A True Gentleman
Title: A True Gentleman (9/?)
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: PG-NC17
Warnings: AU, angst, art geekery
Summary: Uni fic.
Billy knocked at Mort’s office, waiting several moments before attempting to peek through the mostly shut blinds. The light was off inside. He glanced at his watch and down the hallway; it was rather unlike Mort to forget an advising session. He waited another couple of minutes feeling like an idiot as people walked passed him, though the sight of students lingering outside of professors’ offices were a daily occurrence.
Finally he turned away, his thoughts going to the stacks of essays and two classes worth of midterms he had to mark and the paper of his own he wanted to finish before going to work, though he felt a bit blown off. Outside in the cold, he started across the grass, debating whether to go home rather the library. He had been doing so in the last week or so, mainly avoiding Dom. For the most part it seemed like Dom was doing the same. They hadn’t spoken since that afternoon, and Dom had even left off annoying him in class, though Billy often caught long unreadable looks from him. He still didn’t want to deal with him if he could help it.
“Billy!”
Looking up, he spotted Mort, making long strides toward him in a heavy coat, “I didn’t forget,” Mort apologized, looking a bit disgruntled, “I got caught up talking to the head of the financing committee.”
“Ah,” Billy smiled. “Let me guess. They turned down another bid for slide projectors that aren’t as old as I am.”
“Something like that,” Mort mumbled, “God forbid they let us spend a few hundred bucks for a system that might bring us into the twenty first century.”
Billy turned back to the building with Mort falling into step with him, “I also ran into Candelwahl though, mentioned your proposal problem.”
“Yeah?” Billy lit up, “Did she-?”
“She knows your name, but only because her secretary says you call twice a day. Says she’s waiting on paperwork.”
“I do call twice a day,” Billy scowled. “Only way to get those people to remember me is to crawl up their arses. And I don’t know what other paperwork she thinks she still needs, I’ve given them copies of my current transcripts with all my professors signatures on them. I had my professors sign several copies in case the idiots lost the ones I gave them! Next they’ll be telling me I’m not in the system at all.”
“Well, you know, people work admin at big fancy universities because they didn’t have the clout to teach here.”
“Said the man who had to wait for some old tenured bastard to retire,” Billy quipped.
“Touché.”
Mort pulled the door wide, letting Billy back into the warmth first, and following him back to his office, digging his keys out to unlock it as Billy gave a jolting shiver, rubbing the feeling back into his hands as the heated air made them tingle.
Billy paused once they were shut in, he sank in the chair opposite Mort’s desk and gave a small laugh once there, “I don’t really know what else we needed to talk about, besides my proposal date, or lack thereof. Shite, couldn’t I just go breathe down their necks until they just take a look at it?”
“If only it were that easy,” Mort said, peeling his coat off and hanging it before taking his own seat, “It’ll get done, though, it’s just a waiting game. I know,” he preempted, “You don’t want to wait.”
Billy pursed his lips, nodding at his fingers.
“Does everything have to be planned out, though?” Mort asked.
“How do you mean?”
“What’s supposed to happen in the next two years, Bill? Humor me. How does it go in your head?”
Billy thought about what he expected. “I’m supposed to spend a year, or less, finishing this thing, get P-H-D stuck at the end of my name, and then move back home, or closer to it, anyway. Then if I arse-kiss the right people, I’d get a job at any one of the big museums, work up to being a curator somewhere. Kelvingrove. The National Gallery. The Duomo, or the Louvre, if we’re going for my wildest fantasy.” He smiled wistfully at that one.
Mort smile softly back, but still with something else behind it. “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else, Billy?” he repeated, “Your entire life can’t be your work. Do you want to travel? Get a dog? Maybe get married? Have a family?”
Billy laughed, leaning back in his chair, firing right back, “Do you?”
“Tried it,” Mort grinned back, and suddenly he was Viggo again, not the professor. “The marriage wasn’t for me, but having Henry, I don’t regret that.”
Billy looked at the somewhat dated photo of Viggo’s son on the shelves behind the desk. He knew Henry was grown now, twentysomething and going to some university on the west coast, but it was odd to him to imagine those parts of Viggo’s life. That he had a son at all was part of what had kept Billy from continuing to indulge in his short infatuation with the man years ago, even if only in his head. He couldn’t imagine fitting something like that into his life, even if the idea of a romance on that cowboy western ranch of his was a bit of fun.
That brought his thoughts back around to Dom, and to Dom kissing him on his sofa, for reasons Billy could only speculate. He hardly believed Dom did it for anything other than to fuck with his head, just another way to taunt and manipulate him, and a particularly twisted one at that. He considered bringing up their study arrangement and how they were currently avoiding it. He wondered if Dom had spoken to Mort about him, even if Viggo was somehow even a part of some elaborate plan to fuck Billy’s mind over until he couldn’t recover. But he doubted it. Viggo kept himself far too busy to waste free time thinking up malicious ways to have a laugh at the expense of others, unlike some people.
“I… don’t know,” he muttered. “I don’t have time. Anyway, there isn’t anyone I would want. Nobody but Mona Lisa,” he smiled back up.
Viggo rumbled a laugh and arched a brow. “Maybe when you get to France you’ll meet someone who makes you feel differently. Mona doesn’t talk much.”
Billy grinned back, thinking of Dom again. “Some people talk too much.”
It was just after ten pm, and the restaurant crowd at Mortons was beginning to clear out. Only a couple of tables full of businessmen kept ordering drinks around their arguments and bouts of raucous laughter, and the rest of the waitstaff was finishing off their sidework. Billy had ended up working the bar tonight, as the regular barman was out sick and another was on holiday. It was a welcome change from running back and forth waiting tables. And being a slow Tuesday night, he might even get out of here early.
Billy glanced up from the pint glasses he was wiping dry when Sarah seated a familiar face at the end of the bar and groaned inwardly, rescinding that thought. Dom smiled at him, taking his seat and nodding thanks to the hostess. Just what he needed. The doors had just been locked and the rest of the place was nearly empty, he was sure Dom used some insipid variety of charm to get Sarah to let him in. All Billy could hope for was that he would have a beer and then be away, and this torment wouldn’t last long.
He took a steadying breath and a moment to clean the film from his glasses on a corner of his apron, then approached the too casually dressed man at the end.
“What can I get you to drink?” he asked. Dom could very easily be here to taunt and annoy him and complain, but frankly, the big boss was long gone and Billy didn’t much care what the night manager thought.
“Stella?” Dom asked, smiling nicely. Too nicely.
“Can I see ID?”
Dom smirked and pulled out his wallet, which Billy merely glanced at before pulling down a chalice and filling it expertly while Dom’s hooded eyes watched.
“Is it too late to order dinner?”
Billy clenched his jaw, and wiped a spot on the bar, tucking the towel into his apron strings. “No. I’ll just give you a minute, then, shall I?”
He turned away without waiting for an answer, back to the opposite end of the bar and his tray of glassware. It annoyed him that Dom would come this far to irritate him, across the bloody Charles and into the city where parking was a premium. That he’d gladly sit there and bask while Billy had to keep his tongue checked and serve him, watch him eat, be at his beck and call, it was probably a huge stroke to his already substantial ego. Even now he could feel Dom’s eyes on his back. Go on he thought, you like the white shirt and the bow tie? How about the apron, does it work for you? I’m sure you’d love having a manservant you could dress up and order about. It’d be right up your alley, wouldn’t it?
“I, ah,” Dom’s voice came back, too close; he had brought his beer and his menu from the far end over to Billy’s workspace and sat down there. “I couldn’t find you in the library today.”
Billy took a deep breath and looked Dom over, annoyed by the very fact that Dom had wandered in here in jeans and his frat t-shirt with nothing but that leather jacket over top, or why the restaurant’s jackets-and-ties policy didn’t seem to apply if one sat at the bar late at night. He pulled his ticket book and pen out of his apron and said, “What’ll you be having to eat, Dom.”
Dom’s grin seemed relieved, and he ordered the filet mignon sandwiches.
Billy punched the order into the computer, nodding at the waiter dealing with the businessmen for yet another round. He turned, lining up fresh glasses, Dom watching as he pulled beers, poured whisky neat and with ice, gin and tonics and wine.
“How long have you worked here?” Dom asked him as he arranged them all on a tray for the waiter to take.
“A couple of years.”
Dom nodded appraisingly, and Billy couldn’t think what about that might impress him. He turned back to his tray of glassware, polishing and stowing them until Dom’s food came up and he delivered it.
“Have you talked to Mort recently?” Dom asked after his first bite, “Outside of class, I mean.”
“Talked to him this afternoon,” Billy answered, polishing the bar, trying to keep busy and not have to look at Dom.
“Did he mention me at all?”
Billy looked up at him pointedly, “No.”
Dom finished the first of his little sandwiches, pausing before coming to the next, looking perplexed. “Are we not studying together anymore? I mean, it’s been a week and a half and I haven’t been able to find you.”
Billy shrugged, washing his hands and toweling them off, “Not my problem, Dom. I study wherever I happen to be.” He pitched the towel into the laundry bin under the bar before looking back at Dom again. “Besides, you know where I live. You’ve apparently no problem at all with inviting yourself over.”
“Maybe you should give me your number,” Dom tried, “Then it wouldn’t seem like I’m butting in unannounced if I can call ahead.”
Billy merely stared back, wondering if this was yet another sordid trick in Dom’s arsenal against him.
“Look, I didn’t mean… I’m sorry I…” Dom stumbled, shaking his head and tapping at the side of his glass. “Can we just forget what happened? I need these study sessions, okay? I have to keep my GPA up and… working with you does that for me.”
Billy looked out across the restaurant, trying to assemble his thoughts. So often in the last week and a half, often shoving right in when he was trying to work, trying to sleep, trying to lead a class, he could feel Dom’s lips on his own-soft, practiced, insistent but careful. And he could feel his own reaction to it, that riptide of endorphins firing through his heart and his limbs and his cock, making him ache. He’d long forgotten what that felt like, and now it was in his head constantly.
“Bills?”
“Why d’you call me that?” Billy asked abruptly.
Dom grinned, but softly, not his typical leering way, “At first because it pissed you off. But now because it doesn’t.”
Somehow Dom was right about that. Billy had long since quit wasting energy being irritated by that nickname, mainly because Dom had moved on to other methods to annoy the fuck out of him. And hopefully, it would only last another couple of months, and then Dom will have graduated and be away from here and from him and out of his head, and Billy wouldn’t have to think about any of it any longer.
Dom set to the rest of his sandwich, looking like he’d won some argument that had occurred beneath the surface of this conversation, and Billy knew that come Thursday afternoon, if he was in Study Room Eight, that Dom would likely find him there. Why it made any difference to Dom’s grades was beyond him.
When Dom finally stood up from his empty plate, he left two twenties on the bar beside his napkin, a tip well beyond what was necessary for a fifteen dollar meal.
CHAPTER TEN
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: PG-NC17
Warnings: AU, angst, art geekery
Summary: Uni fic.
Billy knocked at Mort’s office, waiting several moments before attempting to peek through the mostly shut blinds. The light was off inside. He glanced at his watch and down the hallway; it was rather unlike Mort to forget an advising session. He waited another couple of minutes feeling like an idiot as people walked passed him, though the sight of students lingering outside of professors’ offices were a daily occurrence.
Finally he turned away, his thoughts going to the stacks of essays and two classes worth of midterms he had to mark and the paper of his own he wanted to finish before going to work, though he felt a bit blown off. Outside in the cold, he started across the grass, debating whether to go home rather the library. He had been doing so in the last week or so, mainly avoiding Dom. For the most part it seemed like Dom was doing the same. They hadn’t spoken since that afternoon, and Dom had even left off annoying him in class, though Billy often caught long unreadable looks from him. He still didn’t want to deal with him if he could help it.
“Billy!”
Looking up, he spotted Mort, making long strides toward him in a heavy coat, “I didn’t forget,” Mort apologized, looking a bit disgruntled, “I got caught up talking to the head of the financing committee.”
“Ah,” Billy smiled. “Let me guess. They turned down another bid for slide projectors that aren’t as old as I am.”
“Something like that,” Mort mumbled, “God forbid they let us spend a few hundred bucks for a system that might bring us into the twenty first century.”
Billy turned back to the building with Mort falling into step with him, “I also ran into Candelwahl though, mentioned your proposal problem.”
“Yeah?” Billy lit up, “Did she-?”
“She knows your name, but only because her secretary says you call twice a day. Says she’s waiting on paperwork.”
“I do call twice a day,” Billy scowled. “Only way to get those people to remember me is to crawl up their arses. And I don’t know what other paperwork she thinks she still needs, I’ve given them copies of my current transcripts with all my professors signatures on them. I had my professors sign several copies in case the idiots lost the ones I gave them! Next they’ll be telling me I’m not in the system at all.”
“Well, you know, people work admin at big fancy universities because they didn’t have the clout to teach here.”
“Said the man who had to wait for some old tenured bastard to retire,” Billy quipped.
“Touché.”
Mort pulled the door wide, letting Billy back into the warmth first, and following him back to his office, digging his keys out to unlock it as Billy gave a jolting shiver, rubbing the feeling back into his hands as the heated air made them tingle.
Billy paused once they were shut in, he sank in the chair opposite Mort’s desk and gave a small laugh once there, “I don’t really know what else we needed to talk about, besides my proposal date, or lack thereof. Shite, couldn’t I just go breathe down their necks until they just take a look at it?”
“If only it were that easy,” Mort said, peeling his coat off and hanging it before taking his own seat, “It’ll get done, though, it’s just a waiting game. I know,” he preempted, “You don’t want to wait.”
Billy pursed his lips, nodding at his fingers.
“Does everything have to be planned out, though?” Mort asked.
“How do you mean?”
“What’s supposed to happen in the next two years, Bill? Humor me. How does it go in your head?”
Billy thought about what he expected. “I’m supposed to spend a year, or less, finishing this thing, get P-H-D stuck at the end of my name, and then move back home, or closer to it, anyway. Then if I arse-kiss the right people, I’d get a job at any one of the big museums, work up to being a curator somewhere. Kelvingrove. The National Gallery. The Duomo, or the Louvre, if we’re going for my wildest fantasy.” He smiled wistfully at that one.
Mort smile softly back, but still with something else behind it. “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else, Billy?” he repeated, “Your entire life can’t be your work. Do you want to travel? Get a dog? Maybe get married? Have a family?”
Billy laughed, leaning back in his chair, firing right back, “Do you?”
“Tried it,” Mort grinned back, and suddenly he was Viggo again, not the professor. “The marriage wasn’t for me, but having Henry, I don’t regret that.”
Billy looked at the somewhat dated photo of Viggo’s son on the shelves behind the desk. He knew Henry was grown now, twentysomething and going to some university on the west coast, but it was odd to him to imagine those parts of Viggo’s life. That he had a son at all was part of what had kept Billy from continuing to indulge in his short infatuation with the man years ago, even if only in his head. He couldn’t imagine fitting something like that into his life, even if the idea of a romance on that cowboy western ranch of his was a bit of fun.
That brought his thoughts back around to Dom, and to Dom kissing him on his sofa, for reasons Billy could only speculate. He hardly believed Dom did it for anything other than to fuck with his head, just another way to taunt and manipulate him, and a particularly twisted one at that. He considered bringing up their study arrangement and how they were currently avoiding it. He wondered if Dom had spoken to Mort about him, even if Viggo was somehow even a part of some elaborate plan to fuck Billy’s mind over until he couldn’t recover. But he doubted it. Viggo kept himself far too busy to waste free time thinking up malicious ways to have a laugh at the expense of others, unlike some people.
“I… don’t know,” he muttered. “I don’t have time. Anyway, there isn’t anyone I would want. Nobody but Mona Lisa,” he smiled back up.
Viggo rumbled a laugh and arched a brow. “Maybe when you get to France you’ll meet someone who makes you feel differently. Mona doesn’t talk much.”
Billy grinned back, thinking of Dom again. “Some people talk too much.”
It was just after ten pm, and the restaurant crowd at Mortons was beginning to clear out. Only a couple of tables full of businessmen kept ordering drinks around their arguments and bouts of raucous laughter, and the rest of the waitstaff was finishing off their sidework. Billy had ended up working the bar tonight, as the regular barman was out sick and another was on holiday. It was a welcome change from running back and forth waiting tables. And being a slow Tuesday night, he might even get out of here early.
Billy glanced up from the pint glasses he was wiping dry when Sarah seated a familiar face at the end of the bar and groaned inwardly, rescinding that thought. Dom smiled at him, taking his seat and nodding thanks to the hostess. Just what he needed. The doors had just been locked and the rest of the place was nearly empty, he was sure Dom used some insipid variety of charm to get Sarah to let him in. All Billy could hope for was that he would have a beer and then be away, and this torment wouldn’t last long.
He took a steadying breath and a moment to clean the film from his glasses on a corner of his apron, then approached the too casually dressed man at the end.
“What can I get you to drink?” he asked. Dom could very easily be here to taunt and annoy him and complain, but frankly, the big boss was long gone and Billy didn’t much care what the night manager thought.
“Stella?” Dom asked, smiling nicely. Too nicely.
“Can I see ID?”
Dom smirked and pulled out his wallet, which Billy merely glanced at before pulling down a chalice and filling it expertly while Dom’s hooded eyes watched.
“Is it too late to order dinner?”
Billy clenched his jaw, and wiped a spot on the bar, tucking the towel into his apron strings. “No. I’ll just give you a minute, then, shall I?”
He turned away without waiting for an answer, back to the opposite end of the bar and his tray of glassware. It annoyed him that Dom would come this far to irritate him, across the bloody Charles and into the city where parking was a premium. That he’d gladly sit there and bask while Billy had to keep his tongue checked and serve him, watch him eat, be at his beck and call, it was probably a huge stroke to his already substantial ego. Even now he could feel Dom’s eyes on his back. Go on he thought, you like the white shirt and the bow tie? How about the apron, does it work for you? I’m sure you’d love having a manservant you could dress up and order about. It’d be right up your alley, wouldn’t it?
“I, ah,” Dom’s voice came back, too close; he had brought his beer and his menu from the far end over to Billy’s workspace and sat down there. “I couldn’t find you in the library today.”
Billy took a deep breath and looked Dom over, annoyed by the very fact that Dom had wandered in here in jeans and his frat t-shirt with nothing but that leather jacket over top, or why the restaurant’s jackets-and-ties policy didn’t seem to apply if one sat at the bar late at night. He pulled his ticket book and pen out of his apron and said, “What’ll you be having to eat, Dom.”
Dom’s grin seemed relieved, and he ordered the filet mignon sandwiches.
Billy punched the order into the computer, nodding at the waiter dealing with the businessmen for yet another round. He turned, lining up fresh glasses, Dom watching as he pulled beers, poured whisky neat and with ice, gin and tonics and wine.
“How long have you worked here?” Dom asked him as he arranged them all on a tray for the waiter to take.
“A couple of years.”
Dom nodded appraisingly, and Billy couldn’t think what about that might impress him. He turned back to his tray of glassware, polishing and stowing them until Dom’s food came up and he delivered it.
“Have you talked to Mort recently?” Dom asked after his first bite, “Outside of class, I mean.”
“Talked to him this afternoon,” Billy answered, polishing the bar, trying to keep busy and not have to look at Dom.
“Did he mention me at all?”
Billy looked up at him pointedly, “No.”
Dom finished the first of his little sandwiches, pausing before coming to the next, looking perplexed. “Are we not studying together anymore? I mean, it’s been a week and a half and I haven’t been able to find you.”
Billy shrugged, washing his hands and toweling them off, “Not my problem, Dom. I study wherever I happen to be.” He pitched the towel into the laundry bin under the bar before looking back at Dom again. “Besides, you know where I live. You’ve apparently no problem at all with inviting yourself over.”
“Maybe you should give me your number,” Dom tried, “Then it wouldn’t seem like I’m butting in unannounced if I can call ahead.”
Billy merely stared back, wondering if this was yet another sordid trick in Dom’s arsenal against him.
“Look, I didn’t mean… I’m sorry I…” Dom stumbled, shaking his head and tapping at the side of his glass. “Can we just forget what happened? I need these study sessions, okay? I have to keep my GPA up and… working with you does that for me.”
Billy looked out across the restaurant, trying to assemble his thoughts. So often in the last week and a half, often shoving right in when he was trying to work, trying to sleep, trying to lead a class, he could feel Dom’s lips on his own-soft, practiced, insistent but careful. And he could feel his own reaction to it, that riptide of endorphins firing through his heart and his limbs and his cock, making him ache. He’d long forgotten what that felt like, and now it was in his head constantly.
“Bills?”
“Why d’you call me that?” Billy asked abruptly.
Dom grinned, but softly, not his typical leering way, “At first because it pissed you off. But now because it doesn’t.”
Somehow Dom was right about that. Billy had long since quit wasting energy being irritated by that nickname, mainly because Dom had moved on to other methods to annoy the fuck out of him. And hopefully, it would only last another couple of months, and then Dom will have graduated and be away from here and from him and out of his head, and Billy wouldn’t have to think about any of it any longer.
Dom set to the rest of his sandwich, looking like he’d won some argument that had occurred beneath the surface of this conversation, and Billy knew that come Thursday afternoon, if he was in Study Room Eight, that Dom would likely find him there. Why it made any difference to Dom’s grades was beyond him.
When Dom finally stood up from his empty plate, he left two twenties on the bar beside his napkin, a tip well beyond what was necessary for a fifteen dollar meal.
CHAPTER TEN