nostalgia and cigarettes
title: Nostalgia and Cigarettes[Part 23/?]
author: Sharmel
pairing: Tre/Billie, Billie/Jason
rating: R
summary: "Billie, can I kiss you?"
previous parts: Here
2005
Billie
Paris, France
Winter to me was so foreign yet so familiar. It was foreign because it never snowed in Oakland and familiar because every time we go on tour during the months of November to March, we always found ourselves right in the middle of a snowy mess. And I’ve never really told anyone, but I love snow. I love how you can make snowballs and nail your friend square on the chest. I love how you can have a contest to see who could make the largest fort, or better yet, make a snowman. And I love how snow brought people together, whether by helping someone shovel their driveway or friends sledding. But not only that, I found snow so fascinating.
Have you ever caught a snowflake on your hand and examined it closely? Have you ever noticed how each individual snowflake is unique from one another? I remember back when I was in school, the teacher brought the topic of winter. The whole concept of snow was somewhat foreign to use since we’ve never actually witness real snow before - unless you were rich of course, but most kids in my class belonged to working class families. And when the teacher described what snow was like, it caught my attention - which was strange since I hated being cooped up in a classroom when we could be outside enjoying our childhood. Anyway, the teacher said how no two snowflakes were the same.
I was sceptical at first, how could something so tiny have such details to make it unique from the rest? But then, one thought led to another, and I compared snowflakes to people. Snowflakes and people were very similar in some aspects. Everyone was different, everyone was unique. Not two people in the world look exactly alike - minus twins of course. But even then, their personalities differ so much.
When you gather a pile of snow, it becomes a melting pot. And when there was a group of people so closely intertwined, it was as if they, too, become a melting pot. I guess that was how Green Day was. We were different from one another, but we had at least one thing in common: the passion for music. That was why we were together for so long; our connection wasn’t just something you could cut easily. No matter what obstacle we faced or how much our relationship strained, we kept it together; we didn’t melt away.
And as I stood right in the middle of Paris, France, snow was falling delicately onto the ground. People were weaving in and out of the streets; all had something to do and somewhere to go to. Everyone seemed to be so caught up in their own little worlds that they don’t stop and take the time to enjoy the simpler things in life. I knew what that was like, and I regretted every minute of it. Even though things seemed calm and aloft with Tre, there was this part of me that had never been so in love with him.
Every so often, I would find my thoughts drifting back to the past and thought about why I was so hesitant to tell him that I loved him when were recording Dookie. I mean, I always told him I loved him, but the way I said it lacked the meaning it should have contained. I knew that we shared this deep, intimate connect with each other, and as young as I was, it scared me. Never had I been in a situation like that; never had I ever felt so deeply about someone and it scared the living piss out of me. And without thinking, I damaged what we had so severely. I was a coward. And for that reason, our relationship crumbled.
If someone were to ask me what my greatest regret was, I’d say it was letting someone so dear to me slip away through my finger tips. If only I was true with myself, I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in. Hell, I’d probably be happy.
Finally, I found myself sitting on a bench with the Eiffel Tower staring at me. The sun was setting, and the lights on the tower twinkled brightly. I was mesmerized by the scenery and bright lights that I didn’t notice someone sit beside me until I felt warmth in my hands. My head cocked to the side and my heart skipped a beat. It was Tre with a tiny smile lingering on his fine lips. My eyes glanced at the source of heat in my hands and saw that it was hot chocolate. I grinned widely.
That was another part I loved about winter. I was never really a fan of hot chocolate, but when I drink it outside in the cold, the hot liquid trickles down my throat with two kinds of sensations: scolding hot and a sense of warmth and relief. It was a bittersweet treat.
We sat in silence for several minutes and just enjoyed the authentic scenery. Neither of us wanted to break the silence - or at least, I didn’t. Not that I wanted to, I didn’t know what to say. The sun was fully engulfed by darkness, and the moon took it’s stance up in the blanket of stars. By that time, the snow stopped falling.
Slowly, my eyes dared to take a peek at him, and to my surprise, he wasn’t even looking at the beautiful tower. Instead, his eyes were perched onto me. The look in his eyes sent a shiver down my spine. He was the only person who had this affect on me.
He leaned closer to me and places a hand on my frozen cheek. I felt the warmth radiate from his hand and I let out an involuntary sigh. This was the first time in months since we’ve been this close to each other. Even though the atmosphere between us was as normal as it would ever get, we kept our distance from each other. It was as if we were afraid of bursting the bubble that surrounded us. And I always reasoned to myself that we were better off moving on.
The day before we went back to Oakland back in 2003, we both convinced ourselves that we needed to grow up and move on. We both convinced ourselves that we were better off as friends. We both convinced ourselves that we could be friends. But who were we fooling? It was so fucking clear that we both loved each other more than before. Tre no longer turned his back on me and used his wife and children as a shield, instead, he came out of his shell and spent more time with Mike and I. When we recorded American Idiot, we would get drunk almost every night with each other. And in more than one occasion, I would wake up with Tre’s arm draped over me. Every time I see him sleeping beside me, his face was so calm and there were times when I would see a smile at the edge of his lips.
But then a few months later, something happened. I was almost positive that he hadn’t drunk a single ounce of alcohol, but something possessed him. Something gave him the courage to speak. And for the first time in ages, he yelled at me. Not just scolding, but genuinely angry. As his voice echoed through my ears, I could see him quivering. He was upset that I hadn’t kept my promise - the promise that I would never let him go. It was the one promise he desperately wanted me to keep. But he should’ve known that it was the promise I could never keep.
And as our mouths collided for the last time that year, we both accepted that it was time to move on. He spent some more time with his family, especially since we were preparing for our tour, but at the same time, he didn’t separate himself from Mike and I. As for me, for the first few weeks, I did nothing. I wrote more songs and spent much of my time practicing and even exercising. But then once night fell, a beer never seemed to have left my hand. I guess drinking was the one thing I had left. Unlike last time though, I kept myself in check. I was still sober enough to remember my own name and Tre’s name. But I drank enough to push back the regrets that dwelled at the back of my mind.
Alarms started to go off in my head as his face was inches away from my own. I could see his blue eyes pierce the dark and penetrating my weak greens. I felt myself melting from his touch and failed. Who was I kidding? I missed his touch, his warmth, and the feeling of his breath tickling my skin.
Why was he doing this though? Why now? After all these months of control, why made him suddenly act like this? And the sad part was, he hadn’t even done anything yet - just a simple gesture of placing his calloused hand on my unprepared cheek. Why did all the simple attributes he did have such a vast affect on me? But as I felt myself getting lost in his eyes, I realized it didn’t matter. He was here, I was here, and we were together.
“Can you believe it, Billie? We’re in Paris.”
I began to regain control of my body and found myself giving a shrug. “We’ve been here numerous times before.”
Tre’s eyes sparkled as if he hadn’t heard me. “No matter how many times we’ve come here, I always have this excitement come over me. I just love seeing the differences of our cultures, our lifestyles; it just gets me every time. And of course, the fact that we’re in Paris, the city of love, just makes it even more exciting.”
My eyes shifted and darted downward to my jittering hand. The tips of my fingers traced the rim of the paper cup. But my thoughts kept getting distracted by the hand that was still resting on my cheek. Before I could move another inch, he made me face him once more. He trapped me with his eyes. I braced myself almost as if I expected him to kiss me, but he didn’t.
He placed his other hand at the other side of my face, and I could feel my face regain color. His eyes soften as if his own thoughts were calming. “Billie, can I kiss you?”
My heart skipped a beat. The way his voice rang through my ears, how does he expect me to reject his request? So without another thought, I nodded and gave him permission.
A timid smile formed on his fine lips. For some reason, the anticipation flowing through my body made this moment feel like a first kiss. As he closed the gap between us, my eyes fluttered to a close. I wanted to savour every second of the kiss. The way his lips pressed softly on mine, how his lips curled around my bottom lip, and how all the elements that surrounded us faded away in the wind and paused time. I missed the way his mouth tasted, the way his tongue effortlessly snakes through my mouth and takes control over me. Most of all, I just missed being this close to him. Our bodies were pressed so closely together that I could feel his heart pounding wildly in sync with mine.
Finally, we broke from our kiss. Our foreheads rested against each other and our noses were touching. The only sounds I could hear were our heavy breaths. I opened my eyes and once again met with his baby blues. I smiled.
I only smiled. I didn’t utter a single word for the rest of the night. My lips stayed shut as we walked back to the hotel arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand. Not a word was spoken between the two of us as we stood outside our hotel rooms and lost in trance with each other’s eyes. We didn’t say anything as our fingers disconnected with one another and went on our separate ways. No words needed to be spoken. Nothing needed to be said. We both just knew that we couldn’t just stop loving each other. Moving on was out of the question.
Right before I fell asleep, my eyes drifted outside the window. Snow began to fall once more. And it was then I came to a realization of why I loved snow. It brought me even closer to the one I truly loved.
----------------------
I will write one more part and post it. After that, all the following parts will be collected and won't be posted until I finish the whole story. I'm doing that just to figure out how more parts to go. :D
It won't be long now until I finish the story!
author: Sharmel
pairing: Tre/Billie, Billie/Jason
rating: R
summary: "Billie, can I kiss you?"
previous parts: Here
2005
Billie
Paris, France
Winter to me was so foreign yet so familiar. It was foreign because it never snowed in Oakland and familiar because every time we go on tour during the months of November to March, we always found ourselves right in the middle of a snowy mess. And I’ve never really told anyone, but I love snow. I love how you can make snowballs and nail your friend square on the chest. I love how you can have a contest to see who could make the largest fort, or better yet, make a snowman. And I love how snow brought people together, whether by helping someone shovel their driveway or friends sledding. But not only that, I found snow so fascinating.
Have you ever caught a snowflake on your hand and examined it closely? Have you ever noticed how each individual snowflake is unique from one another? I remember back when I was in school, the teacher brought the topic of winter. The whole concept of snow was somewhat foreign to use since we’ve never actually witness real snow before - unless you were rich of course, but most kids in my class belonged to working class families. And when the teacher described what snow was like, it caught my attention - which was strange since I hated being cooped up in a classroom when we could be outside enjoying our childhood. Anyway, the teacher said how no two snowflakes were the same.
I was sceptical at first, how could something so tiny have such details to make it unique from the rest? But then, one thought led to another, and I compared snowflakes to people. Snowflakes and people were very similar in some aspects. Everyone was different, everyone was unique. Not two people in the world look exactly alike - minus twins of course. But even then, their personalities differ so much.
When you gather a pile of snow, it becomes a melting pot. And when there was a group of people so closely intertwined, it was as if they, too, become a melting pot. I guess that was how Green Day was. We were different from one another, but we had at least one thing in common: the passion for music. That was why we were together for so long; our connection wasn’t just something you could cut easily. No matter what obstacle we faced or how much our relationship strained, we kept it together; we didn’t melt away.
And as I stood right in the middle of Paris, France, snow was falling delicately onto the ground. People were weaving in and out of the streets; all had something to do and somewhere to go to. Everyone seemed to be so caught up in their own little worlds that they don’t stop and take the time to enjoy the simpler things in life. I knew what that was like, and I regretted every minute of it. Even though things seemed calm and aloft with Tre, there was this part of me that had never been so in love with him.
Every so often, I would find my thoughts drifting back to the past and thought about why I was so hesitant to tell him that I loved him when were recording Dookie. I mean, I always told him I loved him, but the way I said it lacked the meaning it should have contained. I knew that we shared this deep, intimate connect with each other, and as young as I was, it scared me. Never had I been in a situation like that; never had I ever felt so deeply about someone and it scared the living piss out of me. And without thinking, I damaged what we had so severely. I was a coward. And for that reason, our relationship crumbled.
If someone were to ask me what my greatest regret was, I’d say it was letting someone so dear to me slip away through my finger tips. If only I was true with myself, I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in. Hell, I’d probably be happy.
Finally, I found myself sitting on a bench with the Eiffel Tower staring at me. The sun was setting, and the lights on the tower twinkled brightly. I was mesmerized by the scenery and bright lights that I didn’t notice someone sit beside me until I felt warmth in my hands. My head cocked to the side and my heart skipped a beat. It was Tre with a tiny smile lingering on his fine lips. My eyes glanced at the source of heat in my hands and saw that it was hot chocolate. I grinned widely.
That was another part I loved about winter. I was never really a fan of hot chocolate, but when I drink it outside in the cold, the hot liquid trickles down my throat with two kinds of sensations: scolding hot and a sense of warmth and relief. It was a bittersweet treat.
We sat in silence for several minutes and just enjoyed the authentic scenery. Neither of us wanted to break the silence - or at least, I didn’t. Not that I wanted to, I didn’t know what to say. The sun was fully engulfed by darkness, and the moon took it’s stance up in the blanket of stars. By that time, the snow stopped falling.
Slowly, my eyes dared to take a peek at him, and to my surprise, he wasn’t even looking at the beautiful tower. Instead, his eyes were perched onto me. The look in his eyes sent a shiver down my spine. He was the only person who had this affect on me.
He leaned closer to me and places a hand on my frozen cheek. I felt the warmth radiate from his hand and I let out an involuntary sigh. This was the first time in months since we’ve been this close to each other. Even though the atmosphere between us was as normal as it would ever get, we kept our distance from each other. It was as if we were afraid of bursting the bubble that surrounded us. And I always reasoned to myself that we were better off moving on.
The day before we went back to Oakland back in 2003, we both convinced ourselves that we needed to grow up and move on. We both convinced ourselves that we were better off as friends. We both convinced ourselves that we could be friends. But who were we fooling? It was so fucking clear that we both loved each other more than before. Tre no longer turned his back on me and used his wife and children as a shield, instead, he came out of his shell and spent more time with Mike and I. When we recorded American Idiot, we would get drunk almost every night with each other. And in more than one occasion, I would wake up with Tre’s arm draped over me. Every time I see him sleeping beside me, his face was so calm and there were times when I would see a smile at the edge of his lips.
But then a few months later, something happened. I was almost positive that he hadn’t drunk a single ounce of alcohol, but something possessed him. Something gave him the courage to speak. And for the first time in ages, he yelled at me. Not just scolding, but genuinely angry. As his voice echoed through my ears, I could see him quivering. He was upset that I hadn’t kept my promise - the promise that I would never let him go. It was the one promise he desperately wanted me to keep. But he should’ve known that it was the promise I could never keep.
And as our mouths collided for the last time that year, we both accepted that it was time to move on. He spent some more time with his family, especially since we were preparing for our tour, but at the same time, he didn’t separate himself from Mike and I. As for me, for the first few weeks, I did nothing. I wrote more songs and spent much of my time practicing and even exercising. But then once night fell, a beer never seemed to have left my hand. I guess drinking was the one thing I had left. Unlike last time though, I kept myself in check. I was still sober enough to remember my own name and Tre’s name. But I drank enough to push back the regrets that dwelled at the back of my mind.
Alarms started to go off in my head as his face was inches away from my own. I could see his blue eyes pierce the dark and penetrating my weak greens. I felt myself melting from his touch and failed. Who was I kidding? I missed his touch, his warmth, and the feeling of his breath tickling my skin.
Why was he doing this though? Why now? After all these months of control, why made him suddenly act like this? And the sad part was, he hadn’t even done anything yet - just a simple gesture of placing his calloused hand on my unprepared cheek. Why did all the simple attributes he did have such a vast affect on me? But as I felt myself getting lost in his eyes, I realized it didn’t matter. He was here, I was here, and we were together.
“Can you believe it, Billie? We’re in Paris.”
I began to regain control of my body and found myself giving a shrug. “We’ve been here numerous times before.”
Tre’s eyes sparkled as if he hadn’t heard me. “No matter how many times we’ve come here, I always have this excitement come over me. I just love seeing the differences of our cultures, our lifestyles; it just gets me every time. And of course, the fact that we’re in Paris, the city of love, just makes it even more exciting.”
My eyes shifted and darted downward to my jittering hand. The tips of my fingers traced the rim of the paper cup. But my thoughts kept getting distracted by the hand that was still resting on my cheek. Before I could move another inch, he made me face him once more. He trapped me with his eyes. I braced myself almost as if I expected him to kiss me, but he didn’t.
He placed his other hand at the other side of my face, and I could feel my face regain color. His eyes soften as if his own thoughts were calming. “Billie, can I kiss you?”
My heart skipped a beat. The way his voice rang through my ears, how does he expect me to reject his request? So without another thought, I nodded and gave him permission.
A timid smile formed on his fine lips. For some reason, the anticipation flowing through my body made this moment feel like a first kiss. As he closed the gap between us, my eyes fluttered to a close. I wanted to savour every second of the kiss. The way his lips pressed softly on mine, how his lips curled around my bottom lip, and how all the elements that surrounded us faded away in the wind and paused time. I missed the way his mouth tasted, the way his tongue effortlessly snakes through my mouth and takes control over me. Most of all, I just missed being this close to him. Our bodies were pressed so closely together that I could feel his heart pounding wildly in sync with mine.
Finally, we broke from our kiss. Our foreheads rested against each other and our noses were touching. The only sounds I could hear were our heavy breaths. I opened my eyes and once again met with his baby blues. I smiled.
I only smiled. I didn’t utter a single word for the rest of the night. My lips stayed shut as we walked back to the hotel arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand. Not a word was spoken between the two of us as we stood outside our hotel rooms and lost in trance with each other’s eyes. We didn’t say anything as our fingers disconnected with one another and went on our separate ways. No words needed to be spoken. Nothing needed to be said. We both just knew that we couldn’t just stop loving each other. Moving on was out of the question.
Right before I fell asleep, my eyes drifted outside the window. Snow began to fall once more. And it was then I came to a realization of why I loved snow. It brought me even closer to the one I truly loved.
----------------------
I will write one more part and post it. After that, all the following parts will be collected and won't be posted until I finish the whole story. I'm doing that just to figure out how more parts to go. :D
It won't be long now until I finish the story!