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Freakshows, Normality And the Many Gerard Ways
by Nicola
Rating: R
Gerard shows up at Brian's house and Brian lets him in. It's as simple as that. Their relationship has always been incredibly simple—except for the part where it's complicated as hell.
("House" is kind of an overstatement. More like three rooms dumped on top of someone else's house, with a fire escape converted into a separate entrance. But it's all his. Brian put down a deposit on it when he was twenty-three, because it was all he could afford then. He's lived there ever since. No one has ever broken in while he's been away on tour. That's the plus side.)
"What's up?" Brian asks.
"Not much," says Gerard.
Brian doesn't say, it's four a.m., you fucker! Brian doesn't ask, why did you just spend six hours on a plane for "not much"? He definitely doesn't ask if Gerard is all right—that has seemed redundant for a long time.
"You want some coffee?" he says at last. "You want something to eat?"
Gerard shakes his head, no. He's rummaging through the pockets of his jacket. "You got any matches? They took away my lighter at the airport." His voice sinks to a mumble, "…fucking hate flying."
Brian grabs a book of matches from the kitchen counter and hands them to Gerard. They have Leah and a phone number scrawled across the back—a fact which raises a thin smile from Gerard.
Brian watches as Gerard lights a cigarette. Filthy fucking habit, he thinks—but his eyes are intent on the way Gerard's lips pout, moulding themselves around the tip of the cigarette. The way his eyes flicker as he takes that first drag. Brian recognizes a faint echo of the way Gerard looks when he comes.
Brian sighs imperceptibly—just the merest exhalation of breath. He reaches over and pulls a chipped plate from the cupboard. "Ashtray," he says, holding it up for Gerard to see, and then dumping it on the counter. "You can take a shower, but there won't be hot water for another couple hours. There's some stuff in the fridge if you get hungry." Brian can't stop himself from sliding automatically into chaperone mode. (Manager's job the first: don't let anyone in the band die. Manager's job the second: make sure they have everything they need.) He adds, "Open the window if you're gonna keep smoking."
Gerard makes a show of stubbing his first cigarette out on the plate.
Brian hesitates a moment longer. Then he pulls off the t-shirt he put on to answer the door. He finally sets down his baseball bat, leaning it against the wall. He continues to eye Gerard, mentally checking boxes. "There's a Starbucks two blocks over. They open at five." He scratches his belly distractedly, and then lowers his sweat pants, kicking his feet out of them.
Brian begins to walk back to his bedroom. "Oh yeah. And I'm not gonna fuck you," he calls over his shoulder.
Gerard lets out a dry rasp of a laugh that turns into, "…love you, too. Asshole."
*
Brian wakes up as Gerard's arms wrap around his torso. It's a heavy, uncomfortable embrace, but for a second Brian savours the intrusion on his personal space. Gerard's skin is ice-cold, which means he didn't wait for the hot water before taking a shower. It feels like minutes since Brian forced himself back into sleep, but the weak sunlight that enters the room through his cheap curtains indicates it must be around six a.m.
As he spoons Brian, Gerard moulds himself firmly around his body. There's something unnervingly willful in Gerard's desire to hold him and be held. Brian shivers involuntarily. He can feel the press of Gerard's cock against his back. Gerard licks a wet trail of kisses across Brian's neck and shoulders. Gerard is beginning to warm up, rubbing himself lightly against Brian—just the beginnings of what could be a perfect friction.
Brian inhales deeply and then lets out a lungful of breath. "I mean it," he says quietly. His fingers reach for Gerard's hands, prying them from his chest.
There's a tense pause, before Gerard relaxes his grip, finally, and Brian rolls away.
"I'm gonna get up," Brian says, climbing out of bed. He tries to make his voice sound forgiving, but there's a hard edge he can't keep out. "You should try and sleep."
Gerard rolls onto his back, spreading his arms wide in Brian's newly-vacated bed. The outline of his erection is clearly visible through the sheets. The beginnings of embarrassment and anger blossom across his cheeks. He runs his tongue across the sharp edges of his front teeth, visibly craving a cigarette.
"No rest for the wicked," Gerard says in a dead voice. He rolls his eyes and then closes them, pantomiming sleep.
Brian watches him. He hesitates for a second, before walking away, shutting the bedroom door as he leaves.
*
Brian spends the morning running errands. He appreciates the mindlessness of it all; he enjoys the taxi drivers who communicate only in grunts. When he arrives home, Gerard has installed himself at the kitchen table. He looks calm; perfectly at home. There's a litter of Starbucks products spread across the table. Gerard smiles and holds out a waxy cardboard cup to him.
Brian doesn't accept the coffee. He just shakes his head tiredly and sits down opposite Gerard.
"Feeling better?" Brian asks. He can't harbour much resentment towards this contented, caffeinated Gerard. But he also can't forget that as well as he might be faking it, Gerard doesn't belong here; he belongs in LA, recording a fucking third album that Brian's career depends upon just as much as the band's.
Gerard smiles again. "Feeling better," he asserts. He continues, conversationally. "That Starbucks is such a fucking freakshow. It was all workaholics and junkies."
"And which are you?" Brian asks mirthlessly.
"Today… today, I'm the single mom with a stroller who gets caught in the crossfire." He grins widely.
Brian lets out an exasperated breath. "Are you gonna tell me why you're here?" he asks abruptly. "You know how much it's costing for the singer to fuck off AWOL in the middle of recording? Fuck. I don't even give a shit about the money. But you're wasting everyone's time. You can't just… fuck," he spits out, running out of steam.
Gerard looks at him expressionlessly. "I'm wasting your time," he translates.
"No." Brian shakes his head, unable to retain his anger. "Yeah," he amends, with a slight smile. "I'm your fucking manager. It's my job to let you waste my time. Now tell me what's wrong."
"I'm fine."
"Yeah," Brian says skeptically.
"No, that's just it. I'm fine. Almost two years now. All good and clean and sober." Gerard exhales hard. "And some days it all feels just as shitty." He pauses, and Brian can see that the words are causing him pain. "There was this… I had a fight with Mikey."
"Oh, so that's it," Brian says.
"Not yesterday. A few weeks ago, maybe. He didn't come in to the studio, because Alicia was sick and he wanted to stay with her. It kind of pissed us all off, because we were so close to finishing up one particular song." Gerard smiles blankly. "In the six-hundredth stupid battle of Band versus Life, he chose Life for the first time."
Brian realizes he can recall this fight. Ray gave him a carefully edited, painfully objective account of it over the telephone. Everything blew over, and Ray was quick to add that they were making great progress with the record.
"He said I was…" Gerard flicks his cigarette, struggling to keep his voice even. "He said I was jealous"—he moves his wrist—"and lonely"—ash falls onto the plate-ashtray—"and bitter."
Brian has to struggle to imagine Mikey saying these words to Gerard. But Mikey is no longer the scared kid who will cower under the weight of trying to impress his big brother. "He didn't mean it," Brian says lamely.
"Nah, he didn't." Gerard's mouth twists into a darker smile. "But it's true all the same." He rubs at his eyes. "God, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Got to the point where I couldn't…" He shakes his head, trying and failing to clear it. "Couldn't deal with it. I just wanted… wanted it to go away.
"Couldn't think of anything to do but get on a plane." A coil of smoke from his cigarette twists up into the air. "Well, I could"—a flash of a smile—"think of some other way out."
Finally, Gerard meets Brian's eyes. "I'm freaking you out," he says. Big, round eyes.
"Been freaked out worse," Brian answers truthfully.
Gerard moves his shoulders in an almost-shrug. "Just needed to get. Away."
The phrasing is wrong, but Brian gets it. The funny (funny-sad, not funny-haha—as if anything ever is) thing is, Gerard can't ever escape himself. There are too many of his old selves, too many shed skins—too many Gerard Ways, scattered across the country, cluttering up his mind. Brian thinks wryly that there are a few of these assorted Gerard Ways scratching at the inside of Brian's chest.
*
The first time they had sex, they were both wasted. Bitterly, Brian feels like that set the bar for their relationship, and every time after has been inevitably tawdry.
Brian wasn't naïve—not stupid or easy or swayed by rockstar vigor. He wasn't bowled over by Gerard's thrusting hips; he wasn't knocked into raging lust the first time he saw Gerard swagger onstage. The first time he saw the band perform, he squinted appraisingly at the lead singer, who was clearly running too-hot on booze and adrenaline, but killing it anyway. He thought, yeah, okay, a million kids will want to hit that. And when he was first introduced to Gerard, he saw the way Gerard's nose crinkled as he smiled questioning at Brian. When Brian saw the flash of curiosity-desire-something in Gerard's eyes, he thought grudgingly, yeah, okay, me too.
Brian has seen that Something before. He acted on it more that once—until things went wrong with more than one asshole singer who felt like the world owed him. It was then that he realized it was plain stupid to shit where you slept.
Except that Gerard Way isn't just another asshole singer.
Brian stopped in for a casual visit on the Taking Back Sunday tour date in New York. (Except, casual visits from the manager were never just casual visits. The warmth of the hugs he received from Mikey and Frank were genuine—as was the unmistakable tension his presence generated. Gerard was the only one who didn't treat him like someone's mom who had just crashed the party.) Gerard handed him a beer at eleven a.m. and he chugged it without thinking. He kept drinking, on automatic, throughout the day. By the time the night's show was over and the crowds had dispersed, he felt light-headed and jittery.
The tour bus was dark when Brian climbed inside. He could hear rhythmic snoring coming from the bunks, undercut by an insistent bass line that escaped someone's headphones. Gerard was sprawled across the couch. Brian thought that he was asleep—passed out, whatever—until his leg kicked at the blanket draped over him. When he opened his eyes, they appeared round and desperate.
"Mikey?" he whispered, "Mikes… Mikey."
"No, it's Brian."
It took a moment for Gerard to comprehend the words, but then his face relaxed. "Brian . . . Brian, stay with me."
"Gotta drive home, man," Brian said half-heartedly.
"Too good to spend the night on the bus?" Gerard's voice sounded sore, but Brian could hear his smile. "Naww, you can stay. Go home tomorrow."
Gerard was plucking at his sleeve, and finally Brian allowed himself to be pulled into a seat beside him. Gerard made a performance of wrapping the blanket around them both. He arranged and then rearranged his limbs, elbowing Brian in the stomach, banging against his knees.
"For fuck's sake," Brian muttered, unable to keep in an exasperated burst of laughter. "Stop fucking moving!"
"Can't…" Gerard murmured, and his lips were close to Brian's neck now, as he changed positions once more. "Too fucking wired."
"You really want me to stay?" Brian asked. Gerard was leaning heavily against his chest. When he moved his head, his hair tickled Brian's face.
"Yeah I want you to stay. Don't get all needy on me, Schechter." Gerard's hair tickled his face as he laughed softly.
"Fuck off." Brian pushed lightly at Gerard. "You wanna climb on top of me some more?"
"You'd like that." There was a slight menace to Gerard's voice.
Brian imagined a different Gerard—on a different day, in a different frame of mind. If this were a different Gerard, he would have backed off; smiled or screwed up his face as he scooted away from Brian. He would have made the situation easier.
Gerard's hands moved under the blanket. He began rubbing Brian's thigh, smooth sweeps of his thumb up the inside of Brian's leg. As he pressed his body against Brian, it wasn't innocent and playful as before. "Come on," he murmured, irrelevantly. His lips were now deliberately close to Brian's face. It was a dare. Come on, kiss me.
Brian felt the strain of staying still. He moved his head ever so slightly, feeling the cord of tension in his neck. Gerard's hair still tickled against his face, and Brian's fingers ached to reach out and yank it. The air felt tight and claustrophobic, the darkness heavy. He longed to push Gerard away. He longed to push him roughly down onto the couch, pin his arms and feel him wriggle beneath his weight.
Brian heard a particularly loud snore from the bunks, a shuffle of movement. Reading his thoughts, Gerard whispered, "It's dark, they won't see… won't notice… won't care, won't care."
Thoughts splintered through Brian's head. First: if there was a way in which Gerard could have absolved the night of meaning any more decisively, Brian couldn't think of it. Second: how many others had he soothed with the same words? Jealousy lit a match in his head.
"Stupid," he muttered thoughtlessly, before he had a chance to figure out whether he was talking about Gerard or himself. When he moved, it was in one fluid motion. Gerard struggled slightly, unwilling to cede control of the situation. But Gerard was on the heavier side of his fluctuating weight that month, and drunker than Brian, besides. Brian pinned him easily.
The inevitability of it all made Brian irrationally angry. Like a groupie called backstage. Gerard looked smug as Brian pressed the palm of his hand against the front of Gerard's pants, feeling the hardness of his cock. Brian hesitated for only the briefest of seconds, before he pulled at the buttons of his jeans.
*
Their… thing lasted seven months. (Brian can calculate its end date pretty easily.) On/off doesn't begin to cover it, and seven months feels like an inaccurate description. There were, after all, two or three months where Gerard didn't even see him (just stared right through his eyes, out the back of his head), let alone touch him.
Their first Morning After was a taste of things to come. Gerard leaned against the outer shell of the tour bus, shivering and chain-smoking. He talked, in a monotone, about The Simpsons and Dada. It might have been interesting if Gerard hadn't already downed a glass of vodka like it was water. It was nine a.m.
Brian was hungover. Steel tentacles twisted slowly through his abdomen. He lifted the vodka bottle from the ground and took a single swallow. "So last night…" he said in a low voice.
Gerard looked at him blankly. "What?"
Gerard's selective memory became the determining factor in their relationship. It was countered some days by the fact that Gerard couldn't seem to keep his hands off Brian. When Brian arrived at the tour bus to check in, he wouldn't know if he was to be ignored or slammed hard against a wall with Gerard's hands down his pants. Brian felt himself pushed toward an edge (an edge that Gerard already seemed close to toppling over). He is sure he must have been a shitty manager during those months, but apparently it didn't matter, because My Chemical Romance was riding a wave. Things were happening; people were taking notice. And success tasted like vodka and cigarettes.
*
"You think I'm such a fuckup," Gerard says, fidgeting with his coffee cup.
No, I know you're a fuckup. "I don't."
The last two years have been a decent crash course for Brian in how to be a therapist. Never try to give advice; they don't want it. If someone's gonna jump, they're gonna jump. You can only help them find the desire to live inside themselves. Such bullshit. Brian would have told Gerard anything two years ago to stop him from killing himself. He would have promised anything.
"I don't wanna go back." Gerard smiles and then clarifies. "To LA… fucking LA. I hate it there." He pauses, carefully avoiding Brian's gaze. "Can I stay here?"
It's a stupid question. There is no… here here. Brian cannot be Gerard's away.
"Yes, of course you can stay," he says.
Relief blossoms across Gerard's face like happiness. Brian almost clarifies it, adds for a while or until you're ready to go back, but his desire to preserve Gerard's fragile contentment is too great.
"I'll help pay the rent," Gerard says lightly, mischievously. He's already glancing around the apartment, claiming ownership with his eyes.
"You already pay the rent," Brian says dryly. "Every time someone buys Revenge, I can make a fucking mortgage payment."
Gerard isn't listening. "So," he says, drawing out the word as he glances towards the bedroom. "About the rules…"
"I still don't want you smoking with the windows closed," Brian says, deadpan.
Gerard makes a face. "You know what I'm talking about." He exhales loudly and continues. "Since I'm staying here, I think I should get a say. And I really think that…"
"You think what?" Brian stares him down.
"I think I really, really want to fuck you."
"Really."
"Really, really."
The table is between them, but Gerard is leaning forward in anticipation. He licks his lips, and Brian can't help but think about kissing him. It's been a long time—almost two years, as Gerard has just reminded him. Gerard got sober and Brian viewed it as a clean break. So simple it hurts.
Brian stands up. "I'm gonna take a shower," he says.
Gerard frowns, pantomiming consternation. "Is that code for something?"
"What would it be code for?" Brian can't help but laugh.
"Yes, Gerard, I think we should start fucking like bunnies." He pauses, and then adds, "And by all means, close the windows, because it's starting to get cold."
"Fuck you," Brian says good-naturedly. He doesn't wait for Gerard's inevitable retort, he just shuts himself in the bathroom. It's not until he sees himself in the mirror that he realizes he's grinning.
Brian takes a long shower and tries not to think. He wraps a towel around his waist and walks through to the bedroom. Gerard is lying on his bed, fully-clothed, staring up at the ceiling.
"You should paint this," he says softly. "The ceiling, I mean."
"Put glow-in-the-dark stars all over it, like in third grade?" Brian says wryly.
"I was thinking… a solar system. All the planets against a dark blue background." Gerard is thinking aloud, painting in his head. "Not stupid, though. Not that shit most people do. You could have supernovas exploding, maybe. A black hole in the corner." He screws up his face. "No, not a black hole. Too depressing."
Gerard sighs and they drift into silence. Then Gerard scrambles gracelessly off the bed. He comes to hover beside Brian, who is standing at the end of the bed. Gerard reaches out, tentatively, to touch him. Brian's skin is moist and warm from the shower. Gerard's fingers skid clumsily across his cheek. He leans in to kiss him, quickly. The kiss lands on Brian's jaw. Gerard breaks into a lop-sided smile. He pulls away only slightly, maintaining their closeness.
"My therapist would probably tell me"—Gerard is speaking in a low voice, barely more than a whisper, but his tone is conversational—"that I'd developed a sex-negative approach to our . . ." (Brian sees him shape his mouth around the r of relationship, before he hurries on) "Whatever this is. And now that I'm clean we need to work at transforming sex into a positive act that reaffirms our—"
Brian shakes his head, grinning. "That is such bullshit."
Gerard squints up at him, half-smiling. "Yeah, I know. Just because I was wasted, doesn't mean it was bad sex." He rolls his shoulders into a shrug. "It was good sex. I mean, I think. From what I can remember, anyway."
"Yeah, it was good sex," Brian says quietly. He feels a slight twinge, a tiny ache over the fact that so much of their past whatever is lost to the sucking black hole of Gerard's alcoholism.
They have kissed a thousand times (and Brian, at least, was lucid for most of them), so when Gerard covers his mouth with his own, Brian wonders why it feels so unfamiliar. Awkward, but—the best kind of awkward, the kind of awkward where everything feels shaky and exciting. Brian thinks, it feels new.
*
Brian can't sleep, so he's roaming the kitchen, thinking vaguely about making eggs. (That might involve going to the store to buy the eggs.) His eyes flicker through the open doorway. In his bedroom, Gerard is asleep. He looks peaceful, content even. And he's breathing, so all in all, things are good. It's twilight, and the evening stretches out before Brian, full of easy promise: more sex, when Gerard wakes up; TV, maybe, but Gerard's mouth is about all the entertainment Brian is interested in. So: sex; sleep; and fuckit, they'll order in, not leave the house.
Brian hears his cell phone, and finds it (sandwiched between the couch cushions) on the fourth ring. He answers brusquely, but without malice: "Yeah?"
"Is he there?" Mikey's voice is tense.
The sudden urge to lie—to preserve their peaceful bubble of sex, sleep and take-out—constricts Brian's throat. It takes a moment for him to recover. "Yeah," he says in a low voice. "He's here."
"He's there," Mikey repeats—not for Brian's benefit; he can hear a female voice in the background (Alicia, presumably). "Thank God." Brian hears the weight of the relief in Mikey's voice, although he's not entirely willing to forget that this phonecall has taken 24 hours—24 hours in which Mikey has failed to inquire about his brother's absence. "We thought—"
Mikey breaks off and Brian fills in the rest. It is terrible to treat Gerard's two years of sobriety so lightly, but neither of them can stop the thought process. We thought he was in a bar somewhere.
"He's coming back to California, right?" Mikey asks. Brian can hear his relief shifting to resentment and suspicion (possibly he, too, has not forgotten about his fight with Gerard).
Brian releases a breath. "Yeah. He's going back to California."
"When?"
I have no idea. "Tomorrow," he says heavily.
Brian hears the creak of floorboards behind him. He cringes inwardly and then looks around. Gerard is standing in the bedroom doorway, naked, pale as a ghost. Brian expects him to start screaming, cursing him out—so when Gerard simply turns around and walks back into the bedroom, it's almost worse.
*
They stand on the sidewalk outside JFK, because Gerard isn't allowed to smoke inside the terminal. Last looks, Brian thinks blackly, as he watches Gerard light a cigarette. People with suitcases on wheels veer crazily around them. The unending line of taxis provides a blanket of noise.
That morning they had sex in the shower—Gerard pressed against the tile, water beating down on them both. Brain mouthed, stay, stay, stay against the back of Gerard's neck. They got dressed and ate breakfast in silence.
"When's your next visit to LA?" Gerard asks. The question is carefully depersonalized—not, when are you coming to LA?—and his voice is neutral.
"Most of the stuff I need to do I can do from here. I'll probably check in next month," Brian says. "You gotta give me an album before I can do much else."
Gerard makes a sour face that caves into a reluctant smile. Brian is relieved and smiles back, wanly. Whatever they've had these last two days, whatever they've rekindled and extinguished—it's fading back to status: normal.
Brian thinks, this is what friendship is. True friendship is being able to come back from the edge. Come back from the point where you're hurting each other, destroying pieces of one another, and still find something you want to salvage.
"I remember…" Brian murmurs. He sighs and starts again, "One of my worst memories from two years ago…" Gerard seems about to interrupt, but Brian carries on talking and he is silenced. "When you talked to me on the phone, when you were depressed, you used to say things like, tell me you love me or I'll kill myself." Brian realizes he's been holding this memory in, trying to push it down as far inside himself as possible. His pulse quickens. "It got to be a thing. Sometimes you'd laugh, like it was a joke." Brian rubs at his face. "Maybe it was a joke. At the time, I fucking hoped it was a joke. But you'd say it all the time. And I'd always have to—"
"What do you want me to say now, Brian?" Gerard bites out. "That I was fucked up? and selfish? and I just wanted someone to…" Gerard appears to deflate, visibly, "to care?"
"I wanted you…" to say it back? "I wanted you to let me tell you I love you without a gun pressed to my fucking head."
Gerard doesn't say anything. There's a horrible, loaded moment and then Gerard reaches out and pulls him into a hug. Brian feels the anger and resentment, coils of tension beneath his skin, begin to melt down as they embrace. Gerard's great triumph has been that he didn't kill himself. But Brian wonders if one or two of the Gerard Ways that he has known haven't died anyway. This Gerard feels strong, solid—more of a presence than the fragile body he woke up next to for all those months.
Gerard's cigarette is still lit. Brian feels the tiny speck of heat through his shirt where Gerard's arms are wrapped around him. Seconds before it burns down to his fingertips, Gerard disentangles himself from their hug. He drops the cigarette on the sidewalk and stamps it out. There's another quietly excruciating pause and then Brian rushes out—
"Stay."
Gerard is chewing his lip, still toeing the ashy remains of his cigarette. "No," he says slowly. "I should go back. You're right. Mikey's right. Ray. Frank. Bob." He smiles as he says their names. "Gotta make a fucking record."
Gerard looks up, meeting Brian's gaze. His eyes are wide and round, almost childlike. "I'll miss you," he says.
Brian rolls his eyes, smiling. "I'm gonna call when you land. And then I'm gonna call again tomorrow. I'll be on your ass about that album. By the time I fly out, you're gonna be fucking sick of me."
Gerard reaches out and grabs hold of the necklace strung around Brian's neck. He tugs gently, closing the gap between them. He kisses Brian lightly on the lips and then lets him go. "I'll miss you," he says again, more decisively.
Someone mutters, "fucking fags," as they walk past. Gerard starts laughing, insanely, and Brian can't help but join in. Because it's funny. And really, so little in life is.
Gerard kisses him again, and it's a showy, look-at-us kind of kiss. Like something from the end of a movie. More than that, it's a kiss that belongs on-stage; a figurative middle-finger to anyone who might be foolish enough to disagree with Gerard Way.
June 2006
Muse music: '...but home is nowhere' by AFI; 'Down Again' by the Superjesus; 'A Smile That Explodes' by Joseph Arthur; 'Suicide Medicine' by Rocky Votolato; 'Do It Again' by Nada Surf; 'Jaded' by george.
Note: Big thank you to Juliette for the beta.
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