monaboyd_month | All That I Wanted (Were Things I Had Before) 2/3

part one: a chord that rings and never dies
one: dom

He doesn't actually remember the incident, but it's been retold at enough family gatherings that he knows it by heart anyway. It goes like this: Dom was five and it was Saturday, the day he'd been waiting for all week because he had a playdate with a particular boy from school. No one can ever remember the boy's name properly, which is the one hole in the story and the point at which his parents always stop for a good-natured argument over whether it was Jamie or Johnny until someone points out that it doesn't matter and let's just have the story, please.

So. It was Saturday and they were about to leave when Dom, who had been unusually quiet all morning, sat down squarely in the middle of the floor and refused to put his shoes on.

"What is it, love?" said Maureen. "We're going to be late."

"I'm not going," said Dom.

"Why not? You've been looking forward to this all week."

"I don't like him," said Dom, crossing his arms for good measure. (A flair for the dramatic even at that age, says Maureen at this point, and everyone laughs.)

"Oh, but you two are such good friends. Did something happen at school?"

"No."

"Well, what is it? You were so excited yesterday."

"He was my doctor and he got it wrong," said Dom, demonstrating a well-practiced ability not to let people put shoes on him if he didn't want them there.

"Were you and Jamie playing doctor?" asked Maureen ("Johnny!" insists Austen, and is promptly hushed). "Maybe you were thinking of some rules that he didn't know about. I'm sure he didn't mean to do anything wrong."

"No, last time. He got it wrong!" insisted Dom.

"Well, maybe this time you can be the doctor and he can be the patient, and that way you can show him how you like to play."

"No, Mum, he was my doctor last time."

"What happened? Did he hurt you?" asked Maureen, who was beginning to worry.

"Last time!" repeated Dom. "He was my doctor and he got it wrong and I died!"

And that is when Dom's mother realized that her son was not, in fact, talking about a game gone wrong but rather about a past life. She'd sat him down and had a talk about how it wasn't okay to be angry at people for things they'd done in other lives and how it was polite to not mention those things if you knew them, but all the time she was marveling at how strong his sense of selves must have been, even at such a young age.

Dom doesn't remember that Saturday at all, but he does remember his child's surprise at finding out that the rest of the world didn't sometimes dream about lives they'd lived, remembers feeling sorry for them that they might know a person was important but would never know why.

***

Day one of Lord of the Rings is a whirl of accents and introductions and travel exhaustion. He's already a little off-balance from too many moments of recognition when he's ushered into a trailer to meet the other hobbits, and as he glances around the room those bonds hit hard, one, two, and then.

And then.

There is a man, a small, slim man with a black t-shirt and green eyes sitting in a folding chair and Dom loves him, loves him more than anyone in the world can have possibly ever loved anyone ever before. The bond is the oldest he's ever felt, as old as the one he shares with his parents. He can't move. He can't breathe there's no room in his chest for air. It feels like a chord he's been singing his entire life, never knowing it wasn't perfect until it finally slid that last little bit into tune and suddenly there are a thousand overtones ringing off every surface, rich and full and glorious.

He's seen a million romantic comedies that start this way, and not a few pornos, if he's being honest. The man is staring back at him, pale, pupils blown. He takes a step forward. And then the man closes his eyes for just a second and when opens them again the expression on his face is polite interest, nothing more (Jesus, he can act, notes one tiny, distant part of Dom's brain).

The man extends a hand and says, perfectly neutral,

"Hi, I’m Billy Boyd."

The next few hours are a bit of a daze. Billy leaves after a minute and Dom stands there and lets people talk at him about feet and ears and wigs and fat suits, hoping that he'll be able to remember at least some of it. He really wants to talk to Elijah, too, because he's pretty sure they were cousins last time around, but he just can't focus.

"It's Billy, isn't it?" Elijah asks after the third time he loses the thread of conversation. "I could tell something was up when you two were introduced."

"You're right," he says, "I'm really sorry." He doesn't offer an explanation because he isn't quite sure he feels comfortable saying that Billy is the love of his lives, not when the other man had acted so coldly. Luckily Elijah is as good a friend as Dom is pretty sure he always is, and just hands over a phone number and says to call him sometime once whatever it is has been sorted out.

He has the slip of paper in his hand as soon as he's released, planning to force himself into concentration and make something of the night, but when he turns the corner Billy is waiting for him. He's leaning against the side of the trailer, hands in his pockets, the late afternoon sun sparking ginger highlights in his hair. Dom falters a little at how beautiful he is.

"Hi," says Billy. "Do you have a minute? I feel like I owe you an explanation."

"All right." His mind is already racing ahead as he falls into step. He's pretty sure Billy isn't married, but it's entirely possible he has a girlfriend or a boyfriend that hasn't been mentioned in the little bit of publicity Dom's read. Maybe he's a unisexual. Dom's always considered himself pretty open-minded on the whole issue, even if he can't really imagine sex being a deciding factor in how he chooses his lovers. For some reason he's never thought about what would happen to a pair if only one person was unisexual, though.

"I don't even know where to start with this," says Billy. He blows out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. "I never expected this to- I never expected you."

"Me neither, mate." That gets him a quick but honest smile. Billy keeps darting sideways glances at him, which is a reassurance that at least the whole mess isn't somehow one-sided.

"I'm totally the wrong person for this to happen to, though," Billy continues. "I don't really hold with the idea of reincarnation."

"Are you Buddhist?" That hadn't even occurred to him.

"No, nothing like that. It's not that I want to stop living, I just don't like the way that people let their past and future lives decide everything for them. I'd rather live this life for what it is. Does that make sense?"

"Yes?" hazards Dom. He gets another smile, along with raised eyebrows and a skeptical look.

"You sound very sure about that."

"It makes sense, I'm just...not sure how it applies?"

"Look. Obviously you were important to me in another life, and I’m sure you're a great guy and I'm excited to work with you, but I don't think that means we have to be everything to each other this time around. Whoever it was that had that relationship wasn't us. I don't even know you."

"But-"

"No, I don't. I recognize you, sure, but I don't know you. We, us, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, are strangers, and I don't see why we should let an idea of what happened to us before decide everything about our lives."

They walk in silence for a moment as Dom tries to process this. He wonders if they're actually going anywhere, or if Billy's just leading him in loops around the trailers as they talk. He hasn't been paying much attention to his surroundings.

"My father died when I was thirteen," says Billy abruptly.

"I'm sorry to hear that," says Dom, off-balance. It comes out sounding weak and stilted. Billy keeps talking.

"They were still so in love, my parents. You could tell. It used to embarrass the hell out of me, watching them flirt and all, stuff no teenager wants to see. When he died my mum knew they'd meet again in the next life, or the one after- they had that kind of bond, really strong- and so she killed herself. I spent a long time- well." He pauses, looking over at Dom.

"Anyway, I decided that I wasn't ever going to value some life I knew nothing about more than the one I'm currently living. I know this death won't be the last one, but right now I want my decisions to be about me, Billy Boyd, and the things I do in this life."

***

"And what could I possibly say to that?" finishes Dom. He's lasted all of three days before spilling the whole story. "He's right, you know, we are total strangers. I've got no real right to expect him to…whatever, be in a relationship with me if he doesn’t want to."

"But what about your epic soul bond of true love?" asks Elijah. He ducks the pillow Dom throws at him.

"That's the thing, though, isn't it? I mean, we'd never be having this conversation if we didn't already know we were best friends. It's not all bad."

"Why don't you just start from scratch, then? Seduce him like you're strangers, if that's what he wants."

"Won't work. I'm probably the last person on earth he'd sleep with now. I might be doing it for the wrong reasons."

"You would be doing it for the wrong reasons."

"Oh, shut up." He's out of pillows so he just whacks Elijah in the back of the head, which unfortunately makes the little bastard dive straight for his ribs and launch them into a five-minute tickle war.

Dom's still lying on the floor gasping for air when Elijah sits up and points a finger at him.

"I have an idea," he says gravely, and disappears for a minute. When he returns he drops a piece of paper and a green sharpie on the rug and stretches out next to Dom.

"This is what we should do tonight," he says. "We should make a diagram of all the bonds between everyone on this movie."

"A diagram?"

"Why not? Everyone keeps talking about how weird it is that we all recognize each other. Maybe there'll be some kind of crazy larger pattern to it. Anyway, it'll be fun."

It's actually a pretty poor diagram. They only have their own experiences to include, and even that gets complicated because Dom's a little bit synesthetic and keeps trying to describe his bonds with people by writing things like quiet but intense cellos next to their names. After the first two or three times he starts doing it on purpose, getting more and more ridiculous because he likes making Elijah all mock-exasperated.

They keep it going over the next few weeks, trying to discretely pump their fellow castmembers for information and drawing it all out at night on the paper Elijah keeps under his sofa. He says it's like the college experience he never had, staying up late having deep philosophical discussions about past lives. He spends a lot of time tapping his pen on the line between his name and Sean's.

"It's complicated," he says. "Sometimes we're best friends and sometimes we're more. I think we do better as friends, though."

"Makes sense to me," says Dom. He loves the diagram, ineffectual as it as. He's always liked talking about reincarnation more than is polite and besides, hanging out with Elijah helps a lot with the wrench it gives him to say goodbye to Billy at the end of every day.

***

The one topic they steer away from is that despite all the gossip they collect, Stuart's name doesn't have a single line pointing toward it. No one ever really says anything about it and no one says anything about what exactly they're waiting for on the day when Viggo is meant to arrive, but even so every castmember who can is lurking around watching Sean and Elijah film.

PJ calls a halt when Viggo actually shows up, which is probably the only thing he can do. The second he walks on set there's a murmur that rises and falls and Dom takes a second out of his own recognition and relief to feel bad for the man. Even three or four first sights at once was overwhelming when he arrived. Poor Viggo must be dealing with at least twenty.

"What'd you get?" asks Elijah, all angelic in his Frodo curls. "Remember any details?"

"Not really. Death, I think."

"What?"

Dom looks over at Viggo, trying to sort through his impressions. The man of the hour is listening intently to Sean Bean, one hand on his arm, and Dom suspects that their diagram is about to get a lot more exciting.

"Nothing bad," he says slowly. "Not murder or anything. It's more like...I think we died together, recently, or maybe for each other. It's strong, though."

"Your lives are so dramatic," says Elijah, elbowing him without looking away from Viggo.

"Oh, shut it. Why, what'd you get?"

"Teacher, I think, or mentor or something. Strong, too."

"My good hobbits!" cries a voice that Dom is going to recognize instantly for the rest of this life. "What are we talking about?"

Billy, apparently in very good spirits, drapes an arm around Dom's shoulder and leans in conspiratorially. Elijah shoots him a look that says he gets to answer.

"The new guy, of course," he says easily enough. "What do you think?"

"I think," says Billy. "I think...that we should go do something ridiculous to him. I'm not sure what yet, but I did happen upon a whole bottle of hot sauce that someone at craft services left all by its lonesome."

"Well, then, no time to waste," says Dom, unable to stop himself from grinning. They'd spent a few weeks being wary around each other, but the more things relax the more he thinks he might have found his best friend in the world, even if nothing else ever happens between them.

Elijah makes a whip crack motion at him out of Billy's line of sight, but Dom doesn't even care.

***

As it turns out, he's completely right about the best friends thing (Elijah's teasing isn't far off the mark, either, but that's not important). As the months go by and they move past the circumstances of their introduction he and Billy get closer and closer. Sometimes it feels like they spend every spare waking minute together; people start referring to them as BillynDom. It's not quite everything Dom wants, but at the same time he's never had anyone understand him so well, from his innermost thoughts to his wackiest jokes, and most days he is content just to be thankful for that.

It's no small thing to know that he's the most important person in Billy's life. It would be different if he was getting his nose rubbed in what he can't have, but Billy never so much as flirts with anyone in front of him- at least, no more than the entire Fellowship flirts incessantly with each other. Elijah insists that it's a sign. Dom puts it down to courtesy and tries not to get his hopes up.

He's having the time of his life, really, until one day when he takes a nap in his trailer in the middle of the afternoon and he dreams.

The little bits of past lives that Dom remembers, the parts that no one else he's ever met can see, always come to him in dreams. He knows immediately that this one is his most recent life, can tell by how clear it is. It comes in glimpses. His own feet, walking down a corridor. A disconnected feeling, terror and grief, no less intense for being sourceless. A cloudy sky. A road closed. Finally: Elijah, or rather the woman who is now Elijah, a terrible gash across a dark, narrow face, a draped sheet whose lower half is an uncomfortable shape, hair still, incongruously, impossibly, tied back in a perfect braid. He hears his own voice, doesn't recognize the language but knows the words anyway: yes, that is my cousin.

Dom wakes up into his real life with a sob and has to spend several minutes pulling himself together before he can even get out of bed. He wants more than anything to talk to Elijah, but there's no way to reach him when he's working. The second thing he wants is Billy, Billy whom he could turn to for comfort in any situation but this one.

Eventually he stumbles outside. He has a vague plan to go watch the filming, just to see Elijah alive and well, but he's only barely made it down the steps of the trailer when Viggo rounds the corner and sees him.

"Dom, are you all right?" he asks. "You look a little off."

"I'm...I'll be all right. It was just a dream I had."

Viggo probably says something in response, but Dom will never know what it is because as he's talking he reaches out and grips one big hand on the back of Dom's neck in one of those casual gestures that would seem bizarre from anyone else. Maybe it's the contact and maybe he's just oversensitized from the dream, but the instant that Viggo touches him he gets what he's been missing all this time, what's always been there under the death story just waiting to be remembered.

In other lives, the two of them are lovers.

He blinks his way back to reality to find Viggo watching him with half a smile.

"Ah, I see you've remembered," he says, and uses the hand on the back of Dom's neck to reel him into a kiss.

Kissing Viggo, as it turns out, is something like kissing a force of nature. It whites out every other thought in Dom's head for as long as it lasts, and when it's over he finds himself clinging to Viggo's shoulders with no memory of having moved at all.

They look at each other for a long moment. Viggo seems more focused than he usually is when out of character, intent on reading something in Dom's face.

"Don't worry," he says eventually. "We'll come around again." And he lets Dom go.

In the end he does find Elijah, who lets himself be grabbed and hugged hard for several minutes and then sticks close to Dom for the rest of the day once he's heard the story. When PJ finally lets them go they bolt back to Elijah's place to talk it over. Elijah keeps an arm around Dom's shoulders for the entire night, which is maybe a little sad but is also exactly what he needs.

It's only after they've ordered in and demolished a pizza that Dom finally gets around to the second part of the story.

"He knew it, though," he says. "He knew it and I knew it, I wasn't going to do anything without Billy."

"You turned him down?"

"Didn't even have to. I hadn't even thought about it, you know? What I would do if someone else came along. I just figured that this is how things were now and, I don't know, it would all work itself out. But I...there was just no way. Not now that I know Billy."

"Don't you ever get angry with him?"

Dom snorts, tilting his head on Elijah's shoulder. He feels pathetic.

"Do I look like I could get angry with him?"

"It might help."

"It wouldn't be fair, though. It's not like he promised me anything. Honestly, he went out of his way to un-promise me whatever I might have thought he was promising."

"That didn't even make sense," Elijah informs him. Dom sighs.

"I don't know what to do, Lij. I thought I'd be fine, but I didn't think- I can't do this for the rest of my life."

"I dunno, man," says Elijah. Dom chooses to interpret that as a general expression of sympathy, because there's just no way it's okay for Elijah to honestly agree that Dom might go on like this forever.

The next morning Billy leans on him sleepily and says,

"What happened to you last night? You weren't answering your phone."

"Something came up, sorry. Oh, you'll never guess what I remembered. Get this: last life, Elijah was a girl. A tall one. With an awesome rack."

Making Billy laugh is usually Dom's favorite thing. It means that Billy is happy because of him, that they share something no one else has a part of, their own perfect understanding of each other.

Today, for the first time, it somehow doesn't give him quite the same satisfaction.

|part two|

[see first post for notes and warnings]