Pretend

[perfect-oasis.livejournal.com]

Title: Pretend
Author: The Phantom Writer silentnumbsmoke
Pairing: BB/DM
Pairing: PG-13
Feedback: In my opinion, feedback is one of the loviest things ever.
Disclaimer: This isn't real. Nope, not so much.
Notes: Spark word fic! Conformity.
Uh... I wrote it a few weeks ago. So... yesh. It's kinda angsty, but... there's not really too much.

Oooh, and I've put up a challenge for fic requests in my journal. Feel free to request something; it'd make me happy!

Enjoy!




I was never one for conformity. In school, I was the one defying all the ‘rules’ that said that only girls did theatre. I would come to school dressed in outfits that would attract stares, and, of course, during Hetty Wainthropp, I dressed in drag and showed my arse on the tele.

Then Lord of the Rings began. It was all normal until the first movie came out, when people started realizing who I was. That’s when people started taking photos of me, and my pictures would be posted in magazines, newspapers and all over the fucking Internet.

That’s when I got the conformity disease. I’ve read the comments; I know everyone thinks that I’m my own person; that I do what I want to do and wear what I want to wear. But they’re wrong. They’re bloody wrong. When I wake up and decide what to wear that day, a thousand and one questions run through my mind. Will this shirt make the fan-girls squeal for more of me (or less clothing)? Should I conceal my crooked jaw with scruff, or should I shave? Will this scarf help me receive a thumb’s up from People magazine? Then, later in the day, I always curse the conformity bug as I shift in fucking uncomfortable clothing.

Elijah is no help. In L.A., he’s completely different than when we were in Wellington. Now, he’s always dressed for a mix of success and drooling stares (which he considers to be success as well). He’s always on the phone with his agent, which makes me antsy, as I haven’t heard from mine in over a month. Then I begin to doubt my acting skill, so I paste on the mask I know so well… the mask of cocked eyebrows, crooked grins and charming comments in order to keep my spotlight from fading to black.

Since the rope of conformity has bound me, the one person who can keep me real, the one person who can keep me Dom, is Billy. Nothing is fake with Billy. He doesn’t put on fake tears if he doesn’t feel them, and I don’t chuckle fake laughter around him. I’ve never felt the need to, and I know I never will. Billy looks joyful all the time because he is joyful, not because he feels that that’s what people want to see.

He’s the only one who can see through my mask. I’ve seen the knowing glances cast my way during publicity shoots and at the premieres. He knows, and I know that he hates it.

Which is why I’m leaving. Leaving interviews, L.A., the masks and conformity behind me. It’s why I’m sitting here, clutching a boarding pass in my hand. It’s why I’ll be in Glasgow in half a day; so I don’t have to pretend anymore. I’m sick of pretending.

Billy has always seen through my masks. I hope he’ll be able to see through the newest one, the only one I’ll ever hold up for him. The mask that says: ‘Who, me? No, I’m not in love with my best mate!’ If he sees through it, then I won’t have to verbalize the words that have been floating in my head, nonstop, for the past two months.

I only hope he doesn’t feel the need to put up his own mask for once; a front pretending that he never saw through my mask in the first place.