FIC: Twist of Fate-1/?- This part rated PG-13 for language

[cheekyluv28.livejournal.com]

Title: Twist of Fate- 1/?
Author: Jen
Pairings: Monaboyd (eventually)
Rating: Series: undoubtedly NC17 This part: PG-13 for language
Summary: Sometimes the fates bring everything together in perfect, blissful harmony. Other times they simply like to rear up and bite you in the arse. ~~ A strange and cosmic twist on the beginnings of Dom-and-Billy.

Warnings: angst, somewhat AUish (okay...maybe a little more than 'somewhat' ; ))
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The author does not know, and is in no way affiliated with the persons mentioned in this work. No disrespect is intended to the persons mentioned in this work. No money is being made from this in any way.
A/N: Good god- I'm not even sure what to call this bit of weirdness. Part fantasy, part comedy, part angst...one hundred percent insanity. *grins* I've taken the origin of Rings and twisted it ridiculously around to suit my own whims. Heaven help us when Dom and Billy actually come face to face...
A/N II: I haven't abandoned my other ongoing fics- this one just barged in and demanded that I put them on the back burner for a short while. : )






Honey you are the sea,
Upon which I float,
And I came here to talk,
I think you should know
Green eyes, you're the one that I wanted to find...


~Green Eyes
~Coldplay








"Bloody fucking hell!" Dom jerked upright in his seat, opening his eyes wearily, blinking around at the other passengers on the plane. One matronly-looking bird clucked at him in disapproval of his choice of language, but most everybody else appeared to be blissfully sleeping. Which was exactly what he should be doing. He was headed to New Zealand, setting out on what promised to be the great adventure of his lifetime. If he ever needed to have all of his mental faculties in proper working order, today was the day. And yet here he was, wide awake once again, yanked out of sleep by the same old dream, the same pair of gorgeous, laughing green eyes haunting his mind.

Dom was far past the threshold of exhaustion and well on his way to the land of delirium by this point. He'd grown used to his unique brand of insomnia over the last couple of years, but during the last fortnight things had gone from terrible to worse. He'd drift off only to be awakened a few short moments later by a Scottish whisper. Due to all of this, Dom was acting even more daft than usual. At the airport, he'd nearly mowed down an elderly gentleman with his luggage when he'd nodded off while pushing it along, and he'd gotten to babbling so incoherently in-flight that his seatmate had packed up and relocated to another area of the plane.

Dom stretched out and tried to close his eyes again, but it was no good; the dream was still with him. Billy's arms- warm,strong, safe- wrapping around him from behind, cradling him tenderly. Billy's soft, sweet accent breathing promises into his ear. The gentle brush of Billy's fingertips across his skin, calming him with a single touch.

In truth, Dom's world was chaotic and hurried, he was always moving, jittering. He felt hopelessly awkward and unsure; out of place even in his own body. But things were different when he visited with Billy. In his dreams, Dom found what he could not in life- serenity.

Dom had been madly in love with Billy going on three years now. He had known from the very first moment he'd seen those beautiful green eyes that he'd found his soulmate, his life-partner. Over the last thirty six months, Dom had lived only for Billy, had given his heart completely over to Billy.

There was only one minor problem with all of this.

Dom hadn't the slightest fucking clue who Billy was.

The madness had begun one sunny day in April. Dom had been trolling the streets of Manchester, happily humming 'Love Me Do', peering into store windows as he aimlessly bopped along. He'd just spotted what he believed to be a vintage Gibson guitar in the display case of a music shop and was excitedly trotting over to investigate when it hit. His vision went in a blink, as if a sudden cataclysmic fog had enveloped him, and all outside noise simply ceased to exist- the blaring of horns, the chattering of passers-by...all vanished. It was as if time had stopped altogether and he'd gone deaf and blind. He had halted dead in the middle of the walk, face going blank, eyes staring and strange. People around him were gawking, muttering to each other about the crazy lad, opining in hushed tones about the shameful increase in use of illegal substances on the streets of England. But Dom knew nothing of any of this. He'd heard his own name- not from around him but from inside him, somewhere within the depths of his mind. Yet the voice was not his...it was a smooth Scottish lilt that would soon become as familiar to him as the beating of his own heart. And that was when he'd first seen the eyes that were to go on to haunt his nights and forever change his soul. The emerald green had broken through the fog, and such a feeling had come over Dom. A feeling of peace and love and rightness. The place inside of him that had been empty and dead was now filled and alive.

Dom had come back to himself a few minutes later, blinking and confused, torn between elation and terror. On one hand, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that after a lifetime of searching, he'd finally found his other half. On the other hand, given the circumstances, it was not only likely that his other half was a mere figment of his imagination, but also entirely possible that he had gone quite mad somewhere along the way.

Since that day, almost against his will, other bits of knowledge had seeped into Dom's consciousness. He had gone from stunning green eyes and a sexy accent to knowing Billy's first name and place of birth. Then the dreams had begun, and Dom's subsequent bouts of insomnia. Even worse, the strange and unsettling trances continued to overtake him- every once in awhile he would simply go off, be transported out of his world for a few moments and into Billy's. In this state, Dom would get sudden words or phrases, sometimes even strangely disjointed visual images, and he innately knew that he was feeling what Billy was feeling at that very moment, seeing what Billy was seeing. Dom imagined it was a bit like what psychics must experience, the only difference being that the clues they were given at least served some purpose, could be used to keep someone from harm, or to help solve a crime. The things Dom saw never made a sodding bit of sense and seemed to exist for no other reason than to slowly drive him bugshit.

Then, there were the really weird experiences, the ones which reminded Dom less of psychic ability and more of demonic possession. Apropos of absolutely nothing, he'd get a sudden, nearly irresistable urge to don a kilt, or worse yet- since he was one hundred percent gay- to shag a woman. Or he'd be belting out a Beatles ditty in his ordinary enthusiastically off-key style, and his voice would abruptly morph into something sweet and angelic and utterly in tune. He had learned to pretty much cover all signs of his bizarre trance-like states when around others, but it was not nearly as easy to hide things when you were onstage, in the middle of a play, and for no forseeable reason whatsoever suddenly blurted out your lines in a perfect Scottish burr. Most of the the people who had come in contact with Dom over the last three years thought him off his head, and he could hardly dispute the charge.

Most disturbing of all was the Cinnamon-Trouble, which was not only weird and unsettling, but downright bloody absurd. Dom loved the taste of cinnamon, always had; cinnamon rolls, chewing gum, candy- give any of them to him and he was a happy fellow. But whenever he was in Billy-mode, he could get nowhere near it, the mere smell of it made him almost physically ill. On occasion, it had made him ill- Christmas had once been a jolly time for Dom; now it had become a time of insecurity and nausea. The Monaghan brood always went heavy on the spices during the holidays, and he was afraid to attend family gatherings for fear of disaster striking at the dessert table, as it had in '97. Aunt Cordelia still hadn't forgiven him for ruining her best tablecloth. A bird on the Hetty set had once waved a platter of freshly-baked cinnamon buns under his nose, and he'd been off and bolting for the loo at a run, hand clamped over his mouth. Even more mortifying, the very same thing had happened after a love scene with an actress who had freshened her breath for the take by gnawing on a stick of Big Red. It was like some bizarre form of morning-sickness, something Dom had never dreamed of having to endure. He'd gained a healthy respect for pregnant women, found himself giving them looks of empathy. He often wished Billy had developed a disliking for liver or turnips instead of cinnamon. It would have saved Dom a shitload of embarrasment.

Dom was never given a last name for his phantom lover, only a first, and a ridiculously common one at that. He only saw Billy's eyes, never his face. He knew of Billy's fear of thunderstorms, his love of Beethoven, his secret vice of sneaking a joint after a particularly trying day. What Dom didn't know was anything practical that could help him locate Billy, if he indeed existed anywhere outside of Dom's fevered mind. There were only a series of tantalizing clues, which when put together, added up to precisely zero. What it all boiled down to, was that short of traveling to Glasgow and scouring the countryside for green-eyed blokes named William who happened to have an unnatural aversion to pumpkin pie seasoning, there was absolutely nothing Dom could do. And it was the most helpless feeling on earth.

He'd fallen in love with a dream and had discovered there was no going back. He'd tried to date a few times since, find happiness in a more tangible form, but had quickly given it up as a lost cause. Once you'd seen paradise, everything else paled in comparison. There had been that bloke downstreet back in Manchester. He had been funny, nice, gorgeous, and very definitely interested...but he had not been Billy. Which explained why Dom was still a virgin at the ripe old age of twenty two. He thought that if he ever did by some miracle manage to locate Billy he might very well have to fight off the urge to strangle him.

Dom would be much better off if he could only believe that he actually was insane. He'd spent many hours trying to convince himself of that very fact, knowing that accepting insanity would be far easier than accepting the truth. He'd pored through countless textbooks, searching for physical or psychological explanations that could put a name to his bizarre behavior, coming up with everything from a rare, premature form of senile dementia to split-personality disorder. But, deep down, he knew that although he was by nature a bit daft and most assuredly dangerously sleep-deprived at the moment, he was still perfectly sane. Billy existed, somewhere in the world, and Dom loved him with every particle of his being. These things, strange as they may be, were absolute truths. But, if Dom accepted these truths, he had to accept another, much rougher one: The fates very well may have decreed that Billy was his soulmate...but that by no means automatically ensured that he was Billy's.


"Hi."

Dom jerked upright again, startled out of his thoughts, and looked around for the source of the voice. There was a little girl standing in the aisle by his seat, smiling up at him. She was red-headed, green-eyed, gap-toothed, and absolutely adorable, and even though he could barely keep his eyes open, Dom found himself automatically smiling back. "Hello there. Where'd you come from?"

The child pointed across the aisle where a woman was dozing, a sleeping toddler cuddled in her lap. "I'm Marcy. I'm five. Mommy's aseepin'. I'm bored."

"Ah..so that was your little brother causing all the commotion earlier, eh?" Dom had never heard a louder baby in his life; the little one had screeched all the way from Heathrow, only settling down a few minutes prior. The mother had probably passed out from pure exhaustion.

Marcy rolled her eyes dramatically. "His name's Josh. He just sleeps and cries and poops." Without an invitation, she climbed up into the empty seat next to Dom's, toting what looked to be a picturebook up with her. She looked closely at Dom, with not a hint of shyness, and with the wonderful frankness of children blurted, "You look awful. You're all rumply."

Dom laughed, knowing he must look a sight, what with his wrinkled clothing and lack of rest. He'd also been running his fingers through his hair and knew it must be sticking up horrifically. It was a wonder the child had had the nerve to approach him at all. "I know. Been having a bit of trouble sleeping."

"Me too.", Marcy sighed theatrically and settled more comfortably into her new seat. They were both silent for a few moments, then she reached over and plucked Dom's hand off of his lap, peering at it. "Your nail polish is comin' off." She pointed at Dom's nails, where the black varnish had grown chipped and ragged. "Mommy won't let me do hers, 'cause she thinks I'll mess it up. But I wouldn't."

The little girl was looking up at Dom imploringly and he hadn't the heart to refuse her. "Well, you can do mine, love. You can't possibly mess them up any worse than I do." Dom dug through his carry-on, then held up a bottle of remover and four different colors of varnish, letting her choose.

She scooped up all of the bottles at once, grinning. "I'll paint a rainbow.", she decided happily, settling in to her task. She made Dom scoot around in his seat so he was facing her, and draped his hands over the armrest of the chair. "I'll need cotton.", she declared in a professional voice. "To get off this black gunk."

Dom, clamping his lips together on a laugh, rummaged in his bag again and held up a package of Kleenex. "Will this do, do you think?"

She eyed the tissue critically, then sighed wearily. "I suppose." She accepted the Kleenex with a snort of disdain, but quickly set to work on his nails, scrubbing at the remnants of polish. She was much neater about the whole thing than Dom expected, careful not to spill any of the liquid. She worked with great concentration, her little tongue poking out between her teeth. Dom thought he had never seen anything cuter. She finished up in record time, daintily placing the soiled tissues into a plastic bag and recapping the remover, neatly laying it back into Dom's carry-on. She went for the varnish next, but had trouble trying to unscrew the lids.

Dom saw her struggling and reached over and uncapped them for her, thinking that before she was through, the entire seating area was bound to be covered in a mural of paint. No matter- it was making her happy and it wasn't his plane. Besides, anything had to be an improvement over the hideous burnt-orange upholstery the airlines had chosen for decor.

But Marcy surprised him again, taking time to lay out tissues on the armrest to catch any drips before replacing his hands. "You never told me your name.", she said conversationally, applying a neat stripe of Electric Orange to his pinky.

"Oh- I'm sorry. It's Dominic. Dom.", he smiled. He hadn't exactly planned on a midnight manicure from a five-year-old, but found himself thoroughly enjoying her company. He'd always gotten on well with kids, and it certainly beat sitting there alone, drowning in his thoughts. "Tell me, do you make a habit of doing strange men's nails on airplanes?", he asked her teasingly.

He expected a smile, or perhaps no answer at all, but was not prepared for the look of understanding sympathy she sent his way. "You looked kinda sad. Like you needed a friend."

Dom's heart twisted and he found himself absurdly near tears. "I suppose I did, at that.", he said, voice cracking a little. He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the lump that seemed to have settled there. "You do that very well. You must like to paint.", he finally said, nodding down at his nails, which though certainly colorful, were turning out quite nicely.

She grinned then, her sparkling green eyes lighting up happily. "I'm going to be an artist. I'll go to Paris, wear a floppy hat, and live in a garnet."

Dom had to hold back another laugh. "A garnet?"

She paused in her work and raised an eyebrow at him, then explained patiently, trying to help him out, "You know...one of those attic things. But artists don't say 'attic', it's not 'fessional enough. Artists say 'garnet'.", she proudly informed him.

"Ah...of course, you're right. I'd forgotten.", Dom said seriously, eyes twinkling. He didn't bother to correct her pronunciation- it was much more adorable her way. "I've never lived in a garnet, myself. I'll have to try it sometime."

"Are you an artist?", she asked in awe. She'd finished up with his nails and was studiously putting the caps back on the bottles, but she stopped everything and stared up at him, enthralled.

"Of a sort, I guess, but not the painting type.", he answered, smiling. "I'm an actor. Or, pretend to be one, anyway. That's why I'm on the plane- I'm going to New Zealand to make a movie."

Dom expected surprise or excitement at his statement, but all he got from Marcy was an blase look of recognition. "I know all about the movies.", she said, sounding bored with the whole thing, going back to replacing the nail varnish caps. "Mommy makes clothes for 'em. That's why we were in London. To dress people who have no clothes on."

Dom laughed, translating Marcy's words to mean that her mother was a costume designer who had been working on a film in England. "I imagine we'll need lots of people like your mum on the film I'll be doing. It's called 'The Lord of the Rings.' It's a trilogy, actually, by a man named J.R.R. Tolkien, who..."

She interrupted him with a yawn. "Mommy's new movie's just about hairy-feeted bobbins.", she said indifferently, bending to put Dom's bottles of nail polish back into his travel bag for safekeeping.

Dom processed that for a moment, but still came up blank. "Bobbins?", he asked, arching an eyebrow.

She nodded and went on to explain slowly and carefully, as if Dom was perhaps a bit mental. "You know...bobbins. They're real little, live in these holes, and they have ears that are all pointy-like and gigantic hairy feets."

"Wait a minute...do you mean hobbits?" Marcy smiled and nodded again. "I'm a hobbit!", he blurted in surprise.

The little girl's eyes grew wide, and she hurriedly scooted off her seat to kneel on the floor, pulling back the tongue of Dom's trainer and peeking underneath at his bare foot. "Nuh-uh.", she said, looking up at him accusingly, brow furrowed. "You're not a bobbin. You have regular feets." She crawled back up and impatiently brushed his messy hair out of the way, taking his head in her hands and moving it this way and that in order to closely inspect his ears. "And your ears aren't pointy...just kinda big.", she said, voice tinged with disappointment, settling back into her seat, arms crossed in a pout.

Dom laughed out loud. "They're not pointy or hairy yet. But they will be when Makeup gets through with me. Not even they can keep my ears from being big, though.", he grinned. "They'll make me over...like your mommy does with costumes."

Marcy's eyes lit up in understanding. "You mean it's all pretend! Like when I have a tea party with my dolls?"

"That's right, love. Just pretend.", he smiled. He bent down to rifle through his carry-on to see if he could find some gum to share out, but froze with his hands partway into the bag as a horrified gasp came from Marcy's direction.

"You'll mess up your nails!", she cried. "Quick- do this!" She waved her hands in front of her in a frenzied flapping motion, the resulting breeze causing the airline magazines on the backs of the seats to flutter madly in their pockets.

Dom waved his hands in imitation, feeling a bit foolish but not wanting to hurt her feelings. The same old lady who'd snorted in disapproval at his language earlier shot him another disdainful look now, shaking her head sourly. He just smirked cheekily at her and went back to flapping.

"That should do it.", Marcy finally decided, stilling his hands and inspecting his nails closely for any sign of moisture.

"Thank goodness.", he replied, grinning. "I think I was about to take flight."

Marcy grinned back and started to speak, but her words were cut off by a big yawn.

"You getting sleepy, sweetheart?", Dom asked. It was, after all, going on half past one in the morning.

She yawned again hugely, tiredly rubbing at her eyes, but looked right at him and stubbornly said, "Nope."

Dom knew he should send her back to her original seat to get some rest, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it. The little girl had made him smile for the first time in what seemed like forever. He decided instead that a bedtime story might be in order, something to settle them both down. "Hmmm, not sleepy, eh? Let's have a look at this book of yours. Maybe we can find something to read in here." Marcy rolled her eyes and gave him a skeptical look, but said nothing.

Dom picked up the book and idly flipped through the pages, thinking that the stories looked rather juvenille for Marcy's tastes. It seemed more like something her baby brother might enjoy. He finally paused at a colorful picture of a grinning cartoon lorry wearing some kind of ridiculous constuction helmet on the top of its cab. "What about this, then? 'Timmy the Truck.' That looks sort of interesting." He tried to sound enthusiastic.

"It sucks.", Marcy said flatly. "Mommy got me the wrong book- it's for babies. Everybody knows that trucks don't wear hats."

Dom scanned a couple of lines, then made a face. "Hmmm...I think you might have a point there."

"You tell me a story, Dom. Please?"

She was looking up at him with pleading eyes, and there was no way in bloody hell he could refuse. "What kind of story would you like to hear, love?", he asked softly.

"A good story. All drama-like, and tragical, but happy in the end. Once upon a time...", she prompted him, sliding her small hand into his.

Dom smiled down at her, squeezing her hand gently. "Once upon a time, there was this crazy bloke named Dominic..."

By the time the story was winding down, Marcy had snuggled companionably into Dom's lap, head laid against his chest, eyelids drooping. Dom was growing comfortably sleepy himself, and fought back his own yawn as he put the final touches on his tale.

"Then Dominic kissed the frog, and in a flash of blinding light it turned from a slimy, croaking amphibian into a handsome Scottish prince with the most brilliant green eyes. The prince's name was Billy. Dominic loved him with all of his heart, and..."

Dom's narrative was interrupted by a frantic female shout. Many of the sleeping passengers awoke and looked around in alarm. "Marcia Diane Matherly! Come away from there this instant!" The little girl's mother was marching across the aisle, looking horrified, clumsily lugging baby Josh with her. At his mother's yelling, the toddler awoke and started screaming again, adding to the bedlam. Two flight attendants were hurrying over to see what was going on, and Marcy raised her head from Dom's chest, blinking her sleepy eyes in confusion. Before she could even realize what was happening, she was yanked from Dom's arms and set rudely on the floor, as far away from Dom as her mother could get her.

Dom was mortified, mostly for little Marcy, who looked near tears in puzzlement and embarassment over her mother's outburst. He tried to hand her book back to her, but it was snatched angrily away by the mother before Marcy could take hold.

"I was only telling her a story..." Dom stood and tried to calm the woman down, but she was having none of it, ignoring him in favor of running her hands all over her daughter, checking for damage. Dom could understand the lady's fright at finding her child in the arms of a stranger, but the unspoken accusation hurt him deeply all the same. If Dom had been a woman, Marcy's mother would have smiled kindly and thanked him for his trouble, but because he had been born with a penis between his legs, he was automatically a twisted degenerate.

Which all went to prove how bollixed up the world really was.

An abrupt, almost crushing wave of depression swept over Dom then, erasing every good feeling his time with Marcy had brought him, and he sank back into his seat, suddenly too weary to stay upright. He gave one last glance towards Marcy. The little girl was crying now, being roughly tugged back to her seat by her mother, getting a harsh scolding the entire way. The woman was still glaring daggers in Dom's direction, her eyes turning particularly flinty when they came upon his rainbow-painted nails.

Truth hit Dom in that moment, slammed into him with all the force of a hurricane. He was not headed into a great adventure at all, but, rather, running away. Even though he had always adored Tolkien, his acceptance of the role of Merry had been done more out of desperation than anything else. He was attempting to escape the ghost of Billy by flying half a world away, taking on what promised to be a long, grueling challenge in the hopes that he'd have no time for heartache, no time for dreams.

If Dom ever hoped to find any sort of happiness, he realized now, he would have to take charge of his own life, forget this mad, impossible love. Take the reins back from the hands of Fate.

Life was not a fairy tale, there was no happily ever after, and if Fate existed at all, she was not the kind, gentle creature of storybooks, but a hard and cruel bitch.

Dom slid a Sharpie from the pocket of his jeans. He looked down at his hands, pausing for a moment to gently caress one rainbow-striped nail, then scribbled a declaration across his knuckles in bold black ink:

FUCK FATE

Dom closed his eyes and tried to will away his dreams.





...tbc

Comments

[foxrafer.livejournal.com]

Fantastic beginning; very well done.