AN: Personally, realizing I was in love with my best friend was not a smooth transition, lol. So why should these guys have it easy?
Coming into his old bedroom, he closed the door softly behind him. He teetered on the edge of saying something, but knowing what he wanted to say, he lost his nerve. "How can I be in love with Mac? He's my closest friend. I wasn't in love with him an hour ago."
"Oh, Billy, you might not have known it, but you definitely were and the hour before that too," Scatty sighed. She motioned him in and he climbed on the bed, crouching so that he could make a quick escape if he had to. She pushed him over so that he sprawled into more of a seated position.
"What do you mean?" he asked, feeling like the bottom of his stomach had just dropped away.
"Well you… No, wait, I want to hear this from you. Tell me what you're feeling," she ordered, coming to sit knee to knee with him.
"I'm surprised," he said immediately. "I've been thinking about him for weeks, maybe months now, but… I can't put this in words yet, Scatty. I think I knew this all along, but at the same time, I never expected it," he said slowly, thinking aloud. "I never really put it together until now- until just now- and now I don't know what to do. How am I supposed to act around him?"
"Act like you love him," Scatty suggested, sitting back.
"Haven't I always?" Billy asked distractedly. "In some capacity, I've loved Machiavelli since the first time I met him." He felt confused, but also- he couldn't help but smiling. Saying the words out loud made him feel like there was a balloon swelling in his chest, filling him up so that he felt a little taller. He hadn't realized until this moment that it was something he'd wanted to say.
Scatty was quiet, watching him. He shifted under her gaze. "Can I just stay here with you a minute?" he asked. "I need to think about this a bit. Don't let me interrupt you."
"Well, I guess I'll go back to my book," she said, highly reluctantly. "Let me know when you're ready to talk."
He nodded. Settling down, he gazed out at the moon, fuzzy around the edges and with a ring of light around it. He thought it might snow. Letting his mind wander, he tried to figure out what he was saying, what he was feeling. Unbidden, the memory of Machiavelli leaning over him, from back on their time on Alcatraz, loomed into his head. He remembered feeling the Italian immortals hands on his wound and how he'd been looking in the other man's gray eyes right before he passed out from pain.
He could remember the two of them dancing to records in the living room, Machiavelli grinning at him, and the two of them standing outside of the bookstore under a jet black sky, the way Mac had tilted his head as he leaned in close…
"Wait a minute," he said suddenly, processing what she'd been telling him. She looked up from her book. "You've known that I'm in love with him? Why didn't you say anything?"
"I could only suspect what you felt for him; there was no way to know for sure. Besides," she argued. "If I had said to you last week, 'Hey, Billy, are you secretly lusting after our Italian companion?' would you really have said anything other than 'no'?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Hey, wait a minute. I haven't been lusting after him. You're making this sound dirty. And you still could have said something, anything, mentioned it to me," he added aggressively.
"You're just mad because it took you so long to figure it out."
"I guess so…"
They were both quiet for a minute, Billy lost in his own thoughts and Scatty watching him, waiting.
"But are we really sure that I'm in love?" Billy asked at last, half pleading. "There could be a lot of explanations for why I feel the way I do, that doesn't have anything to do with, you know…"
"Name a few."
"A lot of reasons…" The Kid licked his lips nervously. "I love you, but I'm not in love with you. Maybe I'm just confused."
"Or?"
"Maybe I'm just out of sorts because of what we know is going on with Black Hawk and Billie," he said hopefully. "He's my best bud but I've always felt like I have to keep up with him. And now Mac's doing-" he made a hand gesture, unable to put it in words. "Doing things. Maybe I'm just jealous?"
Scatty shook her head. "You know that's not it. You're not the jealous type."
"Okay, well maybe I'm just upset cause I've gotten used to seeing Mac all the time and now he's off with this girl."
"He's been on one date with her." She raised her eyebrow.
"He's been on a date and spent the other night in a bar with her and she gave him her p- They are strangely," he struggled for the word, "together and as Machiavelli's friend, I just…"
"Kid, you wouldn't be arguing like this if you didn't love him."
Billy slouched heavily. "I know."
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him back so that he was lying against the pillows with her. He let her do it, resting his head against her shoulder. "Admit it. You're in love with Niccolo."
The Kid sat quietly, his face propped on his hand so that his body was slightly bowed. He shifted his lower jaw, in deep thought, and looking up at her, nodded. "Yeah, I think I am."
"Doesn't it feel even a little bit nice? To be honest with yourself?"
"I do like that part of this," he admitted. "But I still don't know where to go with this knowledge."
"You don't have to do anything immediately."
"True. But I'm a doer. I like to just get in there and do it."
"Well… just sleep on it for tonight at least. Don't say anything until you're sure."
Billy straightened, glancing at her. "I don't plan on telling him."
"What?"
He nodded. "Yeah, no. Not right now. Maybe not ever. Mac's not gay and neither am I."
Scatty looked pained. "Billy, you're already making decisions. Didn't I just tell you not to do that?" Billy looked at her curiously. He didn't understand why she looked so upset or what she seemed to be holding back, but there seemed to be something she wanted to say. "I'm not smart the way Mac is and I'm much younger and I make mistakes. Somehow he still likes me. Do you think he could ever love me?
"I really do, but you should talk this over with him," she said, relief flooding her features.
"Maybe I will…" But he wasn't convinced entirely.
"You should." He nodded, getting up to go.
"Hey, Scatty," Billy said, as though an afterthought. His hand was on the doorknob, but he turned around to look at her. "Promise you won't tell Mac any of this, you will won't you?"
Scatty seemed to struggle with herself for a minute. "Niccolo would want to know," she said at last.
He thought about it and shrugged. "Perhaps. But I'm not sure what I'm feeling right now. And he's dealing with his own problem right now, so I don't want to give him more to worry about."
"Oh, but Billy…"
"Not a word, promise me?"
"I promise, but you're tying my hands."
~MB~
Billy rapped his knuckles on their bedroom door before pushing it open. He jammed his hands in his pockets. "Hey," he said shyly, feeling like he was meeting Machiavelli for the first time. "You look comfortable."
"I am," Niccolo murmured carelessly, not even opening his eyes. "What is all this?"
"Well, I noticed our pillows were getting pretty flat so I went to the home accessory store. And I was just going to get the pillows, but I brushed up against this blanket and they were so fricking soft, Mac," he explained excitedly, feeling his nervousness melt away. Machiavelli is the same as always. And then I found out that the same company made sheets and-"
"And a body pillow?"
"Yeah, and a body pillow.
"Billy you have made another solid decision," he mumbled.
The outlaw gazed down at his Italian friend. Machiavelli hadn't bothered to undress before he had sprawled on top of their bed; he lay, white dress shirt unbuttoned at the top, his tie trailing out of the hand dangling over the side of the bed.
Niccolo opened his gray eyes. They wandered up to Billy's bright blues. "William?"
Billy beamed at him. "I can't help but stare. I never thought I'd see you wrinkle your suit."
"You've been a bad influence on me," he commented, getting up from the bed at last. "I've just got to change and then I'll be ready to go to bed."
Billy sat down on his side of the bed, gazing out his window at the flakes of snow falling. Maybe they were getting some wind blowing them around, maybe it was the start of a storm brewing, but they seemed to be falling faster and faster into the night, softening the world around the edges. He heard Machiavelli unzip his pants; a sudden feeling below his navel made him dive, blushing, under the covers.
Machiavelli slid in on the other side. "Did you have a good night, caro?"
"I missed you," Billy admitted, wondering if he sounded stupid. "Are you all done, helping this girl?"
"I don't know. I had fun tonight." The tactician snuggled down under the blankets. "What are these sheets made out of, my hopes and dreams?"
The Kid snorted; he couldn't help it. He wanted to talk some more about Machiavelli's date, to know if this was something Machiavelli really was going to pursue again. "What did you do tonight?"
"We swapped background for a couple of hours in this little café. I drank so much coffee. And then she brought me over to the restaurant where we met her parents." He sat up, propping himself up on the body pillow. "They're pretty nasty to her."
In spite of himself, he felt a pang of sadness for her. "Why, what did they do?"
Machiavelli frowned, pushing out his thin lips. "It's nothing they did exactly, but they were just kind of unconsciously cruel, the way they talked to her and even the whole reason for me being there. It was the mother's birthday and she made this big deal about Jill finally bringing a man to dinner for the occasion, I get the feeling they do this every year."
"Aw, what's wrong with her being single? We've done it for years," Billy pointed out.
"That's what I told her afterwards. You know, she didn't seem too perturbed by all of it, but it must upset her at least a little bit, cause otherwise, why ask me to come with her?" He lay back down. "I think it's the mother who's really the piece of work She kept making jibes about the dress Jill was wearing and how much makeup she had on. All these backhanded compliments, the kind that really aren't, you know?"
"They shouldn't do that."
"No," he agreed. "But I think that she really wanted to show them up this year because they don't usually visit her; they just harass her from afar."
Billy frowned. "She should tell them to go fuck themselves." He perked up. "Want me to find them and tell them for her?"
Machiavelli laughed. "Billy, I thought you didn't like her?"
"I never said that," the Kid protested. "I just don't, I want… Hmm. I never said I hated her. I just don't want her to hurt you."
"I can assure you she would never do that," the taller immortal said blithely, picking up his book from the bedside table and thumbing through it. Billy resented the surety in Machiavelli's voice; already it seemed that they were forging a relationship and he'd never wanted them to do that.
"You don't think you're going to end up falling in love with her then?"
Machiavelli laughed just slightly. He looked down at the American immortal, locking eyes with him. Billy was the first to look away, his hearting beating faster. "No, I have my reasons to think that we'd become at most, friends. But even that seems unlikely. Jill is a very sweet girl, but our whole relationship is built on lies and that's no way to live."
The rush of relief was startling. I don't want him to make friends with people I'm not friends with, Billy puzzled in his head. He still wanted to hear more details, pushing down the feeling that he was being completely unreasonable. "But what did you do tonight?" he asked again, wondering what was wrong with him.
Niccolo put his book away again. Turning out his light, the room was bathed in shade and shadows. "Well, we went out to dinner with her parents. Like I said, they're pretty nasty. And then we went to the philharmonic. It's a good thing I wore my suit."
"Before you met me, you'd always be prepared to go to the philharmonic," Billy broke in.
"That's true, but I've really let myself go in the past couple of weeks."
"No, you look better than ever."
Machiavelli laughed again. "Grazie. I actually enjoyed that part of the night, if only because the mother shut up for the first time all night." Billy thought he was done talking because he got very quiet, but after a few minutes of resting, Machiavelli's eyes fluttered open again. "After the philharmonic we went to some jazz club. We danced for a long time, so long in fact that I thought we might never stop… my feet hurt a bit."
"After all that, you walked back here? Why didn't she drive you?" Billy tried not to feel pleasure in pointing out this obvious flaw in Machiavelli's dream date, but he couldn't help but feel a little vindictive.
"The jazz club's three blocks over. I told her not to bother."
"Oh."
Machiavelli shifted so that his hips were lower. He stretched, making a willowy sighing noise. Having reached the end of his story, he was fading fast, but Billy had never felt more wide awake before. He couldn't understand how he'd gone to bed the night before not knowing, or feeling, any of this. It was a long time before he fell asleep that night.
