Note: Written for the Monaboyd remix challenge - Billy's POV to Kia's story In the Script, because it just screamed to be remixed. Didn't plan on just doing a POV switch, but it just happened. Last line blatantly stolen from the original. 🙂
It takes a lot of rewrites until a script is perfect. Billy knows that. After all, he and Dom have been trying to write the perfect buddy flick for several years by now. It has to be the best, the funniest, the one that will make critics go "Well, it's a comedy -- but wow, it's great comedy!"
Billy is not quite sure they will ever reach that state, but he is equally sure that they won't stop trying. They're having too much fun by far to just give up. Sometimes Billy sees them as two querulous old men, sitting in their rocking chairs on a sun-warmed porch somewhere in New Zealand, arguing over a joke or a punch line. The picture comes easily to Billy, and he smiles, because Dom will be a handsome old man, half-deaf from decades of partying but still radiating life from every pore.
Dom will always live life to the fullest, Billy is sure of it. Even if it means taking a carefully crafted script and turning it upside down.
Fade in. There's Heathrow airport, and Dom and Elijah leaving. And there's a plan there, an unwritten script of who is supposed to say what and which things are going to be left unsaid because parting is hard enough as it is. Except that apparently Dom has not read that script. Or maybe he simply finds the existing script is boring and in need of a rewrite. If only he had informed Billy of the change, then Billy might not have bodged his lines completely, making things worse instead of better. This was a comedy after all, happy ending included, not a drama. But Dom startled Billy, and Billy does not take surprises well. Fade out.
Of course, as soon as he had seen Dom disappear through customs, Billy had known clearly what his lines had been. Had known that it was actually only one line. Had also known that Dom was sometimes the most conventional of the hobbits, because while the line was simple and very very true, it was also a move cliché, the biggest there was. One line, three little words, and Billy had messed them up.
Luckily Billy also knows how to do rewrites. He is insanely busy in the days after Dom leaves, but that does not stop him from talking to Elijah and Viggo on the phone, and even have lunch with Orli during a break. It's just that this script desperately needs some excitement before the unavoidable happy ending. At least that's what Billy tells himself, when he hears that tiny voice in his head, the one that wonders, just a bit, if maybe Dom was just... being Dom.
If Billy, who has always wanted to be the lead in a romantic comedy, has not taken his words the wrong way. It's not very likely, but then, this is Dom, who is nothing if not unconventional most of the times. So what if he had just been carried away by the thought of their separation, the tightness of their hug, the slight tickle of stubble against his cheek, and had mixed up buddy flick and romance?
It does not keep Billy awake at night, but it's a whisper in his mind whenever he has a minute to spare to call Dom. So he calls Elijah instead, who tells him to "fix the thing with Dom, for fuck's sake, his whining is driving me nuts", causing Billy to smile widely and be grateful that Elijah can't see his face. What does the voice in his head know about movies anyway?
Yet Billy is startled when his phone rings in the middle of the night. But only for a moment, then he is fully awake and chuckles at Dom's voice, trying so hard not to sound anxious. This time he knows his lines, so there's no need to worry.
Dom is taking a long time to get the hint, though. Apparently he has not thought this rewrite through, because he flounders through the lines, apologizing and rambling and several times almost hanging up. For a second, the tiny voice in Billy's head is a bit worried that Dom might take it back, go back to the original script, the one that left so much unsaid. Billy does not want that, though, he really doesn't.
Dom's breath is loud in his ear, and Billy wonders momentarily if there has been a cut in the scene he has not been informed of. Then he remembers that this is only Dom being an idiot, and Billy won't let him get away with it. Not this time. It's too important, for the script, for their friendship, for him.
"Dom, you idiot," Billy sighs.
It takes a lot of rewrites until a script is perfect. Billy knows that. He also knows how to recognize when a rewrite, conventional as it may appear, will be it, will make everything perfect. This time Billy does not bodge his one line, his three words. And there they are, straight from his heart, straight from the script, uncut, and perfect.
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