There's only so many times, Dom supposes, that a bloke can notice his best mate has the propensity for inappropriate erections when the two of them are together before said bloke begins to put together two and two together. Problem is, Dom's crap at figures. It's not that he can't plop the equation sign and scribble a four, but that he feels incapable of finding and pinning down all the sneaky variables that keep popping up on either side. He could draw a conclusion, but there's no guarantee of that he'd get it right. And Dom's lost his very last eraser (or painted it over with that nail polish).

Is it enough to watch Billy hesitate? He does this in the only way he'll embrace being unsure, which is to say he masks it so completely that the blankness he manages could mean anything. But that clamming up is there. Dom knows. Dom can point a finger at any given second and tell you that Billy's got his cover on. Is that as far as Dom's participation should go? Blink, one-second hesitation, the fuck you think you're foolin', tilt his head the other way, allowing Billy to deal with the embarrassment alone. Some boundaries fly above modern sensibility, no matter how groovy Dom likes to think he is.

The proverbial monkey wrench: the ratio of feeling embarrassed for Billy to enjoying the cause for Billy's embarrassment has begun to sag atrociously toward the latter side. It's not exactly easy for Dom, who knows exactly what he feels, to stand outside himself in this observation, forced to strangle the urge to box his own ears because it's really fuckin' backwards to get excited about the fact that just being around Dom gets Billy that fuckin'...excited.

The part of him that's used to dealing with situations like this by cracking them down the middle and exposing all their silly, stringy, nasty-wet insides with a hilarious exclamation just wants to smother Billy with a pillow until the man admits that he's got a hard-on for the love of God and can't you just flirt with me a little m'beer's gone flat and Elijah's the stupidest drunk I've ever met?

"Did it ever occur to you," Viggo drawls one night, stuck in that annoyingly casual space between himself and Aragorn, "that he's never been in this situation before?"

"That's such an old story, man," Dom says, flicking his wrist so that the leather band around it whispers circles. "'S'bull. If a guy fancies guys he's felt it at some point. Haven't you ever been in a locker room? Or seen some half-naked man on the telly? You know."

"Not what I meant." Viggo flicks Dom's cheek hard enough to leave a mark. "Pay attention, I'll speak slower. You do that to him, but he knows there's the possibility that you might return the attraction. To possibly fuck up everything, including breaking the golden rule—"

"Yeah, yeah, don't fuck your co-workers—" when one of you is supposed to be straight and you're more than just fucking co-workers—

"—and he's not the kind of man that likes taking huge, personal risks, which is something I don't think I have to remind you of."

To be entirely honest, Dom doesn't know what would happen afterward. Dom doesn't care. He sees it, he feels it, he's being honest about it, and that's all he needs to take the plunge. Billy doesn't plunge. Billy lives, Billy has happiness, Billy makes art in various ways, but he leaves the plunging up to Dom. Plunging, Dom thinks, is much safer from the outside. If both halves of a two-man team take that risk together at every turn, eventually there will come a time when the bottom drops out; without one of them perched on the edge ready to pull the other back up. Though the symbolism makes Dom squirm, it's common knowledge that one of the reasons why he and Billy work so well is that they maintain a set of personality traits that contain not only matched, but mismatched pieces; balanced, equated.

All this adds up to is a stream of jumbled words that hum raspberries inside Dom's ear the next time he feels Billy get nervous next to him. Does all that psycho babble really amount to anything comprehensible when Billy's face is made soft glow by the television? When Billy's fingers curl around the pillow that he's kept over his lap the whole time? What must it feel like to be thirty yet carry the shaky feelings of a teenager? It also leaves Dom with no room for subtly; if his intentions don't come across clearly, he could possibly tear down all the fragile beginnings that he feels this strange attraction represents.

This continues to be a strange waking dream in which Dom and Billy have started living all over again.

Billy's fingers have worn tracks along the edge of the pillow. Dom's eyes shift from this, to the arrangement of Billy's body against the far corner of the couch, to the tension that flattens Billy's face. Plunge, he thinks.

"Bill."

Billy's hand flattens consciously. "Mm?"

"It's not going to get any more dead." Dom plucks at the pillow. "In fact, its pillowy soul may never be reincarnated."

A quirk at the corner of Billy's mouth hints at a smile. He goes back to the film, sans pillow death grip.

Silently laughing, Dom topples until his cheek smushes with Billy's shoulder. "Bill."

"Mm?"

He can feel the tension in Billy's body now. Propping his chin on Billy's shoulder, he lets a stream of breath escape his lungs. "You worry too much."

Billy's eyes close a little, but the gesture can't undo the uneven rise and fall of his chest or the heat that prickles his ears and face. He could go on staring at the flicker streaked darkness behind his eyelids until one or both of them falls asleep, but no amount of sleep will take away the appeal of letting something happen.

The couch creaks under Dom's weight. Steeling his resolve, he leans and brushes his lips across the curly flushed shape of Billy's ear. Billy's body twitch-tenses up; propelled, it almost seems, by the huge breath he takes. When he goes still—rapid swallows with Adam's apple bobbing and attempts at saying Dom's name defeated on his tongue—Dom kisses his neck. Breathes. Kisses his jaw. Breathes. No more jumping, now.

"Dom..."

"Shh." Dom brushes the pillow to the floor, using the motion to cover kneeing over until their thighs are jammed together. Mad with the taste of skin in his mouth, Dom lets one hand slip along Billy's thigh. He wets his lips and nips softly at Billy's earlobe. "Should I stop? I can. Don't have to do this." Although the throbbing heat next to Dom's fingers might have something to say about that.

"Jesus." Billy's body seems torn between jumping off the couch and becoming a permanent part of it. It's not as simple as yes or no, and they both know it. "I...fuck. I've never...I don't know how it..." He forces their eyes meet long enough to reassure Dom that he isn't going to bolt. "Don't even fucking know what I want."

"C'mere." I'm plunging, Boyd. Trust me.

Dom brings a hand up and tips Billy's face toward his. That same hand then falls away, trailing the expectation that Billy won't turn away. Billy's eyelashes sink and Dom's eyes skitter across his mouth and their lips touch, hot air and hot skin translating silent confession in an effortless way.

It seems more useful to just linger there with foreheads and noses and mouths touching and breath being shared as Dom's fingers slip across Billy's lap, gathering and then rubbing rhythmically. Cloth provides temporary extra friction, helped by the touch that elicits tension again, a tension that Billy doesn't want Dom to notice, but one that he knows couldn't be more obvious. And yet he stays there, breathing softly across Dom's mouth in a controlled sort of panic, letting Dom's fist learn the shape of him.

"Don't want anything from you." Dom brushes their mouths again. "Just want to make you feel good. Billy." They've begun to shift together now, Dom's body full of barely noticeable motion that brings him closer and Billy's pelvis pushing into the delicious friction, both full of the ragged breathing that goes back and forth between them. "Billy. Look at me."

Heat coming off his skin now, Billy can only rock into Dom's fingers and remember to guide their breath. He forces his eyes open, forces himself to stare this at this intimacy until it begins to look a little something like Dom.

Dom's fingers undo button and zip, lift elastic waistband, smoothing and cupping until Billy's spread. He bares that skin to the air of the room and, never taking his face from Billy's, adjusts his hold and begins to roll his wrist. Billy keeps down any possible noise, but Dom can feel and hear the pent-up panting. Grinning, he sneaks a peek at Billy's reclined and undone lap, at the erection curving eagerly into his palm. And then he stops.

Billy's whole body, taken subtly into motion that reveals its obvious nature only now as it stops, clenches up. "Don't stop." Lips lightly push at Dom's.

Dom begins again, tugging until Billy's thrusting lazily, gulping air just against his mouth. A thousand things remain unsaid, because all that matters is that this is happening, that Billy has wrapped a hand around his forearm and an arm around his shoulder and is unraveling all the tangled lengths of his hesitation around them.

When Billy comes Dom feels it; a buck off the couch that pushes them together, Billy's fingers digging into Dom's skin, a gasping groan vibrating against Dom's mouth as Billy pushes their faces together and then shoves his nose against the curve of Dom's shoulder, sucking another gasp.

Dom cradles Billy's trembling shoulders. "We beyond the pillow stage now?"

"Wanker," Billy exhales, a grin spreading across his face.

"Am I being forced to end with the obvious yes, quite literally, my thick friend punch line?"

"Don't think so." Billy smiles and tightens their embrace, allowing himself to lean into Dom's hold. "Thank you."