Case of You, 7/7
Title: Case of You, Chapter 7
Author: Dani
Fandom: Lotrips
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: A work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Notes: see chapter one, two, three, four, five, six
December 2000
"What do you mean it’s over?"
“Over, Elijah. We’re not seeing each other anymore. There’s no romance. The spark is gone. It’s fucking over. It's been over.”
"And you've been keeping this from me for how many months?" Elijah sits cross-legged on the end of Dominic's bed, flouting his no smoking in the house rule. It wouldn't be his house for that much longer, and besides, Elijah feels it's owed him. Nearly five months have gone by, and Elijah can't quite believe he hasn't known that Billy and Dominic were no longer a couple. They've been out together, the three of them. They'd been to Thailand for a break. They'd been to fucking Australia, and he hadn't known the entire time. He refused to believe it. "That's impossible. You're just winding me up."
"You just haven't noticed, and we didn't want you to." There were piles of shirts and trousers everywhere and Elijah kicks one off the edge of the bed just to annoy Dominic. Dominic bends to pick the clothes up and then catch another pile when Elijah does it again. "This is why we didn't want you to know."
"Bullshit."
"And smoke outside."
Elijah stands, sending three piles to the floor, and steps over to the open window. He waves his hand in front of it as if he can clear the air, thinking it served Dominic right for not saying something before. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."
"We thought maybe we'd stay together for the sake of the kids, but then why bother. They turned out to be a bunch of foul-mouthed smokers anyway."
Elijah ignores that. Instead, he thinks back over the last months of filming--of on set shenanigans, of being so tired he wanted to collapse sometimes. Billy and Dominic never acted any differently, except, he supposes, Dominic kept his hands to himself. There was no sneaking off, no catching them in awkward embraces. In fact, they had both seemed happier, which Elijah had translated into simply finally falling into a comfortable pattern. "Does Orlando know?"
Dominic shakes his head then gives up on trying to back to sit on the bed to face Elijah. "Actually, maybe. I don't know. We didn't announce it, Elijah. It was just something that we had to work through."
Elijah taps the end of his cigarette out the window then smokes some more, watching Dominic rearrange his piles. In three weeks they'll all be back home. On other sets, that was usually the end. He drove home and got on with work--with other scripts and characters, other actors, other lives. He hadn’t really thought about what would happen this time. He supposes in some way he thought it would never end, or at least had hoped it wouldn’t.
“Do you miss him?”
“We’re still friends, Elijah. That came first.”
“I know. But when it stopped being more, were you just, like, okay with it?”
“I had a weekend to sulk and then that was that.” Dominic crumples up a shirt and throws it at Elijah’s head, missing him completely. “Yeah, it hurt. Of course it did. I just, I knew, right? I knew it was like this insane time in both our lives, but I just wanted it so damn much. Sean tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I fucking knew, but I wanted to believe anyway.”
Dominic gives up on packing completely and lays back in his bed, pushing off the piles. They collapse in puddles around the bed and Elijah spots a shirt of his own he’d forgotten about and another that he’s seen Billy wear. He wonders who it actually belonged to, if there was an equal division of the property left between them or if they boxed it all up one night and traded.
After a while, Dominic sits back up and smiles at Elijah. “I should have listened to Sean.”
“I’m totally telling him that you said that. It won’t even matter to him what it was.”
“He knows. I’m sure he knows. I think Billy told him.”
Elijah stubs out his cigarette and tosses it into the garden below, belatedly thinking he shouldn’t have done that. He stands, looks out the window as if he might find it, then walks over to join Dominic on the bed. “I’m really sorry, Dom.”
“I am, too.”
“Is it completely selfish of me to say that I’m glad I didn’t know?”
“A little, but we didn’t want you to, so it’s all right.”
Elijah nods and sags against Dominic. “I’m glad you’re still friends.”
Dominic sighs heavily and hugs Elijah to him. "So am I, Frodo."
***
Orlando moves to wrap his arm beneath Elijah’s chest, pulling him closer even though his balance is now a precarious thing. He kisses Elijah’s neck and shoulders as far as he can reach, while rubbing tight circles into Elijah’s lower back with firm, massaging strokes. “Relax, baby. You have to relax.”
“Hard to,” Elijah says, his breathy laugh breaking in the middle. He’s always hated being called baby by anyone else, but Orlando twists the word enough to make it sound obscene, as if they’re one move away from a porno flick. The wet slide of Orlando’s cock against his thigh helps the image along.
Elijah’s body is stiff, tight, and he pulls his arms beneath him to grip Orlando’s forearm, feeling Orlando's muscles, hard from a year of pulling a bow taut and flexed beneath his hands. His shoulders are hunched and he forces himself to take a deep breath, wills his uncooperative body to heed Orlando’s words. It isn’t their first time--nothing close to it--but it might very well be their last.
Orlando pushes his slick finger into Elijah again, up to the first knuckle and twists it gently until Elijah lets go of the breath he’d been holding, until he's stretching his leg out long and arches his back even more to make it easier. Orlando straightens his finger, pulls it out slightly then back, pushing forward with a second and humming his approval when Elijah takes it and relaxes finally into the bed.
“There you go,” Orlando says, laying down next to him, still working his fingers deep inside Elijah’s body, with a slow, deep movement that makes Elijah’s breath go high and thin. “Promise me we can still do this.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Promise me. After we go home. On holidays. Christmas.” Orlando laughs low and deep. “Every year at Christmas I’ll come and fuck you.”
“Birthdays,” Elijah chokes out. “Like blowing out candles. Like. Like one to grow on. Fucking ready, Orli.”
Orlando pulls out his fingers slowly, listening to Elijah hiss at the loss, then slides his hand beneath Elijah’s body again to stroke his cock. He’s not surprised at all to find Elijah’s hand there and puts his fingers over Elijah’s, moving them together. “Do you want to come first? Do you want me to suck you off?”
“Just fuck me,” Elijah says, moving his hands to brace himself, lift up onto his knees and hold himself against the headboard.
Afterwards, Orlando falls to his back, breathing hard, reaching over the side of the bed to find a towel or a shirt, anything. He finally gets up and stumbles into the bathroom, the bright light blinding them both when he flicks it on. He blinks into the mirror, washes his hands and rinses out a cloth for Elijah.
When he comes back to the bed, Elijah hasn’t moved, though his eyes are open. Orlando swipes the cloth over his face and neck, down his back, cleaning him off until Elijah turns onto his back and takes the cloth from him.
“Did you know?” Elijah asks after he’s dropped the washcloth over the side of the bed and onto the floor. He puts his hand on Orlando’s thigh and closes his eyes.
Orlando watches him over the rim of his water bottle, waiting for more, but Elijah looks as though he’s dropped off to sleep. “About what?” he finally asks.
“Billy and Dom. About them breaking up, like, months ago and not telling anyone.”
“Yeah.” Orlando offers the bottle to Elijah, who drinks thirstily before handing it back to him. Orlando twists the cap back on loosely and sets it on the table, wondering where Elijah’s thoughts are taking him. There’s one cigarette left in his pack and he digs them from his jeans and finds a pack of matches in the drawer of his bedside table. Lighting up seems to revive Elijah a bit and he sits up, waiting for his turn.
“I wanted to be like them for a while. I think I was in love with them both.”
“Not anymore?”
“I still love them. But Sean was right twice today.” Orlando cocks his head to the side and Elijah can see him trying to work out his meaning. He doesn’t want to explain, though. Just wants to finish their cigarette and go to sleep. Explaining would take too much time and energy he doesn’t have. “I think they could have made it though. If they weren’t here.”
“Being here is why they were together. I don’t know. I think you could talk yourself in circles over that for days and still not have an answer.”
They smoke the rest of the cigarette in silence and after Elijah takes his last drag, he curls onto his side. Orlando stubs out the cigarette into an old, glass ash tray that he'd stolen from a hotel on the South Island, its blue lettering and picture of a whale scratched to the point where it’s barely legible. He curls up next to Elijah, his hand traveling the length of Elijah's arm and shoulder before settling on his waist, listening to Elijah’s breaths even out in sleep.
Orlando thinks again about Billy and Dominic--thinks what he would have never said aloud to Elijah. He had loved Dominic himself a bit in the beginning and hates that Dominic fell so hard for Billy. He thinks that he would have given nearly everything at the start but ultimately, he thinks maybe Billy was right. Their families, their careers--there was a lot to lose and who knows what he would have done. Who knows what Dominic really would have sacrificed once they left the islands. He thinks maybe what he'd told Elijah was best and right: he could think about it for days and still never have an answer.
***
The last weeks of filming are over before any of them can really think about it, or mourn it. Billy, turning up for feet as usual before the sun is over the horizon, finds his call sheet and reads with a surprise he knows he shouldn't have that it is his last. He stands staring at the paper for several minutes, not quite believing it's over though he'd known it was coming. It had been only a few days earlier that he'd watched Elijah and Sean's last scene together. In a week or so, surely before Christmas, he’ll be back in Glasgow, eating his gran’s treacle pudding and sleeping on Margaret’s couch again. Just the thought makes his eyes well up, and the entire experience seems as though it never happened.
“This is it, then. Our last scene.”
Billy leans back into Dominic’s hand at the small of his back and nods his head. He turns, meaning to make a joke, but it dies on his tongue at the sight of Dominic’s eyes, glassy with unshed tears. They hug for a long time outside the door and when they step apart, Dominic steals the sheet, folding it neatly and putting it into his pocket.
“Put it back the way it was, Dom.”
“I don’t think I will, Billy.”
“Dominic.” Billy sucks in a great breath through his nose as though preparing for a long lecture but then Dominic is looking at him so expectantly--so repentantly--that the words are lost and he laughs long and loud because if he doesn’t, he’ll cry.
In fact the entire day is like that. Take after take, cheers as everyone celebrates each shot in case it is the last, until when it finally is the last, no one has the voice left for it. It’s just Peter saying “that’s a wrap” and a smattering of applause as everyone begins to hug and say goodbye.
For the last time, Billy and Dom find themselves being stripped of their Hobbit feet, with only one joke of being “defeated” between them. They can’t muster up the energy to think of others, and before long they’re the only ones left in the room to change. No more audience. No one left to entertain.
“Last time we’re in makeup together,” Dominic says. He twirls around in his chair, looking around at the cramped space, every available surface covered with wigs and makeup and pictures they've plastered on the walls. He won't miss the feet, but he will miss Ian bellowing at them at six in the morning to turn their music off, Billy eating his porridge from a cracked blue bowl, Elijah's enthusiasm over music.
“There will be pickups.”
“Last time you’ll tell me there’ll be pickups.”
"Last time you'll tell me it's the last time. Besides, it's not quite over yet. There's dinner and drinks tonight,” Billy says as he begins to count off on his fingers. “There’s breakfast tomorrow and one last surf. The wrap party. We’re on the same bloody flight home. It’s not the end.”
“Yeah.” Billy sits up in his chair and looks at Dominic in the big mirror that stretches across the makeup room. Dominic is staring back at him, looking less young than he once had. “You’ll go far. In your career. I’m glad I was here to see you in the beginning. I'm glad I was a part of it.”
Dominic nods at the compliment, his cheeks bright red in pleasure. It means more coming from Billy than it would have from anyone else. He spins his chair around slowly and when he comes back to center, he finds Billy is still watching him. One more last, Dominic supposes. One last chance. “I still love you, just as much as before, but I understand now.” Billy just nods, his lips turned up into something that's not quite a smile, and Dominic pushes on. "It seems anticlimactic, doesn't it? I mean, even Elijah had his happy ending."
"Not so happy. Not so much an ending."
"No." There doesn't seem to be much else to say, and so Dominic shrugs, getting up from his chair. He takes off Merry's clothes for the last time for a long time and hangs them carefully next to Pippin's. When he meets Billy's eyes this time, it's as themselves, and each seems to holding his breath, and then, just as suddenly as it had started so many months before, it's over.
epilogue
Author: Dani
Fandom: Lotrips
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: A work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Notes: see chapter one, two, three, four, five, six
December 2000
"What do you mean it’s over?"
“Over, Elijah. We’re not seeing each other anymore. There’s no romance. The spark is gone. It’s fucking over. It's been over.”
"And you've been keeping this from me for how many months?" Elijah sits cross-legged on the end of Dominic's bed, flouting his no smoking in the house rule. It wouldn't be his house for that much longer, and besides, Elijah feels it's owed him. Nearly five months have gone by, and Elijah can't quite believe he hasn't known that Billy and Dominic were no longer a couple. They've been out together, the three of them. They'd been to Thailand for a break. They'd been to fucking Australia, and he hadn't known the entire time. He refused to believe it. "That's impossible. You're just winding me up."
"You just haven't noticed, and we didn't want you to." There were piles of shirts and trousers everywhere and Elijah kicks one off the edge of the bed just to annoy Dominic. Dominic bends to pick the clothes up and then catch another pile when Elijah does it again. "This is why we didn't want you to know."
"Bullshit."
"And smoke outside."
Elijah stands, sending three piles to the floor, and steps over to the open window. He waves his hand in front of it as if he can clear the air, thinking it served Dominic right for not saying something before. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."
"We thought maybe we'd stay together for the sake of the kids, but then why bother. They turned out to be a bunch of foul-mouthed smokers anyway."
Elijah ignores that. Instead, he thinks back over the last months of filming--of on set shenanigans, of being so tired he wanted to collapse sometimes. Billy and Dominic never acted any differently, except, he supposes, Dominic kept his hands to himself. There was no sneaking off, no catching them in awkward embraces. In fact, they had both seemed happier, which Elijah had translated into simply finally falling into a comfortable pattern. "Does Orlando know?"
Dominic shakes his head then gives up on trying to back to sit on the bed to face Elijah. "Actually, maybe. I don't know. We didn't announce it, Elijah. It was just something that we had to work through."
Elijah taps the end of his cigarette out the window then smokes some more, watching Dominic rearrange his piles. In three weeks they'll all be back home. On other sets, that was usually the end. He drove home and got on with work--with other scripts and characters, other actors, other lives. He hadn’t really thought about what would happen this time. He supposes in some way he thought it would never end, or at least had hoped it wouldn’t.
“Do you miss him?”
“We’re still friends, Elijah. That came first.”
“I know. But when it stopped being more, were you just, like, okay with it?”
“I had a weekend to sulk and then that was that.” Dominic crumples up a shirt and throws it at Elijah’s head, missing him completely. “Yeah, it hurt. Of course it did. I just, I knew, right? I knew it was like this insane time in both our lives, but I just wanted it so damn much. Sean tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I fucking knew, but I wanted to believe anyway.”
Dominic gives up on packing completely and lays back in his bed, pushing off the piles. They collapse in puddles around the bed and Elijah spots a shirt of his own he’d forgotten about and another that he’s seen Billy wear. He wonders who it actually belonged to, if there was an equal division of the property left between them or if they boxed it all up one night and traded.
After a while, Dominic sits back up and smiles at Elijah. “I should have listened to Sean.”
“I’m totally telling him that you said that. It won’t even matter to him what it was.”
“He knows. I’m sure he knows. I think Billy told him.”
Elijah stubs out his cigarette and tosses it into the garden below, belatedly thinking he shouldn’t have done that. He stands, looks out the window as if he might find it, then walks over to join Dominic on the bed. “I’m really sorry, Dom.”
“I am, too.”
“Is it completely selfish of me to say that I’m glad I didn’t know?”
“A little, but we didn’t want you to, so it’s all right.”
Elijah nods and sags against Dominic. “I’m glad you’re still friends.”
Dominic sighs heavily and hugs Elijah to him. "So am I, Frodo."
***
Orlando moves to wrap his arm beneath Elijah’s chest, pulling him closer even though his balance is now a precarious thing. He kisses Elijah’s neck and shoulders as far as he can reach, while rubbing tight circles into Elijah’s lower back with firm, massaging strokes. “Relax, baby. You have to relax.”
“Hard to,” Elijah says, his breathy laugh breaking in the middle. He’s always hated being called baby by anyone else, but Orlando twists the word enough to make it sound obscene, as if they’re one move away from a porno flick. The wet slide of Orlando’s cock against his thigh helps the image along.
Elijah’s body is stiff, tight, and he pulls his arms beneath him to grip Orlando’s forearm, feeling Orlando's muscles, hard from a year of pulling a bow taut and flexed beneath his hands. His shoulders are hunched and he forces himself to take a deep breath, wills his uncooperative body to heed Orlando’s words. It isn’t their first time--nothing close to it--but it might very well be their last.
Orlando pushes his slick finger into Elijah again, up to the first knuckle and twists it gently until Elijah lets go of the breath he’d been holding, until he's stretching his leg out long and arches his back even more to make it easier. Orlando straightens his finger, pulls it out slightly then back, pushing forward with a second and humming his approval when Elijah takes it and relaxes finally into the bed.
“There you go,” Orlando says, laying down next to him, still working his fingers deep inside Elijah’s body, with a slow, deep movement that makes Elijah’s breath go high and thin. “Promise me we can still do this.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Promise me. After we go home. On holidays. Christmas.” Orlando laughs low and deep. “Every year at Christmas I’ll come and fuck you.”
“Birthdays,” Elijah chokes out. “Like blowing out candles. Like. Like one to grow on. Fucking ready, Orli.”
Orlando pulls out his fingers slowly, listening to Elijah hiss at the loss, then slides his hand beneath Elijah’s body again to stroke his cock. He’s not surprised at all to find Elijah’s hand there and puts his fingers over Elijah’s, moving them together. “Do you want to come first? Do you want me to suck you off?”
“Just fuck me,” Elijah says, moving his hands to brace himself, lift up onto his knees and hold himself against the headboard.
Afterwards, Orlando falls to his back, breathing hard, reaching over the side of the bed to find a towel or a shirt, anything. He finally gets up and stumbles into the bathroom, the bright light blinding them both when he flicks it on. He blinks into the mirror, washes his hands and rinses out a cloth for Elijah.
When he comes back to the bed, Elijah hasn’t moved, though his eyes are open. Orlando swipes the cloth over his face and neck, down his back, cleaning him off until Elijah turns onto his back and takes the cloth from him.
“Did you know?” Elijah asks after he’s dropped the washcloth over the side of the bed and onto the floor. He puts his hand on Orlando’s thigh and closes his eyes.
Orlando watches him over the rim of his water bottle, waiting for more, but Elijah looks as though he’s dropped off to sleep. “About what?” he finally asks.
“Billy and Dom. About them breaking up, like, months ago and not telling anyone.”
“Yeah.” Orlando offers the bottle to Elijah, who drinks thirstily before handing it back to him. Orlando twists the cap back on loosely and sets it on the table, wondering where Elijah’s thoughts are taking him. There’s one cigarette left in his pack and he digs them from his jeans and finds a pack of matches in the drawer of his bedside table. Lighting up seems to revive Elijah a bit and he sits up, waiting for his turn.
“I wanted to be like them for a while. I think I was in love with them both.”
“Not anymore?”
“I still love them. But Sean was right twice today.” Orlando cocks his head to the side and Elijah can see him trying to work out his meaning. He doesn’t want to explain, though. Just wants to finish their cigarette and go to sleep. Explaining would take too much time and energy he doesn’t have. “I think they could have made it though. If they weren’t here.”
“Being here is why they were together. I don’t know. I think you could talk yourself in circles over that for days and still not have an answer.”
They smoke the rest of the cigarette in silence and after Elijah takes his last drag, he curls onto his side. Orlando stubs out the cigarette into an old, glass ash tray that he'd stolen from a hotel on the South Island, its blue lettering and picture of a whale scratched to the point where it’s barely legible. He curls up next to Elijah, his hand traveling the length of Elijah's arm and shoulder before settling on his waist, listening to Elijah’s breaths even out in sleep.
Orlando thinks again about Billy and Dominic--thinks what he would have never said aloud to Elijah. He had loved Dominic himself a bit in the beginning and hates that Dominic fell so hard for Billy. He thinks that he would have given nearly everything at the start but ultimately, he thinks maybe Billy was right. Their families, their careers--there was a lot to lose and who knows what he would have done. Who knows what Dominic really would have sacrificed once they left the islands. He thinks maybe what he'd told Elijah was best and right: he could think about it for days and still never have an answer.
***
The last weeks of filming are over before any of them can really think about it, or mourn it. Billy, turning up for feet as usual before the sun is over the horizon, finds his call sheet and reads with a surprise he knows he shouldn't have that it is his last. He stands staring at the paper for several minutes, not quite believing it's over though he'd known it was coming. It had been only a few days earlier that he'd watched Elijah and Sean's last scene together. In a week or so, surely before Christmas, he’ll be back in Glasgow, eating his gran’s treacle pudding and sleeping on Margaret’s couch again. Just the thought makes his eyes well up, and the entire experience seems as though it never happened.
“This is it, then. Our last scene.”
Billy leans back into Dominic’s hand at the small of his back and nods his head. He turns, meaning to make a joke, but it dies on his tongue at the sight of Dominic’s eyes, glassy with unshed tears. They hug for a long time outside the door and when they step apart, Dominic steals the sheet, folding it neatly and putting it into his pocket.
“Put it back the way it was, Dom.”
“I don’t think I will, Billy.”
“Dominic.” Billy sucks in a great breath through his nose as though preparing for a long lecture but then Dominic is looking at him so expectantly--so repentantly--that the words are lost and he laughs long and loud because if he doesn’t, he’ll cry.
In fact the entire day is like that. Take after take, cheers as everyone celebrates each shot in case it is the last, until when it finally is the last, no one has the voice left for it. It’s just Peter saying “that’s a wrap” and a smattering of applause as everyone begins to hug and say goodbye.
For the last time, Billy and Dom find themselves being stripped of their Hobbit feet, with only one joke of being “defeated” between them. They can’t muster up the energy to think of others, and before long they’re the only ones left in the room to change. No more audience. No one left to entertain.
“Last time we’re in makeup together,” Dominic says. He twirls around in his chair, looking around at the cramped space, every available surface covered with wigs and makeup and pictures they've plastered on the walls. He won't miss the feet, but he will miss Ian bellowing at them at six in the morning to turn their music off, Billy eating his porridge from a cracked blue bowl, Elijah's enthusiasm over music.
“There will be pickups.”
“Last time you’ll tell me there’ll be pickups.”
"Last time you'll tell me it's the last time. Besides, it's not quite over yet. There's dinner and drinks tonight,” Billy says as he begins to count off on his fingers. “There’s breakfast tomorrow and one last surf. The wrap party. We’re on the same bloody flight home. It’s not the end.”
“Yeah.” Billy sits up in his chair and looks at Dominic in the big mirror that stretches across the makeup room. Dominic is staring back at him, looking less young than he once had. “You’ll go far. In your career. I’m glad I was here to see you in the beginning. I'm glad I was a part of it.”
Dominic nods at the compliment, his cheeks bright red in pleasure. It means more coming from Billy than it would have from anyone else. He spins his chair around slowly and when he comes back to center, he finds Billy is still watching him. One more last, Dominic supposes. One last chance. “I still love you, just as much as before, but I understand now.” Billy just nods, his lips turned up into something that's not quite a smile, and Dominic pushes on. "It seems anticlimactic, doesn't it? I mean, even Elijah had his happy ending."
"Not so happy. Not so much an ending."
"No." There doesn't seem to be much else to say, and so Dominic shrugs, getting up from his chair. He takes off Merry's clothes for the last time for a long time and hangs them carefully next to Pippin's. When he meets Billy's eyes this time, it's as themselves, and each seems to holding his breath, and then, just as suddenly as it had started so many months before, it's over.
epilogue