Folie a Deux

[glasgow-blue.livejournal.com]

And here's #2. enjoy!

Title: Folie a Deux
Word Count: ~800
Disclaimer: I am making this shit up.
Summary: It's like one of those old Crosby and Hope road movies, only without the big production number.
Archive: Please ask.

With thanks to Susan and Deb for the beta advice, which I cheerfully ignored on almost every count.




When Dom said We should go to Alaska! Billy had assumed that he was speaking in the abstract. The someday was implied. People just don't drive to Alaska on a whim.

Wrong.

This, after all, was Dom. And Dom was perpetually two steps and a crooked smile away from being declared a full-fledged force of nature. He should know that--should remember the glorious mayhem of New Zealand. And he does. But ten years of picking out couches and painting the bathroom and pints at the local pub had tempered the storm a little, allowing Billy to rationalize away the occasional and brilliant insanity of it all.

So, they hung a right at the Hoover Dam and drove to Bellingham, Washington. The rented Impala was turned in and two tickets on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry appeared, as if by magic. Suitcases full of shorts and t-shirts were left in a storage locker under the watchful eye of Simon Redfeather, and, in their place, they bought jeans and fleece and packed them carefully into giant backpacks alongside water bottles, granola bars, and--God help him--instant coffee. Yukon or bust.

They hadn't really understood the crush of the crowd when the ferry was loading and wound up having to trade Billy's iPod and Dom's pocket camera for two adjacent chairs on the Sun Deck. The cabins, of course, had been booked weeks ago by sane people who planned such journeys. Boring, Dom had called them that first night at sea while they shivered under a shared blanket from the gift shop.

Boring, but warm.

"Where's the adventure in that, Bills? Think of the memories we'll have."

Billy fervently wished those memories included a hot shower and a bed that was actually horizontal in nature. He'd be sixty before his nose fully thawed from the constant and frigid breeze. Sun Deck. Right.

The truth of it is this: There's a little bit of hobbit in Billy Boyd. He likes the comforts of home, the familiar. If left to his own devices, he'd happily putter around Glasgow for the rest of his days. Vacation travel is nice. Home is better.

But there was Dom. Dom the adventurer. Dom the wanderer. Dom the whirlwind that swept into his life and pulled him away from the monochrome and into Technicolor. You're not in Kelvingrove any more, Boyd. And it was amazing--even if the coffee was lukewarm and the people in the next chairs smelled of patchouli and bong water.

Today, he'd woken up in a place called Sitka and taken a tour from a Tlingit woman named Lucy. She'd shown them bald eagle nests and a bear sanctuary and explained that the pigs and goats next door were not bear food, but the local petting zoo. Alaskans, it seems, think nothing of an eight hundred pound brown bear in their driveway, but find barnyard animals absolutely fascinating.

Dom loved that bit.

Lucy told them the story of Alice--a 92-year-old local who lived alone on a nearby island and rowed herself to shore every day for coffee and gossip with the fishermen. She brought them to a chocolate factory that used to be a sawmill, and told them about how her tribe used local plants for healing and eating and medicine. She waved to cars as they passed on the narrow road, always explaining who the driver was and how they fit into things. There were an awful lot of cousins and more than a few ex-boyfriends who waved congenially.

Billy fell in love, a little. With Lucy. With Alice. With the bears and the chocolate. And even with the smell of the fishing boats flushing their bilge water out into the harbor. Diesel and algae and seafood, all rolled into one. It reminded him of a family trip to the Isle of Lewis as a kid.

Dom sidles up to him at the Sitka National Park, smiling in the rain. Lucy is explaining that the totem poles they are looking at are Haida, not Tlingit, and that tribal custom forbids her from telling their stories--not because of rivalries, but because it is the epitome of offense to share a story that is not yours to tell. Billy loves that, too.

Technically, the tour is over, but Lucy has offered to drive everyone into town by way of her brother's sandwich shop so they can stock up for an afternoon of exploration.

"Lunch?"

Billy's stomach grumbles. Breakfast (coffee and chocolate bars from the sawmill) was a long time ago. He could go for a burger the size of a humpback. And some dry socks. And maybe a nap, too.

"We should go to Barrow," he answers. "I want to see a polar bear."

Comments

[kiltsandlollies.livejournal.com]

Dom was perpetually two steps and a crooked smile away from being declared a full-fledged force of nature. He should know that--should remember the glorious mayhem of New Zealand. And he does. But ten years of picking out couches and painting the bathroom and pints at the local pub had tempered the storm a little, allowing Billy to rationalize away the occasional and brilliant insanity of it all.

That is so well-put I can't even. :D I love how you let Billy just fall back into the maelstrom that Dom is, and pretend he's not, really; you can almost see his eyes opening wider with every sentence, even when he lives with them at half-mast.

You're so bloody good. :)

[glasgow-blue.livejournal.com]

♥♥♥

[msilverstar]

this is really cute, I like the Hope-and-Crosby vibe!

[glasgow-blue.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)