Fic: (NaNo) Written Truth - part 1
title: Written Truth (working title, not sure if I'm happy with it yet) - part 1
rating: PG-13 so far, but it's probably going to go up to R or mild NC-17 eventually
summary: AU - Dom's a teenager who likes to watch people, and he becomes obsessed with Billy and tries to control Billy's life. (note: Billy isn't in this first part)
note: This one was coming pretty easily in the beginning, but towards the end of this excerpt, you may notice the writing getting repetitive or just... bad, I dunno. But, no editing 'til December, right? (Also, yes, this is the beginning of the fic)
wordcount: 4388
index
Chapter 4 - The Breakup
Laura stormed out the door, slamming it in her anger, while Jack stood exactly where she’d left him in the middle of the living room, too stunned to move. He was guilty, he knew, but he didn’t think she knew. Jack continued to wonder in shocked horror how Laura had found out about his transgressions. By the time his normal brain function had resumed, Laura was long gone, having thrown rocks into Jack’s car’s windshield in the process.
Jack rushed outside after his now-ex-girlfriend and gaped at the damage to his precious car, which he cared for with something akin to fatherly love. He screamed. Laura’s taillights weren’t even visible at the end of the street, but he screamed at her anyway. “YOU FUCKING BITCH!” he shouted, throwing his head back with the force of his emotion. He couldn’t think of anything more imaginative to say, however, so he repeated this phrase several times at varying volumes.
Later that night, Jack had fallen into a restless sleep. He clutched at the pillow beside his-Laura’s pillow-in her absence. Several times during the evening, Jack jerked awake and looked around the bedroom wildly, searching for his love. But she was nowhere to be found, and the moment the day’s activities streamed back to him, Jack burst into tears, every single time. He had ruined the best thing in his life. Laura.
Jack wandered around the empty house the next day-a Thursday, so he was missing work-at a loss for what to do with himself. He picked up the phone several times, but he never even made it to the point of dialling Laura’s number. Instead, he called his best friend of years, Max Perkins. Their short conversation quickly became heated, but in the end, Max agreed to come over to sooth his friend, and indeed, he arrived within minutes of the end of the phone call.
Jack didn’t go outside to greet Max; Max had a key and let himself inside, an apprehensive look adorning his face. He jingled the keys nervously in his left hand while turned the knob and pushed the door open with his right. As he cautiously entered the silent house, he called out to his mate, “Jack? Where are you?”
“Dinner!”
Dominic Monaghan snapped his journal shut and rolled over, tucking it beneath his bed in the blink of an eye. His mother didn’t come in; she had called from the hallway. Dom had known dinner was ready-he had a sense of smell, after all-but he had no plans to eat it. Most of the time, Dom stayed well away from his mother’s cooking. It was often healthy and moderately filling, but those qualities never made up for the horrendous taste.
“You coming?” she called from right outside Dom’s bedroom door.
“No, thank you,” Dom replied, loud enough so that she could hear him.
Dom’s breathing and heart rate-risen because of the near-panic of his mother catching him writing-had quickly slowed back to normal. Dom frowned at himself; usually he had better control over his instincts, and he hardly ever went into a real panic. Not for several years, anyway.
With a deep sigh, he rolled the rest of the way off his bed and landed on his knees on the floor. His bed consisted of only a mattress barely raised off the floor, so it wasn’t far to fall. Peering beneath it into the darkened treasury, he groped for his tool belt, something he’d made for himself years ago and was still an invaluable aid in his activities. With it, Dom pulled out his journal and pen and a peanut-butter-without-jelly sandwich from lunch that he hadn’t finished.
The tool belt was little more than a leather belt with hand-sewn fabric pockets stapled to it. Dom packed the customized belt with a practiced, methodical ease: binoculars in the right hip pocket-probably Dom’s most-used tool besides his journal; the sandwich, wrapped in damp paper towels into the back-left pocket (Dom wasn’t sure if he’d even need it as he wasn’t feeling very hungry); a multi-power torch and extra batteries in the special pocket on his left hip; and finally, black leather gloves in the front-left pocket.
Next, Dom retrieved his backpack from its hook on the back of the door. Inside he put his journal, a notebook, a dark, chocolate-brown sweater, and his digital camera. Dom sneered at the camera; it wasn’t a very nice one and it took awful pictures, but it was all he had at the moment. And, without a steady job, he had no way of buying a newer, better one at the moment.
Into the pocket of his jeans went Dom’s favourite pen, and then he was ready. He donned the belt, which was small and discreet enough to hide under the navy blue sweater he already wore, and slung the black cloth backpack over his shoulder. Before he left the room, Dom glanced at his reflection in the mirror.
His skin was pale, but not extremely so, like several of the idiots at school who stayed inside all the time playing those awful video games. Dom was pale, yes, but a healthy English pale. Even so, the colour of his skin made him nervous. In the darkness, his hands and face seemed to glow. Hence the dark gloves. His face was usually hidden from sight by the large, expensive binoculars, which he’d bought with his own money a few months ago, or his camera, the digital display of which he’d disabled to hide the glow.
Dom combed through his hair with his fingers, trying to flatten it. Such motions never accomplished anything; his dark hair always appeared dishevelled, and it usually had leaves stuck in it from peering through bushes or tree branches. Dom sighed at his appearance once again and left the room, his head held high.
It was better, easier, to get past his mother if he appeared confident and innocent, neither of which he was in reality.
“You hungry?” she asked distractedly when he walked through the kitchen.
Dom’s mother was a thin woman, and tall, but she didn’t look healthy. She’d worn herself thin trying to raise Dom on her own and hold down two jobs. She had the same dark, almost black hair as Dom and the same thin, toothy smile, though Dom’s rarely showed. She smiled that smile at him then; Dom’s lips quirked up weakly in return.
“No, I’m going out. More for you!” Dom said with a false air of cheeriness. Her smile grew wider.
“Alright. Don’t get into trouble.”
“I won’t.”
She turned back to her meal as Dom walked past her to the door. She paid him no attention when he opened the squeaky door and stepped out into the cold evening air. The door slammed closed from the force of the wind and the physical weight of the door itself. Dom grimaced at the noise, but hurriedly gathered his bike and set off down the short neighbourhood street.
Dominic’s street held houses that were in varying phases of falling apart. His own house was a single-storey, small affair with peeling blue paint on the outside and shutters filled with cobwebs and spiders. The house next door was abandoned and had one wall missing; many years ago, Dom had made it a hide-out of sorts, and before he became adept at hiding, he often stored his tools and notebooks in an old, mouldy cupboard he’d found inside. Now, though, he rarely went into the old house. It had given him more cuts and scrapes than he received from climbing trees and crawling in ditches and the part of the roof had caved in over the summer. And besides, Dom had learned, over the years, how to disguise his intentions and unsavoury activities.
Dom had attended school during his early years, but his spotty attendance record and his unwillingness to participate and make friends forced his mother to take him out and home school him. Dom then learned from books, mostly, as she was too busy to really teach him anything. Dom read every book his mother owned and then went to his elderly neighbour to borrow from her, and then, finally, he explored the library and found books on every subject he could think of.
Being so well read gave him a boost in his grammar and English skills, and Dom quickly became fond of writing out his thoughts instead of speaking them. He was a very shy boy and hid behind his writing quite often. As he grew older, Dom started to write more stories and less of real life, especially his own real life. However, what he wanted was to write true stories. Dom felt that the characters he created were boring and cliché, while the people he knew were real, like ancient rulers and crusaders, were, to him, quite interesting and deep.
Dom eventually followed this logic to the conclusion that he should write about real people, which then led to the practice and perfection of his current activity.
Dominic Monaghan was a spy.
A more literal type of spy, anyway. He spied on people, watched them in secret, and took meticulous notes as research for better, more realistic characters for his stories.
Dom followed people he knew or people he’d seen before in an effort to learn more about them. He had a great interest in psychology and had learned much from the library, where he found old textbooks and scientific journals. He was interested in how people acted and why. His hobby, therefore, became akin to an anonymous scientific study.
The man he was currently watching, Jack Abbott, had had a host of dysfunctional, short-term relationships, and he made a fine subject to examine. Dom, his backpack weighing down one shoulder, pedalled hard to reach the top of the hill and stopped, surveying the twinkling lights of the houses in the small valley beneath him. Jack’s was the house on the corner of the street.
It had been two days since Jack’s girlfriend, Laura Maxwell, had left him, but Jack, so far, hadn’t left the house. His friend Max stayed with him a lot of the time, occasionally bringing food, but more often just to comfort him. Dominic observed that Jack seemed more upset about the destruction of his car than the loss of his girlfriend. The damage wasn’t even that terrible, Dom could help but grumble to himself.
He wished Jack would come out of the house and do something. Maybe take revenge on Laura. That would certainly make for a dramatic confrontation, but would it be too cliché? Dom shook the thoughts from his head and slowly coasted halfway down the hill to turn into an abandoned lot, where he hid his bike in the overgrowth.
Dom shivered from the cold and dropped his backpack to the ground. He pulled out the sweater and notebook, but left his journal and the camera. He had a feeling he wouldn’t need either of them tonight. If Jack didn’t leave the house, there was nothing much to take photos of.
He pulled the sweater over his head and tried to brush his hair into some semblance of order, and then he made his way casually down the street, carrying only his notebook tucked under his arm. Dom’s makeshift tool belt was fully hidden beneath the larger wool sweater and he’d left his backpack beneath the wire cage of his bike tyre.
Once Dom neared Jack’s house, he slipped away from the street and began to step quietly over grass and crunchy leaves. Autumn was the worst for this type of spying, at least if there were people around within hearing distance. Luckily for Dom, his town rarely received more than a light dusting of snow, so he didn’t really have to worry about leaving footprints.
Dom stayed in the shadows cast by the houses for the majority of his short walk, but when he had to enter the large areas of light from the streetlamps, he walked casually, purposefully, as if he had every right to be where he was. He’d learned the hard way that if one looks like they belong, one is rarely questioned. While in the shadows, however, Dom fell into his habit of creeping along as silently as possible. He was very good at it, and so far, he’d never been caught while on his guard.
As he neared his destination, the row of short bushes that lined Jack’s backyard, Dom slowed to a crawl, lowering himself almost to his knees to avoid being detected. Once he found his usual hiding place between two of the denser shrubs, Dom reached beneath his sweater and pulled out the binoculars, and then raised them to his eyes. He focused on Jack’s kitchen window; the light had just turned on.
Silhouetted in the window was Max, holding a bottle of what Dom assumed was beer. Jack’s shadow flickered on the opposite wall, and then again. Jack was pacing, probably drunk. Dom wished he could hear their conversation.
One-handed, Dom flicked open the notebook to the first empty page, which was marked with a short white ribbon. Without looking down at his work, he scribbled a vague note about the situation: Jack and Max talk in the kitchen with beer. He marked down the date and the time, then raised his hand to readjust the binoculars.
His position in the bushes afforded him a clear view of Jack’s bedroom and a decent view of his office as well, but for the rest of the house, it wasn’t a great watching spot. If Jack and his friend remained in the kitchen, Dom would have to move closer to get the information he wanted.
Dom dropped the binoculars to his lap and jotted down a few more notes, outlining what he wished would happen in the scene. His concentration lapsed and the sudden sound of the back door sliding open startled Dom. He remained absolutely still, though his head shot up at the noise.
“C’mon, mate,” Max was saying, standing half in the kitchen and half outside. “The fresh air will do ya good. Clear your head a bit.”
“I don’t need any fresh air,” Jack replied nastily from deeper inside the house.
“Jack…”
“Shut up. She shouldn’t have gone. It wasn’t my fucking fault.”
Jack appeared at the doorway, reluctantly following Max out onto the small, unkempt lawn. Dom hadn’t moved a muscle. His fingers itched to write out the men’s dialogue but he felt sure that if he so much as readjusted his uneasy footing, they would hear him.
His heart was pounding, but Dom tried to tune it out, calm himself down, and pay attention. This could very well be the moment he had been waiting for.
Jack paced drunkenly around the dimly-lit area of the backyard, tracing a lopsided half-circle around his friend, and finally collapsed to the ground, where he then gazed up at the sky. Dom flicked his eyes upward, but, as he suspected, there were no stars, and it was too dark to distinguish the blurry edges of the clouds.
“How could she have found out?” Jack mumbled. Max dropped down beside him. “I didn’t ever tell anybody, not never. Ever. Not ever.”
“You told me.”
“Yeah, but you don’t count. I mean, not like… a real person. You’re more like a not-real person. Like a… a fake person.”
Dom choked down a giggle at Jack’s inebriated logic. Max made a sound of agreement or boredom, Dom couldn’t tell.
“Who knew? I mean, I didn’t kn-okay, well, I knew-”
“And I knew.”
As the two slowly fell into a circular conversation, Dom quickly wrote down the important information about the incident and quotes from the men themselves. Without thinking, Dom relaxed his posture, sinking lower into the shrubbery and setting several fallen leaves to crunching.
“But who else?” Jack said, not noticing or not caring about the sound. “You don’t count, ‘member.”
“Maybe… I dunno. Maybe someone’s spying on you.”
Dom’s blood ran cold for an instant; his muscles seized up, his eyes widened, and his hands and brain stuttered to a halt. The moment of panic, however, didn’t last long. Max continued to speak, setting Dom’s mind at least slightly at ease.
“Maybe she hired someone to follow you. I think I’ve seen… Maybe the guy, y’know? Who she worked-did she work for that guy?”
“I don’t know. But I think you’re right, my good fellow.”
“Am I a fellow now? I was beginning to doubt my existence.” Max soon dissolved into drunken giggles; Jack quickly joined in, starting to speak several times and failing to find the words.
The two men didn’t continue their conversation. In fact, they barely spoke at all after that moment. Dom eventually grew tired of watching their pratfalls and inane giggling, and he gathered his things and made a careful escape from Jack’s yard.
He didn’t have much to report in his journal besides the obvious of Jack choosing to drown his newfound misery in alcohol. As he uncovered his backpack and disentangled his bicycle from the wild underbrush, Dom reflected on his sudden panic earlier in the evening.
The fear that he would be caught was rational, and he knew it was completely rational, but Dom was unhappy with his reaction to that fear. He rarely exhibited physical signs of fear or nervousness, and it bothered him that he had that night. Dom tried to use logic to overpower the lingering fluttering in his stomach: if being afraid causes weakened abilities, then the fear would only strengthen as the effects grew. However, if the symptoms were eliminated and Dom remained clear-headed through the situation, he would have a better chance of not making his fear become a reality.
Dom walked his bike up the hill and stood at the top, poised to hop on and give himself over to gravity. Below him, he could see his house. The indoor lights were off, though his mother had left the dim garage light on for him.
Dom sighed. He wasn’t overly troubled by the fact that he had no one to talk to about his hobby and his ideas, but sometimes he wished he could tell his mother, if only for the reason that he wouldn’t be hiding things from her. They had a positive (if easy-going) relationship, and Dom wanted to avoid-at almost all cost-dissolving the trust she had in him. It would make things difficult for both of them if she knew what he was up to. Dom considered himself lucky to have a parent as lax as his mother, though: she let him go out whenever he desired, and she didn’t often question his whereabouts when he returned. It wasn’t that she didn’t care (Dom didn’t think), it was only that she was so busy, and she trusted Dom to stay out of trouble.
Which was exactly what worried him. If he got into trouble and needed her to help him out of it, Dom wouldn’t be able to continue his clandestine activities.
Dom swung his leg over his bike and, with his hands still clenched tightly around the brakes, twisted the wheels into position. He wore no helmet, and the backpack and tool belt sometimes put him off-balance, and so every time he rode down the hill, he felt an apprehensive chill low in his stomach. He wondered with a smirk if the chill would drive away the butterflies that fluttered there, but both feelings made him uncomfortable and he wouldn’t be in a better state if it did work that way. As it was, he felt both the butterflies and the chill.
With a deep breath, Dom relaxed his hands and eased off the brakes. The bicycle plummeted down the steep hill. Dom held his head high, looking directly into the stiff wind that ruffled his hair and clothes, and let out a shaky laugh at the rush of adrenaline. Within moments, he was home, his speed taking him all the way to the door of his house.
Dom didn’t bother being quiet now; his mother probably drew comfort from the fact that he was home, alive and well. Dom rested his bike against the side of the house and used the key that resided beneath the welcome mat to open the door. He didn’t like to carry keys with him-they jingled.
After replacing the key and locking the door from the inside, Dom cast his gaze around the now-empty and dark kitchen. His mother’s voice rang out from her bedroom down the hall.
“You home, love?”
“Yes, mum. I’m off to bed now.”
“Goodnight, darling.”
“’Night, mum.”
Dom grabbed a slice of white bread off the counter and carried it and his belongings into his bedroom. He ate the bread one-handed as he carefully put everything he’d taken out back into its rightful place.
The night hadn’t been very productive, he mused as he fell backwards onto his bed. Dom didn’t even have anything new to write in his journal. He wanted the story to progress, and to progress dramatically, but he had no control over what Jack chose to do next.
Sometimes Dom wished he did have the control to manipulate people into a perfect storyline, but, for the moment, he was content to simply observe and report.
***
Over the course of the next two weeks, Jack grew less and less interesting to Dom. His passionate anger and depression over Laura quickly fizzled out and, all too soon in Dom’s opinion, Jack was going out cruising a few local clubs for dates.
Dom spent fewer hours watching Jack and more time at home, in his bedroom, staring at the blank pages of his writing journal. Jack had done nothing recently that Dom could write about, that he could turn into a compelling story, and Dom was rapidly becoming more annoyed at his chosen subject.
Reluctantly, Dom gathered his equipment for one last excursion to Jack’s house. If nothing note-worthy happened before nightfall, Dom had made up his mind to follow Max home. It wasn’t often that Dom switched characters like this, but Jack was just… not cooperating. Dom sighed as he searched his room for a rogue box of crackers. He didn’t want the crumbs to attract rodents or bugs, so he’d hidden the box…
“Ah, there,” Dom mumbled, reaching up to a box on the top of his bookshelf. The cardboard box held more than food; several of Dom’s older journals lined the bottom. The top, though, revealed the missing box of crackers, a few slices of bread that had probably gotten stale, and a water bottle with only a few drops left.
Dom emptied the foodstuffs onto his bed, mindful of the crumbling bread on the sheets. He could reuse the water bottle tonight, but the box of crackers had turned into a box of broken bits and crumbs-he would have to raid the kitchen cabinets for something else to bring to eat.
His mother had stayed late at work and then, almost two hours ago, phoned home to tell Dom that she was going out with a few of her friends. Dom was glad of her short absence. He would be gone before she returned, and by the time he came home, she would be in bed, probably asleep already. Dom found the situation very neat and tidy, which was exactly the way he liked it.
Dom filled the bottle from the tap in the kitchen and eventually scrounged up a single-serving container of yogurt and a plastic spoon to bring with him. Both items went into his backpack, and he was off again on his bicycle, pedalling hard up the hill and coasting slowly down to his usual hideout.
Yogurt and spoon in hand, Dom crouched again behind the bushes to watch Jack’s kitchen window. Max’s car wasn’t parked out front, but Dom expected the man to turn up shortly. However, over an hour went by and Max made no appearance. Jack simply piddled about inside, microwaving himself a TV-dinner and reading the newspaper by the flashing light of his favourite television show.
“Fucking boring,” Dom muttered to himself, finally giving in to his boredom and doodling in his journal. He drew little spirals and wavy, intersecting lines; nothing that resembled anything physical. He wondered absently if his scribbles would reveal anything about his innermost thoughts. Dom remembered reading something a few years ago about free-writing and how it could help people realize their true feelings and emotions. As Dom thought on this, he heard a car pull up in the front drive.
“Max,” he breathed, forgetting his rule of silence for a brief moment. Dom stuffed the journal under his arm and the pen into his pocket and crept around for a better view of the entranceway of the house. It wasn’t Max who appeared at the door, but a woman. Laura. Dom frowned; what was she doing back? The present situation was certainly something to write about, even if nothing else came of it, but Dom expected something to happen now.
Dom couldn’t hear their conversation, but Laura’s expression was one of indifference and boredom. Dom surmised that she was using the mask to hide the anger and hurt she felt over Jack’s betrayal. Dom watched Laura push past Jack and stalk around the house, Jack trailing behind her, looking apologetic but remaining, for the most part, silent. Dom followed their progress from window to window. It seemed Laura had come back to collect her belongings.
Their relationship was truly over, then. Dom sighed again. Jack didn’t seem too broken up about it anymore, and Laura’s anger kept her from getting too depressed. At least, it had so far. Dom watched the now-ex-couple until Laura exited the house with a cardboard box and drove away. As soon as she was gone, Jack’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed his forehead, as if fighting a headache, and then he sat back in his armchair in front of the TV.
Dom scoffed. Jack was useless to him now. He really needed to find Max.
to be continued...