Book 5, Chapter 13: A Ground So Proud to Hold Us Up

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Title: A Ground So Proud to Hold Us Up
Authors: kiltsandlollies and escribo
Characters: Billy, Cate
Word Count: 5163
Summary: A brief encounter extends itself.
Index
Note: Original text and characterization of Cate created by magickalmolly; in some chapters through this story, we’ve adapted both text and characterization, but Molly’s work happily remains the foundation for Professor Blanchett.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; the recognizable people in the story belong to themselves and have never performed the actions portrayed here. I do not know the actors nor am I associated with them in any way. If you are underage, please do not read this story. I am not making any profit from these stories, nor do I mean any harm.

The weather is turning. Billy notices it in the students' faces and hunched shoulders before he ever looks up to the skies to see blue turn to grey. The entire campus goes a bit quieter as winter begins to force its way in, and the weather makes its presence felt and sometimes heard by way of odd gusts of wind and tree limbs snapping in its wake. His classes seems to move more slowly, too, as the students discover that he's more serious about the amount of work he expects from them, about the exams he plans to give, and they ask real, searching questions.

Billy feels the change at home as well, reaching more for fireplace matches and brandy and impossibly more for Dominic. And Dominic, as ever tuned in to Billy's shifts of mood and desires, makes them both expansive dinners and runs them both expansive baths. By no means is it Billy's favourite time of year, but it comes close.

He walks now across the campus, crossing his arms over his chest against the wind. He's only in his blazer, having simply refused to throw on his coat in the middle of the day. His destination is as usual his beloved group of trees hidden from the main paths around the campus. Billy's not certain whether he'll be climbing his cherished tree this afternoon--he has one more class today, and it wouldn't do to be covered in bark drag and grass stains while teaching an hour on personal responsibility--but he doesn't have to decide just yet. Not until he arrives at its wide trunk and peers up into the thinned leaves.

Billy palms his pockets to be sure that he's fortified for this break in his day. Two apples, almost perfectly matched in their hard flesh and size, and one rubbish science fiction novel which has, to Billy's irritation, actually turned out to be more of a grounded thriller than the aliens-eating-everything yarn he secretly prefers, check. As he nears the trees, Billy hums a bit to himself some old Jam song and then he's there, only feet away.

And as Billy spies the shock of bright blond hair, red lips and the look of intense concentration on Cate's face as she sketches in one of those journals of hers, he abruptly stops walking and peers around. There is no one else out this far from campus, and Billy wonders, half-fascinated and half-irked, how his own hiding place has been found by of all people Cate, whose hair looks a bit damp at the ends from getting too close to the tree, Billy imagines, and whose eyes have not yet seen him. He could turn and walk away, or he could just ... be friendly. No reason to not be, Billy thinks, and so he takes another step forward, reaching for one of his apples and crunching down on it as warning of his presence. Cate looks up in surprise and her face stretches into a warm smile as she tips her head back to better see Billy, one hand raised to shade her eyes.

"'lo," Billy says, smiling as he swallows down the first tart, perfect bite. "Fancy meeting you here."

"I could say the same to you. Lose your way to the faculty lounge?"

Billy only smiles and raises his eyebrows, and takes another bite of his apple, as if this is explanation enough. Cate laughs and shifts over a bit, patting the grass next to her, offering Billy a seat.

“Plenty of room for two. And ... " Grinning now, Cate reaches into her bag, producing an unopened bar of chocolate. She waves it a bit, her smile cheeky. "If you're of a mind for something sweet, I have dessert."

Billy bursts into laughter before he can think not to. The last time he tasted apples and chocolate in this shade of this tree, it led to the telling of secrets between himself and Dominic, and then later, a sharing of something epic enough in his memory that even now Billy feels a blush rising up in his face. He shakes his head, still laughing, and settles down to the ground next to Cate, already fishing out his second apple and handing it to her.

She takes it and hands him the chocolate in exchange, nodding for him him to split it up as she indulges in the first tart bite of her apple, her smile warm and laughing as juice tries to make its way down her chin. Swiping at her skin with her fingertips, Cate leans back against the tree trunk again, nudging Billy’s shoulder, watching his profile as he peers down at her sketchbook.

"That's nice," he says, pointing to her drawing. "Such a talent you've got. Even if it's not the best light today, you manage to capture something, don't you?" It's said with another smile, and as Billy takes another look at the drawing, he sees Cate's bare feet, making him smile even more. She seems to truly be getting comfortable at Baskerville, and this pleases Billy for a reason he doesn't yet understand, but wants to. He likes the idea of a new teacher finding happiness so soon in this little college, when it took him such a long time to do so.

Resting against the trunk, Billy takes another bite of his apple and stares up at the sky. The clouds are a darker shade, murky waves that roll across the heavens. Billy watches one cloud move above them and turn on itself, swirling in a pattern even someone as scientifically disinclined as he can recognize as beautiful. "Look at that,'" he says to Cate, nudging her shoulder back with his own and pointing toward the sky, the green of the apple in his hand a pretty contrast to the grey. "I’m not going to tell you I see an elephant, don't worry. Just watch a minute."

And indeed, another cloud follows that same pattern, turning in an odd circle to hug itself and then uncurl. "Lovely, isn't it?" he sighs, turning back to look at Cate. "First time I saw that happen I was on a bike at St. Andrews. I chased a cloud for a few minutes across campus--it was my first year there, don't throw me a look," he laughs. "Almost rode myself right into a tree, paying too much attention to the sky and not enough to what was right in front of me."

Cate's smile is very kind, her eyes more so, and Billy stops talking to just look at her for a moment before nudging her shoulder again, this time more playfully. "What are we drawing today, then? Not the clouds, I don't think."

"Not the clouds, no. But if you had come a bit earlier..." Cate licks at her sticky fingers before taking a hold of the journal in her lap, holding it up so Billy can see. She turns the page back one, showing a finished line drawing of what the sky had looked like about twenty minutes before, complete with treetops underneath. "Then you would have caught me drawing just that. I’ve done my own diagrams for study guides and tests, but this is a bit more—mine. Just for me. A minute ago I was actually drawing that bit of trees, just behind you there." Cate points at the thicket, half-eaten apple still in her hand, and as Billy turns to look that way. "In fact—”

Grinning, Cate scoots away from Billy a bit and sets her apple aside completely, picking up her pencil as Billy turns back, eyebrows raised in silent question.

"Stay right there." Hand already moving across the page, Cate begins to sketch, eyes darting from Billy to the page in front of her, and back again. She makes quick work of his wind-ruffled hair, then the line of his jaw, and she leaves his face for last, using it as an excuse to take longer looks at him as her fingers wield the pencil delicately.

"Are you--" Billy doesn't get the words out before he hears Cate's pencil scratching away in her book. She is drawing him, and Billy blinks twice before he feels himself blushing like an idiot. He wants to laugh or turn away, but thinks that were he to move, he'd certainly hear about it from the artist at work.

Instead, Billy turns his eyes back to the sky, stealing glances at Cate only when he knows she is deep in concentration on her sketch. He can't imagine how Dominic's handled this sort of strange attention, standing naked in a classroom. Billy's fully clothed and in the relative safety of the outdoors, under only the eyes of a friend, and he's nearly ready to crawl out of his skin. He takes an enormous breath to calm himself, and trails his fingers in the grass. His half of the chocolate still sits in its wrapping on his leg.

Cate is very pretty, Billy thinks as he stares at the sky. She would have attracted the attention of many at St. Andrews, professors and students alike. Perhaps even Deans as well, or the odd visiting parent. There's something of a spark to her that would send an easily led man around the bend, Billy imagines, and he laughs to himself, thinking of someone like Astin building up the stones to even come near her, much less try to--

Well, pull is not the word here. Billy tilts his head to see Cate better, and laughs aloud when she looks up at the same time. Her raised eyebrows and tight, amused smile makes him nod in apology, still laughing, and sit still again, back in his former position. No, no one could pull the formidable if kind Professor Blanchett, though many might try to push.

On the surface, it's easy for Billy to call his relative comfort in Cate’s presence a result of mutual discomfort with St. Andrews, and an obvious mutual love for good chat and a proper drink. But there is something more at work here, and Billy wonders for a moment what that could be. He's never known someone exactly like Cate, though of course he has had friends who were women. Most were fellow students or junior professors, and only a few Billy could call confidantes. And then there were ... others, late in his adolescence and early in his adult life, who were something more and less. If Billy closes his eyes and thinks very hard he can hear their voices, but in a cacophony--no one voice rises much higher than the rest to earn a place of reverence or horror in his memory. And that, Billy thinks, is no failing. It is more a relief than anything else.

While Cate finishes her drawing, Billy leaves his memories behind and hums absently to himself. He's almost lost to indifferent daydreaming when the rustling of the book startles him to Cate's presence, very near now. She hands the book to Billy silently, colour rushing to her cheeks as she waits for his response.

He takes the book with a smile, meeting her eyes before he looks down at the drawing. She's nailed him, in a way that makes Billy's eyes widen. His hair is a mess and there's just the vaguest hint of stubble along his jaw and cheekbones. He looks at Cate for a moment and laughs, then returns to the picture, shaking his head.

"This is ... it's brilliant. No one's ever drawn a picture of me, not since my sister and I were children. I'm really--do I look like this? Look at that beak--and I need a shave." Billy's hand rises to brush against his cheek, then he drops it to follow the curve of the slight bags underneath his eyes. "And sleep, obviously. Cate, I don't know what to say. It's fantastic.”

He smiles gratefully at her instead, and the color that has so uncharacteristically risen in Cate's cheeks clings stubbornly, blooming even more when Billy compliments her. Turning again to Cate, Billy smiles wider. "May I keep this?"

"Yes, of course. If you'd like..." Taking the book back from Billy with a returned smile, Cate lays it flat on her lap, then carefully tears the page from it, smiling more when it eases from the binding neatly before she offers it to him. She leans back against the tree as well, hair falling across her cheek as she turns her head to look Billy's way, and she brushes it back absently, giving his shoulder a soft bump with her own.

"You don't have a beak, you know. It's a perfectly acceptable nose." Billy's eyebrows rise at this, and Cate laughs. "You might even call it distinguished for its size."

Billy blanches at Cate's little jab, but he can't resist laughing too. In truth, there is much about his appearance that Billy does not like, but he can live with himself, nose included. He's been told before that he has nice eyes, and good lips, and every so often he believes that. But he's still not accustomed to compliments from someone like Cate, who barely knows him, but is still able to capture him so easily, at least on paper.

"Your eyes, though, they’re a pleasure to draw. They're quite lovely." Pointing to the page resting on Billy's knee, Cate's head shakes a little as she glances down. "I don't think I captured them perfectly, but ..." Smiling warmly, Cate looks up, and there's a note of something hopeful and sweet in her voice. "Maybe another time."

"Well, they're my eyes, Cate, there's no hiding it. Look." He points to the lines at the corners, sweeping toward his temples. "That's a tired man with my eyes and nose and hair. It's fantastic." Another smile, and Billy rolls the drawing up carefully before reaching for a tall, strong sprig of grass and tying it neatly around the paper. "There we go. That will keep it safe till I get back to my office."

They sit in happy silence for a moment, each gazing up at the canopy of leaves above them. Then Billy is distracted by a different sort of laughter, far up the path from where he came. The noise is followed by the thick, heavy sound of a student's continued telling of a story--something that happened to him the night before and is still having its effects today. Normally Billy wouldn't listen any further, but the student is Scottish, the accent that of a young man from Edinburgh. It's different from Billy's own natural accent, but closer than he likes to think to the clearer, more refined cadence his voice takes on while teaching. It's one thing drilled into him at St. Andrews that he's never been able to shake--the need to speak more clearly. As if his accent might as well have sounded like another language entirely.

The memory makes Billy frown, but he lets it pass before pulls up another small handful of grass, twirling it between his fingers, and watching their tips stain a pale green. "I was surprised to find you here, Cate," Billy admits, his voice soft. "This is something of a hiding place for me. I read once somewhere that children who grow up without hiding places grow up too fast. With nowhere to hide, we are forced to live in the present, forced to accept that there is no possibility other than what we are shown by adults, I suppose. In hiding we can dream of and sometimes realize our own possibilities. I remember ..."

Billy takes a deep breath and smiles at Cate, then points up into the trees. "When I was six, my father built me a treefort behind our building. There was only the one tree, and he spent an entire weekend constructing this thing. It was perfect, Cate. I spent every moment I could in there. Even did homework up in the tree until winter came. After my parents—a long time ago, I drove back around my old neighborhood, and I wandered around back there. The treefort's gone, of course, but the tree’s still there. When I came here, and I found this tree, I wasn't even pretending it was anything like that tree back home, understand ... but it just felt right." Billy sighs and turns back to Cate. "Did you ever have a hiding place?"

Cate thinks for a moment, her forehead furrowing before she nods. "There was one spot. A spot in the gardens so mossy and muddy and overgrown that no one else ever went there. But I did." Cate manages a bit of a grin, and her head tips forward as Billy watches her fingertips stroke over the firm flesh of the apple in her grasp. "I was actually a bit of a tomboy growing up. No, honestly. I was never afraid to dirty my hands or skin my knees."

Looking up again, Cate gestures vaguely to her appearance now - tailored wool trousers and elegant pearls around her throat, one of her almost trademark silk blouses covering her upper half - the picture of understated grace. "This is my mother's influence. Finishing school, years after no one did it anymore. Teaching me what I needed to know to follow in her footsteps."

Grinning roguishly, Cate takes a bite of her apple, and her eyes crinkle up with barely suppressed mirth. "Too bad for her I took after my father."

"So you're alright with getting dirty," Billy smiles, cheeky as before. "I suppose you would have to be, with all that research you went on to do. And the bugs." Billy makes a vague gesture in the direction of the tree. "Your mother must have loved that, hmm? I'm always curious how parents react to their children's career choices, Cate. You know I'm an advisor—and the things the students tell me ..."

Billy sighs and leans lower against the tree, until he's almost fully on his back in the grass. He stares up into the leaves, and continues, his voice rising slightly as he speaks. "It would seem no parent wants their money spent on an education that won't bring their child an immediate future of financial bliss. 's ridiculous, when you think about it, and if things continue this way, in a few generations there will be no one teaching the more difficult humanities. The world will be overrun by programmers and scientists--no offense, understand; I'm talking more about engineers with their eyes on mechanical prizes. No one will be able to write a proper letter home to their parents thanking them for all that hard-earned tuition money, because they won't know the words to use. Or why they should feel compelled to use them."

Billy turns to his side suddenly, propping himself up on his elbow and twirling a new blade of grass between his fingers for a moment before he bites down slightly on the clean, damp end. "My parents never got the chance to fight what I chose to do," he says sharply, but then tempers it with a smile. "How about yours?"

Cate shrugs elegantly. "My father is a scientist; a biologist. It's what I knew I wanted to be." Her smile turns wry then, and she shifts onto her hip, mirroring Billy's position. "Not at all what my mother wanted, which was for me to be anything but. But..." and Cate shrugs again, "It wasn't her decision, and by the time I was in graduate school, she had died, so she couldn't fight with me about it anymore."

Billy’s still registering that when Cate laughs again and then helps herself to a healthy bite of her apple, white teeth sinking into even whiter flesh. Billy blinks, then shakes his head.

"I'm sorry," he says, removing the stick of grass from between his teeth. "About your mother. My parents passed away many years ago, both of them. Last they knew, I was going to be a writer of, well--" Billy pulls from his pocket the small, already dog-eared paperback he'd planned to finish reading this afternoon. "Science fiction. Aliens and all that. I always was fascinated by why people on Earth reacted so vehemently against aliens in stories and movies. When they weren't ready to kill unfamiliar beings, they wanted to use them--abuse them, more like, gathering scientific knowledge and learning nothing about their hearts." Billy laughs and tosses the book to the grass, a bit of heat rushing up in his face.

"So your mother must have imagined you as something more delicate, then, I suppose. Maybe--" Billy taps the cover of Cate's journal. "An artist? Not that they can't be combined, of course." He looks up and meets Cate's bright eyes, glittering at him from under her blonde fringe. He can't hold her gaze for long, however; it’s too steady, too clear. Cate reaches for the book where Billy has deposited it in the grass, and leans back against the tree again, the book in her lap. She flips through it absently, and then her eyes find Billy’s again over the edge of the book.

"My mother imagined me as a wife for some rich and successful man. Just like herself. She didn't understand that to depend on someone else for ..." Shaking her head, Cate laughs softly, sadly. "Well, for anything, wasn't what I wanted." Looking back to the book in her lap, Cate straightens the one folded corner carefully, her voice softening. "It didn't make her happy. I'm not sure why she thought it would be any different for me."

Cate sets the book down again between Billy and herself, and she rolls back to her hip. Billy can feel they’re both still clinging to cobwebs of thoughts, things neither has considered for a long time, and he suddenly welcomes the distraction of her sharp profile eased when she smiles.

"I didn't mean to get you thinking about any difficulties with your parents, Cate," he says softly. "Forgive me if I have. It's not any of my business, and I'm afraid I'm not ..." Billy shrugs his shoulders before turning fully on his back, folding his hands on his stomach and staring up into the tree canopy again, safer now from those piercing blue eyes and pretty, upturned lips. Cate always seems so terribly amused by him, somehow, and Billy doesn’t know whether he likes that or not, whether it’s worth testing. In the end he decides it might be, and turns his head to face her.

"So with your scientific knowledge and your finer art, too, Cate ... what would you do if you came across someone so unfamiliar to you he had to be some kind of alien? Assuming he looked like anyone else in the world, but there was just something that told you he was alien to this planet?" Billy raises his eyebrows again. "Humour me. Tell me from the point of view of a scientist with heart what you'd do if you'd found yourself in some kind of close encounter.”

"Other than ‘want to believe’?” Cate rolls her eyes, but affectionately, Billy can tell. "If this alien were handsome, I’d probably them out for a drink. Maybe some dancing." Billy smirks up at her and rolls his eyes, too, making Cate laugh. "If you’re insisting I be serious about this, though, I think I would ask him the same things anyone else would in that situation--”

“I don’t think I’d have any questions, if we’re being honest,” Billy murmurs. “None he could hear between my screaming, anyway.”

“You wouldn’t scream,” Cate says impatiently. “Or run away. You’d ask him—as I would, as anyone with half a brain would—about his home. His people.” Looking down to the book again, Cate's fingers play across the cover, a comic-style drawing of a spaceship and frightened, fleeing people there in full color. "People are afraid of what they don't understand. And when that happens, the natural instinct is to take it apart. Not to destroy it, but to understand it better."

Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, Cate's eyes find Billy's, and the smile she gives him is small and bright. "There's a bit of scientist in all of us. Wanting to dissect and find out how things work. The trick is to pay attention while you do so, so you can put them back together again when you're done."

"Conceded," Billy sighs, picking up a new blade of grass. "I don't know how much of a scientist there is in me, but I suppose it's true. I like to think of myself as curious, but I don't like the idea of my curiosity getting the better of anyone but myself, right? It's a fine line. Like when we met, Cate," he says, dropping his voice a little. "There I was, pushing for an answer to a question I had no business asking. I suppose that's like taking someone apart to see how they work, and certainly it was rude of me. But I think ..."

Billy takes a breath and turns his head, sharing another smile with Cate, this one thinner. "I think I'd just made some kind of connection, for lack of a better word, and knowing you'd left St. Andrews made me feel comfortable with you, right then and there, even though we knew nothing about each other. Still don't, really." Another deep breath, and Billy laughs. "Forget what I'm saying; those weren’t the words I wanted. What I mean is what you already know, Cate. The desire for knowledge in some people is a desire to control ... but I don't always feel that, myself, and if I were to exhibit that to someone else when it wasn’t my intention—if they thought or felt I was doing so, it would be terrible. I'm not above--" Games, Billy thinks, but does not say, a bit of play. "The odd tease in a question. But it's rarely intentional."

Billy sits up suddenly, energetic again from his line of thought. "As soon as I knew I was any good at it, I wanted to learn, Cate. I think--I feel, rather--that you're the same way. And I think we both made excellent choices in what we do. Someday, I think I might like to--God, I can't believe I'm saying this, I was just saying it the other day to someone else, too, but now I'm curious again, so feel free to say no, but—I’d be fascinated to sit in on one of your lectures. Preferably not a lab, preferably nothing involving dissection.” Billy laughs, moving a bit closer to Cate and resettling against the tree. "Just a normal class. I might learn something, after all."

"I don't see why that would be a problem. My introductory classes have already cut into everything they could." Cate's smile turns cheeky, and she clasps her hands behind her head. "But you have to promise to behave yourself. I'd hate to send you out for being disruptive."

Billy barks out a laugh, but nods. "If falling over in a heap at the site of dissection tools is considered disruptive, then it's best I stay away. For everyone’s safety.”

“If you weren’t quite so gun-shy, you could join me now,” Cate says simply, checking her watch before she sits up and slips her feet into her shoes, and then her sketchbook into her bag. "I have to head back. Sitting out here, I'm afraid I've lost track of the time."

Cate moves to stand, but waves Billy down when he starts to rise as well, smiling down at him in thanks for the gesture. "Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, Bill. I'll let you get back to your reading ..." Cate's nose crinkles in that amusement again as her eyes flicker to the paperback with the gaudy cover lying beside him in the grass. "If you finish that before Thursday night, you'll have to tell me all about it."

Billy blinks again, then remembers suddenly, happily. “Right, Thursday. We were going to have a drink--”

“We are going to have a drink,” Cate laughs. “Unless you’ve made other plans?”

“No.” Billy shakes his head, and it’s the truth; even if he’d wanted another specific company, it wouldn’t be his to have—Dominic’s promised to join some friends in a long-postponed evening out, celebrating yet another artistic achievement one or more of them has completed. Billy doesn’t expect him back that night at all, frankly, knowing how easily these things can get longer and more pleasant as evening hours go by. “No other plans. I should have warned you, though, The Forest House has music on Thursday nights. If you're not feeling like you can bear a little noise after we leave that meeting, then we can always go someplace else."

“Your concern is noted, professor,” Cate laughs. “I don’t mind a little noise, or a lot. I’ll see you then.”

Billy lets her go with a nod, watching the easy strides she takes over the damn grass for a moment before he calls her name, his voice very clear. Cate turns around slowly, smiling, and Billy lifts the grass stem-wrapped piece of sketch paper. "Thank you for this. Again. It's lovely."

Cate nods, and Billy does, too, waiting for her to walk again before he leans against the tree and uncurls the paper, staring at it while he chews on the grass stalk again. Cate has captured him well, even in the hair that falls somewhat in his face. Get a bloody haircut, Billy tells himself, mildly annoyed, then rolls the sketch up quickly lest anyone catch him staring. He should get moving, back to his own office, especially now that the urge to sit and read is somehow not so great. Billy stares up at the sky, at the ever-darkening clouds. It has been a good day; it will be an even better night.

As he rises to his feet, Billy notices Cate's footprints in the still grass, moving away from the tree, and he follows them with his eyes until they disappear. Unconsciously Billy steps in her prints, laughing under his breath, and follows her trail as much as the grass will allow, until he’s forced to veer off sharply to where he belongs, in an opposite but not unfriendly direction. The taste of chocolate’s still on his lips, the tartness of apple still there, too, and Billy revels in the blend, in the balance found, wishing it were so easily and wonderfully achieved everywhere else in his life. Well, having a laugh and a drink with a friend is a good place to start, he reminds himself, and lets himself look forward to it again.