"The Truth Is" (Lotrips, DM/EW, PG)
Title: The Truth Is
Author: sparcck
Fandom: Lotrips
Pairing: Dominic/Elijah
Summary: Dom started looking for a warning sign.
Disclaimer: Real people and fake fic are mutually exclusive.
Notes: For the songfic challenge, based on Coldplay's Warning Sign. Written in 30 minutes, but, okay, so it all poured out and when I went back to check my spelling it was a TOTAL NIGHTMARE because I was typing so fast I wasn't looking. So, extra ten minutes to clean up my shifting tenses and lack of punctuation and piss poor spelling. I didn't want you all to scratch your eyes out so it was really the selfless thing to do.

A warning sign
It came back to haunt me, and I realised
That you were an island and I passed you by
And you were an island to discover

Come on in
I've gotta tell you what a state I'm in
I've gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

-Coldplay, A Warning Sign


*

The Truth Is, by sparcck

He wanted to say it wasn't because he didn't love Elijah, because he did. He loved him so hard it hurt sometimes, and he prodded at it when he was alone so it hurt more, because he didn't want to forget what it felt like to love him so much.

He wanted to say it wasn't because it was too hard, because that's just shit, isn't it, too hard. Life is hard and anything good is going to be even harder still, because it makes you appreciate it more.

He wanted to say it wasn't because he was tired of sitting at home while Elijah worked and sometimes forgot to call. Not because there was someone else, Billy, maybe, who seemed to be the most likely candidate according to the rumors. Not because of the hundreds of tiny things they disagreed on, or even the one big thing they disagreed on, because it was as much his decision to come out as it was Elijah's and it just wasn't something he wanted to deal with right then.

He could have said all of these things, because they were all true. But then he would have to come up with something to say it was because of, and although he had a list of reasons he'd been adding to over the past few months, none of them really seemed appropriate and anyway, Elijah never asked why.

And it wasn't right to get angry for it since Dom was the one who said, "I think this isn't working" in the first place.

Elijah was only home for a weekend between shooting and he stared at his feet and nodded and never even tried to say no and Dom said he was going to move all his stuff to his actual apartment the week after.

"Don't," Elijah said. "I'm leaving tomorrow. You can stay here if you need to."

Dom slept on the couch and Elijah slept in Hannah's room in the main house and Dom wondered how he was going to get through this at all if being separated by the back lawn hurt that much.

But it was the right thing to do, he had decided, even if at the moment he couldn't think of a single reason why.

*

"So we'll have to talk about custody."

Elijah is silent on the other end of the line, and Dom wonders if he's just put down the phone and walked away; he's seen him do it before, one time when Hannah rang him about something they apparently were having an extended row about and Elijah very carefully put the receiver down and went into the kitchen to have a cigarette.

"You are such a child!" Dom could hear her yell, and he thought about picking it up, but decided it was best if he just left them to it. He didn't feel comfortable enough with Elijah's family to interrupt and Elijah hadn't mentioned anything to him in the first place.

It was another reason he stored up for when it was over, because it seemed to him that when one was in a relationship for almost three years, these were the sorts of things one talked about. It seemed to him that he should be family by now. But he never said anything, just waited for it get better and put it aside for later.

"Elijah?" he says softly and he hears the creak of plastic on the other end.

"Yeah," Elijah answers. "I'm sorry, I don't think I follow."

Dom tugs on one ear and the stretch feels good. He wants to be off the phone, he wants to not have called in the first place.

He wants Elijah next to him, curled on the couch, playing video games, in the kitchen butchering dinner.

"Right," he says instead, and tugs harder. "I was thinking with us flying about all the time, we'll have to split it up, you know, so places don't feel left out."

Silnce again, but shorter this time. Elijah blows out a breath and Dom pictures him smoking in his hotel room, leaning against the railing and looking down on the crowded grey streets. He's always thought of New York as the American London, grey and rainy and cool and crowded with people dressed in dark, fashionable clothes, huge black umbrellas, never looking at their shoes as they walk.

He can't imagine Elijah there, all bright colors and total artless grace.

"I guess I'll take New York, then," Elijah says and Dom remembers telling Elijah how much he liked it when they were there, except for the last time, when they fought in the bathroom of the club and Dom took a yellow cab back to Elijah's room alone.

"I can see why you like it here," Dom had said, even though he never really said he had liked it there, and he's not even sure what he meant by it but it was clipped and nasty.

Elijah's face crumpled for a second before he smiled, dug out a cigarette and spoke with it between his lips, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. "Sometimes I forget you haven't been here very long."

"Dominic," he says now and Dom is brought back to the present, in Elijah's house, sitting on Elijah's couch, talking to Elijah who is on the other side of the country.

"Yes, that's fine. I've already got England, don't need a cheap copy." Then curses himself for his inability to screen thoughts before they come tumbling out of his mouth.

Elijah chuffs his breath out hard but doesn't say anything.

"New Zealand, of course, we'll share," Dom goes on. "Opposite weekends or whatever the judge decides on."

"We'll sit down with her when we go for pick-ups," Elijah says with a rusty, unfamiliar laugh. "Tell her Daddy and Daddy need to spend some time apart but that we still love her."

Dom's chest feels constricted for a moment and he sees the bright colors and never-ending sky where he thought his life had finally started. He forces out a chuckle instead. "Shall we do the same with LA, then?"

Elijah is quiet for so long this time that Dom thinks after everything he has finally gone one step too far. But he can hear Elijah breathing and the distant sound of a police siren so he waits.

"No," Elijah finally says. "I don't want it."

"Lighe--"

"I haven't lived there for almost a year. It doesn't feel like home anymore."

Dom gestures helplessly around the living room, Elijah's living room, even though Elijah can't see him. "But you have all this...stuff. Here."

Quiet chuckle and Dom, straining his ears, can hear the grind of a cigarette butt against what he hopes is a metal ashtray. Although he wouldn't put it past Elijah to drop it off the railing -- not on purpose, just not thinking, like you do.

"I don't have anything there."

"Your mum--"

"I have to go, Dom, okay."

"Okay."

There's a silence, and Dom finds he doesn't want to say goodbye first. But he knows Elijah won't, doesn't like to. Another one, he thinks, another reason why this never would have worked. I can't always be the responsible one. But he figures one last time won't hurt. "Bye, then," he says, casually.

"Bye."

*

When he thinks more about it, a day later, still in Elijah's living room because he hasn't moved out yet and, really, hasn't even started packing even though he told Billy he was almost done, he finds himself fuming over it. Nothing left in LA. It's absurd. Four years of friendship suddenly don't count because they're not fucking anymore?

The phone has already rung twice before he really thinks about what he's going to say. He hangs up after the fourth ring, and he tries to tell himself maybe Elijah has it on vibrate, maybe he's in the loo, maybe he's stepped out to get a fresh pack of cigarettes.

Maybe he's sitting there, listening to the phone ring, seeing his own number on the caller ID, and not picking it up.

Dom tries again, presses the phone hard to his ear to stop himself from hanging up.

"'Lo?" Elijah picks up at the end of the fifth ring, right before it goes into the voicemail.

"You know it's not like this isn't hard for me, too," Dom says, jumping right into the conversation he's been having with himself for a day and a half.

Elijah is silent again and Dom wants more than anything to be there with him, so he can see his face. Just so he can judge what he's thinking.

"It was your desicion," he says at length, and he sounds reproachful.

Dom ground his teeth for a moment. Too young, he hears himself saying to Billy. "Sometimes he just seems a child."

"And sometimes he's too old, isn't he?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Billy tried to respond but Dom wouldn't have it. They went out for a pint and didn't talk about Elijah even though Dom thinks they really were, anyway.

"Hello?" Elijah snaps and Dom sighs.

"Forget it."

"Fine."

There's another silence, and Dom finds it odd that although it's painful and loud and almost too long to bear, it's not awkward. Not comfortable, but not awkward. It just is, like things were with him and Elijah. They just were, until three months ago suddenly it wasn't enough, even though Dom's not sure, now, what enough would be if not what they were.

"Dom."

"Yes," Dom says, when nothing else seems to be forthcoming.

"You know." There's a crackle of static, a burst of a siren so loud through the tiny earpiece it makes Dom start.

"What do I know?"

Ragged exhale and Dom realizes he's never thought about Elijah crying over this, never thought about Elijah out there, alone, in a city he said he never liked much anyway but now wants to keep instead of his home.

"That I miss you."

Dom feels sudden wet heat behind his eyes and he blinks quickly to keep everything back. "I think I did know that."

"Okay. You know, just because I don't think I ever actually said it. So I thought maybe you didn't know."

"No, I." Of course he knew, right, because he knew Elijah and Elijah shoudln't have to say things like that for Dom to know. It's important enough that Dom should have known. "I did."

"Okay."

"I'll let you go," Dom says, because that's what people say, even though he doesn't mean it at all, in either way it could be taken.

"Yeah, um."

Dom sighs. "Bye," he says, and he stresses the word harder than he means to.

"Bye."

Dom hangs up and stares at the phone, and knows he didn't know Elijah missed him and it makes his belly ache. He pokes at the thought a little every couple of minutes while he cooks, washes up, changes into sweats. He pokes a little too hard while he's ringing Billy to tell him about their conversation, and is actually relieved when the answer phone picks up, because he feels like all the breath has been knocked out of him.

Laying bed awake, he thinks about having a wank but ends up cradling his half-soft cock in one hand and curling up on his side, prodding at that place in his belly where Elijah used to be.

*

"She misses you, you know," Dom says when Elijah picks up.

"Dom?" Elijah says and his voice sounds blurry and hoarse, like he'd just been woken up after a night of smoking too much.

"She misses you," Dom says again, and he's not quite sure if this was the best idea to begin with, but he seems to be keen on half-plans that turn out to be bad ideas so what's one more.

"I just talked to my mother yesterday," he says, and it would seem like a normal conversation if Dom didn't know any better. Elijah five minutes out of sleep is one thing; Elijah thirty seconds out of sleep is something else entirely. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

"LA. LA misses you."

Dom hears bedclothes rustling and imagine Elijah sitting up, maybe only wearing pyjama pants. The Traveller's Forecast said it was hot in New York yesterday. "Dom."

"Yeah, we were talking the other day and she was saying how awful it is without you here."

"Dom, for Christ's sake."

"I'm just saying. Maybe you should come back for a visit."

"Stop!" Elijah explodes and Dom feels something in his chest burst in a rush of cold.

"I'm sorry."

"No! Don't be sorry, just -- what the fuck are you doing?"

"I don't know," Dom says miserably. It was wrong before but this is even more wrong, this is the most wrong.

He can hear Elijah's breath heaving on the other end of the phone, little sobbing hitches and he wants to do anything to make him stop.

"I miss you," Dom blurts and listens to the pop-hiss of three thousand miles of utter wrongness.

"You didn't know," Elijah says on the end of a long exhale.

"I didn't. I said I did, but I had no idea."

"All you had to do was ask."

"I didn't think I should have to."

"God, Dom."

"I miss you," Dom says again, a little more desperately.

"Shit, man, me, too. I think about you..."

This time the silence is agonizingly long and awkward and Dom finds himself gnawing on his knuckles.

"I need to ask you."

Dom waits, doesn't prompt.

"I need to ask you," he says again, more slowly. "Why?"

There's something that was pressing in on his chest for three months that suddenly lifts and doesnt' slam down like Dom expected it to. He exhales and closes his eyes, sitting down hard on the kitchen floor.

"You never asked," Dom says.

"I didn't think I should have to."

Dom thinks about putting the phone down and walking away. He feels a little like an arse and a little vindicated and a lot terribly lonely.

"Dom."

"Yeah."

"Please. I want to fix this."

Dom doesn't say anything. He knows, suddenly, he doesn't have to.

"We'll be in New Zealand at the beginning of next month," Elijah goes on. "I'll fly to Heathrow. I'll wait for you. We can. You can have the window seat."

"Elijah."

"Wait, no, shit, I have to go. But. Dom."

"Yes."

"I want to know."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Dom laughs, a little giddy. "Yes, you nutter."

"Okay. Talk to you later?"

"Yeah."

"Bye, Dom."

Dom starts, smiles, as he hears Elijah hold his breath, waiting for Dom to answer. "Bye, Lighe." He can hear his relieved laugh as he hangs up.

*

The truth is, the reasons why weren't as important as the reasons why not.

*

End