(no subject)
Rating: More-or-less R
Pairing: Tré/Billie
Word Count: 7,228
Disclaimer: I own no person used in this story. This is a work of fiction, and any real event parallel to an event in the following is purely coincidental.
Notes: I started writing this at the end of last December. cosmicdancer has been there every step of the way, constantly editing and re-editing. This would be nothing without Xan's effort and advice. This is a story of love, and lust, and Green Day-- needless to say, it contains sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Feeback is appreciated.
1. Eighteen
Billie Joe gets really acquainted with Tré for the first time when he’s eighteen and their then-two-bit band needs a new drummer. He really likes Tré, the guy is funny and represents and can play the drums well and is just really fucking cool. Hell, his last name is-
“Cool,” Billie breathes out with a shitload of smoke. “This is really good.”
Tré is busy being absorbed by the couch, and where the fuck did Mike go? “Glad you like it. I like it too.”
Billie is on the floor against the couch, carpet crawling through the gaps between his toes. His head rolls against the cushions, left, right, and then forward in half circles. “I wasn’t talking about that-well, I was. But you want to be our drummer? I was talking more about that. We could seriously use you.”
“Good to know,” Tré replies. “Yeah, I’d like to. I don’t have much else going for me right now.”
Billie smiles a bit to himself, passing the blunt back up to Tré. His head rolls a bit to the right and he looks up and stays like that. Tré’s fingers scratch against his own chin stubble when taking a hit, and he looks so fucking Zen. Billie likes just listening to the small noises and the sound of the both of them breathing. He likes the way Tré’s thin lips fold over the end of the joint where his had just been. Hell, he likes Tré’s mouth in general.
“Indirect kiss,” he says. Tré raises an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, giving the joint an inquisitive glance.
“Oh yeah,” Billie repeats in reply. He’s giving Tré bug-eyes, as if, didn’t you know? Fuck that they might’ve been sharing this stupid smoke for awhile now. There’s a pause, and Billie takes advantage of the moment to grab Tré by the collar and lift himself up and press his lips against Tré’s, making the silence last a bit longer. Listening to the sighs and scratching of chin stubble; absorbing the smoke in each other’s mouths. Billie likes it; he likes guys, and acting on an impulse he’s never acted on before. He blames Tré for just being so fucking cool about everything. Though Tré’s not resisting, and doesn’t break away until Billie does.
“Direct kiss?” Tré suggests, rubbing at his bottom lip, which Billie had been sucking on only seconds before.
“Oh,” Billie replies, not understanding it himself, “yeah.”
“For a songwriter, your vocabulary’s shit. I’d suggest working on that.” Tré puts the blunt to Billie’s lips and smiles.
2. Twenty
They sleep in the bookmobile a lot. Fans offer them places in spare bedrooms and living rooms to sleep after gigs, but more often than not, the fans are as crazy or crazier than them.
The bookmobile rocks as Tré opens the door and enters and closes the door behind him. Billie looks up from his bunk and sheets of magazines and plastic bags. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Some dog peed on the couch,” Tré sighs, before adding, “while I was sleeping on it.”
“Shitty,” Billie replies in a voice that’s cracked from singing and smoking and exhaustion. He rolls onto his side so he can see Tré a little better, as Tré moves to the back, tripping over everything in between the Bookmobile door and bunk area in the dark.
“Yeah. Did a dog pee on your couch too, or what?” Tré asks with a bit of humor, but fatigue to match Billie’s. Billie shakes his head.
“Naw, I woke up and this chick was giving me a blowjob.”
Tré makes it to the back alive and sets himself on the bunk next to Billie. They’re lying next to each other and breathing warm air and pressed together because there’s absolutely no room. Common Logic would tell Tré that another bunk would be more comfortable, but Common Logic hasn’t shared a bed with Billie Joe Armstrong before.
“What, and you left? That doesn’t sound like you,” Tré smiles against Billie’s cheek.
“Well, I let her finish first before I did.” Billie’s eyes are closed now, Tré realizes, feeling the boy’s eyelashes brush across his face when he shifts. “I just didn’t want to go back to sleep and wake up tomorrow and have a condom fall out of my ass.”
Tré laughs. “Better than no condom at all.”
Billie laughs too, and it’s the last thing they hear for a while as Billie moves a little, arm digging into Tré’s side as his hand cups Tré’s cheek, kissing Tré softly on the mouth. Tré feels the ache of something euphoric and painful settling in his chest,
Billie and Tré have been doing something everyone calls It for a while now-It being an undefined thing, which could mean kissing, or drugs, or sex or all of the above. No one outside them knows exactly what It defines, and cannot accuse, congratulate or shrug it off, but only acknowledge It’s existence.
Tré sometimes laughs and calls It a relationship. He remembers one night not long ago involving an overabundance of weed (is there such a thing?) and just enough eye drops to not see straight when he laughed in an interview on the street and said, “I’ve never had a girlfriend. Actually, I have a boyfriend.”
Billie laughed later, in between bitemarks on Tré’s neck, and asked, “so, who is he?”
And now, Tré sighs while Billie reopens all the scabs with his teeth and decides that there is no needed definition between them, like there is between Billie and Adrienne. And it’s good, and convenient. Billie can still be between him and a wall, reaching down Tré’s sweatpants to stroke his cock, not because it’s what boyfriends do, but because it’s what people who give two shits about each other do.
3. Twenty-Two
Tré opens the door at one in the afternoon. He’s wearing boxers and a t-shirt leftover from the eighties. He smells like coffee and weed and whiskey. Billie embraces it.
“You’re back,” Tré greets, a little surprised.
“I’m back,” Billie replies. He has his hands in his pockets and shrugs, but he’s smiling. “Adrienne’s out with Mike right now, since he apparently found a good coffee shop when we were gone.”
“Oh?” Tré says.
“They should be gone for a few hours.”
Tré supposes he should feel guilty when he pulls Billie inside his apartment and kicks the door shut. But he also supposes it’s no harm done if Billie doesn’t feel guilty about being the one propositioning himself in the first place.
“Mike is really thoughtful,” Tré says as he slams Billie between him and the hallway wall. Billie has his arms wrapped around Tré’s waist, under Tré’s shirt.
“He’s a saint.”
“Or just a martyr for the cause,” Tré replies. “Don’t push it.”
“Oh, I’ll totally push it,” Billie laughs. He twists them around and walks Tré backwards into the living room. Billie sucks and bites Tré’s lower lip, and pushes Tré down on the beaten sofa. They break away when Billie pulls Tré’s shirt off.
“You’re never sexually satisfied, are you?” Tré laughs, muffled. Billie throws the shirt across the room and gives him a deep look.
“I missed you?” he suggests for an answer.
“Billie, you called me for phonesex when Adrienne had to go to the convenience store for more condoms. You were on your honeymoon for less than a week.”
“Well,” Billie says, looking away and focusing on getting his own shirt off. “ I guess you know the answer to your question then.”
Billie kisses Tré, so they don’t have to talk so much, and slides Tré's boxers off. Preparation is a manual, memorized thing. Billie has at least three condoms in his pocket, and Tré has lube buried under the couch cushions where spare change is usually found. Billie lies down on Tré’s chest and wraps his arms around the drummer, simultaneously digging between the creases of the sofa under Tré’s back. He laughs into Tré’s neck with victory when he finds it.
“I really did miss this,” Billie says, pants off and coating his cock with lube. He looks seedy, but silly, and Tré wonders for a brief second what Billie’s philosophy on love and sex is.
Billie folds Tré’s body into thirds, legs up and calves over Billie’s shoulders. Billie fucks Tré face-to-face and drives Tré’s back into a spiring. They don’t kiss, but Billie bites because the darker color of Tré’s lips during sex demand it. Tré digs the simplicity of their sex, and laughs a bit into the pain; it feels different and real when he’s sober.
Billie shudders into Tré when they both get off. Tré is seeing stars and can barely make out Billie arching and shaking; falling into him. The ring on Billie’s finger buries itself into Tré’s side with Billie’s grip. It takes them a few seconds to remember that they exist.
“Mmm,” Billie grumbles, completely deflated. He glances down at the cut the ring left with a frown. “You alright?”
“I’ve had worse,” Tré laughs a bit weakly. “You would know.”
Billie smiles a bit. “You sure you don’t want me to kiss it better? Lick it clean for you?”
“Oh god,” Tré groans. “Don’t start a blood fetish with me, Billie. You’ll turn into one of those kids that thinks he’s a vampire and hangs out at all the goth clubs, and we’ll lose you forever.”
Billie shrugs, and runs a finger over the cut anyways. It’s really small, just a little blood. “You know what, Tré?”
“What, Bill?” Tré asks, and curls one of Billie’s dredlocks around his finger.
“You’re a dumbass.”
“You think it’s the drugs?” Tré suggests, with a hint of sarcasm and concern.
Billie shakes his head. “Nah.”
Silence leaves the two naked and Billie getting his hair twisted by Tré. Billie gives the cut on Tré’s side a glance holding some sort of emptiness. “You’re really okay?”
“Yeah, it’s barely a scratch, man. Stop flipping out.” Tré’s voice is distant.
“I’m not talking about that, Tré.” Tré feels something cold running along his arm and sees Billie’s hand with the wedding band that cut his side, sliding upwards. Tré remembers, right, and hurts a little.
“You’re special to me in ways she isn’t,” Billie admits thoughtfully, “and she’s special to me to me in ways that you aren’t. The drawback in this thing is I can’t marry you.”
“I know,” Tré replies casually, even though he didn’t.
“It would be hysterical if I could though, huh,” Billie laughs and leans forward on tattoed arms to kiss Tré messily. “You should get married. All the cool kids are doing it.”
“Maybe,” Tré says. He has a girlfriend too, he remembers in the back of his mind. And he thinks about it.
4. Twenty-Six
Some nights on tour they sleep in separate beds. Billie is too tired to walk after most shows, much less have sex. Things like cuts and bruises begin taking longer to heal, and Billie is finding it harder to regenerate.
“We need to stop,” he says in a worried tone one night on speed. “I need to stop moving for awhile.”
The Insomniac tour is cut short. They take a three-week break. Billie spends it with his family, while Tré pays bills and finalizes his divorce. They don’t even talk on the phone, though Tré gets coffee with Mike every day.
“He hasn’t called me either,” Mike says between sips of a café latte. “He needs to make up for lost time with Adie, you know?”
“I know,” Tré replies. He taps a familiar beat on the plastic lid to his chai tea and changes the subject. “I met a girl last night at a bar. Her name was Claudia.”
When they see each other again, Billie has stubble on his chin, a smile on his face and weed in his pocket.
“You should’ve seen Joey the other day, man,” Billie laughs when lighting up. “He was just screaming and destroying everything, and running around, and I don’t know, I felt pride, man. He’s turning into such a little hellspawn, it’s inspiring.”
He sighs wistfully and smokes for a while in the studio. Tré thinks Billie has changed over three weeks in a way he can’t define. He forgets about it when Billie drags him to the bathroom and fucks him over the sink counter.
Nimrod is written. The music sounds polished, yet dirty, and Tré loves it. It reminds Tré that he still has the devotion to the music as much as his band mates.
When the tour starts, everything is fine. The only problem they have is that when they aren’t playing, Billie’s on the phone to his wife and kids. It reminds Tré of the phonebills he would get in ninety-two when Billie shared his grungy apartment and would be restless if he hadn’t talked to Adrienne in twenty-four hours.
After awhile, Billie begins discussing the new words Joey is learning instead of the lyrics he should be writing. His biggest concern suddenly becomes finding the best place to buy Cubans, because Adrienne is pregnant again and the world will end if he doesn’t have the perfect cigar for the occasion. Billie’s smallest concern becomes what happens to Green Day after the Nimrod tour, and the growing gap between the three of them.
Mike admits, “I don’t know, man. I’ve never seen him like this before either.”
It’s when Tré doesn’t get laid for a week that they both snap. Billie gives him a handjob after getting off the phone with Adrienne, and says afterwards, “you know, man, I think I’m happy with where I am in life right now. It’s hard though, ‘cause I go onstage every night and have to play Good Riddance, and I don’t feel it. I don’t feel it at all anymore.”
Tré laughs and reaches for his cigarettes on the windowsill he’s leaning against. Billie raises his eyebrows.
“What? Dude, I’m trying to be deep here.”
“Bill,” Tré says. He coughs when he inhales. “Don’t you think it’s funny, in like, the worst sense of the word, that the first time you mention your own music in the past few weeks is in this totally degrading way?”
Billie shrugs. “No.”
They bathe in silence and smoke and dim hotel lighting for a while. Tré asks, “really?”
“Yeah, man, really.”
“I think you’re an ass,” Tré mutters.
Billie laughs a bit this time. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Tré inhales again and sighs, “I think you’re ruining us.” He doesn’t specify ‘us’, but it could be any relationship he and Billie have ever had, he figures. Billie stops laughing.
“Us?” Billie unfortunately needs specifications. “Are we talking about the band, or-“
“Why not?” Tré cuts him off. “What happened to our music and lifestyle, Bill? I don’t mind you being Adie’s fucking wife on your own time. And I’m not here to govern your life, because like fuck I can run my own, alright? But right now, the way you’re devoting one-hundred percent to her and Joey, we’re falling apart. Have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to you, me, and Mike after this tour?”
Billie pauses and his head tilts to the side in thought. “I want to be a dad,” he replies. His voice sounds a little weak, but maybe it’s just because of Tré’s cigarettes.
“And that’s great, fine,” Tré tells him, “but you’ve got a job too, dude. Most dads do. I would know. I’m one. I’m not the best example, but I still fucking know that there’s a line in my life that separates the band and my own family. You can’t choose one and still expect the other to happen, I know that. And now I see you fucking up with the band, like I fucked up with Lisea and Ramona.”
Billie’s mouth twitches, and there’s so many things he wants to say. He is unfortunately a man with more tact than Tré, however, so he takes his time trying to reply. He settles on, “I’m better than that.”
Tré taps some ashes onto Billie’s arm in warning and says, “Dude, you’re so far from, it’s ridiculous. You already said it, you’re not feeling it anymore.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Billie suddenly snaps. Tré flinches a bit and leans one inch away. “What the fuck do you want from me, Tré? Do you want to see me never grow up? Do you want me to fuck up my relationship with my wife and kids in your reflection? Do you want me, or do you want a fucking divorce? Is that it?”
Tré knows that at the end of the day, Billie will always choose Adrienne over anything else. Tré knows from too many nights with an intoxicated Bilie, that those two have more than love going for them; they have fucking fate and red strings attached. And Tré knows that he’ll never be able to cut those strings.
What Tré has with Billie is the it. Tré feels as if he's just something different that makes Billie feel like he’s still rebellious and misunderstood.
“Fuck this,” Tré says. It takes him a few minutes to stand up and walk away and not strangle Billie or himself. He leaves a somewhat confused, but much more pissed, Billie Joe Armstrong with a parting gesture of the middle finger. He knocks on the door of the neighboring room, because he knows Mike is in there with some really good LSD or pot that he can get himself lost in for awhile, and stop thinking about why he had to go and fuck things up so badly.
When Mike sees Tré’s face when he opens the door, he just rolls his eyes. Tré smiles at Mike and raises his eyebrows. Mike turns around, and Tré follows him in. They find themselves on Mike’s bed absolutely doped up, very much clothed, and bitching.
“What was the name of that girl you saw a few times before we left? Caroline? C-um-Caaa-Clafouti?”
“Claudia, dude,” Tré replies. He hits Mike over the head with a pillow.
“You should give her a call,” Mike says into the pillow. He starts munching it.
Tré laughs, and thinks, why not? She didn’t seem half bad the times they met at the bar. And a steady relationship with a girl would be better than what he has going for him now. “We’ll see.”
5. Twenty-Nine
Tré wakes up at three in the morning. His head rests against the porcelain of a toilet bowl and threatens to break open. Something is vibrating against his leg, and as he opens his eyes, his vision swims. When his sight begins clearing up, he realizes the vibrating is his cellphone.
He manages to hit the ‘answer’ button on his phone and throw up in the toilet at the same time. Under different circumstances, ones not involving being half-drunk and half-hungover and confused as fuck-all, he would admire himself for such multitasking.
“Tré?” the voice is fuzzy, and distant, but definitely Billie. The panic in his voice makes noises like static in the phone. He’s shouting, “Tré?”
“Yeah, dude,” Tré replies loudly in a voice that echoes off unfamiliar bathroom walls, “I’m here. What’s up?”
The volume on his phone isn’t set that high, so Billie is obviously shouting his throat dry when he asks, “where the fuck are you?” because Tré can hear him fine and clear.
Tré reaches down and feels for the phone and brings it up to his ear. His chin rests on the toilet seat, and he can feel his stomach getting ready to disagree with him again. He sighs into the phone a little. “I think I’m at a hotel. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours-- you called me at like, eleven, bombed to hell. And Claudia called us a bit before that, and she sounded kind of worried and kind of pissed, and what the hell is going on, man?”
Tré has to pause and think: Claudia. They had a fight. They had a fight that was over something bigger than what they were eating for dinner or Frankito or taxes or anything else they usually fight about.
“I think I fucked up, man,” Tré replies. He can’t talk about it, over the phone, to Billie. He can barely think about it. He throws up again. God, what did he drink? He’s afraid to leave the bathroom to see what kind of mess he made by himself.
“What hotel are you at?” Billie asks. Tré snorts.
“Fuck if I know. A cheap one.”
“Tell me, now.” He can hear Billie tapping something impatiently in the background. ”Before you kill yourself.”
Tré eventually gets up and out and tells him, and realizes that he’s out in a Motel 8 in the boondocks. Billie hangs up as soon as Tré gives him his room number, and Tré just hopes to fuck that his stupidity didn’t have Billie keeping Adrienne or the kids up.
The hotel room is trashed. There is no other word for it, and even ‘trashed’ is a bit of an understatement. There are bottles everywhere, and Tré figures he must’ve bought out an entire liquor store before he came here, but he can’t remember that far back. There’s vomit on the walls, and the TV is on the floor.
Tré waits, because he has a feeling that Billie is coming to yell at him and and play the role of the careless, selfless fuck of a friend who is ‘just concerned’, who Tré feels he doesn’t deserve. He drinks and waits, because not all of the bottles on the floor are empty yet. Finally, there’s a knock at the door, and Tré opens it to find Billie. He’s illuminated in the night by a really cheap lamp hanging next to the door, and he looks tired, and a little old.
“Your eyes are red,” Tré says, pointing with a beer in his hand.
Billie shrugs and just stares with this look that seems to be filled with unbalanced heartbreak, as if he’s blaming himself for whatever happened. He doesn’t even know. “Your eyes are redder.”
Tré laughs, and finds himself sort of falling against the doorway. He never said he was graceful. “Good point.”
And Billie says, “you need to lay down.”
Billie has never seen Tré this drunk, while remaining sober. He’s not sure how to deal with it. He holds Tré, and half-carries him over to the bed. He kicks the assorted booze bottles off the sheets, and tears off the comforter that’s ruined past recognition. They lay down together on the soggy sheets.
“Have you been trying to reach me all night?” Tré asks. He closes his eyes, and the world starts slowing down.
“Ever since you called, yeah,” Billie replies. He remains staring at Tré helplessly.
“I’m sorry.”
Billie says, “no,” and then after a pause, “I’m sorry.”
“Dude,” Tré slurs, “you don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.”
“Are you and Claudia over?”
“Not yet, no,” Tré sighs. “I don’t think she realizes that we even will be. But I can see it happening, man. After that fight, I know where we’re going to end up.”
“What was the fight about?” Billie presses.
“I told her about the next tour, and she went like, fucking ballistic. She doesn’t want me on the road anymore, and she doesn’t think I should work anymore, and she just doesn’t understand how music is my life-how everything up until now that I practically breathe in life relates to the music. And if she can’t understand, I just know it’s not going to work between us. I just feel like shit for not realizing it soon enough.”
“No one knew if Green Day would stay together or not when you guys hooked up,” Billie counters softly, “no one can blame you for the back-up you made for yourself.”
Claudia really was a back-up, and a bit of an escape. Tré giggles, and tries to sing like Cher, “if I could turn back time!” It barely holds Cher’s oomph or crazy vibrato though.
Billie pulls him closer on the bed, close enough that it feels like they’re melding together. Some part of Tré remembers feeling this way ten years ago in a cheap bunk bed in the back of a makeshift tour bus.
“You can do so much better than her,” he hears Billie say. His voice cracks a little. He sounds sincere. He sounds at fault. He sounds like more than just a friend who just left his wife and kids in the middle of the night to deal with a drunken drummer with relationship issues. Tré kisses him. Tré tastes like battery acid and vodka, but Billie kisses back anyways.
Billie says, “God, I’m such an asshole. I wondered if we would ever do this again.”
I did too, Tré thinks. He can’t speak right now, just speculate over the things in life that made it build up to this point. Forget about Claudia and just question, why can’t I ever do better than you?
6. Thirty
Light works its way through the semi-open window shades, painting patterns on Billie Joe. The way that Billie moves when Tré takes him into his mouth, with light and shadows going up and down his body in waves, makes everything worth it for Tré.
“Don’t fucking stop,” Billie slurs. He grips Tré’s hair, rough and needy
Tré lazily sucks on the head of Billie’s cock, licking and stopping and going faster exactly where Billie likes him to. He grips Billie’s waist, hands pressed lightly over the inked number 80. He tries not to mean anything by it, and Billie doesn’t notice. Instead, Tré presses down and digs his chipped fingernails into the skin, and Billie thrusts into his mouth, breathing, “faster, now.”
The atmosphere breaks when the tour bus they’re in shakes. Tré almost pauses, but Billie opens one eye and says, “don’t stop,” again. They can hear someone walking through the bus to their room, and Tré’s blood near freezes when he hears Adrienne’s voice call out, “Billie?”
“Keep going,” Billie warns, and Tré wonders how crazy he is as he sucks down Billie’s shaft.
The door opens.
“Billie?” Adrienne says again, looking into the room. Tré wonders how it looks to her, her husband spread out for another man. It sort of turns him on, but he’s afraid of the current silence, and does Billie really not want him to stop?
“Hey,” Billie gasps, “Adie.”
“I’ll make it quick. Billie, Tom is on a rampage saying you owe him fifty dollars, and he’ll probably be here in ten minutes looking for you. Tré, Claudia is about to have an aneurysm because she lost sight of you.”
“Anything else?” Tré looks at Billie, and Billie is staring with foggy eyes at his wife. He sees Adrienne’s reflection in a TV screen next to the bed. She’s smiling with arms folded and leaning in the doorway. He watches her reflection while Billie presses Tré’s face forward, physically begging him to continue.
“Floodgates open at six,” Adrienne replies, “you should start warming up in an hour.”
“Thanks,” Billie murmurs. He’s arching a bit, and grabbing the sheets next to him with his other hand.
“Anytime,” Adrienne says. She winks at Billie before leaving. Billie makes a sound in the back of his throat and comes into Tré’s mouth as if on cue. Tré thinks he can hear Adrienne laugh when she leaves.
7. Thirty-One
Most nights are spent at the studio after Cigarettes and Valentines gets stolen. The band is hit with a sudden drive and inspiration and passion that they haven’t felt for years. It’s about the music again, about themselves, and nobody else.
Tré and Billie fuck a lot more than they probably should. Fucking is easy and convenient and filled with a lot of the same youthful sentiments they’ve been feeling lately. There are too many nights when the crew leaves, and Mike leaves, and they find themselves alone in a private studio. They find themselves fucking for long periods of time, and falling asleep on sofas and waking up the next morning still alone in the studio, and fucking again. Billie draws inspiration from it, dirty, raw inspiration.
Adrienne arrives at the studio one day. When Tré first lays eyes on her, he realizes that what is happening now-the recording, the best and worst time of his life-won’t last forever.
“Tré,” she says in a way of greeting. She’s lounging on a beaten sofa in the studio, drinking Starbucks and wearing sunglasses in the dark. Her hair is messy less out of fashion and more out of exhaust.
“Adrienne,” he says and twirls a drumstick towards her. “You’re here awfully early on a Sunday morning. Shouldn’t you be in church, little missy?”
She smiles in her trademark heartbroken way, and Tré knows he’s fucked. Adrienne says, “it’s Thursday.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause, and Tré says, “oh. Must’ve lost track of time here.”
She sighs. “Listen, Tré. There was this time a few years ago when you and Claudia began having your problems, when I woke up one morning and I was alone. Billie didn’t mention any business, plans, he had nothing in the studio, and he didn’t leave a note.”
Tré knows where this is going. “I-“
“I was watching TV when he came back. He just reeked of alcohol. And I was like, ‘Billie, where the fuck did you go last night?’ And he dropped his keys on the counter and gave me the most pathetic, guiltiest face I’ve ever seen in my entire life. So, I thought he was cheating on me.”
Tré is silent. There’s nothing he can really say at this point.
She shifts on her seat and looks him dead in the eyes. “He told me what happened. Not just that night, but the entire history. I mean, definitely the abridged version, but you get what I’m saying, right?” She inhales, exhales. “I had a feeling he’d been screwing you or Mike from the get-go, if not both of you, you know? And you’re not another girl trying to ruin my relationship with my husband. He’s known you as long, if not longer than me, anyways. He told me about that night, and I couldn’t care less. He probably would’ve gone to you regardless of your relationship.”
Tré starts to say, “but it’s not-“
“It’s not what you think it is either, Tré. I might be his wife, but he still cares about you in a way he’ll never care about me. I totally accept that. Don’t think otherwise.”
“I never said I didn’t,” Tré replies. “But if I have your blessing for what-the-fuck-ever Billie and I do, then why-“
“Because now you’re taking him away from me,” Adrienne cuts him off. She sounds a little dangerous, which is part of her charm. “In the past few months, he’s only come home for less than a day at a time. Joey and Jakob have asked if we’ve divorced, or if he’s died numerous times. I feel like he’s cutting himself off from us. And it’s going to sound childish, but it’s not fair, Tré. After this, he starts publicity and touring. We rarely see him through that either. You’ll probably share the same bed.”
Tré goes to sit down next to her. Some days he wishes he were her mistress instead of Billie’s. He says, “Adie, this isn’t entirely about me and him, you know? He’s putting all of his heart into the music right now. I don’t think either of us were spared being isolated from his actual emotions.”
She absorbs his words for a moment and nods. “You still see it though. He’s still letting you in on what he’s feeling.”
Adrienne is a girl, Tré thinks, and for the record so is he. “Maybe you should talk to him about it then.”
“I plan to,” Adrienne says. “But I thought we were long overdue for this chat, and maybe you needed to hear this too.”
He gives her a hug and says, “I’m sorry this happened. You don’t deserve this.”
She kisses his cheek and pulls away. “Never apologize for falling in love.”
“Adie-“
“Denial won’t fix anything either.” She stands up. “Billie and I need to talk now. I’ll leave you to whatever business you came in here for.”
She walks to the door when Tré stops her. “Adie, wait,” he calls from the chair. “Does this mean threesomes aren’t out of the question anymore?”
Adrienne smiles as she opens the door and lets light into the dim studio. She says, “no way in hell, Cool,” and leaves.
She’s wearing combat boots that she’ll probably use to kick some sense into her husband, and Tré hears her clunky footsteps slowly fade until the door closes to the studio and shuts him in complete silence.
A weight seems to remove itself from his chest, and he pushes himself off the sofa and moves over towards the soundboard to start work as if no interruptions ever occurred.
8. Thirty-Two
The first time Billie realizes he’s in love with Tré-as in realizes and accepts it-is when American Idiot is released.
Tré calls him the day of, in between a million business calls and press arrangements. He sounds amazed and out of breath. He greets Billie with a simple, “hey.”
“Hey!” Billie echoes. “Can you believe it?”
Tré says, “our sweat and blood is the number one selling record in America, this is the most unreal thing to ever happen in my life, dude.”
Billie realizes he hasn’t seen Tré since filming for the American Idiot video wrapped, and all he really wants to say is, “I miss you.”
“Yeah,” is what he says blankly instead, “I know.”
On Tré’s side of the line, there’s a crash a phone ringing, and the resonance of Frankito screaming. Tré curses to himself and tells Billie, “hey, man, I’ve got to go. Matters of life and death, of course. But I’ll see you in a few days.”
Billie says, a little reluctantly, “night, don’t have a fucking aneurysm.”
“Right.” Tré laughs. “Later. Love you.”
Then he hangs up, and Billie is left biting his tongue thinking over the words he was about to say. Billie wonders if it’s just a reflex-saying “I love you” over the phone- of if it’s something genuine from his subconscious that he’s said a million times before and just never noticed. He tries to forget what Tré just said, and what he was about to say, but he goes to bed that night with his mind wrapped around it. Adrienne shifts, asleep in his arms, and something uncomfortable settles in his stomach.
A voice in his head tells him, “you never tried to stop it from happening.”
Billie finds the scariest thing is that it’s the truth, and that he really doesn’t mind feeling this way at all.
9. Thirty-Six
Joey has seen his dad drunk before; he knows that Billie will go around and make out with all the boys (except for him or Jakob, like oh my god ew! As his girlfriend would say). He knows a lot of people’s dads aren’t like his. But he knows and understands his dad’s philosophies on sexuality, so it doesn’t bother him. He’s seen his dad at concerts, backstage, high off adrenaline, and he’s seen his dad party like the world is about to end. He’s also seen the most love in his life passed in a glance between his dad and mom. Joey knows they’re in love, and nothing would make him doubt that.
The day he walks into the kitchen to get a soda and finds his dad standing on his toes to kiss Tré Cool, who’s sitting on the counter, he’s not surprised in the slightest. He’s just a little confused. He gets the soda and taps the lid before opening. When he pulls back on the aluminum tab he says, “dad?”
They notice him, and Billie jumps about three feet away from Tré. Joey says, “please, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Tré leans back on his hands and surveys the older Armstrong freaking the fuck out because of the younger one’s presence. He wants to tell Billie to chill, and tell him that they were bound to find out eventually, but the way Billie’s in absolute shock makes him change his mind. Maybe Billie never meant for anyone else to find out, and all the fucking trials and tribulations Tré has gone through to have what he has with Billie mean absolutely nothing. He taps his fingers on the counter and jumps off. Introspection has made his good mood disappear.
“I’m going to have a smoke,” he says. Billie can go fuck himself trying to explain this to Joey.
He’s out back and on his second cigarette when Billie joins him. Billie says, “we need to stop ignoring what we have.”
Tré asks, “when have I ever done that?”
Billie corrects himself, “fine, I need to stop ignoring what we have.”
“What went down between you and Joey?”
“He asked if everything was okay, and I was like, ‘I’m not sure.’ And I told him I love his mother very much, and he says, ‘I already knew that, I was talking about you and uncle Tré,’ in this really snarky vice. He was like, ‘what’s going on between you two?’”
Tré stubs his cigarette out on the Armstrong’s porch. He inquires, “so, Billie, what is going on between you and Tré Cool?”
“I don’t know,” Billie replies. “When I told Adrienne about this I said it was a thing. I said, he’s part of my band, so he’s part of me, and I just have to go to him sometimes. I told her I loved her, but I said, ‘I care about him too.’ She seemed to get it. But since then, it’s changed, you know? I can’t put it into words anymore, and I’ve just been trying to ignore the fact that maybe this isn’t some stupid friends-with-benefits thing we started when we were young, you know?”
Billie says, “I find myself awake at night because I can’t choose between you and Adrienne. I find myself caring more than I ever have in my entire life.”
Tré lights a third cigarette and asks, “is that a monologue from somewhere?”
“Fuck you,” Billie says.
“It’s one of the things I do best,” Tré replies.
Billie smiles at him in a way that means ‘I hate to love you.’ Tré shoves his hands in his pockets and leans back and forth and waits for any kind of comeback.
“We need to sort this out,” Billie tells him. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do about our relationship.”
“I think you should talk to Adrienne,” Tré responds. “She deserves to hear about what you’re thinking more than everyone else.”
Billie pulls one of Tré’s hands out of his pockets, and holds it, saying, “no, not everyone.”
10. Forty
Green Day stops touring completely two albums after American Idiot. It’s a hard decision to make, a thought-out decision like it had been when they signed to Reprise.
Billie states in an interview, “but we never said we’d stop making music. Music isn’t a part of our lives, it is our lives, you know? We are each other’s lives. We’d be nothing without the music or band.”
The interviewer doesn’t feel it’s necessary to put in details like Billie and Tré’s hands resting on each other’s, or the way Mike constantly rolls his eyes at them.
Tré says, “The Beatles made their best records after they stopped touring. I think that immortalized their image a lot. I would rather be seen like that more than say like, the Rolling Stones. I don’t want people coming to see me ‘cause my face looks like a potato sack. I just want people to like our music, and they can do that without seeing us make fools of ourselves onstage.”
Mike continues, “I doubt anyone wants to see Billie pretend to jack off during ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’ now anyway.”
“Yeah, Billie’s sex appeal is totally gone, there’s no reason to see us anymore,” Tré tells the interviewer. Billie snaps his fingers in mock-self pity. Tré pulls on the back of Billie’s shirt collar, and Billie falls back onto him. Billie doesn’t move, just snickers a little bit. Mike lights a cigarette. The interviewer wonders if it’s an inside joke.
“I think the point is that we’re happy doing what we’re doing now,” Billie summarizes.
“Yeah, I mean we started out making music for ourselves, and that’s how it’ll end,” Mike concludes. The others nod appreciatively, far gone are the days that they would do anything but.
The interviewer says, “fantastic. And our time is up, it’s been lovely chatting with you.”
There a few more formalities, before the interviewer packs up the tape recorder and pencil and pad of paper and the photographer leaves with him. The boys are left in the rented hotel suite of the private conference alone. Mike turns to the two sitting opposite him on a cushy sofa.
He says, “why didn’t you just pull down your pants and fuck each other silly in front of him? Jesus Christ.”
Tré sighs. “I would, but Adie has him for the rest of the month. It’s not fair for me to take advantage of Billie and have fabulous sex with him in front of interviewers on her time.”
“That, and we forgot the lube,” Billie finishes. Tré snickers and kisses Billie on the side of his forehead, which is the most Tré’s allowed for the next few days.
Mike whines, “stop it, before I’m never able to have sex again without thinking of you two doing it.”
Billie rolls over onto Tré’s lap, straddling the drummer. He raises an eyebrow and lowers his voice, saying, “you know you just want in on the action.”
And Tré pushes him off, laughing, “now you’re being an ass to both of us.”
Billie falls to the floor, and Mike’s cell phone goes off. He looks at it to see ‘Hero’ flashing on the front, and flips it open.
“I’ve got to take this,” he mouths, and gets up to go in the next room.
Billie sits back and his head sinks into the couch cushions and he stares at Tré. Tré looks back down at him, eyebrows raised in anticipation and feeling a twinge of deja-vu.
Billie asks, “do you remember the first time we met?”
“No,” Tré says blandly.
Billie gets up off the floor and climbs on the couch. He lays down supine with his head in Tré’s lap and sighs. “I have a feeling it was a lot like this.”
Tré smirks in his trademark mischievous way. “Except with a lot more drugs.”
Billie chuckles, and it fades into Mike’s muted voice from the other room, and cars driving down on the street. Time is progressing, though they both try to disregard it. They don’t move away from each other until they absolutely have to.
END.
--sapporonoodles
Pairing: Tré/Billie
Word Count: 7,228
Disclaimer: I own no person used in this story. This is a work of fiction, and any real event parallel to an event in the following is purely coincidental.
Notes: I started writing this at the end of last December. cosmicdancer has been there every step of the way, constantly editing and re-editing. This would be nothing without Xan's effort and advice. This is a story of love, and lust, and Green Day-- needless to say, it contains sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Feeback is appreciated.
1. Eighteen
Billie Joe gets really acquainted with Tré for the first time when he’s eighteen and their then-two-bit band needs a new drummer. He really likes Tré, the guy is funny and represents and can play the drums well and is just really fucking cool. Hell, his last name is-
“Cool,” Billie breathes out with a shitload of smoke. “This is really good.”
Tré is busy being absorbed by the couch, and where the fuck did Mike go? “Glad you like it. I like it too.”
Billie is on the floor against the couch, carpet crawling through the gaps between his toes. His head rolls against the cushions, left, right, and then forward in half circles. “I wasn’t talking about that-well, I was. But you want to be our drummer? I was talking more about that. We could seriously use you.”
“Good to know,” Tré replies. “Yeah, I’d like to. I don’t have much else going for me right now.”
Billie smiles a bit to himself, passing the blunt back up to Tré. His head rolls a bit to the right and he looks up and stays like that. Tré’s fingers scratch against his own chin stubble when taking a hit, and he looks so fucking Zen. Billie likes just listening to the small noises and the sound of the both of them breathing. He likes the way Tré’s thin lips fold over the end of the joint where his had just been. Hell, he likes Tré’s mouth in general.
“Indirect kiss,” he says. Tré raises an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, giving the joint an inquisitive glance.
“Oh yeah,” Billie repeats in reply. He’s giving Tré bug-eyes, as if, didn’t you know? Fuck that they might’ve been sharing this stupid smoke for awhile now. There’s a pause, and Billie takes advantage of the moment to grab Tré by the collar and lift himself up and press his lips against Tré’s, making the silence last a bit longer. Listening to the sighs and scratching of chin stubble; absorbing the smoke in each other’s mouths. Billie likes it; he likes guys, and acting on an impulse he’s never acted on before. He blames Tré for just being so fucking cool about everything. Though Tré’s not resisting, and doesn’t break away until Billie does.
“Direct kiss?” Tré suggests, rubbing at his bottom lip, which Billie had been sucking on only seconds before.
“Oh,” Billie replies, not understanding it himself, “yeah.”
“For a songwriter, your vocabulary’s shit. I’d suggest working on that.” Tré puts the blunt to Billie’s lips and smiles.
2. Twenty
They sleep in the bookmobile a lot. Fans offer them places in spare bedrooms and living rooms to sleep after gigs, but more often than not, the fans are as crazy or crazier than them.
The bookmobile rocks as Tré opens the door and enters and closes the door behind him. Billie looks up from his bunk and sheets of magazines and plastic bags. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Some dog peed on the couch,” Tré sighs, before adding, “while I was sleeping on it.”
“Shitty,” Billie replies in a voice that’s cracked from singing and smoking and exhaustion. He rolls onto his side so he can see Tré a little better, as Tré moves to the back, tripping over everything in between the Bookmobile door and bunk area in the dark.
“Yeah. Did a dog pee on your couch too, or what?” Tré asks with a bit of humor, but fatigue to match Billie’s. Billie shakes his head.
“Naw, I woke up and this chick was giving me a blowjob.”
Tré makes it to the back alive and sets himself on the bunk next to Billie. They’re lying next to each other and breathing warm air and pressed together because there’s absolutely no room. Common Logic would tell Tré that another bunk would be more comfortable, but Common Logic hasn’t shared a bed with Billie Joe Armstrong before.
“What, and you left? That doesn’t sound like you,” Tré smiles against Billie’s cheek.
“Well, I let her finish first before I did.” Billie’s eyes are closed now, Tré realizes, feeling the boy’s eyelashes brush across his face when he shifts. “I just didn’t want to go back to sleep and wake up tomorrow and have a condom fall out of my ass.”
Tré laughs. “Better than no condom at all.”
Billie laughs too, and it’s the last thing they hear for a while as Billie moves a little, arm digging into Tré’s side as his hand cups Tré’s cheek, kissing Tré softly on the mouth. Tré feels the ache of something euphoric and painful settling in his chest,
Billie and Tré have been doing something everyone calls It for a while now-It being an undefined thing, which could mean kissing, or drugs, or sex or all of the above. No one outside them knows exactly what It defines, and cannot accuse, congratulate or shrug it off, but only acknowledge It’s existence.
Tré sometimes laughs and calls It a relationship. He remembers one night not long ago involving an overabundance of weed (is there such a thing?) and just enough eye drops to not see straight when he laughed in an interview on the street and said, “I’ve never had a girlfriend. Actually, I have a boyfriend.”
Billie laughed later, in between bitemarks on Tré’s neck, and asked, “so, who is he?”
And now, Tré sighs while Billie reopens all the scabs with his teeth and decides that there is no needed definition between them, like there is between Billie and Adrienne. And it’s good, and convenient. Billie can still be between him and a wall, reaching down Tré’s sweatpants to stroke his cock, not because it’s what boyfriends do, but because it’s what people who give two shits about each other do.
3. Twenty-Two
Tré opens the door at one in the afternoon. He’s wearing boxers and a t-shirt leftover from the eighties. He smells like coffee and weed and whiskey. Billie embraces it.
“You’re back,” Tré greets, a little surprised.
“I’m back,” Billie replies. He has his hands in his pockets and shrugs, but he’s smiling. “Adrienne’s out with Mike right now, since he apparently found a good coffee shop when we were gone.”
“Oh?” Tré says.
“They should be gone for a few hours.”
Tré supposes he should feel guilty when he pulls Billie inside his apartment and kicks the door shut. But he also supposes it’s no harm done if Billie doesn’t feel guilty about being the one propositioning himself in the first place.
“Mike is really thoughtful,” Tré says as he slams Billie between him and the hallway wall. Billie has his arms wrapped around Tré’s waist, under Tré’s shirt.
“He’s a saint.”
“Or just a martyr for the cause,” Tré replies. “Don’t push it.”
“Oh, I’ll totally push it,” Billie laughs. He twists them around and walks Tré backwards into the living room. Billie sucks and bites Tré’s lower lip, and pushes Tré down on the beaten sofa. They break away when Billie pulls Tré’s shirt off.
“You’re never sexually satisfied, are you?” Tré laughs, muffled. Billie throws the shirt across the room and gives him a deep look.
“I missed you?” he suggests for an answer.
“Billie, you called me for phonesex when Adrienne had to go to the convenience store for more condoms. You were on your honeymoon for less than a week.”
“Well,” Billie says, looking away and focusing on getting his own shirt off. “ I guess you know the answer to your question then.”
Billie kisses Tré, so they don’t have to talk so much, and slides Tré's boxers off. Preparation is a manual, memorized thing. Billie has at least three condoms in his pocket, and Tré has lube buried under the couch cushions where spare change is usually found. Billie lies down on Tré’s chest and wraps his arms around the drummer, simultaneously digging between the creases of the sofa under Tré’s back. He laughs into Tré’s neck with victory when he finds it.
“I really did miss this,” Billie says, pants off and coating his cock with lube. He looks seedy, but silly, and Tré wonders for a brief second what Billie’s philosophy on love and sex is.
Billie folds Tré’s body into thirds, legs up and calves over Billie’s shoulders. Billie fucks Tré face-to-face and drives Tré’s back into a spiring. They don’t kiss, but Billie bites because the darker color of Tré’s lips during sex demand it. Tré digs the simplicity of their sex, and laughs a bit into the pain; it feels different and real when he’s sober.
Billie shudders into Tré when they both get off. Tré is seeing stars and can barely make out Billie arching and shaking; falling into him. The ring on Billie’s finger buries itself into Tré’s side with Billie’s grip. It takes them a few seconds to remember that they exist.
“Mmm,” Billie grumbles, completely deflated. He glances down at the cut the ring left with a frown. “You alright?”
“I’ve had worse,” Tré laughs a bit weakly. “You would know.”
Billie smiles a bit. “You sure you don’t want me to kiss it better? Lick it clean for you?”
“Oh god,” Tré groans. “Don’t start a blood fetish with me, Billie. You’ll turn into one of those kids that thinks he’s a vampire and hangs out at all the goth clubs, and we’ll lose you forever.”
Billie shrugs, and runs a finger over the cut anyways. It’s really small, just a little blood. “You know what, Tré?”
“What, Bill?” Tré asks, and curls one of Billie’s dredlocks around his finger.
“You’re a dumbass.”
“You think it’s the drugs?” Tré suggests, with a hint of sarcasm and concern.
Billie shakes his head. “Nah.”
Silence leaves the two naked and Billie getting his hair twisted by Tré. Billie gives the cut on Tré’s side a glance holding some sort of emptiness. “You’re really okay?”
“Yeah, it’s barely a scratch, man. Stop flipping out.” Tré’s voice is distant.
“I’m not talking about that, Tré.” Tré feels something cold running along his arm and sees Billie’s hand with the wedding band that cut his side, sliding upwards. Tré remembers, right, and hurts a little.
“You’re special to me in ways she isn’t,” Billie admits thoughtfully, “and she’s special to me to me in ways that you aren’t. The drawback in this thing is I can’t marry you.”
“I know,” Tré replies casually, even though he didn’t.
“It would be hysterical if I could though, huh,” Billie laughs and leans forward on tattoed arms to kiss Tré messily. “You should get married. All the cool kids are doing it.”
“Maybe,” Tré says. He has a girlfriend too, he remembers in the back of his mind. And he thinks about it.
4. Twenty-Six
Some nights on tour they sleep in separate beds. Billie is too tired to walk after most shows, much less have sex. Things like cuts and bruises begin taking longer to heal, and Billie is finding it harder to regenerate.
“We need to stop,” he says in a worried tone one night on speed. “I need to stop moving for awhile.”
The Insomniac tour is cut short. They take a three-week break. Billie spends it with his family, while Tré pays bills and finalizes his divorce. They don’t even talk on the phone, though Tré gets coffee with Mike every day.
“He hasn’t called me either,” Mike says between sips of a café latte. “He needs to make up for lost time with Adie, you know?”
“I know,” Tré replies. He taps a familiar beat on the plastic lid to his chai tea and changes the subject. “I met a girl last night at a bar. Her name was Claudia.”
When they see each other again, Billie has stubble on his chin, a smile on his face and weed in his pocket.
“You should’ve seen Joey the other day, man,” Billie laughs when lighting up. “He was just screaming and destroying everything, and running around, and I don’t know, I felt pride, man. He’s turning into such a little hellspawn, it’s inspiring.”
He sighs wistfully and smokes for a while in the studio. Tré thinks Billie has changed over three weeks in a way he can’t define. He forgets about it when Billie drags him to the bathroom and fucks him over the sink counter.
Nimrod is written. The music sounds polished, yet dirty, and Tré loves it. It reminds Tré that he still has the devotion to the music as much as his band mates.
When the tour starts, everything is fine. The only problem they have is that when they aren’t playing, Billie’s on the phone to his wife and kids. It reminds Tré of the phonebills he would get in ninety-two when Billie shared his grungy apartment and would be restless if he hadn’t talked to Adrienne in twenty-four hours.
After awhile, Billie begins discussing the new words Joey is learning instead of the lyrics he should be writing. His biggest concern suddenly becomes finding the best place to buy Cubans, because Adrienne is pregnant again and the world will end if he doesn’t have the perfect cigar for the occasion. Billie’s smallest concern becomes what happens to Green Day after the Nimrod tour, and the growing gap between the three of them.
Mike admits, “I don’t know, man. I’ve never seen him like this before either.”
It’s when Tré doesn’t get laid for a week that they both snap. Billie gives him a handjob after getting off the phone with Adrienne, and says afterwards, “you know, man, I think I’m happy with where I am in life right now. It’s hard though, ‘cause I go onstage every night and have to play Good Riddance, and I don’t feel it. I don’t feel it at all anymore.”
Tré laughs and reaches for his cigarettes on the windowsill he’s leaning against. Billie raises his eyebrows.
“What? Dude, I’m trying to be deep here.”
“Bill,” Tré says. He coughs when he inhales. “Don’t you think it’s funny, in like, the worst sense of the word, that the first time you mention your own music in the past few weeks is in this totally degrading way?”
Billie shrugs. “No.”
They bathe in silence and smoke and dim hotel lighting for a while. Tré asks, “really?”
“Yeah, man, really.”
“I think you’re an ass,” Tré mutters.
Billie laughs a bit this time. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Tré inhales again and sighs, “I think you’re ruining us.” He doesn’t specify ‘us’, but it could be any relationship he and Billie have ever had, he figures. Billie stops laughing.
“Us?” Billie unfortunately needs specifications. “Are we talking about the band, or-“
“Why not?” Tré cuts him off. “What happened to our music and lifestyle, Bill? I don’t mind you being Adie’s fucking wife on your own time. And I’m not here to govern your life, because like fuck I can run my own, alright? But right now, the way you’re devoting one-hundred percent to her and Joey, we’re falling apart. Have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to you, me, and Mike after this tour?”
Billie pauses and his head tilts to the side in thought. “I want to be a dad,” he replies. His voice sounds a little weak, but maybe it’s just because of Tré’s cigarettes.
“And that’s great, fine,” Tré tells him, “but you’ve got a job too, dude. Most dads do. I would know. I’m one. I’m not the best example, but I still fucking know that there’s a line in my life that separates the band and my own family. You can’t choose one and still expect the other to happen, I know that. And now I see you fucking up with the band, like I fucked up with Lisea and Ramona.”
Billie’s mouth twitches, and there’s so many things he wants to say. He is unfortunately a man with more tact than Tré, however, so he takes his time trying to reply. He settles on, “I’m better than that.”
Tré taps some ashes onto Billie’s arm in warning and says, “Dude, you’re so far from, it’s ridiculous. You already said it, you’re not feeling it anymore.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Billie suddenly snaps. Tré flinches a bit and leans one inch away. “What the fuck do you want from me, Tré? Do you want to see me never grow up? Do you want me to fuck up my relationship with my wife and kids in your reflection? Do you want me, or do you want a fucking divorce? Is that it?”
Tré knows that at the end of the day, Billie will always choose Adrienne over anything else. Tré knows from too many nights with an intoxicated Bilie, that those two have more than love going for them; they have fucking fate and red strings attached. And Tré knows that he’ll never be able to cut those strings.
What Tré has with Billie is the it. Tré feels as if he's just something different that makes Billie feel like he’s still rebellious and misunderstood.
“Fuck this,” Tré says. It takes him a few minutes to stand up and walk away and not strangle Billie or himself. He leaves a somewhat confused, but much more pissed, Billie Joe Armstrong with a parting gesture of the middle finger. He knocks on the door of the neighboring room, because he knows Mike is in there with some really good LSD or pot that he can get himself lost in for awhile, and stop thinking about why he had to go and fuck things up so badly.
When Mike sees Tré’s face when he opens the door, he just rolls his eyes. Tré smiles at Mike and raises his eyebrows. Mike turns around, and Tré follows him in. They find themselves on Mike’s bed absolutely doped up, very much clothed, and bitching.
“What was the name of that girl you saw a few times before we left? Caroline? C-um-Caaa-Clafouti?”
“Claudia, dude,” Tré replies. He hits Mike over the head with a pillow.
“You should give her a call,” Mike says into the pillow. He starts munching it.
Tré laughs, and thinks, why not? She didn’t seem half bad the times they met at the bar. And a steady relationship with a girl would be better than what he has going for him now. “We’ll see.”
5. Twenty-Nine
Tré wakes up at three in the morning. His head rests against the porcelain of a toilet bowl and threatens to break open. Something is vibrating against his leg, and as he opens his eyes, his vision swims. When his sight begins clearing up, he realizes the vibrating is his cellphone.
He manages to hit the ‘answer’ button on his phone and throw up in the toilet at the same time. Under different circumstances, ones not involving being half-drunk and half-hungover and confused as fuck-all, he would admire himself for such multitasking.
“Tré?” the voice is fuzzy, and distant, but definitely Billie. The panic in his voice makes noises like static in the phone. He’s shouting, “Tré?”
“Yeah, dude,” Tré replies loudly in a voice that echoes off unfamiliar bathroom walls, “I’m here. What’s up?”
The volume on his phone isn’t set that high, so Billie is obviously shouting his throat dry when he asks, “where the fuck are you?” because Tré can hear him fine and clear.
Tré reaches down and feels for the phone and brings it up to his ear. His chin rests on the toilet seat, and he can feel his stomach getting ready to disagree with him again. He sighs into the phone a little. “I think I’m at a hotel. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours-- you called me at like, eleven, bombed to hell. And Claudia called us a bit before that, and she sounded kind of worried and kind of pissed, and what the hell is going on, man?”
Tré has to pause and think: Claudia. They had a fight. They had a fight that was over something bigger than what they were eating for dinner or Frankito or taxes or anything else they usually fight about.
“I think I fucked up, man,” Tré replies. He can’t talk about it, over the phone, to Billie. He can barely think about it. He throws up again. God, what did he drink? He’s afraid to leave the bathroom to see what kind of mess he made by himself.
“What hotel are you at?” Billie asks. Tré snorts.
“Fuck if I know. A cheap one.”
“Tell me, now.” He can hear Billie tapping something impatiently in the background. ”Before you kill yourself.”
Tré eventually gets up and out and tells him, and realizes that he’s out in a Motel 8 in the boondocks. Billie hangs up as soon as Tré gives him his room number, and Tré just hopes to fuck that his stupidity didn’t have Billie keeping Adrienne or the kids up.
The hotel room is trashed. There is no other word for it, and even ‘trashed’ is a bit of an understatement. There are bottles everywhere, and Tré figures he must’ve bought out an entire liquor store before he came here, but he can’t remember that far back. There’s vomit on the walls, and the TV is on the floor.
Tré waits, because he has a feeling that Billie is coming to yell at him and and play the role of the careless, selfless fuck of a friend who is ‘just concerned’, who Tré feels he doesn’t deserve. He drinks and waits, because not all of the bottles on the floor are empty yet. Finally, there’s a knock at the door, and Tré opens it to find Billie. He’s illuminated in the night by a really cheap lamp hanging next to the door, and he looks tired, and a little old.
“Your eyes are red,” Tré says, pointing with a beer in his hand.
Billie shrugs and just stares with this look that seems to be filled with unbalanced heartbreak, as if he’s blaming himself for whatever happened. He doesn’t even know. “Your eyes are redder.”
Tré laughs, and finds himself sort of falling against the doorway. He never said he was graceful. “Good point.”
And Billie says, “you need to lay down.”
Billie has never seen Tré this drunk, while remaining sober. He’s not sure how to deal with it. He holds Tré, and half-carries him over to the bed. He kicks the assorted booze bottles off the sheets, and tears off the comforter that’s ruined past recognition. They lay down together on the soggy sheets.
“Have you been trying to reach me all night?” Tré asks. He closes his eyes, and the world starts slowing down.
“Ever since you called, yeah,” Billie replies. He remains staring at Tré helplessly.
“I’m sorry.”
Billie says, “no,” and then after a pause, “I’m sorry.”
“Dude,” Tré slurs, “you don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.”
“Are you and Claudia over?”
“Not yet, no,” Tré sighs. “I don’t think she realizes that we even will be. But I can see it happening, man. After that fight, I know where we’re going to end up.”
“What was the fight about?” Billie presses.
“I told her about the next tour, and she went like, fucking ballistic. She doesn’t want me on the road anymore, and she doesn’t think I should work anymore, and she just doesn’t understand how music is my life-how everything up until now that I practically breathe in life relates to the music. And if she can’t understand, I just know it’s not going to work between us. I just feel like shit for not realizing it soon enough.”
“No one knew if Green Day would stay together or not when you guys hooked up,” Billie counters softly, “no one can blame you for the back-up you made for yourself.”
Claudia really was a back-up, and a bit of an escape. Tré giggles, and tries to sing like Cher, “if I could turn back time!” It barely holds Cher’s oomph or crazy vibrato though.
Billie pulls him closer on the bed, close enough that it feels like they’re melding together. Some part of Tré remembers feeling this way ten years ago in a cheap bunk bed in the back of a makeshift tour bus.
“You can do so much better than her,” he hears Billie say. His voice cracks a little. He sounds sincere. He sounds at fault. He sounds like more than just a friend who just left his wife and kids in the middle of the night to deal with a drunken drummer with relationship issues. Tré kisses him. Tré tastes like battery acid and vodka, but Billie kisses back anyways.
Billie says, “God, I’m such an asshole. I wondered if we would ever do this again.”
I did too, Tré thinks. He can’t speak right now, just speculate over the things in life that made it build up to this point. Forget about Claudia and just question, why can’t I ever do better than you?
6. Thirty
Light works its way through the semi-open window shades, painting patterns on Billie Joe. The way that Billie moves when Tré takes him into his mouth, with light and shadows going up and down his body in waves, makes everything worth it for Tré.
“Don’t fucking stop,” Billie slurs. He grips Tré’s hair, rough and needy
Tré lazily sucks on the head of Billie’s cock, licking and stopping and going faster exactly where Billie likes him to. He grips Billie’s waist, hands pressed lightly over the inked number 80. He tries not to mean anything by it, and Billie doesn’t notice. Instead, Tré presses down and digs his chipped fingernails into the skin, and Billie thrusts into his mouth, breathing, “faster, now.”
The atmosphere breaks when the tour bus they’re in shakes. Tré almost pauses, but Billie opens one eye and says, “don’t stop,” again. They can hear someone walking through the bus to their room, and Tré’s blood near freezes when he hears Adrienne’s voice call out, “Billie?”
“Keep going,” Billie warns, and Tré wonders how crazy he is as he sucks down Billie’s shaft.
The door opens.
“Billie?” Adrienne says again, looking into the room. Tré wonders how it looks to her, her husband spread out for another man. It sort of turns him on, but he’s afraid of the current silence, and does Billie really not want him to stop?
“Hey,” Billie gasps, “Adie.”
“I’ll make it quick. Billie, Tom is on a rampage saying you owe him fifty dollars, and he’ll probably be here in ten minutes looking for you. Tré, Claudia is about to have an aneurysm because she lost sight of you.”
“Anything else?” Tré looks at Billie, and Billie is staring with foggy eyes at his wife. He sees Adrienne’s reflection in a TV screen next to the bed. She’s smiling with arms folded and leaning in the doorway. He watches her reflection while Billie presses Tré’s face forward, physically begging him to continue.
“Floodgates open at six,” Adrienne replies, “you should start warming up in an hour.”
“Thanks,” Billie murmurs. He’s arching a bit, and grabbing the sheets next to him with his other hand.
“Anytime,” Adrienne says. She winks at Billie before leaving. Billie makes a sound in the back of his throat and comes into Tré’s mouth as if on cue. Tré thinks he can hear Adrienne laugh when she leaves.
7. Thirty-One
Most nights are spent at the studio after Cigarettes and Valentines gets stolen. The band is hit with a sudden drive and inspiration and passion that they haven’t felt for years. It’s about the music again, about themselves, and nobody else.
Tré and Billie fuck a lot more than they probably should. Fucking is easy and convenient and filled with a lot of the same youthful sentiments they’ve been feeling lately. There are too many nights when the crew leaves, and Mike leaves, and they find themselves alone in a private studio. They find themselves fucking for long periods of time, and falling asleep on sofas and waking up the next morning still alone in the studio, and fucking again. Billie draws inspiration from it, dirty, raw inspiration.
Adrienne arrives at the studio one day. When Tré first lays eyes on her, he realizes that what is happening now-the recording, the best and worst time of his life-won’t last forever.
“Tré,” she says in a way of greeting. She’s lounging on a beaten sofa in the studio, drinking Starbucks and wearing sunglasses in the dark. Her hair is messy less out of fashion and more out of exhaust.
“Adrienne,” he says and twirls a drumstick towards her. “You’re here awfully early on a Sunday morning. Shouldn’t you be in church, little missy?”
She smiles in her trademark heartbroken way, and Tré knows he’s fucked. Adrienne says, “it’s Thursday.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause, and Tré says, “oh. Must’ve lost track of time here.”
She sighs. “Listen, Tré. There was this time a few years ago when you and Claudia began having your problems, when I woke up one morning and I was alone. Billie didn’t mention any business, plans, he had nothing in the studio, and he didn’t leave a note.”
Tré knows where this is going. “I-“
“I was watching TV when he came back. He just reeked of alcohol. And I was like, ‘Billie, where the fuck did you go last night?’ And he dropped his keys on the counter and gave me the most pathetic, guiltiest face I’ve ever seen in my entire life. So, I thought he was cheating on me.”
Tré is silent. There’s nothing he can really say at this point.
She shifts on her seat and looks him dead in the eyes. “He told me what happened. Not just that night, but the entire history. I mean, definitely the abridged version, but you get what I’m saying, right?” She inhales, exhales. “I had a feeling he’d been screwing you or Mike from the get-go, if not both of you, you know? And you’re not another girl trying to ruin my relationship with my husband. He’s known you as long, if not longer than me, anyways. He told me about that night, and I couldn’t care less. He probably would’ve gone to you regardless of your relationship.”
Tré starts to say, “but it’s not-“
“It’s not what you think it is either, Tré. I might be his wife, but he still cares about you in a way he’ll never care about me. I totally accept that. Don’t think otherwise.”
“I never said I didn’t,” Tré replies. “But if I have your blessing for what-the-fuck-ever Billie and I do, then why-“
“Because now you’re taking him away from me,” Adrienne cuts him off. She sounds a little dangerous, which is part of her charm. “In the past few months, he’s only come home for less than a day at a time. Joey and Jakob have asked if we’ve divorced, or if he’s died numerous times. I feel like he’s cutting himself off from us. And it’s going to sound childish, but it’s not fair, Tré. After this, he starts publicity and touring. We rarely see him through that either. You’ll probably share the same bed.”
Tré goes to sit down next to her. Some days he wishes he were her mistress instead of Billie’s. He says, “Adie, this isn’t entirely about me and him, you know? He’s putting all of his heart into the music right now. I don’t think either of us were spared being isolated from his actual emotions.”
She absorbs his words for a moment and nods. “You still see it though. He’s still letting you in on what he’s feeling.”
Adrienne is a girl, Tré thinks, and for the record so is he. “Maybe you should talk to him about it then.”
“I plan to,” Adrienne says. “But I thought we were long overdue for this chat, and maybe you needed to hear this too.”
He gives her a hug and says, “I’m sorry this happened. You don’t deserve this.”
She kisses his cheek and pulls away. “Never apologize for falling in love.”
“Adie-“
“Denial won’t fix anything either.” She stands up. “Billie and I need to talk now. I’ll leave you to whatever business you came in here for.”
She walks to the door when Tré stops her. “Adie, wait,” he calls from the chair. “Does this mean threesomes aren’t out of the question anymore?”
Adrienne smiles as she opens the door and lets light into the dim studio. She says, “no way in hell, Cool,” and leaves.
She’s wearing combat boots that she’ll probably use to kick some sense into her husband, and Tré hears her clunky footsteps slowly fade until the door closes to the studio and shuts him in complete silence.
A weight seems to remove itself from his chest, and he pushes himself off the sofa and moves over towards the soundboard to start work as if no interruptions ever occurred.
8. Thirty-Two
The first time Billie realizes he’s in love with Tré-as in realizes and accepts it-is when American Idiot is released.
Tré calls him the day of, in between a million business calls and press arrangements. He sounds amazed and out of breath. He greets Billie with a simple, “hey.”
“Hey!” Billie echoes. “Can you believe it?”
Tré says, “our sweat and blood is the number one selling record in America, this is the most unreal thing to ever happen in my life, dude.”
Billie realizes he hasn’t seen Tré since filming for the American Idiot video wrapped, and all he really wants to say is, “I miss you.”
“Yeah,” is what he says blankly instead, “I know.”
On Tré’s side of the line, there’s a crash a phone ringing, and the resonance of Frankito screaming. Tré curses to himself and tells Billie, “hey, man, I’ve got to go. Matters of life and death, of course. But I’ll see you in a few days.”
Billie says, a little reluctantly, “night, don’t have a fucking aneurysm.”
“Right.” Tré laughs. “Later. Love you.”
Then he hangs up, and Billie is left biting his tongue thinking over the words he was about to say. Billie wonders if it’s just a reflex-saying “I love you” over the phone- of if it’s something genuine from his subconscious that he’s said a million times before and just never noticed. He tries to forget what Tré just said, and what he was about to say, but he goes to bed that night with his mind wrapped around it. Adrienne shifts, asleep in his arms, and something uncomfortable settles in his stomach.
A voice in his head tells him, “you never tried to stop it from happening.”
Billie finds the scariest thing is that it’s the truth, and that he really doesn’t mind feeling this way at all.
9. Thirty-Six
Joey has seen his dad drunk before; he knows that Billie will go around and make out with all the boys (except for him or Jakob, like oh my god ew! As his girlfriend would say). He knows a lot of people’s dads aren’t like his. But he knows and understands his dad’s philosophies on sexuality, so it doesn’t bother him. He’s seen his dad at concerts, backstage, high off adrenaline, and he’s seen his dad party like the world is about to end. He’s also seen the most love in his life passed in a glance between his dad and mom. Joey knows they’re in love, and nothing would make him doubt that.
The day he walks into the kitchen to get a soda and finds his dad standing on his toes to kiss Tré Cool, who’s sitting on the counter, he’s not surprised in the slightest. He’s just a little confused. He gets the soda and taps the lid before opening. When he pulls back on the aluminum tab he says, “dad?”
They notice him, and Billie jumps about three feet away from Tré. Joey says, “please, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Tré leans back on his hands and surveys the older Armstrong freaking the fuck out because of the younger one’s presence. He wants to tell Billie to chill, and tell him that they were bound to find out eventually, but the way Billie’s in absolute shock makes him change his mind. Maybe Billie never meant for anyone else to find out, and all the fucking trials and tribulations Tré has gone through to have what he has with Billie mean absolutely nothing. He taps his fingers on the counter and jumps off. Introspection has made his good mood disappear.
“I’m going to have a smoke,” he says. Billie can go fuck himself trying to explain this to Joey.
He’s out back and on his second cigarette when Billie joins him. Billie says, “we need to stop ignoring what we have.”
Tré asks, “when have I ever done that?”
Billie corrects himself, “fine, I need to stop ignoring what we have.”
“What went down between you and Joey?”
“He asked if everything was okay, and I was like, ‘I’m not sure.’ And I told him I love his mother very much, and he says, ‘I already knew that, I was talking about you and uncle Tré,’ in this really snarky vice. He was like, ‘what’s going on between you two?’”
Tré stubs his cigarette out on the Armstrong’s porch. He inquires, “so, Billie, what is going on between you and Tré Cool?”
“I don’t know,” Billie replies. “When I told Adrienne about this I said it was a thing. I said, he’s part of my band, so he’s part of me, and I just have to go to him sometimes. I told her I loved her, but I said, ‘I care about him too.’ She seemed to get it. But since then, it’s changed, you know? I can’t put it into words anymore, and I’ve just been trying to ignore the fact that maybe this isn’t some stupid friends-with-benefits thing we started when we were young, you know?”
Billie says, “I find myself awake at night because I can’t choose between you and Adrienne. I find myself caring more than I ever have in my entire life.”
Tré lights a third cigarette and asks, “is that a monologue from somewhere?”
“Fuck you,” Billie says.
“It’s one of the things I do best,” Tré replies.
Billie smiles at him in a way that means ‘I hate to love you.’ Tré shoves his hands in his pockets and leans back and forth and waits for any kind of comeback.
“We need to sort this out,” Billie tells him. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do about our relationship.”
“I think you should talk to Adrienne,” Tré responds. “She deserves to hear about what you’re thinking more than everyone else.”
Billie pulls one of Tré’s hands out of his pockets, and holds it, saying, “no, not everyone.”
10. Forty
Green Day stops touring completely two albums after American Idiot. It’s a hard decision to make, a thought-out decision like it had been when they signed to Reprise.
Billie states in an interview, “but we never said we’d stop making music. Music isn’t a part of our lives, it is our lives, you know? We are each other’s lives. We’d be nothing without the music or band.”
The interviewer doesn’t feel it’s necessary to put in details like Billie and Tré’s hands resting on each other’s, or the way Mike constantly rolls his eyes at them.
Tré says, “The Beatles made their best records after they stopped touring. I think that immortalized their image a lot. I would rather be seen like that more than say like, the Rolling Stones. I don’t want people coming to see me ‘cause my face looks like a potato sack. I just want people to like our music, and they can do that without seeing us make fools of ourselves onstage.”
Mike continues, “I doubt anyone wants to see Billie pretend to jack off during ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’ now anyway.”
“Yeah, Billie’s sex appeal is totally gone, there’s no reason to see us anymore,” Tré tells the interviewer. Billie snaps his fingers in mock-self pity. Tré pulls on the back of Billie’s shirt collar, and Billie falls back onto him. Billie doesn’t move, just snickers a little bit. Mike lights a cigarette. The interviewer wonders if it’s an inside joke.
“I think the point is that we’re happy doing what we’re doing now,” Billie summarizes.
“Yeah, I mean we started out making music for ourselves, and that’s how it’ll end,” Mike concludes. The others nod appreciatively, far gone are the days that they would do anything but.
The interviewer says, “fantastic. And our time is up, it’s been lovely chatting with you.”
There a few more formalities, before the interviewer packs up the tape recorder and pencil and pad of paper and the photographer leaves with him. The boys are left in the rented hotel suite of the private conference alone. Mike turns to the two sitting opposite him on a cushy sofa.
He says, “why didn’t you just pull down your pants and fuck each other silly in front of him? Jesus Christ.”
Tré sighs. “I would, but Adie has him for the rest of the month. It’s not fair for me to take advantage of Billie and have fabulous sex with him in front of interviewers on her time.”
“That, and we forgot the lube,” Billie finishes. Tré snickers and kisses Billie on the side of his forehead, which is the most Tré’s allowed for the next few days.
Mike whines, “stop it, before I’m never able to have sex again without thinking of you two doing it.”
Billie rolls over onto Tré’s lap, straddling the drummer. He raises an eyebrow and lowers his voice, saying, “you know you just want in on the action.”
And Tré pushes him off, laughing, “now you’re being an ass to both of us.”
Billie falls to the floor, and Mike’s cell phone goes off. He looks at it to see ‘Hero’ flashing on the front, and flips it open.
“I’ve got to take this,” he mouths, and gets up to go in the next room.
Billie sits back and his head sinks into the couch cushions and he stares at Tré. Tré looks back down at him, eyebrows raised in anticipation and feeling a twinge of deja-vu.
Billie asks, “do you remember the first time we met?”
“No,” Tré says blandly.
Billie gets up off the floor and climbs on the couch. He lays down supine with his head in Tré’s lap and sighs. “I have a feeling it was a lot like this.”
Tré smirks in his trademark mischievous way. “Except with a lot more drugs.”
Billie chuckles, and it fades into Mike’s muted voice from the other room, and cars driving down on the street. Time is progressing, though they both try to disregard it. They don’t move away from each other until they absolutely have to.
END.
--sapporonoodles