The Door
Title: The Door
Author: nc_shy_gurl
Rating: G
Word count: 885
Based loosely on this poem by Emily Dickinson.
Description: Future fic in which Dom and Billy haven't spoken in years; Billy hopes to change that.
How many years had it been since he’d set foot on this porch? How long since the place before him had stopped feeling like an old friend waiting with arms outstretched to hold him and instead started feeling like the cold, unfamiliar touch of a stranger? Billy grimaced at the thought. Those things weren’t important at this point. The only thing that mattered was the door before him and what lay behind it. Or what might not lay behind it for him anymore.
In times past he would have known exactly what he would find when he opened the door. Dom would be waiting there, with his uncontrollable and perpetual energy bursting from every seam, dying to see Billy. He’d charge at him and they’d embrace, Dom would be wrapped around Billy, both would be murmuring words of love and greeting in a jumbled rush. Their hands would be roaming frenziedly, grasping at each other’s shirts and skins, taking in the feel of every bit of each other that they could reach. Their breath would be short, partly from excitement, but mostly from the sudden sensory overload that they threw themselves into mercilessly. Breathing in each other and pulling back barely long enough to rake their eyes across the face of the other, they’d hold on just a touch too long but it wouldn’t be enough. Bodies entwined, breaths mingling, they’ almost become one entity. Nothing could replace the countless days, hours, and minutes that they had been separated from each other, but nothing could stop them from trying. And when they finally pulled away from that initial embrace Dom would be grinning, broad and open, eager to bring Billy into his home and into his bed.
That was then. This is now.
Now the door practically glares at Billy; the harsh truth of things reflected in the fact that the key Dom gave him all those years ago doesn’t fit the lock anymore. He’s just a visitor now, if Dom will even let him in. Those things that he remembers about this place might as well be from a lifetime ago. He left that part of his life behind when he chose to settle down in Scotland with Ali; it hadn’t worked out, but he’d been too ashamed to run back to Dom…afraid of what Dom would think of him and unable to forgive himself for the pain he’d caused the other man in making that decision. He hadn’t heard from Dom in years. Hell, he wasn’t even sure that he still lived here. He might knock and the door open to reveal a stranger’s face, someone whom he had never met could be standing where he needed Dom to be standing. He could easily imagine the vacant stare as he asked for Dom, only to be told that no one by that name lived here. Or, even worse, the stranger who opened the door could be sharing Dom’s home, his bed, and his life. And beyond that, the stranger who opened the door could be Dom, a Dom that Billy didn’t know or recognize as his anymore.
“For fuck’s sake, what am I doing here?” He muttered, absentmindedly running a hand through what little remained of his hair. “What business do I have here anymore? None, that’s what.”
His mind all but screamed in reply. No business here?! Just a life you left behind. The life you should have had.
Suddenly an icy terror seized him, winding its frigid fingers so tightly around his heart that he felt the chill of it surge through his system. What if he had fucked this up beyond repair and there was no going back, not even to friendship? Maybe the opening of this door would reveal the final closing of his relationship with Dom. It could be the end of everything they had ever been----- friends, lovers, and so much more. He stared at the door in trepidation, frightened to enter and yet unable to leave without knowing how things stood between them.
The silence rolled like an ocean around him; wave after wave crashed down upon him as he fumbled at his nerve. Glancing around warily, he half hoped that Dom would appear from nowhere demanding to know why he had stood on his stoop for the past hour without knocking. He laughed a wooden laugh; he was scared shitless to knock on the sodding door…he might even go so far as to say that he feared the door itself. It seemed to him that his whole life hinged on what it opened to reveal. He closed his eyes and cringed slightly as he lifted his hand and knocked.
He removed his tightened fist from the surface of the door carefully as if it were made of glass. A few moments full of doubt passed and then the door swung open.
Dom stood before him, an uncertain smile playing across his features. “I wondered how long you’d just stand there before you knocked. Been watching you from the window for the past forty-five minutes.”
Billy shuffled uncomfortably and stared down at his feet. Then Dom did something that he hadn’t been expecting. He launched forward and wrapped his arms around Billy. And in that moment he knew that everything was going to be all right.