Not even Billy, who is too busy smiling and talking and joking to the pretty blond girl from Wardrobe, who keeps straightening his waistcoat all the time and tries to arrange his shirt in such a way that Billy's chest hair doesn't show.
Dom thinks she must be very glad the moody hobbit with the pallid skin and the bloodshot eyes is currently walking away from her, as she had unsuccessfully tried to cheer him up the entire morning and could barely stop herself from voicing her complaints about his professionalism. Or maybe he is imagining that last bit and she had thrown him nothing but understanding smiles and he had just been too pre-occupied to notice her sweet attempts. He finds his chair, yanks his overcoat from the back of it, puts it on and collapses in his seat.
Why don't you take a break, Dom, we can do Billy's close ups first. Just get something to drink, and I am sure things will be fine after lunch.
Dom looks at Caro, who, on the other side of the soundstage, is giving out strict orders to anyone within a one-mile radius around Peter to be quiet so the next take can be filmed. She had thrown him a very uncharacteristic smile when she told him to take it easy and come back whenever he felt okay again. She had meant it well enough, but Dom knows that he has just been dismissed. Billy had covered for a few of his mistakes, but his miserable state had been obvious to everyone on set and after three or four additional blunders, Peter had sighed, shaken his head and given Caro a pained look.
He pulls his dark green coat a little closer around himself and watches how all kinds of people mill about the place. From technicians who can't seem to stop tinkering with the lighting rigs, and set dressers putting last-minute paintjobs on the indoor Weathertop statues, to pretty Trish with her endless patience and her smiles and what seemed like a limitless supply of make up brushes and war paint. She had been all over him with those...
"Rough night, Master Meriadoc?" he suddenly hears and spins his head around to find out where the low voice is coming from.
"V-Viggo," Dom stutters and the blush he had been able to suppress ever since Caro told him to leave the soundstage now finds a firm spot on his cheeks.
Viggo Mortensen had joined them only three days earlier, having been flown in from the States after Stuart's hasty departure, and Dom still has trouble figuring the guy out. There's this strange sort of distance in the way Viggo treats the people around him, but Dom also senses the beginnings of a connection that goes beyond being colleagues, that entails more than mere friendship.
Viggo seems to be able to look at you and see exactly who and what you are, but needs the time and the distance to do so. His eyes dissect just like Elijah's do, but it is much more subtle and probably much more fine-tuned. Whereas Elijah might still be too young and inexperienced to realise his strengths, Dom understands that Viggo undoubtedly knows he is reading a person's soul, examining it, pulling it apart.
Dom gives the Ranger a long stare and wonders if he will either end up hating this man from the bottom of his heart, or love him unconditionally and trust him with his deepest secrets. For now he decides he just needs to watch Viggo closely, so that maybe, one day, he will be able to make sense of him.
Planting his sword against the folding chair that bears his character's misspelt name, Viggo takes a seat beside Dom and pulls his dirty, torn Ranger's coat around himself, shivering slightly in the chilled air of a New Zealand spring afternoon. They don't look at each other, but Dom knows he is supposed to say something. Viggo hasn't been around for very long, but everyone involved in this project already feels how this man is going to make a big difference. Before he can think of what to say, however, Viggo has already beaten him to it.
"Are you okay, Dominic?" he asks, and Dom knows that to say 'yes' would be a downright lie. He unscrews the cap from a plastic water bottle and stares ahead of him - at Caro, who talks first to Billy and then her walkie-talkie, and at Peter, whose tuft of unruly curly hair is unmistakable behind a stack of monitors.
"Not exactly," he mutters, taking a generous swig from the bottle. �But I'm sure I'm stating the obvious."
"Don't worry - I was asking the obvious," Viggo grins, bringing up his hands to slowly massage the tendons in his neck. "So am I allowed to ask what happened? You seem out of sorts." He drops his hands in his lap again and, like Dom, stares straight ahead, watching Pete rush from behind the monitors to explain something in more detail to Billy.
"Actually," Dom starts after he has taken another gulp from the bottle, deciding he can let Viggo in on some of his misery. "I am hung over."
There's an amused spark in Viggo's eyes as he slowly turns his head to face his colleague. "Stating the obvious again?" he asks and grins under his breath.
Dom wants to give Viggo an annoyed look, wants to shoot some - preferably poisonous - daggers over to the occupant of the next chair, but when he locks eyes with the Ranger, those feelings disappear almost immediately and he can't help but grin too.
"I know, I know," he giggles, shaking his head a little, fiddling with the cap of his water bottle. "I could have known you had already come to that conclusion. It's just that, you know - feeling as miserable as I do today has been a while. Usually, I can hold my liquor fairly well."
"I am sure Pete's delighted to hear that, Dominic," Viggo snorts and again Dom thinks he is going to be pissed off with this man who has basically just walked into their lives, yet for the second time he looks Viggo in the eye and finds no hostility there, just gentle amusement. He swallows and grins, throwing in a wink for added effect.
"I am sure he is too..."
He screws the cap back onto the bottle and thinks for a moment, listening to the distant clanging sounds of lighting rigs being hoisted up and over the soundstage again and is momentarily distracted.
"I'm not going to let this happen again, you know," he mutters, suddenly defensive, and he wonders why he feels the need to say this; why he feels the need to justify his deeds to Viggo. But he does and he looks into the watchful eyes to his left. "I'm not..."
"So," Viggo continues and grabs his sword from its place against the folding chair, holding it up against the sparse sunlight, squinting as he tries to make out its almost flawless shape. "You got drunk all by your lonesome then, or is there another one walking around somewhere who looks as bad as you do?"
"Thanks, man," Dom grumbles, but he knows he sure looks as bad as he is feeling - if not worse. His eyes had been blood-shot ever since he opened them this morning and they had been a dead give away to anyone trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong with Merry today. And for some odd reason he really doesn't want Viggo to pursue this line of questioning any further because, strangely enough, and for the first time ever since he met the boy, Dom really doesn't want to talk about Elijah.
He doesn't want to think about Elijah, or about last night, or about where the bloody hell the kid took off to. He knows nothing serious is going on with him - no accidents or kidnapping or God knows what because otherwise no one around here would be acting as cool and collected as they are; but just simply thinking about last night's actions makes his head hurt in an unspeakable way and he wishes he could make it stop.
He notices that Viggo is still looking at him, awaiting an answer.
"Lij," he offers quickly, as a new wave of nausea suddenly hits him and he drops his head in his neck, heart pounding in his throat.
"Lij?" Viggo echoes and looks at Dom from the side, brain working almost visibly. "Ah," he mutters after a few seconds, understanding written all over his face, and Dom swears he can hear the pieces click into place inside Viggo's brain. "Elijah."
Viggo turns the blade he is still holding - tip down - then swings it up again until the tip points straight up once more and he squints again when he looks up alongside the sword into the sun that has started to seriously break through the clouds, a slow smile around his lips.
Balance, Dom thinks, the nausea slowly changing into drowsiness again, and wonders at the weight of the sword in Viggo's hand. Just what I need as well... It occurs to him that the past few weeks had been a constant search for balance, and when he finally thought he had found some semblance of it two days ago - he immediately went ahead and threw it out of the window again by allowing Elijah to-
Jesus Christ.
Dom's stomach clenches and the green around his nose returns full force. Did I actually let him do that to me? Did I let him blow me? Am I completely out of my fucking mind?
He sags a bit in his chair and from the corners of his eyes he notices Viggo dropping the sword and jumping up to grab Dom by the arms, but he's barely aware of the steely grasp around his biceps.
"Dom?"
God - I wanted him to do those things to me, I wanted it so badly, but... Shit, I shouldn't have let it spin so completely out of control... I shouldn't-
"Dom?!" Viggo�' voice is obnoxiously close and loud and harsh and in that one pretty, crystalline moment in which Dom realises that Viggo's voice is actually never those three things, he heaves violently and throws up his breakfast.
When the world comes into focus again, Dom finds himself sitting just outside the marquee that is usually pulled up to serve lunch to the cast and crew. A large hand holding a wet cloth is being lifted into his peripheral view and when the moist cotton touches his face he remembers what happened all of a sudden and he jerks and opens his mouth to speak.
"Hush, Monaghan," Viggo says softly and dabs a little more at his mouth and his cheeks. The sensation of cool water against his slightly heated forehead is actually a welcome one, and Dom decides to listen to Viggo. He snaps his mouth shut again and simply tries to find his composure.
The cloth disappears but soon the hand returns with a water bottle.
"Rinse," comes Viggo's clipped command. Dom accepts a bottle of water and sips gently, then spits, grateful to somewhat lose the horrid taste in his mouth. His head is pounding viciously again, and he wonders if it would be possible for him to find some aspirin here. Before he can think of how to formulate that sentence, he notices a shiny pink pill in the outstretched palm of Viggo's hand and, smiling weakly, he picks it up and swallows it with a mouthful of water.
"Are you sure it's just a hangover, Dominic?" comes Viggo's next question - mumbled so softly that Dom has trouble hearing him. The Ranger is squatting next to him in the grass, holding on to the armrest of the folding chair Dom is sitting in and his eyes are gentle and reassuring.
"Do you want me to find Elijah?" he adds, almost as an afterthought, and moves to rise up, eyes no longer on Dom's but already scanning the grounds, trying to locate someone Dom had already noticed isn't around anyway.
"No," Dom says quickly, reaching out to touch Viggo's thigh. "No - please... Let it rest. It's okay..."
Not entirely convinced Viggo looks at him again. He moves inside the marquee and for a second Dom thinks Viggo is still going to fetch Elijah, but then the Ranger reappears with another chair that he places next to Dom's folding chair and sits down.
"Then please tell me what is really going on, Dom," he says. "While I sit here and check on you, as I don't want you to pass out a second time."
Dom looks at Viggo's face for a while, waiting for the sound of blood rushing in his ears to subside, contemplating if he is going to say anything to this strange American or that he is going to stick with the hangover - which is not really a lie. He closes his eyes for a second and wishes Billy were here. He didn't even tell the Scot the whole truth about last night so why change that now with someone he barely knows?
"It's kinda personal..." Dom starts and takes another sip from the bottle, so thirsty because of his hangover and hoping the liquid will stay down.
"I figured it was," Viggo says and stretches his legs out in front of him. He has a clear view of the marquee's entrance and silently watches how a few people are already coming down the soundstage towards the tent. He checks the clock inside the marquee and notices it is half past two - more than time for lunch.
"You've met Elijah?" Dom asks quietly, trying to find a way to go about his topic.
"I have," Viggo answers and looks at Dom sideways. "Interesting kid."
Dom nods, wondering how he can feel so exhausted and miserable and still have such a treacherous body that will stop at nothing to make him feel even more uncomfortable. He looks down, hoping Viggo won't notice there's a blush on its way to his pale face, and shifts minimally in his chair, distantly amazed at how his blood can go to both his face and his dick at the same time.
"Interesting in many ways," Viggo adds and he sags a little more in his chair. "I mean, when I looked at him for the first time yesterday, I wondered about his age, and then he opened his mouth and I listened to him speak and I wondered again, thinking I was about a hundred years off with my initial guess."
Dom can't help but grin.
"Besides," Viggo continues. "He's a collection of contradictions anyway. Pretty rosebud mouth - yet he swears like a trooper. Quiet and very observant when he wants to - but plays the loudest music this side of the equator. And I won't even start on the way he looks."
Viggo shakes his head slowly, thinking of a way to best describe the tiny American actor he met on the Weathertop set yesterday, when he senses Dom's grey eyes locked onto his, captivated by his words, almost entranced.
"I must admit I was stunned by those baby blues," he ventures, watching Dom's face for any sign of recognition. "I had seen them before, on the big screen, but the real thing is pretty overwhelming..."
Dom just stares at him, wondering once more if Elijah even realises what effect he has on people. What effect he has on Dom now, when he isn't even around. Dom wriggles in his chair, searching for a more comfortable position, vaguely happy that toda'�s continuous throbbing in his body has shifted from his head to his cock, but still aware of Viggo's prying eyes. They are both quiet for a while, breathing more or less in unison, watching another small group of people entering the tent.
"As I said, interesting kid," Viggo concludes his private musings with the same words he used a minute earlier. "Pretty, too..."
Dom swallows and closes his eyes, his breath coming in increasingly bigger gulps, nausea lurking on the horizon all over again. Fuck yes, he is pretty, he suddenly thinks, bringing up a hand to wipe at his feverish forehead. You should see that mouth wrapped around your dick, Mortensen, and 'pretty' wouldn�' even begin to cut it.
"Dom, man, you okay?"
Before Dom can shake off the palpable image of Elijah's nail bitten fingers strong and insistent around his raging erection, Billy's hands are on his shoulders, shaking him, an edge to his voice that Dom can't quite place.
"Easy, Bill," comes Viggo's voice through the fog. "He's not feeling very well. Not well at all."
The hands disappear but the fog remains. And so do the voices. More and more voices.
Billy is worried, Dom can tell. Billy's accent thickens when he talks quickly, when he tries to figure out something he doesn't understand. And then there's Peter's voice, asking questions that end in Viggo's name, and Dom can vaguely make out Viggo's voice, soft and rumbling, probably telling Pete how Dom is sick and should be at home, and then it's Fran's voice, high-pitched and immediately concerned and suddenly there's a cool hand against his cheek. And just when he hears Billy speaking up, asking people to please move on and get some lunch, Dom distinguishes the rush that is Sean's voice.
If I would open my eyes now, Dom muses, feeling how little pearls of sweat are running down the sides of his face, I would see Sean - and that would be a good thing, because wherever Sean goes, Elijah goes too - and I really want to see Elijah, see if he's all right, see if he's really here, ask if he enjoyed my company, if he enjoyed the beer, the pizza, the topics of discussion, the music, my cock in his mouth - if I scared him off for the rest of this project or if he's willing to do it again. Or I just open my eyes and hope and pray to God he is still willing to look at me because-
The room is dark and quiet and strangely cool and smells a little different but at least the throbbing in Dom's head has mostly subsided and he opens his eyes a little wider, trying to pierce the darkness, wondering who closed the curtains while he was asleep.
He slowly becomes aware of the fact that he is wearing nothing but a t-shirt and his boxers and he asks himself where in this room he put his jeans and shoes and then he realises that his last memory is of himself in full Merry costume.
He gazes into the darkness some more and when his eyes seem to adjust to the intense darkness, he notices that there's actually daylight behind the curtains. He looks around the room and eventually starts to recognise familiar shapes; his dresser, his chair filled with clothes and other random junk, his Man U poster on the opposite wall, the door to the landing - slightly ajar...
The thought has barely left his brain when Billy's face appears around the doorpost, looking straight at him.
"You awake?" he asks softly and pushes the door open a little wider, stepping inside. "You want something to drink? I'll get some water..."
He tries to sit up while Billy's busy in the bathroom but it's no use, just lifting his arms makes the pounding in his head start all over again, so Dom decides to lie back on the pillows and just close his eyes, hoping that maybe someday, he will feel better than this.
Then suddenly Billy's arm is around his shoulders and his back and he feels the cold of a glass of water against his lips and he gulps the liquid down, wondering if he is running a fever, because his teeth are clattering against the glass and he feels inexplicably cold, or if these are his average hangover symptoms. When he tries to ask Billy about it, however, nothing comes out of his mouth and before he is truly aware of it he sinks back into oblivion once more.
There is darkness behind the curtains the second time Dom awakes from his feverish sleep, and he carefully turns his head on the pillow to look at his alarm clock. It's three thirty.
The nausea and the headache and the clattering of his teeth seem to have stopped, yet he still feels feverish - only unbearably hot this time. He pushes the duvet down a bit, relishing the cool air on his bare arms and wonders if Billy left some of that water on his nightstand. He turns slightly and reaches out a hand, but only manages to knock a pile of magazines to the floor.
"Dom?"
There's a sleepy voice to his right and Dom rolls onto his back again, trying to figure out who it is that's checking up on him this time. Again, he wants to say something, but his throat is dry and sore and painful and all he can manage is "thirsty".
"Here..."
Again, that soft, sleep-scratchy voice. Dom quickly glances at his armchair in the corner of the room, and the clothes and papers and junk that were there a couple of hours ago seem to have been removed - replaced by one of his pillows and a blanket. He turns his head back and there's a full glass of water right in front of him, and a strong arm around him, holding him up, keeping him in place so that he can drink.
He knows that voice, and he knows those wiry arms.
"Elijah?"
"Hush," Elijah whispers and puts the glass to his lips again. "No talking - just drink the water, okay? Doctor�s orders..."
"Lij - I," Dom tries again, but the glass is tipped gently and he has to open his mouth and accept the water, and the way it feels, sliding down his parched throat and down his heated body, is actually quite good.
"I'm sorry, Lij," he mutters when the glass is lowered again, empty this time, his throat slightly less painful. "I'm sorry for being... such a fool... I shouldn't... I'm... I'm sorry..."
"Shh," Elijah murmurs again. "Just concentrate on getting better, okay? The rest is not important." He lowers Dom back onto the bed and walks into the bathroom to refill the glass, placing it on the nightstand when he returns.
"Lijah - I-"
"Dom - stop. Please. Please forget about it."
"Lijah?"
"Shh, Dom. Sleep, okay? Just forget it. Forget it ever happened. It was a mistake."
Chapter Eleven
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