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[getlucky.livejournal.com]

Title; The Battle for Billy
Fandom; LOTRIPS
Pairing; DM/BB, BB/Ali
Summary; Dom’s come to Scotland to visit and finds himself some competition. Thus, the Battle for Billy begins.
Rating; So far only PG.
Note; This will be a series. I promise. I hope. I’m a busy girl but I will try my best to get my act together. I’d like to thank sheryl_pip endlessly for the beta.
X-posted; my writing journal: __starvingeyes and fellow_shippers
Prologue - 2,163 Words


When Dom steps off the plane in England, tan and all other forms of sun-kissed, he feels much like a proverbial sore thumb. Looking around him, everyone looks pale and much like it is the middle of the winter and not really the late summer at all. Although, of course, where Dom has just come from it was always much like the late summer and he is amazed, completely, that he had forgotten in such a short time what his homeland is. Which is, basically, a cloudy, rainy, miserable little country.

Particularly Manchester, he muses as he drives in his little blue rental car down the familiar streets, a city which of course can only be described as grey and smelling of soot and coal. The people walking on the sidewalks on either side of his car look so much like ghosts compared to the natives in Hawaii, and the initial uneasiness that he felt upon stepping into the airport is only just slightly starting to dissipate when he reaches the familiar green-painted door of his childhood home. At first, he lifts his hand to ring the doorbell, then decides that would just be a bit too weird, and instead he slips the key into the lock and turns it.

Of course, the door is already unlocked, which makes him feel even sillier still, and shaking his head at himself he just pushes it open. Before he’s noticed, he takes a look around, getting that familiar feeling of “Home,” that nowhere else had ever been able to fulfill (save maybe the little flat he’d lived in in New Zealand, and maybe Billy’s ridiculously quaint house in Glasgow). He breathes in and it smells like his childhood, a smell that he forgets every time he leaves, and forgets only after a couple of days living within it, like it only exists as a welcoming. Things never change much either. The furniture is all basically arranged exactly where it has been for many years, and still there are shoes and hats and an umbrella or two in the corner behind the door. From the kitchen, he can smell ginger, and he can hear water boiling and the low voice of his father. From some open door in the back of the house, he can hear small voices, which mean his brother is there with the children. A smile grows so large across his face that automatically he forgets all about Hawaii and its beaches and its bronze people.

Upon stepping into the kitchen, he is greeted much the way one would be expected to be greeted after not seeing their parents in almost a year. His mother flings herself at him, already tears starting to form, and pour, out of her little eyes. She’s mumbling motherly sentiments against his earlobe, hugging him tighter and tighter until he’s absolutely sure that he must be turning purple, but of course he doesn’t mention it. Over his mother’s head he can see his father, standing and shaking his head, a look of deepest sympathy and apology on his face that does not completely hide the amusement that’s also there.

When Dom’s mother finally lets go of him, stepping back just to look him over, his father moves up and wraps his arms around him. Dom has always liked this about his father; that he was never one to pretend to be too manly to give his son, or other close male companions hugs. His father, though his arms are strong, is still a small man, and he keeps his hug to a much less suffocating level than that of his wife’s. But it’s no less comforting, and Dom squeezes him back tightly once before stepping back and looking down at his mother, who is still looking at him in awe, as if some famous painting has just walked into her kitchen instead of her son.

“Dominic, you are positively glowing. Look at you; you are the color of honey. Of molasses, even.”

Dom, biting his lip and looking down at his tanned arm, shrugs his shoulders and says, “Only less sticky and gooey, I hope. Really, I worked very hard for this tan. Took lots of lying around on the beach and using just the right SPF of sunscreen and all that.”

“Oh, I hope you used enough sunscreen, you’re British, Dominic, and your skin is not made for that kind of abuse.”

Behind his mother, Dom’s father is rolling his eyes and mouthing things that look like, “I’m sorry, really.” Dom feels so wonderfully at home all he can do is grin and laugh and breathe in.

It’s that evening, after Dom has eaten some of his mother’s not-so-amazing dinner but her amazing-enough-to-more-than-make-up-for-it ginger snaps, told his father every last little detail about the work he had been doing in Hawaii, played with his two nieces until he had absolutely tired them out, and had quite an intriguing catch-up of football with his brother (which he had more or less been missing out on completely for far too long), that Dom finds himself in his old bed. His room is pretty much untouched from when he was younger. Even through all the places he had been, and even with all of the work he had been doing for Hetty, his mother had always wanted him to just be her son, and not some workaholic child star or anything of the sort. So things like preserving the boyishness of his room were always very important to her.

His sheets are still dark blue, and one of his pillows is still covered with a case imprinted with footballs that look as if to be flying mid-air from some invisible kicker. He once had an entire bedding-set with the design until he fell very ill with a stomach bug one winter and threw up in his bed multiple times. From then on, no matter how many times they were washed, he insisted that they would forever smell of vomit. He does a quick visual inventory of his room, the Manchester United poster, the cards, the comic books. Beneath his mattress he even finds a few magazines which he shakes his head at, laughing at himself before returning them to their hiding spot.
It’s then that his cell phone rings. It startles him, because the electronic, tinkering version of the classical piece sounds wrong in the room. He fishes deep within his jeans’ pocket, and pulls it out. Upon flipping it open he’s automatically being attacked with questioning.

“You’re in England? Are you really? You’re in Europe, in general, and I did not know of it until this very moment and only because I heard a rumor from… Well I won’t tell you where but it involves maybe a Rings’ fan site… on the bloody internet, Dominic Monaghan and why did you not TELL me?!”

It’s Billy, of course. Billy, whom Dom had most definitely not forgotten to tell that he was indeed coming to his section of the world. More like he wanted it to be a surprise. He wanted to show up at Billy’s house and he wanted to have pretty much the same welcome that he had received from his mother. Only with maybe a bit more air involved, and less fussing. Although, he thought with an indulgent smile, Billy probably would go on about how Dom really should’ve been more careful beneath the sun and how he could’ve gotten cancer and it would all be very ridiculous and…

“Dom?! Dom, you there?”

Dom clears his throat and shifts atop his sheets. “Of course I am. I am here. And, yes, “here” is indeed England. Manchester, to be exact. And no, I did not forget to tell you, I wanted to surprise you and now you’ve gone and ruined the surprise by being a silly fan boy again…”

There’s a second or two of affronted silence before Billy says, “I am not a silly fan boy, I was just, you know. Poking around. I was bored. That’s how it is when I don’t have current work. You know how I am. I’m a restless soul.”

Dom snorts to acknowledge that he does indeed know this, “You, my dear mate, need a hobby.”

“Oh, I have enough of those. I even have a girlfriend, so don’t start. And I have plenty of friends. I’m just currently career-less and, of course, Dominic Monaghan-less.
Which is a lot like being right-arm-less, but please don’t tell him I said that.”

“Oh, no, I won’t; of course, currently he has his fingers in both his ears. Really, I can see him; he’s staring at me from the wall across my bed.”

Now Billy snorts, which then breaks into a tiny little Billy-giggle of a laugh and Dominic feels a lurch of that familiar feeling that he gets when he really, really misses Billy.

“You’re in England,” Billy says again, and Dominic can feel him smiling through the little ear piece of the phone and he thinks that most extraordinary.

“I am. And in a few days I should be in Scotland, but now it’s your turn to be tight-lipped because there is a certain wee madman residing in Glasgow that I want to surprise.”

Never missing a beat, Billy says, “My lips are sealed. Well, they will be once I finish with this conversation, of course.”

“Of course.” Dominic says, and he feels so infinitely content that he wonders if maybe he’ll give up being an actor completely and perhaps set up a little muffin shop in the middle of the town instead.

In the car a few days later Dom keeps drumming his fingers against the steering wheel and fiddling with the air conditioner and the radio compulsively. It’s not so much that he’s nervous but just entirely too excited. Not that he would admit it to anyone, ever, but he’s got the kind of butterflies in his stomach that he remembered getting on the first day of school. Or the kind of butterflies he got the first time he was going to meet the other hobbits on the set of Rings. Not that he’d ever admit it but basically, he gets these butterflies every time he’s about to see Billy.

When Dom finally arrives at Billy’s house, he thinks about how lucky he is that he manages to have two homecomings in the span of one week. He’s standing on Billy’s front porch after ringing the doorbell, shifting back and forth, his nerves all jumping with excitement and thinking that really his life is the best life ever. Then Billy opens the door, and the look on his face confirms this point and even triples the certainty of it.

Billy smiles in the way that Billy smiles, all adorable lines around his mouth, and adorable upper lip, and his eyes just shining so, so, so green. On the spot, Dominic feels his stomach do a flip, but it’s a much less sad-feeling flip than the one he had experienced on the phone a few days prior, and a much more euphoric, giddy type flip. He mirrors Billy’s smile (only regretfully without all of the adorableness of it, or so he thinks) and then lunges at him, because the two of them standing there staring at one another is ridiculous. Billy stumbles back a few steps and Dom forward a few steps against him and Dom’s luggage is left forgotten on the front step as they embrace, quite manly-like. So manly, that Dom’s nose is buried, tickling, rubbing against Billy’s neck, sniffing in. Billy’s arms are squeezed so, so, so wonderfully tight around his middle. And breathing doesn’t seem an issue at all; he’s too happy to remember how to breathe, anyway.

This, he thinks, when he finally steps back and the two of them are both just slightly pink in the face, is what coming home really feels like. It really is like suddenly having your right arm reattached after once losing it, tragically.

“Ah, Dommeh,” is the first thing that Billy says, and he’s still got that smile on his face, and Dom wants to give him another hug, but he’s afraid of over-doing it.

Then, of course, behind Billy comes Ali, who’s smiling just as prettily only less so, really. She steps up next to Billy, a hand coming up on her hip as she looks at Dom mock-reproachfully. “You are here to steal my Billy away from me for the next… however long, then?”

Dom, making his answer sound more like a joke than he really means it, smiles suavely and says, “Of course I am.”

And even if Billy doesn’t see it, and even if maybe Dom is just being overdramatic and a bit silly, and well, like Dom, he’s pretty sure he sees a look pass over Ali’s face that says, “Well then this is WAR.” And Dom, really, is quite ready and willing for the challenge.