Alter Ego
This is a Blue Plate Special for flusteredspeech: half-hobbits, the borders between dom/billy and merry/pippin, laughter both in character and out
And also the photo, appearing at right.
Title: Alter Ego
Pairing: Monaboyd, loosely
Word Count: 600
Disclaimer: I. Am. Making. This. Shit. Up.
Archive: Please ask.
Crossposted: glasgow_blue
Sometimes, Billy isn't sure whether he is a Boyd or a Took. It comes with the territory. Method acting, they call it; and he's been schooled in the techniques of both becoming and shedding character. It's all there in his head--exercises and theory. Tricks of the trade. Pippin isn't much for theory, though. Pippin's just happy to have a real voice and real limbs and real food to eat, finally.
Billy's okay with it, this blurring of lines between them. They have things to learn from one another, he and Peregrin Took. And it's a relief, sometimes, to shuck the weight of knowing loss so intimately and donn a lust for life in its place. Pippin's turn is coming. Billy's read ahead in the script, he knows about these things. But, right now, the Took in him is safe. Innocent. Free of burden. It's a good place to be.
And he's aware, Billy is, that Boyd and Took go hand-in-hand with Monaghan and Brandybuck. Something happened in the instant he met Dom. Something magical and wonderful and just slightly left of what he always thought was center. There was an audible click. He'd swear to it in any court.
So, it's especially hard when Dom's around. On-set, they are Merry and Billy. Pippin and Dom. Monaboyd. Brandytook. Off-set, it's the same. There's a sort of hive-mind, a melding of thought and speech between the four of them. An occasional craving for Second Breakfast on a Sunday in the coffee shop by the beach. This, too, is a good place to be.
He has no clear memory of losing his parents. That instant is a swirling mass of an entirely different sort of chaos and it echoes and clangs in his chest. There is a sense of being untethered, of vacancy. He can taste the wrongness of it, sometimes. Pippin can, too and Billy thinks this will come in handy when it comes time to film the Gondor scenes. What Billy remembers is his Gran telling him over and again that laughter is the best of all medicines.
There is the knowing of things and then there is the understanding of the same. Billy knew the logic of the aphorism all along--he even felt it a few times, here and there. But now he believes it. Now he lives it.
They laugh, Monatook and Brandyboyd. Merry and Pippin. Billy and Dom. They laugh long and hard over bad puns and senseless running jokes. They laugh until it hurts and then they laugh right through the pain. They laugh at, about, and with. They laugh for, sometimes; when people can't seem to do it on their own. And there are more clicks to be heard; only this time they herald the opening of locks. They trumpet the divinity of letting go.
So here they are, these two, standing in a fake tree. Dom is holding a plaster bowl full of water. It is the drought of the Ents, meant to nourish all things and enhance growth. It is a magical potion, holy water. But he keeps flubbing his lines and Dom is swallowing giggles with every gulp.
He's hungry. He's tired. He's sick of trees and he just wants to go home and sleep. So does Pippin, for that matter. Method acting, to the extreme.
Billy bends low, lays a hand on Dom's shoulder. "Quiet, you," he says.
"Get it right, Bills," comes the reply. "I want to catch a set sometime before I die."
Billy nods. Squares his shoulders. Delivers the line without flaw.
Pippin loves to surf.