Understand

Push Away

Summary: Elijah comes over to try to cheer Billy up, but Billy makes it hard on him.

Author/s: Di and Lillia…amazingly, yes, both the PKmaniacs are here. I thought I could write this alone, but Lillia is so connected with this story that I couldn’t, which is why this fic has gone so long without an update…and now that things are not as…hostile, we can get back to work, together. we’ve been fighting lately…if anyone hasn’t noticed, but…we both started thinking about how good of friends we were, and finally I called her up. It didn’t take us long to realize that we couldn’t really understand why our argument, which seems so horribly petty now, had made us so pissed at each other. Anyways, long story short, we’re friends again. We haven’t settled everything and there’s still many conversations to be had which neither of us really are ready to delve into yet, but at least we’re talking and getting along enough that now we can actually have them. So yeah, again, most of this is mine, Lillia is like my unofficial technicality info writer, and kinda like a beta, and she has some creative thoughts that help me get the story along.

Length: this chapter isn’t extremely long, and we do plan do have a few more chapters eventually

Rating: again, a PG-13, although this chapter is more mild than the last. The rating should go up with more chapters.

Warnings: cutting, blood, angst

Archive: again, we really don’t think anyone would like to archive this, but if you’d like to, just ask Di via a review or email first, and I’m sure she’d be happy to give you permission

Disclaimer: Dom, Billy, please forgive us for the completely unrealistic lies we’re going to unleash on the public. Nothing we state is true, we are just two bored 17yr old girls with no life. What else can we do?

Notes: we are really sorry about the whole like 11 months without an update thing. For a lot of that time, we’ve been in a rather bad fight and we couldn’t work together, and I guess Di was just uninspired to pursue this fic without her sweet Lillia. “Sweet, my ass.”-Di Oh shut up, you. Anyways, again, no smut yet, but Dom and Billy are currently split up, so what do you expect? A ~insert text~ signals a FLASHBACK…also, if you’ve read my fic Mistletoe, you’ll probably be able to tell one part that I put in.

And now, the second chapter to Understand!! Dun dun dun dun! …okay, so its not that big a deal, but after almost a year, we expect some response from this post…or humbly request…

…………………………………….

“Billy? You home?”

“Shite!” I curse loudly, dropping the razor. I hear Elijah come in and look down at my bloody leg before quickly yanking my boxers and pants up. I can feel the blood smear and cringe when I realize its staining the inside of my good jeans. But there is no time. I can just fix it after I get rid of Lij.

Quickly, I wipe off my hands on my blanket and shove the razor, tissues and other supplies under my sheets. I’m still trying to discretely pile my blankets when the door swings open. Elijah is standing right there.

“Hey, dude…what’s going on?”

I sit heavily on my bed, on the pile of blankets I’d just made, and my hand unconsciously goes to my leg, as I try to gain composure. “Nothing much. What’s going on with you?”

He leans lazily against the doorframe. “Nothing much, man. Just bored.” He answers. Of course he is bored. There is no shooting until nine tonight, Dom and I still aren’t hanging out with each other let alone speaking so I have no idea what he’s doing aside from the fact that he’s keeping himself busy, Orlando is taking a “girlfriend day”, and Viggo and the two Seans are doing whatever old guys do. I am actually about three years older than Astin, but sometimes he acts his age while I rarely do. Speaking of that, its rare that I remember exactly how old I am when I’m around the other hobbits. I mean, Jesus, I’m eight years older than Dom… when I was eighteen, he was ten…God…I’m a fucking cradle-robber. Well add that to my list of offences.

I smile, appearing annoyed, but inside my brain is reeling, struggling to find an excuse to get him out of the room. So I sit there for a few seconds…he looks at me, and I look at him, and the air turns very awkward as the silence persists. And I still have no idea of what to do, as my brain also starts dealing with the knowledge that my leg is still bleeding quite freely. Finally he mumbles something about being hungry and leaves the doorframe. I would be surprised if he didn’t hear my sigh of relief.

I quickly get up and shut the door. I take down my jeans and try to evaluate the damage.

Shite, oh shite. There is quite a bit of blood smeared on the inside of my jeans, and there are a few splotches that had bled through to the other side. Shite! This is definitely not good. Not sure what else to do, I just start cleaning and bandaging up my leg with the tissues and stuff I had hid in my blankets. When that is done, I stuff my jeans under the bed, making a mental note to wash them later and grab some new ones from my closet.

Taking a second to make sure my breathing is level, I open the door. Elijah is sitting on my counter, helping himself to Oreos and peanut butter. If it had been anyone else, I would’ve made a comment about him just helping himself to my food. Not that I mind terribly, I just would have commented. But I’m pretty used to Elijah cleaning my fridge out, so I let it slide, as usual. Its not like he keeps any food in his place.

I grab a few Oreos out of the bag and sit in a chair opposite Lij. He stuffs a peanut-butter covered Oreo into his mouth, and starts talking while he chews.

“You and Dom still not speaking?”

I nod. “We weren’t speaking last night during filming, why would we be speaking this morning?” I ask, my voice just a bit harder than I mean it to be.

Elijah shrugs, swallowing before answering, slowly, “Yeah, but last night Dom and I were talking, and he seemed like he was in a better mood, and he said he was going to wait for you after the filming was over so I thought maybe you guys had talked it out.”

I shake my head. “I never saw him.” I lie. I had seen him, and I had known he was waiting for me, but I hadn’t known he was in a good mood, I hadn’t known what he was going to say to me, and I had been in a mood where I wouldn’t have been able to take any more without breaking down or screaming, so I had hung back for a while and then left a different way.

“Can I ask, what happened between you two?” Elijah ventured cautiously.

I shake my head again, slowly. “It’s a long story.”

Lij stuffs another Oreo into his mouth. “So? That’s neither a very good excuse, nor one I’m about to accept. I have nothing better to do for eight hours, so unless it’s a longer story than that, you can tell me or tell me why you won’t for real.” He argues, stubbornly.

I glare at him. “Fine, it’s a complicated, unpleasant, emotionally trying story that will cause me to be extremely upset if I try to go into it and it’s really none of your business.”

He stares at me silently for a few moments, before shoving an Oreo into his mouth and responding, “Well that is a very good reason, and so I’ll accept that…”he paused. “Let’s go somewhere. It seems to me that you need a bit of cheering up and I’m bored senseless…and starting to get a slight stomach ache from all your junk food. Haven’t you heard about salads, Boyd? All of this sugary stuff can be really bad for your health.” He finishes, biting another cookie.

I smile softly. “Why should I worry about my health? It’s not like I actually get to eat any of my food.”

He laughs. “And who’s stopping you?”

I roll my eyes. “I really don’t know…there must be some mischievous hobbit that sneaks in and eats everything while I’m gone.”

“You should really call pest control for that.”
***************************

“Wood, for the last time, I really do not feel like going to the beach.”

“Well we’re not going back to your place so you can brood some more.”

“I was not brooding. Neither was I moping, sulking, pining, pouting, feeling sorry for myself or obsessing over Dom in any way.” I answer defensively.

“Well for someone who wasn’t brooding, you sure know a lot of ways to do it...So then what were you doing?”

I hesitate, the truth finding its way onto my tongue, but I bit it back fiercely. “I was…stewing over in anger. We had an argument. Anger is a perfectly natural response.”

Elijah looks at me for a moment. “But its not the only response. There are other emotions that are perfectly natural to go through under these circumstances.”

I avoid his gaze. I knew what caused his words…a few months before, before Dom and me had anything besides friendship, all of us hobbits had gone out to a pub. We got really into the fun and Dom, Elijah, and I came back plastered. Sean had stayed sober since he had realized that no one else was exactly volunteering to be the designated driver. We went back to Elijah’s and played cards...and drank some more, this time around Sean joined us. When Dom beat me for the fourth time in a row at poker, he had seen my mourning over the pile he raked in.
~
“You gonna cry cause I’m whooping your ass, Boyd?” he taunted.

In my drunken state, I found myself being angered by his words, and soon was telling him the truth. “Cry over that? Give me a break, Dom. You can’t make me cry. Nobody can. I don’t cry.” My voice raised with a bit of pride. “I haven’t cried since I was sixteen.”

They all stared at me for a couple seconds.

“Really?” Elijah asked softly.

“Really.” I affirmed with a nod.

They were silent for a moment before Dom spoke up. “There’s something wrong with that.”

I shrugged it off, but the small part of my brain that was still a bit rational realized that their reaction wasn’t good and so I changed the subject.
~
It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I started really thinking about it, and I realized, they were right… there is something wrong with not crying for almost twenty years. I mean, I am a man, and men don’t really cry anyways, but for some reason it still seemed like there was something wrong with it. Not that I was ready to change that.

I turn back to Elijah. “I know there are other perfectly natural responses, but I like anger. Anger is…easy. And I’m going to get very angry at you if you don’t get off my case about this beach thing. I don’t feel like surfing today.”

He shrugs. “Alright then, no beach… What do you suggest then?”

I laugh. “Is that why you put up such a fight, it was your only idea?”

“Basically. I mean, my others include playing my Playstation all day, thinking up some practical joke to pull on Viggo or Sean, going for something to eat because damn am I hungry, or finding something to entertain ourselves with downtown.”

I’m silent for a moment before answering, ‘Let’s go get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry myself.”

“Cool. Let’s go over to The Blue Platter, I feel like seafood.” Elijah suggests.

I turn cold, the chill rising up my spine rapidly. “No, let’s go somewhere else.” I say, not meaning for my voice to come out as stiff and flat as it does.

“Why? The Blue Platter is great.” He whines a bit.

“I don’t really like it.”

He stares, surprised. “I thought you loved The Blue Platter. You and Dom used to…oh…oh shit…sorry…” his voice finally falls away as he looks at me helplessly, his eyes wide and apologetic.

I shake my head dismissively. “Forget it…” I mutter.

He nods before saying, softly, “Is Bonny’s alright?”

I smile reassuringly. “Yeah, Bonny’s is fine.”
~
“Gods, this is good…here, try this.” Scraping up some of the sauce on the shrimp, I lifted up the fork and presented it to Dom, putting it so close to his mouth that he forgot himself and ate right off it. Realizing we were in public, his cheeks flushed slightly.

“You know, you really need to stop feeding me like a-” he cut off as he chewed. “Damn, this is good.” He practically moaned. I giggled slightly, and gently wipe a spot of sauce from below his lip with my napkin. He swallows, before catching my hand. “Really, Billy, you have to wipe my face too? I am not a child.”

I leaned towards him. “I am not treating you as such, the last thing I think of you as, is a child. But then again, you are being quite a dirty boy. When we get home, I’m afraid I’m going to have to clean you up…” I let the sentence end suggestively.

Suddenly, his hand dropped mine so it could raise. “Check please!” he called loudly.

I looked down at my half-full plate. “Oh, but I’m not done eating yet.” I whined halfheartedly.

“And a to-go box!” he called.
~

Food was now disgusting. It was so strange, sitting there at the restaurant, mentally telling myself, “You like this food. You should be enjoying this.” When I took absolutely no pleasure in the tastes. The strangest thing was the flavor. The food tasted familiarly, like it should, but it didn’t taste good like it had before. So I ate mechanically, forcing myself into every bite, chew and swallow. I barely ate half my plate, and hoped Elijah didn’t notice much.

Lij finished all of his plate…but then of course, he always does, and he usually orders more or at least dessert. That kid is a garbage disposal. Today was no different. He ordered another half-plate worth of food and then a double dessert.

“You’re going to die when your metabolism finally slows down.” I mutter at him.

He looks up at me from his ice cream. “Huh?”

Normally I’d drop it, because it’s not worth teasing Elijah about his eating: he doesn’t care. It’s only ever worth teasing someone if they’ll get upset about it. But something pushes me to say it.

“You’re going to die when your metabolism slows down.” I reiterate, louder. “You’re going to get fat, and not just fat: huge, and you’re going to have to be wheeled around in a wagon, and eventually your arteries are going to fill and collapse and you’ll have a quadruple heart attack or something and die a gigantic fat whale with fried chips still in your mouth.”

He just stares at me with his mouth open. I have no idea why I had said it. I didn’t mean it. I mean, I always say the metabolism line. It’s just my joke for him…but I’ve never elaborated like that before. And really, I could’ve said the exact same thing in a different tone and had him laughing his ass off…but I had said it seriously, coldly, with an edge of disgust and ice in my voice. And it had sounded cruel. You just don’t talk that way about one of your best friends dying, even if they’re not going to and you don’t want them to, you just don’t. But I don’t fix it, I just sit there.

He shuts his mouth and shoots me a cool look. “That was harsh. You know, you become an ass without Dom around.” With that he finishes his double dessert, and we go.

I try to find a way to tell him that I am sorry, that I hadn’t meant to say it and I had just taken the joking too far for once…but I just keep my mouth shut and ride out the silence.

He drops me off outside my place and finally my mouth decides to work. “I’m sorry Lij, you know I didn’t mean that.”

He nods at me. “I know, and its okay…but please let me know when you and Dom work this out. It is no fun being around either of you during these fights.” He leaves then, without giving me a chance to answer.

Going inside and collapsing on my bed, the Wicked Voice inside my head, I’ve named him Derek, berates me for a while.
'Great. Keep this up, Boyd, and you’ll have the kid hating you too. Who’re you going to go after next, Orlando, Astin? We could play a game and see how many members of the cast we can get to hate your guts before Christmas. That many less presents to buy.' I tell Derek to shut up, but of course he doesn’t, until I cut. No matter how loud they are, the voices always shut up as soon as I feel that pain. I slap a new band-aid on my thigh and collapse on my bed.
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That’s the second chapter. Please, please review!!! Oh, don’t know when the third one is coming…hopefully sometime soon. I have my opening completed and I know exactly where I'm taking it...just having a little trouble getting it there...should be out within the next month though.unless i get a job, then I'll be really busy until spring break. Oh, and sorry again for the really long wait.