[lotrips] two to tango 1/2
written with shaenie
characters from lotr_porn
Goldilocks?
Nic shakes his head, because he's clearly a little bit barmy. Besides, Bill's more like Mousy-Locks, if the truth were told.
Still.
"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" he says softly, still remembering the cadence of the narrator on his fairytale cassettes.
Bill is quite clearly zonked, snoring ever so slightly with one hand wrapped tightly in a sheet. It's a strong contrast to the towel, which is precariously not-wrapped around his middle, and when Nic leans in the doorway to check him out (because he's not going to pass up an opportunity to do that, given the pretty mental pictures he has from the Thing In The Editing Room) he finds himself willing the towel to slip, or Bill to turn over.
He hasn't even begun to wonder exactly why Bill is sleeping here - on a prop bed, the prop bed, what they call Hi-Ho Silver on account of how often it's been ridden - because it's enough to just watch Bill breathe slowly, unaware of anything, like a normal person caught out in a private moment.
Naked private moment. Nic smirks.
"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" he singsongs again, a little bit louder.
::
It's the creepy someone is looking at me feeling that stirs him at first, and then Nic (of course, who the fuck else), his voice dipping and rolling with an odd, darkly sing-song rhythm.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep, and he certainly hadn't meant to fall asleep somewhere/when that Nic could come across him sleeping. He sits up abruptly, and his head reels a little, combination of the sleeplessness of the last few days (months, the more honest portion of his brain whispers helpfully) and the abrupt transition from lying down to upright sending all the blood sharply in the other direction. A sharp, zinging pain drills into his left temple and he rubs at it, muttering curses under his breath, while his bleary gaze seeks out Nic.
Nic is leaning against the doorframe, all indolent poise, lips curled into a smirk, and Bill just wants to sigh. Sigh and maybe shake the little fucker, and maybe demand: What? Just what in the bleeding fuck is so funny? Do you ever not smile?
Then he remembers that sometimes Nic doesn't smile, sometimes Nic inexplicably clenches his eyes shut and just stands there.
He rubs at his face sleepily, bracing his elbows on his knees, pushing that thought away.
He'd fallen asleep after a quick shower, laid down -- just for a moment -- still wrapped in nothing but a towel.
Which is no longer really wrapped around him, but sort of draped haphazardly. And not in any way that is terribly effective at concealment either.
He doesn't scramble for it, because he can almost hear Nic chuckling mockingly in response to a move like that, and he just doesn't think he can take it.
He ignores it instead, but he can't quite keep back a sigh this time.
"I thought you'd gone," he says, more because it feels like he should say something than because he'd really thought Nic had gone.
::
Nic can't help the yawn that escapes him. He's a bit sleepy himself, and the bed looks inviting in the twilight. With or without Bill.
Christ, what the fuck is he thinking?
"Talking to Johnny 'bout some stuff," Nic stretches up to the top of the doorframe, not bothering to look away as Bill tries to casually cover himself up. Nic can see some clothes slung over the back of a chair, and he imagines he could get them and save Bill the embarrassment, the poor repressed soul.
Instead he pulls off his own t-shirt and throws it to Bill, curious to see what he does.
"You okay?" It occurs to Nic that Bill doesn't exactly look terrific. Far too tired, Nic thinks, Bill's skin seems a little translucent, tight over his cheekbones.
::
"Aye, I'm fine..." Wait a minute.
He tosses Nic's shirt (caught by instinct before it whapped him in the face, although it gets close enough that he can smell Nic on it) back at Nic.
And he can't even think, he's so fucking tired he can't even think, so he asks.
"What are you doing?"
::
"Being lazy. You need clothes. I had some." Nic peers a bit closer at Bill, who is still looking like a hatched chick, hair fluffy and sticking up, wide-eyed and angry, and Nic gives in, retrieves Bill's clothes from the chair. "But seeing as my favourite t-shirt is not good enough, then you can have your own clothes."
He dumps the pile on the end of the bed. Bill will have to lean forward just a little bit to reach. Haha.
::
The problem with Nic is, Bill can't ever fucking tell what the daft twat is going to do. And now he feels like a right arse.
"Sorry," he mutters. It's half-arsed as far as apologies go, but he means it, for what it's worth. He leans forward and ignores the shift of the towel (he suspects strongly that Nic had fucking done that on purpose, and probably thinks of it as mischievous rather than as annoying as fuck) to snag his jeans from the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. He shakes them once to untangle the legs.
Then he just sits there for a moment, not sure how he's going to manage to get them on without Nic getting a good look at his bits.
Oh, fuck it.
He's tired of trying to divine Nic's motivations, tired of trying to anticipate him. If Nic wants to bloody look, let him look. It's not like Nic hasn't fucking seen it.
Bill isn't stupid and he does have a fucking degree in psychology, after all. He's aware that his hesitation likely has more to do with his own hang-ups (namely, with the nagging sense that Nic sees more of Bill than mere nakedness can actually account for) than they do with Nic.
And it isn't Nic's fault Bill is so bloody uptight.
::
Nic can think of a number of things that would accomplish the task of relaxing Bill, but he doesn't think suggesting any of them will go down very well, even now. Bill looks frazzled and weary, and Nic is surprised to find him still here.
"You, ah," he bites down a smile at Bill's very studied nonchalance at being unavoidably naked, "you heading home? Can I take you out for a non-threatening manly beer or something?"
Bill just blinks at him for a second before his head disappears into his t-shirt.
"Or," Nic says slowly, "maybe you're hanging about, hoping for your big break. I know you're gagging to do an audition tape, you sneaky fucker."
He waggles his eyebrows.
::
Bill snorts and rolls his eyes. "Not pretty enough," he says, and slumps back down onto the bed to drag his boots (stuffed with socks and gun) over toward him. "Not by half."
He can feel Nic frowning at him, and smiles a little. "I'll take you up on a beer though," he says, because God knows he could use a little time away from this place, and besides that, he really doesn't want to blow Nic off. There has to be some way for the two of them to have some kind of normal interaction, something that doesn't involve beating one another up, or one of them watching the other shag Bill's girlfriend (and it occurs to him only after he thinks it how totally bizarre it is to ever be in a position to have to think anything even remotely like that).
"As long as you promise me a nice, respectable pub. I'm not up to techno music or crowds or basically anyplace where a lot of people I don't know are going to feel compelled to touch me."
Especially you.
::
"Porn got nowt to do with pretty," Nic says in his best Yorkshire farmhand. He gestures, downward sweep of his hands, "as you see, lad, even we common folk can do a bit 'o' heavin' and gruntin'."
Bill looks like he might be cracking a smile, and it glosses Nic with a comfortable feeling, dispels the apprehensive air he normally gets around Bill. He turns to find his shoes--the reason he was back in the studio to begin with, never can remember where he puts them--when something strikes him, a clear recollection from the party. When he turns, Bill is right behind him. Weird how he can sneak up like that.
"No groping?"
Bill cocks his head and shifts a bit. He looks worried. Heh.
"No booty-shaking?" Nic narrows his eyes. "No gettin' on down, right?" Of course not, Nic thinks. He touches his finger lightly to Bill's chest, punctuation, and then it hits him.
"Ohhhh. You can't!"
::
He glances down at Nic's finger where it's barely resting against his breastbone, and the thought that breezes across the surface of his mind (My friend, you are a lot of things, but you are in no way common) seems odd, foreign somehow, like it's not his own.
He isn't entirely sure what that's supposed to mean -- and he's uncomfortably aware that things like this, like not knowing what the hell his own thoughts mean, only really happen around Nic -- but he can't deny that there is a slight urge lurking there to actually say it out loud. Like some kind of twisted reassurance (which Nic doesn't fucking need, and Bill has no idea why it even occurs to him to want to give). Instead he just looks at Nic's finger poking him in the chest and arches a brow.
"Can't what, exactly?" he asks, but he's pretty sure he knows what Nic is referring to. It's a little disturbing, actually, to watch Nic make such a perceptive and intuitive leap.
::
Nic is delighted.
"You! Disingenuous!" He likes that word. He pats Bill on the cheek, just a tap. "You can't dance for shit, Boyd, and you don't want to go anywhere that you might have to."
He closes one eye to look Bill up and down, remembering just how awkward he had looked at the party, both when he was dancing and when he was watching everyone else. "Especially not with me, huh? Can't say as I blame you. I may have sticky-outy ears, but," he walks backwards on his tip-toes (it's more like a sashay because he really can't help swing his hips a bit) to illustrate his point, "I am pretty fuckin' co-ordinated."
::
I know you are, he thinks, but doesn't say. He hasn't brought up Nic's... alternate job. He's sure enough that Nic doesn't remember him -- he remembers Nic's hazy eyes and the gleam of sweat on his skin, the slow, easy sway of his body, remembers thinking Nic must've been on something -- that it hadn't been something he wanted to bring up, and then have to explain how he knew about it.
Frankly, it isn't something he wants to think about at all, if he can help it.
"It doesn't have anything to do with you, or your ears, Nic," he says, and avoids watching the buck and grind Nic insists on demonstrating for him. "I'm coordinated. I just never learned."
Which is something he sort of regrets, actually, because he would have liked to have danced with Keira last night, especially watching her and Nic dance, hot and close and wicked.
He pauses, frowning a little, pondering the worst idea he's ever had.
Nic stops too, both brows arched in question, and Bill wonders if he's really, seriously considering this.
::
"And here I thought you'd never ask."
And halle-fucking-lujah, Nic thinks. He doesn't have much experience of dealing with such guarded people. And it's bloody frustrating. He sees the man mostly every day, they get on well--there are jokes, even; Keira is obviously besotted with him, and yet Bill keeps himself at a fingertip's distance from Nic, distressingly near-but-far.
Nic doesn't even have a clue about his own motives, doesn't know if his gentle flirting is ultimately for a purpose. The Thing solidified certain... desires, but it doesn't signify, really. Nic doesn't actually have an alternative mode of interaction with people, just a scale of intensity that dials itself up or down by some unconscious signal Nic only occasionally knows something about. But he just doesn't fucking know anything about this whole bizarre situation, whether he wants to impress himself on Bill because he wants his approval, or his friendship, or an open look in Bill's pretty green eyes, or a quick fuck.
Nic sighs, and he is saying it before he even wonders if it's a good idea. "You're fucking hard work, you know. I'm not very good at the whole subtle thing, so maybe you could just humour me and spell it out."
Bill looks a bit baffled.
"Like, for instance, 'Nic, you got the moves, show me your skills'. That would be fine."
Aware that he could be interpreted as sounding slightly pissy when he's not, Nic strides over to Bill and kneels down to untie Bill's shoelaces.
::
"You're not exactly a bleeding cakewalk, either, mate," Bill mutters, and then he realizes he's just been looking down at Nic for several seconds while Nic unties his bootlaces.
Gun, he thinks, and then he's crouched down, holding both of Nic's wrists in his hands, and Nic is looking at him, eyes huge and bright; it takes Bill several seconds of looking at Nic, at the slight crumple between his brows, to understand why Nic is looking at him like that.
He eases up on Nic's wrists deliberately. "Let me spell this out for you, Dominic," he says tightly, hearing the edge in his own voice clearly for a moment, and then scaling that back, too, trying to gentle that as well as his grip, because he actually does like Nic, doesn't want to scare him, doesn't want to use the same tone on Nic that Bill had used on Flack when he had pressed the muzzle of his gun against Flack's forehead; he doesn't want it to be like that at all. "I don't like it when you pounce on me like that. It makes me edgy, and if I'm edgy, I might hurt you. I don't want to do that."
Which isn't actually the whole truth, as Bill spends at least half an hour of every day wanting to choke him into silence or shake him until he just sits still for one fucking minute, but that's neither here nor there.
Nic doesn't pull his wrists away -- bloody weird -- and doesn't say anything -- even weirder -- and as usual, Bill has no fucking idea what the nutter is thinking.
He sighs. "I'm not good with surprises; they make me nervous." And he's not sure why, except he still doesn't want Nic to think he's angry (although he is, a little, or maybe more frustrated than anything), but he adds, "I'm sorry."
::
Oh, fuck.
Just like that, it seeps into Nic's consciousness that Bill is cast from the same mold as Ian, and the little tumblers in his brain click into place with the realisation that Bill will probably come with all the attendant complications.
Thrilling as they sometimes may be.
Nic is paralysed until the parallels between the two coalesce into something he can think about properly (later, on a piece of paper, just to prove to himself that his gut feeling isn't too far off the mark). Until that happens, he's just going to have to put that thought out of his mind, and he leans back on his heels, balanced while Bill has his wrists. Because now, there's no fucking way he's going to yank his hands away, not now, not while he can study Bill's fingers wrapped around him and ponder variations on that theme.
He does wonder about Bill's confession. Edgy. Nervous. It's interesting from someone who seems very pieced together on a day-to-day basis, but Nic is starting to think of Bill as a long-term project, and now he's apologetic even, like he regrets saying anything.
"I think," Nic says slowly, "that you've already demonstrated how quick you are to thump me senseless." He smiles and wraps his own hands around Bill's forearms, pulls him up to his feet. "So I promise. No surprises." He ponders. "And if you get us some beers from the kitchen, I'll even promise not to grope you unnecessarily."
::
He can't even say what it is about Nic's smile makes him nervous.
He puts it away. Nic seems willing to take the whole thing with a grain of salt in spite of the unintended manhandling on Bill's part, and Bill is for that. He shouldn't have said anything like that to begin with. Not that it isn't true -- it's quite true; witness their first encounter, after all -- but Nic isn't the sort of person you show things to.
And if you do, you'd better bloody well expect them to come back and bite you in the arse later. Bill does, but there's nothing he can do about that now. He's just relieved that Nic isn't going to push it for the moment. And he wishes, not for the first time, that he understood Nic better. So that he'd know exactly what sort of backlash to expect.
"Assuming that not groping me 'unnecessarily' is the same as not groping me at all, I think I can work with that," he says, and tries on a smile. It feels okay, if a little strained.
Nic makes no promises, just cocks his head and smiles a little, and Bill satisfies himself with only grumbling a bit on he way to the kitchen to get the beers.
He takes off his boots once he gets there -- assuming that Nic still wants them off, for whatever bizarre-Nic-reason cooked up by his bizarre-Nic-brain -- and tucks the Sig inside one, under his balled up socks.
He thinks he spends an inordinate amount of time hiding his gun, considering the fact that he's wearing more clothes then all of these nutters combined most of the bleeding time.
Well. With one notable exception.
::
Bill comes back in with two open bottles of Becks while Nic is crouched down, trying to find something in the pile of CDs that isn't crappy chicka-bow music.
"Cheers," he says, noting with some satisfaction that Bill appears to have taken his boots off.
"I should ask," Nic pulls back a long swallow, "what exactly are you envisioning here? 'Cos I'm not teaching you to foxtrot, mate." He gives up on the CDs in disgust. "And also, any music in your car? Because this," he waves some bland ambient Swedish electronica in the air, "is shite."
::
Foxtrot?, Bill arches a brow, and Nic gives him a grin.
"I've no interest in--" he makes exaggerated air-quotes, "--'foxtrotting' with you. And I already know how to ballroom dance." Nic looks suspiciously close to laughing, but by some miracle he manages to resist. Bill isn't even sure what to fucking call the sort of dancing Nic does, the sort of dancing he and Keira had done at Johnny's party. Lacking the appropriate terminology, he quotes Nic. "'Nic, you got the moves. Show me your skills.'"
He even manages it with only a little sarcasm.
Nic snorts and rolls his eyes, but he gives a quick nod and waggles the "shite" CD's at Bill.
"I've got something," Bill says, making a quick mental list of what he does have in there. "I think."
He frowns. "You could have mentioned this before I took my boots off."
::
"Tender footsies?" Nic experiments with a withering look. "I don't know why you don't wear trainers. Or go barefoot like everyone does." By everyone else, Nic really means himself and Keira. "You'll just have to tough it out unless you want me rifling through your glove compartment."
And it's pretty fucking obvious that's not going to happen. Bill has already fished out his car keys, and is heading to the door.
"It better not be boy bands," Nic yells. "I'm very particular."
There's a snicker down the passageway. As soon as he hears the back door swing shut, Nic grabs the remote control for the stereo and cranks the volume up on the CD he slipped in earlier. He debates switching on the overhead lights - it's getting dark, but not totally so yet - and instead puts the sidelights on, stretches out in the middle of the floor, and closes his eyes.
::
He gathers up CD's almost at random and tucks them under one arm. After a few moments thought, he shuffles through the pile and then adds a few more. It's probably too much to hope for that Nic shares his taste in music -- which is eclectic at best -- but he's got a fairly wide range of stuff here to choose from.
He locks the Mini -- it chirps and Bill sighs -- and checks that no one glancing in the window will notice anything out of the ordinary.
He hears the music the moment he opens the door again -- carefully locking it behind him, since he really can't think of anything more mortifying than someone walking in on this bizarre little dance lesson.
It gets louder as he approaches the back studios, and he can't help but smile a little at the idea of Nic listening to opera cranked up loud enough to shatter glass. If the opera part of it is a bit of a surprise, the volume of the music helps to sort of ease it into perspective. If one were to speculate Nic liking opera, it only made sense that Nic would like it at unthinkable decibels, the power of the music amplified to overwhelming levels by sheer volume.
Nic is lying in the middle of the floor, eyes closed. Every line of his body screams with mellow attention (it doesn't make sense, yeah, it's a contradiction, but it's still true -- Bill doesn't know how else to describe the lax, easy sprawl of his body coupled with the look on Nic's face). Bill stops in the doorway, not quite willing to interrupt, and waits.
::
"Bill--" Nic doesn't open his eyes when he feels like Bill is back in the room, just moves his hand around on the floor, searching for the beer bottle.
Got it. He wraps his mouth around the bottle and gratuitously tips it down.
"I know you're there," he says, and aims the remote in the direction of the stereo. Nessun Dorma becomes a little more piano. "Like opera?"
::
"So I am," Bill says shortly, abruptly uncomfortable. He turns away from Nic and moves over to the CD player to deposit his stack of CD's on the low table.
His beer is sitting, open and untouched, on one of the bedside tables beside the prop-bed. He retrieves it, and -- with barely a thought to the past several weeks of deliberate restraint -- tips his head back and drains half of it in several long, cool swallows.
"I like... some opera," he answers belatedly.
::
Nic amuses himself by imagining who would be the Princess Turandot. The fat guy finishes before Nic cracks open one eye.
"Alright, then? I'll take you out to Dottie's one night," he says, trying to see where Bill is, see his expression. "For now, you choose."
He skids the remote control across the floor, and pulls himself up to sit, downing the last of his beer while eyeing Bill thoughtfully.
::
"Aye," Bill says, but doesn't look at Nic when he says it. He takes another quick swig of his beer instead. God, he's fucking missed beer.
Although he's only going to have the one tonight. Nic is hard enough to predict stone-sober. The last thing he needs is to attempt it pissed.
He bends and retrieves the remote, considering his musical selection.
What's good to dance to, anyhow? From what he remembers of the occasions when he's seen Nic dance, the bugger can move to nearly anything.
The question, really, is what does Keira like to dance to. He thinks hard for several seconds, mentally reviewing the interior of Keira's car. He shuffles through his stack of CD's, and comes up with Blur, Nine Inch Nails (she'd had Pretty Hate Machine, and this is Downward Spiral, but it'll do), The Clash, and Oasis. Oasis? Who the fuck…? Probably Orlando. The ninny.
He puts it into the CD changer anyhow, along with the others. He pauses, not sure about some of the others. He can't imagine dancing to some of the things he likes to listen to. But it's a six CD changer, so he adds A Perfect Circle and Stone Roses, mentally shrugging. They can always skip songs that don't suit.
"I hope some of this works, at least," Bill mutters, and turns to Nic to say something else. He forgets what, though, as Nic is standing within inches of him, one side of his mouth turned upward slightly, just watching Bill, his expression turbulent but indeterminate. Or at least, it's not anything that Bill knows how to determine.
Bill frowns slightly -- he fucking hates it that Nic had been able to get so close without him noticing, he doesn't even want to think about how fucking unsafe it is that he could do that -- and reaches behind him for his beer, for no reason other than to have an excuse to step away, out of Nic's little bubble of presence.
::
Nic does try to keep his hands to himself, really, but some people. Some people make him itch, and it's just bloody unfortunate that Bill looks like he's turning out to be part of a small club that includes Ian, and Josh, and his flatmate at Christ's, and--maybe not so small.
Nic tries to will his hand away from where it's hovering, caught in his own indecision loop about three millimetres away from Bill's neck, but he can't. He had been wanting to touch Bill's cheek, just put his palm there, but gravity and indecision and the fact he said that he wouldn't only five minutes ago conspire and he falters, and now Bill probably thinks he was going to strangle him (which was maybe a good idea in the long run), but he can't quite make the muscles work the right way and he ends up with his fingertips resting on Bill's collar, arm's length away.
"Is it that you think I'm stupid?"
I'm an idiot, thinks Nic. "Dominic, darling, why don't you think before you speak?" His mother's voice echoes in his head, but it's always far too late (Thanks, Mum, he thinks wryly, good advice, always after the fact). And he's still talking, obviously independent of his brain.
"Cos--I'm not. Or maybe you think that I think you are, but you're obviously not, you know, thick, and everyone can see that. I mean, you're probably intimidating, or something. I don't know." Nic pauses. "I'll shut up now. I'm just talking shite. Don't mind me."
He pulls his hand away now, runs it through his hair. "Okay then. Music. Dancing."
::
He doesn't think Nic is stupid -- not even remotely. Although he does think Nic does stupid things (witness his moonlighting job, not to mention the drugs), but everyone does that. Bill included (witness this... whatever the hell this is). It's just that at times like this, Bill has so much trouble following Nic's train of thought (Stupid? Wha...? Huh? Where the bloody fuck did that even come from?) that it occasionally seems that Nic doesn't have a train of thought at all. More like isolated little thought-bubbles, like the carbonation in the beer Bill is still holding (between himself and Nic, like somehow that will stop any of Nic's body parts from touching him if Nic wanted to), fizzing away madly in Nic's head, bubbling to the surface and right out his mouth without rhyme or reason, without pause, without fucking relevance to the situation at hand.
He can't follow Nic the way he can follow most people, and it frustrates him. A lot.
And the question had been phrased weird. Is it that you think I'm stupid?
Is what that he thinks Nic's stupid? What exactly is he even referring to there? That he doesn't want Nic hanging on him? That he's brusque? That he's never managed to have a conversation with the bloody twat that didn't devolve into exactly this, Nic looking at him like he's something he wants to (absorb) understand, Nic fucking fixating on him (and it makes him uncomfortable as fuck, Bill will never be able to work out how a bloke as flighty as Nic can just fucking focus on a person like that, like there isn't anyone else in existence), while Bill just stares at Nic like a moron, probably with the world's most idiotic expression of utter befuddlement on his face, trying to piece together something coherent out of the randomness. And it always ends up the same way: he'd shake Nic except he doesn't want to touch him.
He considers telling Nic it might be better if he just didn't talk. Ever. But, no, that's a bad idea. The only thing more incredibly impossible than regular-Nic is petulant-Nic.
And he's fully aware that this is a bad idea. He's seen Nic dance. There isn't any possibility of learning it from Nic without Nic just... being all over him. Just thinking about it makes Bill tense, muscles tight and twitchy with adrenaline.
But.
He wants to learn. He wants to be able to dance with Keira, stand close to her and watch her face, laughing and sheened with sweat, while she moves against him.
And.
He really needs to come to terms with his aversion to having Nic touch him. Nic is Keira's closest friend. That isn't going to change. Bill doesn't even want it to; he likes watching the two of them laughing together, likes how comfortable they are with each other, doesn't want to interfere with that. So he needs to get used to Nic being Nic, and that involves Nic touching him.
He sighs.
"I don't think you're stupid at all," he says finally -- and it's been several seconds since Nic said anything, and now he's just looking uncertainly a Bill, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "I never meant to make you think that."
::
Bugger, bugger. Nic squeezes his eyes shut briefly and waves his hands in front of him slightly, because the look on Bill's face is too much like he thinks that he's done something wrong, and that's not it.
"Well, that's good," he says when he opens his eyes, "but I... look, like I said, I'm talking rubbish. You don't make me think that." So daft. Jesus.
He searches for distraction, and clicks through the CD tracks with the remote, snippets at a high volume, scattering his phrases in between the intros. "Not really. I'm an idiot, as you've probably worked out." The baseline to Song 2 makes him grin.
"Moshing?" he asks with a woo-hoo, imagining Bill jumping up and down, and he has to snort at the mental picture, waves his hand in the air again to dismiss it. "Never mind." Champagne Supernova, click. Trent fucking Reznor, click. He eyes Bill up. The man obviously has broody taste, but at least he's not subjecting Nic to Morrissey.
There's absolutely nothing for it. This has to be just a little bit gay, and the slightly put-upon look on Bill's face is worth it when he skips back to Girls and Boys.
::
Bill tries to think of something to say to that -- it's uncharacteristically self-depredating for Nic, he thinks, and he isn't sure why that bothers him -- and Nic skips around until he finds something he likes -- Blur -- grinning in such a predatory fashion that Bill has the urge to back away from him. He manages not to, mostly because he can imagine how that would amuse Nic.
Nic's hips are already in motion, rolling slightly, rhythmic, as though connected to the music in some fundamental way. Bill watches, head cocked slightly (it makes him think of snake charmers, which he thinks he'd read somewhere is actually done by the almost hypnotic swaying motion the practitioners of that unhealthy-seeming art employ, rather than the music), trying to figure out how, exactly, Nic does that.
Fucker must be double jointed. Or possibly completely jointless.
Nic laughs, like he can read Bill's mind (or his doubtful expression, more likely). When he reaches for Bill's hand, Bill lets him take it, but pauses before letting Nic pull him into a more open area of the floor, to down the rest of the beer in his bottle quickly, and set the bottle aside.
"Right," he mutters, and rubs at his hair with his free hand, feeling like an idiot, but unwilling to give up before they've even started. "A little direction would be good here," and his voice sounds a little halting, even to his own ears, and he thinks he might be blushing (for fuck's sake!).
::
"What I think your problem is," Nic says, "is that you're thinking of all your limbs as disconnected bits that have gotta be brought into line, into rhythm." Nic stops moving for a second, just nods his head in time to the music. "It's not like that at all. You can't be methodical and think, ok, left foot there, hip out, click my fingers, you can't do that. 's not ballet."
He disentangles his hand from Bill's and puts it flat on his own stomach. "I know it sounds like bollocks, but it's really just gotta be from here. Centre of gravity in all directions, and you just have to think about tilting along different axes. In time to music."
"Am I making any sense whatsoever?"
::
It does actually, doesn't sound all that different from what Bill does with Jeet Kune Do, except for the bit with the music. "Aye," he says, and eyes Nic's fingertips tapping along to the music on Nic's belly. "Theoretically, anyhow," Bill adds, because while it does make sense, he isn't entirely convinced of his ability to put it into effect.
With martial arts it's different. There's a certain rhythm to it, yeah, but it's not the metered the way music is, and besides that, it's a lot more urgent than Bill has ever found dancing to be. Of course, this isn't the same as ballroom dancing at all, which is the whole point. Ballroom dancing is specific; there's a routine to it. Martial arts is the same way, although it's not as strict a routine. The point is, you counter based on what your opponent throws at you, and while there are a lot of possible counters, you choose one based on your judgment of your opponents skills and strengths.
Okay, so this sort of dancing is probably more like martial arts than not. But.
He isn't at all confident of his ability to judge this in the same manner. He doesn't know any of these moves, and aside from that, being reactive based on how someone is trying to hit you isn't the same thing at all as being reactive based on how someone is grinding up against you.
Unless you're trying to escape from the grinding. He eyeballs Nic, who is watching him with a little frown-wrinkle between his eyebrows. Of course, in this case, that's a distinct possibility.
Except not, because he can't learn if he doesn't at least try, and trying is going to involve touching, and he sort of wishes Nic had put his shirt back on.
You are a twat, Boyd. Fucking deal with it.
Right. Okay. He turns his head sharply and feels the satisfying crackle of his neck, relieving some of the burgeoning tension between his shoulder blades. He curls the tops of his toes against the floor and exerts enough pressure to crack them as well, and rolls his shoulders. He almost wishes for a full warm up period, it might relax him a bit, but he's very conscious of Nic watching him, head cocked and body still swaying a bit.
He feels very still, in comparison to Nic, very static. A few more beers would probably make this a whole bloody lot easier, and Nic as he had been at that fucking party, Nic doped up and hazy eyed, suddenly makes a lot more sense. And he knows he's not making this any easier for Nic, and it isn't his intention to make it harder than it has to be.
"Okay," he says, and takes a couple of slow, easy breaths, listening to the music, deliberately unfocusing his eyes to narrow his concentration (it's easier not having to look at Nic looking at him anyway).
He's almost surprised when he feels himself shift into some sort of slight movement, and he's not entirely sure it's right, just a gentle rocking kind of motion, but it's bloody well better than nothing, and while he may not entirely understand Nic, he's trusts totally in Nic's ability to show him how to make it right, if it's not. "Help me out here?"
::
Hilarious. "You look like you're in pain, mate." Bill's expression is pretty much the same as someone with paper cuts on ninety percent of their body. "This is supposed to be fun, remember? I don't give a shit what you look like." And really, he doesn't.
"Ok. Here's the experiment. Close your eyes. I won't do anything dodgy, promise. Just close your eyes, spin around like you did at primary school, to get dizzy, do that, and then keep your eyes closed." Nic cranks up the volume some more. "Then, the aim is to miss the beat. Whatever you do, however you move, miss the beat. Go through it. Try to ignore it."
It's worked with other people, so there's no real reason it wouldn't work with Bill.
::
"Do you have a video camera hidden in here?" Bill asks warily, and Nic snorts and makes an imperious twirling motion with one hand. Bill sighs. "Fine, you bloody dancing despot."
After all, there's always the chance he'll puke on Nic's feet, and that would just make it all worth it.
He makes sure he's got plenty of space in which to fall on his arse in, then closes his eyes and spins (the floor is cool and smooth under his bare feet, funny how he hadn't noticed that with his eyes open) round until his body and the ability to balance part ways. When he stops spinning, there's no need to attempt to miss the bleeding beat. He staggers about (his eyes want to open, they're no more keen on this whole blind and balanceless thing than the rest of Bill is, but he doesn't let them), aware of the beat, but not really much able to tell if he's missing it or not, considering he's just trying to keep from ending up on his arse on the floor.
What was the bloody point of this again?
::
Nic waits until Bill gets through the bit where he looks like a marionette cut loose from its strings, waits until the vertigo dims and Bill is just unbalanced enough to not think about the music, the timing.
It's there, Nic can see it, can see it in the looseness of Bill's joints; he's perfectly capable of fluidity, of graceful movement. Nic wonders what kind of exercise Bill does, makes a note to ask him. Must be something interesting. Something effective.
"Okay stop," he says, and he turns down the music, jams the remote in his back pocket. "Do you know why I got you to do that?"
::
"Because you're a bloody wanker?" Bill suggests acidly. "In order to have something to mock me about tomorrow?" he adds, but he's finally feeling more like the floor isn't shifting under his weight, and he manages to set his feet and stand still.
Nic doesn't look particularly amused (that's a bloody first), is just looking at Bill and frowning, like there's something he doesn't like about the way Bill is standing. He's eyeballing Bill like Bill might look over a potential opponent if he was sparring, and it's making him feel twitchy.
Everything about Nic makes him feel twitchy; actually, who is he fucking trying to kid. "To get an idea of whether or not I've got any natural balance and grace," he finally says, because it won't hurt him to at least try and meet Nic half way, and that seems as likely an explanation as any.
::
He doesn't have to be so bloody grudging about being nice, but Nic can't hold on to being grumpy. He smiles, tries not to make it an impatient smile. "Gold star," he says, "you're not a klutz, it seems. You're just too self-conscious." Nic scrunches up his face while he thinks of what to try.
"You're a planner, aren't you?" Nic nods to himself. "You'd be fine as long as you knew, like, some kind of routine. Like what schoolgirls do, in front of MTV, yeah?" Fuck. Nic doesn't actually know if he can think about how he dances enough to break it down to components. But Bill's mildly hopeful look suggests he might have to try.
"Give me a minute," he mutters, and he turns away from Bill, who has crossed his arms, waiting. Now Nic feels self-conscious--not because he's dancing, but, because he's not done this before, deconstructed movement like this.
It takes a bit of concentration, but after a couple of minutes he isolates what might be called steps. "Got a pen?" He fishes in his pockets. "No, wait, don't worry."
In the absence of paper, he scrawls loopy reminders on his forearm, and skids the pen across the floor.
"Right! Choose a song."
::
"The one we started with'll do," Bill says, and eyes Nic's arm. He can't tell what he's written there, and he's curious in spite of himself. He shifts slightly, trying to peer at it without being obvious about it, and Nic grins and turns away, waggling a finger at Bill.
Twat, Bill thinks, and rolls his eyes, but his lips curl into a slight smile in spite of that. Twat, yes, but at least he's entertaining.
"Fine, be that way then. Get the remote out of your arse and start the music, you fucking nut."
::
Nic taps his feet to the first twangs of the intro. Fucking song makes him grin; when it first came out he was still at school, seventh year, with holidays in Ibiza, far too much E going cheap, and weekend nights trying to blag into clubs off Canal Street.
"Basic step then, 'kay?" He turns, checks Bill is paying attention (of course he is). "You're shifting your weight through your knees and your hips, dipping across your centre of gravity. Keep your toes on the floor, but your heels will want to move. Keep your shoulders back, with your forearms no further forward than your hips. Otherwise you look like an ape. Your arms will just swing of their own accord."
And he demonstrates, trying very hard not to laugh, because it's really so funny and so serious at the same time. He's deliberately stepped in front of Bill, so Bill can't see his face, and he can't see Bill's, but Bill can see what Nic is doing.
And what Nic's arse is doing, thank you muchly, haha.
::
Bill watches for several seconds, but it's actually what Nic is saying that makes it logical to Bill. It's steps, yeah, and while Bill doesn't precisely want to think of them as "what schoolgirls do in front of MTV," he guesses he can live with that if he has to. It's the results that matter, anyhow, not whatever Nic mockingly labels it.
And yes, he can shift his weight through knees and hips across his center of gravity, that's nothing more than Jeet Kun Do, just basics without the kicks, and he's never had any trouble with that.
Echoing Nic's movements isn't that hard at all, and Bill feels himself sort of relax down into the same kind of center that sparring evokes, wherein he can watch the sway of Nic's hips and arse and not worry about what Nic might be up to, shaking his arse like that, but just copycat, easy as pie.
Nic's limbs are loose and easy, graceful, and it occurs to Bill that he'd be a natural at martial arts as well as dancing, and maybe if an opportunity comes up he'll mention that, because while Nic is strong (Bill still has the faint outline of a bruise on his chest that will attest to that), he's clumsy at fighting the same way that Bill is clumsy at dancing, and it's like an equal exchange of services, right?
"Okay," he says, and Nic peeps at him over his shoulder, his eyes flicking over Bill quickly, taking in what he's doing with a practiced eye.
Bill abruptly loses that feeling of being centered, and he guesses it's nothing but self-consciousness at knowing Nic is looking at him. He ignores it.
"Keep going, I'm with you."
::
Yes, Nic nods, so you are.
The pen scribbles on Nic's forearm are beginning to blur with body heat by the end of the third song, and he hasn't killed Bill yet (and vice versa), so he figures it's time for a break.
"Beer," he says, "More of." Bill shakes his head but it morphs into a nod while Nic frowns at him. It makes Nic feel pleasantly warm, seeing Bill loosen up like this. When he returns from the kitchen Bill is clicking fingers and swaying absently to the music, and it's unselfconscious, enchanting to watch.
A few more deconstructed steps, a few more songs, a little more beer, and Bill even looks to be enjoying himself. Nic becomes fixated on the contrast between Bill's moving naked feet and his jeans, hems crumpled on the back heels where they are a little too long (Nic knows about that problem) and stepped on, and he's a little lost in musing when Bill laughs and says "Earth to Nicky, hullo?"
"Right," Nic says, disoriented momentarily because Bill has stepped up close to him and put a hand on his forearm.
"Close stuff, now?" Bill's question has an air of gruffness to it, but eagerness too, and Nic smiles and nods.
"Same kind of thing," Nic says, snaking his hand around Bill's waist (he's so little), "just less arms. And more hips."
He rocks on his heels, step-back-step. "Cha-cha cha."
part two
characters from lotr_porn
Goldilocks?
Nic shakes his head, because he's clearly a little bit barmy. Besides, Bill's more like Mousy-Locks, if the truth were told.
Still.
"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" he says softly, still remembering the cadence of the narrator on his fairytale cassettes.
Bill is quite clearly zonked, snoring ever so slightly with one hand wrapped tightly in a sheet. It's a strong contrast to the towel, which is precariously not-wrapped around his middle, and when Nic leans in the doorway to check him out (because he's not going to pass up an opportunity to do that, given the pretty mental pictures he has from the Thing In The Editing Room) he finds himself willing the towel to slip, or Bill to turn over.
He hasn't even begun to wonder exactly why Bill is sleeping here - on a prop bed, the prop bed, what they call Hi-Ho Silver on account of how often it's been ridden - because it's enough to just watch Bill breathe slowly, unaware of anything, like a normal person caught out in a private moment.
Naked private moment. Nic smirks.
"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" he singsongs again, a little bit louder.
::
It's the creepy someone is looking at me feeling that stirs him at first, and then Nic (of course, who the fuck else), his voice dipping and rolling with an odd, darkly sing-song rhythm.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep, and he certainly hadn't meant to fall asleep somewhere/when that Nic could come across him sleeping. He sits up abruptly, and his head reels a little, combination of the sleeplessness of the last few days (months, the more honest portion of his brain whispers helpfully) and the abrupt transition from lying down to upright sending all the blood sharply in the other direction. A sharp, zinging pain drills into his left temple and he rubs at it, muttering curses under his breath, while his bleary gaze seeks out Nic.
Nic is leaning against the doorframe, all indolent poise, lips curled into a smirk, and Bill just wants to sigh. Sigh and maybe shake the little fucker, and maybe demand: What? Just what in the bleeding fuck is so funny? Do you ever not smile?
Then he remembers that sometimes Nic doesn't smile, sometimes Nic inexplicably clenches his eyes shut and just stands there.
He rubs at his face sleepily, bracing his elbows on his knees, pushing that thought away.
He'd fallen asleep after a quick shower, laid down -- just for a moment -- still wrapped in nothing but a towel.
Which is no longer really wrapped around him, but sort of draped haphazardly. And not in any way that is terribly effective at concealment either.
He doesn't scramble for it, because he can almost hear Nic chuckling mockingly in response to a move like that, and he just doesn't think he can take it.
He ignores it instead, but he can't quite keep back a sigh this time.
"I thought you'd gone," he says, more because it feels like he should say something than because he'd really thought Nic had gone.
::
Nic can't help the yawn that escapes him. He's a bit sleepy himself, and the bed looks inviting in the twilight. With or without Bill.
Christ, what the fuck is he thinking?
"Talking to Johnny 'bout some stuff," Nic stretches up to the top of the doorframe, not bothering to look away as Bill tries to casually cover himself up. Nic can see some clothes slung over the back of a chair, and he imagines he could get them and save Bill the embarrassment, the poor repressed soul.
Instead he pulls off his own t-shirt and throws it to Bill, curious to see what he does.
"You okay?" It occurs to Nic that Bill doesn't exactly look terrific. Far too tired, Nic thinks, Bill's skin seems a little translucent, tight over his cheekbones.
::
"Aye, I'm fine..." Wait a minute.
He tosses Nic's shirt (caught by instinct before it whapped him in the face, although it gets close enough that he can smell Nic on it) back at Nic.
And he can't even think, he's so fucking tired he can't even think, so he asks.
"What are you doing?"
::
"Being lazy. You need clothes. I had some." Nic peers a bit closer at Bill, who is still looking like a hatched chick, hair fluffy and sticking up, wide-eyed and angry, and Nic gives in, retrieves Bill's clothes from the chair. "But seeing as my favourite t-shirt is not good enough, then you can have your own clothes."
He dumps the pile on the end of the bed. Bill will have to lean forward just a little bit to reach. Haha.
::
The problem with Nic is, Bill can't ever fucking tell what the daft twat is going to do. And now he feels like a right arse.
"Sorry," he mutters. It's half-arsed as far as apologies go, but he means it, for what it's worth. He leans forward and ignores the shift of the towel (he suspects strongly that Nic had fucking done that on purpose, and probably thinks of it as mischievous rather than as annoying as fuck) to snag his jeans from the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. He shakes them once to untangle the legs.
Then he just sits there for a moment, not sure how he's going to manage to get them on without Nic getting a good look at his bits.
Oh, fuck it.
He's tired of trying to divine Nic's motivations, tired of trying to anticipate him. If Nic wants to bloody look, let him look. It's not like Nic hasn't fucking seen it.
Bill isn't stupid and he does have a fucking degree in psychology, after all. He's aware that his hesitation likely has more to do with his own hang-ups (namely, with the nagging sense that Nic sees more of Bill than mere nakedness can actually account for) than they do with Nic.
And it isn't Nic's fault Bill is so bloody uptight.
::
Nic can think of a number of things that would accomplish the task of relaxing Bill, but he doesn't think suggesting any of them will go down very well, even now. Bill looks frazzled and weary, and Nic is surprised to find him still here.
"You, ah," he bites down a smile at Bill's very studied nonchalance at being unavoidably naked, "you heading home? Can I take you out for a non-threatening manly beer or something?"
Bill just blinks at him for a second before his head disappears into his t-shirt.
"Or," Nic says slowly, "maybe you're hanging about, hoping for your big break. I know you're gagging to do an audition tape, you sneaky fucker."
He waggles his eyebrows.
::
Bill snorts and rolls his eyes. "Not pretty enough," he says, and slumps back down onto the bed to drag his boots (stuffed with socks and gun) over toward him. "Not by half."
He can feel Nic frowning at him, and smiles a little. "I'll take you up on a beer though," he says, because God knows he could use a little time away from this place, and besides that, he really doesn't want to blow Nic off. There has to be some way for the two of them to have some kind of normal interaction, something that doesn't involve beating one another up, or one of them watching the other shag Bill's girlfriend (and it occurs to him only after he thinks it how totally bizarre it is to ever be in a position to have to think anything even remotely like that).
"As long as you promise me a nice, respectable pub. I'm not up to techno music or crowds or basically anyplace where a lot of people I don't know are going to feel compelled to touch me."
Especially you.
::
"Porn got nowt to do with pretty," Nic says in his best Yorkshire farmhand. He gestures, downward sweep of his hands, "as you see, lad, even we common folk can do a bit 'o' heavin' and gruntin'."
Bill looks like he might be cracking a smile, and it glosses Nic with a comfortable feeling, dispels the apprehensive air he normally gets around Bill. He turns to find his shoes--the reason he was back in the studio to begin with, never can remember where he puts them--when something strikes him, a clear recollection from the party. When he turns, Bill is right behind him. Weird how he can sneak up like that.
"No groping?"
Bill cocks his head and shifts a bit. He looks worried. Heh.
"No booty-shaking?" Nic narrows his eyes. "No gettin' on down, right?" Of course not, Nic thinks. He touches his finger lightly to Bill's chest, punctuation, and then it hits him.
"Ohhhh. You can't!"
::
He glances down at Nic's finger where it's barely resting against his breastbone, and the thought that breezes across the surface of his mind (My friend, you are a lot of things, but you are in no way common) seems odd, foreign somehow, like it's not his own.
He isn't entirely sure what that's supposed to mean -- and he's uncomfortably aware that things like this, like not knowing what the hell his own thoughts mean, only really happen around Nic -- but he can't deny that there is a slight urge lurking there to actually say it out loud. Like some kind of twisted reassurance (which Nic doesn't fucking need, and Bill has no idea why it even occurs to him to want to give). Instead he just looks at Nic's finger poking him in the chest and arches a brow.
"Can't what, exactly?" he asks, but he's pretty sure he knows what Nic is referring to. It's a little disturbing, actually, to watch Nic make such a perceptive and intuitive leap.
::
Nic is delighted.
"You! Disingenuous!" He likes that word. He pats Bill on the cheek, just a tap. "You can't dance for shit, Boyd, and you don't want to go anywhere that you might have to."
He closes one eye to look Bill up and down, remembering just how awkward he had looked at the party, both when he was dancing and when he was watching everyone else. "Especially not with me, huh? Can't say as I blame you. I may have sticky-outy ears, but," he walks backwards on his tip-toes (it's more like a sashay because he really can't help swing his hips a bit) to illustrate his point, "I am pretty fuckin' co-ordinated."
::
I know you are, he thinks, but doesn't say. He hasn't brought up Nic's... alternate job. He's sure enough that Nic doesn't remember him -- he remembers Nic's hazy eyes and the gleam of sweat on his skin, the slow, easy sway of his body, remembers thinking Nic must've been on something -- that it hadn't been something he wanted to bring up, and then have to explain how he knew about it.
Frankly, it isn't something he wants to think about at all, if he can help it.
"It doesn't have anything to do with you, or your ears, Nic," he says, and avoids watching the buck and grind Nic insists on demonstrating for him. "I'm coordinated. I just never learned."
Which is something he sort of regrets, actually, because he would have liked to have danced with Keira last night, especially watching her and Nic dance, hot and close and wicked.
He pauses, frowning a little, pondering the worst idea he's ever had.
Nic stops too, both brows arched in question, and Bill wonders if he's really, seriously considering this.
::
"And here I thought you'd never ask."
And halle-fucking-lujah, Nic thinks. He doesn't have much experience of dealing with such guarded people. And it's bloody frustrating. He sees the man mostly every day, they get on well--there are jokes, even; Keira is obviously besotted with him, and yet Bill keeps himself at a fingertip's distance from Nic, distressingly near-but-far.
Nic doesn't even have a clue about his own motives, doesn't know if his gentle flirting is ultimately for a purpose. The Thing solidified certain... desires, but it doesn't signify, really. Nic doesn't actually have an alternative mode of interaction with people, just a scale of intensity that dials itself up or down by some unconscious signal Nic only occasionally knows something about. But he just doesn't fucking know anything about this whole bizarre situation, whether he wants to impress himself on Bill because he wants his approval, or his friendship, or an open look in Bill's pretty green eyes, or a quick fuck.
Nic sighs, and he is saying it before he even wonders if it's a good idea. "You're fucking hard work, you know. I'm not very good at the whole subtle thing, so maybe you could just humour me and spell it out."
Bill looks a bit baffled.
"Like, for instance, 'Nic, you got the moves, show me your skills'. That would be fine."
Aware that he could be interpreted as sounding slightly pissy when he's not, Nic strides over to Bill and kneels down to untie Bill's shoelaces.
::
"You're not exactly a bleeding cakewalk, either, mate," Bill mutters, and then he realizes he's just been looking down at Nic for several seconds while Nic unties his bootlaces.
Gun, he thinks, and then he's crouched down, holding both of Nic's wrists in his hands, and Nic is looking at him, eyes huge and bright; it takes Bill several seconds of looking at Nic, at the slight crumple between his brows, to understand why Nic is looking at him like that.
He eases up on Nic's wrists deliberately. "Let me spell this out for you, Dominic," he says tightly, hearing the edge in his own voice clearly for a moment, and then scaling that back, too, trying to gentle that as well as his grip, because he actually does like Nic, doesn't want to scare him, doesn't want to use the same tone on Nic that Bill had used on Flack when he had pressed the muzzle of his gun against Flack's forehead; he doesn't want it to be like that at all. "I don't like it when you pounce on me like that. It makes me edgy, and if I'm edgy, I might hurt you. I don't want to do that."
Which isn't actually the whole truth, as Bill spends at least half an hour of every day wanting to choke him into silence or shake him until he just sits still for one fucking minute, but that's neither here nor there.
Nic doesn't pull his wrists away -- bloody weird -- and doesn't say anything -- even weirder -- and as usual, Bill has no fucking idea what the nutter is thinking.
He sighs. "I'm not good with surprises; they make me nervous." And he's not sure why, except he still doesn't want Nic to think he's angry (although he is, a little, or maybe more frustrated than anything), but he adds, "I'm sorry."
::
Oh, fuck.
Just like that, it seeps into Nic's consciousness that Bill is cast from the same mold as Ian, and the little tumblers in his brain click into place with the realisation that Bill will probably come with all the attendant complications.
Thrilling as they sometimes may be.
Nic is paralysed until the parallels between the two coalesce into something he can think about properly (later, on a piece of paper, just to prove to himself that his gut feeling isn't too far off the mark). Until that happens, he's just going to have to put that thought out of his mind, and he leans back on his heels, balanced while Bill has his wrists. Because now, there's no fucking way he's going to yank his hands away, not now, not while he can study Bill's fingers wrapped around him and ponder variations on that theme.
He does wonder about Bill's confession. Edgy. Nervous. It's interesting from someone who seems very pieced together on a day-to-day basis, but Nic is starting to think of Bill as a long-term project, and now he's apologetic even, like he regrets saying anything.
"I think," Nic says slowly, "that you've already demonstrated how quick you are to thump me senseless." He smiles and wraps his own hands around Bill's forearms, pulls him up to his feet. "So I promise. No surprises." He ponders. "And if you get us some beers from the kitchen, I'll even promise not to grope you unnecessarily."
::
He can't even say what it is about Nic's smile makes him nervous.
He puts it away. Nic seems willing to take the whole thing with a grain of salt in spite of the unintended manhandling on Bill's part, and Bill is for that. He shouldn't have said anything like that to begin with. Not that it isn't true -- it's quite true; witness their first encounter, after all -- but Nic isn't the sort of person you show things to.
And if you do, you'd better bloody well expect them to come back and bite you in the arse later. Bill does, but there's nothing he can do about that now. He's just relieved that Nic isn't going to push it for the moment. And he wishes, not for the first time, that he understood Nic better. So that he'd know exactly what sort of backlash to expect.
"Assuming that not groping me 'unnecessarily' is the same as not groping me at all, I think I can work with that," he says, and tries on a smile. It feels okay, if a little strained.
Nic makes no promises, just cocks his head and smiles a little, and Bill satisfies himself with only grumbling a bit on he way to the kitchen to get the beers.
He takes off his boots once he gets there -- assuming that Nic still wants them off, for whatever bizarre-Nic-reason cooked up by his bizarre-Nic-brain -- and tucks the Sig inside one, under his balled up socks.
He thinks he spends an inordinate amount of time hiding his gun, considering the fact that he's wearing more clothes then all of these nutters combined most of the bleeding time.
Well. With one notable exception.
::
Bill comes back in with two open bottles of Becks while Nic is crouched down, trying to find something in the pile of CDs that isn't crappy chicka-bow music.
"Cheers," he says, noting with some satisfaction that Bill appears to have taken his boots off.
"I should ask," Nic pulls back a long swallow, "what exactly are you envisioning here? 'Cos I'm not teaching you to foxtrot, mate." He gives up on the CDs in disgust. "And also, any music in your car? Because this," he waves some bland ambient Swedish electronica in the air, "is shite."
::
Foxtrot?, Bill arches a brow, and Nic gives him a grin.
"I've no interest in--" he makes exaggerated air-quotes, "--'foxtrotting' with you. And I already know how to ballroom dance." Nic looks suspiciously close to laughing, but by some miracle he manages to resist. Bill isn't even sure what to fucking call the sort of dancing Nic does, the sort of dancing he and Keira had done at Johnny's party. Lacking the appropriate terminology, he quotes Nic. "'Nic, you got the moves. Show me your skills.'"
He even manages it with only a little sarcasm.
Nic snorts and rolls his eyes, but he gives a quick nod and waggles the "shite" CD's at Bill.
"I've got something," Bill says, making a quick mental list of what he does have in there. "I think."
He frowns. "You could have mentioned this before I took my boots off."
::
"Tender footsies?" Nic experiments with a withering look. "I don't know why you don't wear trainers. Or go barefoot like everyone does." By everyone else, Nic really means himself and Keira. "You'll just have to tough it out unless you want me rifling through your glove compartment."
And it's pretty fucking obvious that's not going to happen. Bill has already fished out his car keys, and is heading to the door.
"It better not be boy bands," Nic yells. "I'm very particular."
There's a snicker down the passageway. As soon as he hears the back door swing shut, Nic grabs the remote control for the stereo and cranks the volume up on the CD he slipped in earlier. He debates switching on the overhead lights - it's getting dark, but not totally so yet - and instead puts the sidelights on, stretches out in the middle of the floor, and closes his eyes.
::
He gathers up CD's almost at random and tucks them under one arm. After a few moments thought, he shuffles through the pile and then adds a few more. It's probably too much to hope for that Nic shares his taste in music -- which is eclectic at best -- but he's got a fairly wide range of stuff here to choose from.
He locks the Mini -- it chirps and Bill sighs -- and checks that no one glancing in the window will notice anything out of the ordinary.
He hears the music the moment he opens the door again -- carefully locking it behind him, since he really can't think of anything more mortifying than someone walking in on this bizarre little dance lesson.
It gets louder as he approaches the back studios, and he can't help but smile a little at the idea of Nic listening to opera cranked up loud enough to shatter glass. If the opera part of it is a bit of a surprise, the volume of the music helps to sort of ease it into perspective. If one were to speculate Nic liking opera, it only made sense that Nic would like it at unthinkable decibels, the power of the music amplified to overwhelming levels by sheer volume.
Nic is lying in the middle of the floor, eyes closed. Every line of his body screams with mellow attention (it doesn't make sense, yeah, it's a contradiction, but it's still true -- Bill doesn't know how else to describe the lax, easy sprawl of his body coupled with the look on Nic's face). Bill stops in the doorway, not quite willing to interrupt, and waits.
::
"Bill--" Nic doesn't open his eyes when he feels like Bill is back in the room, just moves his hand around on the floor, searching for the beer bottle.
Got it. He wraps his mouth around the bottle and gratuitously tips it down.
"I know you're there," he says, and aims the remote in the direction of the stereo. Nessun Dorma becomes a little more piano. "Like opera?"
::
"So I am," Bill says shortly, abruptly uncomfortable. He turns away from Nic and moves over to the CD player to deposit his stack of CD's on the low table.
His beer is sitting, open and untouched, on one of the bedside tables beside the prop-bed. He retrieves it, and -- with barely a thought to the past several weeks of deliberate restraint -- tips his head back and drains half of it in several long, cool swallows.
"I like... some opera," he answers belatedly.
::
Nic amuses himself by imagining who would be the Princess Turandot. The fat guy finishes before Nic cracks open one eye.
"Alright, then? I'll take you out to Dottie's one night," he says, trying to see where Bill is, see his expression. "For now, you choose."
He skids the remote control across the floor, and pulls himself up to sit, downing the last of his beer while eyeing Bill thoughtfully.
::
"Aye," Bill says, but doesn't look at Nic when he says it. He takes another quick swig of his beer instead. God, he's fucking missed beer.
Although he's only going to have the one tonight. Nic is hard enough to predict stone-sober. The last thing he needs is to attempt it pissed.
He bends and retrieves the remote, considering his musical selection.
What's good to dance to, anyhow? From what he remembers of the occasions when he's seen Nic dance, the bugger can move to nearly anything.
The question, really, is what does Keira like to dance to. He thinks hard for several seconds, mentally reviewing the interior of Keira's car. He shuffles through his stack of CD's, and comes up with Blur, Nine Inch Nails (she'd had Pretty Hate Machine, and this is Downward Spiral, but it'll do), The Clash, and Oasis. Oasis? Who the fuck…? Probably Orlando. The ninny.
He puts it into the CD changer anyhow, along with the others. He pauses, not sure about some of the others. He can't imagine dancing to some of the things he likes to listen to. But it's a six CD changer, so he adds A Perfect Circle and Stone Roses, mentally shrugging. They can always skip songs that don't suit.
"I hope some of this works, at least," Bill mutters, and turns to Nic to say something else. He forgets what, though, as Nic is standing within inches of him, one side of his mouth turned upward slightly, just watching Bill, his expression turbulent but indeterminate. Or at least, it's not anything that Bill knows how to determine.
Bill frowns slightly -- he fucking hates it that Nic had been able to get so close without him noticing, he doesn't even want to think about how fucking unsafe it is that he could do that -- and reaches behind him for his beer, for no reason other than to have an excuse to step away, out of Nic's little bubble of presence.
::
Nic does try to keep his hands to himself, really, but some people. Some people make him itch, and it's just bloody unfortunate that Bill looks like he's turning out to be part of a small club that includes Ian, and Josh, and his flatmate at Christ's, and--maybe not so small.
Nic tries to will his hand away from where it's hovering, caught in his own indecision loop about three millimetres away from Bill's neck, but he can't. He had been wanting to touch Bill's cheek, just put his palm there, but gravity and indecision and the fact he said that he wouldn't only five minutes ago conspire and he falters, and now Bill probably thinks he was going to strangle him (which was maybe a good idea in the long run), but he can't quite make the muscles work the right way and he ends up with his fingertips resting on Bill's collar, arm's length away.
"Is it that you think I'm stupid?"
I'm an idiot, thinks Nic. "Dominic, darling, why don't you think before you speak?" His mother's voice echoes in his head, but it's always far too late (Thanks, Mum, he thinks wryly, good advice, always after the fact). And he's still talking, obviously independent of his brain.
"Cos--I'm not. Or maybe you think that I think you are, but you're obviously not, you know, thick, and everyone can see that. I mean, you're probably intimidating, or something. I don't know." Nic pauses. "I'll shut up now. I'm just talking shite. Don't mind me."
He pulls his hand away now, runs it through his hair. "Okay then. Music. Dancing."
::
He doesn't think Nic is stupid -- not even remotely. Although he does think Nic does stupid things (witness his moonlighting job, not to mention the drugs), but everyone does that. Bill included (witness this... whatever the hell this is). It's just that at times like this, Bill has so much trouble following Nic's train of thought (Stupid? Wha...? Huh? Where the bloody fuck did that even come from?) that it occasionally seems that Nic doesn't have a train of thought at all. More like isolated little thought-bubbles, like the carbonation in the beer Bill is still holding (between himself and Nic, like somehow that will stop any of Nic's body parts from touching him if Nic wanted to), fizzing away madly in Nic's head, bubbling to the surface and right out his mouth without rhyme or reason, without pause, without fucking relevance to the situation at hand.
He can't follow Nic the way he can follow most people, and it frustrates him. A lot.
And the question had been phrased weird. Is it that you think I'm stupid?
Is what that he thinks Nic's stupid? What exactly is he even referring to there? That he doesn't want Nic hanging on him? That he's brusque? That he's never managed to have a conversation with the bloody twat that didn't devolve into exactly this, Nic looking at him like he's something he wants to (absorb) understand, Nic fucking fixating on him (and it makes him uncomfortable as fuck, Bill will never be able to work out how a bloke as flighty as Nic can just fucking focus on a person like that, like there isn't anyone else in existence), while Bill just stares at Nic like a moron, probably with the world's most idiotic expression of utter befuddlement on his face, trying to piece together something coherent out of the randomness. And it always ends up the same way: he'd shake Nic except he doesn't want to touch him.
He considers telling Nic it might be better if he just didn't talk. Ever. But, no, that's a bad idea. The only thing more incredibly impossible than regular-Nic is petulant-Nic.
And he's fully aware that this is a bad idea. He's seen Nic dance. There isn't any possibility of learning it from Nic without Nic just... being all over him. Just thinking about it makes Bill tense, muscles tight and twitchy with adrenaline.
But.
He wants to learn. He wants to be able to dance with Keira, stand close to her and watch her face, laughing and sheened with sweat, while she moves against him.
And.
He really needs to come to terms with his aversion to having Nic touch him. Nic is Keira's closest friend. That isn't going to change. Bill doesn't even want it to; he likes watching the two of them laughing together, likes how comfortable they are with each other, doesn't want to interfere with that. So he needs to get used to Nic being Nic, and that involves Nic touching him.
He sighs.
"I don't think you're stupid at all," he says finally -- and it's been several seconds since Nic said anything, and now he's just looking uncertainly a Bill, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "I never meant to make you think that."
::
Bugger, bugger. Nic squeezes his eyes shut briefly and waves his hands in front of him slightly, because the look on Bill's face is too much like he thinks that he's done something wrong, and that's not it.
"Well, that's good," he says when he opens his eyes, "but I... look, like I said, I'm talking rubbish. You don't make me think that." So daft. Jesus.
He searches for distraction, and clicks through the CD tracks with the remote, snippets at a high volume, scattering his phrases in between the intros. "Not really. I'm an idiot, as you've probably worked out." The baseline to Song 2 makes him grin.
"Moshing?" he asks with a woo-hoo, imagining Bill jumping up and down, and he has to snort at the mental picture, waves his hand in the air again to dismiss it. "Never mind." Champagne Supernova, click. Trent fucking Reznor, click. He eyes Bill up. The man obviously has broody taste, but at least he's not subjecting Nic to Morrissey.
There's absolutely nothing for it. This has to be just a little bit gay, and the slightly put-upon look on Bill's face is worth it when he skips back to Girls and Boys.
::
Bill tries to think of something to say to that -- it's uncharacteristically self-depredating for Nic, he thinks, and he isn't sure why that bothers him -- and Nic skips around until he finds something he likes -- Blur -- grinning in such a predatory fashion that Bill has the urge to back away from him. He manages not to, mostly because he can imagine how that would amuse Nic.
Nic's hips are already in motion, rolling slightly, rhythmic, as though connected to the music in some fundamental way. Bill watches, head cocked slightly (it makes him think of snake charmers, which he thinks he'd read somewhere is actually done by the almost hypnotic swaying motion the practitioners of that unhealthy-seeming art employ, rather than the music), trying to figure out how, exactly, Nic does that.
Fucker must be double jointed. Or possibly completely jointless.
Nic laughs, like he can read Bill's mind (or his doubtful expression, more likely). When he reaches for Bill's hand, Bill lets him take it, but pauses before letting Nic pull him into a more open area of the floor, to down the rest of the beer in his bottle quickly, and set the bottle aside.
"Right," he mutters, and rubs at his hair with his free hand, feeling like an idiot, but unwilling to give up before they've even started. "A little direction would be good here," and his voice sounds a little halting, even to his own ears, and he thinks he might be blushing (for fuck's sake!).
::
"What I think your problem is," Nic says, "is that you're thinking of all your limbs as disconnected bits that have gotta be brought into line, into rhythm." Nic stops moving for a second, just nods his head in time to the music. "It's not like that at all. You can't be methodical and think, ok, left foot there, hip out, click my fingers, you can't do that. 's not ballet."
He disentangles his hand from Bill's and puts it flat on his own stomach. "I know it sounds like bollocks, but it's really just gotta be from here. Centre of gravity in all directions, and you just have to think about tilting along different axes. In time to music."
"Am I making any sense whatsoever?"
::
It does actually, doesn't sound all that different from what Bill does with Jeet Kune Do, except for the bit with the music. "Aye," he says, and eyes Nic's fingertips tapping along to the music on Nic's belly. "Theoretically, anyhow," Bill adds, because while it does make sense, he isn't entirely convinced of his ability to put it into effect.
With martial arts it's different. There's a certain rhythm to it, yeah, but it's not the metered the way music is, and besides that, it's a lot more urgent than Bill has ever found dancing to be. Of course, this isn't the same as ballroom dancing at all, which is the whole point. Ballroom dancing is specific; there's a routine to it. Martial arts is the same way, although it's not as strict a routine. The point is, you counter based on what your opponent throws at you, and while there are a lot of possible counters, you choose one based on your judgment of your opponents skills and strengths.
Okay, so this sort of dancing is probably more like martial arts than not. But.
He isn't at all confident of his ability to judge this in the same manner. He doesn't know any of these moves, and aside from that, being reactive based on how someone is trying to hit you isn't the same thing at all as being reactive based on how someone is grinding up against you.
Unless you're trying to escape from the grinding. He eyeballs Nic, who is watching him with a little frown-wrinkle between his eyebrows. Of course, in this case, that's a distinct possibility.
Except not, because he can't learn if he doesn't at least try, and trying is going to involve touching, and he sort of wishes Nic had put his shirt back on.
You are a twat, Boyd. Fucking deal with it.
Right. Okay. He turns his head sharply and feels the satisfying crackle of his neck, relieving some of the burgeoning tension between his shoulder blades. He curls the tops of his toes against the floor and exerts enough pressure to crack them as well, and rolls his shoulders. He almost wishes for a full warm up period, it might relax him a bit, but he's very conscious of Nic watching him, head cocked and body still swaying a bit.
He feels very still, in comparison to Nic, very static. A few more beers would probably make this a whole bloody lot easier, and Nic as he had been at that fucking party, Nic doped up and hazy eyed, suddenly makes a lot more sense. And he knows he's not making this any easier for Nic, and it isn't his intention to make it harder than it has to be.
"Okay," he says, and takes a couple of slow, easy breaths, listening to the music, deliberately unfocusing his eyes to narrow his concentration (it's easier not having to look at Nic looking at him anyway).
He's almost surprised when he feels himself shift into some sort of slight movement, and he's not entirely sure it's right, just a gentle rocking kind of motion, but it's bloody well better than nothing, and while he may not entirely understand Nic, he's trusts totally in Nic's ability to show him how to make it right, if it's not. "Help me out here?"
::
Hilarious. "You look like you're in pain, mate." Bill's expression is pretty much the same as someone with paper cuts on ninety percent of their body. "This is supposed to be fun, remember? I don't give a shit what you look like." And really, he doesn't.
"Ok. Here's the experiment. Close your eyes. I won't do anything dodgy, promise. Just close your eyes, spin around like you did at primary school, to get dizzy, do that, and then keep your eyes closed." Nic cranks up the volume some more. "Then, the aim is to miss the beat. Whatever you do, however you move, miss the beat. Go through it. Try to ignore it."
It's worked with other people, so there's no real reason it wouldn't work with Bill.
::
"Do you have a video camera hidden in here?" Bill asks warily, and Nic snorts and makes an imperious twirling motion with one hand. Bill sighs. "Fine, you bloody dancing despot."
After all, there's always the chance he'll puke on Nic's feet, and that would just make it all worth it.
He makes sure he's got plenty of space in which to fall on his arse in, then closes his eyes and spins (the floor is cool and smooth under his bare feet, funny how he hadn't noticed that with his eyes open) round until his body and the ability to balance part ways. When he stops spinning, there's no need to attempt to miss the bleeding beat. He staggers about (his eyes want to open, they're no more keen on this whole blind and balanceless thing than the rest of Bill is, but he doesn't let them), aware of the beat, but not really much able to tell if he's missing it or not, considering he's just trying to keep from ending up on his arse on the floor.
What was the bloody point of this again?
::
Nic waits until Bill gets through the bit where he looks like a marionette cut loose from its strings, waits until the vertigo dims and Bill is just unbalanced enough to not think about the music, the timing.
It's there, Nic can see it, can see it in the looseness of Bill's joints; he's perfectly capable of fluidity, of graceful movement. Nic wonders what kind of exercise Bill does, makes a note to ask him. Must be something interesting. Something effective.
"Okay stop," he says, and he turns down the music, jams the remote in his back pocket. "Do you know why I got you to do that?"
::
"Because you're a bloody wanker?" Bill suggests acidly. "In order to have something to mock me about tomorrow?" he adds, but he's finally feeling more like the floor isn't shifting under his weight, and he manages to set his feet and stand still.
Nic doesn't look particularly amused (that's a bloody first), is just looking at Bill and frowning, like there's something he doesn't like about the way Bill is standing. He's eyeballing Bill like Bill might look over a potential opponent if he was sparring, and it's making him feel twitchy.
Everything about Nic makes him feel twitchy; actually, who is he fucking trying to kid. "To get an idea of whether or not I've got any natural balance and grace," he finally says, because it won't hurt him to at least try and meet Nic half way, and that seems as likely an explanation as any.
::
He doesn't have to be so bloody grudging about being nice, but Nic can't hold on to being grumpy. He smiles, tries not to make it an impatient smile. "Gold star," he says, "you're not a klutz, it seems. You're just too self-conscious." Nic scrunches up his face while he thinks of what to try.
"You're a planner, aren't you?" Nic nods to himself. "You'd be fine as long as you knew, like, some kind of routine. Like what schoolgirls do, in front of MTV, yeah?" Fuck. Nic doesn't actually know if he can think about how he dances enough to break it down to components. But Bill's mildly hopeful look suggests he might have to try.
"Give me a minute," he mutters, and he turns away from Bill, who has crossed his arms, waiting. Now Nic feels self-conscious--not because he's dancing, but, because he's not done this before, deconstructed movement like this.
It takes a bit of concentration, but after a couple of minutes he isolates what might be called steps. "Got a pen?" He fishes in his pockets. "No, wait, don't worry."
In the absence of paper, he scrawls loopy reminders on his forearm, and skids the pen across the floor.
"Right! Choose a song."
::
"The one we started with'll do," Bill says, and eyes Nic's arm. He can't tell what he's written there, and he's curious in spite of himself. He shifts slightly, trying to peer at it without being obvious about it, and Nic grins and turns away, waggling a finger at Bill.
Twat, Bill thinks, and rolls his eyes, but his lips curl into a slight smile in spite of that. Twat, yes, but at least he's entertaining.
"Fine, be that way then. Get the remote out of your arse and start the music, you fucking nut."
::
Nic taps his feet to the first twangs of the intro. Fucking song makes him grin; when it first came out he was still at school, seventh year, with holidays in Ibiza, far too much E going cheap, and weekend nights trying to blag into clubs off Canal Street.
"Basic step then, 'kay?" He turns, checks Bill is paying attention (of course he is). "You're shifting your weight through your knees and your hips, dipping across your centre of gravity. Keep your toes on the floor, but your heels will want to move. Keep your shoulders back, with your forearms no further forward than your hips. Otherwise you look like an ape. Your arms will just swing of their own accord."
And he demonstrates, trying very hard not to laugh, because it's really so funny and so serious at the same time. He's deliberately stepped in front of Bill, so Bill can't see his face, and he can't see Bill's, but Bill can see what Nic is doing.
And what Nic's arse is doing, thank you muchly, haha.
::
Bill watches for several seconds, but it's actually what Nic is saying that makes it logical to Bill. It's steps, yeah, and while Bill doesn't precisely want to think of them as "what schoolgirls do in front of MTV," he guesses he can live with that if he has to. It's the results that matter, anyhow, not whatever Nic mockingly labels it.
And yes, he can shift his weight through knees and hips across his center of gravity, that's nothing more than Jeet Kun Do, just basics without the kicks, and he's never had any trouble with that.
Echoing Nic's movements isn't that hard at all, and Bill feels himself sort of relax down into the same kind of center that sparring evokes, wherein he can watch the sway of Nic's hips and arse and not worry about what Nic might be up to, shaking his arse like that, but just copycat, easy as pie.
Nic's limbs are loose and easy, graceful, and it occurs to Bill that he'd be a natural at martial arts as well as dancing, and maybe if an opportunity comes up he'll mention that, because while Nic is strong (Bill still has the faint outline of a bruise on his chest that will attest to that), he's clumsy at fighting the same way that Bill is clumsy at dancing, and it's like an equal exchange of services, right?
"Okay," he says, and Nic peeps at him over his shoulder, his eyes flicking over Bill quickly, taking in what he's doing with a practiced eye.
Bill abruptly loses that feeling of being centered, and he guesses it's nothing but self-consciousness at knowing Nic is looking at him. He ignores it.
"Keep going, I'm with you."
::
Yes, Nic nods, so you are.
The pen scribbles on Nic's forearm are beginning to blur with body heat by the end of the third song, and he hasn't killed Bill yet (and vice versa), so he figures it's time for a break.
"Beer," he says, "More of." Bill shakes his head but it morphs into a nod while Nic frowns at him. It makes Nic feel pleasantly warm, seeing Bill loosen up like this. When he returns from the kitchen Bill is clicking fingers and swaying absently to the music, and it's unselfconscious, enchanting to watch.
A few more deconstructed steps, a few more songs, a little more beer, and Bill even looks to be enjoying himself. Nic becomes fixated on the contrast between Bill's moving naked feet and his jeans, hems crumpled on the back heels where they are a little too long (Nic knows about that problem) and stepped on, and he's a little lost in musing when Bill laughs and says "Earth to Nicky, hullo?"
"Right," Nic says, disoriented momentarily because Bill has stepped up close to him and put a hand on his forearm.
"Close stuff, now?" Bill's question has an air of gruffness to it, but eagerness too, and Nic smiles and nods.
"Same kind of thing," Nic says, snaking his hand around Bill's waist (he's so little), "just less arms. And more hips."
He rocks on his heels, step-back-step. "Cha-cha cha."
part two