Three Is The Magic Number - Standalone
Title: Three Is The Magic Number
Author: Blink-sum-new-muse
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Green Day
Summary: Tre won't stop singing Point/Counterpoint, so Mike decides to teach him that sometimes you get what you sing for.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the members of Green Day or their families. I also don't own the song Point/Counterpoint, which belongs to Streetlight Manifesto, who I also don't own. I do, however, own Adam and Jason from A, Matt and Dom from Muse, and Bryan Holland from The Offspring. Yes indeedy. But they can be rented out. Prices negotiable.
Status: Finished.
Dedication: Christmas fic for lite_bright
Notes: I am completely aware of how terrible this is. I don't do humour, apparently.
"I've got a gun in my hand but the gun won't cock and my finger's on the trigger but the trigger seems locked and I can't stop staring at the tick-tock clock and even if I could I would never give up, with a vest on my chest-"
"SHUT UP!" Mike finally roars, launching himself in his drummer's direction, hands outstretched and ready to throttle. With a gurgled, "Bull-ergh," they both crash to the floor, Mike landing on top of Tre and not minding one bit, as Tre is considerably more comfortable than the floor and in any case, he's in the middle of trying to kill him. Or at least shut him up, whichever comes first.
"Mike, Mike, you know that's not very nice," Billie Joe admonishes lightly, moving so he's standing above the two of them and then hooking his arms around Mike's chest. With a heave and some energy he conjures up from nowhere - maybe out of concern for Tre, but maybe just because he doesn't want Mike to go down on a murder charge - he manages to pull the bassist away from their other friend, landing on his back on the floor but with a struggling Mike on top of him.
"Let me go, Billie Joe, I'm gonna rip his vocal chords out!" Mike claims, trying to prise his friend's fingers apart so he can get away, but Billie Joe keeps them locked and kicks at Tre to indicate that he might do well to get out of there. Tre rejuvenates quickly, leaping to his feet and sticking his tongue out at Mike, running away before Mike has a chance to kick him too.
Mike finally stops struggling once Tre is out of sight, relaxing and just getting his breath back. Billie Joe thinks the danger might not yet be over, but even if it isn't he's going to have to let his friend go because he's starting to lose his own breath. He releases the grip on Mike, pushing him upwards, and the two break apart, sitting up and breathing carefully in and out.
"Why didn't you let me strangle the bastard?" Mike enquires, frowning slightly. "I could have shut him up, we would've been rid of his singing forever."
Billie Joe half shrugs. "I didn't feel like being a witness to a murder. It was only one song, anyway."
"But he was singing it at three times the speed, and it was the sixth time. Sixth," Mike emphasises.
"At least it was a good song," Billie Joe offers. Mike simply shakes his head.
"Anyway," he says after a short silence. "This isn't over. He's not getting away that easily."
"You can't kill him!" Bille Joe protests. "We need a drummer! And it has to be him, we can't take over the world with only two crazy people. Three is the magic number for taking over the world, Mike. I thought you already knew this."
"I can't let him keep singing like that and not get punished," Mike retorts. "Even if I don't kill him, I still have to punish him. And I would like to do that by removing his vocal chords, so I don't have to keep punishing him. It removes the entire problem."
Billie Joe admits to himself that this is rather a logical solution, but then again, how would they perform Rock and Roll Girlfriend? People requested that every now and then, and well, it wouldn't do to admit that they couldn't play it. Besides, he quite liked it.
"How about," he says slowly, after a moment of thought during which Mike ponders the exact location of the vocal chords and how best to remove them without letting someone bleed to death, "That instead of removing his vocal chords, or even the less drastic option of killing him, we just...punish him some other way?"
"And what way would that be?" Mike asks in a tone that implies he doesn't believe Billie Joe has a good enough answer to this yet.
"Um..."
"Where do we keep the hacksaws?" Mike asks, starting to get up, but Billie Joe grabs his sleeve and pulls him back down again with a thump.
"No," he says, "I've got it." He looks Mike in the eyes. "Do you have Gerard Way's phone number?"
* * * * *
Two days and rather a lot of phone calls later, they have what they need. Mike, it turned out, didn't even know who Gerard Way was, let alone have his phone number, so that meant they had to start off The Band Chain. The Band Chain was a big group of bands who all had at least one number of one member of one other band in the chain, and one member of one different band in the chain had to have one number of one of their band's members as well. It meant that if Warped was going to be cancelled at the last moment, the promoters didn't have to bother phoning a hundred bands, they just phoned one and set the chain off. So far, Warped had never been cancelled at the last minute, but you never know.
So anyway, after Billie Joe phoned Mark Hoppus, who phoned Benji Madden, who phoned Bert McCracken, who phoned Benji Madden back because he said he refused to speak to Gerard, Benji then phoned Chris Demakes, who phoned Tim Rogner, who phoned Andrew McMahon, who phoned Adam Lazarra, who phoned Gerard Way, who phoned Billie Joe back sounding very confused and pretty pissed off because it was three o clock in the morning where he was and he was in the middle of something involving his brother and a lot of neckties. Billie Joe didn't ask.
But thanks to Fed Ex and some other participants of The Band Chain who were on tour, within two days they have what they want. Two Kevlar vests. Only, minus the Kevlar, because My Chemical Romance don't seem to think the 'bullet proof' bit of a bullet-proof vest is that important, so they're really just lookalike black vests. But that doesn't matter, because they only have to look like them for this to work. Billie Joe and Mike are also in possession of a number of movie style plastic wounds and cuts which could be applied to the skin, and two very realistic replica handguns, thanks to WalMart. They also stocked the real thing, but Billie Joe thought Mike didn't really need to be any more tempted than he was.
"You ready?" Billie Joe asks Mike as they psyche - and suit - themselves up. He sticks his gun in his pocket, picks up the vest and looks seriously at his bandmate.
Mike grins demonically back at him. "Let's go, motherfucker." He starts humming Point/Counterpoint as they walk down the hallway. Ducking into the empty dressing room for their support band, he checks it's totally person-free before sticking a thumbs up at Billie Joe, then slamming the door behind him. Billie Joe grins to himself then gets serious, breaking into a run and rushing into the room at the end of the hall, the one where he knows Tre will be quietly watching some DVD.
"Tre!" he hisses, closing the door carefully behind him and running across the room bent over as though he's got a hernia. Tre looks at him like he's gone mad. Billie Joe throws the vest to his drummer, who then looks at that like it's gone mad. "Put that on," Billie Joe says in a low voice, "And don't take it off."
"What the hell is this?" Tre asks, turning the vest over in his hands. "Is this a bullet proof vest?"
"I got it just in case," Billie Joe whispers back, sending nervous glances towards the door every few seconds even as he explains things to Tre. He takes the gun out of his pocket and starts to load it with 'bullets' but fast enough so that Tre can't see they're not real. "After My Chemical Romance started wearing them onstage, you know? And after that Dimebag Darrel thing? Well, I figured we might as well have some just in case we ever needed them and we're needing them right now."
"Why the hell do we need bullet proof vests?" Tre asks, sounding worried, but putting his on when Billie Joe taps it and looks at him urgently.
"Mike's gone psycho," Billie Joe says, trying to sound scared and worried and confused and above all, not like he's going to fall over laughing at any second. "He's got a gun, Tre. I got those as well, two of em, just in case, you know? I've been carrying them with me in my luggage and he found them the other day, you know when you were singing that song and he freaked out? Well," Billie Joe continues, standing up straight and pretending to inspect the gun, like he's finished loading it and it's all ready to fire and kill, "He found 'em, and he asked me about them at the time so I just told him. But he's gone...I don't know man, he's out of his head. He's got one and he's in the support dressing room. Nobody will go in there, I'm going to have to try and talk him out-"
"Billie Joe, you can't go in there!" Tre insists, wide eyed and scared. "If he's got a gun he could shoot you!"
"What do you think this is for?" Billie Joe asks, indicating his vest. "I have to, Tre. I've got a gun too, I can at least try and immobilise him. But I'm going to try and talk him out of it first. I don't know what he wants to do but it's not gonna be good. He hasn't got a vest though, he didn't find those so hopefully he'll just see that I've got the upper hand and give it up."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Billie Joe sighs, shaking his head like he's in great turmoil. "I guess just try to find out what he wants. But stay here, okay? Don't move unless you hear noise, then if you do...get out of here. Stay here for now though, until I come get you or you hear him shouting or something. Or..." he pauses, trying to contain his laughter, "Shooting."
Tre nods wordlessly, watching as Billie Joe tiptoes across the room again, then gives him a solemn nod and leaves quietly. For the next few minutes he stays completely immobile, frozen to his seat and listening for the slightest sound.
Across and down the hall, Billie Joe and Mike are giggling like schoolgirls as they tear a hole in the former's pants, apply one of the fake bullet wounds to his leg, then crush a couple of fake blood capsule onto it so that it looks like it's bleeding profusely. Billie Joe lies on the floor, clamping one hand to his leg and holding his gun loosely in the other, then tries to compose himself. He shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath in and then lets it explode into a giggle as he opens them to see Mike standing above him with the other gun, pretending to hold it to his head.
When they've finally managed to pull themselves together, Mike aims at the ceiling [which, luckily for them, is cracked and broken already] and pulls the trigger. An extremely loud blank cartridge is fired, making them both wince, but immediately afterwards, they contort their faces back to their acted states of anger and/or horror. A few seconds pass as they stare at each other, both still trying not laugh, and suddenly after a couple of distant sounds Tre comes barging in, stopping short in the doorway when Mike suddenly turns the gun on him.
Billie Joe would like to think that Tre cares so much about him that he didn't even think to carefully open the door - knowing that Mike would be behind it, with a gun - as he was so concerned about his friend, but he knows it's much more likely that Tre just didn't think. Thinking isn't one of Tre's strong points, or at least not thinking logically.
"Stay over there," Mike growls at Tre, who's frozen in the doorway and wasn't intending to move any closer, anyway.
"Mike..." Billie Joe calls out, trying to sound weak, "What are you trying-"
"Shut up!" Mike yells, swinging the gun back to point at at Billie Joe. "I already gave you a warning, I don't want to have to follow through."
Tre's eyes finally move from where they've been fixed on the gun, and alight upon the 'wound' on Billie Joe's leg. He mutters, "Shit!" before he thinks - again, Billie Joe thinks, mentally rolling his eyes - and the gun is straight back on him.
"You are really pissing me off," Mike says, quietly. Tre doesn't reply, mostly because he's forgotten how to use the power of speech. "Get in here and shut the door."
Tre makes a move as if to back away and run as fast as he can down the corridor, but Mike adds, "If you don't, I'll kill him right now." He waves the gun in Billie Joe's direction again, and when the man on the floor looks up with a pained, pleading glance, Tre can't do anything else but obey. As much as he knows [thinks] they're both protected by the vests, he also knows that at close range, they haven't got a chance. Billie Joe's already hurt; Mike could easily just go over and rip the vest off him. Or just shoot him in the head, but Tre doesn't want to think about that. Very slowly, he shuts the door behind him, never putting his back to Mike, and then takes a few steps closer.
"Closer," Mike insists. "Right here." He indicates a spot on the floor directly in front of him, within arm's reach. Tre starts to breathe a bit faster, looks even more worried, but he does what Mike says. "Now," the man says quietly, "I want one thing from you."
"Yeah?" Tre says shakily, after a pause which he assumes happens because Mike is expecting a response.
"I want you to stop singing that fucking Streetlight Manifesto song," Mike responds.
Tre looks confused - understandably so, for once. This isn't a normal crazed gunman sort of demand, or not as far as he remembers from TV. "What?" he asks, sounding stupid.
"I want you to stop singing that fucking Streetlight Manifesto song," Mike repeats, but with a bit of an annoyed edge this time.
"Yeah, sure, sure," Tre agrees readily this time, thinking that he can hardly refuse just because he thinks it's not enough of a demand.
"And," Mike continues, "I want you to stop singing period, when you're around me and we're not onstage. Not one note."
Tre nods wordlessly, still looking terrified.
Mike smiles and drops the gun. "Awesome," he says cheerfully.
There are a few seconds of complete silence before Tre manages to blurt out, "What?"
"That's great. Thanks for that promise, man," Mike says, patting his drummer on the shoulder before he can think about moving away. "You all right there?" Mike asks their other bandmate, reaching a hand down to pull him off the floor.
Billie Joe nods, looking remarkably good, Tre realises, for someone who was supposedly shot just a couple of minutes ago. He is further suspicious when Billie Joe smiles, reaches down, and pulls the gunshot wound off his leg. As far as Tre remembers, wounds don't just come off like that, especially not holes. Holes in particular go inwards, not outwards.
"I'm glad we straightened that one out," Billie Joe says as though this were the end of a completely normal conversation.
"You guys fucking tricked me!" Tre finally yells, still pale and even shaking slightly. "You- that wasn't a real gun?"
"This? No," Mike gives a quick grin and fires it again at the ceiling, making the other two wince at the unexpected noise. "It's a starter gun."
"You fucking made me think you shot him! I thought you were really hurt!" Tre explodes again, directing the anger at both of them.
"Got you to stop singing though, didn't it?" Mike raises an eyebrow. "And that was a promise man, you can't go back on that. Next time it might not just be a starter gun..."
Tre doesn't think he believes the threat, but then before ten minutes ago he wouldn't have said he believed his two best friends would scare him like this, so he's not entirely sure. He settles on telling them, "I hate you. I hate you guys."
"Fuck you, thank you, I love you all!" Mike shouts in reply, fist in the air in a show of triumph.
Pic//Blink-sum-new-muse
Author: Blink-sum-new-muse
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Green Day
Summary: Tre won't stop singing Point/Counterpoint, so Mike decides to teach him that sometimes you get what you sing for.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the members of Green Day or their families. I also don't own the song Point/Counterpoint, which belongs to Streetlight Manifesto, who I also don't own. I do, however, own Adam and Jason from A, Matt and Dom from Muse, and Bryan Holland from The Offspring. Yes indeedy. But they can be rented out. Prices negotiable.
Status: Finished.
Dedication: Christmas fic for lite_bright
Notes: I am completely aware of how terrible this is. I don't do humour, apparently.
"I've got a gun in my hand but the gun won't cock and my finger's on the trigger but the trigger seems locked and I can't stop staring at the tick-tock clock and even if I could I would never give up, with a vest on my chest-"
"SHUT UP!" Mike finally roars, launching himself in his drummer's direction, hands outstretched and ready to throttle. With a gurgled, "Bull-ergh," they both crash to the floor, Mike landing on top of Tre and not minding one bit, as Tre is considerably more comfortable than the floor and in any case, he's in the middle of trying to kill him. Or at least shut him up, whichever comes first.
"Mike, Mike, you know that's not very nice," Billie Joe admonishes lightly, moving so he's standing above the two of them and then hooking his arms around Mike's chest. With a heave and some energy he conjures up from nowhere - maybe out of concern for Tre, but maybe just because he doesn't want Mike to go down on a murder charge - he manages to pull the bassist away from their other friend, landing on his back on the floor but with a struggling Mike on top of him.
"Let me go, Billie Joe, I'm gonna rip his vocal chords out!" Mike claims, trying to prise his friend's fingers apart so he can get away, but Billie Joe keeps them locked and kicks at Tre to indicate that he might do well to get out of there. Tre rejuvenates quickly, leaping to his feet and sticking his tongue out at Mike, running away before Mike has a chance to kick him too.
Mike finally stops struggling once Tre is out of sight, relaxing and just getting his breath back. Billie Joe thinks the danger might not yet be over, but even if it isn't he's going to have to let his friend go because he's starting to lose his own breath. He releases the grip on Mike, pushing him upwards, and the two break apart, sitting up and breathing carefully in and out.
"Why didn't you let me strangle the bastard?" Mike enquires, frowning slightly. "I could have shut him up, we would've been rid of his singing forever."
Billie Joe half shrugs. "I didn't feel like being a witness to a murder. It was only one song, anyway."
"But he was singing it at three times the speed, and it was the sixth time. Sixth," Mike emphasises.
"At least it was a good song," Billie Joe offers. Mike simply shakes his head.
"Anyway," he says after a short silence. "This isn't over. He's not getting away that easily."
"You can't kill him!" Bille Joe protests. "We need a drummer! And it has to be him, we can't take over the world with only two crazy people. Three is the magic number for taking over the world, Mike. I thought you already knew this."
"I can't let him keep singing like that and not get punished," Mike retorts. "Even if I don't kill him, I still have to punish him. And I would like to do that by removing his vocal chords, so I don't have to keep punishing him. It removes the entire problem."
Billie Joe admits to himself that this is rather a logical solution, but then again, how would they perform Rock and Roll Girlfriend? People requested that every now and then, and well, it wouldn't do to admit that they couldn't play it. Besides, he quite liked it.
"How about," he says slowly, after a moment of thought during which Mike ponders the exact location of the vocal chords and how best to remove them without letting someone bleed to death, "That instead of removing his vocal chords, or even the less drastic option of killing him, we just...punish him some other way?"
"And what way would that be?" Mike asks in a tone that implies he doesn't believe Billie Joe has a good enough answer to this yet.
"Um..."
"Where do we keep the hacksaws?" Mike asks, starting to get up, but Billie Joe grabs his sleeve and pulls him back down again with a thump.
"No," he says, "I've got it." He looks Mike in the eyes. "Do you have Gerard Way's phone number?"
* * * * *
Two days and rather a lot of phone calls later, they have what they need. Mike, it turned out, didn't even know who Gerard Way was, let alone have his phone number, so that meant they had to start off The Band Chain. The Band Chain was a big group of bands who all had at least one number of one member of one other band in the chain, and one member of one different band in the chain had to have one number of one of their band's members as well. It meant that if Warped was going to be cancelled at the last moment, the promoters didn't have to bother phoning a hundred bands, they just phoned one and set the chain off. So far, Warped had never been cancelled at the last minute, but you never know.
So anyway, after Billie Joe phoned Mark Hoppus, who phoned Benji Madden, who phoned Bert McCracken, who phoned Benji Madden back because he said he refused to speak to Gerard, Benji then phoned Chris Demakes, who phoned Tim Rogner, who phoned Andrew McMahon, who phoned Adam Lazarra, who phoned Gerard Way, who phoned Billie Joe back sounding very confused and pretty pissed off because it was three o clock in the morning where he was and he was in the middle of something involving his brother and a lot of neckties. Billie Joe didn't ask.
But thanks to Fed Ex and some other participants of The Band Chain who were on tour, within two days they have what they want. Two Kevlar vests. Only, minus the Kevlar, because My Chemical Romance don't seem to think the 'bullet proof' bit of a bullet-proof vest is that important, so they're really just lookalike black vests. But that doesn't matter, because they only have to look like them for this to work. Billie Joe and Mike are also in possession of a number of movie style plastic wounds and cuts which could be applied to the skin, and two very realistic replica handguns, thanks to WalMart. They also stocked the real thing, but Billie Joe thought Mike didn't really need to be any more tempted than he was.
"You ready?" Billie Joe asks Mike as they psyche - and suit - themselves up. He sticks his gun in his pocket, picks up the vest and looks seriously at his bandmate.
Mike grins demonically back at him. "Let's go, motherfucker." He starts humming Point/Counterpoint as they walk down the hallway. Ducking into the empty dressing room for their support band, he checks it's totally person-free before sticking a thumbs up at Billie Joe, then slamming the door behind him. Billie Joe grins to himself then gets serious, breaking into a run and rushing into the room at the end of the hall, the one where he knows Tre will be quietly watching some DVD.
"Tre!" he hisses, closing the door carefully behind him and running across the room bent over as though he's got a hernia. Tre looks at him like he's gone mad. Billie Joe throws the vest to his drummer, who then looks at that like it's gone mad. "Put that on," Billie Joe says in a low voice, "And don't take it off."
"What the hell is this?" Tre asks, turning the vest over in his hands. "Is this a bullet proof vest?"
"I got it just in case," Billie Joe whispers back, sending nervous glances towards the door every few seconds even as he explains things to Tre. He takes the gun out of his pocket and starts to load it with 'bullets' but fast enough so that Tre can't see they're not real. "After My Chemical Romance started wearing them onstage, you know? And after that Dimebag Darrel thing? Well, I figured we might as well have some just in case we ever needed them and we're needing them right now."
"Why the hell do we need bullet proof vests?" Tre asks, sounding worried, but putting his on when Billie Joe taps it and looks at him urgently.
"Mike's gone psycho," Billie Joe says, trying to sound scared and worried and confused and above all, not like he's going to fall over laughing at any second. "He's got a gun, Tre. I got those as well, two of em, just in case, you know? I've been carrying them with me in my luggage and he found them the other day, you know when you were singing that song and he freaked out? Well," Billie Joe continues, standing up straight and pretending to inspect the gun, like he's finished loading it and it's all ready to fire and kill, "He found 'em, and he asked me about them at the time so I just told him. But he's gone...I don't know man, he's out of his head. He's got one and he's in the support dressing room. Nobody will go in there, I'm going to have to try and talk him out-"
"Billie Joe, you can't go in there!" Tre insists, wide eyed and scared. "If he's got a gun he could shoot you!"
"What do you think this is for?" Billie Joe asks, indicating his vest. "I have to, Tre. I've got a gun too, I can at least try and immobilise him. But I'm going to try and talk him out of it first. I don't know what he wants to do but it's not gonna be good. He hasn't got a vest though, he didn't find those so hopefully he'll just see that I've got the upper hand and give it up."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Billie Joe sighs, shaking his head like he's in great turmoil. "I guess just try to find out what he wants. But stay here, okay? Don't move unless you hear noise, then if you do...get out of here. Stay here for now though, until I come get you or you hear him shouting or something. Or..." he pauses, trying to contain his laughter, "Shooting."
Tre nods wordlessly, watching as Billie Joe tiptoes across the room again, then gives him a solemn nod and leaves quietly. For the next few minutes he stays completely immobile, frozen to his seat and listening for the slightest sound.
Across and down the hall, Billie Joe and Mike are giggling like schoolgirls as they tear a hole in the former's pants, apply one of the fake bullet wounds to his leg, then crush a couple of fake blood capsule onto it so that it looks like it's bleeding profusely. Billie Joe lies on the floor, clamping one hand to his leg and holding his gun loosely in the other, then tries to compose himself. He shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath in and then lets it explode into a giggle as he opens them to see Mike standing above him with the other gun, pretending to hold it to his head.
When they've finally managed to pull themselves together, Mike aims at the ceiling [which, luckily for them, is cracked and broken already] and pulls the trigger. An extremely loud blank cartridge is fired, making them both wince, but immediately afterwards, they contort their faces back to their acted states of anger and/or horror. A few seconds pass as they stare at each other, both still trying not laugh, and suddenly after a couple of distant sounds Tre comes barging in, stopping short in the doorway when Mike suddenly turns the gun on him.
Billie Joe would like to think that Tre cares so much about him that he didn't even think to carefully open the door - knowing that Mike would be behind it, with a gun - as he was so concerned about his friend, but he knows it's much more likely that Tre just didn't think. Thinking isn't one of Tre's strong points, or at least not thinking logically.
"Stay over there," Mike growls at Tre, who's frozen in the doorway and wasn't intending to move any closer, anyway.
"Mike..." Billie Joe calls out, trying to sound weak, "What are you trying-"
"Shut up!" Mike yells, swinging the gun back to point at at Billie Joe. "I already gave you a warning, I don't want to have to follow through."
Tre's eyes finally move from where they've been fixed on the gun, and alight upon the 'wound' on Billie Joe's leg. He mutters, "Shit!" before he thinks - again, Billie Joe thinks, mentally rolling his eyes - and the gun is straight back on him.
"You are really pissing me off," Mike says, quietly. Tre doesn't reply, mostly because he's forgotten how to use the power of speech. "Get in here and shut the door."
Tre makes a move as if to back away and run as fast as he can down the corridor, but Mike adds, "If you don't, I'll kill him right now." He waves the gun in Billie Joe's direction again, and when the man on the floor looks up with a pained, pleading glance, Tre can't do anything else but obey. As much as he knows [thinks] they're both protected by the vests, he also knows that at close range, they haven't got a chance. Billie Joe's already hurt; Mike could easily just go over and rip the vest off him. Or just shoot him in the head, but Tre doesn't want to think about that. Very slowly, he shuts the door behind him, never putting his back to Mike, and then takes a few steps closer.
"Closer," Mike insists. "Right here." He indicates a spot on the floor directly in front of him, within arm's reach. Tre starts to breathe a bit faster, looks even more worried, but he does what Mike says. "Now," the man says quietly, "I want one thing from you."
"Yeah?" Tre says shakily, after a pause which he assumes happens because Mike is expecting a response.
"I want you to stop singing that fucking Streetlight Manifesto song," Mike responds.
Tre looks confused - understandably so, for once. This isn't a normal crazed gunman sort of demand, or not as far as he remembers from TV. "What?" he asks, sounding stupid.
"I want you to stop singing that fucking Streetlight Manifesto song," Mike repeats, but with a bit of an annoyed edge this time.
"Yeah, sure, sure," Tre agrees readily this time, thinking that he can hardly refuse just because he thinks it's not enough of a demand.
"And," Mike continues, "I want you to stop singing period, when you're around me and we're not onstage. Not one note."
Tre nods wordlessly, still looking terrified.
Mike smiles and drops the gun. "Awesome," he says cheerfully.
There are a few seconds of complete silence before Tre manages to blurt out, "What?"
"That's great. Thanks for that promise, man," Mike says, patting his drummer on the shoulder before he can think about moving away. "You all right there?" Mike asks their other bandmate, reaching a hand down to pull him off the floor.
Billie Joe nods, looking remarkably good, Tre realises, for someone who was supposedly shot just a couple of minutes ago. He is further suspicious when Billie Joe smiles, reaches down, and pulls the gunshot wound off his leg. As far as Tre remembers, wounds don't just come off like that, especially not holes. Holes in particular go inwards, not outwards.
"I'm glad we straightened that one out," Billie Joe says as though this were the end of a completely normal conversation.
"You guys fucking tricked me!" Tre finally yells, still pale and even shaking slightly. "You- that wasn't a real gun?"
"This? No," Mike gives a quick grin and fires it again at the ceiling, making the other two wince at the unexpected noise. "It's a starter gun."
"You fucking made me think you shot him! I thought you were really hurt!" Tre explodes again, directing the anger at both of them.
"Got you to stop singing though, didn't it?" Mike raises an eyebrow. "And that was a promise man, you can't go back on that. Next time it might not just be a starter gun..."
Tre doesn't think he believes the threat, but then before ten minutes ago he wouldn't have said he believed his two best friends would scare him like this, so he's not entirely sure. He settles on telling them, "I hate you. I hate you guys."
"Fuck you, thank you, I love you all!" Mike shouts in reply, fist in the air in a show of triumph.
Pic//Blink-sum-new-muse