Book 5, Chapter 3: Once to Start a New Life, Once to Start a Fire
Title: Once to Start a New Life, Once to Start a Fire
Authors: kiltsandlollies and escribo, with magickalmolly
Characters: Cate, Billy
Word count: 3214
Summary: The day after the meet and greet, at lunch.
Index
Note: Original text and characterization of Cate created by magickalmolly; in some chapters through this story, we’ve adapted both text and characterization, but Molly’s work happily remains the foundation for Professor Blanchett.
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.
Cate enters the faculty lunchroom and looks around a little dubiously, not quite sure why she's there. Obviously it's lunchtime, and she is hungry, but Cate generally prefers to take her meals alone, away from chitchat and gossip, especially that about people and things she has no desire to know. It's the only time she usually gets to herself during a workday, and she needs the quiet to regroup.
But Cate doesn't have an office yet--tomorrow, definitely tomorrow the Chair has promised her--and after spending the last four hours in a shared office, cramped in a corner with her laptop and class files scattered wherever she could set them, interrupted by a parade of people coming in and out of the polished mahogany door all morning long, Cate had decided that the lunchroom would be a far quieter place to escape for the next hour. Besides, after her stint at St. Andrews, Cate is rather wary of Chairs.
And so Cate shuffles now along in line with her plastic tray, quietly introducing herself to the professors on either side of her while trying to distinguish between the gravy-laden meats displayed behind the steamy glass and quickly determining that she’ll have to bring her lunch every day. Cate smiles politely while she pays for the slightly wilted excuse for a salad she’s chosen, then excuses herself as quickly as she can, being sure to look every bit the reticent biology professor she knows she's rumored to be. Reticent is a polite way to say reclusive, and for now that works for Cate. She prefers to think of herself as selective, and she has no plans to change.
Heading straight for a little table next to a sunny window near the back of the room, Cate drops her valise and her tray before settling into the old chair. She takes a leather journal out from her bag, and within five minutes she is engrossed in her writing, tuning out the chitchat and the gossip going on all around her.
She doesn't hear Professor Boyd approach, or ask if he might join her; she’s working now, her pen quickly scrolling across the page of her journal, dipping and swirling with her handwriting. It's only when she stops to tuck her loose hair back behind her ear does Cate notice Billy standing there at all, a friendly smile on his handsome face. Returning it with one of her own, Cate blushes a bit at having been caught off guard and closes her journal, unconsciously holding it to her chest. She's more pleased to see Billy than she thought she would be, and is surprised he’s come to talk to her at all after last night. Cate had left the meet-and-greet shortly after saying goodbye to Billy, mildly irritated with herself for having relaxed too easily with him, and as much for having turned chilly and sharp before she’d walked away. Not that this slightly unkempt, chirpy professor had necessarily earned more or less than she’d shared with him, but it’s always good to get on the right foot with someone in a new situation, whenever possible. In any case, the man was here now, looking tired but sweet, and Cate feels strangely grateful, if also somewhat confused.
"Good afternoon, Professor Boyd. Please, have a seat." She speaks softly, and Cate watches as he sits, not failing to notice how he moves. He seems stiff, his limbs heavy with the kind of exhaustion that Cate can pleasantly recall coming from a full night of bedsport. Apparently Billy's white rabbit had been rather happy to have Professor Boyd catch her. Keeping her smile soft, Cate leans forward a little in her chair and meets Billy's eyes with her own. One hand rubs along the edge of her journal, just a restless action, and she can feel her cheeks flush a little. "I'm glad you came to speak with me,” she says, shrugging a bit as she continues. “I suppose I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I was nervous, and I’d just. Well, you were there, you’d had a bit, too, yes? So."
“So,” Billy ends it for both of them. His own face is suddenly rosy, but then his features twist a little in concern before he laughs it off, waving a hand in the air. “I wasn’t at my best, either. It was a long day.” Cate watches him take a long draw of his coffee, and the tired delight that moves over his face as he swallows. “I don’t usually go to those things, anyway,” he tells her. “You can imagine why. But no, you were great; it was fantastic to meet you. I actually came t’apologize to you. I was a bit--out of order. It’s none of my business, what I asked.”
Billy leans conspiratorially across the table, still smiling, and Cate leans in too, smiling as Billy lowers his voice. “But just here, between us, yeah? St. Andrews will leave a mark on anybody, so good on you for getting out. The administration stands on these pillars of intellectual freedom, but at the slightest hint of dissension in the ranks, well ...” Cate tilts her head, waiting for more, and then works hard hard to hide her slow-growing amusement as Billy rambles. This isn’t gossip; she knows what he means and about whom he’s speaking, in broad terms, anyway, and the moment allows her the opportunity to have the better look at him she’d not had the previous night, watching his body language, learning his little unconscious movements and tics. It's a habit she's picked up from her years of studying animal behavior, and Cate finds it useful to be able to tell what people are thinking, and more important, what they don’t even know they’re thinking.
Billy’s skin is prone to flushing, but each time it’s different, and Cate has to fight the urge to open her journal and take notes as he talks, just so she can record the results. The most attractive of them glows across his cheeks, hinting at the thoughts that are coming to Billy, most likely unbidden. Little flashes of attraction, perhaps, Cate thinks, and then wonders if she’s making a leap of even her own precise, earned logic.
After a few moments, Billy seems to lose his train of thought, and he leans back in his chair, stretching and stifling a yawn. “Can you tell I don’t come in here often either?” he laughs, then his face turns more serious. “I had no intention of offending you,” he says, his apology more confident than many Cate’s heard from men in most areas of her life. “So I suppose I just came to welcome you to the university properly. Soberly,” he laughs. Billy’s eyes fall to the journal Cate hold, and he blinks before he looks up again.
“That’s a beautiful book,” Billy murmurs. “I’ve got one just like it.”
"Thank you,” Cate nods, pulling the book out of her grasp and lays it on the table, one hand softly caressing over the black leather while she talks. “You didn’t offend me at all, Billy--you don’t mind if I call you Bill?” At Billy’s wide smile and the shake of his head, Cate nods again. “I’m rather fond of this book myself. I honestly go through them so quickly I have a stack of empty ones at home, waiting to be used. I fill them with notes, findings, and a lot of my studies. Right now I'm working with spiders; they're quite interesting."
She flips the book open so Billy can see, feeling just as passionate and eager to talk about her work as he was last night to talk about philosophy. The pages in her book are filled with notes and drawings--Cate had studied art as a hobby, and her talent has come in handy for sketching different classifications of species for later reference--and she allows Billy to look through it, curious of his thoughts. Her desire for his opinion takes Cate completely by surprise.
Billy takes the notebook from Cate’s hands, positioning it so they can both read and look at the pages, but his hand brushes against hers in the process, and Cate feels the skin on his wrist and forearm prickle up in response. Billy doesn’t blink, and that pleases Cate, too; he’s not afraid of innocuous contact, as so many she knows have been, and could be open to far more. Cate finds herself looking over Billy’s features again, but this time not for any other reason than because he is attractive. His eyes especially, are fascinating; pale and watery green one moment, vibrant the next. Cate indulges herself by imaging them moving over something or someone more instantly enjoyable than her classifications and detailed explanations of scillia, of venom, of habitat, of nature and nurture in these creatures she knows and loves so well--and the thought makes a little shiver run down her back. Fortunately Billy’s speaking again, and Cate welcomes the chance to refocus.
“You’re brilliant.” The words tumble from Billy’s mouth, and Cate laughs as he unconsciously bites down on his bottom lip, looking back at the journal and one particularly fascinating drawing. “This is brilliant, I mean. I never knew, well, I knew, but I suppose I never paid much attention to their differences. A spider is a spider is a dead thing in my world,” Billy laughs. “I guess I never had a reason to fancy them like you do.”
Billy runs one finger along the soft rounded line of a spider’s belly in the journal, and takes a deep breath when his fingernail makes an indentation in the fine paper. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “It’s just an incredible drawing. That’s a black widow, yeah?” He smiles seconds after Cate does, and reaches for his coffee once more.
“It’s good you brought more of these, Cate,” he sighs, turning over the cover of the journal to caress the leather. “They’re fine things, and you can’t find them within fifty kilometres of here.” Billy sits back a little, still holding Cate’s journal in his hands, weighing it like a prize before he locks his gaze with hers and speaks again. “At the risk of offending you again,” he says. “You have hands meant for art, for air, not for earth. Why biology? Why--” he pauses again, and Cate watches his hands trail along the edges of the journal’s paper, fluttering them so they make a quiet shhh at his touch. “Why spiders, Cate?”
"Biology is art,” Cate says simply, leaning closer to Billy and taking hold of the journal, but just enough to open it again, letting it rest in Billy's hands. Her shoulder brushes against his as she flips the pages, and when she finds what she's looking for, she sits back a bit, but doesn't move away. “All of nature has a beauty to it, and science shows us that beauty on an intimate level."
She points toward the photograph stuck down on the page; it shows herself, standing out in the Amazon rain forest, an enormous spiderweb spread between two limbs of a tree behind her. The dirty khaki shorts and shirt she wears in the photo make quite a contrast to what she’s wearing today, but her appearance isn't the point in showing Billy this snapshot, and Cate pulls the photo from the page and holds it up, pointing to the web.
"That right there; that's why. People think spiders are frightening, vicious creatures, but look at what they create. Have you ever watched a spider spin a web, Bill? It's like a dance. They're so graceful, each delicate movement is precise and elegant. And their webs allow them to capture their prey, so this beauty is their necessity; they need this art to survive."
Her point made, Cate sits back and smiles, and Billy nods, his fingers still moving over the lovely paper of the journal. “I suppose I never wanted to see beauty quite that intimately,” he laughs. “In the form of a spider, anyway. You’ve almost convinced me to think twice before I step on the next one I see. Almost. And of course, you’re welcome to take your best shot at Kant.”
He reaches for the snapshot Cate still holds, and takes it from her hand without asking--a breach of protocol Cate can see he instantly regrets, but one she excuses with a nod of her own--and holds it up to the light of the window to get a better look. The woman in the photograph is only slightly younger than Cate appears now, she knows, but there is something different, something gentler and softer about the her that others who’ve seen the picture have remarked on. Billy’s eyes flit from Cate herself across the table to the warmer, tanned and earthy woman in the picture, and his gaze settles there before he speaks.
“You like to watch the dance, do you not, Cate? You like to watch them spin their webs. You called it art; I suppose you’re the visitor to their museum. I suppose that’s what we all are. I envy you the ability to watch and wait. I envy the patience you must have to do so.” His voice has gone slurry and tired, Cate notices, and his smile is a bit weary now. “I think I’m more interested in the survival than the art these days. And while I appreciate precision, I’ll be the last to demand elegance from creation. Elegance can be manufactured, and I prefer my nature as raw as it’s willing to show itself.”
Billy presses the picture back into Cate’s open hand, his smile relaxing again. “Your work is fascinating,” he says. “I wish I had the background to appreciate it better.” He holds Cate’s journal once more, fingers tracing along the endpapers, and then peers over to the his coffee cup, but when he reaches for it, his finger slides along the edge of a page, slicing the skin neatly.
“Shite,” he gasps, shaking his hand in the air and pushing the journal away. “Sorry, sorry. Have I stained it?”
Cate's action is pure instinct. Her hand shoots out across the table, neatly capturing Billy's fingers in a gentle but unbreakable grip. She takes in the sight of the thin line of blood welling up over his fingertip, crimson against his skin, and she brings his hand closer. Parting her lips, Cate draws Billy's finger into her mouth and softly sucks on it. The taste of his blood is coppery against her tongue, and her taste buds prick with the warm tanginess that is the flavor of Billy's skin.
Gently moving her tongue across the cut, Cate justifies to herself that her actions are meant to soothe, to clean the wound and start the healing process, but she realizes too late that her impulse has taken the professor by surprise. Billy stares at her wide-eyed and a bit slack-jawed, and he doesn't seem to know what to make of the situation, other than what Cate can see working in the back of his mind: he knows what she’s doing: it’s instinctual and common and obvious. But at the same time, it’s something more, and Billy looks wildly unprepared for the shock Cate knows her touch is capable of bringing to anyone’s skin. Cate slips his finger from her mouth quickly, but doesn't release his hand, covering up her discomfort by fumbling for a napkin from the stack on her tray. She dabs at Billy's finger carefully, more detached now, and glances around the room to make sure no one else has seen what just occurred.
"I'm sorry." Flicking her eyes up to where Billy is still silently watching her, she gives him a small, apologetic smile, hoping he’s not the one potentially offended now; he might be a bit different from the other professors she’d met so quickly last night, but he’s easily the most interesting and appealing, and there is a fierceness behind Billy’s blushes and those eyes. Setting the crumpled napkin aside, Cate inspects Billy's finger in a purely professional manner. The cut has already mostly closed, and the faint line cutting across his skin is hardly visible.
"That should be alright if you keep it clean. Paper cuts have a tendency to become infected--" Cate cuts herself off with a laugh, realizing that she sounds as if she’s lecturing a child here, not a man likely older than herself. She pats Billy’s hand once, then releases it, only now remembering to check her journal. There is a faint smudge of blood on the edge of the page that Billy cut himself on, but otherwise the pages are clean. Cate’s smile turns pleasantly as she finds herself sorry there isn't more of a mark left behind.
“Thank you,” Billy says softly. “I am sorry. I’ll go and have a look at it in the washroom.” He reaches for his coffee cup, slower and more carefully this time, but when he makes to stand, Cate watches him discover that he’s still too rattled. And terribly tired all of a sudden, Cate thinks; she can't help but to wonder what it is that's troubling him. This is a mental weariness, not simply physical, and as much as Cate wants to ask what's troubling him, she doesn't feel the question would be that well received. It's certainly none of her business, and considering they've only met, that makes it even less so. Billy sinks back into the chair, looking younger now, and runs his unharmed hand through his hair, his chin rising as Billy unknowingly offers Cate a clear view of his pale throat. Blooming red across the skin close to his Adam's apple are marks, certain and deliberate, and Cate feels a strange jealously swell in the pit of her belly at the sight. It’s irrational, yes, she can admit that much, but it’s jealously nonetheless, and her concern for Billy's well-being melts away like ice left out on hot pavement.
Cate forces herself to count to ten before she gathers up her journal and her valise. There’s no reason she should feel anything but amusement or pity for the professor at the moment; they can certainly be friends, and anything else that might come in the future, well. She doesn't want to rush off again in a huff like she did last night, and as she rises from her chair she puts her calmest, kindest smile on her face.
"You look tired, Professor Boyd. Marking all those papers last night seems to have worn you out. I should get back to work myself, but thank you for stopping to talk with me. I appreciate it." Cate shoulders her valise and shakes her head when Billy starts to rise from his chair. "No, don't bother. You stay and finish your coffee; I’m sure I'll see each other soon."
Authors: kiltsandlollies and escribo, with magickalmolly
Characters: Cate, Billy
Word count: 3214
Summary: The day after the meet and greet, at lunch.
Index
Note: Original text and characterization of Cate created by magickalmolly; in some chapters through this story, we’ve adapted both text and characterization, but Molly’s work happily remains the foundation for Professor Blanchett.
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.
Cate enters the faculty lunchroom and looks around a little dubiously, not quite sure why she's there. Obviously it's lunchtime, and she is hungry, but Cate generally prefers to take her meals alone, away from chitchat and gossip, especially that about people and things she has no desire to know. It's the only time she usually gets to herself during a workday, and she needs the quiet to regroup.
But Cate doesn't have an office yet--tomorrow, definitely tomorrow the Chair has promised her--and after spending the last four hours in a shared office, cramped in a corner with her laptop and class files scattered wherever she could set them, interrupted by a parade of people coming in and out of the polished mahogany door all morning long, Cate had decided that the lunchroom would be a far quieter place to escape for the next hour. Besides, after her stint at St. Andrews, Cate is rather wary of Chairs.
And so Cate shuffles now along in line with her plastic tray, quietly introducing herself to the professors on either side of her while trying to distinguish between the gravy-laden meats displayed behind the steamy glass and quickly determining that she’ll have to bring her lunch every day. Cate smiles politely while she pays for the slightly wilted excuse for a salad she’s chosen, then excuses herself as quickly as she can, being sure to look every bit the reticent biology professor she knows she's rumored to be. Reticent is a polite way to say reclusive, and for now that works for Cate. She prefers to think of herself as selective, and she has no plans to change.
Heading straight for a little table next to a sunny window near the back of the room, Cate drops her valise and her tray before settling into the old chair. She takes a leather journal out from her bag, and within five minutes she is engrossed in her writing, tuning out the chitchat and the gossip going on all around her.
She doesn't hear Professor Boyd approach, or ask if he might join her; she’s working now, her pen quickly scrolling across the page of her journal, dipping and swirling with her handwriting. It's only when she stops to tuck her loose hair back behind her ear does Cate notice Billy standing there at all, a friendly smile on his handsome face. Returning it with one of her own, Cate blushes a bit at having been caught off guard and closes her journal, unconsciously holding it to her chest. She's more pleased to see Billy than she thought she would be, and is surprised he’s come to talk to her at all after last night. Cate had left the meet-and-greet shortly after saying goodbye to Billy, mildly irritated with herself for having relaxed too easily with him, and as much for having turned chilly and sharp before she’d walked away. Not that this slightly unkempt, chirpy professor had necessarily earned more or less than she’d shared with him, but it’s always good to get on the right foot with someone in a new situation, whenever possible. In any case, the man was here now, looking tired but sweet, and Cate feels strangely grateful, if also somewhat confused.
"Good afternoon, Professor Boyd. Please, have a seat." She speaks softly, and Cate watches as he sits, not failing to notice how he moves. He seems stiff, his limbs heavy with the kind of exhaustion that Cate can pleasantly recall coming from a full night of bedsport. Apparently Billy's white rabbit had been rather happy to have Professor Boyd catch her. Keeping her smile soft, Cate leans forward a little in her chair and meets Billy's eyes with her own. One hand rubs along the edge of her journal, just a restless action, and she can feel her cheeks flush a little. "I'm glad you came to speak with me,” she says, shrugging a bit as she continues. “I suppose I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I was nervous, and I’d just. Well, you were there, you’d had a bit, too, yes? So."
“So,” Billy ends it for both of them. His own face is suddenly rosy, but then his features twist a little in concern before he laughs it off, waving a hand in the air. “I wasn’t at my best, either. It was a long day.” Cate watches him take a long draw of his coffee, and the tired delight that moves over his face as he swallows. “I don’t usually go to those things, anyway,” he tells her. “You can imagine why. But no, you were great; it was fantastic to meet you. I actually came t’apologize to you. I was a bit--out of order. It’s none of my business, what I asked.”
Billy leans conspiratorially across the table, still smiling, and Cate leans in too, smiling as Billy lowers his voice. “But just here, between us, yeah? St. Andrews will leave a mark on anybody, so good on you for getting out. The administration stands on these pillars of intellectual freedom, but at the slightest hint of dissension in the ranks, well ...” Cate tilts her head, waiting for more, and then works hard hard to hide her slow-growing amusement as Billy rambles. This isn’t gossip; she knows what he means and about whom he’s speaking, in broad terms, anyway, and the moment allows her the opportunity to have the better look at him she’d not had the previous night, watching his body language, learning his little unconscious movements and tics. It's a habit she's picked up from her years of studying animal behavior, and Cate finds it useful to be able to tell what people are thinking, and more important, what they don’t even know they’re thinking.
Billy’s skin is prone to flushing, but each time it’s different, and Cate has to fight the urge to open her journal and take notes as he talks, just so she can record the results. The most attractive of them glows across his cheeks, hinting at the thoughts that are coming to Billy, most likely unbidden. Little flashes of attraction, perhaps, Cate thinks, and then wonders if she’s making a leap of even her own precise, earned logic.
After a few moments, Billy seems to lose his train of thought, and he leans back in his chair, stretching and stifling a yawn. “Can you tell I don’t come in here often either?” he laughs, then his face turns more serious. “I had no intention of offending you,” he says, his apology more confident than many Cate’s heard from men in most areas of her life. “So I suppose I just came to welcome you to the university properly. Soberly,” he laughs. Billy’s eyes fall to the journal Cate hold, and he blinks before he looks up again.
“That’s a beautiful book,” Billy murmurs. “I’ve got one just like it.”
"Thank you,” Cate nods, pulling the book out of her grasp and lays it on the table, one hand softly caressing over the black leather while she talks. “You didn’t offend me at all, Billy--you don’t mind if I call you Bill?” At Billy’s wide smile and the shake of his head, Cate nods again. “I’m rather fond of this book myself. I honestly go through them so quickly I have a stack of empty ones at home, waiting to be used. I fill them with notes, findings, and a lot of my studies. Right now I'm working with spiders; they're quite interesting."
She flips the book open so Billy can see, feeling just as passionate and eager to talk about her work as he was last night to talk about philosophy. The pages in her book are filled with notes and drawings--Cate had studied art as a hobby, and her talent has come in handy for sketching different classifications of species for later reference--and she allows Billy to look through it, curious of his thoughts. Her desire for his opinion takes Cate completely by surprise.
Billy takes the notebook from Cate’s hands, positioning it so they can both read and look at the pages, but his hand brushes against hers in the process, and Cate feels the skin on his wrist and forearm prickle up in response. Billy doesn’t blink, and that pleases Cate, too; he’s not afraid of innocuous contact, as so many she knows have been, and could be open to far more. Cate finds herself looking over Billy’s features again, but this time not for any other reason than because he is attractive. His eyes especially, are fascinating; pale and watery green one moment, vibrant the next. Cate indulges herself by imaging them moving over something or someone more instantly enjoyable than her classifications and detailed explanations of scillia, of venom, of habitat, of nature and nurture in these creatures she knows and loves so well--and the thought makes a little shiver run down her back. Fortunately Billy’s speaking again, and Cate welcomes the chance to refocus.
“You’re brilliant.” The words tumble from Billy’s mouth, and Cate laughs as he unconsciously bites down on his bottom lip, looking back at the journal and one particularly fascinating drawing. “This is brilliant, I mean. I never knew, well, I knew, but I suppose I never paid much attention to their differences. A spider is a spider is a dead thing in my world,” Billy laughs. “I guess I never had a reason to fancy them like you do.”
Billy runs one finger along the soft rounded line of a spider’s belly in the journal, and takes a deep breath when his fingernail makes an indentation in the fine paper. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “It’s just an incredible drawing. That’s a black widow, yeah?” He smiles seconds after Cate does, and reaches for his coffee once more.
“It’s good you brought more of these, Cate,” he sighs, turning over the cover of the journal to caress the leather. “They’re fine things, and you can’t find them within fifty kilometres of here.” Billy sits back a little, still holding Cate’s journal in his hands, weighing it like a prize before he locks his gaze with hers and speaks again. “At the risk of offending you again,” he says. “You have hands meant for art, for air, not for earth. Why biology? Why--” he pauses again, and Cate watches his hands trail along the edges of the journal’s paper, fluttering them so they make a quiet shhh at his touch. “Why spiders, Cate?”
"Biology is art,” Cate says simply, leaning closer to Billy and taking hold of the journal, but just enough to open it again, letting it rest in Billy's hands. Her shoulder brushes against his as she flips the pages, and when she finds what she's looking for, she sits back a bit, but doesn't move away. “All of nature has a beauty to it, and science shows us that beauty on an intimate level."
She points toward the photograph stuck down on the page; it shows herself, standing out in the Amazon rain forest, an enormous spiderweb spread between two limbs of a tree behind her. The dirty khaki shorts and shirt she wears in the photo make quite a contrast to what she’s wearing today, but her appearance isn't the point in showing Billy this snapshot, and Cate pulls the photo from the page and holds it up, pointing to the web.
"That right there; that's why. People think spiders are frightening, vicious creatures, but look at what they create. Have you ever watched a spider spin a web, Bill? It's like a dance. They're so graceful, each delicate movement is precise and elegant. And their webs allow them to capture their prey, so this beauty is their necessity; they need this art to survive."
Her point made, Cate sits back and smiles, and Billy nods, his fingers still moving over the lovely paper of the journal. “I suppose I never wanted to see beauty quite that intimately,” he laughs. “In the form of a spider, anyway. You’ve almost convinced me to think twice before I step on the next one I see. Almost. And of course, you’re welcome to take your best shot at Kant.”
He reaches for the snapshot Cate still holds, and takes it from her hand without asking--a breach of protocol Cate can see he instantly regrets, but one she excuses with a nod of her own--and holds it up to the light of the window to get a better look. The woman in the photograph is only slightly younger than Cate appears now, she knows, but there is something different, something gentler and softer about the her that others who’ve seen the picture have remarked on. Billy’s eyes flit from Cate herself across the table to the warmer, tanned and earthy woman in the picture, and his gaze settles there before he speaks.
“You like to watch the dance, do you not, Cate? You like to watch them spin their webs. You called it art; I suppose you’re the visitor to their museum. I suppose that’s what we all are. I envy you the ability to watch and wait. I envy the patience you must have to do so.” His voice has gone slurry and tired, Cate notices, and his smile is a bit weary now. “I think I’m more interested in the survival than the art these days. And while I appreciate precision, I’ll be the last to demand elegance from creation. Elegance can be manufactured, and I prefer my nature as raw as it’s willing to show itself.”
Billy presses the picture back into Cate’s open hand, his smile relaxing again. “Your work is fascinating,” he says. “I wish I had the background to appreciate it better.” He holds Cate’s journal once more, fingers tracing along the endpapers, and then peers over to the his coffee cup, but when he reaches for it, his finger slides along the edge of a page, slicing the skin neatly.
“Shite,” he gasps, shaking his hand in the air and pushing the journal away. “Sorry, sorry. Have I stained it?”
Cate's action is pure instinct. Her hand shoots out across the table, neatly capturing Billy's fingers in a gentle but unbreakable grip. She takes in the sight of the thin line of blood welling up over his fingertip, crimson against his skin, and she brings his hand closer. Parting her lips, Cate draws Billy's finger into her mouth and softly sucks on it. The taste of his blood is coppery against her tongue, and her taste buds prick with the warm tanginess that is the flavor of Billy's skin.
Gently moving her tongue across the cut, Cate justifies to herself that her actions are meant to soothe, to clean the wound and start the healing process, but she realizes too late that her impulse has taken the professor by surprise. Billy stares at her wide-eyed and a bit slack-jawed, and he doesn't seem to know what to make of the situation, other than what Cate can see working in the back of his mind: he knows what she’s doing: it’s instinctual and common and obvious. But at the same time, it’s something more, and Billy looks wildly unprepared for the shock Cate knows her touch is capable of bringing to anyone’s skin. Cate slips his finger from her mouth quickly, but doesn't release his hand, covering up her discomfort by fumbling for a napkin from the stack on her tray. She dabs at Billy's finger carefully, more detached now, and glances around the room to make sure no one else has seen what just occurred.
"I'm sorry." Flicking her eyes up to where Billy is still silently watching her, she gives him a small, apologetic smile, hoping he’s not the one potentially offended now; he might be a bit different from the other professors she’d met so quickly last night, but he’s easily the most interesting and appealing, and there is a fierceness behind Billy’s blushes and those eyes. Setting the crumpled napkin aside, Cate inspects Billy's finger in a purely professional manner. The cut has already mostly closed, and the faint line cutting across his skin is hardly visible.
"That should be alright if you keep it clean. Paper cuts have a tendency to become infected--" Cate cuts herself off with a laugh, realizing that she sounds as if she’s lecturing a child here, not a man likely older than herself. She pats Billy’s hand once, then releases it, only now remembering to check her journal. There is a faint smudge of blood on the edge of the page that Billy cut himself on, but otherwise the pages are clean. Cate’s smile turns pleasantly as she finds herself sorry there isn't more of a mark left behind.
“Thank you,” Billy says softly. “I am sorry. I’ll go and have a look at it in the washroom.” He reaches for his coffee cup, slower and more carefully this time, but when he makes to stand, Cate watches him discover that he’s still too rattled. And terribly tired all of a sudden, Cate thinks; she can't help but to wonder what it is that's troubling him. This is a mental weariness, not simply physical, and as much as Cate wants to ask what's troubling him, she doesn't feel the question would be that well received. It's certainly none of her business, and considering they've only met, that makes it even less so. Billy sinks back into the chair, looking younger now, and runs his unharmed hand through his hair, his chin rising as Billy unknowingly offers Cate a clear view of his pale throat. Blooming red across the skin close to his Adam's apple are marks, certain and deliberate, and Cate feels a strange jealously swell in the pit of her belly at the sight. It’s irrational, yes, she can admit that much, but it’s jealously nonetheless, and her concern for Billy's well-being melts away like ice left out on hot pavement.
Cate forces herself to count to ten before she gathers up her journal and her valise. There’s no reason she should feel anything but amusement or pity for the professor at the moment; they can certainly be friends, and anything else that might come in the future, well. She doesn't want to rush off again in a huff like she did last night, and as she rises from her chair she puts her calmest, kindest smile on her face.
"You look tired, Professor Boyd. Marking all those papers last night seems to have worn you out. I should get back to work myself, but thank you for stopping to talk with me. I appreciate it." Cate shoulders her valise and shakes her head when Billy starts to rise from his chair. "No, don't bother. You stay and finish your coffee; I’m sure I'll see each other soon."