Flying High-Chapter Five

[hobbits-r-cute.livejournal.com]

Title: Flying High-Chapter Five
Rating: R for language
Pairing: BB/OB, eventual Monaboyd
Summary: Sean B. talks to Dom, Dom talks to Billy, Orlando tells Elijah why...
Disclaimer: talks of killing one's self, suicide, the boys aren't mine. I'll probably never meet them let alone own them

OMG!! Sorry this took TWO MONTHS! School started and stole some of my time, then I joined an RPG and that really stole my time. I have the next chapter of Baker edited and will be sending off Little Scot to the beta. Sorry for the wait!! *hugs*

Beta'd by the ever wonderful, aire_blair

Response to Inspiration 3 Challenge.

Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Chapter Five

Sean quietly left Billy’s room and headed back towards the waiting room. He was surprised to see Margaret there, sitting beside Dom, the pair chatting quietly, Dom’s arm around her shoulder. “Maggie, I’m sorry,” he whispered as he walked over and knelt before Margaret. “If I’d know you were here, I wouldn’t have stayed so long with him. I wore him out. He finally fell sleep.”

“Oh, Sean, at least he’s alive. That’s all I hoped for when Peter called me.”

Sean kissed her cheek and began to scan the room. He noticed almost immediately that Orlando and Elijah were missing. “Where’d Orlando and the kid go?” he asked Dom.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Dom said as he gently rubbed Margaret’s arm.

“Dom, can I talk you for a bit?” Sean asked, gesturing his head towards the doorway.

“Yeah, sure, mate. Mags, I’ll be back. I’ll have Livvy sit with you.” Dom squeezed Margaret’s hand and, after getting Liv to sit beside her, followed Sean out into the hallway. “Sean, what’s wrong?”

Sean ran a hand through his hair. “Billy told me he called Orlando when he landed in Glasgow to...apologize for reacting like he did or whatever, doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t Billy’s fault by any means. Anyways, I guess...fuck, Dom, Orlando told him to...to do everyone a favor and...and jump off a bridge.” He watched as Dom started to clench his fist, ready to hit something, someone. “I just want to know why. I want to know what happened. Orlando was so...so fucking happy with Billy. They just...just fit, you know?”

“I don’t know, Sean, but I can tell you he’s about this far from being in a hospital bed of his own,” Dom growled as he held his thumb and pointer finger a hair-length apart.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Dom. Billy, he...he needs you now. He needs all of us. The last thing he needs is to hear Orlando’s in the hospital and you’re in jail. Dom, I know how you feel about him. He needs you now more than any of us.”

Dom let out a soft sob. “Christ, Sean. I do love him. So much. I can’t just...just sit here and watch him do this to himself. He still blames himself for everything. Orlando should pay for this. Pay for what he did. Billy, out of all of us, didn’t deserve this. You know how hard it is for him to let people that deep into his life. He trusted Orlando with his heart and...and look what happened.”

Sean grabbed Dom by the upper arm. “Dom, you can’t think of that now. You can’t think of what Orlando did. You have to focus on helping Billy come back from wherever he’s gone. Billy’s lost in darkness now and we have to help him. Fuck Orlando. I can’t change what happened. You can’t change what happened. The past is over. There’s nothing we can do about it, but we can help Billy’s future. He needs us, needs you to be strong.” He wrapped his arms around Dom and hugged the now sobbing man to his chest. “We can’t lose him, Dom. Not like this.”

Dom wiped away his tears. “No, we can’t. I can’t. Not now. Not when I have a chance to be with him.”

“I hope you both take that chance. I love you both like my younger brothers and I just want to see you guys happy. Billy will be happy with you. You just have to help him know that he matters, that he deserves to be love unconditionally, that we love him, that...that anything Orlando said is a lie, and that we’ll always be there. I know you’re up for that.” Sean put his arm around Dom’s shoulders and the pair walked back into the waiting room.

Most of the remaining cast members were sleeping across the stiff chairs. They probably should have been kicked out hours ago, but there were a number of big advantages to being a member of a famous cast. Elijah and Orlando were still missing.

“Look, Dom, why don’t I keep an eye on Margaret for a bit, eh? And you go sit with Billy. Talk to him. Just keep telling him that we love him, that you love him. He just needs to hear it over and over again until it sets in.”

Dom nodded and hugged Sean again. “Thank you, Sean.”

Sean smiled before going over to sit with Margaret. He didn’t speak to her, instead he pulled into a hug and rested her head on his chest as Dom turned and left the room.






Elijah’s lungs were on fire as he finally caught up with Orlando sitting outside a small diner several miles from the hospital. He placed his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath before sitting beside Orlando. “Do you want to talk about this?” he panted.

“Not really,” Orlando muttered as he put his head in his hands, threading his fingers through his dark curls.

“Orli, please, mate. The last thing we need is you jump...doing something to yourself.”

“Do you really think I would do that?” Orlando snapped as he turned to look at Elijah. “That I’d do something that...that stupid?” He found himself surprised by Elijah’s suggestion. How could Elijah think that he would be so affected by Billy’s action, that he might actually consider it himself? Yes, he was feeling guilty, but he couldn’t imagine thinking that he had no other choice, feeling like he had no one to turn to for help...feeling...just like Billy must have felt, like how he made Billy feel with his nasty words, telling the already unstable man that no one cared. He buried his face in his knees again. He had made Billy feel as though no one loved him enough to care if he was gone.

“I don’t know, Orli. I mean, I didn’t think Billy would, but...”

“I didn’t either,” Orlando whispered into his knees. “Even though I...I told him to.”

Elijah snapped his head up. “What? You...you…what?”

“He called me. When he landed in Glasgow, after he found me with Molly. And...and I told him to just go...go jump off a bridge. Rid us all of his weakness. God, if I had known he’d...he’d actually do it.” Orlando leaned his head back against the brick wall of the diner.

“Shit, Orli. Why? Why would go and...and say something like that? To Billy of all people? Hell, to anyone? You don’t just tell someone to jump off a bridge like that. Maybe you say it as a joke, but not when you’ve just...” Elijah shook his head, not quite comprehending Orlando’s behavior towards Billy.

Back in New Zealand, it was obvious to even a layperson that Orlando and Billy were very happy together. Orlando was always finding some way to touch Billy, ‘accidentally’ knocking over the hobbit so he’d have a reason to hold his hand as he helped the Scot to his feet, hiding Billy’s keys so he had to stay with him at night, not that Billy needed such an excuse after a while.

Something had happened apparently between filming Rings and Troy, Elijah wasn’t sure when. The last time he’d spoken to Billy had been before his visit to Mexico and Billy had been exceptionally excited at the prospect of seeing Orlando again.

“Orli, what happened? What made you cheat on Billy, made you tell him he was annoying and a girl and should go jump...jump off a bridge? I mean, Christ, Orli. He loves you.”

“I don’t know, Lij. I don’t know. I mean, I love him. I really do, but I’m not in love with him. I...I don’t even know if I ever really was,” Orlando admitted quietly.

“So, you cheated on him? God, Orlando! Ever heard of ‘tact?’”

“You don’t have to beat me up about it, Lij. I’m already killing myself over it. I don’t know why I said any of the things I said. I was pissed off and just spouted off the wrong things. But none of you guys know what our relationship was like. He’s older than me but he depended on me so much, it was stifling. I felt like I was drowning. I...I had to get out. I panicked.”

“Still, Orli, you don’t tell someone to jump off a bridge if he calls you half in tears.”

Orlando groaned as he got to his feet and began to pace. “You don’t think that hasn’t been eating at me since Dom got that phone call? Those words kept running through my mind. I kept asking myself ‘why did you say that? Why didn’t you just tell him it was over?’ And I don’t have the answer to that, Lij. I really don’t. None of you have any idea how guilty I feel about all this. I want to take everything back, break it off with him nice and easy.”

“Why break it off at all, Orli? Help me understand exactly why you’d break up with Billy?”

Orlando sank to the ground again. “I didn’t mean it, when I called him a clingy girl, but he leaned on me so much for support that...that, I don’t know, I felt more like a...a fucking therapist then a boyfriend.” He looked down at the ground before returning his gaze to Elijah’s. “His parents’ deaths hit him a lot harder than he lets on.”

Elijah moved closer to Orlando. “Tell me, Orlando. Make me understand so I can help Dom understand. So he doesn’t kill you.”

Orlando nodded. “He’d wake up, in the middle of the night...”

~~~*~~~

Orlando stirred slightly in his sleep as the sounds of soft sobbing filled the room. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Bill?” he whispered, hoarsely when he saw his boyfriend sitting on the floor, his head buried in his knees. Orlando crawled out of bed and knelt before Billy. “Dimple, did you have another nightmare? Love, look at me.” He reached out to raise Billy’s head but the older man shuffled back. “Billy, come on,” Orlando said, trying to hide the frustration in his voice. “Talk to me. You know you can talk to me about this.”

Billy shook his head, stood up and quickly ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Orlando could hear the deep, heart wrenching sobs through the door and knew there nothing he could do. He sat on the floor on the other side of the door. He was scared, petrified that he didn’t have the strength to help Billy, the maturity to understand exactly what he was going through. Orlando knew he was only one Billy had confided in about how deeply his parents deaths had hurt him. Outside of their bedroom, Billy would behave as though the years since his parents’ death had softened the grief. He rarely talked about them, but didn’t burst into tears at their mention either. Privately, Billy’s pain was etched deeply into his soul, something Orlando didn’t understand. His father had died as well, but he had been younger and gotten an almost instant replacement. Billy had to deal with losing first his father, than his mother and the pain of knowing his mother had, in a sense, died of a broken heart, not willing to carry on after the death of her husband, leaving her two already grief-stricken children alone. “I can’t deal with this,” Orlando said as he got up off the ground.

At his words, the door flung open and Orlando was on the ground with a lap-full of Billy sobbing deeply into his chest. “Don’t go. I just need someone to be here,” he whispered between sobs.

Orlando hesitantly began to rub Billy’s back. He knew deep down he wasn’t the person Billy needed. Try as he might, he just couldn’t comfort Billy properly, he couldn’t push past his immaturity, his youth, to see accurately what Billy was going through. He knew he couldn’t deal with this much longer.

~~~*~~~

“I had to get out, Lij. I just didn’t have the strength to help him. No one does.”

“Orli, this is Billy were talking about. He wasn’t looking for strength, just someone to be there for him, to help him deal with all his pain.”

“That’s just it, Lij!” Orlando nearly shouted as he ran a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t be there for him. I couldn’t help him deal. And I hate myself for it. I knew, deep down he was close to doing something this...this drastic and I still had to open my mouth and give him shit. Now, everyone hates me.”

Elijah squeezed Orlando’s shoulder. “No one hates you.”

“Dom does.”

“Ok, fine, Dom hates you, but he’s far from everyone and he has his own agenda in all this. You know how he feels about Billy. Come on. Come back. Running away like this doesn’t help anyone.” Elijah stood up and pulled Orlando to his feet. “Let’s go.” He put his arm around Orlando and slowly led him back to the hospital.






Dom quietly entered Billy’s room. He knew visiting hours had long since passed and he didn’t want to get caught. He sat in the chair right beside the bed and took Billy’s hand. “Ah, Bill,” he whispered, carefully stroking the back of Billy’s hand, mindful of the tubing. “My Billy. My wonderful Billy. I love you so much, Billy. I have for a long time. Since I met you, probably, but...but I saw how happy you were and...and that’s all I wanted. For you to be happy. I want you to have happiness in your life, Billy. I can give you that. I wouldn’t hurt you, Billy. Ever. I’d die before I hurt you. You know that, Billy. Please see me Bills, I’m right here next to you. I always was, always will be. Please.” Dom kissed the back of Billy’s hand and laid his head down on the bed, gently stroking Billy’s arm, still clutching Billy’s good hand. He continued his mantra of love. “I love you, Billy. I really do. Maybe, after this…” Dom’s head snapped up as he felt Billy’s hand tighten slightly around his. Billy could hear him. He knew Dom was there. While the physically and emotionally injured man was still sleeping, Dom had a feeling Billy was aware enough to know he loved him. “Just get better, Billy. One step at a time.” He leaned over and kissed Billy on the forehead before settling back in the chair, not willing to leave until he was forced to.