Home, Chapter 10

[semaphore27.livejournal.com]

Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The third volume of the trilogy (Part One: Lost and Part Two: Found, as well as the earlier parts of this story can be read at Caraidean thanks to the hard-working jesslotr). In which Dom hallucinates about a number of things, many of which are reptilian.
Feedback: is incredibly inspiring! Thank you, thank you, my dears for all the comments so far. I know this is late, but at least it's two parts in the same day.
Disclaimer: As usual, none of this is real, and I make no profits.



Home, Chapter 10

At first, in the early part of the evening, Dom’s dreaming about Billy, of being home with Billy at their own house in Kailua, in their own bed. A storm’s blown in during the night and he can hear the palm trees thrashing a bit and also the rapid-fire plash of heavy raindrops on the skylight over their bed. Dom likes storms, and rain. He likes most sorts of weather, actually. Snowy days, hot days, rainy ones, even those long, sultry winter days in LA where it never truly gets cold and one can still surf in December, even though the sea’s a bit cold. He moves slightly, snuggling into Billy just for the warmth of him, because he can’t believe how cold it’s got, even if there is a storm. It’s never been cold like this, for as long as he’s been here, but then it’s never been December either, though he’s certainly been to Hawaii in winter a time or two.

In the shelter of Billy’s warmth, Dom falls back into sleep, dreaming of Sir Ian this time. Sir Ian dressed in his Gandalf the White robe, telling him something very important and very serious. Sir Ian’s given him a pen to take notes on his hand, but it must be a specially sharp pen, because it’s cutting into his skin, whether he writes on his arm or on the hand itself, only it’s crucial he not forget anything of what Ian’s telling him, because Very Bad Things will happen if he does. Billy will be taken away from him, and he’ll be shut up in a cold blue room with people in blue masks looming over him. The thought makes his shivering worsen, and even Billy can’t keep him warm any longer.

He wants to cry out then, call Billy’s name and plead with him, “Stop this, Bills, just make it stop,” only he wouldn’t want to wake Billy. Not when he’s so tired.

There’s a long, grey, cold time and then Dom’s in the jungle. Not just any jungle either, he’s in Brazil, in the rainforest. It’s amazing there, full of plants and animals he’s never seen, the air moist, full of the smells of life and decay all at once.

Dom would like to have a series of pulleys to go up and down through the canopy, like in that shite film with Sean Connery, where one could see the answer to the mystery a quarter of an hour in, but it took the characters nearly two hours beyond that, which made them look nothing more that a pair of stupid gits, rather than the brilliant scientists they were meant to be.

That being said, he’d like very much to make it to his own old age still looking as good as Sean Connery, and there’s nothing funnier in the world than Billy, a few drinks in him, doing impressions of said Mr. Connery, addressing Dom as Miss Moneypenny, which always sends him off into fits of giggles, most likely because he’s generally had a few drinks himself by that point.

It would be lovely to dream about the Amazonian rainforest, except that in his dream he’s being slowly squeezed to death by a boa constrictor. He can feel the coils of it heavy around him, the sleek, powerful muscles, the metres of dry, slick skin. It squeezes at him in powerful bursts, oddly timed to coincide exactly with the beats of his heart, until he can’t bear it any longer and begins thrashing, trying to kick, crying out with the effort of it all.

“Chrissakes, Dom,” says a sleepy voice to the left of him, and Dom wants to call out, “Billy! Help me, Billy, this snake’s got hold of me.”

All he can gasp though is, “Snake. S-s-snake, B-b-ills.” He’s shivering violently, because he’s not only about to be a boa’s breakfast, he’s also bloody, freezing cold, which seems odd, in the tropics and all, though he supposes it must get a bit chilly there sometimes. “B-b-bills,” he wails, angry at himself for sounding both so entirely daft and so completely needy.

He’d want Billy to wake him, though, if he was being eaten by a snake. He’d want to do his level best to rescue Billy.

“Gae. Sleep,” Billy tells him, in a gruff, middle-of-the-night voice, “Back tae.” His hand wriggles out from beneath the covers to pat Dom’s shoulder clumsily. “Bad dream, that. Just.”

Dom makes himself wake up slowly. He doesn’t want to open his eyes because the snake still feels so very real to him, even if he can’t exactly feel its coils anymore. Now he’s aware of the steamy Brazilian heat, though, which makes him sweat madly, and of something squeezing very, very tightly on his broken arm, so tightly that he thinks he’ll go mental if the feeling continues much longer, because it hurts, it fucking hurts, and he’d like to go back to sleep, the way Billy says, only how can he, with all that going on?

“No snake,” he tells himself. “No snake. Listen to Billy.”

The cold’s back again then, and he’d like to curl up into Billy, just cuddle into his warmth and forget about snakes and rainforests and broken arms, only if he does that, with his sweat and his chilliness and his shaking, he’ll wake Billy up, and if nothing else, Billy deserves a good night’s sleep. He feels sick and miserable and lonely, and he’d really like Billy to wake up on his own, fully rested, and take charge of the situation, because Dom’s aware he might not be thinking clearly.

For one thing, he can still hear the rainforest noises, the calls of birds, cries of monkeys, hissing of snakes…

No, that one’s him. That’s him breathing in and out with his teeth clenched so they won’t chatter.

There’s a large bath in the bathroom, and at any other time he’d have Billy in there with him faster than anything, just to re-explore the possibilities, like, but right now all Dom thinks he wants is a good, long soak in a tub of very hot water to make the chills go away, and to make himself clean again.

He eases away from Billy carefully, stands carefully, and promptly falls down on his arse beside the bed, though except for the jar of the fall in his arm, the sisal rug seems unusually deep and soft and the floor’s a lovely honey-colour as well. It’s more comfortable, actually, than the bed has been, because it holds very, very still, not moving at all, even when he moves.

Dom decides he might as well stay there on the comfortable rug, though he wishes he had a duvet to curl up in. There’s a feather one just above him on their bed, a specially non-allergenic feather one, that’s very light yet lovely and warm on cool nights, and no burden at all on hot ones. He likes to lie on his stomach with no weight at all over him, only the weight of Billy’s hand against the small of his back, or straying down lower, to cup his bum softly as he sleeps.

The duvet’s too far away to reach, though, and even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t want to leave Billy cold, uncovered like that.

Christ, but he wishes Billy would be awake now, only he won’t wake him. He won’t.

Dom wishes too, fervently, that he could just be strong enough to make it downstairs, that he could shamble out to the lounge and curl up on the sofa with the sound of the sea in his ears, that’s somehow different downstairs than it is upstairs. Billy would find him there in the morning, and wake him with a cup of tea and one of those gentle, gentle touches and Dom would gaze up at him with bleary, first-thing-in-the-morning-eyes, loving Billy so completely it’s like the greatest pleasure he could ever know, and the greatest pain at the same time.

He’d like to cry now, but he won’t cry. He’s cried enough, even if actors are allowed to show more emotion than other people.

Dom wishes Billy’s hand would flop down over the edge, the way it sometimes will, and that he could stroke Billy’s fingers and take some comfort in that, only he knows Billy’s sleeping in the exact centre of the bed, curled up into a neat little packet of Billiness, his hands kept, absolutely, to himself.

Dom lies on his back on the sisal, staring up at the ceiling. After a bit it begins to go blurry. After a bit the snakes come back, no boas this time, and not entirely solid, either. Not transparent. What’s the word he’s looking for? It’s like transparent, only different.

Translucent, that’s what it is. The snakes are translucent. They’re striped or spotted or marked with zigzags of colour, but the light shines through them with a sort of diffuse glow. They’re winding across his skin, back and forth across his skin, and sometimes their scales are harsh enough to hurt him. Dom knows he probably ought to be frightened, but he’s fascinated instead. They’re so lovely, with their perfect eyes and their perfect heads and their lithe, sinuous bodies. He could watch them all night. He falls back asleep watching them, even though his arm’s hurting him badly.


“Dom?” Billy says.

Dom turns his head slowly. There’s one of Billy’s feet, quite close by his eyes. One of Billy’s lovely feet, with the light haze of auburn hair across the instep and the curly little toes and the clean, clipped nails. Dom loves Billy’s feet. He manages to get his right arm up off the rug and folded across his body and to stroke Billy’s great toe with his fingertips.

The only bad thing is, he’s afraid Billy’s frightened all the lovely snakes away. Billy doesn’t understand how quiet one needs to be.

“Ssh,” Dom whispers. “They’ll come out again. Prolly just under the bed.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice.

Billy’s feet move away from him. They make a soft crumping, padding sound down the stair, then a brisk, distant slap slap on tile, then there’s a tap running, followed by the same sounds in reverse. Billy’s kneeling beside him, sliding an arm beneath Dom’s shoulders, tugging him up into a sitting position, only his back protests and his head protests and his broken arm feels very odd indeed.

Dom gives a soft, “Oh!” but Billy’s already picking him up off the floor, depositing him onto the bed again. The swaying of the mattress makes Dom feel sick, but their bedroom’s too lovely to be sick in, and he’s had enough of that, anyway, to last him a lifetime.

He begins to understand the snakes will not be coming back. That perhaps there never were any snakes.

Billy wipes his face, his throat, his chest gently with the damp towel, regarding Dom gravely. “It was all far, far too much for you, wasn’t it, love?” he asks.

Dom tries to tell him about the rainforest, and the boa constrictor, but Billy shushes him with a finger across his lips. “Lie quiet for a little, Dommie. Let me have a look at you.”

Dom lies still. After a time, he begins to feel stronger. “What time is it?” he asks.

“Half ten,” Billy answers, looking mildly guilty. “I slept late.”

“Can we go home now, Bills? After you’ve had some brekkie, that is? I just want to go home. Don’t want to be in the jungle anymore.”

Billy’s gazing down at him again, wiping his face and chest with the damp towel again. At first his skin felt hot but now it’s gone cold and he wishes Billy would put hot water onto the towel next, so that it would warm him and he could stop shivering.

Instead, Billy bundles all the covers around his body, though they don’t help, much. Dom’s still shaking so hard he can’t speak, and he can’t read Billy’s eyes properly, though he thinks Billy might be angry with him. He doesn’t feel strong enough to go angry in return, so he goes cowed instead, pressing his face down into the duvet, willing himself to be warm, just to be warm again, because after all, he’s a mammal and mammals can regulate their body temperature, so he should be able to make himself not freeze, shouldn’t he?

Mammals make him think of that funny song, and he whispers to himself, “Let’s do it like they do it on Animal Planet,” only he’s not certain he’s got the words right. He’d ask Billy, because Billy has a much better head for lyrics than he does, but Billy’s back is turned to him. Billy’s rung someone on the mobile, and he’s talking to that person in a low voice. Is he planning to go out somewhere? Surely Billy wouldn’t go out somewhere and leave him when he’s feeling off like this?

Only maybe if Billy’s angry enough with him, he would.

Dom can’t remember what he’s done to make Billy so angry.

Perhaps it was letting all those snakes into their room. Billy’s not terribly fond of snakes, which is why Dom doesn’t keep one now, in any of their homes.

“I’m sorry, Bills,” he mumbles. His voice sounds softly mushy, as if he’s speaking through a mouthful of porridge, and Dom realizes that his throat is very, very sore. “Didn’t mean to let them in, honestly. They were just there. Suddenly, like.”

“What are you on about, daftie?” Billy rings off, coming to sit beside Dom on the edge of the bed. He takes Dom’s face between his hands, which is lovely because Billy’s hands are very warm and some of that warmth spreads a little into the rest of his body. “How long have you felt bad, Dommie? Why didn’t you wake me?”

Dom doesn’t want to say that Billy told him to go back to sleep, that he was imagining things. Instead, he says, “’m all right.” His cast is itching terrifically and he’d like to tear it clean off himself, only it’s shrunk in the night. He can’t get his fingers into either of the openings.

He does start to cry then, turning his face harshly into the mattress so that Billy can’t see. “Get this damn thing of me, can’t you, Bills? It’s driving me mental.” He’s thrashing around a bit in the bed, trying somehow to get at the maddening itch, with the feeling of tightness growing stronger and stronger, until he’s certain that his arm will just explode somehow inside it. “Oh, God, God, God,” he moans.

“Will you be all right in my car,” Billy asks him, “or should I ring emergency services?”

“No.” Dom forces himself to lie still, then to sit up. The bureau’s just across the room and since it’s not a big room, he tells himself that all he has to do is walk four steps, fetch his clothes and return to the bed again. That should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?

He tries to sneak a look at his arm first, but his shoulder’s terribly stiff and he can’t seem to manage. The fingers of his left hand are purple and bloated and he’s afraid he’ll see his ring from Billy sunk into his skin, that it will have to be cut off him and spoilt, but the ring’s not on his hand after all. He suffers another moment of panic. “Ah, fuck, Bills.” His voice sounds absolutely heartbroken. He is heartbroken. How could he have lost something so special, when Billy gave it to him? How can he have been so daft, so thoughtless?

“Christ, Bills,” he moans. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. How could it even have come off, with my fingers like this?”

Billy touches his hand—his left hand—and Dom screams, utterly unable to help himself. It hurts so much, that simple caress, like fire shooting through his arm. He can’t stop himself from twitching away and that causes another bolt of fire to zing up and down his bones. He moans low, then, scarcely aware that Billy’s fetched his clothes, that Billy’s starting to dress him. He’s powerless to help himself.

Billy ties his trainers, gazing up at Dom with concern in his face, his hand curled loosely round Dom’s ankle. Dom blinks, and somehow in that time Billy manages to have dressed himself, brushed his hair, made himself look neat and tidy. How Billy’s done all that so quickly, Dom has no idea.

“We’ll just go down to the garage. I can have you in Honolulu in less than an hour,” Billy tells him, slipping his new wallet into his pocket. “Think you can manage, céile?”

Dom nods mutely. He doesn’t think he can manage, actually, and he doesn’t have the slightest idea where they’re going, except that it’s to the city, but if Billy wants it, that’s enough for him. Slowly, achingly, he climbs to his feet.

“Feel about ninety years old,” he tells Billy.

“Take your time, love,” Billy answered. His arm’s around Dom’s waist as they go downstairs, which is lovely, because Dom honestly has doubts about his ability to make it down on his own. Dom would like to snog him senseless but instead finds himself leaning quite hard against Billy’s body, his head hanging limply onto Billy’s shoulder.

They take the little side door into the garage, and Dom’s happy because Billy’s car smells again of seaweed and salt water. He struggles a bit when Billy tries to put him in the back, calling out, “Shotgun, shotgun,” in a muffled sort of voice, which is something he’s picked up from Elijah.

Billy’s looking at him. Dom says, “I want to sit up front, next to you.”

Billy gives Dom another look, but buckles him in securely, then wriggles around into the back seat to fetch the small bin that’s kept there, placing it between Dom’s knees.

“What’s that for?”

“I only ask,” Billy answers, “That if you need to be sick, you do so in the bin, okay?”

Dom laughs at him, calling him, “Silly Billy,” but laughing hurts and he’s gone hot again, so hot the window next to him is fogging, and the front windscreen too.

“Want your seat tilted back a bit?” Billy asks.

“No. No.” Dom gives a clumsy pat to his knee. “A-OK here, Bills.”

A few miles out and he’s wishing Bill would turn off the air conditioning, because he’s freezing again, trembling in abrupt little shudders, but trying to hide them because Billy’s driving a bit too fast for the speed limit and Dom doesn’t want to distract him.

“It’s only fifty through this bit, Bills. Not seventy. Were you thinking it’s kilometers per hour?”

Billy reaches over, touching his cheek, telling him, “Hush.”

Dom hushes. He can distinctly feel something crawling up and down the inside of his cast now, something with tickling small feet, then, later, something with tickling small feet and hurtful pincers. Dom guesses he knows what it is now: ants. Fire-ants most likely, by the way it’s burning.

He imagines actual ants made out of fire, teeny bits of fire, marching up and down his arm, leaving small, smoky trails upon his skin.

It’s like a very childish song he learnt from Elijah, one night when they were both completely trollied, with words that go,

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah.
The ants go marching one by one, hurrah! hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one, the little one stops to suck his thumb
And they all go marching down into the sea
To get out of the rain
Boom-de, boom-de, boom-de, boom-ba-de-boom.

He laughs a bit, singing those words, and he’ll always claim that he does not suck his thumb, even though he knows very well that he does, really, that he’s more than just a bit orally fixated and often wants to have not only his thumb in his mouth, but a sweet or a pen cap or a lolly or a fag, or some bit of Billy that he’s been told all his life doesn’t belong in one’s mouth at all, only Dom thinks it does, and is quite nice there, ta very much.

“Don’t put things in your mouth, Dominic,” he says, and laughs.

Billy glances quickly sideways, and though Dom can tell how very tense and upset he is, Billy also laughs a bit. “Who told you that, Dommie?”

“Sister Maria Therese, in primary school,” Dom answers, then, quite quickly and unexpectedly, he needs to be sick after all and is glad he has the bin, though he’s not exactly certain of his aim.

Billy pulls off onto the verge, parks and gets Dom’s door open, unbuckling him and turning him toward outside so that he’s being sick onto the ground between his feet, not all over himself, which is vile. Billy gets out and comes round to stand beside him, holding Dom’s shoulders quite firmly. It goes on for some time, even though there’s nothing much inside him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be finished and he’d like very much to cry, the way he did when he was a small boy, from the misery of it all, only he doesn’t.

When it’s over with, at last, Billy fetches a box of towelettes from underneath the seat, tidying up Dom’s hands and face, his shirt and his trainers, emptying the bin into the grass a bit further away.

“Feeling a bit off, Bills,” Dom tells him, rather awed, on the whole, by how truly horrible he does feel. His heart's beating wrong and his chest hurts and his nausea's so complete he can't ever remember feeling any other way.

"Didn't take my pills yesterday," he says softly.

"I know that," Billy answers, a bit sharply, though most likely that's from worry, and possibly disgust.

"Got sick on them the day before."

"I know," Billy says again, and Dom realizes he's actually not angry in the least,he's frightened, terribly frightened. That's not exactly encouraging, because Billy wouldn't be that way unless something's really wrong with him.

Dom doesn't want there to be something really wrong. He wants to be a little overtired, and to get his uncomfortable cast off, then come home again and catch up on his sleep, with Billy snuggling him and bringing him cups of tea until he's more himself again.

Billy gets his hands under Dom’s elbows, raising him gently, but Dom finds himself shrieking, absolutely shrieking, “Don’t touch my arm, don’t touch my arm!”

“Dom,” Billy says softly.

“It’s the fire-ants, Bill,” Dom tells him. “I don’t want them to get on you.”

Billy’s looking at the bit of his hand that pokes out of the cast then, and tugging Dom’s shirt aside to examine his shoulder above it. There’s a long silence, followed by Billy’s exhalation, “Ah, shite.” Things go hazy for a bit, though Dom knows Billy’s put him into the back and taken the sleeping bag from the boot, tucking it in around him, which is kind, even though it doesn’t make Dom the least bit warmer.

He feels very safe though, suddenly, having Billy look after him, even once Billy’s started the engine and the noise of it vibrates through the seat beneath his cheek.

“I feel very safe,” he says, glad to see Billy glance swiftly back at him over his shoulder. He’s glad Billy’s not angry that he’s made a bit of a mess in his car, but he’ll clean it up soon as he can, just as soon as he can. Billy has a generous and forgiving nature.

“You’re perfectly, perfectly lovely, Bills,” Dom tells him, then blinks again, and suddenly, when he opens his eyes, they’re outside Queen’s Medical Centre.

“Brilliant!” Dom says, heaving himself upright. “Are we here to visit Dr. Helen? I miss Dr. Helen.” Which is true. Of all the doctors he saw in his dark time, Dr. Helen helped him the most, helped him get through those first weeks of filming Lost, helped him turn back into himself again. He’ll be glad to see her.

“Not just now,” Billy answers. “Remember, love, you’re having the cast off today?”

“’s right. ‘s right.” Dom remembers now. His arm gives another horrible pulse of agony, as if protesting against the removal of its armour. There’s a Hawaiian man close to them now, urging Dom to sit down in a push chair. “Don’ need it,” he slurs, sounding as if he’s several stages beyond trollied. Billy’s pushing him down though, and he’s sitting. He blinks again and somehow he’s in an examination room. There’s a doctor coming in, introducing himself in a booming voice, but Dom doesn’t catch the name because all he can hear is a thumping, crashing sound, like the surf breaking on the rocks. There’s another noise too, like the voices of octopuses he heard recorded once on a nature programme.

“Octopuses? Octopi?” Dom giggles a little. It all strikes him as outrageously funny. “Octopods?”

Billy’s helping him out of the chair, up onto the examination table. The octopus and friends are screaming loudly and Dom suddenly feels extremely dizzy, as if he needs to lie down Right Now, because if he doesn’t he’ll fall off the table directly and onto the floor, which will probably hurt him quite a lot, because the floor looks very cold and very, very far away.

Billy’s helping him to lie back. He’s holding Dom’s face between his two hands, and it occurs to Dom that Billy’s face is lovely whether upside-down or rightside-up. Billy strokes his cheek gently. He appears slightly nervous, but he says to Dom in his own version of an octopus voice. “Dr. (squeal boom) will cut off your cast now, Dom. Try to hold very still for him, won’t you?”

There’s a saw whirring with a nasty, high-pitched whine. There’s dust in the air, making Dom cough violently, and a smell of burning, followed by a stench so incredibly foul it makes the reek of Merry’s hated fatsuit seem like a fine cologne.

Billy makes a long, drawn out, disgusted noise that sounds oddly like, “Faaaauuggghhhh,” only uniquely Scottish, and Dom would laugh at him, only he’s too busy being made deathly ill by the horrible smell. Even the doctor looks nonplussed.

Dom wonders if a family of mice crept into his cast whilst he wasn’t looking—for the warmth perhaps—then died there. He’s wondering if that’s what attracted the ants, and will they all spill out now and swarm everywhere, now the thing’s open? There’s a cracking, tearing sound and his arm’s free again, weak and spongy and on the whole no better than when he thought it was a lobster claw, back on the island. It doesn’t look like a claw now. It’s puffy and purple, except where there are red streaks, a little ridged, a little puckered. Dom can’t figure out what it does look like, except then he gets an idea and another little hysterical fit of the giggles bursts out of him again.

It hurts amazingly, unbelievably, in a way he didn’t know any part of his body could hurt.

The doctor puts his hand on Dom’s shoulder. He makes booming sounds and octopus sounds and something a little like whalesong, which is rather pleasant, really. A nurse comes in with a bin liner, to take the cast away in, then another pair of nurses arrive with a tray that’s full of cold-looking, sharp, shiny things, gauze, swabs and a number of sealed foil packets. The doctor goes out and the nurses begin work on his arm, swabbing and jostling, pushing things quite hard into his skin, on the tender inside where the scar is.

Only… Dom sneaks a look. The scar isn’t there anymore. Or, rather, it is, but it’s not a neat purplish line as he expected. It’s open and inflamed, oddly sexual-looking, but in the most unpleasant of ways.

What the nurses are doing to him hurts so much it’s hard not to let tears leak out of his eyes, but he won’t do that. He won’t. He clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth together and before he knows it Billy’s patting his cheek, saying. “Dom. Dommie. Wake up a bit, can’t you? They need x-rays.”

Dom can’t understand why. He’s only in Feet, isn’t he? Having his prosthetics attached?

“Time to stand up yet?” he asks Billy, wondering why Billy’s Hobbit feet show no signs of being stuck on, and why he himself is still wearing his trainers. “They’ll have to bloody hurry if we’re going to be on set in time.”

It’s all a huge wind-up, he decides. Billy’s woken him an hour early or summat, counting on Dom’s early morning grogginess to make the prank work. He ought to be angry, only he can’t be angry at Billy. He can’t. It’s not in him.

It’s strange, because Billy helps him down from the table he’s been lying on very gently, seating him in a push chair, which is odd, Dom thinks—but maybe the glue in his feet isn’t dry yet and he’s meant to spare them until he is.

He must have been very naughty the night before, and far, far overindulged himself, because just now he feels like shite on a biscuit, and not a nice biscuit, either. A stale, soggy one, with no salt on.

It hurts having the x-rays too, having his arm moved about, though he can’t remember anything from the script about Merry having a broken arm. Perhaps this is the result of stabbing the King of the Nazgul, though he’d thought that was meant to be his right arm, his sword arm, not the left. He’s also a bit peeved that it seems to really be hurt, not just make-believe, and it seems a bit rich for Pete to have hurt his arm so badly, only for the reality of it, when he could act those scenes perfectly well without that, thank you very much.

Dom’s peeved with himself that he’s let that happen, and with Billy for not standing up for him—though maybe Billy has done, but it made no difference.

He’s very dizzy. Billy’s rubbing his shoulders, and a woman in a white coat brings him a cup of water, which Billy has to hold for him because he can’t manage somehow. The water feels lovely in his dry mouth and his sore throat, however, by the time it’s reached his stomach, it’s made him go a bit sick.

“Need to have a lie-down,” he tells Billy. “Not feeling my best, Bills.”

“I know, love, I know,” Billy tells him gently, then he’s back in the room with the table, lying down again, with Billy standing over him so that he doesn’t roll off accidentally. The kindness of that strikes him hard, and Dom feels himself go terribly emotional, all melted-like with it. “You’re so good to me,” he tries to tell Billy. He can’t remember whether it’s appropriate to say to Billy, “Love you,” or not, but that’s inside him, so huge it seems to block out everything else. Dom tries to say the words, appropriate or not, but he’s gone tongue-tied and what comes out is nothing but a garbled mess.

“Ssh,” Billy tells him, stroking Dom’s hair. “Ssh, you idiot. I love you too. Shut your eyes now. See if you can’t rest a bit.”

Dom does as he’s told. In a little while, he’s pleased to see, the snakes have come back. They’re very gentle with him this time, in their slithering, and he’s happy that Billy will be able to see them too, that they aren’t shy of Billy anymore.

“Snakes, Bill,” he whispers joyfully, not wanting to startle his reptile friends, and just in case Billy somehow hasn’t noticed. “Lovely, aren’t they?”

“Och, you poor daft wanker,” Billy says back, but he kisses Dom’s forehead (the snakes part to allow him to do so) then strokes Dom’s hair some more, which is very soothing.

Dom drifts off to sleep that way, but he doesn’t dream much of anything.