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*** stargore-77.neocities.org ***********************************************
****************************************** e-mail: stargore@disroot.org *****
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*** Silly Thing *************************************************************
**                                                                         **
** Fandom: Hard Core Logo (movie)                                          **
** Warnings: References to & discussion of (canon) suicide.                **
** Summary: "You could never be my gay best friend, Billy," she says.      ** 
** "I don't even like you, and you just said you're not even gay."         **
**                                                                         **
** Billy and Mary reunite at Joe's funeral. They talk about Joe, and what  ** 
** John said in Winnipeg.                                                  **
**                                                                         **
** Notes: "This is extracted from a much longer fic I've been trying to    **
** write. While it ever make it out of my drafts? I don't know! Which is   **
** why I'm posting this section, because I like it. Mostly."               **
**                                                                         **
** This fic was originally posted to Ao3 on the 15th of November, 2025.    **
**                                                                         **
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**                                                                         **
** Mary does come to the funeral in the end. No husband and no kid in tow  **
** this time: nothing to prove anymore, he guesses.                        **
**                                                                         **
** Billy tells Pipe and John and John's girlfriend that he'll make his own ** 
** way home, and walks to the graveside, standing next to Mary. They're    **
** almost alone: the people from the funeral home are off at a respectful  ** 
** distance, packing up something in the hearse.                           **
**                                                                         **
** Some asshole sent a flower wreath in the shape of a dollar sign. It's   **
** next to the grave, propped up on one of those little folding stands.    **
** Billy reaches for his cigarettes.                                       **
**                                                                         ** 
** Joe is dead. Billy's life will never be the same. Mary is wearing       **
** Calvin Klein perfume.                                                   **
**                                                                         **
** "I knew something bad was going to happen," Mary says.                  **
**                                                                         **
** "What, you're fucking psychic now?" Billy says.                         **
**                                                                         **
** She rolls her eyes and tosses her hair. Billy didn't remember her       **
** having so much hair.                                                    **
**                                                                         **
** They both look into the open grave.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** "Did you love him?" Mary asks.                                          **
**                                                                         **
** "More than anybody else I've ever known since," Billy replies.          **
**                                                                         ** 
** /More than you/, was the obvious subtext. Mary doesn't seem to mind,    **
** though: she just nods and accepts this as a statement of fact.          **
**                                                                         **
** Mary pauses; and then, in a deliberately detached, cool voice, she says,**
** "John told me he fucked you up the ass, and that's what went wrong.     **
** That was why the band broke up."                                        **
**                                                                         **
** This was how Mary talked when she was trying hard to pretend that she   ** 
** didn't care. He'd heard her use that voice before, one time, when they  ** 
** were lying in bed together and she said /So you're not gonna stay, huh?/**
**                                                                         **
** /He fucked you up the ass/. Mary's eyes look a little wild and scared.  **
**                                                                         **
** Billy counts to ten and tries to think. Mary hadn't spoken to John at   ** 
** the funeral, and they'd never really been friends back in the day, so   **
** she wouldn't have spoken to him until....                               **
**                                                                         **
** "Was that at the Winnipeg show?" he asks, and she nods.                 **
**                                                                         **
** "John had just lost his meds," he says, trying to make his voice gentle.**
** "He didn't know what he was saying."                                    **
**                                                                         **
** "But he was talking about something real, right?" she insists.          **
** "He didn't just invent it?"                                             **
**                                                                         **
** Billy throws the butt of his cigarette into the open grave.             **
** Joe wouldn't have minded. Joe gave himself a Germs burn with a          **
** cigarette once and claimed that he liked the pain. Which was a lie,     **
** because Joe was a fucking baby, and when he fell down a skateboard ramp ** 
** and had to get stitches he'd cried and sweated and begged for morphine. ** 
**                                                                         **
** Billy stepped back, paced a few steps away, then turned to face her.    ** 
**                                                                         **
** He didn't want to talk about this.                                      **
**                                                                         **
** Mary could be trusted, is the thing. She wasn't in the band, she wasn't ** 
** even a roadie, but she had always kept their secrets. She had the same  ** 
** kind of blind loyalty they all felt, the kind that had dragged him back ** 
** here for the tour.                                                      **
**                                                                         **
** So tell her. Bring her in from the cold.                                **
**                                                                         **
** "Years ago," he says, "When we first moved to Vancouver...."            **
**                                                                         **
** Back before they got their band back, back when Joe was playing bass in ** 
** a go-nowhere bar band called Lobotomy and Billy was just                **
** /Billy, Joe's boyfriend/ instead of /Billy Tallent/.                    **
**                                                                         **
** "Joe and me were together. Together, like...."                          **
**                                                                         **
** Mary just looks at him. He turns away.                                  **
**                                                                         **                                          
** "We broke up just before we got the band back together, in 1981," he    **
** says. "That was the end. That was it."                                  **
**                                                                         **
** That was a lie, but the only person who could prove it was lying in     **
** front of them, six feet under in a wooden box.                          **
**                                                                         **
** "I never knew that," Mary says, and then; "I'm sorry.                   **
** Dumb thing to say."                                                     **
**                                                                         **
** "Nobody knew. Well, maybe a couple people, but....We never really       **
** talked about it after we broke up. Except. On the last tour, in 1990.   **
** I think Joe knew I wanted to leave. We were fighting all the time.      **
** He started bringing it up in front of the other guys."                  **
**                                                                         **
** He shrugs. "I guess he was trying to prove that he knew who I really    ** 
** was, what I really wanted." Trying to make it a joke, make it sordid,   ** 
** make it embarrassing. "So maybe John heard him then, and got confused." ** 
**                                                                         **
** And the fuck of it was, they'd been happy, for however long they'd      **
** dated - six months, maybe, if that. It hadn't been sordid, it hadn't    **
** been wrong.                                                             **
**                                                                         **
** Of course they'd broken up over something stupid, but it was a miracle  ** 
** Joe had ever allowed it to happen at all -- dogged by a self-hatred     ** 
** that corrupted everything it touched, that consumed him, that made him  ** 
** want to take the good things he'd had and drag them through the dirt.   **
**                                                                         **
** It had been a good thing. One of the few good things Billy could        **
** salvage, as he looked back on the wreckage of the last 15 years.        **
**                                                                         **
** "I didn't know you were like that," Mary says.                          **
**                                                                         **
** "I'm not," Billy says, irritated. And she looks at him and he looks     **
** away, rubbing at his face. "I'm not -  I'm not in denial. Sure, we were ** 
** together, but I was young. I wasn't like Joe. I don't think he liked    ** 
** girls at all."                                                          **
**                                                                         **
** "That would certainly explain a few things," Mary mutters.              **
**                                                                         **
** "Oh, what?" Billy says.                                                 **
**                                                                         **
** "Nothing!"                                                              **
**                                                                         **
** "Couldn't he get it up? I want details."                                **
**                                                                         **
** Mary hits him on the arm and says "/Jesus/, Billy, he's lying right     **
** there, dead."                                                           **
**                                                                         **
** "Yeah, he's dead, it can't hurt him, so tell me," Billy says.           **
**                                                                         **
** "/No/," she says.                                                       **
**                                                                         **
** "Look at it this way," he says, "I'm your gay best friend-"             **
** and Mary laughs.                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Damn, she was really pretty when she laughed, even wearing those dorky  ** 
** glasses. It was a shame she was married now. That big lunk from         **
** Winnipeg didn't know what he had.                                       **
**                                                                         **
** "You could never be my gay best friend, Billy," she says.               ** 
** "I don't even like you, and you just said you're not even gay."         **
**                                                                         **
** And it was like Joe had never come between them.                        **
**                                                                         **
** "Wanna go get wasted?"                                                  **
**                                                                         **
** "Yeah," Mary says. Suddenly, she looks her age.                         **
**                                                                         **
** She opens her giant bag - Billy guesses that all women got given one of ** 
** these giant handbags when they turned 30, to put their ibuprofen and    **
** tubes of lipstick and crochet kits and pocket books in. She pulls out   ** 
** a lighter and a packet of Marlboro reds. "Bye bye, Joe."                **
** Billy put his arm over her shoulder as they left. It seemed like the    **
** right thing to do, since she was crying.                                **
**                                                                         **
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*** End Notes: The title is from Silly Thing by the Sex Pistols, ************
** from the posthumous /Great Rock N' Roll Swindle/ film and album. ********* 
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*** A "Germs burn" is a cigarette burn on the inner wrist, a la the burns ***
** distributed by Darby Crash, lead singer of the Germs and an aspiring *****
*** cult leader. ************************************************************
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*** This textfile was created on the 2nd of December, 2025. *****************
*******/Oh you silly thing, you've really gone and done it now./*************
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