Fic: This Is the Way the World Ends, Ch. 53
Author: Sema
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower).
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51; Chap. 52
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 53
The first sign Billy receives that his hope is not entirely misplaced is the sound of his own name, waking him in the night. He's drifted off in the big comfortable chair that's been placed for him by Dom's bedside, and someone's spread a blanket over him. He hasn't meant to fall asleep there, and his waking is groggy and disoriented. He's stiff, too, and his stomach hurts, but not too badly, if he thinks about it.
"What's that?" he asks, his voice thick with sleep.
"Billy?"
He looks around wildly, not sure who's spoken--there's no one in either of the doorways. Then, when he looks down, he sees Dom's eyes shining up at him in the candlelight, not clouded for once, but clear.
"Oh, it's you is it?" Billy says softly.
In answer, Dom's hand snakes out from under the covers. For a moment Billy's not sure what he wants, but he touches the hand lightly, just brushing it with his fingertips. To his surprise, Dom's fingers curl almost firmly round his own, holding fast.
"There… Billy," he murmurs, with some satisfaction, before his eyes drift shut again.
For once, Dom's sleep appears dreamless and peaceful, and Billy sits up the rest of the night, holding his hand, watching his face, which seems almost like Dom's face once more, if he looks right.
The second sign comes two days later, as he's heading out on a patrol with Sonja. It's a new task, this looking for threats in the fields and woods around their home, and they're both armed to the teeth, semi-automatic weapons now in addition to Billy's six-shooters and Sonja's katana and Luger. They're standing in the corridor, checking their loads one last time, when Billy hears his name, spoken with slight impatience.
Billy returns to the lounge, gazing down at Dom, who appears to be fast asleep. "You called, sir?" he asks, teasing a little, because all of them like to keep up that pretence--that this Dom is their Dom.
"Going to leave without a kiss?" Dom cracks an eye, and Billy thinks he sees humour there, behind the pain.
He kneels beside the sofa, taking Dom's face softly as he can between his hands, bending down to brush Dom's lips with his own. "Like that?" he asks.
"Hmn…" Dom answers, as if considering. "Do better?"
"Three weeks ago you couldn't stand for me to touch you," Billy says. The memory still hurts him, far worse than his own rapidly-healing scars.
In answer, Dom's hand goes round behind his head, pulling Billy close again, kissing him a little weakly, but well, and Billy knows then that his Dom is in there after all, and perhaps always was. He's not sure if that makes things better or worse, that his Dom has had to suffer all this.
"Be careful," Dom tells him, with a faint grin. "Won't bail you out again."
"Oh, Dom." Billy's throat is tight as he caresses Dom's hollowed cheek. "Wouldn't expect you to, céili."
Dom turns his head to kiss the palm of Billy's hand. "Night, then."
"I'll be careful. I promise. Sleep tight," he adds, but Dom's already out, his cheek still nestled in Billy's palm.
Billy wants to leave less than he's ever wanted anything in his life.
It's cold outside, the clouds grey and lowering, making them shiver despte their wooly caps and anoraks. It feels odd to walk the perimeter of their land with guns, nerves jangling, nearly ready to shoot anything that moves. At least that's how Billy feels. Sonja looks far calmer, the semi-automatic neatly balanced in her hands, the sword strapped crossways on her back. She's begun, he noticed inside, to show the slightest bit, but it doesn't seem to inconvenience her in the least, and she hasn't any morning sickness or other negative symptoms. Sean, on the other hand, is frantic every time she patrols--he'd go with her, if he didn't realize he'd be more a detriment than a help.
The two of them move soundlessly, not talking, though it's a companionable silence, and Billy realizes how much he's come to depend on this unflappable woman in the weeks since she nearly knocked his brains out with a wine bottle. From behind them comes the faint sound of construction, Viggo and the others finishing the job of fitting new steel shutters to the windows, and new steel doors, so that everything can be locked up at night, safe and secure. They've even fitted grilles over the chimneys so that no noxious thing can be dropped down.
Sonja gestures suddenly. Something's rustling in the underbrush, something grayish-brown, nearly silent. Without thinking, Billy fires one of his revolvers empty; the crackling increases for a moment, then dies.
Sonja crouches at the edge of the thicket, parting the brush with her hands. There are bodies there, but they're smallish, not quite canine.
"Coyotes," she murmurs, and Billy blushes, thinking how disappointed Dom would be in him--Dom who's been known to follow coyotes in the dark and feed them spareribs, because he finds them, and all other unloved creatures, so fascinating.
"Don't feel bad." Sonja straightens. "I grew up on a farm. Do you know what those will do to livestock? Do you know what it would be like if they got in with our goats or chickens?"
Billy, city born and bred, shakes his head. "Dom loves them."
"Dom's a wing-nut," Sonja answers, and laughs. "Honestly, they'd even kill Squire if they had the chance. Lure him away from us and kill him. Believe me, they're bad news, Bill."
Billy nods, and he believes her--but he still feels bad, worse even than when he killed Flagg's bikers, or Max made his candlestick fire.
He wonders if it's true that Max--try as he night, he can't think of him as Simon, none of them can, and even the little boy seems, now, to have given up on his former name--has lost his special abilities. He certainly looks, and acts, like an ordinary child, albeit a very bright one, these days. If he remembers his old life--and Billy suspects that he does--he's like Toni and doesn't talk about it.
"Billy,"Sonja tells him, "You're too soft-hearted. You know that, right?" She's smiling, but the question is serious.
"Not when it comes to the wolves," Billy says, and pops another six cartridges into his revolver.
It's near dark when they get home, and all the steel shutters on the first floor have been hung. They give the house a new look, closed off, a little threatening, a far cry from the open, welcoming place it's been. It makes Billy sad that they're forced to live this way, when they'd thought all the badness had been drained from the world.
"It's going to be funny," Sonja says softly, "Bringing a child up this way. Our house in California was eighty per cent glass."
"We'll all protect him--or her," Billy tells her.
"Oh, I know. And I know the old world had its own dangers…"
"A slightly lower chance of disembowelment."
"Yeah." She laughs. "A slightly lower chance of that." She turns to Billy, studying his face. "You look good, Bill. Are you good?"
A slight lump comes into his throat. "I'll be good when Dom's good."
"That's not what I was asking." Sonja's blue eyes can look icy, like Viggo's, but they don't look icy now. They look kind, inviting of confidences; at that moment she and Sean don't seem like such an odd couple after all.
"I'm good," Billy tells her.
"Dom looks better, you know." She raps at the door. It's so solid now that Billy can scarcely make out the sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor. There's an obvious scuffling as someone looks through the peephole. "I don't know if you can see it, but I'm not just saying that. He does."
The door opens and Orli beams out at them. "I'm so glad you're home!"
Billy goes directly into panic mode. "Something's wrong? Is Dom…?"
Orli just laughs at him. "Chill, Billy, chill. I'm just glad, that's all. I missed you. Dom's fine."
Inside it smells of homebaked bread and venison stew, and Sean comes out of the kitchen to give Sonja a hug and a kiss and to take her guns. "Good patrol, sweetie?" he asks, and Billy catches Orli grinning at him over the top of Sean's head.
This, Billy thinks, Is the world we live in..
It's not the world he would have chosen, but it might have been much worse. He imagines the eight other people who make up his family now, and tries to imagine life without any one of them. It's impossible, and he realizes he doesn't want to go there, down the dark path of such thoughts. He'll live in the now, and to hell with the future.
That in mind, he pops into the lounge to see Dom who, as always, is flat on his back on the sofa, eyes closed. This time, however, there's a cherry-red iPod perched atop his chest and ear buds plugged into his ears. The distant, tinny, but unmistakable sound of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" rises on the air. Billy can't help but smile as he bends down to pop out one of the buds. Dom's eyes fly open instantly.
"You shouldn't listen so loud. You'll destroy your hearing."
"I like it loud." Dom pulls out the other bud and reaches for the iPod, his fingers finding the pause point at the bottom of the round control wheel unerringly. "Kiss and a cuddle, please?"
"You never change," Billy tells him, only wishing that was true. He kneels by the sofa, gathering Dom carefully as he can into his arms. When Dom doesn't protest, he proceeds to kiss him gently but thoroughly, only stopping when Dom makes a small sound of protest.
Billy pulls away, stroking Dom's hair back from his forehead. Despite his illness it's come in like a house afire, fairer than Billy remembers, though his memory may be playing him tricks with that--it's been a good six years since he's seen anything like Dom's natural colour. "You look better, céili, though you're all bones." He kisses Dom's brow, which is still warm, though nothing like so burning-hot as it's been. "What does Toni say?"
"That the antibiotics are working, she thinks, and the scars are healing. Who knows, maybe they'll even go away, in time."
"Until then, we'll match," Billy tells him. Dom laughs softly.
"Until then. Oh, and look!" Dom waves his fingers under Billy's nose--or vaguely in that direction; his aim is far from perfect.
Billy takes the hand, half to stop it from hitting him, half for the comfort of holding Dom's hand in his own. If he looks closely, he can see what Dom's trying to show him: the faint, pink beginnings of new fingernails.
"Very nice. You'll be varnishing them black in no time."
"Nah, you'll have to do it for me. Part of your husbandly duties, and all."
"Have to say, I don't remember that bit in my vows."
"Course you do." Dom laughs. "It came right after 'obey.'" There's a pause, during which Dom's face falls.
"Bills, I have to confess to you--I can't find my ring. I just suddenly missed it today, and I've had Lijah and Orli looking in my things and round the house, but they said they can't…"
"Daftie." Billy pulls a chain out from under his shirt, catching hold of Dom's hand so that he can finger the small round object suspended there. "It's too big for your finger now. I've kept it safe for you." He slips the chain over his head, settling it round Dom's neck instead. "There, you can have it near and think of me."
"Billy, I always think of you," Dom answers, but he turns his face away, and Billy realizes he's weeping silently; he's so physically weak just now that every small thing carries him away. "I really thought I'd lost it."
"I know." Billy does his best to wipe the tears away with his fingers. "But you didn't. It just slipped off your finger."
"Like Isildur," Dom says, and though he can't see Billy's blank look, perhaps he can feel it. "You never did read the bloody book, did you?"
"Oh, that," Billy says. "The bloke in the prologue."
Dom laughs. "And Professor Tolkien thanks you for your keen appreciation of his complex mythology."
There's another pause, during which Billy thinks, He remembered. Dom remembered! He just doesn't want to draw attention to it and make Dom feel self-conscious.
"I…" Dom says at last. "Billy, thank you for my ring. Hope you know what it means to me."
"Dom, céili," Billy answers, giving Dom's hand a bit of a squeeze. "Thank you for my life, even if it wouldn't have meant so very much without you."
"Thanks accepted, if not needed." Dom clings to his hand fiercely--or fiercely as he's able--for a long while, though at last the hold softens as he drifts once more toward sleep, his free hand clutched round his wedding ring.
"The truth is, céili," Billy whispers, a secret Dom won't ever be allowed to hear, "Without you, it wouldn't have meant anything."
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower).
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51; Chap. 52
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 53
The first sign Billy receives that his hope is not entirely misplaced is the sound of his own name, waking him in the night. He's drifted off in the big comfortable chair that's been placed for him by Dom's bedside, and someone's spread a blanket over him. He hasn't meant to fall asleep there, and his waking is groggy and disoriented. He's stiff, too, and his stomach hurts, but not too badly, if he thinks about it.
"What's that?" he asks, his voice thick with sleep.
"Billy?"
He looks around wildly, not sure who's spoken--there's no one in either of the doorways. Then, when he looks down, he sees Dom's eyes shining up at him in the candlelight, not clouded for once, but clear.
"Oh, it's you is it?" Billy says softly.
In answer, Dom's hand snakes out from under the covers. For a moment Billy's not sure what he wants, but he touches the hand lightly, just brushing it with his fingertips. To his surprise, Dom's fingers curl almost firmly round his own, holding fast.
"There… Billy," he murmurs, with some satisfaction, before his eyes drift shut again.
For once, Dom's sleep appears dreamless and peaceful, and Billy sits up the rest of the night, holding his hand, watching his face, which seems almost like Dom's face once more, if he looks right.
The second sign comes two days later, as he's heading out on a patrol with Sonja. It's a new task, this looking for threats in the fields and woods around their home, and they're both armed to the teeth, semi-automatic weapons now in addition to Billy's six-shooters and Sonja's katana and Luger. They're standing in the corridor, checking their loads one last time, when Billy hears his name, spoken with slight impatience.
Billy returns to the lounge, gazing down at Dom, who appears to be fast asleep. "You called, sir?" he asks, teasing a little, because all of them like to keep up that pretence--that this Dom is their Dom.
"Going to leave without a kiss?" Dom cracks an eye, and Billy thinks he sees humour there, behind the pain.
He kneels beside the sofa, taking Dom's face softly as he can between his hands, bending down to brush Dom's lips with his own. "Like that?" he asks.
"Hmn…" Dom answers, as if considering. "Do better?"
"Three weeks ago you couldn't stand for me to touch you," Billy says. The memory still hurts him, far worse than his own rapidly-healing scars.
In answer, Dom's hand goes round behind his head, pulling Billy close again, kissing him a little weakly, but well, and Billy knows then that his Dom is in there after all, and perhaps always was. He's not sure if that makes things better or worse, that his Dom has had to suffer all this.
"Be careful," Dom tells him, with a faint grin. "Won't bail you out again."
"Oh, Dom." Billy's throat is tight as he caresses Dom's hollowed cheek. "Wouldn't expect you to, céili."
Dom turns his head to kiss the palm of Billy's hand. "Night, then."
"I'll be careful. I promise. Sleep tight," he adds, but Dom's already out, his cheek still nestled in Billy's palm.
Billy wants to leave less than he's ever wanted anything in his life.
It's cold outside, the clouds grey and lowering, making them shiver despte their wooly caps and anoraks. It feels odd to walk the perimeter of their land with guns, nerves jangling, nearly ready to shoot anything that moves. At least that's how Billy feels. Sonja looks far calmer, the semi-automatic neatly balanced in her hands, the sword strapped crossways on her back. She's begun, he noticed inside, to show the slightest bit, but it doesn't seem to inconvenience her in the least, and she hasn't any morning sickness or other negative symptoms. Sean, on the other hand, is frantic every time she patrols--he'd go with her, if he didn't realize he'd be more a detriment than a help.
The two of them move soundlessly, not talking, though it's a companionable silence, and Billy realizes how much he's come to depend on this unflappable woman in the weeks since she nearly knocked his brains out with a wine bottle. From behind them comes the faint sound of construction, Viggo and the others finishing the job of fitting new steel shutters to the windows, and new steel doors, so that everything can be locked up at night, safe and secure. They've even fitted grilles over the chimneys so that no noxious thing can be dropped down.
Sonja gestures suddenly. Something's rustling in the underbrush, something grayish-brown, nearly silent. Without thinking, Billy fires one of his revolvers empty; the crackling increases for a moment, then dies.
Sonja crouches at the edge of the thicket, parting the brush with her hands. There are bodies there, but they're smallish, not quite canine.
"Coyotes," she murmurs, and Billy blushes, thinking how disappointed Dom would be in him--Dom who's been known to follow coyotes in the dark and feed them spareribs, because he finds them, and all other unloved creatures, so fascinating.
"Don't feel bad." Sonja straightens. "I grew up on a farm. Do you know what those will do to livestock? Do you know what it would be like if they got in with our goats or chickens?"
Billy, city born and bred, shakes his head. "Dom loves them."
"Dom's a wing-nut," Sonja answers, and laughs. "Honestly, they'd even kill Squire if they had the chance. Lure him away from us and kill him. Believe me, they're bad news, Bill."
Billy nods, and he believes her--but he still feels bad, worse even than when he killed Flagg's bikers, or Max made his candlestick fire.
He wonders if it's true that Max--try as he night, he can't think of him as Simon, none of them can, and even the little boy seems, now, to have given up on his former name--has lost his special abilities. He certainly looks, and acts, like an ordinary child, albeit a very bright one, these days. If he remembers his old life--and Billy suspects that he does--he's like Toni and doesn't talk about it.
"Billy,"Sonja tells him, "You're too soft-hearted. You know that, right?" She's smiling, but the question is serious.
"Not when it comes to the wolves," Billy says, and pops another six cartridges into his revolver.
It's near dark when they get home, and all the steel shutters on the first floor have been hung. They give the house a new look, closed off, a little threatening, a far cry from the open, welcoming place it's been. It makes Billy sad that they're forced to live this way, when they'd thought all the badness had been drained from the world.
"It's going to be funny," Sonja says softly, "Bringing a child up this way. Our house in California was eighty per cent glass."
"We'll all protect him--or her," Billy tells her.
"Oh, I know. And I know the old world had its own dangers…"
"A slightly lower chance of disembowelment."
"Yeah." She laughs. "A slightly lower chance of that." She turns to Billy, studying his face. "You look good, Bill. Are you good?"
A slight lump comes into his throat. "I'll be good when Dom's good."
"That's not what I was asking." Sonja's blue eyes can look icy, like Viggo's, but they don't look icy now. They look kind, inviting of confidences; at that moment she and Sean don't seem like such an odd couple after all.
"I'm good," Billy tells her.
"Dom looks better, you know." She raps at the door. It's so solid now that Billy can scarcely make out the sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor. There's an obvious scuffling as someone looks through the peephole. "I don't know if you can see it, but I'm not just saying that. He does."
The door opens and Orli beams out at them. "I'm so glad you're home!"
Billy goes directly into panic mode. "Something's wrong? Is Dom…?"
Orli just laughs at him. "Chill, Billy, chill. I'm just glad, that's all. I missed you. Dom's fine."
Inside it smells of homebaked bread and venison stew, and Sean comes out of the kitchen to give Sonja a hug and a kiss and to take her guns. "Good patrol, sweetie?" he asks, and Billy catches Orli grinning at him over the top of Sean's head.
This, Billy thinks, Is the world we live in..
It's not the world he would have chosen, but it might have been much worse. He imagines the eight other people who make up his family now, and tries to imagine life without any one of them. It's impossible, and he realizes he doesn't want to go there, down the dark path of such thoughts. He'll live in the now, and to hell with the future.
That in mind, he pops into the lounge to see Dom who, as always, is flat on his back on the sofa, eyes closed. This time, however, there's a cherry-red iPod perched atop his chest and ear buds plugged into his ears. The distant, tinny, but unmistakable sound of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" rises on the air. Billy can't help but smile as he bends down to pop out one of the buds. Dom's eyes fly open instantly.
"You shouldn't listen so loud. You'll destroy your hearing."
"I like it loud." Dom pulls out the other bud and reaches for the iPod, his fingers finding the pause point at the bottom of the round control wheel unerringly. "Kiss and a cuddle, please?"
"You never change," Billy tells him, only wishing that was true. He kneels by the sofa, gathering Dom carefully as he can into his arms. When Dom doesn't protest, he proceeds to kiss him gently but thoroughly, only stopping when Dom makes a small sound of protest.
Billy pulls away, stroking Dom's hair back from his forehead. Despite his illness it's come in like a house afire, fairer than Billy remembers, though his memory may be playing him tricks with that--it's been a good six years since he's seen anything like Dom's natural colour. "You look better, céili, though you're all bones." He kisses Dom's brow, which is still warm, though nothing like so burning-hot as it's been. "What does Toni say?"
"That the antibiotics are working, she thinks, and the scars are healing. Who knows, maybe they'll even go away, in time."
"Until then, we'll match," Billy tells him. Dom laughs softly.
"Until then. Oh, and look!" Dom waves his fingers under Billy's nose--or vaguely in that direction; his aim is far from perfect.
Billy takes the hand, half to stop it from hitting him, half for the comfort of holding Dom's hand in his own. If he looks closely, he can see what Dom's trying to show him: the faint, pink beginnings of new fingernails.
"Very nice. You'll be varnishing them black in no time."
"Nah, you'll have to do it for me. Part of your husbandly duties, and all."
"Have to say, I don't remember that bit in my vows."
"Course you do." Dom laughs. "It came right after 'obey.'" There's a pause, during which Dom's face falls.
"Bills, I have to confess to you--I can't find my ring. I just suddenly missed it today, and I've had Lijah and Orli looking in my things and round the house, but they said they can't…"
"Daftie." Billy pulls a chain out from under his shirt, catching hold of Dom's hand so that he can finger the small round object suspended there. "It's too big for your finger now. I've kept it safe for you." He slips the chain over his head, settling it round Dom's neck instead. "There, you can have it near and think of me."
"Billy, I always think of you," Dom answers, but he turns his face away, and Billy realizes he's weeping silently; he's so physically weak just now that every small thing carries him away. "I really thought I'd lost it."
"I know." Billy does his best to wipe the tears away with his fingers. "But you didn't. It just slipped off your finger."
"Like Isildur," Dom says, and though he can't see Billy's blank look, perhaps he can feel it. "You never did read the bloody book, did you?"
"Oh, that," Billy says. "The bloke in the prologue."
Dom laughs. "And Professor Tolkien thanks you for your keen appreciation of his complex mythology."
There's another pause, during which Billy thinks, He remembered. Dom remembered! He just doesn't want to draw attention to it and make Dom feel self-conscious.
"I…" Dom says at last. "Billy, thank you for my ring. Hope you know what it means to me."
"Dom, céili," Billy answers, giving Dom's hand a bit of a squeeze. "Thank you for my life, even if it wouldn't have meant so very much without you."
"Thanks accepted, if not needed." Dom clings to his hand fiercely--or fiercely as he's able--for a long while, though at last the hold softens as he drifts once more toward sleep, his free hand clutched round his wedding ring.
"The truth is, céili," Billy whispers, a secret Dom won't ever be allowed to hear, "Without you, it wouldn't have meant anything."