Threadbare Gypsy Soul
Title: Threadbare Gypsy Soul (12/?)
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: Letters, fears, old friends and new ones.
Author's note: There is a graphic in this chapter. Let me know if it's not there.
Chapter 12
Saturday, October 14th
“Billy, it’s…” Dom tried for the right words as he reread Billy’s familiar, looping script. “It’s…”
“Shite. It’s total shite is what it is,” he reached to try and snatch the paper back.
Dom held it away, “No, it’s good! It’s really very good. It’s to the point, you know… efficient.”
“Efficient? You make it sound like I’m cutting a business deal,” Billy leaned back from the table, which was strewn with dozens of similarly scrawled sheets. Some stopped mid-sentence and crumpled amongst the chair legs, and others were several pages long, rambling and smudged. The stale remains of a sandwich sat among them, while Dom’s plate was empty. Billy looked forlorn at the mess before him. “I don’t know. I just don’t know about this.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Dom tsked, “It’s really nice, Billy, aside from all that about not deserving it. You don’t need to write a book, just… this. Just let her know you’re still here.”
Billy propped his elbows on the table and his face in his hands with a pout of exasperation. “I don’t know if I said enough. Or said it right.”
Dom looked at him fondly. “You managed to say enough on those little postcards you gave me.”
“You were easy to write to.” The corner of Billy’s mouth lifted, just a little. “I didn’t muck up your life before I came running back looking for… Shite. I did exactly that, didn’t I?”
Dom grinned, “Turns out I didn’t mind so much.”
“This is so hard, Dommeh,” Billy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, raking it up wildly. “Feels like I’m twenty again, only I don’t have the… the…” he tapped a finger on the table, searching for a word, “…the fucking recklessness for it anymore.”
“Right. Telling some bloke you spent a week and a half with that you’d fly across the world if he called wasn’t the least bit reckless.”
“No,” Billy laughed humorlessly. “Doing it though, that was bloody insane.”
“Then it’s insane,” Dom pressed. “It can be worth it, right?”
Billy’s eyes went glazed, staring across the room and out the windows, where the afternoon sun glinted off the opposite building. “How do I explain, though? Where I’ve been, why I never came back? How do I tell her I’ve done nothing useful, that I never made anything of myself? How do I tell her about boxing for money and living in the Tube and… and…” his eyes darted back to Dom, “Christ, how do I even tell her I’m gay?”
Dom regarded him with fond amusement, “Same way you tell anybody.”
Bill ran both hands over his face and left them there, peeping at Dom through the spaces of his fingers like a kid watching a horror flick.
“You’ve never had to tell anyone?” Dom asked incredulously. Billy had never, in all the time they’d spent together, struck him as an in-the-closet sort of bloke.
Billy shook his head, staring blankly at the paper in front of him. “People that needed to know just found out, I guess. But that was all after I left.”
“Even Bean?”
“Oh, he figured it out,” Billy snickered a little, and his cheeks went pink as he ducked his head.
Dom grinned lecherously, “You made a move.”
“No,” Billy laughed a bit harder. “It was hot out on a construction site one day, and the fucker took his shirt off. Mind, this was when he was twenty-nine and his marriage was fucked, and there was an office full of birds across the street, getting just as nice an eyeful as I was. ‘Course he noticed. First the birds, then me.”
“What’d he do?”
Billy rested a rosy cheek on his hand and grinned at the long ago memory, “He took me to the pub and bought me a beer and threw me the biggest piss-taking I’ve ever had. And then everything went right back to normal.”
“Bean’s a great mate,” Dom smiled.
“Aye,” Billy murmured, then came back to the present. “But that doesn’t help me now, though. I don’t know how to tell her these things. It’s not the same as mates, Dom. I’ll have found her, only to lose her all over again.”
“You don’t know that. You never really know, Bills. Maybe she already knew it.”
Billy eyed him skeptically. “You didn’t grow up in Glasgow.”
“No. I grew up in Manchester, and went to Catholic school on top of it,” Dom countered. “Trust me, Bills, I’ve been there.”
Billy tapped his fingers on the letters absently. “How’d you tell them? Your parents? Your brother?”
“Matt knew,” Dom answered, reassuring where Billy was doubtful. “I don’t know how, but he figured it out before anyone. Even me.”
Billy looked at him quizzically, and Dom shrugged. “I remember this one time at school… I was eleven. Matt was fourteen, so he had classes in a different building, separated by a yard that had trees at the ends, and we’d have breaks out there. And I…” Dom darted a look at Billy, “I had a mate, then, my best mate. And we were always together, you know? Always. During breaks, we’d be round those big trees, climbing them, or sitting under them, just me and him.
“Once, there was a group of the older kids, skiving classes and smoking, and they found us. They started in on us for fun, taking the piss, calling us names and… daring us to kiss or some shite. I didn’t even really know, then. I just remember thinking it wouldn’t be so very awful, to kiss a friend I liked as much as him.”
Dom skipped ahead, “Matt came. Out of nowhere, really. They were his own mates too, and he gave them all a piece of hell for picking on me.”
He grinned at the memory of that day. “’Where do you lot get off fucking about my kid brother? If anyone gets the privilege, it’s me, not you load of wankers.’ That’s what he said to them, and then he lights up a fag, all casual-like and says to me, ‘Dom, any one of these pricks starts in on you again answers to me, all right?’”
Billy was smiling widely. “Matt was cool.”
“So cool,” Dom mused, “The way he said it… they weren’t angry with him, and at the same time they never messed with me again. I wanted to be like him, but… I was always Matt’s Kid Brother. It was bad enough we went to the same school where Dad taught, though. Matt only got around that bit getting into trouble. But I was the good son, I was Dad’s favourite.” There was a time when those words didn’t taste quite so bitter. Billy would ask him to elaborate, and hell, he had a right to know, having to meet the man in a few months.
“What was his name?” Billy asked, pushing in quite another direction altogether. “Your mate.”
“Cullin,” Dom said quietly, shifting a little. Now the tables were turned again, with Billy asking sticky questions without knowing boundaries. He changed the subject. “Anyway, I told my mum and dad before my last year at Uni.”
Billy must have caught Dom’s unease, the way he hesitated, but didn’t press the first subject. “Well, what happened? What’d they say?”
“Mum was Mum. She babbled on about having a feeling and worried herself into knots, but then she was fine. And Dad… well, Dad didn’t say anything. Still hasn’t.” Dom tried to dull the bite in his tone, but it didn’t really work. “Billy, he’s not going to be an easy…”
Billy dismissed this once again with a gentle shush. “I’m not afraid of your dad.” He closed his hands over Dom’s fingers on the table, meeting his eyes. It was stunning really, how in the midst of Billy’s most difficult fears, he still found the strength to reassure Dom against his own. Billy was remarkable that way. “And I can’t wait to meet this brother of yours.”
“He’s straight, Bills,” Dom deadpanned, and received a playful smack to the head for his cheek. “I don’t know if he’s going to come to Christmas, but I hope he does. I didn’t know I missed him until now.”
“Me either,” Billy murmured, looking down at his letter where it lay among the other attempts. “You really think this is okay?”
Dom saw a fervent need for approval in his eyes. “I think it’s enough. And it’s beautiful, Bills, it really is. Want me to type it for you?”
Billy stared down at his words. “No. No, I’ll… I’ll write it out.”
Dom paused, “Billy, there are about a hundred addresses in there. There are people who do this sort of thing for a living - finding people - that we can call-“
“No. I’ll do it,” Billy protested, looking overwhelmed but determined. “I’ll write it all out and send it to them all.”
Dom shook his head, bemused. “You don’t have to do it that way anymore. Just type it, and we’ll print as many copies as we need.”
“No,” Billy refused stubbornly. “It’s more personal, if I write it out. I want to. I don’t want to pay someone to clean up my own mess.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a glutton for punishment?” Dom chuckled as he got up from the table, tilting to kiss Billy's cheek as he took away their lunch plates. It would take Billy nearly as long to type as to write it out anyway, hunting and pecking for the right keys. It was an endless source of fun, the way Billy was utterly at ease with the world aside from the few modern upgrades he’d done without for most of his life. He still treated Dom’s little computer as though he might break it if he wasn’t fully supervised for every click. “Old man.”
“Hush, you.”
Dom ruffled Billy’s already wild hair. “I think Bean had a crush on you.”
“Fuck, Dom,” Billy blurted through giggles, “I want to be there when you accuse him of that, just to watch him sit on you until you can’t breathe. He’ll show you he has a crush.”
By noon the following day, the dining room table held five stacks of envelopes, addressed, sealed and stamped, a cardboard box of ‘mistakes’ to be recycled, and a rather dry ballpoint pen.
“That’s all of them?” Dom asked. He’d found an old shoebox that still had its lid in the top of his closet.
“Two hundred and twelve addresses,” Billy told him, rubbing the ache in his right hand from hours of writing longhand. “A lot more than a hundred, really. I won’t be playing guitar for a while. Or wanking.”
Dom feigned hurt, and began to shuffle the envelopes neatly into the shoebox. “Why the hell would you need to wank?”
“When you’re at work and I miss you.”
Such a blunt answer startled Dom into stillness, gaping at Billy. “I…”
“It’s all right,” Billy quickly amended, “I was only joking.”
“No, you’re… you’re right,” sitting down, Dom fidgeted. He knew he wasn’t home enough, he even still feared that Billy would grow bored of him because of it. “Cate wants me to cut back my hours, so… maybe…”
“You need to work, Dom,” Billy told him gently, and if he was at all put out by it, he didn’t look it. “You love your kids. They need you.”
Dom stared at the pile of letters in the shoebox and in his hand. Billy was working through something twenty years in the making, something Dom had pushed and pushed and pushed on until he’d yielded, and yet Dom was only here to support him evenings and weekends, and sometimes not even those.
He reach into his jumper and pulled off the Manaia pendent, holding it out to Billy, who took it almost reluctantly, question and concern pinching his eyebrows. “Maybe I need to sort out my priorities, then.”
“Dommeh…”
“No,” Dom took the necklace and put it over Billy’s head. “It’s not mine. You told me that. You put it on me, and you can take it off. When you need it, take it, and I’ll be right here.”
The stunned look on Billy’s face melted to a besotted adoration, and then he was reaching out to bring Dom close by the neck, foreheads touching. “When did you get to be such a romantic?”
Dom nuzzled Billy’s pointy nose with his own, “I think this bloke I met rubbed it off on me,” he tilted to press a warm kiss to Billy’s lips, and it was answered gladly.
“I mean it, Bills,” he murmured when the pulled back, “If you need me, you've got to tell me. Don’t hold it in until it bursts. It gets us into too much trouble.”
“Okay,” Billy gave Dom’s own pendant a little tug.
Dom kissed Billy’s forehead and then rose, shuffling the rest of the letters into the box. “Get your coat. And mine too.”
“Where are we going?”
Dom grinned, shutting the lid safely over the box. “I’ve got an idea.”
Striking out in the crisp wind and sunlight, Dom led the way on a random route up the Forest Hills sidewalks. The snow had melted; only fleeting piles remaining where the city plows had pushed it from the streets. Billy had the shoebox tucked under one arm and Dom’s hand laced in the other, his palm a knot of warmth inside the cold nipping at their knuckles.
When Dom reached his destination and stopped, leaning on the object of his search and turning to grin. Billy looked at him like he was off his rocker. “I was just going to take them to the post office.”
“Yeah, but this is so much more you, don’t you think?” He brushed a few dead leaves caught in the mouth of the old blue street side letterbox, obviously disused in the age of email and text messages. “Think of it, Bills. All those letters and so many old letterboxes in New York City. You’d never know which one held the right envelope.”
Dom knew he had him when the grin rose to Billy’s eyes. “You are completely fucking mad, Dominic.”
Billy opened the shoebox, and drew out a letter from the top of a stack, but once it was in his hand and in frightening vicinity of a post box from which he could not get it back, doubt struck his eyes.
Dom struggled fiercely with himself to hold his tongue, not to push, not even to encourage. This was Billy’s choice, and if he wanted to go back on it and scratch the whole idea was something Dom would not hound him about. Not anymore.
He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes to keep himself from interfering until he heard the squeak and groan of old metal hinges, and his eyes popped open to see the white letter slip into darkness and out of sight.
Billy looked slightly shell shocked at what he’d done, but Dom let out the breath he’d been holding and put a tight arm around him. “See? It only gets easier from here.”
“Does it?” Billy wondered, still staring at the closed mouth of the letterbox as though he might wrench it open and dive in.
“Tampering with the US Mail is a federal offense. They’ll deport you, and then you’ll be that much closer already.” He grinned cheekily and left a peck a cold, rosy cheek. “It does get easier. Come on, we have a lot more to go.”
It took the remainder of the afternoon and several trips on the subways, visiting every borough and seeking out every old blue post box they could find, until the shoebox was empty. Billy had left letters in front of the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, round the corner from the Brooklyn Bridge, by Coney Island, where glimpse of the nearby racetrack had given Billy a moment’s hesitation and a sudden fierce determination without any coaxing from Dom. He’d left some in Chinatown and SoHo, and Chelsea, one in Times Square, outside the Empire State Building, and around the perimeter of Central Park. The last he’d left outside of the Cloisters, where Billy gazed up at the old stonework as though remembering something he’d not seen in ages.
It was nearly dark by the time the made their way back to the very first letterbox on the corner, and the crisp breeze of the autumn day had fallen to bitter cold. Stopping to gaze at it, Dom chafed Billy’s hands in his own.
“You’re cold, Bill. Let’s get some coffee, eh?” Dom nodded to the Starbucks nearby.
Sat at the familiar table with hot coffee and a low bustle of patrons, Billy continued to glance out the window at the letterbox.
“It’s not going to come flying out, you know,” Dom chuckled, reaching across to stroke the pink scar across the back of Billy’s knuckle.
Billy allowed it for a few moments before turning his hand over in Dom’s fingers. “I know. This just feels so… odd. Final. It’s done and I can’t take it back and I can’t run from it either. Not unless I…” He stopped short, looking angry.
“What, Billy?”
“Well, it’s your address, isn’t it?” Billy said to his coffee, eyes darting up fleetingly at Dom and then back, almost shameful.
Dom tightened his fingers. Billy could only run from the outcome of the letters if he ran from Dom as well. It was a possibility that Dom knew was there. It always would be, even when things were good, as good as they were tonight. “Our address,” he said firmly. “You made the first move. You made your choice, just like with me. Now you just have to wait for Maggie to come across a vintage guitar somewhere.”
Billy laughed, shaking his head, “You and that notion of fate, Dom, I don’t-"
“So I suppose the roses did the trick.”
Dom blinked up at the source of the interruption, standing beside the table, surprised to find a familiar face. “You!”
The old man barked a laugh as Dom stood up, “Me. God forbid. Find me a chair, my lad, this is my table you lot are occupying and I’m set in my ways.”
Dom gave him his own chair and then pulled one over to tuck in beside Billy, who had reached across the table to shake the old man’s hand.
“Actually, Dom’s rather shite at flowers, but he managed to get back in my good graces anyway. Billy Boyd, sir.”
The old man shook it with gleaming eyes on Dom, who flushed. “Did he? You’re a tolerant man, then. Bill, you said? My ears are going. He looked like he’d been kicked out for sure, last I saw him. Dom, was it?”
“Dom Monaghan, sir. And thank you. You know, for-“
“Shut up, I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know,” the old man grumbled, “And none of this ‘sir’ rubbish either, I’m no Lord of the Manor. Name’s Ian. Did you know any Holm's back in England?”
Dom looked at Billy, who did the same, “Erm, no… I don’t think so.”
“No? Hmm. Old name, out of Scotland, you know, far removed. My Bea was a Gilbert, herself,” he sipped his coffee and sighed. “I went to the doctor the other day.”
Dom shared a glance with Billy again. The old man, Ian, seemed at once fiercely intelligent, but at times lost in his own head, just as he had before. Dom had to wonder if it was a loss of function from age or simply grief for a companion he’d had for so long.
“Are you ill?” Billy asked, concern in his tone.
Ian laughed, “Am I ill? I’m old, lad, just old. Same old complaints. I wasn’t going to bother, but some young tosser yanked me out from in front of a bus, so I figured I’d better be certain it was worth his time. Who’s blood was that, hmm? You look a right state better than last time.” He squinted at the two of them.
Billy looked to Dom for explanation. Dom cleared his throat, squeezing Billy’s hand on his thigh in apology for having divulged this to a perfect stranger, “It was… it was Bill’s, on my shirt. Remember, I said we had an argument and he punched the wall? Cut himself a bit, that’s all.”
Ian looked appraisingly at Billy for a few moments, “Well, that was stupid, wasn’t it?”
Billy looked struck, and then belatedly he laughed. “Yeah, it was, at that.”
“I expect you’ve sorted it, then?” Ian asked, looking for all things like a father reprimanding a pair of siblings.
“Yes,” Dom answered. “Repaired and forgotten.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, no wonder you’re a bundle of nerves,” Ian rolled his eyes at the ceiling, “Never forgotten. Learned from, I should hope. History bloody repeats itself if you don’t pay it any attention. My Bea once turned me out on my arse when I’d been at the pub for a good sight too long, said I could go back and see if they’d have me sleep on the steps if I wanted to drink the evenings away. You’d imagine a cold night would have taught me, but noooo. I did it again, and she turned me out again, threatened to take up our Lissa and Barnaby and buy a ticket on one of those aeroplanes away back to England, eh? Taught me to pay attention.”
Dom smiled through this story, and Billy latched right in, “Lissa and Barnaby?”
Ian sipped his coffee and nodded. “My children. They’re grown now, older than you, I expect, have their own children. But I don’t remember their names. They’re written in the Christmas cards we get. My Bea puts them on the mantelpiece and the piano.” His smile dropped away, and he shook his head, “No. No, she doesn’t. She did, though. Cancer. Very quick.”
Dom watched the old man speak. His eyes were sharp and his body still relatively spry, but grief settled on him like sacks of bricks. He was alone when he never had been, and had family, but apparently rarely saw them. He seemed desperately lonely. Dom looked at Billy, whose gaze seemed to mirror his own thoughts. “Ian, would you like to come round to dinner sometimes? At our place?”
The old man glanced at him, “Oh, I don’t want to impose… you’re young…”
“It’s not an imposition,” Dom chuckled, “Just a good dinner, and friends to talk to.”
Ian thought about it, “I think I should like that. Things change, this city’s changed. People don’t like to talk much.”
They’d left Ian to his coffee after collecting his phone number and address, which was only a few blocks farther from the coffee shop than their own.
“I like him,” Billy said, as they climbed the steps of their building.
“Me too,” Dom agreed, “I don’t know if he’s well, but he seems like he could use a friend or two. He helped me out when I needed it.”
“I think you helped him first,” Billy pointed out as they climbed the stairwell, “You’ve got a knack for helping people, Dommeh.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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: Letters, fears, old friends and new ones.
Author's note: There is a graphic in this chapter. Let me know if it's not there.
Chapter 12
Saturday, October 14th
“Billy, it’s…” Dom tried for the right words as he reread Billy’s familiar, looping script. “It’s…”
“Shite. It’s total shite is what it is,” he reached to try and snatch the paper back.
Dom held it away, “No, it’s good! It’s really very good. It’s to the point, you know… efficient.”
“Efficient? You make it sound like I’m cutting a business deal,” Billy leaned back from the table, which was strewn with dozens of similarly scrawled sheets. Some stopped mid-sentence and crumpled amongst the chair legs, and others were several pages long, rambling and smudged. The stale remains of a sandwich sat among them, while Dom’s plate was empty. Billy looked forlorn at the mess before him. “I don’t know. I just don’t know about this.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Dom tsked, “It’s really nice, Billy, aside from all that about not deserving it. You don’t need to write a book, just… this. Just let her know you’re still here.”
Billy propped his elbows on the table and his face in his hands with a pout of exasperation. “I don’t know if I said enough. Or said it right.”
Dom looked at him fondly. “You managed to say enough on those little postcards you gave me.”
“You were easy to write to.” The corner of Billy’s mouth lifted, just a little. “I didn’t muck up your life before I came running back looking for… Shite. I did exactly that, didn’t I?”
Dom grinned, “Turns out I didn’t mind so much.”
“This is so hard, Dommeh,” Billy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, raking it up wildly. “Feels like I’m twenty again, only I don’t have the… the…” he tapped a finger on the table, searching for a word, “…the fucking recklessness for it anymore.”
“Right. Telling some bloke you spent a week and a half with that you’d fly across the world if he called wasn’t the least bit reckless.”
“No,” Billy laughed humorlessly. “Doing it though, that was bloody insane.”
“Then it’s insane,” Dom pressed. “It can be worth it, right?”
Billy’s eyes went glazed, staring across the room and out the windows, where the afternoon sun glinted off the opposite building. “How do I explain, though? Where I’ve been, why I never came back? How do I tell her I’ve done nothing useful, that I never made anything of myself? How do I tell her about boxing for money and living in the Tube and… and…” his eyes darted back to Dom, “Christ, how do I even tell her I’m gay?”
Dom regarded him with fond amusement, “Same way you tell anybody.”
Bill ran both hands over his face and left them there, peeping at Dom through the spaces of his fingers like a kid watching a horror flick.
“You’ve never had to tell anyone?” Dom asked incredulously. Billy had never, in all the time they’d spent together, struck him as an in-the-closet sort of bloke.
Billy shook his head, staring blankly at the paper in front of him. “People that needed to know just found out, I guess. But that was all after I left.”
“Even Bean?”
“Oh, he figured it out,” Billy snickered a little, and his cheeks went pink as he ducked his head.
Dom grinned lecherously, “You made a move.”
“No,” Billy laughed a bit harder. “It was hot out on a construction site one day, and the fucker took his shirt off. Mind, this was when he was twenty-nine and his marriage was fucked, and there was an office full of birds across the street, getting just as nice an eyeful as I was. ‘Course he noticed. First the birds, then me.”
“What’d he do?”
Billy rested a rosy cheek on his hand and grinned at the long ago memory, “He took me to the pub and bought me a beer and threw me the biggest piss-taking I’ve ever had. And then everything went right back to normal.”
“Bean’s a great mate,” Dom smiled.
“Aye,” Billy murmured, then came back to the present. “But that doesn’t help me now, though. I don’t know how to tell her these things. It’s not the same as mates, Dom. I’ll have found her, only to lose her all over again.”
“You don’t know that. You never really know, Bills. Maybe she already knew it.”
Billy eyed him skeptically. “You didn’t grow up in Glasgow.”
“No. I grew up in Manchester, and went to Catholic school on top of it,” Dom countered. “Trust me, Bills, I’ve been there.”
Billy tapped his fingers on the letters absently. “How’d you tell them? Your parents? Your brother?”
“Matt knew,” Dom answered, reassuring where Billy was doubtful. “I don’t know how, but he figured it out before anyone. Even me.”
Billy looked at him quizzically, and Dom shrugged. “I remember this one time at school… I was eleven. Matt was fourteen, so he had classes in a different building, separated by a yard that had trees at the ends, and we’d have breaks out there. And I…” Dom darted a look at Billy, “I had a mate, then, my best mate. And we were always together, you know? Always. During breaks, we’d be round those big trees, climbing them, or sitting under them, just me and him.
“Once, there was a group of the older kids, skiving classes and smoking, and they found us. They started in on us for fun, taking the piss, calling us names and… daring us to kiss or some shite. I didn’t even really know, then. I just remember thinking it wouldn’t be so very awful, to kiss a friend I liked as much as him.”
Dom skipped ahead, “Matt came. Out of nowhere, really. They were his own mates too, and he gave them all a piece of hell for picking on me.”
He grinned at the memory of that day. “’Where do you lot get off fucking about my kid brother? If anyone gets the privilege, it’s me, not you load of wankers.’ That’s what he said to them, and then he lights up a fag, all casual-like and says to me, ‘Dom, any one of these pricks starts in on you again answers to me, all right?’”
Billy was smiling widely. “Matt was cool.”
“So cool,” Dom mused, “The way he said it… they weren’t angry with him, and at the same time they never messed with me again. I wanted to be like him, but… I was always Matt’s Kid Brother. It was bad enough we went to the same school where Dad taught, though. Matt only got around that bit getting into trouble. But I was the good son, I was Dad’s favourite.” There was a time when those words didn’t taste quite so bitter. Billy would ask him to elaborate, and hell, he had a right to know, having to meet the man in a few months.
“What was his name?” Billy asked, pushing in quite another direction altogether. “Your mate.”
“Cullin,” Dom said quietly, shifting a little. Now the tables were turned again, with Billy asking sticky questions without knowing boundaries. He changed the subject. “Anyway, I told my mum and dad before my last year at Uni.”
Billy must have caught Dom’s unease, the way he hesitated, but didn’t press the first subject. “Well, what happened? What’d they say?”
“Mum was Mum. She babbled on about having a feeling and worried herself into knots, but then she was fine. And Dad… well, Dad didn’t say anything. Still hasn’t.” Dom tried to dull the bite in his tone, but it didn’t really work. “Billy, he’s not going to be an easy…”
Billy dismissed this once again with a gentle shush. “I’m not afraid of your dad.” He closed his hands over Dom’s fingers on the table, meeting his eyes. It was stunning really, how in the midst of Billy’s most difficult fears, he still found the strength to reassure Dom against his own. Billy was remarkable that way. “And I can’t wait to meet this brother of yours.”
“He’s straight, Bills,” Dom deadpanned, and received a playful smack to the head for his cheek. “I don’t know if he’s going to come to Christmas, but I hope he does. I didn’t know I missed him until now.”
“Me either,” Billy murmured, looking down at his letter where it lay among the other attempts. “You really think this is okay?”
Dom saw a fervent need for approval in his eyes. “I think it’s enough. And it’s beautiful, Bills, it really is. Want me to type it for you?”
Billy stared down at his words. “No. No, I’ll… I’ll write it out.”
Dom paused, “Billy, there are about a hundred addresses in there. There are people who do this sort of thing for a living - finding people - that we can call-“
“No. I’ll do it,” Billy protested, looking overwhelmed but determined. “I’ll write it all out and send it to them all.”
Dom shook his head, bemused. “You don’t have to do it that way anymore. Just type it, and we’ll print as many copies as we need.”
“No,” Billy refused stubbornly. “It’s more personal, if I write it out. I want to. I don’t want to pay someone to clean up my own mess.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a glutton for punishment?” Dom chuckled as he got up from the table, tilting to kiss Billy's cheek as he took away their lunch plates. It would take Billy nearly as long to type as to write it out anyway, hunting and pecking for the right keys. It was an endless source of fun, the way Billy was utterly at ease with the world aside from the few modern upgrades he’d done without for most of his life. He still treated Dom’s little computer as though he might break it if he wasn’t fully supervised for every click. “Old man.”
“Hush, you.”
Dom ruffled Billy’s already wild hair. “I think Bean had a crush on you.”
“Fuck, Dom,” Billy blurted through giggles, “I want to be there when you accuse him of that, just to watch him sit on you until you can’t breathe. He’ll show you he has a crush.”
By noon the following day, the dining room table held five stacks of envelopes, addressed, sealed and stamped, a cardboard box of ‘mistakes’ to be recycled, and a rather dry ballpoint pen.
“That’s all of them?” Dom asked. He’d found an old shoebox that still had its lid in the top of his closet.
“Two hundred and twelve addresses,” Billy told him, rubbing the ache in his right hand from hours of writing longhand. “A lot more than a hundred, really. I won’t be playing guitar for a while. Or wanking.”
Dom feigned hurt, and began to shuffle the envelopes neatly into the shoebox. “Why the hell would you need to wank?”
“When you’re at work and I miss you.”
Such a blunt answer startled Dom into stillness, gaping at Billy. “I…”
“It’s all right,” Billy quickly amended, “I was only joking.”
“No, you’re… you’re right,” sitting down, Dom fidgeted. He knew he wasn’t home enough, he even still feared that Billy would grow bored of him because of it. “Cate wants me to cut back my hours, so… maybe…”
“You need to work, Dom,” Billy told him gently, and if he was at all put out by it, he didn’t look it. “You love your kids. They need you.”
Dom stared at the pile of letters in the shoebox and in his hand. Billy was working through something twenty years in the making, something Dom had pushed and pushed and pushed on until he’d yielded, and yet Dom was only here to support him evenings and weekends, and sometimes not even those.
He reach into his jumper and pulled off the Manaia pendent, holding it out to Billy, who took it almost reluctantly, question and concern pinching his eyebrows. “Maybe I need to sort out my priorities, then.”
“Dommeh…”
“No,” Dom took the necklace and put it over Billy’s head. “It’s not mine. You told me that. You put it on me, and you can take it off. When you need it, take it, and I’ll be right here.”
The stunned look on Billy’s face melted to a besotted adoration, and then he was reaching out to bring Dom close by the neck, foreheads touching. “When did you get to be such a romantic?”
Dom nuzzled Billy’s pointy nose with his own, “I think this bloke I met rubbed it off on me,” he tilted to press a warm kiss to Billy’s lips, and it was answered gladly.
“I mean it, Bills,” he murmured when the pulled back, “If you need me, you've got to tell me. Don’t hold it in until it bursts. It gets us into too much trouble.”
“Okay,” Billy gave Dom’s own pendant a little tug.
Dom kissed Billy’s forehead and then rose, shuffling the rest of the letters into the box. “Get your coat. And mine too.”
“Where are we going?”
Dom grinned, shutting the lid safely over the box. “I’ve got an idea.”
Striking out in the crisp wind and sunlight, Dom led the way on a random route up the Forest Hills sidewalks. The snow had melted; only fleeting piles remaining where the city plows had pushed it from the streets. Billy had the shoebox tucked under one arm and Dom’s hand laced in the other, his palm a knot of warmth inside the cold nipping at their knuckles.
When Dom reached his destination and stopped, leaning on the object of his search and turning to grin. Billy looked at him like he was off his rocker. “I was just going to take them to the post office.”
“Yeah, but this is so much more you, don’t you think?” He brushed a few dead leaves caught in the mouth of the old blue street side letterbox, obviously disused in the age of email and text messages. “Think of it, Bills. All those letters and so many old letterboxes in New York City. You’d never know which one held the right envelope.”
Dom knew he had him when the grin rose to Billy’s eyes. “You are completely fucking mad, Dominic.”
Billy opened the shoebox, and drew out a letter from the top of a stack, but once it was in his hand and in frightening vicinity of a post box from which he could not get it back, doubt struck his eyes.
Dom struggled fiercely with himself to hold his tongue, not to push, not even to encourage. This was Billy’s choice, and if he wanted to go back on it and scratch the whole idea was something Dom would not hound him about. Not anymore.
He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes to keep himself from interfering until he heard the squeak and groan of old metal hinges, and his eyes popped open to see the white letter slip into darkness and out of sight.
Billy looked slightly shell shocked at what he’d done, but Dom let out the breath he’d been holding and put a tight arm around him. “See? It only gets easier from here.”
“Does it?” Billy wondered, still staring at the closed mouth of the letterbox as though he might wrench it open and dive in.
“Tampering with the US Mail is a federal offense. They’ll deport you, and then you’ll be that much closer already.” He grinned cheekily and left a peck a cold, rosy cheek. “It does get easier. Come on, we have a lot more to go.”
It took the remainder of the afternoon and several trips on the subways, visiting every borough and seeking out every old blue post box they could find, until the shoebox was empty. Billy had left letters in front of the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, round the corner from the Brooklyn Bridge, by Coney Island, where glimpse of the nearby racetrack had given Billy a moment’s hesitation and a sudden fierce determination without any coaxing from Dom. He’d left some in Chinatown and SoHo, and Chelsea, one in Times Square, outside the Empire State Building, and around the perimeter of Central Park. The last he’d left outside of the Cloisters, where Billy gazed up at the old stonework as though remembering something he’d not seen in ages.
It was nearly dark by the time the made their way back to the very first letterbox on the corner, and the crisp breeze of the autumn day had fallen to bitter cold. Stopping to gaze at it, Dom chafed Billy’s hands in his own.
“You’re cold, Bill. Let’s get some coffee, eh?” Dom nodded to the Starbucks nearby.
Sat at the familiar table with hot coffee and a low bustle of patrons, Billy continued to glance out the window at the letterbox.
“It’s not going to come flying out, you know,” Dom chuckled, reaching across to stroke the pink scar across the back of Billy’s knuckle.
Billy allowed it for a few moments before turning his hand over in Dom’s fingers. “I know. This just feels so… odd. Final. It’s done and I can’t take it back and I can’t run from it either. Not unless I…” He stopped short, looking angry.
“What, Billy?”
“Well, it’s your address, isn’t it?” Billy said to his coffee, eyes darting up fleetingly at Dom and then back, almost shameful.
Dom tightened his fingers. Billy could only run from the outcome of the letters if he ran from Dom as well. It was a possibility that Dom knew was there. It always would be, even when things were good, as good as they were tonight. “Our address,” he said firmly. “You made the first move. You made your choice, just like with me. Now you just have to wait for Maggie to come across a vintage guitar somewhere.”
Billy laughed, shaking his head, “You and that notion of fate, Dom, I don’t-"
“So I suppose the roses did the trick.”
Dom blinked up at the source of the interruption, standing beside the table, surprised to find a familiar face. “You!”
The old man barked a laugh as Dom stood up, “Me. God forbid. Find me a chair, my lad, this is my table you lot are occupying and I’m set in my ways.”
Dom gave him his own chair and then pulled one over to tuck in beside Billy, who had reached across the table to shake the old man’s hand.
“Actually, Dom’s rather shite at flowers, but he managed to get back in my good graces anyway. Billy Boyd, sir.”
The old man shook it with gleaming eyes on Dom, who flushed. “Did he? You’re a tolerant man, then. Bill, you said? My ears are going. He looked like he’d been kicked out for sure, last I saw him. Dom, was it?”
“Dom Monaghan, sir. And thank you. You know, for-“
“Shut up, I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know,” the old man grumbled, “And none of this ‘sir’ rubbish either, I’m no Lord of the Manor. Name’s Ian. Did you know any Holm's back in England?”
Dom looked at Billy, who did the same, “Erm, no… I don’t think so.”
“No? Hmm. Old name, out of Scotland, you know, far removed. My Bea was a Gilbert, herself,” he sipped his coffee and sighed. “I went to the doctor the other day.”
Dom shared a glance with Billy again. The old man, Ian, seemed at once fiercely intelligent, but at times lost in his own head, just as he had before. Dom had to wonder if it was a loss of function from age or simply grief for a companion he’d had for so long.
“Are you ill?” Billy asked, concern in his tone.
Ian laughed, “Am I ill? I’m old, lad, just old. Same old complaints. I wasn’t going to bother, but some young tosser yanked me out from in front of a bus, so I figured I’d better be certain it was worth his time. Who’s blood was that, hmm? You look a right state better than last time.” He squinted at the two of them.
Billy looked to Dom for explanation. Dom cleared his throat, squeezing Billy’s hand on his thigh in apology for having divulged this to a perfect stranger, “It was… it was Bill’s, on my shirt. Remember, I said we had an argument and he punched the wall? Cut himself a bit, that’s all.”
Ian looked appraisingly at Billy for a few moments, “Well, that was stupid, wasn’t it?”
Billy looked struck, and then belatedly he laughed. “Yeah, it was, at that.”
“I expect you’ve sorted it, then?” Ian asked, looking for all things like a father reprimanding a pair of siblings.
“Yes,” Dom answered. “Repaired and forgotten.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, no wonder you’re a bundle of nerves,” Ian rolled his eyes at the ceiling, “Never forgotten. Learned from, I should hope. History bloody repeats itself if you don’t pay it any attention. My Bea once turned me out on my arse when I’d been at the pub for a good sight too long, said I could go back and see if they’d have me sleep on the steps if I wanted to drink the evenings away. You’d imagine a cold night would have taught me, but noooo. I did it again, and she turned me out again, threatened to take up our Lissa and Barnaby and buy a ticket on one of those aeroplanes away back to England, eh? Taught me to pay attention.”
Dom smiled through this story, and Billy latched right in, “Lissa and Barnaby?”
Ian sipped his coffee and nodded. “My children. They’re grown now, older than you, I expect, have their own children. But I don’t remember their names. They’re written in the Christmas cards we get. My Bea puts them on the mantelpiece and the piano.” His smile dropped away, and he shook his head, “No. No, she doesn’t. She did, though. Cancer. Very quick.”
Dom watched the old man speak. His eyes were sharp and his body still relatively spry, but grief settled on him like sacks of bricks. He was alone when he never had been, and had family, but apparently rarely saw them. He seemed desperately lonely. Dom looked at Billy, whose gaze seemed to mirror his own thoughts. “Ian, would you like to come round to dinner sometimes? At our place?”
The old man glanced at him, “Oh, I don’t want to impose… you’re young…”
“It’s not an imposition,” Dom chuckled, “Just a good dinner, and friends to talk to.”
Ian thought about it, “I think I should like that. Things change, this city’s changed. People don’t like to talk much.”
They’d left Ian to his coffee after collecting his phone number and address, which was only a few blocks farther from the coffee shop than their own.
“I like him,” Billy said, as they climbed the steps of their building.
“Me too,” Dom agreed, “I don’t know if he’s well, but he seems like he could use a friend or two. He helped me out when I needed it.”
“I think you helped him first,” Billy pointed out as they climbed the stairwell, “You’ve got a knack for helping people, Dommeh.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN