LotRips, again
All the post-Oscar angst fic was really messing me up. Like a lot. So I was like, dude, I'm going to write a perfectly happy fic, and I *really* tried. This is the result. It is not, however, perfectly happy, but merely reasonably happy. Happy is hard, man.
Title: To the End of His Days
Rating: PG
Pairing: Billy and Dom friendship
Disclaimer: Fact and fiction are different kinds of truths. This, however, is the second kind.
AN: Thanks to gentle_thorns for betaing.
***
Some days there's something about the quality of the light that sticks in Billy's memory. Sort of golden and warm, like the air is glowing around the edges of things - around blades of grass, the sides of buildings. Grains of sand. The hairs on Dom's arm.
Like there's liquid happiness flowing through the air, thick like honey, yellow and translucent. Remembering those days is like unearthing a dusty box of vinyl records from the top shelf of his closet, pulling it down with a thump and peering to see what's there, just the way he left it. He takes those golden days out one by one to look at, to touch and see. They aren't in mint condition anymore - weathered and dog-eared a bit from handling, but that's the way he likes them. They are soft and worn from rainy afternoons and nights he couldn't sleep, and they play gently on his old turntable.
Days like this one: being woken by Dom leaping on the bed, golden light sticking to him and haloing around his head, the bright yellow cheer of early morning mixing in his hair. Grinning that vivid grin of his, the happiest of all Dom's smiles, light crinkling around his eyes and mouth. His arm heavy and warm across Billy's bare chest, his voice sleepy-rough as he says, "Your hair's sticking up."
Or this: driving home from kayaking on a Sunday afternoon, windows down and the car full of the Fellowship. The smell of seaweed and salt and sweaty actor and a car Billy never cleaned out. Dom turning the music up louder, and the guys all beginning to mosh and dance in their seats so enthusiastically the entire car shook. The look the woman in the Volvo gave them and how Elijah laughed so hard he cried.
Or this: four hobbits on a beach. Sean snoring on his towel, Billy reading with the sun hot on his shoulders, and Lij and Dom industriously building an enormous sandcastle down by the water, completely absorbed. When Billy reaches the end of the page he glances up to look at them, sun-browned and salty, sand covering their hands and feet and marking where they'd rubbed their faces. Elijah looks up at him and waves. "Hey Billy, we need some seaweed to decorate! Bring some over here!"
"Get it yourself, lazy bugger," Billy calls back. That sets off a chorus of protests from both of them until Billy relents and goes in search of perfect decorating seaweed.
Dom takes it from his hand gravely and regards their castle with tilted head, profile framed against the blue of the ocean, eyes intent. He begins to string it over the battlements. Elijah takes a particularly sturdy piece and sticks it into the highest tower, makes a flag.
"You should have a white tree in that courtyard there," Billy says, standing beside them and pointing at one bit of the castle, almost at the top.
"Fetching's your job - you should've brought us one," Dom says, still intent on what he's doing.
"No tiny white trees to be found," Billy says, watching Dom. Dom's concentrating so that his tongue is sticking out in the left corner of his mouth. Billy thinks he must be tasting salt.
"Ah, well," Dom says distractedly.
"Not everything has to be Middle Earth, you guys," Elijah says, laughing.
Dom looks up, eyes laughing. "Blasphemy! And from the star, no less."
"Shut up," Elijah says, rolling his eyes.
Billy is watching the water coming closer to the castle with each wave, beginning to fill the moat on its inward surges. "The tide's coming in," he says. Dom looks up at him from where he's kneeling, and Billy nods towards the water.
"Good," Dom says. "We're nearly finished." He strings the last bit of seaweed along, gazes at the castle and then nods, getting to his feet.
"It's perfect," Elijah says, standing and brushing the sand off his knees. The tide is already lapping at the far wall of the castle, about to start washing it away.
Dom looks at Billy's worried expression and smiles. "One moment of perfection is enough, Bill." His eyes twinkle a bit, amused, and he says with sham gravity, "After all, it'll always be in our hearts."
Billy smiles back and pats his hand against his chest, mock sincerely. "Aye, that it will." The tide laps at the foundation of the castle, already making a visible indentation in the sand. Time and tide make everything disappear, and Billy feels a growing sense of alarm watching it wash away.
They wake up Sean to see the castle, its sea-facing wall already beginning to disintegrate. And then the four hobbits sit on the beach and watch it crumble, watch until there is only ocean where the castle had been. The courtyard where the white tree should've gone is the last part to fall in.
Billy is still wistfully looking at the empty ocean when the others begin to get up and gather their things together. He looks at the waves until Dom grabs his wrist and pulls him to his feet, his hand warm and wet and gritty on Billy's arm.
"Cheer up, Bills. We'll build another one tomorrow," he says, smiling impishly. He leans in and gives Billy a wet kiss on the cheek, damp and sandy. While his mouth is still close to Billy's ear he says softly, so the others can't hear, "You don't always have to hold on so tight."
He squeezes Billy's arm and gives him a last grin before "accidentally" bumping into Sean, who is leaning and off-balance, knocking him down and sending them into a good-natured scuffle that kicks sand into everyone's eyes. Billy and Elijah look at each other, eyes watering. "Oh, that's it," Elijah says, and they jump into the fight, a puppy pile of hobbit arms and legs, squirming and laughing and yelling.
When Billy's head is in Elijah's armpit, and the rest of his body in an impossible tangle of Sean elbows and Dom knees, he begins to see that thick, red-gold liquid gladness flowing in around them, in the rich light of the setting sun. It settles in the gaps of Elijah's teeth, the spaces between Sean's toes, in the creases of Dom's knuckles and the crook of his knee. And Billy is happy, so happy, and he can't stop laughing.
***
These are the things Billy thinks about when it's 3 am on the Tuesday after the Oscars. When everything's all over and he's sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed and listening to Ali's slow, even breathing, wishing he could sleep.
His mobile rings tinnily, buried somewhere in a pile of clothes, and makes him jump. He scrambles to find it and quickly moves into the hallway before it can wake her.
The name on the caller ID is not a surprise. "Dominic," he says into the phone.
"You awake?" Dom asks.
Billy rolls his eyes. "I am now."
"Liar," Dom says.
"Berk," Billy replies.
"Liar," Dom says, persistently. And sounding a little amused.
Billy sighs. "I may have been suffering a wee bit of insomnia, yes."
"It's weird, eh?"
"Insomnia?" Billy asks.
"Last awards show," Dom says patiently.
"Oh. Yeah," Billy says. "A bit, I guess."
"Billy Boyd," Dom says, sounding irritated.
"What?"
"Quit it."
"Quit what?"
"Pretending you haven't been sitting there moping about this," Dom says.
"I haven't."
"William," Dom says.
"I haven't," Billy insists.
Dom sighs. "Fine." He sounds hurt.
The light in the hallway is harsh and fluorescent, middle-of-the-night garish. This is not going to be one of those golden memories. Maybe there won't be more.
"You remember that day on the beach?" Billy asks suddenly, into the aching silence.
"Which day?" Dom asks, voice still a little flat.
"Any of them," Billy says.
There's a long pause. Finally, Dom speaks. "Yeah," he says quietly. "'Course."
"I don't like endings," Billy says.
"I know, Bill," Dom says. Billy leans his head back against the wall, very, very tired. His chest hurts. In the silence he notices a water stain on one of the ceiling tiles down the hallway, brown and ugly.
"We still going surfing tomorrow?" Dom says after a minute. "Or are you going to be crying too hard?"
Billy laughs a little and shifts the phone from his right ear to his left. "We're still surfing."
"Then you better get some sleep, old man."
Billy rolls his eyes. "Good night, Dominic."
"Wait, Bill?" Dom says.
"Yeah?"
"Some endings are happily ever after," Dom says, voice mischievous.
Billy pauses. "I suppose so."
"And you really should think of it less as an ending and more as a beginning. First day of the rest of your life, you know."
"Good night, Dominic."
"Because you know, every cloud really does have a sil-" Billy hangs up the phone.
When he looks up from the "End call" button, the light in the hallway has changed, somehow. Rich and warm and lovely, golden and homey and bright. "And they lived happily ever after," he murmurs, and goes back to bed.
***
END
Title: To the End of His Days
Rating: PG
Pairing: Billy and Dom friendship
Disclaimer: Fact and fiction are different kinds of truths. This, however, is the second kind.
AN: Thanks to gentle_thorns for betaing.
***
Some days there's something about the quality of the light that sticks in Billy's memory. Sort of golden and warm, like the air is glowing around the edges of things - around blades of grass, the sides of buildings. Grains of sand. The hairs on Dom's arm.
Like there's liquid happiness flowing through the air, thick like honey, yellow and translucent. Remembering those days is like unearthing a dusty box of vinyl records from the top shelf of his closet, pulling it down with a thump and peering to see what's there, just the way he left it. He takes those golden days out one by one to look at, to touch and see. They aren't in mint condition anymore - weathered and dog-eared a bit from handling, but that's the way he likes them. They are soft and worn from rainy afternoons and nights he couldn't sleep, and they play gently on his old turntable.
Days like this one: being woken by Dom leaping on the bed, golden light sticking to him and haloing around his head, the bright yellow cheer of early morning mixing in his hair. Grinning that vivid grin of his, the happiest of all Dom's smiles, light crinkling around his eyes and mouth. His arm heavy and warm across Billy's bare chest, his voice sleepy-rough as he says, "Your hair's sticking up."
Or this: driving home from kayaking on a Sunday afternoon, windows down and the car full of the Fellowship. The smell of seaweed and salt and sweaty actor and a car Billy never cleaned out. Dom turning the music up louder, and the guys all beginning to mosh and dance in their seats so enthusiastically the entire car shook. The look the woman in the Volvo gave them and how Elijah laughed so hard he cried.
Or this: four hobbits on a beach. Sean snoring on his towel, Billy reading with the sun hot on his shoulders, and Lij and Dom industriously building an enormous sandcastle down by the water, completely absorbed. When Billy reaches the end of the page he glances up to look at them, sun-browned and salty, sand covering their hands and feet and marking where they'd rubbed their faces. Elijah looks up at him and waves. "Hey Billy, we need some seaweed to decorate! Bring some over here!"
"Get it yourself, lazy bugger," Billy calls back. That sets off a chorus of protests from both of them until Billy relents and goes in search of perfect decorating seaweed.
Dom takes it from his hand gravely and regards their castle with tilted head, profile framed against the blue of the ocean, eyes intent. He begins to string it over the battlements. Elijah takes a particularly sturdy piece and sticks it into the highest tower, makes a flag.
"You should have a white tree in that courtyard there," Billy says, standing beside them and pointing at one bit of the castle, almost at the top.
"Fetching's your job - you should've brought us one," Dom says, still intent on what he's doing.
"No tiny white trees to be found," Billy says, watching Dom. Dom's concentrating so that his tongue is sticking out in the left corner of his mouth. Billy thinks he must be tasting salt.
"Ah, well," Dom says distractedly.
"Not everything has to be Middle Earth, you guys," Elijah says, laughing.
Dom looks up, eyes laughing. "Blasphemy! And from the star, no less."
"Shut up," Elijah says, rolling his eyes.
Billy is watching the water coming closer to the castle with each wave, beginning to fill the moat on its inward surges. "The tide's coming in," he says. Dom looks up at him from where he's kneeling, and Billy nods towards the water.
"Good," Dom says. "We're nearly finished." He strings the last bit of seaweed along, gazes at the castle and then nods, getting to his feet.
"It's perfect," Elijah says, standing and brushing the sand off his knees. The tide is already lapping at the far wall of the castle, about to start washing it away.
Dom looks at Billy's worried expression and smiles. "One moment of perfection is enough, Bill." His eyes twinkle a bit, amused, and he says with sham gravity, "After all, it'll always be in our hearts."
Billy smiles back and pats his hand against his chest, mock sincerely. "Aye, that it will." The tide laps at the foundation of the castle, already making a visible indentation in the sand. Time and tide make everything disappear, and Billy feels a growing sense of alarm watching it wash away.
They wake up Sean to see the castle, its sea-facing wall already beginning to disintegrate. And then the four hobbits sit on the beach and watch it crumble, watch until there is only ocean where the castle had been. The courtyard where the white tree should've gone is the last part to fall in.
Billy is still wistfully looking at the empty ocean when the others begin to get up and gather their things together. He looks at the waves until Dom grabs his wrist and pulls him to his feet, his hand warm and wet and gritty on Billy's arm.
"Cheer up, Bills. We'll build another one tomorrow," he says, smiling impishly. He leans in and gives Billy a wet kiss on the cheek, damp and sandy. While his mouth is still close to Billy's ear he says softly, so the others can't hear, "You don't always have to hold on so tight."
He squeezes Billy's arm and gives him a last grin before "accidentally" bumping into Sean, who is leaning and off-balance, knocking him down and sending them into a good-natured scuffle that kicks sand into everyone's eyes. Billy and Elijah look at each other, eyes watering. "Oh, that's it," Elijah says, and they jump into the fight, a puppy pile of hobbit arms and legs, squirming and laughing and yelling.
When Billy's head is in Elijah's armpit, and the rest of his body in an impossible tangle of Sean elbows and Dom knees, he begins to see that thick, red-gold liquid gladness flowing in around them, in the rich light of the setting sun. It settles in the gaps of Elijah's teeth, the spaces between Sean's toes, in the creases of Dom's knuckles and the crook of his knee. And Billy is happy, so happy, and he can't stop laughing.
***
These are the things Billy thinks about when it's 3 am on the Tuesday after the Oscars. When everything's all over and he's sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed and listening to Ali's slow, even breathing, wishing he could sleep.
His mobile rings tinnily, buried somewhere in a pile of clothes, and makes him jump. He scrambles to find it and quickly moves into the hallway before it can wake her.
The name on the caller ID is not a surprise. "Dominic," he says into the phone.
"You awake?" Dom asks.
Billy rolls his eyes. "I am now."
"Liar," Dom says.
"Berk," Billy replies.
"Liar," Dom says, persistently. And sounding a little amused.
Billy sighs. "I may have been suffering a wee bit of insomnia, yes."
"It's weird, eh?"
"Insomnia?" Billy asks.
"Last awards show," Dom says patiently.
"Oh. Yeah," Billy says. "A bit, I guess."
"Billy Boyd," Dom says, sounding irritated.
"What?"
"Quit it."
"Quit what?"
"Pretending you haven't been sitting there moping about this," Dom says.
"I haven't."
"William," Dom says.
"I haven't," Billy insists.
Dom sighs. "Fine." He sounds hurt.
The light in the hallway is harsh and fluorescent, middle-of-the-night garish. This is not going to be one of those golden memories. Maybe there won't be more.
"You remember that day on the beach?" Billy asks suddenly, into the aching silence.
"Which day?" Dom asks, voice still a little flat.
"Any of them," Billy says.
There's a long pause. Finally, Dom speaks. "Yeah," he says quietly. "'Course."
"I don't like endings," Billy says.
"I know, Bill," Dom says. Billy leans his head back against the wall, very, very tired. His chest hurts. In the silence he notices a water stain on one of the ceiling tiles down the hallway, brown and ugly.
"We still going surfing tomorrow?" Dom says after a minute. "Or are you going to be crying too hard?"
Billy laughs a little and shifts the phone from his right ear to his left. "We're still surfing."
"Then you better get some sleep, old man."
Billy rolls his eyes. "Good night, Dominic."
"Wait, Bill?" Dom says.
"Yeah?"
"Some endings are happily ever after," Dom says, voice mischievous.
Billy pauses. "I suppose so."
"And you really should think of it less as an ending and more as a beginning. First day of the rest of your life, you know."
"Good night, Dominic."
"Because you know, every cloud really does have a sil-" Billy hangs up the phone.
When he looks up from the "End call" button, the light in the hallway has changed, somehow. Rich and warm and lovely, golden and homey and bright. "And they lived happily ever after," he murmurs, and goes back to bed.
***
END