fic: correlation does not equal causation
correlation does not imply causation
For lordessrenegade for the nightmare_xmas challenge.
Brian/Gerard, R, ~6,500 words
Discussions of substance abuse, profanity, some angst.
These are slices of time, spanning from 2002 to 2006, which means there are mentions of both Gerard and Brian’s experiences in rehab. Thanks to secrethappiness, octette and audreysrev for the betas, handholding, and making me expand the story another 3k words beyond the first draft they got. They rule and any remaining mistakes are a result of my own stubbornness.
2002
Brian keeps missing Gerard.
It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except that he’s trying to get a goddamn job here and he keeps missing the fucking lead singer. He’s actually not sure that Gerard’s the dude who makes the decisions, but he knows that he’s the one who can convince the rest of the band.
Last week, Gerard got a slew of scene kids to scream along to a song that they didn’t even know. It’s somewhat possible that this guy could convince anyone to do anything if he put his mind to it.
Brian leans against a wall, sloshing his whiskey around in his glass. Around him are all of the normal sounds of setup. Like right around him, since it’s not like Maxwell’s is even big enough for all of the techs and bands to be on the stage, let alone in the imaginary behind-stage area. And the place is already packed, people pressing and pushing against each other.
It’s this kind of shit that convinced Brian that he had to manage these My Chemical Romance guys after seeing them … god, just a week before. He has to. There’s something there, something intangible surrounding them, making them different than every other band of half-fucked up Jersey dudes playing music with their friends. It’s not totally there yet - Gerard is still too nervous to fully work the crowd, Frank’s chords are sloppy as shit, Ray doesn’t look up from the damn guitar, Mikey looks like he’s made of stone, and Matt is kind of obviously missing pick ups.
But there’s something there. It’s just beyond reach and, even with it beyond reach, Brian can see the kids amped just a little more.
He can bring it out. He knows he can.
It’s only after a stream of girls with dyed black hair and fishnets on their arms push past him with Xs on their hands and a couple of dudes with dyed black hair hanging in their faces crowd around him that Brian catches a glimpse of a different dude with lank black hair.
“Gerard,” he calls out loudly, gently pushing aside the two teenage boys who have planted themselves in front of him.
Gerard’s eyes are a little wide and a little unfocused and … fuck. What is he on? “Hey.” He grins a little and ducks behind his hair. “Brian. You made it?”
“Dude, of course,” Brian seriously cannot fucking believe this guy. After the first show, he told them that he wanted to manage them. And Gerard’s surprised that he made it to the CD release? “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Gerard smiles again, his fingers fidgeting in the cuffs of his jacket. He looks … shit, he looks nervous and drunk and maybe a little high. He has to look down slightly to make eye contact with Brian, but Brian’s pretty sure he’d be staring at the floor either way.
Somewhere in there is the guy who has enough charisma to move the whole fucking crowd. The guy Brian's talking to is not that guy. Not exactly.
“You ready, man?” Brian asks, slipping into a tone he’s heard managers use with their bands. Maybe if he just acts like a manager, they won’t notice that he’s doing the job until he’s too hard to get rid of.
Gerard nods a little vaguely, waving his hand toward the bar. “The guys are gonna set up in a minute and I think that Mikey’s having trouble tuning his bass or something? But I’m sure it’ll be cool.”
“You think he wants some help?” Brian asks.
“Seriously?” Gerard looks him fully in the eyes, finally. “Yeah, definitely. He’s like … nervous? Because our grandma is coming and shit? That would be totally awesome.”
Brian nods, moving over toward a lanky, messy-haired guy in the general direction that Gerard had waved toward. It would be easier to find Mikey if he didn’t look like every other guy in the New Jersey scene.
“Hey!” Gerard calls as Brian moves farther away.
Brian turns half around and stops.
“Thanks.” Gerard grins, his whole face lighting up.
And that’s it. That’s the guy Brian knows is in there, somewhere.
Brian nods and moves again. He has to go make himself indispensable.
*
It’s honest to God like watching some Superman-style-changing shit to see Gerard walk on stage. His shoulders move back, his face sets into a vaguely hot snarl … everything about him shifts. The guy staring at his feet is gone.
This is My Chemical Romance.
From the second that Gerard shouts “This song is called ‘Headfirst for Halos’!” and berates some random frat boy in the pit for shoving the girl in front of him, he owns that crowd. Sure, his vocals slur sometimes and the sound could be better, but his strutting and slamming around the tiny stage changes everything.
Maxwell’s is small -- small enough to feel the energy rolling off people in the crowd.
At first, Brian watches with a tech’s eye, looking for mistakes, for out-of-tune instruments, for shitty levels. They’re there. Of course they’re there. This is a local band playing one of the smallest but most awesome venues in Jersey. Some of the songs are going to need work, some of the vocals are going to have to change, but this is it. This is the band that has the foundation, the heart, the raw talent to be something more than five guys in New Jersey.
This is what Brian has seen the last three times he’s seen them perform. Nothing has changed from his first impression except an increasingly intense need to hold this band, to shape it, to make them what they want to be.
Brian is the guy. He knows he’s the guy. He just has to show them.
It’s maybe halfway through “This Is the Best Day Ever” that Brian stops watching with a tech’s eye and just starts listening. He throws himself into the pit that’s formed directly in front of Ray’s microphone and stays there until the end of “Skylines and Turnstiles.”
Something releases as he shouts along with Gerard, demanding “Tell me, where do we go from here?” and, for a moment, his eyes catch Gerard’s.
Brian grins and raises his eyebrows at Gerard as the kids scream. He hasn’t missed this part, at least.
*
Brian doesn’t exactly give up everything - he’s a guitar tech. He can find work anywhere. But he definitely starts changing the jobs he takes and the jobs he passes on.
“How can you be around so much?” Gerard asks once, talking around a mouthful of Doritos in some parking lot somewhere in South Carolina. “Don’t you have a job or something?”
Brian shrugs. “The Used pay me pretty well when I tour with them and I’m picking up some work along the way.”
Gerard looks at him, an eyebrow raised. “Really?”
Brian shifts his eyes away, not even thinking about the slow erosion of his savings account. “Yeah.”
“Huh,” Gerard shrugs and stands to throw out the bag of chips.
Later, Brian finds a five that he knows he didn’t have shoved in the pocket of his jacket. Someday, he’ll stop being surprised by Gerard, by what he sees and what he misses. Someday, he’ll remember that Gerard gives too much of what he has to give when he can see what’s needed.
Brian buys a two-pack special of Marlboros with the five and offers one to Gerard. They can share the little they’ve got, maybe.
*
2003
They’re sitting in a shitty Dennny’s in Chicago when Gerard pulls Brian outside and lights a nervous cigarette. It’s the grin on Gerard’s face that catches Brian, just like always. It’s not that Gerard is the whole of the band for him, not even close. Ray is really one of the most phenomenal musicians Brian has ever met, Mikey has this quiet hilarity that everyone seems to depend on, Frank’s mania will carry every show that Gerard can’t, and Matt holds them up when nobody else can. They’re all awesome, but Gerard is … well, he’s Gerard.
Whatever that means.
Gerard’s grin is spreading up into his eyes and his hand is on Brian’s wrist. “So, you want to give up your life to follow us around for real?”
The hand tightening on Brian’s wrist is almost imperceptible, but Brian can feel the nervousness in it. Gerard always smokes faster when he’s anxious, too.
Brian frowns a little, shaking his head slightly. Gerard’s hand slips away as he leans back and his whole body prepares for the worst.
“Fucking idiot,” Brian laughs after a few seconds. “I did that five months ago. Didn’t you notice?”
Gerard’s smile returns as he leans over to shove at Brian’s shoulder. “Asshole, I’m trying to offer you a job here.”
Brian laughs and snags Gerard’s cigarette. “Oh? You gonna give me the big money?”
“Well, I can promise you some truly impressive debt,” Gerard opens his eyes all wide and fake-earnest.
From the way that Matt and Mikey are staring at them through the window, Brian’s pretty sure that they can hear Gerard’s cackle all the way inside the restaurant.
*
Brian’s always watched Gerard. At first, it was him trying to assess the guy he had marked as the most likely to be Brian’s gateway to the rest of the band. That really didn’t last long.
Now, it’s keeping an eye on Gee, making sure that he’s taking his meds, watching for the kind of drunk that has kept them sitting outside the busses and vans for hours, talking about fame and loneliness in long, rambling metaphor. Gerard always apologizes in the mornings (afternoons) after those nights, but Brian doesn’t mind.
He knows about the world being too heavy on your shoulders. And really, it’s his job to lighten the load, to keep an eye out for the bad nights. Maybe he’d do it anyway, but it’s his job.
It’s one of the good nights, but it’s still not a great one. Someone showed Gerard a website about school shootings the day before and he’s been pissed ever since. Now, he’s sitting on the top of a table outside of another gas station in another state, smoking a cigarette and ranting. “It’s like after school shootings, when people are all wailing and tearing at their garments and shit, you know? ‘How could they do it?’ Hell, how could they not do it? Don’t people realize just how amazing it is that all of the teenagers in America haven’t fucking risen up against us and blown up the world?”
Brian shifts his shoulders in his jacket, fisting his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. Are there really more angry kids now than there were twenty years ago? Or do they just have more ways to be heard? They have websites and blogs and zines and shit now. What did when have when we were fourteen and wanting to explode? Who was listening?”
Gerard squints at him. That’s one of the best things about Gerard, as far as Brian’s concerned. He doesn’t believe that any questions are rhetorical ones.
“I don’t know. I had Mikey,” Gerard answers, finally. “Mikey and Miss Collins, this one art teacher who never turned me in for all of the exploding heads and severed limbs that I was drawing in class. She asked me what moved my art, but not in a ‘I think you’re a headcase’ way. I think she just wanted to get it.”
“And it made a difference, right?”
“Yeah,” Gerard nods. “I guess it did.”
Brian shrugs. “I don’t think the people who are listening aren’t surprised by all of this shit. Miss Collins probably isn’t. The rest of those fuckers just aren’t hearing.”
Gerard’s face is half-feral. “What would happen if they did?”
“It would change the world,” Brian answers flippantly.
“Yeah,” Gerard says thoughtfully. “It would.”
*
It’s a night on the tour with Taking Back Sunday somewhere on the West Coast that Brian thinks that maybe he’s not just watching Gerard for his own protection. They’re sitting at the edge a circle of people, watching Adam and Eddie recount some ridiculous story that they’re probably just making up. Gerard grins, a little slow and sloppy, and leans back on his arms. He’s laughing and the smile is actually reaching his eyes.
He feels Brian looking and his smile slides over to Brian. It is nothing that Brian hasn’t seen before and the lurch in his stomach isn’t exactly new, either.
Oh. Brian thinks. Well, hell.
*
They’re in L.A. at an afterparty in someone’s brother’s friend’s house at the end of the tour. The guys are, understandably, pretty fucking proud of themselves. The reviews of My Chem have been consistently glowing - they’re gaining momentum, not only with fans, but with the media as well. They’re about to go into the studio, they’ve just finished the work on the contracts with the label and it’s simultaneously the best thing to ever happen to any of them and completely terrifying.
Brian’s job as manager has gone from babysitting to babysitting plus PR work. It’s kind of bizarre that he’s talking to the New York Post tomorrow, but it’s also pretty fucking amazing. It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster - he can see that they’re about to be going faster than he can even imagine. And he’s not the one that’s going to have to be a part of the face of all of this.
So the guys are, yeah, cutting a little loose. Jamia’s managed to get a frequent flyer ticket out, so Frank is even more gleeful than usual. Matt and Ray are doing what look like beer bongs in the corner, Mikey is sliding up on everything tall and slim and bendy that he can grind up against, and Gerard is …
Gerard is somewhere.
Brian finds him, eventually, smoking a cigarette out on a porch swing in the back yard. A bottle of Jack is leaning dangerously against his body, shifting a little with each swing.
“Hey,” Brian says, moving the bottle as he sits down and clasping it loosely in his left hand. It’s kind of a close fit on the swing, but Brian’s fit in tighter. Hell, he’s slept in tighter places. “Here you are.”
Gerard’s eyes aren’t smiling when he looks up, so the smile that should say Welcome just looks like Oh God. “Hey,” he says. “I just …” He trails off, his hand waving in the air, indicating everything, ever.
“Yeah,” Brian says, his voice a little rough with whiskey and exhaustion and maybe a little fear. “Me too.”
“I …” Gerard is not Gerard on Stage right now; he’s the dude who struggles to explain X-Men retconning, earnest and awkward and having trouble with the words. “It’s just so …” He stops and makes a frustrated sound in his throat.
Brian nods. He doesn’t have words, either.
It’s not really a surprise when Gerard’s lips smear across his, clumsy and warm. It’s not really a surprise, but Brian still didn’t see it coming. A part of him thinks Shouldn’t and a part thinks Can’t and a smaller part wonders Drunk? But most of him just says Want.
Brian will take care of people when they want it, but he’s not a saint. He knows that Shouldn’t should win over Want.
But does that really ever happen?
Later yet, when they have hands pressed between zippers and pubic hair, fumbling and gasping and sweaty and good, Brian thinks, Never again.
But Brian’s always been good at lying to himself.
*
2004
They manage to miss each other, which Brian can admit is surprising on the same (rare) days that he can admit that he might have a problem. You’d think that two addicts would work well together, that they would be on the same rollercoaster, the same ups and downs, the same lucid days.
But he and Gerard manage to fuck it up, the same way they always fuck it up. The days that Gee is sober, Brian is gone. The days that Brian is okay, Gerard is so depressed that he can’t get out of his bunk. They both seesaw, but they’re on different boards, just missing each other and only catching glimpses of the middle.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t fuck. They fuck more now than they ever have, at least when Brian visits them on the Warped Tour. There is making out behind towers of amps, handjobs underneath the table in the kitchen on the bus, messynasty fucks in bunks at night or midday or whenever.
They tried to keep it quiet for a while, but they both only have room for so many secrets from the other guys and Gerard chooses cocaine and Brian chooses Vicodin, so they both just ignore the concerned looks from Frankie and the increasingly uncomfortable silence from Matt.
They don’t talk about it, not the sex and not the drinking and not the increasing number of times that Gerard’s smile is only living on his lips these days.
Brian is still the best manager in the business and Gerard still works a stage. They don’t fuck up their jobs, but Brian sometimes wakes up with his head fuzzy, his mouth chalky, and his arm thrown over Gerard’s hip, wondering where the hell they are and if they’re fucking up everything else.
*
Gerard’s downward spiral is impressive in its speed and terrifying in its depth. The five hours they spent on the phone, Brian pacing in his house and Gerard incoherent and hysterical in the middle of the Midwest, are, without a doubt, five of the shittiest hours of Brian’s life. The scariest part isn’t how fucked up Gerard is, closer to an overdose than ever. Brian has seen Gerard in bad shape.
It isn’t even how sure, how really really sure Gerard is that he is going to die. It’s that he doesn’t even think of waking up the guys sleeping not five feet from him, doesn’t think to wake up his brother. That is the part that convinces Brian that Gerard means it this time.
Brian may be a drunk, but he’s not a suicidal drunk. He really didn’t see this coming, not at all.
There is at least an hour where he sits, hands shaking, convinced that Gerard is going to die, rattling off dreams and disappointments and self-hatred.
That terror lives in the pit of Brian’s stomach for a while after the phone is put down.
*
After Gerard gets clean and Matt is gone, Brian has to pull his own shit together a little more, step up and fix the shit that was getting broken while he was fucking his lead singer. He doesn’t stop, not with the pills or the drinking or the walks by himself that he doesn’t tell anyone about. But he pulls it in, pulls himself in, and steps up.
Sometimes, he thinks he sees something in Mikey’s eyes that he recognizes, but Brian can only hold so much together. He’s running out of adhesive quality when he calls Bob. This band doesn’t just need a drummer (though, God, they need a drummer). They need someone who already gets them, someone who has already seen the bad shit and might still want to stick around. Bob hadn’t been playing with them during a lot of the worst shit, but he’d been on the terrifying European tour, teching and sleeping five feet from Brian and Gerard tangled up together. He hadn’t said anything, but he’d seen everything.
Bob saves him. Bob maybe saves all of them, but his quiet assurance and contained glee in his simple “Fuck yes” does something to ground Brian. It’s maybe only after Bob agrees to join that Brian can hope that there might still be something of My Chemical Romance left, something worth saying “yes” to.
The end of the whatever that Gerard and Brian were doing happens in the middle of all of it, just after Gerard steps off the plane from Tokyo. Ending something that’s never really been acknowledged is strange, but it’s also strangely easy.
“I don’t think that this is a good idea,” Gerard says, speaking with a voice that is shaking with something - withdrawal or sadness or anger, Brian can’t tell. He sounds a little bit like he’s saying something that someone told him he should say, but the steadiness in his hands shows that he means it.
Brian nods quickly. It’s not a good idea. It never was. He’s always known that, even while they were doing it. Knowing that doesn’t stop a slow burn of loss, but it at least stops him from letting Gerard see it.
Gerard’s smile is small, but it’s spreading beyond his mouth. It’s a start.
*
It’s good to see a Gerard that Brian hadn’t even noticed disappearing. He’s drawing again, talking with Dark Horse about a comic, giggling hysterically as Bob schools Ray in Halo. His eyes are brighter than they’ve ever been, a lot of the sallowness of his skin fades, and he is looking at things more.
On stage, the difference is unbelievable. Brian hadn’t realized that he’d never seen Gerard perform sober, but within a week of the Nintendo Fusion tour, he wonders how he could have not known. Gerard is strutting more and throwing himself around less. His hair is pushed out of his face and he is touching the audience more.
His voice wavers less. It’s like he’s been mastered live.
It’s not a perfect shift, it couldn’t be. Gerard still slouches, his body pulling in on itself as he gets farther from a stage. He still has the smiles that don’t go beyond his mouth, nights where they sit outside the busses while Gerard rambles. The difference, now, is that they have coffee instead of whiskey and hugs goodbye instead of rough blowjobs.
Nothing’s perfect, but Brian knows that it’s better.
It doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments that sting, when he has to restrain himself from dragging Gerard into a dark corner or behind a bus. He’s maybe sometimes a little angry that he will never really have this Gee, not have the way he used to have.
But maybe that’s appropriate, too. Brian doesn’t really deserve things that are unfractured, people that are whole. He needs someone to rub his ragged edges against and this newer, softer Gerard would dent. He’d break.
Before, Brian was holding him together. Now he thinks he would split him apart.
*
2005
Brian always kind of figured that depression was linked to life circumstances.
Like, sure, he’s been depressed before. But he was living in a van with five smelly guys, blowing his savings on what could easily be an ill-advised pipe dream. He wasn’t sleeping much and he was talking out his ass most of the time and doing a job that he didn’t know how to do.
He was also maybe a little bit in love with his dysfunctional singer who he only fucked only when they were both fucked up.
So, yeah, he was depressed.
But now, things are objectively pretty fucking amazing. Revenge is mind-blowingly successful; Gerard has stayed sober (to the surprise of everyone, including Gerard); they’ve moved on up in the world to spacious busses; My Chemical Romance is opening for fucking Green Day; the label’s talking about a headlining tour. Brian doesn’t even have to tour with the guys all the time and occasionally manages a three-day weekend at home. He’s eating meals that contain actual nutrients, he has amazing friends, and he will probably never really have to worry about money again if he plays it smart.
He should feel better.
He doesn’t.
*
They’re in the middle of Warped when Brian gets the phone call from Bert.
“I can’t fucking believe him,” Bert shouts as soon as Brian opens the phone.
Brian looks around to see if anyone is close enough to hear what is bound to be a hell of a conversation. Mikey is shut in the back lounge with Pete, doing Brian-doesn’t-want-to-know-what. Gerard and Bob are off on another coffee run and Frank convinced Ray to come watch Bowling for Soup play.
There’s no reason to not do this now, then. Brian puts his head down on the table in the kitchenette, shoving a pile of papers aside so he doesn’t get sweat on Gerard’s drawings.
“Bert,” Brian says, his voice calm only through practice. He’s known Bert McCracken for years, after all. This isn’t the first irate phone call he’s fielded. “You couldn’t have thought anything different was going to happen.”
“He fucking mailed me pamphlets, Brian!” Bert screams. “Fucking rehab pamphlets and some shit about ‘alternatives to twelve steps’ and a letter about how he’s concerned about my erratic behavior.”
Fuck. Brian wants a drink.
“He’s not a proselytizer in general, Bert,” Brian tries to keep his voice quiet. “You showed up in San Diego with a megaphone. You screamed shit about Gerard sucking cock for thirty minutes.” And your pupils were dilated and your voice was slurred and your hands were shaking, Brian finished mentally. He’s not getting into it. He can’t.
He also doesn’t have a ton of room to talk.
“I don’t give a fuck, Brian,” Bert snarls. Brian hears something crash in the background of the call. Sounds kind of like a bottle. “Call him off.”
“I can’t do it, Bert.”
“You fucking can.”
“I could,” Brian concedes. “But I won’t. It wouldn’t do anything anyway, but I won’t.”
The thing is, Brian knows Bert. Brian’s known Bert longer than almost anyone else he’s still in contact with. They’ve hung out together, they’ve drank together, they’ve spent quiet hours in the morning searching for diner food and coffee together. Brian knows that breaking the silence around Bert’s drug use is a betrayal. He knows that his own refusal to step in, to reason with Gerard, to pull him off is an even larger one.
“Fuck you,” Bert spits and then cuts off the call.
Brian never hears from him again.
*
They’re overseas, finishing up the headlining tour, when Brian finds himself bartering with local security guards to replace his stash of pills. He’s shoved them in his pocket and is walking back to the venue when he runs into Gerard.
“What are you up to?” Gerard is exhausted and bright and full of smiles in the way that only a good show can make him.
Brian only half-notices that he shifts his messenger bag to hide the tell-tale tube shape in the pocket of his jeans. “Just wrapping some shit up before we go to the hotel.”
“Hotel,” Gerard says, the word still sounding like a prayer in his mouth. “Hell yeah.”
Brian smiles and goes to move past Gerard, needing to actually wrap up some non-pharmaceutical shit before they leave the venue.
“We’re gonna play some Halo in my room tonight,” Gerard says, turning around to face Brian. “You in?”
Brian thinks of the party being held in the Alkaline Trio’s manager’s room, the bottle of pills in his pocket.
“Nah,” Brian says. “Think I’ll just stay in tonight.”
“Reallly? Okay,” Gerard looks … something. Concerned, maybe, or just confused. Brian guesses it is kind of out of character for him to pass on video games. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, totally,” Brian says, already moving away.
The thing is, Gerard is better. He’s managed to stay more or less better. Even the bad days aren’t as bad and maybe that’s why Brian is seeing his own shit a little more clearly - he doesn’t have anyone to take care of anymore.
The guys don’t see it. They can’t, not only because Brian hides it pretty damn well, but because they just don’t have anything left after Gerard. They’re kind of refueling their supplies of empathy right now and Brian can’t blame them.
So he keeps going, keeps working, keeps managing, keeps maintaining. He keeps popping Vicodin from the breath mint container in his pocket at night, mainlining coffee during the day, and disappearing with the Green Day techs in the evening to drink vodka away from the eyes of a band who suddenly notice how many drinks everyone has had. Brian’s up when he needs to be up and passes out for long enough to make it through the next day.
He’s even learned exactly how drunk he can get before the headaches will come, knowing just how many pills will balance out the booze. He’s stopped getting hangovers entirely. So why does he feel like shit?
*
2006
The recording of The Black Parade damn near kills all of them. Mikey's breakdown is more public than the pressure any of the rest of them feel, but every one of them is on the verge of falling apart. It’s not just the Paramour (though the place is freaky as fuck) -- it’s everything. It’s a series of firsts. The first time they feel the pressure of recording, knowing that everyone is watching for them to fall. The first time Gerard’s recorded sober, the first time Bob has been on this side of the mixing boards, the first time that Mikey and Frank each separately tell Brian that they’re thinking of quitting.
Ray doesn’t have any firsts except Brian knows that it’s the first time that he’s watched his band almost fall apart with nothing concrete to blame.
The recording process is horrible and having to find housing in L.A. halfway through is horrifying and dealing with the fallout of every song, every decision, every moment of pause is some of the hardest work Brian’s ever done.
It’s the day that Mikey comes to him that it all comes to a head.
“I have to go,” Mikey says, staring at the ground and twisting his sleeves in a way that Brian hasn’t seen in years.
“Yeah?” Brian’s voice is neutral, practiced. He’s never had to use it on this Way brother, but he’s pretty accustomed to listening and waiting for someone to talk themselves out.
“Yeah, I. Um,” Mikey flinches a little. “My therapist said I just have to say it. I ... I need to check myself in somewhere for a while.”
Okay. That wasn’t exactly what he was expecting, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.
“Promises?” Brian asks, flipped through his book for a number of a guy who can keep shit out of the media if necessary. “You want to stay near L.A., right?”
“Um, no,” Mikey smiles, small. “Not that kind of in. And no, not near L.A. I’m flying back to Jersey this weekend and I’m going into Trinitas.”
“Wow,” Brian’s voice is quieter. This isn’t something he’s handled before. “Yeah?”
Mikey nods. “Yeah. They’re going to try some stuff with meds and … look, I’m sorry. But we’re almost done. And I can fly out if I need to and … I just can’t not do this.”
Brian gets it. “Yeah. No, you really can’t.”
*
It’s a couple of weeks after Mikey leaves that Brian calls Gerard in the middle of the night, the first time that particular call has been in his outgoing calls and not his incoming.
He isn’t overdosing or anything. It’s nothing dramatic. It’s just the same fucking night that he’s had for the last year or more - blurred and lonely and alone. The only difference is that it's the first night where Brian understands what Gerard means about suicide being a back-up plan, and that freaks him out.
Brian doesn’t want to call Gee. He wants to call anyone but Gee, actually, but there’s nobody else that he could do this with who wouldn’t freak out. Brian would end up taking care of them and he just … he just can’t do that anymore. He doesn’t think that Gerard will take care of him, exactly, but he knows that he won’t freak out.
So he calls Gerard. He doesn’t pick up the first call, but calls back immediately.
“What’s going on?”
“I, um …” he doesn’t really know how to start this. Brian has never done this from this end. “I think that I need …”
Gerard listens well. Brian has always known this, but he’d managed to forget how comforting it can be. Brian rambles for an hour, about his head and his heart and a bottle and escaping. Gerard never says that he understands, never makes Brian’s struggle his fight. He listens, he makes understanding noises, he’s just there.
At the end of the call, Brian hears a knock on the door of his L.A. apartment. He opens it to find Gerard, who has apparently been driving from Melrose to Los Feliz for the last half an hour.
“Hey,” Gerard says, pulling him into a hug.
Brian breathes against Gerard’s neck, bizarrely happy for the first time pretty much ever that Gerard has a few inches on him.
“Hey.”
Brian doesn’t expect anything. He didn’t even expect this.
But when Gerard sits him down with a cup of tea and a blanket and just lets him talk, Brian knows that he couldn’t have expected any of this. Because it’s what he needs.
They talk. They talk all night and it feels almost like déjà vu, except they’ve never done this version of this conversation before.
At the end, Gerard doesn’t tell Brian anything. But he does ask: “Do you want to go to a place?”
Brian shakes his head emphatically. No. Nononononononono. No places, no people, no fucking primal scream shit or sitting in group meetings. No.
“Brian,” Gerard’s voice is gentle. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
Brian slumps.
“Brian, you can’t do this alone,” Gerard’s voice is almost a whisper.
Brian pats his pockets unconsciously, looking for the small curve of a bottle, the comfort of oblivion.
Wait. What?
It’s as Brian realizes what he’s doing and that Gerard is just sitting there, just watching, not judging, that Brian realizes it’s true. He’s actually looking for the pills that he hasn’t taken in front of Gerard in years, he would actually do this.
He knows it then.
Yes.
*
Nobody picks Brian up from treatment. It’s not like he goes to Betty Ford or anything, and Ryan, his therapist in Utah, doesn’t like to have people coming up to his house unnecessarily.
Brian kind of likes it this way. Ryan drives him to the airport and he has the short flight to L.A. to acclimate himself. When he steps out of the baggage claim and sees Gerard, slumped in a chair and wearing a stupid beanie, he’s glad he’s had the time.
He maybe could have used more.
Gerard doesn’t say anything, he just stands up and folds Brian into a hug.
“You’re here,” Brian says into his shoulder.
“You didn’t call me while you were there,” Gerard says, his voice trying to be neutral but managing vaguely accusatory. His hands are shaking a little. Nervous. “I had to harass Bob to find out when your flight was getting in.”
“I kept missing you,” Brian says, shrugging and reaching for his bags. He didn’t call, but that’s not exactly what he means. Gerard can take from it what he will.
Gerard smacks his hand away, reaching down for the bags. He picks them up and heads toward the parking lot, hitting the remote unlock button periodically, presumably to find the rental.
Brian smiles a thin smile. Some things really don’t change, not even when everything else does.
After finding the car by the blinking headlights, Gerard hoists Brian’s bags into the trunk. Brian’s never been good at being taken care of, but Gerard’s always been good at trying. He hands Brian the iPod, says “Pick something,” and starts the car.
They’re pulling out of LAX and onto the freeway when Gerard’s incessant finger-tapping on the dashboard push Brian to snap: “Jesus, what? What is it?”
Gerard looks over, his face implacable but his shoulders hunched a little. “You didn’t tell me when you were coming back, Brian.”
Brian sighs and looks out the window. “I didn’t … I didn’t want you to think that you had to take care of me.” Stupid therapy. Stupid learning to be honest. Well, mostly honest.
“But what if I wanted to?” Gerard’s voice is serious, his face shadowed by the stupid giant sunglasses he put on before starting the car.
Brian shrugs. They ride the rest of the way to Los Feliz in relative silence with Nina Simone wailing in their ears.
It had seemed appropriate.
It’s only as Nina’s moaning, “Sun in the sky, you know how I feel” that they pull into Brian’s apartment complex. He moves to open the door, but Gerard stops him with a steady hand to his wrist.
“You let me help you once,” Gerard says, his face shadowed still. “Just once. And I can’t figure out why then and not now, but … I wonder if we’ve had a whole conversation in your head that I wasn’t in on.”
Brian has no idea what he’s talking about. Except he kind of does.
“Brian, I never said that I didn’t care. I said it was a bad idea.”
Brian groans. People are never going to let him fucking stop processing shit now that he’s started. He rubs his hand over his face and shakes his head. He doesn’t want to do this.
“What if it was a good idea?” Gerard non-sequiters, taking off his sunglasses and throwing them in the back seat.
“What?” Brian is exhausted. He doesn’t know if he has the energy to do this, whatever this is, right now.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Gerard leans across the console, his hand still on Brian’s wrist, his face close to Brian’s. “That this is a bad idea.”
Brian’s eyes widen.
Wait. What?
“No,” he manages to say. “You weren’t wrong.”
“Brian,” Gerard says, shaking his head slightly. “You still watch.”
Brian shrugs, moving his head away a little, telling himself not again. “It’s my job.”
“Brian,” Gerard says, smiling a little and following his head. He laughs a little, tilting his head up toward the sun in a way Brian’s never seen him do before. It looks weird. It looks weirder when this strange, sunkissed Gerard leans over and brushes his mouth against the corner of Brian’s.
Gerard has always shared all of what he has. Brian has never managed to remember what that means for him.
“You know, it wasn’t just you,” Gerard smiles, wide, like a promise or hope or an apology. “I kept missing you, too.”
For lordessrenegade for the nightmare_xmas challenge.
Brian/Gerard, R, ~6,500 words
Discussions of substance abuse, profanity, some angst.
These are slices of time, spanning from 2002 to 2006, which means there are mentions of both Gerard and Brian’s experiences in rehab. Thanks to secrethappiness, octette and audreysrev for the betas, handholding, and making me expand the story another 3k words beyond the first draft they got. They rule and any remaining mistakes are a result of my own stubbornness.
2002
Brian keeps missing Gerard.
It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except that he’s trying to get a goddamn job here and he keeps missing the fucking lead singer. He’s actually not sure that Gerard’s the dude who makes the decisions, but he knows that he’s the one who can convince the rest of the band.
Last week, Gerard got a slew of scene kids to scream along to a song that they didn’t even know. It’s somewhat possible that this guy could convince anyone to do anything if he put his mind to it.
Brian leans against a wall, sloshing his whiskey around in his glass. Around him are all of the normal sounds of setup. Like right around him, since it’s not like Maxwell’s is even big enough for all of the techs and bands to be on the stage, let alone in the imaginary behind-stage area. And the place is already packed, people pressing and pushing against each other.
It’s this kind of shit that convinced Brian that he had to manage these My Chemical Romance guys after seeing them … god, just a week before. He has to. There’s something there, something intangible surrounding them, making them different than every other band of half-fucked up Jersey dudes playing music with their friends. It’s not totally there yet - Gerard is still too nervous to fully work the crowd, Frank’s chords are sloppy as shit, Ray doesn’t look up from the damn guitar, Mikey looks like he’s made of stone, and Matt is kind of obviously missing pick ups.
But there’s something there. It’s just beyond reach and, even with it beyond reach, Brian can see the kids amped just a little more.
He can bring it out. He knows he can.
It’s only after a stream of girls with dyed black hair and fishnets on their arms push past him with Xs on their hands and a couple of dudes with dyed black hair hanging in their faces crowd around him that Brian catches a glimpse of a different dude with lank black hair.
“Gerard,” he calls out loudly, gently pushing aside the two teenage boys who have planted themselves in front of him.
Gerard’s eyes are a little wide and a little unfocused and … fuck. What is he on? “Hey.” He grins a little and ducks behind his hair. “Brian. You made it?”
“Dude, of course,” Brian seriously cannot fucking believe this guy. After the first show, he told them that he wanted to manage them. And Gerard’s surprised that he made it to the CD release? “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Gerard smiles again, his fingers fidgeting in the cuffs of his jacket. He looks … shit, he looks nervous and drunk and maybe a little high. He has to look down slightly to make eye contact with Brian, but Brian’s pretty sure he’d be staring at the floor either way.
Somewhere in there is the guy who has enough charisma to move the whole fucking crowd. The guy Brian's talking to is not that guy. Not exactly.
“You ready, man?” Brian asks, slipping into a tone he’s heard managers use with their bands. Maybe if he just acts like a manager, they won’t notice that he’s doing the job until he’s too hard to get rid of.
Gerard nods a little vaguely, waving his hand toward the bar. “The guys are gonna set up in a minute and I think that Mikey’s having trouble tuning his bass or something? But I’m sure it’ll be cool.”
“You think he wants some help?” Brian asks.
“Seriously?” Gerard looks him fully in the eyes, finally. “Yeah, definitely. He’s like … nervous? Because our grandma is coming and shit? That would be totally awesome.”
Brian nods, moving over toward a lanky, messy-haired guy in the general direction that Gerard had waved toward. It would be easier to find Mikey if he didn’t look like every other guy in the New Jersey scene.
“Hey!” Gerard calls as Brian moves farther away.
Brian turns half around and stops.
“Thanks.” Gerard grins, his whole face lighting up.
And that’s it. That’s the guy Brian knows is in there, somewhere.
Brian nods and moves again. He has to go make himself indispensable.
*
It’s honest to God like watching some Superman-style-changing shit to see Gerard walk on stage. His shoulders move back, his face sets into a vaguely hot snarl … everything about him shifts. The guy staring at his feet is gone.
This is My Chemical Romance.
From the second that Gerard shouts “This song is called ‘Headfirst for Halos’!” and berates some random frat boy in the pit for shoving the girl in front of him, he owns that crowd. Sure, his vocals slur sometimes and the sound could be better, but his strutting and slamming around the tiny stage changes everything.
Maxwell’s is small -- small enough to feel the energy rolling off people in the crowd.
At first, Brian watches with a tech’s eye, looking for mistakes, for out-of-tune instruments, for shitty levels. They’re there. Of course they’re there. This is a local band playing one of the smallest but most awesome venues in Jersey. Some of the songs are going to need work, some of the vocals are going to have to change, but this is it. This is the band that has the foundation, the heart, the raw talent to be something more than five guys in New Jersey.
This is what Brian has seen the last three times he’s seen them perform. Nothing has changed from his first impression except an increasingly intense need to hold this band, to shape it, to make them what they want to be.
Brian is the guy. He knows he’s the guy. He just has to show them.
It’s maybe halfway through “This Is the Best Day Ever” that Brian stops watching with a tech’s eye and just starts listening. He throws himself into the pit that’s formed directly in front of Ray’s microphone and stays there until the end of “Skylines and Turnstiles.”
Something releases as he shouts along with Gerard, demanding “Tell me, where do we go from here?” and, for a moment, his eyes catch Gerard’s.
Brian grins and raises his eyebrows at Gerard as the kids scream. He hasn’t missed this part, at least.
*
Brian doesn’t exactly give up everything - he’s a guitar tech. He can find work anywhere. But he definitely starts changing the jobs he takes and the jobs he passes on.
“How can you be around so much?” Gerard asks once, talking around a mouthful of Doritos in some parking lot somewhere in South Carolina. “Don’t you have a job or something?”
Brian shrugs. “The Used pay me pretty well when I tour with them and I’m picking up some work along the way.”
Gerard looks at him, an eyebrow raised. “Really?”
Brian shifts his eyes away, not even thinking about the slow erosion of his savings account. “Yeah.”
“Huh,” Gerard shrugs and stands to throw out the bag of chips.
Later, Brian finds a five that he knows he didn’t have shoved in the pocket of his jacket. Someday, he’ll stop being surprised by Gerard, by what he sees and what he misses. Someday, he’ll remember that Gerard gives too much of what he has to give when he can see what’s needed.
Brian buys a two-pack special of Marlboros with the five and offers one to Gerard. They can share the little they’ve got, maybe.
*
2003
They’re sitting in a shitty Dennny’s in Chicago when Gerard pulls Brian outside and lights a nervous cigarette. It’s the grin on Gerard’s face that catches Brian, just like always. It’s not that Gerard is the whole of the band for him, not even close. Ray is really one of the most phenomenal musicians Brian has ever met, Mikey has this quiet hilarity that everyone seems to depend on, Frank’s mania will carry every show that Gerard can’t, and Matt holds them up when nobody else can. They’re all awesome, but Gerard is … well, he’s Gerard.
Whatever that means.
Gerard’s grin is spreading up into his eyes and his hand is on Brian’s wrist. “So, you want to give up your life to follow us around for real?”
The hand tightening on Brian’s wrist is almost imperceptible, but Brian can feel the nervousness in it. Gerard always smokes faster when he’s anxious, too.
Brian frowns a little, shaking his head slightly. Gerard’s hand slips away as he leans back and his whole body prepares for the worst.
“Fucking idiot,” Brian laughs after a few seconds. “I did that five months ago. Didn’t you notice?”
Gerard’s smile returns as he leans over to shove at Brian’s shoulder. “Asshole, I’m trying to offer you a job here.”
Brian laughs and snags Gerard’s cigarette. “Oh? You gonna give me the big money?”
“Well, I can promise you some truly impressive debt,” Gerard opens his eyes all wide and fake-earnest.
From the way that Matt and Mikey are staring at them through the window, Brian’s pretty sure that they can hear Gerard’s cackle all the way inside the restaurant.
*
Brian’s always watched Gerard. At first, it was him trying to assess the guy he had marked as the most likely to be Brian’s gateway to the rest of the band. That really didn’t last long.
Now, it’s keeping an eye on Gee, making sure that he’s taking his meds, watching for the kind of drunk that has kept them sitting outside the busses and vans for hours, talking about fame and loneliness in long, rambling metaphor. Gerard always apologizes in the mornings (afternoons) after those nights, but Brian doesn’t mind.
He knows about the world being too heavy on your shoulders. And really, it’s his job to lighten the load, to keep an eye out for the bad nights. Maybe he’d do it anyway, but it’s his job.
It’s one of the good nights, but it’s still not a great one. Someone showed Gerard a website about school shootings the day before and he’s been pissed ever since. Now, he’s sitting on the top of a table outside of another gas station in another state, smoking a cigarette and ranting. “It’s like after school shootings, when people are all wailing and tearing at their garments and shit, you know? ‘How could they do it?’ Hell, how could they not do it? Don’t people realize just how amazing it is that all of the teenagers in America haven’t fucking risen up against us and blown up the world?”
Brian shifts his shoulders in his jacket, fisting his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. Are there really more angry kids now than there were twenty years ago? Or do they just have more ways to be heard? They have websites and blogs and zines and shit now. What did when have when we were fourteen and wanting to explode? Who was listening?”
Gerard squints at him. That’s one of the best things about Gerard, as far as Brian’s concerned. He doesn’t believe that any questions are rhetorical ones.
“I don’t know. I had Mikey,” Gerard answers, finally. “Mikey and Miss Collins, this one art teacher who never turned me in for all of the exploding heads and severed limbs that I was drawing in class. She asked me what moved my art, but not in a ‘I think you’re a headcase’ way. I think she just wanted to get it.”
“And it made a difference, right?”
“Yeah,” Gerard nods. “I guess it did.”
Brian shrugs. “I don’t think the people who are listening aren’t surprised by all of this shit. Miss Collins probably isn’t. The rest of those fuckers just aren’t hearing.”
Gerard’s face is half-feral. “What would happen if they did?”
“It would change the world,” Brian answers flippantly.
“Yeah,” Gerard says thoughtfully. “It would.”
*
It’s a night on the tour with Taking Back Sunday somewhere on the West Coast that Brian thinks that maybe he’s not just watching Gerard for his own protection. They’re sitting at the edge a circle of people, watching Adam and Eddie recount some ridiculous story that they’re probably just making up. Gerard grins, a little slow and sloppy, and leans back on his arms. He’s laughing and the smile is actually reaching his eyes.
He feels Brian looking and his smile slides over to Brian. It is nothing that Brian hasn’t seen before and the lurch in his stomach isn’t exactly new, either.
Oh. Brian thinks. Well, hell.
*
They’re in L.A. at an afterparty in someone’s brother’s friend’s house at the end of the tour. The guys are, understandably, pretty fucking proud of themselves. The reviews of My Chem have been consistently glowing - they’re gaining momentum, not only with fans, but with the media as well. They’re about to go into the studio, they’ve just finished the work on the contracts with the label and it’s simultaneously the best thing to ever happen to any of them and completely terrifying.
Brian’s job as manager has gone from babysitting to babysitting plus PR work. It’s kind of bizarre that he’s talking to the New York Post tomorrow, but it’s also pretty fucking amazing. It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster - he can see that they’re about to be going faster than he can even imagine. And he’s not the one that’s going to have to be a part of the face of all of this.
So the guys are, yeah, cutting a little loose. Jamia’s managed to get a frequent flyer ticket out, so Frank is even more gleeful than usual. Matt and Ray are doing what look like beer bongs in the corner, Mikey is sliding up on everything tall and slim and bendy that he can grind up against, and Gerard is …
Gerard is somewhere.
Brian finds him, eventually, smoking a cigarette out on a porch swing in the back yard. A bottle of Jack is leaning dangerously against his body, shifting a little with each swing.
“Hey,” Brian says, moving the bottle as he sits down and clasping it loosely in his left hand. It’s kind of a close fit on the swing, but Brian’s fit in tighter. Hell, he’s slept in tighter places. “Here you are.”
Gerard’s eyes aren’t smiling when he looks up, so the smile that should say Welcome just looks like Oh God. “Hey,” he says. “I just …” He trails off, his hand waving in the air, indicating everything, ever.
“Yeah,” Brian says, his voice a little rough with whiskey and exhaustion and maybe a little fear. “Me too.”
“I …” Gerard is not Gerard on Stage right now; he’s the dude who struggles to explain X-Men retconning, earnest and awkward and having trouble with the words. “It’s just so …” He stops and makes a frustrated sound in his throat.
Brian nods. He doesn’t have words, either.
It’s not really a surprise when Gerard’s lips smear across his, clumsy and warm. It’s not really a surprise, but Brian still didn’t see it coming. A part of him thinks Shouldn’t and a part thinks Can’t and a smaller part wonders Drunk? But most of him just says Want.
Brian will take care of people when they want it, but he’s not a saint. He knows that Shouldn’t should win over Want.
But does that really ever happen?
Later yet, when they have hands pressed between zippers and pubic hair, fumbling and gasping and sweaty and good, Brian thinks, Never again.
But Brian’s always been good at lying to himself.
*
2004
They manage to miss each other, which Brian can admit is surprising on the same (rare) days that he can admit that he might have a problem. You’d think that two addicts would work well together, that they would be on the same rollercoaster, the same ups and downs, the same lucid days.
But he and Gerard manage to fuck it up, the same way they always fuck it up. The days that Gee is sober, Brian is gone. The days that Brian is okay, Gerard is so depressed that he can’t get out of his bunk. They both seesaw, but they’re on different boards, just missing each other and only catching glimpses of the middle.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t fuck. They fuck more now than they ever have, at least when Brian visits them on the Warped Tour. There is making out behind towers of amps, handjobs underneath the table in the kitchen on the bus, messynasty fucks in bunks at night or midday or whenever.
They tried to keep it quiet for a while, but they both only have room for so many secrets from the other guys and Gerard chooses cocaine and Brian chooses Vicodin, so they both just ignore the concerned looks from Frankie and the increasingly uncomfortable silence from Matt.
They don’t talk about it, not the sex and not the drinking and not the increasing number of times that Gerard’s smile is only living on his lips these days.
Brian is still the best manager in the business and Gerard still works a stage. They don’t fuck up their jobs, but Brian sometimes wakes up with his head fuzzy, his mouth chalky, and his arm thrown over Gerard’s hip, wondering where the hell they are and if they’re fucking up everything else.
*
Gerard’s downward spiral is impressive in its speed and terrifying in its depth. The five hours they spent on the phone, Brian pacing in his house and Gerard incoherent and hysterical in the middle of the Midwest, are, without a doubt, five of the shittiest hours of Brian’s life. The scariest part isn’t how fucked up Gerard is, closer to an overdose than ever. Brian has seen Gerard in bad shape.
It isn’t even how sure, how really really sure Gerard is that he is going to die. It’s that he doesn’t even think of waking up the guys sleeping not five feet from him, doesn’t think to wake up his brother. That is the part that convinces Brian that Gerard means it this time.
Brian may be a drunk, but he’s not a suicidal drunk. He really didn’t see this coming, not at all.
There is at least an hour where he sits, hands shaking, convinced that Gerard is going to die, rattling off dreams and disappointments and self-hatred.
That terror lives in the pit of Brian’s stomach for a while after the phone is put down.
*
After Gerard gets clean and Matt is gone, Brian has to pull his own shit together a little more, step up and fix the shit that was getting broken while he was fucking his lead singer. He doesn’t stop, not with the pills or the drinking or the walks by himself that he doesn’t tell anyone about. But he pulls it in, pulls himself in, and steps up.
Sometimes, he thinks he sees something in Mikey’s eyes that he recognizes, but Brian can only hold so much together. He’s running out of adhesive quality when he calls Bob. This band doesn’t just need a drummer (though, God, they need a drummer). They need someone who already gets them, someone who has already seen the bad shit and might still want to stick around. Bob hadn’t been playing with them during a lot of the worst shit, but he’d been on the terrifying European tour, teching and sleeping five feet from Brian and Gerard tangled up together. He hadn’t said anything, but he’d seen everything.
Bob saves him. Bob maybe saves all of them, but his quiet assurance and contained glee in his simple “Fuck yes” does something to ground Brian. It’s maybe only after Bob agrees to join that Brian can hope that there might still be something of My Chemical Romance left, something worth saying “yes” to.
The end of the whatever that Gerard and Brian were doing happens in the middle of all of it, just after Gerard steps off the plane from Tokyo. Ending something that’s never really been acknowledged is strange, but it’s also strangely easy.
“I don’t think that this is a good idea,” Gerard says, speaking with a voice that is shaking with something - withdrawal or sadness or anger, Brian can’t tell. He sounds a little bit like he’s saying something that someone told him he should say, but the steadiness in his hands shows that he means it.
Brian nods quickly. It’s not a good idea. It never was. He’s always known that, even while they were doing it. Knowing that doesn’t stop a slow burn of loss, but it at least stops him from letting Gerard see it.
Gerard’s smile is small, but it’s spreading beyond his mouth. It’s a start.
*
It’s good to see a Gerard that Brian hadn’t even noticed disappearing. He’s drawing again, talking with Dark Horse about a comic, giggling hysterically as Bob schools Ray in Halo. His eyes are brighter than they’ve ever been, a lot of the sallowness of his skin fades, and he is looking at things more.
On stage, the difference is unbelievable. Brian hadn’t realized that he’d never seen Gerard perform sober, but within a week of the Nintendo Fusion tour, he wonders how he could have not known. Gerard is strutting more and throwing himself around less. His hair is pushed out of his face and he is touching the audience more.
His voice wavers less. It’s like he’s been mastered live.
It’s not a perfect shift, it couldn’t be. Gerard still slouches, his body pulling in on itself as he gets farther from a stage. He still has the smiles that don’t go beyond his mouth, nights where they sit outside the busses while Gerard rambles. The difference, now, is that they have coffee instead of whiskey and hugs goodbye instead of rough blowjobs.
Nothing’s perfect, but Brian knows that it’s better.
It doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments that sting, when he has to restrain himself from dragging Gerard into a dark corner or behind a bus. He’s maybe sometimes a little angry that he will never really have this Gee, not have the way he used to have.
But maybe that’s appropriate, too. Brian doesn’t really deserve things that are unfractured, people that are whole. He needs someone to rub his ragged edges against and this newer, softer Gerard would dent. He’d break.
Before, Brian was holding him together. Now he thinks he would split him apart.
*
2005
Brian always kind of figured that depression was linked to life circumstances.
Like, sure, he’s been depressed before. But he was living in a van with five smelly guys, blowing his savings on what could easily be an ill-advised pipe dream. He wasn’t sleeping much and he was talking out his ass most of the time and doing a job that he didn’t know how to do.
He was also maybe a little bit in love with his dysfunctional singer who he only fucked only when they were both fucked up.
So, yeah, he was depressed.
But now, things are objectively pretty fucking amazing. Revenge is mind-blowingly successful; Gerard has stayed sober (to the surprise of everyone, including Gerard); they’ve moved on up in the world to spacious busses; My Chemical Romance is opening for fucking Green Day; the label’s talking about a headlining tour. Brian doesn’t even have to tour with the guys all the time and occasionally manages a three-day weekend at home. He’s eating meals that contain actual nutrients, he has amazing friends, and he will probably never really have to worry about money again if he plays it smart.
He should feel better.
He doesn’t.
*
They’re in the middle of Warped when Brian gets the phone call from Bert.
“I can’t fucking believe him,” Bert shouts as soon as Brian opens the phone.
Brian looks around to see if anyone is close enough to hear what is bound to be a hell of a conversation. Mikey is shut in the back lounge with Pete, doing Brian-doesn’t-want-to-know-what. Gerard and Bob are off on another coffee run and Frank convinced Ray to come watch Bowling for Soup play.
There’s no reason to not do this now, then. Brian puts his head down on the table in the kitchenette, shoving a pile of papers aside so he doesn’t get sweat on Gerard’s drawings.
“Bert,” Brian says, his voice calm only through practice. He’s known Bert McCracken for years, after all. This isn’t the first irate phone call he’s fielded. “You couldn’t have thought anything different was going to happen.”
“He fucking mailed me pamphlets, Brian!” Bert screams. “Fucking rehab pamphlets and some shit about ‘alternatives to twelve steps’ and a letter about how he’s concerned about my erratic behavior.”
Fuck. Brian wants a drink.
“He’s not a proselytizer in general, Bert,” Brian tries to keep his voice quiet. “You showed up in San Diego with a megaphone. You screamed shit about Gerard sucking cock for thirty minutes.” And your pupils were dilated and your voice was slurred and your hands were shaking, Brian finished mentally. He’s not getting into it. He can’t.
He also doesn’t have a ton of room to talk.
“I don’t give a fuck, Brian,” Bert snarls. Brian hears something crash in the background of the call. Sounds kind of like a bottle. “Call him off.”
“I can’t do it, Bert.”
“You fucking can.”
“I could,” Brian concedes. “But I won’t. It wouldn’t do anything anyway, but I won’t.”
The thing is, Brian knows Bert. Brian’s known Bert longer than almost anyone else he’s still in contact with. They’ve hung out together, they’ve drank together, they’ve spent quiet hours in the morning searching for diner food and coffee together. Brian knows that breaking the silence around Bert’s drug use is a betrayal. He knows that his own refusal to step in, to reason with Gerard, to pull him off is an even larger one.
“Fuck you,” Bert spits and then cuts off the call.
Brian never hears from him again.
*
They’re overseas, finishing up the headlining tour, when Brian finds himself bartering with local security guards to replace his stash of pills. He’s shoved them in his pocket and is walking back to the venue when he runs into Gerard.
“What are you up to?” Gerard is exhausted and bright and full of smiles in the way that only a good show can make him.
Brian only half-notices that he shifts his messenger bag to hide the tell-tale tube shape in the pocket of his jeans. “Just wrapping some shit up before we go to the hotel.”
“Hotel,” Gerard says, the word still sounding like a prayer in his mouth. “Hell yeah.”
Brian smiles and goes to move past Gerard, needing to actually wrap up some non-pharmaceutical shit before they leave the venue.
“We’re gonna play some Halo in my room tonight,” Gerard says, turning around to face Brian. “You in?”
Brian thinks of the party being held in the Alkaline Trio’s manager’s room, the bottle of pills in his pocket.
“Nah,” Brian says. “Think I’ll just stay in tonight.”
“Reallly? Okay,” Gerard looks … something. Concerned, maybe, or just confused. Brian guesses it is kind of out of character for him to pass on video games. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, totally,” Brian says, already moving away.
The thing is, Gerard is better. He’s managed to stay more or less better. Even the bad days aren’t as bad and maybe that’s why Brian is seeing his own shit a little more clearly - he doesn’t have anyone to take care of anymore.
The guys don’t see it. They can’t, not only because Brian hides it pretty damn well, but because they just don’t have anything left after Gerard. They’re kind of refueling their supplies of empathy right now and Brian can’t blame them.
So he keeps going, keeps working, keeps managing, keeps maintaining. He keeps popping Vicodin from the breath mint container in his pocket at night, mainlining coffee during the day, and disappearing with the Green Day techs in the evening to drink vodka away from the eyes of a band who suddenly notice how many drinks everyone has had. Brian’s up when he needs to be up and passes out for long enough to make it through the next day.
He’s even learned exactly how drunk he can get before the headaches will come, knowing just how many pills will balance out the booze. He’s stopped getting hangovers entirely. So why does he feel like shit?
*
2006
The recording of The Black Parade damn near kills all of them. Mikey's breakdown is more public than the pressure any of the rest of them feel, but every one of them is on the verge of falling apart. It’s not just the Paramour (though the place is freaky as fuck) -- it’s everything. It’s a series of firsts. The first time they feel the pressure of recording, knowing that everyone is watching for them to fall. The first time Gerard’s recorded sober, the first time Bob has been on this side of the mixing boards, the first time that Mikey and Frank each separately tell Brian that they’re thinking of quitting.
Ray doesn’t have any firsts except Brian knows that it’s the first time that he’s watched his band almost fall apart with nothing concrete to blame.
The recording process is horrible and having to find housing in L.A. halfway through is horrifying and dealing with the fallout of every song, every decision, every moment of pause is some of the hardest work Brian’s ever done.
It’s the day that Mikey comes to him that it all comes to a head.
“I have to go,” Mikey says, staring at the ground and twisting his sleeves in a way that Brian hasn’t seen in years.
“Yeah?” Brian’s voice is neutral, practiced. He’s never had to use it on this Way brother, but he’s pretty accustomed to listening and waiting for someone to talk themselves out.
“Yeah, I. Um,” Mikey flinches a little. “My therapist said I just have to say it. I ... I need to check myself in somewhere for a while.”
Okay. That wasn’t exactly what he was expecting, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.
“Promises?” Brian asks, flipped through his book for a number of a guy who can keep shit out of the media if necessary. “You want to stay near L.A., right?”
“Um, no,” Mikey smiles, small. “Not that kind of in. And no, not near L.A. I’m flying back to Jersey this weekend and I’m going into Trinitas.”
“Wow,” Brian’s voice is quieter. This isn’t something he’s handled before. “Yeah?”
Mikey nods. “Yeah. They’re going to try some stuff with meds and … look, I’m sorry. But we’re almost done. And I can fly out if I need to and … I just can’t not do this.”
Brian gets it. “Yeah. No, you really can’t.”
*
It’s a couple of weeks after Mikey leaves that Brian calls Gerard in the middle of the night, the first time that particular call has been in his outgoing calls and not his incoming.
He isn’t overdosing or anything. It’s nothing dramatic. It’s just the same fucking night that he’s had for the last year or more - blurred and lonely and alone. The only difference is that it's the first night where Brian understands what Gerard means about suicide being a back-up plan, and that freaks him out.
Brian doesn’t want to call Gee. He wants to call anyone but Gee, actually, but there’s nobody else that he could do this with who wouldn’t freak out. Brian would end up taking care of them and he just … he just can’t do that anymore. He doesn’t think that Gerard will take care of him, exactly, but he knows that he won’t freak out.
So he calls Gerard. He doesn’t pick up the first call, but calls back immediately.
“What’s going on?”
“I, um …” he doesn’t really know how to start this. Brian has never done this from this end. “I think that I need …”
Gerard listens well. Brian has always known this, but he’d managed to forget how comforting it can be. Brian rambles for an hour, about his head and his heart and a bottle and escaping. Gerard never says that he understands, never makes Brian’s struggle his fight. He listens, he makes understanding noises, he’s just there.
At the end of the call, Brian hears a knock on the door of his L.A. apartment. He opens it to find Gerard, who has apparently been driving from Melrose to Los Feliz for the last half an hour.
“Hey,” Gerard says, pulling him into a hug.
Brian breathes against Gerard’s neck, bizarrely happy for the first time pretty much ever that Gerard has a few inches on him.
“Hey.”
Brian doesn’t expect anything. He didn’t even expect this.
But when Gerard sits him down with a cup of tea and a blanket and just lets him talk, Brian knows that he couldn’t have expected any of this. Because it’s what he needs.
They talk. They talk all night and it feels almost like déjà vu, except they’ve never done this version of this conversation before.
At the end, Gerard doesn’t tell Brian anything. But he does ask: “Do you want to go to a place?”
Brian shakes his head emphatically. No. Nononononononono. No places, no people, no fucking primal scream shit or sitting in group meetings. No.
“Brian,” Gerard’s voice is gentle. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
Brian slumps.
“Brian, you can’t do this alone,” Gerard’s voice is almost a whisper.
Brian pats his pockets unconsciously, looking for the small curve of a bottle, the comfort of oblivion.
Wait. What?
It’s as Brian realizes what he’s doing and that Gerard is just sitting there, just watching, not judging, that Brian realizes it’s true. He’s actually looking for the pills that he hasn’t taken in front of Gerard in years, he would actually do this.
He knows it then.
Yes.
*
Nobody picks Brian up from treatment. It’s not like he goes to Betty Ford or anything, and Ryan, his therapist in Utah, doesn’t like to have people coming up to his house unnecessarily.
Brian kind of likes it this way. Ryan drives him to the airport and he has the short flight to L.A. to acclimate himself. When he steps out of the baggage claim and sees Gerard, slumped in a chair and wearing a stupid beanie, he’s glad he’s had the time.
He maybe could have used more.
Gerard doesn’t say anything, he just stands up and folds Brian into a hug.
“You’re here,” Brian says into his shoulder.
“You didn’t call me while you were there,” Gerard says, his voice trying to be neutral but managing vaguely accusatory. His hands are shaking a little. Nervous. “I had to harass Bob to find out when your flight was getting in.”
“I kept missing you,” Brian says, shrugging and reaching for his bags. He didn’t call, but that’s not exactly what he means. Gerard can take from it what he will.
Gerard smacks his hand away, reaching down for the bags. He picks them up and heads toward the parking lot, hitting the remote unlock button periodically, presumably to find the rental.
Brian smiles a thin smile. Some things really don’t change, not even when everything else does.
After finding the car by the blinking headlights, Gerard hoists Brian’s bags into the trunk. Brian’s never been good at being taken care of, but Gerard’s always been good at trying. He hands Brian the iPod, says “Pick something,” and starts the car.
They’re pulling out of LAX and onto the freeway when Gerard’s incessant finger-tapping on the dashboard push Brian to snap: “Jesus, what? What is it?”
Gerard looks over, his face implacable but his shoulders hunched a little. “You didn’t tell me when you were coming back, Brian.”
Brian sighs and looks out the window. “I didn’t … I didn’t want you to think that you had to take care of me.” Stupid therapy. Stupid learning to be honest. Well, mostly honest.
“But what if I wanted to?” Gerard’s voice is serious, his face shadowed by the stupid giant sunglasses he put on before starting the car.
Brian shrugs. They ride the rest of the way to Los Feliz in relative silence with Nina Simone wailing in their ears.
It had seemed appropriate.
It’s only as Nina’s moaning, “Sun in the sky, you know how I feel” that they pull into Brian’s apartment complex. He moves to open the door, but Gerard stops him with a steady hand to his wrist.
“You let me help you once,” Gerard says, his face shadowed still. “Just once. And I can’t figure out why then and not now, but … I wonder if we’ve had a whole conversation in your head that I wasn’t in on.”
Brian has no idea what he’s talking about. Except he kind of does.
“Brian, I never said that I didn’t care. I said it was a bad idea.”
Brian groans. People are never going to let him fucking stop processing shit now that he’s started. He rubs his hand over his face and shakes his head. He doesn’t want to do this.
“What if it was a good idea?” Gerard non-sequiters, taking off his sunglasses and throwing them in the back seat.
“What?” Brian is exhausted. He doesn’t know if he has the energy to do this, whatever this is, right now.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Gerard leans across the console, his hand still on Brian’s wrist, his face close to Brian’s. “That this is a bad idea.”
Brian’s eyes widen.
Wait. What?
“No,” he manages to say. “You weren’t wrong.”
“Brian,” Gerard says, shaking his head slightly. “You still watch.”
Brian shrugs, moving his head away a little, telling himself not again. “It’s my job.”
“Brian,” Gerard says, smiling a little and following his head. He laughs a little, tilting his head up toward the sun in a way Brian’s never seen him do before. It looks weird. It looks weirder when this strange, sunkissed Gerard leans over and brushes his mouth against the corner of Brian’s.
Gerard has always shared all of what he has. Brian has never managed to remember what that means for him.
“You know, it wasn’t just you,” Gerard smiles, wide, like a promise or hope or an apology. “I kept missing you, too.”