fellowshippers | Another challenge fic

Let's face it folks, I'm addicted to this.

Title: Stubborn and scared
Author:

penguingal
Pairing: Monaboyd
Rating: R, for implied sex
Word Count: 478
Disclaimer: Don't know 'em, haven't see 'em, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Feedback: is my sunshine on a cloudy day
A/N: For the

lotrpschallenge 12, write a story between 450 and 500 words that ends with the line "Why didn't you call?" Just lent itself to Dom/Billy in my head. Written during my lunch break :)

x-posted to my journal

Stubborn and scared

Billy fidgeted on the doorstep of Dom’s new apartment. He kicked himself for being this nervous, but it was his own fault. It was so stupid, too, and all over something that he should have done but didn’t because he had been too stubborn to admit to himself that he was scared.

“C’mon, Dom… me invalid gram opens a door faster than this,” he muttered under his breath, adjusting the bottle of wine under his arm for the umpteenth time and pulling at the cuffs of his shirt under his jacket.

Finally, open door, warm smile, manly hug, and he and Dom are off chatting as though no time has elapsed between this moment and all those moments they’d spent together halfway around the world. He breathes deeply and is instantly transported back there. Dom busies himself in the kitchen and he makes a show of looking around but his mind’s eye refuses to really let him see anything but flashes of a time that was: Dom lying in bed, rumpled and content, after shagging him within an inch of his life; his hands on Dom’s hips as they lay together in the night; Dom rubbing his shoulders on set after a particularly trying scene; and the shared agony as they sat trapped in Treebeard’s branches.

He smiled despite himself as he continued looking at the morass of collected refuse from Dom’s travels. The man collected everything he could get his hands on, and Billy trailed his fingers over piles of restaurant menus and displays of stolen salt and pepper shakers. He drew his arms tightly around himself as though to ward off the pervasive feeling that was insisting on creeping up on him. The longer he stood in the middle of Dom’s living room, the more he felt like he was home in a way he never was anywhere else. How could he possibly ever explain to Dom that he was afraid of this? What kind of lunatic is afraid of finally finding a place, a someone, he can feel at home with?

“It’s because some things can’t ever be the same,” he sighed to himself.

“What’d you say, Bills?” Dom said, poking his head out from the kitchen.

“I said that it’s nice that some things stay the same.”

“’S what I thought you said,” Dom replied handing him a cold beer from the fridge. “Dinner’ll still be a bit. You wanna sit?”

“You’re not actually cooking, are yeh? The last meal you made was just this side of toxic waste, mate!”

Dom laughed. “I’ve gotten quite a bit better since then, but you wouldn’t know that now, would yeh?”

Shite. He’d walked right into that, and he put his beer down in anticipation of what was about to come.

“You were in LA last month, Bills. I saw you on Bravo. Why didn’t you call?”