Billy didn't mean to catch Dom red-handed - in flagrante delicto, as it were - he really didn't.
Of course, he'd been a little suspicious when Dom had stopped complaining about the daily rehearsals that took Billy out of the house for long hours. And the way that Dom went grocery shopping, where five plastic bags went into the rubbish and only a loaf of bread and a quart of milk to show for it. And the other day, when Dom had ended a phone call rather abruptly when Billy walked into the kitchen. Had he really been saying "... as long as Billy doesn't find out" as Billy opened the door?
The day before yesterday Billy had arrived home to find Dom shifting furniture in the lounge, looking red-faced and breathless. Of course, he could have been practising his yoga, as he said... except that Billy knew full well that Dom did his yoga as soon as he woke up, and preferred to do it on the back lawn when the weather was fine. It had been sunny for the last four days.
Still, there wasn't any real reason to suspect that anything was wrong... was there? It was only his paranoid imagination that made him think of all the things Dom might be getting up to during the days when he was at the theatre. Dom was certainly as randy in the evenings as he had ever been. It was just a feeling... he couldn't help but think that Dom's thoughts were elsewhere at times.
So when the director called a halt to a frustrating and rather unproductive rehearsal a good hour early, Billy's first thought was to ring Dom and tell him he'd be home early. His second thought was to put the phone back in his bag and hurry off without a word.
And now he was standing in the middle of the lounge, looking down at Dom, who was lying there, caught, quite literally, red-handed.
"I can explain!" Dom scrambled up before Billy could say anything.
"You don't have to, Dom. It's quite obvious what you were doing."
"You weren't meant to find out this way."
"That's obvious." He couldn't take his eyes off the evidence on the floor. "When were you going to tell me?"
"I thought... Monday."
"My birthday? Is this supposed to be a present?"
"Well, yes. Sort of." Dom bit his lip, shame-faced. "I really wanted it to be a surprise."
Billy snorted. "It's a surprise, all right."
Dom scuffed his foot on the paper he'd put down to protect the carpet. "It was a stupid idea. I can't even do it properly." He turned away, but Billy caught him around the waist.
"It's the daftest, numptiest, most idiotic idea you've ever had - and that's saying something - but I love you for it."
Dom looked into green eyes and the broadest grin he'd seen on Billy's face for a month. "You do?"
"I do. Of all the people I have ever met, only you, Dom, only you would ever try to make me a kilt out of fruit roll-ups."
Dom grinned back at him. "Wear it for me?"
"Not on your life."
END