Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

Never Without You	By : SolusNemo Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Good Charlotte Views: 1340 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Good Charlotte. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Title: Never Without You
Author: “Solus Nemo”
Rating: R
Summary: It seemed as though the world was out to get them. They were struggling to hold something together that was rapidly breaking, shattering no matter how carefully they were handling it. Was it ever meant to be in the first place? Will it ever be worth it?
Author’s Note: Sequel to “My Gift To You” so I’d read that first. Title comes from Tanzwut’s “Neimals Ohne Dich” — or “Never Without You”.
Disclaimer: I am implying nothing about the men featured within this text and the events in this piece of fiction have never happened in real life. I own nothing, not even the song blips at the beginning of each chapter.

Chapter One

“Do you ever see it out from outside your fears? Thinking about your life? Thinking about your inner fears?” - KoRn’s “Lies”

It was like a boa constrictor was forever wrapped around his neck, constantly tightening its grip. The reptile would never let go, it was there for rememberance – the oaths, the ever-watching eyes, the ideals, the choking hand of fame.

This wasn’t a life, didn’t even remotely pass off as one, but Benjamin Madden was stuck in the tar pits of his celebrity status. From the moment he used that black ink fountain pen to write his name on that dotted line he was on a stage, standing there before millions of corneas to be victimized, visually and emotionally raped.

To be left for dead, to rot in the hell he had created would be a blessing, but of course no one would have the empathy to do that. People always wanted more out of him, either to snatch up with grubby hands for a shrine or burn out of rage. The moment he had left John Morris’s office that January day long ago he had put the price on his own head.

Benji was trapped in an endless parade of publicity stunts, a whirlwind that left him disoriented and praying for something that would end the éclat that he had grown to bitterly hate.

Long ago he had relied on alcohol to quell the world around him, give him some peace and silence the roar of the fans. It hadn’t worked as well as he hoped, for the only thing the booze had ever given him was more anger to harbor. He had become verbally abusive to everyone around him, became what he loathed, what he wanted out of his life. To save the relationships that meant more to him than the air he breathed he had stopped.

One of those relationships was the undying love he had for William Martin, the second guitarist for their band Good Charlotte. He’d die for that man and couldn’t bear the fact that he was destroying the only love he could ever truly feel.

Benji had never laid a hand on Billy the wrong way, if he had he would have turned a gun on himself – that he would do without hesitation – but he had cheated, called him horrible things Benji didn’t want to ever repeat again, done so many things that he was shocked to this day to still be in a relationship with William.

Close to a decade the couple had stood by each other, braving the waves of every storm that they had come across, each one worse than the last for some time. It was a miracle the destroying fist of what at first the men had dreamed of having didn’t bring them to a demise. It was more of a miracle that Billy encouraged Benji to get upset, to actually show his emotions instead of bottling them all down.

With Billy’s help Benji had come a long way, farther than he could have ever wished of going on his own. He had dragged himself out of the darkest graves of self-loathing, had been forced to face his past head on and Billy didn’t flinch when Benji nigh exploded with the strain and pressure of doing what could only help him. Constantly he was being told that he was making Billy proud, helping Benji grow stronger in more ways than one.

The price to pay to his man was great, but nothing Benji could do would ever repay Billy for everything he’s done for him. Nothing was an adequate thank you, nothing ever would be and Billy always said that he was fine with that – that as long as he had Benji’s love it would be more than enough.

More often than not Billy was the only thing that kept Benji breathing, the only constant in his life, the only thing he knew he would never stop having feelings for.

Benji used to love his profession, never had a second thought about anything. He had fun back in the days when Good Charlotte was hardly known, going wild on stage and basking in the glow of the energy that the crowd gave him, thrilled by the fact that he had fans to go to the shows in the first place. Now nothing pleased him anymore.

The stage never sent his worries away like it used to, it was the worry. He could never escape the ideal people created, the man Benji had to become just to not be eaten alive. All his nerves were rubbed raw, he wanted to take this “career” all back, live in a packing crate in the middle of the city, anything if it meant escaping the spotlight forever.

Over the years he had begun to pray for the rain to wash away the fame plaguing him, like this moment.

Storms were the only thing that granted him solace in his life now other than Billy. The deluges seemed to do everything but wash away the monster forever stalking him, yet he always held out hope that one day it might happen.

The heart beating in the rib cage below his right ear was the only solid thing to him, the only thing he could really count on. It calmed him, eased the nightmares away, gave him order in a world of chaos, peace in a room of ceaseless screaming.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said solemnly. Benji’s left hand was tracing his lover’s right collar bone, the ring Billy had given him as a gift long ago still on his pinky finger – he never took it off. “This fame, I don’t want it anymore.”

Billy tightened his arms around his boyfriend, his words rumbling in Benji’s ear. “I know, baby, I know. It’s not what anyone thought it would be.”

The older man tried to burrow his head closer to the beating muscle; he could never get close enough to it, could never hear it clearly enough, it was never loud enough to drown out every last thing on earth.

“I hate it,” he stated meekly.

“So do I,” Billy replied. “But you don’t have a ball and chain attached to your ankle, none of us do.”

Benji sighed. “I can’t let them all down.”

“If the fans wanted you to blow your brains out would you do it?”

“Depends,” Benji quipped grimly. “12-gauge Mossberg? Heckler & Koch P7? Cap gun?”

It was Billy’s turn to sigh, his pale skin glowing in the aftermath of the most recent lightning strike. “I’m being serious here.”

“And I’m not? I can’t leave the band and break all of those hearts, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself,” Benji explained in earnest. “I can’t take this fame anymore, but those kids…as misguided as they are they love us, they need us whether to cope or just to be one of the popular ones in school. Hell, some of them don’t even understand what the music’s really about, but I can’t just leave them all in the dust and crush them with the sole of my boot like they’re nothing.”

Billy nodded slowly, chewing his lover’s words. “You really are more like your brother than you two give yourselves credit for. I know how you don’t like to disappoint anyone, Benj, but I don’t want you to keep doing something you don’t love anymore. You’re completely miserable doing this, I don’t…I don’t want you doing anything drastic because you didn’t get out when you could.”

Benji laughed, though it was dry and forced. “Let’s say I do leave the band, retire and stay here until I die. What am I suppose to do? If I don’t go stir-crazy I’d end up being one of those people who just sits in a chair by the window all day, staring out at something only they can see. I’d never get a good job, I don’t have a college degree.”

“You can always go back or just live off your savings, you’re richer than God after all.”

“Everyone’s richer than God. Have a hay-penny and you’re richer than God, have a metal shaving off a hay-penny and you’re richer than God.”

Billy shut his eyes, trying to take his mind off the cold air attacking his skin as Benji got up, crawled out of bed and stood absentmindedly near the foot of the bed. “Right, I’m sorry.”

“It’s just that this is my life. I made this shit casserole and I have to eat it,” Benji expounded. “I guess it could be worse, I could be an actor and have to abide by all of Hollywood’s rules and regulations.”

“You really want to end up being like the Rolling Stones and performing on stage until, I don’t know, we keel over and die? Is that what you really want, Benji, to be tethered to this lifestyle for all of eternity? Tell me this isn’t your way of thinking that if you live through Hell now you won’t have to go later.”

“If there is a Hell,” Benji corrected.

Billy rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing it, I’m merely stating a fact!”

“Then answer my questions, Benji. Is this what you really want? Staying in the cage when the door’s wide open, pretending like it’s still locked just so you don’t have to let anyone down?”

Benji only shrugged.

“This isn’t going to make him proud of you.”

Walking to one of the large windows in the room, Benji pulled down a pleat in the blinds and looked out at the dead night, rain drops coming down like it was going out of style. “I know that, leave him out of this.”

“No. Just because you and Joel got Josh back doesn’t mean your father’s going to call you up, saying he wants to try meeting you again, that he was sorry for never showing up the first time. He doesn’t care. If he did, if he was ever genuinely proud of you in the first place, he’d have said something by now. It’s been eleven years, Benji, eleven. Stop hanging around here, sticking your arm in the water for the sharks to eat because he isn’t ever going to call you again. Let it go.”

“I really wish you’d stop with the metaphors, they’re annoying.”

Billy sat up, leaning his back against the headboard of the bed. “Would analogies be more to your liking?” he asked sourly, trying to get Benji to head up to the next step.

“No, they wouldn’t be. Can’t you just shut up? I really don’t want to talk.”

“You’re the one who started the conversation,” Billy stated calmly. “I was the one lying happily in the glow of after sex, silent, not saying a word.”

Benji turned away from the window, let the blinds go back to their original form with a snapping noise. “I’m sorry I said anything, then. I retract every statement I’ve said since the grunting and moaning.”

“That isn’t going to help anything and you know that.”

“Here we go with the putting of thoughts into my head,” Benji said exasperatedly. “I really hate it when you do that.”

“And I really hate it when you’re being bullheaded.”

Benji shook his head, walking around the bedroom and picking up the clothes that were torn from his body a few hours before, getting dressed. “I am not being bullheaded,” he grumbled.

“See, there you go again.”

Wading Billy’s discarded shirt in his hands, Benji made an effort to throw it in his face. It didn’t go very far before unwrapping itself and losing momentum. “Whatever.”

“‘Whatever.’ Such a strong argument. You blow my mind,” came a sarcastic reply from his companion.

“Why do I stay with you?” Benji hissed.

“The sex is so good, that’s why.”

Benji sighed, buttoning the lone button to his pants. “No, I don’t want to keep doing this until I die and, no, I’m not sticking with the band because I subconsciously want my father to come crawling back to me. I just don’t know what else to do, I don’t know anything else but the band. I can’t survive in the band, but I can’t survive without it…. You know I love your metaphors more than anything.”

“Good job, Benj. I’m proud of you.” Billy smiled. “And you know I find your bullheadedness irresistible.”

After pulling on his sweatshirt, Benji walked to the bed and gave his lover a passionate kiss. “I miss your lip-ring,” he said when he pulled away.

“Our lips kept getting stuck together. I love you, baby, but I don’t want to have to wear you as a hood ornament.”

Benji laughed warmly. “I’m going to sit outside on the porch, watch the storm for awhile.” He stood and watched Billy nod and settle back underneath the bed covers, pull the comforter over his head so that the glare from the lightning strikes wouldn’t prevent him from sleep.

The only thing missing from the Good Charlotte household was a beach for the back of the house to overlook. It was modern in every sense of the word with high, vaulted ceilings and several walls throughout the home dedicated to the sole purpose of providing a place for windows. Benji liked to say it was so big that someone could be murdered in the foyer and no one would hear the screams even from the kitchen.

The monotonous sound of the rain kissing the mansion’s roof was relaxing, reverberating through the halls from the third floor to the first. The cold from the maple floors reached up, as if begging for a change to come in contact with the rain that was such a rarity in Los Angeles. Benji loved dark, quiet nights like this in the house. He hummed a show tune as he made his way from he and Billy’s bedroom to the front hall.

Being a modern palace, the walls and ceilings were either painted white or other bright hues of colors. Some red here, a first-cousin to neon green there, blues and any other shade of the prime color family the designer thought of. During the morning the color of the walls alone was enough to give anyone a headache, but at night – with the only light sources being the street lamps from outside, the warm amber glows seeping through open window shades – the loud painted walls were soothing.

Seeing as how any home that wanted to be one of the big boys on the block had “art” hanging on the walls that seemed more fitting to be placed in a garbage bin, the Good Charlotte mansion was no exception. Three-year-olds going on twenty and thirty had had a field day; loading up canvases or lack thereof with black lines straight down the length of the expensive art supply, throwing paint wildly in a seizure induced state at anything placed in front of them, or drawing…things that were suppose to represent the state of the world. If the world was giving off the vibe that it felt like a brown blob or orange splotch that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a rose, then Benji just didn’t want to listen to its mood swings.

At least it wasn’t Donald Trump’s pent house.

The double front doors were painted an off shade of blood, gold locks and knobs clashing well with the painted steel. Benji turned the thumb tab on the deadbolt locks and opened the right-hand door, stepped out into the moist night and shut the metal slab behind him.

Under the velvet sky most of the California citizens on Honker Drive – Benji always laughed when he heard his street name or even read it off of envelopes or the street sign – were sound asleep or watching infomercials like most insomniacs are known to do. Apart from the occasional car and the sounds of the storm everything was silent. The air was cool, but not so much that it was unbearable.

Benji sat down on the concrete slab that served as the front stoop, placed his bare feet on the third step from the landing and set his hands behind him at the sides so he could lean back. The deck off the master bedroom on the second floor served as the overhang, white painted concrete pillars supporting the healthy sized deck with the French doors. Bordering the front stoop were a few planters, though no vegetation had yet grown up from the soil.

A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky above the house across the street from where Benji was sitting, booming thunder strong enough to shake windows following very soon after. The wind carried a hint of ozone with it, wrapping around the man seated on the front stoop and serving as an invisible blanket.

His fame had given him the money to pay cash for this home, buy all the furnishings to put inside the walls, gave him the opportunities to sit out on the stoop and watch the storms without worrying about making the bills, getting enough to eat the next day, being evicted from their home and put on the streets for an unknown amount of time. No, he didn’t need to think about the things that used to be fixed to his mind, all of those hardships were behind him.

But having to deal with this stalking, deadly beast was another thing entirely.

The hideous monster sat down next to Benji, he could smell its rotten breath, feel its ghastly yellow eyes fixated on him and him alone. It was calling his name, taunting him, grinning its disgusting grin as it tried to coax Benji right over the edge and beyond.
- 1
- 2
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Never Without You