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robthegoodfellow · 2 years

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See, it had all started right before Christmas break, at the end of the Gatsby unit in his English class. Billy had gotten a real kick out of the story, which had been mercifully short and jam-packed with… well, it was gay as shit, basically—to the point where he’d tormented Harrington one afternoon reading select passages aloud, really dialing up the loaded phrases.

“Question for ya,” he’d said, sprawled on Harrington’s bed—his favorite place for half-assing any homework—or really his favorite place, period. He skimmed the paragraph, plucking choice words, glanced up where Harrington was propped against the headboard, eying him placidly over his History notes. “What would you think if you heard me describe an old buddy as ‘sturdy… dominant… leaning aggressively forward…’?”

Billy rolled and crawled into his lap—leaned forward with as much sturdy dominance as he could muster. Ignoring how his audience had snapped to attention, he cleared his throat, stuck the book between their faces, and continued, voice comically husky:

“…Or if I said the guy’s body had ‘enormous power’ that ‘seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing—’” As he read, Billy had reached down between them with his free hand, rubbed until Harrington was himself straining the zipper of his jeans. “‘—and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved…’?” A whine as Billy abandoned his ministrations below to trail up Harrington’s torso, caressing his collarbone, the meat of his shoulder, and finished: “‘It was a body capable of enormous leverage—’”

Planting his feet, Harrington arced his pelvis off the bed and Billy toppled over, snickering. In a blink, he was bowled onto his back, grinning up into a smug face.

“I’d think you wanted to fuck him,” Harrington said, and slotted their hips together, grinding where they were both hard.

“Right?” Billy panted. He weakly swatted Harrington’s head with the book he’d somehow kept hold of. “Man, I haven’t even gotten to the part where he fucks this random photographer guy—or when he describes Gatsby’s car and it’s just—it’s just—”

Harrington had sat up, hands tugging at their jeans, trying to get them undone. Rather than help, Billy raised the book above him and leafed forward a bit. “Hold on… I’ll find it…”

“You are such a little shit,” Harrington muttered.

Billy feigned distraction. “I swear, it was right after…”

Harrington had them unbuttoned and unzipped when Billy flipped to the scene.

“Here it is!” He cleared his throat and deigned to lift his ass so Harrington could drag his jeans and briefs down around his thighs. “So Gatsby’s ‘balancing himself on the dashboard’ of this huge car—picture it just jutting out from his crotch, okay? And then Nick’s all randy about it—saying how the car’s ‘swollen here and there in its monstrous length—’”

The book was snatched away and sent sailing off the bed, then Billy’s bookless fingers were anointed with the preferred dollop of lotion and drawn down to Harrington’s dick. No instructions necessary.

“Am I nuts?” he demanded, grunting as Harrington reciprocated. “Like—that car is a—” He gasped as Harrington upped the pace. “—a fucking… monster cock—a la verga—”

“Billy,” Harrington said, tightly, though he seemed on the verge of laughter. “Can we… focus on our actual cocks for a sec?”

That earned him an obnoxious smirk and slow, lingering stroke. “Damn, babe,” he said, admiring. “You held out way longer than expected.”

The ohmygodIhateyousomuch was mumbled directly against his lips, but he was smiling—Billy knew because he kissed teeth a moment before Harrington adjusted, and then he was pulling Harrington down, sucking tongue until they’d made a mess of their hands.

So anyway, that had got him thinking, and when it came time to write an essay, he’d rolled the dice and composed an unwieldy manifesto on Nick’s latent queerness. He’d had to look up all kinds of fancy words for gay and dick—homoeroticism and phallic had heavily featured—and maybe it was because this was the first time he’d ever felt personally invested in a writing assignment, but what had started out as a bit of a joke topic had morphed into… something else. Something he really meant. Nick was repressed as fuck and it had fucked him up.

He hadn’t run it by Pendergast—aside from the mere thought making him want to set himself on fire, he figured it wasn’t necessary; she’d given them a list of possible prompts, and the last one amounted to Choose Your Own Adventure. Plus, she’d gotten up on a soapbox at the start of the year, banging on in her twangy accent about how their approved booklist was too “narrow”—got as close as she could to calling it too white, too male, too straight without outright saying it. So… odds were good she wouldn’t read it and march him straight to the counselor or something.

Despite his best intentions, though, he’d almost thrown in the towel toward the end, when he’d been trying to transcribe his pencil draft into the final and the ink kept smearing—pens just weren’t fucking made for poor left-handed schmucks. When Harrington had seen him about ready to rip the draft in half, he’d spirited Billy into an austere office and sat him in front of some space-age looking contraption that purported to be a typewriter—shown him how to feed paper through, how to backtrack and correct any errors, stamping them out of existence, and told him to take his time.

And Billy had used a typewriter before—even endured a typing class freshman year—but that had been on a dime a dozen Smith-Corona electric, tacky from countless fingers before him, not an… IBM Selectric III, which he’d never even heard of, but assumed must be the best money could buy. It had a matte grey chassis with black squared keys, and when he tentatively pressed the B, a whirring, mechanical flutter conjured the letter on the page in a flash, like the machine had already known what symbol he wanted—hadn’t known to capitalize it, though. Leaning back and forth to peer over the edge of the chassis, where the arms of each key would usually fly out to strike, he watched as, for every letter of his name, a magic silver golf ball encrusted with the building blocks of language—the alphabet, punctuation, numbers 0-9—pivoted and spun, laying down each item with a crisp clatter that was weirdly spine-tingling.

billy Hargove

Eh, one missed capital was no biggie.

He’d started off slow, afraid of making more mistakes, not trusting himself to correctly deploy the corrector, but a couple sentences in, he was grooving—and god, the staccato whirr of those keys was damn satisfying.

He only knew he’d been at it awhile when a tension headache, that old friend, began to pulse at his temples and build behind his brow. Not enough to derail him, though—he lay down the final period with a flourish, yanked out the last page, and helped himself to the stapler.

After he’d turned it in, he’d kinda forgotten about it, too busy dreading Christmas break and all the “family time” it would entail. He wouldn’t even have the castle as his usual retreat, since Harrington’s folks were already back for the holiday, hosting a horde of his mother’s family at the country home until the whole brigade left for a New Year’s soiree in the Windy City.

So he’d perked up when Pendergast started wandering the room, handing the essays back, reminding them to actually read her comments if they hoped to improve next time—only she got to the bottom of the stack and… no essay for Billy. She hadn’t seemed to notice, but—

Then he freaked out a bit. Was she planning to hold him back after class, or—fuck—hoping to talk to him about it? Maybe he’d read her totally wrong and she was gonna march him to counselling after all. Or give him a detention for submitting something she found distasteful. Vulgar.

Of course, maybe she’d… lost it? He really hoped so, because he’d rather take an unjust zero than chat with her about the essay at all. Never should have written the fucking thing in the first place—such an idiot.

He snuck glances at Pendergast all period, but even when they made eye contact once, she hadn’t frowned or given any indication of her intentions… She was either one cool customer or genuinely as scatterbrained as she seemed on the surface and had just—yeah, lost it.

At the lunch bell, Billy had no recollection of what had transpired in class, too swept up in anxious speculation. He wanted to make a break for the door, but if she uttered a word about his topic with anyone else around he’d never hear the end of it. He’d bolt when the coast was clear and pray she wouldn’t call his name.

“Hey,” someone said, close by his ear, and Billy leapt in his seat, knees knocking the underside of his desk. He whirled, venom on his tongue, only to find a roll of papers shoved in his face, brandished by that girl with the brown bob who sat behind him, and who was now crossing her arms in defense at his reaction.

“Whoa!” she said, grinning wryly with big goofy teeth. “Easy. I come in peace.”

“In pieces,” he muttered, turning to sit sideways in his desk to level her a glare.

“Yes, you’re very scary,” she agreed. “So I really hope you won’t murder me for—um…” She tapped the scroll on his shoulder. “…reading this.”

Billy snatched the papers, his stomach seizing—already knew what he’d see when he unrolled the coiled pages, and yep—there it was: billy Hargrove in blocky typeface in the top left corner.

“Congrats?” the chick said, tentatively. “You got an A.”

The small part of Billy that wasn’t flipping his shit wondered how that was possible—the first page alone was littered with red marks correcting his grammar, scolding him for informal turns of phrase—but all that was a murmur compared to the tirade raging in his mind, listing haphazard means to ensure the nosy bitch wouldn’t dare use this against him.

He half-heard her babbled explanation: “Sorry—I know I shouldn’t have. It was just that the staple on yours got snagged on mine, and then I saw the title and I thought it was just you being a dumb jerk but then I realized it wasn’t—”

The title in question: Character Analysis of Nick Carragay. He’d been torn between that and Nick Wants Dick, but decided he was already pushing the envelope enough.

Billy swept the area, saw it was almost empty—only Pendergast remained, busy erasing the chalkboard. He let his eyes and tone go flat like Neil’s, and turned back to the threat. “Here’s how this is gonna go,” he said, slow and quiet. “You tell a fucking soul, and I’ll—”

“Shit, that’s unsettling,” she interrupted, gaze skittering over his blank face, the thin veneer of a lax posture that belied winding tension, spring-loaded. He blinked when she snapped her fingers in front of his nose. “Stop that. I’m not gonna say anything—not that I’d assume anything.” She peered around him at their teacher on the far side of the room, then leaned back in and whispered, “Though if I were to assume something, and that assumption was correct, it’d be fine, because—uh…” Wincing, she eyed Billy a moment—whose expression had gone slack for a whole different reason—then barreled on: “Because… me, too?”

Billy was so overwhelmed by the onslaught of implications that all he could manage was, “What?”

The girl raised her brows, nodding meaningfully. “Mine would’ve been about Jordan Baker, if I had the guts.”

“Hurry up, you two,” called Pendergast. “I’d like to get to lunch sometime this century.”

They gathered their things—well, the girl did. Billy had a policy against backpacks, so all he had was the crumpled essay and the next book they were doing, this play called The Crucible. He’d read something by the same guy at his old school—Death of a Salesman—which had been pretty good.

They stopped just outside the door, and Billy looked down at the essay, then fumbled to flip to the last page. The grade was circled at the bottom, with a note: Nuanced and daring interpretation only hampered by poor mechanics and some less than academic wording at times. Overall, excellent work.

“I can’t believe she gave me an A,” he said with a snort, and the girl giggled, high and unhinged.

“Oh, I can.”

At his questioning glance, she hesitated, then darted her attention up and down the mostly deserted hallway and motioned him toward the Arts wing. Utterly at a loss, but undeniably intrigued, Billy followed at a safe distance. He was starting to think that, of the two of them, he wasn’t actually the dangerous one.

Which tracked, given his lived experience with lesbians thus far.

She had a funny stomping gait in the ankle boots, a bit at odds with her Molly Ringwald look—a brown tee shirt under a knee-length purple dress under a droopy wool cardigan—and very much undermining the cloak-and-dagger vibe she was going for. Their destination, apparently, was the back riser of the music room, surrounded by empty chairs and gleaming instruments. She’d been clutching a rectangular case ever since Pendergast threw them out, and when she settled beside Billy, she rested it on her lap before taking a slow, composing breath.

“What I am about to show you has weighed on my conscience for months, but since we’ve jumped into the deep end vis-à-vis our true selves, I assume I can trust you with this.”

Okay, so she was… one hundred percent a theater kid. Billy cleared his throat, tried to school his face into something appropriately solemn. “Uh—uh huh.”

Girl was nuts, but he for sure wanted to know whatever freaky business she was hiding. Was it a sex thing? His lip curled in appalled conjecture as he eyed the case. A sex… instrument thing?

Oblivious to his lurid musing, she flipped open the clasps and lifted the lid, revealing—a trumpet. He didn’t think it was a sex trumpet.

“The reason I’m not surprised that Pendy loved your little gay thesis—is this.” Prying back the loose corner of the crushed velvet lining, she extracted a thick sheaf of papers, stapled along one side like a book. Billy reached for it, but she held it aloft, a deranged glint in her eyes. “If you choose to look upon this, you can’t unsee it. You can’t unknow it. And you can’t tell anyone—”

“Jesus Christ, will you just—” Billy snatched it out of her hand with a huff. He must have swallowed a super-magnet that only attracted weirdos and conspiracies—but surely, surely what she was peddling couldn’t compare to the revelations this goddamned town had already dumped on him.

Slumping down in his folding chair, Billy flicked the papers to stand straight in his lap, looked down—and squinted, confused.

The entire front page was this… stylized line drawing—sort of art nouveau?—a mid-shot of two dudes in a distinctly sexual embrace against a background of roses the size of dinner plates. One guy had walked right off the cover of a bodice ripper—wavy mane and one of those drapey shirts unbuttoned to bare a tasteful tit, eyes closed, lips lustfully parted—only he was the one being bodice-ripped, by a Dracula type with a helmet of glossy dark hair, black high-collared cape and… pointy elf ears. He was vaguely familiar, but Billy was too sidetracked by the way Dracula was licking the other guy’s neck, thumbing his nipple, to place him.

When he didn’t say anything, the girl coughed nervously, then asked, “Have you—ever watched Star Trek?”

Right, right—that’s where he’d seen Dracula before. “Just one of the movies, in middle school.” He tapped the pointy ears. “Recognize him—Spock?”

“This is not Spock as you’ve ever seen him,” she intoned.

He flipped the packet open, expecting more art, but instead found a detached printout tucked ahead of a title page that declared it OUT OF BOUNDS and listed a table of contents: When Dreams Come True… Not Quite Enough… Bed of Silence… The Hustler. The loose page offered a different kind of list—a checklist.

Underneath the heading I BOUGHT THIS ZINE BECAUSE were a range of options, a few of which had him muttering awe-struck what the fucks as he read.

I wanted something to hide from my mother.

K/S zines are scarcer than hairs on Kirk’s chest.

I’m horny.

It’s been too long since I’ve been horny.

My library card to the Blueboy Library was revoked.

I need a typo fix.

I’m a connoisseur of filth.

I need something to confess.

I wanted to see if it would make it through customs.

I love bad grammer [sic], misspelling, and misplaced punctuation.

I collect four letter words.

It was cheaper than the Joys of Gay Sex.

I didn’t meet the requirements to receive Code 7.

I couldn’t afford to go to San Francisco.

I’m a secret investigator for the Moral Majority.

I’m too shy to go to X-rated movies.

I like Mary Jim and Mary Spock stories.

I wanted a zine with no Bones about it.

I don’t believe in the K/S premise–I just love to read it.

He jerked his head up and found the girl already staring with bated breath, awaiting his response. Billy looked back down, bent the pages and let their edges thwip past his thumb like a flip book. It was one hundred and fifty plus pages of text, of…

“Is all this just…?”

She sucked her lips between her teeth and nodded, wide-eyed.

“But how…?” Billy tried. “Where did you even—?”

“I stole it,” she burst out, with the air of someone unburdening themselves at last. “I stole it from Pendergast’s desk the first week of school.” She buried her face in her hands, wheezing a hysterical, guilt-ridden giggle. “I swear I almost killed the poor woman—when she realized it was missing, she went around with this… this hunted look for weeks, like she was just waiting to be blackmailed, or fired, or…”

She peeked at Billy pleadingly over her fingers, as though he could absolve her of her sins. “I didn’t even know what I had when I took it. I just thought she was interesting and wanted to snoop on what she was reading—she kept making all these super liberal comments but she’s from Texas, and I know I shouldn’t stereotype but they make all our textbooks—did you know that?—and it really shows. And every day I noticed her pulling a different book from her desk, like she was blasting through a novel a night, and so during lunch that Friday I snuck into her room and…”

Her gaze dropped to the burgled contraband in Billy’s lap.

“I’ve read it over and over,” she confessed, unfocused. “I don’t know why I’m so into it, because it’s all dicks all the time—but it’s fucking hot. And kind of ridiculous—like purple prose up the wazoo.” She blinked. “No pun intended. And some of it’s really twisted... but…”

Absolutely nothing in Billy’s life had prepared him for this. But again—what else was new. He coughed a disbelieving laugh. “Holy shit.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” she insisted, dead serious. “I don’t want to make any trouble for her—or me,” she added, with a grimace.

He nodded, quick and firm, then bit his lip.

“Can I—uh…?” he trailed off, gesturing between the stolen goods and himself.

She narrowed her eyes. “Only if you promise to guard it with your life—and return it in the exact same condition.” Making an X with her arms, she elucidated: “NO spooge stains.”

Billy busted a gut—this chick was something else. When he’d recovered, she was scanning him head to toe, unfazed and unimpressed.

“Are you planning to hide it up your ass, you bagless lunatic? Because that would also violate our terms.”

In the end, she’d tucked the zine back into her case and escorted him to his car, where he hid it under the driver’s seat. On the way, she benevolently gave him half of her turkey on rye, and he wolfed it down.

So that was how he met Robin Buckley.

next snippet or full chapter (sry, fic is WIP)

#how billy met robin #a tale as old as time #wherein robin twigs to billy's gayness #and lets him in on a couple secrets of her own #robin buckley #billy hargrove #fic snippet #spin me right round #harringrove

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