Pairing: Dominic Monaghan/Elijah Wood
Rating: PG15
Warnings: None, except for language. And the truly dreadful title…
AN: It’s 2014.
Feedback: Always appreciated - perhobfan@yahoo.co.uk
His name was Raul and he was a pool boy. He had sleek golden skin and curling, ebony hair that spilled over his shoulders like a mantle. As he walked – no, as he shimmied along the edges of the pool, his net in his hand, he exuded a cloud of sex, an aura of sex, that followed him around like a faithful dog…
“Oh fuck off,” Dom snorted. He was reading over Elijah’s shoulder.
Elijah pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and continued tapping away.
Raul was Puerto Rican…
“He was fucking Cuban. He was, right?” Dom squeezed his eyes tight shut and tried to remember. “No, scratch that, you’re right. He was Puerto Rican. His boyfriend was Cuban.”
Elijah shrugged, hoping to dislodge Dom from his shoulder. It didn’t work.
Raul was the best lay of my life.
“Fuck off! He was probably good, yeah. Schlong a foot long, yeah, you’ve told me often enough... But best? Of your life? Cheers, mate. Thanks a fucking lot,” Dom pouted, finally buggering off to sit on the sofa. Elijah said nothing. He edited the text.
Raul was without doubt the best lay of my life.
The summer of the year I turned thirty will live in my memory, a shiny and special time - forever my summer of love. It was a season for sex and sensuality; I had viewed my birthday with trepidation. A child actor reaches thirty with considerably more dread than most people. I’d quit smoking the year before but nearly took it up again, as September 2010 rolled over into October and then catapulted into November, pausing for the festivities of December, before leaping like a scalded cat into January, 2011…
“Do the words purple prose mean anything to you at all, Lijah?” Dom asked. He was light on his feet, Dom was, and had returned to his place at Elijah’s side, his fingers lightly caressing Elijah’s arm. Elijah bristled slightly; that was his writing arm. Out of habitude, his hand reached for a cigarette that did not exist. He took a breath and began again.
I had something to prove. Contrary to popular belief, I’d been circumspect in my sex life…
“You swallow a thesaurus as well as a whole lot of Domcum today, Lijah?” Dom asked, blowing softly in Elijah’s ear. Elijah scowled. “Sorry. Go on…”
…circumspect in my sex life and had therefore reached the age of thirty, or its threshold, with a meagre tally of limbs and cocks and bums and breasts…
“Don’t say it, Dom. Just. Don’t.” Elijah looked up with a grim expression, right into Dom’s eyes. Dom bit his lip.
“Wasn’t going to say a word, honest,” he protested, earnestly. Elijah stared for a moment or two, then turned back to the work at hand. Behind him, Dom cupped his nipples and rolled his eyes; he was quiet, careful as a cat.
…and breasts to my name. I felt restless. Career-wise, all was well; two small scale but interesting movies a year, etc etc. But where was the passion? Had it all seeped away after Rings? No, it was there but it was buried deep. It needed to be set free…I was a pressure cooker, waiting to explode. A balloon pumped full of air, ready to pop…”
“You were a cartoon hosepipe, Lij, and some fat guy was standing on you and all the water was backing up into a big, big rubbery bubble…”
Elijah reached for the lid of the laptop but Dom quickly stepped back, his hands up. “Sorry. Honestly. I’ll leave you to get on with it. I’ll sit over here and read, okay?” He plonked down on the sofa again and picked up a magazine. It was Groom & Groom. He flicked through the pages, one eye on Elijah’s back.
He listened to the steady tap tap tap. The phone ringing was a welcome distraction. “Hiya. Yeah. Oh, that’s great. Great. Red of course! And lots of ‘em! Aw, that’s so sweet. Yeah. He’s five, yeah. Velvet… Oh, I dunno. Hang on, I’ll ask him,” he held the receiver against his chest and called out, “Lijah – It’s your mum. She wants to know if you’ve made your mind up about a pageboy. Did you talk to Billy? Is Hamish still it?”
Elijah turned, a sour look upon his face. “Yes. I told you this already. Hamish is pageboy and Alexandra and Elizabeth are flower girls. Orlando says little Emily has chickenpox and can’t make it. I told you this already, Jesus!”
“You heard that, yeah? Yeah. Nasty. Yeah. I know, I know. What? I can? You sure? Right! Elijah - your mom says I can spank your bottom for being such a mardy arse,” Dom licked his lips, lasciviously. Elijah turned back to his laptop. Dom shrugged and carried on his conversation.
“Yeah. Nerves. Yeah. More than ever, Debbie… I know.” Dom’s voice had gone low; Elijah, despite himself, was straining to hear. “Beautiful. Yeah. Me, too… Special, yeah… God, yes. I promise… I never break a promise. Love you too. Okay, we’ll call you tomorrow with the seating plan… Yeah. Okay, bye. Bye!”
There was silence for a moment, then the tapping began again. Dom sat on his hands for two minutes; then he pulled his left foot up so he could inspect his toenails. He sighed, and wandered as casually as he could back over to Elijah.
I was a volcano, a natural phenomenon. I needed release or I would die. Or at the very least I would get an ulcer. I had so much to give and all I lacked was a recipient for the giving. I couldn’t pick anyone up in a bar, just couldn’t. Couldn’t be picked up, either. If I looked at a guy and thought he’d do, the moment he read the signals and came on to me, I lost interest. It was crazy. I deserved to be alone…
“Why? Why, baby? I never understood that. Why? You were young and gorgeous. You should’ve been shagging left, right and centre – hell, I thought you were! All that time wasted… Why?” Dom trailed off, bewildered.
“I don’t know. What do you think I am: Freud? Doctor Ruth?” Elijah stood up, stretched and stared out of the window down onto the pool. The sunlight shimmered on the surface of the water; it wasn’t coincidental that the original art on the walls around them was mostly by Hockney…
“So. Raul? You met Raul just after your birthday. I remember your birthday. I flew in from Morocco and Billy from Glasgow. Was good. I thought you looked good…”
“Fuck off. I’d put on thirty pounds! Thirty pounds of blubber to celebrate my thirty years of not very much.”
“Well, the extra weight suited you… Anyway, you seemed happy…”
“Well, I wasn’t. Look, Dom. Let’s forget the wedding, okay? I thought I was ready for marriage, but I’m not.” Elijah crossed to the balcony. A faint breeze from the bay ruffled his thick hair and Dom ran a hand through his own thinning locks with only a slight twinge of envy.
“You are. Finish the chapter, get it out, off your chest. Then let me take you to bed and do as instructed by your mom – let me spank your pretty little arse till it squeaks, till it’s rosy and hot and burning and-“
“You deserve better,” Elijah said, solemnly. He could see sailing boats bobbing on the sea, the sun brilliant on the rolling carpet of azure water. People said such crap about his eyes but they’d never seen Capri.
“In two weeks, we get married, Lijah. It’s what we both wanted. It’s what we still want,” Dom put his arms about Elijah’s waist and leaned his head on Elijah’s shoulder, enjoying with him the view they had shared the last seven days.
“Why, though? We have it good; why be greedy?” Elijah turned in Dom’s arms, turned to face him, his fingers cupping Dom’s chin, his soft nest of beard.
“Why does anyone get married? And don’t say ‘cos they’re addicted to wedding cake, Lij. Seriously, why?”
“Well, some to have babies, Dom,“ Elijah said, his mouth twitching at the corners.
Dom made his eyes very big. “You’re not…?” he said, laying his hand in awe on Elijah’s belly.
“Well, I wondered how to break it to you, tosser,” Elijah replied. “But I meant what I said. Why? Why spoil what we’ve got? To prove a point?”
Elijah let his gaze wander again, to the bay, to the boats, to the crowds in the piazetta.
“We’re not proving anything to anyone by getting married, Lij. I thought it was what we wanted to do, to take that step…” In the crowd below were many, many couples. Old. Young. Mostly heterosexual. Dom wondered if they had these conversations about marriage, or whether for them it was just a given, a normal thing, a commonplace. He envied them, for that sense of ordinariness that seemed to evade him and Elijah.
Three years on from the change in the law in the States, six years on from similar legislation in the UK, and still it was tabloid fodder. Still there were photographers hanging about and hack journos… He saw a young man below, on the pizetta, a camera slung across his shoulder; he was looking up… A young girl ran up to the cameraman and flung her arms about his neck; he lifted her up, twirled her about… Dom turned from the balcony, his cynicism slightly abated.
Elijah returned to his laptop. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them and began again.
Raul was nineteen. He was hard and eager. I took his hand and led him into the guest bedroom of my friend, Diane, whose house it was. She was out, shopping, but I didn’t know that when I called. Lie. I did know. I knew Raul would be there, alone – Wednesday was pool day. I took his hand and led him inside and laid him down on the guest bed and he was hard and eager for me on the floral counterpane. He knew who I was. His eyes were liquid and his mouth full and he smiled and began to say “Fro-“ and I stopped him with a kiss. Frodo was never fat. Frodo was never thirty. Okay, Frodo was all those things. But that was Book Frodo and he was allowed.
When it was over, I scribbled his number down on a scrap of paper, gave him an autograph for his niece or his nephew, I forget which, and told him I’d call him. He knew I wouldn’t.
After Raul there was Tim and then Jay and Jay’s friend, Dean. After them there were, I think, the twins, Matty and Bo. All of them were young, none of them were over twenty-one, though all were legal – I’m sleazy, not perverted – and so it went on and then I lost track of who was next and when and why…
“What does any of this matter, Lij? You think I’ve been a saint all these years? Christ, I’m older than you! You think you cornered the market on insecurity?” Dom took Elijah’s hand and ran Elijah’s fingers through blond hair, threads of natural silver competing with the dyed gold and beneath, the increasing expanse of pink …
“If you don’t marry me, Sean’s girls will hate you forever. They’re counting on wearing those dresses, Lij. And Hamish… He’s having a kilt, Lij – red and green and just that hint of gold… You can’t deprive a wee Scots laddie of his big moment, in his tartan, with his wee sporran and his knee socks and his big shiny green eyes…”
Elijah’s eyes were resolutely on the screen, not on Dom. It was low and mean to bring other people’s kids into it. Below the belt.
“The last year has been so good, Dom,” he said, quietly. “So good. After the mad time, well, to find everything with you, it was you all along… The friendship, the love-“
“The sex? Don’t forget the sex, Lij,” Dom pointed out, anxiously. Elijah smiled.
“You said Raul was the best lay you ever had, Lij; is that true?” Dom knew the answer but felt obliged to ask the question anyway. A car horn blared out down below, then another.
“He was good. But not that good. He had zits, too,” Elijah admitted. “But he did have-“
“Yeah, I know. The foot long schlong.”
“Eight, nine at the most, inches. You know me – I exaggerate.”
“Yeah well, when you’re thirty and over the hill, I guess any dick seems endless.” Dom wrapped Elijah up in his arms and they watched the sun dipping on the bay, scorching the darkening water.
“I do want to marry you. I love you, more now than ever before… Just, I don’t want it all to be too, too-“ Elijah searched for the right words but failed and settled for a sigh and a vague gesture out to sea.
“Too what? Over the top? Too romantic? Too fluffy? Too what?” Dom let his hand wander down to Elijah’s bottom; it was a little bigger than it had been back in the days when they were lads in a strange and magical land. He squeezed – yeah, still firm and generally pointing in the right direction. He felt a familiar response in his own body and hoped he could soon prove that that also was capable of pointing in the right direction. He was two years off turning forty, still lean and fit, thanks to yoga, still a souped-up sex machine…
“It could never be too romantic. I just want it to be, you know, tasteful. You and me alone with the officiator and a witness, in a forest glade or on a beach or something - that would have done. Why all the fuss and bother? It could all be tacky if we’re not careful, Dom.”
Dom felt Elijah push a little into the hand that was palpating his buttocks, always a good sign. Dom buried his nose in Elijah’s hair. “’Cos we’re two men, we can’t have flowers and a cake and get dressed up? Cos we’re guys, our mums can’t have silly hats and our friends can’t get pissed and throw up and my uncle Lionel can’t strut his stuff on the dance floor? Why should that be? Is there some unwritten law that only girls can have fun on their wedding day?”
Elijah smiled. “Let’s go out for a walk, Dom. In a few days we’re out of here, back to the States, back to the organisation and the mayhem. Let’s have a walk, then find a bar.”
“Can we fuck like stoats first? I’ve got a hard-on and at my age, you don’t waste ‘em,” Dom nuzzled Elijah’s neck. He remembered wanting nothing more than to do that when he was twenty-two and Elijah was turning nineteen. They’d kissed a bit, fooled around, moved on. It was only seeing his friend again, after a break of a year, a year in which Dom had made a successful movie, broken up with his boyfriend, crashed his car, decided against implants to replace his thinning hair… It was only seeing Elijah after that whole year without him that he realised he’d never stopped wanting to nuzzle that neck. And fifteen years after first setting eyes on him, he knew he never wanted to let him out of his sight.
“No. I’m not really in the mood. Let’s do the walk and eat and drink, then come back and screw,” Elijah said, firmly. Dom watched him close down the laptop and shrug on his jacket. He didn’t mind. Elijah would make it up to him later.
Sunglasses in place, Elijah paused at the door, reaching out his hand to Dom. “Will your Uncle Lionel really get up and dance, Dom? He must be eighty.”
Dom took his hand and together they walked to the elevator. “He will and he is. The good news is that my cousin twice-removed, the one with the glass eye? Well he won’t be there to bore everyone rigid with his crap jokes.”
Elijah pressed the button and turned an inquisitive eye, barely visible behind smoked glass, upon his lover. “Why?”
“Oh, he’s totally homophobic, so he’d rather have his liver removed with a rusty spoon than come to our wedding,” Dom said, casually. The doors opened; inside the elevator stood a middle-aged nun, rosy of cheek and shiny-eyed. She nodded her head slightly in greeting as they entered.
“Is he that bad? Really? He’s anti-gays getting married?” Elijah asked, squeezing Dom’s hand in defiance of the nun; she probably hated gays, too.
“Bad? He’s persona non grata in our house. Real obnoxious git. I mean, who could begrudge two people finding love together, just cos they’ve both got the same wedding tackle?”
Elijah stifled a giggle. The doors opened onto the lobby and the two men stepped aside for the sister. As she passed them, she laid a hand upon Elijah’s sleeve and said in perfect American English, “Bless you, child. I hope you’re both very happy.” Elijah muttered something and Dom nodded his head, smiling. Prejudice, it seemed, worked both ways.
They walked through the piazetta, amidst the brightly-coloured throng, the press of people of all hues and genders; the breeze from the sea gave them an appetite and they found themselves heading to a little restaurant they’d discovered on day two of their vacation.
Four courses later and Elijah was patting his stomach, ruefully; he had to lose some weight for a role and maybe Italy wasn’t the best place to come to do that. He envied Dom his svelte figure, though he knew his lover had to work at it, too.
They sat, undisturbed, drinking in the sight of each other along with the rich red wine.
“Regrets, Lij?” Dom asked.
Elijah put down his glass and appeared to be deep in thought. Then he laughed. It was full and real and deep and Elijah. “No! None. I look at you and maybe it’s the candlelight and the wine, but you are exactly what I want to see tonight, tomorrow and forever. Fuck it, fuck all of it! If people don’t like it, people can go fuck themselves on a barbed wire fence!”
Dom blinked. Then he grinned. This was his Elijah back again; he knew he was in there, somewhere.
It was dark outside and the atmosphere was changing, children gradually disappearing off to their beds and the adults moving into a different gear. They could find a club, dance, drink some more...
Or they could go back to their room and make love.
Clubs were overrated.
“Me neither… It’s for good… Or let’s not do it,” Dom agreed, panting.
Afterwards, they laid entwined in the crumpled sheets, sweaty and still.
“Are you going to finish it? Your – what is it, anyway? Your memoirs? Your autobiography?” Dom leaned on one elbow, looking down into the face that still looked twenty, especially just after sex.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just wanted to write it down before old age overtakes me,” Elijah closed his eyes.
“Did my coming back into your life save you from your lurid career as a cradle-snatcher?” Dom kissed Elijah’s eyelids, sucking in the lashes.
“Fuck off. There weren’t that many of them and they were all adults,” Elijah snapped. Dom loved Elijah when he was snarky.
“And now you’re stuck with balding old me…” Dom turned on his back.
“Yeah. Till death us do part. With flower girls and a page boy in a kilt and balloons and confetti…”
“Not if you really don’t want, Lij.”
“You mean miss Uncle Lionel’s interpretation of Y*M*C*A? ‘Sides, I am addicted to wedding cake…”
The End
