Chapter Text
Los Angeles 1978
For most of his life, Billy had mixed feelings about fatherhood. He veered from resenting his father’s abandonment, desperately wanting him back, believing he was better off without him, to longing for the kind of fathers he saw other boys in his neighbourhood had. Fathers who sat the dinner table every night, fathers who took you to baseball games, fathers who were on your ass about school.
Nobody cared what Billy did. Well, that was not exactly true. His mother cared deeply but between working long hours to keep him and Graham fed, clothed, and housed, she didn’t have time for anything extra. And Billy could hardly fault her for it. What this meant in practice is that while Billy had a mess of complicated feelings about fatherhood, he spent much of his childhood as a caretaker of, and father-figure to Graham. It was his job to get Graham up for school, to make sure Graham did his homework, to fix him an afternoon snack and sometimes diner. He was the one who taught Graham to drive, gave him advice about girls, cleaned his bloody nose when he got into his first fight. And he loved Graham, he really did. But he also resented him something fierce sometimes because taking care of Graham meant that Billy never really got to be a kid. Graham’s needs forever before his own.
He was just trying to figure out life his fucking self but he was expected to not only keep Graham alive but also teach him the things he needed to know. This seemed like a stretch because Billy felt uncertain that he knew anything about anything most of the time. He learned to fake certainty when Graham would look beseechingly to him for answers. Made himself all-knowing in his brother’s eyes but really he didn’t know shit. Mostly he felt weighed down by the responsibility.
All this left him indifferent about his own prospects of fatherhood. What he wanted was to not feel responsible for everything for a goddamn minute, to quiet the noises in his head always reminding him about the possibility of failure, to put himself first selfishly and unapologetically. He didn’t see a future where he had kids of his own, or at least not for a long time.
Even when he met Cam and he fell in love with her strength, calm, humour, and beauty, the life he envisioned for them was free and unfettered. I mean, there was some responsibility, or at least Billy held himself responsible for the success of the band (and that alone nearly ended up killing him) but beyond that, he imagined a wide-open future for them. He would make music, become a huge star (and make his father sorry for ever leaving both him and Graham), Cam would take photos and work on her art. There would be money, and adventure, laughter and sex but most of all there would be freedom. The beautiful freedom to chase their dreams.
But then unexpectedly came Jules. And while he loved Cam, his first reaction to the news she was pregnant was panic, then dread, resentment, and then finally resolve. Resolve to not be like his father, resolve to do right by Cam, resolve to not be the fuckup he secretly thought he was, that Cam’s parents not so secretly thought he was, to give his kid a better life than he and Graham experienced.
And so they’d gotten married. And he’d spent Cam’s entire pregnancy running away from the responsibility he’d signed himself up for. Fucking everything in sight, drowning the doubts in his head with booze, and drugs, noise, and once almost, the sweet lure of heroin. It didn’t matter that he loved Cam, didn’t matter that he’d been planning on marrying her since the second they were offered a record deal and the only person in the world he wanted to tell was her, didn’t matter that he had vowed to himself to do better by his child, he wasn’t ready for the responsibility yet.
Who knows how long the spiral would have lasted if Cam hadn’t given him an ultimatum. Forced him to get his shit together for their child’s arrival. Without her, Teddy, and the band, who knows how long it would have taken him to step up? Even then, he missed Julia’s birth, drying out in rehab. Missed so much of her young life, time lost to the studio and his demons.
And yet, Julia was the most precious thing in his life. Whenever he looked at her face, he couldn’t imagine a world without her, his precious baby girl. He’d never known a love so big, so unfaltering, so true than what he felt for his daughter.
If at times he’d been less than devoted, lost himself to the music, to the need to make something of himself, he knew he’d always come home to his girls. The one time that was ever truly at risk was when he met Daisy. It had been an event that had changed everything for him. Before that, he’d scoffed at people describing meeting someone and feeling like you’d been struck by lightning. He’d known connection before, deep love, infatuation that left him hard and aching, but he’d never known the intoxicating combination of obsession, connection, madness, attraction, and soul-deep resonance that he felt with Daisy Jones.
A cosmic pull so deep, so fundamental, that sometimes late at night when the weight of denying them, denying her became too much and he couldn’t lie to himself and say it was just her gorgeous face and body, their matching vices, her free spirit, her genius talent, her ability to make him better, his wayward thoughts would quietly whisper that it felt as if she’d been molded from his very rib. They were that much a part of each other.
It was Daisy who put him on the path back to his family, saving them both, damning them both to a lifetime apart but he couldn’t be mad at it. It was the only choice (in so much as there actually was one), it was what he needed, even if he didn’t deserve it. Besides, he’d always believed Daisy had the strength to find her own way. She never needed him. She was, in fact, better off without him.
And he couldn’t imagine not being here with Julia every day, to watch the slightest changes in her as she grew, to know the story behind the bruise from the playground on Tuesday, or what her favourite toy was, the silly faces that made her laugh, the things that made her cry. He was so thankful that he got to chase the monsters from her closet and snuggle her to sleep. And while he and Cam were still struggling to get their marriage back on track, they were making progress and every day he got to spend with his girls was more precious for almost having lost them. He would never take them for granted again.
This week had been a hard one. He and Cam had started it by fighting. Or it was better to say, some small annoyance in their daily life had escalated to a full-fledged fight. The spark that ignited everything was that Billy had forgotten to take out the trash and escalated from there. Cam hurling accusations at him about his other fuckups.
Billy swallowed every rejoinder, every recrimination down, remembering what their couples’ therapist had said about lingering anger after infidelity.
Most days were good, they had settled into a routine and more of their days were happier than sad but there were still some days that the hurt led Camila to lash out, seemingly out of nowhere. Billy had learned to accepted it just like he learned to accept the days where the bitterness he felt for giving up his musical dreams would linger on his tongue like the taste of something sour.
That day’s fight settled into a cold stalemate. Billy and Camila each retreated, giving each other privacy to nurse their respective wounds. He knew they would come back together later. He would apologize for forgetting to take out the trash(but he would be apologizing for something else entirely) and Cam would forgive him(forgiving him again for something else entirely).
Normally, he would head to his office when he needed a moment to decompress, maybe put on an album to drown out the voices in his head. Sometimes he would tackle a project around the house, keeping his hands busy was almost as good as keeping his mind busy. In rarer cases, he would go check on Jules. Just seeing his daughter’s face could bring him peace on the toughest of days.
It was late, nearly ten o’clock, long after Jules’ bedtime but he promised himself he wouldn’t linger, he’d just peek his head in. When he climbed the stairs to the second story of the house, he could hear the creak of old stairs. Camila loves this house. He loves this house. When he first got out of rehab, they had been living apart but after a few months she had let him come home and they decided they needed a new home to match their fresh start. They searched till they found a perfect place, a four bedroom, in a well-to-do, quiet corner of Silver Lake. Noting too fancy but certainly a much nicer neigbourhood than either of them had grown up in. Billy was still getting residuals both from Aurora and SevenEightNine and he suspected his brief time in the spotlight would keep his family comfortable for the immediate future.
The house was older, made little noises and came with a whole host of oddities which appealed to Cam. Frankly, it appealed to him as well, more to do. It was a home to build dreams on, a home to build a family in.
Jules’ bedroom was the third door in the hall, near enough that they could hear her when she needed them and just far enough away to give them a little privacy. When Billy popped his head in, the room as dark but softly lit by Jules’ nightlight. Stars fell across the walls in soft yellow light.
Jules was tucked into the corner of her ‘big girl’ bed at an awkward angle. She was holding close her favourite elephant stuffed animal under her right arm. She was wearing footie pajamas covered in Teddy bears. Her dark hair was an absolute mess in disarray around her face. Billy could see that she was awake.
He let himself fully into the room and approached the bed. “Hi sweetheart, pretty late to be awake,” he whispered. He could faintly make out the damp traces of tears on her face and felt his heart clench.
Since she was a baby, Jules had suffered from frequent ear infections that made her miserable. Her pediatrician said it was pretty common for children under five but that didn’t ease Billy and Camila’s worry when they saw their child suffering. Nearing her fourth birthday, the ear infections were still a frequent affliction in the Dunne household.
When he reached Jules, he pressed his hand against her forehead to check her temperature. The skin was warm and lightly clammy, she had a low-grade temperature. He knew that he and Camila would have to take her to the doctor if it didn’t clear up in a day or so to get her some antibiotics. She looked at him, gaze fuzzy and clearly in some pain.
“Don’t worry, daddy’s going to get you some medicine. Help you feel better.” With that, Billy dropped a kiss on her forehead, went to the bathroom medicine cabinet in the bathroom next to her room and dug around until he found an over-the-counter pain reliever. Then he grabbed a clean washcloth, ran some warm water on it and made a warm compress.
When he came back into the room, Jules was sitting up in her bed and tugging at her right ear. It was a miserable slog to get her to get the medicine down but once she did, she climbed into his lap as he sat at the edge of her bed, as obedient as a lamb.
He turned so that he was fully seated on the bed, his long legs stretched out before him, hanging off the tiny bedframe and Jules securely in his lap. He gently pressed the warm, damp, compress to her ear, as she squirmed uncomfortable and he held her close, his nostrils filling with the scent of sleep, laundry, and toddler. He marvelled that he could walk around in the world with his heart existing outside of his body like this. He held the most precious thing in his world tighter for a moment, but she kept fidgeting away.
He really needed her to sit still so he could apply the compress, so he did what he always did when he needed Jules to sleep or calm down, he began to sing, almost unconscious of song choice. As always, she was hypnotized by the sound of her father’s baritone. This stilled her movements enough so he could apply the home remedy. “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day/when it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May/ I guess you’d say/what can make me feel this way? My girl, my girl, my girl/ Talking bout my girl/ My girl/ I’ve got so much honey the bees envy me/ I’ve got a sweeter song then the birds in the trees…”
As he continued to sing, he was so absorbed in the moment and comforting Julia that he missed Cam arriving and watching the scene silently, leaning against the doorframe. By the time he’d cycled through “My Girl” followed by “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” Julia was fast asleep, limp in his arms.