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monaboyd Jun. 17th, 2004 09:35 pm)
semaphore27.livejournal.com posting in monaboyd Jun. 17th, 2004 09:35 pm)Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: R, for graphic war imagery
Feedback: Is longed for and appreciated. Enormous thanks to all who've commented so far!
Summary:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moonlight_spike gave me a plot bunny for a haunted house story involving Billy as the head of a team of paranormal investigators, and though it seems to be mutating slightly, the basic premise is still the same. This is 1920’s AU (with extensive flashbacks to WWI) and will also feature Elijah, Sean, Andy and Bernard, at the very least. Backtracking a little for Dom's point of view, and a little more for a flashback to the end of Dom's war, then up to the present again for a meeting.
Disclaimers: all that’s written here is fiction, and never took place. The lines Hill quotes are from "The Soldier," by Rupert Brooke.
Previous chapters and other writings can be found at: Caraidean, designed and maintained (which I appreciate more than words can say) by the lovelyjesslotr.
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved…
-John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”
Haunted, Chapter 6
Dom knew he’d worried Elijah, and was humbly sorry that he’d done so, but it could not be helped, not when every clatter of wheel on track, every rattle of a window, every whistle that sang out from the train called, hurryhurryhurry, or nownownow.
The visions had gone mad inside him, flashing at a rate too rapid for him to process, making Dom feel almost sick with their motion through his head. Fleeting images of Billy (older, sadder, more worn than ever he’d been, even in the trenches) mingled with horrors and trivialities. It was all Dom could do not to press his fingertips against his closed lids and shout. “Stop it, all of you. Stop it at once!”
But then Dom realized he’d said the words aloud—though not at the top of his lungs, as demanded by his frustration and his pain, only in an anguished mutter that made Elijah’s lips part and the skin tighten round his remarkable eyes.
By some small mercy they’d the First Class compartment to themselves, so that, at least, no stranger was present to remark upon Dom’s eccentricities.
“Sir,” Hill said quietly, passing over a beaten-silver flask with its cap already unscrewed.
With a trembling hand, Dom put the small, flat bottle to his lips, tossing back a long drink of what proved to be neat whiskey. The spirits burned a long fiery trail down the back of his throat, but before the fire could fade the slightest bit, Dom drank again, draining the flask, the impact of the undiluted alcohol hitting his empty stomach like a fist.
“You look ill, Dom,” Elijah said concernedly. “Are you ill? Eat a little something. I think you should.”
If only to dull the pain, Dom managed to choke down half of what he knew to be one of Hill's unfailingly excellent ham sandwiches, which might have been made up of pasteboard and glue for all the flavour he perceived. For a moment, fighting to swallow the last dry bite, Dom feared he might actually be sick, but in time he managed to overmaster himself.
“Here now,” Elijah told him, sliding down from the seat. “Why don’t you lie here, Dominic? Have a rest. You’ve had a shock, and I’m certain it will do you good.” He folded up his good topcoat and laid it beneath Dom’s head, his cool palm hovering over the bruise on his brow. “That’s it. Good man. Just rest.” Tenderly, Elijah spread Dom’s own coat over him, then rose to lock the compartment door with a brief snick of the latch, pulling down the blinds until the air around them darkened.
“You’re good to me, Elijah,” Dom murmured.
Elijah touched his forehead again briefly, his fingers soft and delicate as a child’s. “Rest,” he said.
Dom hadn’t thought he could let loose of his apprehensions, his hopes and fears, but the gentle motion of the train soothed him, rocking the visions away until they existed as no more than rippling watercolours at the edges of his consciousness. He’d always slept well on trains, ever since he was a boy, lulled into easy slumber by the constant, humming rhythms of the wheels, and just now he was so very weary, as weary as he remembered being in his life.
Across the compartment, vaguely, he heard Elijah’s voice, higher-pitched than usual with concern. “Is he often like this, Hill? I’m worried for him.”
“No, sir,” came the quiet rumble of Hill’s words. “Not often anymore.”
“I don’t…” Elijah began. His voice broke, and he tried again. “I can’t understand what’s happening. What is it...?” The words trailed off a second time. From a distance, Dom felt Elijah’s fingertips stroke through his hair, travel round the curve of his ear, then settle the collar of his coat a bit more snugly beneath his chin. “What is it, Hill, that he sees?”
“The future,” Hill answered, with a calmness that could not be denied. “He sees the future, Mr. Wood.”
“Oh.” Dom heard Elijah shift position; imagined him sitting back on his heels. “Is that why…? I mean, is that what he’s told you? Surely you don’t…?” He cleared his throat, suddenly, roughly, his hand alighting on Dom’s shoulder.
“Do you believe that to be an impossible thing, Mr. Wood?” Hill’s tone was soft and respectful, absolutely expressionless.
“I… Good lord.” Elijah gripped a bit tighter to Dom’s arm, just above the end of the stump where it was most tender, and Dom found himself wanting to tell him to stop, not to hold on so hard--but in that instant, his friend seemed to realize his mistake. “Oh! I shouldn’t! I shouldn’t, should I, Hill?” He stroked, gently, at Dom’s sleeve, as if to soothe whatever pain he’d caused. “Poor Dominic. Does it hurt him still? He never says.”
“At times,” Hill responded, in the same non-committal voice, his tone not making clear whether he meant Dom’s arm or the intrusive visions.
Elijah seemed to have interpreted the answer as he would. “It’s all true, isn’t it?” His touch returned to Dom’s hair, to which Dom had not taken, that day, the trouble of applying pomade. A soft fringe of it fell across Dom’s brow, and Elijah stroked the strands back gently. “It’s how he made his money—why the investments he puts me onto never fail. It’s how…” Elijah’s voice dropped low suddenly. “It’s how he survived the war. How he knew the shells were going to fall, when and where. My God, Hill, that means, then…”
Elijah’s clothing rustled. He was moving away, withdrawing to his bench, and Dom thought briefly, wearily, So this is where it ends. This is where I lose my friend.
“Poor Dominic,” Elijah said softly. “Poor Dom. What a burden to bear. In the war, he must have known all along what would happen. That’s worse than merely living through it, don’t you think? Because you can’t change everything, can you? No one can change everything.”
“Mr. Wood,” Hill answered. “I believe that’s very true. Some things cannot be changed. At other times, the visions one is given are not those, precisely, that one needs.”
“Poor Dominic,” Elijah said again. “I know… I come across as an ass, I’m sure… But he’s my dearest friend, you see. I’ve never had a true friend, in all my life, only people who wished to use me. Yet I suppose that sounds quite feeble and pathetic to you, Hill, as I’ve known Dom such a brief time.”
“Not at all, sir,” Hill replied.
“Well, most likely it does, and you’re merely being polite.” A touch of laughter came into Elijah’s voice. “At least you haven’t treated me to, ‘It would not be my place to say, Sir.’ It’s good of you to spare my feelings, Hill.”
In response, the older man laughed quietly. “To do so would be presumptuous, Mr. Wood.”
Elijah laughed outright at that, “Now there’s a response for a gentleman’s gentleman, Hill. I’m glad he has you to look after him.”
Hill’s voice took on a warmth quite apart from its usual polite detachment. “And I am glad, sir, that he has you, as well. For some time now he’s needed a true friend, just as you have, Mr. Wood. One quite apart from those drones whose company he shares.”
“They are an awful bunch, aren’t they?” Elijah asked. “I’d thought Hollywood was bad. And it is. It truly is. Sometimes…” Dom could hear him shifting on his seat. “Do you think we all dance so fast in order not to give ourselves the time to think?”
“I believe, sir, that may well be the case.”
“I can’t imagine it,” Elijah murmured. “The war, I mean.”
“It’s better that you should not.”
“Did you…?” Elijah began, then cleared his throat. “No, never mind. Everyone except me seems to have lost someone he loved.”
A silence fell.
“I had a son,” Hill said, “In the 2nd Manchesters.”
“Did you?” Elijah asked, in hushed tones. “Did he…? I mean…”
“He’d have been twenty-five years old this year, had he lived. A married man, perhaps, soon enough with children of his own.”
“Lord, but I’m sorry, Hill. Honestly, you don’t have to speak of it to me, if you don’t like to.”
“He was cut down by the Berggman guns at the Sambre-Oise Canal, less than a week before the end of the war. He’d written me a letter during his last night of life, speaking of his friends, his hopes, his fears.” Hill was quiet then, for some moments, before quoting softly,
There's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware.
“I’m sorry, Hill,” Elijah said again. “Truly.”
“A young soldier pulled him out of the water, my Harry. He wasn’t dead yet, you see, but terribly hurt, drowning. He was always a bit afraid of the water, my boy.” Hill’s voice had taken on that elusive trace of a country accent again. “Grew up on the banks of the Avon, yet never learned properly how to swim. Poor, foolish, lad. ‘Relax,’ I’d say to him, ‘Let go of the fear and you’ll bob to the top like a cork.’ Only he never could. It must have seemed such a divine intervention, to feel strong arms around him then, at the end, lifting him out of the current. He must have been happy to die upon dry land, with one of his mates holding fast to him.”
“Yes,” Elijah said in hushed tones. “I can see that he might. Er… have been… that is.”
“Cost the lad who saved him from the canal an arm,” Hill murmured. “Couldn’t have saved Harry’s life, not by then, but saved him at least from dying so afraid. That was brave, don’t you think, to have taken such a chance for a mate?”
“Yes,” Elijah answered. “That was… Oh!” Another long silence fell, “Where do you think we are, Hill?” he asked.
“Yorkshire,” Hill said quietly, in his usual voice. “Not so very far from Scotland now.”
Billy, Dom thought, before sleep claimed him entirely. When he dreamed, though, it was not of Billy at all, but of that last day on the Canal.
The fourth of November was the coldest day so far that year, so cold Dom scarcely felt his hands inside his fingerless gloves, and the breath of the men around him steamed in the air. His heart beat madly in his chest, and yet, at the same time, he felt terribly, calmly numb, in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
Marching down, he’d turned his ankle on a bit of stone, and throbbed fiercely inside his tight-laced boot, so much so he wasn’t sure he could rely upon it supporting his weight if it came to any sort of a run.
It occured to Dom, in a sudden flash, that he’d be twenty-one years old in a month and four days, a length of time that had come to seem an eternity. The visions showed him nothing of himself, only a peace that would come soon—and yet it was a birthday Dom never expected to see.
Beside him, Private Alasdair made a joke about Guy Fawkes Day, in a trembling voice, as the German guns blazed, blasting away at the Royal Engineers as they attempted to cast the small, temporary bridges they'd made up across the canal, slipping in murky water up to their waists, heads disappearing beneath the current now and then—some not coming back up at all, as twists of red and pink unfurled against the water's muddy brown.
“Bloody stream,” Private Hill muttered, in a low flat voice, and Dom couldn’t help a bit of a grim smile, at a pun he knew had been entirely unintended.
Poor blokes down there, Dom thought, Must be frozen to bits.
“We’ll be all right,” he told the younger man, even though he knew that was a lie. They’d huge, flat stretches of field to cross down to the water, with their only defense some tall bits of hedge, while the Germans held the high ground on the other side, the Lock House and the lock itself. Dom checked his Lee-Enfield automatically, his fingers more alert to the state of his gun than his conscious mind. It would be all right, he told himself. His gun would fire. This wasn’t the day he died.
Behind his eyes, Dom watched Lieutenant Owen’s insides burst in a gout of red, and could not help but turn his face away, as if that might somehow remove the vision from his mind. From the edge of his sight, he saw the lieutenant make a silent signal to the men in his raiding band—they intended to circle round, zig-zagging along the lines of hedge until they came upon the Lock House from behind. They’d cover no more than half the distance before, to a man, they died.
“No,” he breathed, “Lieutenant, not that way.”
Owen turned back a moment with a funny sort of smile, his eyes catching Dom’s eyes, one of his shoulders rising in a bit of a shrug.
But it’s only six more days, sir, Dom wanted to cry. Lie low today. We’ve only six more days to go before they end it all.
Owen’s pale lips shaped the word, “Goodbye,” and Dom sketched a salute in return.
The lieutenant carried a pocket notebook in his tunic, one that would be found later in the day, bloodied but untorn. He’d lovely handwriting, Owen had, much finer than Dom’s untidy scrawl, and he understood things no man his age should have to understand, things they all knew in these days: all the tales of heroism they’d grown up on were nothing but lies, bloody lies, there was nothing sweet or beautiful in any young man’s death, not when the Mauser bullets ripped through one’s heart, or the chlorine gas filled one’s lungs. When they went back home (those who made it back home, that was) they’d find a country divided between those who believed in glory, still, and those who’d learned differently in the hardest of ways.
At home, they’d learn to lock the secrets of these years behind their closed lips, inside their minds, because everyone who hadn’t been there wanted nothing but to believe the cause had been just, all the battles fought for what was good and right in the world.
The 2nd Manchesters drew together then, Private Alasdair’s and Private Hill’s shoulders brushing his. They all smelt of wet wool, of sweat and smoke and blood. Young Private Mowbridge, just seventeen years old had a damp patch on his trouser-fronts. The pulse beat violently in his throat, and he stank, badly, of piss.
Dom nudged him with his arm, murmuring under his breath, “Stay near me, Mowbridge. You’ll be all right.”
And Mowbridge would be, it was true (in body at least) for the two years he’d spend in Craiglockhart as a Mental Case, before the night he used a twisted bedsheet to end his own life.
“I don’t want to see these things,” Dom whispered. “I don’t want to see.”
But then they were moving, skulking their way downhill, the Lancashire Fusiliers on their tail, the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex flanking them left. The Bergmann guns stuttered, flashing fire at the rate of 600 rounds a second. It was like fireworks, Dom thought, like boys setting off strings of fireworks before the Guy flew onto the bonfire blaze--only that was meant to be tomorrow, not today.
Along with the men around him, he broke into a shambling run, the bits and pieces of his kit bouncing against his hip-bones, his spine, his thighs, until Dom found himself shrugging out of it all, casting off the lot except for his ammunition and his gun. There was no more point to the rest of it, not here at the end, and he’d no idea, by now, whether that bothered him still, or had ceased to mean anything.
Will Billy be waiting for me over there? he wondered, briefly, before it was too late for more thought. Men fell out of the pack, torn down in front of comrades who were too late to stop, comrades whose boots slid and tripped on bodies and mud.
And then, just beyond, stretched the flat, dirty water of the canal.
Dom laughed aloud as one of the Royal Sussex men, a giant of a bloke, fired off a Lewis Gun from his hip--a machine gun too heavy, really to be carried, much less operated on the run. He laughed and laughed aloud, because there was no more pain, no more fear, nothing but smoke and noise, then not even that anymore, only grey interrupted with flashes of light, a heavy body slamming into his as a bullet creased his shoulder at the base of his neck, a burning like a wasp-sting that flared brightly and vanished again, except that Dom was on his face in the mud, crawling, his gun gone, no way left to defend himself, even was there defense to be had.
He slithered head-first into the canal, unable to brake his progress down the muddy bank, gasping in a mouthful of filthy muck before he bobbed to the surface, coughing it out again. There were others in the water, some bleeding, some too still. Cold, COLD, COLD! Dom’s body screamed at him, though he'd really gone far beyond feeling such things.
He clutched at the nearest body—another Sussex man, bleeding in gouts from a wound in his cheek, trembling violently from the shock. He was easily twice Dom’s size, but Dom caught hold of him still, muscles burning as he threw him onto the bank. He slipped on the canal-bed and came up again, catching hold of another man, and another, not caring, by this time, if they were living or dead, only knowing he needed to get them to dry land, because dry land meant safety to them all.
A second bullet screamed along his back, opening his tunic in one long, thin line—he’d only just managed to turn in time, for an instant's hesitation would have sent the projectile exploding through both his lungs, instead of burning a mere whip-lash across his skin. Dom cried out and fell again, his bad ankle deciding, suddenly, that it had taken enough, that it would bear his weight no longer in this filthy weather, and this cold.
He came up beneath a body—no, a still-living man—whose hands wound with desperation into Dom’s hair. Scalp stinging, Dom pulled away, catching the man’s hands in his hands, pulling him close, then, into a rough embrace. Panicked breathing rasped in his ears, and Dom found himself panting, in return, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, mate, I’ll see you out again.”
And then they were sprawled out on the bank, belly to belly, hot wetness soaking the front of Dom’s tunic, his trousers, though he did not think the blood was his own.
He rose up on his elbows, smoothing mud-drenched hair out of the other man’s eyes. They’d both lost their flat, dinner-plate helmets somewhere, and Dom suddenly recognized the features beneath his own as Private Hill’s, his muck-streaked face deadly pale, his eyes stretched open, shocked, and full of pain, and far too young.
“Monaghan,” Hill choked, as mud and blood burst from his mouth, splattering across Dom’s cheek. “Dom.”
“Yes, only me,” Dom answered, finding himself, oddly, smiling, sheltering the younger man’s body with his own. “You took a nasty fall there, Harry.”
“Never liked the water much anyway,” Hill said, and coughed again.
Dom wiped Hill’s face clean, as best he could, with the back of his hand. “Just you wait a bit. They’ll have the stretchers down here once they’ve taken the lock.”
“Do you think they will?” Hill asked.
“Bloody Sussex blokes are up there now. Glory hounds.”
Hill smiled, weakly but warmly, a spark of the life returning to his eyes—in the moment before they glazed over, and the light went away from them for all time.
“God, mate,” Dom breathed, still huddled low over the suddenly-slack body, the air tainted now not only with rot and blood, but also shite. “Y’ poor young git. ‘m sorry, Harry. ‘m sorry, mate.”
Dom meant to slide back and away, to take Hill’s gun, perhaps, if it still fired. He’d meant to go back down to the canal, to join his friends on the other side, only just then came the strangest sound he’d ever heard, like lightning and thunder combined, if it was, really, that lightning possessed a sound of its own.
It seemed to Dom that lightning did, then, have such a quality, a noise like the sizzle of electricity from a live wire, and with it a loud cough, a crack, a burning, tearing pain.
But when he glanced over his shoulder to see what the trouble was, all Dom saw was brilliant crimson fountaining away from him. For a moment he found himself mesmerized, to see the rich beauty of such colour amidst all the grey.
It struck him, then, My blood, my blood, that’s my blood coming out of me, and where’s my bloody arm got itself to, anyway?
Dom’s hands were shaking, trembling—or rather, he realized, his one hand, his one remaining hand, the right, had begun to quake violently, and yet he felt the left hand there, doing just the same, even though, when he glanced back behind, he saw what might well have been his own limb lying fully three feet away: a tattered glove, a knob of thin, pale wrist, a spattered sleeve.
Dom began to laugh hysterically.
Some cold and logical part of his brain took over then, telling him, You must do something. You must do something now, or you’ll be dead.
For a moment Dom wavered, thinking, first, Billy! then, What does it matter? It’s too late, it’s too late anyway.
Yet at the same time his fingers were working, unwrapping one drenched puttee, unwinding the cloth from around his leg, tearing it a little in his haste, until he’d managed to get off a strip long enough to use, and wrap it around his bleeding stump, holding one end in his teeth, the other between his trembling fingers as he tied off a knot. He dropped five bullets getting one out of his belt, but the sixth he thrust beneath the knot, twisting and twisting, as the pit dropped out of his stomach and great spots of darkness and strong colour swooped before his eyes.
Dom wanted to faint, then, from shock and distant pain and loss of blood, but he’d gone cool inside again, and he forced himself to hold on, he had to hold on. He’d no one else to keep tension on the tourniquet.
He slumped over a little, then found himself lying down, his head on Private Hill’s torn chest, though he no longer smelt much of anything, or minded the blood. Dom thought, though, of the young man dead beneath him, wondering if he’d a mum and dad back home, or a girl. He wondered if, like Dom himself, Hill had already lost all his boyhood friends. He wondered why water, being in the water, had troubled his mate more than death.
That seemed such an odd thing, Dom found himself smiling at the sky above, the muted grey marked with slightly blacker clouds, where a single dark vee of geese crossed high overhead, the lot of them honking cheerfully.
Except for that one noise, the exuberant birds, it was so quiet where Dom lay it filled him with wonder.
He’d never known a war could be so quiet, or so still. It was lovely, really.
Dom opened his eyes as someone rapped on the compartment glass. Elijah had been sleeping too, it appeared, his head pillowed on Hill’s arm, lips parted, eyes moving in random arcs beneath his half-opened lids.
Hill, Dom could see, was watching his face, his expression one of tenderness and concentration. The images had, for the moment, died back to a dull hum, scarcely demanding his attention, and he’d grown skilled at ignoring such things.
Dom propped himself up on his elbow, feeling awkward, as he always did, when he’d recently shaken off sleep.
“Almost there, are we?” he asked.
Hill nodded, smiling slightly.
“Never knew he was your boy,” Dom said, after a pause. “Harry, that was. Thought it was a coincidence, with the names. He said he’d grown up in the country, with his gran and granddad.”
“And so he did,” the older man replied.
“Sorry,” Dom told him. “It’s not… I don’t mean to pry.”
Hill shook his head. “It’s not prying, sir.”
“I don’t… I mean, that is, Hill, I wouldn’t want you to think you owed me anything. Harry was my mate, and he was younger than me, and afraid. I wouldn’t ever have left him there, y’see.”
“I know, sir,” Hill answered quietly. “It’s just that I’d wanted to meet you, when I heard how he’d died, and then I saw you needed me.”
For a moment, their eyes met, wearily, full of knowledge, in utter honesty.
“I did,” Dom told him. “Maybe more than you’ll ever realize. I do still.”
Gently, Hill raised Elijah’s head from his shoulder, lowering the sleeping youth to the compartment bench. He crossed the small space between them, pulling back the coat and helping Dom to sit, slipping the sleeves over his arms and tucking the empty one into its pocket tenderly. “I hope you find what you’re seeking here, sir,” he said, softly, a world of unexpressed emotion in his voice.
Dom glanced down at the toes of his own highly-polished shoes. “If I do,” he said cautiously, “Don’t think the less of me?”
For only a moment Hill’s fingers brushed his cheek, such a brief touch Dom might have imagined it, except for a lingering warmth.
“Dominic,” he said. “Son, I would never think less of you.”
Dom shut his eyes. He felt like weeping—but, of course, he did not weep, only looked at the older man with burning eyes. “I meant what I said, Hill. This morning. I meant every word.”
“I know,” Hill answered, smiling. “I know, sir, truly.
Elijah was still sleepy when they left the train, yawning hugely and rubbing at his eyes. “I thought we’d hours to go yet,” he said.
“No,” Dom answered softly, “Here we are.” He watched Hill hail a taxi at the cab stand, and urged Elijah forward with a hand beneath his arm.
“Are you nervous?” Elijah asked, then yawned again.
Now that he stood on Glasgow streets, Dom could not have said what it was he felt. Certainly, he’d butterflies floating up none-too-gently beneath his ribs, and his head pounded with a hard, steady pulse. The visions tried to show him various things, but Dom found himself too distracted to pay them much heed, as none of the pictures seemed to be of Billy.
In the back of the taxi, he found himself shaking, Elijah patting his arm tenderly. “It’s all right, old fellow,” he crooned, “It’s all right, you’ll see.” But his eyes appeared worried, a shallow line marking the normally-smooth skin between his brows. “If…” he began, then shook his head. “It will all turn out well. Yes, it will turn out perfectly.”
Dom shook his head, hunching over his knees, hand spread across his eyes, as Elijah rubbed his back in slow, distracted strokes. “It’s so very grey here,” Elijah said. Then, later, “What a lovely building. Is that that the University?”
Dom couldn’t look. His vision was blurring, at least it was internally. Inside his head flashed pictures, so many pictures, telling him it was over, too late, all this was nothing but a dream, a vain attempt to regain again something he’d lost irretrievably. By the time the taxi let them out at the kerb, the last of his vague hopes had drained away entirely.
“This is it, then?” Elijah asked, tipping the cabman generously. “903?”
Dom looked up, his mouth feeling tight, his jaw as if it was locked in place. A narrow grey house made of stone rose before him, eight steps leading up to the stoop. Small widows looked down upon the street like dull bluish eyes. Not a candle or a lamp shone anywhere inside.
The door had been painted black, a shiny black but cheerless and colourless still, resembling nothing more than a well-tended hearse. It pained Dom’s heart to think of Billy living in such a place, and made him wonder, for the first time what, all these years, Billy might have been thinking, were he alive.
What if the memories were too painful for him to keep close? said a bitter voice in Dom’s head. What if he’s known all along you were living? He can’t have heard otherwise. How can you arrive, without warning, on his doorstep in this way this? If he’d wanted to find you, he’d have looked before now.
Bonelessly, Dom sank down on a lower step, hardly noticing when Hill brushed past him to ring the bell. He heard the chime distantly, and waited, scarcely breathing. When no answer came, Hill rang again. “Perhaps…” Hill began, then arranged himself neatly on the edge of the stoop. “Perhaps he’s gone out for a bit. We’ll wait here a little, shall we, sir?”
Elijah sat a step up from Dom, gazing at him sadly, though Dom scarcely registered the expression. Time seemed to have gone strange, to have stopped entirely, wound up in a stretch of waiting that seemed to have no beginning, and no end. Passersby strolled the pavements, never looking, never speaking to them, as if the three had turned invisible to all but their own eyes.
After a moment, Dom removed his hat, setting it beside him on the step. In another moment, Elijah did the same, edging closer, then closer still, to where Dom sat, leaning toward him, great concern showing clearly on his face.
They waited until night was close to coming on, and the pub across the street begun a brisk evening’s trade. In the distance, someone sang, in a tuneful yet drunken voice.
Elijah nodded toward the public house. “You look so distressed, Dom. Come over to the pub with me. Have a drink to settle yourself.”
Dom shook his head, incapable of other movement, scarcely capable of speech. “I couldn’t, Elijah. If he comes home, y’see…”
“When,” Elijah said softly.
“When, then,” Dom repeated. “When. I’ll need to be waiting. I’ll need to see him. Even if I’m wrong, or he doesn’t want me here, I’ll need to see him for myself.” He’d begun to tremble again, and clutched tight to his thigh in a vain attempt to steady his hand.
From behind him came an odd sound, a dragging and creaking noise. It perplexed Dom, and yet he found himself unable to turn, unable to investigate. Desperately afraid, he called upon the visions then, but they refused to show him anything but random flashes of lightning that left dark streaks behind his eyes.
“I can’t see, I can’t see,” he cried aloud. His breath was burning in his throat, making his voice ring harshly through the still November air. “Where, in God’s name, are the damn things when I need them?”
“Dominic, quiet,” Elijah murmured. “Someone’s here, I think.”
God! Dom thought, floating to his feet, unaware of making any movement by his conscious choice.
Dom turned partway, unable, in that moment, to do more.
The images did flare then, in a blaze of light, and he was gazing down on Billy, his own dear Billy, looking tired and worn and with a dull desperation filling his eyes. Dom found himself freed to turn completely, to read Billy’s face with his own true sight: the sweet curve of mouth and chin, the small, straight nose, the moss-green eyes. Billy, just as he remembered, with the additions of much sorrow and a few more years.
“Billy,” Dom found himself saying, hardly knowing his own voice, not recognizing its hard edge, yet unable to control the tone, to shape into something more pleasant, more welcoming.
“Dominic,” Billy whispered, his voice soft and warm and perfect, all the welcome in the world contained in the word. Billy’s face, though, had gone white, dead white, as if he was himself coming close to a dead faint.
Dom found himself leaping forward, wrapping his arm tightly round Billy’s waist, holding him up as he began to tumble forward, holding him close against his heart, breathing nothing but Billy’s well-remembered scent.
Billy’s head fell onto Dom’s shoulder; his face ground into the wool of Dom’s suit. His arms rose then, closing round Dom’s own waist, hugging him tight and tighter still, until Dom found himself laughing as his lips brushed the neat curve of Billy’s ear, whispering to him, as if they’d never been apart, “Missed me a bit then, did you, Bills?”
Dom’s hand rose to stroke the back of Billy’s neck as Billy’s face turned up, seeking his, blindly kissing him, throat and jaw and chin, until their lips met, finally, sweetly, with more warmth then Dom had ever known existed in the world, much less expected to feel for himself.
He brought his hand to Billy’s face, stroking his roughly unshaven cheek, the soft skin underneath the scruff of beard. His tongue parted Billy’s lips, stealing in through that small space, tasting lager on Billy’s tongue, along with something else, something he’d forgotten, that unique, essential flavour belonging only to one William Boyd of Glasgow, Scotland.
A long kiss passed between them then, longer and sweeter than anything in seven years of painful, longing dreams. Neither wanted to pull away, and yet Dom did so first, gazing down into Billy’s eyes, Billy’s body pressed to his, side, hip and thigh.
Dom held tightly to him, tighter than tight, feeling the mad beat of his own heart, of Billy’s heart against his chest, marveling that this time, this time surely, things had come out right, that he was not to be dragged forward into the future, or back into the past, but allowed to balance, just this once, firmly in the present, here with Billy, where he belonged.
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: R, for graphic war imagery
Feedback: Is longed for and appreciated. Enormous thanks to all who've commented so far!
Summary:
moonlight_spike gave me a plot bunny for a haunted house story involving Billy as the head of a team of paranormal investigators, and though it seems to be mutating slightly, the basic premise is still the same. This is 1920’s AU (with extensive flashbacks to WWI) and will also feature Elijah, Sean, Andy and Bernard, at the very least. Backtracking a little for Dom's point of view, and a little more for a flashback to the end of Dom's war, then up to the present again for a meeting.Disclaimers: all that’s written here is fiction, and never took place. The lines Hill quotes are from "The Soldier," by Rupert Brooke.
Previous chapters and other writings can be found at: Caraidean, designed and maintained (which I appreciate more than words can say) by the lovely
jesslotr.Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved…
-John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”
Haunted, Chapter 6
Dom knew he’d worried Elijah, and was humbly sorry that he’d done so, but it could not be helped, not when every clatter of wheel on track, every rattle of a window, every whistle that sang out from the train called, hurryhurryhurry, or nownownow.
The visions had gone mad inside him, flashing at a rate too rapid for him to process, making Dom feel almost sick with their motion through his head. Fleeting images of Billy (older, sadder, more worn than ever he’d been, even in the trenches) mingled with horrors and trivialities. It was all Dom could do not to press his fingertips against his closed lids and shout. “Stop it, all of you. Stop it at once!”
But then Dom realized he’d said the words aloud—though not at the top of his lungs, as demanded by his frustration and his pain, only in an anguished mutter that made Elijah’s lips part and the skin tighten round his remarkable eyes.
By some small mercy they’d the First Class compartment to themselves, so that, at least, no stranger was present to remark upon Dom’s eccentricities.
“Sir,” Hill said quietly, passing over a beaten-silver flask with its cap already unscrewed.
With a trembling hand, Dom put the small, flat bottle to his lips, tossing back a long drink of what proved to be neat whiskey. The spirits burned a long fiery trail down the back of his throat, but before the fire could fade the slightest bit, Dom drank again, draining the flask, the impact of the undiluted alcohol hitting his empty stomach like a fist.
“You look ill, Dom,” Elijah said concernedly. “Are you ill? Eat a little something. I think you should.”
If only to dull the pain, Dom managed to choke down half of what he knew to be one of Hill's unfailingly excellent ham sandwiches, which might have been made up of pasteboard and glue for all the flavour he perceived. For a moment, fighting to swallow the last dry bite, Dom feared he might actually be sick, but in time he managed to overmaster himself.
“Here now,” Elijah told him, sliding down from the seat. “Why don’t you lie here, Dominic? Have a rest. You’ve had a shock, and I’m certain it will do you good.” He folded up his good topcoat and laid it beneath Dom’s head, his cool palm hovering over the bruise on his brow. “That’s it. Good man. Just rest.” Tenderly, Elijah spread Dom’s own coat over him, then rose to lock the compartment door with a brief snick of the latch, pulling down the blinds until the air around them darkened.
“You’re good to me, Elijah,” Dom murmured.
Elijah touched his forehead again briefly, his fingers soft and delicate as a child’s. “Rest,” he said.
Dom hadn’t thought he could let loose of his apprehensions, his hopes and fears, but the gentle motion of the train soothed him, rocking the visions away until they existed as no more than rippling watercolours at the edges of his consciousness. He’d always slept well on trains, ever since he was a boy, lulled into easy slumber by the constant, humming rhythms of the wheels, and just now he was so very weary, as weary as he remembered being in his life.
Across the compartment, vaguely, he heard Elijah’s voice, higher-pitched than usual with concern. “Is he often like this, Hill? I’m worried for him.”
“No, sir,” came the quiet rumble of Hill’s words. “Not often anymore.”
“I don’t…” Elijah began. His voice broke, and he tried again. “I can’t understand what’s happening. What is it...?” The words trailed off a second time. From a distance, Dom felt Elijah’s fingertips stroke through his hair, travel round the curve of his ear, then settle the collar of his coat a bit more snugly beneath his chin. “What is it, Hill, that he sees?”
“The future,” Hill answered, with a calmness that could not be denied. “He sees the future, Mr. Wood.”
“Oh.” Dom heard Elijah shift position; imagined him sitting back on his heels. “Is that why…? I mean, is that what he’s told you? Surely you don’t…?” He cleared his throat, suddenly, roughly, his hand alighting on Dom’s shoulder.
“Do you believe that to be an impossible thing, Mr. Wood?” Hill’s tone was soft and respectful, absolutely expressionless.
“I… Good lord.” Elijah gripped a bit tighter to Dom’s arm, just above the end of the stump where it was most tender, and Dom found himself wanting to tell him to stop, not to hold on so hard--but in that instant, his friend seemed to realize his mistake. “Oh! I shouldn’t! I shouldn’t, should I, Hill?” He stroked, gently, at Dom’s sleeve, as if to soothe whatever pain he’d caused. “Poor Dominic. Does it hurt him still? He never says.”
“At times,” Hill responded, in the same non-committal voice, his tone not making clear whether he meant Dom’s arm or the intrusive visions.
Elijah seemed to have interpreted the answer as he would. “It’s all true, isn’t it?” His touch returned to Dom’s hair, to which Dom had not taken, that day, the trouble of applying pomade. A soft fringe of it fell across Dom’s brow, and Elijah stroked the strands back gently. “It’s how he made his money—why the investments he puts me onto never fail. It’s how…” Elijah’s voice dropped low suddenly. “It’s how he survived the war. How he knew the shells were going to fall, when and where. My God, Hill, that means, then…”
Elijah’s clothing rustled. He was moving away, withdrawing to his bench, and Dom thought briefly, wearily, So this is where it ends. This is where I lose my friend.
“Poor Dominic,” Elijah said softly. “Poor Dom. What a burden to bear. In the war, he must have known all along what would happen. That’s worse than merely living through it, don’t you think? Because you can’t change everything, can you? No one can change everything.”
“Mr. Wood,” Hill answered. “I believe that’s very true. Some things cannot be changed. At other times, the visions one is given are not those, precisely, that one needs.”
“Poor Dominic,” Elijah said again. “I know… I come across as an ass, I’m sure… But he’s my dearest friend, you see. I’ve never had a true friend, in all my life, only people who wished to use me. Yet I suppose that sounds quite feeble and pathetic to you, Hill, as I’ve known Dom such a brief time.”
“Not at all, sir,” Hill replied.
“Well, most likely it does, and you’re merely being polite.” A touch of laughter came into Elijah’s voice. “At least you haven’t treated me to, ‘It would not be my place to say, Sir.’ It’s good of you to spare my feelings, Hill.”
In response, the older man laughed quietly. “To do so would be presumptuous, Mr. Wood.”
Elijah laughed outright at that, “Now there’s a response for a gentleman’s gentleman, Hill. I’m glad he has you to look after him.”
Hill’s voice took on a warmth quite apart from its usual polite detachment. “And I am glad, sir, that he has you, as well. For some time now he’s needed a true friend, just as you have, Mr. Wood. One quite apart from those drones whose company he shares.”
“They are an awful bunch, aren’t they?” Elijah asked. “I’d thought Hollywood was bad. And it is. It truly is. Sometimes…” Dom could hear him shifting on his seat. “Do you think we all dance so fast in order not to give ourselves the time to think?”
“I believe, sir, that may well be the case.”
“I can’t imagine it,” Elijah murmured. “The war, I mean.”
“It’s better that you should not.”
“Did you…?” Elijah began, then cleared his throat. “No, never mind. Everyone except me seems to have lost someone he loved.”
A silence fell.
“I had a son,” Hill said, “In the 2nd Manchesters.”
“Did you?” Elijah asked, in hushed tones. “Did he…? I mean…”
“He’d have been twenty-five years old this year, had he lived. A married man, perhaps, soon enough with children of his own.”
“Lord, but I’m sorry, Hill. Honestly, you don’t have to speak of it to me, if you don’t like to.”
“He was cut down by the Berggman guns at the Sambre-Oise Canal, less than a week before the end of the war. He’d written me a letter during his last night of life, speaking of his friends, his hopes, his fears.” Hill was quiet then, for some moments, before quoting softly,
There's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware.
“I’m sorry, Hill,” Elijah said again. “Truly.”
“A young soldier pulled him out of the water, my Harry. He wasn’t dead yet, you see, but terribly hurt, drowning. He was always a bit afraid of the water, my boy.” Hill’s voice had taken on that elusive trace of a country accent again. “Grew up on the banks of the Avon, yet never learned properly how to swim. Poor, foolish, lad. ‘Relax,’ I’d say to him, ‘Let go of the fear and you’ll bob to the top like a cork.’ Only he never could. It must have seemed such a divine intervention, to feel strong arms around him then, at the end, lifting him out of the current. He must have been happy to die upon dry land, with one of his mates holding fast to him.”
“Yes,” Elijah said in hushed tones. “I can see that he might. Er… have been… that is.”
“Cost the lad who saved him from the canal an arm,” Hill murmured. “Couldn’t have saved Harry’s life, not by then, but saved him at least from dying so afraid. That was brave, don’t you think, to have taken such a chance for a mate?”
“Yes,” Elijah answered. “That was… Oh!” Another long silence fell, “Where do you think we are, Hill?” he asked.
“Yorkshire,” Hill said quietly, in his usual voice. “Not so very far from Scotland now.”
Billy, Dom thought, before sleep claimed him entirely. When he dreamed, though, it was not of Billy at all, but of that last day on the Canal.
The fourth of November was the coldest day so far that year, so cold Dom scarcely felt his hands inside his fingerless gloves, and the breath of the men around him steamed in the air. His heart beat madly in his chest, and yet, at the same time, he felt terribly, calmly numb, in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
Marching down, he’d turned his ankle on a bit of stone, and throbbed fiercely inside his tight-laced boot, so much so he wasn’t sure he could rely upon it supporting his weight if it came to any sort of a run.
It occured to Dom, in a sudden flash, that he’d be twenty-one years old in a month and four days, a length of time that had come to seem an eternity. The visions showed him nothing of himself, only a peace that would come soon—and yet it was a birthday Dom never expected to see.
Beside him, Private Alasdair made a joke about Guy Fawkes Day, in a trembling voice, as the German guns blazed, blasting away at the Royal Engineers as they attempted to cast the small, temporary bridges they'd made up across the canal, slipping in murky water up to their waists, heads disappearing beneath the current now and then—some not coming back up at all, as twists of red and pink unfurled against the water's muddy brown.
“Bloody stream,” Private Hill muttered, in a low flat voice, and Dom couldn’t help a bit of a grim smile, at a pun he knew had been entirely unintended.
Poor blokes down there, Dom thought, Must be frozen to bits.
“We’ll be all right,” he told the younger man, even though he knew that was a lie. They’d huge, flat stretches of field to cross down to the water, with their only defense some tall bits of hedge, while the Germans held the high ground on the other side, the Lock House and the lock itself. Dom checked his Lee-Enfield automatically, his fingers more alert to the state of his gun than his conscious mind. It would be all right, he told himself. His gun would fire. This wasn’t the day he died.
Behind his eyes, Dom watched Lieutenant Owen’s insides burst in a gout of red, and could not help but turn his face away, as if that might somehow remove the vision from his mind. From the edge of his sight, he saw the lieutenant make a silent signal to the men in his raiding band—they intended to circle round, zig-zagging along the lines of hedge until they came upon the Lock House from behind. They’d cover no more than half the distance before, to a man, they died.
“No,” he breathed, “Lieutenant, not that way.”
Owen turned back a moment with a funny sort of smile, his eyes catching Dom’s eyes, one of his shoulders rising in a bit of a shrug.
But it’s only six more days, sir, Dom wanted to cry. Lie low today. We’ve only six more days to go before they end it all.
Owen’s pale lips shaped the word, “Goodbye,” and Dom sketched a salute in return.
The lieutenant carried a pocket notebook in his tunic, one that would be found later in the day, bloodied but untorn. He’d lovely handwriting, Owen had, much finer than Dom’s untidy scrawl, and he understood things no man his age should have to understand, things they all knew in these days: all the tales of heroism they’d grown up on were nothing but lies, bloody lies, there was nothing sweet or beautiful in any young man’s death, not when the Mauser bullets ripped through one’s heart, or the chlorine gas filled one’s lungs. When they went back home (those who made it back home, that was) they’d find a country divided between those who believed in glory, still, and those who’d learned differently in the hardest of ways.
At home, they’d learn to lock the secrets of these years behind their closed lips, inside their minds, because everyone who hadn’t been there wanted nothing but to believe the cause had been just, all the battles fought for what was good and right in the world.
The 2nd Manchesters drew together then, Private Alasdair’s and Private Hill’s shoulders brushing his. They all smelt of wet wool, of sweat and smoke and blood. Young Private Mowbridge, just seventeen years old had a damp patch on his trouser-fronts. The pulse beat violently in his throat, and he stank, badly, of piss.
Dom nudged him with his arm, murmuring under his breath, “Stay near me, Mowbridge. You’ll be all right.”
And Mowbridge would be, it was true (in body at least) for the two years he’d spend in Craiglockhart as a Mental Case, before the night he used a twisted bedsheet to end his own life.
“I don’t want to see these things,” Dom whispered. “I don’t want to see.”
But then they were moving, skulking their way downhill, the Lancashire Fusiliers on their tail, the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex flanking them left. The Bergmann guns stuttered, flashing fire at the rate of 600 rounds a second. It was like fireworks, Dom thought, like boys setting off strings of fireworks before the Guy flew onto the bonfire blaze--only that was meant to be tomorrow, not today.
Along with the men around him, he broke into a shambling run, the bits and pieces of his kit bouncing against his hip-bones, his spine, his thighs, until Dom found himself shrugging out of it all, casting off the lot except for his ammunition and his gun. There was no more point to the rest of it, not here at the end, and he’d no idea, by now, whether that bothered him still, or had ceased to mean anything.
Will Billy be waiting for me over there? he wondered, briefly, before it was too late for more thought. Men fell out of the pack, torn down in front of comrades who were too late to stop, comrades whose boots slid and tripped on bodies and mud.
And then, just beyond, stretched the flat, dirty water of the canal.
Dom laughed aloud as one of the Royal Sussex men, a giant of a bloke, fired off a Lewis Gun from his hip--a machine gun too heavy, really to be carried, much less operated on the run. He laughed and laughed aloud, because there was no more pain, no more fear, nothing but smoke and noise, then not even that anymore, only grey interrupted with flashes of light, a heavy body slamming into his as a bullet creased his shoulder at the base of his neck, a burning like a wasp-sting that flared brightly and vanished again, except that Dom was on his face in the mud, crawling, his gun gone, no way left to defend himself, even was there defense to be had.
He slithered head-first into the canal, unable to brake his progress down the muddy bank, gasping in a mouthful of filthy muck before he bobbed to the surface, coughing it out again. There were others in the water, some bleeding, some too still. Cold, COLD, COLD! Dom’s body screamed at him, though he'd really gone far beyond feeling such things.
He clutched at the nearest body—another Sussex man, bleeding in gouts from a wound in his cheek, trembling violently from the shock. He was easily twice Dom’s size, but Dom caught hold of him still, muscles burning as he threw him onto the bank. He slipped on the canal-bed and came up again, catching hold of another man, and another, not caring, by this time, if they were living or dead, only knowing he needed to get them to dry land, because dry land meant safety to them all.
A second bullet screamed along his back, opening his tunic in one long, thin line—he’d only just managed to turn in time, for an instant's hesitation would have sent the projectile exploding through both his lungs, instead of burning a mere whip-lash across his skin. Dom cried out and fell again, his bad ankle deciding, suddenly, that it had taken enough, that it would bear his weight no longer in this filthy weather, and this cold.
He came up beneath a body—no, a still-living man—whose hands wound with desperation into Dom’s hair. Scalp stinging, Dom pulled away, catching the man’s hands in his hands, pulling him close, then, into a rough embrace. Panicked breathing rasped in his ears, and Dom found himself panting, in return, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, mate, I’ll see you out again.”
And then they were sprawled out on the bank, belly to belly, hot wetness soaking the front of Dom’s tunic, his trousers, though he did not think the blood was his own.
He rose up on his elbows, smoothing mud-drenched hair out of the other man’s eyes. They’d both lost their flat, dinner-plate helmets somewhere, and Dom suddenly recognized the features beneath his own as Private Hill’s, his muck-streaked face deadly pale, his eyes stretched open, shocked, and full of pain, and far too young.
“Monaghan,” Hill choked, as mud and blood burst from his mouth, splattering across Dom’s cheek. “Dom.”
“Yes, only me,” Dom answered, finding himself, oddly, smiling, sheltering the younger man’s body with his own. “You took a nasty fall there, Harry.”
“Never liked the water much anyway,” Hill said, and coughed again.
Dom wiped Hill’s face clean, as best he could, with the back of his hand. “Just you wait a bit. They’ll have the stretchers down here once they’ve taken the lock.”
“Do you think they will?” Hill asked.
“Bloody Sussex blokes are up there now. Glory hounds.”
Hill smiled, weakly but warmly, a spark of the life returning to his eyes—in the moment before they glazed over, and the light went away from them for all time.
“God, mate,” Dom breathed, still huddled low over the suddenly-slack body, the air tainted now not only with rot and blood, but also shite. “Y’ poor young git. ‘m sorry, Harry. ‘m sorry, mate.”
Dom meant to slide back and away, to take Hill’s gun, perhaps, if it still fired. He’d meant to go back down to the canal, to join his friends on the other side, only just then came the strangest sound he’d ever heard, like lightning and thunder combined, if it was, really, that lightning possessed a sound of its own.
It seemed to Dom that lightning did, then, have such a quality, a noise like the sizzle of electricity from a live wire, and with it a loud cough, a crack, a burning, tearing pain.
But when he glanced over his shoulder to see what the trouble was, all Dom saw was brilliant crimson fountaining away from him. For a moment he found himself mesmerized, to see the rich beauty of such colour amidst all the grey.
It struck him, then, My blood, my blood, that’s my blood coming out of me, and where’s my bloody arm got itself to, anyway?
Dom’s hands were shaking, trembling—or rather, he realized, his one hand, his one remaining hand, the right, had begun to quake violently, and yet he felt the left hand there, doing just the same, even though, when he glanced back behind, he saw what might well have been his own limb lying fully three feet away: a tattered glove, a knob of thin, pale wrist, a spattered sleeve.
Dom began to laugh hysterically.
Some cold and logical part of his brain took over then, telling him, You must do something. You must do something now, or you’ll be dead.
For a moment Dom wavered, thinking, first, Billy! then, What does it matter? It’s too late, it’s too late anyway.
Yet at the same time his fingers were working, unwrapping one drenched puttee, unwinding the cloth from around his leg, tearing it a little in his haste, until he’d managed to get off a strip long enough to use, and wrap it around his bleeding stump, holding one end in his teeth, the other between his trembling fingers as he tied off a knot. He dropped five bullets getting one out of his belt, but the sixth he thrust beneath the knot, twisting and twisting, as the pit dropped out of his stomach and great spots of darkness and strong colour swooped before his eyes.
Dom wanted to faint, then, from shock and distant pain and loss of blood, but he’d gone cool inside again, and he forced himself to hold on, he had to hold on. He’d no one else to keep tension on the tourniquet.
He slumped over a little, then found himself lying down, his head on Private Hill’s torn chest, though he no longer smelt much of anything, or minded the blood. Dom thought, though, of the young man dead beneath him, wondering if he’d a mum and dad back home, or a girl. He wondered if, like Dom himself, Hill had already lost all his boyhood friends. He wondered why water, being in the water, had troubled his mate more than death.
That seemed such an odd thing, Dom found himself smiling at the sky above, the muted grey marked with slightly blacker clouds, where a single dark vee of geese crossed high overhead, the lot of them honking cheerfully.
Except for that one noise, the exuberant birds, it was so quiet where Dom lay it filled him with wonder.
He’d never known a war could be so quiet, or so still. It was lovely, really.
Dom opened his eyes as someone rapped on the compartment glass. Elijah had been sleeping too, it appeared, his head pillowed on Hill’s arm, lips parted, eyes moving in random arcs beneath his half-opened lids.
Hill, Dom could see, was watching his face, his expression one of tenderness and concentration. The images had, for the moment, died back to a dull hum, scarcely demanding his attention, and he’d grown skilled at ignoring such things.
Dom propped himself up on his elbow, feeling awkward, as he always did, when he’d recently shaken off sleep.
“Almost there, are we?” he asked.
Hill nodded, smiling slightly.
“Never knew he was your boy,” Dom said, after a pause. “Harry, that was. Thought it was a coincidence, with the names. He said he’d grown up in the country, with his gran and granddad.”
“And so he did,” the older man replied.
“Sorry,” Dom told him. “It’s not… I don’t mean to pry.”
Hill shook his head. “It’s not prying, sir.”
“I don’t… I mean, that is, Hill, I wouldn’t want you to think you owed me anything. Harry was my mate, and he was younger than me, and afraid. I wouldn’t ever have left him there, y’see.”
“I know, sir,” Hill answered quietly. “It’s just that I’d wanted to meet you, when I heard how he’d died, and then I saw you needed me.”
For a moment, their eyes met, wearily, full of knowledge, in utter honesty.
“I did,” Dom told him. “Maybe more than you’ll ever realize. I do still.”
Gently, Hill raised Elijah’s head from his shoulder, lowering the sleeping youth to the compartment bench. He crossed the small space between them, pulling back the coat and helping Dom to sit, slipping the sleeves over his arms and tucking the empty one into its pocket tenderly. “I hope you find what you’re seeking here, sir,” he said, softly, a world of unexpressed emotion in his voice.
Dom glanced down at the toes of his own highly-polished shoes. “If I do,” he said cautiously, “Don’t think the less of me?”
For only a moment Hill’s fingers brushed his cheek, such a brief touch Dom might have imagined it, except for a lingering warmth.
“Dominic,” he said. “Son, I would never think less of you.”
Dom shut his eyes. He felt like weeping—but, of course, he did not weep, only looked at the older man with burning eyes. “I meant what I said, Hill. This morning. I meant every word.”
“I know,” Hill answered, smiling. “I know, sir, truly.
Elijah was still sleepy when they left the train, yawning hugely and rubbing at his eyes. “I thought we’d hours to go yet,” he said.
“No,” Dom answered softly, “Here we are.” He watched Hill hail a taxi at the cab stand, and urged Elijah forward with a hand beneath his arm.
“Are you nervous?” Elijah asked, then yawned again.
Now that he stood on Glasgow streets, Dom could not have said what it was he felt. Certainly, he’d butterflies floating up none-too-gently beneath his ribs, and his head pounded with a hard, steady pulse. The visions tried to show him various things, but Dom found himself too distracted to pay them much heed, as none of the pictures seemed to be of Billy.
In the back of the taxi, he found himself shaking, Elijah patting his arm tenderly. “It’s all right, old fellow,” he crooned, “It’s all right, you’ll see.” But his eyes appeared worried, a shallow line marking the normally-smooth skin between his brows. “If…” he began, then shook his head. “It will all turn out well. Yes, it will turn out perfectly.”
Dom shook his head, hunching over his knees, hand spread across his eyes, as Elijah rubbed his back in slow, distracted strokes. “It’s so very grey here,” Elijah said. Then, later, “What a lovely building. Is that that the University?”
Dom couldn’t look. His vision was blurring, at least it was internally. Inside his head flashed pictures, so many pictures, telling him it was over, too late, all this was nothing but a dream, a vain attempt to regain again something he’d lost irretrievably. By the time the taxi let them out at the kerb, the last of his vague hopes had drained away entirely.
“This is it, then?” Elijah asked, tipping the cabman generously. “903?”
Dom looked up, his mouth feeling tight, his jaw as if it was locked in place. A narrow grey house made of stone rose before him, eight steps leading up to the stoop. Small widows looked down upon the street like dull bluish eyes. Not a candle or a lamp shone anywhere inside.
The door had been painted black, a shiny black but cheerless and colourless still, resembling nothing more than a well-tended hearse. It pained Dom’s heart to think of Billy living in such a place, and made him wonder, for the first time what, all these years, Billy might have been thinking, were he alive.
What if the memories were too painful for him to keep close? said a bitter voice in Dom’s head. What if he’s known all along you were living? He can’t have heard otherwise. How can you arrive, without warning, on his doorstep in this way this? If he’d wanted to find you, he’d have looked before now.
Bonelessly, Dom sank down on a lower step, hardly noticing when Hill brushed past him to ring the bell. He heard the chime distantly, and waited, scarcely breathing. When no answer came, Hill rang again. “Perhaps…” Hill began, then arranged himself neatly on the edge of the stoop. “Perhaps he’s gone out for a bit. We’ll wait here a little, shall we, sir?”
Elijah sat a step up from Dom, gazing at him sadly, though Dom scarcely registered the expression. Time seemed to have gone strange, to have stopped entirely, wound up in a stretch of waiting that seemed to have no beginning, and no end. Passersby strolled the pavements, never looking, never speaking to them, as if the three had turned invisible to all but their own eyes.
After a moment, Dom removed his hat, setting it beside him on the step. In another moment, Elijah did the same, edging closer, then closer still, to where Dom sat, leaning toward him, great concern showing clearly on his face.
They waited until night was close to coming on, and the pub across the street begun a brisk evening’s trade. In the distance, someone sang, in a tuneful yet drunken voice.
Elijah nodded toward the public house. “You look so distressed, Dom. Come over to the pub with me. Have a drink to settle yourself.”
Dom shook his head, incapable of other movement, scarcely capable of speech. “I couldn’t, Elijah. If he comes home, y’see…”
“When,” Elijah said softly.
“When, then,” Dom repeated. “When. I’ll need to be waiting. I’ll need to see him. Even if I’m wrong, or he doesn’t want me here, I’ll need to see him for myself.” He’d begun to tremble again, and clutched tight to his thigh in a vain attempt to steady his hand.
From behind him came an odd sound, a dragging and creaking noise. It perplexed Dom, and yet he found himself unable to turn, unable to investigate. Desperately afraid, he called upon the visions then, but they refused to show him anything but random flashes of lightning that left dark streaks behind his eyes.
“I can’t see, I can’t see,” he cried aloud. His breath was burning in his throat, making his voice ring harshly through the still November air. “Where, in God’s name, are the damn things when I need them?”
“Dominic, quiet,” Elijah murmured. “Someone’s here, I think.”
God! Dom thought, floating to his feet, unaware of making any movement by his conscious choice.
Dom turned partway, unable, in that moment, to do more.
The images did flare then, in a blaze of light, and he was gazing down on Billy, his own dear Billy, looking tired and worn and with a dull desperation filling his eyes. Dom found himself freed to turn completely, to read Billy’s face with his own true sight: the sweet curve of mouth and chin, the small, straight nose, the moss-green eyes. Billy, just as he remembered, with the additions of much sorrow and a few more years.
“Billy,” Dom found himself saying, hardly knowing his own voice, not recognizing its hard edge, yet unable to control the tone, to shape into something more pleasant, more welcoming.
“Dominic,” Billy whispered, his voice soft and warm and perfect, all the welcome in the world contained in the word. Billy’s face, though, had gone white, dead white, as if he was himself coming close to a dead faint.
Dom found himself leaping forward, wrapping his arm tightly round Billy’s waist, holding him up as he began to tumble forward, holding him close against his heart, breathing nothing but Billy’s well-remembered scent.
Billy’s head fell onto Dom’s shoulder; his face ground into the wool of Dom’s suit. His arms rose then, closing round Dom’s own waist, hugging him tight and tighter still, until Dom found himself laughing as his lips brushed the neat curve of Billy’s ear, whispering to him, as if they’d never been apart, “Missed me a bit then, did you, Bills?”
Dom’s hand rose to stroke the back of Billy’s neck as Billy’s face turned up, seeking his, blindly kissing him, throat and jaw and chin, until their lips met, finally, sweetly, with more warmth then Dom had ever known existed in the world, much less expected to feel for himself.
He brought his hand to Billy’s face, stroking his roughly unshaven cheek, the soft skin underneath the scruff of beard. His tongue parted Billy’s lips, stealing in through that small space, tasting lager on Billy’s tongue, along with something else, something he’d forgotten, that unique, essential flavour belonging only to one William Boyd of Glasgow, Scotland.
A long kiss passed between them then, longer and sweeter than anything in seven years of painful, longing dreams. Neither wanted to pull away, and yet Dom did so first, gazing down into Billy’s eyes, Billy’s body pressed to his, side, hip and thigh.
Dom held tightly to him, tighter than tight, feeling the mad beat of his own heart, of Billy’s heart against his chest, marveling that this time, this time surely, things had come out right, that he was not to be dragged forward into the future, or back into the past, but allowed to balance, just this once, firmly in the present, here with Billy, where he belonged.
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And the story of Hill's son bought tears to my eyes. How do you tear my heart up like this, and then make me feel happy again?
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Yes, poor Harry.*sniff* I kept thinking of Theoden's line about having to bury his son as I was writing that bit.
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