Anyone Who'll Lie Down
Recipient: ladysunrope
---
Author: tarteaucitron
Pairing: Dom/Elijah, Dom/Viggo
Rating: R
Summary: Set during "that year" after Dom moved to LA. He takes what he can get.
Notes: The requester asked for plot, something I've always struggled to shoehorn into lotrips, I feel I may have failed on that count. I really hope this is not too much of a disappointment. Author's notes: Beta'd by algernon_mouse, secrethappiness and buckle_berry, who all had different ideas about it. Thanks also to secrethappiness for the title.
"Dom, you can stay. It's cool." Elijah has his phone flipped open. "As long as you don't mind Hannah's friends staying over once a fucking week."
Dom watches as Elijah throws the strap of his canvas bag over his head and onto the opposite shoulder. He'll try it in the mirror later with his own army surplus duffle bag.
"Hannah's friends? Perhaps I'll stay after all." Dom is lying on the sofa with one foot up on the cushions at the back. He jiggles the foot to suggest a good mood, but perhaps it just looks nervy. "I can woo them with sordid tales of my life as catamite of cocaine-floured former child-stars."
Elijah gapes at him like he's crossed yet another line, a transparent pretence of horror and disbelief.
"Believe me, those are not your best stories." He snaps the phone shut. "I've gotta go.
When he leans over to kiss Dom on the cheek, his green shirt bags at the waist. Dom thinks about Elijah's belly, and how he knows exactly what it feels like to slide a palm up there to rub against the black hair under his navel, fingers dipping and circling at the butter-soft skin of his hip. It's easy to get Elijah hard. Wind him up and watch him go. Dom could sell his story to the fucking LA Times.
There's a pause when Elijah leaves the room. He'll be standing by the front door putting on that gigantic scarf. Dom waits with his thumb on the remote, and when the door finally shuts, he changes the channel back to Fox, because actually he doesn't give a shit.
Later on he goes out himself, and meets Mac at a bar on Wilshire. He can hardly concentrate on what Mac's saying, though, and that's partly because there's a speaker right by his head, and partly because of that wrap of speed inside him. Frankly, he'd rather bite his lower lip and smack the drumbeat on his hip with the heel of his hand than make small talk.
He looks at the boys standing at the bar, his eyelids falling easily into that lazy bored expression, but they don't turn round. From behind, one of them looks like Orlando, tall and skinny with a half-hearted fauxhawk, and even though it's just some random, Dom zeros in on him. By the end of the night he's so fucked he's staring at that kid like he's the love of his life.
He was off his tits and so was Elijah that night in Te Anau when they were snowed in and talking about girls, thinking about each other. Ever fucked a hobbit? That was going to be Dom's line when the films made them the biggest fucking deal in LA. They'd pissed themselves laughing. He narrows his eyes and thinks about it. Must be worth a blowjob at least.
~
Dom's prodding at his phone, trying to send a text message, and doesn't see the box before he's trodden in it and is toppling forwards, his body swinging downwards too fast for his foggy brain to gauge the motion; then he's on his front, the cord of the Venetian blind in one hand, chin on a pile of books, and his legs covered in tiny bits of paper. The phone has slid out of reach somewhere.
"Fuck." He's vaguely aware of a new ache humming in the back of his head. He levers himself up on watery joints, waits for his elbow to give and then lock, pushes himself back onto his arse, and settles on pulling his trainers off and crawling into bed -- staying there until forced bodily to move. The pillow is cold and crisp under his cheek and he's grateful for it for about half a second before he slides steeply into unconsciousness.
Dom comes round the next morning -- it could hardly be called waking -- in Viggo's house. It takes a moment or two for that memory to slot back into place -- the result of a phonecall from Astin offering a room, and the fear of weeks of unwelcome advice and monogrammed towels. Fortunately Dom had remembered Viggo, and he's never been one to be shy of making capital out of a casual offer. Now here he is. The blind's hanging half off the window like a broken fan and the bright light of December punches through the window, making a spiteful beeline for his pillow. He curls into a gritty huddle; his mouth and brain feel poisonous and hot, and his hair drags on the pillowcase, all stale wax and cigarette smoke.
The room at Viggo's is vast and painfully white and filled with boxes and junk. The only nod to its being a guest room is the divan in the corner in which Dom lies, limply cocooned. In the shaft of light from the window, it seems filled with motes of dust circling and rising, settling on his eyelids, unnaturally heavy. A quintessence of dust, Dom thinks, and feels a strange sense of comfort in the poetic melancholy of his narcotic hangover.
From somewhere underneath the bed, his mobile beeps twice, and he scrabbles around, hoping he can locate it by touch alone, that he won't have to crane over. His fingers grab and skitter over slippery piles of spilt photographs. Success.
It's from Elijah: Don't fucking text me when you're fucked, asshole. I'm meeting with people today and tomorrow. I'll call you Thursday.
Dom snaps the phone shut and takes a careful breath in. It's a solid hour before he lifts the duvet and creeps across the hallway to the bathroom.
Viggo's a fucking slob, of course. There's a pair of pants slung on the floor by the shower, and Dom's only surprised that Viggo's been in the shower at all. He toes them away and stares at them for a moment, struggling with the inertia of his brain. On a day like today it's hard to remember the sequence of muscle movements needed to climb into the stall and wash.
~
To be at all -- what is better than that?
Dom pulls the post-it off the fridge. If it was there yesterday he doesn't remember it. He wants to ask Viggo about it, but he's in two minds as to whether it's pure bullshit, and, after a moment or two of blankly staring at it, sticks it back on, trying to get the angle the same.
For breakfast there are two types of muesli or bacon, no bread. Dom has the muesli with the dried berries on the grounds that it's more LA and he's thinking of getting a personal trainer after Christmas. Or rather the holidays. He crunches through it manfully, thinking of his Dad, who'd call it "gruts" or "gravel". Dom gets to the bottom of his second cup of tea, leaves the leafy bit undrunk, his stomach swilling with liquid. A kettle is an unusual luxury in an American kitchen, and it's a shame not to make the most of it. He makes another cup and goes in search of Viggo.
He finds him in the cellar. Or rather that's where he tracks him down, after eliminating every other possible location in the house. He knocks on the door and gets a grunt in response.
"Cup of tea for you, Vig."
A pause and another grunt. "Thanks. Leave it outside."
The door opens five minutes later and Dom looks up from the floor. He could have left the tea, but he was sweating alcohol and speed, and sometimes your body tells you to sit and it's really best to listen.
"I didn't realise you were waiting." Viggo's wiping his hands on a dirty cloth. He looks at the cup, only half full. "I don't really drink tea."
"Good." Dom picks it up. "I was drinking it anyway. What are you doing?"
Viggo spends a lot of his time not really doing anything. That's something Dom never noticed when they were all together and doing something pretty much all the time. Now Viggo does nothing. People call it "art" or "writing" or whatever, but mostly it's just staring at walls and looking gormless.
Part of the cellar is partitioned off to make a darkroom, and that's where Viggo's been this morning, developing photographs of his neighbours. His camera's one of those boxy old-fashioned jobs with a viewfinder at the top. Dom remembers him using it in New Zealand, his hair hanging in a curtain round the top of it, a little camera obscura. The photos he's been working on don't catch anyone face on, and no one's completely in focus, all in the middle of something: typing, cycling, drawing in the dirt with a stick.
"They're nice."
Viggo shrugs. "They're interesting people, you know?"
"Sure," Dom says enthusiastically, though he's never met them.
They're both silent for a minute or two. Dom looks at the photos. They all have the same strange pattern of brushes and flecks of light, like they've been taken from behind a window with the light bouncing off. Voyeuristic, he thinks.
"Is this what you're going to be doing all day?"
~
Dom's out again that night with some band that's having about as much success as he is. Elijah's giving them a leg up or something, which is more than he's doing for Dom. They're good drinkers, though, and Dom gets so pissed he forgets and almost rolls home to Elijah's instead of Viggo's.
Viggo's already in bed when he gets back, or he's out or something. Or maybe he's pulled and gone home with some woman. Dom smirks. He was seeing that crunchy-looking artist bird, wasn't he? Lola? He's halfway into the kitchen when his shoulder hits the doorframe and he bounces off, staggering into a chair, grabbing at a plaid shirt that's slung over the back of it. It's an enormous shirt, green and brown and sort of faded and felty. Dom puts it on and tells himself to drink something.
The worktop by sink is covered in dirty pans; two plates are smeared in something tomato-y. Perhaps there's actually a bird here? He swipes a finger across one of the plates and sticks it in his mouth. Chilli, and something bitter in the tomato sauce. He wipes his hand on his jeans, and sways across the kitchen to take the milk from the fridge, drinks it straight from the bottle. It glugs down, cold and sour on the back of his tongue. It makes his throat ache, but it'll be worth it in the morning.
Then, as he closes the fridge, he sees that post-it again. To be at all, what is better than that? Dom stares, trying to focus on it, and finally takes a pen from his jacket pocket, bends so close first time that his nose bounces awkwardly off the fridge door.
To be me, he writes.
He'll feel like a prick in the morning.
~
It's about a week before he speaks to Elijah. He's lying in the ruins of his bed, the duvet half off and trailing in a crumb-covered plate that had his breakfast on it two hours ago. He's in a pair of pyjama bottoms and Viggo's plaid shirt, and barely listening to Elijah talk about the shoot, because he's already got his hand under the elastic of the waistband, wrapped around his cock.
"I've been thinking about you," he says, interrupting, trying for smoky.
"What? Oh come on, Dom. I'm on lunch break."
"Come on, yourself. It's nearly Christmas. A little charity wouldn't go amiss."
Come on come on come on, he thinks, easing his foreskin gently forwards and back, knowing Elijah's going to cave.
"Where are you? Have you got a trailer?"
"Yes, Dom, I'm in it. I also have a bunch of rewrites to look through."
"I'm in bed. Naked," he adds. "I smell of peaches and lilac petals. I'm touching myself and thinking about fucking your beautiful rosebud mouth."
Elijah laughs. "God, you are so bad at this." Then there's a pause.
Dom's hand stills, a fingertip pressed to the underside of his cock, holding it like a spring. There's a creak, the sounds of a body shifting. He waits.
"Have you got your hand down your trousers?"
"Yes. Yes I have."
Elijah's trying to sound sarcastic, but there's an extra little sigh of breath. God, he's always so easy, so quick. Dom's cock jerks up -- already that insidious seam of pleasure in his balls.
They're both pretty quick about it. Dom's spouting some nonsense about the taste of Elijah's skin, about his tongue and teeth, when Elijah practically yelps down the phone at him. Then he stops talking altogether, listens to Elijah's breath rustling like the sea in a shell, feels the soft feltiness of the shirt tickling at his wrist and hip as he brings himself off. He comes hard, staring at the ceiling, the pulse of something desperate and temporary thrumming tightly through his belly and balls, and he pants to hold onto it.
There's nothing to say afterwards. When Dom's hung up, the room settles on him, each chair and box falling back into place, solid and heavy. He waits, listens to his heartbeat echo and jolt round his body while the dust drifts steadily back down.
~
"I might be a photographer."
"You don't keep still long enough"
"Well, you see, that's the irony of my life. Lij says I never move at all these days."
Viggo looks at him for a moment and makes a noise that's half chuckle and half grunt. His voice is set at that rumbling pitch that only whales and apparently Dom's cock can hear. "I guess that's not what I mean." He pauses long enough for Dom to assume he's finished and open his mouth to ask what Viggo means. "You never really look at anything, you know?" Viggo frowns, as if he really does want Dom to know.
"No."
Dom tries to look at Viggo. It's a struggle because he's already half cut, although he's officially taking a night off and staying in, and his gaze slides and stops, and only sees Viggo in bits and pieces: his thick blunt fingers around the wine glass; his knees, pale patches in his jeans, almost worn through; his hair, cut into a weird mop, no style at all, sliced with chunks of grey. His adams apple jutting as he swallows.
Ever fucked a hobbit, Dom thinks hazily, and smiles.
Viggo smiles back, toothy, blurred and sleepy-looking. "No, I don't know either."
Dom laughs until he's bent over his knees and the wine is burning the back of his nose.
~
Viggo goes away for a week with Henry at the beginning of December. He doesn't say it's okay if Dom stays -- he doesn't say anything at all -- so Dom stays.
The first time he sleeps in Viggo's bedroom, it's because he's wandered into it by mistake, drunk, and decided to stay just because it was easier. He feels lost when he wakes up, although it's a room much like the spare room -- huge, white and full of boxes. There are photos, though. The walls are covered with them, some framed, most just roughly tacked up. There are dozens of people Dom doesn't recognise, animals, houses, trees, lots of trees, but there are also his friends.
There's a picture of Billy talking to Bernard. Billy's in his robe and Pippin's wig, with a cup in his hands; Bernard's got his hair in a ponytail. There's a shot of Orlando from behind, and it reminds Dom of that boy in the bar weeks ago, who actually looked nothing like Orlando. There's a picture of Kiran holding forth, cigarette in hand, the vastness of Mount Cook draped in cloud at his shoulders. There's a picture of him and Elijah: he's talking to someone out of shot, gesticulating; Elijah's looking at him, laughing, those little gappy teeth, and his eyes screwed up.
When he's been through all the pockets lying in a heap on the floor by the bed and located his phone, he calls Elijah, leaves a message.
Dom stays in Viggo's bed every night after that, because he can lie here, on his side, angle his head up a degree or two on the pillow, and see for thousands of miles.
~
There are two days of squalling rain halfway through the month, and Viggo packs Dom into the car and takes him to the coast. The joggers must have opted for the gym, and who could blame them? The beach is deserted and the sea brittle, choppy and iron grey.
Dom had thought he would wait in the car while Viggo did whatever it was he wanted to do, but for some reason he's bursting with adrenalin and opening the car door before the parking brake's even on.
"Come on!" he shouts, leaning back into the car, barely able to hear himself over the downpour, his face a river within seconds, shorts clinging like seaweed. He sets off down to the shore at a run, all sound walled off except the thud of rain on the sand and the pulse in his temples, chasing him down the beach. He turns after a minute or two, convinced he can hear footsteps behind him, but Viggo's a long way back, walking at a slow plod, hunched over, dark and sodden. Dom runs back towards him, suddenly filled with the odd sensation that he is a dog being taken for a walk, and by the time he makes it back to Viggo, he's panting.
Viggo's smiling at him. Dom bends double and puts his hands on his knees. Viggo says something that he misses.
"What?" Dom shouts.
"Are you going in the water?"
"What? No!"
He watches as Viggo takes his trainers off and pads slowly to the white edge of the water. He wades in up to his knees and just stands there, bending to trail his hands in the water while it breaks in haphazard little waves round his legs and spits upwards towards his waist. Dom is incredulous at first, and then, just as he's seized with the urge to take his own shoes off and paddle in, Viggo turns and trudges heavily back towards him, grinning like a maniac.
"It's fucking freezing!" he bellows in Dom's ear, and Dom laughs.
The car steams up the instant they're back inside. There are no towels, so they sit there and drip into the upholstery while they wait for the fan to clear the windows.
Dom takes his soaking trainers off and puts his feet up by the vent to dry them off.
"I'll be back at Mum and Dad's this time next week," he says. He's tried not to think about Christmas. He'd hoped to have more to show for his year than an independent short, had half thought about staying out, but Mum had been pretty insistent.
Viggo nods. "Are you going to see Elijah?"
Dom shrugs and looks out of the window. Viggo doesn't press the point, but starts the engine and drives them back to his house. They're silent.
Spending time with Elijah, you have to be "on" all the time. It's tiring, nerve-wracking sometimes. "Dom's a hoot," Elijah used to say, when he first moved to LA, and so he was -- as if saying it made it so. As if it was no effort at all.
Spending time with Viggo can be like standing in the shadow of something you'd like to reach out and take hold of. Something you'd like to climb to the top of, admire the view from, beat your chest. Viggo laughs at his jokes all right, but there always seems to be more to prove. Dom feels caught up in the fog of his perpetual hangover -- frustrated, always missing the point.
All the way back he fights the urge to shout and kick at the dashboard.
~
You can't fuck your way to enlightenment, or so he tells himself. Still, when the car's parked in the garage, he puts his hand on Viggo's thigh, high enough not to be mistaken, his thumb stroking against the damp hair.
Viggo looks at him. His eyes are surprised, but his voice is the same lazy disjointed drawl that makes the hair stand on the back of Dom's scalp.
"What do you want?"
Dom shrugs. He slides his hand an inch or two under the hem of Viggo's shorts, skidding and catching on wet skin. "What do you want?"
"I'd like to watch you come."
Dom jumps a little at the sudden flick of heat in his own belly and thighs. Viggo's looking at him, apparently serious, and Dom wonders if he should lean across and kiss him. There's that dent in his chin that's always looked the perfect size for a tongue tip. Dom presses his tongue to his palate to suck a little moisture into his dry mouth.
"You want me to--?"
"However you'd like."
Dom shifts in his seat. The upholstery's so waterlogged that it puddles under the pressure of his arse and legs. His erection is snagged in wet cotton, and he pulls at his shorts to free it, to let it lie pointing north, hot against the cooler skin of his abdomen. He rubs himself through his shorts, glancing across. Viggo's staring, frowning a little, but offering no instruction. His mouth's open and Dom looks at his tongue, pressing behind his bottom teeth, wet, twitching.
The waistband of his shorts is tight and pulls at the skin on his knuckles as he forces his hand in to take hold of his cock. He stretches out his legs into the footwell, pushing his toes against the scratchy carpeting, presses back against the seat with his shoulders, angling his hips upwards. It feels odd but comfortable, the warm squelch of the seat, the awkward angle of his neck, the solid familiarity of his cock in his hand, the hot spike of Viggo's gaze on his face, on his chest, on his groin.
Dom pulls steadily at his erection, thinking of the damp slide of muscle in Viggo's thighs, the soggy cling of his shorts as he waded out of the sea. His eyelids slide to half mast. He thinks of being held down, biting up against that dented chin, pushing back, fighting with his feet, and he thrusts up into his hand and stamps a bare foot against the floor of the car. He could have a hand in that hair, tugging, licking, sucking, Viggo's hand, Viggo's hand -- he looks down. Viggo's hand is in his own lap, resting, not pressing, those big stubbed fingers curled loosely, and Dom pulls faster at his own cock, twisting, tugging, as if he could make it move by the power of example, and he's starting to pant, to feel the ratchet of orgasm.
He stops. Closes his eyes. Waits. Beat, beat, beat, his pulse. His cock twitches angrily against his thumb. He waits for the slow peeling back from the edge, but there's a finger then, rubbing over his bottom lip. He opens his eyes.
"Watch, you said -- just -- watch," Dom says.
"I am watching."
Viggo looks utterly calm, but his pupils are blown wide. A hand squeezes round the fabric of Dom's shorts, round his hand, round his cock, and suddenly Dom knows he's about to come. One stroke, two, with that hand still there, and he's arching out of the seat, an arc from shoulder to heel, flung towards that moment of blank pleasure, the euphoric snapping into place of mind and body, grasping at sensation, the pant and jerk. Too late he reminds himself to open his eyes and look; it's already sliding away, leaving a strange heaviness and toes stretched in soggy, scratchy carpet. Viggo lifts his hand away.
Dom looks at him, still with that serious little frown. He feels ridiculous, panting and sticky, but weirdly happy, like having a wank in a car is some major fucking achievement. He laughs, and Viggo smiles at him, eyebrows raised, no teeth this time.
"How was that, then?"
Viggo gives a small shrug. "That was nice."
~
Dom sleeps in Viggo's bed again. They fuck, and it is nice, even though Viggo stares a lot, and Dom doesn't think he's ever said "What?" so many times in bed before. But he fucks Dom hard when Dom tells him to, and his hand sits sweetly at the top of the cleft of Dom's arse in a way that makes his skin prickle and his balls tighten, until he comes like a rocket, and falls back onto the bed laughing again.
Viggo lies up against his back afterwards which is both peculiar and lovely. Dom smiles to himself, angles his head up on the pillow and looks at the picture of himself and Elijah. He's being a hoot, of course, and Elijah's laughing. Elijah would laugh his balls off if he could see him now.
~
As a Christmas present, Viggo lends Dom his camera to take home.
"I don't know, take pictures of the dog or something. Whatever you want," he says, when Dom asks what he should do with it.
He cooks as well, the night before Dom leaves, and Elijah comes round, which is a surprise. They kiss on the lips, while Viggo's serving up in the kitchen, but without any urgency, and Dom touches Elijah's stomach almost like it's a reflex.
"You're a bit skinny."
Elijah makes a face and pushes Dom's hand away. "Not for long. Viggo's fixing dinner for sixteen by the look of it."
"He always does that. He eats his meals off two plates even when there's no one else here."
There's a whisky warmth in Dom's belly, something unusually nostalgic and tender, and he wants to touch Elijah. Just for the sake of touching. He settles for a hand on his arm, fingers curling round an elbow. He smiles.
"How's things? Good to be back?"
"Good to be back. The apartment's a mess, though. Fucking Hannah broke the coffee table." Dom laughs. "She said it was you." Dom's stomach falls a little -- was it him? -- but he manages to keep laughing.
"Cheeky mare."
"Christ knows what sort of a state she was in." They look at each other. "You're looking well," Elijah says finally.
"Well--" There are several things he could say: that time with Viggo agrees with him, that he's been well looked after, that he's not sure he'll be coming back after Christmas. "What's this?" he asks instead, running a thumb along Elijah's jawline. "Is this some sort of attempt at a beard?"
Elijah grins. His "fuck off" is drowned out by Viggo shouting "Dinner's up!" from down the hall.
~
Dom does come back. He comes back full of Mancunian good sense and roast dinners, and "no more Guinness than you'd see your father drink". He rents his own apartment, sees his personal trainer, gets a couple of call-backs. People begin to comment, though Dom pays less attention to them than he thought he would.
On his bedroom wall he sticks a collage of photos. He'd planned to keep the film until he got back, get Viggo to develop it, but in the end he'd gone to Boots. The pictures are straightforward, bits of evidence, no flashes or flecks of brilliance. They document his Christmas.
A woman at the airport, her face white from cold, an ugly purple hat on her head.
A woman, bent over the gravy pan, peering for lumps, one hand out towards him, mid-dismissive wave.
A man pouring a can of draught Guinness, forty-five degrees from the vertical, sliding down the side of the glass.
His bed, rumpled, empty.
A dog craning his head up from his position by the back door, tolerant, golden-eyed, half-asleep.
A car parked across the driveway.
Five dinner plates for five people, licked practically clean, one sprout nestling against the tines of a fork.
Four lads at the pub, two smoking, none looking, fixated on the screen in the corner, red shirts and blue.
Two men: one languid and sleepy, looking at the camera; one animated, gap-toothed, a red wine stain on his lips, a smattering of hair on his chin.
Some of the pictures didn't come out at all, and he's stuck these ones up too -- squares of black, or orange lines, in among the faces and places. They are a cluster of colour on the white paint.
Sometimes Dom lies with his head tipped up on the pillow, his hands under his cheek and stares at them for minutes on end. As often as not, he turns to the wall, his belly full of peppermint tea, his head full of plans.
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