[...the art of perfect moments...]

[whynot]

It's a 3-in-1, dude. Well, 4-in-1 5-in-1 if you include the GIP and the awesome new community bloodynbruised, fulfilling all your multifandom people-beating-the-crap-out-of-each-other-for-reasons-which-may-or-may-not-relate-to-sexual-tension needs. Join now and get free shirts and lollipops.

Okay, so maybe just one lollipop.

Okay, there are no lollipops.

...I have just been informed there are no shirts either.

Aphorism. Boondock Saints drabble. Written for contrelamontre's 'fire' challenge and bds_drabble's 'fight' challenge. Connor/Murphy, PG13.

Good Intentions. Harry Potter drabble. OMFG I wrote Harry Potter. Who'd a thunk? I'm back, I'm back. So, I tried to write Padma/Parvati but that turned out to be a false alarm. So maybe I'm not as back as I thought. Anyway. Implied Draco/Harry, and after just replying to McTabby's poll with 'Harry/Draco' as my one dislike, too. The gods are funny that way.
You may notice 'Good Intentions' isn't posted under this account. A long time ago before this account came to be, all my fics were posted in what is now my RL journal. A long time ago, my RL journal got posting access to hpdrabble and I'm too lazy to fight for lassiterfics's posting access. So. That is Why.

Anyway.

Title: Stories About Vancouver
Fandom: LOTRips
Pairing: DM/BB
Rating: PG13
Summary: Reality evens out. The ground will be rushing up to meet you and the first mistake is to think this is a fall.

-
Stories About Vancouver


Dom looks up novels set in Vancouver on Amazon.com. He’s never been to Vancouver. He’ll be shooting a movie there in a couple of months but he wants to know what it's like beforehand. No travel sites for him. No Lonely Planet books or anything like that. Novels. Stories people tell. He wants to see what the dreamers have to say about Vancouver.

So he's looking up novels on Amazon.com, and he has another window open for Barnes & Noble, and he's scrolling down the search results. Dom clicks through page after page until his eyes glaze over and he thinks 'forget it.' He closes the windows and checks his email.

There's an email from Billy. For a few moments Dom just stares at the familiar address, cursor hovering above the subject line ('don’t delete this') before he gives it a pass and starts trawling through the rest of his inbox.

The Billy thing. Dom likes to think it’s nothing personal, really. It’s like the Vancouver thing. Dom just likes dreams better, and whether they're his own dream or someone else's dream is not important. He has a knack for taking all the dreams and pushing them together to make one big beautiful picture. Nothing is excluded. Everything is absorbed.

Check: nothing is excluded unless Dom is excluded first.

Sometimes Dom thinks he should stop being so vindictive, but it's kind of hard.


+


Sometimes Dom thinks he's beginning to get the hang of this celebrity thing. He thought he got a fair amount with 'Hetty Wainthropp Investigates' but then suddenly it was as if a whirlwind came into his life, picked him up, knocked him around a bit, and spat him back out. Ptooey, and suddenly there was New Zealand, and fake hairy feet that kept falling apart, and itchy wigs, and.

And the assistant directors going nuts trying to find people during Shire crowd scenes because you couldn't tell anyone apart once they had their wigs on, and.

And making fun of Orlando's 'injury quota' and the faces he made when Viggo rolled his eyes and Elijah said things like, “So much for preternatural elven grace.”

And.

And Billy.

So sometimes Dom thinks he's beginning to understand celebrity and how it works and how you navigate it. He hears his name mentioned in the same sentence as Ian McKellen, and maybe once upon a time that would have really floored him. But it's just not an issue anymore. Sometimes he reads gossip about Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrell, and he thinks he understands that underneath the glamour these people are just like him: human, with a million mundane details that cut them down to size.

But Billy. There's Billy, see. He's a detail in Dom's life that makes him forget that humans are allowed to be human. Are real humans allowed to make mistakes this big? Billy is one detail in Dom's life that... Billy is...

Billy was.

The past tense is everything.


+


“I want to be the best version of myself around you,” Dom almost said one time, but he didn't.

Years of being on screen--TV and movie--telling stories everyone wants to hear and saying words everyone wants to say: it does something to you. It did something to Dom. Dom had learned, through osmosis, the art of perfect moments.

This, for example. This was a perfect moment. Dawn's half-light sneaked through the slats in the blinds and paints stripes on the opposite wall. A sleeping Billy squirmed beside him, turning towards Dom and stretching an arm across Dom's bare chest.

“Mmmver,” said Billy.

“What?”

“Move,” said Billy, though it sounded more like 'mrrb', or some other vowel-less word. “Move over.”

So Dom moved, and Billy moved, and there was a great deal of wriggling around until they found a comfortable position, facing each other. Mirror reflections or twins in the womb. The only difference was that Billy was not awake and Dom was. Alert, awake, and in the quiet he felt alive. Dom reached out a hand and touched Billy's cheek. Billy grunted ungracefully, but when Dom traced Billy's lips with his thumb, Billy kissed it. Muscle memory.

This was when Dom almost said it. It would have been a good time to say it, because Billy was pretty much asleep and too far gone to react. This meant there would be no bad reactions. No especially good ones, but definitely no bad ones.

I want to be the best version of myself around you.

“Because you deserve to receive everything you're giving,” Dom said instead.

And Billy didn't snore, but didn't wake, and just made a vague growling noise in his throat. Whether Billy heard or didn't hear was irrelevant anyway. Dom moved forward to kiss Billy, a gentle touch of lips. Billy kissed back, at least for a second or two.

It was a crash of badly stacked props that roused them from sleep. Putting on their clothes, Dom and Billy engaged in nonsensical conversations with a casualness that secretly delighted Dom. They pottered around the kitchenette until there was hardly enough darkness outside to cover Billy's retreat to his own trailer.

Here, Dom wanted to crack another joke, something from Romeo and Juliet when Romeo's rushing to leave Juliet’s room because the nurse is coming. On second thought was that scene from Romeo and Juliet or Shakespeare in Love? Both?

Dom couldn't remember, so when it came time for Billy to go away, all he said was, “Goodbye.”


+


Vancouver, insofar as he can tell, is a beautiful city. True, he hasn't seen much of it beyond Granville Street where he and some members of cast and crew ate last night, but that's why he's wandering all over the city today. Just wandering all over the place, just because. He's on a ferry going to North Vancouver, dressed in sporty sunglasses and a baseball hat he bought on impulse during his stopover in Detroit.

He sits in the front row of seats and he's looking out the window at the water rippling past the boat, tuning out the babble of tourists around him.

Vancouver has a kind of feel to it. An aura? Aura sounds too New Age bullshit. There's a kind of feel to Vancouver that Dom can't quite pinpoint. It's a combination of cloudless blue sky, crisp fresh air, and... something. Something that makes him breathe easier, smile a bit softer, stand more at ease.

Halfway through the ferry ride, he has a thought that maybe it’s not Vancouver itself. It's the newness of it. The newness to him. Vancouver streets are a new maze for him to navigate. Vancouver buildings make a new skyline to ooh and ahh over, and make him wish he were half as good with a camera as Viggo is.

Vancouver does not know him. There is no promise, only potential. No history, only possibility.

There are no ties that bind.

His cellphone keeps on beeping, though. Beeping and vibrating and refusing to let Dom’s new beginning really take off. A man that looks to be in his mid-forties turns to Dom and says buddy, your phone's going off, you wanna answer that?

“Not really,” says Dom.

“You know, I think I've seen you around,” said the man, and his eyes start to glaze and his brow starts to furrow in a manner Dom has come to recognize. “You look really familiar.”

“I was in that dog food commercial,” Dom improvises.

The man nods with vague thoughtfulness, saying, “Ah.”

“I bet you there's a lot of happy dogs out there right now eating Kibble To Go,” says Dom. “Lots of protein, you know. Dogs need protein. They need it more than we do, so this dog food, it's like a godsend. Or a... a dogsend if you're dyslexic.” Dom chuckles to himself.

The man nods less thoughtfully, more vaguely, and resolutely turns to his friend beside him and begins talking very loudly. Mission accomplished, Dom turns his attention back to the water. His cellphone goes off again, receiving text messages from half a world away.

Maybe he ought to turn it off, but he doesn't really want to.

When they reach the shore on the other side, Dom takes his time, reading some of the texts. They're all pretty much the same. Variations of 'i still don't understand' and 'why haven't you written back'.

It's when he sits down to lunch in a small Italian restaurant when he finally decides to reply to a text message. Why not? What real harm can it do?

The reply to the reply arrives at the same time as his fettucini. 'so how do you think i feel,' it reads. 'you fuckin idiot, you left me first.'

He receives another message one minute later. This one simply reads, 'i miss you.'

A few minutes later, another follow-up. Dom turns his phone off. He figures the people over at the next table would appreciate a lunch free of cellphone beeps. He's not so hungry anymore, but he makes himself pick up the fork and he shovels fettucini into his mouth. No sense in letting good pasta go to waste. He toys with the idea of texting back, scrolling through a hundred possible replies from glib to sincere. But nah. Nah.


+


Dom is in love with possibility. He is in love with new beginnings. He takes his dreams and other people's dreams and makes them into one big beautiful picture, and he is in love with this also. He knows this. He's self-aware to a fault.

His epiphanies aren’t epiphanies; they’re hesitant admissions.

It happens during a dinner, just him and a co-star. It's a dinner because there is an unspoken agreement not to call it a date, not to take things too fast. It's not a date, but there are these looks that she gives him. She's smiling, white teeth between red lips lit up by the gold of candleflame, and Dom smiles back. When she cracks jokes, he laughs because they're actually funny. She's great, she's charming, and there's a point where they end up holding hands across the table. He's not sure how that happened, but it feels natural, so he keeps holding, and she keeps holding, and they just keep on talking.

Things always start great. (Here it is, the admission creeping up at the edge of Dom's vision.) It's the honeymoon period, and everything is dandy. Everyone says the things everyone else wants to hear. The word 'perfection' is thrown around with nary a care.

She says something that he doesn't quite catch, but she smiles as she says it, and that's good enough. At the same time Dom’s thinking what a wonderful woman she is, he’s wondering how fast she will last before they both burn out and fade.

The thing is, apparently, obviously, the honeymoon doesn't last forever. You're flying high, but eventually reality will start to even out. It does that. The ground will be rushing up to meet you and the first mistake would be to think this is a fall. You think of it as a step down and you're wrong. You think of it as something that will break you open unless you flap your arms and grab onto the next dream.

You never touch the ground.

Maybe, Dom thinks, maybe that's not how it works.

You're not falling from grace. You're falling into it.

“Dom? Dominic?” She's looking at him with big dark eyes, amused and concerned. “Hey, where'd you go?”

He tells her something silly that makes her chuckle and the conversation continues like nothing happened, but in his head Dom's already wondering whether it’s too late to call Billy when he gets home.


[end.]

Comments

[lea-ndra.livejournal.com]

shirts? we give away shirts? *ggg* thanks for the pimping! :-) weeeeeeeeee!

nothing but the shirts on our... wait.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

You mean we don't have those either? What'll we do?
Write bloodynbruised fic.
Oh yeah.

[twentyfivepast.livejournal.com]

I love this. Well, I love Vancouver, too, but yes. Dom's dog food commercial randomness made me laugh. And the rest of it made me think, which is a wonderful thing, because, I mean, I'm at university. No thinking required.

And "He toys with the idea of texting back, scrolling through a hundred possible replies from glib to sincere. But nah. Nah." ...the fact that it was "nah" instead of "no"...it gives it a completely different feeling, and...yes. I don't know. I notice the weirdest things. And this was wonderful. And I'm incoherent, so I'm stopping now. But yes.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Well, I love Vancouver, too.
Oh, gosh, it was a beautiful place when I visited last summer. On top of that, it's like the LA of Canada? 'Smallville' was filming down the street of the hotel I was staying at.

I notice the weirdest things. And this was wonderful. And I'm incoherent, so I'm stopping now. But yes.
*laughs* Don't worry about it, I love weird comments. Probably 'cos I make a lot of them myself. Thanks for stopping by! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[pre-expansion.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed it. Your writing style is quite unique. I enjoy Dom's mental dialogue and his reasoning for all actions.

THis The past tense is everything. Is a great line.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks! I'm glad you did.

THis The past tense is everything. Is a great line.
^_^

[writteninsable.livejournal.com]

Maybe, Dom thinks, maybe that's not how it works.

You're not falling from grace. You're falling into it.

I have a weakness for the "falling from grace" line. No matter how often I hear it or read it or *write* it I love it and it always makes me go *melt*.

However, being constructive, I must say that I enjoyed the whole flow of this fic. The fact that Dom didn't want to answer his phone and the bit of the text-messages.

The part with the woman at the end worries me, but you know, I adore the way you ended it. Just. Lovely.

And the way you described Vancouver. *smiles* Wonderful.

~Cai

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

And the way you described Vancouver.
:D! I'm glad that worked. It's been a while since I've been there. And, I'm glad you like it. Thanks for reading!

[silentescape.livejournal.com]

and now that i want to go to Vancouver... :)

beautiful story. i love your way with words. i could actually see all of this happening in my mind.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

and now that i want to go to Vancouver...
Aww, it's a great city. So laid-back in the summer.

i could actually see all of this happening in my mind.
Awesome. I'm glad that worked for you! Thanks for reading.

[twistingflame.livejournal.com]

Dom is in love with possibility. He is in love with new beginnings. He takes his dreams and other people's dreams and makes them into one big beautiful picture, and he is in love with this also. He knows this. He's self-aware to a fault.

His epiphanies aren’t epiphanies; they’re hesitant admissions.

Love love love this. And the whole fic has this kind of transitory grace - the feeling that this is what it is in this moment, but the next moment it may be entirely different. Great story.

And thanks for the rec to bloodynbruised. What a great premise.

beauty in transience

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Love love love this. And the whole fic has this kind of transitory grace - the feeling that this is what it is in this moment, but the next moment it may be entirely different. Great story.
Thank you! I aim to please. ;)

Credit for bloodynbruised goes to lea_ndra. If it weren't for her shameless sadism, this dream would never have taken off the ground. Fight fight fight!

[konishi-zen.livejournal.com]

I really like this one, cause the way you talk about Vancouver (Never been there, live in the middle of the Industrial, nation-state wanna-be place called Edmonton, Alberta) makes the reader feel the same way about it that Dom is feeling. It sets up the story perectly to get that epiphany that Dom gets during the dinner.

Just brilliant.

PS: Love the Boondock icons. Just adore the rope one. *smirks*

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Haha, thanks. I'm so on a Boondock Saints kick right now. Ah, the rope one, as you may see, has gone into remission. *kicks a free account's icon space*

I'm glad I got Vancouver's atmosphere--or at least my version of it--across to you. Thanks for reading! Pleased you liked it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_shellofmyself/]

But Billy. There's Billy, see. He's a detail in Dom's life that makes him forget that humans are allowed to be human. Are real humans allowed to make mistakes this big? Billy is one detail in Dom's life that... Billy is...

Billy was.

The past tense is everything.

So. I really, really liked that part. Because it stood out and because the writing of it was just ... yes. This whole story! So perfectly written, so much so that while reading it I consistently kept thinking, I wish I wrote this, or could at least write something half as good as this.

Beautiful.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

*blushes* Aww, dude.
I'm so pleased you like it as you did. Thanks for stopping by, man. It's appreciated.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely gorgeous. The past tense really is everything and this line was as close to perfect as people ever get: “I want to be the best version of myself around you,” Dom almost said one time, but he didn't. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Beautifully done.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

*kicks the ground in a bashful sort of way* Shucks...

I'm chuffed, man. Thanks for reading. :)

[philomel.livejournal.com]

Years of being on screen--TV and movie--telling stories everyone wants to hear and saying words everyone wants to say: it does something to you. It did something to Dom. Dom had learned, through osmosis, the art of perfect moments.

Love this. And this:

The ground will be rushing up to meet you and the first mistake would be to think this is a fall. You think of it as a step down and you're
wrong. You think of it as something that will break you open unless you flap your arms and grab onto the next dream.

Euphoric and penetrating.

Engaging.
Exquisite.
Oh, and lots of other lovely adjectives (that apparently start with "e"). :)

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Love this.
^_^. That is one of my favourite parts, too.

and lots of other lovely adjectives (that apparently start with "e"). :)
I'm much obliged. Thank you so much. Glad you enjoyed it!

[dirty-diana.livejournal.com]

I have no idea which of the lotr guys is which. But this is written so prettily.

stupid hobbit wigs

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

I have no idea which of the lotr guys is which.
I had the same problem for like 3 years.

And thank you, none the less. :)

[bungee.livejournal.com]

Wow, this was wonderful. Really beautifully written, and pieced together nicely, and I think your characterization of Dom was spot-on. :)

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Do you? Haha, well. Cool. :)
Thanks, man. I'm glad you like it.

[moondanger.livejournal.com]

Got here via pogrebin and man, I've never read LOTR fics but everything you write is brilliant. There is an awareness of character coupled with a no-nonsense realism that just aaah. Hope you don't mind me friending you. :0)

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Of course I don't mind you friending me. :)
And, *blush*. Aww. Thank you. I'm chuffed, I'm pleased you like my fics.

[lux--aeterna.livejournal.com]

you write monaboyd too? man, you are my kind of girl.

i love this dom, because he makes excuses for himself, and makes excuses for the fact that he makes excuses, and that is such a brilliant human thing to do. i suck at feedback, but i so love the strange instropection of the piece, because dom is avoiding studying his actions, yet studying them at the same time. if that makes sense.

and just, your style of writing: straight-forward, and without adornment. i love that simplicity (hack_this has a similar style, which i adore), because writing is about the essentials of things, and this captures that perfectly.

[lux--aeterna.livejournal.com]

when i said hack_this, i naturally meant hackthis. i'm a loser and always fuck up poor zahra's screenname. la.

[vakker.livejournal.com]

i absolutely adore this. it's just so right. very precisely constructed and it flows wonderfully. i would elaborate, but mostly i just keep wanting to write: guh. and !!!.

i love this: Maybe, Dom thinks, maybe that's not how it works.

You're not falling from grace. You're falling into it.

and i love the end too. i was worried, and then i read billy and i was like, oh, ok, good.

all right, i'm off to see if i can find more of your gorgeous writing.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

*blush*
Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy what else you find. :)

[andrealyn]

I must say, I think this is one of the best pieces that showcases Dom. Like, it's a refreshing take, and it's like a breath of fresh air. Love the correspondance between him and Billy and well, this in general! Lovely piece!

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! I'm flattered you think so. :)

[fitofpique.livejournal.com]

Wow. I absolutely adore this Dom - the neophile - so full of faults, and all too aware of it. What fascinating characterization.

And I admire your use of understatement and the overall feeling of ambiguity. That you leave so many questions unanswered. I feel unsettled and hopeful all at once. It's a kind of weird feeling :)

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. :)

PS: Your icon is *lovely*. Great colors.

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. Thanks for the ride. It was less of an epiphany, than a hesitant admission. Beautiful understatement.

Have I said "beauiful" too much? It's just the right word.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks, man. :)

Can I ask how you found this fic, btw? It's a rather old one.

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

His epiphanies aren’t epiphanies; they’re hesitant admissions.

Oh, this is just great. Thoughtful, introspective Dom; not miserable, not moping, and "self-aware to a fault." Such and interesting characterization and so very beautifully written.

*happy sigh of fic satisfaction*

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)
Glad you liked.

[kho.livejournal.com]

This was really great. I love the slow meandering of it, and how you never do say exactly what the problem is, only that the honeymoon had ended. And I'm left with the feeling that perhaps nothing really happened, but that Dom left before 'the bad thing' could happen. And the psychologist in me said 'fear of abandonment, so abandons on his own.' Meh.

Have you ever read any fic by scattergold? She's got a wonderful style, and several fandoms, but I love her LOTRips and Royal Tenenbaum fics. Well, any fic she does it good, but those are the ones I mostly read. If not, troll her memories when you want to read something.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right. My Dom's fickle, scared, and proud, so yeah, abandonment issues are not too far off the map.

I have read her Royal Tenenbaum and Wilsoncest fics, yes. They're lovely things.

I'm going to feel like a bit of a douche saying thank you in each reply I give you, so take my word for it that I am glad for your wonderful feedback and do thank you for it. :)

[proteinscollide.livejournal.com]

The writing in this is just lovely. I love how you write Dom - wry, and a bit scared, and regretful - and the glimpses of Billy from his eyes are very nice, sweet. I really enjoyed this.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[elmathelas.livejournal.com]

Found this via obsessivetendancies.net. I wish I could put my finger on what it was I liked so very much about this-- I think it had a lot to do with Dom's self-awareness, the way he knows that it's the dream he loves, particularly:

Dom is in love with possibility. He is in love with new beginnings. He takes his dreams and other people's dreams and makes them into one big beautiful picture, and he is in love with this also. He knows this. He's self-aware to a fault.

Seems very real, as does the realization of why he likes Vancouver.

[lionessfreedom.livejournal.com]

I broke down and came over here to see your RPS. *shakes head at self* I'm so... yeah. Glutton for punishment. Three AM and I'm still reading your stuff. :-p