Halfway Out the Door (One-Shot)
Title: Halfway Out the Door
Author: Logan
Pairing: Billie/Mike (Billie/Adrienne)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You were okay with it when it first started.
You were okay with it when it first started. You were okay with watching the two of them dance around each other, stealing small touches and lingering glances when they both knew that they were committed to someone else. She had him and he had you and that’s how it was meant to be. At least, that’s how it was meant to be in your mind.
So, you didn’t care. You just sat back and watched with a small grin knowing that he’d be coming home with you afterwards and not with her. Never with her. And you made him tell you that because hearing it from his mouth was the only way that you knew it could be true. You could tell yourself that he was yours all you wanted but you only believed it when he uttered those words right back.
Then you noticed things starting to change. He started talking to her more and more often. His voice would sound carefree and joyous whenever you caught him on the phone, eyes lit up in wonder as he talked to the person that he couldn’t have. But you still ignored it because he still crawled in next to you every single night, in that cramped single bed that really would have been more comfortable sleeping in alone but you were never one for being alone. Neither was he.
After he wrote that first song, the one that he denied over and over again about it being about her, you got in your first big fight. You’d been in fights before, some that were purely spoken fights and some that involved fists and feet instead of words, it came with being friends since elementary school. But you had never been in a fight like this. You’d never been in a fight so harsh and violent. He didn’t even need to lay a hand on you to make you back off. All he had to do was scream out that he didn’t love you and that he didn’t love her either but he liked her a hell of a lot more than he liked you. You kicked him out that night. Not out of the house, just out of your bedroom, and for the first time in over two and a half years you slept alone on your single bed.
You avoided him for the next few weeks. Band practice was tense as hell, especially when he continued bringing in new songs. Songs about her that you were forced to play along to. He knew it was hurting you but he didn’t care, she had broken up with her boyfriend and he broke up with you three days later. He broke the silent war to ask to bum a smoke, lit it up and followed that with the words, ‘it’s over’. You never realized that you could suddenly go from feeling so full to feeling so hollow and you never realized just how much you would miss him, even though you’d see him every single day.
It took a couple more tries and a year or so for her to finally come out west. It took less time than that for them to get married, to welcome a baby and completely forget that he had ever been with you. You moved on too, at least, to the public eye it seemed that you had moved on. Found your own wife and had your own baby, a little girl, a couple years after his. Once you were married, before the baby, he came up to you and congratulated you. Said that he hoped that the two of you could forget about everything that happened and just go back to being the best of friends that you had promised to be back when you were twelve years old and watching the sun set before the first day of school. You told him to go fuck himself and that you would never, never forget your first love.
He told you that you two had never been in love. It was nothing more than teenagers experimenting with each other and that he loved her and would never, ever love you. You went home that night, holding tightly to the hand of your brand new wife. You kissed her that night, exactly like you used to kiss him, and fell asleep curled tightly around her body. The only problem was that you spent the entire night thinking about how it should be him sleeping next to you. But you were with your wife and he was with his and that’s how it would be for the rest of their lives. Or so that’s what you told yourself.
Fast forward a few years. You’re divorced and he’s teetering on the edge of his own divorce. He comes to you when the fights get especially bad. When he wants the screaming to stop he comes and stands on your doorstep, he doesn’t even knock because he just knows that you’ll answer. You do because you’ve always been able to sense when he’s around, always. So you always let him in and pull him into a hug while telling him that things are going to be okay. You tell him that it’s going to be okay while secretly hoping that it won’t be.
He cries into your chest about all the things going wrong in his life. He can’t write any songs because he’s pissed off at her and she’s his muse, or so he says. He’s afraid that his children view him as the ‘bad guy’ even though you know that those two little boys look up to him as though he were god reincarnated. He cries about the fact that the band is breaking up, just like his marriage, just like his life. He says that things just haven’t been the same as they were back when you first started out. That things will never be the same because he broke your heart and he didn’t do anything to soften the break.
You let him kiss you. You let him fist your shirt in both hands and hold you as close to his body as physically possible. You followed him to your bedroom and fucked him in your bed, ignoring the fact that he still wore a wedding ring. You managed to ignore it until the next morning when you woke up with his hand open, fingers spread, across your chest with the wedding ring glinting in the morning sunlight.
You continued doing that with him until his marriage finally ended. When he was arrested she packed his bags and dropped them off on your front porch. She knocked on your front door and said that she was done. She came in and cried on your shoulder, the exact same one that her husband slept on after they fought, and said that she was just done. As she was leaving, slender fingers wiping at the tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, she said that she knew. She knew that you were sleeping with him and told you that she hoped that you could make him happy.
And you did. After the first couple weeks of crying and screaming, mainly at her and sometimes at you, things calmed down and you two lived in blissful happiness for a few months. He started writing more and somehow your band managed to become a top seller once again. The first months that followed that album release were some of the happiest moments in your life. He told you that he had been lost those many years ago and that he had just wanted a semi-normal life. He wanted to take it all back and said that he would if he could. You believed him like the lovesick man you were. You took every ‘I love you’ and absorbed it, you needed it like an alcoholic needed a drink.
And then it stopped. He started screaming again. Screaming at you and only you. Said that it was all too much, it was all too fast and he was losing his fucking mind. He sobbed and said that he shouldn’t have ever gotten himself arrested those few years ago because if he hadn’t then he would still be with her and he would have his family and he wouldn’t have to sleep next to you. He said that even if he had still broken up with her that you two shouldn’t have moved so fast. It didn’t fucking matter that you had had a relationship when you were kids, you should’ve just slowed the fuck down and maybe, just maybe, your life could be better.
He left you for a couple weeks. Came back with a notebook filled with songs and dropped it onto your lap. He curled up on the corner of the couch and silently watched as you read through each and every one. The last page said that he was sorry and that he wanted to try again. You just looked at him and told him that it wouldn’t be that easy. That words couldn’t just make it all better and that he actually had to try this time.
And he did. He tried. He tried to look you in the eye and tell you what was going on in his mind. He tried to remember to say ‘I love you’ every morning and every night. He tried to not get angry and in return you tried to do the exact same things.
It was too much sometimes and it still sometimes felt like everything was happening too soon. But somehow you managed to make it through. You managed to love each other because you had never stopped and he had finally realized that he had always loved you too. And in the end that’s all that mattered. The fact that you loved him and he loved you back. He had always loved you back.
Author: Logan
Pairing: Billie/Mike (Billie/Adrienne)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You were okay with it when it first started.
You were okay with it when it first started. You were okay with watching the two of them dance around each other, stealing small touches and lingering glances when they both knew that they were committed to someone else. She had him and he had you and that’s how it was meant to be. At least, that’s how it was meant to be in your mind.
So, you didn’t care. You just sat back and watched with a small grin knowing that he’d be coming home with you afterwards and not with her. Never with her. And you made him tell you that because hearing it from his mouth was the only way that you knew it could be true. You could tell yourself that he was yours all you wanted but you only believed it when he uttered those words right back.
Then you noticed things starting to change. He started talking to her more and more often. His voice would sound carefree and joyous whenever you caught him on the phone, eyes lit up in wonder as he talked to the person that he couldn’t have. But you still ignored it because he still crawled in next to you every single night, in that cramped single bed that really would have been more comfortable sleeping in alone but you were never one for being alone. Neither was he.
After he wrote that first song, the one that he denied over and over again about it being about her, you got in your first big fight. You’d been in fights before, some that were purely spoken fights and some that involved fists and feet instead of words, it came with being friends since elementary school. But you had never been in a fight like this. You’d never been in a fight so harsh and violent. He didn’t even need to lay a hand on you to make you back off. All he had to do was scream out that he didn’t love you and that he didn’t love her either but he liked her a hell of a lot more than he liked you. You kicked him out that night. Not out of the house, just out of your bedroom, and for the first time in over two and a half years you slept alone on your single bed.
You avoided him for the next few weeks. Band practice was tense as hell, especially when he continued bringing in new songs. Songs about her that you were forced to play along to. He knew it was hurting you but he didn’t care, she had broken up with her boyfriend and he broke up with you three days later. He broke the silent war to ask to bum a smoke, lit it up and followed that with the words, ‘it’s over’. You never realized that you could suddenly go from feeling so full to feeling so hollow and you never realized just how much you would miss him, even though you’d see him every single day.
It took a couple more tries and a year or so for her to finally come out west. It took less time than that for them to get married, to welcome a baby and completely forget that he had ever been with you. You moved on too, at least, to the public eye it seemed that you had moved on. Found your own wife and had your own baby, a little girl, a couple years after his. Once you were married, before the baby, he came up to you and congratulated you. Said that he hoped that the two of you could forget about everything that happened and just go back to being the best of friends that you had promised to be back when you were twelve years old and watching the sun set before the first day of school. You told him to go fuck himself and that you would never, never forget your first love.
He told you that you two had never been in love. It was nothing more than teenagers experimenting with each other and that he loved her and would never, ever love you. You went home that night, holding tightly to the hand of your brand new wife. You kissed her that night, exactly like you used to kiss him, and fell asleep curled tightly around her body. The only problem was that you spent the entire night thinking about how it should be him sleeping next to you. But you were with your wife and he was with his and that’s how it would be for the rest of their lives. Or so that’s what you told yourself.
Fast forward a few years. You’re divorced and he’s teetering on the edge of his own divorce. He comes to you when the fights get especially bad. When he wants the screaming to stop he comes and stands on your doorstep, he doesn’t even knock because he just knows that you’ll answer. You do because you’ve always been able to sense when he’s around, always. So you always let him in and pull him into a hug while telling him that things are going to be okay. You tell him that it’s going to be okay while secretly hoping that it won’t be.
He cries into your chest about all the things going wrong in his life. He can’t write any songs because he’s pissed off at her and she’s his muse, or so he says. He’s afraid that his children view him as the ‘bad guy’ even though you know that those two little boys look up to him as though he were god reincarnated. He cries about the fact that the band is breaking up, just like his marriage, just like his life. He says that things just haven’t been the same as they were back when you first started out. That things will never be the same because he broke your heart and he didn’t do anything to soften the break.
You let him kiss you. You let him fist your shirt in both hands and hold you as close to his body as physically possible. You followed him to your bedroom and fucked him in your bed, ignoring the fact that he still wore a wedding ring. You managed to ignore it until the next morning when you woke up with his hand open, fingers spread, across your chest with the wedding ring glinting in the morning sunlight.
You continued doing that with him until his marriage finally ended. When he was arrested she packed his bags and dropped them off on your front porch. She knocked on your front door and said that she was done. She came in and cried on your shoulder, the exact same one that her husband slept on after they fought, and said that she was just done. As she was leaving, slender fingers wiping at the tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, she said that she knew. She knew that you were sleeping with him and told you that she hoped that you could make him happy.
And you did. After the first couple weeks of crying and screaming, mainly at her and sometimes at you, things calmed down and you two lived in blissful happiness for a few months. He started writing more and somehow your band managed to become a top seller once again. The first months that followed that album release were some of the happiest moments in your life. He told you that he had been lost those many years ago and that he had just wanted a semi-normal life. He wanted to take it all back and said that he would if he could. You believed him like the lovesick man you were. You took every ‘I love you’ and absorbed it, you needed it like an alcoholic needed a drink.
And then it stopped. He started screaming again. Screaming at you and only you. Said that it was all too much, it was all too fast and he was losing his fucking mind. He sobbed and said that he shouldn’t have ever gotten himself arrested those few years ago because if he hadn’t then he would still be with her and he would have his family and he wouldn’t have to sleep next to you. He said that even if he had still broken up with her that you two shouldn’t have moved so fast. It didn’t fucking matter that you had had a relationship when you were kids, you should’ve just slowed the fuck down and maybe, just maybe, your life could be better.
He left you for a couple weeks. Came back with a notebook filled with songs and dropped it onto your lap. He curled up on the corner of the couch and silently watched as you read through each and every one. The last page said that he was sorry and that he wanted to try again. You just looked at him and told him that it wouldn’t be that easy. That words couldn’t just make it all better and that he actually had to try this time.
And he did. He tried. He tried to look you in the eye and tell you what was going on in his mind. He tried to remember to say ‘I love you’ every morning and every night. He tried to not get angry and in return you tried to do the exact same things.
It was too much sometimes and it still sometimes felt like everything was happening too soon. But somehow you managed to make it through. You managed to love each other because you had never stopped and he had finally realized that he had always loved you too. And in the end that’s all that mattered. The fact that you loved him and he loved you back. He had always loved you back.