So roughly a million years ago, I wrote Splice.

Today I was going through my ficseed folder and I saw a file named, I kid you not, “julian makes sandwiches and is sad.rtf”. Of course I had to open it. Here’s what I found.

(I’d forgotten I was originally going to ping-pong back and forth between their perspectives. I abandoned the idea. Still, I thought this was neat, and I figured some of you might think so too.)

Dinner, Julian declares, is going to be simple, because they are camping, and so there is to be no fancy cooking permitted, are we clear, Elim? He smiles and brandishes an admonishing finger, and Elim laughs back at him, and for a moment there is a spark of light in his eyes.

I keep relighting that spark. It keeps going out…

God, what is he supposed to do? He keeps groping for something familiar in this sea of maybes, and there is nothing, nothing; Elim is nothing like he used to be…

Or maybe he’s exactly how he always was.

Could it all have been a front? All of it?

Elim keeps denying it, and Julian hates to ask, wants to try to move forward; he’s the one who said they were starting over, and now he’s the one who keeps looking back.

Where is the Elim who delighted in beautiful things, who dressed so perfectly, whose mind worked like a cleverly-built machine, whose skin smelled faintly of spice? Where is the Elim who calmly chased, who softly seduced, who wanted Julian so very badly that he waited with no guarantee for a long, drawn-out time, and whose smile at their first kiss had cracked his cool façade so wonderfully?

Julian makes up sandwiches, because that’s simple, and as he spreads peanut butter on to the bread, as he dollops on jam, he sneaks glances over his shoulder. Elim is sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book, waiting for dinner to be simple; he turns the pages slowly, and he’s lost in whatever world they’re spinning for him, and so Julian can tally him up. He’s simpler now, in so many ways. His clothes are darker, more sedate. His mind works just a bit more slowly. His smile is seen much less often, and when it turns up, it’s a quiet thing, unremarkable. And there is no spice on his skin.

It’s a strange and almost painful thing, to see Elim’s light dimmed so low that it’s almost invisible…

It will pass, Julian. This is what happens. This is just his body relearning how to live.

Part of him wants that to be true, and part of him – and he hates himself for it – misses how Elim used to be, and wishes things were the way they were before. What if this is what he is, now? What if this is what he always was?

Lies and more lies, and Julian feels lost in them, sometimes, and when he tells Elim that everything is fine, when he smiles at him and tries to make him laugh, he feels like a liar, too.