#i think ultimately in ch 35 is when he stopped having any feelings of doubt in vash and caved to realizing that he /wants/ to protect him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sowk-fic-archive · 7 years

Text

SOWK ch.10/35

Summary:

Life goes on with frayed tensions and warnings...

Chapter 10 : dénivellation

The days rolled by, much as they had always done. A week after their argument, and with the knowledge that Matthew was indeed in the running to become a Unique, Dominic found himself sitting by the fireplace with a copy of Le Monde loose in his hands. His mother was crashing about in the kitchen, the sounds of pots and pans ringing throughout the house. The rational part of his mind gently reminded him that he should probably ask if she needed any help, while the obsessive part, the part stuck on the fickle entity known as revenge, staunchly reasoned that if he did ask, she would simply refuse his help anyway. Why waste his time and hers by asking in the first place?

He moved to sit with his back resting against the battered armchair that nobody had sat in since his father’s death. Opening the newspaper, he began to flip through the pages until he found Voix Watch. There was a picture of Matthew splayed across the page, though not on his own. He was with Adora.

She was the one problem, the one fault in his otherwise perfect plan. Adora Constantine. The little girl Matthew had grown up with, the girl that he professed to love. Dominic scoffed, his eyes focused on her smiling face as she and Matthew walked hand in hand.

Le Monde was reporting on their selection, of course. The newspaper had been doing so for three days now, when it had been officially recognized that they were in the running to be the next Uniques. It was beginning to wear on Dom. The newspaper had successfully reminded him that with the quick approval of Matthew as a Unique-in-waiting, he had less time to break the Voix’s admittedly iron resolve. Every time they spoke, it seemed, they deteriorated into a fight. Not that they’d spoken since the incident in Dominic’s office, a week ago. He had seen nothing of Matthew for the whole week, and his lack of appearance was beginning to make Dominic nervous.

“Dom, you look like there’s a little gnome inside your head, hitting your brain with a hammer. What’s up?”

Dominic blinked, shaking his head and looking up at Nancy, who was standing above him with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. He stared at her for a moment or two. “Sod off, Nancy,” he said eventually.

“Well excuse me for being interested in my baby brother’s well-being!” Nancy said, apparently wounded. She sat down on the sofa, curling her legs up beside her and watching him with her head tilted to the side. “Seriously, Dom. You haven’t said a word in days. What are you thinking?”

Dominic gritted his teeth, wondering when it was that his sister got so infuriatingly nosy. “I said,” he snarled, “sod off. So just give me some space, and shut the hell up, okay?”

Nancy seemed to have understood that he didn’t want to spill his every emotion to her, for she lapsed into silence. Relaxing slightly, Dom flipped back to Voix Watch, scanning over the article. It was the same as every other pathetic, pointless, simpering article that had been in its place over the past three days. He didn’t know why they bothered to publish it. There wasn’t a person under the sun, either Voix or glouglou, that wasn’t aware of Matthew Bellamy and his glorious existence.

“Dom?”

Nancy was trying to talk to him again. With a deep breath, he turned towards his sister and swallowed down the urge to throw something at her. “What?” he snapped.

“Dom, what’s wrong with you?” Nancy’s voice was small, as if she was hiding away from him. The fact that she was desperately trying not to look at him wasn’t exactly comforting, either. “Ever since Dad... since he...” she shook her head, standing up and moving to sit in the chair that he was leaning against. “Dom, you’re not yourself, and it’s scaring me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Dominic didn’t reply, staring fixedly at his fingers for as long as he could manage. “You’re sitting in Dad’s chair,” he said eventually, his voice numb.

“Oh, because that’s the most important thing right now,” Nancy said bitterly. “It’s a chair, Dom. I know you miss him, but there’s no need to build him a shrine. I miss him too. The only man I have in my life right now is you, and you won’t even look at me without spitting fire.” Her voice softened, a hand touching his shoulder. “Just... if there’s anything you want to tell me, Nicky, just tell me. I’m your sister.”

Dom pulled his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees. He could tell her. He could tell her everything. About Agostino Bellamy, and his father’s murder, and his plan. He could tell her about what he was doing to Matthew, and he could tell her about the things he planned to do in the future. He could tell her all of this. It would be such a weight off his chest, not to have it all to himself. Just to let somebody else in, somebody he trusted completely and without a shadow of a doubt...

He turned to his sister, looking at her expectant smile, and shook his head. “I don’t have anything to tell you, Nancy. Go away.”

And she did.

Matthew didn’t bother knocking when he entered Dominic’s office, four days before his audition. He found the glouglou with his back to him, looking at the piano with his head cocked to the side. Glancing around, the Voix found there to be many more sheets of paper than his last visit, and the bin was overflowing with crumpled paper balls.

“Hello,” Matthew said somewhat curtly, Dominic visibly jumping and turning around.

“Christ,” Dominic said, clutching a hand to his chest. The other was holding a few sheets of paper. “You could’ve knocked, at least,” he snapped, looking Matthew up and down. The Voix was wearing skinny white jeans and a tight fitting white t-shirt with black braces. Dominic gulped.

“I don’t have to, it’s my house,” Matthew said, as if someone had asked him what colour the sky was. “Now, do you have my song for me?”

“Yes,” Dominic immediately said, a grin breaking out on his face. Matthew could tell without even asking that he was proud of the song, and for that fact alone he respected Dominic in that moment. Beckoning him over to the piano with a hand gesture, Dominic pushed a bundle of papers out of the way to sit on the stool.

“Here, the lyrics,” he said, stuffing two sheets of paper into the pale, outstretched hand. “Do you want me to talk you through them?” Dominic asked, his hands automatically running up and down the keys in two octaves as he looked over his shoulder up at Matthew.

“I...” Matthew couldn’t find the right words to say. It all fitted; every single lyric made sense, yet the song wasn’t outwardly simple. The bridge and chorus repeated, but Matthew knew that it was for meaning, for performance. Mouth opening and closing, he couldn’t quite find the right words; his throat felt tight and his fingers flexed. “It’s perfect.”

He looked up in time to see Dominic turn back to the piano, his cheeks stained rouge. “I’ll play the melody, mouthing along so you get the idea,” he instructed, the art of teaching a Voix how to sing a certain melody quite a difficult one to master. Now, Dominic was running solely on his instincts and his fuzzying memories of his father’s technique.

“Okay,” Matthew said, plopping down without warning next to Dominic on the piano stool. The glouglou shuffled about his papers resting against the piano, both music and lyrics ready to meet for the first time.

Dominic began to play, his fingers much more sure of themselves than the first time he had played for Matthew, to Matthew. His mouth formed the silent words as his right hand picked out the melody, forgoing some of the chords to allow Matthew to pick up the tune. By the second bridge, Matthew was quietly singing along at his side, nodding and making faces at himself if Dominic’s fingers didn’t quite work in time with his mouth.

By the time that the final chords rang out and hung in the air between them, Matthew was smiling. “I love it,” he simply said, a small smile tilting the corners of his thin lips upwards. Dominic nodded in respect, hands unable to remain still in such close proximity to the man who was, ultimately, his victim.

“Do you want to run through it again?”

Matthew nodded. As the sun began to set in the sky, they practiced the song over and over, Matthew finally feeling like he was connecting to the song more, after Dominic suggested during a bolt of courage that the Voix picture he was singing to a certain someone. He didn’t dare ask who.

“There’s still something not quite right,” Dominic said as he stretched his aching fingers. When Matthew decided they could stop, they would stop. It wasn’t his place to ask.

“Did you actually have my voice in mind when you wrote this?” Matthew snapped, his nice attitude from the afternoon slipping away with the going down of the sun.

“Yeah...” the glouglou said distractedly, looking out of the window at the orange sky. “Your voice is almost too perfect, though,” he said, looking up at Matthew’s face and expecting a smug smile. Instead, he looked almost upset, staring down at his feet. A true perfectionist. “It needs to be... more broken. More exasperated. You know, this could be the end of everything, he’s desperate to make it all okay.”

“What do you suggest?” Matthew said quietly.

Dominic didn’t answer straight away. Instead, he looked at Matthew and allowed a smirk to form on his lips, the Voix quirking his eyebrow at him. He stood up from the piano stool, moving to kneel on his desk to reach the high window. Cracking it open and watching the dust swirl and tango in the sunrays, he jumped back down onto the floor.

“My father sometimes had trouble relaxing,” Dominic said, beginning to search the drawers and rifling through the contents of each one. “So he’d keep a box of what I’m about to show you, somewhere...”

“Dom, what are you talking about?”

Dominic looked up. It was the first time Matthew had ever referred to him by name without saying it like it would burn his tongue. It also occurred to him that the luxury Fleck used to keep was unheard of in polite Voix circles.

“Aha!” Dom said, pulling out a box of cigarettes. “My father’s writing aid,” he said with a sad smile.

Matthew looked at him as if he had just pulled a rabbit out of a top hat, eyes on stalks. “What... what are those?”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Dominic deftly opened the packet and pulled out a single cigarette. “Cigarettes,” he said. “No, they’re not illegal before you ask, Mr Goody-Two-Shoes, and they’re not going to damage your voice. My mother even told me that one time, in her youth, Joie smoked a whole carton of these before recording the vocals for what is still the best song of all time,” Dominic said with a nod, gesturing with the white stick towards Matthew. The Voix stood still, dumbfounded.

“You smoke them,” Dom continued. “Watch.”

Dom placed the filter in his mouth, fishing out a lighter from the back of the drawer and lighting the cigarette. Letting out a contented hum, he plucked the lit cigarette from between his lips and blew out a stream of smoke.

“Try it,” he said, placing the cigarette between Matthew’s index and middle fingers. Whilst Matthew glared at the offensive object in his hand, Dominic unearthed an ashtray from all the clutter in the drawer. “Go on, it won’t kill you. Well, not in that quantity anyway. And I don’t have any germs,” he said, when Matthew had not stopped glaring.

Sighing, the Voix put the unlit end between his lips and inhaled, instantly pulling it away from his mouth and coughing. Dominic allowed himself to roll his eyes this time as he stepped forward, wanting to help Matthew but his fear of the consequences only just won out. He stood up again, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth.

“Just... it’s really hard to explain,” Dom said, exasperated. “Try again, go on.”

Matthew huffed but did as he was told, bringing the cigarette to his lips once more. He inhaled, his eyes fluttering shut as he could feel the smoke curling inside him. Lips forming a perfect “o”, he blew the smoke and watched it fade into nothingness.

“And...?” Dominic asked, watching Matthew take another drag. It hurt his pride to admit it, but the sight of Matthew Bellamy being corrupted by his own devices was more erotic than he’d ever thought it would be. The way his eyelashes would brush upon his cheekbones, the way his cheeks would hollow as he sucked, the way his eyes sparkled just that little bit more...

“I like it,” Matthew admitted with a toothy grin. “Now, how many of these do I need to smoke before my voice sounds right?”

Dominic laughed, throwing his head back at the thought of Matthew’s voice not being right. After a full afternoon of working with the Voix, his voice was actually beginning to become appealing, appeasing...

“Just the one should do the trick, I can hear it on your voice already,” he said, licking his lips. Matthew shook his head imperceptibly, tapping the excess ash into the glass dish in Dominic’s palm and finishing off the cigarette. As he did so, he carefully regarded the glouglou, with all his tanned skin and wide grey eyes and unruly hair. The glouglou with the red cheeks, the wide irises and the slightest sheen of sweat where his t-shirt failed to cover all of his chest.

“There,” Matthew said, a definite husk to his voice as he dropped the extinguished butt of the cigarette into the ashtray. “Another round?”

Dom swallowed dryly, cursing at the more animal side of his mind that didn’t take another round to be a run-through of the song.

He didn’t want to fall for Matthew, at all. His plan was to make Matthew fall for him, and that only. As long as he could manipulate the other man’s feelings, his hatred for Agostino could simmer away quietly, and his grief for his late father would slowly fade away, knowing justice had been exacted. Now, as he listened to Matthew’s raspy, husky voice singing the song and the end of each line positively dripping with sex, Dominic found it very difficult to keep his feet on the pedals and resist the urge to cross his legs tightly.

“That... that was good,” Matthew panted. Dominic found it hard not to pant also, so he merely nodded and bit his lip. “I think we should leave it for tonight.”

“I agree,” Dom rushed to say, their eyes accidentally meeting and breaking away. “I mean, if I may, I need to go home and help my mother--”

“Yes, yes,” Matthew said distractedly. “Go on, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dominic grabbed his messenger bag and almost bolted from the room, the air in the main part of the Bellamy mansion much cooler against his heated skin. It would’ve been too easy, then, to whisper just the tiniest thing to the Voix and watch him melt before his eyes, before crashing their lips together. “Too easy,” Dominic said to himself as he walked towards the worker’s entrance. The glouglou had to remind himself that Matthew was meant to come to him, and not the other way round.

He resurfaced from his thoughts just in time to hear a loud clunk. He stopped walking, bending down to pick up a sketchbook that had apparently been dropped to the floor. Standing up again, he turned to see a woman walking quickly along the corridor, evidently unaware that she had lost her book.

“Miss!” Dom called out, the sight of the woman’s long blonde hair a sign that he should be polite. “Miss, I think you dropped this.”

She turned on her heel, walking back towards him and giving him a grateful smile as she took the book from his hands. “Thank you,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost it.”

Dom forced a smile onto his face, despite the fact that he was standing face to face with Adora Constantine, the only woman who could completely ruin his plan for revenge.

“Thank you again,” she said, her voice practically dripping with the sweet smell of lavender and frolicking through the meadows. “Have a nice night.” And with that she turned away, walking briskly down the corridor again.

Dom waited until she had gone until he bent down to pick up the piece of paper that had fallen from her sketchbook. Flipping it over onto the side she had drawn on, his stomach flipped at the sight of a charcoal sketch of Matthew, signed in the corner with her flowing signature. Without thinking, he slipped it into his bag, before turning to leave for the night.

“Matthew? Can I come in?”

“Yes, Aleksandr.”

Aleksandr carefully pushed his bedroom door open, having being directed to one of the dozens by Calliope. After a rather vague and somewhat distressing call from his best friend, the older Voix had raced across their district in St Pierre to be with him.

Matthew had realized that he could really do with a friend right now. Not a mother or father or girlfriend, just someone who would listen and who could be sworn to secrecy. Someone who knew what to do in every situation. Someone like Aleksandr.

They had met at Matthew’s first rehearsal for Les Voix du Monde, when Matthew was only five and the youngest boy ever to join the famous choir. Aleksandr had only been with the choir for a few more months, but at the age of seven he had been happy to show Matthew around the grand buildings they rehearsed in. Best friends ever since, Aleksandr insisted that he’d always known Matthew would become an Unique, and still stuck by that opinion to this day.

Matthew was curled up on one side of his vast bed, the room dark and only lit by the moonlight coming through the window. The first thing Aleksandr did was to switch on the lamp on Matthew’s bedside table. “Matthew, what on earth is the matter?” he asked, sitting heavily at Matthew’s side and watching the Unique-to-be pull his head out of his arms.

“I need to swear you to secrecy,” he said in a deadly serious tone. Aleksandr rolled his eyes, smiling.

“Again? I swear, the first time you did that was--”

“--over stealing a cookie from my mother’s batch when I was five, Aleksandr, I know.” Matthew sat up, leaning his head heavily against his friend’s broad shoulder, like he always would when he was troubled. Matthew was a very touchy-feely person and craved physical contact, so he was glad that his mother, girlfriend and best friend were comfortable with it.

“It seems serious,” Aleksandr said in a cautious tone.

“It is,” Matthew said. “I need you to help me, but first I need you to promise you won’t tell Adora.” He gulped when his throat closed up upon uttering her name. “I know you’re cousins, but... you just can’t, Aleksandr. It would break her.”

“Matthew, I’m actually worried now. What’s happened? Have you argued?”

“No, I...” Gripping his hair tight, Matthew fell back onto his mattress, staring at the ceiling just as he had a week earlier, thinking of that glouglou... “I’m so confused.”

“About the Unique thing? Because you know I can’t help you there, mon ami. You’re better off asking--”

“It’s not about that.” Matthew’s tone made Aleksandr emit a small oh sound, the pair lapsing into silence and listening to a nearby owl hooting. The older Voix knew better than anyone else that Matthew would eventually tell, once given time. Seconds, minutes, hours passed before Matthew opened his mouth once more.

“Do you know the glouglou who died on my birthday?” Aleksandr nodded. “He was my principal songwriter, and his son has now taken over that job.”

Matthew paused, watching Aleksandr trying to work out how that has any relevance to his cousin.

“The night he died, it was my birthday party. Father and I visited Sector 3 to see the party there, and me and the glouglou were forced to dance.”

“Dancing? That’s... strange. I can’t remember the last time I danced.”

“It wasn’t just a dance, though. The glouglous take it really seriously, and this was some kind of special dance, almost something... sexual,” Matthew said, looking up at the ceiling and allowing it to be a canvas for his memories. “It was weird, I enjoyed it,” he admitted with a whisper.

“A glouglou... a male glouglou...” Aleksandr muttered, looking over his shoulder back at Matthew. Their eyes locked, and Matthew nodded a tiny amount. “Matthew, you shouldn’t have done that. You just need to forget it and--”

“No!” Matthew almost shouted, sitting back up in an instant. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t. I have an audition in four days and he’s my songwriter. We’re working together to rehearse, he has to be my accompanist--”

“You have the music and lyrics, right?” Matthew nodded at his friend’s question. “Well, then. Practice it with another glouglou, any damn cassé. I know what you’re like, Matthew. What you want, you get, but not this time.”

Matthew blinked, considering the idea. He didn’t have to spend so long with that wretched glouglou, after all. He could spend the next four days rehearsing with someone else, but he knew that he’d prefer to spend them in the cramped office with him. What’s more, he knew it from the bottom of his heart.

“The song’s so personal, too...” Matthew said, looking down at his hands.

“Matthew James Bellamy, look at me.” Aleksandr gripped Matthew by the shoulders and turned him so he couldn’t escape his stare. “I am telling you now: you go down that rabbit hole and you won’t come back out, Alice. You’ll never be the Unique you strive to be, and you’ll lose the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You’ve told Adora, right?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll ring her now and see if she--”

“Don’t you dare,” Matthew growled, and in that instant he knew he had done wrong. Aleksandr’s outstretched arm stilled, fingers barely brushing the white casing of Matthew’s telephone.

“You haven’t told her.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.

“She doesn’t need to know. I told you, it’d break her.”

“She’s your girlfriend, Matthew. The woman you’re going to marry, have a child with, spend the rest of your life loving. You should be prepared to tell her anything. Secrets will rot your relationship.”

“I don’t care!” Matthew screamed, standing up from the bed. He paced over to the balcony, wondering for a split second if it would hurt to jump from a second floor window.

Aleksandr paused, blue eyes wide as he watched Matthew. His slim frame was shaking, but at the distance Matthew had put between them, he couldn’t tell if it was through anger or sobbing. “Calm down, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?” Matthew asked with venom in his voice. “You’ve never had a serious girlfriend, you’ll never be a Unique, how the fuck do you know anything?”

Aleksandr’s mouth popped open at Matthew’s use of a glouglou swear word, and at the verbal assault. He swallowed and tipped his chin up slightly, looking down his nose at his so-called friend. “You’ve changed, Matthew,” he said, as he stood up and began to walk towards the door. “An ugly monster has reared its head inside you, and I don’t want to be around to see if it takes you over or eats you alive.”

With that, Aleksandr was gone.

2 notes · View notes