"People will think we were on crack when we did this," Elijah giggles from under his headphones, presses rewind again and starts crooning along with the inaudible beats. "Whohoo, this is so good, man. Crazy chipmunks on crack," he beams.
"Drugged halflings, you mean." Viggo looks up from the magazine he's reading, a sleepy smile curling his lips.
Pretending to read, Elijah thinks, while sleeping with his eyes open. He knows the chances that Viggo's awake at this hour are below zero.
Viggo doesn't talk much in the early hours. He never had.
At first, that mumbling, grumbling morning mood had irritated Elijah. In another life, on another planet, it seemed now, way back in New Zealand. Whenever Viggo stepped out of his trailer at the break of dawn, he hardly looked up. Apparently, even his artistic sensibility was still asleep at this hour, something Elijah always fond a bit odd. How could Viggo not notice the sunrise? Elijah himself had barely been able contain the wild exitement he felt each time at the spectacular sights unfolding anew every morning under grey clouds or a pale blue sky.
Elijah looks out of the window, as if hoping to find rugged mountain-ranges there or quiet lakes, unperturbed and crystalline, untouched by modern-day madness. The mountain ranges over here are different, he notices with a pang of regret, made of steel and concrete, hazy shades looming in the mist. The sounds coming up from the streets below are muffled by November fog. Elijah takes another sip of coffee, sits down on the window sill and peeks out. Down there, people are swarming on the streets like never-tiring ants.
Viggo had hardly ever spoken before appearing on the set. But then, almost instantly and mysteriously, he would cease to be absent-minded and grumpy and tight-lipped. Was it the coffee? Was it seeing Elijah? From one second to the next, as if a switch had been flipped, he was focused, present in every sense of the word, and delivered – seemingly without effort - whatever the scene demanded.
Later on, Viggo's morning grumpiness had bothered Elijah less. He had found his own ways of waking up Viggo, even when it was still dark outside and Viggo seemed to him like a sleeping landscape himself, a boulder thrown into Elijah's path that had materialized out of nowhere.
And when it came to Viggo, Elijah hadn't been able to contain his excitement either. Hadn't wanted to, for there had been so many things he wanted instead. It had all be so easy, back in New Zealand. Stolen kisses between two takes when no one was looking or sneaking into Viggo's trailer in the early hours, just as quietly as one would expect from a hobbit. Not that they deliberately avoided becoming an item. Maybe they already were one, but neither of them really cared. It seemed things simply fell into place, just like that. Like when Elijah would find his way into Viggo's bed before sunrise and slip under the covers so gingerly, creep on top of Viggo, stretched out on his back, and just lie there, very still.
Listening to the heartbeat of the sleeping dragon. It is said that dragons are coiled up in the land in the form of mountains, that they breathe black clouds that bring storms and floods. Red and gold are the dragon's colours ….
The stillness never lasted long. Soon, Elijah's fingers would stray under Viggo's frayed t-shirt, searching for warm skin, mapping the lines and curves of this landscape of ribs and hipbones. Waking up Viggo never took long. Viggo would wake up in short order and he was hard, almost instantly, just as Elijah himself. And Elijah would say "hey", and smile.
The memory of those mornings, of Viggo languidly moving under him, still reverberates in Elijah's body. Glancing back at Viggo who's still hidden behind his newspaper, Elijah shifts on the window sill to sit more comfortable.
"Ahhhh, there's that old lady again, yeah, mauve hair, always carrying her two chihuahuas around," Elijah points out with his coffee mug. "Remember, the one who told me she's keeps seeing the ghost of Frank Lloyd Wright? Says he sometimes roams that brick building over there. Apparently, he lived there for a while, way back in the fifties, though the actual building was pulled down long ago. Maybe that's why he keeps coming back. Might still be looking for it."
"Mmmmm, you wouldn't believe it. But this is a ghost town," Viggo mumbles, still not looking up from the crumpled papers, taking another sip of tea.
'There can't be any caffeine in this stuff, whatever Viggo claims,' Elijah thinks with a grin. 'Must be Valium instead.'
"Granted, New York has its spooky sides, just take the subway. But ghosts, Vig, c'mon …"
"I've seen one, once." Viggo gazes out into the clouds, right above Elijah's head.
"A ghost? You're sure about that?"
"It was some years ago, around this time of the year. There had been a gigantic blizzard the day before. The whole town was completely immobilized. No cars, almost no people around. It was so quiet. Just imagine, New York all quiet. That alone was surreal. That evening, I had to go out once more. Henry was still a kid then. I remember him being sick, so I had to get him some prescriptions."
At that moment, as if that had been his cue, Henry stumbles into the kitchen sleepily. Without saying a word, he walks over to the fridge, opens the door and murmurs something. Not being not a morning person obviously runs in the family, Elijah thinks, amused.
"So I went down a few blocks and it was somewhere near that little park that I saw him. It was dark, of course, but the snow was gleaming and sparkling under the streetlights. Nobody else was around. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, this man appears. He looks like one of the homeless, ragged clothes and all that, carrying cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
'Have you seen my little girl?' he asks me, face turned upwards, reaching for me with his empty hand. 'Have you seen her?' And I answer, 'No, I didn't see anyone. Did she come this way?' I look into his face, but he doesn't look back at me. He keeps staring into the falling snow with wide-opened, blind eyes. And then, all of a sudden, he's gone again, as if the snow had swallowed him."
A muffled chortle comes from behind the refrigerator door. "Here goes dad again. Don't believe a word of it, Elijah. He loves telling stories like that. When I was a kid I always whished someone would tell me a real bedtime story, not some crazy fairy-tale about ice bears wearing pink sunglasses."
Viggo laughs quietly.
"It's ok," Elijah grins. "I believe I've heard enough real fairy tales. I'd rather go for the pink sunglasses now."
"Yeah, whatever," Henry waves, all the cool indulgence of his age, especially towards persons like impossibly weird fathers, implied in that single gesture, and walks out of the room taking the milk carton with him. "Think I'm going to wake up that snorting hobbit in the other room. Take it that no one over here's going out for breakfast?"
"We've had breakfast already," Viggo points to the fruit peelings on the table before him.
"Did we?" smiles Elijah.
And for the first time this morning, Viggo looks back, really looks back, not above Elijah, not through him, but right back at him and it's as if a tiny light has been turned on somewhere behind his eyes, as if the sun had risen just then.
"Breakfast's fairly over-rated, you know."
"If you say so."
"Come here, Elijah," Viggo says, with a slow smile.
Elijah walks over and puts down his cup down on the table in front of Viggo. "What for?"
"Why don't we pretend that there's been a blizzard today?" Viggo looks up at him, eyes alive now and sparkling. "We can't go out. We're stranded in that little room of yours, amidst piles of books and still unpacked boxes."
Slowly, his hand glides upwards, under Elijah's loose paisley shirt.
"Don't we have to go back to the studio again?"
"Remember, we can't go out."
"Well, if we can't go out …"
Viggo lifts the flowery shirt and kisses the skin above Elijah's navel. "Close your eyes."
Elijah does as asked and lets Viggo take his hand, lets himself be guided into the big white solitude. Out into the endless waste, where there's nothing but ice and snow, where the wind's so cold that your lungs seem to freeze and where the light's so blindingly white that Elijah can see it, feel it, even behind closed eyelids. In that instant, all hollow high-pitched giggles and fake smiles fall away from him. He has no use for them anymore.
The ice is thin. But I'm not afraid. Lead me wherever you want. Push me over the edge. I know the waters below are bottomless, a labyrinth of grey caves descending into dark. And there's only one way out. I don't mind. I'm not afraid down there. Even when the water presses down on me so heavily that I can't breathe anymore. Even when I don't know the way back. Maybe I don't want to find back any more.
It's not gentleness Elijah needs now, nor soft touches. Sometimes, it takes Viggo a while to understand that - or maybe he simply doesn't want to understand. There's always that flicker of resistance turning his eyes from green-grey to dusky-smoke, lips twitching at the edges when Elijah spills his fantasies, scattered fragments of dark forbidden dreams, murmured against Viggo's neck.
"You … scare me." Viggo would say to the wall, voice a tumble of disconcerted vowels, while looking down at his hands, at the carpet, at the fucking potted plants, but never back at Elijah.
Even when he’s pushing, though, pushing and revelling in it, he realizes that this could well be the reason for them sitting at an empty table or squatting on some park bench, a year from now, maybe, or maybe only a few months, with a cold wind blowing from the east and scare leaves falling down on them as they stare into the air, no more secrets between them and no more words to heal what can’t be mended any more.
Elijah pushes aside these images, nothing but pessimistic speculations, and chooses to ignore the awkward pull at his insides these thoughts always trigger. This is not what he needs, so he twirls a finger in Viggo's hair and says, "How can you be scared? You want it, too."
"I want it too much already. That's what scares me." He takes Elijah's hands in his, holding them gently, eyes fixed on Elijah, almost pleading. "There's so much more I would want to give you."
"I know," Elijah says, and it sounds to him as if someone else is speaking. "But you know what I want right now."
So Viggo gives in, as always, and perhaps he hates himself for giving in so quickly. Perhaps Viggo also hates Elijah for the way he sometimes makes Viggo hold him down and claim him more violently than Viggo would have ever wanted. But the truth of the thing as it happens makes reflection meaningless for Elijah. Only his sharp shrill cries are real and the marks Viggo’s hands leave on his skin.
Elijah shivers as he remembers Viggo pinning him. His eyes are still closed while he fucks Viggo's mouth now, fast and hard, just as fiercely as he wants Viggo to fuck him later on. No need to draw this out. He loves to come fast, loves to watch Viggo swallow and then kiss away the thin white streak that sometimes escapes to run down Viggo's chin. He has seen it so often, doesn't have to open his eyes now. He can still see it.
Viggo's lips are around him, wet and tight and warm, and Elijah loses himself quickly. Gives up thinking and speculating when Viggo spreads him and pushes into him, tearing him open, liquid fire that eats up the imaginary snow and the ice that were surrounding them before. And the blinding white turns into burning red, red and hot like the fiery breath of the dragon, and Elijah's heart falls to ashes.
When Elijah wakes up, his bed is empty. The apartment, way too quiet now, seems empty as well. The clock has vanished from his bedside table - probably buried under some scattered clothes on the floor. He must have slept for quite a while, so zoned out that he didn't hear Viggo and the others leave. The growling of his stomach tells him that it must be around lunch time already.
Elijah walks back to the kitchen. No one's there, just as he expected. Everything's cleaned up neatly, only a piece of paper sitting between the apples on the table. He knows it probably some note like "Join us at the studio when you've slept enough, you woodchuck."
He doesn't bother to check, but walks over to the window and begins to stare out again, into the fog that hasn't lifted since morning. On the contrary, the light's even dimmer than before and slowly the numbness descends down on him again, enveloping him like a thick grey blanket. Elijah sits down on the rough wood of the window sill and leans against the window, cold glass against his cheek.
He still feels a bit sore from Viggo, but he doesn't mind, not at all. It's the only thing that makes him feel alive and almost happy in a moment like this, when his memories feel more real to him than the so-called real world around him. It's what helps him to brave that sudden dread that his private travelling circus might have moved on already.
Without him. Without anyone looking back. And that Viggo might have disappeared already, disappeared for good, as quickly and unexpectedly as a ghost in the blizzard.
