fellowshippers | Fic: Savage Heart 2/? RPS AU

Author: Sema
Pairing: Eventually, Monaboyd
Rating: NC-17 overall
Note: I'm probably playing fast and loose with some timelines here, but that's why they call it an alternative reality, right?
Disclaimers: this story uses the names and images of real people. I do not know these people, neither to I claim to have any actual knowledge of their lives. No insult is intended.

Previous chapters: Part 1

Part Two: Manchester

It's a funny thing, trying to sleep in his old bed, in his parents' house. Everything feels too small, and the posters on the walls, the bits and pieces left behind of his boyish life, don't seem to suit him anymore, as if the Dominic who slept in this pale blue room with the darker blue curtains was someone else entirely, someone he hasn't known for a long while.

It's funny, too, to have his mum come to his room to wish him goodnight and see her perch uneasily on his bedside, gazing down at him with eyes that are exactly his eyes. She's trying not to cry, he can see that--chuffed as anything that he's been given this opportunity, proud as can be, but already missing him fiercely, as he misses her, and his dad, already. He hasn't expected to be homesick, but here he is, still in Manchester, and nearly overcome with it. It hasn't helped that him mum made his favorite chicken for dinner, and his favorite pudding, all the things he likes best.

It's humbling to be loved as his parents love him, when all he can think of, at times, is how often he's disappointed them. How often he's bound to disappoint them in the future.

Where he's going, no one will know what he likes and, furthermore, no one will care. He's horribly aware that everyone else has made it there before him, whilst he, the last-cast hobbit and the one who needed to finish up his work in France, will arrive late, a stranger to them, when they've already had a bit of time to learn each other's ways. Elijah Wood and Sean Astin he knows by reputation--they've solid careers already, many films to their credit. The other bloke, the Scottish one--Billy--is even more obscure than he is, and a bit older too, he gathers. It's Billy who worries him: as Pippin to Dom's Merry, he knows they'll work closely together. What if Billy thinks him a total twat? What if he can't get along with Billy?

It's positively nerve-shredding.

His mum runs her fingers over the cuts and bruises on his face, and Dom wishes she wouldn't. They're horribly sore, for one thing, the sensation of being stung again and again by bees not have done anything like left him. For another, it's embarrassing to be fussed over by one's mum. For a third, he knows he's worried her, all the more so because he's told her, and his dad, an out-and-out lie.

When it came down to it, he couldn't tell them about the monster. How could he? The more he thinks about it, the more ridiculous it seems. A monster? In Picardy? A monster anywhere in the modern world, for all that. Most likely his mind's exaggerated the whole incident and Juliette's right after all--what attacked them was an Alsatian gone feral, or something along those lines.

A fucking big Alsatian, his mind supplies.

For some reason, though, he hasn't told them about an Alsatian (a dog, he insists to himself, it was only a dog and you know that's all it was, Dominic). Instead, he's spun out a tale of yobbos on the Underground, a fight over his short hair, being taken for a skinhead. He gave them his defiant look to accompany the story, and gained a lecture from his dad about controlling his temper and seeking the aid of the proper authorities, rather than diving in with his fists. His mum wept a bit, and shook her head, and asked him, "Dominic, whatever shall we do with you? Your brother never caused half the trouble."

Which is very true. Matthew, after all, apparently was born with halo and wings.

"I don't think you're very well," his mum's telling him now, feeling his cheek with her smooth, cool hand. "I think you've got a bit of a fever. Don't you think…?"

Dom lets out an exaggerated sigh. "I'm fine, Mum, and even if I'd got bubonic plague, I'd still be on that flight tomorrow."

"It's only that I don't like the thought of you not being well, and not having anyone to look after you."

"I'm perfectly able to look after myself," Dom answers her, making his voice kind with an effort. "Have been doing it for a bit now, Mum."

"But not so far away." She's teary again, and he hates that, because it makes him feel teary too.

"You'll have to come for a visit, once I'm settled in. I'll show you the sights." Dom gives her a grin--his best grin, in fact, the one she never can resist, and with that she kisses him good night, sighing herself as she switches off the light, and again as she shuts his door behind her.

Dom lies on his back, arms crossed behind his head on his pillows. Even with the lights off and the curtains drawn tight across the windows, the room seems too bright. There's no moon to shine in, but perhaps it's the streetlights. Or perhaps it's only his nerves. He feels as if he can make out every detail around him, yet there's no colour, only more shades of blue.

He forces himself to breathe: one long breath, hold to the count of three, out again, trying to make each breath regular and calming as waves washing in from the sea.

He hears there's decent surfing to be had in New Zealand, even if the water's chilly. The others are young blokes, perhaps they'll take it up together, and when there's a day off, now and then, all go out in their wetsuits. He's always wanted to take up surfing.

Perhaps they'll all end up good mates, and everything will be brilliant.

He thinks of Juliette, a little sadly, but not sadly enough that it really makes a difference to him, and then of Roger, who he's truly sorry to be leaving. Perhaps, if he wasn't going so far away, they'd have been great friends, or lovers, whatever it was they were to each other.

Dom rolls over in bed, pulling the pillow over his head. Christ, why won't the lights dim? It's still bright even when he's dragged the duvet over his head as well. Across the street, the Johnstone's damned West Highland terrier is yapping and yapping--sounds as if the poor thing's going mental--and he wishes they'd either soothe it or kill it, one of the two.

Which is a joke, of course. He'd never bring harm to an animal, if he could help it, even though he supposes he is a bit of a hypocrite, in that he does eat them. The ones that are meant to be eaten, that is.

What in hell could be making the little dog so excitable? It's always seemed a reasonable enough creature, as small yapper-type dogs go. He wonders if something's got into the Johnstone's garden, a raccoon, or a squirrel outside its window, something to upset it.

Gradually, though the light doesn't fade, and the yapping continues, Dom drifts into sleep.

When his dreams come, they're vivid and terrible: he's running and running in the night, with the monster just behind him, and this time he knows it will catch him once and for all, to bring him down and tear at him. Only it doesn't catch him, and he realizes, with a jolt of fear so terrible and perfect it's like a spear through his heart, that the beast isn't on his heels after all, the beast is inside him. The beast is him, filled with blood-lust and fury, baying his lungs out at the moon, and he'll never, never be able to run away from it.

It's this thought that wakes him. That, and the cuts throbbing.

He's damp, and for a moment he thinks he's soaked in sweat, but then he realizes the moisture is dew, that he's lying in his parents' back garden, in the longish grass his dad means to cut in the morning (though secretly Dom's meant to get up early to do the job for him) before it's time for the long drive down to London.

He's lying in the long grass, damp and perfectly naked, but for all the cool, wet dew, his skin is burning, particularly the scrapes where the monster's (the Alsatian's, he insists) claws cut him. When he goes to pick himself up from the ground, his body feels awkward, as if it's held quite a different shape only a moment before, and is now having to get used to its own form. His bones and muscles ache.

And that's what you get for sleepwalking into the garden, Dom tells himself, laughing a little. When he was a boy, he sleepwalked frequently, all around the house and outside too. It made his mum quite frantic. She'd even put locks high up on the doors so that he couldn't reach them and let himself out, but he still found ways, even in his sleep, around that.

It's nerves, no doubt, that have driven him back into the childhood habit. And God, he hopes that doesn't continue. He scarcely wants to imagine the bollocking he'll receive.

He'll go for a run round the neighborhood, that's it, work off some of these nerves and pent-up energy in sweat and pure exhaustion. Maybe it will let him sleep through part of his flight.

Looking carefully left, then right, to be sure no one sees, he scuttles inside--he's left the kitchen door wide open, anything might have got in.

He's just shutting the door behind him, carefully, so as not to engage the loud "snickt" it generally makes otherwise, when he realizes he's not alone in the kitchen. His dad's over by the kettle, just about to plug it in. The expression on his face is one of surprise, to say the least, when he notices Dom's damp, thoroughly unclothed, grass-littered condition.

"Er…" Dom begins.

"Tea?" his dad asks. He raises one eyebrow, looking Dom up and down.

"Not just now." Dom fights the urge to cover himself, to grab a tea towel off the rack, or a placemat off the kitchen table. "Umn… I was sleepwalking, I think. I'm so bloody nervous, Dad."

"Well," Austin answers, "I suppose that's understandable. Best… er… before your mother…"

"Ah. Yeah." Dom runs a hand over the scant prickles that are all that remains of his hair, then down the itching, burning scrapes. "I was thinking of going for a run."

"Best thing for it, really." His father takes the teapot down from the cupboard, spooning in leaves from the caddy. "Work off some of that energy. I'll make you a proper bit of breakfast when you return."

"Not really hungry, actually." Dom laughs. He'd been scarcely able to touch the lovely dinner his mum made the night before. It's all nerves. Bloody nerves. At this point he's literally shaking with them, and he hopes his dad doesn't notice.

"Nonsense," Austin tells him. "You're a growing boy. Get dressed, go for your run, and I'll see you when you're through." He turns back to the now-hissing kettle, pouring water into the pot as Dom makes his escape upstairs.

He rifles through the drawers of his old bureau for a t-shirt and pair of trackies, dresses and slips off downstairs again. His good trainers are in the mud room, just off the kitchen, and though he'd rather not face his dad again just at this minute, he knows there's no help for it. He sits at the kitchen table, lacing up his shoes as Austin stands by the worktop, sipping his tea. He's nearly bubbling over with the desire to impart fatherly advice, Dom can tell, but he holds it in, looking at his youngest son, it seems, a bit sadly.

"I know other fathers have sent their sons to foreign wars far younger than you are now," Austin says at last, "And you're only going away to work in a film, but I can't help but worry for you. Sometimes you're not sensible, Dominic."

"I know." Dom's face feels hot. All of him feels hot. He knows his dad's right, and he's not clever sometimes, not contained, not practical.

"This fighting…"

"Dad…" For a moment, Dom almost tells his father the truth. What he knows really happened, all thought of wild Alsatians gone from his head. The thing is, his dad's a scientist at heart, with a scientist's logical mind, and there is no logical explanation for what happened in the countryside the other night. He's not certain his dad wouldn't be more offended by the word "monster" than he would by the thought of him scuffling with skinheads--either way, he suspects, he can't win.
Still, it's almost killing to him to feel Austin's disappointment, especially since in this one instance, at least, it's not deserved. He should hardly be blamed, as he might reasonably and justly have been blamed so many times before. He looks down, tugging his shoelaces tight, trying to find the words.

"What is it, son?" his father asks at last. Dom's let too much time pass; if there are words, it's too late for them now.

"Nothing." Dom jumps to his feet. "Nothing. Only… I will do better, Dad. Try, anyway. You know me. I do try."

Austin nods, still sipping his tea. "Have a good run, Dominic." He's not in any way convinced, Dom can tell. Matthew's place as the good son is preserved, as is his own position as the family's ridiculous fuckup.

He's cursing in his head as he comes down the back stairs, and he barely bothers to stretch, taking off instead at a flat sprint, going harder and harder until he's left his old neighborhood behind and found himself in streets he's never seen before, wondering if he'll know the way to get back when it's time to turn the other way. There's a ferocious stitch in his side and his breath's coming in sobs, but he doesn't slow, can't slow, somehow, he's too wound up in anxiety, worry, anger, self-reproach--thinking of the fractured conversation he had with his gran yesterday, the last they'll ever have, most likely, thinking of his mum's worry and his dad's disappointment.

Eventually, Dom knows he has to turn, and he does, but it's a big, slow circle, taking him the longest way round possible, until by the time he gets back there's no more than a quarter hour left before the time they'd agreed on for his departure.

His mum's hovering by the stairs, not quite wringing her hands, but nearly. Dom only gives her a bit of a grin and dashes by as best he can, though the truth is he's close to collapse, breathing so hard he can't imagine how he'll recover. She's laid out clothes for him on his old bed, a decent shirt and trousers, a tie, his best shoes nearby on the floor. He'd laugh if he could spare the oxygen. That's his mum, trying to put a good face on him for the world.

He'll be a proper son this time, he decides, and so he showers in record time and dresses as she wishes him to dress, doing a bit of a spin for her as he pauses on the landing. "Am I presentable?" he asks, with his finest cheeky grin, still gasping a little from his run, but his mum only shakes her head. "You're impossible, Dominic. Get in the car."

She not angry with him, at least. Dom thinks she understand better than his dad what torture it would have been for him to have to wait even a moment. The journey down to London, trapped in the backseat of his dad's car, will be difficult enough. He can't believe, hard as he ran, exhausted as he is, that he's still twitching as if volts of electricity are running through his body. He's going to have to get himself under control.

"Dominic," his father says, with exasperation, as Dom breezes by him on his way out the door.
Dom doesn't pause. He's making lists in his head, the same lists he's been making for days: his big suitcase is already in the boot, his carry on in the backseat. Passport, money (his mum has already, kindly, exchanged notes for New Zealand Dollars for him at her bank), credit card, phone, charger for the phone…

Somehow, he can't keep hold of it all in his head, but then he never can. He's sure to have forgotten something, which will then, with expense and inconvenience, need to be posted. As long as he has his passport, though, and his work visas are in order, he doesn't suppose he needs to worry--and that last bit has been handled for him. All that remains is that the car not break down on the way into London, that they reach Heathrow by lunchtime, and that he not miss his connections in Frankfurt and Sydney.

It seems a good omen, somehow, that he's embarking on this adventure through the country of his birth.

About forty hours from now, with driving and connections and that strange time change by which he lives a day twice, he'll be in Wellington.

Dom slides into the backseat, bending over his knees. Outside, he can hear his parents' voices: his dad's a bit cross; his mum's conciliatory. His dad's been smoking again, he can smell it in the upholstery, and wouldn't mum just murder him if she knew--which she will, the moment she steps inside. The odor's over everything, not the least masked by a trace of lavender, most likely from his mum's hand-lotion, and something a bit like a greenhouse. No, realizes after a moment, it's tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes.

He straightens, wondering a bit. He doesn't normally notice smells much, most likely because he's allergic to more or less everything and spends much of his life in a state of perpetual congestion. Sounds, he notices, and sights. Colours.

Except that the colours look a bit dull this morning, as if everything's taken two steps left into the sepia range. The sounds, on the other hand, are sharper than ever, the Johnstone's terrier now leading a positive chorus of barks, yips, growls all up and down the street. Oddly, it's not the barking of bored dogs either--every voice Dom can hear is somewhere in the range between terrified and completely mental.

"Good heavens!" his mum exclaims, sliding into the passenger seat. "What's got into them this morning? I'd heard the Johnstone's Westie last night, but this morning they seem to have all been bit by the same bug. I hope they've quieted by the time we get home."

"The Westie most likely woke to Dominic sleepwalking through the garden," Austin says. "No doubt thought he was an intruder."

"I wasn't in their garden," Dom informs him. "I was in yours." He wonders when "our garden" became "your garden. " When had he made that transition?

It occurs to him that he'll never again, after this, be anything but a guest to them. That all the days of "our house" and "my room" are over and done with now. His eyes sting and Dom rubs them, trying not to be obvious about it, not wanting his mum, especially, to think he's weeping, though he is. He's strangely overwrought this morning, all his emotions far too near the surface.

"You were sleepwalking?" His mum twists in her seat. "Oh, darling!"

Dom thinks of distracting her with a comment about the reek of smoke in the car, but decides to keep his peace. It's too petty a revenge--though his dad really needn't have brought up the sleepwalking. Instead he settles back into his corner, answering all Aureen's questions about whether he's remembered this or that thing with "Yes, Mum," though he doesn't know whether he's remembered or not.

They've nearly reached Birmingham by the time she's exhausted this line of questioning, and from there the conversation drifts into a sort of gentle melancholy--remember this time in Ireland? That time at the seaside? Remember when we lived in Berlin, or Dusseldorf, or Bern? His mum's crying openly now and her face is just like his when he cries: her skin goes blotchy red, her nose puffy, her eyes silvery, like mirrors. It's the reason he hates to cry on camera; he looks an ugly wreck.

He's seen both Elijah Wood and Sean Astin cry in films, and both of them are good criers, masters of the single gentle tear and the misty look. Dom would be willing to bet that the unknown Billy's a good crier too, and that he'll be blubbing away at the Grey Havens like a big girl's blouse whilst the other three stand there looking moist and heroic.

Christ, what made him think he could do this? What in hell? He ought to tell his dad to turn around and drive home right now, and become a firefighter like his old mate Stephen.

Only it's too late. They've arrived at Heathrow, and his dad's slotted the car into the carpark stall. It's time to stand, to walk, to move.

It's time to say goodbye.