Fic: Chasing Ian chapter 9

[kribban]

9


He drops his carry-on and his laptop on the bed. Fuck, he’s tired. He should try to sleep for a few hours and then go online to book a return flight. It’s only when he slips out of his jacket that he discovers that his shirt is completely drenched in sweat.

The door to the bath room slides open with a nudge of his foot. Taking off his sneakers, he opens the cabinet door to find a fresh tooth brush awaiting him. Fifteen years, and he still hasn’t gotten used to the unsullied anonymity of hotel life.

He’s soon under the shower, the hot water washing away perspiration and soothing tension until he feels almost human again. After ordering room service – ‘anything not fucking English, please’ – he pulls on his slacks and a T-shirt and sits down on the bed to sort through his luggage.

He feels strangely at peace, aching in pain, but resigned.

He likes to think he’s handled this well. Seen it through, clean break and all that. Elijah knows all about chapters closing and eras ending. He survived the end of principal photography, his parents’ divorce, being dumped by Belinda for snotty, baby-spawning whatsisname. He can get over this too.

Grabbing his cell phone, he presses the number three preset, but Debbie must be out, because he only gets her machine. He briefly considers leaving a message, but this is the kind of news you should really give in person.

His food arrives, and he lies watching TV until he’s on his last nacho. Predictably, the phone soon rings. With a famous son, a caller ID had been a necessity for Debbie. He flips it open without checking the display. “Mom?” There’s silence on the other end. “Hello?”

A raspy voice answers. “May I see you?”

Elijah’s heart jumps. “Ian?” The ragged breaths on the other end of the line mirror his own.

“May I see you?”

He swallows. “But of course.” He feels like launching himself into a thousand different questions, but he doesn’t want to scare Ian off.

“Where are you?” Ian’s voice sounds thick and strained, as if he’s fighting with himself to speak.

“One Aldwych. Room 604. I’m registered as Marty McFly.” There’s silence on the other end. “Ian?”

“I’ll be there.”

The call is disconnected. Putting his head between his knees, Elijah tries to stop it from spinning. The minutes seem to stretch into hours as he waits. He smoothes the duvet with his fingers, hides the nacho plate under the bed. A drop of blood trickles down his index finger, and he realizes he’s bitten his nail until the cuticle broke.

At last there’s a knock on the door. He takes a final, long drag on his cigarette.

Ian looks as if he’s been hit with a truck. There are bags under his eyes, and his face seems more wrinkled than ever. “May I come in?”

Elijah nods. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he stuffs them into his pocket. “Have a seat.”

Ian nods silently, and they sit down by the table near the window. Elijah notices for the first time that he seems to be very nervous.

“Uhm. Do you want a cigarette? It’s Marlboro.”

“Thank God.” Ian exhales shakily. His hands are tightly clenched in his lap.

They smoke in silence. On his third cigarette, Elijah’s throat is itching, and he rubs his fag in the ashtray. “Why are you here?” seems so intrusive, so instead he asks “How are you?”

Ian’s lips purse, and a great shudder runs through him. “Curious.”

“Curious about what?” Elijah throws his hands out, in a very Ian-esque gesture, he realizes.

“A couple of things. Are you fucking someone else?”

He drops his lighter. “What? No!”

“Because if that’s the reason for your little display here tonight, I have a right to know.”

Ian looks so miserable that Elijah instinctively reaches out for his hand, but he flinches and pulls away. “Is it?”

“Ian… No. I haven’t found anyone else. Honest.”

It’s so quiet that the soft hum of the mini-bar seems almost unbearable.

“Not that it’s any of my business anyway, but it would seem as if you flew out here just to get the break-up you wanted. You weren’t satisfied with the one you got, so you came here to stage another little scene of yours, one where you would get the final word.” Ian’s knuckles are white around the edge of the table. “I think you saw this as a good excuse to get rid of me and still feel like a victim.”

Elijah bites his tongue. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? Am I to believe that it truly was pity and pity alone that made you fly six thousand miles to put on this… lavish display for the lover you so callously slighted only weeks ago?”

“No… I… I’m not pitying you. It’s just…”

“Then what the fuck is it? Is it at all possible that you could be so polite as to tell me the truth for once?”

“It’s complicated, okay?” Elijah lets out a deep sigh. “I, uh, I finished Return of the King.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I started reading it again after you had left me in L.A. I kind of went through a weird stage. I realized that Fran and Phil wrote it differently. In the film Sam’s got a confidence boost after the Quest and proposes to Rosie, but in the book it’s Frodo who encourages him to do it. It sheds a whole new light on the ending.”

Ian looks suspiciously at him. “Go on.”

“People think Frodo left because he wanted healing. That’s not the reason. Not the whole of it, anyway. He left to save Sam. The others, the rest of the hobbits, they felt as if they were waking up from a nightmare, but Frodo felt as if he were falling asleep again. He knew that as long as he stayed Sam would never get the chance to forget their ordeal. Frodo would be a constant reminder of it. But if he left, the Quest would slip into oblivion, becoming nothing more than a distant memory. Sam would grieve, but eventually the memories would fade.”

He forces himself to ignore Ian’s gasp. “I realised how Frodo felt. I couldn’t waste any more of your life.”

“My God! Listen to yourself! How self righteous and melodramatic could you possibly get? You’re not fucking dying, and you’ve no right to make decisions for me. Christ, you’ve made yourself up to be some sort of hero!”

“I haven’t! Look, it’s a bad example, OK? It’s a bit over-the-top, I grant that, but it’s the best way I know to explain this to you. I don’t want to hurt you. Not any more than I already have, and I’m fucked up in a lot of ways, and I’m angry in a lot more, but I never wanted to be this guy – this… My dad.”

“So you decided to be the righteous martyr instead – nobly sacrificing yourself for my happiness?”

“No! I... I don’t mean that at all. Look, I’m not trying to save my own ass here, I’m…” but his voice dies out in a whisper and he puts his hands under the table so that Ian won't see how much they're trembling.

Ian moves away slightly. “You’re not a victim.”

“I know that. I just… You were telling me about how you’ve given me years, and I just… I couldn’t bear the thought of wasting more of your life.”

Silence descends so swiftly you can almost hear the flicking of a switch. Ian turns his head away, and it’s enough to make Elijah nauseous. “I just think… maybe it’s better to end things before they’re totally doomed, you know?”

“Oh, I know, I know. I’ve been through this a couple of times before, you know.”

“Oh.”

Ian falls quiet again. He chews on his lip for a few moments as if he’s debating with himself.
“I don’t think you should go.”

Elijah twitches. “What?” He fumbles with the lighter in his hand.

“Elijah,” Ian says softly, and it hits him that he hasn’t really heard that voice in a long time. “If you want to, I’d very much like for us to try again.”

“Fuck.” He hits the igniter a few times but the lighter has obviously run out of fuel. “Why this then? Why all this interrogation?”

“I wanted to make sure.”

“Of what?”

“Your sincerity.”

“Oh.” The lighter falls forgotten on the table. “So I passed your little test then. What now - we ride off into the sunset together?”

Ian looks at him tiredly. “I can’t play a part in your drama anymore. I’m too old for that.”

Elijah shakes his head. His mind is reeling with the possibilities. “It won’t be like that, I swear.”

“I’m not going to put up with your insecurities anymore, and I’m not going to pretend to feel guilty about my past. If you’re expecting me to say that what I did was wrong and you were right to condemn it, then it’s true, you really shouldn’t waste any more of my time.”

“I know, I know. I’m not asking you to do that.” Elijah coughs, leaning forward slightly. “You said you, uh, go out. Did you…”

“I haven’t been entirely celibate.” Ian bites off the words as if his teeth could really sink into them.

Elijah puts his hand up. “It’s okay, it’s none of my business.”

Suddenly, Ian is touching his elbow slightly, just above the place where skin meets fabric. Elijah does his best not to arch into the touch.

“I really do miss you,” Ian says with a note of affection in his voice, and Elijah can’t help but feel hopeful.

“Yeah. I miss you too.”

Then the touch is gone, and Ian’s looking at him solemnly, as if he knows something awful is about to happen. “Don’t ever bullshit me again. If you do, I’m gone.”

“I know,” and Elijah does, because there’s a limit to how much you can stretch someone’s love before it breaks.

A couple of moments pass in silence. Elijah almost expects it to start raining, but life isn’t a film, luckily. Ian balances on his chair. “You can buy me a cup of coffee tomorrow.”

Elijah raises his eyebrow. “What – we go on a date? I haven’t done that since I was sixteen, Ian.”

“If you want to call it that. No pressure. No strings attached. I can’t commit to more than that right now.”

Elijah nods. “I know. Look, are you sure you want to? ‘Cause a lot of things maybe won’t go away. A lot of them might, but I can’t change who I am.”

Ian heaves a sigh but looks suddenly somehow elated. “I figured as much. But you know what? Neither can I.”

***

It’s one of those things that you can’t pinpoint just exactly when they end.

One of those things that quietly slip further and further to the edges of your mind until they are lost amidst phone numbers, cheat codes and song lyrics.

Elijah doesn’t notice when he stops thinking about the whole thing. All he knows is that one day it no longer bothers him.

Sometimes he tries to remember how he had reasoned with himself, but it seems unreal to him now how he could ever have obsessed about it.

It takes three visits to Starbucks to get some tongue. Whether Ian is suspicious of him or has simply grown prudish in his old age is hard to tell, but Elijah doesn’t mind the wait.

He had thought he would have to put in long hours of discussing his problem, but as it turns out they don’t talk much about the past at all.

On Sunday they’re fooling around on the couch and Ian sticks his hands inside Elijah’s shirt. He lets him and had forgotten how much he likes it.

They end their three month long dry spell right there, in the commercial break for Sex and the City. It’s nothing spectacular, just a run-of-the-mill mutual hand job, but it’s lovelier than he had thought, and to his surprise, he comes. When he hugs Ian afterwards, the guy doesn’t flinch.

They visit pubs for drinks and for testing the boundaries of their relationship. Ian flirts with handsome men, and Elijah looks a little extra hard at curvy waitresses. It’s all good.

He ties Ian to the bedpost one evening, but the thrill isn’t there, and the experiment is abandoned.
Sometimes they play cards.

Ian’s stiffer now and needs a hot water bottle in the bedclothes. He’ll grow old soon and the prospect of being there for him as he does doesn’t frighten Elijah anymore.

Eventually the real world demands his attention. November comes round and it’s almost time for the Two Towers junket. He checks out of his hotel to stay the last night at Ian’s house, and his mother gets a single, three word telegram. He’s coming back alive.

His boyfriend is back to his old usual self, as far as Elijah can remember, at any rate.

“I’ve bought you something.”

He rolls his eyes, but he feels better than he’s done in a long time. “Are you trying to woo me with gifts? I hate to break it to you, but I’m richer than you are, and you’re kind of too late.”

Ian laughs. “It’s not that kind of a gift. Just open it.”

Elijah absent-mindedly tears the paper from the burgundy carton box that rattles when he shakes it. “You want to play games with me?”

He smiles, but Ian looks at him sombrely. “Nothing beats Scrabble with you.”

***

On the plane back to the States, he wonders at how much – and how little – things have changed since the first time he flew out to see Ian. In some ways the old Elijah is gone and in some ways he’s more himself than ever.

He can’t help but wonder if the whole ordeal was nothing more than a self-indulgent ego trip, but there’s no point agonizing about it now. He learned a long time ago that if there’s pain, there’s gain, and he’s determined to make the best of it.

There’s a little girl the size of Ian’s grandniece who asks for his autograph under the watchful eyes of her mother. He writes his name in her colouring book and wonders if the ‘Not Frodo’-shirt isn’t such a bad idea after all.

As he puts his pen back in his jacket, his fingers brush against something that he didn’t put there. It’s a handkerchief and he unwraps it to find a tiny piece of wood.

As he holds it up to the window he can see that it’s a blank tile, the kind that can be used as any letter. In the world of Scrabble, it’s virtually priceless.

He holds it in his hand all the way home.



The End.