[fic] a lifetime of firsts
A Lifetime of Firsts
bandslash, Bert McCracken (includes Bert/OMC, Bert/Quinn, Bert/Katie, etc etc)
R, ~7,000 words, thanks to octette for the beta and secrethappiness for the quick read-through
For sinsense in the usedfic challenge. Ended up working with Bert/Quinn and “stories from the road.” Um. There are SOME road stories in here? It’s basically a big Bertfest.
**
Bert can remember most of the important firsts, at least as far as what other people think matter. He knows that it’s surprising, that most people would expect that all of the shit he’s put in his body would impede memory. Instead, it’s like it’s heightened it. Maybe it’s all of the adrenaline from near death experiences or something, fuck if he knows.
**
Quinn
Bert will never forget the first time that he saw Quinn. It’s not, weirdly, the first time that Quinn saw Bert, or at least not the first time he remembers seeing him.
Robert has always known that he’s a little different from other kids, always been aware that the things that catch his attention aren’t the things that he can usually share with other people. Even his most “normal” interests - piano and gymnastics - are getting farther and farther away from other boys his age.
There’s a blond scruffy boy who has been taking the piano lesson slot before Robert for two years and, before, he always seemed to be smiling, shrugging his shoulders when Miss Lawson would call after him “Now, this week, I want your practice sessions to be actual practice, Quinn!” Lately, though, he’s left the room scowling, his long sleeves stuffed over his hands the way that Robert’s mom always tells him not to. Robert knows Quinn by sight, sort of, but it’s not like they go to the same school. It took Robert months to figure out Quinn’s name, it’s not like he could just ask him what’s wrong.
He’s sitting in the little hallway before the practice rooms and Quinn’s mom is picking him up after his lesson, just like every week. Quinn’s scowl is particularly deep and he slams Miss Lawson’s door a little bit as he leaves.
“Hey, honey,” Quinn’s mom says. “How was your lesson?”
“Stupid,” Quinn mumbles, shaking her hand off his back. “God, mom, I’m eleven, not some baby. I don’t know why I need to take these stupid baby classes.”
Robert blinks and turns his head away from their conversation, leaning down to pick up his sheet music.
He’s never heard anyone use the Lord’s name in vain before. It’s also never occurred to him that piano lessons are something that he might grow out of.
**
Kiss
Lea Forbes - his first kiss, both 14 years old. Dripping with sweat and both of their lips a little chapped from biting down on them while they were in the pit. She pushes away from his face before leaning in and biting his top lip a little. She smells like sweat and tastes gritty and bitter like Diet Coke and Bert spends more time thinking “What?” than he does realizing what’s happening.
**
Crush
Bert has always wanted to tell people that his first crush on a dude was on Quinn - it would make the most sense, it would be like some kind of story that someone would write about a life.
But it wasn’t Quinn. It wasn’t even some dude that Bert really knew, a friend or someone remotely appropriate.
Just some guy. Some guy in one of his classes.
It’s not that Robert doesn’t try to stop being weird - in junior high, he stops talking about his piano lessons and his gymnastics tournaments, even though he’s been winning piano competitions and his coach says that he’s one of the best vaulters she’s seen at his age. He’s proud of that stuff, proud that the things that he’s worked so hard on are things that he’s good at, but he’s also realizing that the other kids don’t really care what he’s proud about or what he’s good at.
In fact, the same stuff that gets a smile from his mom and a gruff “good boy” from his dad gets him called a “fag” a lot.
And, like, Robert doesn’t want anyone thinking that. Not about him.
So he separates them - Robert is the kid that lives for a 9.8 from a judge, who loves the moment that he finishes a sonata to look out at a audience with tears in their eyes. Bert is the other kid, the one who is going to be popular and have friends, the one who can blend in.
“Hey,” he says, leaning over his desk in homeroom to talk to Jason Rhodes the minute that the homeroom teacher was done taking roll. Bert’s still pretty well trained from those days in grade school where they were calling him “hyperactive” - he doesn’t talk during roll call, even though everyone else does, because he finds it almost impossible to whisper and, even when he thinks he’s whispering, he’s usually talking pretty loud. And teachers hate that.
Jason looks up at Bert blankly, like he hadn’t even remembered Bert was there.
“Did you hear that my band was playing a show this weekend?” Bert says, shoving a crumpled, photocopied flyer at Jason with a big smile on his face. Bert hates that smile, is always trying to make it a cool, disinterested smirk, but it always seems to creep up, too big, too eager, too excited.
Excited is not cool.
Jason, though, is totally cool. He is everything Bert isn’t - tall with dark brown hair and about a million flannel shirts and pairs of baggy jeans. His hair is just long enough (past his ears) that he looks cool, but probably not long enough that his ward elders could figure out how to get him to cut it. Bert wishes he could be like that, but he’s … not. He’s short, his mom won’t let him dye his “beautiful hair,” and Bert doesn’t really get the grunge thing - not that he could claim to anything about fashion, but how hot do these guys want to be in the middle of June in Utah? Flannel.
Jason looks down at the flyer briefly, his forehead furrowing a little and his hand pulling absently at his flannel shirt. Jason only glances for a second before his mouth curves up into what Bert hopes is a smile, but worries is a smirk.
He seriously can’t always tell the difference.
“‘I’m With Stupid,’” Jason reads from the flyer. “Yeah, no, I haven’t heard of your band. What kind of music do you play?”
Bert flails a little, because someone is asking him about music and that someone is Jason Rhodes and then they can talk to each other every day and school would be about a million times better if he wasn’t the “weird music gymnast fag,” but was “that kid that Jason Rhodes hangs out with.”
“Well,” Bert says quickly, his voice speeding up the way that it does when he gets excited. “We’re kind of a bunch of different stuff? I play the trumpet and Chris, he’s the singer, he really likes The Beatles, but our drummer is totally obsessed with the rhythms in Michael Jackson songs, which completely makes sense because they are the jam, you know, like how there are something like fifty layers of snares in ‘Billie Jean,’ so we’re trying to incorporate a bunch of different …”
“That’s great,” Jason interrupts. His eyes are kind of distant and he turns around. “Thanks for the flyer, man.”
Bert smiles. Even if the edges of the smile are lower than they were before, he is going to take this as encouragement. Because, maybe that went well? Maybe.
“Anyway, we’re playing on Saturday, right? And there’s going to be a skate course set up in the parking, lot so …”
“Mmmm,” Jason says, still not turning back around.
“Well … you could … come, if you wanted.” Bert falters a little, because the awesome way he saw this conversation going was not like this.
“Yeah, maybe, man,” Jason says.
Bert is at his locker later that morning when he says Jason crumple up a small piece of paper and throw it in the garbage can in the hall.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s Bert’s flyer. It could be anything.
**
Weed
The first time Bert smokes weed, he coughs up half a lung and just blushes and passes the pipe on. He’d been a straightedge kid two months before, for fuck’s sake, he figures there might be a little bit of a learning curve.
Serena Torres smiles at him, slow and liquid and smooth, her face obscured by a fall of hair in her face as she leans down to take a hit off the pipe.
She tilts her head back as she blows the smoke out and raises her eyebrows at him as she hands it back to him.
When people in the circle complain, she waves a hand.
“He’s gonna get it this time. Give him a minute.”
Bert doesn’t actually fall in love with her, but he thinks that maybe that he falls in love with weed a little harder because of the way Serena Torres purses her lips around the pipe and the way she lays a hand on his knee as she tries to shotgun a hit into his mouth.
**
Weird
Robert clearly, painfully remembers the first time that he realizes that he’s weird.
Robert’s mother calls him a “child with a singular focus” in a voice that sounds proud.
The kids at school call him “weird.”
He doesn’t mean to be either of those things (or that thing, sometimes he thinks that singular focus is more than a little weird), it’s just what happens. He can lose hours playing Liszt, trying to work out the minor key progression in the “B-Minor Sonata.” Robert spends hours every day just working on the high bar, practicing ¾ giants, cast handstands, flyaways, tap swings. He wants to do fancy dismounts like the older kids do, like a layout or a double front pike or something.
His coach says “no,” though. She’ll let him try some dismounts, but she says he’s not getting near a triple until he’s at least 12.
He thinks about trying it anyway, sometimes, when the coach is distracted by the girls practicing uneven bars, but he so far, he’s stayed on the obstacle course that Anna set up for him. He thinks he can talk her into it.
This might be what they mean by “weird.”
But Robert can’t really help it. Once there’s something that he wants to know or do, it’s all he can think about. So he tries a little harder, focuses a little more. He’s got a lot of energy to use up - the reason his parents started all of the lessons in the first place, his mom says with a smile - so he has the energy and he’s going to do everything he can to get better.
It always works, so. Weird or focused, at least it works.
*
“Is John coming over after practice?” Robert’s mom asks. She’s making lunch, stirring a pot of what smells like spaghetti sauce, and his sisters and brother are playing in the living room. His dad is reading the morning paper at the table and drinking a glass of milk.
Robert shrugs, looking out the window for John’s mom’s station wagon. “His parents are usually okay with it as long as he’s home to go to temple tomorrow. So, I think so, yeah. You’re picking us up, right?”
“Sure,” she says, smiling at him and reaching over to ruffle his hair. Bert leans into it and squishes his face up.
“How’s school been?” his dad asks, folding up the paper and leaning in.
“All right,” Robert says. “I got an ‘A’ on my spelling test and Mr. Mason asked me to help when we do our gymnastics unit in gym. I’ve been working pretty hard to get my math grade up, too.”
Bert works really hard on a lot of stuff. His grades are pretty good and he spends a lot of time at the gym and practicing piano because he refuses to be one of those kids that doesn’t qualify for the meet or the one that makes Miss Lawson shake her head and sigh.
“That’s great, honey,” his mom says. Robert turns his head away from the window just long enough to see his mom shoot his dad a look that Robert can’t really read.
Adults are weird.
“Been making any new friends lately?” his dad asks in a weird voice.
Robert shrugs again. “I don’t know … not really?”
His mom laughs a funny laugh and, seriously, what is going on?
“That doesn’t matter, does it, sweetie?” she says lightly. “You’ve got John and Caroline and your family. You don’t need anything else.”
Bert shrugs again, turning back toward the window.
He has friends. Not, like, a lot, but he has them. Mostly, they’re people like John (who takes the same gymnastics classes as Bert) or Caroline (who Bert travels to regional piano competitions with for two years).
And they have fun together, which is probably good, since he has to spend a lot of time with both of them. And he knows that there are a lot of people in his ward who hang out with each other but don’t call him. He guesses that’s kind of weird, too.
It’s just never bothered him before now.
Finally, Mrs. Schueler’s green station wagon pulls up in front of his house and John leans out the back window, waving at Robert.
“Mrs. Schueler’s here!” he says, jumping up, excited for another practice. “Bye!”
Robert’s not sure, but he thinks his parents’ goodbyes sound a little … weird. But when his mom picks them up after practice, she brings them string cheese and carrots for them to munch on the way home, just like always.
Robert more or less forgets about that specific conversation, but something about all of that stays with him, a little itch in the back of his head, telling him that maybe he should have more friends.
**
Prayer
Bert stops praying when he’s nine years old. There’s not even really a reason, but he will never forget the first time that he closed his eyes to go to sleep without praying to God, the rush and the terror and the feeling of wrongrightness all at once.
None of that ever fully goes away.
**
Show
It would be a stretch to say that Refused saves Bert’s life.
But maybe, in a way, they do.
Hearing the songs led to songs stuck in Bert’s head. The songs led to scribbling lyrics on his notebooks. The lyrics led to other kids stopping him in the hall when they recognized the band (okay, that happened once, but it was awesome). Bert has always thought that music could change lives, but he’d never known that it could change his life.
Bert still isn’t sure how he talked his mom into letting him go all the way to Salt Lake City with John to see Refused just a couple of months after he claims straightedge. She hates them, hates all of the music that Bert’s been listening to lately and she’s convinced that he’s going to get drunk and do drugs and have sex and shit.
But Bert doesn’t need that stuff. He gets it now, that he was chasing after the wrong people, that the people he wanted to like him were idiots. And Bert doesn’t need all of those losers. All of those people he used to think were so cool - Jason Rhodes and his friends - they’re all burning out every weekend, getting drunk and high and stupid. And Bert doesn’t need to belong with them because not doing all of that stuff doesn’t make him a loser - he’s fucking straightedge.
And Bert is better than those losers. He’s going to Salt Lake City to see Refused and it’s going to be awesome - John’s girlfriend’s brother’s band is opening up and they’d said that Bert could hand out his zine at the zine table. He grabs fifty copies of “Drugs Can Suck My Dick,” hoping that he has enough copies.
Bert straightens up and checks out the mirror carefully - walking the line between “mom-friendly” and “show-ready” is a hard one, but he knows that it’s safer to stick to baggy cargo shorts, a black shirt, and Chucks. He wishes he could wear his sharpied SXE shirt with “drugs can suck my dick” on it - it would be good publicity for the zine, but she would get pissed if he saw it when he got home from the show. It’s like she doesn’t believe him that this is a good influence, that it’s loud and, yeah, there’s swearing, and it’s outside of god, but it’s also about being clean and sober and living your best life.
Bert swears that god is cool with him stepping outside of stuff every once in a while when it’s about living your best life. He’s almost sure, anyway.
“Another line in a history book, another line to justify the lands that we took,” Bert belts out. His parents and little brothers and sister are out, so it’s just Bert. He doesn’t turn the music he has playing quietly from a portable CD player up, though. His mom might be putting up with the music, but it doesn’t mean he’s willing to chance her coming home to “This Trust Will Kill Again” playing in her home.
Bert finishes the song and then gives himself one final look in the mirror. He nods decisively.
“Best night ever.”
If he says it enough, maybe it’ll be true.
**
Van
Branden, in particular, hates the tour van.
It might be because he’s the one that bathes the most. Bert will give him that.
“God, this is disgusting,” Branden shouts, throwing … something that has partially dissolved up toward Bert and Quinn’s heads. “I don’t even know what that used to be. Fuck.”
Jepha’s sprawled out in the back back seat, his legs hooked over a couple of amps. Fucker can sleep anywhere.
Branden’s shouting and Quinn is scowling and Jeph is sleeping and Bert … Bert loves the fucking van.
**
Quinn (again)
Bert loved choir class, once. Once wasn’t even that long ago - about six months.
But, like many of the things that Bert loved, choir is apparently dorky and weird. Which, well, is fine if you don’t care about being liked.
And Bert doesn’t, okay?
But he would maybe like to, just once, have something that he loved that didn’t make him weirder.
Still, there are parts of choir that are okay. Just not the music itself (he’s pretty sure that’s what makes it dorky).
Bert likes singing, at the end of the day. He likes the feeling of closing his eyes and having something go right.
And there’s this guy, this vaguely familiar skinny, blonde kid who always slides into class at the last minute, his skateboard clattering to the ground.
“Allman,” the teacher sighs, shaking his head and marking something down on his attendance sheet.
The blonde kid always grins.
Bert kind of wishes he knew why the kid was always running late, but Bert is a treble or an alto and the Allman dude is a low tenor (without much range). So it’s not like they’re even on the same side of the room.
Halfway through sophomore year, the blonde kid stops showing up to choir. Around the same time, Bert requests a drop from the class.
He could use the study hall anyway.
**
Temple
Bert doesn’t stop going to temple after school all at once. It’s not a sudden revelation or something he fights out with his parents when it happens - that comes later. It starts because he has choir practice after school, then because there’s “I’m With Stupid” and he and another guy he knows have been talking about writing a zine about Utah hardcore that isn’t all about drugs and drinking and premarital sex.
So when it starts, it’s kind of hard to argue with. Sure, he’s not going to the Young Men’s activities with guys from his ward anymore, but he’s involved in wholesome, God-fearing activities like music, so his mom lets it slide.
He’s pretty sure his dad is just relieved that he has stuff to do and, presumably, friends to do that stuff with.
Temple had been so much a part of his life before that it kind of surprises Bert when he realizes that he doesn’t miss it.
Then, he starts attending temple at the meetinghouse only on Sundays with his parents and little brothers and sisters.
Maybe it’s because it happens so slowly that nobody, including Bert, really sees it coming, but eventually, he finds more and more excuses and shows up less and less. Bert doesn’t know if it makes him a sinner, but he is shocked to find that he’s not that worried about it.
**
Gerard
The first time he kisses Gerard Way like he means it and Gerard kisses back feels like getting kicked in the gut in the best possible way.
Later, Bert knows that he should regret it, but he never does. He needed that kick in the guts.
**
Night on the Street
His parents didn’t kick him out, not the way you’d think, not in some Lifetime made-for-tv movie way. There was no throwing his stuff out into the street and screaming.
Just silence. Just Bert’s mom dropping his works on his bed and him turning over blearily only long enough to see the tears on her face.
“I should go, huh?” he rasps into the silence.
He can’t imagine how hard it is for her to nod, but she does.
*
He crashes with friends for a couple of days, because he can, because for at least a while, even tweaker friends are generous enough to let you sleep on their couch or their dirty floor.
But tweaker generosity runs quick and it’s only just over two weeks (seventeen days) later that Bert runs out of places to run.
He thinks about John’s house, but knows that he can’t actually see Mr. or Mrs. Schueler like this. Just a few more days, just enough time to get his shit together, just enough money for one more hit, just enough time to figure everything out.
Which leaves him at least a few days of not knowing where the hell to go.
Bert even looks in the fucking phone book (because he is an awful damn homeless person) under “homeless” and then under “shelter.” There are only two homeless shelters in the entire area - one in Midvale and one in Salt Lake City - and none of them take minors.
So that was time well-spent.
Bert is huddled next to a wall, his backpack next to him and his head down on his arms when he feels a kick to his thigh.
“What?” he says, looking up and his eyes blurring a little - he’s started coming down, finally, and was just fucking hoping to sleep for a little while before waking back up to his life of suck.
A guy who looks like more a pile of coats than an actual guy shakes his head. “Stupid fuck. You’re going to get picked up out here.”
Bert shakes his head, squinting at the guy. “T’ fuck?”
“Vagrancy, kid,” the guy says. “Sitting out in the open like this, they’ll take you in.”
Bert shrugs. What does he care.
“Yeah?” the guy says, leaning down to grab at Bert’s arm. Bert tries to roll away half-assedly, but it doesn’t really work. “You got someone to bail you out?”
Bert shakes his head.
The guy takes his hand off Bert’s arm and holds it out instead. “C’mon, get up. It’s fucking colder out here, anyway. I’ll show you a good windbreak.”
Bert stands up. He needs some help, but he stands up.
**
Heartbreak
“God, Bert.”
“What?” He looks up, blinking hard to get his eyes to focus. Fuck. “Fucking … what.” It’s not a question. Even as fucked up as he is, Bert knows this line.
She just stares at him, her fingers picking absently at the looser threads at the bottom of her uniform shirt, the yellow piping turning mustard with grime and dirt. Her eyes are a little unfocused, like she’d smoked a bowl out behind the dumpsters with the other fry cook, and her hands are moving fast. High, then. High, but not fucked up.
“Have you even moved since I left this morning?” Her voice is a scratchy. He hadn’t noticed that earlier. Of course, he’s been pulling the wallpaper off the walls for the last four hours, so he probably wasn’t noticing much when she left for her shift at McDonalds.
“I moved,” he says, going back to what he’s doing. “There’s some shit on the table. Bring me my kit?”
Katie throws his kit toward his head - it doesn’t snap the needle when it hits the wall, so that’s all right. And he notices she takes her own fucking hit with her as she goes into the bathroom muttering about “stupid junkie fucks.”
Living with Katie … hasn’t work out like Bert had imagined. He’d kind of seen it as being just like when her mom was out of town and they’d sneak him into their house - they’d fucked in every room in the house and shot up just enough and just often enough that they always had the manic edge that made everything fucking amazing.
Living with Katie for real is not like that.
**
The Used
Better than anything - better than a half-remembered feeling of flight from the uneven bars, better than hitting just the right notes in the Apassionista, better than fucking meth - is the day that Bert runs into Quinn Allman in the used CD section of Moore Music. Bert hangs out there more than he probably should - he doesn’t steal anything from them, though, and sometimes the guy that works the counter in the afternoons will bum Bert a couple of cigarettes.
Well, it’s better than anything in retrospect. At the time, it means less than nothing.
Bert’s there that afternoon, helpfully alphabetizing the M section (people always forget that Mc is its own section, not a part of the M section and it drives Bert fucking nuts). This guy walks in and the only thing that Bert really sees is “tall” and “bottle blond” and “probably doesn’t have any good shit” (the last is purely habit). He goes back to alphabetizing and it isn’t until he hears Chris say “Hey, Quinn” that he turns back around.
Bert knew a Quinn once. Sorta.
Hard to tell if this is the same guy - his back is to Bert and his hair is obviously not the color he was born with. It’s not that it really matters, it’s not like they were friends, but Bert still kind of wants to know if this is that guy. Bert squints a little and shrugs. Could be. Quinn’s not that common of a name.
“Mind if I hang another sign?” The guy - Quinn - asks Chris.
Chris shrugs and waves his hand toward the bulletin board on the side wall of the store, just beneath the old Operation Ivy posters that the owner won’t sell for love, money, or blowjobs. Not that Bert has exactly tried to offer all of them for the posters, but he has definitely implied, to no avail. “Go for it, man. Nobody yet, huh?”
Quinn shakes his head “no” as he turns around to walk back toward the bulletin board. He has a sheaf of papers in his hand with those hand-cut tear off strips at the bottom. If Bert squints, he can see someone has written “Sing, Motherfucker” at the top of the page in Sharpie.
Bert might fall in love with this band. He’ll definitely have to catch them live sometime. He squints at the name below the title and repeats it out loud, not sure if he’s ever as quiet as he thinks he is.
Strange Itch. Right.
He snickers a little and goes back to the Ms - he’s almost done with Metallica, which is a fucking chore in and of itself.
*
The flyer is still hanging at the bottom of the bulletin board a month later when Bert is back in Moore, fronting like he’s there to bug Chris on his midday shift, but mostly trying to stay the fuck away from the Timpanogos Memorial Gardens, where he knows, knows, fucking knows he can score.
He promised his mom he’d at least try.
Bert is sitting on the floor, his hair falling in his face and his knees curled up to his chin.
“You should call them,” Chris says suddenly, lifting a rollie to his mouth and licking the paper. Bert blinks at him.
“What?”
“Them,” Chris motions with his chin. “They need a singer, dude.”
Bert blinks, realizing he’s been idly swatting at the tear-offs to Quinn’s flyer, all but two still attached. Fucking. Fucking shit. He does shit he doesn’t know he’s doing all the time now, fuck.
“What’s wrong with them, nobody wants to join their band?” Bert snickers, trying to find some place of meanness to pull from to cover the pure want that’s sitting somewhere in his stomach.
Chris shrugs and hands Bert one of the two smokes he’s just rolled and bumps the door outside to the alley open with his hip. “They’ve tried most of the people who do. They’re … picky.”
“What makes you think they’d want me then?” Bert sneers, still hoping some kind of veneer is covering him.
Chris shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t know if they would. But it’s not like you’ve got much to lose.”
Bert stares at him for a minute. Nobody has been that fucking brutal with him since he got out of rehab.
His mouth stretches a little, almost resembling a smile.
Bert fingers the tab with someone’s phone number he’d torn off a week ago, the numbers almost rubbed off by his fingers in his pocket.
**
Quinn (one more time)
Less than a week later, Bert still hasn’t called the number. He excuses it in a lot of ways - he’ll do it later, he wants to finish this cigarette, maybe when he’s just a little bit drunk.
In the end of the day, he never does call.
Bert’s mom keeps asking him when he’s going to do something - and by something, she always seems to mean “go back to school, get a respectable job and a haircut, and finally stop embarrassing the family,” though at least, to her credit, she doesn’t say it that way. Not out loud.
Bert is doing something. Sort of. He helps Chris out often enough that Chris is talking about getting the owner to give Bert some hours where he’s actually working there instead of just lurking. He takes out the garbage for the guys at Chef’s Table, so he gets free dinners every night, even if they are a little cold. He’s providing for himself, for fuck’s sake, even if it’s not at a 9-to-5 job.
Bert knows that his mom just worries. And, really, it’s been so long since he wasn’t actively giving her a reason to worry that he can’t much begrudge her it.
Still.
He’s hanging out outside of the City Limits Tavern, listening to shitty disco music that’s echoing out the door into the back alley. Sometimes, they let him sweep up cigarette butts and keep the clearly underage kids from trying to sneak in the back door, so he shows up a couple of times a week to get a couple of comped beers and a basket of popcorn. He takes a drag off of his cigarette, singing a few bars of “Tell Everyone We’re Dead” and casting an appraising glance at the cigarettes scattered around the ground - weekends are always good nights to find mostly-untouched cigarettes to re-roll. The weekend before, he’d managed to roll eight cigarettes off of discarded half-assed Mormon cheerleader cigarettes.
He’s just found one that must have two, maybe three drags off it when a big, white tennis shoe steps right the fuck on it.
“What the fuck, man?” Bert snaps, looking up (because he’s always looking up) at a blonde dude he kind of recognizes.
The guy is staring at him. Bert’s also used to that, but it’s not anything he likes any better.
“The fuck, man?” he snaps, kicking at the guy’s big stupid foot. “I was going to smoke that.”
The guy tilts his head to the side and bites his lip a little.
“Fucking what?” Bert snaps, leaning down to take the smooshed cigarette, figuring most of the tobacco is probably still in it, even if it’s all flat. Better than nothing.
“You remind me of someone,” the dude says, finally, his voice kind of unsure.
Oh, awesome. Bert hopes like fuck he’s not some old hookup or trick or some damn thing. “Sure. Great. Good times. Go the fuck away.”
Normally, he tries to charm the clientele a little for the hope of some free shit, but fuck this guy. Bert pulls his arms in a little in case he has to shove or punch and run.
The blonde guy looks confused. “What? No. Wait, what? No, aren’t you … Rob? Robert? Something? You went to Timpanogos High? Sang in the choir and shit?”
Bert narrows his eyes again and looks at the guy - bottle blond, skinny as fuck - and shit starts to click.
“Bert. Fuck, yeah. Man, you’re … Quinn something, right?” Bert extends his hand, not quite an apology, but at least an acknowledgement. It’s the closest thing Quinn’s going to get.
“Allman, yeah,” Quinn grabs Bert’s hand and actually shakes it, like he’s some kid who was raised with manners. “How’s it been going?”
Bert knows the rumors about him - they range from the completely batshit to the totally plausible to the ones that hit a little close to home. He shrugs as he crouches down to deconstruct the cigarette and put the tobacco into his pouch. “All right, I guess. Kicking meth and crack and sleeping in my mom’s basement, so pretty horrifying as far as things go, but it could be worse.”
He peeks up to catch Quinn’s face, just to check.
Quinn’s face looks blank, but his eyes are following Bert’s fingers, either distracted by the activity or trying to be distracted. Bert can appreciate it either way. Even if he’s freaked out, he’s hiding it well. Bert can respect that.
They sit in silence that couldn’t really be called companionable for a few more minutes.
Bert doesn’t mean to start singing under his breath, but it’s kind of something he does without thinking, so.
“Hey,” Quinn says suddenly, fast like he’s afraid he won’t say it if he doesn’t say it now. “What are you doing right now?”
Bert looks up at Quinn through his eyelashes as he tucks his tobacco pouch in his shorts pocket and stands back up. “Right now? Not a goddamn thing. Why?”
“Want to meet some guys?” Quinn says quickly again, his mouth quirking quickly into a nervous smile.
Bert could take it to mean something more suggestive or something more monetary, but there is something so … nervous about Quinn that he’s pretty sure that he’ll be fine.
Sometimes, there’s nothing behind a smile but a fucking smile.
“Sure,” Bert says.
*
Six months later, Bert is detoxing yet again and shivering on Quinn’s bed, his boxers crumpled between his thighs and almost falling off his hips. Quinn has wrapped himself around Bert and laid down behind him, anchoring him to the bed.
“I bet I scared the fucking shit out of you when you saw me that time,” Bert says, not having to clarify which time because it’s Quinn and Quinn is remarkably good at getting things, even from Bert. Maybe even especially from Bert.
Quinn just holds him quietly and lets Bert shake it out.
Bert’s pretty sure the lack of answer is his answer.
**
The Baby
Bert still doesn’t talk about it.
**
Fame
The first time that Bert feels a little bit famous wasn’t actually when he walks (skulks) into Ozzie fucking Osbourne’s front door with his youngest daughter. Though that is amazing.
It was actually the first time that a server gets flustered in a restaurant.
They are sitting in a booth in Waffle House in buttfuck Ohio and all that Bert’s doing is hoping that Jepha and Branden could either get hashbrowns made without butter or at least that the Waffle House people would lie about it so that Bert could get his damn pancakes.
Jepha is sprawled out (he’s always sprawled out), his ankle hooked behind Bert’s and his finger’s playing with Quinn’s hair. He’s leaning toward Branden, making him share his menu because Jeph is “too comfortable to lift an arm.” Especially ridiculous considering Jeph can only eat three damn things on every Waffle House menu in America.
Quinn is half-asleep and Branden is either very entertained by Jeph or very annoyed - it’s hard to tell which way Branden will ever go until he’s done it.
Sometimes, bugging Branden is like teasing a viper. Bert’s bets are on Jeph, if only because he knows that he himself is much, much more annoying and yet continues to live.
“What can I get y’all?”
Bert looks up and the girl is pretty young - probably 17 or 18 - and has what is probably a very punk haircut for some small ass rural town - the bangs on her fauxhawk are dyed almost the exact same color as the streaks in Bert’s hair. Her little nametag says “Bonnie.”
Bert grins at her, wide and big and happy. He loves it when the town misfit ends up at his table.
“We are fan-fucking-mazing, Bonnie,” Bert says, leaning across the table and tapping right next to her order pad. “We have had a long night of driving and we are desperately needing some pancakes.”
She smiles, almost against her will, Bert thinks. God, 17 is cute.
After they order, Bert sees Bonnie over in the corner, flipping through a CD case quickly. She pulls out a familiar CD sleeve and flips it over, her eyes narrowing.
Bert grins a little. Because that CD, that has their fucking faces on it, their words and music in it. That CD is the culmination of all good things that Bert has ever had happen that he never could deserve.
When she comes back later with an additional set of vegan hashbrowns (Bert doesn’t even care if they’re lying and he kind of doubts that the Annoying Vegan Diet Twins do at this point, either), she is a little flustered and awkward.
Finally, as the current roadie that has been designated payment manager pays the bill - not all bands have them, but the management flatly refused to hand any of his band several thousand dollars in cash, which Bert is kind of proud of - Bonnie fidgets at the front of the table.
“Look,” she finally says. “This is ridiculous. I know who you guys are. I like your music. Could you just sign this?”
She holds out a copy of their album and a black Sharpie with the end chewed all to shit.
They all do. And Bert gives her a big, sloppy kiss on the check because, seriously.
Seriously, this is his life.
**
Quinn (again and again and again)
Bert remembers shit. The first time he smoked crack, the first time he had sex, the first time someone fucked him. He remembers all of them, even the drug shit that shouldn’t be crystal clear.
But he doesn’t remember the first time that he realizes that he’s fucking stupid forever in love with Quinn.
Maybe it’s because there’s never been a time that he hasn’t been in love with Quinn. Like, before he’d ever even fucking met him, maybe Quinn had a piece of his stupid heart before it was ever broken.
bandslash, Bert McCracken (includes Bert/OMC, Bert/Quinn, Bert/Katie, etc etc)
R, ~7,000 words, thanks to octette for the beta and secrethappiness for the quick read-through
For sinsense in the usedfic challenge. Ended up working with Bert/Quinn and “stories from the road.” Um. There are SOME road stories in here? It’s basically a big Bertfest.
**
Bert can remember most of the important firsts, at least as far as what other people think matter. He knows that it’s surprising, that most people would expect that all of the shit he’s put in his body would impede memory. Instead, it’s like it’s heightened it. Maybe it’s all of the adrenaline from near death experiences or something, fuck if he knows.
**
Quinn
Bert will never forget the first time that he saw Quinn. It’s not, weirdly, the first time that Quinn saw Bert, or at least not the first time he remembers seeing him.
Robert has always known that he’s a little different from other kids, always been aware that the things that catch his attention aren’t the things that he can usually share with other people. Even his most “normal” interests - piano and gymnastics - are getting farther and farther away from other boys his age.
There’s a blond scruffy boy who has been taking the piano lesson slot before Robert for two years and, before, he always seemed to be smiling, shrugging his shoulders when Miss Lawson would call after him “Now, this week, I want your practice sessions to be actual practice, Quinn!” Lately, though, he’s left the room scowling, his long sleeves stuffed over his hands the way that Robert’s mom always tells him not to. Robert knows Quinn by sight, sort of, but it’s not like they go to the same school. It took Robert months to figure out Quinn’s name, it’s not like he could just ask him what’s wrong.
He’s sitting in the little hallway before the practice rooms and Quinn’s mom is picking him up after his lesson, just like every week. Quinn’s scowl is particularly deep and he slams Miss Lawson’s door a little bit as he leaves.
“Hey, honey,” Quinn’s mom says. “How was your lesson?”
“Stupid,” Quinn mumbles, shaking her hand off his back. “God, mom, I’m eleven, not some baby. I don’t know why I need to take these stupid baby classes.”
Robert blinks and turns his head away from their conversation, leaning down to pick up his sheet music.
He’s never heard anyone use the Lord’s name in vain before. It’s also never occurred to him that piano lessons are something that he might grow out of.
**
Kiss
Lea Forbes - his first kiss, both 14 years old. Dripping with sweat and both of their lips a little chapped from biting down on them while they were in the pit. She pushes away from his face before leaning in and biting his top lip a little. She smells like sweat and tastes gritty and bitter like Diet Coke and Bert spends more time thinking “What?” than he does realizing what’s happening.
**
Crush
Bert has always wanted to tell people that his first crush on a dude was on Quinn - it would make the most sense, it would be like some kind of story that someone would write about a life.
But it wasn’t Quinn. It wasn’t even some dude that Bert really knew, a friend or someone remotely appropriate.
Just some guy. Some guy in one of his classes.
It’s not that Robert doesn’t try to stop being weird - in junior high, he stops talking about his piano lessons and his gymnastics tournaments, even though he’s been winning piano competitions and his coach says that he’s one of the best vaulters she’s seen at his age. He’s proud of that stuff, proud that the things that he’s worked so hard on are things that he’s good at, but he’s also realizing that the other kids don’t really care what he’s proud about or what he’s good at.
In fact, the same stuff that gets a smile from his mom and a gruff “good boy” from his dad gets him called a “fag” a lot.
And, like, Robert doesn’t want anyone thinking that. Not about him.
So he separates them - Robert is the kid that lives for a 9.8 from a judge, who loves the moment that he finishes a sonata to look out at a audience with tears in their eyes. Bert is the other kid, the one who is going to be popular and have friends, the one who can blend in.
“Hey,” he says, leaning over his desk in homeroom to talk to Jason Rhodes the minute that the homeroom teacher was done taking roll. Bert’s still pretty well trained from those days in grade school where they were calling him “hyperactive” - he doesn’t talk during roll call, even though everyone else does, because he finds it almost impossible to whisper and, even when he thinks he’s whispering, he’s usually talking pretty loud. And teachers hate that.
Jason looks up at Bert blankly, like he hadn’t even remembered Bert was there.
“Did you hear that my band was playing a show this weekend?” Bert says, shoving a crumpled, photocopied flyer at Jason with a big smile on his face. Bert hates that smile, is always trying to make it a cool, disinterested smirk, but it always seems to creep up, too big, too eager, too excited.
Excited is not cool.
Jason, though, is totally cool. He is everything Bert isn’t - tall with dark brown hair and about a million flannel shirts and pairs of baggy jeans. His hair is just long enough (past his ears) that he looks cool, but probably not long enough that his ward elders could figure out how to get him to cut it. Bert wishes he could be like that, but he’s … not. He’s short, his mom won’t let him dye his “beautiful hair,” and Bert doesn’t really get the grunge thing - not that he could claim to anything about fashion, but how hot do these guys want to be in the middle of June in Utah? Flannel.
Jason looks down at the flyer briefly, his forehead furrowing a little and his hand pulling absently at his flannel shirt. Jason only glances for a second before his mouth curves up into what Bert hopes is a smile, but worries is a smirk.
He seriously can’t always tell the difference.
“‘I’m With Stupid,’” Jason reads from the flyer. “Yeah, no, I haven’t heard of your band. What kind of music do you play?”
Bert flails a little, because someone is asking him about music and that someone is Jason Rhodes and then they can talk to each other every day and school would be about a million times better if he wasn’t the “weird music gymnast fag,” but was “that kid that Jason Rhodes hangs out with.”
“Well,” Bert says quickly, his voice speeding up the way that it does when he gets excited. “We’re kind of a bunch of different stuff? I play the trumpet and Chris, he’s the singer, he really likes The Beatles, but our drummer is totally obsessed with the rhythms in Michael Jackson songs, which completely makes sense because they are the jam, you know, like how there are something like fifty layers of snares in ‘Billie Jean,’ so we’re trying to incorporate a bunch of different …”
“That’s great,” Jason interrupts. His eyes are kind of distant and he turns around. “Thanks for the flyer, man.”
Bert smiles. Even if the edges of the smile are lower than they were before, he is going to take this as encouragement. Because, maybe that went well? Maybe.
“Anyway, we’re playing on Saturday, right? And there’s going to be a skate course set up in the parking, lot so …”
“Mmmm,” Jason says, still not turning back around.
“Well … you could … come, if you wanted.” Bert falters a little, because the awesome way he saw this conversation going was not like this.
“Yeah, maybe, man,” Jason says.
Bert is at his locker later that morning when he says Jason crumple up a small piece of paper and throw it in the garbage can in the hall.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s Bert’s flyer. It could be anything.
**
Weed
The first time Bert smokes weed, he coughs up half a lung and just blushes and passes the pipe on. He’d been a straightedge kid two months before, for fuck’s sake, he figures there might be a little bit of a learning curve.
Serena Torres smiles at him, slow and liquid and smooth, her face obscured by a fall of hair in her face as she leans down to take a hit off the pipe.
She tilts her head back as she blows the smoke out and raises her eyebrows at him as she hands it back to him.
When people in the circle complain, she waves a hand.
“He’s gonna get it this time. Give him a minute.”
Bert doesn’t actually fall in love with her, but he thinks that maybe that he falls in love with weed a little harder because of the way Serena Torres purses her lips around the pipe and the way she lays a hand on his knee as she tries to shotgun a hit into his mouth.
**
Weird
Robert clearly, painfully remembers the first time that he realizes that he’s weird.
Robert’s mother calls him a “child with a singular focus” in a voice that sounds proud.
The kids at school call him “weird.”
He doesn’t mean to be either of those things (or that thing, sometimes he thinks that singular focus is more than a little weird), it’s just what happens. He can lose hours playing Liszt, trying to work out the minor key progression in the “B-Minor Sonata.” Robert spends hours every day just working on the high bar, practicing ¾ giants, cast handstands, flyaways, tap swings. He wants to do fancy dismounts like the older kids do, like a layout or a double front pike or something.
His coach says “no,” though. She’ll let him try some dismounts, but she says he’s not getting near a triple until he’s at least 12.
He thinks about trying it anyway, sometimes, when the coach is distracted by the girls practicing uneven bars, but he so far, he’s stayed on the obstacle course that Anna set up for him. He thinks he can talk her into it.
This might be what they mean by “weird.”
But Robert can’t really help it. Once there’s something that he wants to know or do, it’s all he can think about. So he tries a little harder, focuses a little more. He’s got a lot of energy to use up - the reason his parents started all of the lessons in the first place, his mom says with a smile - so he has the energy and he’s going to do everything he can to get better.
It always works, so. Weird or focused, at least it works.
*
“Is John coming over after practice?” Robert’s mom asks. She’s making lunch, stirring a pot of what smells like spaghetti sauce, and his sisters and brother are playing in the living room. His dad is reading the morning paper at the table and drinking a glass of milk.
Robert shrugs, looking out the window for John’s mom’s station wagon. “His parents are usually okay with it as long as he’s home to go to temple tomorrow. So, I think so, yeah. You’re picking us up, right?”
“Sure,” she says, smiling at him and reaching over to ruffle his hair. Bert leans into it and squishes his face up.
“How’s school been?” his dad asks, folding up the paper and leaning in.
“All right,” Robert says. “I got an ‘A’ on my spelling test and Mr. Mason asked me to help when we do our gymnastics unit in gym. I’ve been working pretty hard to get my math grade up, too.”
Bert works really hard on a lot of stuff. His grades are pretty good and he spends a lot of time at the gym and practicing piano because he refuses to be one of those kids that doesn’t qualify for the meet or the one that makes Miss Lawson shake her head and sigh.
“That’s great, honey,” his mom says. Robert turns his head away from the window just long enough to see his mom shoot his dad a look that Robert can’t really read.
Adults are weird.
“Been making any new friends lately?” his dad asks in a weird voice.
Robert shrugs again. “I don’t know … not really?”
His mom laughs a funny laugh and, seriously, what is going on?
“That doesn’t matter, does it, sweetie?” she says lightly. “You’ve got John and Caroline and your family. You don’t need anything else.”
Bert shrugs again, turning back toward the window.
He has friends. Not, like, a lot, but he has them. Mostly, they’re people like John (who takes the same gymnastics classes as Bert) or Caroline (who Bert travels to regional piano competitions with for two years).
And they have fun together, which is probably good, since he has to spend a lot of time with both of them. And he knows that there are a lot of people in his ward who hang out with each other but don’t call him. He guesses that’s kind of weird, too.
It’s just never bothered him before now.
Finally, Mrs. Schueler’s green station wagon pulls up in front of his house and John leans out the back window, waving at Robert.
“Mrs. Schueler’s here!” he says, jumping up, excited for another practice. “Bye!”
Robert’s not sure, but he thinks his parents’ goodbyes sound a little … weird. But when his mom picks them up after practice, she brings them string cheese and carrots for them to munch on the way home, just like always.
Robert more or less forgets about that specific conversation, but something about all of that stays with him, a little itch in the back of his head, telling him that maybe he should have more friends.
**
Prayer
Bert stops praying when he’s nine years old. There’s not even really a reason, but he will never forget the first time that he closed his eyes to go to sleep without praying to God, the rush and the terror and the feeling of wrongrightness all at once.
None of that ever fully goes away.
**
Show
It would be a stretch to say that Refused saves Bert’s life.
But maybe, in a way, they do.
Hearing the songs led to songs stuck in Bert’s head. The songs led to scribbling lyrics on his notebooks. The lyrics led to other kids stopping him in the hall when they recognized the band (okay, that happened once, but it was awesome). Bert has always thought that music could change lives, but he’d never known that it could change his life.
Bert still isn’t sure how he talked his mom into letting him go all the way to Salt Lake City with John to see Refused just a couple of months after he claims straightedge. She hates them, hates all of the music that Bert’s been listening to lately and she’s convinced that he’s going to get drunk and do drugs and have sex and shit.
But Bert doesn’t need that stuff. He gets it now, that he was chasing after the wrong people, that the people he wanted to like him were idiots. And Bert doesn’t need all of those losers. All of those people he used to think were so cool - Jason Rhodes and his friends - they’re all burning out every weekend, getting drunk and high and stupid. And Bert doesn’t need to belong with them because not doing all of that stuff doesn’t make him a loser - he’s fucking straightedge.
And Bert is better than those losers. He’s going to Salt Lake City to see Refused and it’s going to be awesome - John’s girlfriend’s brother’s band is opening up and they’d said that Bert could hand out his zine at the zine table. He grabs fifty copies of “Drugs Can Suck My Dick,” hoping that he has enough copies.
Bert straightens up and checks out the mirror carefully - walking the line between “mom-friendly” and “show-ready” is a hard one, but he knows that it’s safer to stick to baggy cargo shorts, a black shirt, and Chucks. He wishes he could wear his sharpied SXE shirt with “drugs can suck my dick” on it - it would be good publicity for the zine, but she would get pissed if he saw it when he got home from the show. It’s like she doesn’t believe him that this is a good influence, that it’s loud and, yeah, there’s swearing, and it’s outside of god, but it’s also about being clean and sober and living your best life.
Bert swears that god is cool with him stepping outside of stuff every once in a while when it’s about living your best life. He’s almost sure, anyway.
“Another line in a history book, another line to justify the lands that we took,” Bert belts out. His parents and little brothers and sister are out, so it’s just Bert. He doesn’t turn the music he has playing quietly from a portable CD player up, though. His mom might be putting up with the music, but it doesn’t mean he’s willing to chance her coming home to “This Trust Will Kill Again” playing in her home.
Bert finishes the song and then gives himself one final look in the mirror. He nods decisively.
“Best night ever.”
If he says it enough, maybe it’ll be true.
**
Van
Branden, in particular, hates the tour van.
It might be because he’s the one that bathes the most. Bert will give him that.
“God, this is disgusting,” Branden shouts, throwing … something that has partially dissolved up toward Bert and Quinn’s heads. “I don’t even know what that used to be. Fuck.”
Jepha’s sprawled out in the back back seat, his legs hooked over a couple of amps. Fucker can sleep anywhere.
Branden’s shouting and Quinn is scowling and Jeph is sleeping and Bert … Bert loves the fucking van.
**
Quinn (again)
Bert loved choir class, once. Once wasn’t even that long ago - about six months.
But, like many of the things that Bert loved, choir is apparently dorky and weird. Which, well, is fine if you don’t care about being liked.
And Bert doesn’t, okay?
But he would maybe like to, just once, have something that he loved that didn’t make him weirder.
Still, there are parts of choir that are okay. Just not the music itself (he’s pretty sure that’s what makes it dorky).
Bert likes singing, at the end of the day. He likes the feeling of closing his eyes and having something go right.
And there’s this guy, this vaguely familiar skinny, blonde kid who always slides into class at the last minute, his skateboard clattering to the ground.
“Allman,” the teacher sighs, shaking his head and marking something down on his attendance sheet.
The blonde kid always grins.
Bert kind of wishes he knew why the kid was always running late, but Bert is a treble or an alto and the Allman dude is a low tenor (without much range). So it’s not like they’re even on the same side of the room.
Halfway through sophomore year, the blonde kid stops showing up to choir. Around the same time, Bert requests a drop from the class.
He could use the study hall anyway.
**
Temple
Bert doesn’t stop going to temple after school all at once. It’s not a sudden revelation or something he fights out with his parents when it happens - that comes later. It starts because he has choir practice after school, then because there’s “I’m With Stupid” and he and another guy he knows have been talking about writing a zine about Utah hardcore that isn’t all about drugs and drinking and premarital sex.
So when it starts, it’s kind of hard to argue with. Sure, he’s not going to the Young Men’s activities with guys from his ward anymore, but he’s involved in wholesome, God-fearing activities like music, so his mom lets it slide.
He’s pretty sure his dad is just relieved that he has stuff to do and, presumably, friends to do that stuff with.
Temple had been so much a part of his life before that it kind of surprises Bert when he realizes that he doesn’t miss it.
Then, he starts attending temple at the meetinghouse only on Sundays with his parents and little brothers and sisters.
Maybe it’s because it happens so slowly that nobody, including Bert, really sees it coming, but eventually, he finds more and more excuses and shows up less and less. Bert doesn’t know if it makes him a sinner, but he is shocked to find that he’s not that worried about it.
**
Gerard
The first time he kisses Gerard Way like he means it and Gerard kisses back feels like getting kicked in the gut in the best possible way.
Later, Bert knows that he should regret it, but he never does. He needed that kick in the guts.
**
Night on the Street
His parents didn’t kick him out, not the way you’d think, not in some Lifetime made-for-tv movie way. There was no throwing his stuff out into the street and screaming.
Just silence. Just Bert’s mom dropping his works on his bed and him turning over blearily only long enough to see the tears on her face.
“I should go, huh?” he rasps into the silence.
He can’t imagine how hard it is for her to nod, but she does.
*
He crashes with friends for a couple of days, because he can, because for at least a while, even tweaker friends are generous enough to let you sleep on their couch or their dirty floor.
But tweaker generosity runs quick and it’s only just over two weeks (seventeen days) later that Bert runs out of places to run.
He thinks about John’s house, but knows that he can’t actually see Mr. or Mrs. Schueler like this. Just a few more days, just enough time to get his shit together, just enough money for one more hit, just enough time to figure everything out.
Which leaves him at least a few days of not knowing where the hell to go.
Bert even looks in the fucking phone book (because he is an awful damn homeless person) under “homeless” and then under “shelter.” There are only two homeless shelters in the entire area - one in Midvale and one in Salt Lake City - and none of them take minors.
So that was time well-spent.
Bert is huddled next to a wall, his backpack next to him and his head down on his arms when he feels a kick to his thigh.
“What?” he says, looking up and his eyes blurring a little - he’s started coming down, finally, and was just fucking hoping to sleep for a little while before waking back up to his life of suck.
A guy who looks like more a pile of coats than an actual guy shakes his head. “Stupid fuck. You’re going to get picked up out here.”
Bert shakes his head, squinting at the guy. “T’ fuck?”
“Vagrancy, kid,” the guy says. “Sitting out in the open like this, they’ll take you in.”
Bert shrugs. What does he care.
“Yeah?” the guy says, leaning down to grab at Bert’s arm. Bert tries to roll away half-assedly, but it doesn’t really work. “You got someone to bail you out?”
Bert shakes his head.
The guy takes his hand off Bert’s arm and holds it out instead. “C’mon, get up. It’s fucking colder out here, anyway. I’ll show you a good windbreak.”
Bert stands up. He needs some help, but he stands up.
**
Heartbreak
“God, Bert.”
“What?” He looks up, blinking hard to get his eyes to focus. Fuck. “Fucking … what.” It’s not a question. Even as fucked up as he is, Bert knows this line.
She just stares at him, her fingers picking absently at the looser threads at the bottom of her uniform shirt, the yellow piping turning mustard with grime and dirt. Her eyes are a little unfocused, like she’d smoked a bowl out behind the dumpsters with the other fry cook, and her hands are moving fast. High, then. High, but not fucked up.
“Have you even moved since I left this morning?” Her voice is a scratchy. He hadn’t noticed that earlier. Of course, he’s been pulling the wallpaper off the walls for the last four hours, so he probably wasn’t noticing much when she left for her shift at McDonalds.
“I moved,” he says, going back to what he’s doing. “There’s some shit on the table. Bring me my kit?”
Katie throws his kit toward his head - it doesn’t snap the needle when it hits the wall, so that’s all right. And he notices she takes her own fucking hit with her as she goes into the bathroom muttering about “stupid junkie fucks.”
Living with Katie … hasn’t work out like Bert had imagined. He’d kind of seen it as being just like when her mom was out of town and they’d sneak him into their house - they’d fucked in every room in the house and shot up just enough and just often enough that they always had the manic edge that made everything fucking amazing.
Living with Katie for real is not like that.
**
The Used
Better than anything - better than a half-remembered feeling of flight from the uneven bars, better than hitting just the right notes in the Apassionista, better than fucking meth - is the day that Bert runs into Quinn Allman in the used CD section of Moore Music. Bert hangs out there more than he probably should - he doesn’t steal anything from them, though, and sometimes the guy that works the counter in the afternoons will bum Bert a couple of cigarettes.
Well, it’s better than anything in retrospect. At the time, it means less than nothing.
Bert’s there that afternoon, helpfully alphabetizing the M section (people always forget that Mc is its own section, not a part of the M section and it drives Bert fucking nuts). This guy walks in and the only thing that Bert really sees is “tall” and “bottle blond” and “probably doesn’t have any good shit” (the last is purely habit). He goes back to alphabetizing and it isn’t until he hears Chris say “Hey, Quinn” that he turns back around.
Bert knew a Quinn once. Sorta.
Hard to tell if this is the same guy - his back is to Bert and his hair is obviously not the color he was born with. It’s not that it really matters, it’s not like they were friends, but Bert still kind of wants to know if this is that guy. Bert squints a little and shrugs. Could be. Quinn’s not that common of a name.
“Mind if I hang another sign?” The guy - Quinn - asks Chris.
Chris shrugs and waves his hand toward the bulletin board on the side wall of the store, just beneath the old Operation Ivy posters that the owner won’t sell for love, money, or blowjobs. Not that Bert has exactly tried to offer all of them for the posters, but he has definitely implied, to no avail. “Go for it, man. Nobody yet, huh?”
Quinn shakes his head “no” as he turns around to walk back toward the bulletin board. He has a sheaf of papers in his hand with those hand-cut tear off strips at the bottom. If Bert squints, he can see someone has written “Sing, Motherfucker” at the top of the page in Sharpie.
Bert might fall in love with this band. He’ll definitely have to catch them live sometime. He squints at the name below the title and repeats it out loud, not sure if he’s ever as quiet as he thinks he is.
Strange Itch. Right.
He snickers a little and goes back to the Ms - he’s almost done with Metallica, which is a fucking chore in and of itself.
*
The flyer is still hanging at the bottom of the bulletin board a month later when Bert is back in Moore, fronting like he’s there to bug Chris on his midday shift, but mostly trying to stay the fuck away from the Timpanogos Memorial Gardens, where he knows, knows, fucking knows he can score.
He promised his mom he’d at least try.
Bert is sitting on the floor, his hair falling in his face and his knees curled up to his chin.
“You should call them,” Chris says suddenly, lifting a rollie to his mouth and licking the paper. Bert blinks at him.
“What?”
“Them,” Chris motions with his chin. “They need a singer, dude.”
Bert blinks, realizing he’s been idly swatting at the tear-offs to Quinn’s flyer, all but two still attached. Fucking. Fucking shit. He does shit he doesn’t know he’s doing all the time now, fuck.
“What’s wrong with them, nobody wants to join their band?” Bert snickers, trying to find some place of meanness to pull from to cover the pure want that’s sitting somewhere in his stomach.
Chris shrugs and hands Bert one of the two smokes he’s just rolled and bumps the door outside to the alley open with his hip. “They’ve tried most of the people who do. They’re … picky.”
“What makes you think they’d want me then?” Bert sneers, still hoping some kind of veneer is covering him.
Chris shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t know if they would. But it’s not like you’ve got much to lose.”
Bert stares at him for a minute. Nobody has been that fucking brutal with him since he got out of rehab.
His mouth stretches a little, almost resembling a smile.
Bert fingers the tab with someone’s phone number he’d torn off a week ago, the numbers almost rubbed off by his fingers in his pocket.
**
Quinn (one more time)
Less than a week later, Bert still hasn’t called the number. He excuses it in a lot of ways - he’ll do it later, he wants to finish this cigarette, maybe when he’s just a little bit drunk.
In the end of the day, he never does call.
Bert’s mom keeps asking him when he’s going to do something - and by something, she always seems to mean “go back to school, get a respectable job and a haircut, and finally stop embarrassing the family,” though at least, to her credit, she doesn’t say it that way. Not out loud.
Bert is doing something. Sort of. He helps Chris out often enough that Chris is talking about getting the owner to give Bert some hours where he’s actually working there instead of just lurking. He takes out the garbage for the guys at Chef’s Table, so he gets free dinners every night, even if they are a little cold. He’s providing for himself, for fuck’s sake, even if it’s not at a 9-to-5 job.
Bert knows that his mom just worries. And, really, it’s been so long since he wasn’t actively giving her a reason to worry that he can’t much begrudge her it.
Still.
He’s hanging out outside of the City Limits Tavern, listening to shitty disco music that’s echoing out the door into the back alley. Sometimes, they let him sweep up cigarette butts and keep the clearly underage kids from trying to sneak in the back door, so he shows up a couple of times a week to get a couple of comped beers and a basket of popcorn. He takes a drag off of his cigarette, singing a few bars of “Tell Everyone We’re Dead” and casting an appraising glance at the cigarettes scattered around the ground - weekends are always good nights to find mostly-untouched cigarettes to re-roll. The weekend before, he’d managed to roll eight cigarettes off of discarded half-assed Mormon cheerleader cigarettes.
He’s just found one that must have two, maybe three drags off it when a big, white tennis shoe steps right the fuck on it.
“What the fuck, man?” Bert snaps, looking up (because he’s always looking up) at a blonde dude he kind of recognizes.
The guy is staring at him. Bert’s also used to that, but it’s not anything he likes any better.
“The fuck, man?” he snaps, kicking at the guy’s big stupid foot. “I was going to smoke that.”
The guy tilts his head to the side and bites his lip a little.
“Fucking what?” Bert snaps, leaning down to take the smooshed cigarette, figuring most of the tobacco is probably still in it, even if it’s all flat. Better than nothing.
“You remind me of someone,” the dude says, finally, his voice kind of unsure.
Oh, awesome. Bert hopes like fuck he’s not some old hookup or trick or some damn thing. “Sure. Great. Good times. Go the fuck away.”
Normally, he tries to charm the clientele a little for the hope of some free shit, but fuck this guy. Bert pulls his arms in a little in case he has to shove or punch and run.
The blonde guy looks confused. “What? No. Wait, what? No, aren’t you … Rob? Robert? Something? You went to Timpanogos High? Sang in the choir and shit?”
Bert narrows his eyes again and looks at the guy - bottle blond, skinny as fuck - and shit starts to click.
“Bert. Fuck, yeah. Man, you’re … Quinn something, right?” Bert extends his hand, not quite an apology, but at least an acknowledgement. It’s the closest thing Quinn’s going to get.
“Allman, yeah,” Quinn grabs Bert’s hand and actually shakes it, like he’s some kid who was raised with manners. “How’s it been going?”
Bert knows the rumors about him - they range from the completely batshit to the totally plausible to the ones that hit a little close to home. He shrugs as he crouches down to deconstruct the cigarette and put the tobacco into his pouch. “All right, I guess. Kicking meth and crack and sleeping in my mom’s basement, so pretty horrifying as far as things go, but it could be worse.”
He peeks up to catch Quinn’s face, just to check.
Quinn’s face looks blank, but his eyes are following Bert’s fingers, either distracted by the activity or trying to be distracted. Bert can appreciate it either way. Even if he’s freaked out, he’s hiding it well. Bert can respect that.
They sit in silence that couldn’t really be called companionable for a few more minutes.
Bert doesn’t mean to start singing under his breath, but it’s kind of something he does without thinking, so.
“Hey,” Quinn says suddenly, fast like he’s afraid he won’t say it if he doesn’t say it now. “What are you doing right now?”
Bert looks up at Quinn through his eyelashes as he tucks his tobacco pouch in his shorts pocket and stands back up. “Right now? Not a goddamn thing. Why?”
“Want to meet some guys?” Quinn says quickly again, his mouth quirking quickly into a nervous smile.
Bert could take it to mean something more suggestive or something more monetary, but there is something so … nervous about Quinn that he’s pretty sure that he’ll be fine.
Sometimes, there’s nothing behind a smile but a fucking smile.
“Sure,” Bert says.
*
Six months later, Bert is detoxing yet again and shivering on Quinn’s bed, his boxers crumpled between his thighs and almost falling off his hips. Quinn has wrapped himself around Bert and laid down behind him, anchoring him to the bed.
“I bet I scared the fucking shit out of you when you saw me that time,” Bert says, not having to clarify which time because it’s Quinn and Quinn is remarkably good at getting things, even from Bert. Maybe even especially from Bert.
Quinn just holds him quietly and lets Bert shake it out.
Bert’s pretty sure the lack of answer is his answer.
**
The Baby
Bert still doesn’t talk about it.
**
Fame
The first time that Bert feels a little bit famous wasn’t actually when he walks (skulks) into Ozzie fucking Osbourne’s front door with his youngest daughter. Though that is amazing.
It was actually the first time that a server gets flustered in a restaurant.
They are sitting in a booth in Waffle House in buttfuck Ohio and all that Bert’s doing is hoping that Jepha and Branden could either get hashbrowns made without butter or at least that the Waffle House people would lie about it so that Bert could get his damn pancakes.
Jepha is sprawled out (he’s always sprawled out), his ankle hooked behind Bert’s and his finger’s playing with Quinn’s hair. He’s leaning toward Branden, making him share his menu because Jeph is “too comfortable to lift an arm.” Especially ridiculous considering Jeph can only eat three damn things on every Waffle House menu in America.
Quinn is half-asleep and Branden is either very entertained by Jeph or very annoyed - it’s hard to tell which way Branden will ever go until he’s done it.
Sometimes, bugging Branden is like teasing a viper. Bert’s bets are on Jeph, if only because he knows that he himself is much, much more annoying and yet continues to live.
“What can I get y’all?”
Bert looks up and the girl is pretty young - probably 17 or 18 - and has what is probably a very punk haircut for some small ass rural town - the bangs on her fauxhawk are dyed almost the exact same color as the streaks in Bert’s hair. Her little nametag says “Bonnie.”
Bert grins at her, wide and big and happy. He loves it when the town misfit ends up at his table.
“We are fan-fucking-mazing, Bonnie,” Bert says, leaning across the table and tapping right next to her order pad. “We have had a long night of driving and we are desperately needing some pancakes.”
She smiles, almost against her will, Bert thinks. God, 17 is cute.
After they order, Bert sees Bonnie over in the corner, flipping through a CD case quickly. She pulls out a familiar CD sleeve and flips it over, her eyes narrowing.
Bert grins a little. Because that CD, that has their fucking faces on it, their words and music in it. That CD is the culmination of all good things that Bert has ever had happen that he never could deserve.
When she comes back later with an additional set of vegan hashbrowns (Bert doesn’t even care if they’re lying and he kind of doubts that the Annoying Vegan Diet Twins do at this point, either), she is a little flustered and awkward.
Finally, as the current roadie that has been designated payment manager pays the bill - not all bands have them, but the management flatly refused to hand any of his band several thousand dollars in cash, which Bert is kind of proud of - Bonnie fidgets at the front of the table.
“Look,” she finally says. “This is ridiculous. I know who you guys are. I like your music. Could you just sign this?”
She holds out a copy of their album and a black Sharpie with the end chewed all to shit.
They all do. And Bert gives her a big, sloppy kiss on the check because, seriously.
Seriously, this is his life.
**
Quinn (again and again and again)
Bert remembers shit. The first time he smoked crack, the first time he had sex, the first time someone fucked him. He remembers all of them, even the drug shit that shouldn’t be crystal clear.
But he doesn’t remember the first time that he realizes that he’s fucking stupid forever in love with Quinn.
Maybe it’s because there’s never been a time that he hasn’t been in love with Quinn. Like, before he’d ever even fucking met him, maybe Quinn had a piece of his stupid heart before it was ever broken.