Notes: Written for the Classy Motherfucker challenge. Crossover with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but knowlege of that canon isn't necessary.
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Let's not drag out the details
Salt the wounds
What good would it do?
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It took him seven hours and three thousand dollars to forget Joe.
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He woke in the morning and discovered that he needed a job.
In the subway station, a kid was playing guitar, and the sound bounced off the walls, reminding him of something he couldn�t quite name. The kid saw him watching and raised an eyebrow. �You play?"
He shook his head. �No�I don�t think so,� he said, but when the kid offered him the guitar, his fingers moved across it with practiced ease, and a song he had never heard rang out above the echoes of the station.
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Lacuna, Inc. said the sign above the door, and when he walked in, the girl behind the counter gave him a big smile and a form to fill out.
Name: was the first line on the form, and he stared at it for a few moments before writing in William Boisy. Billy Tallent had died the same night as Joe Dick. His death had just been a little quieter, a little less bloody.
�I�m here to erase Joe Dick,� he said a while later into a tape recorder, looking down at the guitar calluses on his fingers.
�And Billy Tallent.�
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I knew a guy, said Pipe, and all his stories started out that way. He knew this guy who knew this chick, right? And she got her memory erased. Erased, man. Like, she chose to do it. Not the whole thing, you know, just the parts with some guy in it. Place called Lacuna. Wiped her fucking brain, you believe that shit?
They didn�t.
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The first thing he forgot about Joe was his death.
The way that, from a certain angle, he looked like he had just passed out on the sidewalk like he�d done a million times before. I�m not picking you up, Billy thought when he came out of the club, looking at him sprawled out there with the glass shattered beside his hand. Let Pipe deal with your shit, or John, or fucking Bruce. Not me, not this time, and then he saw the blood.
Once he forgot that, the rest was easy.
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Turn that off, the girl said, and to his credit, Bruce listened. That time.
They�d gone back to Joe�s room, the four of them, and Billy had Thelma while Joe banged Louise, and when they woke up in the morning they were broke and hung over and lying together on a bed that still smelled like beer and cheap perfume.
There was a moment there, as Billy lay with his eyes open and his mind idly counting the cracks in the ceiling before reality set in, when it felt like the old days, the crazy days, the Joe and Billy days. Stretched out on a bed in some shithole motel room, Joe's arm slung warm and heavy across his chest, their legs tangled together so bad that his left foot was asleep and he couldn't tell where his skin ended and Joe's began. It was a scene out of a thousand road stories, except that this time when he reached into his pants to get a cigarette, his wallet was gone.
His swearing woke Joe up, but Joe didn't say anything, just watched him as he kicked the dresser and stormed out the door.
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He changed his shirt before the photo shoot with Jenifur, forgetting about the bruises.
What the hell happened to you? asked one of the girls. He couldn't remember her name. He wanted to say you should see the other guy, but he didn't, because he didn't want them to see him. That was what this gig was about, after all�forgetting that shit. So he just shrugged and let her think what she wanted, let her think he was some kind of tragic punk hero or something, when really the bruises were just the latest in a long string of reminders that the name he had given Joe all those years ago was more accurate than either of them could have anticipated.
One last fight, one last fuck, and then they'd boarded two different planes with two different destinations. When he'd checked into his hotel, he had stripped off his shirt and stared into the mirror at marks that would just get worse before they started to heal.
Somewhere, he knew, a country and a lifetime away, Joe was doing the same thing.
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They fought about Billy fucking Joe, not the other way around, but the walls in that hotel were thicker than in most, so maybe John heard wrong. Or maybe he just got confused.
There had been some girl there for a while, one of a million nameless and faceless suburban punk chicks who thought they knew the world and didn't have a clue. Billy never heard her name, or if he did he'd forgotten it by the time the three of them ended up tangled together on a hotel bed that squeaked the same as every other hotel bed in every other town where they'd ever fucked some girl.
She sucked Billy while Joe watched, his hand moving lazily across his dick through his jeans, leering at Billy over the rim of his beer bottle. Billy watched his lips wrap around it, his tongue flick out to catch a drop on the side, and he came so fast and hard it was like they were fifteen again, on the dirty couch in Joe's basement that always smelled like dust and pot.
Then Joe fucked her while Billy sprawled next to them, drinking what was left of Joe's beer. He didn't watch, not really, but when Joe made that noise�the one that was somewhere between a gasp and a moan and always went straight to Billy's dick�he glanced up, and Joe's hand came up to wrap into his hair, pull his face down to meet him. They were kissing over the girl's head when Joe came, and he bit down hard enough on Billy's lip to draw blood.
The girl didn't last much longer after that. Joe rolled off her and said something in her ear, low enough that Billy couldn't make out the words. She shot him a look that she probably thought was full of attitude, but was really just a little pathetic, and then gathered her clothes from the floor and left.
"The fuck was that?" Billy asked, because they didn't do that shit, not in front of anyone, and it wasn't his rule, it was Joe's.
"You liked it," Joe said, pinning him back against the headboard and taking his mouth with his own. And goddamn if he wasn't getting hard again, just from Joe's hands on him, lips clashing, teeth scraping against sensitive skin.
Then they were rolling, grappling, hands slipping on skin slick with sweat, legs tangling into impossible knots, until Billy was sitting on Joe's back, one hand holding his wrists into the mattress, the other clutching at his hip, keeping him from throwing Billy off the bed. "The fuck?" Joe mumbled into the pillow, and Billy stretched out on top of him, bringing his lips close enough to Joe's ear that he could feel him shiver at the touch of his breath.
"You like it," he said, low and hard, and Joe did like it, because he didn't move when Billy reached for the lube, didn't try to get away as Billy's fingers slid into him, slowly at first, expecting retribution, and then harder, faster, until Joe was pushing his hips back at him, making noises into the sheets that Billy couldn't quite name and had definitely never heard from him before.
He moved his hands to Joe's hips and pushed in, and then Joe was moving, shoving up, and maybe he was getting into it, or maybe he was trying to throw Billy off, but it didn't matter at that point, because all Billy could think was hot and tight and Joe, and he was driving into him, as hard as Joe had ever fucked him, harder maybe, one hand braced on Joe's shoulder, the other holding himself up on the mattress.
He cried out when he came, wordless and meaningless, and he collapsed on the bed, feeling sleep washing over him, not bothering to turn and look Joe in the face. He fell asleep almost as soon as he hit the pillow, and it was probably only part of a dream when he felt Joe trembling beside him.
They fought in the morning, fists and raised voices, broken furniture, no different from any fight they'd ever had except that it was louder and bloodier and the brutal silence between them afterward lasted longer. That was what John heard, in some twisted way, and when Mary told Billy about it years later, he didn't bother to correct her.
What did it really matter, anyway? In the end, they both got fucked.
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Billy fell in love when he was twelve, not with a person, but with a guitar.
It wasn't all that great looking, or even, he realized much later, all that great sounding, but when he touched the strings they made music, and that was all it took. It had been Joe's uncle's, the one who'd died in the war, and it had lived in the Mulgrews' basement for enough years that it had collected dust thick enough to write their names in. Which they did, before they got the idea to play it, drawing flames along the sides and scrawling Joe Dick and Billy Tallent into the layer of grime.
Then Joe took it off its stand, and they spent the rest of the night passing it between them, picking out melodies by ear, each trying to outdo the other. Three months later they pooled their money to buy another, and there wasn't any fighting over it, because Joe wanted the new one, the "better" one, and Billy wouldn't trade the old one in for anything in the world.
It lasted until their first show as Hard Core Logo, when Joe smashed it onstage. Billy hit him across the face with the remains, and forever after that, if he looked at Joe in the right light, he could still see the scar.
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Maybe he looked like an easy target, scrawny little kid with his hair sticking up. Maybe it was just because he hadn't made any friends yet. Whatever it was, something made Joe Mulgrew attack Billy Boisy in the music room one Tuesday afternoon, and something else entirely made Billy strike back with the only weapon he could get his hands on.
They were both sent to the principal's office as soon as Joe got back from the nurse, and Billy heard the principal telling his secretary to make sure that the music teacher didn't keep her baton anywhere within the reach of the students from then on.
They were too young for detention, but they had to sit out recess for a week, and in that week they developed a grudging respect for each other. Billy didn't think they'd ever be friends, but at least he wouldn't have to worry about getting beat up on the playground. Him and Joe together, they could take down anyone who tried.
But as far as Billy was concerned, friendship was out of the question. After all, who would ever want to be friends with a dick like Joe Mulgrew?
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It took him seven hours and three thousand dollars to forget Joe.
Small price to pay.