Black Holes and Revelations

Nov. 19, 2009 (still)
Driving in the direction of home, there were many half-crazed moments where Billie Joe thought maybe it'd be a little easier if he just veered off the road into a pole, a tree. He would do it fast enough. It would kill him on impact, and he would get the way out he was searching for from this fucking mess.

Quickly following those brief seconds of panic were rationalizations. Jakob and Joey's faces, Adrienne's face - God help him, Mike's face. The beloved, familiar images swept suicide away, leaving pale, sweaty fingers and a lurching heart behind.

He pulled over. He was shaking and scaring himself and very possibly losing his mind, if he ever had it to began with. He was starting to think he hadn't.

Jason White had been number four on his speed dial for as long as he had a cell phone. Billie Joe was overwhelmingly thankful for that because there just wasn't anyway he could have remembered his best friend's number, let alone hit every one of those seven digits correctly.

"Billie?"

"Jase, I-" Billie let his head fall against the window, and when he squeezed his eyes shut, he could feel that his eyelashes were wet. "God, Jason, this is so fucked up."

Green Day's back up guitarist and Billie Joe Armstrong's best friend - next to Mike, but fuck - sighed, and its funny how much sympathy can hurt. He was parked outside of Starbucks, had been ready to grab a grande mocha something, and Jason knew he was going to need it more than ever now. But he couldn't put Billie Joe on hold, especially with an introduction like that. "What happened?" He asked, hoping the composure in his own voice would infiltrate Billie. "Did you talk to Mike?"

"Yeah," Billie managed. He tried to get a handle on breathing because it was difficult. "But I didn't tell him. I almost did, though, Jason, fuck, I almost did!"

"Hey, Billie Joe, breath. In and out, man, come on." He wasn't frustrated - exactly - even if he sounded like it, but Billie was headed straight for panic mode and he couldn't afford that. There was too much at stake at this point, and ghostly memories of Billie's adventure in New York City before American Idiot stirred in his head. "You calm, Bill?"

Watching the cars fly by, a dizzying blur of color and sound, gave Billie something to focus on. He kept his gaze on the road and gripped the phone tighter. Breathlessly, he said, "Working on it."

Jason paused for a moment before asking, "What happened when you talked to Mike, Bill?"

"It's just. . ." He trailed off, his exhale choked as he blinked back tears. No fucking way could he cry, no fucking way. "He knows there's something wrong. He knows."

"Billie Joe, of course he knows. Everybody knows, dude, it's written all over you face. Damnit, Billie, I feel so bad, this sucks, but. . . you've been cheating on your wife. There are consequences."

"Don't you think I fucking know that?" Billie snapped, and hated how shaky he sounded. Where was his unstoppable passion these days? He gritted his teeth and leaned his head back against the seat. "I'm a bastard and Adrienne deserves better and this situation is fucked up, I know these facts, Jason, I've got them down cold. Trust me."

Jason sighed and bit down on his lip. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to put salt in the wound, Billie Joe. Calm down, okay?"

"I can't, Jase." His voice broke on his best friend's name and finally, he decided he didn't give a damn. He let the tears go. "What am I supposed to do? I have to go home and pretend everything's fine when it isn't and it's not going to be. And the tour. We'll be in Australia in two weeks, Jason, I - what the hell am I supposed to do?"

It had to be said, even if Jason really, really didn't want to say it. When he bit the bullet and did it, his voice was soft. "You have to tell Mike before you do anything."

Billie had already known it was true, but to have it take the form of an actual sentence and come from the mouth of someone else set off deep pains in his belly. He curled his arm around himself and lowered his head against the steering wheel.

"Billie?" Jason asked, voice edging with concern when he received no response. "You there, Bill?"

"Yeah," Billie Joe managed, his voice strangled and weak. "Yeah, I'm here."

Jason wanted to hug Billie close to him, protect him from all the fire his own personal hell that he was surrounded by and promise everything would turn out all right. As it was, he couldn't do any of those things, least of all promise him anything because nothing was certain. That scared Jason the most, and he didn't want to think about what it was doing to Billie.

"I've - shit, I have to go, Jase." Billie's eyes had caught the time from the clock on the dashboard, and by the time he would reach home, dinner would already be over and Adie would be pissed. He sighed heavily. "Thanks, I - damn, what would I do without you, man?"

"You'd be fucked," Jason chuckled. "Drive safe, Bill, and call me tomorrow, got it?"

"Yeah, I got it, Jason."

Billie Joe hung up the phone and glanced at the screen. There was a new message in his inbox, and it was from Tre, asking him out to beers with him and Mike after dinner. He bit his lip hard, took a steadying breath, and turned his phone off.

He was going to go home, and then he was going to stay there.