Book 2, Chapter 17: Dependent on the Comfort of Strangeness
Title: Dependent on the Comfort of Strangeness
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy, Dominic
Word count: 2205
Summary: Follows from here.
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.
This is one of few afternoons in which Billy wishes he weren't an advisor. It's not that he's had a run of students coming to him; in fact the opposite is true. He sits alone in his office now, bent over the file in front of him on his desk, opened to its middle, the pages staring blankly back at his narrowed gaze. Billy's scanned the entirety of the file already, and actually read the last several pages, gritting his teeth slightly but being careful not to bend any corners or smudge any ink.
It is not just Billy and Dominic's personal lives that have gone slightly mad since the moment Dominic dropped to his knees in Billy's office. In his position as Dominic's advisor, Billy's spent a few hours today speaking to three of Dominic's professors, casually of course, about Dominic's current performance in their classes, and he has not been encouraged. He's been told that Dominic does not always attend lectures, but that's not a surprise to Billy; after all, he's been an accomplice to and occasional reason for Dominic's skiving off, especially his early morning classes.
What does surprise and displease Billy is that Dominic has seemed more distracted of late to his other professors. Dominic's less interested in discussions, and is quick to rush from class where before he had always been pleasant, engaging his instructors in conversation about anything and everything. He's stopped asking questions unless prompted to do so, apparently thinking he'd receive answers-answers he clearly needed, from the look of his marks-elsewhere, out of class. Billy had nodded slowly and swallowed as he’d heard this from Dominic's creative writing professor, a teacher who obviously adored Dominic, and why wouldn't she? Up until the last few weeks, Dominic had been a model student-and, she had been happy to tell Billy, a good young man: an encourager of his classmates, and a giver of astute constructive criticism, delivered with such charm and good spirits that Dominic's classmates had never been made to feel their work was poor or their place in the class undeserved.
Billy's notes about his visits to Dominic's professors are scrawled in spidery green ink down two pages of an A4 pad, just to the left of a chipped saucer currently littered with ash. However calmly he had gone about his unhappy work today, Billy's exhausted now from holding back his reactions to the other professors' words about Dominic, and from having had so little sleep last night. He’d been tired long before he and Dominic had gone home, after-after that, Billy thinks, refusing to give what had happened a name. Not that can he can avoid thinking about it; the feeling of Dominic pushing him against the office wall Billy's eyes flit to over and over again before he’d swept over Billy completely, desperate in an uglier, more terrifying way than Billy had ever seen, is not one Billy’s likely to forget. And Billy hadn’t stopped him.
Having slipped away from Dominic early this morning, Billy's spent most of the day unreachable and away from this office. He's able to see in a glaring, deeply unflattering light the damage he's done to both himself and Dominic by continuing their relationship, and by allowing it to overrun everything in their lives. It’s not just Dominic who has changed in the past few weeks; Billy has found himself losing the threads of his lectures and begging off engagements with the few friends he has at Baskerville. Miranda especially haunts him at the moment; her voice has been measured, steady in an almost unnerving way as she tells Billy via his answering machine that We should talk, soon. Billy’s also let his work outside of classes-his writing, the only future he sees for himself beyond the walls of academia-slide to the point of stopping, believing his evenings were better spent by Dominic's side, believing Dominic had been keeping up with his work, believing himself happy.
After years of believing in nothing, it had been refreshing.
Billy closes the folder carefully and pushes his chair back and away from his desk. It's late; the building is quiet again, and if it weren't such an act of cowardice-even taking into account what happened here the evening before-Billy thinks he could easily spend the night in his office. It would not be the first time he'd done so, and it would be easier, certainly, than going home to Dominic's ashen, apologetic face and shivering body. But it would not necessarily be any more comfortable.
This is not about comfort, Billy reminds himself sharply. Comfort is what he and Dominic have spent the very few months trying to find, and haven't. Just because their sleep has been deep does not mean it has also been peaceful, and until this situation is resolved Billy can't imagine sleeping a night through again.
When he leaves his office and steps back out into the dirty weather that refuses to move off this side of the country, Billy doesn't bother raising his umbrella or even making a dash for his car. He closes his eyes and lifts his head to the sky, weighing the options of going home or stopping off at the Noble Bachelor for just a short drink, maybe two, just enough to stave off the nerves already beginning to weaken him. But beyond the chance that he’d have to face Miranda and whatever she needed to tell him, there might be other colleagues at the pub who have other things to tell Billy, things he needs to know and doesn't want to. Disappearing into the Reichenbach Fall seems for a moment the better choice, but being surrounded by students, listening to their chatter when he'd sooner hear nothing more than Dominic's voice in anything but an apology, would be hard to take.
The last words he’d heard from Dominic had been a long run of those apologies, to the point where Billy wasn’t sure Dominic even cared what he was apologizing for or why. His own silence in return had to have been unnerving, Billy thinks, but what could he have said? Had they been in the arena of play, Billy could have wrested more than apologies from Dominic and left them both better off; had the whole thing been simply the result of a moment’s or one day’s frustration, he could have turning the evening in the direction of something warmer and kinder. Instead, Billy had spent the hours after Dominic had fallen asleep making apologies of his own to the air and coming to a conclusion he hates, however much he understands it, however much it makes sense.
That conclusion forces his steps toward the car. The rain makes Billy drive more carefully, but only just, and he shivers in the driver's seat, soaked to the skin, letting silence fill the car along with his quick little breaths. Getting home takes longer than it should, and at one point Billy wonders if he's missed his turnoff before he thinks you've missed all of them, you selfish bastard, even the ones marked for you a long time ago.
There's no fire going when he gets inside the house, no dinner scenting the kitchen and making Billy's mouth water. But Dominic is here; Billy feels it right along with his own pulse. He drops his briefcase next to the still unopened mail, next to the past three days' worth of newspapers, and walks through the empty front room and down the hall, knowing Dominic's in the bedroom, knowing he's-
Asleep, shirtless and curled tightly between Billy's pillow and his own, barefoot and breathing heavily in the sort of dreams Billy senses can only be conjured by exhaustion. The duvet’s been kicked down to the end of the bed, and Billy's half-tugged it back up again to cover Dominic's feet before he changes his mind.
Crawling onto the mattress is an easy thing, crawling into the space behind Dominic much harder. Billy closes his eyes and inhales the scent of Dominic's hair, breathes kisses into his skin and forces himself not to speak. For once Dominic doesn’t wake, doesn't turn over and fold himself into Billy's arms. They're both too tired, too far gone. That doesn’t stop Billy from almost wishing Dominic would stir, wishing he could feel that unfamiliar tide of Dominic’s need move over him again, this time gently, this time safely and reciprocated.
Billy's taken Dominic's need for granted more often than not, calling it a fortunate thing but also something he could always sate. But not like this, not by driving them both into the ground and risking everything they’ve earned on their own for the little time and victories they can share. Closing his eyes tighter than before, Billy sees in his mind his notes from the meetings today slurring into each other like bad poetry or a catalogue of mistakes, more his own than Dominic's.
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of life is to live dangerously. Billy's never been a Nietzsche man, not even at his worst and most disappointed with humanity's acceptance of everything and nothing. Dominic had whispered those words to him in the throes of offering everything he had to Billy, and Billy had taken them for granted, too. Dominic had believed them, and together they had put those words to the test in ways large and small. Living dangerously has given them little, Billy thinks, compared to what it's taken from them.
Tomorrow they’ll talk about this-there's no choice anymore-and tomorrow it will end. Billy's chest fills and burns as he silently rehearses the speech he has to give Dominic, and he moves closer, his cheek resting on Dominic's hair and his hand stroking down Dominic's arm, his body settling into the angles of Dominic's. It's when Dominic releases a sigh in his sleep-more a deep hum of satisfaction that goes ragged at its end-that the words begin to sound hollow even in Billy's mind.
This is for the best. Your marks are getting worse, Dom; you’re distracted and I’m part of it, and that cannot happen on my watch, do you understand? We can’t do this. We can't have this anymore.
Your professors are concerned. This is not just about us anymore. Your focus should be on your studies, not on us and not on me.
I am your advisor first, and I’m responsible for getting you through this school, not into bed with me. I've broken every trust you should have had with me.
We took a risk, and we hadn't earned the right to do so. We made a mistake, and we can't afford to make more.
This is not what I want, not anymore than you do, Dominic, you must know that. But this has to end.
Billy's next breath is a harsh one, and he rises from the bed slowly, slipping away before Dominic has a chance to wake and keep him there. Wandering in the silence of the front room is a small relief but a cold one, and Billy wraps his arms around his chest and goes still in the middle of the room, closing his eyes again but finding he can’t keep them shut, can’t settle or be calm. He aches for a drink, for another cigarette, and for his hands to be back on Dominic's skin-and he indulges now in none of these things. His eyes move to the table in front of the couch, and then agonizingly to the box in which rests some of the evidence of Billy’s vices: the rolling paper, the really good pens, Dominic’s cuffs. Billy stares at the box and then leans to pick it up, rising to stow it among the books and other nonsense on the room’s high shelves. The movement knocks the breath out of him as if he’s a much older, frailer man, and Billy pushes his cold hands up into his hair, waiting for that breath to come back.
It takes several long seconds, during which Billy stares into the darkness of the fireplace, willing it to spark and come to life by itself, willing the ashes and broken tinder there to burn again. It would be a matter of five steps or fewer to gather the long matches Billy loves and set the blaze he loves even more, but that heat would be another comfort he hasn't earned. In the bedroom, the headboard creaks plaintively when Dominic turns in his sleep, and Billy’s rattled enough by the sound that he moves to the couch immediately, stretching out only after he’s certain Dominic’s still lost to his dreams, whatever they might be now.
Again Billy wraps his arms around himself and tries to close his eyes, waiting for his own sleep to come. It would have been safer to stay in the office than in a house this haunted, he thinks, safer to deal with ghosts of a hundred mad professors than the ghosts of what’s left of himself and Dominic.
Tomorrow they will talk, and tomorrow it will end. Tonight Billy might sell his soul to dream that it doesn't have to, and that it won't.
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy, Dominic
Word count: 2205
Summary: Follows from here.
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.
This is one of few afternoons in which Billy wishes he weren't an advisor. It's not that he's had a run of students coming to him; in fact the opposite is true. He sits alone in his office now, bent over the file in front of him on his desk, opened to its middle, the pages staring blankly back at his narrowed gaze. Billy's scanned the entirety of the file already, and actually read the last several pages, gritting his teeth slightly but being careful not to bend any corners or smudge any ink.
It is not just Billy and Dominic's personal lives that have gone slightly mad since the moment Dominic dropped to his knees in Billy's office. In his position as Dominic's advisor, Billy's spent a few hours today speaking to three of Dominic's professors, casually of course, about Dominic's current performance in their classes, and he has not been encouraged. He's been told that Dominic does not always attend lectures, but that's not a surprise to Billy; after all, he's been an accomplice to and occasional reason for Dominic's skiving off, especially his early morning classes.
What does surprise and displease Billy is that Dominic has seemed more distracted of late to his other professors. Dominic's less interested in discussions, and is quick to rush from class where before he had always been pleasant, engaging his instructors in conversation about anything and everything. He's stopped asking questions unless prompted to do so, apparently thinking he'd receive answers-answers he clearly needed, from the look of his marks-elsewhere, out of class. Billy had nodded slowly and swallowed as he’d heard this from Dominic's creative writing professor, a teacher who obviously adored Dominic, and why wouldn't she? Up until the last few weeks, Dominic had been a model student-and, she had been happy to tell Billy, a good young man: an encourager of his classmates, and a giver of astute constructive criticism, delivered with such charm and good spirits that Dominic's classmates had never been made to feel their work was poor or their place in the class undeserved.
Billy's notes about his visits to Dominic's professors are scrawled in spidery green ink down two pages of an A4 pad, just to the left of a chipped saucer currently littered with ash. However calmly he had gone about his unhappy work today, Billy's exhausted now from holding back his reactions to the other professors' words about Dominic, and from having had so little sleep last night. He’d been tired long before he and Dominic had gone home, after-after that, Billy thinks, refusing to give what had happened a name. Not that can he can avoid thinking about it; the feeling of Dominic pushing him against the office wall Billy's eyes flit to over and over again before he’d swept over Billy completely, desperate in an uglier, more terrifying way than Billy had ever seen, is not one Billy’s likely to forget. And Billy hadn’t stopped him.
Having slipped away from Dominic early this morning, Billy's spent most of the day unreachable and away from this office. He's able to see in a glaring, deeply unflattering light the damage he's done to both himself and Dominic by continuing their relationship, and by allowing it to overrun everything in their lives. It’s not just Dominic who has changed in the past few weeks; Billy has found himself losing the threads of his lectures and begging off engagements with the few friends he has at Baskerville. Miranda especially haunts him at the moment; her voice has been measured, steady in an almost unnerving way as she tells Billy via his answering machine that We should talk, soon. Billy’s also let his work outside of classes-his writing, the only future he sees for himself beyond the walls of academia-slide to the point of stopping, believing his evenings were better spent by Dominic's side, believing Dominic had been keeping up with his work, believing himself happy.
After years of believing in nothing, it had been refreshing.
Billy closes the folder carefully and pushes his chair back and away from his desk. It's late; the building is quiet again, and if it weren't such an act of cowardice-even taking into account what happened here the evening before-Billy thinks he could easily spend the night in his office. It would not be the first time he'd done so, and it would be easier, certainly, than going home to Dominic's ashen, apologetic face and shivering body. But it would not necessarily be any more comfortable.
This is not about comfort, Billy reminds himself sharply. Comfort is what he and Dominic have spent the very few months trying to find, and haven't. Just because their sleep has been deep does not mean it has also been peaceful, and until this situation is resolved Billy can't imagine sleeping a night through again.
When he leaves his office and steps back out into the dirty weather that refuses to move off this side of the country, Billy doesn't bother raising his umbrella or even making a dash for his car. He closes his eyes and lifts his head to the sky, weighing the options of going home or stopping off at the Noble Bachelor for just a short drink, maybe two, just enough to stave off the nerves already beginning to weaken him. But beyond the chance that he’d have to face Miranda and whatever she needed to tell him, there might be other colleagues at the pub who have other things to tell Billy, things he needs to know and doesn't want to. Disappearing into the Reichenbach Fall seems for a moment the better choice, but being surrounded by students, listening to their chatter when he'd sooner hear nothing more than Dominic's voice in anything but an apology, would be hard to take.
The last words he’d heard from Dominic had been a long run of those apologies, to the point where Billy wasn’t sure Dominic even cared what he was apologizing for or why. His own silence in return had to have been unnerving, Billy thinks, but what could he have said? Had they been in the arena of play, Billy could have wrested more than apologies from Dominic and left them both better off; had the whole thing been simply the result of a moment’s or one day’s frustration, he could have turning the evening in the direction of something warmer and kinder. Instead, Billy had spent the hours after Dominic had fallen asleep making apologies of his own to the air and coming to a conclusion he hates, however much he understands it, however much it makes sense.
That conclusion forces his steps toward the car. The rain makes Billy drive more carefully, but only just, and he shivers in the driver's seat, soaked to the skin, letting silence fill the car along with his quick little breaths. Getting home takes longer than it should, and at one point Billy wonders if he's missed his turnoff before he thinks you've missed all of them, you selfish bastard, even the ones marked for you a long time ago.
There's no fire going when he gets inside the house, no dinner scenting the kitchen and making Billy's mouth water. But Dominic is here; Billy feels it right along with his own pulse. He drops his briefcase next to the still unopened mail, next to the past three days' worth of newspapers, and walks through the empty front room and down the hall, knowing Dominic's in the bedroom, knowing he's-
Asleep, shirtless and curled tightly between Billy's pillow and his own, barefoot and breathing heavily in the sort of dreams Billy senses can only be conjured by exhaustion. The duvet’s been kicked down to the end of the bed, and Billy's half-tugged it back up again to cover Dominic's feet before he changes his mind.
Crawling onto the mattress is an easy thing, crawling into the space behind Dominic much harder. Billy closes his eyes and inhales the scent of Dominic's hair, breathes kisses into his skin and forces himself not to speak. For once Dominic doesn’t wake, doesn't turn over and fold himself into Billy's arms. They're both too tired, too far gone. That doesn’t stop Billy from almost wishing Dominic would stir, wishing he could feel that unfamiliar tide of Dominic’s need move over him again, this time gently, this time safely and reciprocated.
Billy's taken Dominic's need for granted more often than not, calling it a fortunate thing but also something he could always sate. But not like this, not by driving them both into the ground and risking everything they’ve earned on their own for the little time and victories they can share. Closing his eyes tighter than before, Billy sees in his mind his notes from the meetings today slurring into each other like bad poetry or a catalogue of mistakes, more his own than Dominic's.
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of life is to live dangerously. Billy's never been a Nietzsche man, not even at his worst and most disappointed with humanity's acceptance of everything and nothing. Dominic had whispered those words to him in the throes of offering everything he had to Billy, and Billy had taken them for granted, too. Dominic had believed them, and together they had put those words to the test in ways large and small. Living dangerously has given them little, Billy thinks, compared to what it's taken from them.
Tomorrow they’ll talk about this-there's no choice anymore-and tomorrow it will end. Billy's chest fills and burns as he silently rehearses the speech he has to give Dominic, and he moves closer, his cheek resting on Dominic's hair and his hand stroking down Dominic's arm, his body settling into the angles of Dominic's. It's when Dominic releases a sigh in his sleep-more a deep hum of satisfaction that goes ragged at its end-that the words begin to sound hollow even in Billy's mind.
This is for the best. Your marks are getting worse, Dom; you’re distracted and I’m part of it, and that cannot happen on my watch, do you understand? We can’t do this. We can't have this anymore.
Your professors are concerned. This is not just about us anymore. Your focus should be on your studies, not on us and not on me.
I am your advisor first, and I’m responsible for getting you through this school, not into bed with me. I've broken every trust you should have had with me.
We took a risk, and we hadn't earned the right to do so. We made a mistake, and we can't afford to make more.
This is not what I want, not anymore than you do, Dominic, you must know that. But this has to end.
Billy's next breath is a harsh one, and he rises from the bed slowly, slipping away before Dominic has a chance to wake and keep him there. Wandering in the silence of the front room is a small relief but a cold one, and Billy wraps his arms around his chest and goes still in the middle of the room, closing his eyes again but finding he can’t keep them shut, can’t settle or be calm. He aches for a drink, for another cigarette, and for his hands to be back on Dominic's skin-and he indulges now in none of these things. His eyes move to the table in front of the couch, and then agonizingly to the box in which rests some of the evidence of Billy’s vices: the rolling paper, the really good pens, Dominic’s cuffs. Billy stares at the box and then leans to pick it up, rising to stow it among the books and other nonsense on the room’s high shelves. The movement knocks the breath out of him as if he’s a much older, frailer man, and Billy pushes his cold hands up into his hair, waiting for that breath to come back.
It takes several long seconds, during which Billy stares into the darkness of the fireplace, willing it to spark and come to life by itself, willing the ashes and broken tinder there to burn again. It would be a matter of five steps or fewer to gather the long matches Billy loves and set the blaze he loves even more, but that heat would be another comfort he hasn't earned. In the bedroom, the headboard creaks plaintively when Dominic turns in his sleep, and Billy’s rattled enough by the sound that he moves to the couch immediately, stretching out only after he’s certain Dominic’s still lost to his dreams, whatever they might be now.
Again Billy wraps his arms around himself and tries to close his eyes, waiting for his own sleep to come. It would have been safer to stay in the office than in a house this haunted, he thinks, safer to deal with ghosts of a hundred mad professors than the ghosts of what’s left of himself and Dominic.
Tomorrow they will talk, and tomorrow it will end. Tonight Billy might sell his soul to dream that it doesn't have to, and that it won't.