Title: New Suit, Cufflinks, and a New Tie
Author:
belmanoirPairing: Joe/Billy implied
Rating: R (for language) (like you thought there could be HCL fic without swearing)
Warnings: Uh, spoilers?
Word count: 334
Summary: Billy engages in a little self-sabotage for Joe.
Author's Notes: Set post-film. Unbeta'd, so sorry for any typos or run-on sentences.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, and I am making no money off this.
He doesn't take interview questions about Joe. He's being interviewed for Rolling Stone, biggest fucking deal of his career, and the bitch keeps asking why he didn't go to Joe's funeral. He smiles apologetically and says no comment every way he can think of, and when she won't stop, he says, softly, "Fuck off, cunt." Not because he's angry--he's not, he's feeling nauseous and thinking about the headlines--but because it's the only way he can think of to tell Joe all the shit he can't ever tell Joe again. It's not like he thinks Joe can hear him or anything. But he's still gotta say it.
Which is also why he didn't go to the funeral. He could have gone. It would have been easy. Billy fucking Hollywood owns a suit. Shit, he owns cufflinks. It might even have been fun in a fucked-up way, watching Joe's psycho bitch mom trying to pretend not to hate him in front of the cameras. He wouldn't even have had to fake the crying, and he would have looked like a sensitive guy, loyal buddy, blah blah fucking blah. But they were burying Joe in a suit. It wouldn't have been open coffin, no way to hide a fucking bullet hole in the forehead, not with Joe's hair, but Billy would have known. So. Joe Dick, buried in a suit. Embalmed, in a closed five thousand dollar steel coffin, with a fucking weeping angel on his tombstone. No burning to ash, no being eaten by maggots, the only thing Joe might have liked about it was how fucking grotesque it was. And the tabloids had a field day. "BILLY TALLENT BLOWS OFF BEST FRIEND'S FUNERAL," "BILLY TALLENT: FAIR WEATHER FRIEND," "BILLY TALLENT: HAS FAME MADE HIM COLD?" Joe would have loved it.
Billy went at night. He climbed over the chain-link cemetery fence. Joe's ripped-up army sweater caught on the top and finally bit the dust, totally unwearable now, which is when Billy actually almost started crying.
He spit on Joe's grave.