a glorified screw (hcl, joe/billy, 2/2)
4. pretty vacant ('73)
The light in Joe's basement hangs overhead like a fat orange beetle on a string. It casts an umbrella of weak, warm light that doesn't dispel the dark entirely, but presses it against the ceiling and the walls, into corners and deep shadows.
Billy says the basement needs fixing up, and Joe reasons it's a simulacrum of the stage they'll be standing on soon. You can't see the audience when the house lights go down. You only need to see each other you only need to see your band (they'd have a real band); to aim a cue, a smile, a spit wad (they're spit brothers a hundred times over by the time they set foot on a stage as Peckerhead in their middle school auditorium).
They're fourteen years old, and Peckerhead's been around for a few months.
William Boisy and Joseph Mulgrew, cross-legged in Joe's basement smoking a hand rolled cigarette laced with nowhere near enough pot to get them high, but they feel high, high on the head spins and from coughing so long they nearly pass out. High on huge hits of smoke licking virgin lungs, nicotine sparking receptors and addictions they'll both be stuck with for the rest of their lives. There's a guitar on the floor between them, an almost-decent Fender Joe's mother had bought him at the hock-shop for Christmas and Joe had immediately given to Billy to take care of. On top of its strings there's a creased old porn mag with a blonde on the cover cupping her breasts, the pale pink tips of her nipples poking out next to her pale pink painted nails.
Groupies: it's an interesting thought when you're fourteen and discovering that you're going to feel permanently horny for the next few years.
Sex, the mechanics Joe basically knows, there's never been a cone of silence around his mother's bedroom, and though she's never given him The Talk, a few of her boyfriends have tried. Joe goes to the sex-ed classes that Billy's parents don't let Billy attend. (Billy goes to the religion classes that Joe opts himself out of to cement his addiction to nicotine and rebellion and throws rocks at the second story classroom window where Billy sits, every time, so he can see Joe make faces and Christ-poses and mime hanging himself or jerking off).
What it means is Joe knows a little more than Billy right now, and while that changes and changes rapidly in the next few years, right now he's ahead.
Oh and if Joe weren't so fucking admiring of Billy's blue, blue eyes he'd hate Billy for that sensitive, sky-coloured stare that lands him the ones with the legs and the laughs. As it is, he settles for hating the legs and the laughs and making sure to fuck the ones who are certifiably crazy because Billy hates them the most.
What he ignores is the fact that he was the first one Billy won with that look.
More immediate to their lives than sex, though, is the tentative steps before: holding hands is for pussies, but kissing. Kissing is a must.
"But it's got to be awkward," Joe says and feels infinitely pleased with himself when his chest spasms a little but he doesn't cough the smoke out, "the first time. But that's everything right? You weren't great at the guitar first time you played. Who fucking cares," It's not a perfect example because Billy was better than Joe the first time he'd picked it up and Joe had already been plucking away for weeks.
"I guess," Billy says. "Fuck," he adds, like an after thought, and grins sharply. Billy is learning to curse, and he's as dedicated a pupil here as he isn't at school. Joe's had it down since he can remember, but while Billy's family lives in the same shithole neighbourhood as Joe's, they've got God and they've got rules.
And boy do they hate Joe.
Joe's Mom loves Billy. Little skinny blonde kid that actually looks more like her than Joe does; Joe's his sperm donor through and through, he's been told enough he's not forgetting any time soon.
Joe wears too much black and his clothes have holes (that hoodlum from down the street), Joe spikes his hair up with his mother's stolen hairspray, Joe who's been out of school for the last week for skipping class to smoke and draw anarchy symbols over the toilet doors (what Billy's parents don't know this time is that Billy had been standing on the toilet while Joe stood outside the closed door lied with a grin, took the rap and the slap from his mother and worn them like a badge stamped fuck you right over his heart).
Joe who borrowed the dusty cross his mother kept in the kitchen drawer next to the scissors and tied it upside down with string to hang around his neck when he'd knocked on the door to ask if Billy was home. That had hurt for a second, a near disaster, because he hadn't thought it through past how fucking funny it would be. To see that lemon-sucking, panicked look on Billy's mother's pretty face, her wide eyes and pursed lips, the bruise running a riot of colour around her eye socket and cheekbone, the small silver cross at her throat she reached her fingers towards unconsciously.
Near disaster, because he'd been banned from coming to Billy's house again and Billy was never to see him again. It had hurt until the first time Billy had turned up at Joe's house next, a painful three days later, and when Joe asked, Billy had pulled out a cigarette he'd stolen from somewhere, put it in his mouth right there on the doorstep where anyone could see and said I lied.
For Joe.
Now, Billy lies to come over and practice.
He lies well, too, they're never caught until Billy's ready to be, until he's ready to come live in Joe's room, which he does for months until Joe's mother and her latest cunt of a boyfriend kick them out. Just finished high school and pissing everyone off by spitting in the face of higher learning. There's nothing he needs to know his band can't teach him, music, books, booze and Billy.
The education is hard and real, lessons like not realising why the apartment they find seems like a good deal until winter sets in and they're fighting off frostbite huddling together in the same bed and leaving the oven on all night for warmth because there's no other heat.
But before that, Billy lies to come over and to sit around in the basement listening to a Stooges record loud as they can get it, and smoking too weak joints. This is all before Joe discovers the real thing in Bucky Haight and underground clubs no one ever fucking heard of.
"Fuck," Joe echoes encouragingly and passes the joint over to Billy. "You feel anything?"
"I think so," Billy says and grins and shakes his head a few times. "Kind of floaty. It's cool."
"Cool," Joe says. He maybe feels something too, other than his cough-raw throat and the beginnings of the first of a long line of bloody spitwads forming.
"So how the hell do you know you're doing it right?" Billy asks, and looks up at him under his eyelashes.
"What?" Joe asks and feels himself flush, watching Billy as he watches Joe back, watching Billy run his hands over his thighs like his palms are sweat, or maybe just like it feels good. Joe feels warm all over and wonders for a second if that's just being high.
He shifts, brushing his palm across the ugly shag rug that looks like a mangy Afghan dog but is better to sit on than the cold concrete floor. Billy's looking at him like he wants something. "Kissing?" Joe asks after a second and feels himself flush warm again when he realises what Billy's not asking and Joe realises, yeah, that's exactly what he wants.
He takes a long drag on the joint, pushes the guitar out of the way and leans forward over his crossed legs, crooks a finger at Billy and waits for him to clamber to his knees and shuffles across the rug to him. Billy leans in and opens his mouth, their lips a centimetre apart. This they've done before.
Joe expects him to close his eyes but he doesn't and they watch each other as Joe breathes out his thick lungful of smoke into Billy's mouth and Billy breathes it in. Billy only closes his eyes when he breathes out and Joe watches him concentrate as smoke pours out of his slack mouth, steadying himself so he won't cough.
"Practice makes perfect," Joe says quietly. "You want to?" Joe asks and Billy nods with his eyes still closed, his lips still parted.
Joe leans in and presses their lips together, keeps his eyes open.
5. thin as a dime ('85 again).
All you need to know is at this point, a point not so different from a lot of points in your life, is that you're completely fucked.
"Bill. Billiam. Billy. Buddy. Billllllliam. Baby. B-fucking-illiam. When've I ever done anything daaangerous." William fucking Boisy, you won't say, even though it rolls around the inside of your head and sits like spit on the tip of your tongue, tempting mischief. That is not buddies.
You savour a sliver of the thrill, a shiver at the thought, because it's something of Billy you own more than anyone else. You don't need to put your fists up to time warp back to when you'd both thrown those old names away and smashed bottles of beer across the pavement when you christened each other, new, different, better.
Yours.
"Saint Dick, huh?"
"The patron saint of COCAINE. And you can get fucked, you lapsed Catholic altar boy, it's not my fault the priests touched you in your no-no place."
"Yet I'm the one going to hell. Go figure."
"Hey, if it helps I'll see you there. Ain't religion grand. Makes me want to piss on a church. Next fucking holy place we pass, I'm gonna make Pipe take a shit on their front lawn."
"Good luck with that."
"Aw 'cause you don't find the idea funny, do you, Saint Tallent?"
"Patron saint of Go Get Me Another Fucking Drink, Joe."
"Want me to bake you a fucking cake while I'm at it? Get in the kitchen and make you some eggs?"
"Yeah, Tabasco on the side. Thanks."
Billy is a grin in haze, shark-teeth in the deep soupy damp air. Cigarettes smoke and steam warm are familiar in your lungs and somewhere deeper in your chest something shifts, something more than the unusual drip fed chunks of red and gold snot.
You protest like the cliché says: too fucking much. You're already up on your feet and pushing the bathroom door open, letting out some of the precious trapped heat to go and get Billy Tallent his beer.
Eight, eight, eight thousand beers later and a bottle of bourbon filched from your own rider (which isn't stealing, but you feel better if you pretend it is, and you aren't sure what they says about you, but on the other hand there's a raised middle finger because you don't give a fuck).
You're unsteady past the beds and your knees feel like jelly shots when you reach the bathroom door again. It takes you a full thirty seconds to work out that you can hold two beers in one hand, and that's only after the five seconds you require to work out you need a spare hand to tilt the doorhandle down to get it open.
You're drunk enough you feel like a working paraplegic: your legs are going but fuck if you can feel them.
You're full of metaphors that good you think you should be writing songs but you've forgotten by the time you work out the handle and shove the bathroom door back open, you've forgotten you've forgotten by the time you're sitting back down on the closed lid of the toilet seat.
Billy fucking Tallent, the skinny little blonde with the junkie thin, junkie strong arms and clever, long fingers, is watching TV in the bath. You blink and refocus your eyes with an effort, watching the bubbles clinging to the blonde hairs on his skinny knees when he pulls them up out of the water.
You peer unsubtle and unacknowledged over the rim of the tub, leaning precariously close to falling off the toilet. Besides the snowy mountain range of his knees and the wet rope of his arms, Billy's body is a blur under the water and the sparse censorship of the white foaming bubbles. Up further the water laps gently, nearly up to his collarbones as he slumps into it.
You drop the beer with a plunk and a bigger than anticipated splash, and you can't help but laugh at Billy jerking in on himself as the cold bottle hits his stomach, the warm water exploding in a tidal wave and spitting across the room like an audience at a gig. Billy's cigarette hisses out as it's doused in water.
He spits the damp stick of tobacco into the bath with a huff.
You bark a final laugh at the dismissal, the lack of fucks given.
"We're a rock'n'roll cliché."
"You're the one that ripped the TV off the wall."
"You're the one that said 'entertain me, Joe'. If they don't want the furniture moved they should bolt it down."
"It was bolted to the fucking stand."
"Bolt it down better you cunt-radictory cunt, shut up and watch your stories."
"Seen it. Bored."
He fumbles with his wet toes against the TV until he hits the off button and the screen blinks out, soap bubbles running down the black plastic.
You remember, abruptly, with the idea of electricity and water and death, that there was a song eating away at your brain stem like Pipe on a particularly good sandwich, all disgusting delighted sounds and animal focus. Billy though, he isn't listening to you right now. Not about songs.
You think it could be because this song, it sounds maybe like something Bucky Haight might sing, his smack thin fingers are inside your brain. His music jangles something loose in you sometimes, helps process pure fire, brimstone anger into words.
Billy's not hearing it though, but that's all part of a typical Hard Core Logo song writing moment. Part of the build up to building something new. Eventually, you wear Billy down and he listens to you, and you both pluck nonsense riffs out on your acoustics, adjusting each others fingers with cigarettes clenched between knuckles and teeth.
Then you present a shell to John, usually, usually it's just a thin flimsy thing, thin as the paper it's scrawled over. John helps fill it out, gives its beating heart a jolt with a bassline and eventually it's approved by all the important assholes in the band. Et viola, master-fucking-piece.
Billy lights a cigarette in the damp blue twilight of the bathroom, and it glows like a lighthouse at the edge of a cliff.
You ignore it.
His eyes meet yours and you watch his arm slip over the side and dive under the water, slow down his belly and into the deep.
Takes you a long, drunk second to realise what the fuck is going on.
Bil-ly fuck-ing Show-off.
You tilt your head back, screws your eyes shut and let yourself spin in the dark. Sometimes that's a fun game, rolling on the head spins like a funfair ride.
You ride it for a long second to tune of water lapping arrhythmically at the edges of the tub (he builds up to a rhythm, it's not like you haven't heard this before, this bit is just a tease). The water is deceptively gentle, softer even than the breath bouncing off the tiled walls, yours and his. You think you shouldn't be breathing this hard, not hard as Billy, not this dog-pant, but you are and it's about as controllable as the periodic tilt-a-whirl of the world.
You open your eyes and tilt your head forward, blink the stars from your eyes. You're still in the dinky little bathroom, blue tiles and white walls, the high sided tub that'd fit two people in it if one of them was a skinny fuck (like Billy) and the other wasn't so fucked drunk he'd drown in six inches of water (like you).
The stupid TV's still sitting squat and square and threatening on the edge where you put it, dark faced and still damp where Billy had switched it off with his toes.
Billy.
Billy's got one knee pulled up, a tease within a tease, obscuring your view of anything but the long strong line of his arm, the knot of his shoulder where his muscle jumps and jerks gently in time with his hand.
When you tear your eyes away from his shifting skin, you meet his eyes and you feel the tug in your spine and your balls, useless as that is to you right now.
He's watching you, too, is the thing, and you wish that didn't mean a thing to you, but it does.
You try on a smile, but it falls down sloppy and fake. He shifts so both his feet are firmly on the bottom of the bath, legs only fractionally bent so the uneven islands of his knees breach the water. When he smiles, it's what you wanted to do but couldn't, a little white line drawn in the sand, a little distance in the curl of his lip, a little painful, so fucking hot.
When he lifts his hips, soap bubbles cling to his knuckles and slide off his cock, hard and arrogant as the snarl on his lips. The water sloshes over the side on a particularly vicious stroke and you only realise your cigarette has burnt down to the filter when your fingers blister.
You flick the butt into the increasingly large puddle in the middle of the floor and curse absently.
Billy laughs, face turned towards you, and then groans, and you forget burnt fingers quick as you forget every single time you've gotten your fingers burnt because of Billy.
You forget there's a world outside and Billy's eyes drift shut. You watch him bite his bottom lip, pulling it under his teeth at the corner, sucking the full line of flesh into his mouth for a long second. You watch him, his cheeks flushed from warm water and sex. He looks like he's running a fever and you feel like you are.
You twist on the toilet seat like a tree towards the sun, the toes of your boots hitting the side of the tub, the cramped space is familiar, like every motel bathroom you've ever been in.
The movement sets you back on the tilt-a-whirl, your head like a big cocktail someone's taken a swizzle stick to. You still the world with your hand on the edge of the bathtub and it takes a frustrating second for your head to catch up, but when it does Billy's skinny fucking legs and hard cock right are fucking there, his knuckles slick and his dick red and hard, his grip not fucking fooling around. Just fucking.
Fucking unfair.
Everyone's jerked off in the van or the bus, you've even heard John's furtive salami slapping, sounding embarrassed and sorry even in the little hitches of his breathing. There's a special place, though, somewhere in the back of the current sickening carnival ride of your mind that's reserved for the times Billy's been caught out.
There's one that's as well worn as a favourite record: Pipe and John were passed out cold and Billy had kicked the blanket off and taken his fucking time on the backseat, catching your eyes in the rear view mirror deliberately, while you'd had to keep your hands on the wheel.
Now, though, you're fucked. You're so fucking fucked you can't fuck.
You can't fucking appreciate the moment to the fullest, despite the frisson of interest that shoots down your spine and tugs at your nuts. You're half hard, sure, but you know from experience you're not getting any harder.
Billy's shifted so one hand's on the edge of the tub, his warm wet fingers sliding against yours where they're still clenched on the rim of the tub.
"We having a good time now?"
"We're having a ffffuck-- fucking good time. Joe. You're having a good fuck-ing time right?"
You slip off the toilet seat to your knees with the aid of gravity real and imagined, most of it in the flick of his tongue against his bottom lip as effective as fingers through beltloops. You land kneeling in a puddle of bathwater and it soaks into knees of your jeans.
Billy spits out more breathless obscenity, and you watch him squeeze his cock like he's close and trying to will it away for just a second, draw it out for a second, torture for him maybe, but worse for you.
You can't stand it.
You break first, and lean over to lick the sweat and steam off his upper lip. The sleeves of your sweater soak from the torn cuffs upwards until they're heavy, tugging your arms further into the water, tugging your hands at his skin, the insides of his thighs as slick, about the only soft part of him, your thumbs brush his balls and he groans against your mouth. You blame gravity again.
You kiss Billy until you feel him lose it, water sloshing and slapping over the sides of the tub warm down your chest and soaking the crotch of your jeans like you've lost it too, a sad damp tease, but when it ends you get something after all: Billy kissing you back.
6. black cats ('89 again).
Pipe's ass is hanging out the bus window, bared to a world that's either profoundly ungrateful or profoundly amused. It's hard to judge the emotional tone of car horns. Joe’d laughed until he coughed for the first five minutes, sitting on the bus's L-shaped couch with Pipe's head hanging down next to him, watching Pipe's face go red as the blood rushed to his brain, covering one ear with his hand as Pipe hoots in tune with every blaring honk that flies past them.
Now it's a little less amusing to him, but Pipe's still pretty fucking cheerful.
"You're going to get frostbitten nuts," Billy says, smiling through a veil of smoke and watching Pipe as he attempts to crane his neck without pulling his ass back inside the bus.
"Yeah? Well you can just suck my fucking sack until they're all toasty and warm again," Pipe says with a cracked laugh.
Billy sucks another lungful of smoke through his little close mouthed smirk and flips Pipe the bird, leaning down low over Joe's knees to shove his hand in Pipe's face so Pipe can properly appreciate the gesture.
When he sits up he catches Joe's gaze and rolls his eyes, and Joe crosses his eyes back and makes a retard face. Billy's happy, and Joe feels like he's been fucking stoned for the last twenty-four hours with nothing stronger in his system than his regular breakfast-beer and Billy's smiles.
Moods in confined spaces spread like the clap (the band is a confined space outside the claustrophobic smoke-overcast bus, too) and Billy's moods are the most infectious of all. Joe rides his little smile like a high and grins back.
It's hard to tell if Pipe's mood is chemically enhanced or just some freakish brainfart; with Pipe it's always hard to tell.
"There were kids in that car," John says from up front, where he's leaning over their driver's shoulder watching the road. "They're gonna need a lot of therapy."
They ignore him.
"Hey Pipe," Joe yells in Pipe's ear before turning and raising his eyebrows at Billy; watch. He waits for Pipe to finish hooting again, accompanying a Morse code of car horns, beepbeep beeeeeeeeep.
"Whaaaat?" Pipe says tuneful as a broken police siren.
Joe reaches up and grabs Pipe in a headlock, shoving him further out the window to give him a little scare, waiting until he hears Billy's wheezing laughter over Pipe's half choked Joe fuck Joe fucking don't fucking fuck JOE I'm gonna fuckin' diiiie and yanks Pipe back into the bus, off the couch and throws him flailing onto the floor, Pipe scrabbling with his pants around his knees, and Billy raising his feet up out of the way, delicate as a cat. Pipe eventually regains enough composure to realise he's inside and not rolling along the tarmac under oncoming traffic.
"Fuck you!" Pipe yells and yanks at his pants, climbing clumsily out from under the shitty plastic table they'd already cracked down the middle. He stumbles down front to sit in the vacant seat next to Asshole Kevin (he's still better than the first driver they'd had).
Billy laughs hard enough he collapses forward, forehead to Joe's knees. He calms down, but doesn't lean back, just turns his head to the side so he can fit the remains of his cigarette in his mouth, takes the final puff with his cheek against Joe's kneecap. He turns and rubs his forehead against torn denim and the skin of Joe's knees.
Pipe's bitching up in the front seat and Joe throws up a perfunctory middle finger in his direction, eyes on the curve of Billy's skull.
A suspiciously fucking good mood, Joe thinks and drops his hand down slide his fingers through the short hair at the nape of Billy's neck.
"See how fucking fast you can get a new fucking DRUMMER Joe you ASSHOLE, ARE YOU LISTENING ASSHOLE?"
"Shut the fuck up, Pipefelcher," Joe snaps without looking, and feels as much as hears Billy mumble the same against his leg before he pushes up against Joe's fingers against the back of his neck and sits back on the bench. He's watching Joe
"What?" Joe asks, because Billy wants him to. Billy just slides down against the back of the seat, his shirt riding up and his hair dishevelled from Joe's hands, and kicks his legs up and settles his socked feet in Joe's lap. "Billiam, what?"
"It's a secret," Billy singsongs, smiling at Joe like the Cheshire fucking Cunt.
Joe narrows his eyes.
Billy kicks his feet a little, his heals digging into Joe's thighs. Joe curls his fingers around one of his ankles and watches Billy watch him back with content, half-lidded eyes.
"Did you get the jack from that Karen-Krystal-Kelly chick? Because I told you she looked dirty--"
"No, Joe, because you fucked her, and her name was... fuck, who cares."
"Aw yeah," Joe says. "She was dirty, too," Joe sniffs his fingers theatrically and curls his lip, Billy laughs quietly. "So are you going to tell me your seeeecret? You fucking fourteen year old girl."
"Yep," Billy says and doesn't elaborate.
Joe presses his knuckles to the arch of Billy's foot and abruptly wants a cigarette, but he takes a lungful of the soup of second hand smoke floating around the bus and plays the game.
"You going to tell me now, Billiam?"
"No," Billy says. "Light me a cigarette."
They smile at each other.
They've got a bus and a hotel, which is just fucking nuts, but it keeps Tallent happy and Joe can't say he hates hotel mini-bars, at least. Of course, he has to take the batteries out of the smoke-alarm in his room, but what the fuck anyway.
Billy and Joe still share a room, though, because it makes sense and Joe flat out refuses to get a single.
They're a little buzzed on kiddy-sized sampler drinks and Joe is slumped into one of the two puffed up arm-chairs they've dragged out the sliding door onto the balcony of their room. The view is classic fare, an ugly swimming pool full of piss and leaves and beyond that a stunning panorama of a parking lot studded with shiny business cars and broke down bombs, and one big ugly fucker of a bus.
Cars whizz past on the highway, comets of light with the streetlights as stars, fixed yellow blobs.
"So fucking tell me already," Joe says, holding out the little bottle to Billy and thinking about the bag of coke burning a hole in his pocket.
"I don't know, Joe," Billy says and takes the half finished bottle and tipping it back. He leans back against the balcony railing, one foot up propped on the seat of his chair.
"I don't knoooow Joeee," Joe mocks sarcastically, "Tell me, Tallent, or you can go fucking sleep in the bunk that Pipe desecrated last week."
Billy rolls his eyes at the empty threat, then points at Joe the miniature liquor bottle dangling between two fingers. "Okay, deal time. Share and I'll tell you."
Joe turns and blows out his lungful of smoke towards Billy, watches as he blinks the sting from his eyes.
"Share?" he asks, trying on virtuous confusion for size and coming off about as innocent as a twenty-dollar truck stop whore, which is an improvement on what he'd predicted.
Billy calls the lie with the quirk of his lips, and drops both his feet back to the ground, steps up close do his knees are brushing Joe's.
Joe looks up at him with his eyebrows up, a silent dare.
Billy just smiles, kicks Joe's feet apart and plants one knee in the space between Joe's legs, brushing the crotch of his jeans.
He leans in and presses well-trained fingers, long strong fingers, into Joe's pocket. His jeans are fucking tight standing up, but sitting down Billy's got to work to get his hand in, and when he does his fingertips rake down Joe's thigh and his thumb brushes Joe's cock just barely, playing him as easy as an old song.
It's not as if Joe doesn't know what Billy's doing but it's hard to give a fuck when he's half-hard. Billy jerks his hand out as Joe jerks his hips forward, almost painful against Billy's leg, still between his, and Joe sucks back the noise building in his throat.
Billy holds up the little plastic rectangle with its happy bulge of white.
"How did that get there?"
"Shut the fuck up," Billy says happily, and backs off to perch on the arm of Joe's chairs, holding the packet up to the light and watching the pearly white powder shift loosely in when he flicks it. Yeah, it's good shit, and Joe reads the appreciation in Billy's face.
It's good enough shit Joe's double-bagged it with careful paranoia and was attempting to save it for something, something good, but he watches Billy's face and can't think of anything else worth saving it for.
Billy looks down at him when Joe's snakes his arm around his waist and Joe grins as he jerks him down into his lap, Billy flails for a second then settles all hard angles pressing into Joe riding the border between feeling good and hurting (feels like Billy).
"I share, you share, that's our little deeeaaal is it you bogarting prick," and he tightens his arm around Billy's waist as he shifts to get comfortable or as close to as they're going to. He settles in when he realises Joe's comfortable being half comfortable, and this is part of the stupid little deal now.
"Dink," Billy says, anchoring himself with an arm around Joe's shoulders.
"Asshole."
"Cunt."
"Blow me."
Billy's hands work right up in front of Joe's face, right under his nose. He opens the packet carefully and tilts it, lines the furrow between his thumb and index finger shallowly, an uneven line. Billy shakes his head and leans in to lick Joe's lips, not quite a kiss, something less chaste than a press of lips.
"Maybe."
Some fucking deal.
The inside of Joe's skull is all lit up, beacon fires burning from his head to his cock. Normally it'd be fucking hard to concentrate with Billy fucking Tallent in his lap, but he can't not pay attention to Billy's little secret: "Ed got us a gig for Seymour Stein, Joe. A fucking audition. A meeting."
It takes Joe a second to unstick his mind from where they're going to be ten minutes from now, because he doesn't want to. It takes longer for him to unstick his tongue from Billy's sweat-salty neck (especially when Billy groans just a little, deep and low in his throat).
His lips tingle when he licks Billy's upper lip right under his nose, and Billy shoves his face away. He tugs out of Joe's grip, and after a second Joe lets him go because he wants to push, but he doesn't want the shove right now. There's nothing fun about fighting with Billy on coke, except when he's in the mood for new scars (to be fair, sometimes he is).
It's like when he'd first called Ed back, dialling the number printed in black and white on that little white card, everything had gone from the fun kind of head spin to the kind that you just know is going to end in blood and puke. Everything was going faster, and after ten fucking years of steady as she goes, it was too fast. Too fucking fast. Fast-fucking Ed.
Billy stands and doesn't pace across the tiny balcony, there's not enough room and he kicks at Joe's feet and knocks their knees together.
"Great. So when he hands me that pen, you think I'm going to have to sign in blood? I hear that's standard in contracts with the fucking devil."
"Stein's not the devil, Joe. Neither's Ed."
"No, he's just an asshole in a suit who works for him. The whole fucking industry is the Devil and you want us to sell our immortal souls. We already got the music, Billy," Joe gestures between them, because that's where their music is, that's where it gets good, "we don't need a crossroads deal."
"--And you said when, when he hands us the pen to sign because you know he's going to want us. You fucking know it!"
Someone bangs on the wall of the room next to theirs, and Joe yells an echoing “FUCK OFF” out across the swimming pool. Billy doesn't twitch at the banging or the yell, ignores both and comes up close in front of his chair to stand between Joe's spread legs.
"We'd go to L.A., record, party, have a fucking time Joe. Roll around in the fucking dust and make real money. Live. I want out of this fucking cesspit, Joe. If I have to drive across rural fucking Canada one more time I'm going to start shooting cows out the bus window."
"I like this fucking cesspit."
"We're better than this. We're better than this fucking cesspit, Dick. You're better."
Now, they both know that's a lie.
"Are you hearing me?" Billy asks in his ear, leans down and grabs Joe's face in both hands and kisses him, pulls back and looks at Joe, hands still on his cheeks and forcing his focus in on Billy's black and blue eyes. “You listening, Joe?”
"Yeah, yeah," Joe says. "Ed blah blah fucking something about selling our immortal souls."
"We've got fucking three days to call so Ed can set this up, Joe," Billy says and he's got a hand on Joe's cock through his jeans, fingers squeezing, and Billy won't ask because he never fucking asks.
"Really," Joe doesn't quite make it a question.
Billy pulls away, stands straight and looks down at him with stage-worthy snarl because it's like he forgets sometimes that Joe knows him, knows him like no one else knows him, like no one else will ever (ever) know him.
Joe thinks he's about to get Billy's fist in his face but what happens in Billy strips off his shirt in a movement just as violent as a punch.
Billy drops his shirt somewhere beside him and licks his bottom lip, quick. "Fuck it," he says with a smile.
"Don't make it too easy, Bill, I won't believe I've won."
This is the problem.
Joe's got what he wants: this tour vacuum, independence and the price they pay for it, the dirty clothes and dirty cars, the broke-down amps and filthy bars and cigarettes until Joe can't scream without his throat bleeding; Billy singing for him when he has to spit chunks of his lungs, the hotel rooms they're lucky to have and not having them when they decide they want to eat or party hard that week.
It's standing in front of him, shirtless and pale, blue eyed and vicious, ugly expression and beautiful face, stupid fucking spiked up blonde punk hair.
This is a means to Billy, and it's Joe's end.
Billy leans over him, hands and knees, doesn't bother this time keeping the knee between Joe's legs from brushing his balls hard and hot. He leans down, his smile sharp and white disappearing as he presses his face against Joe's throat, doesn't spare him teeth when Joe's hands go to his warm chest and find a nipple to press hard against.
“Come inside,” Billy breathes against his skin.
The bed's half a step behind Joe and feels like someone watching, the feeling in his gut is nothing like what he feels before stepping on stage, but he's got nothing else to compare it to. There's a similarity in the liquor warm roil of his stomach. He's half-hard, and that's familiar too, familiar as the face in front of him.
Billy steps up close and hooks his fingers into Joe's belt loops, a mirror of a move Joe's made on stage and Joe plays Billy's part and lets himself be tugged forward a little off-balance until they're nearly chest to chest, his still covered and Billy's naked, his nipples peaked still from the cold outside, from the fact he's clearly as ready for whatever this is as Joe-- as ready to fuck.
His fingers tighten on Joe's jeans and Joe can feel his knuckles and his cock, hard against Joe's through double denim. They're not on stage now though and there's no guitars slung around their bodies, no illusion of distance, no distance at all. Billy grins at him and Joe shifts his cigarette with his tongue to the corner of his lips, they're close enough together the half burnt cigarette could span the space between their lips.
Billy plucks the cigarette from his mouth and flicks it to the motel carpet, grinds it out under his socked toe, leaving an ugly black mark on the rug.
He's ready for it when Billy shoves him.
He lets himself fall when the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed, bounces a few times on the mattress and feels the urge to laugh rise in his throat. Billy settles his knees either side of Joe's hips and it still comes out half a laugh but it's adulterated by the fucking grind of Billy's hips against his. Billy sniffs against his neck, then licks the skin of his throat pulse point to pulse point like he can slit Joe open with his tongue.
Joe's hands go to Billy's waist, dip around his bare skin, warm, until his fingertips meet over the obvious bumps of Billy's spine, and he can't help dip his fingers down under the waistband of Billy's jeans. Too fast, but no fucking idea beyond take what he can get now.
It's not like they were ever hands-off but they've never fucked. Shared a bed (a bench, a couch, a van-floor), sure, but that's buddies. What's a handjob up against a wall with a lip and a bottle of bourbon split between them after a fight with someone, with each other, what's a hand on someone's skin when there's three people in a bed?
It's not the same. It's nothing like the same that Billy's mouth had been on his dick with a chick in the room, and sucking the back of Billy's neck while he fucked someone wasn't the same, if he's got his clothes on it doesn't count, if there's a chick it doesn't count, if he's just watching it doesn't count.
It's inevitable his hands find Billy, drawn like greedy kids towards the front of the stage where they know they're going to get hurt and spit on but they just keep pushing for it because they can't not. It's like gravity.
Like the inexorable drift of his shoulder to Billy's when they're walking through a crowd.
His hands on Billy's hips now, pale skin under his fingers and the dirt under his nails and the tarnish on his rings stands out severely against Billy's skin.
“Get naked,” Joe says, pushing, and the fuck of it is, Billy does. He stands up and pops the button on his jeans, slides them down and off his hard cock, and stands in front of Joe with nothing but a smile on his lips. Joe reads the smile and the tilt of his hips easy as black and white on a page: yeah, you too, I fuckin' dare you.
Joe kicks his boots off and strips. Billy watches him and Joe couldn't give less of a fuck that he doesn't compare to Billy (who fucking does), he doesn't look like a half-starved model, he's always gonna be heavier. Lack of sleep fucks with both their faces, but Billy looks dangerous and deliberate, bruised, where Joe looks fucked up and tired: he's got bags under his eyes they could carry the whole tour in. Coke fucks Joe's skin up, doesn't do a fucking thing to Billy's (but then, Billy doesn't do as much as Joe).
While Billy's just looking, Joe takes the advantage and takes Billy's hand, tugs them both back on the bed, they roll and Billy calls him a cunt, he was fucking thinking apparently, and Joe apologises by letting Billy roll them over and settle back in his lap.
Win fucking win, the head of his dick drags across the skin of Billy's ass and he groans, they both groan. “Yeah,” Billy says, and Joe grabs Billy's hips to steady himself, get more purchase, more friction, but it's his head as well as his body that feels like it's out of control. “Wait,” Billy says.
He hooks his feet under Joe's thigh and leans over the side of the bed, ribs visible, you could play a fucking tune on them, and he comes up with the packet of coke (out of Billy's own pants, Joe notes, not fucking surprised). Leans down with a grin and taps a messy line out across the centre of Joe's chest, powder sticking in his uneven spatter of chest hair.
Billy surveys his canvas. He leans over again, more carefully this time, slow enough he doesn't disturb the blow spilled on Joe's chest.
Joe breathes shallow, hears metal scrap against the bedside table beside them. Billy backs up and the first flash of metal in his hand is accompanied by a paranoid whisper in the back of Joe's head, knife, with as much interest as fear.
It's not a knife, though, it's the key to their room, the room number dangling off of it on a white plastic square. Joe smirks up at him and Billy spares him a glance under his eyelashes before he scrapes the powder together into some apparently adequate semblance of a line and leans in, lips brushing the skin of Joe's chest, his sternum, before he snorts the line, comes up watery-eyed and open-mouthed. Out-of-his-head hot.
It's almost too fucking sweet. He throws his head back and grinds against Joe, a shivering sweat-slick mess of wet-dark hair and flushed cheeks. Smiles. Joe should know Billy doesn't give anything away for free. He leans down but makes Joe work for the last inch between their lips and they kiss-- Joe jerks hard as Billy drags the teeth of the key across his chest.
Billy licks the wicked metal edge, Joe's sweat and white powder on the curl of his tongue. Joe chokes on a fuck, mostly, mostly because that stung and he cranes his neck forward, his skin red-raw in a long line down the middle of his chest like a heart-surgery scar.
Billy leans forward again, flashes the silver metal in Joe's line of sight for a lingering second before he presses the point right next to Joe's left nipple. Joe opens his mouth to ask him what the fuck he's doing other than being a cunt and Billy digs the point in and draaags, a slow stutter as it catches at his skin, crossing the heart-surgery line through the middle and Joe's whole body contracts toward the centre of the cross Billy's drawn. Up towards the point of the key.
His cock presses up against the crack of Billy's ass, head slick against hot skin. It takes a frustratingly long time to be able to press his shoulders back flat against the mattress and there's no way in any fucking heaven or hell Billy hasn't noticed how seriously fucking hard he is against him.
The look on his face says he has. Billy leans down a draws his tongue over the first scratch, tongue almost cold against the feverhot skin of Joe's chest.
"Fuuuuuuuck," Joe screws his eyes shut for a second, until he feels like a cunt and a coward and snaps them open.
"You. Love. It." Billy says, punctuating with sharp little scratches. The last one makes Joe hiss and he knows he's drawn blood without looking. He jerks again but this time it's just his hips.
"Yeah? Like you fucking don't." And he feels more grounded when he shifts his grip from bruise-tight fingers on Billy's hips to his ass and Billy's eyes widen. Joe gropes, squeezes and pulls his ass cheeks apart and Billy jerks this time, looks down at Joe and shifts back so he can lean into him and press their cocks together, a teasing brush.
Joe can't fucking remember what fucking town they're in, what fucking room, anything. Hyper-focussed on Billy above him, eclipse-eyed Billy who's watching him so intensely Joe can't even remember his own fucking name. Billy with blue irises thin a new moon, sweat on his face, his dick against Joe's, brushing his stomach in the hellfire hot space between their skin, slick with sweat.
Billy's mouth is open and wet, and Joe jolts as Billy gathers them together in one long-fingered hand, jerking a clumsy rhythm so fucking hot Joe can't even see for a second, eyes wide open. His hips jerk and he has to grab Billy's hand to stop him or it's all going to be over real fucking quick.
Billy reaches up and lays a rough hand on Joe's cheek, and even through his fucked sinuses he can smell sex. Joe pushes up against the barely-there pressure of Billy's palm against his face, and Billy leans in and lets him bite at his soft bottom lip until Billy buries the same hand in the back of his mohawk and tugs sharply. It's really fucking hard to make himself stop, but he backs off, Billy's hand still wrapped in his hair.
"What do you want, Joe?" Billy's breathing heavily and his voice is rough and sexy, a sandpaper counterpoint to his cock, wet and hot against Joe's stomach, both catching Joe and pushing him higher, closer.
He wants to be closer. He wants. This. Billy. Eclipse-eyed bastard. Everything. Whattaya got?
"You tell me," he says and Billy's closes his eyes for a long second, until Joe shoves up against him deliberately, jolting him. He blinks his eyes open and comes back grinning like the cat that got the canary fucking islands. He plants a hand on Joe's side and Joe huffs out a breath hard, hyper-aware of the touch, like a shock through his body, Billy's callused thumb brushes against one of the scratches on his chest, a rough little burn.
Billy stretches his hands above his head, sitting up on his knees, Joe watches him, thin and taught a guitar string, rolling his hips when Joe's squeezes his ass and digs his fingers in just a bit. Billy's cock jerks obscenely in thin air because he fucking loves Joe's eyes on him (Billy fuckin' Showoff). He gets off on it, on how bad Joe fucking wants to open him up and crawl inside, on how Joe want to live in his fucking guts.
"You want to fuck me," Billy says, bringing his arms down and pressing his hands against Joe's chest, palms flat. Joe takes him in from hard dick to hard smile, full of teeth and the remnants of the argument and anger he'd swallowed before starting this.
Billy grabs his wrist and pulls one of his hands away from his ass, tugs Joe's hand up to his lips and Joe goes from unresisting to active the second his fingertips touch Billy's bottom lip. He presses two fingers in, Billy's hand still around his wrist, fingers squeezing and urging him on, letting him in.
They watch each other, Joe's fingers curling against Billy's tongue and Billy sucking hot and wet, tongue moving against the pads of Joe's fingertips. They both rub against each other, feedback loop of wanting and wanted; spit-wet fingers conducting sex.
The sound when Joe tugs his fingers out is obscene, the red wet jut of Billy's bottom lip, but none of it quite matches the feeling when Billy pulls at Joe's wrist and leans forward so Joe's fingers find his ass, slide against hot skin, slip and bump wet against his hole.
Joe's done this before with chicks, the best that one time she'd said fuck yeah after he'd eaten her out, everything slippery and slick from her cunt and his lips, and maybe he'd thought of Billy, yeah, when he turned her over on the floor of the van and fucked her.
Billy's hot and tight and he groans as Joe slips a finger in up to the knuckle, forehead against Joe's neck, leaning on him heavily. Joe squeezes Billy's ass with his other hand just fucks him like that for a while. Fucks him and feels him, until he slips two fingers in and it starts feeling like he needs more slick, spit. Billy groans against his neck when he pulls his fingers out slow, a half-pained, half-wanting sound that jerks Joe by the heart and the balls.
That's fucking it: he's fucking done unless he gets his cock inside him now.
“Sit up,” he says and his voice comes out a rough ruin, like he's just screamed the set of his life. He spits in his own palm and holds it out to Billy (he's breathing hard, harder than Joe, and he's got teeth marks all over his lower lip. Joe has no idea which one of them put them there). Billy spits as well, and Joe urges him up so he can slick his cock with it, punk rock ass fucking, and he'd laugh if he weren't about to fucking blow.
Joe presses his dick against him and Billy lowers himself back, and Joe fights the violent urge to just shove further in, faster, harder. Billy stills on top of him and looks as cracked open as he is for a second, lost in Joe's hands, and he tries to move too soon, way too soon for either of them, and Joe grabs his hips hard enough it's got to hurt and stills him.
Billy's fingers dig into Joe's chest in automatic retaliation (unerringly into the red lines he's left there, like an x-marks the spot for where to dig his blunt fingernails in). He doesn't stop when Joe loosens his grip, finally feels like he's not going to come the second Billy moves. He lets Billy fuck himself in agonisingly slow moves of his hips, hissing between his teeth, until Joe feels as if his head's going to implode, his cock, his chest is going to tear open under Billy's fingers pressing against the little cracks in the surface.
He grits his teeth and digs his fingers into Billy's hips to flip them over. Billy looks up at him wide eyed, and he can't do anything but shove forward until they both groan, hard and fast and too fucking gone to give a fuck about anything now but Billy Billy Billy and getting off.
Billy leaves welts down his back to match the ones across his chest, scratches hard at his skin with rough, blunt-nailed fingers, strong fucking fingers, guitarists fingers, tracing out wings across Joe's shoulder blades that he barely feels now except as another force pushing him towards the edge.
Joe's going pieces, yeah, and it feels fucking great to be balls deep and bleeding.
And in the morning, Joe picks up the phone by the bedside and calls Ed. And he says yes. Set it the fuck up. No, he hasn't had a fucking chaaaange of heeeeeart, Ed, you fucking lifetime movie fag. He looks over at Billy, naked back to bruised hips, pressing his face into Joe's pillow as he stretches.