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[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

Title: Palimpsest
Author: sophrosyne31
Pairing: Dom/Billy, Dom/Orlando, Dom/Elijah. However, this is angst, not a slut!fic, in case you were getting hopeful.
Rating: Adult for concepts and language
Summary: Dom scrapes against the world. The world scrapes him.

A/N Thanks to angstslashhope, epicanthus and xquotessuch for the beta. Liberties here have been taken with some public moments. And there’s a scene a little reminiscent of shaenie’s recent Valentine’s fic ‘Half-Four’ – I had the idea before I read her story, honest, but no doubt this owes something to her.



"Do you remember," Dom says, and he holds slack knuckles tenderly across his palm, "how soft your hands were that time?"

Elijah smiles merely with the gentle corners of his mouth. His face is shadowed in the dimness. He's looking down; Dom can see his eyelids, wide, pale, tapered ovals and lashes. Around them the din of the pub batters the thick orangey air. They're in a corner booth.

"From all the rocks on Mount Doom," he says. "That set. Crawling along. They really ripped me up." His voice is low and his face tilts down further.

"Wore off all your fingerprints, nearly. You were so tired." Dom squeezes the fingers in his hand. Runs his thumb along warm skin. "The way you used to fall asleep all the time!"

"I barely knew what I was doing, man. Frodo. Frodo was hard." Elijah's still talking to the tabletop.

"Everyone else was always digging the fake dirt out from under their nails! You, you never had any nails. One of these days you'll have to quit that."

"I know. But not yet." Elijah uses his left hand to raise his beer, manoeuvring it beneath their outstretched arms. "You can't talk. You've got your bad habits."

"I keep my vices out of sight." A sarky smile. "It's funny, isn't it, these last days. All together. Press, premieres, bullshit. I'm having a great time though, Elijah." He hefts back a bit in his seat, sprawls. Their hands string a bit looser across the table. Elijah looks up.

"Must have been great, being back in Berlin. Talking German. Did you remember?"

Dom gazes at the table. "It wasn't the same without you."

Dom feels the heat of Elijah's hand in his, and feels his own getting sweaty. Elijah removes his hand, skin snagging a little, pulling away. He drinks his beer, thoughtful again.

"That time, the time when your hands were smooth, and we- "

"All the cuts and scratches everyone had! The walking fucking wounded." Elijah's laughing now, with his eyes flickering to the room behind Dom. His laughter runs away a little fast. Dom runs his fingers over the edge of the bench in front of him.

"You mean the make-up wounds or the real ones?"

Elijah's mouth twitches down to stillness. He flicks his eyes up to Dom's, a flare of gloss, and down. "I guess – I - mean the real ones."


Dom remembers leaving the family house in Germany. Rooms scoured clean, spaces echoing white, the doorsills scrubbed of grubby marks at hip height. The place they got in Stockport was fresh, too. Walls powdery with new paint. Dom made sure he touched every sill as he passed through, his parents leading ahead with the real estate agent. Surfaces enamelled glossy, holding every imprint, till with time they ran together in smears.

When he lost his virginity, squirming on a cold night, goosebumped on top of the covers, he pressed his palms against the wall above the headboard, arching above the girl; the next day, waking to a different world, he saw the marks, like oil on water, silver and secret.



Dom crosses the carpark at a fast skip-stumble, unzipping his jacket as he goes. There are techies and extras standing in smokers' clusters already. The sky is fluffy with pinkness and the air around the smokers thickens with exhaled breath into the chill.

"Shit, crap, bugger," Dom mutters. He passes the Cuntebago, its lights on, the thin sound of Orlando singing inside. Viggo is sitting on the steps, already swarthy and ragged in costume, reading a slim book. He raises a hand without looking up.

"How goes?"

"Fucking late," Dom moans.

"That'll learn you," says Viggo, still reading. "It's a whipping offence this time."

Dom half-runs on. Their trailer is next. He opens the flimsy metal door and stands on the threshold, puffing.

Elijah and Sean have already gone. There's music, something drum 'n bass, snapping on the stereo, and half-finished paper cups of coffee on the bench. Billy's standing there alone, looking in the mirror. He turns, quickly, as Dom walks in.

"Wotcha," says Dom.

"You're late, Dom." Billy turns back to the mirror. He's got his sleeve hiked up and is running a finger delicately along his forearm.

"The car. It was too late to call you."

Dom comes up behind him. Billy raises his face to meet Dom's eyes in the mirror. Two thoughtful gazes hold the morning still.

"Bill. Leave it."

"Wardrobe's going to ask."

Dom takes Billy's slender arm in his hands.

"That's a good one this time." There are two long shallow scratches on the inside, dark, pale along each side. Dom runs his cold fingers along the tiny cobbles of blood. "Tell 'em Treebeard did it."

Billy doesn't say anything. But his eyes flick back up from his arm to meet Dom's reflection. They stare at each other. In the crystalline fluorescent light their skin looks worn, with violet shadows, and their eyes are pale glass drops. Billy's expression is thoughtful, expectant. Dom drops his gaze again to the scrapes along pale flesh.

Billy drops his arm, and their hands rest on the edge of the counter, four chains of knuckles. Billy's are paler than Dom's, waxy white.

"Tonight I'll go easier," Dom says. "I won't hurt you again, Bills."

"Please," says Billy.


His first girlfriend liked it hard and rough. Dom agreed with that, plunged in. Hammering away, soaking and blood-flushed, riding the wave of adolescent melodrama with fierce, grappling balance. Clutching onto each other as the bed threw them back and forth and they cried out like movie stars. In the dull morning light, before school, pulling on innocent white shirts and socks, they'd compare bruises. Beautiful indigo stains on hipbones, upper arms, buttocks. The warfare of it soothed them. They weren't kids, this was serious. They fought glorious battles with their flesh every night. Wounds to brandish, and kiss better.



Orlando dumps himself into his chair next to Dom. The room is full of press, murmuring and checking their seating numbers; there are glasses of iced water in front of each cast member. Dom doesn’t like iced water; he'd prefer it tepid. Orlando drinks his water in one long swallow. Dom has the impression that everyone in the room watches that throat buckling. Dom holds his glass, to warm it.

They're still checking the microphones. A small woman reaches between Orlando and Dom to adjust one on the table. Orlando turns his face away.

"How're you doing," says Dom. The woman smiles, and moves away to Andy.

"Orli? How you doing?" He tugs his shirt straight and pulls on the scarf hanging down. The fabric is itching his neck. The room is full of New Zealand accents, the thud of chairs being shifted, and Dom's proud to be looking fine. Back here. The premiere was incredible. Incredible.

Orlando's looking orange. Maybe it's his colourful scarf. His skin doesn't have any texture anymore, thinks Dom. Can they do that, can they wipe your skin clean? Dom loves his stubble days. He loves the scrub of it under his own fingers, and the little moles on his cheek. The roughness, and the plumpness beneath. It makes everything more tender, he thinks. He loves seeing the pink rise around lips after kissing, the skin swelling, loves that his texture has been imprinted. He likes to kiss hard.

Orlando's gesturing for more cool water. "I'm good, man," he says. "Tired. I feel a bit weird, back here. It's all so showbiz. I thought it would be a bit more cool, here. You know?"

"Uh huh." Orlando's tan is perfect. "You wanna go out later, if we can? Head down to Fidel's?"

"Maybe." The room's settling down, the threads of conversation fraying. They're nearly set to go. Orlando smiles, voice lowering. "I'm stonkered though, man. I just need to hang quiet. Or, maybe you want to come up to my room, you know, catch up… I'd like to catch up with you, man. Just be, you know..."

Now, leaning in, Dom can see the tiny black moles on his cheek; the fine stubble along the jaw. Even these details seem glossy, painted. "I don't know, mate. I feel like getting out of here."

"Like that one time, Dom, do you remember? In Queenstown?" Orlando's facing ahead, smiling at the journalists. Dom tightens his scarf. Orlando whispers, "You left marks, man. Marks all over my throat."

"Elijah, how does it feel to be back in Wellington for the premiere of the last film in the trilogy?"

Dom slumps back to listen. "They faded."


The first time he went back home to stay for Christmas, smelling of different clothes liquid, swaggering with the strut of a young man fresh from the field of sharehousing, he'd forgotten that he'd given up his room for a spare bedroom. His mother had taken down the posters; changed the sheets to frills and flowers. His single bed was smaller, and the sheets were tucked in tight. Waking the next day, he looked up, and saw the faint sheen of many handprints. They'd darkened a little with dust. Dom ran his fingers over them. His hands seemed bigger now.


It's Dom's idea, the fellowship tattoo. Him and Orlando, one afternoon at the Queenstown pub, drawing with magic markers on their knees, hands, earlobes. Orlando makes daisy earrings on Dom. He adorns Orlando's shoulder with a skull and crossbones, 'Dead Sexy' scrawling out of the mouth. 'Mine mine mine' says Orlando's palm, and he lays it, laughing, on the scruffy back of Dom's neck, and the wet ink on his damp palm leaves faint scraggly smears on the skin.

"Branded!" says Orlando, smirking.

"That's what you think. Reverse psychology, my friend. Who's got the feckin' mark then?"

"Mark of the beast." Orlando's carefully inking something on his abdomen, the writing wonky as he does it upside down. Dom peers down. 'BITE M-'.

"Is that right," Dom says. "You and your fucking fantasies, Bloom. You don't realise you've got a head like a pig's arse."

"Uh-huh." Orlando finishes the 'E'.

"You should get 'Farts in bed' tattooed on your head. Or like that guy who had 'cunt' tattooed in by his mates. Right on his dial."

He hefts up a bit in the seat and headbutts Orlando, more or less gently. "Right there, sunshine."

"Oi! Careful! I bruise easily. There's already a bump from Viggo yesterday. He whacked me something shocking."

"Such a sensitive plant. A bruiser, huh?"

Orlando smiles. "A bruiser, alright. You better believe it."

Dom's grip on the pen is sweaty, and the alcohol lurches in his head for a moment, but he reaches across and takes Orlando's lower lip in his fingers. "Hold still."

His own mouth is soft with concentration as he pinches the slippery flesh. He writes 'DOM' on fragile, rosy skin. Orlando is still, his head forward, waiting, his breath warm on Dom's fingers. Dom lets him go. Orlando sits back, mystified. He looks like a Maori, adorned, his lip black with distorted letters.

"Go have a look in the mirror," Dom says. "Then we'll go, huh? Back to the hotel?"

Orlando gets up, a bit wobbly, and trudges off smiling stupidly across the brown carpet towards the men's. Dom takes a drink. He colours in the pad of each fingertip. Maybe they'll leave prints.


For a while there everything was blank in his life. No girls, no guys; his friends had nothing new to say. Filming 'Hetty' was something they had no interest in. Dom's tales of debacles on take twenty-three and Patricia's bon mots were met with polite chuckles and gossip about the girls from their old school. He didn’t like to wear his old clothes; but he wasn't sure what else to buy. The sky was white every morning when he got up. There was no time for going out late, with early call every day; Dom was too busy trying to remember his lines, polishing anecdotes for the cast. It was strange how no one flirted with him anymore.

He jerked off every night, his fantasies becoming more and more savage. His fist vicious around his cock. But orgasms were mere thuddings through his belly, echoes without sound. In the dark he scraped at his arms, his chest, remembering Rebecca. He tried to leave scratches, but the stinging red streaks were always gone in the morning. He read that there are levels of sensors in the skin. The deepest ones register only pain, alarm triggers for a body suffering impact. The top ones recognised only sensation; it was the brain that coded it pleasure or pain. It was the same with memory, thought Dom. Or was it the opposite?



"I'm sure it was just here, it was!" Dom's leading the way through a Wellington sidestreet, away from the strip of restaurants. Orlando and Elijah and Sean have hesitated in front of a store window. Billy won't arrive for shooting pickups till tomorrow. Dom squints to look further up the dark street.

"I've never had faith in your navigational abilities, Monaghan," Sean says. "And even less when you've had two jugs of margheritas. Does this bar even exist?"

"Or is it a figment of a perverse imagination?" mused Elijah. "Dom's always had an active mind. Do you remember his imaginary friend Balthazar? Farted like a buzzard. Never caught."

"It's only been a year, fuckwad, and my mind is as fresh as a fig." Dom said. He stopped to rummage in his memory. The others were already turning to go back to the mall.

Dom followed them, a bit hurt. He remembered these streets so well; how could a bar disappear? This neighbourhood had been theirs for all those months, those crazy months of filming. A life. He'd walked here so often, through different weathers, different lights, different moods. Angry with Sean, drunken and nervous with Orlando, quiet in the aftermath of confessions with Elijah. He remembered Billy's hand knuckly and awkward, half-hanging out of his back pocket. Stopping and hitching Billy into his hands, one night, and whispering "I'm sorry, Bill, I'm so sorry" into his ear. Right here.

There should be footprints on the cement, Dom thought. There should be footprints scorched in, worn in, from all the times we've walked here. Ghosts of us, streaming by, in the air. This air.


Somewhere in a forest in the South Island of New Zealand there is a tree. It's a straight, thick tree, silken bark, elegant leaves. Against it, once, Dom laid his face. He felt it pulsing cool next to his cheek. The tree sang to him, very quietly, of its leaves, of bark shedding, of transience and endurance. He stepped away, and went to his tent, and got a knife. He came back to the tree, and regarded the smooth bark. He ran his thumb over the edge of the blade, thinking.

Then he put his arms around the trunk for a moment, a long moment, and then he walked away.