Billy didn't flinch when I asked him if I could meet Ryan. He didn't rage. He didn't pull away from me or turn away. He sighed, and pulled me closer. Kissing my forehead before pulling back far enough so he could look down into my eyes, he only asked that we hold off on that conversation for when we got to our house.
Raising an eyebrow, I countered with an agreement for a postponement on the condition that he kiss me breathless, and with a roguish grin he took on the task with gusto.
We picked up takeout on the way to the house, deciding that Homelander's bouquet would be best served in the fire pit outside, rather than ingested by humans or animals. Wrapped in plastic and tucked in a Tupperware bowl with the lid on tight, until we felt up to a fire, we took our food to the living room and settled around the coffee table.
"What're we putting on tonight?" Billy was filling our plates and jump up to grab drinks, while I reached for the remote.
"I was thinking that we'd watch -" I was flipping through Netflix, since we'd managed to mainline quite a few series while I was in medical and therapeutic confinement. I was grinning as the show's title screen popped up. "Supernatural."
"Supes, fucking supes," Billy muttered, opening his beer and sitting my glass of tea on the table. "Don't we deal with enough supe shite at work?"
I snorted, tossing two overstuffed pillows on the floor so we could use the base of the sofa as a back rest, but the pillows would save our asses from the pain that came from beautiful, yet hard as fuck hardwoods. Close together, elbows brushing, I waited until we were settled before I corrected his assumption about the show. "The show is about demons and angels, Billy." I nudged him as he handed me a fork. "You know, SUPERNATURAL stuff, NOT super powered assholes in capes."
He grunted, clearly reserving judgement for when the show got going, so I hit play and we settled into our dinner routine. Food, drink, and beginning a show to mainline like a new drug. I must have made a noise when John Winchester popped onto the screen because I saw Billy twitch out of the corner of my eye, but he didn't interrupt so I didn't get diverted too far from the story. Two episodes in, dinner was finished, and Billy was twitching more often than not. Restless, I thought, and ready for our pinned conversation from earlier.
I hit the home key on the remote so Netflix wouldn't keep the good times rolling, and with Billy's help I cleaned up our dinner mess. He was quiet, but I chalked it up to the topic we would be focusing on once everything was put to rights, and honestly, it made sense to me. Ryan wasn't an easy situation for Billy to contend with in any light, but me wanting to meet him? After Becca - I could understand his hesitation.
"Porch or -" I left the suggestion open ended, leaving it up to Billy where we hashed things out. He took my hand and pulled me into our bedroom, up the stairs and I was a little surprised. "This is where you want to talk about me meeting Ryan?" I looked at the bed I hadn't bothered to make before we left for work and was shocked silent when his lips captured mine with the same kind of hunger he'd shown- Fuck. "Billy," I pulled away, and he growled, making my eyes widen and a twist of lust hit me low and hard. Damn it. "Billy, what the hell has gotten into you?" I was thinking blonde, cape-wearing idiot, so what he said brought me up entirely short.
"That man," I must have looked confused, because I was, so he went on as his fingers and hands worked to free me from my clothing. "On that supe show-"
Man on the show? I tried to work through which man on the show, but Billy's calloused fingers were brushing against my bare skin, making thinking about anything BEYOND his skin on mine more difficult than I cared to admit. Focus, Ronnie, focus. There were three main guys on Supernatural. Which- my eyes snapped shut, REALLY?
"John Winchester?!" It came out sharp and incredulous, and he answered with a nip on my shoulder. "Billy Butcher, are you fucking jealous of a FICTIONAL fucking character?"
His teeth were grazing my skin even as he murmured his reasoning. "You made the same noise when his fictional ass came on screen as you make when I do this-" His tongue touched my pulse point and I realized I made a tiny noise that I never noticed before. "So now, Ronnie, I've gotta make sure you make a hell of a lot of other noises for me before I see that asshole on the tellie again." Fuck.
We were wrapped together, our sheets tangled around us, and I felt sated and exhausted. "Was that some weird way to keep from discussing Ryan?" A part of me worried that Billy wanted to distract me, and keep distracting me when it came to Becca's son.
He chuckled, and I kissed his bare chest before looking up at his very smug face. "Honestly forgot that we were gonna talk about that at all, Ronnie." A sigh left him, but it was content without a trace of irritation. "Why do you wanna meet him?"
I let out my own sigh, stretching so my leg ran down the length of his and smiling at how he wrapped his closer to mine. My ear met his chest, searching for the soothing sound of his heartbeat, and I considered how to explain it.
"Seeing the star-spangled asshole made the urge come bubbling up, but I think it's been there for awhile." Since the videos, since we watched how his upbringing had been so different from Homelander's. "I know where he is, Billy, and I know that technically he's being taken care of, but he's under the watchful eye of Big Brother." Billy's fingers were sliding up and down my back, his own path to peace, and his chin was pressed into the top of my head. "Is the government a better mother than Vought?"
"And you'd be meeting him as what?" Ah, am I going in as his potential- fuck, what would I be?
"I'm a psychologist, Billy." True enough, plus I was involved with Ryan's surname-sake. "Becca wanted you to promise to keep him safe, which you have, but I think she didn't just mean bodily." I know she didn't, regardless of how I felt about her choices, Becca was a good mother. She tried very hard to raise Ryan to be the opposite of his biological father, and she gave him Billy's last name. For that reason, I wanted to meet him, to make sure that he was still on the path that she'd put him on. "What he went through, what happened to -" I couldn't go on, discussing Becca's death was too much. "He's still a little kid, Billy, regardless of where part of his DNA came from."
"Not here," I knew the battle was won, that now the devil was in the details. "Homelander can't know where to find him, and while we got our home locked down, I don't trust him, or Vought." I nodded, and before we went to sleep, we discussed how to make my first meeting with Ryan work.