Book 2, Chapter 5: One Way Back Home
Title: One Way Back Home
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy, Dominic
Rating: Adult
Word count: 2500
Summary: The waiting is the hardest part.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
The optional but recommended revised essays come pouring in, somewhat to Billy’s surprise. It’s not that he believes his students especially lazy, but he certainly hadn’t expected this level of interest in having their marks raised only a possible few points.
Most of the papers come to him in the hands of their authors, who stand or sit and chat for a few minutes with Billy in his office, making excuses for their original work or telling him they’re not sure the revision is any better. Billy stops just short of telling those students that half the point of the exercise was to get them simply to try and make their work better, for themselves as much as for Billy, as for a higher mark. Other essays arrive by email, a method Billy’s allowed but one he doesn’t particularly love and must force himself to accept as now conventional for some of Baskerville’s professors. He sends that stack to his printer and turns up the volume on his CD player to cover the hum of the machine, fighting hated technology with loved.
The last straggling few papers Billy finds tucked into his large, squared-off mail slot in the department’s outer office. It’s a middle option for a few students, a compromise between having to actually see or speak to their professor and hoping Billy remembers to check his email, and it’s the option Billy likes best, though he’s never said so aloud to any student. Let them think they’re doing themselves a favour, Billy had told himself years ago, and everyone wins.
Dominic’s essay is one of those in the mail slot. The fourth one down, precisely, and Billy takes that as a sign that Dominic had worked hard on it, but not been so worn down that he’d turned it in at the last second. Whether that’s true isn’t relevant at the moment; again, the point is that he’d made the effort, however long it had taken and however close he’d cut it to the deadline. Billy pushes Dominic’s essay into the middle of the entire stack, rationalizing the gesture to himself with the reminder that he cannot show preference, even in marking, but it takes a self-discipline Billy hates to exercise on himself to not read it first and see what Dominic’s done with Billy’s advice.
Over the next few days Billy will go over the revised work, promising no expedient rate of return to the students who wait to hear what their effort will get them. Again to Billy’s surprise there’s only the smallest murmured dismay at his unwillingness to put a deadline on himself, and Billy decides to take that as evidence that the students are confident enough in their papers now, or that they can no longer find the energy to care. He can sympathize, and he does, but in the meantime there are other lectures to teach, other things they must learn along with patience.
It’s not a virtue Billy’s learned all that well himself. The week seems to crawl before him, the end of it just beyond Billy’s reach, over hill and dale of class after class. Billy’s mind drifts again and again to what he’ll do when Dominic appears at his door on Friday evening, if he appears-there is no guarantee of anything, Billy knows, and he’d certainly have earned it if Dominic decides better of returning to Billy’s home only to be hidden there like contraband on two legs.
When Thursday evening arrives, Billy’s reached the point where he can’t spend another minute in his house without itching to share the kitchen and bed with a specific another. He tries to remember how it felt in the beginning with Andrew, but it was calmer then, less greedy, and Billy had far less cause for concern over bringing Andrew home; they were only friends first, with no connection formed by that bloody school. There was no risk of power or influence forcing issues or hands. Any relationship with Dominic will be blanketed by risk, Billy knows; they’ll feel trapped in the fog of it no matter what they do. If after Dominic’s had the week to think about it, he still finds Billy worth that risk, then perhaps Billy owes it to them both to give the thing a chance as well.
It’s a good decision, a satisfying one, but it doesn’t stop Billy from wanting to postpone going home on Thursday night for as long as possible. He leaves the campus on foot, taking his time walking through the outskirts of the grounds to the curving lanes of bookstores and little shops catering mostly to Baskerville’s students and their open-minded views of what constitutes food and fashion. He catches the eye of other wandering professors every so often, and Billy lifts a hand in acknowledgment but doesn’t engage in anything more; he’s too distracted to talk shop tonight, and the only company he wants is what he’s gone and denied himself in a moment of fear disguised as caution.
At the step of The Noble Bachelor, something inside Billy freezes up, and he has to talk himself into opening the door, into making Andrew’s prophecy a false one. Once inside and with a glass in his hand Billy feels marginally better, but minutes still pass before he can turn and smile and chat with someone who appears just as nervous. Billy recognizes and remembers the name of only a few people in the pub, where a few months ago, in the company of Andrew or Miranda or even Karl, he might have known or at least been introduced to half the clientele. Everyone seems lit up with from within to Billy, warmed by something that’s not drink, and he envies them that, envies the ease with which they move from one little group to another, their smiles only tilting lower in a moment’s sympathy for someone’s bad day or week before they lift again and laughter rings out. Billy misses the energy of this building and hates it, too; his quieter presence seems unwelcome here now, and he’s abandoned his pint, pushed off from the bar and made his way almost to the door when a hand falls on his arm.
It’s Miranda, and Billy folds into her embrace gratefully for a few seconds before he steps back. She tilts her head and makes to speak before Billy stops her and says simply that he’s not feeling it tonight, that he has work and that it’s fucking hot in here. Miranda’s eyes go very soft before she leans in and kisses Billy’s cheek, but then she chucks it, too, telling Billy he’s spent long enough away, and if he doesn’t return next week she’ll have words for him. Billy’s smile is genuine, and he kisses her, too, before he steps back outside and walks faster now, in the direction of the other side of town.
The Three Gables informally belongs to the professors, and at its bar Billy feels welcomed even when he doesn’t really want to be. He doesn’t love the place by any stretch, but at least here he can sit and not feel as though his silence is disturbing the louder peace of anyone else. Miranda would call him on that, Billy thinks; no one in the Bachelor was disturbed but him, and he would have easily fallen into conversation and cheer with Miranda’s lot if he’d stayed. Fear ran him out of the building, he knows-fear that people would ask after Andrew, fear that they’d wonder what Billy was doing there after such a long absence, fear that even the easy companionship would leave him even more unsettled and unsatisfied than he feels now. But fear’s not always a bad thing, Billy reasons. Fear-even disguised as caution-will keep him and Dominic out of trouble if this … thing that cannot be classified continues.
At the bottom of his glass Billy finds that he wants it to continue, and that if Dominic doesn’t come back tomorrow night he’ll feel disgusted with himself and a bit … shattered, too; splintered, though that’s not the word Billy would choose if he had the ability to find another. What he will not feel is surprised.
He’d love a second pint but shakes off the questioning glance from the barmaid before he’s dragged into the shoptalk he’d dreaded by one of the younger Chairs, one who fancies himself a friend to the professors and doesn’t realize he’s hated as much as any other overlord. Billy acquits himself rather nicely, he thinks, and even laughs at some absurd joke before his smile tightens at the next remark the man makes, something about cutting funding to the Languages department because half the students already speak something other than what they should. The truth? Billy wants to ask but of course does not, and he excuses himself from the bar with a nod in the direction of the loo.
Out the back door and into the streets, Billy sees that more time has passed than he’d thought. Baskerville’s little world is darkening, and Billy’s mood might, too, if he doesn’t get back to his house soon. He moves quickly back onto the campus and toward his car, the evening air sobering him up rudely, and on the way home he stops only for some pad Thai, good beer, and a paper he rarely reads. Anything to see something different, he supposes as he hands over his cash, anything to think something new.
At home Billy devours his dinner while alternately nodding and snorting with derision over articles and comics and sports reports that make him roll his eyes. It’s a welcome distraction, this hour before he has to face the last of the essays, and Billy rises from his couch only to grab his mail and his own paper, making the time stretch to two hours and then three before he acknowledges what he’s doing and surrenders to it, moving from newspapers to books, from the couch to bed. The essays have waited this long; they can wait a little more.
It’s only in his ragged morning rush that Billy remembers he has no intention of marking papers that night. He half-staggers through the day, wondering where the long week has gone and how it got away from him so quickly. Meetings fill the afternoon, and for once Billy’s grateful for that; the droning of embittered colleagues fades into a hum that Billy drowns out now with his own thoughts. He’s barely seen Dominic this week barring classes, and though he’s encouraged Dominic in discussion within the walls of the classroom, he’s been careful to go no further. If Dominic turns up tonight, it will be because he honestly wants to and has agreed to the minor demands Billy’s placed on him and any possible relationship-Billy taps his pen furiously against his tablet at the sound of the word in his thoughts, leaving a run of irritable, dark green dots on the grey paper-and because he wants to. Because even the lure of his friends and more interesting things to do, even the lure of younger and kinder arms into which to fall, can’t top the idea of being with his professor, whatever the many, many risks.
The scrape and shuffle of fifteen mugs of coffee and fifteen pairs of shoes wakens Billy to the fact that the meeting’s ended, and he moves past the crowd of professors still hovering to argue outside the conference room’s doors back to his office, throwing down the tablet and pen and reaching for his briefcase. He’s ready to be gone from here, ready to be home, ready to know what tonight will bring him and, he hopes, prepared for it either way. The essays still require his attention if Dominic does not, and Billy has cigarettes and wine to spare. He can taste them both already, and he drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he waits in traffic, all thoughts of patience flying out the opened window beside him.
The trouble with having just invited Dominic to come tonight is that Billy hadn’t specified when. It hadn’t seemed necessary at the time, but now it’s more excruciating than Billy had imagined to wait and wonder. Even after he’s poured himself a drink and dealt with the mail and the new paper, he’s still restless, and he feels faintly ridiculous pacing his front room still half dressed in what he’s worn all day. He shakes off the nerves and changes clothes, padding barefoot from the bedroom and back into the house and then to the garden, reaching blindly for cigarettes and matches as he nears the desk.
Outside it’s better; Billy settles in the fresh air and tilts his head to light a match and pollute that air sweetly with one of the cigarettes. Rocking back and forth on his heels, Billy takes a hard look around his rapidly darkening back yard, wondering when this, too, got away from him, and why he’d never thought to tidy it up, considering how often he likes to sit out here. Dominic’s words from before come back to him-how nice the place might look if it were taken care of-and for a moment Billy indulges himself in the idea of letting Dominic have at it, letting him form and shape Billy’s garden as he might other things if they continue this … relationship.
It is an indulgent thought, one that he has no intention of speaking aloud, but it fills his mind for long enough that he’s startled by the sound of his gate opening quietly behind him. Billy pivots to watch Dominic slide inside and spin to shut the gate just as quietly, and takes another long hit off the cigarette when Dominic turns back to see him. There’s a pause between them, one more moment of breath they keep holding around each other, and then Dominic advances carefully, not speaking but saying everything possible in the way he holds his ground under Billy’s stare. Fuck risk, Billy thinks, reaching out with his free hand. Fuck everything but this.
The soft crash of lips and teeth feels fantastic, the harder crash of back against brick even better. Dominic releases a small, eager grunt and then laughs, his face flushing hard enough that Billy can see it in only the little light they have left out here. Billy laughs too and pulls at Dominic’s arm, a bit harder than he meant to, but Dominic follows him inside without a word and doesn’t fight when he finds himself against another wall, this time the concrete of Billy’s mudroom. The door creaks in protest as it tries to shut, and Billy kicks it shut absently, plunging them into darkness that silences them, too, for a moment.
“Good choice,” Billy says again, finally, and his voice is hoarse enough that Dominic only nods before it’s his turn to reach and grab and take.
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy, Dominic
Rating: Adult
Word count: 2500
Summary: The waiting is the hardest part.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
The optional but recommended revised essays come pouring in, somewhat to Billy’s surprise. It’s not that he believes his students especially lazy, but he certainly hadn’t expected this level of interest in having their marks raised only a possible few points.
Most of the papers come to him in the hands of their authors, who stand or sit and chat for a few minutes with Billy in his office, making excuses for their original work or telling him they’re not sure the revision is any better. Billy stops just short of telling those students that half the point of the exercise was to get them simply to try and make their work better, for themselves as much as for Billy, as for a higher mark. Other essays arrive by email, a method Billy’s allowed but one he doesn’t particularly love and must force himself to accept as now conventional for some of Baskerville’s professors. He sends that stack to his printer and turns up the volume on his CD player to cover the hum of the machine, fighting hated technology with loved.
The last straggling few papers Billy finds tucked into his large, squared-off mail slot in the department’s outer office. It’s a middle option for a few students, a compromise between having to actually see or speak to their professor and hoping Billy remembers to check his email, and it’s the option Billy likes best, though he’s never said so aloud to any student. Let them think they’re doing themselves a favour, Billy had told himself years ago, and everyone wins.
Dominic’s essay is one of those in the mail slot. The fourth one down, precisely, and Billy takes that as a sign that Dominic had worked hard on it, but not been so worn down that he’d turned it in at the last second. Whether that’s true isn’t relevant at the moment; again, the point is that he’d made the effort, however long it had taken and however close he’d cut it to the deadline. Billy pushes Dominic’s essay into the middle of the entire stack, rationalizing the gesture to himself with the reminder that he cannot show preference, even in marking, but it takes a self-discipline Billy hates to exercise on himself to not read it first and see what Dominic’s done with Billy’s advice.
Over the next few days Billy will go over the revised work, promising no expedient rate of return to the students who wait to hear what their effort will get them. Again to Billy’s surprise there’s only the smallest murmured dismay at his unwillingness to put a deadline on himself, and Billy decides to take that as evidence that the students are confident enough in their papers now, or that they can no longer find the energy to care. He can sympathize, and he does, but in the meantime there are other lectures to teach, other things they must learn along with patience.
It’s not a virtue Billy’s learned all that well himself. The week seems to crawl before him, the end of it just beyond Billy’s reach, over hill and dale of class after class. Billy’s mind drifts again and again to what he’ll do when Dominic appears at his door on Friday evening, if he appears-there is no guarantee of anything, Billy knows, and he’d certainly have earned it if Dominic decides better of returning to Billy’s home only to be hidden there like contraband on two legs.
When Thursday evening arrives, Billy’s reached the point where he can’t spend another minute in his house without itching to share the kitchen and bed with a specific another. He tries to remember how it felt in the beginning with Andrew, but it was calmer then, less greedy, and Billy had far less cause for concern over bringing Andrew home; they were only friends first, with no connection formed by that bloody school. There was no risk of power or influence forcing issues or hands. Any relationship with Dominic will be blanketed by risk, Billy knows; they’ll feel trapped in the fog of it no matter what they do. If after Dominic’s had the week to think about it, he still finds Billy worth that risk, then perhaps Billy owes it to them both to give the thing a chance as well.
It’s a good decision, a satisfying one, but it doesn’t stop Billy from wanting to postpone going home on Thursday night for as long as possible. He leaves the campus on foot, taking his time walking through the outskirts of the grounds to the curving lanes of bookstores and little shops catering mostly to Baskerville’s students and their open-minded views of what constitutes food and fashion. He catches the eye of other wandering professors every so often, and Billy lifts a hand in acknowledgment but doesn’t engage in anything more; he’s too distracted to talk shop tonight, and the only company he wants is what he’s gone and denied himself in a moment of fear disguised as caution.
At the step of The Noble Bachelor, something inside Billy freezes up, and he has to talk himself into opening the door, into making Andrew’s prophecy a false one. Once inside and with a glass in his hand Billy feels marginally better, but minutes still pass before he can turn and smile and chat with someone who appears just as nervous. Billy recognizes and remembers the name of only a few people in the pub, where a few months ago, in the company of Andrew or Miranda or even Karl, he might have known or at least been introduced to half the clientele. Everyone seems lit up with from within to Billy, warmed by something that’s not drink, and he envies them that, envies the ease with which they move from one little group to another, their smiles only tilting lower in a moment’s sympathy for someone’s bad day or week before they lift again and laughter rings out. Billy misses the energy of this building and hates it, too; his quieter presence seems unwelcome here now, and he’s abandoned his pint, pushed off from the bar and made his way almost to the door when a hand falls on his arm.
It’s Miranda, and Billy folds into her embrace gratefully for a few seconds before he steps back. She tilts her head and makes to speak before Billy stops her and says simply that he’s not feeling it tonight, that he has work and that it’s fucking hot in here. Miranda’s eyes go very soft before she leans in and kisses Billy’s cheek, but then she chucks it, too, telling Billy he’s spent long enough away, and if he doesn’t return next week she’ll have words for him. Billy’s smile is genuine, and he kisses her, too, before he steps back outside and walks faster now, in the direction of the other side of town.
The Three Gables informally belongs to the professors, and at its bar Billy feels welcomed even when he doesn’t really want to be. He doesn’t love the place by any stretch, but at least here he can sit and not feel as though his silence is disturbing the louder peace of anyone else. Miranda would call him on that, Billy thinks; no one in the Bachelor was disturbed but him, and he would have easily fallen into conversation and cheer with Miranda’s lot if he’d stayed. Fear ran him out of the building, he knows-fear that people would ask after Andrew, fear that they’d wonder what Billy was doing there after such a long absence, fear that even the easy companionship would leave him even more unsettled and unsatisfied than he feels now. But fear’s not always a bad thing, Billy reasons. Fear-even disguised as caution-will keep him and Dominic out of trouble if this … thing that cannot be classified continues.
At the bottom of his glass Billy finds that he wants it to continue, and that if Dominic doesn’t come back tomorrow night he’ll feel disgusted with himself and a bit … shattered, too; splintered, though that’s not the word Billy would choose if he had the ability to find another. What he will not feel is surprised.
He’d love a second pint but shakes off the questioning glance from the barmaid before he’s dragged into the shoptalk he’d dreaded by one of the younger Chairs, one who fancies himself a friend to the professors and doesn’t realize he’s hated as much as any other overlord. Billy acquits himself rather nicely, he thinks, and even laughs at some absurd joke before his smile tightens at the next remark the man makes, something about cutting funding to the Languages department because half the students already speak something other than what they should. The truth? Billy wants to ask but of course does not, and he excuses himself from the bar with a nod in the direction of the loo.
Out the back door and into the streets, Billy sees that more time has passed than he’d thought. Baskerville’s little world is darkening, and Billy’s mood might, too, if he doesn’t get back to his house soon. He moves quickly back onto the campus and toward his car, the evening air sobering him up rudely, and on the way home he stops only for some pad Thai, good beer, and a paper he rarely reads. Anything to see something different, he supposes as he hands over his cash, anything to think something new.
At home Billy devours his dinner while alternately nodding and snorting with derision over articles and comics and sports reports that make him roll his eyes. It’s a welcome distraction, this hour before he has to face the last of the essays, and Billy rises from his couch only to grab his mail and his own paper, making the time stretch to two hours and then three before he acknowledges what he’s doing and surrenders to it, moving from newspapers to books, from the couch to bed. The essays have waited this long; they can wait a little more.
It’s only in his ragged morning rush that Billy remembers he has no intention of marking papers that night. He half-staggers through the day, wondering where the long week has gone and how it got away from him so quickly. Meetings fill the afternoon, and for once Billy’s grateful for that; the droning of embittered colleagues fades into a hum that Billy drowns out now with his own thoughts. He’s barely seen Dominic this week barring classes, and though he’s encouraged Dominic in discussion within the walls of the classroom, he’s been careful to go no further. If Dominic turns up tonight, it will be because he honestly wants to and has agreed to the minor demands Billy’s placed on him and any possible relationship-Billy taps his pen furiously against his tablet at the sound of the word in his thoughts, leaving a run of irritable, dark green dots on the grey paper-and because he wants to. Because even the lure of his friends and more interesting things to do, even the lure of younger and kinder arms into which to fall, can’t top the idea of being with his professor, whatever the many, many risks.
The scrape and shuffle of fifteen mugs of coffee and fifteen pairs of shoes wakens Billy to the fact that the meeting’s ended, and he moves past the crowd of professors still hovering to argue outside the conference room’s doors back to his office, throwing down the tablet and pen and reaching for his briefcase. He’s ready to be gone from here, ready to be home, ready to know what tonight will bring him and, he hopes, prepared for it either way. The essays still require his attention if Dominic does not, and Billy has cigarettes and wine to spare. He can taste them both already, and he drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he waits in traffic, all thoughts of patience flying out the opened window beside him.
The trouble with having just invited Dominic to come tonight is that Billy hadn’t specified when. It hadn’t seemed necessary at the time, but now it’s more excruciating than Billy had imagined to wait and wonder. Even after he’s poured himself a drink and dealt with the mail and the new paper, he’s still restless, and he feels faintly ridiculous pacing his front room still half dressed in what he’s worn all day. He shakes off the nerves and changes clothes, padding barefoot from the bedroom and back into the house and then to the garden, reaching blindly for cigarettes and matches as he nears the desk.
Outside it’s better; Billy settles in the fresh air and tilts his head to light a match and pollute that air sweetly with one of the cigarettes. Rocking back and forth on his heels, Billy takes a hard look around his rapidly darkening back yard, wondering when this, too, got away from him, and why he’d never thought to tidy it up, considering how often he likes to sit out here. Dominic’s words from before come back to him-how nice the place might look if it were taken care of-and for a moment Billy indulges himself in the idea of letting Dominic have at it, letting him form and shape Billy’s garden as he might other things if they continue this … relationship.
It is an indulgent thought, one that he has no intention of speaking aloud, but it fills his mind for long enough that he’s startled by the sound of his gate opening quietly behind him. Billy pivots to watch Dominic slide inside and spin to shut the gate just as quietly, and takes another long hit off the cigarette when Dominic turns back to see him. There’s a pause between them, one more moment of breath they keep holding around each other, and then Dominic advances carefully, not speaking but saying everything possible in the way he holds his ground under Billy’s stare. Fuck risk, Billy thinks, reaching out with his free hand. Fuck everything but this.
The soft crash of lips and teeth feels fantastic, the harder crash of back against brick even better. Dominic releases a small, eager grunt and then laughs, his face flushing hard enough that Billy can see it in only the little light they have left out here. Billy laughs too and pulls at Dominic’s arm, a bit harder than he meant to, but Dominic follows him inside without a word and doesn’t fight when he finds himself against another wall, this time the concrete of Billy’s mudroom. The door creaks in protest as it tries to shut, and Billy kicks it shut absently, plunging them into darkness that silences them, too, for a moment.
“Good choice,” Billy says again, finally, and his voice is hoarse enough that Dominic only nods before it’s his turn to reach and grab and take.