Book 3, Chapter 1: Strike Anywhere
Title: Strike Anywhere
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy
Word count: 2500
Summary: The night after the afternoon before.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Billy postpones going home that first night for as long as possible, knowing he has little to look forward to once he gets there. The house is a wreck and has been for weeks now, and the cupboards, never very full to begin with, are almost bare, reproachful in the look and sound of echoing emptiness. There's still drink, though; there always is, and there's at least one box of the cheaper cigarettes, even if Billy is-after his last ragged creation smoked in the car on the way to work that morning-now out of papers with which he'd roll his own. And there are certainly things at home Billy could be more productively doing than sitting here inside The Three Gables, warming a mostly-empty pint glass between his hands.
He'd chosen the Gables on purpose, avoiding The Noble Bachelor and its unsettling embrace again. Give yourself a few weeks, Billy thinks, and then it'll be alright; you'll be back to yourself, whatever that means. You'll recognize yourself in the mirror again, and it'll be alright. He reminds himself then that he’s not in mourning here, not really; it’s not the first time he’s ended a relationship messily, and will probably not be the last. Even calling what he’d had with Dominic a relationship is a bit of a stretch; relationships are meant to be mature things, secure things, not long surfs over wave after dangerous wave of stress and desire tempered by brief moments of calm. Billy’s under no illusion that he’ll sleep peacefully tonight, but the kind of guilt that might keep him awake is different from that he might feel if he were to have let things continue. It’s a kind he’s felt before and has mostly learnt how to carry and eventually ignore.
Almost two hours into convincing himself of this, Billy shakes off the bartender’s unspoken question and steps away from further temptation and out into the streets. There’s none of the nerves he’s felt recently on the walk back to his car; instead there’s a strangely pleasant numbness that settles over him, blurring the people who sidestep him on their way to the shops or their own homes and lives and blanketing him with enough warmth that Billy hardly notices the drizzle of Baskerville’s rain beginning again. Billy’s had only enough to encourage that numbness to approach, so he feels moderately confident behind the wheel of his car, keeping his gaze on road and mirrors and not focused anywhere near the mess of sunglasses, cassettes, and paper cups at his side. He pushes buttons blindly, settling on the radio rather than any of his own music, unwilling to hear whatever Dominic had last chosen for their last long drive, and then sits back to endure traffic he normally avoids by making his escape from the campus much earlier. Billy drums his fingers on the wheel, counts backward from twenty in three languages, insults the drivetime deejay under his breath, and stares longingly at a late-model Audi in front of him, all to keep from letting his mind wander elsewhere. This time alone in his tired, rain-streaked old Beemer, time Billy’s typically considered one of his chief joys in life, is horrific tonight, the car behaving tetchily even under the command of Billy’s firm, certain grip and the walls feeling as if they might be closing in on him right up until he makes the final turn onto his street.
Once home and indoors, Billy decides he’s earned a little more to drink after such a conservative start to the evening, and it's with a somewhat comfortable stride that Billy gathers the mail and shucks his coat in almost one move before he makes his way past couch and desk to the stash of bottles and glasses in the corner of his darkened front room. His hand wraps around air where best of those bottles used to be, and Billy stares at the empty space, astonished that he and Dominic had polished off the entire thing until he remembers that they hadn't-that they couldn't have, because there was still enough for at least two glasses last night. Billy lowers his eyes to the floor, then, and breathes out slow and deep; the thought of Dominic stealing something so impersonal as a bottle of whiskey, either in revenge or for the sake of memory, makes Billy's stomach turn a little, but not enough to keep him from reaching for something stronger when he looks up again.
Billy smacks at the lamp behind the couch before he settles in with the mail, and he’s halfway downed his glass before he comes across yet another envelope with familiar handwriting, an envelope he makes to toss to one side as he has so many others before he stops himself and frowns. Andrew’s persistent, Billy will give him that, and Billy’s been a complete bastard ignoring the notes he’s sent or reading them once and then forgetting their contents, refusing to read between lines or even acknowledge there’s anything left to be said between them. For a moment as he tears open the envelope Billy considers whether he still wants or needs Andrew as a friend now that he knows Andrew’s quite happy where he is, and that they’d both known from very early on that friendship was where they’d end, regardless of what road they might take to get there. Billy doesn’t feel anymore what he once had for Andrew-whatever that was and perhaps shouldn’t have been-but there’s still a deep fondness, and Billy wants him to be happy; Billy has no right to begrudge Andrew anything, and shouldn’t behave or feel like such a miserable fuck when he reads or sees evidence of that happiness.
Still, the letter leaves Billy feeling as if he’s been punched again, in the same place in his chest he’d taken all of Dominic’s quiet but brutal shots earlier in the office. Andrew’s more than happy at the moment, and had apparently taken great pains to try and tell Billy face to face only a week before; his letter details his attempts to contact Billy during Andrew’s short visit back to England, his desire to meet up in London for a day or night and see Billy, talk to him properly before Andrew’s life changed in a way Billy’s is not likely to, ever. Andrew’s tone never crosses the line into anger, Billy notices as he swallows and reads, but there’s disappointment and sadness and the continued, carefully-worded wish that Billy won’t avoid everything and everyone in his life; there’s also a less careful charge to Billy that he take a bloody picture once in a while, that he examine something besides himself for more than two minutes on the trot.
Billy’s rising from the couch before he knows what he’s doing, thinking you have no idea what I’ve seen through your fucking lenses, mate and taking the turn into his kitchen hard and on one heel. He can't work out things like time differences and country codes now; instead he begs help from an operator and listens, his entire body tense with frustration and something heavier, more unfamiliar, as Andrew's number rings and rings, the sound so jarring Billy has to close his eyes as if each peal were a little firework going off behind them. He exhales in some kind of relief when the machine picks up but then feels cold as the adrenaline leaves him along with the anger. Andrew's voice in his message is calm, cheerful even, and Billy listens to it intently, catching every rounded twist of his accent as if he's never heard it before. Bad luck, I'm not home, Andrew says after he's dispensed with the more professional and personal courtesies; Leave a message, and I'll ring you back when I can.
Billy’s prepared to let apologies tumble from him, but the words stop and start like the traffic on the way home, leaving him rattled again. He can almost see the sympathetic tilt of Andrew's smile at his future listen, and thinking of it makes Billy settle down immediately, coughing and collecting himself for a simpler hello, a shorter apology, a quiet congratulations, and a signoff that feels final and true leaving his lips. Replacing the phone in its cradle, Billy stands where he is for a long time before he takes a breath and leaves the kitchen for the safety of the front room again.
He paces there, tamping down the urge to re-read Andrew’s letter or start on that never-ending pile of essays or pour another drink, until his gaze settles on his desk, or what he can see of it under the newer, angrier mess across it. The rug kicks up under Billy’s feet as he leans to pull the banker’s lamp cord and illuminate that mess, the light failing in its attempt to warm the black and white images of Dominic covering the blotter and calendar and everything else Billy once thought more important. Every picture leads Billy’s eyes to the next and Billy’s thoughts back to the night he’d taken them, and he can feel his fingers flexing restlessly at his sides as he tells himself that one night hadn’t changed everything-that it was fantastic, that the only thing he and Dominic had done wrong was to let things happen now and not in another year, when they would have been safer and smarter.
Billy counts the pictures absently and knows before he’s even reached the end that one is missing; that theft doesn’t surprise him, but it makes him think of possible others, and the shock of seeing the photographs spread across his desk so violently is slowly replaced by anger that Dominic's gone through the desk to find them, gone through a part of Billy's life he doesn't happily share with anyone. It's only a piece of furniture, but it was once Billy's father's, and it means a good deal of the world to Billy now, both in structure and contents; to think of Dominic rifling through even one drawer's worth of those contents without Billy's knowledge-even for something he’d requested, something Billy was willing to give him after a hard internal struggle-makes Billy momentarily furious, his blood rushing hot in a way it hasn't in years. The rage passes quickly into a quieter seething when Billy finds his heart can't keep up with it, and he steadies himself, letting the numbness have it way again as he tidies the stack of photographs, putting them back in order as best he can remember. As he slows his breathing and sets his stare hard in the middle distance, Billy places the pictures carefully back into the leather folder, his touch suddenly as detached as a lab attendant tucking away results from a disastrous experiment for future reference. Billy has no plans to look at the pictures again anytime soon-the images are burnt in his mind, in any case-but he'll remember their effect, on himself and Dominic, too.
No papers are going to be read tonight, that’s clear, and no other pieces of mail, either. Billy turns away from the desk and wraps his arms around himself as if guarding against another hit, looking around and waiting for the roof to cave in, just to complete the evening. A fire would be nice, he supposes; a fire, some more to drink and a shitty paperback could redeem things a little, but as Billy approaches the mantel he sees on top of week-old ashes the torn edges of that missing photograph and the anger rises again, forcing Billy to close his eyes and bite down on curses that would set the fire alight without aid of any matches, long or short. Billy runs up trees while Dominic tears things to shreds; both create larger problems from small solutions, and both crawl to separate shores beaten down by those fucking waves.
His heart doesn’t slow within the time Billy’s given it to do so, and he knows that reaching for the cheap cigarettes isn’t going to help but does so anyway, nearly crushing the pack in one hand as the other rifles through the stacks of nothing and everything on the mantel looking for the beat-up lighter he hates to use but thinks might be the safest weapon in the arsenal tonight. It takes three long draws off the cigarette before Billy’s calm again, and he bends to pull one wrecked quadrant of the picture from the fireplace, brushing the paper off on his trousers and then sinking back into the couch.
If you’re going to do this, then do it properly, Billy scolds the air, Dominic, and himself, and turns the torn piece right side up in his hand. Only the edge of Dominic’s smile is visible, but Billy can imagine the rest of it and so chooses to, pushing away the worst of everything they’d done just for a moment and indulging himself with the knowledge that he’d prompted and earned Dominic’s joy thrown his way after that long night. But it is an indulgence, one sullied by Dominic’s petulance now along with everything else, and eventually Billy feels his hand around the lighter again, lifting it to spark and catch the edge of the paper to burn.
He lets the photo warp and crumple for a few seconds in his fingers, and then with the confidence of a man familiar with the art he turns his wrist and flicks the paper into the fireplace, tilting his head until the debris catches in obedience, lifting the dirtiest flames possible up Billy’s chimney. Billy watches the fire until his eyes fall heavy and weak and a second cigarette’s followed the first, and then he gives in again, one more night surrendered to this couch that’s seen kinder hours.
Billy’s exhausted and still angry, as petulant as Dominic and then some, but he has his fire now; he has the sort of heat that might scorch a man not buried under the chill of an evening like this. And before long Billy has his sleep, too, slumped on the couch and building a violent ache in his back and shoulders with every moment. He doesn’t hear the telephone ring or the machine pick up; he doesn’t hear Andrew’s held breath releasing itself or the returned benediction of goodbye Andrew offers right after. He couldn’t have carried that, too, Billy tells himself when he wakes thirteen hours later with those violent aches, a hangover like the sternest punishment from all his mad professor ghosts, and only selective memory of the night before. Listening to Andrew’s message a second time before he deletes it, Billy decides he can’t be expected to carry much of anything at all right now but the weight of his work, and after a shower and a hard bargain with someone else’s god, he’ll get back to that work. A shower, a bargain, and maybe one more drink.
Authors: kiltsandlollies
Characters: Billy
Word count: 2500
Summary: The night after the afternoon before.
Index
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.
Billy postpones going home that first night for as long as possible, knowing he has little to look forward to once he gets there. The house is a wreck and has been for weeks now, and the cupboards, never very full to begin with, are almost bare, reproachful in the look and sound of echoing emptiness. There's still drink, though; there always is, and there's at least one box of the cheaper cigarettes, even if Billy is-after his last ragged creation smoked in the car on the way to work that morning-now out of papers with which he'd roll his own. And there are certainly things at home Billy could be more productively doing than sitting here inside The Three Gables, warming a mostly-empty pint glass between his hands.
He'd chosen the Gables on purpose, avoiding The Noble Bachelor and its unsettling embrace again. Give yourself a few weeks, Billy thinks, and then it'll be alright; you'll be back to yourself, whatever that means. You'll recognize yourself in the mirror again, and it'll be alright. He reminds himself then that he’s not in mourning here, not really; it’s not the first time he’s ended a relationship messily, and will probably not be the last. Even calling what he’d had with Dominic a relationship is a bit of a stretch; relationships are meant to be mature things, secure things, not long surfs over wave after dangerous wave of stress and desire tempered by brief moments of calm. Billy’s under no illusion that he’ll sleep peacefully tonight, but the kind of guilt that might keep him awake is different from that he might feel if he were to have let things continue. It’s a kind he’s felt before and has mostly learnt how to carry and eventually ignore.
Almost two hours into convincing himself of this, Billy shakes off the bartender’s unspoken question and steps away from further temptation and out into the streets. There’s none of the nerves he’s felt recently on the walk back to his car; instead there’s a strangely pleasant numbness that settles over him, blurring the people who sidestep him on their way to the shops or their own homes and lives and blanketing him with enough warmth that Billy hardly notices the drizzle of Baskerville’s rain beginning again. Billy’s had only enough to encourage that numbness to approach, so he feels moderately confident behind the wheel of his car, keeping his gaze on road and mirrors and not focused anywhere near the mess of sunglasses, cassettes, and paper cups at his side. He pushes buttons blindly, settling on the radio rather than any of his own music, unwilling to hear whatever Dominic had last chosen for their last long drive, and then sits back to endure traffic he normally avoids by making his escape from the campus much earlier. Billy drums his fingers on the wheel, counts backward from twenty in three languages, insults the drivetime deejay under his breath, and stares longingly at a late-model Audi in front of him, all to keep from letting his mind wander elsewhere. This time alone in his tired, rain-streaked old Beemer, time Billy’s typically considered one of his chief joys in life, is horrific tonight, the car behaving tetchily even under the command of Billy’s firm, certain grip and the walls feeling as if they might be closing in on him right up until he makes the final turn onto his street.
Once home and indoors, Billy decides he’s earned a little more to drink after such a conservative start to the evening, and it's with a somewhat comfortable stride that Billy gathers the mail and shucks his coat in almost one move before he makes his way past couch and desk to the stash of bottles and glasses in the corner of his darkened front room. His hand wraps around air where best of those bottles used to be, and Billy stares at the empty space, astonished that he and Dominic had polished off the entire thing until he remembers that they hadn't-that they couldn't have, because there was still enough for at least two glasses last night. Billy lowers his eyes to the floor, then, and breathes out slow and deep; the thought of Dominic stealing something so impersonal as a bottle of whiskey, either in revenge or for the sake of memory, makes Billy's stomach turn a little, but not enough to keep him from reaching for something stronger when he looks up again.
Billy smacks at the lamp behind the couch before he settles in with the mail, and he’s halfway downed his glass before he comes across yet another envelope with familiar handwriting, an envelope he makes to toss to one side as he has so many others before he stops himself and frowns. Andrew’s persistent, Billy will give him that, and Billy’s been a complete bastard ignoring the notes he’s sent or reading them once and then forgetting their contents, refusing to read between lines or even acknowledge there’s anything left to be said between them. For a moment as he tears open the envelope Billy considers whether he still wants or needs Andrew as a friend now that he knows Andrew’s quite happy where he is, and that they’d both known from very early on that friendship was where they’d end, regardless of what road they might take to get there. Billy doesn’t feel anymore what he once had for Andrew-whatever that was and perhaps shouldn’t have been-but there’s still a deep fondness, and Billy wants him to be happy; Billy has no right to begrudge Andrew anything, and shouldn’t behave or feel like such a miserable fuck when he reads or sees evidence of that happiness.
Still, the letter leaves Billy feeling as if he’s been punched again, in the same place in his chest he’d taken all of Dominic’s quiet but brutal shots earlier in the office. Andrew’s more than happy at the moment, and had apparently taken great pains to try and tell Billy face to face only a week before; his letter details his attempts to contact Billy during Andrew’s short visit back to England, his desire to meet up in London for a day or night and see Billy, talk to him properly before Andrew’s life changed in a way Billy’s is not likely to, ever. Andrew’s tone never crosses the line into anger, Billy notices as he swallows and reads, but there’s disappointment and sadness and the continued, carefully-worded wish that Billy won’t avoid everything and everyone in his life; there’s also a less careful charge to Billy that he take a bloody picture once in a while, that he examine something besides himself for more than two minutes on the trot.
Billy’s rising from the couch before he knows what he’s doing, thinking you have no idea what I’ve seen through your fucking lenses, mate and taking the turn into his kitchen hard and on one heel. He can't work out things like time differences and country codes now; instead he begs help from an operator and listens, his entire body tense with frustration and something heavier, more unfamiliar, as Andrew's number rings and rings, the sound so jarring Billy has to close his eyes as if each peal were a little firework going off behind them. He exhales in some kind of relief when the machine picks up but then feels cold as the adrenaline leaves him along with the anger. Andrew's voice in his message is calm, cheerful even, and Billy listens to it intently, catching every rounded twist of his accent as if he's never heard it before. Bad luck, I'm not home, Andrew says after he's dispensed with the more professional and personal courtesies; Leave a message, and I'll ring you back when I can.
Billy’s prepared to let apologies tumble from him, but the words stop and start like the traffic on the way home, leaving him rattled again. He can almost see the sympathetic tilt of Andrew's smile at his future listen, and thinking of it makes Billy settle down immediately, coughing and collecting himself for a simpler hello, a shorter apology, a quiet congratulations, and a signoff that feels final and true leaving his lips. Replacing the phone in its cradle, Billy stands where he is for a long time before he takes a breath and leaves the kitchen for the safety of the front room again.
He paces there, tamping down the urge to re-read Andrew’s letter or start on that never-ending pile of essays or pour another drink, until his gaze settles on his desk, or what he can see of it under the newer, angrier mess across it. The rug kicks up under Billy’s feet as he leans to pull the banker’s lamp cord and illuminate that mess, the light failing in its attempt to warm the black and white images of Dominic covering the blotter and calendar and everything else Billy once thought more important. Every picture leads Billy’s eyes to the next and Billy’s thoughts back to the night he’d taken them, and he can feel his fingers flexing restlessly at his sides as he tells himself that one night hadn’t changed everything-that it was fantastic, that the only thing he and Dominic had done wrong was to let things happen now and not in another year, when they would have been safer and smarter.
Billy counts the pictures absently and knows before he’s even reached the end that one is missing; that theft doesn’t surprise him, but it makes him think of possible others, and the shock of seeing the photographs spread across his desk so violently is slowly replaced by anger that Dominic's gone through the desk to find them, gone through a part of Billy's life he doesn't happily share with anyone. It's only a piece of furniture, but it was once Billy's father's, and it means a good deal of the world to Billy now, both in structure and contents; to think of Dominic rifling through even one drawer's worth of those contents without Billy's knowledge-even for something he’d requested, something Billy was willing to give him after a hard internal struggle-makes Billy momentarily furious, his blood rushing hot in a way it hasn't in years. The rage passes quickly into a quieter seething when Billy finds his heart can't keep up with it, and he steadies himself, letting the numbness have it way again as he tidies the stack of photographs, putting them back in order as best he can remember. As he slows his breathing and sets his stare hard in the middle distance, Billy places the pictures carefully back into the leather folder, his touch suddenly as detached as a lab attendant tucking away results from a disastrous experiment for future reference. Billy has no plans to look at the pictures again anytime soon-the images are burnt in his mind, in any case-but he'll remember their effect, on himself and Dominic, too.
No papers are going to be read tonight, that’s clear, and no other pieces of mail, either. Billy turns away from the desk and wraps his arms around himself as if guarding against another hit, looking around and waiting for the roof to cave in, just to complete the evening. A fire would be nice, he supposes; a fire, some more to drink and a shitty paperback could redeem things a little, but as Billy approaches the mantel he sees on top of week-old ashes the torn edges of that missing photograph and the anger rises again, forcing Billy to close his eyes and bite down on curses that would set the fire alight without aid of any matches, long or short. Billy runs up trees while Dominic tears things to shreds; both create larger problems from small solutions, and both crawl to separate shores beaten down by those fucking waves.
His heart doesn’t slow within the time Billy’s given it to do so, and he knows that reaching for the cheap cigarettes isn’t going to help but does so anyway, nearly crushing the pack in one hand as the other rifles through the stacks of nothing and everything on the mantel looking for the beat-up lighter he hates to use but thinks might be the safest weapon in the arsenal tonight. It takes three long draws off the cigarette before Billy’s calm again, and he bends to pull one wrecked quadrant of the picture from the fireplace, brushing the paper off on his trousers and then sinking back into the couch.
If you’re going to do this, then do it properly, Billy scolds the air, Dominic, and himself, and turns the torn piece right side up in his hand. Only the edge of Dominic’s smile is visible, but Billy can imagine the rest of it and so chooses to, pushing away the worst of everything they’d done just for a moment and indulging himself with the knowledge that he’d prompted and earned Dominic’s joy thrown his way after that long night. But it is an indulgence, one sullied by Dominic’s petulance now along with everything else, and eventually Billy feels his hand around the lighter again, lifting it to spark and catch the edge of the paper to burn.
He lets the photo warp and crumple for a few seconds in his fingers, and then with the confidence of a man familiar with the art he turns his wrist and flicks the paper into the fireplace, tilting his head until the debris catches in obedience, lifting the dirtiest flames possible up Billy’s chimney. Billy watches the fire until his eyes fall heavy and weak and a second cigarette’s followed the first, and then he gives in again, one more night surrendered to this couch that’s seen kinder hours.
Billy’s exhausted and still angry, as petulant as Dominic and then some, but he has his fire now; he has the sort of heat that might scorch a man not buried under the chill of an evening like this. And before long Billy has his sleep, too, slumped on the couch and building a violent ache in his back and shoulders with every moment. He doesn’t hear the telephone ring or the machine pick up; he doesn’t hear Andrew’s held breath releasing itself or the returned benediction of goodbye Andrew offers right after. He couldn’t have carried that, too, Billy tells himself when he wakes thirteen hours later with those violent aches, a hangover like the sternest punishment from all his mad professor ghosts, and only selective memory of the night before. Listening to Andrew’s message a second time before he deletes it, Billy decides he can’t be expected to carry much of anything at all right now but the weight of his work, and after a shower and a hard bargain with someone else’s god, he’ll get back to that work. A shower, a bargain, and maybe one more drink.