FIC: "Dare Sweet Dare" (unfinished but it's Karl/Dom!)

[lobelia321]

You asked for it, especially sheldrake who gave a cogent enough reason as any to post something which has been languishing on the hard drive forever and a day and is unlikely ever to be finished.

FIC: "Dare Sweet Dare" (KU/DM)

Title: Dare Sweet Dare
Status: Unfinished.
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Fandom: Lord of the Rings Real Person Slash (acronym? what acronym?)
Pairing: Karl Urban / Dominic Monaghan (yay! *has brief bout of lotrips nostalgia*)
Rating: NC-17 -- well, that was going to be the rating for the finished fic; the version as is rates an R for suggestive dialogue and lewd propositions
Summary: Karl dares Dominic to do something. Dominic accepts. (Though unfinished, aficionadas of the genre will easily guess where this is headed.)
Length: 3,789 words, incl. header'n'footer
Size: 45.8 kb
Dimensions: Two.
Temperature: 35 kelvin.
Tone: Humorous. But not crack.
Person: First.
Tense: Simple Past.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word! The feedback can be as unfinished as the fic.
Content/Warnings: RPS. Unfinished. (Did I mention it's unfinished?)
Spoilers: None.
Archive Rights: None. Only me.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen.
Dedication: This one's for shaenie. Who needed porn for services rendered. ;-) Except I never got to the porn part... It's also for sheldrake who was sweet about the non-finito.



Dare Sweet Dare

-----

It all started with that stupid dare.

It was me who suggested the dare but it was Dominic who accepted the dare. I knew he'd accept the dare. It was just the sort of madcap, crazy-as-horsemanure idea he'd go for.

The dare had followed on from a truth, as these things will. I should note at this point that although it was me who suggested the dare it was Dominic who had suggested the truth.

In fact, it was Dominic who had suggested the whole truth-or-dare business to begin with. And his truth and my dare had not a little to do with the intake of alcohol and the pulse of loud music, the combination of which invariably gets me in what a former girlfriend used to refer to as a 'giddy mood'. Women, eh?

Dominic, too, it seems. Because after every one else had left and we were the only two still sitting there, shouting at each other over the bone-deep beat, he turned to me with a decidedly 'giddy' look and said:

"Truth or dare, Karl?"

"What?" I shouted, not because I hadn't heard but because I had heard and had even understood but was stalling for more time during which to gauge how I wanted to react to this and where exactly it was going to take me.

"Truth," Dominic said, looking giddier than ever, "or dare. You up for it, Karl?"

The music was pumping through my head and the beer was pumping through the rest of me, so, of course, I said, "Sure I'm up for it. Truth or dare it is."

And then it was Dominic's turn to say "what" because, if truth be known, my words may have been slurred just the tiniest bit.

Upon hearing my reply a second time, Dominic grinned the most fiendish grin, and then he grabbed one of the bottles left behind by the others, swept the table clear (several bottles rolled to the floor which, with hindsight, seems a clear indication of his drunken state but which all seemed perfectly standard at the time) and held the belly-up bottle in place with one long index finger.

"Sure?" he shouted.

"Abso-fuckin'-lutely," I shouted back, and I may have hiccuped in the middle of the 'lutely' as well, it's difficult to reconstruct the details now.

Dominic spun the bottle.

The bottle spun.

Round and round and round it went, like a fast-forward clockface, and then it stopped. The neck was pointed at me.

In retrospect, I can almost believe that Dominic rigged that first round.

I stared at the bottle. I looked up and everything was wobbling cheerily, including Dominic's cheery, wobbly face.

I raised my eyebrows at him. It's a trick I have: say nothing, just raise the eyebrows. It's a trick, I take it, that others indulge in as well.

Dominic didn't raise any eyebrows. He did nothing with his eyebrows but his grin widened, Cheshire-cat-like, and he said:

"Truth."

"Okay." I nodded.

"Right." The grin was now virtually falling off Dominic's face.

"Go ahead."

"Okay. You ready?"

"Sure I'm ready." I shrugged.

"Okay then." Dominic bent forwards slightly. His chair swayed. "This is the question. Have you ever had sex with a guy?"

"I take it back," I said. "I opt for dare."

"Hah!" cried Dominic. "I knew it! You have!"

"What what what?" I said this thrice, hedging. "What do you mean, you knew it?"

Dominic was laughing and laughing. "So it's true? You have!"

"What do you mean you knew it?" But this endless repetition was starting to sound lame even in my own ears.

"I just knew it," crowed Dominic and leaned back. "Go on: truth."

"Okay," I said and leaned back, too. We scrutinised each other like gunmen before a duel at noon. "So what if I have?"

"Nothing. Nothing if you have. It's just truth here. It's not 'consequences'."

I squared my shoulders.

He squared his shoulders.

"Okay," I said. "Truth it is. Okay. Yes."

"Yes?" said Dominic. Bizarrely, he looked very surprised. In fact, he dropped his drink he seemed so surprised. There was a chonk and a backsplash onto my socks but I was too giddy to care.

"I thought you 'knew'", I mocked with what I hoped was a smirk but all the time the old heart was going kaplocka, kaplocka.

"Well," said Dominic. "I didn't know. I knew but I didn't know."

"I did it only the once," I added quickly. The back of my neck suddenly felt very hot. And itchy.

"Only once? That bad, was it?"

"No," I said, all the while wondering what had happened to the walls, they were so far away, only Dominic's face was sharp and in focus. "It's just not my thing, is all."

"Aha," said Dominic, staring, looking 'giddy', looking away again. Not looking very aha-like at all. "So you're not going to reveal any more, is that it?"

"No," I said. "Absolutely not. Rules of the game. Yes or no."

"Bugger," said Dominic. "I should have phrased that truth-question better."

"Too late, my man," I said and spun the bottle.

Maybe Dominic had rigged that first spin, it's not clear, but it's sure as fucking clear that I rigged that second one.

The bottle stopped. Its neck pointed at Dominic's solar plexus.

"Right," he said, only swaying once and holding onto the table.

"Dare," I said immediately.

"Okay. Dare." He trained a grin on me that reminded me of nothing so much as some impish genie, just released from its bottle.

I had to remind myself that he was the one who was being dared here, not me. I knew what I was going to dare him to do, too. Something worthy of his own preposterous truth-question. Something to get him back for being such an impertinent pup and for making me feel hot and cold and itchy all at once, like an icecube in the microwave.

"Sex, right?" I said because, for some reason, it was difficult to get a whole sentence out at once.

He nodded. He looked completely unsurprised. His eyes had the polished brightness of the very drunk.

"With a guy, right?" I continued.

Another nod. Another unsurprised and sozzled look.

"Okay, that's it. That's what I dare you to do. Have sex with a guy."

Dominic kept on looking at me, this time without nodding. He looked giddy, he looked bright, he looked totally plastered. Much more so in fact than the actually relatively small amount of liquor we had consumed would seem to have warranted.

He licked some moisture from his top lip -- sweat? beer? Then he grinned, and the top and bottom rows of his teeth flashed like well-boiled grains of rice.

"With a guy?" he asked.

"Of course." My turn to nod. My turn to look smug.

"Right now?"

"No, obviously not. Anytime. Well, let's say..." I made a show of elaborately calculating. "One month. Within the next month. That should give you ample time."

Dominic pursed his lips. "Any guy?"

"Any guy at all. Take your pick. Well, minors excluded, of course."

"Of course."

"And non-human males."

"Right. That rules out your dog, then."

"Exactly. Hands off my dog."

"Not that your dog is anywhere in Wellington."

"No, indeed."

We stared at each other. It felt like face-off time. I took a swig. I rolled the beer around in my mouth before swallowing. I wiped the foam off my beard with the back of my hand. I felt tough. I felt rugged. I felt pleasantly in control.

After that uncomfortable little moment of truth back there.

"Next question, Karl. How do you define 'having sex'?"

"Sex. Sex is sex. What's to define?"

Dominic leaned up close and shouted, each word timed to coincide with a lull in the techno-pulse, "Masturbation? -- Ejaculation? -- Penetration? What, Karl, what?"

I thought about this. I studied Dominic. It was then, I think, at that very moment, that it first dawned on me that he really was going to take me up on this. No shilly-shallying. No buggering about. Well, as it were. Just buggering. If needs be.

My moment of hesitation came and went, and Dominic supplied his own perilous answer.

"Why don't we say," and I swear he was the spitting image of a cartoon gnome I used to watch as a kid on early-morning television, whose name escapes me now, "that it's defined in the same way as you defined it when you said that you'd had sex with a guy."

Fuck.

How had this happened? How was he allowed to turn the tables on me?

"So tell me," Dominic grinned -- no, leered, leered, "what exactly did you do with this guy?"

I grabbed my bottle: empty. I grabbed another random bottle: two pathetic drops trickled down my parched throat. Dominic charitably pushed his own beer across the table. The bottle neck was wet with his spittle.

"Okay," I said, feeling vaguely fortified. "Penetration." I almost choked on the word. In fact, I literally did. The p got caught in my tongue, and the t's got stuck half-way down my throat, so that I ended up coughing and spluttering beer all over my shirt.

I didn't think a person's grin could be that wide without actually splitting the skin apart but on Dominic's face it could be. He didn't say 'Hah' again, though. Nor did he claim he'd 'known it'. Too worried, was my guess. Too fucking worried about his own predicament.

I swallowed, and I swallowed again, and finally those p's and t's deigned to slither down into my guts, and I could utter what was meant to be a triumphant "Hah" of my own but which came out rather more feeble-sounding than I'd intended.

Dominic put his head on one side. "Who did the penetrating?" he asked.

I scratched the back of my head like a madman. I rubbed my face. I said, "Okay. I did."

"You did? You buggered this guy?"

"Yes, Dominic." Fuck. "I buggered the guy." I rolled my eyes and sighed which was intended to convey urbane worldweariness and detract from the continuing kerplunk of my heart beating like a time bomb in my chest.

Dominic rolled his own eyes. "Phew. That's a relief. Thought I was going to have to be fucked up the arse myself." He winked. "Definitely thought that."

I wanted to swear and say, 'Oh shut up' but instead I found myself laughing and taking another wobbly swig from Dominic's lip-warmed bottle. Everything was starting to get woozier by the minute.

"So." Dominic sat back. He was losing his sharply focused contours and starting to ooze into his surroundings. He folded his arms. "What else? What about coming?"

"What about coming?"

"Do I need to make the guy come?"

"Orgasms are not required," I replied. "Although feel free to have one, if the mood takes you."

He closed his grin over a laugh.

"And oh," I added, "you're not allowed to pay anyone for this."

"No rent boys?"

"Absolutely not."

"Darn it all," he said with an American accent.

"I know. You've had your eye on that little bloke with the blond quiff up by the railway station for weeks, haven't you? But no go."

"What makes you think I go for blonds?"

"You don't have to 'go' for anybody, Dominic. You just have to have sex."

"Just sex."

"Just sex."

"Like you did? When you had 'just sex'?"

"Exactly," I said. I was absolutely going to refuse to reveal anything more about that little episode of my past. The not too distant past, at that. "But," I amended, "feel free to 'go' for the guy, if the mood takes you."

"Oh, I will," said Dominic and half-closed his eyes. "I will."

For a moment I wondered whether he already had someone in mind.

-----

That was the drunken truth or dare. We never shook hands on it. It wasn't a deal or a treaty or anything. In fact, it wasn't anything. It was a liquor-induced ramble, the sort of woozy, hazy, risqué, stupid thing you find yourself garbling on about just before pub closing time. By the next morning, all that remained of the previous evening was a shit-as-fuck headache, a load of cotton wool stuffed down my ear holes and a stiffie the size of the Eiffel Tower.

I lay in bed, with my eyes closed and a moan stuck somewhere half-way between stomach and tonsils. A ray of sunshine had found a chink in my curtains and was zapping me right in the middle of my forehead. I couldn't decide what to do first: get up and fetch five packets of aspirin (at the risk of falling over or being sick on my bedroom floor or both), get up and make myself a cup of coffee as strong as mud (incurring the danger of similar side effects) or lie there and give myself the wank of a lifetime.

Finally, I opted for the latter. I tensed my feet and let those moans rip but my wrist got kind of tired and in the end, it turned out to be one of those violent orgasms that leaves you exhausted and thinking, 'Oh, was that all?' Also, my balls were sore as a result, and my headache hadn't gone away, although my ears felt better.

I immediately fell asleep again and only woke up two hours later, roused by my own snores and the sunshine digging twin holes into my pupils. My hand was still curled around my sticky cock. I patted the floor with the other until I grabbed hold of my trusty box of Silky Soft Men's Kleenexes. Because, I may as well tell you straight off, I'm a tissue man, not a towel man and most definitely not a hankie man. Never could understand those dudes who like to recycle and keep their sperm around for days and to meet it again, 'hello, semen, my old friend', come laundry time.

Not me. I like to ejaculate and dispose.

I shuffled to the loo and watched my pee splash onto the crumpled-up wad of tissue floating at the bottom of the toilet bowl. Vague thoughts of ejaculation floated around in my brain, and then I remembered Dominic's words 'Masturbation? Ejaculation? Penetration?', and a bit of pee went haywire and hit the top of the toilet brush.

This was irritating. I am a cleanly man. I do not like my personal hygiene to be compromised. I shower twice daily. I keep my nails neatly buffed. I always use wetted toilet paper when wiping myself after a bowel movement. I generally urinate sitting down, precisely to avoid mishaps like the one I have just described. It was only the hangover and my pressing bladder that had caused me to hurry and do the deed standing up.

It was when I was squatting down on all fours, squeezed in between tiles and toilet lid, spraying disinfectant at the toilet brush and wiping away at the surrounding floor space with a sponge, that the phone rang.

I hit my shoulder on the porcelain bowl, then my temple on the toilet roll holder, then my left hip on the wash basin and my right toe against the doorframe on my way out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where the phone sat in its little cradle unit and blared at me. I picked it up, still wearing my yellow plastic gloves.

"Hello?" I croaked.

"Hey," said a cheery voice.

I suspected phone sales and was just about to go into my best 'fuck off, evil serfs of world capitalism' speech when another phrase was added:

"How's it going, Karl?"

"Dominic?" I couldn't believe this. It was, what, some ungodly hour in the morning... I glanced at the alarm clock sitting on top of the kitchen counter. The large hand pointed at the twelve, and the little hand was nowhere to be seen. It took me several headthrobbing moments to realise that the little hand was hidden underneath the large hand because it was noon precisely. Well, noon counts as ungodly when you've been on a drinking binge.

"Karl, about last night."

"Yes?" My left temple hurt from having been banged, my right temple was pulsing with pre-aspirin pain, and the whole of my skull was made of tiny goblin needles pressing down into my brain.

"What we talked about."

The words 'ejaculation' and 'penetration' rose unbidden to my attention. By way of keeping these nouns under control and under wraps, I gave a noncommittal groan. This is a strategy I have perfected over the years: a groan can mean anything at all, and is ideally used in situations where deflection is required.

"Yeah, that." Dominic laughed. He had interpreted that groan in quite the wrong way. Why was he so awake, anyhow?

"Why are you so awake, anyhow?" I asked him.

"Oh, can't get wait to get going on my task," he said.

"What? Your're not going through with... with that dare?" I rubbed my forehead but as I had forgotten about the plastic gloves, instead of a soothing massaging sensation all I got were sprays of disinfectant in my eyebrows.

"Can't wait to rise to that challenge," went on Dominic.

I flapped at my eyes. I clamped the phone under my chin, pulled off one glove with the other glove and wiped my brows with naked fingers. The phone promptly sailed in the direction of the floor but, wonder of wonders, I managed to bend, swivel and catch it all in one quick movement. Rather elegant that, if I say so myself. I was just in time to catch the end of Dominic's sentence: "Rise, get it, haha?"

"Look," I said, "I haven't had coffee. Can I ring you back or something?"

"Did I wake you?"

"No, but only just. I haven't had coffee. I haven't had aspirin. I may need to be sick. Why are you so chirpy, anyhow?"

"Don't go yet. I'll be quick. I just need some more clarification. This guy who I'm going to have sex with, is he allowed to be gay? Also, here's another one, am I allowed to say that it's all in aid of winning a dare thing? And also..."

"Dominic. It's not a legal contract. Don't worry about all that. Just forget about the dare."

"Forget about the dare? No way, José. Or should that be Carlito? José, Carlito -- get it? I'm going to get this done, by hook or by... How does that go again?"

"Crook," I said and groaned again. This time it was not a deflection groan, but simply a groan of pain and caffeine withdrawal. I staggered over to the cupboard and attempted to insert a filter into the coffee machine and fill it with water while still keeping the phone tucked in under my chin. I think it was the beard that made this exercise so difficult. I'm sure there's some sort of oil in facial hair that causes phone receivers to be as slippery as ducks' feathers.

"Yeah, by hook or by crook! You told your truth, and I'm going to do my dare."

"Dominic, they're hardly compatible."

"Well, that remains to be seen, doesn't it? You'll have to tell me more about your truth so that I can figure out whether it's going to be compatible or not."

"Aha, I see why you're doing this. Pretending to be going through with this ridiculous dare thing so that you can try and winkle details out of me."

Dominic laughed. His laugh was rather loud. His laugh hurt my tender ears. I think the vibrations of his throat were making my hammers clang against my anvils. I winced and groaned again. I tried to spoon coffee into the filter but the plastic glove was flopping all over the place. Bright dots of sunshiney pain thrust against my eyeballs.

"Yeah," Dominic said, "you can't stop me winkling. Winkler Monaghan, that's me. But no, I'm not doing this dare thing because I want to know more about your own thing. I'm using this as an opportunity. I've wanted to do this, and now I've got incentive."

"Well, don't blame anything on me," I said, "and now I've got to go. I need to have my coffee."

I pressed the 'off' button but within seconds another bell rang.

I dropped the phone. I dropped the spoon, and coffee went all over the countertop. Some went over my bare feet as well, and onto the floor, and I said, "fuck." What bell was this? At first I couldn't figure it out -- alarm? mobile? Then it rang again, and it dawned on me. I sprinted to the front door with grains of Columbian clinging to my naked soles.

The person outside the door was Dominic. He was grinning from ear to ear. Literally. I mean, there was an invisible grin string strung from his left earlobe to his right earlobe. He held up both his hands. One of them clasped both a mobile phone and a pack of disprin, and the other brandished one of those egg carton trays for holding takeaway cups. The tray contained two cups, and even though they had lids on them, I could see the steam rising from within and smell that Starbucks aroma.

-----

And that's all she wrote on 11 August 2003.

(No, actually she did write some more but it's in handwritten form in a notebook. And now she also remembers that this fic was conceived at night, at the poolside, on a package holiday on Zakynthos. Make of that what you will.)

Comments

[msilverstar]

I would know that voice anywhere, it's familiar and just right. I'd love it if you'd write more (of course) but it's good the way it is.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You are so sweet to say that about the voice. To me, re-reading after over a year, it felt like a voice from the past! As if I'd lost something.

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

this was awesome. i loved it. i laughed out loud many times. i could feel the throb of the music. i felt karl's pain. i imagined dom's ear-to-ear grin.






i'm vastly disappointed this was abandoned ... *weeps*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you, you sweet feedbacker! I'm beaming because you laughed out loud! I, too, felt disappointed that it ended (re-reading it after over a year was a bit like reading someone else's fic). There are shreds of it somewhere in my notebooks... (You know how it'll end, of course, right?) And oh, the guy Karl has had sex with? Marton.

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

WOOF!!! now i would lurve to read you writing something smutty between karl and marton.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Meows to your woof. ;-)

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Aw, wonderful, hilarious stuff. So funny the sex almost isn't needed (but do note I said "almost" and I wouldn't be put out in the least if you decided to finish this). Maybe it's the prolific use of "ejaculate" and "penetrate." *g* And your Karl and Dom are so perfect, as always. I'm glad we managed to twist your arm. :=)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It didn't take a lot of twisting, did it?? I know what you mean about the sex. I gave this a G first and then I thought, actually, it conjures up loads of sex in my head even if the sex isnt' there on the page! Karl/Dom used to do that to me. *g* Thanks so much for your kind feedback! And thank you for doing the twisting!

(You know, though, how this fic would have finished, right? Heh.)

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

huzzah! lotrips from lobelia!

n.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

Raiding the archives here.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Ah! I'm so glad you posted it. I love Karl's slightly odd, very individual voice, and his violent but disappointing orgasm, and his hangover, which is quite similar to the one I'm currently suffering from. I love Dom "losing his sharply focused contours and starting to ooze into his surroundings". (I really like drunkenness in slash - why is that?)

And now of course I wish you had finished it... I shall just have to reconstruct the ending in my head. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the lovely detailed feedback! Saying precisely what you noticed about this. Ah, drunkenness in slash -- it's loss of control, it's 'anything could happen', it's 'inhibitions are down', and it's the slurring of words and the way the other man starts to look all shimmery and delectable.

Well, the ending. You can guess it, right? It's just the getting there. At some point, it fizzled out, I don't know why. The 'other' guy in Karl's past is Marton, btw.

[piran.livejournal.com]

oooh! i like this muchly. the voice, the quirky similes, the clever repetitions - the detailed, descriptive and so vivid style that's uniquely yours, lobelia. and all those smart words like aha-like, lip-warmed, sunshiney. *hearts* lovely to read.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you, you sweet feedbacking person! Such lovely precise fb -- that's what an author's dreams are made on.

*beams happily*

[zana16.livejournal.com]

More! More!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*g*

Thanks for wanting more but I'm not sure I can come up with more. I'm too mired in Desert Prince and Harry Potter saga.