Archive of Our Own

"What are you doing?"

"What?" Bert looks up. "What do you mean?"

"Dude," Gerard says, wrinkling his nose. "You just grabbed a butt out of that ashtray."

Bert looks at the half of a cigarette in his hand. "So? You do it all the time."

"Yeah," Gerard says, drawing out the word. "One of my butts. Out of my ashtray. Or yours. Not a total stranger's butt in a communal ashtray at a venue."

Bert shrugs and pockets the cigarette butt, to be unrolled and rerolled later.

"Dude, did I manage to gross Gerard Way out?" he asks, snickering. He reaches up to ruffle Gerard's hair. "That's kind of amazing."

Gerard flips him off languidly. "Fuck off."

Bert allows a beat of silence to pass, because he has timing.

"Well, I could," Bert says. "But I think I might need some help there." He slides closer to Gerard, pressing his chest and hips flush against Gerard's. "Wanna help me fuck off?"

Even after weeks of doing this, Gerard still blushes. All the fucking time.

It's awesome.

Bert drags him over to a hallway and kisses him dirty and fast, thanking god that Taste of Chaos has indoor venues with hallways and unused rooms and labyrinth-like dead ends. Admittedly, Bert doesn't give a fuck if he does this on stage in front of a crowd of thousands, but Gerard likes some shit to remain private.

Private. Bert can do private, especially if Gerard keeps making those noises and gasping while Bert pushes him against a wall.

"Shhhh," Bert says, breaking away from Gerard's stupid mouth to drop to his knees. "You have to be quiet if I'm going to fuck off."

Bert unzips Gerard's worn and too-tight pants while Gerard sucks a breath in like he's turned on, which he is, but Bert knows that he's also trying to suck in his belly. Like Bert gives a fuck. Gerard's body issues are kind of adorable, even if they are standing annoyingly in the way of Bert having seriously public sex with him.

Public sex is, like, the best part of being a rock star. Maybe the second-best, next to music being his job.

Sometimes, Bert looks up at Gerard with his pants around his knees, knowing that he gets to go up and sing for thousands of people later, and he wonders if this is really his fucking life.

But it is. Which is … yeah. It's just awesome.

*

Brian finds them later, curled up together on the floor with Bert's pants still unzipped but at least pulled back over his hips.

"Bert, for fuck's sake," he says. Bert knows that he sounds exasperated, but he's pretty sure that Brian is actually smiling underneath that scowl. Somewhere. Maybe really deep down.

He toured with them for a while before leaving them, tragically, for My Chemical Romance. Bert knows that Brian has love in his heart, but he keeps it covered with the shell of a small, tattooed, angry man.

"Hey!" Bert is trying really hard for self-injured, but he can't keep the shit-eating grin off of his face. Seriously, his life. "How do you know it wasn't Gerard?"

Brian stops and stares at Gerard for a minute and turns back to Bert, his face incredulous. "Seriously?"

Gerard is blushing, fumbling with his belt like a middle school kid that just got caught by his mom. It's hot.

Bert laughs so hard that his whole body shakes. Because, well. Yeah. It's pretty obviously his initiative every time they get caught doing something they're not supposed to be doing in hallways at venues. Obviously.

"What?" Gerard asks with a furrowed brow. "What? What's so funny?"

Brian smirks and shakes his head. "Just keep it to the busses, for fuck's sake."

Bert launches himself toward Brian and licks his cheek. "We'll be good, I promise."

"Sure," Brian says doubtfully, patting Bert on the head. "I'm management, dude, not fucking deluded."

"What?" Gerard asks again, looking back and forth between Bert and Brian.

*

Later, after a couple more blowjobs and a couple of kickass performances and an argument about whose bus smells better (Bert is totally right, it's totally his, if only because there are only four dudes on his bus), they're back on Bert's bus, sprawled out across one of the couches in the front lounge.

Jepha and Gerard are involved in some kind of ridiculous geekout about some anime bullshit that Bert couldn't give a fuck about. Quinn retreated to the bunks almost an hour ago because, once again, Quinn is smarter than Bert and knows when to escape the ridiculous conversations of massive fucking dorks.

"The change in style is just a turning point for manga, though!" Gerard protests, his wavy-hand gestures sloshing beer out of his glass and onto Bert's shirt. Gerard always waves his hands more when he's been drinking for a while. Bert guesses he might give a shit about it, but he knows he's just going to jack one of Jepha's shirts in retribution. So whatever.

"The narrative fucking blows, though," Jepha shakes his head sadly. "They can't maintain a consistence characterization or storyline throughout the series. So it doesn't matter if the art is good if the story sucks!"

"But artistic merit can stand alone!"

Bert tunes out Gerard's indignation and Jepha's hysterical laughter, heading to the kitchen(ette) with an indulgent smile. Fucking nerds.

It's not until he hears that they've stopped talking that he turns around to find them staring at him.

"What?" he says, actually confused. He's not drunk yet, just a little buzzed, and he's pretty sure he didn't say that out loud.

"Dude," Jepha raises his eyebrows and nods at Bert's hand. "Did you seriously just hide the last beer?"

"What?" Bert asks, turning around and looking in the direction of Jepha's nod. He sees a can of PBR peeking out from behind the microwave and looks down at the one in his hand, confused.

Huh. That must have been him, but …

"What? I gotta learn to fend for myself with you assholes around," Bert says, his voice hopefully sounding totally normal. He gives Jepha a wet willy and flops himself on top of Gerard for good measure, as much for the fun of it as for the distraction.

There's a lot of shit that Bert does that he only half-understands and can never manage to explain. It's hard to explain to people the habits you pick up on the street, the habits that have little to nothing (but, yeah, sometimes something) to do with a pipe or a needle and everything to do with survival--even years later, even when you don't have to worry about where your next pack of smokes is coming from or where you're sleeping that night.

Bert still picks up cigarette butts out of ashtrays that have a couple of drags left at the end, he still could tell you the four best windbreaks he's seen in the last 24 hours, he still mentally notes the position of any security officers or police officers, including the ones that are paid to protect him. He will still stash the last beer without thinking about it.

Bert's still in survival mode, even after he's survived.

*

It's not like Bert doesn't know that Quinn saved his fucking life. It's just that it's hard to know what to do with that kind of knowledge.

What do you say to that?

"Hey, thanks for giving me something to give a shit about that wasn't a hit."

or

"You know that you saved what's left of my life, right?"

or

"I never knew how to belong to something that I didn't have to pay for until you showed me that I could"

So while Bert's head still sometimes whispers: "Why did you let me come with you here?", mostly he just says: "Dude, move the fuck over. Your bed is more comfortable. Learn to share, asshole."

And Quinn shifts, moves, makes the room.

Bert thinks that might be Quinn's version of "you're welcome" and "shut up, jackass," all rolled up into one.

And then he wakes up in the morning with Quinn's rancid morning breath in his face and Jepha poking him in the side and, fuck, his life is like a big, cosmic "you're welcome."

*

A lot of people only kind of get Bert's whole … Bert-ness. The guys try and they succeed most of the time. It's not for nothing that they've actually been there through most of it, that they've stayed through it.

But Gerard doesn't get Bert in a lot of ways. He's had his own kind of suffering, he's carrying his own pain, but there's still a lot of him that is sheltered, even though he's five years older and grew up in the Mob Jersey.

And Bert loves that. He is grateful, so motherfucking grateful that he somehow managed ten minutes or ten hours or a lifetime with this guy who is so brilliant and so sad, so goofy and so fucking hot, so soft and so tough. So fucking shiny. So new, new in the way of things that Bert doesn't get, has never gotten, doesn't deserve.

Bert's been dropped in the middle of the most fucked up life that normal people can imagine and it's still more normal than the life he thought he'd have.

Sometimes, he gets a little lost trying to be normal and mostly he doesn't care. And really, he's never been good at faking it. He's an addict and sometimes he's an asshole and he smells bad and he's broken in a thousand ways, but. Fuck it.

He'd rather wear his fucked-up on his sleeve than hide it. He figures it hurts less that way. At least the person they leave is actually him.

He said something along those lines to Quinn, once, back in the day.

He hadn't thought that Quinn would actually punch the wall.

"That's fucking stupid," Quinn had yelled, his cheeks flushed and his mouth tight, shaking his fist. "There's nothing fucking wrong with you. You're awesome."

They had still been staying with Quinn's parents and Bert had been in the middle of trying (again) to get clean. Bert still remembers looking down at his thin chest and his shaking hands, his small pile of dirty clothes in the corner; his charity-case, junkie-ass self.

"Okay," he'd said. And maybe he even started to believe it. Because …well. Even then, Quinn knew shit.

*

"You're …" Gerard is drunk. Like. Really fucking drunk, drunk enough that he's forgetting his sentences and stumbling, drunk enough that Bert notices.

It's been happening more and more in the last couple of months, the prettyhandsomeawkward Gee that Bert kind of might love disappearing into … this guy.

Not that Bert has much ground to stand on when it comes to inebriation, but he kind of worries. Especially after Kate, after watching someone …

Well. It's not like he thinks Gerard will overdose. But yeah. He worries.

"I'm what?" Bert says, his voice quiet, trying to lead Gerard by example. They're slumped in the corner of a crowd around someone's firepit, the insanity of Taste of Chaos flowing around them.

"You're really … pretty," Gerard says, slumping against Bert with a bright, sloppy smile.

Bert closes his eyes, pushing away the wishes that Gerard would say this shit without a case of beer or a fifth of vodka or a couple of bumps in him.

"Thanks," Bert says instead.

Gerard leans against Bert with a sloppy kiss to his cheek, closing his eyes.

*

Brian and Bert don't exactly talk a lot. Bert jumps all over Brian occasionally and Brian used to be the designated Bert Wrangler (and there was that two month period that Bert never told a fucking soul about, where Brian was kind of the center of some of his favorite jerking-off fantasies). They do talk, though. They talk about music sometimes and they talk about schedules and they've had a couple of awful, stilted conversations that talked around, but not about, Gerard's … issues.

So while they might not be the dudes that sit around and bare their fucking souls to each other, they do talk. Sometimes.

But Brian never talks about his family. Not "barely mentions" them, but seriously never fucking talks about them. Bert hadn't noticed, because he's surrounded by fuckers like Gerard or Jepha or Branden who never shut up about their damn moms. But, really, Brian never talks about his family.

He only notices when he sees Brian pacing outside the busses, his face drawn with some kind of tension, slapping his hand against the side of the equipment trailor. He looks like he's trying to yell quietly.

A little while later, Bert sees that Brian's just sitting on the ground and figures it's safe to go outside. Despite what some fuckers (Quinn) say, Bert is sensitive to the needs of other people. And shit.

Also, he's seen Brian pissed before. He's not getting in the middle of that shit.

Brian is a small shape next to the bus, his shoulders hunched down. Bert sits down next to him and wordlessly hands him a bottle that Bert's been pulling off of.

"Girlfriend?" Bert asks as Brian takes a swig.

Brian's laugh is brittle. "My mom."

Bert nods quietly, trying to hide his surprise. It's not like he thought that Brian sprung, fully-formed, from the head of some god, but …

Well, he kind of thought that. Mostly because …

"You never talk about your family, Brian," Bert says, his breath huffing out in front of him in clouds he can see. It's still cold enough to do that and this is why winter is his favorite season now. Sometimes, it's good to be reminded that you're breathing.

Brian looks over, his face lit with shots of light and shadow from the breaks between the busses. It's a good look for him – his face is even more unreadable than usual.

Finally, Brian looks away, back to staring out at the streams of people moving back and forth in front of them – from bus to party to shadowed corner, on until morning.

"Neither do you," Brian says, his voice barely above a mumble.

Bert's laugh cracks at the edges. "Well … yeah." Of course he doesn't talk about his family. They fucking kicked him out at fifteen, leaving their junkie son to the streets, like it was something he deserved, like they couldn't help him, like he was too much work. They just …

Oh.

"Yeah," Brian says, turning his head toward Bert. "Thin line between kicked out and leaving. Or sometimes no line at all."

*

Bert expects the Gerard Thing to end when Taste of Chaos ends. Because, really, it's a tour thing, a dude thing, a music thing. It's a whatever thing and Bert has had kind of a lot of Things and they never fucking last.

But Gerard isn't everyone else, isn't like anyone else, and it doesn't end. Three days after the tour ends, Gerard shows up at Bert's doorstep with a duffle bag and stupid sunglasses.

"We have a couple of days," Gerard had said, his voice casual, but his hands tight around the handles of his bag. Gerard's bravado is pretty easy to see when you know what to look for. "So I thought I'd come see you."

Bert doesn't gape or stare. His jaw definitely doesn't drop. Definitely none of those things happen when Gerard just shows up at his door like things don't have to end.

Gerard pushes his sunglasses up on his head and fidgets, but he waits out Bert's totally unfamiliar silence with his chin tilted up, his shoulders set as if for a fight.

Huh.

Maybe this is the kind of shit guys like them can do.

"Fucker," Bert says, pulling Gerard against him and knocking his bag to the floor. "Fuck you."

It's good that Gerard is starting to speak Bert, because he seems to get that Bert means "thank you" and "you're here" and "I missed you."

"I would have been here earlier," Gerard says against the side of Bert's head. "But my mom would have fucking killed me if I hadn't come home for a little while."

"Sure," he says like he understands.

"She wants to meet you." Gerard smiles as he pulls away.

Bert blinks. "She. She does?"

"Yeah, of course." Gerard picks up his bag from the floor in the hallway and closes the door behind him with his foot.

Moms … moms don't want to meet Bert.

He doesn't think he's said that out loud until Gerard turns to him, his eyes bright and his face tense.

"Why wouldn't she want to meet you? You're awesome."

Bert nods, echoes of Quinn in his head.

Because Quinn was wrong, that day so long ago: there's a lot wrong with Bert. But some people, maybe, are cool with that. Maybe some people won't push him away when they figure it out.

*

Bert knows that everyone expects him to freak out when Gerard gets clean. Hell, he kind of wonders if he can hack it. Because he's not there – he's not gonna stop drinking and he still needs the more-than-occasional Ativan to sleep, and he likes his ups and his downs, but …

But Gerard's shit is different. Self-destructive. Fucking hard to watch in its familiarity.

So, more than anything, Bert is proud of Gerard when he gets clean, that's the crazy thing. Every phone call they have after Japan, every month-of-sobriety anniversary that Bert sends him some stupid gift, every fucking day, Bert is proud of Gerard.

So he feels that he's understandably broken and pissed and hurt to come off of a show to a voicemail message – a voicemail message, for fuck's sake, after almost two fucking years – telling him that Gerard "needs a break."

But at least Bert has something – someone – that Gerard can never take away: Quinn. Because when Gerard breaks Bert's heart, Quinn buys him a twelve-pack, puts in Never Been Kissed, and pulls Bert on top of him without a word.

Bert wakes up hours later with his head pillowed against Quinn's lap, grateful that he already knew about Bert's broken-hearted preferences for Drew Barrymore movies.

And that he's not gonna tell anyone.

*

Okay, so maybe Bert shouldn't have said the shit he said. Maybe calling Gerard a "self-righteous cocksucker" was going too far.

Saying it into megaphone outside a festival? Almost definitely too far.

But that's the problem. Bert's not the guy that sees the line, not until after he's crossed it, danced across it, lit it on fire. Changing that would be like changing everything that makes him Bert. He could quit smoking, he could quit drinking, he could finally really really give up every stimulant ever and he would still be the dude who burns bridges.

It's who he is. He's never stopped to think of a consequence before it's all up in his face, but … fuck. He might have done other shit if he'd known that he wasn't just going to lose Gerard.

"What the fuck?" Brian's voice is cold, angry.

"He fucking started it," Bert yells, pacing back and forth outside of the bus. "And what the fuck do you care? He just. You can't just do that to a guy, Brian. You can't just leave, you can't just leave a fucking voicemail and break up with someone, you just …"

Fuck.

"Fuck that." Brian has been pissed at Bert before. Hell, Brian's face is more or less constantly set in some version of "Jesus fuck" when it comes to Bert, but … Bert's never heard him like this. Not once.

"People break up, Bert. People break up, bands move on, tours go on, people go the fuck on. Everyone else in the world can deal with their broken hearts but you, you fuck. And now … now, you're outing my lead singer without fucking asking him, you're getting bad press for my band and your band. I care, you fucking idiot, because I don't want a breakup, a bottle of Jack, and one of your stupid-ass stunts to ruin two bands that I fucking love."

Bert winces. He was planning on injured self-righteousness, but …

Well. Brian kind of has a point. Maybe.

"Um," Bert slumps to the ground next to the six-pack he'd brought out of the bus with him and pulls the third one out of the plastic rings. Quinn and Jepha are playing some sort of stupid video game marathon and Branden is doing whatever he does and Bert will not be distracted from this. Fuck that, he's still pissed. "Fuck that. You just … Brian, you fucker, you were ours first. What the fuck?"

There's a pause on the other end of the phone and Bert wonders, for the first time ever, if Brian actually hung up on him.

"You asshole," Brian's voice is scratchy, exhausted. "You fucking asshole. You can't be making me choose, you can't fucking do that. Don't fucking do that."

Bert takes a swig of his beer, half the can. Fuck.

"I …" Bert closes his eyes. They don't do this, they don't talk about shit like this. It's not how it works. "You're … you're band, Brian."

And the thing is, Brian knows what that means, knows all of the layers of "family" and "home" and "trust" beneath Bert's "band." He knows because he's got it, too.

"Yeah," Brian's voice is still rough. "But they're band, too."

"Fuck."

Brian's voice is firm, but Bert's positive he almost hears it crack in the middle. "Be better than your broken fucking heart, Bert."

Bert doesn't know what else to say. He can't apologize, won't apologize, but some small part of him that is buried beneath the anger and hurt and rage and bridge-burning knows that Brian is right.

He can burn the Gerard bridge, no matter how much it fucking hurts. But he can't. Won't. Can't burn Brian.

He hears Brian's breath reverberate off of the phone line.

Neither of them know what to say.

*

There are things that you pick up on the street, things that don't go away just because you're not there anymore.

Bert still picks cigarette butts out of ashtrays, he can still show you the best windbreaks in town, and he still hangs on just this side of too tight to things that matter. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, hanging on so tight just makes things slip more out of his grasp.

"Hey," Quinn's breath ghosts across the back of Bert's ear as he slips in behind him on the bench seat in the front lounge.

Bert leans his head back a little, resting his head against Quinn's. It's late, too fucking late, even for him. Bert finished all of the beers and a few shots of whiskey, but he's still not drunk and he kind of doesn't feel like getting drunk. He doesn't feel like getting drunk and he doesn't feel like watching movies and he doesn't feel like sleeping. He mostly just feels like staring out the window and feeling so fucking stupid.

He lost Gerard and he almost lost Brian and he doesn't even know how the hell he keeps losing them and getting lost, but. Fuck.

Quinn, who knows Bert better than anyone, probably even knows that. The fucker.

"You're not gonna leave, right?" Bert knows that his voice is small and scratchy, knows that he'd never say this out loud, not normally, but it's 5 am at the end of a long fucking set of days and he's been on the road for years and he's just so fucking tired of people leaving.

Bert can't see his face, but he can feel Quinn scowl against the side of Bert's head. "Don't be fucking stupid."

Bert nods and closes his eyes, every part of his body just hurting and tired and done. Later, minutes or maybe hours later, he's almost asleep, lulled by the familiar smell of Quinn and the bouncing of the bus when he hears it. It's not just comfortable, it's home.

Home. Home is this bus, these guys, the quiet-noise of the road in his ears. Home is Quinn's voice, quieter than usual, fierce.

"Fucking never leave, dude. Never."