acid chemistry {Dom}

[Erik Stewart]

Ever since Dom had helped him, he’d an increasing need to see the boy, which he’d hoped was well concealed despite the frequent texts and prolonged eye contact and the change in his general attitude. Erik was still a little sarcastic shit when he wanted to be – he could still bite – but there was less ambivalence there and more tentative friendliness…and it went without saying that the ordeal had, at least, done wonders for his trust. He had always suspected Dom wasn’t all chilly exterior, of course, but there was something different about experiencing it firsthand.

But tonight he was a lot like when he’d seen him at the library. Irritated. Reticent. After a few minutes of trying to get him to respond to bullshit small talk, Erik began to suspect he knew the problem. He didn’t know Carter and Dom weren’t communicating – but he did know they were pretty close, and he’d probably heard… well. Erik shuffled; he figured he’d better fess up.

“I met your brother,” he said. Then he sat down beside him, on the side of his bed. Erik bit his lip, anxious, like a dog who’d just been found to have chewed up a purse.

“I thought he was you,” he admitted. “And then…I called ‘im an asshole.”

Erik always had a hard time getting along with people, ever since he was small. He had been raised in the woods, and before he’d come to Hammel he was dramatically un-socialized. Besides that, he just seemed naturally abrasive. Making enemies came natural to him; when it came to making friends, it seemed an uphill battle.

He looked up at his face, a look on his face that resembled pining, mixed with, perhaps, a vain hopefulness. “Are you mad?”

[Dominique Chevalier]

Dom had forgotten Erik was coming over; he would have cancelled. To say he wasn’t in the mood for the snake-was not even close to covering it. Oriel’s talk of ‘gossip’ had been clearly exaggerated, but that didn’t change the fact that he had been brought up. Dom’s business was his own, and he had expected Erik to understand that.

People gossiped, he understood that, and people had gossiped about him before, but they weren’t his, well, friend was probably the closest word to what Erik was.

So yeah, he wasn’t really in the mood to fool around, let alone chat, and had stayed mostly silent as he rubbed ideally at his eyes. But the look of disinterest in his face faded when Erik mentioned his brother, and his eyes grew sharp.

“You talked to Carter,” he asked, his voice curiously flat. “You called him an asshole.” His hands were back by his side now as he stared at Erik. “And you thought he was me.”

How long had he been sleeping with Erik? On and off, over a year. Sure, they didn’t talk much, though that was changing a bit after some... recent event, and surely that was enough time to...

When your identity was always questioned, you grew pretty fucking protective of it. Would Erik have ever noticed if Carter hadn’t said anything? Would he have just jumped on his dick like Tak had and laugh it off after?

When Erik turned to him, all forlorn like a kicked puppy, Dom abruptly pushed himself to his feet and crossed to his dresser to find the two quartz spheres he used to meditate on his powers. Was he mad?

“You’re an idiot,” he said between his clenched teeth, even as he stared at the two balls until they began to circle in his palm. It was difficult to say anything else, his jaw was clenched so tight. The stones were spinning faster and faster as he took deep breaths through his nose.

[Erik Stewart]

He was mad. He could tell from the first word out of his mouth. “Dom,” he pleaded, as he abruptly pushed himself off the bed.

Erik had no idea what it was like to have a twin, or even a sibling; his identity had never been questioned. Even as he looked at him now he experienced regret but not much understanding. He let out a sigh, his freckled shoulders slumping, mentally fumbling with an apology and his fault, neither of which he had much experience with.

He didn’t refute his last statement, just frowned and shifted. “Sorry,” he muttered. His hands rested in his lap, knees together. “It was…just for a minute, an’…well, I ain’t used t’anyone else openin’ the door, so I thought - ” He looked up, to see if any of his words were getting through to him. One of his hands came up to rub at his arm; his eyebrows were drawn in and he had a sort of grimace, the kind people had under acute pressure, or embarrassment. “I thought it was you.”

There was no other way to put it. Erik dropped his gaze down to the floor. He looked contrite enough, of course.

After a pause, he got to his feet, slower than Dom had; he wondered if he should approach and, finally, took one or two tentative steps towards him. His hands he didn’t know what to do with – he clasped them loosely together, fingers hooking over each other, shifting and fidgety. Erik was no flawless navigator of interactions. He still had yet to apologize to many, many other people. It was doubtful he ever would. Yet here he was, unable to dish out one when he actually wanted to.

“Dom, it was a mistake. I didn’t mean anythin’ by it.” His voice drawled with a distinct southern tang. “An’ sometimes when people say shit t’me I just…say some shit back an’…”

[Dominique Chevalier]

Dom was not looking up, his eyes fixed on his crystals as he watched them turn. He needed to concentrate his energy on this, or he'd hit something, or break something. Unlikely it would be Erik, but Dom had been in trouble for broken windows before, even if he mended them well enough that only someone like Campbell could even tell it had smashed at all.

"We're not the same," he said, his voice odd. He could just imagine how angry Carter must have been; Dom was the one with the temper, but Carter knew, Carter knew that he was a tough act to follow for his younger brother sometimes. He'd seen Carter after Tak had left him out of the news she had to break, had seen the frustration mirrored in their faces when people who should have known better got them confused.

Though Dom suspected that he was called Carter more than his brother had been called Dom. There was no malice in the thought, not towards his brother. It just made sense, didn't it?

Abruptly his fingers curled over, halting the spinning as he looked up. He wasn't about to explain that. That was his business. "Think you would have caught on before or after you had his dick in your mouth?" he wondered, his voice as rough as granite as his fingers squeezed the smooth quartz. "We're not the same person, usually people who make a habit out of fucking us know that."

He wasn't shouting, but it was impossible not to hear the lava-hot anger welled up in his throat. Looking back at his crystal balls, Dom started to smooth out the intents his fingers had left.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik’s shoulders squared. He looked up at him, attuned to the anger seething in his voice; he had never heard Dom upset, had never heard him breach anything other than, perhaps, mild irritation, and it was then that he started to realize how greatly he’d trespassed. It had seemed so simple a mishap before. Now he grew uneasy, agitated, rueful, all at once.

“Y’think I don’t know that?” he asked, with what sounded like indignation.

Erik raked his fingers through his black hair, leaving it ruffled. “Shit, Dom, I don’t even know your brother. I know he ain’t you, an’ I definitely wasn’t lookin’ t’suck his dick or anythin’ like that.” His lips shut tight, then broke open like a dam with a hurried, blurted admission: “I mean, he scares th’ shit outta me.”

This did not hold true for Dom, obviously. He went silent then and looked down at the carpet. He blinked, brows furrowed; his arms had since uncrossed and one had gone up to the side of his face, again, to thread his fingers absently through his hair. He only spoke again when he’d mustered up the nerve to and he’d done some fumbling around in his thoughts.

“Look, I know I should’ve…” he paused, “…known somethin’ was up.” After all, Carter had been staring at him like A) he didn’t know him and B) he was pissing him off. “And – I did,” he amended, “but, y’know, sometimes you ain’t seem like y’wanna talk all that much either.”

Erik’s cheeks flushed. He knew it sounded weak; it probably was. His blue eyes picked up off the floor to send a glance Dom’s way, to pick up on what he was thinking (though his back was still mostly turned to him), and to utter: “Dom, I don’t wanna mess this up.”

[Dominique Chevalier]

It didn't surprise Dom that Erik was scared of Carter, if he'd called Carter by his brother's name. Carter's temper wasn't as quick to kindle as Dom's, but that didn't mean it didn't burn cold enough to freeze blood.

When Erik looked up, he would see that Dom had turned to face him, and was still staring at him. His face hadn't twitched an inch, his jaw tight and his teeth set as tight as zipper teeth. It was true, sometimes he didn't want to talk, and sometimes he had been cold and distant, and that sometimes might have been quite often.

It didn't make it ok. It didn't make them the same.

"There's no this," he said flatly. There were now deep indents in the solid quartz from his fingers as he stared at Erik, and slowly he raised his eyebrows in indignation. "We've never had a this. We just had sex."

And then he looked down and saw what had happened to the spheres he used for stress relief, that his father had given him, and he turned and threw them bodily at the wall. They hit the plaster with twin cracks, and stuck there in twin craters.

Turning back to Erik, Dom's hands clenched into empty fists and then loosened to hang by his sides. "I thought you'd be able to tell," he said. A chord in his neck stood out as Dom swallowed. "But you couldn't. So no, there is no thing."

[Erik Stewart]

Erik’s blue eyes widened around the edges, then tightened, it seemed, in a brief indication of pain. He certainly didn’t like to hear that all he’d feared was true, that he was “making it up”, as it were; at first he felt a sort of absence, a blank, even as Dom sent the two pieces of quartz in the wall. Then the blood started to rush towards his face. He heard his heart pound in his ears.

“Oh," he said, face deadpan, despite the burning in his chest. "I get it. You were just pretending t'give a shit." His voice was laden with a sudden and hefty amount of venom. "Like you know anythin’ about me."

“Like you could tell th’ difference,” he said, “between me an’ any other asshole you’re fuckin’. I let you come in an’ out whenever you fuckin’ wanted to. I let you treat me like a rebound an’ you know what? I never asked anythin’ more. I didn’t care.” His teeth flashed as he spoke. “I never bitched about how you didn’t know me.”

There was a light in his clear blue eyes; they were wide open and burning, the black pupils punched through the middle. “So excuse me for tryin’. I know I ain’t th’ best at it, but,” he said, turning away; his chest burned. “fuck.”

[Dominique Chevalier]

Wait, how the hell was this becoming his fault? When did that happen? His eyebrows raised even as his now empty fists flexed out and then clenched again. It was a distraction, perhaps, or deflection. An obvious technique and one he wouldn't fall for. He was not going to have a moment where he'd felt some slight sense of sympathy held against him. Everyone had lapses in judgement. He was not going to have that used against him.

And he was not going to put up with the hypocrisy that he was hearing.

"Of course I could tell the difference," he said coldly. "And I don't rebound. Rebounding suggests there was ever something going on that I gave a fuck about." He hadn't been so transparent, surely? Had he? There had been that one time, after that stupid present, but that had been a one time thing. One time. And Erik hadn't complained.

Dom's lips grew pale as he pressed them together in a thin, cold line as he looked at Erik like he'd grown a second head. "It's been a long time since you first came up to me and made your offer," he said quietly. "If you had a problem with our arrangement, you've had almost a year to voice it. You don't get to throw that at me now. I didn't fuck up. You did."

[Erik Stewart]

“You don’t rebound,” he reiterated, with the brunt of whatever it was bubbling in his chest, lunging up his throat like an animal. “I mighta been around the block a few times - that just means I seen it all. I know you think you shit gold but you ain’t any different; ‘til the second you do, you’re made ‘uh the same dirt as the rest of us.”

He grew fierce; he was leaning forward some, teeth flashing as he spoke, a cord of muscle in his neck straining underneath his skin…he may have had a slight body but his voice could carry. It didn’t matter that Dom was completely impassive towards it. He didn’t think he’d ever got though to him and he wasn’t sure he ever would, but this display was more for himself than anything: there was just suddenly too much steam under the lid and it made him wild.

“Did I sign a contract?” he spat. “Agreement? What agreement? Is that what you call it when you fuck someone? Jesus Christ, if you think,” he said, enunciating, “that I kept doin’ you because I thought I was in some kinda ‘agreement’, then you’re fucking wrong.”

Erik raised his head. He opened his mouth – then huffed, eyebrows drawn in. This time it wasn’t only in anger, but something else; it inched into his blue eyes. “I fuck up a lot,” he replied (still haughty), then grit his teeth. His eye contact slipped. “I know I do. An’ I said - ”

He wasn’t going to sound like a broken record. Instead, Erik paused – hesitated, almost – and broke his voice down a degree to tell him “I don’t understand,” in a wavering a slightly bewildered tone.

[Dominique Chevalier]

Telling an earth manipulator that people were made of dirt probably did not have the desired effect. Dom knew that, and he knew just what he could do with dirt. His expression became disdainful as he raised an eyebrow and looked Erik up and down. The meaning of the glance was clear; Dom didn't need to produce gold from his ass to know what he was about, and where he stood.

Erik was starting to take everything he said and run wild with it; "I mean," Dom said flatly, "that it's just sex. And it has always just been sex. That was the agreement." It was the agreement he had with everyone he slept with. It was the reason he slept with them, and it was not allowed to change.

Again, Dom's jaw clicked as he flexed it, his lips paling under pressure as his teeth ground. Erik's display of anger had been ignored, other than confirming what he already knew about the other boy's out-of-control emotions. He watched it flare up, like a cobra's hood, and then just as quickly fall back.

He just sounded confused. Small and confused.

What was there to be confused about? It wasn't his job to explain what was perfectly obvious, was it? But the confusion was real. His eyes still narrowed, unable to shake the suspicion that he was being played, Dom felt his jaw ache and tried to release it. "What," he got out between gritted teeth, "are you finding so hard to understand?"

If this was a trick, if there was the slightest sign that Erik was playing dumb, Dom felt he'd hit something.

[Erik Stewart]

He wondered if he should tell him. Dom’s reassurance that their whole arrangement had been just that and no more, no less, felt like a severing to him. He could have gone on and done some more yelling. He’d half a mind to. But that didn’t seem quite as effective where Dom was concerned; it would be as fruitful as waves pounding against the side of a mountain.

Erik would go back and nurse his sore spots later, if need be. But right then Dom’s tone made him prickle, and he raised his head, jaw set, squinting. “Whatever that was!” he said. “You know, one minute it was fine, and then - ” it had certainly seemed real to him, after all, “ – and then you’re tellin’ me you’re not the same as he is.”

He was all bewilderment and some exasperation. “I mean, what’s that about?” he asked. “You don’t think I know what twins are? Of course I fucking know that. It’s not like I think they scan ‘em in and print ‘em out.”

He understood that was the root of the problem, somehow, that he’d mistaken his brother for him. He thought if he hadn’t even seen him or spoke to him something might have been different. Yes, he regretted it, but he was unaware of just how grievously he’d blown it.

And here he was now, granting Dom the knowledge that he’d thought there had been some leniency to the ‘fuck buddies’ thing, and he was keenly embarrassed by it.

[Dominique Chevalier]

Without anything to hold in his hands, to fix his attention on, Dom's fingers had curled into fists that pulsed open and closed like a heart beat. He shouldn't care. He shouldn't care. Erik had committed a crime that the twins considered unpardonable; Carter had broken it off with people for assuming he and Dom were a 'two for one' kind of deal and he usually liked the people he hooked up with more than Dom did.

Or at least, found them less pathetic and transparent.

"You're so fucking stupid," he said finally, staring at Erik as if seeing him for the first time. "You have no idea what I'm talking about." No one would, of course, unless they were Carter. That was the point. But Carter wasn't talking to him. "Why do you even bother talking to me at all, if you don't fucking listen? You always natter on about bullshit that doesn't matter."

Erik's small talk and attempts at conversation had only grown recently, and he'd asked.. things that people usually wouldn't really think were important to know. Things that didn't have smooth, polished sides to show. Things that were jagged and ugly. And without Carter, he had had no one else to let those things even begin to show because no one wanted them. But Erik had asked, hadn't changed, and Dom had thought maybe...

Erik clearly had invested something too. His mistake for admitting it. "You didn't look hard enough," he said finally. "Most people don't."

[Erik Stewart]

It wasn’t as if Erik hadn’t been called stupid before. If his grades accounted for anything, then he must have been, but the declaration made his arms cross over himself and his jaw set anyways. His eyes flickered down towards a point at his feet and then upwards, where the blue of his irises stared from underneath his dark brows.

He’d thought all his bullshit had mattered a little, but he figured saying that would put him in an even deeper hole. “I guess I don’t. I can’t read minds,” he snapped. “You’re the one who ain’t listenin’ t’me. You don’t listen t’anybody. It’s all bullshit t’you.”

Erik thought he shouldn’t have bothered, too. He was red with indignation and embarrassment, and he was getting nowhere, absolutely nowhere. He could hardly look at Dom anymore. He wanted out. He had no more words; his throat was tight. He could feel himself shutting down with something close to hopelessness, and no small amount of hurt, but this he would keep to himself until he was sure he was alone.

You didn’t look hard enough. Erik made a sound, like an exhale, his fingers running through his scalp in one long sweep; he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and looked up, teeth set and lips taut.

“Fine,” he said. He paused, for a second. “I should’ve but I didn’t.”

He had already told him he hadn’t meant it. He had already said sorry. It would be redundant to say it again and it would do him no favors, he reckoned, because if there was any dignity to him left then he intended to keep it. “I’ll go.”

[Dominique Chevalier]

Abruptly Dom turned on his heel, crossing Erik to yank his dorm door open expectantly. He didn't have anything else to say on the subject, instead looking to where his two quartz spheres were still embedded in the wall and out of his reach. Fucking hell, he'd need those back quickly. And he'd seen the way Erik's eyes had started to glint. He wasn't going to let him stay long enough to try and use water works on him, he was so tired of that trick.

If you found the flaw in a stone and tapped it hard enough, the stone would crack. It didn't matter how hard it was; even diamonds had flaws they could be split along. Dom felt that his flaws had been hammered to breaking point, and if he was going to split it would not be when there were people around to gape and gawk at his insides.

Erik would have to walk past him to pass through the now open door, and once he had, the door would swing shut with enough force for the sound to be heard throughout the small common area.

What went on when the door was closed was Dom's business, and it would stay that way.