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unautremonde) wrote2004-03-12 01:11 am
"Fangirl" - Xover, Dom/lance sorta, PG13
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dom is slowly turning into a fangirl...
Author's Note: Answer to the Two Lines challenge (the two lines in question are the lines under the title) and birthday fic for my dear Zarah, because she's the reason why I'm here today, lusting after both Dom and Lance. Happy Birthday, honey!
Thanks: to Aelane for the beta, Piran and Kia for being wonderful cheerleaders, and to Ryn for being ever so patient with me (wouldn't have done it without all of you). Thanks to Mary as well for finding info about Lance's production company for me.
Disclaimer: Gimme an F! Gimme an I! Gimme a C! Gimme a T! Gimme an I! Gimme an O! Gimme an N! F.I.C.T.I.O.N.! Fiction! Yay!
Fangirl
Was watching your window from here below
I think I might stay here all day
Melissa Etheridge - Watching you
When Dom met Lance for the first time, he instantly felt an intense dislike. He didn’t like boybands—bloody pretentious little snots the whole lot of them—and he wasn’t about to give one of them a chance. So it was spite and hostility from the get go.
Dom didn’t think Lance was likeable anyway, or at least, only likeable in the way that he was easy to make fun of.
It was, of course, possible that most of Dom’s hostility had initially come from having just lived through the most wretched week ever: getting nearly killed in a stupid car crash (why had Elijah suddenly decided to put potted plants in the driveway to his mom’s house?), receiving the umpteenth crappy teenage script from his agent when he was still trying hard to decide between doing nothing, or… well, nothing… In the end, all of that had added up to make a very, very cranky Dom. And contrary to Orlando, Dom’s mood never improved with American brand piss in lieu of beer, or phoney smiles and greetings in lieu of challenging conversation.
Now Dom wasn't what one would call mean, but he did have a thin mean streak. A streak that never failed to surface when the drinks were shite and the company too dull for words. That streak wasn’t a mile wide, mind you, not even an inch wide, but it was a mean streak nonetheless, and Lance and his eagerness, the way he took everything so seriously, even partying, all of this was so easy to laugh at and be nasty about that Dom didn't really think about it twice.
Dom had been standing in his little corner of woe is me, grumbling about the beer, the people, everything… when Lance had appeared out of nowhere, thinking he was the shit, and acting like he owned the place, when he wasn’t even more than a pathetic excuse for an actor. After all, boyband members did not great movie stars make, according to Elijah, and Dom was inclined to agree. It had made sense then to despise Lance instantly. He’d taken one look at the too crisp clothes, the too nice smile, the enticing blush on Lance’s cheeks, and the body not as toned as months in Star City should have meant, and he’d known instantly that Lance was as fake as they came.
Lance even had illusions of grandeur and the nice little pretend producing company to go with that, it seemed, which he’d made sure to stress as he’d been introduced to Dom, telling him he’d seen his work, and that he’d be happy to do business with him if Dom ever had the time to squeeze him into his most likely busy schedule. Dom had looked at Lance’s neat little business card and snorted. “A Happy Place. Right, well, I’m not really into gay porn. Not that desperate, yet.”
To his credit, Lance hadn’t even looked shocked. He’d raised an obviously professionally plucked eyebrow and grinned, all teeth and ready to bite. “Yes, I thought I’d have the company’s name remind me the business is full of people like you.”
Dom had raised his own eyebrow right back at Lance, inching it incrementally higher in an effort to look even bitchier. “People like me?”
Lance had smiled that sleekly professional smile Dom had seen him sport on every single one of the pictures he’d ever come accidentally across. His voice had been glacial, holding none of its previous deep southern warmth. “Yes, people like you. Assholes.”
Dom was kind of ashamed to admit he’d been floored.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Dom. If I had the first clue, I wouldn’t ask.”
“I’m watching a film.”
“Yes, I see that, Captain Obvious.”
“You asked what I was doing, you cunt. So I’m saying. I’m watching a film.”
“You know perfectly well what I meant. I can see you’re watching a movie. Doh. I was just asking…”
“…what I was doing. Yeah, I know. I’m watching a film.”
“Dom!”
“Elijah!”
“For fuck’s sake, why on earth are you watching… On the Line? I mean, wasn’t it elected, like, crappiest movie of the year?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m just watching it.”
“Right, but…”
“It’s not exactly Oscar material. Now can you please leave me the bloody hell alone so I can watch?”
“Dom.”
“What!?”
“Did you get it from a fan? Is that it? Is that why you’re watching it? Because if I’d known you were this bored I’d have…”
“I didn’t get it from a fan.”
“You rented it? You rented this piece of crap on purpose?”
“…”
“You didn’t buy it, did you?”
“…”
“Dom?”
“…”
“You bought it! You fucking walked into a shop and you fucking bought it! Oh, my, wait till I tell Billy about this!”
“Piss off.”
“Oh, wait, not Billy, he won’t know why it’s so funny. No, I’m gonna tell Sean. Sean’s gonna so crack up when he hears this. Are you planning on joining the fan club or what? Because as far as I know, it’s only the die hard fans who bought the thing in the first place.”
“Elijah? Quit being a cunt. Just piss off, ok?”
“Would you like me to find you those *NSYNC dolls for Christmas, Dom? Cuz I can do that. Lance bobble-head, maybe? I would have bought you a ticket to their concert for your birthday, but I don’t think there are any shows planned in the area and…”
“Piss. Off.”
“Yo! Dom! Wait! You didn’t tell me who your favourite was! Dom! Come back here! Your movie’s not finished yet! Doooom!...”
By the time Dom met Lance for the second time, he’d maybe changed his mind about the guy a little. Maybe, just maybe, Lance wasn’t as annoying and stupid and fake and…everything as Dom had first thought he was. But Dom wasn’t ready to swear by that just yet.
After that first meeting, Dom had done his homework. He’d been stuck in L.A. too long, in between jobs and bored out of his skull enough to start feeling fidgety. Elijah had been busy, Billy had been on the other side of the ocean, Sean had been… well, Sean. There wasn’t much for Dom to do at the time other than pick up the Hollywood ways and try to absorb any and all useful information.
He’d watched a lot of TV, too. And he’d spent quite a fair amount of his time on Elijah’s laptop. Google found 110,000 matches for “Lance Bass”, all of which seemed to really be about Lance, with pictures and biographies, and even a lot of information about his failed attempt at becoming the first l’Oreal representative in space—since as far as Dom could tell, Lance’s motto did sound like it could be because I’m worth it. Google only came up with 36,500 hits for “Dominic Monaghan,” and the fact that it gave 355,000 possibilities for “Elijah Wood” didn’t even come as a consolation at that point.
Elijah’s second favourite channel happened to be MTV. Not because he liked watching the videos so much—though there was that—but because he liked to fancy himself up to date on everything that was hip and everything that wasn’t in today’s music. Dom didn’t quite understand the addiction to MTV seeing as it was so mainstream and Elijah’s tastes were usually geekier than geeky when it came to music. Dom suspected that Elijah liked to watch the videos for the half naked ladies, and so he could pretend he didn’t enjoy them by making fun of the popular artists.
For his part, Dom didn’t like MTV. It never showed anything by the Beatles or the Ramones or any of the groups he deemed worthy of his ears, and it had regular news specials about Lance Bass and his little adventures in Russia, and what he’d been up to since his return from his failed picnic among the stars.
The more he watched and the less Dom understood the appeal Lance Bass seemed to have with teenies world wide. The guy couldn’t sing, was obviously a mere backup singer for JC and the Timberlakes—and the fact that Dom now knew by name all of Lance’s band mates really kind of pissed him off—and couldn’t dance to save his life.
Then again…
Lance might have been hopeless at dancing in the early days of the band—according to the websites, it wasn’t like Dom had gotten as low as doing extensive video research—but he’d certainly learned how to move and walk up and down the red carpet since then. And as for being a mere backup singer, having caught—completely by chance—a rerun of *NSYNC’s tribute to the Bee Gees, Dom was forced to admit that Lance’s booming bass sounded pretty professional and good.
And hot.
But whatever. It still didn’t explain all of that appeal.
Lance wasn’t sexy. Really, he wasn’t. He had wonky eyes, eyes that weren’t exactly green but rather a strange shade of yellowish… greenish… They were wonky. Dom knew, he’d downloaded enough research material to be able to tell (Dom! What are these 2000 and plus pictures on my hard drive? You’ve crashed it, dude!). Lance didn’t have a well-defined musculature. He probably couldn’t surf to save his ass, and honestly, if all he had to show for his months of training were his sorry abs and flabby pecs…
Dom had somehow managed to become extremely pathetic.
Thank goodness for work, because suddenly, Dom’s plate was full again, and it was just as well. It was obvious that he couldn’t handle too much free time, and he’d grown way too addicted to the net and the gossip websites. Even Elijah was beginning to sound suspicious, casting enquiring glances Dom’s way whenever they were driving somewhere and Justin Timberlake’s latest song came on.
Time passed, Dom worked. Dom didn’t obsess and certainly didn’t subscribe to Wireimage… Life went on as usual.
So when next Dom bumped into Lance, things weren’t tense just because of Lance’s holier-than-thou attitude, but also because Dom kept thinking about knowing Lance’s preferences between briefs, boxers or going commando. Some fangirls really took the word research seriously. Not that Dom was a fangirl, but he’d obviously done some reading.
By his seventh drink, Dom couldn’t quite remember which premiere they were attending, but he could still recall Lance calling him an asshole during their previous meeting and realized he needed at least a couple more drinks before walking over to where Lance was shamelessly flirting with three very pretty boys and a few very eager girls. Dom could have gone over and flirted right along, for sure, but seven drinks simply weren’t enough. He’d reached for an eighth one still staring at Lance and trying to convince himself Lance was still a dim-witted, pretentious, talent-less boybander.
By the Twelfth drink—and those weren’t sissy drinks, either—Dom was beginning to think that Lance’s wonky eyes were leering his way, and he was feeling happy enough with the world to finally make his way over to try and give the boy a piece of his mind. What that piece was going to be, he didn’t really know, yet.
Lance was still holding court, still flirting left and right, and if he wasn’t quite leering at Dom yet—Dom was ready to admit that might have been alcohol mingling with his own wishful thinking—he would soon enough. Because Dom was sexy. Dow was sexy, and cool, and sharp and oh whoops, Dom was walking into tables, too. Lance looked up at the commotion, eyes instantly boring down on Dom sprawled out on his ass in front of at least a few hundred of the most influential people in Hollywood. Granted, a lot of these people seemed to have brought their twins along to the party, but still… Lance was looking at him. Dom gave a little wave and was rewarded with… well, maybe not quite a leer, more like a sneer, maybe.
“Dom!” Oh, Elijah. Elijah was Dom’s friend. Dom loved Elijah. A lot more than he loved Lance, of course. Because Elijah was prettier and nicer and more talented and he also let Dom use his internet connection and his TV and all that Dom needed to keep in touch with Lance, and…
Lance! Lance, Dom wanted to talk to Lance. Dom wasn’t an asshole, and Lance had assumed he was, and that just wasn’t right and…
“Dom! Get the fuck up off the floor, will you? You’re making a fool of yourself. How much have you had to drink?”
Strangely enough, though, Dom’s limbs weren’t cooperating, and all the twins in the room were spinning around him in a very dizzying manner. By the time Elijah had managed to pull him back up and was steering him towards the exit, Lance was nowhere to be seen and Dom figured their second meeting probably hadn’t gone as well as it should have given the amount of preparation and research he’d put into planning for it.
Dom found himself anticipating their third meeting with all the excitement of a twelve year old fangirl at a Backstreet Boys concert. The irony of which didn’t escape Dom.
The good thing about TV and the internet was that you could watch and watch and watch and never have to find yourself ridiculously inadequate in front of the object of your obsession. Because by now, Dom had to admit his little Lance thing had become big enough to be called an obsession.
He wasn’t sure he knew what was up with that, but he couldn’t get over being called an asshole by such a… cute little bundle of squee-worthy boyband-slash-astronaut meat.
Dom was doomed.
It didn’t matter, though, because whether he was lusting after the Bass ass or not, he was still intent on not doing anything more than watching. As long as there remained a screen between him and Lance, Dom figured he was safe. Their previous meetings had proven that they just could not co-exist in the same room with Dom’s ego coming out intact, so…
MTV and the internet had become Dom’s best friends.
There were perks to this new hobby. They’d all heard about what the deranged fangirls came up with from Ian, who had been thrilled to tell them about his encounter with the crazy waitress-slash-webmistress who’d shamelessly admitted to writing slash. Ian had had a hard time deciding between being appalled and immensely amused, but they had all convinced him it was not worth losing one’s English cool over. So yes, Dom had known about slash and fanfiction and pairings before, but he’d never heard of popslash and tinhats until his obsession for the Basstronaut had taken him on a trip through a great number of yahoo lists.
The whole thing was hilarious and there were many an evening spent with Elijah giggling over some stupid piece of smut about Orlando and Viggo, or even Elijah and Dom themselves. It all gave Dom the perfect excuse for being online so much, too. Elijah loved the stories, loved how the fans perceived him—to Astin’s horror, since Sean thought it was all very morally wrong—and had a blast reading about how some people had ended up believing the stories were true. As far as they all knew, Ian was the only gay one out of all of them—well, there was Craig, too, but Craig wasn’t a member of the fellowship—and even though Dom liked boys as well as the next girl, he didn’t fancy himself gay. He liked to see himself as an opportunist who was open to all sorts of suggestions and opportunities. Elijah himself loved girls too much to bother with anything else, but he was open minded enough to enjoy the humour of most of the stories. When Billy came to visit, Elijah even had him read the phone book aloud while he and Dom laughed their asses off. Billy of course had not understood, but he’d indulged them because he was too sweet to ruin their fun, even if their fun was at his detriment.
Dom also loved to play with the fangirls directly. He liked to utter half comments, cocky little things to lead them all on. It was fun. He could then watch the results unfold from his living room.
But mostly, Dom liked to read popslash. Preferably stories featuring Lance, of course. Combined with the endless hours of footage he’d taped on his VCR, they’d become his substitute for porn.
It was kind of strange, though. Dom had never been one to lie to himself, so he’d admitted his obsession easily. He knew what he liked, and Lance’s unflappability during their first meeting had been impressive enough to get him curious. Their second meeting had then made him realize just how far he’d gone into the obsession, and instead of fighting against it, he’d decided to embrace it.
The problem was… he was miles away from embracing the real thing.
All of the hype around the fellowship and all of that… lotrips frenzy made it clear enough that whatever he found about Lance through his various screens was as far from the real Lance as he himself was from the cocky clownish persona his own fans adored. Not that he wasn’t cocky and a comedian, of course, but he didn’t have half the confidence his fans saw in him when he was in public. That was also very clear from his handling of Lance during their two meetings.
His obsession for Lance had grown, and as he’d become an expert on everything popslash—from the weird little names the writers gave to the pairings they wrote, to what they called fanon—he’d realized he’d become obsessed with more than the little punk who’d accosted him and offered to work with him that first time. It had come to a point where he didn’t know who he was obsessing over: was it the public persona or the real person he’d glimpsed the day Lance had insulted him?
There was only one way to find out.
Dom never threw anything out, so he knew Lance’s business card was still somewhere. It took him three days to find it. Whether that was because he’d honestly forgotten where he’d put it or whether he was buying himself time, he didn’t stop and wonder. Once he’d retrieved the card, it took him another five days of finding himself looking at it every time he opened the refrigerator’s door before he’d managed to muster enough courage to pick up the phone and call.
Lance’s secretary wasn’t warm and helpful. Dom understood Lance was a very busy and solicited person, but he had hoped to be able to benefit from being Dominic Monaghan. As it was, after hesitating for days before calling for a meeting, he found himself having to wait another three weeks for an opportunity to see Lance in person. It was okay, he could wait.
As the day grew near, Dom found himself growing more and more impatient. Pictures of Lance building paper rockets while wearing big dorky goggles, or the sight of him pointing gleefully at his crotch—or rather at what was dangling from his jeans’ pockets, but Dom liked the idea that Lance was pointing at his crotch better—left him all hot and bothered. He was afraid he might not make it through the meeting without exploding from lust. The meeting was set to happen at lunchtime in one of the trendiest L.A. places, but Dom wondered whether he might be able to jump Lance without the other patrons noticing.
When the day finally came, Dom was so eager he decided to get to the club early. From what he’d understood, the place served as Lance’s headquarters and by the time of their meeting, he would have been there meeting other people for hours. Dom hoped he’d be able to watch him work from the bar.
Lance was already there when Dom walked in. He was engrossed in a phone call, making rude leave-me-the-fuck-alone gestures in the direction of the young woman seating opposite from him. Dom ordered a beer and settled down to watch, a bowl of peanuts handy. Lance made phone calls, signed papers, met people, and drank way too much. He was loud and far from appearing as smooth and cool as Dom had grown used to reading him. He seemed nice enough, of course, greeting people with warmth, apologizing to his assistant, looking all eager and blushing easily… He looked awfully normal.
Dom chewed on his peanuts and felt awkward. He had no screen, here, but watching Lance was so familiar… if not for the fact that yes, this Lance seemed awfully normal. Normal by L.A.’s standards, sure, but normal enough. Apart from the normality of it all, Dom still felt like a voyeur. It wasn’t something he felt guilty about—not as long as he didn’t cross over the line and fall into stalker mode—but it was something that made him wonder again: who was he here for?
He thought back on the first time he’d seen Lance, on their second meeting, on his own inadequacy and on how the humiliation he’d felt both times had been mostly of his own doing. He thought about what was most likely going to happen during their upcoming third meeting, thought about what he’d say, where it would lead him… and then he thought about his little obsession. He thought about pictures of a highly groomed Lance, thought of him written as such a sleek, manipulative, powerful young man, thought about how he felt and fantasized when he read and watched… thought about how he was feeling right then, eating peanuts and drinking beer while still watching from afar.
He thought about what he liked best: the humiliation of their meetings or the thrill he got from being a simple voyeuristic fan.
The sun outside was shining bright and Dom lowered his trendy new glasses to his eyes before fishing out his cell phone. He threw one last look at the club’s door and smiled at the thought of Lance venting his annoyance and frustration at being stood up by a hobbit. If that wasn’t going to strengthen his belief that Dom was one of those Hollywood assholes he pretended he knew so well how to handle, then Dom didn’t know what would.
As he walked down to the parking lot behind the club, dialling Elijah’s number and trying to think of something to do before going home to his computer, he thought about his third meeting with Lance.
Their third meeting had been anticipated, sure, but what Dom was looking forward to, now, was finding out what their fourth one would be like.
THE END
Note: The story that prompts Elijah to make Billy read the phone book is Inbetweens' wonderful, wonderful In Which Billy Boyd Says Stuff. If you've never read it, then you should go read it now. *nods*