"Roommates" - Billy Russo x college!Reader
[TW: threats, age gap (at least ten years), might be read as sugar daddy dynamic]
<moving back to uni dorm in two days, starting my second major y'all girl is going on an adventure>
SUMMARY: Billy agrees to help you move. When he discovers you're going to live with a stranger, he makes sure to let the man know he's on thin ice.
Although it was you moving places, it was Billy who carried your boxes. He made it very clear that he wanted you to step back and let him do it. It felt a little flustering to have someone taking care of your affairs while you were perfectly capable of doing them on your own but the current situation was still better than Billy's initial plan of hiring a company to move whatever you had in that small room you were renting before. You would still be living there if it wasn't for the dean's scholarship you were granted.
Speaking of new residential arrangements, it's vital to mention that Billy had offered to pay your rent in a newly built flat in the nicer part of the city but, to his disappointment, you had declined. He understood that you would feel bad about being his dependant and, at the time, Billy hadn't yet realized he enjoyed spending his money on you. Truthfully, what else was he going to do with it?
"You have a ton of shit. Did you really sign the boxes?" Judging by his smile, there was something amusing about the cardboard having 'kitchen' written on each side.
"Call me a psycho but I like to actually know where my stuff is."
"Whatever you say, psycho." The sound of his chuckle was drowned out by the loud shut of the car's trunk. It was one of the things you treasured about your relationship with him: very little jokes were off-limits and even when a line was crossed, mostly unconsciously, there was hardly any bad blood between the two of you.
"Wow, you really are mean, Billy."
He opened the door on the passenger's side for you - something he had a habit of doing and you had grown quite used to experiencing. Sometimes you caught yourself unconsciously expecting that treatment and those were the moments when you could only laugh at yourself. There really was something humorous about one man worming his way into your life in a way that can't be easily reverted. Not that you wanted to.
"You told me to, princess," he said as he closed the car door after you. Maybe such treatment was one of the reasons women your age dated slightly older men. To put it simply - they knew the right moves and they enjoyed giving.
"So which is it? Princess or psycho?"
"Depends on which one keeps me on your speed dial." Having said that, he gently kissed the back of your hand. Billy was a really audacious man to casually shower you with nonchalance that not many could equal.
"Hate to break it to you, old man but people don't use speed dialling anymore." Although you never meant anything malicious by the nickname, at the very beginning of your relationship Billy couldn't help but wonder whether there was even an ounce of honesty in those words: maybe you did think he was a little too old for you. To his pleasure, you denied such sentiment vigorously and many times. "Thanks for helping."
His hand, as he habitually did, rested on your thigh as the other held the steering wheel.
The apartment building was maybe twenty minutes away from your institute, close to the subway station and quite a few restaurants. From a student's perspective, it was nothing short of perfect. You thought there was something charming about the bare brick on the outside of the building, giving it a truly New York feel.
Billy was carrying one of the boxes titled 'bedroom' when something completely threw him off: there was a blond man leaning against the kitchenette. He couldn't recall if you ever mentioned having a flatmate.
"Hey, man!" The blond called out. He was happily drinking Hawaiian Punch straight from the gallon bottle. "I'm Chris. You need any help with that?"
The man had to be around your age judging just by his features. Billy, however, thought of him as probably younger than you by the seashell necklace he wore - a symptom of drawn-out, unbearably careless youth.
"Billy," he answered indifferently and left the apartment to fetch another box of your belongings.
He sighed to himself as he saw you taking the packages out of the trunk; there was some need for independence inside you that was undoubtedly something you couldn't control. You never called it 'independence', though - in your own understanding it was more of a hatred of staying idle, something Billy could relate to quite well. Truthfully, it was fairly hypocritical of him to ask you to be dependent on him.
"Met Chris," he announced. Billy never explicitly said that but it was fairly obvious from his tone that he was expecting some sort of story behind the unforeseen turn of events. In a way, it hurt him and his pride that you were willing to move in with a strange man and not with him.
"Seems cool, right?" you asked. His facial expression stayed unreadable but more on the irritated side. "I talked to him like three times and thought he was okay. Has a bit of that childish outlook on the world but it's nevermind."
"So you don't even know that guy and you're gonna live with him?"
"It's gonna be fine. I've done summer camps and dorms, I know what's up. I'm a big girl, Billy."
In his imagination, he had offered you to live with him multiple times. He could never quite actually ask you because he was a little too well aware of the situation and how it would look: you're a college student in a big, unfamiliar city and he's a millionaire older than you by at least a decade. Truthfully, Billy couldn't care less about the implications on his side - the worry was regarding you. People would start treating you differently, talking things and you were a little too optimistic to consider it was their own prejudice at fault and not some imagined slight you could have mistakenly committed. Moreover, Billy was self-aware enough to also know just how angry that would make him. Not to mention the crusade your parents would go on should they find out you were living with some older, rich guy. To be clear, Billy never hesitated he could easily talk his way into their good books but it was still a hurdle he would have to jump over; although easy to succeed in, it would still be another checkbox on a never-ending 'to do' list.
"And he's a big boy," he answered. You knew very well what he meant and no matter how much you wanted to sigh or roll your eyes, you understood his sentiment. Billy's protectiveness could sometimes be hardly bearable but you knew he never meant any harm and only wanted you to be okay. "You tell me if anything's off, you hear me?"
If Chris wasn't going to deliver, maybe Billy could spin a yarn good enough to make you reconsider taking up his offer. It wasn't ideal, far less than that, to create some kind of a scheme but he would sleep peacefully at night knowing that you weren't sharing your living space with a stranger. Even worse - he knew that if the surfer-looking boy would try anything weird, you would generally brush it off as something maybe bizarre but never malicious. Although he always considered the kind-hearted world you lived in to be a naive pipe dream, part of him was glad you were able to live like that, to never assume the worst of people.
"I will, promise. I gotta take a few things out ASAP," you said as you tapped a box signed 'fragile'. There were mainly plants and glass things inside. "But after that, we could get something to eat."
"Are you asking me out to dinner?" Billy's face lit up with a playful grin as his hand ran down your arm. Something about his gentle touch made you shiver.
"Only if you're gonna say yes."
"Not to me," you answered with a shrug. Billy kissed your forehead before grabbing another box.
Making trips there and back again with your stuff, Billy waited for a convenient moment when you would be out of earshot to have a little chat with your new, hopefully only temporary, flatmate. He wanted to make sure Chris is certain this isn't going to be some Hollywood love story where college roommates fall in love.
Compared to Chris, Billy was taller and somehow bigger, although both of them were lean. The blond man wasn't feeling too warm about his new flatmate's friend in the sense that Billy didn't seem like a radiant person - he gave off a quite confrontational feeling as if it didn't take much for him to throw hands at someone.
"Don't get too used to it, surf boy. She's not gonna live here much longer."
"Ex...cuse me?" Chris asked. The warning seemed to lack quite a lot of context.
"You know the drill, man," Billy continued his increasingly threatening monologue. "If you try any shit with her, I'm putting you down." For some reason, he stopped himself from adding 'like a dog' at the end of the sentence. It was, in a way, a default additive considering how aggressive he appeared.
Chris quite clearly did not expect Billy to be so hostile and the surprise made him choke a little on the Hawaiian Punch. One of those days, either those fake seashells or the juice are going to cause his death.
"Calm down, dude," Chris choked out between coughs. "We ain't gotta be enemies."
"Oh, I'm very calm." If one ignored the aggression in Billy's voice, its general tone could actually pass off as unbothered. "And I meant every goddamn word."
The tense discussion was cut short by the sound of your closing the door to your bedroom and locking it. As if some magic was at play, Billy's grim and dark expression was suddenly changed into a soft smile, although the dangerous glint in his eyes wasn't going anywhere.
"You good to go, princess?" Billy asked as his arm circled your waist. It seemed as if his warning became a wordless announcement.
"Sure. Ever had Tatar food? There's a good restaurant nearby."
Chris was watching Billy walk away and leave the apartment with you, when he noticed something weird about the man or rather his clothes - there seemed to be something peeking out of the back of his jeans as if he had tucked something between his t-shirt and the pants. With squinted eyes, he stared at the weird shape for a moment only to come to a surprising conclusion that it was, without a doubt, a gun. An uncomfortable shiver run down his spine as he realized he was going to have, probably, the weirdest year of his life.
