hackthis_archive | (REPOST) LOTRips - Four and Twenty Poor Boys Singing in the Street

Long day. V frustrated. It’s only fucking noon. Zeus with a thunderbolt.

LOTRips
BB, et al.

The fraction of time when he’s moving between asleep and awake is when the delusion seeps in.

There’s a minute second before reality is upon him and his nerves recognize the cold, and that’s when Billy thinks things might be different this time when he opens his eyes.

This will be the day that he wakes up somewhere else as someone else, and won’t it be a fucking great life? Sycophants hanging onto his every word and women throwing their knickers on stage at his feet. Studios and concerts and thousands of people knowing who he is everywhere he goes instead of those darting glances of ‘don’t I know you from somewhere’ and the like.

No more hobbits, no more feet, no more "which one are you then?" Instead it will all be "Billy Boyd, the best performer since Tom Jones" or "Oi, Boyd, I saw you down in Wembley, yeah? Fucking wicked performance and all.”

Billy’s always wanted to be a rock star, but in the cold, gray Glasgow morning his dreams disappear when he opens his eyes.

*

Billy is not just a performer who provides a moment of entertainment for a passing crowd. He’s a man and a brother and actor, too. He’s a lover and friend. He’s loyal and honest. He lives and breathes and bleeds. He recites and learns and projects.

He urges people to believe in him with his eyes and his hands and his mouth.

Billy is a Scotsman and a dirty blond, and he prefers tea to coffee. He prefers Celtic to the Rangers. He has thoughts and plans and hopes and at the end of the day, he’s just a man who likes to sing.

If nothing else, he wants people to hear his songs.

*

The glossy magazines at the newsagent taunt him with all the things he is not.

Mojo, Q, NME and Rolling Stone, all sing the praises of mass-marketed children who are airbrushed to within an inch of their perfectly sculpted abdominals. Billy’s got a bit of a gut.

He’s pale and pasty and short. He’s not even got orange hair like that bloke in The Darkness. But he’s got a better voice, and Billy misses The Maker.

He misses things the way they used to be.

Billy remembers when rock stars actually looked like real people, and if Billy were a bit taller, a bit younger, a bit more photogenic and more willing to suck the cock of every music executive he’s ever met, then maybe, he might be a star too. A huge, shiny, magnetic rock star with groupies and millions of fans and hundreds of thousands of miles clocked on coaches and planes, and absolutely no one to come home to at the end of the day.

Billy could be a vapid singer with nothing between his ears and a complete inability to function unless someone’s telling him how to breathe and what to wear and how to speak. He could have no mind of his own, or be eaten away by the industry until he’s reduced to filling his veins with smack and his mouth with alcohol because he can’t cope.

There are all kinds of sides to being a star, and everybody wants to be famous, but nobody ever tends to think about the cost.

*

Billy sings in the shower and around the house. He sings for children at benefits and for Dom over the phone when he gets overly excited and starts babbling at alarming rates.

Billy will sing for anyone if they ask.

He’s not egotistical about his voice; singing just makes him happy. He wishes it were something he could share with more people, but he suspects he’ll have to be content with Pippin singing for Denethor and the tunes he bangs out in the wee hours on his guitar.

*

Dom’s tenor is high-pitched and scratchy. He sounds like a cat stuck in a rubbish bin when his voices goes outside its range, and sometimes he rings up Billy when he’s horribly pissed and demands Billy sing to him.

Sometimes, when he comes to visit, Billy will sing to him after long nights down at the pub.

It’s not something Billy does all the time, just every now and then when Dom’s eyes are glassy, and he’s gazing at Billy as though he’s Prince and Ozzy and Julian from the Strokes all wrapped into one.

Sometimes Billy will perform for Dom as though he’s one of thousands of screaming people who desperately want to make a connection with the only person they think understands them in the entire world. Music tends to have that effect on people. But more often than not, Billy will sing to Dom as though they’re the only people in the entire world, and Billy has just one song that he knows.

These are the nights that Dom will curl around Billy like smoke, and when Billy stops singing Dom will beg for more. And this is when Billy thinks that maybe he doesn’t need to perform for everyone as long as he’s got one fan who believes in him.

-end-

Written from 11:01 to 12:15. Un'betad. Plot provided by the ~~plot generator~~