"Little Things" 2/4

[kaydeefalls]

Like it says.

Title: Little Things - Damage (2/4)
Author: kaydee falls (OneRingDoodle@aol.com)
Pairing: DM/OB, OB/EW, still mild DM/EW
Rating: R
Summary: ...what could go wrong? And how could it get worse?
Archive: TAKE IT. PLEASE... just tell me where
Feedback: is to kaydee as water is to flowers
Disclaimer: none of this happened. i don't know the sexuality of anyone involved.
Notes: I'm still freely messing around with NZ living arrangements here. Let's assume that our boys each have their own house, shall we? And thank yous to Gabby for the amazingly fast beta, and Tash for not complaining too much about the foul language.


I'm nursing the hangover from hell in makeup the next morning. It's a pity, because for once all four hobbits are here together, and I'm too miserable to care.

Elijah gives me a small smile when I walk in, and I acknowledge him with something between a hello and a moan. He turns back to Sean, chattering a mile a minute. Normally I might listen in, amused, but right now I can't focus on anything he's saying.

Billy claps me on the back as I sit down, and sparks go off in my head. I rub my temples, groaning. He smiles sympathetically. "One of those nights?"

"Wicked," I mumble.

He passes me a couple of aspirin, and I swallow them dry. One of the makeup girls, Natasha, starts prepping my ears for the prosthetics. "Please don't yank me around too much," I plead when she shifts my head a fraction of a centimeter. "I'll be eternally grateful, I swear."

She rolls her eyes. "Aren't I usually the one telling YOU to stop moving?"

My brain is too foggy to come up with an appropriately sarcastic remark.

Eventually, the aspirin start kicking in. "Dom?" Billy says quietly.

"Mmhmm?" I turn my head to look at him. Natasha slaps my shoulder, muttering under her breath.

Billy is staring straight ahead. "Is something wrong with you and Orli?"

I snort. "You sure are the perceptive one, Boyd."

He glances over at me. "It's just that, ah... you know Sean picks Lij up most mornings?" I nod. I'm not sure where this is going. "Well, today he picked him up from Orli's house. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean anything," he adds hastily. "I mean, yesterday morning you were at Lijah's, and you've sworn to me that nothing happened."

"Nothing happened," I repeat dully. "Lij spent the night with Orli?"

Billy sighs. "At Orli's house, aye. Not necessarily with Orli."

I look over at Elijah. He's still talking to Sean, but he must feel my eyes on him, because he turns and glances at me. His face looks frozen for a moment, then he offers me a weak grin and goes back to Sean.

"Not necessarily," I mutter. "Right."

Billy leans back in his chair, squeezing his eyes shut. "I shouldn't have said anything."

Natasha starts applying my wig. "You mean Elijah is gay, too?" she jokes quietly. "Ah, fuck!"

Billy opens his eyes and grins winningly up at her. "You still have me, Tash me love."

She swats him, fighting a smile. "You're too old for me."

He puts on his wounded puppy face, and even I have to laugh.

* * * * *

Elijah and Sean are scheduled to leave for Whakapapa National Park at one o'clock. More Mordor, I gather. They tend to go off for three or four day stretches at a time. Which means that I have less than fifteen minutes to find Lij, or I won't be able to talk to him until next week.

So if I were the little bugger, where the fuck would I be?

Hiding from me, probably. Too bad.

Oddly enough, it's the wind that gives him away. He's crouched down behind the makeup trailer, and I would've missed him entirely if it weren't for the faint-yet-unmistakable scent of those clove cigarettes.

"Elijah."

He stands, sighs, takes a long drag on the cigarette. Then he drops the fag and steps on it. He isn't wearing the prosthetic feet, I notice. I guess Peter figured they'd just get in the way in the already-cramped helicopter. Otherwise, Lij is in full Mordor-Frodo garb -- and sneakers. It looks very weird.

"What?" he mutters, and his voice is a little hoarse from the smoke. The ground around him is littered with cigarette butts -- he's obviously been chain-smoking here for a while.

I study his face. He looks like shit, and not all of that is due to the grisly Mordor makeup. Well, that's his problem. We don't have time for sympathy or subtlety. "Did you shag Orli last night?" I demand.

Lij shifts his pack of fags from hand to hand, nervously. "Yes." At least he has the decency to be honest about it.

I briefly contemplate giving him a black eye -- it would go splendidly with his near-death-Ringbearer look -- but decide that a fight with the backstabbing little shit wouldn't be worth mussing my lovely Knight of the Mark costume. "Why?" I ask instead, failing to keep the hurt out of my voice.

He starts to pull another cigarette out of the pack, then glances at me and changes his mind. Instead, he gnaws on a thumbnail. "He asked," he mumbles around the nail.

I cross my arms to keep myself from giving him that black eye he seems to be asking for. Or broken nose, but Peter might notice that. "Excuse me?"

Elijah sighs and gives up on the thumbnail. "I was at the pub," he says wearily. "I'd already had a few too many beers. And Orli came in, and slid in across from me in the booth. He was in a shitty mood, but he wasn't talking. We just kept ordering more drinks." Lij starts fiddling around with his wig, twisting the false curls around his finger like a girl. "Eventually he told me that you two... that it was over. I asked if there was anything I could do to help, and he said, yeah, there was." He lets go of the wig, stares at the ground.

I try to keep my voice neutral. "So it was just a sort of comfort thing."

"Yeah," he says, "something like that."

I explode. "Well, fuck, Lij, aren't you just the master of comfort! Feeling a bit down, just go to Elijah, he'll make you feel all better! 'Course, some of us just ask for a beer or two, but if a shag is your fancy, he's ready and willing to provide!"

Elijah closes his eyes. He presses his lips together tightly, weathering the storm. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him, but I don't trust myself right now, and if I take a step closer to him my fists might independently decide to do the talking for me.

"Tell me, Elijah," I snarl. "You're so eager to comfort everyone, who do you go to when YOU need a bit of comfort?"

His eyes snap open. I expect to see fury there, hatred maybe, something for me to fight. But there's only hurt and blueness, and I have to struggle to hold on to my anger. "Maybe," he says quietly, "just maybe, Orli was as much of a comfort to me as I was to him. Maybe I didn't give a rat's ass about his own feelings when he asked me to fuck him." His voice drops so that I can barely hear him. "Maybe I did it because I was hoping he would taste like you."

The silence that stretches between us is almost palpable. I can't bring myself to look at him, so I stare at little things instead -- the collection of cigarette butts scattered around his feet, the peeling white paint on the makeup trailer, his hands in their unnatural stillness.

"I'm sorry," he finally mutters, jamming his hands into the shallow pockets of his trousers. "Gotta go catch my ride out." He shoves past me as he goes, and the pack of cigarettes falls to the ground. Elijah doesn't notice, and trudges off.

I stare at the pack for a long moment, while visions of Lij and Orli in bed together dance through my head. They're both smokers -- I wonder if they shared one of these fags after fucking.

I pick up the pack and hurl it into the woods as hard as I can.

* * * * *

All right, now where's that fucking elf?!

After Elijah left, yesterday afternoon, I had to dash off to filming. My scenes were all with Miranda Otto, with no Orli in sight. And by the time I got out of makeup at the end of the day, he had vanished. Rung his house, no answer. Tried the pub, he wasn't there. My conclusion: Orlando Bloom is hiding from me.

I can't say I blame him, given the choice words (and theoretical violence) I have in mind.

Well, we're all together today. Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, and the Prince of Mirkwood himself. He can't avoid me now.

There's still a good ten or fifteen minutes before Peter will be ready to start. I dodge my way around a mess of cameramen, production assistants, and equipment before I finally locate my fellow actors.

Some of them, anyway.

John Rhys-Davies is sitting comfortably in a folding chair, reading his script pages for the day. He absently scratches at his bearded cheek -- his makeup is probably bothering him, poor bloke.

I tap him on the shoulder. "John?"

He looks up at me, peering over the tops of his glasses. "Good morning, young hobbit," he booms. John never talks. He bellows. Even when he isn't speaking loudly, he gives off the impression that he's making some sort of sweeping pronouncement. "And what can I do for you?"

"Have you seen Orli?"

John gestures vaguely in the direction of a trailer. "He might be over there. It's where I saw the lad last. But that was some time ago."

In other words, he's been poring over the script so carefully that he has completely lost track of time. I envy his professionalism. Someday, the little voice in the back of my mind whispers. Someday I'll be that experienced.

I'm tempted to ask what Orli was doing when John saw him last. Is Orli fucking him, too?

No. That would be rude. "Thanks," I say instead, and jog off toward the trailer. Except that I'm wearing the Feet, so it isn't so much a jog as a hurried stumble.

Maybe John would take it as a compliment, I muse distractedly as I approach the trailer. That I believe him still capable of getting it up at his age....

Right, thinking is a bad thing.

Orli IS in the trailer. He's having his wig adjusted. Poncy elves.

I lean lazily against the doorway, waiting for him to notice me. He doesn't. One of the makeup girls does, though. She glances up from her magazine. "Can we help you with something, Dominic?"

I watch Orli stiffen. "No thanks, Natasha," I drawl, still eying my former boyfriend. "Just waiting to have a word with Mr. Bloom, here."

She shrugs and goes back to the latest issue of 'Elle.' "Suit yourself."

Orli doesn't turn around. "I have nothing to say to you, Dominic."

"S'okay," I reply agreeably. "'Cause I've got plenty of things to say to you."

The two girls working on his wig release him. He knows that the only way out of this trailer is through me. Reluctantly, he takes a step toward me. "Not in here," he mutters.

"Why not?" I demand. "Don't worry, these nice birds have overheard far worse around us. They'll keep their mouths shut."

The nice birds glare at me. One of them -- Bridget -- gives me a look clearly indicating that if I value my manhood, I'll never refer to her as a 'bird' again. Her friend, whose name I don't know, seems to be suggesting that I have no manhood to speak of. Natasha doesn't bother looking up from her magazine; she just gives me the finger.

I grin at them. Orli winces. He grabs my arm and pulls me outside.

"Get your fucking hands off me," I tell him, as pleasantly as possible.

He releases me quickly and backs away. I want to laugh. Does he actually think I'd start a fistfight here, in front of the entire crew, five minutes before filming?

"So talk," he says.

"You fucked Elijah."

He rubs his arms. It's a chilly morning. "Is that a statement or a question?"

"Okay, WHY did you fuck Elijah?"

"So you're assuming that I did."

Maybe he had the right idea when he put distance between us. He'd look even more smashing with a black eye than Lij would. "I already know you did, you fuck."

Orli shrugs. "Well, that makes the two of us, then."

I roll my eyes. "Other people know, arsehole."

"Not know," he says testily. "That makes two of us who've slept with Doodle."

My jaw drops. "I never shagged him."

He snorts. "Yeah, right. We all know you spent the night together. D'you expect me to believe that you slept alone on the couch or sommat?"

"I did," I insist angrily. "Nothing happened, Bloom."

"At least I had the decency to call it off with you before I started fooling around," he continues, ignoring me.

"I never fucked Elijah!" I yell. I notice a few heads turning among the nearby techies, and lower my voice. "Did you ever bother asking him if I'd 'fooled around' with him?"

He smirks. "We were otherwise occupied, sorry. He's a good wank, isn't he?"

Protesting is obviously both useless and somewhat humiliating. I clamp my mouth shut, glaring daggers at him.

"Now you know how it feels," Orli continues relentlessly.

I can't stop myself. "How what feels?"

"How it feels when someone you love starts fucking someone else."

I refuse to give him this satisfaction. "When did I ever say I loved you?" I ask sharply.

I expected that to sting him, but he just smiles mirthlessly. "When did I ever say I was the one you love?" I gape at him. "You wouldn't care if I were screwing around with anyone else," he says grimly. "You're only angry because I went to Elijah. I stole your happy little comfort source, didn't I? How'd you like it when you dashed over to his place and found that he wasn't there?"

I turn away, fuming silently. I can see the rest of the cast assembling around Peter, and stalk off toward them.

Orli matches my stride. "For what it's worth," he adds quietly, "I didn't set out to nail Doodle. I only wanted to get drunk. It just sort of happened."

Billy waves for me to join him, so I push Orli away. I ignore the question in Billy's eyes, pretending to listen to Peter's long, involved direction.

All I can think about are Orli and Lij, tangled up in each other, laughing at me.

END PART 2/4

Comments

ooo!

[laursies.livejournal.com]

This is great. I'm seriously trying to contain myself here, because I've been lamenting the lack of good new fic lately, and this seems to fit the category quite well. It's fresh, and you have lovely characterization. I can't wait to read the rest.

Re: ooo!

[kaydeefalls.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you like it so far...

[lush-rimbaud.livejournal.com]

aarrrgghhh! I want to smack Dom! Or, rather, I want to do Obi-Wan's little Force-hand-wavy thing at him and say, "Now, first, you are going stop being sad, and second, you are going to go over there, grab Elijah, toss him over your shoulder, and carry him off into the woods to do things to him which are illegal in the state of Utah. Thank you."

oh, and, it's really really good. and... *pokes kaydee* moremorenow.

[kaydeefalls.livejournal.com]

::keels over laughing::

[troisroyaumes]

C'mon, c'mon, give me a happy Domlijah ending! ::big grin:: I'm not a RPS fan yet, but I like your fic nevertheless. ^_^

...Tari

[kaydeefalls.livejournal.com]

Thanks...
You DO realize that the ending has already been written, right? And that I'm not gonna change it or anything, right?