Entire Worlds, Chapter 3

[semaphore27.livejournal.com]

Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: makes me do the happy dance!
Summary: It's the day after the events in the last chapter of At Your Most Beautiful. Dom and Billy have had some hard times, but the process of healing is beginning. The problem is, it's easy to get better in paradise, but how does that translate to the real world? Behold the wonder! For a Semafic, this chapter is remarkably angst-free.
Previous chapters and my other writings can be found here: Caraidean



Chapter 3: Touch

The place Dom chose for them appeared a little flash for Billy’s liking, self-consciously metallic in its decor, with colours rarely grouped together in nature, half salon, half spa, with a thin veneer of piercing parlour laid over for good measure. It made him feel old, and a trifle uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to argue with anything Dom said looked interesting.

Dom didn’t often find things interesting, these days, and because of this, Billy hadn’t the heart to discourage him.

Besides which, a pretty young woman with flame-coloured hair had given him a decent haircut, one that went a great deal towards hiding the fact that Billy’s hair was, now, most definitely thinning, especially up front. Gillian, the girl’s name was. Her touch had been sure and skillful, and she’d put highlights in of quite an interesting golden colour. When she’d finished, Billy tipped her generously and took a seat in one of the sleek,leather-upholstered armchairs in the waiting area, sipping iced coffee as he settled in to wait for Dom to be finished. He knew, inevitably, that event would be some time in coming.

Laughter burst from behind one of the salon’s partitions and, along with it, a sound of murmuring voices. Dom, Billy guessed, had begun to assert his charm on the salon staff. Billy smiled a bit, shaking his head--couldn’t Dom just do that, when he wanted to?

Gillian, perched behind the cash register, smiled vaguely at Billy, then left him to join her co-workers round the back where he couldn’t see her. Soon she was laughing too, though she hadn’t laughed with him: she’d been friendly enough, but professional.

Maybe she’d thought Billy was too old to be here too. He gave a tight, rueful grin. At least his haircut made him look younger.

“OW!” came Dom’s voice loudly. “Holy fuck, that hurt!”

Billy tensed, instantly worried—but then Dom laughed again, a clear, bright sound, and his muscles relaxed. No doubt some sort of hair-styling mishap, a chemical irritation, a bit of gel in the eye. He wanted to join Dom, to see what all the hubbub was about, but his friend (lover?) had forbade him.

And so he waited, and waited, flipping leaves of a surfing magazine. Wondering what he’d look like in that particular wetsuit, and guessing the fit might be less than flattering, thinking of how Dom’s suit clung to his long legs and his shoulders. Around him, the air smelled strongly of chemicals, fragrance and hair-dye.

Sometimes, Billy wished he felt beautiful, as Dom was beautiful. Most of the time he felt… all right. At peace with himself. Good looking enough. Fit enough. Young enough, he supposed. His own version of charm was quieter than Dom's, a bit more sardonic, more a matter of a grin and a lifted brow, the tone he put into his voice when performing a wind-up.

Billy wondered how, whether or not he was well, Dom could look in the mirror and think himself ugly. How could Dom’s mind play such tricks on him that he’d see himself so?

Troubled, Billy turned, gazing out the window. The shop bordered on side street, and all Billy could make out, really, were palm trees and shadow, bits of pavement brightened into golden puddles by the filtering sunlight.

Such a foreign world, Hawaii, lovely and warm, and yet it still made Billy miss Glasgow. Wherever he went, no matter how he liked the place he lived in, he missed Glasgow. Glasgow was home. Scotland was home, living inside him in his blood and breath and bones.

“We,” Dom had said, “Have no home,” and Billy supposed that was one of the great problems between them. Where could they live, and be happy? For Dom, Billy knew, was about as suited to a quiet life in a tidy semi-detached in Scotland as a peacock is suited to a small roost in a henhouse, and Los Angeles, though Billy had become accustomed, in time, to his visits there, still struck him as nothing but heartless and vain, at best a diversion, never a home. Billy was always glad to get out alive from that city, with his soul still intact within him.

“Hey, Bills,” Dom touched his shoulder and Billy started violently, making Dom give a soft chuckle. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“He’s handsome, huh?” said Dom’s stylist, a tall, slender, Japanese-Hawaiian man who looked scarcely more than sixteen. He ran long fingers though Dom’s newly-cut hair (as Dom shook his head, grinning) saying to Billy, “You get tired of this one, sweetheart, you just send him on my way.”

Billy smiled, vaguely. “Can’t see that happening,” he answered.

Dom reached across his body to fumble out his wallet, wincing as he twisted.

Billy came instantly alert again. “Dommie, what is it?”

Gillian and Dom’s stylist and the shampoo girl all laughed together. “Didn’t tell you he was going to, did he?”

Dom twitched aside his shirttails, not difficult, as his shirt was only held shut by two of the middle buttons. Silver glinted in his navel, and Dom laughed aloud at Billy’s expression. “What do you think, Bills? Like it?”

“It’s…” Billy found himself at a loss for words, eyes captured by the glint of metal, the fine, narrow line of dark hair that ran down Dom’s flat belly. The treasure trail, they called that, didn’t they? He found himself fascinated--by that line, by the piercing.

“Unexpected,” he concluded drily.

“Aww, he likes it, hon,” the Japanese boy laughed. “He just has his mind on other things.”

Billy couldn’t help himself, he brushed the piece of jewelry with his fingertips, a plain silver bar with an unadorned round ball on the end inside Dom’s navel, the outside ball a little larger, delicately chased with a pattern of minute leaves. He found himself wanting to take the little bauble in his mouth, to savour the contrast between cool, hard metal and warm, soft, pliant skin, salty with Dom’s sweat.

“Suits you, Dommie,” Billy said softly, and was pleased to see Dom’s eyes light again. His hair was lovely too, all shades of gold and platinum over bits of auburn, clipped short at the sides and standing up atop Dom’s head in a sort of chaotic triumph.

Billy tipped the salon staff a bit of a smile. “Can’t praise him too much, y’know. There’ll be no living with him.”

They all laughed again, Dom included as, one-handed, he fumbled out his credit card to cover of the damages.

“Christ, but you’re expensive,” Billy exclaimed. Which was true. The cost of Dom's little adventure added up to more then the week's wages he'd earned as a bookbinder.

“But worth every penny,” Dom said, raising his eyebrows, grinning, while everyone continued to laugh, waving after them as they left together.

At which point, Billy began to tremble slightly, because, for the first time in his life, he hadn’t pretended.

“You all right there, Bills?” Dom asked, in a tone Billy couldn’t altogether decipher.

“Scared myself a bit,” Billy answered. “The honesty, you know. Not so used to being honest about this, Dommie.”

Dom’s shoulder lifted, dropped again, which might have been a gesture of indifference, except that he was smiling, and his eyes were full of kindness. “Ach, daresay you’ll get used to the feeling. Don’t mind, do you? I didn’t embarrass you?”

“Were you acting?” Billy asked, curious, because in those moments Dom had looked quite all right. He’d looked himself again.

A strange expression came over Dom’s face, slightly sour, slightly bitter, and the brightness in his eyes diminished a little. “Yeah,” he said at last, almost whispering. “Yeah, Bills, I was acting. It didn’t show much though, did it? You believed it?”

“I’ve always thought you a good actor,” Billy told him, and that was true enough. He only hoped that Dom would not try, any longer, to act with him--because, on the whole, he preferred the pain of that morning, in all its honesty. That as least was real, and it said to Billy that he, and he alone, was the one Dom most loved and trusted

A smile flickered over Dom’s mouth, and there, on the shadowy street, he put a hand on Billy’s arm, stopping him, turning Billy toward him until they touched at hip and thigh. Dom’s forearms rested then on Billy’s shoulders, his fingers clasped lightly behind Billy’s neck.

Billy found his face tilting upward.

Dom’s face, tender and serious, bent down, and Dom’s lips parted, brushing Billy’s, just a light touch, first, and then a claiming, teeth brushing his lower lip, then Dom’s tongue sliding in between Billy’s own teeth as their bodies met suddenly, closely, at chest and belly, and Billy’s mouth was filled with slippery, demanding warmth, and the flavour of Dom.

For one instant, Billy nearly panicked, nearly cried out, nearly pulled away, but it was sweet, God it was sweet, sweeter and closer and dearer to him than any kiss he’d ever enjoyed—and Billy was, by no means, inexperienced.

Kissing Ali had been sweet and tender too, but kissing Dom was that and a blaze of fire besides, a heat that did not hurt or consume, only made passion grow stronger.

“There,” Dom said softly, pulling back at last, when Billy was beginning to feel a bit weak from lack of oxygen. “The world didn’t come to an end, did it?”

Billy pressed his palms to Dom’s chest, sliding his hands up to Dom’s shoulders, pulling him down again so that it was Billy’s mouth, this time, that did the claiming, Billy’s hands that held Dom tight to him, refusing to let him loose again, ever.

At last, breathless too, Dom broke away, laughing. “And there, we see another side to my Billy!”

For a long while they stood watching each other’s faces, Billy’s eyes alternately dazzled and shadowed as the palm-fronds that shaded them tossed and shifted. Dom’s face was very still, its contours outlined in gold and vermilion, his newly-done hair dazzling. At first his mouth was that straight line that meant he was concerned (possibly), serious (definitely), but slowly the corners tilted, curling upward. The lines of Dom’s face shifted, until it was lovely and cheeky and radiant, his face that of the Dom Billy had known in New Zealand, grown only a little older, handsomer, its sadness transmuted to wisdom.

“Together, Bills,” Dom said at last, in a soft, throaty voice. “And just like that.”

“Together,” Billy agreed. “Exactly.”

And Billy understood, then, the reason for the piercing. It meant that Dom had come to a place where the waters changed from salt into sweet, and as he always did, had marked the change upon his body. It meant the weather had turned now, that everything was shifting, and it was up to him to race before this wind, or to let the tides engulf him.

When he looked up again into Dom’s eyes, Dom's bright, expectant face, Billy saw that he had no choice in the matter. He never had done. His sails were open and his vessel trim, and he could run on and on forever. When he took Dom’s hand in his, Billy realized that he felt no shame now, no embarrassment, only warm, rough skin against his own and the curve of long, strong, slender fingers. Only the hand of the person he loved most in the world curled round his, as if they’d always been together.