Threadbare Gypsy Soul
Title: Threadbare Gypsy Soul (4/?)
Rating: NC-17 over all (PG-13 most chapters)
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Warnings: Sequel to BTS, AU, angst. In this universe, Dom is a NYC social worker. The nature of his work may be a touchy subject for some people.
Feedback: is loved.
Summary: It’s human nature to bury our secrets. The fear lies in digging them up.
Chapter Notes: There’s a hole in the wall.
Author's Note: So, I hope you all paid attention to Billy's history lesson. And before you stone me, yes, I will try to post the Chapter 5 soon, preferably before ORC. Have I mentioned I'm going to ORC? Because yeah, I am. :)
Chapter 4
Wednesday, October 4th
It was almost too easy, really. A few internet searches, a few international phone calls, a few credentials thrown around for good measure, and a few days later there it was: an email with an attachment several pages long in his inbox.
Dom downloaded the attachment and hit the print key, pretending the real reason for getting up was to get cup of coffee from the break room, which was conveniently situated just past the printer. The coffee was awful, as usual, to a point Dom actually considered dumping in a heap of one of the numerous flavoured creamers the rest of the crew always had just to mask the sludgy day old taste. Instead, he opted to just pour the rest out in the sink as the printer announced its latest product with a loud beep.
Sliding the papers into a folder and then in his briefcase, Dom darted an eye up at Sean across from his desk, bent at his own reports. He hadn't been spotted, he didn’t think. This wasn’t really Sean’s business, but his best friend had a habit of minding Dom’s affairs a little too closely. Then again, Dom had to credit the man for pulling Dom away from a precipice (and occasionally pushing him off of them) in the last few years. If it wasn’t for Sean’s stubborn persistence about Dom taking that cruise, Dom wouldn’t be doing this for Billy in the first place.
“What?” Sean asked.
Caught staring, Dom shook his head and snapped closed his briefcase over damning evidence of Doing Other Things At Work Besides Work, and got up to drop the reports he’d already finished writing up in Cate’s inbox to sign. With a quirked smile, he announced, “I’m off.”
Sean raised an amused brow at him as he finished writing, “I can’t wait for your next evaluation, when they notice you’ve suddenly dropped overtime like you never realized you could leave at six.”
“I can?” Dom feigned incredulousness, shrugging into his coat, “Good thing I get my work done by then, unlike some people.”
“I’ll be done in ten minutes,” Sean grumbled, hurriedly finishing his own reports. “I’ve got to pick up Allie from the stables, and Chris has a sonogram thing tomorrow morning that I can’t miss…”
Dom shook his head with a grin, tossing his goodbyes over a shoulder and headed for the subway.
It would help, he was certain. Billy would go all introspective and misunderstood, but Dom could pull him out of it, he always could. The list would just show him how easy it could be, give it a chance, show him that it wasn’t a lost cause. And Dom would be there with him the whole way. He got off the train early to drop into the grocery. He would make a nice dinner tonight and then he would bring it up after and they could talk it over, plan how to do it.
Pears were on sale. With a grin, Dom got a wild hair and searched the store for the rest of the ingredients he would need to make Viggo’s chutney. Whole ginger root was expensive but worth it, and there were packages of candied ginger as well that he couldn’t resist. Currants could probably be found in one of the specialty markets somewhere, but he settled on cranberries as a reasonable replacement and also bought two Cornish hens to serve it with. He wondered if he could sneak the cinnamon in without Billy’s notice. It was only a pinch, after all.
Carting armfuls of carrier bags home with a little trouble, Dom managed to get up the stairs to the landing and thump a corner of his briefcase against the door. Billy opened it, brightening.
“Dom, what’s all this?” he laughed as Dom stepped over the threshold, dropped the lot on the carpet and kissed him even as he panted a little from the load.
“I am going to make you a dinner you won’t forget.”
“There were some I should have forgotten?”
Dom stooped to pick up the bags and brought most of them to the kitchen, Billy following with the rest. “Probably. We’ve had some bad take-away, remember? And anyway, it’s been awhile since I’ve really cooked anything worth the trouble.”
Billy watched while Dom unpacked, his bright eyes taking in each item as it found a place in the small kitchenette. “Can I help?”
In the living room, Billy’s guitar was occupying the sofa, as were some CDs and a few songbooks Dom had bought for him. Evening was dropping fast into a night where the damp chill left ice etching the corners of the windows, and a fire crackled merrily between them to keep the cold at bay. Billy was wearing jeans and a heavy olive-colored shirt, one of few that had come with him, and that Dom adored. It made him look warm and open and set off the color of his hair and eyes, as he leaned against the wall by the refrigerator. He looked lovely and content, which was exactly how Dom wanted him to be tonight.
Shaking his head, Dom shrugged off his suit jacket and tugged off his tie, tossing them over the dining room chair for the moment. Crowding close and dropping a kiss high on Billy’s cheek, he whispered, “You just stay the way you are. Right now.”
Billy quirked an amused brow, but said nothing. He took Dom’s jacket and tie to the bedroom and came back, bringing his guitar to one of the barstools to strum while he watched Dom dress the birds and slip them into the oven.
While Dom began peeling and chopping the pears into small dice, occasionally turning to stir the sugar and vinegar mixture in he’d started in a saucepan on the stove, Billy picked out strains of a song that seemed both familiar and not, low and sensuous and voluminous as it floated through the flat.
“I went down to Manhattan today,” Billy said while Dom worked. “Down to that restoration shop you got a card from.”
“Yeah?”
“I talked to the owner, you know, that does it. Nice bloke. He’s from Barcelona, Dommeh,” a note of intensity broke in Billy’s voice. “He… seemed to know… know what he was about. Knew his guitars. And makers.”
Dom stopped his work and searched Billy’s eyes, and the things behind them. “What are you thinking, then?”
Billy shrugged, but smiled as though he was nervous about getting his hopes too far up. “Maybe he’ll help me fix it. Maybe I could get a job there. Maybe... Maybe.”
Screw the plan. Billy had a sparkle about him that was heavy and hopeful and beautiful, and everything wrong about these last few weeks could be put to rights, all at once.
“I have something for you,” he said breathlessly, rinsing and drying his hands of pear juice. Skirting the counter, Dom dragged him by the sleeve to the desk, and pulled the guitar away to rest on the couch so Billy’s hands were free. Pulling the briefcase from where he’d left in on the floor to the desk and popping it open, he held the folder for just a moment in his hands, and then turned, handing the sheaf of papers to Billy with a flourish and a nervous grin.
“What is it?” Billy asked, looking at the handful, flipping through a page or two as though not really reading them.
“It’s an address list,” Dom stated the obvious. “See? It’s all the current addresses for anyone named Margaret Boyd in the UK, or that had Boyd as a maiden name. It’s public census record, you just have to make some calls and pay a fee-“
Billy dropped the sheaf of papers haphazardly on the corner of the desk and turned away, shoulders stiff and hands shoving deeply in his pockets. The papers had landed precariously and in a moment began slipping from the surface to the floor, spreading out over the carpet as they fluttered.
Dom chased a few before admitting defeat and just knelt to begin picking them up. They’d be all out of order now. Shuffling and turning the pages back into a neat pile, he muttered a little nervously. “I thought you’d be excited. The hard part-“
“Well, what did you want me to say?” Billy threw back in a voice thoroughly overshot with tension, “Oh, thanks Dom, it’ll all be sunshine and daisies from here on! The hard part is over! What part of 'let it be' did you not understand?”
Dom watched as Billy began to pull and scrub at the back of his neck, saw him getting agitated as he had when he broached this subject back on the ship, and crossed his own arms sternly, bracing for a row. Billy was here now, not on the ship, not alone with his demons, and Dom was going to get him to stop running from this. “You’ve said that since I met you. You’ve told yourself that for years before us, Bill. When are you going to turn around and face it?”
“Don’t you fucking patronize me on this, Dominic.”
“Used to be you were all for taking chances,” Dom pressed, ignoring the interruption, “You took a crazy chance on me, Billy. Why not her?”
“What if I don’t want to, eh? Thought of that?” Bill retorted loudly, having crossed the room to put the entire length of the sofa between them and more, hands now balled up at his sides, “Did you ever think that maybe I’m happy not knowing? You fucking hounding me doesn’t make it easy, do you get that? You always were a brick wall, and you know what else? You’re always so certain that you’re right that you can’t bloody see any other way to be, even when the whole goddamned world can see otherwise.”
“Bill-”
“I don’t need you to tell me when I’m ready for something I thought I was done with, Dominic. I didn’t come here to be your little pet homework project, and I sure as fuck don’t need your therapy!” His fist shot out as he spat the last word, connecting with and then going through the wall by his side.
The bubbling of the saucepan in the kitchen seemed as loud as an alarm in the drowning silence. Both of them stared in shock at the hole in the wall for several seconds before anything happened.
Dom had never seen Billy lose control like this, and with a terrifying rush, the reality of Billy’s past came flooding back. Bill had spent his youth angry and fighting, with a temper that could turn vicious in a blink. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen it, but it was the first time he’d seen it do significant damage.
Billy turned back to Dom, his face speeding through a hundred unreadable emotions before he animated, brushing past Dom and right out the door without another word.
Half-sitting against the solid arm of the sofa, Dom breathed shakily for a few minutes, trying to take in the gravity of the situation. Billy was upset. Really fucking pissed off. It was only a bunch of addresses, which could be defunct for all he knew. But it was clearly more than enough to push Billy over a precarious edge.
It was a big mistake.
Dom should have talked to him first. He shouldn’t have pushed so hard. Once, back on his cruise, Dom had pushed too hard on the same subject. He’d asked Billy why he was afraid, and had been met with complete rejection. Billy was not ready for the question then, and he was not ready for the answer now.
He hadn’t expected this much of a mess, but Dom should have known never to expect anything with Billy. Billy was always unexpected, and Dom went into this relationship knowing full well that Billy had that darkness about him. It was all part of why he fell for him in the first place. This perfect man had tender spots that he guarded fiercely from the whole world, and from Dom most of all.
He stood and went to examine the damage. The section of wall was between the tiny laundry closet and short hall to the bathroom. Billy’s fist had smashed through the outer layer of drywall, twisted a metal support beam and coming quite close to an outlet box, denting the opposite side of plaster. He opened the closet door to see the dent, which bulged out on the other side, cracking the paint just above the fold-out ironing board.
He thought again of Billy’s younger days boxing for whatever money he could win, bloody and bruised, broken in a gutter somewhere. It wasn’t an image he liked, not now that he knew it took so very little to bring out that temper that Billy had spent years tamping down. Billy’s tried and true method of dealing with a difficult problem was to not deal with it, full stop.
The reality was that Billy had been here with Dom in New York for hardly any time at all. Six weeks, plus twelve crazy days, and six long, lonely months in between. That was the extent of their relationship. The reality was that this thing was still very new, and they were still learning each other, and things still had potential to slip back to the way they were, very easily.
The sharp, burning smell of sugar and vinegar brought him back, rushing to pull the saucepan from the stove and thrust the ruined mess under the faucet. Sickly smelling steam billowed from it, making his eyes water and his throat choke as he groped to turn off the burner. Dom wasn’t the crying sort, but this was all just as well to making him look it, feel it, nervousness and fear and anger driving through him anyway. Never mind that the beautiful dinner Dom planned was screwed up. Billy wasn’t even here to eat it anymore; he’d gone out in a rampage without even a coat against the bitter cold.
What if Billy left and didn’t come back at all? Dom slapped the oven off and hurried to the window, trying to see down six floors to the sidewalk. Billy was quite capable of simply taking off and leaving Dom’s life completely. He’d done it before, hadn’t he? And why wouldn’t he, the way Dom came home from work in sour moods and depended on Billy to kiss it all better? When Dom had walked away from him on that ship and left him to think about it for six months afterwards before he came to a decision, a decision he would never have made if it weren’t for a silly guitar and a stupid romantic notion that they were meant to be together.
The fear in Dom’s chest changed and felt like it was squeezing him from all directions. Billy could leave. He could. Dom had been nothing but a child when Billy had first struck out on his own in the world. Billy had got on for a very long time on his own. He didn’t need Dom’s therapy. He didn’t need Dom for anything.
He groped for his phone, automatically hitting the speed dial for Billy’s mobile, and jumped when it lit up and rang shrilly, right in the charger on the desk in front of him. Dom snapped his own shut, biting off a curse as he shoved it in his pocket. He wrenched his coat out of the closet and stormed down the building’s stairwells and out in the frigid night, looking hard up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. It was freezing and blowing, steam bellowing from the manholes over slick pavement, and Billy had gone out with nothing but the shirt on this back and the shoes on his feet.
Where could he go? How do you find someone who’d just walked off into the boroughs of New York City? Dom squinted up and down the street against the chill wind, and struck off to the right. It was as good a choice as any, if Billy had two directions to choose from. He turned over in his mind any places Billy may have mentioned in these last few weeks, places he might go for shelter, places to stay if he meant to run off…
The Subway! Billy had lived in the London Underground for fuck knew how long when he and Bean met. Dom sprinted to the nearest station, taking the stairs two at a time and hurtling over the tills. Below, it was nearly empty, the distant sound of trains echoing off the tiles. Still he checked the benches and around the rubbish bins, even leaning out to glance up and down the tracks off the platform, but he saw no one. Dom had not prayed since he was a boy, but now he did, hoping to God Billy had not jumped down onto the tracks to hide in a maintenance doorway.
He walked until the temperature fell even further and he could not feel the tips of his fingers, checking the next four stations, all with the same results. He turned back, cold and panicky, his mobile held tight in his fingers inside his pocket, then pulled it out to call Billy’s again just in case he’d gone back home. It rang and went to the voicemail. Frustrated beyond belief, he punched the only other speed dial he had.
“Sean? I… we just… I messed up. I really fucking messed up… Yes…. I don’t know, he’s just gone.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Rating: NC-17 over all (PG-13 most chapters)
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Warnings: Sequel to BTS, AU, angst. In this universe, Dom is a NYC social worker. The nature of his work may be a touchy subject for some people.
Feedback: is loved.
Summary: It’s human nature to bury our secrets. The fear lies in digging them up.
Chapter Notes: There’s a hole in the wall.
Author's Note: So, I hope you all paid attention to Billy's history lesson. And before you stone me, yes, I will try to post the Chapter 5 soon, preferably before ORC. Have I mentioned I'm going to ORC? Because yeah, I am. :)
Chapter 4
Wednesday, October 4th
It was almost too easy, really. A few internet searches, a few international phone calls, a few credentials thrown around for good measure, and a few days later there it was: an email with an attachment several pages long in his inbox.
Dom downloaded the attachment and hit the print key, pretending the real reason for getting up was to get cup of coffee from the break room, which was conveniently situated just past the printer. The coffee was awful, as usual, to a point Dom actually considered dumping in a heap of one of the numerous flavoured creamers the rest of the crew always had just to mask the sludgy day old taste. Instead, he opted to just pour the rest out in the sink as the printer announced its latest product with a loud beep.
Sliding the papers into a folder and then in his briefcase, Dom darted an eye up at Sean across from his desk, bent at his own reports. He hadn't been spotted, he didn’t think. This wasn’t really Sean’s business, but his best friend had a habit of minding Dom’s affairs a little too closely. Then again, Dom had to credit the man for pulling Dom away from a precipice (and occasionally pushing him off of them) in the last few years. If it wasn’t for Sean’s stubborn persistence about Dom taking that cruise, Dom wouldn’t be doing this for Billy in the first place.
“What?” Sean asked.
Caught staring, Dom shook his head and snapped closed his briefcase over damning evidence of Doing Other Things At Work Besides Work, and got up to drop the reports he’d already finished writing up in Cate’s inbox to sign. With a quirked smile, he announced, “I’m off.”
Sean raised an amused brow at him as he finished writing, “I can’t wait for your next evaluation, when they notice you’ve suddenly dropped overtime like you never realized you could leave at six.”
“I can?” Dom feigned incredulousness, shrugging into his coat, “Good thing I get my work done by then, unlike some people.”
“I’ll be done in ten minutes,” Sean grumbled, hurriedly finishing his own reports. “I’ve got to pick up Allie from the stables, and Chris has a sonogram thing tomorrow morning that I can’t miss…”
Dom shook his head with a grin, tossing his goodbyes over a shoulder and headed for the subway.
It would help, he was certain. Billy would go all introspective and misunderstood, but Dom could pull him out of it, he always could. The list would just show him how easy it could be, give it a chance, show him that it wasn’t a lost cause. And Dom would be there with him the whole way. He got off the train early to drop into the grocery. He would make a nice dinner tonight and then he would bring it up after and they could talk it over, plan how to do it.
Pears were on sale. With a grin, Dom got a wild hair and searched the store for the rest of the ingredients he would need to make Viggo’s chutney. Whole ginger root was expensive but worth it, and there were packages of candied ginger as well that he couldn’t resist. Currants could probably be found in one of the specialty markets somewhere, but he settled on cranberries as a reasonable replacement and also bought two Cornish hens to serve it with. He wondered if he could sneak the cinnamon in without Billy’s notice. It was only a pinch, after all.
Carting armfuls of carrier bags home with a little trouble, Dom managed to get up the stairs to the landing and thump a corner of his briefcase against the door. Billy opened it, brightening.
“Dom, what’s all this?” he laughed as Dom stepped over the threshold, dropped the lot on the carpet and kissed him even as he panted a little from the load.
“I am going to make you a dinner you won’t forget.”
“There were some I should have forgotten?”
Dom stooped to pick up the bags and brought most of them to the kitchen, Billy following with the rest. “Probably. We’ve had some bad take-away, remember? And anyway, it’s been awhile since I’ve really cooked anything worth the trouble.”
Billy watched while Dom unpacked, his bright eyes taking in each item as it found a place in the small kitchenette. “Can I help?”
In the living room, Billy’s guitar was occupying the sofa, as were some CDs and a few songbooks Dom had bought for him. Evening was dropping fast into a night where the damp chill left ice etching the corners of the windows, and a fire crackled merrily between them to keep the cold at bay. Billy was wearing jeans and a heavy olive-colored shirt, one of few that had come with him, and that Dom adored. It made him look warm and open and set off the color of his hair and eyes, as he leaned against the wall by the refrigerator. He looked lovely and content, which was exactly how Dom wanted him to be tonight.
Shaking his head, Dom shrugged off his suit jacket and tugged off his tie, tossing them over the dining room chair for the moment. Crowding close and dropping a kiss high on Billy’s cheek, he whispered, “You just stay the way you are. Right now.”
Billy quirked an amused brow, but said nothing. He took Dom’s jacket and tie to the bedroom and came back, bringing his guitar to one of the barstools to strum while he watched Dom dress the birds and slip them into the oven.
While Dom began peeling and chopping the pears into small dice, occasionally turning to stir the sugar and vinegar mixture in he’d started in a saucepan on the stove, Billy picked out strains of a song that seemed both familiar and not, low and sensuous and voluminous as it floated through the flat.
“I went down to Manhattan today,” Billy said while Dom worked. “Down to that restoration shop you got a card from.”
“Yeah?”
“I talked to the owner, you know, that does it. Nice bloke. He’s from Barcelona, Dommeh,” a note of intensity broke in Billy’s voice. “He… seemed to know… know what he was about. Knew his guitars. And makers.”
Dom stopped his work and searched Billy’s eyes, and the things behind them. “What are you thinking, then?”
Billy shrugged, but smiled as though he was nervous about getting his hopes too far up. “Maybe he’ll help me fix it. Maybe I could get a job there. Maybe... Maybe.”
Screw the plan. Billy had a sparkle about him that was heavy and hopeful and beautiful, and everything wrong about these last few weeks could be put to rights, all at once.
“I have something for you,” he said breathlessly, rinsing and drying his hands of pear juice. Skirting the counter, Dom dragged him by the sleeve to the desk, and pulled the guitar away to rest on the couch so Billy’s hands were free. Pulling the briefcase from where he’d left in on the floor to the desk and popping it open, he held the folder for just a moment in his hands, and then turned, handing the sheaf of papers to Billy with a flourish and a nervous grin.
“What is it?” Billy asked, looking at the handful, flipping through a page or two as though not really reading them.
“It’s an address list,” Dom stated the obvious. “See? It’s all the current addresses for anyone named Margaret Boyd in the UK, or that had Boyd as a maiden name. It’s public census record, you just have to make some calls and pay a fee-“
Billy dropped the sheaf of papers haphazardly on the corner of the desk and turned away, shoulders stiff and hands shoving deeply in his pockets. The papers had landed precariously and in a moment began slipping from the surface to the floor, spreading out over the carpet as they fluttered.
Dom chased a few before admitting defeat and just knelt to begin picking them up. They’d be all out of order now. Shuffling and turning the pages back into a neat pile, he muttered a little nervously. “I thought you’d be excited. The hard part-“
“Well, what did you want me to say?” Billy threw back in a voice thoroughly overshot with tension, “Oh, thanks Dom, it’ll all be sunshine and daisies from here on! The hard part is over! What part of 'let it be' did you not understand?”
Dom watched as Billy began to pull and scrub at the back of his neck, saw him getting agitated as he had when he broached this subject back on the ship, and crossed his own arms sternly, bracing for a row. Billy was here now, not on the ship, not alone with his demons, and Dom was going to get him to stop running from this. “You’ve said that since I met you. You’ve told yourself that for years before us, Bill. When are you going to turn around and face it?”
“Don’t you fucking patronize me on this, Dominic.”
“Used to be you were all for taking chances,” Dom pressed, ignoring the interruption, “You took a crazy chance on me, Billy. Why not her?”
“What if I don’t want to, eh? Thought of that?” Bill retorted loudly, having crossed the room to put the entire length of the sofa between them and more, hands now balled up at his sides, “Did you ever think that maybe I’m happy not knowing? You fucking hounding me doesn’t make it easy, do you get that? You always were a brick wall, and you know what else? You’re always so certain that you’re right that you can’t bloody see any other way to be, even when the whole goddamned world can see otherwise.”
“Bill-”
“I don’t need you to tell me when I’m ready for something I thought I was done with, Dominic. I didn’t come here to be your little pet homework project, and I sure as fuck don’t need your therapy!” His fist shot out as he spat the last word, connecting with and then going through the wall by his side.
The bubbling of the saucepan in the kitchen seemed as loud as an alarm in the drowning silence. Both of them stared in shock at the hole in the wall for several seconds before anything happened.
Dom had never seen Billy lose control like this, and with a terrifying rush, the reality of Billy’s past came flooding back. Bill had spent his youth angry and fighting, with a temper that could turn vicious in a blink. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen it, but it was the first time he’d seen it do significant damage.
Billy turned back to Dom, his face speeding through a hundred unreadable emotions before he animated, brushing past Dom and right out the door without another word.
Half-sitting against the solid arm of the sofa, Dom breathed shakily for a few minutes, trying to take in the gravity of the situation. Billy was upset. Really fucking pissed off. It was only a bunch of addresses, which could be defunct for all he knew. But it was clearly more than enough to push Billy over a precarious edge.
It was a big mistake.
Dom should have talked to him first. He shouldn’t have pushed so hard. Once, back on his cruise, Dom had pushed too hard on the same subject. He’d asked Billy why he was afraid, and had been met with complete rejection. Billy was not ready for the question then, and he was not ready for the answer now.
He hadn’t expected this much of a mess, but Dom should have known never to expect anything with Billy. Billy was always unexpected, and Dom went into this relationship knowing full well that Billy had that darkness about him. It was all part of why he fell for him in the first place. This perfect man had tender spots that he guarded fiercely from the whole world, and from Dom most of all.
He stood and went to examine the damage. The section of wall was between the tiny laundry closet and short hall to the bathroom. Billy’s fist had smashed through the outer layer of drywall, twisted a metal support beam and coming quite close to an outlet box, denting the opposite side of plaster. He opened the closet door to see the dent, which bulged out on the other side, cracking the paint just above the fold-out ironing board.
He thought again of Billy’s younger days boxing for whatever money he could win, bloody and bruised, broken in a gutter somewhere. It wasn’t an image he liked, not now that he knew it took so very little to bring out that temper that Billy had spent years tamping down. Billy’s tried and true method of dealing with a difficult problem was to not deal with it, full stop.
The reality was that Billy had been here with Dom in New York for hardly any time at all. Six weeks, plus twelve crazy days, and six long, lonely months in between. That was the extent of their relationship. The reality was that this thing was still very new, and they were still learning each other, and things still had potential to slip back to the way they were, very easily.
The sharp, burning smell of sugar and vinegar brought him back, rushing to pull the saucepan from the stove and thrust the ruined mess under the faucet. Sickly smelling steam billowed from it, making his eyes water and his throat choke as he groped to turn off the burner. Dom wasn’t the crying sort, but this was all just as well to making him look it, feel it, nervousness and fear and anger driving through him anyway. Never mind that the beautiful dinner Dom planned was screwed up. Billy wasn’t even here to eat it anymore; he’d gone out in a rampage without even a coat against the bitter cold.
What if Billy left and didn’t come back at all? Dom slapped the oven off and hurried to the window, trying to see down six floors to the sidewalk. Billy was quite capable of simply taking off and leaving Dom’s life completely. He’d done it before, hadn’t he? And why wouldn’t he, the way Dom came home from work in sour moods and depended on Billy to kiss it all better? When Dom had walked away from him on that ship and left him to think about it for six months afterwards before he came to a decision, a decision he would never have made if it weren’t for a silly guitar and a stupid romantic notion that they were meant to be together.
The fear in Dom’s chest changed and felt like it was squeezing him from all directions. Billy could leave. He could. Dom had been nothing but a child when Billy had first struck out on his own in the world. Billy had got on for a very long time on his own. He didn’t need Dom’s therapy. He didn’t need Dom for anything.
He groped for his phone, automatically hitting the speed dial for Billy’s mobile, and jumped when it lit up and rang shrilly, right in the charger on the desk in front of him. Dom snapped his own shut, biting off a curse as he shoved it in his pocket. He wrenched his coat out of the closet and stormed down the building’s stairwells and out in the frigid night, looking hard up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. It was freezing and blowing, steam bellowing from the manholes over slick pavement, and Billy had gone out with nothing but the shirt on this back and the shoes on his feet.
Where could he go? How do you find someone who’d just walked off into the boroughs of New York City? Dom squinted up and down the street against the chill wind, and struck off to the right. It was as good a choice as any, if Billy had two directions to choose from. He turned over in his mind any places Billy may have mentioned in these last few weeks, places he might go for shelter, places to stay if he meant to run off…
The Subway! Billy had lived in the London Underground for fuck knew how long when he and Bean met. Dom sprinted to the nearest station, taking the stairs two at a time and hurtling over the tills. Below, it was nearly empty, the distant sound of trains echoing off the tiles. Still he checked the benches and around the rubbish bins, even leaning out to glance up and down the tracks off the platform, but he saw no one. Dom had not prayed since he was a boy, but now he did, hoping to God Billy had not jumped down onto the tracks to hide in a maintenance doorway.
He walked until the temperature fell even further and he could not feel the tips of his fingers, checking the next four stations, all with the same results. He turned back, cold and panicky, his mobile held tight in his fingers inside his pocket, then pulled it out to call Billy’s again just in case he’d gone back home. It rang and went to the voicemail. Frustrated beyond belief, he punched the only other speed dial he had.
“Sean? I… we just… I messed up. I really fucking messed up… Yes…. I don’t know, he’s just gone.”
CHAPTER FIVE