Lost, Part 14

[semaphore27.livejournal.com]

Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: Umn...Pg-13, I'd say
Feedback: Ain't too proud to beg...
Summary: It's November, 2004,"Lost" is a success, and during a filming hiatus, Dom and Billy are flying to Australia for a convention. This wasn't a good idea. Part 14: in which we're still backtracking through Billy's point of view. You know me, you know the angst.
Disclaimers: "Billy? Dom? What do you want me to tell them? That it's all lies, right? Okay, got it."



Lost, Part 14

They’ve gone in search of food, and found it, but in doing so found the house as well, and it’s there, in the face of that dark little shack, that Billy feels the last of his resolve crumble, for it seems to him, somehow, like the final proof that there’s no justice and no kindness anywhere in the universe.

The house is small and old, but must have taken time and labour to build. Billy suspects, if not knows, what they will find inside.

Because of that, he wants to grab hold quite tightly of Dom’s arm and drag him away from there, before sights and motions they’ll both regret are likely to occur.

Instead, Dom’s staring at the door, and as Billy watches, he moves forward. All his customary flamboyant grace is gone: his new walk lurches, and his body stoops around the pain he won’t discuss.

The dark of the narrow doorway swallows him as if he’s never been, and Billy’s heart leaps into his throat in a choking lump to see his Dommie disappear so, gone so thoroughly he might have stepped into another world.

Another world, Billy supposes, is exactly what this might be—a doorway into the past, or perhaps a future he, for one, has no desire to see.

“Dom?” he calls, moving forward entirely against his will, but unable to stop himself, until the shadows close around him as well.

Through shadow
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight

Billy thinks. He’d like to sing to himself now, a bit of something cheerful, maybe, to lighten the mood and prove that he has no good reason to feel this way. Whistling past the graveyard, don’t they call that? He’d like to whistle just as loudly as he can.

And they’ve every right to be cheerful, haven’t they? Only minutes ago now, they discovered quite a good source of food. They have fire. They’ve built a sign. There’s much to feel happy about, really.

Except that Billy’s moved all the way inside now, and seen the bed, and what’s on the bed. Dom has dropped to his knees by the edge, and his face looks white and frightened in the diffuse light. His hand reaches out, touching the bones of two men just like them, who’ve gone to their final rest facing each other, forehead to forehead, knee to knee, a position he and Dom have lain in more times than Billy can number.

He calls Dom’s name softly, strokes his fingers through Dom’s hair, feels the weight of Dom’s head pressed against his hip. Dom’s skin is on fire, and he’s trembling violently. He’s saying something, terribly upset about something, and Billy recites his words of comfort by rote, because in his heart he can’t help but agree with everything Dom says: the men in this cabin were old. They died here, aged and abandoned, and no one ever came to their aid.

Dom’s pulling a knife out from inside one set of ribs, and Billy knows they both understand what that means. One of these men was old, and died, perhaps of his age, while the other…Billy can imagine only too well how the loneliness crept in. He understands a thing or two about loneliness, and loss, how it might feel to live alone here without the warmth of touch, with only the shrieking of the birds for company.

“That’s not you,” Billy tells Dom, trying to convince himself, more than his friend, that they won’t be lost here for all time, to fade away eventually of age. “That’s not me.”

Dom reads the lie on his face easily enough, and the look in his eyes is bitter and wild, though Dom’s voice has gone quite dull. “No, you’re absolutely right,” he says, with the knife in his hand, indicating the one who did not die, they both suspect, entirely naturally. “This one’s me all right.”

Time slows for Billy, and inside his head many voices clamour, and many fears collide, and the worst of those fears is that Dom will leave him here, and without Dom he’ll have no one to care for, no one to hold on to. He’s been left alone too, too many times to bear another abandonment.

Billy hauls Dom upright then, oblivious to Dom’s expression of hurt surprise, astonished by the ugliness of his own voice as it bursts from his mouth. “The hell!” he cries, and his hands come up, pushing hard at Dom’s chest, once, and again, so that Dom, who has no strength left to him, and no resistance, flies out through the door, crashing down on his left side in a tangle of vines as Billy screams, “I won’t hear you say that that again, I won’t, or I’ll kill you myself, you miserable sod!”

He spits out those words at the one who means more, in his life, than all the world, when what he truly intends is, Dommie, Dommie, I love you. I beg you not to leave me here all alone.

Dom’s lying in the mud, his face pale and twisted with pain, and Billy thinks, Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus, I’ve done that to him, I’ve hurt him, and how will he ever forgive me and Christ what have I done? Billy’s body has gone tight with terror and rage and sorrow, until it seems to have lost all touch with the earth and sent him to hover in some other, fiery, element instead.

“Bills,” Dom’s saying, all the velvet gone from his voice. It’s broken and rough, and Dom’s trying to get up, trying to rise out of the mud, but Billy knows he won’t be able to, because if his voice is broken, his body’s broken too. It comes to Billy that Dom won’t ever, after all, die by his own hand, that he’s already dying, right there before Billy’s eyes, because this place, and the journey here, have already destroyed him, and it’s only a matter of time before the end.

All the fight and the fire drains out of him then and Billy stands with his hands hanging at his sides, already alone in his mind, as if this was another location entirely, and another time. As if he’s standing once more on a green Scottish hill, wearing a stiff collar and a scratchy suit and trying not to cry, because he’s the man of the family now, and Margaret depends upon him.

“Billy, I’m sorry,” Dom tells him, so gently it causes Billy physical pain. “Billy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Just shaken up, is all. Don’t know what came over me.”

You’re dying, Dommie, Billy thinks. You’re leaving me, and I can’t do a bloody thing to stop you, or even to help you stay. If you understood would you try harder for me, because I can’t be left alone again, this time it’s going to destroy me.

He finds himself sinking down, then, on the ground, knees drawn up and head in his hands, because this is the final grief and he can’t take a moment more. He can’t be here. If he’s going to die anywhere, he needs to be in Scotland, with a whole long life behind him, and a Dom who is still handsome, even if his hair is more white than sunbleached now, by his side, smiling in his old way, as if they both were still young again, as if it’s all a great adventure and their whole lives lie ahead.

Dom’s trying to pick himself up, trying to crawl, to reach him any way he can, and all Billy can do is stare, helpless with fear.

“I’m so sorry,” Dom gasps. “Bills, it won’t be that way. That was a long time ago, don’t you think? Things are better now. They can find people better now.”

But it won’t be in time, Billy thinks. Not for you, céile. Not for me.

And he stares, sick with self-loathing, because in the fall Dom’s splints have snapped, and now his arm’s at an angle so terribly wrong Billy can hardly conceive of it, and there’s a red and white rawness where the bone’s torn through the skin, but through it all Dom’s dragging toward him.

Billy wants to cry out, Oh, God, no, don’t touch me, don’t look at me, can’t you see what I’ve done to you? He slumps forward over his knees, trying to block out the sight with a hand over his eyes, but Dom, somehow having made his way to the side of the cabin, is hauling him backward, holding him tightly until Billy can’t bear it anymore and he falls sideways, into Dom’s lap, burying his face against the tautness of Dom’s stomach, while Dom’s hand whispers softly over his skin, and the words Dom says to him are comforting and oddly cheerful, even as he apologizes for his own need.

Don’t you know, Dommie? Billy thinks, That your needing me is what keeps me here and keeps me sane? You say you’ve no life without me, do you think I’ve any life without you?

But instead he says, in his Oscar-worthy voice, “It’s all right then, Dom. Just gave ourselves both a bit of a turn, didn’t we?”

And Dom’s smiling, Billy knows, because he’s made himself sound all right.

---

Dom’s fallen asleep by the side of the cabin, and Billy thinks that’s likely best for now. He has work to do, not work he relishes, but work all the same. A part of his heritage is to feel the echoes and currents of the past, but he’s a modern man, and modern men do not allow themselves to turn away from what must be done because of a frisson of fear, or a small sense of awkward distaste.

He goes a little further along the grasslands, finding a place where the earth is loose enough to dig, and scrapes out as deep a hole as he can, until he hits the tough lava-bed down below the topsoil. It’s enough, he thinks. A shallow grave, but enough.

Back at the cabin, he rolls the bones gently into their decaying mattress of sail, tucking in ends as best he can, until he’s made a bundle he can carry well enough, one that will fit into the hole he’s made. They would like that, perhaps (these men who sheltered here, where they will shelter, long before his and Dom’s parents, or even their grandparents were born). Yes, he thinks, as he scrapes in the soil to cover them. They’d like that someone took this time. That someone cared.

Once the grave is filled in, he builds as much of a cairn as he can, and on a piece of dark stone scratches, dh' fhalbh iad le chéile “They went away together” in Scots Gaelic, wishing he had more words to say.

He then gathers armloads of grass and soft fern, and carries them back with him to the cabin door.

“Dommie?” he calls, touching the younger man’s cheek, but Dom doesn’t stir, except that his lips move slightly, forming words Billy can’t read.

“Rest a little more, then,” Billy says. “I’m doing a bit of d.i.y. our new home.” He scoops up sand in a coconut shell, and collects scraps of rough husk, rubbing down the platform until the wood is bright and clean. He distributes his grass for a mattress, returning twice to the plain for more. These little domestic chores calm him; it’s good to have something to do, something physical to occupy his hands and allow him to shut off his mind.

“Come in and lie down, Dom,” he says, but while Dom’s eyes open, he can’t seem to focus them. His skin is still burning, and his lips are dry.

“Sorry,” he’s trying to say. “Sorry, Bills, sorry.”

Billy answers, “You’ve nothing to apologise for, Dommie,” and all but carries him inside, laying him down in the soft grass, and covering him with their shirts. He ought to make blankets somehow, or something for warmth, but he’ll have to work on the roof first, to keep out the worst of the rain. The last thing Dom needs now is to get soaked in another downpour.

But first, there’s the arm.

Billy carefully unties the broken splints, and the bandages he’s wrapped round Dom’s chest to hold the injury in place. The pulse is faint in Dom’s wrist, his fingers swollen and dark as little blood finds its way past the terrible fracture. Outside the cabin, Billy finds new sticks, straight and fairly smooth, and once again he pulls out the arm, his stomach turning over as the bone slips wetly back inside. Dom gives a faint groan, but makes no other sound, though his lips go pale, and sweat pops out on his brow.

Once the new splints are tied firmly in place, Billy bends to kiss his mouth. “I’m the one who ought to be sorry,” he says. “I never mean to hurt you, yet I do.”

Dom’s eyes open to slits, watching him vaguely.

“I need to bring back fire,” Billy tells him, “And the other things we’ve left behind. Don’t go anywhere, will you?”

Dom’s lower lip twitches, as if he means to smile.

---

There’s a fireplace in the cabin, where a small bright fire burns now. Billy’s repaired enough of the roof, too, working long into the night, that he thinks it will keep out the worst of the wet if the rains come late again.

The cabin is mostly bare, but he’s discovered a thing or two he can use—an axe-head well rubbed with coconut oil to preserve it from rust, a slightly more rusty handsaw that it makes his skin crawl to touch. A chisel and a second knife. A pottery bowl, and one of copper, the first large large, the other slightly smaller. He puts both outside the doorway, waiting for the evening storm.

As Dom sleeps on, Billy wraps yams in banana leaves, setting them down in the coals. He’s brought in bananas and coconuts, and a rather stunted, lopsided pineapple he’s found. In the morning, he’ll go nesting again, but for now it’s enough, he thinks, and it’s good to lie by Dom’s side, one hand on Dom’s bare chest, watching the flicker of the flames.

In a little while the rains do come. He listens to them ping in the bowls outside, or hiss, every now and then, into the flames. He’s dripped coconut oil and placed bits of husk in the fire, because Dom’s told him those things will help to keep the insects away, and the precautions seem to be working for now. The roof still leaks badly, but there’s time to repair that another day. At least the area over their bed, where he’s worked hardest, remains dry.

Billy lays his head down in the wilting grass, his mouth close to Dom’s ear, breathing in the musky tang of Dom’s skin, that usually smells so sweet and clean, almost like the skin of a child. For all his other sloppy ways, Dom’s very clean personally, but the way he smells beneath that, without the usual assortment of grooming aids Billy can’t help but tease him about at times, is, though strong, in no way unpleasant, actually.

It’s just Dom, and even though it isn’t Scotland, that is, for Billy, the scent of home.