The Man Who Would Not Be King

She couldn’t help but feel that maybe this all was just a bit ridiculous. If it wasn’t in the guy’s pocket, it must have been stolen. They weren’t going to find it lying on the ground, or mixed up in a pile of papers. This was a fool’s errand, and one that had somehow co-opted half of the roadies, including her, as well as the members of the band. Excluding Tré. They had all been sworn to secrecy, lest Tré find Billie Joe pathetic. Would he, Annabelle wondered, even as she interrogated the bodyguard who was the catalyst of the whole mess.

“Come on, let’s retrace your steps,” she sighed, dutifully. She knew she had effectively given them her blessing, but maybe, she thought, it was too soon to get so close. She glanced across the room at Billie Joe, who was feverishly scouring the floor for signs of a dropped photo. A pang of jealousy seized her heart; it was love for someone else that drove him. Annabelle forcefully rid herself of the thought and focused on the suit traveling in front of her.

“This is the only place I went during the show, apart from backstage, and I was only here for five minutes.” He gestured to the space in between the barrier and the stage. Her beliefs nearly confirmed, she asked him what had transpired in that time. “There was a squabble between security and a concert-goer. I stepped in, but someone else escorted him off the property.”

“So if you had lost it, it would have been then,” she stated, more to herself. Ignoring his shrug, she imagined a scene where the boy aimed a punch at the body guard, only for his arm to get tangled in the front flap of his suit jacket and magically come out with the picture. It seemed far-fetched, but then again, it had vanished from a seemingly impenetrable inner pocket—where else could it have gone? “Shall we start searching? Maybe it’s under some of this debris.”

The debris Annabelle referred to was a standard concert mystery. She understood the crushed water bottles and buckled beer cans, giving them a pass for hopping the barrier. But there was something harder to comprehend about the pair of shorts, the bra (did they bring extras?), the teddy bear, and the flashlight. She shifted a sticky newspaper page with her sneaker.
***

Billie Joe knew time was running out. Ten minutes ago Mike had exercised his authority as a member of Green Day to keep the building open an extra hour, and insisted that the staff wait till morning to clean up properly. That hour had already been drained to a remaining fifty minutes. It was past midnight, and he could guess that his crew would give anything to commit mutiny and strand him on a desert island at this point, they must be so exhausted. But he couldn’t work any faster. He’d been over every inch of the backstage area twice. His spirits sank as he realized that his not finding anything here lowered his chance of success drastically.

“You find anything?”

Billie Joe got up from his knees to shake his head in response to Pete. “Nothing. You?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Nope. You wanna split up? I’ll get the hallway, you get the dressing room?”

The two men parted ways at the door. Billie Joe took a deep breath before stepping inside, praying silently that he wouldn’t run into Tré. Nobody had seen him in the commotion, and Billie Joe kept anticipating that he would show up and discover what everyone was searching for. Frankly, it had surprised him that he hadn’t come ambling along already since it was past the time they were supposed to have left the venue.

But the lights were off in the room. Billie Joe flicked them on and surveyed the barrenness. It wasn’t in here, but he would check anyway. At least he’d know that he’d covered every square inch. He started at the back, next to a stack of folded metal chairs. Lifting them up just enough to see there was nothing underneath, he swore. Perhaps it was the dead quiet, or that he was cut off from the crazed hunt outside, but the room made him hopeless. It was as though a vice gripped his chest, and he descended into a familiar despair, begrudgingly an expert at discerning what was coming. He could never tell, when they came without the wild fear, whether he was getting better or only accustomed to their frequency. Heat curled off of his body, his lungs moved so fast he could never quite catch the air drawn in, and Billie Joe waited it out away from himself, absently standing.

And it passed. He stretched his arms overhead to relieve the resultant stiffness in his muscles. A cheap corner table and its stack of what looked like magazines drew him toward it. Sure enough, somebody’s forsaken advanced copy of Rolling Stone lay at an angle on the top. They were automatic now, his movements, and without realizing it Billie Joe was staring again at the picture, one whole with the page. Not his. It could never be his. He tore out the page unevenly and crumpled it up like a bad rough draft before word processors and recycling, then threw it on the ground, far from the room’s trash can.
***

Humming to himself, Jason entered the second dressing room expecting to leave again empty-handed—as had been the trend of his search. Instead of the photo, he found Tré sprawled faced away on the floor, legs asunder. “You’re still here?” One of his eyebrows rose incredulously.

Tré didn’t answer, he sobbed.

“Dude, are you okay?” He stepped closer slowly, as if he were approaching a dangerous animal, until he could see over Tré’s head. He was holding the picture! “Wait, you found it!? Oh my God, we have to tell Billie right away; he’ll be thrilled!” Jason paused when he got no response. “Hey…why are you crying, anyway?”

Tré looked up at him then, and Jason saw puffy, swollen eyes and a red that would linger long after the streaking eyeliner black was washed off. “What are you talking about? Found what?” Consternation creased his brow.

“The photo that Billie Joe is going crazy looking for. He said it was that one, cut out of the article.” He pointed, and Tré followed the invisible line to his own photo.

“This is mine. I ripped it out this morning,” he said, like it was obvious.

The guitarist narrowed his eyes, processing. “So this is not the same photo that Billie Joe gave to a security guard for safe-keeping and was lost?” he confirmed.

Tré nodded, mind working quickly. Billie Joe had taken it too. That meant he thought it was important. That meant he thought Tré was important. Did it mean that he still loved him? Maybe, maybe not. He couldn’t know for sure. But there was one thing that Tré was sure of, something that a good fit of tears had pulled out of him—he still loved Billie Joe more than he’d ever loved anybody. It hurt to be around him; it hurt to be without him. He wanted so badly to make it a good hurt again.

“Fuck, Jason. What am I doing?” He sprang to his feet with more energy than either of them had anticipated, considering the lethargic state he’d been discovered in. “There isn’t a bathroom in here, is there? How badly smudged are my raccoon eyes?”

The first question was greeted by a shrug, the second by an honest, “Like hell.”

“Shit shit shit. Oh hey, I think that door over there might be one,” he guessed, and averted his eyes from a long mirror on the wall as he passed by it. He only needed a mirror if it came with a sink. The door led to a room with a single toilet, equipped with both sink and dreaded looking glass. His excitement was tempered by how awful he looked. He exaggerated his own image of himself until he’d had his face beaten in and pushed into a vat of wet black tar. If he was this hideous there was no way Billie Joe would take him back. He bit his lip, forced himself under a stream of hot water, and scrubbed.

A few minutes later he came out looking sunburned but with little trace of the makeup. Tré reacted with surprise when he saw that Jason was still there. “You waited for me?”

Jason scoffed. “No, only here to make sure you don’t pussy out of this.”

“How did you—?”

“You looked determined suddenly. Let’s go.”

They met him at the side of the stage. Jason headed off to give them more privacy, although they couldn’t be more exposed. “Beej, I heard you were looking for the picture of us. And I wanted to give you this.” Tré showed him the photo.

Billie Joe frowned. “This isn’t mine. Mine was cut out neatly. I used scissors.”

“I know it’s not yours. It’s mine. I ripped it out this morning after I read the article. I was gonna keep it, scrapbook it or something for when I get old. For when I would regret breaking up with you, adding to a beer belly and probably drunk dialing you. But I want you to have it. I want to give it to you.”

Something inside Billie Joe’s brain was shocked into spasm, like a hiccup of the mind. He couldn’t be about to…not after what he’d said earlier. “So you’re giving it to me because you want to avoid drunk dialing me? Tré,” he chuckled, “you’ve been drunk dialing me for years.”

Tré felt his face warm as he realized this was true. “Yeah, well, I think it would be a different sentiment, one more needy. But in all seriousness, Billie, that’s not why. I want to give you a part of myself, at least. My whole self, if you’ll have it.”

The hiccup again. Billie Joe was taken aback by the earnestness he read in Tré’s eyes, eyes whose rawness he had willed himself to ignore. His heart throbbed painfully in his chest, protesting all the extra use it had gotten today pumping his stress-contaminated blood. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

Tré’s heart was having a fit of its own. He felt dizzy, like a thief named vertigo had stolen his sense of reality. This was a thousand times worse than the first time he’d confessed. He’d been surer of the outcome then; somehow confidence had flown to his side, but it didn’t join him now. He missed it. He could barely speak, the words caught in his throat. “Say you’ll be with me,” he croaked.

Billie Joe wanted more than anything to fling himself into Tré’s arms—fuck his manliness—but uncertainty stopped him. “I’m sorry that I let you down before.” Tears clouded his vision and he worried his hands in shame. “How do I know that I won’t do it again? What if I fuck things up and you leave me?” He shook.

The drummer swallowed dryly across from him. “Billie,” he said, wording things carefully, everything he cared about riding on what he told him now, “if there’s one thing all this has taught me, it’s that the fear of getting hurt is much more damaging than anything that could happen. I let you go because I was afraid, and you said it yourself in the interview, you can’t give up because there’s usually a solution hiding out somewhere. Well I’ve found my solution, and it’s to trust you and communicate with you and love you the best that I can and nothing less. I want to be with you for a long-ass time, if you’ll have me. I love you, Billie Joe Armstrong, and you will break my heart if you deny me right now.” Waiting for the result of his monologue, Tré noticed that the mother lode had vanished. It was as if he had said the magic words for two reasons, the other being that the man he’d said them to reached for the photo that had never stopped being outstretched.

Holding the picture in awe, Billie Joe marveled that they looked even better framed by messy edges, for the laws of a perfect romance need not always apply. Even if it was disastrous, it would be their disaster. Theirs together. A wide grin spread across Billie Joe’s face. “Tré, you idiot, why didn’t you say all that sooner? I am in fucking love with you, you bastard, and you had me thinking I was doomed into the eternal oblivion of unrequited love.”

A great weight lifted from Tré’s shoulders and he hugged Billie Joe fiercely to him, pinning his arms in his haste. “Don’t worry,” he consoled him past his ear, “you can still write sappy love songs about me if you want to.”

At that moment a yell rang out and hit the walls and the high ceiling, reverberating. “I found it!” From all corners of the venue a low buzz of excitement mounted, and people spilled into backstage eager to find out who had discovered it, where, and how Green Day’s singer would react. The crowd formed around Bill, bald head glinting in triumph as he held up the picture for all to see.

Billie Joe and Tré squeezed their way into the quickly expanding mob and met Bill with alternating bro hugs. “Dude, I can’t thank you enough, seriously!” Billie Joe almost bowled the victorious tech over with his gratitude, but a canvas for smiles and crinkly eyes as he retrieved his thought to be lost keepsake.

From within the crowd the security guard’s voice piped up. “Where was it?” he asked, more curious than anyone. Bill informed him that it had been on the ground in a bathroom stall, and the guard’s face lit up in embarrassed remembrance. Someone remarked that one always forgets the things he does most often, and he couldn’t help but agree.

The spectacle over, the conversations that had erupted at Bill’s call quieted as people began to peel off, yawning, towards their beds. When the hubbub had died down, Billie Joe smiled at Tré. “Hey.”

“What?” Tré took him in, admiring all the components that came together to create the face of his lover.

“My photo. You can have it, like a trade.”

Tré experienced a new kind of dizziness as he leaned in to kiss him again for the first time, all feelings and tingling sensation. It was perfect, and he knew he’d replay it many times in the coming weeks. They came apart, glowing.

Mike came up beside them, a smirk of amusement in place on his lips. “So you guys are together now?”

The three of them walked towards the venue exit finally after so much delay, arms threaded together over shoulders. Billie Joe answered, from the middle, projecting the news to anyone still left within earshot, “We still need to talk and work some things out, but yeah, we’re together.”