says tiredly, and Elijah nods, neither happily nor irritably; it's as if they both recognize that tonight is not the time to question anything, not after today.
Swallowing the pill is easy, leaning against Elijah afterward easier still. Dominic pushes his nose against the short hairs at the nape of Elijah's neck, letting rambling words become puffs of warm breath. The smell of Elijah's cigarettes assaults his nostrils, but he inhales deeply anyway, letting the sting make his eyes water. Elijah stays still for possibly the longest Dominic's ever seen him do so awake, until impatience finally gets to him, and he nudges Dominic backward.
"Hey," Elijah murmurs, and then releases a little noise of laughter. "Not so much in a hurry to get the hell out of here now?"
"More in a hurry than I was before," Dominic sighs. "Just. I just needed that."
"I know." Elijah's hand drifts up into Dominic's hair and he tugs, almost affectionately, Dominic thinks. "Let's go meet some people, Dom. And then you can get whatever else it is you need, and we can both get as fucked up as we want, for real."
To be continued.