Fic: The Hobbits Exchange Rings!

[silentdescant]

title: The Hobbits Exchange Rings!
pairing: Billy/Dom
rating: PG-13
warning: very slight spoilers for the Lost s3 finale
summary: Dom and Billy do an interview together at the LotR 10th Anniversary convention.
disclaimer: this is very not-true, and set in the future besides, so how can it be true? the interviewer is completely my invention, though Billy and Dom are obviously not. most of the facts are accurate, but I may have smudged the details a bit in order to suit my purposes. this is a fictional interview.
feedback: is love. and it makes me write more. :)
a/n: this is for my brainspouse, bloodrayveness, whose request was "Dom and Billy in the future, doing an interview for the Advocate (the big gay magazine), either coming out, or after they've come out, talking about their relationship and keeping it secret and stuff. Totally like an interview in a magazine."
a/n2: this fic is a bit different; it's formatted completely like an interview transcript. it was a lot of fun to write, because it's almost all dialogue, but also a bit of a challenge for the same reason. and it is supposed to be American-ized.



The Hobbits Exchange Rings!
by James Doyle


I’m in New Zealand at the 10th Anniversary party for the Lord of the Rings films. Here with me are two of the stars, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, who played hobbits Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck (respectively). These two actors invited me to their hotel to sit down and discuss both their feelings about Rings ten years after the fact and to officially let the world in on their worst kept secret: the true nature of their relationship.


JD: Billy, Dom, thank you for having me here.

DM: Our pleasure.

BB: It’s very nice to meet you, James.

JD: Explain, if you would, how you two met. You didn’t know each other before Lord of the Rings, right?

DM: Not at all.

BB: Though I had seen his TV program [Hetty Wainthropp Investigates] a few times.

DM: You didn’t tell me that!

BB: Yes I did!

DM: I thought you were joking! [laughing] My god, that’s embarrassing. I was so young in that.

BB: You were cute.

DM: [laughs] But yeah, we met here in New Zealand—

BB: Just down the street from where we are now, actually—

DM: —and he took me out to lunch, because I was the last hobbit to arrive.

BB: Elijah [Wood] was with me, and Sean Astin. We were all in the fitting rooms getting our costumes sorted out. Then Dom came in and we had a huge group hug.

DM: Nearly killed me, that hug did.

BB: We’re nothing if not enthusiastic.

DM: [laughs]

BB: What?

DM: Billy’s enthusiastic about everything.

JD: So what was your relationship like during shooting?

BB: Well, our working relationship was fantastic, right from the start. Dom and me have this great comedic timing that we didn’t even have to work on, really, it was just there from the moment we met, and we made everybody laugh, didn’t we?

DM: [nods]

BB: We were, like… twins or something, y’know?

DM: So much the same, but also different enough that we complemented each other. But our personal relationship, at the time, wasn’t much more than our professional relationship.

BB: There just wasn’t time for anything like that. I mean, we were shooting three feature-length movies—

DM: Longer than feature length.

BB: —at once, which is, y’know, quite a lot, if you think about it. And we were only in New Zealand for, what a year?

DM: Year and a half. Almost. Not including pickups.

JD: Was there time for any personal relationships?

DM: There was some time, especially for the guys with families, like Sean. His wife and oldest daughter were both in New Zealand for most of the shoot, so I mean, there was time enough to maintain relationships—

BB: But not a lot of time to start anything serious.

DM: I think people would be surprised at how little time we had to ourselves. I mean, we always talk about going surfing or—

BB: Cliff-diving—

DM: Bungee jumping. But really, those times were kind of… few and far between, y’know?

BB: Mostly we just hung about on set.

DM: Or at Billy’s house. He had the best house to hang out in, of all of us hobbits. His kitchen was massive, like, with an island in the center and barstools and enough space to walk around. It was like this big meeting place for us.

BB: And he would completely take it over and shoo everyone out in order to cook something horribly spicy that would smell up the entire house.

DM: I would not!

BB: You did!

DM: You like my cooking.

BB: I never said I didn’t.

DM: But yeah, we didn’t really get together until afterwards.

JD: When did you go from friends to… more than friends?

DM: It took him bloody ages.

BB: Wasn’t like you noticed. You were too busy fooling around in Hawaii.

DM: Bill kept resisting a relationship with me. We’d, y’know, gone at it a few times in New Zealand, to release tension, like, but it was always a casual kind of thing.

BB: And then during pickups, I had a steady girlfriend, which lasted for—

DM: Eight f***ing years. Eight years, Billy. You made me wait eight years for you.

BB: Well, I married her.

DM: And I was his best man!

JD: Wow, so things didn’t get serious for quite a while, then.

DM: No.

BB: I married Ali, and we had a son, Jack—

DM: Who is, by the way, the cutest child I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

BB: —so, I had this idyllic sort of life, for a while, and Dom was just kinda off with his own girlfriend during that time.

DM: Oh, don’t start with that.

BB: What? I’m just telling what happened.

DM: But she wasn’t really my girlfriend, y’see. We had a kind of casual relationship, like Billy and I had during Rings.

JD: Is this Evan—

DM: Evangeline Lilly, yeah. It was great to be with her, for a while, but every time things started to get a bit serious, the rumors would start and she’d get all paranoid about it.

BB: Whereas Dom would rather just tell everybody in the whole world everything that he thinks and does all the time.

DM: Well, maybe not to that extreme, but yeah, I found her paranoidness annoying after a while. Is that a word, Bill? Paranoidness? Paranoidivity?

BB: I dunno, you’re the Scrabble fiend.

DM: Well, now I have to look it up. ‘scuse me. [He pulls out his cell phone and, presumably, looks up the word.] Ah, it’s not. Oh well, carry on.

JD: Are you usually good with words, Dom?

DM: Yeah, usually. I got really into Scrabble when I was in Hawaii filming Lost, and I’ve loved words since I was a kid. I’ve kept journals and stuff practically all my life. I write stuff on my hands.

BB: And he’s written some poetry.

DM: And stories. Sometimes.

BB: And we’re writing a screenplay together.

JD: Oh, I’ve heard about that. How is it coming? It’s been quite a few years in the making, hasn’t it?

BB: Dom’s putting the finishing touches on it now, actually.

DM: Don’t tell them!

BB: [looks annoyed]

DM: It’s supposed to be this big surprise announcement thing that we’re gonna talk about during our panel session.

JD: Well, this interview won’t be printed until next week, after the convention’s over.

BB: See, so we can talk about it. Anyway. We’ve been writing it off and on for—

DM: Ten bloody years! Can you believe that, Bill?

BB: Yeah, and we got it finished about a year ago, and we already had a couple people attached to it—

DM: Including us, and Elijah, and Orlando and Viggo and Sean.

BB: So about six months ago, we went to a few studios, Dom and me, and talked to a few of the higher-up people, and they finally—

DM: F***ing finally!

BB: —gave us the money to go and start filming.

DM: We’re in pre-production now, but it’s top secret. After the convention, we’re going back to the States to start shooting.

JD: What’s the movie about? There’ve been rumors flying about this project, but they’re all so different I don’t know what to believe.

BB: It’s about these two—

DM: [claps a hand over Billy’s mouth to quiet him] It’s going to be a surprise.

JD: [laughs] So back to your relationship – how did you go from girlfriends to each other?

BB: Dom broke it off with Evi and came around to Glasgow—

DM: Which is where Bill lives.

BB: And anyway, he and I talked everything out, explained what we both wanted from each other, and agreed on some stuff, and then Dom took Jack to the playground and I talked everything out with Ali, and she took it very well and just moved back to her apartment in the city, which she’d kept for when she had rehearsals and stuff at the theatre full-time, and then Dom came and moved in with me—

DM: And we’re all still really good friends. Like, I chat with Ali all the time, and Jack stays with us for part of the time and with her for the rest of the time. It’s just whoever’s not working at the moment, y’know?

JD: But don’t you live in Hawaii most of the time, Dom?

DM: Not anymore, no. After Lost finished for me, I kind of wanted out, y’know? But I love Hawaii, so I stayed there for a while, because Evi still lived there. But after we… broke up, I went to LA.

BB: He doesn’t have a house there anymore, either, though.

DM: Whenever I’m in LA now, I just stay with Elijah or Sean Astin’s brother, Mackenzie, who I used to live with.

BB: But the rest of the time, he lives with me in Scotland.

DM: Which is nice, because—

BB: I’m there.

DM: Because I’ve kind of missed England, and Scotland, since I’ve been gone, y’know? Not quite homesickness, but sort of. And yeah, Billy’s there, which is also not a bad thing. [laughs]

JD: So just like that, you were in a committed relationship?

BB: Just like that, yeah.

DM: Well, it had been festering under the surface for years. We just finally managed to get our act together.

BB: Festering? Like your splinter?

DM: Don’t make fun of me! That thing was painful, I’m telling you.

BB: He’s such a baby, this one. Big girl’s blouse.

DM: [punches Billy in the arm]

BB: Oi!

DM: About a year—was it a year, Bill?

BB: I don’t know what you were going to say, so I dunno.

DM: The rings.

BB: Oh, right. Yeah, almost a year. Next March.

DM: So about a year ago, Bill and I had a kind of wedding-slash-engagement-slash-whatever, kind of thing. It wasn’t really “official” in any sense, but we exchanged rings and had a bit of a to-do with my family and his sister and a few of our friends.

BB: Elijah was the ring-bearer.

DM: Of course.

BB: And we’d each picked out rings for each other, but kind of secretly, y’know, so we didn’t know what they looked like.

DM: I got him this one—[he picks up Billy’s left hand and touches a silver band around his finger], and it’s plain on the outside, because Bills doesn’t like all this crazy shit that I usually wear, but it’s got writing on the inside.

JD: What does it say?

DM: Something Celtic. I don’t remember.

BB: Liar.

DM: [blushing] Uh. It says something really cliché that’s like a variation on “I love you,” I think.

BB: [laughing] You’re such a liar, Dommie. It says, "Love is eternal” in Gaelic, and it has both of our names.

DM: The writing’s really small. [laughs]

JD: And yours, Dom?

BB: I got him this one [points to one of Dom’s three rings].

DM: And this one, for my birthday two years ago. [twists the rings on his fingers.]

BB: But this one for the commitment thing. It has this kind of swirly design on the outside, y’see, but on the inside, it has the date we first met.

DM: And a symbol for forever. Which is what the swirly bits are supposed to represent as well.

JD: Well that’s very romantic.

BB: [laughs] Thanks.

DM: [blushes, nods]

JD: Could you explain why you kept your relationship a secret?

BB: Well, it’s not that we kept it secret, really—

DM: We just didn’t tell anyone.

BB: There’s always that chance, when you’re famous, that saying anything controversial will negatively impact your career or your image or whatever.

JD: Were you pressured by your publicity reps to stay quiet?

BB: No, nothing like that.

DM: [hesitates before answering] I was.

BB: [looks at Dom quickly] You didn’t tell me that.

DM: It didn’t matter. Since when have I ever listened to her, anyway? She’s told me, several times in fact, not to wear eye makeup and nail varnish, but… [wiggles his fingers; a few of his fingernails are painted different colors]

BB: I love when you wear makeup.

DM: I know.

BB: Don’t listen to her, Dom.

DM: I know.

JD: So were you worried about announcing your relationship because of your career, Dom?

DM: No. Never.

BB: I didn’t think it would matter much, for me, but it might’ve affected him a bit more, if we had made a big announcement.

JD: How do you think people will react to hearing the news “officially”?

DM: I think… I don’t think it’ll be a surprise to most people, y’know? I mean, a lot of people kind of assumed we were gay from the start.

BB: I imagine people will be kind of like, “oh, right, I already knew that.”

JD: So you’re pretty confident in the loyalty of your fans?

DM: Oh yeah. I mean, I’m sure they’re happy for us and everything.

BB: Fans are great.

DM: I tell everyone that I love Bill anyway. I have for years. Nobody’s ever cared.

BB: Or, if they did, not in a bad way.

DM: [laughs] Right.

BB: But yeah, so we didn’t make a big statement before, but it’s not like we kept it completely under wraps either.

DM: And a ton of people just kind of knew. Just from, like… seeing us or something. I dunno.

BB: That’s good fun, that is, because a lot of fans just seem to know and we can talk about it but they don’t pester us for more information. See, that’s the thing about keeping secrets: if you make a big deal out of it, it just makes people want to know more.

DM: Which was what annoyed me about Evangeline. …About being in a relationship with her, I mean. She’s lovely to be with, just a very private person.

BB: Nice save, Dommie.

DM: Did’ja like that?

BB: Very impressive.

DM: So, to make it completely official, here in this interview, right now, I will officially announce that yes, Billy and I are in a relationship, and I love him.

BB: And I love him too.

DM: Well, that’s a relief. Would hate for my feelings to be one-sided.

BB: Wanker.

JD: Well, congratulations, to the both of you.

BB: Thanks.

DM: Yes, thank you. Much appreciated.

JD: Is there one thing in particular that you can think of to describe your relationship?

DM: Well, ‘funny,’ probably. We always make each other laugh.

BB: ‘Crazy,’ for another. Absolutely mad, we are. Especially if we’ve been alone together for more than a week.

DM: I think the love is part of the crazy, though. Or the crazy is part of the love. One of the two.*

BB: Yeah, and it’s just different, our relationship, from any other relationships I’ve had in the past. It’s better.

DM: [grins] We’re just kind of in love.


Our talk then turned from personal to professional. Well, as professional as a chat with these two guys can get. As they’re in New Zealand for the Lord of the Rings 10th Anniversary, I thought it appropriate to ask them to share a few memories from the old filming days.


BB: Um… well, let’s see. Um… oh! There was that time when Dommie and I snuck up on Elijah while he was sleeping—

DM: He slept all the bloody time. [laughs]

BB: And anyway, we snuck up on him in his trailer—

DM: Which was a bit hard, because he had so much shit in there, not like mine and Bill’s. Ours was spotless.

BB: Only because I cleaned up after you. Anyway, we snuck up on him, quiet as possible, and tied him up to the bed, all spread out.

DM: Then, the really nasty part, Bill brought in some mud and smeared it all over Lijah’s stomach—

BB: He wasn’t in costume, so it was okay.

DM: And then I went out and collected a few bugs—

BB: Dommie loves bugs. He’s obsessed with them. Me, I just squish them.

DM: Don’t say that! Anyway, I got some bugs, some worms and stuff, and put them in the mud on Elijah, and my god, you should’ve heard him screaming when he woke up.

BB: He was mostly cursing you.

DM: And telling me exactly what he’d do to me once I untied him. Meanwhile, Billy, inconsiderate wanker that he is, escaped before Elijah realized what was going on, and never told Elijah that it was all his idea.

BB: See, that’s what I keep Dom around for: I need someone to blame.

JD: How about you, Dom? Any memorable incidents?

DM: Probably millions. But, um…

BB: Tell him about that time in the boats when you—

DM: No. That was embarrassing.

BB: All your memorable times in New Zealand were embarrassing, Dommie.

DM: Shut it. Let me think.

BB: Well, that time, Dom and I were in a little canoe, for the rowing practice, and we were all supposed to stay together, us guys and Elijah and Sean and Orlando and Sean Bean and everybody, but Elijah and Sean were ahead of us and Orlando and Bean were somewhere behind us, probably overturned or something, and Dom—

DM: Okay, enough of that story.

BB: Oh, come on.

DM: No. I’ve thought of one to tell, anyway.

JD: Let’s hear it, then.

DM: Well, this more about Bill than New Zealand, but it’s one of the best times I had here. So. [looks at Billy]

JD: [to Billy] Do you know what he’s going to say?

BB: I have no idea. He’s unpredictable.

DM: Okay, so. This was early on, like when we first got here, almost. We were done training, and had started filming, so things had slowed down a bit – it wasn’t all rush-rush-rush, y’know. I mean, it still was, sort of, but not as much. And uh, the slowing-down kind of made me realize how homesick I was for my mum and for my friends back home.

BB: Oh, I remember this.

DM: You’d better.

BB: Go on, then.

DM: Well, I just went home after we were finished for the day, and Billy drove me, because he lived nearby, and so somehow the conversation got around to our families, and I mentioned how homesick I was feeling. So Bill took me inside, made me a cup of tea, and, uh. Actually, nevermind, this isn’t sounding all that great. But at the time, it really was, and y’know, I think that’s when I first fell in love with him.

BB: Is it really?

DM: Possibly. Well, and that other time, d’you remember? When you wore that thing and…

BB: Oh, that, yes. I remember that. Don’t talk about that one, Dommie.

DM: You were about to tell the story about me in the canoe!

BB: You’re a much better and nicer person than I am?

DM: It’s a good thing I love you, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tolerate you.

BB: I love you too. [kisses Dom on the cheek]

DM: [smiles, blushes] We’re kind of monopolizing your interview, aren’t we? Did you have more questions for us?

JD: No, this is perfectly fine. [laughs] Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

BB: Ummm…

DM: Trees.

JD: Trees?

BB: Dom always has to bring up trees.

JD: What about trees?

DM: What about trees, indeed. I would just like to take this time to say thank you to everyone that donated money to Carbon Neutral, or Future Forests, or any environmental organization, really. I’m just really glad that people have been listening, and have taken action. So, thank you, all you people that donated.

BB: And to the rest of you: you really should! The future of the planet depends on you.

DM: [laughs]

JD: Billy, Dom, unfortunately I think we’re about at the end of our time together today. It was an enormous pleasure meeting you both and talking to you. Congratulations again on your relationship, and on your new film!

BB: Thank you very much.

DM: Yes, go and see it when it comes out!

JD: I definitely will, and I’m sure my readers will.

DM: They’d better.

JD: So, will I see you guys again in another ten years?

DM: Twentieth Anniversary convention – it’s a date.

BB: We’ll be celebrating these movies for the rest of our lives, won’t we, Dommie?

DM: I’m sure of it, Bills. Until we’re old and grey.

BB: I’m already old.

DM: But not grey, and that’s the bit that matters, Billy. It was lovely talking to you, James.

BB: Yes, very much so. See you in ten years, then!


fin.


*an actual quote from Raquel about our crazy love. ♥ when she said it, I thought it sounded like something Dom would say, so I saved it to use for a fic someday. and so, here it is.