> previous


Two turtle doves: This Is What It Sounds Like

It’s a testament to Billy’s ability to make a fire—a real fire, blazing and beautiful—that when Elijah wakes in the middle of the night and stretches hard out of his curled–up position on the couch, he’s still warm even without the benefit of the blanket he doesn’t remember gathering around himself—the same blanket he’s kicked down to his feet.

Elijah blinks into the firelight, cursing the ache at the back of his eyes from dried–out contact lenses. He must have fallen asleep after that last drink with Billy, after the last of Billy’s friends had left. Elijah and Billy have always gotten along well enough, and after so many years they’re able to settle into an easy silence late in the evenings, punctuated by smiles and laughter. They have relatively few things in common, but the one thing they both hold most dear—the one person they both hold most dear—rarely comes up in conversation between them.

Elijah supposes that’s because they sorted things out early in shooting. Dominic saw no reason why he should have to make a choice of with whom he would spend his free hours in the day or, more important, his long, late nights. And Dominic, able to talk paint off walls on a good day and still mildly persuasive even on a bad, wasted no time in convincing Elijah and Billy of this logic.

Elijah knows somewhere deep inside what used to be his concave chest and slow–beating heart that Dominic is better suited to him. They are closer in age, closer in musical and literary tastes, closer certainly in physical proximity. So why then does Dominic seem to fold into Billy easier? Why does he not loom over Billy the way he does Elijah, and why does he so quickly fall to his back for Billy when he’s not even suggested as much for Elijah?

Because you’ve never asked, Elijah hears his own voice answer. Billy’s always demanded a certain etiquette from Dominic, even when they’re drunk and reeling and unable to form sentences not sprinkled liberally with variations of the word fuck. But those demands—and their occasional accompanying scoldings (or, as Billy would call them, corrections)—have always fallen politely from between Billy’s sharp teeth. They never fail to make Elijah shiver, sometimes before Dominic reacts in the same way.

Elijah wants very much to make Dominic shiver at least once while they’re here. At least once in front of Billy.

Elijah stretches again, pushing the blanket away completely and leaning forward, elbows on knees and chin in hands. A thought crosses his mind about tamping the fire down and lurching toward the bedroom to fall asleep properly, blanketed by arms and legs instead of wool. Like last night, when the three of them had barely made it to the mattress before exhaustion overtook them. It was one of the deepest pleasures of Elijah’s life to have woken so wrapped up between Dominic and Billy, and he had clung fiercely to the grey Penrith dawn, praying it would not lighten and wake them before he’d had time to fully appreciate the feeling.

It’s almost as quiet now as if had been then—almost. Elijah concentrates on the crackling fire for another moment before he hears something entirely different—the sound of breathing, hard and low, down the hallway and in the bedroom; breathing unlike any he’s heard so far on this little holiday, shuddering breaths that sound like surrender.

That sound nothing like Dominic at all.

Elijah pads down the hall, blinking now into darkness lit by flickers of orange and yellow—the same candle Dominic had burnt for an hour in the front room upon their arrival in Penrith, the same candle they’d used to light cigarettes and … other things that same night. Elijah angles himself into the corner opposite the bedroom door, careful not to be seen and even more so to see, in the reflection of the mirror across from the bed, Dominic indeed looming over Billy and coaxing those sounds from him.

It’s the first time Elijah’s ever seen Billy on his back, and he concentrates as fiercely on the image as he had on the fire, burning it like the flames into his memory. Dominic’s straddling Billy across the bed sideways, pushing his legs apart gently and molding his hands perfectly over the curves of Billy’s thighs and then lower, lower, until Billy’s breath catches under the weight of Dominic’s kiss.

It’s not long before Dominic’s making as much noise as Billy, though in truth Elijah knows this is a muted little affair. Billy usually forces the headiest sounds from Dominic (and from Elijah himself, yes), and when Dominic falls to his knees and takes Billy in whole, even Billy’s prone to cries like he’s muffling now, cries that bring to mind bird calls—coos and songs and sighs.

When Billy releases something like a sob, Elijah leans against the wall and closes his eyes, unable to watch either of them overtaken. He understands that Dominic and Billy have slept together before, many times before, and will do so again and again. But it’s just tonight that’s hard to hear and see and feel deep in the pit of his stomach like this. When it’s over, Elijah waits, breathing more quietly than it would ever occur to Dominic or Billy to attempt, waits until he’s certain they’re asleep.

He’s not going to wake up between them in a few hours. He won’t even bother to see in the dawn and persuade it to slow its approach. But he won’t run, either. As before, he will wait for his chance to make Billy see, and to make Dominic shiver.

Elijah retreats back to the front room and the fire, blinking again, this time at the ache between his legs. Surrender comes in many forms, Elijah thinks, staring into the only now lowering flames, and his will not come tonight.


> next