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With the lights out, it's less dangerous (Billy)

Character study for lotruniversity. Takes place during their separation, but before the confrontation in Billy's office.

For one of very few nights in his adult life, Billy’s fallen asleep in his bed fully dressed. Less surprising than this, however, is the fact that occupying the space that had belonged to Dominic are now several books, two pens (one blue ink, one black) and an oversized notepad, covered in Billy’s spiky handwriting that tilts down one side of the page and into the margin. A third pen—dark green ink this time, a colour Billy only uses when making his last edits on a draft—rests still in his right hand, its tip pressing lightly into the sheet and leaving a slowly widening mark.

Questions of ethics and morality have plagued Billy for most of his waking life, but on occasion they take up unwanted residence in his dreams as well. He’s spent the last few evenings trying to shake them off, writing down whatever answers he could find and hoping for more peaceful sleep. It’s a battle he anticipated from the first evening he came back to his house aware that never again would Dominic join him there—and a war Billy can’t win.

What, after all, makes him any better than the last or next professor to have broken the trust of a student? Worse, to have broken that student’s heart? And Dominic’s heart is broken, Billy knows this; he’s seen it every time he’s managed to make fleeting eye contact with Dominic, and he’s felt it in the tightness of his chest every time Dominic has looked away.

I’ve learnt my fucking lesson, Billy’s pen had stabbed into the pale yellow paper earlier tonight. What was I supposed to have done?

Billy had dropped the blue pen, then, reading in his words the same panic he’d felt kneeling behind the statue of Athena at Bodiam. His fingers had found the green pen easily, curling around it and raising it to tap against Billy’s lips as he closed his eyes just for a moment, just to think.

Hours later, Billy turns over in his sleep, frowning as his body makes odd noises of dismay. He’s unpleasantly warm; thirsty, too, and as he sits up in bed, Billy curses at the green ink spilled on his sheets and fingers. It’s twenty to three in the morning, Billy notices, squinting at his alarm clock, but it feels much later. Billy steps barefoot from his bedroom to the kitchen, double–checking the time and leaning his forehead against the cool refrigerator before he reaches inside for a bottle—of water, and only water, Billy smiles to himself. He’s spent enough time lately on the edge of inebriation.

There’s no point in returning to bed. He’s sticky with sweat and yet too distracted to duck into the shower, however better off he’d be for it. Instead Billy wanders his front room, leaving the lights off but turning the music on, low and gentle—music Billy doesn’t remember having left in the player, but must have, considering how he’d emptied the machine of Dominic’s mixes and his own usual background pieces.

I’m as sad as a proud man can be sad tonight, Richard Thompson sings on Billy’s behalf, and Billy raises his bottle in acknowledgment. He’s never considered himself a proud man before, with all that phrase’s connotations, but now—

Billy has always been proud of Dominic and his accomplishments, and of the very small part he’s played in Dominic’s success. He had been proud to have been so … needed by Dominic, so wanted, in and out of classrooms and offices and beds. But pride is always supposed to come before a fall, Billy determines, ignoring the cliché with the detachment of one who’s been forced to teach it. And he and Dominic both fell—in entirely different, entirely destructive directions.

Billy could have caught them both. He could have reasoned with Dominic, or suggested that they just … slow things down, or take a break before they did each other real damage. He could even have taken Dominic away again, for a long weekend somewhere, and used that time to remind them both of what they were bound to lose—personally and professionally—if they continued to fuck things up as much as they had. He could have made the difference, if he had not been so frightened—yes, it was fear, and Billy will admit it now to anyone who asks—and so desperate for a solution that ended up solving nothing. He could have done so much better.

And in some part of his mind, Billy believes he still can.

-----

It’s slow going, the putting on of shoes and a coat, the finding of keys. Billy’s hands shake too much and drift, ink–stained, into his hair before he even notices. After another short spate of cursing and a longer drink from the now half–crumpled water bottle, he’s outside, walking to his car in a fog of sudden need and deep determination to find Dominic and make up for everything he’s done wrong, from the very beginning.

Memory takes over as Billy drives: the feel of his foot on Dominic’s chest, pushing him to the floor of his office before Billy fucked him much too hard, the sight of Dominic crawling away from him in fear the one night Billy had not welcomed him immediately into his arms, the smell of the hedgerows at Bodiam surrounding them both as he brought Dominic off and kept him quiet with no force at all, the taste of Chinese food and good beer and Dominic’s lips—

The sound of his own voice rising in argument, and falling to a hush three days later, just before he closed his office door on Dominic and tried to forget all of it.

The campus is deathly quiet, and for as much that Billy expected such silence, the sound of his car door slamming startles him enough that he almost forgets to lock it behind him. He moves quickly across the enormous patch of green separating the academic buildings from the residence halls, and notices for perhaps the first time how much every campus looks the same at night. He could be back at St. Andrews, at Strathclyde or even Sterling, were it not for the scent of the trees that belongs only to Baskerville and the absence of any statues, any monuments to learning or service or money. Billy blinks away the sudden bitterness and keeps walking, already regretting having brought a coat on this cool but not chilly night.

Faced with a row of residence halls, Billy squints again, searching for Langton Hall, reserved for international students and others whose concentrations are in languages and linguistics. It’s a short, compact building, and though Billy’s seen it often in daylight, he’s still somewhat surprised by how hidden it seems, tucked around a corner and facing what must be the smallest parking area on the entire campus. It’s not a particularly nice view, Billy thinks, regretting that Dominic must wake to it every morning.

Langton is also among the few halls that have not yet been updated with strong security measures, and for this Billy has absolutely no regrets. He wouldn’t deny feeling rather like a criminal testing the front door, but fate, with its strong sense of black humour, sends Billy a sweet–smelling, sweeter–smiling pair of angels just before he reaches for his wallet and the inevitable credit–card trick. They tumble through the doorway, almost knocking Billy over, and the young man of the couple stares at Billy with glassy, unseeing eyes.

“Y’never saw us,” he smiles, holding the door open for the younger girl, who flushes a deep red at the sight of Billy.

“Never,” Billy whispers, and there is a moment before he remembers to smile back as he tucks one foot inside the door to keep it from closing. The girl clutches at Billy’s lapel, spinning around and away from him before raising a finger to her lips. They’re clearly drunk, clearly very far gone, and it takes everything Billy has not to warn them to keep it down, and to not even think of venturing in the direction of the parking lot. He’s quite gratified when they move instead to the next building over and slip inside without any further interruption.

A brief gust of wind reminds Billy that he, too, needs to get inside, and quickly. Closing the door as quietly as possible—and locking it, as much as it can be locked, crumbling as the door appears to be—Billy turns and wanders down the front hall, looking for the staircase.

Dominic’s room is on the third floor. Billy knows this from discussions he’s had with Dominic, who never seemed breathless even after they’d climbed broad hills and walked long distances together. Billy takes the stairs two at a time, keeping his steps light and his breathing even—anything to not attract attention. He was lucky enough to have only encountered a pair of drunk students who would never recognize him in daylight, but he’d rather not risk meeting other who might be more sober—and less in need of a bargain of silence.

This is possibly the worst thing Billy’s done at Baskerville, short of actually sleeping with a student. He doesn’t belong here, and would have no plausible explanation if he were caught. But he’s so close now, he can almost feel Dominic pulling him forward, to the row of mailboxes on the third floor landing and specifically to the one marked D. Monaghan, 11.

Eleven it is, then. Billy touches the steel of the mailbox as if for luck, and then moves down the hall, feeling his breath quicken a bit. Dominic’s door is painted a dark blue, as is every other door on this floor, and his room is the second to last on the left. From where he stands before it, Billy can turn his head and see on one side the window at the end of the hall—circular, with an ornate crossbar—and on the other, the half–opened door to the communal bathroom.

Billy can hardly keep from smiling at this setting, at himself and the situation—about to break into his former lover’s—his student’s—bedroom like an obsessed fool, ready to wake him and beg for forgiveness, and forgetting the possible consequences of being found here. It’s insane. It’s immoral, unethical, risky on every physical and emotional level, and it’s everything Billy wants and must do.

The lock falls open in Billy’s hands, leaving him hardly a chance to wonder about it. Dominic must have fallen asleep without locking the door, he decides, unwilling to consider that Dominic might have … expected company of some sort. Billy squeezes his eyes shut tight at the thought and takes a deep breath, pushing the door open and sliding inside the room before daring to exhale. And then he’s there, less than ten feet from Dominic, who is asleep and alone and unaware of anything, much less Billy’s gasp.

Billy leans against the door, hands splayed flat against the painted wood. From here he can catch his breath again and keep himself from crawling immediately into Dominic’s side, fitting himself so perfectly against Dominic’s body as he had for what seems like too many and yet too few nights. From here he can look around the room and try to understand why Dominic sleeps with his light on, and wonder what would happen if he plunged them both into the dark.

To Billy’s left is the wardrobe, built into the wall and bare of much beside Dominic’s one suit and a footie uniform, the sort Billy knows Dominic pulls out when there’s a good pickup game happening in an hour, just ten minutes’ walk down the campus, on the practice pitch. On the floor Billy can see shoes and clothes and books, all tumbled as if Dominic thrown them there in a hurry to do something else. Everything about Dominic has been hurried somehow, Billy thinks as he reaches to pick up what he knows is one of his own shirts, perhaps one Dominic was wearing when Billy told him it was over between them. He lets the material fall from his hands, back to the floor. As he rises from his crouch, Billy’s coat catches on the edge of Dominic’s desk, and he shucks it immediately, draping it over the pile of clothes already resting on the desk chair.

The hardwood floor creaks as Billy walks around the front of the desk, and he looks over his shoulder to see if Dominic reacts to the sound. But Dominic doesn’t move, lost in his dreams, and Billy smiles tightly before he returns his attention to the desk. There are papers all over its surface, most in German but a few in English, and as Billy fingers through them he notices how much of his own handwriting litters Dominic’s essays. He has been harsh with Dominic’s work over the last few weeks, frustrated that Dominic refuses to come to him for help of any kind, and he has pulled very few punches in regard to Dominic’s errors of spelling and logic. You are capable of better work than this, Dominic, Billy reads, noting with an acrid amusement that his scolding looks less forceful in green ink than black, and your mark is in jeopardy. Come see me immediately.

And of course Dominic had not.

The third time his suggestion had been ignored, Billy had let himself settle into a quietly seething rage, leaning back in his office chair and grinding his teeth as he assured himself over and over again that he had made the right decision. Dominic would have to move past his feelings of rejection and realize that his future was in his own hands, to win or lose without depending so thoroughly on someone who could not give him anything more. Dominic would have to learn, as Billy had years ago, that no one gain is worth the loss of everything else.

Billy returns the paper to Dominic’s desk, covering his hard words with what must be softer ones, written in grey ink by Dominic’s German literature professor and punctuated by what Billy can tell—even in German—is encouragement of a gentler, better kind. The only encouragement Dominic’s ever really taken to.

Billy taps his fingers now on the desk, looking around the small room. The Manchester United poster over Dominic’s bed looks something more than well–loved, held up as it is by new and old tape and torn at the corners. Billy can imagine it in Dominic’s bedroom back home in Manchester, serving as both a source of generalized, footie–fan joy and as a more specific concession to Dominic’s father—evidence that his son was as much of or more than a man than the elder Monaghan would ever be. Billy’s smile turns strangely, until he has to look away again, back to the floor and then to the bedside table.

Dominic’s lamp is battered and tilted at an odd angle, the better to read by, Billy supposes. Its shade is torn in one corner, exposing the thick wire frame. Billy reaches to turn off the weak light, but halfway there he’s distracted by the empty can next to the lamp—Boddington’s, and finished recently, from the drops of condensation at the bottom. Billy’s frown goes tighter, and he leaves the can where it is, hardly able to manage irritation about its presence when his own recycling basket is nearly filled with Guinness bottles.

Propped between the lamp and the bottle is a textured black notebook, closed, with a short pencil sticking up from between its pages. Dominic’s journal, Billy knows, and he clenches his hands into fists to stop himself from even reaching for it. There’s enough of Dominic’s emotions on display in his daily life—Billy’s not sure he could bear to see or read more.

There is another book, too, resting face down on pages 122–123, The Concrete Sky, by a Marshall Moore. It doesn’t at all look like required reading, and Billy takes it up eagerly, scanning the back cover and smiling at the descriptive mix of mystery, dry humour and apparently great sex Dominic’s been reading. It’s tempting to flip through its pages, but instead Billy rests the book back down where he found it—knocking over a small, pale orange pill bottle in the process. Frowning again, he tries to find the bottle on the floor, his hand moving under the table recklessly. And it’s when he almost has the bottle that he reaches further, his shoulder banging hard against the table and making a noise loud enough to have certainly woken even Dominic.

Billy freezes, fingers curled in thin air, and waits out a breathless half–minute before he tilts his head up, praying he’s not been caught. His shoulder aches, but he twists around quietly and finds that Dominic is still asleep, but only just, his body shifting up the bed a few inches and his breathing evening out after a sigh.

“Chiontach,” Billy whispers before he can stop himself, and he falls back on his knees immediately, surprised by the sound and the wave of relief that comes from having said it aloud. Dominic—always beautiful to Billy’s eyes, even with all of what society would call his imperfections—is a picture of quiet, broken wonder asleep like this, on his stomach and with a large pillow tucked deep into his side. His bed is made in what Billy notices with a sense of mild despair are Baskerville’s colours, navy and grey and pale blue. Dominic had mentioned once in an offhand way how cold the residence halls would get in winter, and Billy thinks not for the first time that this school is not in the business of keeping its students warm or comfortable in any way.

Still, it seems that Dominic is not in need of much warmth this night, naked and barely draped as he is by the sheet covering from the small of his back to the middle of his strong, perfect thighs. Billy inhales deeply, trying to steady himself, and catches the scent of soap and shampoo and everything that is Dominic when he’s just come from the shower. It’s so familiar that Billy doesn’t blame himself for shifting on his knees closer to the bed, wanting more.

Dominic’s left hand is pulled up tight underneath his chin, his knuckles pressing into his jaw. Billy remembers that, too, and can recall pulling that hand away from Dominic’s face to rest on his own chest until they were both asleep. He’s not had to give that comfort in weeks, and every night it’s supposed to hurt a little less. And of course, it does not.

Again, Billy feels the surge of anger with himself. Why should he expect Dominic to move on when he cannot? How can he ignore what his body and mind have known all along now that his heart has finally agreed?

Billy takes another breath and rises a little, just enough to press his hands to the mattress and lever himself from the floor onto the edge of the bed. He reaches easily to turn the light off, and finds that he’s shaking again. But he almost welcomes it, is almost thrilled to feel it because at least he’s feeling something beyond emptiness. At least he’s here, and he can touch Dominic if he wants to, if Dominic doesn’t wake, and then he can leave, having caused no more damage. He can forget what he originally came here to do, as long as Dominic’s eyes remain closed, and his body remains still.

Neither of which happens.

“Billy?” It’s a question, a searching whisper, and Dominic recoils a bit before he stretches for the light. Terrified, Billy catches his arm and pulls him back down, to his back, and stretching over Dominic like a predator, ready to consume him whole.

“Billy, Billy, what—“

Dominic’s needy gasps are cut off by the pressure of Billy’s lips, hard and demanding, and more than ever before Billy’s shocked at how quickly Dominic surrenders beneath him.

“’m sorry,” Billy whispers frantically, over and over again into Dominic’s mouth and against his throat. “’m so sorry. Was a mistake, shouldn’t have made you leave, need you, chiontach, I can’t breathe without you—“

Dominic’s arching up already, his hands flying to Billy’s hair, tugging at the strands as he pulls Billy to him again. Billy feels Dominic’s teeth sinking into him everywhere—on his lips, his neck, below his left ear—leaving marks that Billy will neither question nor fight. When they pull apart for breath, Billy can see that Dominic eyes are wild and bright even in the darkness, and the stubble he’s worn for days has developed almost into a full beard, making Dominic look a good three years older, stronger, more beautiful. “Mo chiontach,” Billy murmurs, and Dominic smiles wickedly, all sharp teeth, before his grin softens and his hands move to Billy’s waist, to open his trousers and find Billy hard already, dying for his touch.

“A mistake …” Dominic sighs, leaning in for another kiss, gentler this time. Billy nods, slowly, and feels Dominic yanking down his trousers before turning him to his back, straddling him easily. “No more mistakes, Billy. I drive you mad, but you love me. You love me.”

“Dominic,” Billy whispers, his eyes closing just as Dominic slides his hips so their bodies meet and arch together. “Oh Christ, chiontach, please—“

“You love me, Billy.”

Billy forces his eyes open, in time to see Dominic’s expression turn once again. It’s a reflection of Billy’s own greed transformed into something sweeter, and Billy recognizes it, gives in to it completely.

“I do.”

Dominic’s hands still on Billy’s body, rising after a moment to capture his face for one more kiss, this one blistering in its intensity. Billy grabs at the air, desperate, until his hands tangle in Dominic’s hair, still damp from the shower. It’s rushed, hurried like everything about Dominic, and Billy allows himself a joyful gasp of laughter when Dominic releases him, nipping at his bottom lip and thrusting hard against Billy’s body, teasing and taking.

“This is alright?” Dominic smiles, sitting up again and reaching to unbutton Billy’s shirt. “Billy, what if we’re caught? Did anyone see you? What if—“

Billy reaches up, pressing fingers to Dominic’s lips to quiet him, fingers Dominic immediately holds and kisses with the reverence Billy has missed as much as anything else—that feeling of being so deeply … loved.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he whispers. “I don’t care.”

“But why—“

“I had to touch you.” The simplicity of it stuns Billy even now, and he shakes his head to clear it, not at all surprised when he feels the wet heat behind his eyes forcing its way out from between his lids. “I had to.”

Dominic leans down, racing his thumb gently over Billy’s cheek to wipe away the thin streak of tears. “I love you,” he says, very softly. “And I’m sorry. For everything.”

“Chiontach, you understand why—why I stopped it? Because it was wrong, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t let you fail—“

“Of course,” Dominic nods, and his kiss is the gentlest Billy has ever felt. “What were you supposed to have done?”

-----

Billy wakes with a start, kicking at the cushions at the end of the sofa. He’s soaked in sweat, yet freezing; thirsty yet unable to even reach for the bottle on the table beside him. The music is too loud, the sunrise too bright, and Billy tucks his head in his hands, almost between his knees, and breathes deeply, in and out, in and out.

Another battle lost, in a war that will not end.


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