rome could (thinkaloud) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-06-20 00:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, todd hewitt |
Who: Rome and Eli
What: A chat about relationships, because Rome is the perfect person to ask.
Where: Reliquary.
When: A couple hours after this.
Warnings: Explicit language, quite a lot of it.
Midday, and Eli looked like he had not slept in the better part of two days. He looked this way because he had not slept, and he saw no end to that wakefulness in the immediate future. Preston was asleep in the back room, and Lucas had fallen asleep in his chair (Eli had checked on him). The shop was fairly empty, save a few couples abovestairs who looked guilty. He suspected they were a result of the costume party that had taken the recently-reassembled pieces of his own relationship and shattered them anew.
His hands braced on the counter in front of him, head bowed, Eli sighed and wished he could simply close for the day. He was in no state to speak with either Preston or Lucas, both for very different reasons. Lucas had betrayed him, and Preston worried him, and he had no effective balm for either feeling. And overtop it all was the constant dull ache that his relationship with Preston made him feel. He punched the counter, and then he cursed and shook his hand.
Rome, on the other hand, was in the best mood of his entire life. He was on air. Rain didn’t touch him, clouds didn’t hang over him. He was getting near regular meals off of Drake, who usually stocked fast food, but the provisions were, for Rome, the equivalent of a daily banquet, and it had been a couple weeks since he’d experienced real biting hunger, the kind where your juices cut into you and you can’t think about anything else. Meeting Callie at the party (and the ensuing experiences) contributed more to his general contentment than anything else.
Moving with his usual confidence, since stealth was so far beyond him, he never bothered, Rome stopped outside the window of Reliquary and watched with concern and interest as Eli abused the countertop. He shuffled the old duct-tape-and-leather jacket a little firmer on his shoulders and then wandered into the shop of the boots Drake had given him, now comfortable, if much dirtier. Hey Eli. You look tired. Working too much? Rome looked around. Not too many people here.
Eli looked up when he heard Rome’s familiar voice-thinking, and he spared a tired smile for the young man. He was accustomed to Rome popping by during the daytime hours, in search of odd jobs, for which Eli purposefully paid a very generous fee. Rome looked better than he had weeks ago - well fed, and with a strange smile on his face that morning that was unfamiliar. “Mostly upstairs, hiding from their spouses, I suspect,” Eli said, grabbing a discarded towel and going back to cleaning the counter with it. “You look quite content with the universe,” he said conversationally.
Rome, without any of his initial shyness, came all the way up to the counter that Eli was wiping and leaned his lean figure over it, weight on his elbows, muddy blue eyes directed upwards at the other man. ’Quite content,’ he thought with amusement. When you say it English it sounds way smarter. Then, glancing down at the counter, First you’re hitting it and now you’re cleaning it? Why are you pissed at the store? It was a leap, but Rome made a lot of leaps.
Eli laughed, a tired laugh, but a laugh. “If I speak English then what, pray tell, do you speak?” he asked, tossing the towel aside again, too distracted for the job. “The shop has done nothing to put me in a sour mood,” he explained truthfully. “I am merely being melancholic about everything that is not the shop. You, why are you quite content?” he asked, intentionally repeating the term from before. “Everything well with your brother?” He had been avoiding Drake as of late, not wanting to lie to him about the plane incident, should it arise.
Rome grinned at the phrase again, ‘quite content,’ and even laughed. Rome didn’t laugh in the mind, he did it vocally, a rusty, hoarse chuckle sound that sounded, in comparison, bizarrely soft. You know what I mean. English the other country. Nodding a little at this information and not aware he was boasting his lack of education, he continued, Yeah, Drake’s cool, he’s been getting some too, or did last week. Smug smirk.
“Too?” Eli asked, leaning his elbows on the counter. “Ah, I see. Met someone, have you? As for your brother, he’s been getting some as long as I’ve known him. It’s caused us no end of trouble on some jobs, if you would know the truth.” He glanced toward the back room, not realizing he was doing it, and then back at Rome when he caught himself. “Did you meet her at the party, your lady love?” he asked, theorizing that the Creation effect might have been very good for Rome.
When Eli turned his head back toward Rome after his glance backwards, the young man tipped his head curiously, and thought out loud, over Eli’s question, What’s back there? The inquiry successfully derailed his curiosity for the present, however, and he brightened up. Her name is Callie, she was in this gauzy thing at the party, she’s so fine you would not even believe. She doesn’t care that she can hear me all the time and we did it twice! Rome beamed.
Eli shook his head as he laughed. He could never recall being quite that excited about sleeping with anyone in his entire life. Women had never suited, and there was only Preston besides, and that was tied up with fears and guilt and insecurity. He couldn’t help but smile at Rome’s crass appreciation of having done it twice with this girl, Callie. “You are certainly Drake’s brother,” he said. “If there was ever any doubt, this has cleared the matter up entirely.” He glanced toward the back room again, one quick look. “My lover, who ran into someone else at the party who he liked more than he likes me, I fear.”
Rome came down off his cloud long enough to look confused. Why’d he bring that up? Oh... oh. He was answering the thought, you mean what’s back there? Then, with a blink and a short draw back. Lover, do people still use that term? Did he say he? Yeah, he did. What, like your boyfriend? Why’s he here if he likes another guy then? Guys liking guys, weird, I don’t get it. A little shake of his head, and then a look of uncomfortable contrition. Sorry, I didn’t mean it was like... bad, or anything.
Eli smiled. “That’s quite alright. I don’t understand the appeal of vaginae, myself,” he said, affecting an intentional, exaggerated shudder. “I believe he’s scared of losing what he knows. Tell me, were you yourself at that party? Could you remember things you wanted, or was everything obliterated from your memory?”
Rome looked confused. He hadn’t heard the Latin term, obviously. Appeal of what. He didn’t actually ask, or expect an answer, because he just kept going. Losing what he knows, what does that mean? At the party? I guess I could remember, but the rest of it took over mostly. Like I was this badass Jack Pumpkinhead, and mostly he wanted to screw with people but one time he got really angry, and I never get angry like that. I think he might have hurt somebody, almost, and I couldn’t really remember anything that I wanted, he was too mad. Rome stood up from the counter and pulled his jacket a little straighter, even though there was nothing wrong with it. That part wasn’t that fun.
“Vagina,” Eli said, but he was distracted by the rest of what Rome was thinking. “Do you mind my asking more about what it was like when you wanted to harm whoever it was that you wanted to harm?” He didn’t know Rome well enough yet to know if he took after Drake. Drake, Eli knew, was perfectly willing to kill anyone who required killing. He was prone to decisive action, which was often lethal, in a way Eli was not. If Rome shared this, then the confession was not particularly meaningful.
Rome had been thinking the expected thoughts that he would think when someone mentioned vaginae (he was pleased at the addition to his admittedly limited vocabulary), but Eli managed to get through with his obvious concern and questioning. Oh, yeah, you can ask, Rome said, giving him a peculiar look. Why wouldn’t you want to ask? And then, in his usual rambling fashion, I don’t know, she said something, I can’t remember exactly what, but it really pissed me off. I never get really mad about very much, not really mad, you know, but this time, it was like all of a sudden--well, no, it wasn’t all of a sudden, because I was a lot more into the party and I wasn’t worried about anything, not even anybody figuring out who I was or hearing what I was thinking or anything--it was just like from that I had this serious temper, and I just... I just lost it. I shouted at her and I wanted to make her afraid of me, which is just... Honest, cloudy blue filtered up toward Eli, at a loss. Weird. I think I would have hurt her but I realized what was happening and almost stopped, kind of. It’s hard to explain. You didn’t go to the party?
“I attended,” Eli said, “but I went as someone very like myself. Perhaps less hotheaded, more prone to introspection, but similar enough that I felt no conflicted desires. I preferred writing to photographs, but my decision making was not clouded. I remembered my lover, and I remembered that I was not a free man. My lover did not have the same reaction. He encountered someone-” Here he broke off, because he truly had no faith in either Preston’s or Lucas’ telling of the night’s events. They did not coincide, and he assumed the worse, and that they had opted to minimize the interaction to him. “And they shared intimacies.”
Rome’s thoughts weren’t the kindest, but you definitely didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was honest. He looked pensive. You mean he fucked somebody else. Or... or got fucked. I don’t know how that works, exactly. Awkward look, and then attempting to carry on, Well, a lot of people were doing that. They wore sexy costumes and then... got sexy. Rome pulled his hand through his hair, which was fairly filthy. How it worked, I guess. So you’re mad at him he dressed up as someone sexy, Rome guessed.
“No, I’m not angry at him,” Eli said, and he realized that was true. “I’m sad that he preferred someone else to me, yet again.” It was an honest confession, because he viewed Rome as quite harmless, all things considered. Rome wasn’t aggressive, and his thoughts (now that Eli had grown accustomed to them) were somewhat soothing. It was a welcome change to be around someone you knew would always be honest. “You’re going to tell me it was the costume and not him?” he asked, adding. “No, he dressed up as a lascivious sodomite. A poet, one who had quite a few gay lovers, and who was purported to be very sexual, yes. But he’s gotten drunk and done this sort of thing before when he was upset, so it isn’t the first time.”
What’s a lass--oh. Rome blushed and then scraped at the back of his head with his hand. He dressed up as that? Maybe he wanted to seduce somebody. Or you, I guess, you can’t tell, and backfired or something. Maybe somebody like that doesn’t prefer anybody, and they’ll, you know... fuck whoever comes along. Rome winced. I would have said it better. I... I don’t think it was just the costume since, you know, I wasn’t only Jack. I was just mostly Jack a lot. I put it on, and everything. I was cool when I was doing stuff I would do, like drink and, y’know, prank people or whatever.
Rome’s thoughts raced too fast for Eli to follow at times, and this was one of those times. “You’re saying that the costume cannot be blamed in its entirety?” he asked, clarifying.
I’m saying that it’s like a majority and it takes over until you wanted to stop badly enough that it stopped. Like Callie was way more forward before, but she didn’t stop.
Eli sighed, fully aware that he was soliciting romance advice from a teenage boy who had, almost certainly, lost his virginity a mere 48 hours prior. To make matters worse, said teenage boy was related to Drake, who enjoyed teasing Eli about his homosexuality entirely too much. “Perhaps the key is why he wore the costume in the first place, and why he stopped when he did,” he posited, adding. “And if he stopped merely out of guilt. What then?”
What do you mean, merely out of guilt? Like he stopped because he felt bad? That’s good, isn’t it? Oblivious, Rome looked at the door behind Eli, and then he looked at the pastry case. I’m hungry, he commented.
Eli reached for a pastry, and he put it on the counter with a napkin beneath it. “Shouldn’t he stop because he doesn’t want to be with anyone else?” he asked, adding with a smile. “Or is that question going to illicit a poor response from someone who just did it twice?”
Stop because he doesn’t want to be with anyone else, Rome repeated, thinking that through with derision. Doesn’t everybody want to do it with everybody? I mean, Callie is the most awesome girl ever and if she didn’t want me to I totally wouldn’t fuck anyone else but I still want to. Rome pushed half of the pastry into his mouth at once.
Eli’s grin widened, and he felt (unexpectedly) slightly better. Callie, it seemed, was the best thing to grace the planet, and he couldn’t help but imagine a perfectly ordinary girl, made extraordinary because the boy across the counter was smitten with her. “So the key, you feel, is in not completing the act of coitus.” And perhaps he was fucking with him just a wee bit. He was tired, and it improved his mood.
Rome chewed and gave Eli an open and curious stare. What’s coitus?
“Fucking,” Eli said, blue eyes going a little lighter with mirth.
Why didn’t he just say that? Oh. Then, taking another bite of the pastry, Anyway, what were you asking, oh, right, I think if he’s dressed up as some guy that fucks everyone that says yeah, and he didn’t fuck anyone, then that’s pretty good. It’s like me not hurting that chick in the cop outfit.
“And what of the fact that he and my best friend covered up what had happened?” Eli asked, reaching for a pastry for himself, and setting out mugs of coffee for both of them, as if this was a pleasant afternoon tea (with more caffeine). He set out the sugar and the cream, knowing Rome would use so much the coffee would be unidentifiable (if he was anything like Julian). “This cop, what did she say to make you react negatively, or was it merely her costume and presence that had the effect?” He paused, thoughtfully, and grinned. “I don’t suppose Drake went as something terribly embarrassing, did he? It would make me feel a sight better.”
Maybe your friend thought you were going to go around hitting counters a lot, Rome thought, looking down at his coffee and obviously not really intending to communicate that. He pulled the cup close and indeed spooned several heaps of sugar in, but after eying the cream he shook his head. Can’t afford to get sick. Nudging the cream away, he resumed, I don’t like cops anyway, but this one called me names and pushed me, and I got real mad, like I said. Usually I don’t say anything, if a cop wants to shove you then let him, or her, whatever. They’re cops. Rome brightened with mischievous interest. I don’t know what he went as, do you?
“No. I’ve not asked, but I’m currently hoping it was something quite horrific. A sad clown, or a donkey’s arse,” Eli said, taking a sip of his coffee before continuing. “You think lying is acceptable, if those you’re lying to will be upset with the truth? That’s hardly true, Rome. Being honest is important, especially in a relationship. Do remember that if you wish to continue your calisthenics with Callie.” He smiled at the end of that sentence, and he mused over his own words a moment. “Let us say, for example, that you had slept with the same woman your brother had, just a few days prior, as you indicated - that Callie was this woman. If Drake mentioned it to you, would you tell him the truth, or would you lie?”
Rome had been dunking the last of his pastry into the coffee so he could swallow it whole, and while licking his fingers, he put together a confused reply: I can’t lie, Eli. I promise it’s not as as great as you think. Nobody wants to be friends with me because I’ll always say what I think, and I can’t hide anything important because someone will always hear. I can’t think about the horrible stuff I sometimes think about without putting it on someone else, like Drake with the fucking nightmares, and there’s nothing great about that. If I ever wanted to talk to Drake again, I guess I’d have to go let him hear, but I’d want to do that in whatever way he wasn’t the maddest, so that he would still talk to me eventually. Honesty sucks, Eli. He leaned forward in his vehemence, eyes narrowed, genial smile gone. After he subsided into a series of mumbles about lost relationships, positive and negative, things he didn’t mean, and he sipped his sweet coffee.
Eli went quiet, thoughtful as he sipped his coffee and considered the boy across from him. He’d never thought about that, really, about the things Rome could not hide. He knew the young man was honest, yes, and he understood that fact made Rome easier to trust. But he also considered, for the first time, what it would mean if his private thoughts were made public, for everyone to see. He did not think he would fare so very well. “And if you could hide it from him?” he asked, after another sip. “If you and he were talking together, about Callie, and he had slept with her and did not tell you. If you spent all of an evening talking about your feelings for this girl, and you later found out he’d been with her, had discussed it with you at great length, and not said as much?”
That would be fucked up. Sounds like me, though, if I thought he would make me leave and never talk to me, I might do it. I would. If he slept with her and didn’t tell me I’d kick his ass, but then maybe I’d ask her about why.
“Again, you are most certainly Drake’s brother,” Eli said, resting his elbows on the counter. “So, I’m to kick my best friend’s arse, and then I’m to ask my lover why he did what he did, is that correct?” he asked. There was the added complication of Lucas’ feelings in this matter, but he didn’t have any way to work that into the hypothetical he’d created.
Wonder why he keeps saying that about Drake, we’re not that alike. Rome slurped at his coffee again and looked out the front of the shop, averting his gaze, something he didn’t when he didn’t want anyone to draw attention to what he was thinking, since he already knew they knew. Your best friend? I thought you said he didn’t actually get to the fucking part? he asked, curiously.
“My best friend was Drake in this hypothetical situation, was he not? And I can’t be certain they didn’t have sex. One of them said they only flirted with one another, but the other said it was more than that. They lied once. This, too, might be a lie.” The glancing away surprised him, and he waited for Rome to look back before clarifying. “Drake would throw a punch, also,” he told him, explaining. “And I do believe there’s little he enjoys more than women.”
Yeah, they like being enjoyed, too. Rome smiled, but it didn’t have the carefree aura that his grins usually did. Drake would hit the guy, yeah, on principle, for screwing with his girl, or whatever. Even if it was me. So if you think they had sex and you don’t think it’s because of the costume, why are you even talking to them?
Eli sighed. “That is the question, is it not?” He wanted a cigarette, but he couldn’t light one inside while the shop was open, and he just pulled one out and held it between his fingers. “I love him,” he began, because that was the easiest response. “I’m more bothered by the lying than I am what happened,” he admitted after a minute. “And, to be quite honest with you, my lover dumped me over this, not the other way round.”
It’s stupid to get mad about lying. Everybody lies. Especially if whichever, the Drake, or both, eventually were going to tell you. People lie. Otherwise everyone would hate each other. Rome was surprised. Why’d he do that?
“Everyone lies about small things, Rome, but if you lie about large things, about significant things, how can anyone trust you again? Relationships are nothing but trust. You can’t be with a lover twenty-four hours a day. You must to be able to trust them to tell you the truth, in all important things, regardless of what will happen,” Eli said firmly, because he believed that to be incontrovertible. “If he desired someone else and told me, it would be a very different thing than if he lied to me about it.” He ran his fingers along the cigarette thoughtfully. “Because he does not wish to hurt me, I believe. But I suspect they will become a couple if I leave it how it is now.”
Jesus, you been in relationships where the girl, I mean the other guy, he tells you whenever he wants somebody else? And you were okay with that? Rome’s eyebrows went all the way up.
Eli chuckled. “No, I have not, but I have heard tales of such relationships. I do not want one, but I do not want a lover who is tethered to me emotionally, while wanting other things physically.”
Well, you only want someone else for a second and then you go back to wanting who you want. Unless you’re some horny poet guy, I bet.
Eli smiled at that simplified description of Oscar Wilde who, admittedly, he knew only rumors of. “Yes, I believe that’s the general understanding.” He looked up from his cigarette. “But there is more to it than that. We have other problems, communication, mainly, and our differing opinions on relationships. Which you’re going to tell me we should discuss.”
Rome shrugged. If you want to be with the guy. You don’t sound like you do. You even like him? I mean, not want to fuck, just like.
“Preston?” Eli asked surprised, forgetting he’d not used a name in this conversation. “I love him, as I said. What makes you doubt that?” he asked, leaning forward curiously at the turn in the conversation.
Rome eyed him. I knew this guy in LA, he thought/said, blandly, and he and his girlfriend were all in love and telling everybody about it, and all over each other, it was gross (at the time), but then he was always beating the hell out of her if she spent too much money at the mall. Rome shrugged. So he was in love with her but he didn’t like her. That’s what I’m asking, not, like, I think you’ll beat him, just whether or not you like him. Without the love part.
Eli wasn’t certain where the story was going at first, but he understood in the end. “Yes, quite. I’ve liked him since we were younger than you. He just doesn’t let me see very much of that anymore. He’s quite guarded, and I never know what he’s thinking or what he wants. And when I push him to tell me, he can’t. It gets a bit lonely, especially as I’ve seen what’s beneath all that. I’d like it back, I suppose.”
That made sense to Rome. So what changed then? Maybe you can change it back.
“Not bloody likely. This city is one panic attack after another, and we’ve very different stands on very important things. EIT, for example. His employer has secrets, and I suspect Preston has a fair few of his own. It’s difficult, sharing things, when the majority of your days involve things you can’t share,” Eli said, tapping the cigarette on the counter. “I don’t have a solution for that, either, I’m afraid.”
If you want to stay with him then you’ll get over the secrets and he’ll get over not sharing things, I bet. Otherwise it won’t work and you’re just going to end up beating the hell out of him about groceries, only you know what I mean. Rome smiled a little at the poor joke.
“Explaining that hasn’t worked so terribly well in the past,” Eli said, but he was willing to admit he might be to blame for not explaining it as well as it could be explained. “Your lady love, when are you to see her again?” he asked, changing the subject and grabbing their mugs.
Maybe it just won’t work, and this guy is just an asshole, Rome thought. Rome’s thoughts were as loud as his conversational speech, however, and after he thought it he only sighed and kicked at a discarded napkin crumpled on the ground. Not sure yet, he admitted. Sort of putting it off in case it’s the last time.
“He isn’t an arse,” Eli said with certainty. “He’s- I believe he needs help,” he said with full candor for the first time in a very long while. Getting Preston to understand that, however, was going to be quite the challenge. He smiled as Rome kicked at the napkin. “Ask your brother what he thinks. Drake is, as I said, quite good with women. I always found them unfortunately emotional,” he said, and he almost laughed at the irony there.
Drake is good with women, Rome agreed. I don’t want to ask him, it’s dumb and this is my first and I don’t want to tell him. He turned pink. Fucking Noise.
Eli smiled fondly, though he tried to hold the reaction back. “As difficult as it is to believe, I suspect your brother was once inexperienced, too.”
Oh, God, was Rome’s embarrassed response to that, and then he thought/said, What’s this guy need help with, please change the subject.
Eli laughed. He really was darling, this boy. “Self worth, I suspect. He discounts his own needs and desires to the extent that he doesn’t even know what they are.” It was, Eli knew, part of the problem. He couldn’t trust that Preston cared for him, not when Preston was prone to saying whatever he needed to say to make him happy. “He’ll say and do anything he thinks those around him need. It makes it difficult to know what he, himself, feels.”
Rome stared out the window again until he was not thinking about Callie or Drake and the blushes cooled. The distraction helped, and essentially turned his mind to other things. That’s really fucked up. How can you not know what you need? When you’re hungry you’re hungry.
“I believe it’s a little more complicated than that. If you spend all of your life thinking you don’t matter, that you deserve nothing because you’re not good enough, then you start believing it,” Eli said. “But I’ve no idea how to turn that around him for him. I’ve told him it’s not true, but he doesn’t believe me. I suppose I thought Lucas could do a better job than I,” he added, sounding slightly bitter at the prospect. “If they spoke, made a connection that I can’t seem to manage with him, then maybe he’s better off without me, even with all my good intentions.”
Bullshit, Rome responded immediately. Obviously you give a damn about the guy and if he doesn’t care about himself then at least you do. That’s a lot already. Not a lot of people care about other people if they don’t have to, so he’s not better without it.
“But is it wiser to merely be his friend, and allow him to see if he can have someone who suits him more than I do romantically?” Eli asked.
Rome gave him skepticism. Seriously? You’re just going to stand there and see if he finds someone else he likes better? When he’s upstairs now? Is it different with gay guys?
Eli arched a brow, entertained by the skepticism. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve only recently become one.”
Rome’s jaw fell open with shock. What, you just turn into one without warning? The horror was clear.
“You’ve nothing to worry about. I never had your reaction to a pussy in my entire life, darling,” Eli said, grinning. “Now, if you’ll excuse me? I do believe you were recommending I go speak to the man?”
Benumbed with the idea that suddenly one just turned gay, like milk turned in sunshine, Rome just nodded and stole another pastry to take with him before departing with a little wave, Good luck.