Enough To Close Your Eyes To
Title: Enough To Close Your Eyes To
Pairing: Bert/Gerard
Rating: R
Summary: There was a little spot underneath his eye- an "angel's kiss," his mother would have called it, although the irony of applying that term to a boy Bert had gotten both vomit and semen on would probably have killed her- that got redder and starker when he was embarrassed or excited or turned on or all three at once. It was darker than usual now, and Bert kind of wanted to bite it. Or kiss it. Or maybe both.
Disclaimer: Not true. No monies.
On the last day of tour, Bert was mostly asleep when Gerard asked him suddenly, "Did you ever lie as a kid?"
Bert opened his eyes and wiggled around onto his side. Gerard was sitting up in bed- or, rather, in bunk- his eyes wide and kind of soft-looking. He wasn't drawing. At some point he'd tried to tuck his pencil behind his ear and missed, tangled it up in his hair instead. Bert wondered whether he should mention it and decided it'd be funnier to let him find out for himself.
"What the fuck?" he said, because even for Gerard it was late. It was, like, day. And he hadn't slept. Bert had been with Gerard long enough to know the difference between "I'm not sleeping because I'd rather do something fun and interesting, such as suck Bert McCracken's dick" and "I'm not sleeping because my brain is going a mile a minute and I'd rather waste my time trying to keep up with it than do something fun and interesting, such as suck Bert McCracken's dick." "Why aren't you asleep, you retard?"
Gerard smiled one of those half-moon smiles that meant he was worrying about something and couldn't make himself stop. "Couldn't. Had too much coffee, I guess. You know how they say you never really get over an addiction, you just... you kind of switch to something else?"
"Lifesavers." Bert yawned. He felt a draft coming in from somewhere and curled further into Gerard's warmth, taking the blanket with him. He fucking hated the cold. Gerard was always warm, like a blow-up doll with a built-in heater. Bert had told him that once. Gerard had frowned, kind of like he was frowning now with a wrinkle deep between his eyebrows that Bert always, irrationally, wanted to do some fucking dirty things to, and asked, "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"
Bert hadn't really been sure himself, so he'd done what he usually did when he wasn't sure about something Gerard wanted to know: he'd shoved his hand down his pants. It was an effective distraction, if nothing else.
Gerard poked him in the shoulder, bringing him back to Earth. Almost, anyway. "Lifesavers?"
"The first time I got off meth, when I was... what, fifteen? Fucking Lifesavers, dude. I wanted something really crunchy, something sweet, because I kept grinding my teeth. Quinn's parents started bringing me home rolls of Lifesavers, you know, the little candies? Every day. They're bring me a roll home every night and I just got addicted to the fucking things. They were kind of fun, you know. Distracting. Except the green ones. Fucking hated those." Bert reached down to the floor and felt around for Gerard's worn black hoodie. It smelt bad, like everything else he owned. "Do you have any candy in here?"
Gerard laughed a little, like Bert had surprised it out of him, and shook his head. "No. Mikey might have some Pixi Stix or something-"
"Fuck that. I want something I can chew." Bert sniffed Gerard's hoodie one more time before letting it fall back to the floor. He remembered he'd been surprised that Gerard still had his dirty Gerard-smell after he'd gotten clean, like he'd thought on some level that it was the booze and the drugs that made him stink. Surprised and kind of relieved, because he liked the way Gerard smelled.
He decided to say that then, buried his face in Gerard's greasy hair and breathed in and muttered, "I like the way you smell."
"I smell terrible," Gerard replied, but Bert could hear him smile. He reached down with one hand and cleared away the sketchbook, settling in Gerard's lap instead. He was still wearing yesterday's clothes- which had also been the clothes of the day before, and the day before that, and possibly the week before that- and his eyes were bloodshot and there were crumbs of something at the corner of his mouth and Bert wanted to taste them really bad all of a sudden, so he pulled him closer and did. He felt Gerard smile again, but this time it was against his lips and into his mouth and he never got tired of that. He really fucking didn't.
A thought occurred to him, and he broke away and asked, "What was that question again?"
Gerard's face was kind of flushed and his mouth stretched into a funny little "huh?" Kissing made Gerard stupid. Bert forgot that sometimes, maybe because kissing made him stupid too.
"Your question," he repeated. There was a little spot underneath his eye- an "angel's kiss," his mother would have called it, although the irony of applying that term to a boy Bert had gotten both vomit and semen on would probably have killed her- that got redder and starker when he was embarrassed or excited or turned on or all three at once. It was darker than usual now, and Bert kind of wanted to bite it. Or kiss it. Or maybe both. "You asked me something when you woke me up, dumbfuck."
"I- oh. Oh, yeah." Gerard blinked, like he had to clear his head. "When you were a kid, did you lie a lot?"
Bert considered the question, both hands buried in Gerard's T-shirt. (Fucking Madonna.) He could remember lying to his parents, obviously, about girls and about drugs and about places he'd go and things he'd do once he got there, but he kind of figured that wasn't what he meant. "You mean other than the usual teenage bullshit, right?" he asked, and Gerard nodded.
"Yeah. I mean, about things you'd think, or things you wanted to do. Or what you believed... I don't even know. Just important shit like that. Did you ever lie about it?"
Bert thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. "No," he said. And that was true. Bert couldn't think of any time, past or present, when he hadn't told the truth as he understood it at the time. Sometimes the truth changed, that was all.
Gerard rubbed his chin, smiled a sad little smile that Bert wasn't sure about, and said, quietly, "I did. Kind of a lot, actually. I remember when I was little... this was before Mikey was even here, so I probably wasn't three yet. I remember I was sitting on the front steps of the house, mom and dad were out somewhere and Elena was watching me from inside, I think, and I was making up stories and telling them to myself. I think this was when she was reading me Peter Pan, because it was about the Lost Boys. I think. It's a little hazy." He chuckled a little, kind of to himself, and it made Bert sort of pissy. Gerard did that sometimes- he just faded out and started rambling to himself when there were people right in front of him. Like they didn't matter. "When Mikey was born the first thing I did was tell him stories. I was so fucking excited to have a little brother because it meant someone would have to listen to me. He didn't learn to talk for a long time, did I ever tell you that? He still couldn't talk that much when he went to preschool. Sometimes I think that's my fault. Like he was too busy listening to me to learn how."
Bert waited. Gerard's stories usually had a point, eventually.
"I remember my first day of high school I was real excited. I think it was because junior high was so shitty, and in movies and stuff high school... well, it wasn't a cool place to be, exactly, but it was a place where uncool people would be able to find each other. So the night before I was telling Mikey about all the cool stuff I was going to do in high school- join an art club and write my own comic and hang out with a bunch of weirdos smoking clove cigarettes in the parking lot, blah blah blah. And... you know Mikey, he never says when he's excited about something, but he listened to me and his eyes were shining. He drank it all in." Gerard scratched his nose, frowned. "He looked up to me, I guess."
"You guess," Bert said, rolling his eyes. "Not like he fucking worships the ground you walk on or anything, asshole."
He ducked his head and smiled sheepishly, one hand straying to play idly with his hair. "Yeah, I know. Anyway. I remember the first day of high school I wore that fucking leather jacket and a Queen t-shirt and raised my hand in class for the first time in years, and some varsity asshole and his friend found me at lunch and beat the shit out of me in the bathroom. They hit here- and here-" He demonstrated with his hands, his fingers hovering just over skin on Bert's upper arms and torso, places that would usually be covered. Probably, anyway. Definitely at school, at least; his memories of high school are vague at best, but he's pretty sure it required clothing. "I fucking cried on the bus home- which, you know, didn't help the fact that I was already being called a fat fag fuck, but I couldn't help it. I'd hoped it would be different. I hoped... but when I got home Mikey was waiting for me on the steps, and he looked at me and said, 'How was school?' He'd never asked that before. And his eyes were kind of shining again, like he was waiting for me to tell him about all the awesome shit I'd been doing, how great everything was going for me, so... I just told him."
"You lied."
"Yeah. I told him I'd met some really cool guys who were into, like, Romero and the Doom Patrol and stuff, and that my art teacher let us listen to Iron Maiden, and that there was a hot girl with blue hair in my English class. Just boring, mundane shit. I could have just said 'fine' and not told him anything, but I felt like I needed to make up a story. I didn't want him to be disappointed in me." Gerard stopped and looked at Bert like he was waiting for some flash of understanding, some sort of fucking hallelujah.
Bert didn't have one. "Okay," he said, wondering if he should go the down-the-pants route again for this one. "So why are we talking about this when I could be blowing you, again?"
That little red mark flushed deeper, and Bert still hadn't bitten it yet. This didn't seem right, somehow. Gerard looked down, his voice fading out and trembling at the edges the way it did when he needed something and wasn't getting it. "I kept that up for three weeks. Would have kept it up for longer, except he saw the bruises. I expected him to get mad, but... he just looked at me for a long time and said, 'it's not good, is it?' And all I could say was no. And we never talked about it again." He sighed. "I would have kept going, though. I mean, at first it was about Mikey, about protecting him, but after a while it was like the lies got bigger on their own. I wanted to believe them. Fuck, I wanted to live them. It was so much nicer than what actually existed. And..." Gerard's nervous fingers found the pencil in his hair and he blinked, confused. "What the fuck?"
Bert burst out laughing, pressing his face in the flush of Gerard's neck. He'd been right- it was funnier for him to find out on his own. When he pulled back up Gerard looked kind of puzzled still, but also resigned, like he was willing to go along with the joke even if it was on him.
"My point is," he said- he still hadn't gotten to the point? fuck- "my point is that sometimes lies have their own truth, you know? Like sometimes I think that's all music is, that's all performance is. It's a lie we tell ourselves over and over again, because if we lie to ourselves enough that lie will become real. When you guys were touring in a van did you tell yourselves you were the best band in the world?"
"Nope," said Bert cheerfully. "Quinn told me I sucked all the time. Still does. And then I tell him I boned his mom. And, you know, this conversation has been going on for a while and your dick still isn't in my mouth, what the fuck is up with that?"
Gerard laughed a little, but it sounded dry. It rattled. He looked steadily at Bert, his wide weirdo eyes catching the light like leaves and gold and a thousand other things Bert couldn't think of in the moment, and he smiled another sad, strange smile.
"The thing is," he said, "you have to tell the truth eventually. The real world always catches up."
And just like that his tongue was in Bert's mouth and he was undoing his fly, like someone had flipped a switch.
Gerard wasn't very good at sex, which was okay with Bert. Being good at it wasn't really the point. Besides, Gerard was only not good at it because he got so into it that he lost track of what was happening sometimes and couldn't do anything but lie there and gasp and stare. That was also okay with Bert. More than. The first time they'd fucked he'd done that, collapsed backwards and just let everything happen, so ridiculous and innocent that Bert wanted to keep him on the verge of coming forever just to see that look on his face.
This was different, somehow. This was Gerard with his lip caught between his teeth, jerking him off with a kind of frantic leisure that left Bert arching his back and hissing and snapping forwards, digging into his sides with his fingers. Their kisses were messy, had always been like that, tangles of teeth and tongue and saliva that would have been disgusting if they weren't so fucking hot. Gerard pulled away after a moment, his forehead still touching Bert's, watching his face as he stroked his cock. Bert locked eyes with him, watching his pupils grow and shrink. Gerard's hands were hotter than they should have been, like he was running a fever, and there were little beads of sweat along his hairline that glittered in the morning light and Bert's fucking weirdo brain compared them to icicles and crystallized honey and a thousand other unlikely things.
Fucking Gerard was like summer, he thought, and then wondered what that even meant.
He felt like he should say something good. Usually he kept running off at the mouth even during sex, a steady stream of suggestions and obscenities (and suggestive obscenities), and usually Gerard ended up stuttering something that was probably supposed to be sexy but came out sounding like a passage from a D&D manual, but they were both quiet now, filling up the silence with heavy breathing. Bert thought about telling him what he'd thought about the first time they'd fucked, and what he thought about the last time they'd fucked, and about how those two thoughts blended together to make summer in his mind.
Instead he reached up and touched Gerard's face, gently bit the little red mark under his eye, and said, "You- you're really fucking pretty."
And it was true, Gerard was really fucking pretty. But it wasn't what he wanted to say.
Gerard's face twisted at the same time as his fingers, and Bert had to make noise when he came, which broke the moment a little. Gerard pulled his hand out and wiped it on Bert's jeans, smiling ruefully.
"How can you sleep in those?" he asked. Bert giggled, still panting a little.
"Can't now," he said. "Sleeping in your own seminal fluids makes you gay. I saw it on Oprah once. De-pants me so I can borrow your fucking capris."
Gerard rolled his eyes but helped him peel the jeans off. Bert flopped over onto his back, wiggling his toes and enjoying that just-came feeling still humming in his bones, and when Gerard popped back up again with his stupid girly pants he'd already decided to stay pantsless forever.
"I'm going to stay pantsless forever," he told Gerard, who shook his head ruefully and threw the capris back on the floor.
"You're ambitious," he said, settling back into the bunk with him. He curved his arms tight around Bert's chest and bent his legs against Bert's. Bert could feel his nose smushed into the back of his neck and the weird, unsteady way his heart was beating. Too much coffee. Way, way too much.
"That's me," Bert said. "One ambitious, pantsless motherfucker. Are we spooning?"
"Yep."
"Awesome," he murmured, because he was sleepy and happy and spooning really kind of seemed like the best idea in the world right at that moment. He thought about that and added, because it seemed like something he should say out loud and not just think about, "I like this. Spooning with you. I don't wanna do it with anyone else. Let's not, okay?"
Gerard didn't say anything, but he lifted one hand to Bert's hair and that seemed like some kind of answer, some kind of okay, let's not. Enough to go on, anyway. Enough to close his eyes to.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened them Gerard had started up and started muttering "fuck, I've gotta go, fuck fuck fuck, where's my fucking jacket?" He scrambled out of the bunk, picked something up off the floor and shoved it into his purse- he had a fucking purse, Jesus- and ran to the other end of the bus, cursing.
"You could stay in bed," Bert said. "We could just fuck all day and then ride off into the sunset or something. Jepha knows where to get white horses. It'd be romantic."
Gerard smiled a little, shook his head. "Brian wants us to meet up at around nine. We're thinking of putting out a DVD or something." He frowned suddenly. "Why does Jepha know where to get white horses?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you later. When you call me, because you're definitely gonna do that or I'll never let you jerk me off again."
Gerard didn't answer that right away, just took Bert's hand and squeezed once. There was something different about his face, something sad, and Bert thought about what "later" meant for them, how it meant the few weeks kind of later instead of the few hours kind of later, and wished it away.
"I'll call you," Gerard said. "In San Diego. I'll call you." He kissed Bert once, quickly, and turned to go, and Bert was almost asleep again when he stopped and added, "I drew something for you. Six pages in. You can take it with you when..." And then he seemed to catch himself and shook his head again and said, "I'll call you," and he was gone.
Bert lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a while, letting himself feel warm and buzzed and the good kind of empty, and then pulled out the sketchbook. The drawing was the kind that Gerard always did in the early hours when he was feeling loose and unfocused, with scraps of poetry taking up corner space and half-finished nothings crowding the edges. The centre, though, the main focus, was a drawing of Bert sleeping on his side, his face scrunched in dreamy concentration. His hand was clutching something, and Bert had to turn the sketch book a few different ways before he realized it was the edge of Gerard's T-shirt. (He didn't remember holding onto it. Maybe he let go before he woke up.) At its corner, along the folds of the blanket, he'd written so long and goodnight.
"Smartass," Bert whispered, and couldn't stop smiling.
Because it had been a good night. It had been a good night and he could see more good nights stretching ahead for the rest of the summer, long stupid nights of bad jokes and good sex and two A.M. burger runs and moments that stretched out tense and musical like guitar strings and he fucking ached with love. The kind of love that made you want to do something beautiful and destructive like set yourself on fire. He loved the summer, its long beginnings and lazy winding middles, the way it folded gracefully into autumn and never really faded away. Never faded, which meant it never ended.
Forever had always been a kind of open-ended concept for Bert, but he never got tired of thinking about it. He really fucking didn't.
He lazed around for the rest of the day, slept and drank and folded and unfolded the drawing and grinned to himself, and the next morning he got on a plane to go home and tried to call Gerard and found out he'd changed his number, that he wasn't going to call him from San Diego or any other city, that the real world had caught up and was leaving him behind.
Pairing: Bert/Gerard
Rating: R
Summary: There was a little spot underneath his eye- an "angel's kiss," his mother would have called it, although the irony of applying that term to a boy Bert had gotten both vomit and semen on would probably have killed her- that got redder and starker when he was embarrassed or excited or turned on or all three at once. It was darker than usual now, and Bert kind of wanted to bite it. Or kiss it. Or maybe both.
Disclaimer: Not true. No monies.
On the last day of tour, Bert was mostly asleep when Gerard asked him suddenly, "Did you ever lie as a kid?"
Bert opened his eyes and wiggled around onto his side. Gerard was sitting up in bed- or, rather, in bunk- his eyes wide and kind of soft-looking. He wasn't drawing. At some point he'd tried to tuck his pencil behind his ear and missed, tangled it up in his hair instead. Bert wondered whether he should mention it and decided it'd be funnier to let him find out for himself.
"What the fuck?" he said, because even for Gerard it was late. It was, like, day. And he hadn't slept. Bert had been with Gerard long enough to know the difference between "I'm not sleeping because I'd rather do something fun and interesting, such as suck Bert McCracken's dick" and "I'm not sleeping because my brain is going a mile a minute and I'd rather waste my time trying to keep up with it than do something fun and interesting, such as suck Bert McCracken's dick." "Why aren't you asleep, you retard?"
Gerard smiled one of those half-moon smiles that meant he was worrying about something and couldn't make himself stop. "Couldn't. Had too much coffee, I guess. You know how they say you never really get over an addiction, you just... you kind of switch to something else?"
"Lifesavers." Bert yawned. He felt a draft coming in from somewhere and curled further into Gerard's warmth, taking the blanket with him. He fucking hated the cold. Gerard was always warm, like a blow-up doll with a built-in heater. Bert had told him that once. Gerard had frowned, kind of like he was frowning now with a wrinkle deep between his eyebrows that Bert always, irrationally, wanted to do some fucking dirty things to, and asked, "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"
Bert hadn't really been sure himself, so he'd done what he usually did when he wasn't sure about something Gerard wanted to know: he'd shoved his hand down his pants. It was an effective distraction, if nothing else.
Gerard poked him in the shoulder, bringing him back to Earth. Almost, anyway. "Lifesavers?"
"The first time I got off meth, when I was... what, fifteen? Fucking Lifesavers, dude. I wanted something really crunchy, something sweet, because I kept grinding my teeth. Quinn's parents started bringing me home rolls of Lifesavers, you know, the little candies? Every day. They're bring me a roll home every night and I just got addicted to the fucking things. They were kind of fun, you know. Distracting. Except the green ones. Fucking hated those." Bert reached down to the floor and felt around for Gerard's worn black hoodie. It smelt bad, like everything else he owned. "Do you have any candy in here?"
Gerard laughed a little, like Bert had surprised it out of him, and shook his head. "No. Mikey might have some Pixi Stix or something-"
"Fuck that. I want something I can chew." Bert sniffed Gerard's hoodie one more time before letting it fall back to the floor. He remembered he'd been surprised that Gerard still had his dirty Gerard-smell after he'd gotten clean, like he'd thought on some level that it was the booze and the drugs that made him stink. Surprised and kind of relieved, because he liked the way Gerard smelled.
He decided to say that then, buried his face in Gerard's greasy hair and breathed in and muttered, "I like the way you smell."
"I smell terrible," Gerard replied, but Bert could hear him smile. He reached down with one hand and cleared away the sketchbook, settling in Gerard's lap instead. He was still wearing yesterday's clothes- which had also been the clothes of the day before, and the day before that, and possibly the week before that- and his eyes were bloodshot and there were crumbs of something at the corner of his mouth and Bert wanted to taste them really bad all of a sudden, so he pulled him closer and did. He felt Gerard smile again, but this time it was against his lips and into his mouth and he never got tired of that. He really fucking didn't.
A thought occurred to him, and he broke away and asked, "What was that question again?"
Gerard's face was kind of flushed and his mouth stretched into a funny little "huh?" Kissing made Gerard stupid. Bert forgot that sometimes, maybe because kissing made him stupid too.
"Your question," he repeated. There was a little spot underneath his eye- an "angel's kiss," his mother would have called it, although the irony of applying that term to a boy Bert had gotten both vomit and semen on would probably have killed her- that got redder and starker when he was embarrassed or excited or turned on or all three at once. It was darker than usual now, and Bert kind of wanted to bite it. Or kiss it. Or maybe both. "You asked me something when you woke me up, dumbfuck."
"I- oh. Oh, yeah." Gerard blinked, like he had to clear his head. "When you were a kid, did you lie a lot?"
Bert considered the question, both hands buried in Gerard's T-shirt. (Fucking Madonna.) He could remember lying to his parents, obviously, about girls and about drugs and about places he'd go and things he'd do once he got there, but he kind of figured that wasn't what he meant. "You mean other than the usual teenage bullshit, right?" he asked, and Gerard nodded.
"Yeah. I mean, about things you'd think, or things you wanted to do. Or what you believed... I don't even know. Just important shit like that. Did you ever lie about it?"
Bert thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. "No," he said. And that was true. Bert couldn't think of any time, past or present, when he hadn't told the truth as he understood it at the time. Sometimes the truth changed, that was all.
Gerard rubbed his chin, smiled a sad little smile that Bert wasn't sure about, and said, quietly, "I did. Kind of a lot, actually. I remember when I was little... this was before Mikey was even here, so I probably wasn't three yet. I remember I was sitting on the front steps of the house, mom and dad were out somewhere and Elena was watching me from inside, I think, and I was making up stories and telling them to myself. I think this was when she was reading me Peter Pan, because it was about the Lost Boys. I think. It's a little hazy." He chuckled a little, kind of to himself, and it made Bert sort of pissy. Gerard did that sometimes- he just faded out and started rambling to himself when there were people right in front of him. Like they didn't matter. "When Mikey was born the first thing I did was tell him stories. I was so fucking excited to have a little brother because it meant someone would have to listen to me. He didn't learn to talk for a long time, did I ever tell you that? He still couldn't talk that much when he went to preschool. Sometimes I think that's my fault. Like he was too busy listening to me to learn how."
Bert waited. Gerard's stories usually had a point, eventually.
"I remember my first day of high school I was real excited. I think it was because junior high was so shitty, and in movies and stuff high school... well, it wasn't a cool place to be, exactly, but it was a place where uncool people would be able to find each other. So the night before I was telling Mikey about all the cool stuff I was going to do in high school- join an art club and write my own comic and hang out with a bunch of weirdos smoking clove cigarettes in the parking lot, blah blah blah. And... you know Mikey, he never says when he's excited about something, but he listened to me and his eyes were shining. He drank it all in." Gerard scratched his nose, frowned. "He looked up to me, I guess."
"You guess," Bert said, rolling his eyes. "Not like he fucking worships the ground you walk on or anything, asshole."
He ducked his head and smiled sheepishly, one hand straying to play idly with his hair. "Yeah, I know. Anyway. I remember the first day of high school I wore that fucking leather jacket and a Queen t-shirt and raised my hand in class for the first time in years, and some varsity asshole and his friend found me at lunch and beat the shit out of me in the bathroom. They hit here- and here-" He demonstrated with his hands, his fingers hovering just over skin on Bert's upper arms and torso, places that would usually be covered. Probably, anyway. Definitely at school, at least; his memories of high school are vague at best, but he's pretty sure it required clothing. "I fucking cried on the bus home- which, you know, didn't help the fact that I was already being called a fat fag fuck, but I couldn't help it. I'd hoped it would be different. I hoped... but when I got home Mikey was waiting for me on the steps, and he looked at me and said, 'How was school?' He'd never asked that before. And his eyes were kind of shining again, like he was waiting for me to tell him about all the awesome shit I'd been doing, how great everything was going for me, so... I just told him."
"You lied."
"Yeah. I told him I'd met some really cool guys who were into, like, Romero and the Doom Patrol and stuff, and that my art teacher let us listen to Iron Maiden, and that there was a hot girl with blue hair in my English class. Just boring, mundane shit. I could have just said 'fine' and not told him anything, but I felt like I needed to make up a story. I didn't want him to be disappointed in me." Gerard stopped and looked at Bert like he was waiting for some flash of understanding, some sort of fucking hallelujah.
Bert didn't have one. "Okay," he said, wondering if he should go the down-the-pants route again for this one. "So why are we talking about this when I could be blowing you, again?"
That little red mark flushed deeper, and Bert still hadn't bitten it yet. This didn't seem right, somehow. Gerard looked down, his voice fading out and trembling at the edges the way it did when he needed something and wasn't getting it. "I kept that up for three weeks. Would have kept it up for longer, except he saw the bruises. I expected him to get mad, but... he just looked at me for a long time and said, 'it's not good, is it?' And all I could say was no. And we never talked about it again." He sighed. "I would have kept going, though. I mean, at first it was about Mikey, about protecting him, but after a while it was like the lies got bigger on their own. I wanted to believe them. Fuck, I wanted to live them. It was so much nicer than what actually existed. And..." Gerard's nervous fingers found the pencil in his hair and he blinked, confused. "What the fuck?"
Bert burst out laughing, pressing his face in the flush of Gerard's neck. He'd been right- it was funnier for him to find out on his own. When he pulled back up Gerard looked kind of puzzled still, but also resigned, like he was willing to go along with the joke even if it was on him.
"My point is," he said- he still hadn't gotten to the point? fuck- "my point is that sometimes lies have their own truth, you know? Like sometimes I think that's all music is, that's all performance is. It's a lie we tell ourselves over and over again, because if we lie to ourselves enough that lie will become real. When you guys were touring in a van did you tell yourselves you were the best band in the world?"
"Nope," said Bert cheerfully. "Quinn told me I sucked all the time. Still does. And then I tell him I boned his mom. And, you know, this conversation has been going on for a while and your dick still isn't in my mouth, what the fuck is up with that?"
Gerard laughed a little, but it sounded dry. It rattled. He looked steadily at Bert, his wide weirdo eyes catching the light like leaves and gold and a thousand other things Bert couldn't think of in the moment, and he smiled another sad, strange smile.
"The thing is," he said, "you have to tell the truth eventually. The real world always catches up."
And just like that his tongue was in Bert's mouth and he was undoing his fly, like someone had flipped a switch.
Gerard wasn't very good at sex, which was okay with Bert. Being good at it wasn't really the point. Besides, Gerard was only not good at it because he got so into it that he lost track of what was happening sometimes and couldn't do anything but lie there and gasp and stare. That was also okay with Bert. More than. The first time they'd fucked he'd done that, collapsed backwards and just let everything happen, so ridiculous and innocent that Bert wanted to keep him on the verge of coming forever just to see that look on his face.
This was different, somehow. This was Gerard with his lip caught between his teeth, jerking him off with a kind of frantic leisure that left Bert arching his back and hissing and snapping forwards, digging into his sides with his fingers. Their kisses were messy, had always been like that, tangles of teeth and tongue and saliva that would have been disgusting if they weren't so fucking hot. Gerard pulled away after a moment, his forehead still touching Bert's, watching his face as he stroked his cock. Bert locked eyes with him, watching his pupils grow and shrink. Gerard's hands were hotter than they should have been, like he was running a fever, and there were little beads of sweat along his hairline that glittered in the morning light and Bert's fucking weirdo brain compared them to icicles and crystallized honey and a thousand other unlikely things.
Fucking Gerard was like summer, he thought, and then wondered what that even meant.
He felt like he should say something good. Usually he kept running off at the mouth even during sex, a steady stream of suggestions and obscenities (and suggestive obscenities), and usually Gerard ended up stuttering something that was probably supposed to be sexy but came out sounding like a passage from a D&D manual, but they were both quiet now, filling up the silence with heavy breathing. Bert thought about telling him what he'd thought about the first time they'd fucked, and what he thought about the last time they'd fucked, and about how those two thoughts blended together to make summer in his mind.
Instead he reached up and touched Gerard's face, gently bit the little red mark under his eye, and said, "You- you're really fucking pretty."
And it was true, Gerard was really fucking pretty. But it wasn't what he wanted to say.
Gerard's face twisted at the same time as his fingers, and Bert had to make noise when he came, which broke the moment a little. Gerard pulled his hand out and wiped it on Bert's jeans, smiling ruefully.
"How can you sleep in those?" he asked. Bert giggled, still panting a little.
"Can't now," he said. "Sleeping in your own seminal fluids makes you gay. I saw it on Oprah once. De-pants me so I can borrow your fucking capris."
Gerard rolled his eyes but helped him peel the jeans off. Bert flopped over onto his back, wiggling his toes and enjoying that just-came feeling still humming in his bones, and when Gerard popped back up again with his stupid girly pants he'd already decided to stay pantsless forever.
"I'm going to stay pantsless forever," he told Gerard, who shook his head ruefully and threw the capris back on the floor.
"You're ambitious," he said, settling back into the bunk with him. He curved his arms tight around Bert's chest and bent his legs against Bert's. Bert could feel his nose smushed into the back of his neck and the weird, unsteady way his heart was beating. Too much coffee. Way, way too much.
"That's me," Bert said. "One ambitious, pantsless motherfucker. Are we spooning?"
"Yep."
"Awesome," he murmured, because he was sleepy and happy and spooning really kind of seemed like the best idea in the world right at that moment. He thought about that and added, because it seemed like something he should say out loud and not just think about, "I like this. Spooning with you. I don't wanna do it with anyone else. Let's not, okay?"
Gerard didn't say anything, but he lifted one hand to Bert's hair and that seemed like some kind of answer, some kind of okay, let's not. Enough to go on, anyway. Enough to close his eyes to.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened them Gerard had started up and started muttering "fuck, I've gotta go, fuck fuck fuck, where's my fucking jacket?" He scrambled out of the bunk, picked something up off the floor and shoved it into his purse- he had a fucking purse, Jesus- and ran to the other end of the bus, cursing.
"You could stay in bed," Bert said. "We could just fuck all day and then ride off into the sunset or something. Jepha knows where to get white horses. It'd be romantic."
Gerard smiled a little, shook his head. "Brian wants us to meet up at around nine. We're thinking of putting out a DVD or something." He frowned suddenly. "Why does Jepha know where to get white horses?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you later. When you call me, because you're definitely gonna do that or I'll never let you jerk me off again."
Gerard didn't answer that right away, just took Bert's hand and squeezed once. There was something different about his face, something sad, and Bert thought about what "later" meant for them, how it meant the few weeks kind of later instead of the few hours kind of later, and wished it away.
"I'll call you," Gerard said. "In San Diego. I'll call you." He kissed Bert once, quickly, and turned to go, and Bert was almost asleep again when he stopped and added, "I drew something for you. Six pages in. You can take it with you when..." And then he seemed to catch himself and shook his head again and said, "I'll call you," and he was gone.
Bert lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a while, letting himself feel warm and buzzed and the good kind of empty, and then pulled out the sketchbook. The drawing was the kind that Gerard always did in the early hours when he was feeling loose and unfocused, with scraps of poetry taking up corner space and half-finished nothings crowding the edges. The centre, though, the main focus, was a drawing of Bert sleeping on his side, his face scrunched in dreamy concentration. His hand was clutching something, and Bert had to turn the sketch book a few different ways before he realized it was the edge of Gerard's T-shirt. (He didn't remember holding onto it. Maybe he let go before he woke up.) At its corner, along the folds of the blanket, he'd written so long and goodnight.
"Smartass," Bert whispered, and couldn't stop smiling.
Because it had been a good night. It had been a good night and he could see more good nights stretching ahead for the rest of the summer, long stupid nights of bad jokes and good sex and two A.M. burger runs and moments that stretched out tense and musical like guitar strings and he fucking ached with love. The kind of love that made you want to do something beautiful and destructive like set yourself on fire. He loved the summer, its long beginnings and lazy winding middles, the way it folded gracefully into autumn and never really faded away. Never faded, which meant it never ended.
Forever had always been a kind of open-ended concept for Bert, but he never got tired of thinking about it. He really fucking didn't.
He lazed around for the rest of the day, slept and drank and folded and unfolded the drawing and grinned to himself, and the next morning he got on a plane to go home and tried to call Gerard and found out he'd changed his number, that he wasn't going to call him from San Diego or any other city, that the real world had caught up and was leaving him behind.