Work Text:
Three in the morning, four fingers of whiskey
Holden decided to take a shower when Bill sat down to call Nancy. Unwillingly eavesdropping on their depressing conversations every time they shared a room, he couldn't force himself to pretend he was sleeping through another round of Bill's tired sighs and half-hearted encouragements.
He stood from his bed, Bill looking up at him with the receiver in his hand.
“Sorry if I woke you. Gotta check in.”
Another sigh. Holden didn't turn to look at his partner, but he didn't have to to picture the drawn look on the older man's face.
“This humidity is already keeping me up, so I'm going to take a shower. You give her my regards.”
Bill hummed before lighting his cigarette and dialling his home number.
While standing under the hot spray (if it could be called that considering the low water pressure), his mind wandered. Debbie. Seeing her in that room, legs spread with that Patrick propped up against her. He felt a combination of anger and hurt wash over him, and the longer he ransacked his brain for a reason Debbie would do this, the more he felt he was grasping at straws. He did show enough interest in her, didn't he? Her passionate love for academia he didn't particularly share, of course, but she was more than her studies. She was curious, open-minded, serious about her work, free in spirit and a dream in the sack, but..in what light did she see him? The suit and his clothes had been up for debate, on her side, quite a lot. It was obvious she found his style monotonous, but he liked it, felt comfortable in them, so should he change that only to please her? He'd never seen her in any dress that didn't scream 'Liberal leftist hippie chick', but he didn't mind any of that.
The water started coughing in random small spurts before coming back full force, only with the water turned icy cold. With a shriek, he fumbled with the knob to turn it off and quickly wrapped himself tight in a dry towel. When the steam started to clear, he studied his face in the mirror.
'Am I boring?' he thought to himself, carefully taking in his hair, eyes, nose, and chin. He tried to smile, but to his horror, the grimaced smile reminded him more of the disturbed men they were interviewing, than himself.
When he exited the bathroom, he found Bill sitting with his head in his hands, about four fingers of whiskey in a glass, no ice. The man immediately sat up, trying to compose himself.
“Are you alright?” Holden asked before walking straight over to his partner and sat down right beside him. He put his hand on Bill's shoulder, but it was shrugged off right away.
“Holden, we have separate beds for a reason, I thought you got that last time,” grumbled Bill and took a huge gulp out of his drink. “And is it so hard for you to mind your own goddamn business?”
“Right,” Holden nodded and went to sit down on his own bed. He sat there quietly with his hands on his knees, looking at Bill patiently. They had worked together for a while now; Holden knew it would just take a moment before the man's anger dissipated.
“No, I'm not,” Bill sighed and took another swing of his drink. “I'm sorry.”
“Is this about Nancy?”
Bill sighed again and eyed his younger partner for a few seconds.
“Not exactly. I think it's about me.”
“How so?”
“Well, you wouldn't understand. You're young and in love with your girlfriend.”
Holden almost wanted to tell him about Debbie, but then again he wasn't so interested in bringing it up right now. It was much more comfortable to care about other people's problems than one's own sometimes.
“Don't be so old-fashioned, Bill. You feel ready to join the country club yet?”
Bill snorted, the tiny smile barely there for a split second. He lit himself another cigarette, Holden had long since gotten used to sleeping in a fog of smoke when he was on the road with Tench.
“I've been together with Nancy my whole adult life, as I told you. I've never regretted my decision to marry her.”
Holden thought he could see where Bill was headed, but the older man offered no further explanation.
“You're afraid Nancy's regretting marrying you?”
“Well, she always knew I was with the Bureau.”
“So, what's this about then?”
Bill stood with another tired sigh and walked over to the kitchenette to get the bottle.
“You want one?”
“Sure, thank you.”
Bill poured himself another drink, took a big gulp of it before pouring some more into his glass and then one for Holden.
“She was so ready to become a mother. When it became clear that I couldn't- that we couldn't have a kid naturally, it was a big strain on her. All our friends had 6-7-year-olds by the time we agreed to consider adoption, and then it was another three years until we were finally accepted.”
“Tough process, I'm sure.”
“It is..it is, yeah.”
Holden felt sleep tugging at him and noticed he was still clad only in a towel. But it would feel wrong to interrupt Bill, so he just slid under the covers, lying down on his side, still facing his partner.
“Why do you think this is about you, Bill?”
Bill chugged the rest of his drink, a slightly unsteady hand reaching for the bottle on the nightstand between their beds. Holden took the bottle, so it was out of his reach.
“C'mon, kid. I'm not in the mood for being mothered by you.”
“I think you should slow down, we have an early interview.”
“Give me that bottle, Holden.”
Holden gave up, something in the stern voice made him think now was not a good time to push it.
“I'm not great at being a father, and even though Nancy's not saying anything, I can read her like an open book. I'm trying my best, but the boy is..he's just so unresponsive, like I'm a presence in his life that he just have to tolerate but doesn't want to interact with, and I'm...I...well, fuck, I don't know, Ford.”
Now he was just taking a sip from the bottle, not bothering with the glass as they were nearly out.
“And Nancy wants me to take on less work.”
“That's-” Holden sat up.
“Yeah, I know. I know. But it's hard to get her to understand. I'm not really letting her in on most of what we have our hands on. She's..she can be fragile.”
“I see.”
“I think she anticipated I would apply for a spot at the Bureau with less travelling and overtime after we took the kid in. That's the part of me she will never understand, what I do- especially what I'm doing now, it's a foreign world to her. I could never be in the Bureau and work a job like Greggs.”
“Me neither. I would shoot myself,” Holden replied with a yawn. He knew it was rude, but he would fall asleep at any minute.
“And I guess that makes me an egoist,” Bill chuckled, but there was no humour in his voice.
“More like a realist. You're doing important work, Bill.”
Silence settled over the room and Holden turned over on the bed, sleep finally setting in.
“Debbie's not disgruntled over the long hours you work?”
It pulled a small laugh from him.
“No, she's very supportive of it these days, actually.”
“Good for you, Ford. You thinking about marrying her?”
At that question, Holden decided he would pretend he'd already fallen asleep.