*

The mistake began, as mistakes often do, with excuses.

Dom had two excuses. The first was that he was very drunk. Arguably, this wasn’t a very good excuse, as it was entirely his own fault that he was this drunk; he was the one who drank the beverages that got him this drunk even if he didn’t quite pay for them all himself. Hiding behind a self-inflicted chemical toxicant is generally a really stupid thing to do, but then Dom was really stupidly drunk, so that fitted remarkably well. A fair few particularly unkind people might (almost-certainly-would) say that Dom managed to be pretty stupid the rest of the time too, but the fact remained that alcohol was at this juncture a rather convenient excuse.

The second excuse was that he was right. Of course, this is routinely appreciated far less often than most people, in this case Billy and Elijah, are comfortable admitting. This makes being right a very weak excuse and one which is only very rarely accepted.

Dom was drunk. Dom was really stupidly drunk. But he was nowhere near drunk enough for the second excuse to sound like a good idea, so he kept quiet about being right and stuck to being drunk.

Which, as he actually was drunk, was a very easy thing to do, and it wasn’t entirely his own fault. Elijah was the one who suggested going out. And… that’s about as far as apportioning blame elsewhere could be stretched.

Is the point made? Is it thoroughly clear yet quite how drunk Dom was? Very drunk. Really stupidly drunk. It’s important to get that established.

If Dom hadn’t been quite so unwisely inebriated, he would never ever have said what, unfortunately, he did in fact say. He had been very thoughtfully not saying these things for quite some time, despite periodic bouts of drunken revelry, and now, having said what should undoubtedly have never been uttered out loud, all Dom had to add was that he was really stupidly drunk.

“I’m really stupidly drunk,” he said, and gave up on making the situation any worse than it already was. He cocked his head slightly to one side and wondered if he dared add anything further, escaping Billy’s narrowed gaze only to fall into Elijah’s threateningly impassive mask.

Elijah didn’t often look scary. Once Dom got over the slight feeling of alarm he initially felt at being presented with irises that were in all likelihood brilliant enough to be radioactive in their colour, he had failed to find Elijah in the least bit scary. Sean would never have let them walk around with a radioactive health hazard in their midst in any case.

Oh, shit, Dom thought as he realised he really was saying everything out loud tonight.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and was unsure as to whether the words came out before or after he had thought them. Friends. Far from amused. Dom took a last look at Billy silently passing him another drink before picking up somebody else’s tobacco pouch, still muttering about being very drunk.

Time to learn how to roll cigarettes for people, and what better place to practice than underneath the table? In a bar with bad music. And a 2-for-1 offer. Dom unceremoniously slid under the table onto the sticky floor, and thanked deities of merriment that there wasn’t any broken glass to be sat on.

*

Dom was gone, Elijah realised, and his leg promptly reacted with violent spasm, resulting in the abrupt connection of his toe with a limb of unspecified identity. It could very well have been an arm, or possibly even a right-calf, but the relevant detail was that it was an unspecified limb belonging to Dom, and that as unlikely as it was that Dom would actually notice any of the pain received courtesy of Elijah’s violent leg spasm at the current time, there was a slim possibility.

Possibility enough for the effort to feel less than a total waste, slim enough for the action to be generally unsatisfactory; leaving Elijah completely lacking in the attainment of either retribution or closure.

So, Dom was gone and Elijah was left in the shit.

But this was Billy, so hopefully dramatics could be avoided. Elijah swallowed and smiled, façade to façade in breaks and waves, and the only reason he was at all comfortable with this was because Billy was friend. And friend was Billy.

Elijah went to take another sip of his drink, as that was undoubtedly a part of the general code of behaviour for young males experiencing an anticipatory awkward silence in which to contemplate the more purposeful and intense awkward silence yet to inevitably come.

He stopped to glance at his drink with his lip on the glass. Thought of Dom, as one is wont to do when a body is taking up all of the legroom. Drunk Dom, far-gone Dom, and Billy sat opposite Elijah, folding, or more accurately bending with intent, a beer mat. Elijah put his drink down and thought of something to say.

It took him a while. He got a bit stuck. Elijah found himself struggling to produce what he could view as adequate and appropriate words, a predicament understandable and far from simple.

“Well, yeah,” Elijah agreed with nothing in particular but probably too much. His nails felt chewy and he wondered if now would be an ok time to cough. As much as the uncomfortably necessitated honesty felt like it should stick in his throat, it really didn’t, and Elijah glanced around nervously again. He had acquired over the years a false sense of security, a degree of surety that this specific awkward silence would never have to be endured.

“I agree. This…it’s good. And it’s better…that we’re friends,” Elijah said.

*

Oftentimes Billy would choose to give as little away as he could. When there was something he really wanted to hear he would sit quietly, for a while, until something struck him as amusing or he’d heard enough to know roughly what he wanted to say in return.

At that moment, however, that would obviously have been really quite a cruel position in which Billy might place his friend Elijah. The situation was already far from pleasant, and he also was of the view that this conversation was not one that ever needed to be spoken. But in the spirit of charity, Billy contributed his fair share to the rescue of the evening, and unlike Elijah his voice did indeed stick a little. Maybe he’d been drinking beverages of a less smooth nature.

“Well, of course, we could have had something.” Billy was torn between requiring greater beverages quickly and soon, and the undoubtedly wise view that there had been more than enough drinking this night. “But it never would have worked out between us. We would have been an annoying tragedy, and clearly quite predictable.”

Elijah nodded slowly. “I saw it. You saw it. And we were filming, and there was all that mess with… yeah.”

“Even Dom saw it,” Billy continued, and the silence became less awkward. “We both know he’s right.”

Which just goes to show that even Dom occasionally underestimated his friends, and that no easily available excuse should ever be discarded.

“Murgh,” said Dom, which probably meant ‘I am happy that my wisdom and insight are appreciated.’ The noise travelled up from beneath the table, but unfortunately the product of the cigarette rolling session was a very abstract interpretation of the concept. It could never be smoked. Very abstract.

“We maybe could have. Just after filming. Just tried.” Billy voiced all their thoughts, or what would have been all their thoughts had Dom been sober enough to concentrate on any one thing for more than a handful of seconds.

“But what’s the point of trying something when you already know it won’t work?”

Too young. Too old. Too pretty. Too somewhere else. Too compromising. Too busy. Too messy. Too tired. Too needy. Too clueless. Too insecure. Too slutty. Too complicated.

“And we wouldn’t have been friends once we were done.”

Wanted kisses and smooth skin and warmth. Cleverness and fingers with surrender. Eyes and need, more kisses. Sweaty sheets for night after night, and the difference between Billy and Elijah right then was that Billy considered how much laundry that would create.

Didn’t care, of course.

Naked Elijah spread out and wanting, and laundry wasn’t the thing that made Billy think, no.

Not a good idea.

They wouldn’t have been friends once they were done, and being sensible hobbits of varying age they both knew well to value friends.

“Bleurgh,” said Dom, which probably meant ‘It is a good thing that you never bothered putting yourselves through that and I am very drunk.’ Or possibly, ‘There is an imminent risk of my throwing up over your shoes.’

Luckily, that is the kind of distasteful happening that friendships survive.

Slashababy 2004 Stories