"Hush, hush, I thought I heard you callin' my name, now..."

[gabbyhope.livejournal.com]

I come in peace. With a fic, as well!

Title: 'Chrome' (1/1)
Author: Gabby Hope (yllosubmarine@yahoo.com)
Pairing: Dom/Orli
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 'It’s. Well. You’re painting your nails, mate.'
Feedback: Don't make me beg :)
Archive: BTF and anywhere else, just ask.
Disclaimer: I don't know or, least of all, own the individuals mentioned in this piece of fiction. Fancy that, eh?
Notes: Many, many salaams to ladymoonray for the kind, lovely beta. Thank you, dear!



Orlando was out on the deck, smoking one of his last cigarettes while leaning against the wooden railing. The wind was chilly and his plain black T-shirt did not keep him from shivering as gooseflesh covered his bare arms. He watched the trees sway in the distance, the dark green of the leaves blurring with the black of the night. His chocolate brown eyes traced the night sky as he pulled hungrily at the cig, exhaling through his nose which was mostly numb from the cold.

It was a pity that he and Elijah were not allowed to smoke indoors. At least, not while Dominic was in the house at the same time. When Dom would enter the room and Orli or Elijah happened to be lighting up, he would throw an absolute fit, yammering on about second hand smoke and disgusting yellow teeth and the smell of smoke hanging in a room for days or some other inane shit like that. Of course, they obliged their friend and took their smoking outside without much complaining. They complained enough about his snoring as it was.

Orli had finished his cig and flicked the butt into the yard below. He ran the palms of his hands up and down his arms, taking a last look around him. He then turned and entered the house through the kitchen back door. The house was quiet, which was odd, seeing as how he had left to go outside because Dom was in the house, making himself a snack in the kitchen while singing along to The Beatles’ “Revolver.” They were the only two at home (Elijah and Billy had gone to visit Sean’s wife and daughter with him), which made Orli, well, jumpy. Unsettled. He had been on edge ever since the night before. The last thing that Orli had heard before he stepped outside on the deck to seek refuge in smoke was Dom wailing to “Taxman.” There was no singing or music playing now that he reentered the house, however. Orli ran a hand over his cold nose and surveyed the empty kitchen.

Curious, he walked around the small, cluttered kitchen table and into the living room. There, sitting on the couch facing away from where he was standing, Orli could see the back of Dom’s mussed hair as he leant forward. He straightened up slightly as he heard Orli enter the room, but other than that he made no sign of acknowledgment as Orli walked towards him. He instead kept his attention on what was in front of him.

“Hey, what’s the deal?” Orli began as he reached his friend’s side. “It’s so fucking quiet in here. I thought you were dead or...” he trailed off as he took in what his friend was engaged in.

Dom sat slightly hunched over, his elbows on top of his knees, a small nail polish brush held almost awkwardly in his left hand as he painted the jagged ends of his right fingertips. The color was a bright and splendid silver. Chrome, practically. Brilliant and luminous in contrast to Dom’s creamy skin color.

Orli could feel himself staring. Dom. Painting his nails like a ninny. He found himself about to giggle; it was so absurd. He cleared his throat instead and Dom blinked, looking owlishly up at him. It was as if he had just been interrupted from a daydream. “Ehm.” Orli muttered. “What’re you doing?” He asked quietly.

Dom shrugged his shoulders. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” He asked rhetorically, turning his attention back to the fingernail he was holding under his face. He ran the little brush over the bare nail.

“Uh, well. I see what you’re doing,” Orli said. “I guess the question is why you’re doing it, then. It’s. Well. You’re painting your nails, mate.” Silly, very silly. Why was everything so fucking weird all of a sudden? Was he in Oz or some shit like that?

“Don’t know why.” Dom murmured, reaching forward with the tiny brush to dip it into the bottle that was sitting in front of him on the coffee table. And what a funny bottle it was, too, not even a bottle. It was more like a vial, something that you see in the chemists of yore that held potions of ragweed or whatever the fuck else they held in stupid little bottles. On the surface the bottle was the same silver color of the polish. It also had the words “Spacey Silver” written in a curvy print across the middle. Stupid name for a polish, Orli thought.

Dom turned his head and raised his eyebrows at Orli, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “Felt like something a bit different.”

Orli laughed slightly and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Different, huh.” He said, as if he were repeating a joke he had heard in a pub. He watched impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to another aimlessly as he watched Dom paint the remaining of his nails on his right hand. The left hand, Orli noticed, was already painted. The nails glinted merrily up at both of them.

“Silly thing to do, though.” Orli said before he could catch it. Dom shrugged.

“Gives me something to do.” He had finished his pinkie and now held his hand in front of his face to survey. Orli looked at it as well. It was strangely intriguing. Girly, yes, silly, of course. And yet it had its appeal. He fidgeted as Dom held both of his hands in front of him and compared the two. It occurred to him for maybe the tenth time that day that he had been acting very differently around Dom. Almost like he couldn’t settle on the correct thing to say, the right thing to bring up. Orli crossed his arms over his chest and knitted his brow. Dom looked up at him and nodded towards Orli’s crossed arms. “Want me to do yours, too?”

Orli opened up his mouth, closed it. Opened it again to utter an oh-so-intelligent, “Uh.”

“You can always take it off if you don’t like it.” Dom assured. He held up the tiny brush with one of his painted hands and waved it in front of him. Beckoning. The tip was covered with silver polish; Orli could see a drop moving from the tip to the plastic end piece. Strangely tempting, he thought faintly. Luring.

“Sure,” said Orli. He sat down beside his friend, who took Orli’s left hand in his warm left hand (and wasn’t it strange to be touching Dom in such a way, so intimate, so very odd?) and raised the brush. Orli found that he was holding his breath once Dom reached forward and touched the end of the brush to the tip of his thumb. The paint flowed at once onto the smooth surface, transferring its unearthly silver to Orli’s fingernail. All at once Orli’s body relaxed and he merely watched, feeling boneless and rather drained, as Dom painted. Dom’s hand was paler, smaller, and more compact than his. His fingers were sort of squared and weren’t lean, long and almost graceful looking as Orli’s were. Dom’s were also softer from lack of weapon work that Orli had to endure during training. He lacked the calluses, the almost leathery feel of the webbing between fingers that come from intense work with bow and arrow. After the silver began to make its way across his fingers, though, Orli found it sort of hard to notice the differences between their hands. They were beginning to look the same. Painted, disguised, in hiding. Lovely.

After his first three fingers were covered and Dom had to reach for more polish, Orli glanced up from his transforming hand and into Dom’s face. Dom, much like Orli, could never sit still. He was usually bouncing a knee or going through a series of silly facial features, acting as if there was a battle occurring over which emotion he wished to display. But this was different, because here he was, holding Orlando's hand in his, staring with intent concentration as he spread the nail polish on the fingernails in front of him, not moving a muscle but for the ones in his arm.

Orli was uneasy just watching him. He could feel himself tensing as he watched his friend’s soft blue eyes watch with sheer determination as he pushed the brush around on the nail in front of him. Orli thought that he should make a joke about the situation they were in ("Hey, after this, why don't I stick on a pair of fishnets and go stand on a corner? Make some extra money in case the movies don’t take off, eh?"), but the look on Dom's face was making him restless. It made him want to squirm, made him want to maybe push the man's smaller hand away from his and scramble off of the couch. Sort of escape through the screen door and hunt down a bottle of nail polish remover to take off every last trace of the silver color now coating his fingernails like a glove.

Dom had moved onto his pinkie, the last digit on the hand he held, and was now turning his upper body to reach for more polish with the brush. Orli opened his mouth to protest ("I could just do without the little finger, ya know... who needs a little finger, anyway?") but slowly, it seemed as if everything was in slow motion, Dom turned back from the bottle and began to push the color around on his nail once again. It was a reckless job like the other fingers he had been. He let the paint drip into the center of the nail. They both looked down at it for a minute before Dom let the brush travel into the liquid, pushing it up and down the nail with an unpracticed hand.

It wasn't graceful like it had seemed with his mother when she would prepare for parties. It wasn’t like his sister would do, carefully and painstakingly before a date with a beau. But fuck all, Orli thought; it was sexy to watch the silver color, building with strength with each stroke of the brush, contrast against his golden skin. To watch as the brush slipped and slid over his cuticles, definitely where it was not supposed to touch. Dom's fingers fumbled with the brush as he let go of Orli's hand and the other man's index finger accidentally dipped into the still wet paint on Orli's pinkie. Dom muttered a curse and returned the brush to its bottle for more paint.

Orli looked down at his hand and noted the clumsy job, the stray paint that covered his skin, the fingerprint on one nail. It was like Dom had left his signature on a work of art. His work of art, of having used Orli for his canvas. “We would now like to present an original piece by Mr Dominic Monaghan, entitled, ‘Orlando Bloom becomes a fairy.’”

What a stupid thing to think, Orli chastised himself. Wearing nail polish does not automatically make a person gay. And then, he thought as he watched Dom take Orli’s other hand from his lap to hold it up, primped for polishing, perhaps it is only the first step. Dom’s face was blank. It was not mischievous, it was not half-smiling and his eyes were not glinting into Orli’s own like they had done the night before.

Because the night before they had both been drunk. Dom, Orli, Elijah and Billy had all had their fair share of drinks. They had had a little “hobbitsnorli” party, “without the fat arsed Sam!” Billy had declared, at their newly rented house a block away from the shoreline. And wasn’t it lovely how they could all shut themselves up inside, sprawled out on the living room floor? It was, admittedly, too fucking windy outside and you can’t get good and drunk when sand is blowing into your eyes and ears and nose and any other orifice you might have showing when you’re in a group with your mates.

When they were pissed and discussing what is hands down the most interesting conversation to have when you are amongst friends of the same gender (sex, of course), Elijah began their little game in which they began listing sexual fantasies.

Elijah apparently was one kinky bastard with a mighty appetite. He claimed that if he had his way, he would cover the girl of his dreams with whip cream and chocolate sauce and sprinkles and vanilla ice cream and yes, he would devour her among many other things. Sticky, yes, but dead sexy, he assured.

Billy was more of an adventurer. In the sense that he wanted to hike to certain meadows with his lass and do her in all sort of Karma Sutra positions amongst the flowers and the flowing rivers and the squirrels and what not. He had so far had sex in the wild five times with two different girls. One of the girls loved it; the other complained about grass stains and squawking birds.

That was when Dom decided to admit to his own sexual fantasy. He had waited for Billy’s roller coaster of a tale to end when he cleared his throat and stated, all the while staring down the neck of his beer bottle, that he wanted to give someone a blowjob. In the stunned silence that followed, Orli completely forgot about his own fantasy (which consisted of him and a leather clad woman with a whip and a feral grin) and merely stared at his friend sitting next to him. Dom had met his eyes and smiled, the corners of his mouth turning slightly upwards, his hands tinkering with the peeling label on his beer bottle. He hadn’t been joking. No one had laughed.

Orli had spent the remainder of that night wondering exactly what Dom had meant. Did he mean to just find a random bloke in a club and ask him, “Hey, can I blow you?” What the fuck did he exactly intend to do? Okay, so maybe he wasn’t actually planning to suck some guy off in the near future. Maybe it was just something he wanted to get off of his chest at that moment, some sort of childhood secret that had followed him out to New Zealand. Orli couldn’t think of any concrete reasons and he certainly wasn’t going to ask Dom about it. Still, the entirety of the day he had felt strange when he saw his friend. “Is he thinking about it now?” he’d wonder to himself. “Is he thinking, is he plotting?” He hadn’t slept that much during the night. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Dom with his queer smile and his grinning eyes. Him uttering the word “blowjob” over and over.

“Finished.” Dom stated, pulling Orli out of his thoughts. He looked down at his hands, and yes, all ten fingernails were now completely silver. Dom replaced the brush in the bottle without screwing it on tight. He then stood up, stretching so that his painted fingernails rose into the air (silver fingers, fingers so much like Orli’s own). With a sort of satisfied sigh, he then left the room, walking towards the back of the house in the direction of his room.

Orli’s head was spinning. He was light headed and he felt suddenly dehydrated as his thick, dry tongue ran across his bottom lip. He trained his eyes on his hands and turned them over and over in his lap. He studied the strong, sturdy palm with the lines cut throughout the tanned flesh. Which line was the life line? Which one told him how much wealth he would accumulate? When he flipped his hand over the chrome color stared him in the face. The ceiling light blinked at him through the nail polish as it reflected onto his face. Turn, tan. Turn, silver.

It was strange, because Orli had been sitting beside Dom, had seen the strange glint in his friend’s smoky blue eyes when his mouth had formed the words “blowjob” as if it was some sort of exotic food. A French delicacy to be eaten slowly, to enjoy at all costs, to let your lips caress what made the tasty treat in the same manner that your lips might trace the outline of someone’s groin. Orli had seen Dom’s eyes dim, see them withdraw from Orli’s gaze, and yes, he could see Dom picturing himself doing it. He could see through Dom’s clouded pupils as he kneeled in front of another man, his hands tracing up the other man’s thighs.

And as the hands made their ascent, Orli could now see the silver nail polish that covered them. The chrome colored fingernails were moving up, curling around hips belonging to a nameless man. They reached for a zipper, pulling, tugging, teasing. As things progressed, it was not the mouth that Orli watched, but the hands. The hands that had marked his own hands, made a duplicated copy of their own. Dom and Orli’s hands were twins, the same so that it was so easy to see his own hands roaming up that random-man-in-the-club’s thighs instead of Dom’s. His own hands gripping to steady thrusting hips. His own painted fingernails digging into fabric and the hard flesh beneath it.

And what would happen if silver fingers ran up the back of his neck, clutching at his dark mohawk, threading through it, holding onto it for dear life? Silver fingers holding shaking hips. Silver fingers holding a moving head. Twins, the two sets of hands were twins just as Orli and Dom somehow were identical because of their matching hands.

And wouldn’t it be lovely if they could somehow consummate this newfound sexual glory with the twinkle in Dom’s eye and the curl of his lips into that queer smile of his and Orli’s sudden curiosity brought out by the shock of chrome fingernail polish on man’s skin? Orli closed his eyes and hummed deep in his throat. Oh, dear.

Dom entered the room and Orli snapped out of his reverie. “I best be going, now,” he said. He was pulling on his leather jacket while reaching for his car keys in the pocket. Orli watched his hands travel, the hands that so clearly matched his.

“Where are you going?” He asked, standing up and fidgeting from one foot to another.

Dom shrugged. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll drive around,” he met Orli’s eyes and the corner of his mouth tugged up into a ghost of a smile from the night before. “Maybe go to a club. Y’know.” He turned and headed for the front door.

“Uh, well.” Orli was talking before he knew exactly what he wanted to say. He had also somehow maneuvered around the coffee table and was now standing behind Dom. He felt awkward and rushed, his chest for some reason constricted so that his words sounded whispered. He shuffled his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Why not stay in? We can bond or some shit like that, since we haven’t the time while we’re shooting and all.”

“What, like bang a drum and eat a sausage?” Dom asked with a chuckle. “No thanks, mate. Think I’d rather go out. No offense, though. We’ll go out tomorrow, all right?” He reached out and squeezed Orli’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture. Orli let his eyes linger on the contrast between Dom’s fingers and his black shirt. The silver polish against black. Black that almost matched his hair.

“Ehm, sure.” He heard himself mumble, his eyes still trained on the silver on black. The fingers let go and Dom was smiling at him when Orli looked back up. Dom opened the door and slipped out, his half smile being the last thing that Orli saw.

The house was quiet as Orli stared at the door in front of him. He rotated his hips, shifting his weight, and felt a strange tug at his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It felt as if his hands were attached to the...

Oh, shit, he thought. He attempted to wiggle his fingers but they were stuck fast to the lining of his jeans. With a tug they came free, making a sickly half ripping, half sucking noise.

When he raised his formally silver fingertips to his face, all Orli could see was the mangled remnants of the polish that Dom had so imperfectly applied. Pieces of lint and random blue strings covered his fingernails. The silver nail polish had strayed as far as his knuckles. His fingers felt heavy and sticky with half dry paint. As he wiggled them, the polish cracked and flaked. Every nail was ruined, each one imperfectly imperfect. The fingerprint that Dom had mistakenly made on Orli’s pinkie was gone entirely.

Sighing, Orli dropped his hands to his sides. He returned to the couch and sat down, regarding the bottle of nail polish that remained standing alone on the coffee table. He reached forward and knocked it over with one of his ugly, mauled looking hands, turning it over so that it lay on its side. The movement loosened the brush-end so that it fell separately from the bottle. Silver liquid seeped from the gap and leaked onto the wood underneath, creating a puddle of molten iron that grew as if the bottle from which it came was pulsing. Beating, like the heart working overtime to make up for lost blood because of a mortal wound.

Orli watched. He then dropped his face into his ruined hands. A tremble began in his shoulders and then coursed through his body so that soon he was racked with sobs. Tears leaked through his fingers and soaked the drying nail polish covering his hands. The chrome color winked and sparkled as it began to peel away from his hands.


fin.