Prelude: When I started writing, I knew this was going to be a story about Billy and dead!Joe, and I knew it would have as happy an ending as possible. That's all I knew. The moment I sat down to write, the muses took over. For three weeks straight it was like that, and at some points I was typing so fast I had no idea what I was writing. It felt like something physically pushing words down through the top of my head and out my fingertips. Freakiest feeling ever.
Only a handful of things were done with conscious intent: the header photo and caption, the title graphic, the soundtrack, the disclaimers, and the revision of the text. The process of writing this story was incredibly weird, and my relationship with it is different from most of my other work because I had so little control over it. But let's start with the bits I did actively design and go from there...
Acknowledgments: Many thanks to AuKestrel, Malnpudl, & RubyNye for their brilliant beta skills and invaluable research assistance, as well as to Bohemian__Storm, TheComingNight, Maelithil, & Secret_Garden for being there, being patient, and, well, being there. ~Sage
(Written for Bohemian__Storm's Hard Core Logo fic exchange, April 2006.)
Jenifur (from left): Hannah on vocals, Ashley on keyboards and rhythm
guitar, Trevor on drums, Billy on lead guitar, and Adalia (Dee) on bass.
{ Does anyone know what Hannah's (Molly Parker's) shirt says? I've never been able to figure it out. }
(Okay, one super-dense section because I want to talk about the visuals for a minute. I promise I'll get much less wordy down the page!)
Notes on Visual Design:
Acknowledgments are at the top because they're absolutely most important. I was so lucky to have so many people willing to help beta and research and offer support. Absolute team of champions, and I'm vastly grateful to them all!
Then comes the soundtrack. This is, above all, a story about a guitar player, his bands, and living a life defined by the music business, so opening the story with music was a big deal. However, the soundtrack was created after the story was totally finished and submitted for the challenge, and most of the actual writing was done in silence.
The photo of the band is third (like cover art, but not) because after the first draft was finished, I realized I needed a clear, concise way to present the characters and conceit of the story. The photo and caption do all that without requiring ten pages of backstory to introduce everyone.
Stylistically, opening with names, faces, and music parallels the opening of the film. And yet, Hard Core Logo is Billy's antiestablishment past, while the fic is what happens once Billy's career heads mainstream (hello, Spin cover, omg).
As far as choosing the bandmembers, the movie doesn't tell us what Trevor plays, or even if he's actually a member of Jenifur, so making him the drummer was totally arbitary. I stared at the Spin photo for a really long time, and eventually figured out who each character was, what they played, and what the band meant to them.
Everyone connected with the band (Hannah, Ashley, Trevor, Dee, Marty, and the tour crew) is essentially an original character...and when I sent the fic to beta, I was terrified that it wouldn't find an audience because of all these random unknown people, even with Joe and Billy there and the promise of crazy-hot sex and a relatively happy ending. It's a difficult thing in a lot of ways. This was written for a small fic exchange in a small fandom, and most of the people I knew would read the story were also either beta-reading or otherwise helping with research. I was pretty sure my recipient (JS Cavalcante) would be happy with anything, so that freed me to let the muses run wild and see what came of it.
The title graphic was the last thing I made (even after the soundtrack), when I was coding the version for my site. I know the backwards-ness of the title phrase is confusing, but I felt really strongly about using the parenthetical structure like this. It makes it like a song title, except the parenthetical phrases are inverted because Joe shooting himself turned everything upside-down for both of them. Also, I love that it squishes together two separate-but-connected phrases in a way that reflects the situation between Joe and Billy – technically they're separated by death, but it's only a technicality. Something to work around. At least until it starts killing Billy.
1.
Soundtrack: "Rock 'n Roll is Fat and Ugly" - Hard Core Logo
Perspective's a bitch.
I didn't expect this phrase to open every chapter, but I like that it became something to riff on as the story progressed and to show Billy not moving out of the rut, just finding himself in different corners of it.
Angry as he is, Billy just leaves. There's the funeral and the police investigation and the fucking press swarming all over the place, and he's not doing it. Not any more. Besides, Jenifur needs him there doing the thing he wants most in the world and Joe fucking Dick is not going to take that away from him. Not any more.
The structure of this makes it sound like Billy didn't bother with the funeral at all, even though we find out later that he probably did go – he just left for LA straight from pissing on Joe's grave. (Like Joe says in the film, Billy bitches, but he always shows up.) I thought about rewriting this whole section once I saw how fractured it is in comparison to the rest of the story, but I like how Billy's pov can't hold a consistent thread, because he can't.
The recording sessions pass in a blur, and that's good. It gives him something to focus on, and he can't think about drinking all night if he knows he has a twelve-hour day ahead of him. He's there, even when he doesn't have to be, wearing himself out so he won't have to think.
Maybe that's why the tour happens so damned fast, or maybe they're just itching to get out there, riding the momentum, something. He's good with that, though. Good with the flurry of plans, good with simple directions: "Pack for five weeks. You get one drawer six inches by twenty-four inches wide by twelve inches deep and space in the closet for one small duffel. If you bring a guitar on the bus, you're sleeping with it."
It all sounds really fucking good.
I did crazy amounts of research into early 90s grrl-punk and spent weeks listening to Garbage, Poe, L7, Sleater-Kinney, and Hole (among others). Jenifur formed in the cradle of early 90s grrl-punk, but took off in more of an alt-rock direction than electronica or metal.
Realistically speaking, this tour is happening incredibly fast. However, when a record label thinks they have a moneymaker, they release an advance single and pimp the hell out of it before the record is even finished so they can ride the buzz of being "The Next (Really) Big Thing".
Billy sprawls out on his couch, absently strumming his acoustic and thinking about Joe. It's fucking insane. How many guys could say someone – someone they weren't even fucking at the time – organized a fraudulent charity benefit just to get them back in the same goddamned country for a couple of weeks?
(Oh that's clunky. Pretend that paragraph reads better.) The guitar players I've known would spend every waking and most of their sleeping moments with a guitar within arm's reach, unless they were specifically occupied with something else that prevented it. It's love in six strings and a fretboard, and a self-made security blanket that will wrap around them and hold the world at bay. I still think there ought to be more of Billy's guitar throughout the fic, but my lovely team of betas agreed that it would diminish its significance. So I left it. Same with the cigarettes.
Fucking Joe.
And fuck, he doesn't really think of Joe as an ex, does he? Mary's the ex. Joe is family. You can't be ex-family, no matter how much you end up hating each other. Like he said to Bruce in Vancouver, in all the years since he met Joe he's never loved anybody else more. He's never missed him this much, either. Before, even a thousand miles apart, even wanting to smash his fucking face in, Billy always knew Joe would be there if he needed him. But now? He's got shit.
Except that isn't true; he's got a new band and they're strange and hilarious and sexy and fucking obnoxious most of the time, and it's an alien fucking thing to be surrounded by so many women. The rules are different, and yet not. He can be an ass and they can bitch at him right back, and it's good. He likes it. He's surprised that he's even getting used to all the damned hugging. The girls are fucking touchy feely. Trevor is, too, for some reason, and it makes him wonder if all of them are fucking and nobody bothered to tell him.
It was important to establish the women as obnoxious and fun and not "nice girls", because regular people would be fairly appalled by the nomadic sort of life they lead, even though I didn't show much of its sordidness. I actually made them sort of freakishly clean – at least as far as we see through Billy's eyes.
They might be; he's seen Hannah making out with both Dee and Trevor, but the first time it was at Lollapalooza and he'd been busy with a lapful of groupie, anyway. Or maybe not groupie – she had an artist's badge. He thinks. Probably. He remembers purple hair and lots of tattoos and her fingers rolling a blue condom down on him, and how that reminded him of Joe pushing a girl onto his lap, years back, in some sketchy motel room in Buffalo or Philly, back before things went to hell.
She'd put the condom on him and Joe lifted her up and pressed her down, slapping Billy's hands off her hips. Joe knelt between Billy's legs and moved her, lifting her up and shoving down as Billy played with her tits. It was fucking weird. It didn't start to be good until she arched back, raising her arms to encircle Joe's neck. Joe bit at her neck and the top of her shoulder, making her squirm on Billy's cock as Joe bounced her; Joe held Billy's gaze the entire time.
Is it surreal enough? It's meant to be fairly surreal. I like writing sex where someone's having a David Byrne moment of "How did I get here?" And I think Joe would do every damned thing he could, short of actually fucking Billy as Billy fucked the groupie, to push the limits of what he felt they could get away with.
Joe fucked her when Billy was done and a minute later her friend was banging on the door, calling, "Oh my god, aren't you done yet?" Joe laughed into Billy's shoulder. "Fucking Pipe." Then the girl was gone and Billy was pulling Joe into the shower; he wanted to get her smell off them.
The other groupie's line still makes me laugh. Poor Pipefitter.
They'd had so fucking much sex back then – fucking quietly, mostly behind paper-thin walls. It was mind-blowing, hiding it, getting off on the kinkiest shit they could do in total, unmarked silence.
I wavered a little on this, but decided to keep it because I love the idea that Joe is publicly provocative with Billy (while they're still seen doing groupies and Mary) and everyone dismisses it as Joe fucking with their heads, like he does (constantly, about everything).
He wonders what Trevor's dick is like. He wonders if he'd get kicked out of the band if he tried to find out.
Somehow he doubts it.
The business end of playing guitar for a living is a pain in the ass. Billy's contract with Ed Festus defaults to an automatic renewal every January. The tour's about to start when Billy asks himself why the fuck he should pay a double cut when Marty's doing all the goddamned work.
Martina Sandberg yanked Jenifur out of the hands of their old manager, a Seattle-based scuzz bucket who didn't know his ass from his coke under the mattress, according to Trevor. Marty's thirty-four and makes Ed Festus look like a slimy piece of shit. Marty's all business, as Type-A as they come until she's finished her latest to-do list and lets herself kick back with a beer.
Billy likes her. She grew up spending half her nights in CBGB's, there when fucking Bucky Haight drove himself into the ground, the stupid shit. Back in the '80s she played drums before she fucked up her shoulder and started doing club bookings instead. Now she's got her own agency and Jenifur doesn't have to fuck with separate management, booking agents, etc. It's all in-house, professional, and smooth.
In other words, totally different from what it was like with Hard Core Logo. Turner's novel goes into a lot more detail on the financial side, with sample contracts, receipts, examples of Joe managing, and Joe blaming their "old friend" Ed Festus for ripping them off when he'd gotten them to sign all of their assets away to him. By contrast, Mulligan (from the film) is a booking agent – all he does is book gigs, he has nothing to do with record or concert promotion or with band management. Marty's firm are professionals, and for Billy, this is so much of what it means to have arrived at the big time.
One day over lunch, she lays out what it'll cost Billy to get free of Ed. Non-renewal is still two years of 7.5 percent commissions paid to Ed for not doing a single goddamned thing. Then there's still Marty's fifteen percent. She says, "It's a raw deal, but it'd be worse if he sued you."
Getting Billy free of Ed is so important. In the Turner book, Jenifur is totally an Ed Festus contrivance. It's meant to be a grunge rock supergroup, and at the end, Billy hops on a plane to Seattle to go meet the singer Ed's lined up. That characterization of Ed didn't gel for me with the Ed in the film, and Billy needed a totally fresh start, so I got Billy out of his contract (with penalties).
Assuming they have a typical contract, each member of Jenifur earns less than a dollar off each CD sold in stores. The ticket sales on the tour are earmarked for paying back the record company for the cost of making the album and the tour itself. Once they turn a profit on tour, they'll each get their share. (The real money is in royalties off publishing rights, which will build up nicely if the band is an enduring success – hopefully Billy's contract nets him a share for as long as he's with the band.) In sum, if Billy's main goal is to get rich, he's got better odds playing the stock market.
"That fucking sucks," he says.
"If you have savings, you could offer him a deal. Cash upfront, you can probably get out for less."
"Marty," he says lighting another cigarette, "I don't have that kind of money."
She nods, shrugging her shoulders, and says, "Two years isn't that long, and if the first single of the new record's a hit, you might be able to squeeze him."
Two years isn't that long when you're on tour for seven or eight months of the year (going for five or six weeks, then taking a two or three week break before heading out on the next leg).
He nods back, doubting it. Ed's not that poor or stupid. Then Billy blinks at her, realizing with a start that with Ed gone, this is it. It's him and Marty and the band. No more Ed. No more John or Pipe or Hard Core Logo. No more ties to the past.
Just him. Finally getting what he always fucking wanted.
He says, "This is for real." He's been dicked around for so long doing session work, guys saying, sure, man, we'll make a place for you, but it always goes up in smoke when the guy in question gets out of detox or the divorce goes through or the band breaks up.
Marty grins and says, "Hannah and Ash have been on me for ages to get you out of that contract."
"Yeah?" he says.
This time the ink's dry on the page. This time it's finally real.
She offers her hand and says what Hannah, Ashley, Trevor, and Dee told him nine weeks ago: "Welcome to Jenifur, Billy."
Heee...I still love this. :D
Soundtrack: "Something's Gonna Die Tonight" - Hard Core Logo
I wavered on the Omega symbols and indented margins. Now I think they're too obvious, but I needed something that would leave no doubt about the reality-shift and Joe's place in it.
Also, the following is the first section of the story to be written. (Fountain pen on a flattened paper plate, edge to edge, and Joe snarling in my head the whole time.)
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Good fucking move, Joe.
Joe floats there. Above his body. Watches Danny wipe his mouth and Joe the Sound Guy shout for someone to call 911.
Fucking hell.
Joe floats there. John appears, still painted white, still wearing nothing but his fucking white thong, and starts screaming his lungs out. Raw, throat-ripping shrieks. He shakes Bruce off. He falls to his knees on the wet sidewalk, arms outstretched like he's being crucified.
A minute later, he's curled up in a ball next to Joe's stinking body, whimpering, quiet until a passer-by cups his shoulder gently and sets him off again.
Fuck.
Motherfucking fuck.
Joe floats there above his body, pool of blood spreading around his head.
"What the fuck?" Pipe shouts, bursting through the side door. The door clocks John on the shoulder, cranking the volume of his screaming even higher.
"Fuck, Pipe, where the fuck is Billy?" Bruce yells. He's on his knees next to Joe's body, like he's going to try to do CPR or something.
Pipe sets off in a run. Danny tugs Bruce back, says, "Bruce, it's not a heart attack. He's fucking gone."
Then the first police car arrives.
Fucking fucking fuck.
Pipe finds Billy. Finds him like a homing pigeon. Next block over. Tim Horton's. Nearest place to get coffee at three in the fucking morning.
Pipe shouts from the doorway, panting breathlessly, "Billy! You gotta fucking come now, Joe's dead!" The place is half-full with the Saturday night after-hours crowd. A lot of them look like they've drifted over from the show. They're all staring at him.
Billy's face goes stony, like he thinks Pipe is shitting him.
Motherfuck.
Hi, this is Joe in hell. Who needs Dante when you can watch yourself fuck over the people you love most for (what feels like) eternity?
2.
Soundtrack: "Violet" - Hole
Perspective is playing five thousand seats two months after Joe Dick bitches he won't go on 'til there are twenty people in the house. Fucking Joe.
And sure there's bullshit. There are shows and promos and press junkets and Marty lining things up for them nearly every single fucking day.
Successful musicians are pretty busy on tour. This is a band that's still up-and-coming, and they can't afford to make people wait. Someday, they'll get to a point where they can spend a couple of hours before the gig seeing some of the city they're in.
She's still a damn sight better than Ed.
What it comes down to is there's what Billy's got, what he thought he wanted, what he used to be willing to give up, and what he'd had no fucking idea he'd be losing. And sure, Joe was a dick, a prick, a fuckface charismatic loser, but Billy knew him for twenty-two years, and they'd been practically joined at the hip for seventeen of those years.
And then the fucker fucking left him. Left first. Trumped him. Hard.
The Jenifur gig is working, though. They're good people, a little younger than he is, but none of them seems to care, so he decides not to worry about it. And the tinge of family is enveloping Billy faster than he'd imagined possible. For some reason, they like him. They get him the good kind of drunk when he gets morose and cut him off before it turns into a throw-down between Billy and alcohol poisoning. The girls draw him out despite himself. He and Trevor play the classic movie game in the bus for miles and miles.
Best of all, they don't talk about it.
The first weeks of the tour go by, and they settle into their routine. They're using eight of the twelve bunks in the bus, with the others removed so they can sit up in their beds. It's the band, Wes the tour manager, Rob the stage tech, Dave the merchandise guy, and Lou the driver, who has a whole separate living area down in front. One kitchenette, one lounge up front, a lounge in the rear, and a tiny bathroom with a sink smaller than Billy's right hand. The DVD players are cool, but mostly they lie around with headphones on, pretending it's privacy.
Tour bus interiors are like cushy RVs built for twelve people. There is ZERO privacy (except in the rear lounge, which has a dinky sliding partition). People live with headphones on, but if you fart, everyone knows it. Also, if all the bunks are in, they're like racks in a submarine: you can't sit up in bed, much less fit two people in the same bunk for sexin'.
One by one, they come to him.
The first time, it's in his hotel room. Hannah pushes him back on the bed and says, "This is where we get the sexual tension out of the way."
He says, "Uh, okay?"
And it's good. She's rompy and knows what she likes, and doesn't mind when he flips them over, buries his hands in her thick, dark hair, and nibbles at the freckles on her shoulders and chest.
Afterwards, he says, "So how...?" and she kisses him with a laugh on her lips. "Boredom kills, Billy. This is just play, okay? Enjoy it."
After the next gig, Ashley drags him to her room, saying, "What, you thought it was only Hannah?"
He smiles and goes with it.
A couple of nights later, Billy's awake in the back, watching Bullitt on the big screen TV. It's late, nearly dawn, and everyone but him is asleep in their bunks. Then the door of the rear lounge opens and Trevor comes in, shutting the door quietly behind him. He sprawls out next to Billy and says, "Great movie."
"Mmmh," Billy agrees, moving his guitar out of the way.
They watch for a while, stretched out comfortably, and then Billy pulls his eyes off Robert Vaughn and notices Trevor staring at him. He raises his eyebrows and waits.
Trevor says, "Can I blow you?"
Billy says, "Sure."
Trevor says, "You know, this couch pulls out into a bed."
Billy grins slowly. "I didn't know that."
It does! If this were the tour of a big-name solo artist, then the star would get the bed and everyone else would get the bunks. But in a situation like Jenifur, there would be a massive fight over who got dibs on the bed, so no one does. Except for the recreational sex. :P
Sunday morning, Billy doesn't even know what city they're in, but he drops his bag on the king size bed and finds Dee standing next to him.
"We're not actually a fuck farm, you know." She's smirking up at him and peeling off her leather jacket. Her wifebeater is pale against her olive skin. "This way it keeps us balanced...like once we all know what each other taste like, we can put it back into the music."
Dee is seriously working the post-Bound lesbian-chic. (I remember that autumn, there were girls in wifebeaters everywhere you looked. All the boys I knew were trying to figure out how to ask their girlfriends to go with them to a movie about lesbians...and going over and over with their best guy friends instead.)
"And it's fun," Billy says in a low voice, lips against her ear.
He feels strong, callused fingers slide over the back of his neck as she grinds against him. "That too."
*happy sigh* They're so hot together.
The whole band's got a firm No Comment policy on all matters pertaining to Joe Dick, Hard Core Logo, Bucky Haight, and Billy's private life, fuck you very much. He's no fucking A-list celebrity, so basically the ghouls can just suck it. The music's decent, anyway. Maybe not totally to his taste, but it works. He wonders how the fuck Joe could've asked him to give this up. (You fucking sell-out! Joe shouts in his head.) It's not selling out when you never stood for anything more than piss and vomit and coke to begin with. It's not fucking selling out to turn your 'talent' into a career. Joe was a chickenshit, always scared someone would call him on his shit and call him on the carpet to take responsibility.
Like the fucking benefit. What the fuck? How the fuck was he planning to get out of a fucking felony fraud rap? Billy had said, "Hope you don't do time," and sure, he was pissed off and being a bitch about it, but fuck! Twenty grand was a lot of money.
Or maybe Joe had had a plan – besides offing himself. He was pretty much at rock bottom anyway, right? Maybe he was going to fake his own death, pull a Jim Morrison...
Except that if he had, Billy would've been in on it. Whether he wanted to be or not, Joe would have needed him...and Billy would have done it.
Unless Bruce had done it. Or even fucking Bucky.
3.
Soundtrack: "Pretend We're Dead" - L7
Perspective isn't a bitch. Perspective's a stupid fucking cunt.
Just like he is. It's so fucking stupid and he knows it, especially when he slips one time when he's shitfaced and says something out loud, something that makes Dee squeeze his arm and say, "Oh, honey."
He fell into the couch slurring, "Next time I see Joe – don't care if it's ten years – fucker shows up m'gonna...fuck, he was warm, y'know? Soft, like, Joe Dick, electric fucking blanket...."
Thing is, it's possible. He wasn't fucking there. He'd just finished puking his guts up in the men's room at Tim Horton's when it happened; and maybe it makes him an asshole, but after all the bullshit with the interviews and Bucky's farm and faking the benefit and Joe fucking conning Billy to get him to come back, Billy doesn't trust a single fucking person who claims they saw it happen.
Bruce says he has it on film, and sure he does, he's got everything on film. But for all Billy knows, the bullet was a blank with a paint pack. Joe was already fucking gone by the time he and Pipe made it through the crowd and the police line. The ambulance was halfway up the street, klaxon silent, and Billy never saw the fucking body.
He doesn't know what was in the casket they buried.
He just doesn't fucking know.
This is what I love most about Hard Core Logo: it's plausible. As with so much in the film, there's nothing to say it didn't happen just like this.
Soundtrack: "The Sound of Silence" - Simon & Garfunkel
The stream of piss splatters the fresh dirt on his grave.
"How does it fucking feel, Joe?" Billy says. The funeral was hours ago. There's a cab waiting on the road down the hill.
He zips up. He wipes a sleeve across his face. He turns and tromps away through the rows and rows of gravestones.
If he sees Joe standing there, he doesn't show it.
He doesn't look back.
Fuck.
I so love this image.
Joe floats there. Above his body. Watches Danny wipe the bile from his mouth and Joe the Sound Guy shout at people to call 911.
Fucking hell.
"What the fuck?" Pipe shouts, bursting through the side door. The door clocks John on the shoulder, cranking the volume of his screams even louder.
"Fuck, Pipe, where the fuck is Billy?" Bruce yells.
Oh, motherfucking hell.
"How does it fucking feel, Joe?" Billy says.
It feels like shit, cuntface, what the fuck do you think? Joe is shouting, but Billy ignores him. Dozens of times now, maybe hundreds, maybe more. Billy always fucking ignores him.
He turns away before Billy this time. He can't fucking stand to watch him walk away any more.
There's a woman standing behind him, pale face, black hair, black clothes, heavy chain around her neck with a pendant. She looks like a fan. "He's cute," she says, jerking her chin toward Billy.
"You can see me?" Joe asks stupidly.
Her lips twitch. "You're ready to see me now, Joe."
"Okay..." Joe looks around. "So, is this when the white light and all that happens?"
She laughs. "That isn't how it works."
He frowns. "What does that mean? Am I going to hell?"
"Do you think that's what you deserve?"
Joe turns his head and watches Billy get into the cab. He turns back and he's standing in the street again, watching Danny puke in the gutter, the stench of gunpowder burning the rain-damp air.
Okay, so here we've just met Death, as per Neil Gaiman's Sandman. It might be a slightly different take on her, but I seem to remember her gazing sadly at ghosts who just flat refused to see her. One thing I wish I'd given some more attention is the difference in descriptive language between Joe and Billy's sections. Joe's lyrics aren't nearly as cool as Headstones lyrics, but he does have a knack for written language that I don't really associate with Billy (John and Joe are the self-described songwriters; Billy calls himself a guitarist, reads graphic novels, and watches tons of movies). I love the image of Joe standing there, watching this ghastly scene over and over, noticing every little detail. But I wish I'd pushed the language further throughout the Omega sections and possibly into Joe's dialogue with Billy, too.
4.
Soundtrack: "Bleed Like Me" - Garbage
Perspective's a bitch when you start doubting every fucking thing.
Billy calls Bruce and demands copies of the last reel, no, all the reels. They get into a shouting match over it. Bruce relents when Billy mentions his lawyer. He has one now...working on the thing with his kid. Not that he has room in his life yet for a daughter, but Mary should've told him. If they find out she really is his, then he wants visitation rights, minimum. He can do ice cream and a Disney flick.
It can't be half as bad as babysitting Joe.
Bruce rolls over completely when he gets a voice mail from Billy's lawyer. Several days later, a FedEx box is waiting for Billy at the hotel when Wes checks them in. It's a big box with dozens of tapes inside and a mini-viewer with a headphone set. The note says: "This won't bring him back, you know." Under the signature, there's a phone number and the words: "call me at home if you want to, man." Billy fingers the viewer, but there's no time. They have a press thing, and then sound check and an on-air interview at the local so-called 'alternative' radio station and then at their so-called competitors down the hall in the same fucking corporate tower. Magically food happens – it always does – and then at last, the gig.
See me cram as much exposition as possible into one paragraph, and limit my ranting against corporate radio. \o/
The gig is good. They're on and the crowd is great, so hyped Joe would have called them all cunts and spit at them; and that's a fucking brutal reality check. This life, this gig – it's nothing like playing with a never-was punk band nobody ever heard of. Fucking Joe. But now Billy has Jenifur. It's his, and it's good.
They have another gig tomorrow night, so there's not a hotel this time, just back on the bus after they shower and eat backstage. Billy's too wired to sleep and he's in good enough a mood that he can open the box of tapes again without wanting to kill something.
Two weeks of his life: the four gigs they played, time in the van, the fucking benefit, and the interviews beforehand. Together it makes forty-two tapes. They're numbered and labeled: 'John Bridge', 'Billy Washroom', 'Billy Airport', 'Benefit Backstage 2', 'Edmonton Finale', and so on.
Billy watches the last tape first, the end of the gig, the fight, John fucking losing it after Billy walked out, walked around to the back door, grabbed his coat out of the green room and headed over to the next block, where he could see a red and white Tim Horton's sign lighting up the night. That was almost the worst thing, that he'd been so goddamned close but might as well have been on another planet. And Joe...the look on his face at the end – crashing down from the coke, crashing on the fucking whisky, high on the gig, high on the fucking fight and fucking needing more than anyone could give, much less Billy.
Billy scrubs his face with his hands when the tape ends. He runs it forward, looking for more, like the hidden tracks on the last two CDs they'd put out. It's just blue until right near the end. There's a blip of static, then white, then dark murk and the sound of someone snoring. "You fucking cunt," Joe says softly, and there's a glow coming in from the window of the van. It's not yet dawn from the look of it. Then Joe's hand strokes through Billy's hair, and turns out he's the one snoring. In his sleep, he makes a soft mewling noise and presses into Joe's hand. His thumb strokes across Billy's lip and Billy kisses it, not waking up. Then Joe pets his head once more and curls up in a bundle of blankets against the van's rear door. There's no reason that it should be at the end of this tape like this. Maybe it was a tag on a different reel and Bruce fucked up the transfer. Maybe it didn't even happen.
This is the one bit of film that I totally made up, but what if? I mean, it's plausible. There would be tons of unused footage, and Joe loved Billy so damned much...
Except for how he's looking at it. At himself, passed out after the Winnipeg not-a-gig, before John's schizo freak-out.
He remembers the night in Saskatoon, Joe's fucked up apology, him saying "You and me, you and me," and Joe saying, "I love you," like he fucking meant it, like it fucking meant something and wasn't just a way to win the fight.
Soundtrack: "Lost" - Saving Jane
Everywhere he turns, Joe's faced with a scene from his life. At first, it's the end. Then it's the beginning. His mom's face when she's twenty-two and fucking pleased as punch with her little bundle of joy. His dad's a year older and looks scared out of his mind. Joe doesn't remember him like this. He remembers him as a lumbering hulk attached to a fist knocking him across a room.
Then he's older, maybe five; Joe doesn't remember ever being that small. Even as an adult, even dead, that fist looks really fucking big.
He doesn't remember his mother getting in the way, but he winces when she goes headlong into the edge of coffee table, when he sees the gash open across her forehead.
He wonders why that is.
Hmmm...am not thrilled with this. It needed to be vivid and something traumatic enough to launch Joe into a life of self-defeating rage at authority figures. And it also needed to be something that wouldn't require ten pages unwinding his (woe!) existential angst at being a miserable child of a comfortably well-off family. And yet, in hindsight, the violence seems gratuitous.
He watches himself give Billy head for the first time.
He watches Billy's face.
He watches his own face.
He watches Billy's face.
He times it.
He watches Billy's face.
He watches Billy's face.
He watches Billy kiss him after he swallows.
He watches Billy kiss him.
He watches Billy.
He watches Billy give him head for the first time.
He watches Billy's face.
He watches his own face.
He watches Billy's face.
He watches Billy's hand jerking fast in his own pants.
He times it.
He watches Billy.
He watches Billy.
He watches Billy kiss him.
He watches Billy.
I adore them, can you tell?
He watches Billy drink himself into a stupor after spending fifteen hours in the studio.
He watches Billy redo his solos. Again. And add more texture to the rhythm tracks.
The keyboardist, Ashley, catches the producer eyeing Billy through the glass. She goes into the box and turns the mike off so Billy can't hear.
He says, "You didn't want it this...intricate."
"Just record it," she says. "We're paying for the studio time anyway, right?"
"Well, yeah, but—"
"But he's a fucking genius going through a bad time, and if we can do a tenth of this live..."
He watches Billy watch them talk. He watches him crack a lame joke when she leaves the booth. He watches her squeeze Billy's shoulder. He watches Billy lean into her touch.
He watches Billy sling the guitar neck-down and let Ashley wrap her arms around him. Face buried in her hair, Billy breathes in deep. She holds him tight.
He watches Billy hold on for a long time.
He watches Billy.
He watches her take Billy's hand and pull him toward the door. He watches Billy unplug, shift the guitar into a better hold, and follow.
See Joe in hell. Poor Joe. Poor Billy. I really love how this part turned out.
5.
Soundtrack: "Three Angels" - Headstones
Perspective's a bitch when you figure out everyone you thought you had pegged has been lying to you since the beginning.
Billy finally sees Bruce's pre-show interview with Joe in Edmonton – where he fucking tells Joe Billy's quitting the band and going to LA, and he damn near puts his fist through the front of the bus' microwave. Hannah screams at him and Trevor and Dee fucking sit on him while he screams back and curses them and Bruce and Joe.
He could kill Bruce with his own hands. Fucking son of a bitch.
They get to Vegas too soon, too fucking soon, and Trevor takes him up to the hotel room, pours three shots into him, and makes him sleep. Trevor fucking sits there, too, like a fucking prison guard. He sleeps, though. Apparently Wes and Rob and the girls handle sound check because it's after eight when they finally wake him. When they do, he's dreaming of Joe, and they're both fifteen again and getting high in Billy's basement, looking at some porn mag Joe had stolen and jerking off together on the ratty old striped sofa. He gets three flashes of that, and then the fourth time, the dream circles back on itself so they jerk off, come, and then lay there wrapped tight around each other, kissing so hard Billy's lips hurt.
Then Joe says, "No one's like you. You're better than any girl." The words are slurred and sound totally stupid. Joe's drunk and stoned, but Billy's high, too, and he knows what Joe means. They're two halves of a whole. Billy's the face, Joe's the mouth. Joe likes to think he's the brain, but Billy keeps him on his toes and Joe fucking knows it. They're joined at the hip, and not just when they've got their cocks gripped tight in the circle of their joined hands.
"Fuck," Billy says, waking. He's hard, aching, and the room phone's shrill enough to start him on a headache.
He needs water.
He needs to come.
Then Trevor's there, hand warm and solid on his shoulder. "Can I help you with this?" He's so gentle, there's no pressure. It's weird to be so free to say 'no'. With Joe, the default was always 'Yes'. Saying 'No' would have triggered an excruciating, long-ass conversation with Joe picking Billy's brain for motives and doubts and bullshit until finally Billy took his pants off and said, "Will you please shut the fuck up already?"
Um, that's kind of my manifesto on Joe and Billy's early-to-middle relationship.
But Trevor just wants to help.
Billy gets up and lets Trevor pull him into a hard hug, because, fuck, he's in a band now that does that. Then Billy drags him into the suite's bathroom where he slams two cups of water, brushes his teeth, and scrubs wet fingers through his hair until the gel has it all pointing in the right direction again. Trevor snorts, but Trevor's a drummer. No one can fucking see him. Then he's half-sitting on the counter with Trevor on his knees on the tile, sucking him off fast and hard.
It's rough, like Joe used to do it, and afterwards he thinks he probably called Trevor 'Joe', but apparently Trevor doesn't hold it against him. He's not hard, either, and Billy automatically says, "Sorry," because it shouldn't be one-sided, but Trevor just laughs at him, takes hold of Billy's shoulders, and says, "When I need it, be there. None of the rest of it matters, okay?"
(God, clunky. Pretend the drummer and guitarist do have some sense of rhythm together, okay?)
"Yeah."
"Good. Come on, we're late for the show."
The gig is eh. Vegas doesn't feel real; it's like playing Disneyland or some shit. Billy keeps breaking strings and he plays his fingers bloody. It's stupid, stupid, but the pain feels good, and the weird feeling he has when he takes a break to dab superglue onto the fingertips of his left hand reminds him why he's here: that he was always going to be here, whether Joe had found out from Bruce or not. Dying didn't change that. Dying meant he'd lost the person he'd fucking loved most in his whole damned life, but even so he hadn't had Joe for years.
Superglue works. Guitarists have to maintain their calluses because steel strings cut your fingertips. When they lose a callus, their fingering goes all to hell unless they use superglue to create a fake one. Also, Billy's breaking strings because he's thinking too damned much instead of focusing on the gig.
He doesn't get drunk after the gig. He doesn't get laid either, and back in his hotel room he feels like the only guy in Vegas doing neither. He goes further back in the footage. He finds their conversation in the hallway where Joe said "I love you." Then he goes searching for the tape from the radio interview, because he just knows Bruce lied to his face. He fucking knows. He picks up the phone and dials the first eight digits of the number Bruce had scrawled on the note. Then he tries to think of what to say besides, "Motherfucker, you will pay." It isn't like he has any ground to stand on. Bruce used Joe. Joe used Bruce, Joe used everybody. Billy used Joe too, and he hadn't given a fuck about Bruce beyond what exposure the documentary might get him.
He puts the phone down. It'd be stupid to call before he's seen the rest of the tapes anyway.
He's too wired to sleep. They're supposed to do some lesbian hairy armpit festival in Albuquerque late tomorrow afternoon, and then truck on over to Las Cruces for their next gig. He tries to read, to watch TV. He doesn't let go the old Takamine acoustic he'd brought up with him. It should be enough. An hour passes and nothing helps. Finally he gets up and goes across the hall to the other suite. Dee lets him in, shushing him. Hannah and Ashley are asleep. They go into her room and shut the door.
I took the western US tour schedule from Garbage's 1998 World Tour, but I can't remember if they played a festival in Albuquerque or if I just found it when looking up New Mexico concert venues. The Takamine guitar is the one he's shown playing in the band house kitchen in the film, and it's definitely a lower-end instrument – Billy probably ought to have bought himself a nice new (or old) Martin by now. Maybe he's holding out until he can order one custom.
"I need a favor," he says. "If it's too much to ask, just say so, okay? I don't want to fuck anything up."
"What do you need?"
Billy laughs bitterly. "You have a strap-on, right?"
Dee raises an eyebrow and he has to give her points for nonchalance.
"I, uh..."
"Yeah, I do."
"Would you? I don't want to think anymore. I just want my brain to shut the fuck up and it won't."
"You loved him a lot."
There needs to be a thoughtful pause there before she answers. I wanted all of this to be understated and kind of minimalist, but if I were doing this now, I'd at least add vocal inflection or tense muscles.
"Never said I didn't."
She smiles up at him and goes to her suitcase. "Get naked," she says, and he does.
From the bed, he watches her fasten the harness and adjust the base of the silicone cock against her mound. It looks stupid, but she doesn't seem to care and so neither does he. Her tits are small and kind of lumpy. Her nipples are brown and nearly as small as his own. In his head, he can imagine some stubble on her face and can almost, almost turn her into a guy. A guy with a lumpy chest and great arms.
He watches her arms when she climbs up between his legs and swats at his half-hard cock. Her fingers are long, strong, and know exactly what to do with him. He rolls over and tilts his ass up for her, and a wet finger pushes into him just as he feels her place a soft, hot kiss against the small of his back. A shudder runs through him and he opens for her.
A minute later, she's fucking him, pounding his ass, and he has his face buried in the pillow, arms wrapped tight around it, and in the gasping darkness of it, he's nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine all over again, legs spread wide for Joe, taking Joe deeper and deeper into his body. Lights spark behind his eyes and his body convulses in her hands. He feels Dee's fingers dig deeper into his hips, holding on, keeping him from pushing her out. Dimly, he can hear her voice chanting his name, saying, "That's it, let it out. Let it out, Billy." He does, but he doesn't make a sound.
This might be my favoritest sex scene that I've ever written. It's such a big deal for him to ask for it, but that's all he has to do. He needs and she's there for him and I love it. :D
He wakes up much, much later. There are voices in the suite's living room, some music playing, and the telltale heat of Nevada in the morning pressing against the drapes, despite the darkness of the room. All he remembers of his dream is swimming in a big, dark, heated pool, and then discovering it was blood. Used to, that sort of thing would have sent him sprinting to retch into the toilet. Now it just makes him want a shower.
Sage-fic recurrent images #4 and #5: dreams and pools. *is such a creature of habit*
The other side of the bed is untouched, and Dee's suitcase is gone. In the bathroom, he finds his own shaving kit and duffel on the counter. No note, no need. He needs to remember to do something nice for her sometime.
He knows none of these guys are going to be what Joe was, and god knows if Jenifur will still be doing this five years from now, but they've got the music. That has to count for something.
6.
Soundtrack: "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" - The White Stripes
Perspective's a bitch when all you have left are memories.
The legend was they'd met for the first time in juvie, back in Grade 7, when Billy was thirteen and Joe was twelve. Joe had been caught spray-painting a school building and Billy had been picked up after leaving prints in a wicked Camaro he'd taken for a joyride.
That all happened, sure, but they'd known each for a helluva lot longer. Billy had beaten Joe up in kindergarten. Later, they traded smokes in the schoolyard sometimes, and sometimes laughed at the same jokes and whistled at the same foxy Grade 8 babes. They weren't 'friends' though, not 'til they got stuck in a detention cell together for a weekend while somebody tracked down their parents and got them released. They talked music the whole time. After that, they were pretty much inseparable.
When he sees what John told Mary, Billy's throat closes up like a vise. He fucking forgets how to breathe because it's so wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong. And John said, "It's fake," as he fell apart and asked Mary's name, but of course Mary wouldn't know what the fuck that meant. Fucking schizo. Goddamned fucking schizo.
Maybe it's "vague", maybe it's "fake", or maybe it's meant to be indistinct. But I would love it if someone could track down John Pyper-Ferguson and ask him what the hell he was saying!
Not that Billy really cares what Mary thought, but that fight with Joe wasn't over sex. The fight was over Joe's fucking stash and Billy threatening to leave if he didn't fucking get clean. Joe sucked at being alone. He fucking hated it, and for a long time walking was the only goddamned thing that penetrated the haze. And even then, sometimes days would pass before Joe would notice, would pick up a phone and say, "Yo, cuntface, what the fuck?"
Fucking cunt.
"Goddamned piece of shit," Billy says to the screen. "I fucking loved you, fucking bastard."
"I love you, man," he hears.
Billy lies back in his bunk and takes a deep breath. He can smell Joe, sweat and cigarettes and the crap he put on his hair to make the goddamned mohawk stick up. Next to him, between his body and the wall of the bus, he feels something heavy, dense. This is so wrong, he thinks, but he doesn't much care.
He's hard as he's ever been; his eyes are fixed on where the sheets and pillow are slightly compressed. "Joe, you fucker," he breathes.
"Billy." It's a cold gust against his face and he swallows it in as he yanks his dick out of his pants. And holy shit, if he had thought he was dreaming before, now it's either real or an all-out hallucination. He feels a big, freezing hand on his dick. There's nothing there, nothing. But something's squeezing him hard enough to press pale finger marks onto his hard, red dick. Pulling. Jerking him. Billy arches back, mouth opening wide, mouthing the words, "Fuck me" in a silent scream. Holy fuck, fuck, fuck, does he want.
This paragraph still bugs me, but I think the awkwardness of the rhythm is okay given the awkwardness of the content...maybe? I mean, this is creepy-as-fuck wrongness; it shouldn't flow too smoothly. Also, a note on the cold: this is a little problematic because cold characterizes demons (according to medieval demonologists at least), and Joe hasn't turned into an incubus. He's just a plain old, everyday ghost.
When he comes, he doesn't make a sound. There are too many people out beyond his flimsy little bunk curtain. He takes a tissue from the compartment by his head and wipes up, and, shifting, for a moment, he feels something and hears something, a low groan, a Joe-groan, and then Joe's voice is soft against his ear. "Next time, I'll suck you. If I can." And Billy sees him, just for a second, blue eyes looking into his. Then it's – he's – gone and Billy's heart seizes up in his chest. "I'll be back," he hears and then there's nothing.
All he wants is to bawl like a fucking baby, because if what he thinks just happened really did happen, then this means Joe didn't fake shit.
Again, there probably should've been a pause (something more than just the paragraph break) before this line for Joe's presence and then absence to sink in. Then Billy can react. OTOH, I struggle with paragraph breaks. Maybe it's fine as is.
He's really fucking gone.
When they get to Lubbock, Ashley wakes him up. Somehow he slept through arrival. "Come on," she says, "Wes has card keys." She doesn't say anything about his puffy face or the dark, wet patch on the pillow case, or the pile of crumpled tissues. On their way into the lobby, she says, "I want you to read something later, okay?"
"Sure." It's the first bit of good he's felt in days. If Ash is writing again, then they'll get the music going, and if they're lucky they'll have their next album written by the time they finish North America. It's a fucking trip that they're going to be in Europe in ten weeks.
Billy never dreamed. Well, yeah he did, but he knew he'd never get there with Joe. Maybe he hoped, right to the end when Joe said, promised, "You and me." Maybe he'd dreamed of dragging Joe's ass down to LA with him, of showing him that not every working guitar player dropped their pants at the city limits for BMI or Sony Music.
There was so much he'd wanted to show him, but Joe just wouldn't fucking listen. Just went on about what a fucking cunt Seymour Stein was, none of those assholes at Sire or anywhere else were worth it, and on and on. Fucking chickenshit.
Funny thing that not enough people realize: Seymour Stein is a real guy. Sire Records pioneered The Ramones and Talking Heads (and a whole list of bands that make me nostalgic like crazy, and they made bazillions off Madonna back in the day). Joe Dick pissing in Seymour Stein's gin and tonic is funny as shit, but it's also seriously huge. As in, holy shit, you just completely destroyed your band's entire future.
7.
Soundtrack: "Destroying Angel" - Sneaker Pimps
"Perspective's a bitch," Joe whispers against Billy's ear.
Uh, Joe's use of the phrase is supposed to be my transition for moving the "Perspective's a bitch" line into the Omega side...even though I didn't use it consistently in the Omega sections. Sometimes it just felt right...I probably should've figured a rationale for it.
"No shit," Billy says. He's sprawled on his hotel bed, a plate of pasta on the bedspread next to him. There's a shallow divot in the cover along Billy's right side and he isn't surprised anymore by the coolness or the invisibility of Joe's touch.
"I love you, man," Joe says in a low, deep voice, and it sounds as easy as it ever did.
"You got a funny way of showing it, blowing your brains out and all."
"Sorry."
"Joe."
"Really. I owe you a hell of a lot more than that, but I am. Sorry. About that and all of it."
"Fuck, don't do that."
"What?"
"You're talking like you're leaving again."
"Billy—"
"Shut the fuck up. Touch me. Let me feel you."
"If I could fuck you..."
"If you weren't so fucking dead." Billy scrubs his face with his hands. "I miss you so much."
"Yeah."
"Let me fuck you," Billy says.
"Yeah." Joe straddles Billy's hips as Billy angles his cock up.
"Oh fuck, you're cold." Joe's ass, Joe's thighs, all of Joe is fucking freezing, but he takes Billy's cock in easy, and it's so tight and smooth Billy makes himself stop caring about the cold.
It's the freakiest thing when he comes. He can't see Joe, not really. He's a hazy outline, but Billy's cock is pointing straight up at the ceiling, not at all angled toward his chest. He watches his dick spurt upwards twice, three times, a sputter of a fourth, all the come just staying there, in midair above him. Then it vanishes.
"Holy shit," Billy gasps, still reeling from orgasm.
Joe comes into view briefly, leaning forward to kiss him. It's barely a brush of cold air against his mouth, in his mouth. And then Joe's eyes, so bright, saying, "I love you," and disappearing again.
"Love you, too," Billy mumbles, feeling a little stupid. He gets up to piss, and when he gets back to bed, there's a fuzzy outline of Joe on the other side.
"You do realize how entirely fucked up this is, right, Billy?" Joe says.
"Mm-hm."
"Because it is. You're not supposed to skip parties to go back to your hotel room and fuck a fucking non-corporeal entity."
It's a sad day when Joe Dick is the voice of reason, Billy. Seriously.
"Since when do you give a shit? Besides, it's you, you dink. Why are you complaining?"
"Maybe I don't have any business fucking you up any more."
"And like I said, since when do you fucking care?"
"You forget I'm fucking dead here? You forget I've had a fuck of a long time to sit and work shit out while you've been off playing rock star?"
Billy rolls over, not answering.
"Jesus fuck, Billy, I'm trying to do the right thing here."
"Well, don't," Billy says.
"No?" Joe's in his face again, floating right over him.
"Fuck the right thing," Billy says, running a fingertip over the cold air of Joe's face. "Just stay and don't fucking leave any more."
"Billy—"
"Haunt me."
I wish I'd put in a little more description because this line kills me. Billy should tug on Joe's ghost-hair and kiss him. Then say, "Haunt me." Yeah. And then the negative space of the next four lines can speak for itself.
"Fuck, Billy—"
"Shut the fuck up and go to sleep."
"I don't sleep."
"Yeah? Well, fake it."
8.
Soundtrack: "Last Time" - Saving Jane
Perspective's a bitch in ways Billy's never even thought about.
Life in the fucking bus, for instance. Ash and Trevor have been friends since high school. They met Hannah and Dee in Portland, and they'd known Earl since then, too, but Earl couldn't keep his ass clean and out of rehab. They weren't like bands Billy had met who treated it like a job. Billy had worked with a lot of those, doing session work in LA after Joe pissed Hard Core Logo away. You were all old friends, or two of you were old friends and the rest just coworkers, or else all of you were coworkers who worked and lived together a few months a year and otherwise never fucking saw each other.
Hannah, Ashley, Trevor, and Dee don't know how to be coworkers, not with him or with each other. Billy thinks that might bite them in the ass later on down the road, but once they get done with the first flush of curiosity, each of them trying to learn more about his life than he's ever told anyone, and all shit that Joe already knew because he was either fucking there or didn't give a shit, they're good about telling him their stories: the bullshit with their old label, the bullshit with their old friends from their years in Seattle, what they want the next album to sound like – and that never fails to dovetail into someone grabbing a guitar and a notebook and scratching out some notes and lyrics and chord progressions.
Backstory on the band, finally. It's a little late, I guess, but moving it up interfered with the Joe/Billy story too much and here it serves to pull Billy back into his life (yay!).
Six weeks on the road, they've got parts of thirty songs written. Most are crap, but half a dozen are pretty good and another seven or eight will be decent with a little work. Trevor says, "See, this is why we like you so much."
Hannah laughs and says, "Yeah. Plus, we can stick him in front when they want to do photos on a bad hair day."
"Which you have so many of," Ash says on cue.
"Don't make me take your tiara away," Hannah threatens darkly, and Billy just sits there grinning.
Yes, it's goofy dialogue, but nothing stupider than Pipe would say.
If Pipe and John had had a working brain between them...
If Joe hadn't been such a fucking cunt...
The girls kick ass. Trevor's a fucking queen trapped in a drummer's body and in his head Billy can hear Joe calling them both faggots, but he's got what he wanted. Joe made jokes about models and hookers, but there was no fucking way that Joe would've said no to a model if she'd offered. No fucking way. Course, they'd never have looked twice at him anyway. Not while he was using and fucked up, pasty and overweight and wrong.
Billy remembers Joe best when he was twenty-two and wiry from working all summer on a fishing boat up the Sound, earning money to get them new used amps and a shitty used van. Billy spent the time bartending. John shelved books at the library until he got fired for having a psychotic break in the middle of the children's section during story time. Pipe never kept a single job more than two weeks the whole summer.
But when Joe came back...fuck. Billy couldn't look at him without getting hard and Joe was a smug bastard about it too, but it was good. Fucking excellent...at least until the money ran out.
Someday I'll write an outtake about Joe at 22, all muscle but not grown into his shoulders yet, hair wild with salt and sunstreaked copper along with the brown. He's got a wicked gleam in his eye because he's the leader of the fucking coolest punk band on the west coast and they're getting new gear because of him.
Gilt Lick's cheapshit advance money didn't stretch near as far as they'd planned, and they were looking at living in the van or squatting in some leaking tenement with no heat. Joe blamed everybody but himself, and Billy did what he always did: he started covering the noon shift at the corner bar.
Soundtrack: "Lithium" - Nirvana
Yeah, perspective's a bitch. Especially when you're outside looking in.
"Can he see me?"
"No."
"But I want him to. Isn't that how it works?"
"I believe you are mistaking this for a fable, Joseph."
"But people talk about seeing ghosts all the fucking time!"
"Do they?"
"Oh fuck, you know what I mean."
"Manifestation requires enormous energy, far more than you may presently access – and even then, assuming the living being does not dismiss your presence as an impossibility – you will find yourself unable to affect more than one of their senses at a time."
"But can he feel me? Can I touch him?"
"Perhaps eventually, if you persist with this."
"I told you I'm not done yet. I have to make him understand."
"Because clearly he will never arrive at a sufficient level of comprehension on his own."
"Oh, fuck off."
"Honesty, Joseph."
"Okay, fine. I'm just not fucking ready to let him go, okay?"
"Yes."
"Gah!" Hekate's laugh is warm in the air. He thinks he can feel it on his skin. "So how do I get more energy?" he asks, bouncing on his heels.
"You'll figure it out. Or you won't."
He turns away from Billy to stare at her. "Aren't you supposed to be helping here?"
"I am," she answers, tilting her head up to look into his face, "as much as you'll let me."
"Like hell you are!"
"You know the way back up," she says, pointing at the shimmering disk high above their heads.
"I told you—"
"I know." Then she's gone.
"God I fucking missed you," he says, turning back to Billy. Billy gives no indication that he's heard. "So," Joe continues, "thing is, I figured some stuff out..."
Okay, meet Hekate. She's not Death. Hekate is the Greek goddess of the crossroads. Like Gaiman's character Death, Hekate delivers dead people to the afterlife/Hades. But (in this fic at least) none of the psychopomps (guides to the underworld) can force a spirit to leave the living world if it wants to remain as a ghost. The guides can't force Joe to stop haunting Billy; Joe has to make the decision to move on of his own accord...but now that Joe is making sense of his life, Hekate prods him along gently, reminding him that he's being a complete idiot but letting him make his own mistakes anyway.
After a while, Joe gets fed up with Billy ignoring him. Or not hearing him – whatever. Bears too much resemblance to how things were while he was still alive. Joe decides to go track down his grave, and finds it barren except for some graffiti and the stench of stale beer and piss.
He finds Pipe sprawled out naked on someone's couch, popped out of his head. John's in a psych ward; they've cut his hair off and let his beard grow in. His face looks dull and gray, and Joe figures maybe it's the lithium. The walls are covered in butcher paper, layers deep, and it's covered in John's scrawl – sixteen colors of crayons, ceiling to floor.
"Huh," Joe says. John looks up and starts screaming at the top of his lungs, like he's on a bad trip or someone's killing him. It doesn't stop when Joe says, "Easy. Hey, easy, John, it's okay." John throws himself at the locked door of his room, blam, blam, blam, and his screams only get more blood-curdling as the long seconds stack up. Finally a couple of orderlies show up with a woman in a white smock. They hold him down and she stabs him in the arm and hits the plunger. When he goes limp, they dump him on the bed and wrap the Velcro restraints around his limbs. John's eyes slide back over to Joe and just before he slips under, Joe manages to say, "Jesus, John. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry." Then John's eyes fall shut and he's out.
Even on lithium, if anyone could see him plain as day, John would.
9.
Soundtrack: "Streets of Laredo" - Headstones
"Perspective's a bitch, you know?"
Billy grins and the interviewer smiles back, apparently forgiving him for not answering the question.
I didn't specify, but I was envisioning this as an interview with Spin. It's too music-savvy to be Entertainment Weekly, it's not specific enough about technique to be Guitar Player, and I wanted to save the second interview for Rolling Stone...so that leaves Spin.
"So tell me, how do you feel about comparisons made between Jenifur and Garbage?"
"Garbage rocks. That's not something I mind."
"What about with Hole? You were both on the Lollapalooza tour in the summer of '95, and a couple of months ago MTV had their little battle of the bands thing—"
OMG, the amount of research I did to get the damned chronology (mostly) right. Hole was on the '95 Lollapalooza tour, btw...and at some point I remember MTV doing some sort of Battle of the Bands thing with vids and interviews and stuff, but I don't remember the time frame. The comparison with Garbage is based on Hannah and Shirley Manson both being gorgeous, smart, opinionated women singers in successful rock bands with a similar core audience, though Jenifur's sound is closer to Garbage's more guitar-heavy tracks than their electronica. Meanwhile, Hole is fairly simple guitar rock with one very loud, angry lead singer that no one likes very much but everyone's fascinated by. (Wish she'd go back to acting.)
"And wow, did that turn ugly."
"It did. I think everyone was surprised by how much invective there was there."
"What sucks," Billy says, "is that all that most of these kids see is Courtney or Hannah. They think it's this professional catfight going on or whatever, when it's nothing like that: it's just hype. Meanwhile, nobody looks at the other four members of Jenifur or the other three people in Hole. They ignore us—"
"And that bothers you?"
"Well, one, they're comparing two different kinds of music. I'm not even sure who Hole's current line-up is, but they've always been all guitars and they deserve a lot of respect for what they've done musically."
Billy is lying through his teeth. He knows exactly who their line-up is, since everyone's been talking about Hole losing yet another bass player.
"Courtney Love—"
"Courtney's a strong personality and people tend to get blinded by that. She walks into a room, and you stop what you're doing and watch – kind of like how people describe Iggy Pop back in the '70s. She's a wildcard. You never know what she's going to do. And Hannah, Hannah's not like that."
Billy's comparison of Courtney to Iggy Pop is paraphrased from Kurt Loder's interview of Courtney (the article's in the MTV archives) a few years after all this is set, but people have been comparing Courtney to Iggy for years. No punk singer can strip on stage without someone invoking Iggy.
I grew up addicted to music magazines and MTV. I skimmed a ton of music journalism while putting this thing together, and found myself digging through stuff I hadn't thought about since the Music and Pop Culture class I took six or seven years ago. Everytime the muses stopped talking, I spent a day with the internet. Initially I had a three-page-long list of references and works cited, and then decided to trash that in favor of disclaimers that cover everything. And see, this is fanfic to source material that's part RPF to begin with! Oh, it breaks my brain...
"It could be a factor of star power—"
"Nah, I wouldn't say that."
"Would you want to be in Hole? Or what if Courtney and Hannah switched places?"
Billy laughs. "It wouldn't work. Jenifur doesn't work like that. We're a tight fit."
"How does it compare to your years with Hard Core Logo?"
"Apples and oranges. Or more like, I dunno, broccoli and motor oil? They're not anything alike."
"A couple of weeks ago, in the Toronto Sun, your former manager Ed Festus made a statement about great rock 'n roll suicides in which he compared Joe Dick to Kurt Cobain. What do you think about that?"
Billy lights another cigarette. "See, everybody knew Kurt; he was famous all over the fucking world, and Joe never got anywhere near that level of...notoriety. Didn't want it. He always thought Nirvana were pussies for selling out."
"And you?"
"Yeah, he thought the same thing about me, but I got the music and a career doing what I love. What's he got?"
Billy's deflecting on purpose, not misunderstanding.
"How do you feel about the documentary coming out?"
"...I dunno. It's complicated."
"Are you in contact with Bruce McDonald at all?"
"Yeah, but I haven't seen the final cut yet. And it's...hard. I mean, we had some great shows, but everything ended when Joe blew his brains out. Some things you just don't want to have to go through again."
"Are you afraid there might be some backlash, like what Courtney's faced?"
"No, see, it doesn't fit, and this is where Ed Festus is a fucking moron. Joe – Joe was like Courtney, and Courtney draws fire because she's loud. She'll call you a prick to your face, just like Joe would. And so, yeah...I mean, you know how many people showed up to his funeral."
"What do you think caused him to do it?"
"Coke, booze, the whole fucked up situation."
"And by that, do you mean the exposure of the Bucky Haight benefit fraud, or your joining Jenifur?"
"Both, neither." Billy shrugs. "When you're an addict, you're hiding from responsibility, from the reality of things and consequences of your actions. He knew about Jenifur from the beginning, from way before the Bucky thing – actually from the Lollapalooza dates – but, see, Joe didn't want to face it, so he got high. So he wouldn't have to fucking grow up and cope."
Billy gets uncomfortable, he lights a cigarette and gets philosophical. Usually about addiction.
"You sound angry."
"Yeah, I am. He was a dumbshit and none of this had to happen, but all I can do now is live my life."
"You miss him?"
"Fuck, yeah. Every fucking day."
10.
Soundtrack: "Ghost Riders in the Sky" - Johnny Cash
"Perspective can be a real bitch to work with sometimes, you know, with the camera angles and showing things in ways that mean something to the audience."
Bruce, you are such a tool! *giggles* I felt weird about doing this, because it's NOT real-life Bruce McD. It's his character in the film, who makes himself a villain by his actions toward Joe and Billy. If Bruce had kept his trap shut, Joe (probably) wouldn't have killed himself (because Billy would've been able to manage the reveal and balance it against Joe's current drug intake). So...fictive!Bruce gets to be a villain here, too, since it's supposed to be the same guy. (Yeah, this totally pinged my own RPF-writing squicks, but it's canon...)
Billy doesn't say anything. Bruce is down from Toronto, apparently paying his own way at the Budget Inn on Sunset. They're at Denny's in West Hollywood, drinking bad coffee while Bruce jabbers on about shit Billy doesn't care about. He could've just had Bruce come over to his apartment, but keeping it public means that he won't kill him, and he remembers the exact moment – Billy was stabbing violently at the crust of his apple pie – that Bruce twigged to that.
These locations are real, thanks to the miracle of the internets (I've never been to LA). Also, all Denny's coffee tastes the same. *g*
"It'll do the festival circuit – indie films and a couple of doc-fests, too," Bruce is saying, "then we'll get a video distributor, and that'll be it."
Billy scowls. He knows Bruce is leaving a lot out. Every single rock journalist in the business is already asking about the film, even though two months ago it was all Jenifur-this, Jenifur-that, and no one gave a crap about the old punk band Billy did twelve years in.
"Look, just watch the final cut. I think Joe would've liked it, but it's your call. Give me a buzz tonight and let me know."
Billy's grim. He sneers at Bruce as he finishes his coffee. It's bitter, but right now bitter is good, it's satisfying. He knows what it cost Bruce to give up the final cut. Joe's contract with Bruce had defaulted to Billy, and that was the one good thing about the whole stupid mess. All he had to do was sic the lawyers on him and renegotiate.
Billy takes the package and leaves Bruce with the tab.
Hours and hours of footage reduced to a ninety-minute film – except it feels more like a drama than any documentary Billy's ever seen. It for damned sure isn't a concert movie. When it gets to the Edmonton gig, there's a white screen insert that says: ENDING ONE, and it cuts to show the gig and the brawl and a long shot of Billy walking out of the venue with Joe lumbering after, a bottle of whisky in one hand and two glasses in the other.
It goes to black with Joe sitting on the steps, dropping the second glass and kicking it away. Then a page of end titles tells how five minutes later, Joe Dick was dead, no one went to the funeral, and a year later some fucker stole the body.
Then it blips back to: ENDING TWO, and Billy watches it all roll out, watches the toast and the gun come up, watches Joe's body drop and the camera go dark as Danny put the camera down and puked in the gutter, watches the frame freeze on the exit wound and fade to black.
See me pretend to be a filmmaker.
"Fuck," Joe says from next to him on the couch.
"No shit."
After a minute Joe says, "The first ending makes you look like a pussy."
"He did that on purpose."
Joe grunts.
"What he wants is to show the fucking gunshot. It'll get him in good with Tarantino, and all the Pulp Fiction freaks will eat it with a spoon."
Right, so I'm the only person in the world who was totally 'eh' on Pulp Fiction...I'm okay with that.
Joe nods. "So what do you think?"
"I think you look like a stupid fuck no matter how he cuts it," Billy says.
Joe nudges him. "The second ending leaves you in the clear."
Billy nods.
Joe says, "You know you were in the clear anyway."
Billy smiles at him. "Yeah, I know."
See? Absolution!! *loves on them*
Joe turns, floating up to straddle his lap, and takes Billy's shoulders in hand. His grip is strong and his tongue is cold in Billy's mouth. Billy can see sunlight from the window streaking through Joe's skin, but his eyes are bright and warm.
"Nothing more honest than death, right?"
"Not that anyone would believe my life now."
"Fuck 'em."
"Yeah." Billy kisses Joe again, then takes his cell phone from the end table and dials.
"Billy!" Bruce says cheerfully. "So what did you think?"
"I think you're an asshole, but you already know that," Billy says matter-of-factly. "I should make you re-cut it again, but I won't. Go with Two."
"See, I knew you'd see reason!"
"Fuck you. You're not blackmailing me. You're stupid if you think cutting it to look like Joe killed himself over a lover's quarrel makes any fucking difference to me."
"I didn't—"
"Shut up. Joe fucked himself over and you're cashing in on it with a fucking snuff film—"
"Hey, now. Snuff is murder filmed for profit, this is a documen—"
The things you learn from Wikipedia... :P
"Stop fucking talking, Bruce. Here's the deal. You get your ending, but you do not do a thing on this without telling Marty first. Especially in Canada. However long your screenings and festivals and all that bullshit lasts, you call Marty and mesh the schedules, every single time. I got the band to think about and I got a kid to think about, and none of this shit is their fault."
"Sure, Billy. Jesus."
"I mean it. Everything goes through Marty. This is bigger than you or me, and you do not get to fuck anybody else over here. Understand?"
"Yeah, I got it."
Billy's so relieved to get to vent at Bruce, finally. He should be up and pacing around. All of this should be more dynamic. It's huge – this is going to transform Billy's life for the next year and a half. If I were writing this now, I'd make it much louder.
11.
Soundtrack: "Long Shadow" - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
"He's a bitch," Billy says, the tape freezing the semi-defiant look on his face. Then a shot of Joe with Tabitha Soren's voiceover: "Joe Dick: a New Rock perspective...coming up next on MTV."
Remember Tabitha Soren? (She's a photographer now. Found some nifty exhibit info on her online.) I love this. I love the idea of Joe posthumously achieving this huge level of international fame that would've totally horrified him while he was still alive.
The media bullshit lasts for more than a year. Sundance, Toronto, New York, Boston, South by Southwest, Vancouver, Montreal. The documentary plays in limited release in Vancouver and Toronto, and then again in New York and LA. There are protests at Lilith Fair, but every Lilith date Jenifur plays sells out. When an MTV reporter asks Sarah McLachlan for her feelings on the documentary's profanity, she smiles sweetly and says, "I am so glad you asked me that! Let's talk about the etymology of 'cunt'."
Okay, this entire fic is not simply an excuse to show Sarah McLachlan using the word "cunt". It's not! Honest!! :P
Also, I've done the film, music, and interactive (multimedia) sides of SXSW, so the details connected to indie film conferences are correct as far as my own experience. If you've worked/attended Sundance or Toronto, for example, YMMV.
Billy's phone rings for weeks after that. He turns down Kurt Loder and Marty pitches a fit, but Billy doesn't budge; he just stops answering. When he finally agrees to do the Rolling Stone interview, it's because he's so fucking sick of it all. He doesn't even want to go to rehearsal because there'll be some fucker hanger-on waiting to give him shit over Joe. He can't even fucking write. All his tinkering sounds like old Pete Townsend licks – because they fucking are.
Turning down Kurt Loder is sacrilege. I'm sure Marty had kittens.
"So what's next for Billy Tallent? We've heard rumors of solo projects, an acoustic tour, even casting directors sending you film scripts. What's the story?"
"Next is a break for a couple of months. You know Ash's dad is sick, so she needs to be with her family right now. A couple of different people have called me about sitting in on some tracks in the studio. Nothing certain on that yet, but hopefully it'll happen."
"Anyone in particular?"
"Not saying 'til it's set in stone."
"What about the movie roles? At Sundance, it's all anyone—"
"Nuh-uh."
"No?"
"I'm not much of an actor. What you see up there onscreen – that's me. You stick a camera in my face and tell me to be somebody else? I don't know how to do that. That's not who I am."
Total inversion of CKR's interview on the HCL Behind the Scenes clip.
"So, in the documentary, when Joe called you 'Billy Hollywood', that was—"
"Him being a bitch about me living in LA and jamming with Jenifur. That's all."
"You don't want to be a movie star?"
"Exactly."
"Are you seeing anyone?"
Billy rolls his eyes. "Next question."
"How's your daughter?"
"Great, she's great. I talked to her on the phone the other day."
"When Liv Tyler appeared in the Aerosmith video for "Crazy", there was a lot of talk in the media about rock stars and their kids."
"Yeah, and you know, this isn't all that weird a situation. Kids happen. You find out you're a parent, and you deal with it."
"You seem to be dealing pretty well, especially given the circumstances."
"Yeah, well...I hope so. I mean, it's a trip, this little person who's half-me...but yeah, she's great." Billy trails off with a grin.
"What's the custody situation like?"
"We're working it out. Next question."
I thought about this for a while before deciding just to go with it. The fact that Billy does seek some level of custody tells me that he does value family, and also that he values the old days with Joe and Mary and the band – and he needs to have access to this child, this proof that something good did come from the (bad) old days. I mentioned Liv Tyler because her parentage is such an odd (and well-publicized) situation, and because it illustrates the point really well: rock stars can be dads, too.
"Cool, okay, so...Jenifur's new album?"
"Should be out by the holidays, we hope. Things are a little hectic right now, so we don't want to be overly optimistic. That isn't fair to the fans."
"New sound or more of the same?"
"New. It's still us, but we've been through a lot together the last two years, and I think the music reflects that."
"Awesome."
"Yeah, I think it is."
"Last question – if you could change anything about the last two years—"
Billy's voice turns icy. "You mean aside from Joe killing himself?"
"Right."
For a minute he only sits there, rolling his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Then he says, "No, aside from Joe being dead, everything's great."
"You think Joe would be happy for you, wherever he is now?"
Billy laughs. "You know, he's probably sitting up there on a cloud right now trying to figure out how to spit on me." Billy looks up at the ceiling. "You hear me, you dink?" He flashes a wide, white grin at the interviewer and shrugs. "Life goes on, you know? That's the thing: life goes on."
12.
Soundtrack: "In the Sun" - Michael Stipe and Joseph Arthur
Perspective's a bitch and it's funny as shit, too.
"You're pretty when you lie," Joe says.
"You're pretty with your legs in the air, so the fuck what?"
I love that line.
Joe glides around in a nebulous circle, frowning. "This," he says finally.
"This what?"
"How is this 'Life goes on'?"
Billy collapses onto the sofa and props his feet up on the coffee table. "Living in LA, check. Playing in a fucking great rock band that has its shit together, has a solid fan base, and who are all fucking clean? Fuck yeah, life goes on."
Joe's got an eyebrow hitched into his hairline. "Uh-huh, Billy—"
"Fuck you. Life goes on. I get to have what I always fucking wanted."
"What about the models and limousines?"
"When did I ever say that? You said that. It's on the tape. Want me to find it?"
"No, I don't want you to fucking find it, I want you to stop missing the goddamned point."
"What's your goddamned point, Joe?"
"That it wouldn't hurt to do a fucking groupie sometimes...unless you like it when they call you a fag."
Billy grabs a lighter and pack of smokes off the coffee table, lights up. He blows smoke at Joe and watches it catch inside the denser miasma of Joe's body. It swirls around for a few seconds before it dissipates. "I love watching that," Billy says.
"This is life goes on?" Joe says quietly.
"You live with me," Billy says simply.
"Except for the part where I'm dead."
"We get along better now than we have in twenty years."
"Okay, yeah, I'll grant you that."
Billy curls his lip into a snide smile. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Joe shoots back, just like always.
"The sex was weird at first – no, I take that back. It's still weird. You're fucking freezing and it's creepy as shit, but—"
"But you like it."
"I like you, asshole. You don't see me asking Hannah to suck on ice cubes before she blows me, do you?"
Wrote that before I'd ever heard of Kissed. :P
"And yet you didn't fucking mind when she did."
"That was a snow cone and it was Dallas in August. And it felt fucking amazing."
"Uh-huh."
"Don't pretend you don't like watching."
"Sometimes."
Billy scowls up at him and Joe scratches his head and looks away. "Joe—"
"Look, hell was bad. Worst part of hell was getting grilled on why I did every shitty thing I ever did. And then having to...you know, face that. Without being able to say 'Fuck off'."
Billy nods.
"Second worst part was watching. You, mostly, but Pipe and John and Bucky, too. Like it was a fucking eternity dealing with my shit, but then the window'd be there and no time had passed out here at all. There Pipe was, standing inside the door of Tim Horton's screaming at you to get your ass back there."
"Fuck."
"You've had two years of this shit, but—"
"You've had longer."
"Yeah."
And maybe I should've shown more of it. I didn't show anything about Bucky, and I'm afraid the whole Bucky section wasn't set up well enough...but oh well. Now I know.
"Okay, so what then?"
Joe swallows and mumbles, "I don't want you to fuck your life away on account of me, that's all."
I love Joe trying to do right by Billy and how he reacts to Billy not letting him.
"Fuck you, Joe. I'll do what I goddamned well please."
"You always did."
After a minute, Billy says, "Do you have somewhere else to be, is that it? I thought you were done with all the soul-searching crap."
"You know that tunnel of light in all the movies, Billy?"
"Yeah."
"It's always there."
"Don't. Don't say shit like that." Billy's on his feet, crowding Joe like he isn't intangible.
Joe whispers, "I fucking love you," pointing a finger at Billy's face, then stroking down his cheek.
"Don't fucking leave."
"I won't. Not yet."
"Stay. Just stay."
"Not forever, it can't be – you hear me?"
"Shut up."
"You know how fucked up it is for you to be in love with a dead man?"
"Yep."
Joe sighs. "Well, okay then."
Toward the end of this section, I'm mostly okay with having underplayed it. They are talking, for once, and I felt like the dialogue had to bear all that tension and anxiety without the interference of too much description. I might have put in some pauses and shown what Billy's doing with his arms in this last bit, but for me to believe them talking about being in love, I want it to be as spare as can be. Still, the top needs a lot more in the way of verbal inflection and facial cues. Have I mentioned how much I've learned from rereading this fic? The writing happened almost without my volition (all I did was type what the muses told me to), but every time I reread it, I learn something new.
13.
Soundtrack: "Do You Realize?" - Flaming Lips
Perspective? Bitch, please.
"What?" Billy asks, lighting another smoke and adjusting the guitar strap on his shoulder.
"Nothing. Jeez, Billy." Ash is back from Oregon and sorting through her dad's stuff with her step-mom and grandparents. She'd shown up on his doorstep with a simple, "I'm back, we're fucking. Let's go," and pushed him straight into the bedroom.
Joe had sat next to them on the fucking bed and watched like it was better than TV. Okay, it was better than TV, but his proximity was still a trip.
Ashley takes a long drag off the cigarette he'd been smoking, raises her eyebrows, and says, "Tell me you're not using."
"What?" he says again, this time with growing anger.
She's unfazed. "Look at you. You've dropped, what, fifteen pounds in the last three months, Billy – and you never had it to spare."
"Like hell. You fucking know me better than that," he says, getting to his feet. "All the shit with Joe, my old man, my whole fucking life, Ash."
"Fuck, Bill, calm down. You aren't sick, are you? I mean, if you are, you gotta tell us. We'll make it okay, but you have to fucking tell us."
"I'm not sick."
"Billy—"
"I'm fucking clean. Every fucking way there is to be clean, I'm clean, goddamnit."
"Okay," she says, "okay. Look, I'm going to make dinner. You have food, right? I'll cook and you can show me the pumpkin song, or whatever it was that Dee was telling me about."
So Ashley cooks and he plays her the thing he'd written for Billie to make her laugh. It makes Ash laugh, too. She says, "Let's record it. It can be our Thanksgiving song." And things are okay again.
"That was not buddies," Billy says to Joe after she leaves.
"Uh-huh." Joe looks contrite, which strikes Billy as kind of strange, but he's tired and doesn't feel like pursuing it. He drags his fingers through Joe's body, watching the shimmery trails, and then he uses the bathroom, strips out of his clothes, and crawls into bed. Joe's there, so he kisses him, cold and dry, and he drifts off to sleep.
He dreams.
Joe is there in full living color, standing at the foot of his bed in his coat and that old Motherfucker cap. Next to him is a tiny woman with black hair wearing a shapeless white linen thing with a gold rope belt tied around the waist. She looks like an old statue come to life.
Billy's never even heard of Hekate.
Standing there, Joe looks like he's staring at a ghost, which is kind of funny, considering. But he's shooting glances at Billy as she's talking, and whatever it is, it's not good.
"What?" Billy wants to ask, but he can't move his mouth. Joe pulls off his cap and rubs a hand through his mohawk. There's a look on his face like...like he should be on stage, wailing into the mike, because Joe doesn't show this kind of feeling in private, not even around women, and now Billy really wants to know who she is – and if she's real or something else entirely.
A minute later, she vanishes and there's another girl standing in her place, wearing all black with an ankh around her neck. It doesn't take Billy long to place her. Sandman. Death as Goth chick. Good series, and also, fiction. But then Joe's dead and he's still around, so Death might as well be the real thing, too, right?
See me get all handwavey with the metafiction? (At least it's canon that Billy reads graphic novels.)
Then she's looking straight at Billy and Billy feels himself shiver. She's a babe, but it's not sexual. Something in her eyes reminds him of his favorite babysitter from when he was little – Kelly, who played Play-Doh and Tinker Toys with him for hours, every single time. He'd loved her so much that he'd begged her to stay forever.
Okay, so I had a babysitter named Kelly who fits this description. So what? :P
Then the dream ends: Joe and the woman vanish, and Billy falls into murkier sleep.
Soundtrack: "This Big Hush" - Shriekback
"People can't live like this, Joe."
Joe rubs his eyes. This is...he's been afraid of this. At first, he could be heard but not seen, felt but not heard. All of it a trade-off...until he and Billy started fucking. Every single time Billy comes from Joe's touch, Joe gets a little more tangible, a little more there.
He's not stupid. This is just as fucked up as it ever was, only Billy's using Joe for...hits of happiness, maybe? And Joe's just fucking unable to let go. Or maybe he's got it backwards. Maybe Billy's unable to let go and Joe is getting hyped on the joy of him and Billy finally fucking getting along.
Or...or they're both users.
Or just two sad sons of bitches in love.
"Why does it have to be like this?" he asks.
She smiles gently and pats his arm. "It's a unidirectional feed, Joseph. Once you die, you only absorb electromagnetic energy, and it slips away quickly unless it's constantly replenished."
"And if I stop?"
"Remember what you witnessed this evening, between Billy and Ashley. You were watching the energy flow back and forth between them."
"Yeah."
"Recall how he glowed."
"Yeah, okay."
"As did she."
Joe tenses. He hates it when she pulls this shit, but then he stops and thinks. And then he realizes. "When it's me, he doesn't glow. It's a negative feed."
And there's the other half of the title. And the implications of the plot, such as it is (the fic was finished before I realized the entire plot is the story of Billy's semen).
"Negative Feed" was the title that stuck, probably because I like the sound of the fricatives better than all the s's in "Perspective's a Bitch". I also like the allusion to electrical feedback, even though what's happening between Joe and Billy is different from auditory (positive) feedback, where amplified sound is reamplified by another piece of equipment. What Joe and Billy have is circuit drain. Meanwhile, from a human relationship standpoint, two partners are meant to nurture each other equally, rather than have one partner feeding off the other.
"It requires two living bodies to complete the circuit."
See! It wasn't just gratuitous voyeurism!
"So I'm killing him. That's just fucking great."
Hekate poofs and Death stands in her place. She punches Joe lightly in the arm and he growls back at her. "Sucks, huh? So, give me a shout when you're ready to talk, okay, Joe?"
Joe snarls in reply, but she's already gone.
Yes, there's some disparity between Billy's pov of this scene before he falls asleep and what we've just seen of Joe's. Death is cool like that.
He curls up on the foot of the bed, wraps his arms around his knees, and watches Billy sleep.
Joe doesn't sleep. Ghosts don't. Once he's sure Billy isn't going to wake up, Joe takes off. LA's a fucking weird place to be dead. First, it's crowded as shit with living people, but it's also fucking dense with ghosts. Mostly they're following the living around. Some hang out on the Strip, others stalk the tourist traps, and others haunt the mercados in East LA. It's normal for neighborhoods.
The ghost of Ashley's dad had followed her into Billy's apartment. He looked a little sad and a little amused when she'd jumped Billy, but it didn't bug him. Then he'd noticed Joe. It was funny watching a dead guy go pale, but Joe'd taken pity. The guy was newly dead, after all, and seemed just to want his little girl to be okay. Joe had nodded at him and given him a crooked smile, like hey, we all got family, right? He seemed freaked, though, and now that Joe thinks about it, maybe it's because he was looking at all of the Billy that's inside Joe now – at everything that makes Joe more than your average wraith floating down Wilshire Boulevard.
I was surprised by the whole thing about Ashley's father dying, but I like how it wove so many threads together. Also, we're going to pretend that I know how to punctuate complex sentences. *sigh*
Bucky'd said, "If you're ever back this way, don't drop in." Joe figures that doesn't really apply now. Odds are Bucky won't even be able to sense him.
Earlier Joe mentions Bucky along with Pipe and John as people he saw while he was in hell, and this seems to contradict that. I meant for the hell-bits to have been inflicted on Joe, while here he's going of his own volition.
Travel, as a ghost, is strange. It's not a matter of physical distance so much as zeroing in on emotional space. Psychic resonance of places never made any sense to him when he was alive, but now he gets it. Places where people have died, concert halls, sports arenas, and graveyards all shine like beacons to him. Finding Bucky's farm is not that easy.
Joe drifts around rural Saskatchewan for a while trying to get his bearings. He knows the route. One minute he's standing on the edge of Highway 16, the next he's on the shore of Little Nut Lake, and the next he's all the way down in fucking Melville. He can't focus. It fucking sucks.
Much time was spent with atlases trying to figure where all Joe was blipping in and out.
"Lost?" a voice says behind him.
Joe whirls around. The voice belongs to a guy wearing entirely too little clothing for this part of Canada at this time of year. Perfect body, weird-looking cape, stupid-looking boots, ridiculous hat, funny gold walking stick. Huh. "Okay, I'm guessing...Hermes?"
Back in Grade 7, Joe's mom gave him an illustrated history of the Olympic gods. He didn't open it for months, thinking it was the lamest gift ever. Then one day it got knocked off the shelf and landed open on the floor. The page was full of mostly- or entirely-naked people. Joe read the whole book that night.
"You're smarter than you look." Hermes' voice is silky, oozing charm and contempt in equal measure. Joe notices that he's got a faint golden glow about him, brightening the overcast day.
"Thanks." Joe spits for effect, but Hermes doesn't seem to notice.
Soundtrack: "Empty Road" - Matthew Good
"You ever think about perspective, Joe?"
"Yeah, it's a real bitch."
"You're not this much of a dick to Hekate. Is there something you'd like to tell me?"
"Fuck, no. No."
Hermes snorts. "Whatever. So, where are we going?"
"Look, it's no big deal. I'll get there."
Hermes stops, crosses his arms over his chest and says, "See, six thousand years ago, a guy wouldn't have issues with asking directions. Especially not from the deity in charge of making sure travelers got where they were supposed to, and certainly not when he showed up of his own volition to help."
Joe raises an eyebrow and says, "Anyone ever tell you you're hot when you're angry?"
"Thanks. Why are you being such a pussy?"
Joe tilts his head. "Do gods talk like that?"
"I was always better at keeping up with the times."
Hermes is the god of communication as well as travel. He keeps up. Unfortunately, I seem to be incapable of giving him body language or facial expression. Doh.
"That doesn't include fashion, I guess."
"Is it my fault you only know me by ancient iconography?"
"Yeah, okay. I'll give you that."
Hermes laughs. "You're a real peach. So...you want directions or what?"
"Fuck, I guess. Okay."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Turn around, Joe."
Joe does. Bucky's farm is right fucking there. "You're a bitch," says Joe.
"Nope," says Hermes, chuckling again. "You just can't get through the veil on your own here." Joe grunts and starts toward the house. "You're welcome," Hermes calls.
Joe flips him off without turning, and then nosedives into the gravel, solidifying just long enough for it to hurt like a fucker. When he stands up, Hermes is at his side, half again as large as he was before. "So we're clear," he says, "I can put you back in hell any damn time I feel like it."
"Shit. Sorry...really."
"Naomi's in the kitchen. Bucky's in bed. Have fun."
Joe swallows and goes in.
Gah, again with needing a pause there before Joe's reaction.
Bucky's pasty white and feverish. He's under a pile of blankets, sweating and shivering. Joe thinks it looks like the flu.
"Oh fucking hell," Bucky says, staring straight at Joe. "Naomi!" he yells. "Naomi!"
She comes in a minute later, holding a tray with a bowl of chicken soup and toast. "Bucky, what's wrong?"
"Get your smudge."
"Why?"
"There's an unwelcome spirit in the house."
With a frown, she puts down the tray and scans the room. "I feel something, but I can't tell what it is." She looks over her shoulder to where Joe is standing. "I'll be right back."
Glaring at Joe, Bucky takes a deep breath, like maybe he thinks he's going to shout him out of the house, but it turns into a violent coughing fit before he gets a word out. When he finishes, Naomi's back from the living room with a lighter and a small, half-burned bundle of herbs. Outside, a dog starts howling and she shakes her head. "Okay, that's weird. Take this, I'll be back in a minute."
I never even questioned why Bucky could see Joe. It might be because he's got so much LSD and other shit permanently stuck in his body that he'll never be rid of it. Or it might be a really weird side-effect to the hepatitis meds. Or it might be natural ability. Hell, it might even be Hermes intervening. Or all of the above.
After she leaves, Joe says, "You okay?"
"You jackass, do I look okay? You fucker." Bucky lights the charred end of the wand and waves it at him. "Get the fuck out of here, Joe."
Joe's nose crinkles. "Man, that shit is nasty. Look, I'm sorry. It's a bad time. I didn't know you had the flu—"
"It's not the fucking flu, you idiot. It's the hepatitis treatment."
"Oh."
(So clunky. Pretend it's better? :P)
"Leave."
Joe feels the smoke gathering around him, trying to push him out of the house. "Damn it, I'm going, okay? I just wanted to fucking apologize, all right? You were right. I was a shit and you didn't deserve that."
Bucky stops blowing on the burning end and lets a coat of ash grow over the embers. Finally Bucky says, "For all I know something's making you say this."
Joe scowls. "That's not how it fucking works."
Bucky takes a breath. "All right, then. Have a nice afterlife. Go away now."
Joe steps back with a snort. "Yeah, you too."
Outside in the road, Joe can see the edges of Bucky's farm gradually disappear, and then the weird lack of definition that covers so much of the living world is back, making it into a totally indistinguishable part of the landscape.
"That about what you expected?" Hermes asks with a glint in his eye.
Joe stares back at him. "Fuck if I know."
"Well, you didn't think he'd invite you to suck his cock, did you?" Joe turns his back and starts walking while Hermes continues, "But I guess he's got hepatitis-dick, huh? Granted, you're dead, so it's not like it can hurt you now, but still...hey, you never blew him while you were alive, did you? While he was still your 'mentor'?"
Joe flips him off again and Hermes' laugh, deep and rich, fills the still prairie air. A split second later, Hermes is blocking Joe's path. "He earned it, Joe. He used you, too."
"Not like—"
"No, he took advantage of your trust and adulation."
"Christ, could you make that sound a little more gay?"
Hermes snorts, plucking at Joe's mohawk. "Cute."
Hermes is being a prick here because it's what Joe will understand. I wasn't sure about it, but the idea was that as god of communication and guide to the underworld, Hermes would be able to push Joe's buttons in a way that helped him cope with his Bucky- (and father- and authority-) issues. (That was the idea, at least.)
Joe rolls his eyes. "I get it. Bucky got off on having his little gang of toadies and he couldn't deal when they wised up and turned on him." Joe takes a breath. "He just never pegged me to screw him, too."
"Joe!!" It's a shout, louder than a shout. Loud like a gunshot against his head and just like that, Joe's standing in the middle of Billy's living room.
BLAM! Only Billy's the trigger-man here.
"Joe!"
It's not as loud this time, but the roaring in his head is. Joe sinks to the floor, hands over his ears, even though he's dead and that doesn't help at all. "Fuck, be quiet," he grits out. This feeling...it feels like something just turned him inside out, and if he could hurl, he'd be doing it – all over Billy's fucking shoes.
"What the fuck, Joe?" Billy says quietly. He's crouching now, a hand lying possessively on Joe's shoulder. Sort of. Billy's bony fingers keep slipping down into him, but Joe can't dense himself up enough to stop it. "Hey, say something. This is freaking me out."
Joe laughs, low and bitter. "And talking to a ghost is totally cool."
"I'm talking to you, cuntface."
Joe never forgets that he's dead, but Billy kind of does.
"Yeah," Joe says. After a minute, he sprawls out on his back in the middle of the floor. "I went to see Bucky."
"Oh, shit."
"When you shouted my name, I was standing in the road on the edge of the farm."
"Doing what?"
"Huh? Oh, talking to – never mind."
"Who?" There's a violent glint in Billy's eyes and Joe thinks, Holy shit, that used to be me.
He says, "Billy. Get a grip."
"Fuck you, you left without telling me. I didn't know what the fuck was going on!"
"I'm dead, okay? Shit happens!"
Billy glares for a few moments and then strips off his clothes. "Blow me and then fuck me, okay? I need it."
Oh this part needs more. Or maybe not. I resisted adding more because I liked the look of it being so skeletal. It fit the content. But now I wish I'd given more over to describing the scene and showing a bit more of Billy from Joe's POV.
Afterwards, Billy mumbles, "Who were you with?"
"Just one of the guides, Bill. It's no big deal."
"The Goth chick? Looks like the girl from Sandman?"
"You've seen her? When did you see her?"
"Yeah, the other night."
14.
Soundtrack: "Small Blue Thing" - Suzanne Vega
Perspective's a bitch no matter how you slice it.
Billy dozes off. His ass is sore in that weird-as-hell way he's really begun to dig. He kind of wonders how different it would be from getting ass-fucked with an icicle, even though the books say not to do that unless you're into scat, which he's not, because it's that messy. He's drawn the line at necrophilia – which he says to make Joe laugh. They both know what he means.
When he wakes up, he's on the couch and Joe is gone again. He's pissed, he can't help it. All this time and he's finally got what he wants. This vanishing shit isn't buddies.
He gets up and throws together a peanut butter sandwich, and then he goes to take a leak. Looking in the mirror afterwards, he runs a hand over his stubble. There's some gray in it, which is a little weird. His face is sallow-looking and he gets where Ash's concern came from: he looks sick. He's lost weight and he'd probably better get tested, even though it's unlikely as hell that he'd caught anything. But if he did, then the whole fucking band's got it, too.
Sage-fic recurrent image #6: people doing stuff in the bathroom mirror. But they do! In real life, people do. /feeble self-justification.
"Play xylophone on those ribs," Joe says from behind him. There's no reflection, but there never is. Billy feels cold arms come around him and leans back into the embrace. Joe's lips brush his neck, his jaw, his cheek, his ear. Billy decides not to ask where he went. It's just nice to have him here now. "Love you, man," Joe whispers and Billy turns his head, tensing in surprise. The timing's off. They're not in the middle of a fight or anything.
"What?" he prompts.
Joe jerks his chin at the mirror. "Look at yourself."
"I know." Billy shivers as Joe's hands move down his chest, belly, hips, and groin. "I'm going to see a doctor, okay? I know it looks bad."
Joe steps back, letting go, and Billy catches himself against the counter as Joe storms out.
"What the fuck is your problem?" Billy yells, following Joe to the living room where he's standing, rubbing his forehead.
Joe paces, doing that caged animal thing he always did when he was alive. Then he turns, wheeling on Billy, clenching a fist and letting it go, clenching it and letting go. Shaking his head, he says, "You don't fucking get it, Billy. You're not sick, not like that."
For a minute, Billy doesn't move; then he purses his lips and walks over to the couch. He sits down and lights a cigarette, and after the fourth drag, he says, "What do you mean?"
Stress smoking again. Also, it's been a while since we last saw him with his guitar because he's (unsuccessfully) using Joe to fill that need instead.
Joe says, "This is killing you. You said the other night you saw her, the Goth girl who was talking to me?"
"Yeah."
"That's Death. Real actual Death. If you can see her, then you're too fucking close to the edge, Billy, you get me?"
"Joe—"
"I'm not bullshitting you here," Joe says calmly. "You said that, and so I had to go find out what it meant, and that's what it comes down to."
Billy just sits there shaking his head. "That makes no sense."
"Fuck, will you listen to me? Remember what I was like at the beginning, in your bunk on the bus?"
"Yeah."
"I should probably still be like that."
Billy narrows his eyes. "You're not."
"Because you're feeding me."
Billy laughs. "The only thing I'm feeding you is come, Joe."
Joe levels his gaze. "The emotion's there too."
Billy starts laughing. "Have you maybe been watching a little too much Buffy?"
At least here they watch Buffy together. :P
"I'm here because of you, you bitch. You yanked me back from fucking Saskatchewan because you panicked when you couldn't find me."
"Jesus."
"Look, tell me something. All your plans – the new record, getting Mary to let Billie stay next summer break, the session work with fucking Chris Cornell – you're serious about all that, right?"
"Yeah."
"Serious-yeah, or 'hey, sure, that'd be nice'—"
"Fuck you, yes I'm fucking serious."
Joe slides over the coffee table and sits down on it, facing Billy. "Here's the deal. I fucking refuse to kill you." Billy blinks, a smile beginning. "No," Joe says. "I'm totally fucking serious. I am not going to be the thing that kills you."
"Okay."
"Which brings us to the real problem."
"What's that?" Billy says, but Joe is gone. "Okay," he says to the room, "either you meant to do that or somebody wants to talk to you again."
Ninety seconds later, Billy says, "Damn it, Joe! Get the fuck back here!"
Another minute later, Joe's back, flashing him a seasick-looking grin from the other side of the room. "You know it's sunset in Australia right now?"
"You are such a bitch."
"Paying for it."
"Huh?"
Joe pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. "It's easier when I'm expecting it, but distance is still hard."
"You dink."
"Proved my point, though." Joe looks up, his mouth twisted into a wry smile.
Billy frowns. "Okay, which point would that be?"
"You know how when you got sober, you wanted a drink all the goddamned time?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, so this isn't just you. It's fucking hard for me to stay away from you."
Billy takes a moment to digest that. On one hand, it's cool that they're even. They need each other, they fit – it's buddies. But then he remembers Death staring straight at him. "Fuck."
"Especially since this—" Joe strokes fingers through his own skin, making it shimmer— "is you."
"Joe..." Billy takes one last drag from the cigarette, and then sits there looking at his body. He wonders when his legs got so goddamned skinny. His arms aren't that bad, not really. The veins are ropey and dark under his skin, but the muscles are good. Have to be with all the playing. "Fuck." Billy crushes the butt and stands up. "Okay, so we stop. What happens to you? Do you vanish again? Do you go all dolphin-boy on me?"
Joe laughs and puts his hands up. Billy smiles, suddenly sad. It should be funny.
"Can you stay if we just don't fuck? Is that enough?"
Joe steps close and wraps his arms around him. "We should ramp it down. Cold turkey might be worse. And you should probably..."
"What?"
"Find somebody living...that's the core of it. Dead guys can't give back."
"That's bullshit," Billy says. "I've got the whole band—"
"Not like—"
Er, I'm not really satisfied with how this bit works. The point was that it wasn't just physical, it's emotional, too.
Billy puts a hand up, pointing with two fingers. "You are not telling me to fucking start dating."
What is he going to say: "Sorry honey, tonight's reserved for quality time with my noncorporeal, dead, queer life partner – how's next Wednesday?"
"Billy—"
"No!"
"Just—"
"Fuck off."
Joe gives him a long silent look, and then disappears.
15.
Soundtrack: "Wild" - Poe
Perspective's a bitch when you know what you're missing.
I couldn't write a whole moronic, clichéd "Choose Life" chapter. I just couldn't do it.
They wrap the new record and don't kill each other after all. Hannah and Dee are at each other's throats for the last two weeks of it, but finally, fucking finally they put the last touches on the last track and they're fucking done. There's a party where they all get trashed, except for Billy, and Dee and Hannah are fine until the third hour, when they start with the sniping again. Billy, Ash, and Trevor decide to get them the fuck out of there, Trevor teasing them mercilessly until Hannah and Dee are pulling each other's clothes off in the back of the limo.
Luckily, Trevor's house has a secluded drive, so they manage to get inside without paparazzi filming the whole thing. "Come here," Hannah says, tugging Billy and Ashley by the wrist. "Dee, where's Trevor?"
"Getting supplies."
"Oh good."
"Hannah," Billy starts, but she cuts him off with a kiss. "Play with us. Or better yet, let us play with you."
"Ooh!" Ashley says next to him and stretches to run her fingernails up the back of his neck. When she changes directions, she takes his jacket with her.
Hannah steps back far enough to tug his t-shirt over his head. Her eyes are huge, blown on cosmos, but this has always been easy and she's never not wanted it.
Dee appears at Billy's other side, opening his pants and shoving a hand inside. She kisses his mouth, and then turns his face toward Hannah, who kisses him again before making room for Ash. When she lets go, he feels Trevor press up behind him, solid and blazing with heat. His mouth is scalding on the back of Billy's neck and Billy groans.
"That's it," someone says, and minutes later, the chenille throws from the couch are spread out in the center of the floor, surrounded by discarded clothing, scattered packets of condoms, a leather chest of toys, and three kinds of lube.
"On your back, Billy."
"No, wait – I want to see him suck you, Trevor. Will you, Billy? You'd be so pretty like that."
Er, hi, this is Hannah talking. Oops.
"Fuck, yeah." Billy slides down Trevor's body, rubbing his face over his cock. Billy spends a moment nuzzling Trevor's balls. They're cooler than the heat of his cock. They're heavy and feel good against his lips and tongue. Someone's kneeling next to him, kissing his neck and shoulders. Someone's behind Trevor, holding him still, biting his neck and pinching his nipples. Ash is on Billy's right side – he can see her pale hair and feel the softness of her body against his. She's rubbing him, petting him like a cat from his head all the way down to the soles of his feet. She's ignoring his front, his cock, and every time she dips her fingers down the cleft of his ass, he moans. He can't help it.
He hears a chuckle and realizes it's Hannah on his left, nipping at his shoulder blades and pinching his nipples hard. Then Dee's reaching around Trevor's waist, angling his cock down to hit Billy in the forehead.
"Oh, yes," Hannah says, grabbing Billy's hair and pulling him off Trevor's balls. Billy opens up and takes him all the way down, sliding up, down, working his tongue.
Hannah makes a small noise and Billy catches a glimpse of Dee pushing her down, pushing her face between Hannah's thighs. Then Billy's moaning, loud and raw, around Trevor's cock. Ash has two, fuck, maybe three fingers in him, just like that, wet and twisting, and she's making low noises against his skin, telling him to open for her, open up. And he is, as natural as breathing.
Then Trevor's pulling out of his mouth. "On your back, Billy. Knees all the way up."
Billy rolls. Someone shoves a cushion under his hips and Trevor's sliding the condom down as Ash straddles Billy's right hand.
"Fuck that's hot," she says, and Trevor kisses her hard.
"Sit on his face if you want," he says, and Billy can feel Ashley shudder against him, her cunt clenching around his fingers. Then she's kneeling over his face, facing Trevor, who's pressing the fat tip of his cock right there, pushing in – deep into him. Billy opens his mouth wide, trying not to shout at the feeling of so much heat shoving inside him, and then he's lapping at Ashley's flesh, using a little teeth when she grinds down, and sucking at her clit like his whole world depends on it.
Then Trevor pulls out and slams in. Out and in, over and over. It's not long before Ash comes, gushing into his mouth. Then Hannah's on his face and she at least tries to touch his dick, but someone slaps her hand away. It slaps against his dripping erection and he bucks up, crying out against her. Someone pins his hands over his head. Hannah gets up and goes somewhere, leaving him arching up, bereft. He thinks they all laugh. He thinks he hears Joe's laugh mixed in with theirs. The thought almost makes him come – almost. And god, he wants to, but maybe—
Trevor hitches Billy's legs higher and fucks him harder. Then Trevor's coming with a shout and Hannah's shoving him aside, shoving a big, black strap-on into Billy. Billy sees Dee tightening a harness and moving in behind Hannah, gripping her hair to kiss her deeply as she thrusts in.
On the floor next to him, Trevor's alternately watching, chanting obscenities, and nibbling Billy's neck as Hannah keeps pounding him. Ash's sitting behind Billy's head, holding his hands down, and Billy wants to weep he's so goddamned hard, and no one's touching his cock.
Then there's cold – cold on his lips and his mouth falls open. He can't see Joe at all, but Billy can feel him floating over his body. "God, please," he begs and Ashley finally releases one hand, squeezing the other tight.
He feels Joe's freezing mouth slide over the tip of his erection as soon as Billy has a grip on the base, and he's bucking against Hannah, who in turn is thrusting wildly back against Dee, and sparks are flying everywhere in his brain.
His ass is all heat. His legs are hot against Hannah's skin. His hand is hot around his cock, jerking hard into the burning ice-cold of Joe, Christ, Joe. And Joe, the bastard, pulls off just as Billy comes. He shoots high up on his chest, so hard it knocks him flat, and for a brief moment he feels Joe's cold kiss on his mouth and three or four scorching hot hands on his skin, rubbing his come all over him. And in his ear, Joe says, "Why weren't we doing this from the beginning?" and "I'll see you in bed later," and "Fuck, I wish..." but Billy doesn't hear the rest. It's just a voice in his head and hands on his body and Dee being pressed down onto his come-smeared chest as she has her turn getting fucked, and it's so fucking hot, but he can't stay awake for it.
I think this might win for hottest thing I've ever written. Hopefully what it shows is Billy's back living his life, participating fully in the band, and opening himself to them in a way he couldn't be earlier (pun totally intended).
I remember being so nervous of the orgy because I'd never written group sex before. I sent it to RubyNye, who had never even heard of Hard Core Logo, I think, begging her to check the choreography of it. (If writing DC Comics fic teaches you anything, it's how to deal with twisty-flippy body mechanics.) I still wish I'd found a way for Dee to fuck Billy again, but it seemed more important to move on to the exchange with Trevor and to the reconnection with Joe.
Billy wakes up sometime later to Trevor pulling him to his feet and pointing him at the third bedroom. "Sleep," Trevor says, and kisses him warmly. Billy kisses back, rubbing their bodies together. It feels good, but he knows someone's waiting in Trevor's bed, and Joe will be in this bed as soon as Billy lies down.
"Thanks," he says, meaning it. He hasn't been this perfectly fucked out in longer than he can remember. Trevor kisses him again and says goodnight. Then Billy's in bed and Joe's arms are close around him, his cold kiss a sharp contrast to Trevor's. Billy moans into it and Joe moans back.
Billy says, "Whatever you want. Anything." Joe hauls him up into his lap, kissing him fiercely and fitting his ice-cold cock into Billy's ass, just like that, with no preparation – it's that easy. Billy shudders as Joe's big hands move him. Billy sucks on Joe's cold tongue, shutting his eyes tight against his invisibility. He wants to see Joe's eyes. He wants it so much, but that's gone now.
If he touches, he can't see. If he can hear the words as he touches, they're extra-quiet or Joe loses substance, and god, Billy needs Joe solid. The freezing fucking cold cock in his ass feels completely solid and the cold body he's embracing is entirely tangible. And maybe it's more fucked up than ever, but it's okay. Joe's inside him and he's still inside Joe, and he's got Joe here, here, like he's fucking supposed to be.
Circularity, yay!
Joe says, "Yeah, fuck. Ride it, Billy. Take it." Billy shuts his eyes tighter and buries his fingers in Joe's hair, lifting up and slamming down. It's so good, so fucking good. "More," Joe says, kissing him again, freezing Billy's tongue in a circle of tight cold that matches the freezing circle of Joe's fist pumping his cock.
"Christ," Billy moans, coming, and he opens his eyes for it, to watch the come spurt and vanish, spurt and vanish onto Joe's translucent chest, into Joe. Joe's hips are still moving, but Billy feels a cold thumb wipe the end of Billy's cock clean and press against his mouth. Billy sucks it in, sucks it hard, and Joe comes with a shout Billy hopes only he can hear, and a final trembling thrust.
Theirloveissofuckedup. And hot. If by 'hot' you mean freezing-fucking-cold. :P
In the morning, Billy wakes up to California sunshine and Joe watching him. "Hey," he says, smiling.
"Morning," Joe says, fading out to a dull glimmer to kiss him on the mouth. Billy's cock stirs and he moans at the sensation. "Sore?" Joe asks.
"Fuck yeah."
Joe laughs.
"Do me anyway?"
"Yeah, why don't I just pour a liter of Jack down your throat?"
"Bitch."
"Addict."
"Fucker."
"Two weeks and we'll ask."
"She'll probably say three."
"Maybe not. She digs you. The Goth chicks always do."
Death totally digs Billy. She thinks it's sweet how much he and Joe are willing to do to be together...even though, as Hekate keeps telling him, Joe's going to have to move on eventually.
"Yeah but those Goth chicks are just hoping to catch a Joe Dick sighting."
"Tell you what," Joe says, "the next three you fuck, the fourth one, I'll let her see me."
Out of the kindness of his heart.
"Fuck you."
"Positive feeds, negative feed. Do the goddamned groupies and everybody wins."
(Pretend there's some sort of description there? Joe can make an irritated face or something.)
Billy shakes his head. "I'm not...no."
"Take it like a man, Billy. I'm not worth dying for."
Billy holds Joe's gaze for a long time. Then Billy kisses him again and gets up to find breakfast.
As things are, at least they're together, so this is a compromise that works for them, at least for now. So, it's not an entirely happy ending, because the situation is just too fucked up for a genuine happily ever after – but I think it's the happiest possible ending under the circumstances.
All in all, I'm extremely pleased with how the story turned out. The process was weird as anything, but the end result makes me all kinds of happy. :D
Soundtrack: "Haunted" - Poe (closing credits)
[Commentary posted 8/29/2006. The original version went live 4/28/2006 at hcl_fic.]
Disclaimers: Hard Core Logo (in its various media) is the brainchild of Michael Turner, Noel S. Baker, Bruce McDonald, Nick Craine, et al. Sandman is the creation of Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg. Sandman and all related characters are trademarks of and copyright DC Comics. This story is a work of fiction, and no offense or infringement is intended by the references to real people, works, and/or entities contained herein.
