Thursday Night
The evening of the Open Call, the Bill/Johnny Convo, and the Bill/Orlando Convo.
Bill pulls the Mini half onto Johnny's drive and half on the grass. There's plenty of room at the moment, but once he's ready to go, he's not interested in getting blocked in. In his experience, when he's ready to get away from the DBY crew, he's ready now.( ... )
Bill pulls the Mini half onto Johnny's drive and half on the grass. There's plenty of room at the moment, but once he's ready to go, he's not interested in getting blocked in. In his experience, when he's ready to get away from the DBY crew, he's ready now.( ... )
His mind inevitably ratchets backward, a casette tape reel doing a jerky, unpleasant rewind, and the room is bright and the upholstery is expensive and the carpet is deep pile and so soft that Bill's boots sink at least an inch into it, and it's the most unlikely place in the world for a gunfight, and the two stupid twats beside him are both still standing, staring, three shots in, and Bill shoves (Orlando) the bloke closest to him and shoots at the same time, steps to the side to shield him (Orlando) with his body and feels the (searingly bright pain and the spill of superheated blood down his thigh inside his trousers, and hours later, doped to the gills from surgery but coming down, he'll ponder how the feel of the blood trickling rivulets of body-temperature liquid death down his leg had bothered him more than the pain of being shot) bullet slam into this thigh, and one of the fuckers Bill'd shot is screaming, high and gurgling and ceaseless --
He closes his eyes tight for a moment and sees white starbursts, and when he opens them Johnny is still gazing earnestly at him from across the table, his eyes dark and cloudy with drugs and champagne which don't quite hide the weariness lurking behind them.
Bill has fucked up that hard, so fucking hard the world seems to crumble under his feet, but...
It wasn't that time. Saving Orlando was not that kind of fuck up.
But he says, "Yeah, John, I know just what you fucking mean."
Reply
"Thanks, man." He lights up, leans his head back and blows a couple rings at the ceiling, watches them break up as they start to float away. Metafuckinphors, again, man, it's like... "Shit."
He shakes his head again. "I didn't talk to Orlando. I mean, I can't, like. I can't tell him he shouldn't be using, right, I can't, I ain't got a fuckin' leg to stand on, moral fuckin... high ground, fuck it, I'm in a hole m'self, you know, Bill, I-"
Johnny swings his other foot to the floor, leans up and forward to brace his elbows on his knees.
"I do love him," he says clearly, "but I can't help him. I can't even help myself, right now, and I'm more than a little fucked up right now, so, you know, if you ever mention this again, I will fuckin' kill you, okay? But the truth is I am goddamn tired of fixing shit. I got everything I ever wanted, Bill, and I don't want any of it, I don't want the... responsitilty. Responsibility. I don't want to be the guy that got this far because he sold out, okay, I'm sick of that, so like, here it is, Bill, and I got no idea why I'm telling you all this except for I figure you know the weight of a secret, this kind, you know-" Johnny presses the heel of his hand to his chest.
"-and I figure you get it, how fuckin' exhausting it is to be always making up for your fuckups, fixing shit for other people to clean up your karma, like, like, that's going to make up for it, balance it out, like loving that kid is going to make up for not loving somebody else enough, before. I figure you get it, so, you know, sorry, man, it's like, fuckin'... Keep swimming." He laughs. It sounds like smoke, bitter and acrid. "Keep swimming."
Reply
He stands, and Johnny's brows slide upward in question. "Hang on," Bill says, and Johnny nods, his brows returning to their normal resting place above his eyes, if a bit knotted together in puzzlement. Bill turns away, and manages to get to the kitchen before he runs a hand through his hair, ignoring the dampness of his palm.
He is deeply unnerved. He is deeply fucking unnerved, and he's not even sure what it is that's got his hackles up. It's just... Johnny, as ridiculously eccentric as he is, has always been so fucking stable. Fucking solid, in spite of his nebulous-ness, sharp and present in spite of his singular lack of lucidity, and Bill should have fucking seen this. He's never been so bloody blind and useless, and he's not sure if he's more angry or fucking ashamed.
He jerks his head to one side hard, and his neck gives a satisfyingly loud, pseudo-painful crack, followed by a few seconds of instense relief.
It takes him a few seconds to suss out the hard liquor -- cupboard above the fridge, and Johnny's stocked, which isn't a surprise -- and snags himself a bottle of The Macallan (which he can barely fucking reach, bloody tall people). A glance at the label, and Bill's eyebrows snap upward. "Nice," he mutters, and snags a tumbled from two cupboards over from the booze.
When he walks back into the living room, Johnny's got his head tipped back on the back of the sofa. There's a lit joint idling between his lips, and his hands are together in his lap, still, but holding each other.
"Right," Bill says, and Johnny opens one eye to regard him. Bill tips the bottle toward him. "Top fucking shelf, Johnny. Do you mind?"
Reply
Buy your silence with eighteen year old Scotch, whatever works, man, whatever... Just, whatever. He folds his hands in his lap again, cracks a couple of knuckles and then takes hold of the joint to hit it properly. Bittersweet rush in his lungs; he holds it a long, long time, before letting a thin stream smoke seep from his nose.
"We'll be a'ight," Johnny drawls, watching Bill toss back two fingers worth of Scotch and then pour another. "What we do, right? Gotta put our game faces on... Bill, I don't 'spect you'll ever tell me everything, I don't figure you're ready to-" he hits the joint again, watching Bill drink, watching through the smoke as Bill watches him over his glass. He exhales.
"-ready to unload what's weighing you down, man, and I get that, like, it's like, not your thing, and I get that, I really do, and you know what, talkin' about it doesn't actually help because, y'know what, I do believe I feel worse right about now." Johnny drops the joint in the ashtray, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, and he sees bright colors and patterns swirling for a moment before the normal, dull grey, world returns.
It used to be that bright all the time, once. He's pretty damned sure it'll never be again.
Reply
Then he downs that, too.
Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!
He spends several seconds roundly cursing his psychology degree -- clearly useless -- and then several more watching Johnny jam his eyes into the back of his head with the heels of his hands.
Bill's not a fucking therapist, just barely gets by as a human being, in fact, and he finds it funny, in a bitter, viciously self-loathing way, that he can lie and manipulate and twist the perceptions of others to suit his own ends, and he can't fucking comfort Johnny -- who he genuinely fucking likes -- when he's falling apart in front of Bill's eyes, can't even fucking commiserate without tripping all over his own lies, and if he had to fucking take a shot for every lie he's ever told this man, well...
Bill sincerely doubts Johnny has that much fucking whiskey.
"I don't remember how to unload," he mutters. He pours a shot, downs it, and glances up in surprise when Johnny's hand curls around his wrist as Bill's hand is closing around the neck of the bottle again.
"Hey," Johnny says, concern glimmering through the haze of his eyes for a moment. "Hey, go easy, man."
There's a question in there, buried in the statement, implied but never stated, as Johnny isn't the prying sort.
Bill swallows a lungful of bitter laughter and nods toward the joint, still lit and smoldering in the ashtray, and makes a very slight gesture with two fingers indicating the unlit joint Johnny's already holding in his fucking hand. "I will if you will, mate," he grinds out, shaved-glass-amusement prickling his throat along with the burn of the whiskey.
Reply
"Florence fuckin' Nightingale or something," he mutters, "Man, I need some coffee. People gonna be here in an hour or something, I gotta-"
Johnny wipes his eyes on the back of his hand, just watering, man, that's it, lotta smoke in here. He pulls himself to his feet, pinching the bridge of his nose, and one foot in front of the other goes over to the sliding glass doors at the back of the room, opens them for a rush of warm evening air. He looks out across the backyard, braces his forearm on the doorframe above his head. Orlando's cottage is still dark.
"Gotta get my shit together," he says, breathing deep the air for a moment before he turns back to Bill with a grin.
And chimpanzees, they only grin when they're frightened or angry, three guesses which one he is, man, and "You know what, Bill?" he says.
Bill twitches his chin, eyebrows flicking upward. "What?"
Johnny shrugs, makes a helpless gesture, palms up and out. "I am one sadass fuckin' monkey, man." He shrugs again, doesn't wait for a reaction before stumbling back across the room, toward the kitchen. "Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee."
Reply
He pulls the coffee maker out from the wall (Capresso, reads the elegant lettering near the top of the machine, and Bill smiles slightly) and plugs it in. The entire back detaches, and Johnny holds it under the tap until it's full and then slides it back onto the machine. He tugs the carafe out of the space between hotplate and basket, and Bill listens to the glass chatter against the surface of the countertop for an instant before Johnny lets go.
Johnny's hands are shaking slightly. He struggles with the foil bag of coffee, muttering under his breath, and Bill just can't fucking stand it.
He moves to stand beside Johnny and relieves him of the bag of coffee, using both thumbs to bend back the little plastic bits that hold the flap closed. Johnny reaches to take it from Bill once it's open, and Bill nudges him gently out of the way with one elbow. "Bugger off," he says casually. "I want to be able to drink this without straining the grounds through my teeth first."
Johnny growls a non-answer, but steps back out of Bill's way.
It only takes a trifle of Bill's attention to make coffee, which he does with careful, deliberate precision. The rest of it, he directs toward Johnny, who is stalking around the kitchen now that he's got nothing to occupy himself, pacing tight little circles around the butcher block.
Johnny cracks his knuckles, first one hand and then the other, and Bill suspects he honestly doesn't know he's doing it. His face is a gothic portrait of himself, brows drawn down, chin tipped toward his chest, dark circles deepening the shadows of his cheekbones and the pits of his eyes. There's a muscle jumping in his jaw and his shoulders are tight and set back, parallel to the floor and as dense as a steel girder.
Nothing like Johnny on the couch. More like Bill on the couch, in fact, and Billy carefully folds the coffee pouch closed, setting the plastic tabs in place, and slides the basket of grounds into its slot. He thumbs the brew button, and a few seconds later, the coffee maker begins to do it's thing.
Bill turns to watch Johnny more openly, but Johnny doesn't seem to notice. He's still pacing and circling (so, who will die if he stops swimming, John? Bill thinks), the thick swells of his biceps bunching and relaxing as he rolls his hands into and out of white-knuckled -- and Bill thinks totally unconscious -- fists.
And so the fuck what, if he's crap at offering comfort. Every bloke's got his strengths and weakness, right, and comfort simply isn't one of Bill's strengths.
But this --
Well, he knows how to handle this, knows how to direct tension, knows how to manipulate a person into directing their tension, and he thinks this might work.
If not, the worst that happens is that he has a royally pissed off boss.
Frankly, Bill would rather suffer a beating at the hands of an enraged Johnny Depp than watching him skitter like this for one more second.
And he knows just how to do it. Sure he does; he always fucking does.
Reply
He decides it isn't important; this isn't really about Bill anyhow.
"So, Orlando," Bill says, and Johnny's frown deepens as his right hand twitches, open, closed, open closed. "It's just 'ta, kid, thanks for all the cock?' is it?"
Johnny's mouth actually drops open in surprise, and it's funny, but Bill doesn't smile. He doesn't even feel like smiling. Johnny looks like Bill just kicked him in the fucking balls.
"It's 'adios, get the fuck out of my bed,' because he doesn't happen to have the good luck to be this Jack bloke, who, in my admittedly uneducated opinion, is unlikely to be either as good looking or as good a man as Orlando is, and who doesn't even know the fucking lovesick sacrifice you're making on his behalf, as you haven't seen him in years? The one who, like as not, curses your name and burns you in effigy because of The Big Fucking Mistake, right, John? It's just, 'so long, sucker,' for Orlando, that's what you're telling me, yeah?"
"I..." Johnny says, and he sounds like he's been kicked in the balls, too, winded and shocked.
"Because I have to tell you, John, that sounds a whole fucking lot like you've been using Orlando to me, a lot like you've been fucking taking advantage of a bloke in a bad situation. That sounds a lot like Big Fucking Mistake part two, to me, and to be honest with you, I'm not completely comfortable with that. Your Jack can rot in hell as far as I'm concerned, but Orlando..."
That's as far as Bill gets.
Reply
When Johnny punches Bill in the face reflexes he'd forgotten he had, muscle memory, the swing, the strike the only sound is that of the air leaving Bill's lungs in a grunt of surprise, overlaying the faint smack of Johnny's knuckles colliding with Bill's jaw.
His head snaps to one side with a sickening crack, and Bill teeters and flails for a moment before catching himself on the counter, blood welling from his lip, trickling from his nose, and Johnny flashes for a moment on the colour, bright and shocking against Bill's pale skin.
"You don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about, man-"
"Oh, please," Bill spits, hauls himself up and he gets a half step toward Johnny before Johnny swings again. Bill's neck snaps again, his cheek already purpling.
"Stay down, man, stay fuckin' down," Johnny growls, and somewhere beneath the rage he is completely appalled with himself, he is stunned at his own reaction, but-
"What the fuck?" he snaps at Bill, Bill who's wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, looking completely unconcerned. "Do you even know the first fucking thing about me, man? Do you? Do you know the first fucking thing about me and Orlando and how I tried, I tried for fucking months, you don't know any, anything about Jack, about me, about us, fucking Christ, don't fucking assume, and don't fucking presume to condescend to me, you arrogant little shit."
Johnny has not lost his temper in years. Seven years, in point of fact, since... Since...
He slumps back against the island, slides bonelessly to the floor. "Orlando asked... He. He asked who Jack was, and once that was there, once that was out there, between us..." Johnny tilts his head back; it thuds against the cabinetry with a hollow, comforting pain. "Jack was my world, and I'm really fucking sorry for you if you don't know what that is, what that feels like, man, but I had it, okay, I gave up my world for this world, and Orlando has fucking nothing to do with that, okay, so don't..." The anger flashes again, bright and sickly sweet; his fists flex and he unclenches them with effort.
Johnny inhales slowly through his nose. "Don't ever cross that line again, Bill. My fucking word on it. Don't."
Reply
But it's draining out of Johnny's face, that jittering tension, coiled and self-destructive, and that's good enough for Bill.
He turns and spits into this sink, then runs the tap for a second to wash it down the drain. His left cheek is throbbing dully, echoing his heartbeat. He thinks he'll have a beautiful fucking shiner by morning. "You've got a hell of a right hook, J.D. I had you pegged as a brawler."
Reply
It takes second, between THC and alcohol and adrenaline and endorphins, all at war, all flying through his blood at the speed of sound or something insane, fucking angry still which is at the very least better than fucked up and defeated and and-
"Fuck you," Johnny snaps, and he flexes his fists again. "You little motherfucker. Fuck. You."
There's something like smile threatening to spread across Johnny's face, and he twitches his jaw, trying to stomp it down. He fails utterly.
Reply
"If you want another go, have at it, man," he invites, making a 'come on' gesture with one hand. "This time, I reserve the right to bloody up your pretty face, though."
Johnny snorts. "Fair enough, man."
He sounds more or less sober and calm, his tone coming across to Bill as darkly amused, if still shaded with weariness.
Bill fixes up coffee for both of them, and eventually leans down and offers Johnny a hand up. Johnny takes it, allowing Bill to pull him to his feet. When he's upright again, he leans forward and peers critically at Bill's face. "You want some ice for that, Bill?" he asks, verging on sheepish.
"I've had worse," Bill assures him, amused, and presses a cup of coffee into Johnny's hands. His hands curl obediently around the cup, but Johnny doesn't look away from Bill's face.
"Man, Keira's gonna kick my ass," Johnny mutters.
"You let me mind Keira," Bills says, grabbing his own cup of coffee and sliding his free hand to the small of Johnny's back to guide him back out into the living room. Johnny goes along without protest, and slumps down onto the couch, coffee cup still cradled in his hands.
Bill can feel Johnny's eyes still on him; he doesn't look up as he sweeps the two untouched joints into the ashtray with the remains of the others, and then removes the whole mess from in front of Johnny, though only so far as the mantle where it's out of sight.
When he sits down this time, he chooses the same couch that Johnny's occupying.
"All right, Johnny?" he eventually asks.
Reply
Thanks for getting me riled enough to stop being pitiful, thanks for helping me fight this thing, thanks for taking it, thanks for being there. Johnny lowers his face over the coffee cup, inhaling the steam. His shoulders shake a little, the tattered remains of both his high and his depression still trying to fight it out, and he might cry, if he had the energy for anything other than resignation.
"I'm sorry, about Orlando, I really am, man, I... hate to think you think I didn't give him the best of me, for as long as I could, but I think... I mean..." Johnny leans further, sips. The coffee's good, Bill always makes it exactly right.
"I'm tired, Bill," he says into the cup, his hair falling forward to hide his face. "I'm forty fucking years old, and I'm alone, and I'm tired." There's a flaky brown splotch of coffee on the white ceramic rim. He scrapes it with the side of his thumbnail, watches it crumble and fall away. "And I think... I think you know what I mean."
Reply
He recognizes an opening, an invitation, when one's handed to him, of course, and a handful of double shots of The Macallan has dulled the edges of his brain. He isn't drunk; the adrenaline of picking a fight had seen to that, but he's not exactly straight either. There's a mellow glow of alcohol induced well-being in his belly. Recognizing it for what it is doesn't make it less pleasant.
"I think you're the best thing that could have happened to Orlando," he says frankly. "Especially after Burelle. I think he'd be dead or so strung out as to be close enough to it, if you hadn't been there for him, and he knows it. You didn't do a damned thing wrong as far as Orlando's concerned, and he knows it, and I know it. Forget about what I said; I'm a manipulative arsehole that knows how to push people's buttons, and that's my fucking issue, not yours."
Johnny's brows lift slightly in question, but he doesn't ask.
Bill shakes his head, but he isn't sure what he's denying or refusing, exactly.
"When was the last time you slept, man," Johnny says, and Bill's head snaps up, surprised into meeting Johnny's eyes.
He's so fucking used to Johnny not asking the hard questions, giving only subtle, easy offers of someone who'll listen if Bill wants, but never pressing.
"I'm not actually sure," he says finally, measured and deliberate. He doesn't look away from Johnny, because, by God if he's going to choose to talk about this (for whatever fucking reason, and Bill isn't sure that he even has one), then he's not going to be avoidant while he does it. "I snatch an hour or so here and there, but it's been weeks since I slept a full night, and before that...well, it was weeks before that, too. I've never been what you'd call a normal sleeper, but it's been worse since..."
Since the shooting, which he can't say, as Johnny doesn't know he was there. He substitutes, "For a while now," and doesn't doubt for an instant that Johnny recognizes it as a substitution.
Reply
Yeah.
Yeah, they both have a since, don't they? Bill's got something weighing just as heavily, stabbing at his guts just as sharply. It would explain the sparking bare wires of Bill's nerves, visible only to somebody like Johnny, only to somebody who fucking gets it, exhaustion, man. When he said he thought Bill knew what he meant by 'tired', he meant soul deep, and that's what he can see in the eyes of the man across from him.
"Since?" Johnny asks, takes a scalding sip of coffee, never looking away. "C'mon, man, showed you mine."
Reply
It wouldn't be the first time Bill has given up a secret because it is necessary and expected.
In the past, it's always been about giving away as little as possible while still accomplishing his ends. Honestly, this won't be that much different, because while the truth will do well enough -- Bill is pretty sure Johnny already suspects he had been with Orlando when Burelle had died, after all, and has merely never said anything about it, because that's the kind of guy Johnny is -- truth is a relative thing.
Yes, he hasn't slept well since then, and yes, that has something to do with it. But it isn't everything to do with it, or even most of it. There's so much more to it than that, and the rest of it he cannot, will not, give away, and never mind that he almost, almost wants to spill his guts to Johnny.
He doesn't know where that's coming from, but it's there, a kind of lowgrade, steady pressure in his temples and in the back of his throat.
He can feel Johnny looking at him, still, patient to a degree that would seem unlikely if you didn't know Johnny, and the spike of tension twists itself back into existence between Bill's shoulderblades.
He sighs, because it seems less likely to be misinterpretated than a snarl, and hooks the bottle of The Mcallan, tipping it to top off the three-quarters of a cup of coffee sitting in front of him on the table.
Johnny doesn't say anything, but Bill can feel him watching as Bill gives it a half-hearted stir with one finger, and then helps himself to a good mouthful.
"Since the night Burelle died," Bill says, meeting Johnny's eyes when he says it. Lying comes easily enough to him, but half-truths are harder, at least when at least part of his brain seems to want to make them whole-truths. "Since I left that place on a stretcher."
Reply
Leave a comment