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He hadn't given any thought to how topsy-turvy it would feel talking to Billie Joe at some later point, knowing what he knew. In fact, Taylor had completely forgotten he even knew what he knew until approximately one minute and thirty-two seconds into an unexpected conversation with Billie, here near the bar at one LA night club or another.
The recollection smacks him in the chest, like a hard wind come up out of nowhere: Dave. Billie. Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeah.
["Nope," he'd said when Dave had dropped the B.J. Bomb on him. "Nope." He'd been sitting cross-legged in bed, cornflower blue sheets pooled on his thighs, a gray dusting of ashes scattered across one of the sheet's folds. The offending cigarette dangled from his lips. "You did not. Never happened. You're telling fibs again, David Eric Grohl, and you--" He poked Dave's chest. "--should be ashamed of yourself."
Dave, his head down to hide the grin that Taylor knew--knew knew knew!--was there, shrugged. He flicked the ash away with two fingers. "If you say so."
"Fuuuuuuck," Taylor groaned, leaning back on his hands. Then he straightened. "When? Why? How?" The cigarette bobbed with each word.
"How?"
"How."]
And now with his breath still taken away by the gale of memory, he's fixating on Billie Joe's mouth-- or maybe not his whole mouth. Maybe just his lower lip--juicy lower lip, something you'd want to suck on, like a mandarin orange section.
Taylor touches his tongue to his own lip.
"And, so, yeah," Billie Joe is saying, and Taylor nods and drags his eyes up from Billie Joe's nibblable lower lip to his kohl-circled bedroom eyes, and he says, "Yeah. Sure," and has no idea what he's yeah suring--all he does know is that Billie probably more than likely almost certainly has no fucking idea that he knows what he knows.
He can't seem to keep the tip of his tongue away from his lips, so he drags his lower lip under his teeth instead.
["How...." Dave had said again. "Wellllll, it started out, if I recall correctly, something like this...." He angled his head and dropped a soft kiss on Taylor's lips, with a slight scrape of stubble against Taylor's chin (how he loved an unshaved Dave)--and then he stole the cigarette from between Taylor's fingers and sat back, naked save for a pair of plaid boxer shorts.
"Not that fucking how, dicktease."
Dave grinned around the cigarette.
"How, like--who made the first move, how."
"Ah, well, you know me." Dave exhaled smoke and stamped the cigarette out in the ashtray on the bed before sliding down to lie on his side facing Taylor, his elbow propped on the mattress, chin propped in his hand.
"Oh, so he did," Taylor said.
"Okay, so he did."]
And now Billie Joe is looking at him expectantly, like he'd just asked Taylor a question, which meant he probably had. Taylor had missed it because he'd been distracted by the ephemeral image of Dave--figment!Dave--winking at him before leaning in and taking Billie's perfectly shaped bottom lip between his teeth, right there in the club, right in front of everyone and his brother. And then, right in front of Taylor's overactive imagination, Dave and Billie were sucking face, tongues and all.
It's difficult to tear himself away from this imagery, but Billie Joe is waiting for an answer of some sort.
"Uh--sorry," he says. "I spaced for a second." Scratching his neck, trying to look nonchalant, he asks, "What'd you say?"
[Smiling and leaning against the headboard, shifting his legs under the cornflower blue sheets, Taylor had said, "And? So?"
"So, well, it was the usual story...."
"Oh, you were both drunk, huh?"
"Ohhh-blooterated." As he flashed a grin, his left hand slipped beneath the sheets and found its way to Taylor's knee. "And," he said, still grinning, "while I may not have made the definitive 'first move,' I'll have you know that I made plenty of subtle, sneaky moves prior to the first move--" His forefinger rubbed Taylor's knee. "--without which the first move would never have been possible. You could say I engineered the first move."
"I could say a lot of crazy things."
"Yeah, well, if you're going to make me recount my crazy sexy adventures, the next crazy thing you're going to find yourself saying is 'Oh Dave!,'" he said in falsetto, "'Dave! Fuck me harder!'"
Taylor didn't fail to notice that Dave's hand had roamed to his inner thigh, and he felt no compulsion to move it away (what, and interrupt a good thing?).
He also didn't need more information to flesh out Dave's "engineering" scene in his imagination: Dave, in babbling conversation with Billie Joe, moving closer with each exchange, steamrolling over all concepts of personal space, tapping his arm or chest, knocking shoulders, and slinging, finally, an arm around Billie's back while he leaned half-drunkenly against his side to make a crass joke in his ear.
Taylor pictured Billie's head cocking toward Dave's mouth to hear the joke. He pictured (as Dave's hand moved, warm, over his own skin under the sheets) Billie Joe's eyes, more heavy-lidded than usual--care of too much to drink and the gauzy strands of cigarette smoke hanging in the air--and how they would have gazed off to the left somewhere as he listened to Dave's witty remarks with a half smile on his face.
And then Dave being Dave, he'd have laughed at least as loud as his own joke as Billie Joe did, knocking up against him even closer and squeezing him from the other direction with the slung-around arm.
Once Dave had the 'arm sling' going, he wasn't likely to move away from it. Billie Joe could have taken it--and the bumping of Dave's hip against his, and the way Dave had to put his mouth right up against his ear so that stubble scratched his earlobe or even his neck--as the camaraderie of someone who'd downed three or four too many whiskeys. Dave, in fact, was unlikely to unsling his arm unless outside forces acted upon him, such as an interruption that literally dragged one of them away, or Billie Joe eventually slipping out of his grasp and stumbling away.
But when attention like that goes on long enough (and when it had been Taylor, it had gone on for four and a half weeks, but that was another story) anyone entertaining the idea that there might be something more than mere drunken camaraderie to capitalize on might begin to do what Billie Joe, in Taylor's imagination, did that day.]
In some club in LA, Billie opens his mouth--a mouth Taylor mentally pens long and impossibly beautiful odes to--and he's about to repeat his question, which Taylor is pretty sure is not going to be, "Hey you wanna get out of here and fuck each other till we're dehydrated husks of things that used to be people?"--when someone comes up from outside their intimate little circle of two and puts a hand on Billie Joe's shoulder. Billie cocks his ear toward the guy's mouth, and after a few seconds, he nods. And then he says, "Okay," to the guy, with another nod, and the guy turns away--which is good--but Billie lifts his eyebrows in apology--and that's not good. Taylor sighs inwardly as Billie Joe says, "I gotta--" and gestures in the direction of the guy making his way back through the crowd, in some club, somewhere in LA. Some club Taylor wasn't even planning to hit tonight, but somehow he'd wound up here--and wound up talking with Billie Joe. And wasn't that fate?
Billie Joe says, "You know how it is."
And--"Yep," Taylor says. Damn, Taylor thinks.
"Hey, see ya around," Billie says and lifts his hand just before he turns away.
"Yep." Damndamndamn. "See ya." As Billie disappears through the crowd, Taylor takes a deep, chest-swelling breath. "Fuck it," he says, to himself. "I needed a smoke anyway." He hasn't caught sight of anyone inside the club smoking, so it's one of those places, the kind that enforce the ban. Stupid California. He pats down his pockets, making sure he has smokes before he leaves, then makes his way to an exit and out into the mild night air.
People lined up hoping to get into the club recognize him--there's a "Hey, Taylor Hawkins!" he smiles and nods at, and a "Taylor!" he says "What's up?" to, and there are whispers and pointing--and then he's ambling alone up the sidewalk and lazily around the corner, where he stops halfway down the side of the building and leans his shoulders against the brick. He lights up, inhales deeply, and remembers what his imagination had cooked up that day, while Dave was fucking him through the cornflower blue sheets (and while he'd made a game of crying out out "Oh! Billie Joe! Fuck me harder!" as much as he could get away with): lush, full-color imagery of Dave's mouth and Billie Joe's closed eyes and his long neck, and their hands, and their naked hips--Dave with his jeans and underwear around his ankles, the whites of his socks showing above that. Billie Joe with his button-up shirt unbuttoned, save for the one button underneath the knot in his necktie. Dave pulling on the necktie, pulling Billie in for more kissing--hey, that's what Taylor would do. And who could blame him. With that mouth?
With that mouth.
Dave, with his arm slung around Billie Joe's shoulders, had probably been laughing at something amusing he'd just said when Billie Joe, eyes gleaming with alcohol and more, had looked, grinning, toward him. Had made eye contact, then shut his eyes and angled his head. Had--
Well, that's how it had happened with Taylor at least.
He leans his head back against the brick wall and takes a long, satisfying drag off his cigarette. Smiling.
What'd those STD propaganda sheets say? When you slept with someone, you slept with everyone they'd ever slept with, too?
That wasn't so bad.
Not a bad deal at all....
He flicked his ashes and took another good drag. Smiling.
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