Wake And Bake
"Cocoa Puffs," is the first thing that Dom says when Elijah stumbles into the living room, bleary eyed and not a bit sore. Someone hogged all the covers last night, and someone else was forced to curl up like a stray dog to try and suction as much body heat as possible from someone else's spine.
That's a lot of someone's this early in the morning.
And it is most definitely morning, and it's most definitely early. Really early. Elijah can hear the cartoons blathering on the television.
Dom and Cartoon Network. A match made in hell.
Plus, there's bright sun streaming in the blinds by the kitchen door. Elijah and mornings are just a big no. At least on their days off anyway, and those are so rare; how can Dom have even found the energy to get out of bed?
It can't be more that eleven in the morning, and Dom never seems this awake when Elijah's the one who's all bouncy. Not that Elijah likes to think of himself as bouncy, that's more a Dom adjective, but whatever.
"Cocoa what?" Elijah was supposed to buy some? He's standing on some? He didn't hear anything crunch underneath his feet, although his inability to keep his eyes open might also extend to his inability to hear.
Cocoa Puffs and not Weetabix?
Elijah didn't even know they sold Cocoa Puffs in New Zealand.
He really doesn't like mornings, and maybe this is a game. Dom's tricksy like that. Not even a 'hello' or 'good morning.' Maybe it's a code. Although Elijah can't think of any kind of code containing Cocoa Puffs, which truly is the hallmark of a good code.
It would explain a lot.
He should try again, maybe he heard Dom wrong.
"Cocoa Puffs what, Dom?" Elijah leaves the entryway and shuffles into the adjoining kitchen. What he really needs is coffee. A lot of coffee is required when dealing with Dom-speak.
"I'm coo coo for Cocoa Puffs," calls the voice from the living room again, and it's definitely too early for this.
"That's nice," Elijah says. His tone a lot more cheerful than he feels. He shakes his head while opening and closing cupboards, finding filters and grounds and mugs. A little caffeine will help this all make sense. At the very least the fumes should distill that rank smell in the air, and oh.
Ah, it's a wake and bake kind of morning. Maybe he should go for instant over brewed, it'll take less time
"Liiiiiiiiiiiiijah." Dom stretches his name out for several seconds, and Elijah can't help but wince. What the hell is Dom smoking? He pauses for a moment, mentally smacking himself.
That's a dumb question.
"Yeah, Dom?" Elijah puts the water on before emptying several spoonfuls of instant coffee in his 'You Can be a Hobbit Too, Ask Me How' mug.
"I want Cocoa Puffs." Dom's dangerously close to whining. Elijah might have to kill him. Just as soon as he has his coffee.
"I don't think we have any, Dom."
"But why?"
"Because I don't think we bought any at the market." It's only been 10 seconds, but Elijah is suddenly desperate for the water to boil. He needs coffee to deal with a high Dom.
Either that or he needs to join in the party.
He turns up the heat way too high on the stove, and considers the possibilities of getting stoned with Dom. It's not as though they're supposed to do anything today. They had talked about maybe going to the pub with Orli and Billy, but that can always happen later.
There's nothing to prevent him from getting high, but he should probably make his coffee first. If he hit the bong right now, chances are he'd forget about the water and burn down the flat.
Then it strikes him that Dom's been quiet for a long time.
Elijah considers going over to check on him, but pauses when a large cloud of smoke wafts up from the sofa. That certainly explains the silence.
Cue the coughing.
"Lijah," Dom croaks. Here they go again.
"Yes, Dom?"
"I want Cocoa Puffs." This is where Elijah made his mistake last time.
Never tell a stoner no.
"Why don't you come over here and find them yourself," he says, breathing a sigh of relief when the water on the stove begins to steam. Fuck the boiling.
"Can't," Dom answers, as though that solves all the problems of the universe.
Elijah walks over to the fridge and grabs the carton of milk. It smells slightly rank when he opens it, but the coffee should kill that. "Why not?" he queries, dumping the milk into his mug. It's probably not supposed to be lumpy like that, but whatever.
Milk, coffee, three lumps of sugar, now the coffee is passable.
Viggo generally laughs when he sees Elijah making coffee. He tends to say something about Elijah mainlining sugar, but there's nothing wrong with Elijah wanting his coffee palatable. The sugar and milk are what's really important. The coffee is just for coloring, and wasn't Dom supposed to be answering him?
"Dom?"
"Too stoned," Dom's voice calls faintly.
Well, there's today shot then.
It's a myth that all stoners watch cartoons, but Elijah is into myths.
He's just not into the Powerpuff girls.
This is Sky Digital, so there must be something else on, and as soon as he can bring himself to find the remote, he'll change it.
A voice is telling him the channel is never getting changed, but that could just be Dom.
They're firmly ensconced on the sofa with Dom stretched out next to Elijah in striped pyjama bottoms and a shirt that says 'I Touched the Ring.' Orlando once made a really crass joke about which ring the shirt was in reference too, and Dom had said something saucy about 'wouldn't he like to know.'
Elijah, by turns, had wanted to go into great detail and hide under the table.
That conversation keeps running through his head, along with all his lines for the next two weeks, the shopping list, and whether or not Kelly called last night. Or maybe that was Hannah. Or maybe it wasn't a girl at all.
The television is really loud, and Elijah's not even sure of his own name right now.
Cartoons plus coffee plus weed are a good combination, and Elijah's surprised that he'd forgotten this. Of course, the coffee smells awful but that's probably the milk, and it's not going to stop him from drinking it.
As soon as he can bring himself to move his hands.
Elijah likes his hands. True, his nails are bitten to the quick, and his fingers aren't nearly as long as Dom's. And okay, his palms are a bit soft when the pads of his fingers are rough, but that doesn't matter at all, and the fabric of the sofa is very soft. Almost as soft as Dom's hands, which are right there on the sofa next to his.
He should study them.
Yes, very long fingers indeed, and pale hairs on the back of Dom's hand. Turning Dom's hand over, Elijah's eyes can't quite take in the proliferation of lines on his palm. They keep moving together, this is some seriously good weed.
"Lij, what are you looking at?"
Dom's voice seems very far away, possibly in the next room, and Elijah's slightly surprised when he looks up and Dom is right there. Practically nose to nose, and is it wrong that Elijah thinks Dom is really pretty? Not pretty in the girl sense, just pretty in the 'Elijah's glad they share a bed' sense.
He feels pretty lucky. Yes, very pretty indeed.
He should say something about that.
"Pretty." That's not what Elijah was going to say, but okay. It's an answer to something, isn't it? 'Pretty' sounds like a perfectly good reason to Elijah. Doesn't matter what the question was, it's not like Elijah's currently in his own mind anyway.
He thinks he should have a neon sign over his head that says ' Currently Out - Not Sure When Coming Back.' The idea alone makes him laugh, and this somehow leads to Dom wrapping his fingers around Elijah's hand, ostensibly to stop whatever Elijah's doing.
"You are so stoned," Dom crows, as though he's just won an enormous bet.
"Look who's talking, Mr. Cocoa Puffs!"
"You never got me any Cocoa Puffs," Dom complains, pouting as he tugs their joined hands into his lap.
"And you're calling me stoned?"
Elijah thinks he's trying for incredulous, or is that incredible? He's trying for something. His brain can't really process anything right now. Dom's playing with his fingers, and is his thumb supposed to bend that far back?
"Aren't you the one who got high before shooting on Amon Hen?" Dom is doing things to Elijah's hand that Lij doesn't think it's supposed to do. He swears his fingers aren't that flexible. It should hurt, but he can't really tell.
He's seriously stoned.
"It didn't hurt my performance, did it?" he says.
"Depends on which performance you're referring to." Dom places Elijah's hand over his face and grins between splayed fingers.
It takes Elijah several seconds to realize that he was just insulted. His brain is lagging severely.
"Hey!" Elijah knows he's supposed to feel offended, but he's suddenly forgotten why.
"Pot head!" Dom retorts suddenly, his voice muffled because of Elijah's hand.
"Half-baked!" Elijah counters.
"Wasted!"
"No, Dom, that's when you're drunk."
"Oh. Stoner!" Dom repeats emphatically, taking Elijah's hand off his face and placing it on his chest.
"Dope!" Elijah pushes against Dom's chest, but it feels very hard. And wow, is that a heart-beat? It's very... rhythmical.
"Junkie." Dom's calm now, and his heartbeat has slowed. His eyes are half-closed, and Elijah thinks he might be falling asleep.
"I am not a junkie." Elijah knows he sounds surly, but really. Talk about an insult. "I only go organic."
"Whatever," Dom says with a wave of his hand. "Pass me the bong."
Elijah's coffee has probably gone cold. He knows this, but the side table is really far away, and he just can't bring himself to move that far. Especially with all the action on the TV. It's a lot of action, very colorful.
"Fucking hell," Dom's voice breaks into Elijah's reverie about green cats and birdmen living together in beehives. Dom's doing a quite a bit of moving on the sofa next to Elijah, and it's throwing Elijah's state of nirvana off. "What are we watching?"
Through bleary eyes, Elijah tries to focus on the television. The picture comes in much clearer if he closes his left eye. "He-Man," he declares after several seconds of observation.
"You must be taking the piss," Dom counters, shifting and dropping his head onto Elijah's shoulder. "More like She-Man."
"What are you talking about?" Dom's head sits very heavy on Elijah's shoulder, but not in a bad way. Just in that stoner, 'every sensation feels really good and is multiplied a 1000 times' way.
"Look at that bob haircut. He is so gay," Dom mutters, more to himself than to Elijah. Except that Elijah pulls away rather quickly, and Dom falls over onto his side. "What'd you do that for?" he sputters without actually moving from his position.
"He-Man's not gay!" There's something in Elijah's blood that's telling him to argue this point, even though he's not sure why.
He never even liked He-Man when he was small.
Dom flops about enough to prop himself up on one elbow, and he eyes Elijah appraisingly. "Have you gotten a load of what he's wearing?" he says calmly, gesturing to the television set where someone is talking about Disco men and their arms.
Or maybe not.
Elijah is really stoned. "It's just a cartoon," he begins.
Dom finally manages to roll himself back up to a sitting position, and grins. He's got a lot of teeth. Very white teeth. Elijah could go blind. "Lij, he's wearing furry knickers."
"Those aren't knickers!" Elijah has to cut his eyes away to check.
"Oh yeah, and what would you call them then?"
"It's -- they're --" Elijah really isn't at his best.
"Don't you Americans call them 'gym bunnies?"
"Dom." This is what Elijah gets for insisting on having digital cable at the flat. American culture filtered to his best mate by HBO. Fucking brilliant.
"What? Am I wrong?"
"Dom."
"What?" Dom gestures to the television where the character in question is now dressed in a pink vest and tights. "Doesn't matter what they dress him in, he's still all bronze and muscle-ly."
"He's the Prince of Eternia," Elijah sputters helplessly.
"So that means he can't be gay?" Dom makes a tutting sound, while grabbing a pillow from next to him and propping it under his head. "Lij, I thought you knew better by now. You can't tell just by looking at someone."
"Yes, you can." Elijah counters and then stops. He didn't mean to say that. That's such a stereotype.
"Lijah," Dom smirks, wriggling down into the sofa and getting re-positioned. "We're not talking about you."
Elijah's finally managed to pick up his coffee, and the word 'yuck' immediately springs to mind, but through the haze it turns into 'truck.' Which immediately translates into 'lorry' or perhaps 'Laurie,' only Elijah doesn't know any Lauries. And that thought took a really long time for him to have. At least five seconds. He should probably have another hit.
This all makes sense in his mind, but to light the bong he'll have to put the coffee down. It's too much coordination for right now. Besides his head is ringing, and when he takes the spoon out of his coffee he catches a brown-tinged glimpse of his face in his reflection. Wow, he looks stoned. Although he is looking at a spoon, and maybe that's not quite the best judge.
He should put the coffee down.
"Dom?"
"Eh?" comes from the pile of cushions that Dom has placed over his head.
"Are you singing?"
"No," Dom's voice seems very clear despite all the pillow-interference, and Elijah thinks that maybe this is the only time that Dom makes sense, when he's stoned. It would explain a lot. "But the phone's ringing."
"Oh, is that what that is?" Elijah hears what Dom's saying, and he knows that something else is supposed to happen, but it takes him several seconds to figure out what. "Are you going to get it?" he finally continues after trying and discarding lots of other possibilities like 'should we put it in the fridge' and 'does it go well with coffee?'
"I don't live here," Dom explains as though he's just solved world hunger.
Elijah would beg to differ.
"Yes, you do."
"I do?" Dom sits up, and all the pillows fall away. He looks very awake, as though he hasn't smoked anything all day.
"Yes." Elijah is quite clear on this point. Plus, he's got the boxers in his dresser drawer to prove it.
"Right you are then." Dom nods his head, and looks around as though he should do something to make this official.
"Get the phone, Dom," Elijah suggests.
"Kay."
"You have to move first."
There's a snort.
"Dom."
"Right, phone." Elijah pokes at Dom to make him get up, but doesn't follow his movements, preferring instead to focus again on the television, and the spoon sticking out of a mug on the coffee table. Coffee. Table. Whatever happened to his coffee anyway?
Elijah starts trying to replay the morning in his head, and he's as far as the PowerPuff Girls when Dom comes strolling back into the living room. "Orli's coming over," he announces, sitting back down and rearranging the cushions over his face.
"That's nice." Yes, Stoned Orlando is definitely nice. Elijah still remembers the time that Orlando locked Viggo in his trailer in a state of stoner pique because Viggo wouldn't write him any poetry.
"I told him to get some Cocoa Puffs," Dom says to no one in particular.
Elijah nods his head knowingly, and curls up on the sofa, his head in Dom's lap. Scooby Doo is on, and it's all very busy. Maybe Elijah should take a nap, but he has no idea why he's so tired. Dom's fingers lace through his hair, and the whole stroking thing is very nice.
All stoners should get stroked.
Elijah's eyes are about to close when he realizes what the problem is. "Dom?"
"Yeah, Lij?" Dom pauses in the petting thing, and that's not right at all.
"What happened to my coffee?"
It's not Elijah's imagination that Dom is snickering. He's obviously too sober, they need to rectify that. Just as soon as they take a nap. "It's on the table in front of you, stoner."
"Oh, yeah. But that's cold."
Dom is quiet for several seconds, and Elijah rolls over so that he's looking up at the Caradhras of pillows where Dominic's head should be. "I know," says the mountain of pillows.
There's a long pause.
"Dom."
"Yeah, Lij?" Caradhras is sighing. Dom sounds very tired, and the petting has stopped again.
"Will you make me some coffee?"
"No." No?
"But why?" Elijah suddenly feels very desperate for some coffee.
"Because Orlando is bringing you some."
Oh.
"Oh."
"Dom?"
"Yes, Elijah?"
"Thank you."
"Yeah, yeah. Shut it, and pass the bong."