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.( ... )
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."
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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.
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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."
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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."
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He's always known that Bill and Orlando's connection went way back, that they was way tighter than... anybody, really, so he should've known, man, he should've been able to put two and two together and figure out that if Bill knew Orlando then Bill had to've known Robbie. He should've been able to figure out that that's where Bill's fierce protectiveness of Orlando came from, that fucking... asshole who... fuck. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Johnny suddenly wishes for more clarity, takes another hefty hot swallow of coffee before responding.
"Makes sense," he says aloud, finally, reaching for his cigs and again not finding them. Bill flips him another butt with his studied nonchalance cracking around the edges, yeah, Johnny can see the cracks now, Johnny squints as he lights his cig and asks. "How deep in it were you, man?"
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Ass deep in alligators, he thinks, and almost feels like he might smile for a second, but it stalls out before it ever makes it to his face. He regards Johnny across the couple of feet separating them and tries to decide whether to answer that.
Deep enough to break a man's wrist, once, for touching dope he hadn't paid for, J.D. Deep enough to slap a hooker, deep enough to hate myself, deep enough to trade my soul for the arrest, if I'd been able to go on.
Because he would have. Oh, yes. He would have, if it had come to that, if he'd had the time and the ability, if not for Orlando.
It occurs to Bill that, in an odd, twisted way, Orlando might have saved his life that day, too.
"All the way, J.D." he says flatly, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "All the fucking way."
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He used to wear it in front of the cameras, he used to wear it when Peter would hand over crisp packs of hundred dollar bills in exchange for some 13 year old girl from the provinces. He used to be dying behind a face just like that one, he fucking knows. It was sex, not drugs, then, but they're kissing cousins, man. Same fuckin' family.
Johnny leans forward, ashes sloppily, rubs his finger through what missed. He leaves his elbows on his knees, his hair falling forward; he could reach out and touch Bill if he wanted to. If he wanted to lose a hand. All these years, man, he never forgot, he just put it away, he just... kept it there, back of the closet.
"I was seventeen. In Hong Kong. Still a colony, then. See, I ran away from my old man, sick of getting punched in the face for being a faggot, and met a real nice guy who took me in, you know, English guy, a real prince, and he was into pornos and more. Lots more... But mostly into little girls." Johnny drops his mouth to the cigarette instead of lifting it to his lips, gives him time to choose the next words and time for Bill to really hear what he's saying.
When he looks back up there's still that horrible nothing on Bill's face, but Johnny plows on, needing to say this. 'I understand' is hollow. Everybody says they understand.
"So Peter takes me with him back to Hong Kong, right, and it basically goes down like, I took you in, kid, you owe me, you do this one picture and you don't owe me anymore. Right? Fuck no, of course not, but what did I know? So I do one picture. Ten pictures. I don't know how many times I gave my ass up for the camera. Meanwhile back at the ranch... Little girls, man. You know what those fuckin' rich bastards, fuckin'... from everywhere, businessmen, you know, movie stars, they like baby pussy, and they paid fucking money like I ain't never seen before or since, and they... liked me? The girls, I mean, I guess 'cause I was young, closer to their ages, and I'd never touched any of 'em, so Peter used to take me along when he'd visit his... businesses. He was a real hands on kinda guy." Johnny can feel his jaw twitch, remembering. "He called us his babies."
He hits the word with an involuntary turn of posh accent, makes his ears burn to hear it from his own lips.
"I guess what I'm saying, man," Johnny says, and he crushes his smoke out before raising his head, before meeting Bill's eyes, "is I'd never judge you for what's past. It stays there. It's dead and it's done."
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