Work Text:
Stitched up tight / Can't shake free / Love is the drug / Got a hook on me
Longing is a hell of a drug.
And I would know because I’ve done plenty of drugs: pot, coke, acid, speed, and my drug of choice booze. Never did heroin but stepped right up to the edge of it and peered down into the abyss one night in the dingy green room of a Florida honky tonk after we’d just played a killer gig. (That’s a lie. I looked at that darkness more than once, but some small shred of self-preservation kept me from plunging the needle in, thank fucking god because I would be dead now. I have zero doubts about how much I would have fucking loved smack.)
Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict.
That’s the thing they make you say in rehab every day. And not just once, but at each meeting, every session with a shrink – Hi I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict, Hi I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict. I grew to appreciate the monotony of it, the confession of it. It was forced honesty and let me tell ya, honesty is not my strong suit so being kept accountable by this mantra seemed stupid at the time but now I’m grateful for it. I still use it every day. Lately, every minute of every hour of every day.
“Hey, are you coming in here or what?” Daisy asks me and I look at her with hair all fiery red and wild, one hand on a cocked hip and the other wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Jack. I’ve missed my cue on a song we’re rehearsing and hadn’t even noticed that the band had gone silent behind us. “Earth to Dunne. Pittsburgh, do we have a problem?” She intones in a deep voice and the rest of the band quietly laughs because they love when she gives me shit. They live for it. Ever since the day she joined the band and quickly put the boys in their place, they follow Daisy’s lead when it comes to hassling me. I can still tell them how to play a song, but she’s the one that sets the tone for how the room is going to react to me.
“Sorry” I mutter and look down at my guitar, “where are we?” I truly don’t know where they were, but I know where I was – in my addict brain thinking about that beer Warren has behind his kit, and the joint hanging from the corner of my brother’s mouth, and the bottle in Daisy’s hand. And Daisy. I am always, always fucking thinking about Daisy Jones.
Like I said, longing is a hell of a fucking drug.
“Billy?” Teddy speaks from the booth, “let’s take five.” I nod and mouth thanks and slip my guitar off. Teddy was with me at the lowest point in my life and he saved it and ever since he keeps an eye on me, keeps me focused on the goal of writing this record and recording it and making it so good that no one will be able to deny the talent of The Six.
Or the talent of Daisy. For all the good Teddy has done for me he also brought Daisy into my world and some days I resent him for that and others I want to fall on my knees and thank him from the depths of my heart. I don’t drink anymore and haven’t touched drugs since the day Julia was born but I’m still an addict and my new addiction makes me think about that night in Florida all the time – that dark, sexy urge to throw myself into something that could destroy my entire life and give me the greatest fucking high I’d ever have. I live in fear that I would love every minute of it no matter how dangerous or how much damage it caused to me and everyone around me – my wife, my daughter, my band – to Daisy.
“Let’s split” Daisy is standing next to me, and I look around at everyone else before letting my eyes meet hers. Karen is laughing at something Warren said and Eddie is lighting up a cigarette and Graham is plucking at his guitar as he watches Karen take a swig of Warren’s beer.
“Split? He said five, Daisy.” I hear the sharp edge in my voice and so does she, but she barges right past my sour attitude.
“They can’t continue without us, right?” She puts her hands on my arms and spins me then gives me a push on my back towards the door. “C’mon man, move.”
Outside the sun is high and hot like it is every day in LA. I pull out my cigarettes and she strikes a match for me then lights her own. We stand in the parking lot smoking and squinting in the glare, and she shrugs her coat off and throws it on the hood of a Mercedes. “Why are you wearing that anyway?” I ask, “It’s 85 degrees out and there’s fur on it.”
“It’s not real fur” she says as if that explains anything. “You wanna take a walk?”
Yes, please but no way I think, because alone time with Daisy is something I crave the same way I used to crave a drink. “Do you see where we are?” I gesture around the lot, “and beyond here is a broken playground and a freeway.”
She rolls her eyes at me, “boy you’re a dark cloud” she turns and starts to saunter away. She’s got cowboy boots on and her denim cut-offs and a long vest with tassles that swing in the breeze as she goes, and her legs are bare, her hips are swaying, and her hair is voluptuous and I want to thrust my hand into it and tug her head back to expose her neck then sink my teeth into her flesh like a fucking vampire. Just taste her and smell her and hear her moan when she pressed her body back against mine.
Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict. Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict. Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict.
“Hey Daisy” I call out and she stops and spins back around to look at me. “Have you thought any more about the bridge in You Were Gone?”
She walks back and stands inches from me because personal space is not something Daisy Jones gives two shits about. “Is that why you’re out to lunch today? Thinking about that?” I nod but I also unintentionally lick my lips and she stares at my mouth for a long second before she lifts her cigarette and takes a slow drag that makes my entire body ache with the hunger pains of an addict – the ones that come when you desperately want something you absolutely can’t have.
Daisy tilts her chin up and blows the smoke out and sings a line and then looks back at me, “what about that?” And I nod dumbly because I set my own trap by bringing the song into it. Writing with her is like foreplay – it’s give and take, pleasing and teasing, it’s challenging and exciting and fun as hell and we’re good at it. We are so fucking good at it that I can’t help but think what the performances of these songs that we wrote together are gonna be like when we get on a stage to sing them.
That’s a lie. I think I do know. I have thought about it way too much for a married man who loves his wife and has promised to stay faithful after getting a chance he did not earn. A lot of sleepless nights have gone into imagining singing these songs with Daisy as thousands of people watch us standing as close as we are now with our eyes locked, sharing the words we penned together, breathing one another in. I force myself to take a step back and lean against a car, and she furrows her brow. “I thought we were getting along” she says, “what’s going on?”
“We were…we are” I correct. “It’s nothing.” Daisy groans and my pulse picks up, I feel a fight coming on and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe yelling at her will burn off some of this intense energy I have around her. Maybe being friends isn’t good for us. Isn’t good for my marriage or my addiction. “I can have an off day, Daisy. Not everything is about you as hard as that is for you to understand.”
She squares up and her jaw sets and sometimes when I watch her getting pissed off, I remember those cartoons when I was a kid where the cat would get so furious steam would pour out of his ears. I kind of smirk at this thought and she storms over to me, “are you fucking laughing at me?” She demands and I shake my head, “then what is your fucking problem Billy? You are checked out in there, you have no creative juice flowing, you’re scowling at everyone and wasting our time. I’m playing nice. I am being so nice to you even though most of the time you still don’t deserve it. And you,” she juts her index finger into my chest at each word to emphasize her point, “are being an asshole.”
The jabs are sharp, but they are also a fucking turn on. When she’s this close I can smell her warm musky scent and see that her rage is rising up in a pink flush over her chest and warming her cheeks, her eyes are shiny and bore into mine and her lips are soft and parted and my face dips towards hers, Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict. Hi, I’m Billy Dunne and I’m an addict and I’m an addict and I’m an addict I’m an addict, goes off in my head as if someone dropped a needle on a record that won’t stop skipping. I stop closing in on her and instead take her hand that is still pointed at my chest, “I’m sorry” I say, and carefully place her arm back at her side.
Daisy is clearly stunned because she blinks a few times, and I can see in her eyes she’s trying to figure out how to react. “For what?” She finally says, “what are you sorry for?”
“You are playing nice, and I am wasting time and I am an asshole. And I’m sorry for all of that.”
“You are?” She says, her voice thick with suspicion.
“I am” I nod, “you sounded great in there. Really solid. I can see Teddy is really happy with it too. You’re killing it, Miss Jones.”
Her face breaks out in a wide smile, and you don’t get to see her smile like this often but damn when it happens, it’s the purest, lightest, sweetest thing in the world. Armies would fall, truces would be made, peace would come to nations in the shimmer of this particular Daisy Jones smile. I’m not sure I ever deserve it, but I drink it up whenever she bestows it like a parched man in a desert.
I hadn’t realized I was still clutching her wrist until she twitches, and I reluctantly release her. She reaches for her back pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper and then digs into a front pocket and pulls out a tiny nub of a pencil. She looks at me with a devious grin and opens up the paper and smooths it flat on the hood next to me.
I watch as she dabs the pencil on the tip of her tongue and bends down to start scribbling something. “What are you writing?” She doesn’t answer and I rest my palm next to the paper and try and peer over her shoulder, but her hair falls in a curtain blocking my view and for the second time today I wish I could take it in my hands and trap it through my fingers (that’s a lie. I’ve thought about it way more than two times today. The truth is I stopped counting after two.)
She giggles and stands back up and holds the paper up to my face and I read it out loud:
Under the sunlit day / in the heat of LA / he says I’m sorry babe / I’ll play nice today
She lowers the paper and we’re both grinning, “I didn’t call you babe.”
Daisy shrugs, “poetic license, babe.” She sings it with one melody then again in another and she’s about to try a third when the studio door opens, and Tobias sticks his head out and waves at us. “Sorry Tobias!” Daisy waves back, “we’re coming. Billy’s sorry too!” She turns to me, “right? Say you’re sorry, I love hearing apologies from your pretty mouth.”
I grab her coat that of course she’s forgotten is on someone else’s car, as she walks backwards away from me, “Sorry!” I holler towards the man holding the door, “babe” I mutter so only Daisy can hear and she throws her head back and laughs and when she reaches him, she drapes an arm around Tobias as they head back inside, letting the door nearly close on my face.
“You good?” Teddy asks when I reach the booth. I nod but my eyes are still on Daisy who has gotten hold of one of Warren’s sticks and is acting like a conductor in front of him as he wails away on his skins for her. “Billy” his voice is sharp, and I turn and look at him, still clutching Daisy’s coat in my hands. Teddy knows exactly what it looks like when I am deep into addiction, and I won’t lie to him.
“I’m trying” I say and throw the coat down on the couch, “every single day Teddy, I’m trying to be good.”