TITLE: Heterochromia
AUTHOR: Sparcck
ORIGINAL STORY: Surprises by Bexone
RATING: R
PAIRING: Kate Bosworth/Orlando Bloom/Dominic Monaghan
SUMMARY: "You and Dom hit it off pretty well." Orlando's shoulders are square and he rips at the buttons on his cuffs.
NOTES: Thanks, as always, to thejennabides
DISCLAIMER: No reality claimed, no money made, no harm meant. And if you think you've seen something like this before, you have, as it's rewritten, with the author's permission. Although maybe she didn't know quite what she was asking at the time :)
=====
Orlando is all wide, wild eyes, finely jittering limbs, flared nostrils, lathered with sweat; Kate feels the same pump of adrenaline, a panicky lump solidifying in her throat and her arms shake as she holds herself above him. He's a horse before a show, understanding the excitement but not knowing what to do with it, and she’s had this urge to shove a bit in his mouth and show him.
She blinks, and he strains under her, his heart pounding through both of them and she wipes away a slick of sweat that streaks the side of his face from his temple to the pillow, like he’s been crying. She feels Dominic’s gentle hand on her throat, in her hair.
She bends to kiss him, hushing him, inhaling his humid, shuddery breath. "So I gave him my key," she breathes and she can feel his mouth suddenly curve into one of his blinding grins, and his hands sure on her back, under her shirt, sliding the edge slowly up her ribs; he's gotten his legs back beneath him and she feels her chest swell with pride.
The lock clicks and Orlando slides his hands up to cup the back of her skull, mouthing Katie against her.
There’s a slice of light from under the door and Kate feels blinded by it. A door, finally, cracking open slowly, and it turns out she had the key all along.
*
Dominic is taller than she expected. She's in heels, maybe two and half inches, and she's still looking him straight in the eye.
"What," he murmurs when Orlando is pulled away by a slightly drunk Elijah, and she jerks her head up from where she's examining the similarities in her foot and his, both of them wearing black pointy shoes although there's a little less of hers and his are shinier.
"I'm wearing heels," she says and sticks her foot out, heel parallel to the floor.
He snickers and does the same. "So am I."
She smiles a little easier. Dominic's rumbling laugh, although completely different from Orlando's bright one, sounds somehow the same. Or maybe because he's narrower than she expected, too, narrow shoulders and hips, built like Orlando only shorter. But there's something familiar in his eyes.
"Tch," she clucks and cracks her toes in her shoe.
*
"Dom's straight," Orlando strangles out, but his hips rolls and roll against her; she rides him for a moment, and his dick rubs her, hot and hard, harder than she’s ever ever felt him. Then she holds herself up, just out of reach, her thighs shaking with the effort; her underwear is soaked through, and she's so wet it's almost like an extra layer between them, making her more desperate and more focussed at the same time.
She wants to sneer like Dominic -- Dom -- but she's not even sure she knows how to pull it off -- she's seen the word and she's seen the look, but she has no idea how to put the two together. So she smiles instead and when Orlando shudders and drags his blunt nails against her hips, she thinks maybe she got it right anyway.
"That's what he said," she grinds out and she sounds more like herself now. "But then he said for you...." It’s not a lie, not really a lie; it wouldn’t be possible if not for her, so it’s just the rules, just the way it is. Dominic’s face burns on the backs of her eyes, not a moment of hesitation. He accepted for both of them, for all three of them, on these grounds.
"He said for you, he'd make an exception."
*
She remembers why she was half-terrified to meet Dominic. He has little crinkles around his eyes and a wide mouth that’s used to laughing, but his eyes are glittery and calculating, and he asks questions casually that become questions on some test she knows she’ll never pass.
“Orlando says you’re a pretty good surfer,” he says. “Did a movie or summat?”
She prickles and swallows the lump of quiche she hadn’t been able to wash down with champagne, feeling it stick and grind in her throat on the way down. “Yeah, something like that. Why, do you surf, too?”
Dominic’s hackles go up, his nostrils flare and his ears tinge red. “Learned together. Can kick his arse, anyway.”
Kate smiles even though her heartbeat is fluttering in her throat, one for one. “I heard even Elijah can wipe the floor with him.”
Dominic snorts and chokes a little on his champagne. “Point,” he says, and relaxes his shoulders.
“He’s gotten really good, though. Almost keeps up with me most days.”
That makes his eyes go a little narrowed again, and Kate inhales and exhales deeply. She didn’t mean for that to be a challenge.
"Have you met everyone, then?" Dominic sips at his champagne and Kate steals a cracker of beef tar tar off a passing bamboo tray.
She closes one eye and tilts her head, shoving the square in whole. "Nope," she says, licking cracker off her teeth. "Elijah last month sometime. And Viggo." She fishes at the tiny piece of beek stuck between two of her molars with her tongue; It's already insane to be talking about this so casually, but now Dominic is looking at her funny, a half grin making his jaw go more crooked. She thanks god and her mother for her tan when she feels her face heat and she licks her lips and grins. "Don't tell him, okay? I've been so good about not eating meat."
He leans in and bushes a crumb from the corner of her mouth with a long thumb. His nail is longer than Orlando's, longer than most men she knows, and it dents into her bottom lip. "Our little secret," he says and his voice is all gruff and English.
For a moment her heart thud thuds a little crazily and her stomach rumbles. "Orlando warned me you were charming."
Dominic laughs long and loud, his whole face squinching up and his head going back. Kate can't help but smile, catch Orlando's eye over Dominic's shoulder.
All right? he mouths and Kate winks at him.
When she looks back, Dominic is grinning and closing first one eye than the other. "What?" it's her turn to ask, a little giddy with champage and a sort of victory.
"Nuffin," he says with a secret smile, his voice muffled into his glass. "C'mon, I think they’ve got chicken samosas in the other room."
*
"I like you like this," she hears herself say, and her whole body feels hot and prickly with power and confidence and she does like it, she loves it. “Taking it,” she breathes into his ear, nips at the tip of it
He mouths a growl at her and she ducks her head, bites slow and hard on the tendon between throat and shoulder. She doesn't quite hear Dom's voice in her head, but it's there, on Orlando's face. Orlando, she wants to say, to feel his name in her mouth. But he reaches up for her and she catches his wrists and presses them back into the thin mattress. She grinds against him slow, too hard and his mouth forms an ‘o’, his body squirms back from and against her. “Taking it.”
She draws her skirt up around her thighs, spreading herself over his narrow hips, settling her weight onto him as he arches into her, craning his neck to reach her with his mouth; he twists his wrists, tugging weakly at them.
He whimpers, fucking whimpers, and she laps at the wet-salty hollow of his throat. “Mm, pretty noises,” she husks and he hitches his hips again -- she can feel the slick of herself smeared on the insides of her thighs. “Will you make them for Dom, too, pretty noises when he presses inside you?”
He gasps and groans and bucks hard, almost unseating her, but she tightens her thighs, her legs relaxed from the knees down, the way she learned to ride. His erection presses almost painfully into her clit, making her grunt out her breath, bare her teeth against his throat. They move against each other for a stretched out moment, and she reaches between them, slides the palm of her hand down against his balls, pressing behind them with the tips of her fingers. He mouths her name and his head thrashes on the pillows.
She grabs his chin with her other hand, and his eyes slit open, glitter at her. "I want to watch. Want to see your face when he fucks you."
He looks like he's been punched in the stomach, all the breath knocked out of him; when she kisses him again, his mouth is already open, maybe to protest but it’s like he’s waiting for her and for a second, she forgets who she is.
*
They hide their samosas behind more tiny vegetable quiches. Actually, Dominic hides them, piling hors d'oeuvres onto a napkin -- “Best part of these things, I’ve found.” “The open bar’s too shabby, either.” And he grinned and pointed at her with a toothpick, “Good girl.” -- and letting her pick from them as they lean against the wall near the bar.
Dominic is talking to someone Kate recognizes from Vanity Fair. The guy is laughing and rubbing the back of his neck like he’s a 12-year-old girl and Kate rolls her eyes, although she knows she probably looked about the same way. Dominic gestures extravagantly with his glass, winks at her as the guy flips open a silver card holder, scribbles something on the back of a white rectangle.
She shakes her head and scans around for Orlando.
“Probably outside smoking,” Dominic says, suddenly at her elbow, folding the card and tucking it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He delicately selects a samosa from his greasy napkin and nibbles on the point of it. “I thought he’d quit.”
Kate nods. “But with all the press. You know.”
She finds she genuinely loves his grin, when it’s real and not a challenge of who knows Orlando better. “I do,” he says. “And Elijah’s no help.”
“From what I’ve heard, neither are you.”
His thick eyebrows go up and he assumes a haughty look. “I’ll have you know I’m the perfect moral example for the lad. Someone’s got to look out for him.”
There it is again, that little shove that says, We’ve got inside jokes and we share bad habits, what have you got? Maybe to get her back for the surfing comment from before, because he seems to have settled into her, fussing with the rings on one hand but not shifting from foot to foot anymore.
“Dominic--” she starts but he cuts her off.
“Here he is, back from the trenches. Don’t look!” he hisses when she turns to catch a glimpse of Elijah and Orlando coming in from outside, Elijah brushing ash off his black suit.
"He's ticklish, y'know,” Dom says loudly and Kate stifles a laugh when three people in their vicinity turn to look at them, “Just behind the knees, and--”
"And if you get him going,” she finishes, “he can't fight back."
Dominic’s half-laugh half-snicker makes her laugh out loud and she sees maybe they’ve gotten back around to where they’re both okay with sharing, because Orlando, for all his flaws, has the biggest heart she’s ever known.
“Keeps a close eye on you, eh?” Dominic murmurs, looking down.
Kate leans in, not up, and puts a hand on his hip. To steady herself. He smells blunt and earthy. “You’re never far, either.”
Dominic looks up and smiles, his eyes soft and glossy and Kate can feel her heartbeat in the crooks of her elbows and between her legs. She’s drunk, she knows, but it suddenly hits her that Dominic loves him, and it makes her feel like he loves her, too, like the thick desire on his face is for her. Maybe it sort of is.
“Get some air?” He cups her elbow.
“Lead the way.”
*
Kate doesn’t even have to try to remember Dominic’s mouth on hers, it’s like he left a little imprint, and she thinks of him downstairs, waiting, and she groans into his mouth, their teeth clicking together. She sucks his tongue into her mouth and thinks, you want this, too, you want him and so do I, I want that for you. She sinks into his lap and he grabs her hips, breathing curses onto her mouth, her name. She holds his head between her hands, and tilts it the way she wants it, shoving her tongue against his.
His lower lip strains and tears a little when she bites, catches it between her mouth and his teeth; she pulls back, licks across his mouth and almost can't believe it herself. The line about it tasting like a penny is sort of right, and when he bares his teeth at her, jerks his hips up, she sees a smear of bright bright red on the perfect white enamel.
He stares at her, searching her face, and she smirks, feels her mouth go wide and she thinks maybe her one eye looks like Dominic's his, because it clicks on Orlando’s face and tears gloss his eyes for a moment before he blinks them back. He’s gone soft and pliant and she pushes him down, slowly, shoving a knee between his legs to guide him up until his head touches the headboard.
Her smirk turns into a bright grin, she can’t help it. Yeah, she thinks, Dom and I hit it off.
*
They’re barely out of sight of the smokers when Dominic propels her against the wall and his mouth crashes into hers. He kisses the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he can command everyone in a room with a tilt of his smirk.
“Christ,” he mutters, licking into her mouth, his breath coming fast and hard, “Fucking Christ.”
His hands grasp either side of her head, directing her the way he wants to go; she struggles against it, craning her neck to try to take control. He nips at her lower lip and inhales hard as he kisses her again; slows down, undulating against her, holding her with his hips and his hands and his mouth.
“Fucking gorgeous,” he breathes, but when she pries her eyes open she sees his are closed, the crinkles in the corners something other than laugh lines.
One hand slides down over her breasts and her belly, moving between her legs. His dick digs into her thigh and she moves against it by instinct. “Dominic.”
He hushes her, his eyes squeezed shut, and he kisses the corner of her mouth, the edge of her jaw, slides his teeth against the vein pulsing in her neck.
She holds him to her by instinct, her fingers digging into his back and his hip.
They move against each other, silent except for their harsh breathing and she feels like she’s burning and in her head she thinks Orlando, Orlando, Orlando. His fingers press and circle and press against her and she can feel herself building up, so fast, too fast, and when it breaks it’s almost not an orgasm; she’s five steps past orgasm before it hits and she snaps her head back against the brick wall, pressing a hand hard over her own mouth. Orlando, she thinks again, and tears seep out under her lashes even though she doesn’t feel like crying.
She knows that’s what Dominic is thinking, too and when he shudders against her after a few more rough shoves and pulses wet and warm through his pants and her skirt. She opens her eyes to find he’s looking at her, tilting his forehead against hers, his teeth gritted.
He hisses when she rolls her hips again and stills her with hands on her waist. “So close,” he says and she knows what he means but he goes on anyway, “Almost perfect.”
*
They don't talk in the limo. Orlando taps a cigarette against his thigh and stares out the window and Kate laces her fingers through his other hand and squeezes, putting her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. He lets her, but he doesn't squeeze back.
He helps her out, as always, because she hasn’t really gotten used to getting up from so low a seat in such high heels. He stops, using the limo as a buffer for the breeze. "G'wan," he says around the cigarette, lighting it with a match and waving her toward the door. He shakes the match out and knocks on the trunk of the limo.
"I'll wait, it's a nice night." The limo pulls away.
He exhales and kisses her softly, rubbing the ends of her hair between his fingers. "Just need a tic."
"Key," she says when he inhales again. He raises one eyebrow but doesn't ask, just gives her his key and exhales with his head tilted back.
In the room, she kicks off her shoes and stares at herself in the mirror, thinking about him facing the wall with one hand against it, like he's just some guy, random guy in a suit, sucking down a smoke as fast as he can. He does it when he's anxious or upset and she knows he's not stupid, knows he knew the look on her face and her swollen lips and the reason for her freshly applied clear lip gloss.
She closes one eye and then the other.
He never bangs doors or anything, and she likes that. Yeah, she was born in California, but she grew up in New England and she really can't deal with yelling or slamming doors. Not that they've ever had an actual fight over anything. Arguements, sure, in which they both curse too much and stalk around and eat in silence and then have slow slow sex that always makes her misty-eyed after, when he strokes her belly and calls her Katie.
So his knock is normal and not at all angry, and she hopes the cigarette took the edge off.
He brushes past her when she opens the door and paces twice around the room, looking at the bed and her shoes and finally the couch. The he starts pulling off the cushions, methodically, and pulls out the fold out bed. He tugs the sheets at the bottom, pulling at them and tucking them back in with hospital corners.
She's never complained, not once, ever, about his career interfering with them. She pretends not to notice when a character slips in, when his on-set training manifests itself. It makes her angry sometimes, because she wants to be a part of it, and she feels like there aren't many ways into that little world, doesn’t know the password and can’t even find the shape of a door to pick the lock to. Her hospital corners always look messy and she notices when they've settled into enough of a routine either at her place in LA or his in London that her way of making the bed magically fixes itself. Such a stupid thing.
It makes her furious, here, in the present, and she doesn't give a flying fuck if he actually has a right to be pissy. Good, she thinks, meanly. I'm glad.
"What the fuck is your problem?" she snaps.
He doesn't turn to look at her, just keeps on smoothing out the sheets on the sofa bed.
They're both so hot-tempered, and she knows she shouldn't be angry. Neither should he. He just doesn't know it yet. She tries to pitch her voice a little lower. "You'll kill yourself on that thing, with your back."
He throws down one of the cotton-stuffed pillows they had to get for her and makes a noise, one of his fake laughs. "You and Dom hit it off pretty well." Orlando's shoulders are square and he rips at the buttons on his cuffs.
She gapes at the rigid line of his back as he jerks his shirt off one arm at a time, stiffly. "You--" She barks a little laugh and scrubs her hand over her eyes, forgetting her makeup and ending up with a cocoa and lilac smudge across her palm. "Is that what this is about?"
He turns, his arms are folded, trapping his long chain against his chest. His jaw juts out, and his wrinkly brow says I’m hurt I’m furious I love you.
"Sometimes, Orli. Jesus Christ." She crowds him back against the makeshift bed and his forearms press into her breasts. "Sit."
"Why," he clips out.
She smiles and her belly flutters but it suddenly feels right. This person who had been walking around in her skin all night really was her. She wants his hospital corners and his longing glances at photos of him with a mohawk, calluses from whatever weapon of the week and that smile, that smile. She pushes against his arms, and he goes easily, maybe surprised at her strength, maybe because he wants this as much as she does.
"He gave me something for you," she says and it's amazing to see him looking up at her, not a game, not this time, sneering and pleading.
"What?"
"This." She leans down and kisses him.
*
"If you had a prick," Dominic grinds out, his hand still cupping her through her skirt. He shapes his fingers into a funnel and strokes out into the air. His face flames red to the outer shells of his ears.
"Any prick?" she husks back, her voice sticking and stumbling, her whole body flushing to match his face. She's pretty sure she's never even thought that word let alone said it outloud.
He chuckles and brushes her bangs back off her forehead, following the curve of her skull to tuck them behind her left ear. "Clever, clever," he rumbles. "No, not any prick."
It's hot and humid in the little space between their faces, and she can see his shoulder rotating as he pulls and works her phantom dick, his knuckles pressing against her on every downstroke. Her knees shake and she digs her hands into his shoudlers. "I thought you were straight."
Dominic's breath fogs against her cheek when he mouths at her and wisps of her hair prickle and stick to her neck. "Is that what he told you."
"Is that what you told him?"
Dominic stops, just stands, his hand pressed against her; Kate wants to claw and kick at him and scream he's mine I just found him and you had your chance. Dread coils in her belly and she presses forward against the heel of his hand -- it's not Dominic's fault, really.
It's been there this whole time, this panicky feeling that they were only connected by this thin thin thread. Ever since she found out it had all been a set up, her laugh stumbling at Orlando’s almost wry melancholy when she showed him the Star that morning, pictures of the two of them on their second real date, and her quote, right there, like the asshole she was, "set-ups don't work, I believe in fate."
He sets his jaw, his pulse ticking just under his ear and backs away, disappears around the corner; she tilts her head back against the wall, cool air against her flushed throat and face. She wipes at the dark spot on her skirt, considers her hand and scrubs at her face. She smells like him.
She goes after him.
"Dominic," she says, when she catches up with him near the bathrooms and grabs his arm. He lets himself be pulled around and leans back, his arms dangling at his sides.
Did he tell you, she wants to ask, did you laugh at me, the two of you, stupid little girl, and she’s imagined it dozens of times, Dominic watching Orlando get ready to meet her that first night, planning Orlando’s escape, planning to meet up later after he’d managed to ditch her.
But now she has an actual person to go with it, and a voice and a kind smile and his suddenly familiar face doesn't say that. He looks like she feels, fear and desperate want and this evil little hope.
"Dom."
“M’sorry.” He wipes away a thread of sweat trickling down her throat. "He's lucky to have you," he whispers, "Lovely girl."
"He is." She doesn't know who this person is who's moving her arms and her mouth, thinking of these things to say, thinking that she'd like to wipe out her fear and his, and give Orlando something to stop that little furrow he gets when Dom calls, when Kate asks after him. She's being selfish, she can admit that, but they all are, kind of. "Lucky to have you, too."
"Doesn't really have me, does he?" His smile is painful. "I'm straight, or do you need more proof.”
Kate fumbles for her bag, clicks open the kiss clasp and slides her hand inside; her fingers feel thick and numb, but they find the rectangle of plastic with the holes punched in one half; she slides the tips over the raised edges of the number stamped on it. "But for Orlando. I mean, you'd make an exception, right?"
Dominic's brow pulls together, a dark, furry underscore to the deep grooves in his forehead.
"Just one," she says, firmly, and holds out the key.
He takes it, looks at it dumbly for a second, then smiles with all his pointy, gappy teeth. She sees the decision on his face and she smiles back, loves this impulsive, honest man who loves Orlando as much as she does. He presses a genuine, brotherly kiss to her cheek and looks at her for what feels like a full minute, making her blush. “You’ll be there,” he asks and her breath hitches. “Won’t you?”
She nods.
“Good.” He walks away, doesn't look back.
She watches him go, watches him wind his arms around Elijah’s shoulders from behind, bite his earlobe and duck away as Elijah jerks and turns to punch him, laughing. Behind his back, where only she can see, he slides the key into his back pocket.
All her joints feel stiff and if they hadn't been at this fancy party with all these beautiful people, she would squat and pop her knees, bend forward and let her spine and ribs crackle and pull apart.
Orlando's eyes find hers over Dominic and Elijah's banter, his mouth set into a thin line.
She cracks her toes again and the first joints in both her thumbs. She smiles.