The Road to You [oneshot]

Title: The Road to You.
Author: saint_sorrows
Pairing: Bert/Gerard
Rating: NC-17
POV: Third
Summary: Bert is sleeping off withdrawal. He dreams of hazel eyes and nervous smiles.
Disclaimer: Fictional. All of it. Don’t sue me.
Warnings: Some disturbing imagery, swears, an unnecessary amount of screaming.
Notes: I’ve not posted anything for a while, and I started tapping away at this last night and thought I’d share it. It is strange. It is confusing. It is badly written. I just wanted to let my mind go for a while. Approx. 2000 words, oneshot.



They’re sat on the grass overlooking the main stage, on a high rise of rocks and soil that seems to high to be standing ground. Bert’s not sure but judging from the sun and the crowd and the Spring Break atmosphere that bustles below, it feels like Warped Tour, the smell of burning and oil tangible in the air. Gerard is laughing his stupid honking laugh beside him and pointing off into the distance, hair wet with grease and sweat, dirt streaked down his face like he’s showered in shit. Bert stares at him, not really sure what he’s saying, feeling the solidity of the ground beneath him and wondering how stoned he really is. He sits for a moment, trying to remember, but his thoughts are obscured by Gerard’s pale arms, waving and gesticulating, unusually bare. His hair billows back off his face. Bert thinks he looks beautiful.

Gerard stands then, turning to look at him with bright eyes, the back half of his hair brutal crimson, the noon sun blazing above him and bleaching the sky of blue.

‘Come on, Brett,’ he says in a distant voice. Bert recognises it and there’s a dull twist somewhere in his chest as he reaches out a hand, nervous, desperate-

And he stops as a copy of himself walks by, grabbing Gerard’s hand and turning him around in some strange, clumsy pirouette. Gerard laughs and stumbles on the uneven ground, grabbing at him, tie billowing in wind he can‘t feel. It’s Bert as he was, then, with dark hair and crimson bruises veining the insides of his arms. He kisses Gerard and they laugh in an altogether private way, foreheads touching, grinning dirty and secret.

Bert feels sick to his stomach. The eyes of his dark-haired counterpart are blurred, like his subconscious is unable to recall, and as fingers tighten around Gerard’s pale wrists, he’s trying to get to his feet, slipping on the loose earth, sliding down the sloping rise.

‘Gerard!’ his own voice sounds drowned by distance, and as he slips further in the dirt, he cries out in horror, scrabbling at the rocks and sand. ‘Gerard! Get away from me!’

On the edge of the rise, the past tense of Bert smiles wide and leering, and shoves Gerard sharply.

‘NO!’ Bert flings out an arm to reach for him, only slipping further, almost bodily hanging from the crumbling rocks. Gerard’s eyes widen and he lurches back where he’s wobbling dangerously, arms wind milling in an almost comedic fashion, body bending back in a graceful arch as gravity grabs at him and he lets out a soundless cry-


Bert vaults upright in his bed, panting hard and fumbling for the light. The filament flares white as he flicks the switch and he looks around, chest heaving, sweat damp on his skin.

Outside his window, the night is calm and quiet. He runs a shaking hand through stringy yellow hair and sighs.

‘Fuck.’

Without thinking on it any further, he reaches for his cell phone and dials. Lying back against the mattress, he presses it to his ear and listens hard, straining, as though he’ll be able to hear life beyond the tinny ringing on the other side of the States.

There’s a click and a breath. Bert bites his lip, listening to the familiar rush of mumbling, a few clunks and fidgets, and then a whisper.

‘H-hello?’

Sleepy and soft. Bert closes his eyes and listens, still on the bed. A short pause falls. ‘Hello..? I- Bert? Is that you?’

He doesn’t reply. Another hesitant silence, then the dial tone sounds, dead and constant.

Lowering the phone slowly, Bert stares at the ceiling, then throws back the duvet and gets up.

He needs a hit.

He’ll settle for a cigarette.


Gerard’s screaming in his face this time, greasepaint glistening white across his cheekbones, the black bar obscuring his eyes like the inky smear of his hair, dripping across his face in all its sweat-slicked glory. He’s singing, but it’s not the singing Bert knows, nasal and wretched and raw, but purely animal in itself, no longer coherent words but the stream of white noise Bert identifies with the stench of flesh and tearing teeth, rip hack sluicing blood down his chin.

The lights are flashing around them and there’s a sea of hands, clawing for the stage, grey-skinned and empty eyed kids with dead faces and gaping mouths. Bert feels like he’s the only person alive. Gerard is writhing on the stage floor and he looks strange, broken, like he’s been dropped from a great height. His leg juts out at a strange angle from the knee; dark stains are cruses around the corners of his nose and mouth where his face is tipped back against the white flood lights, the bracket of his neck unnatural and awkward-looking. It reminds Bert of all those times they fucked. It reminds Bert of the night Gerard almost died doing speedballs with him in the back of the bus with his silly domino-mask eyeshadow smeared all down his fucking face.

He looks at Bert with his wide eyes, pupils blown, irises dull grey and glossy, fingers the clutch the microphone crushed and broken. Around them, the noise level rises to a deafening roar, and Gerard laughs, long and high and mad mad mad mad mad



This time when he wakes, Bert screams, and he lunges for the bedside lamp, tearing out of bed as he beats it roughly against the nightstand, floods of adrenaline rushing through him and seizing him and demanding that he FUCK FUCK FUCK destroy something, destroy everything.

He rips his room to pieces, snarling to himself, and with bleeding hands and bruised knees, crawls back into bed and pulls his pillow over his head.

‘Fuck,’ he rasps against the mattress, turning his nose straight into the fabric and pushing down, as if hoping to break his own face, to crush bone and cartilage and leave a stunning splatter of scarlet. His insides ache with sharp, feral desire. He stretches out, face down, crucifix style, and imagines the nails sinking through his skin, splintering bone and splicing veins. He‘s tethered and anchored and bound and restrained, trapped and secured and safe. Drowning in his own blood and water.

‘F-fuck, fuck. Fuck.’

A little while later, he makes his silent phone call again, and falls asleep to the familiar sound of drowsy curiosity.



He barely sleeps the next night, trapped in half-hour snatches and semi-wakeful moments of insanity, mind reeling him audio tapes of Quinn’s voice telling him over and over again are you all right man, you don’t look so good and he turns over and grunts, punching at his mattress and closing his eyes really Bert what’s wrong you look so tired and the phone rings and he snatches it up and screams and there’s a bang and his head’s spattered against the bedroom wall, dripping black, grey brain matter mashed into the plaster.

He turns over in bed again and looks at the clock with wide eyes, the letters glowing odious, malignant green that reminds him of rotting skin and phlegm and the way the night vision caught his eyes that time and he laughed, freaky, silly laughter, and licked his tiny teeth. Bert feels him inside his head, all his soft lines and square-tipped fingers. The cold tip of his nose in the curve of his cheek.

The phone shatters the silence again. Bert rips the cord out of the wall and hurls it across the room, turning over, panting hard and wiping at the sweat in his eyes, on his face, trying to forget the need need need inside him. It eats at the marrow of his bones like woodworm. He crosses his arms over his head and cries out, begging and pleading for him to make it stop, please god make it stop it hurts too bad, just give me something, anything, anything

He falls asleep to the sound of slamming doors and skittering footsteps; the soft rustle of wings on the air like sightless creatures swooping blind into his dreams. Something inside him sighs and he sweats yellow into his mattress, twisting and choking out broken jolts of mirthless laughter. The itching inside his skin grows, pulsing inside him like the hot, deep strokes of wanton desire, like masturbation, like honest to god animal-paced sex that reaches an anticlimactic crescendo of dissatisfaction.

Curling onto his side, he draws his knees to his chest and tries not to think of him, tries not to dream of his blonde halo of shining hair, his brown lashes cast down and the sharp lines of his features. Gerard’s too thin now, sitting on the floor in a dimly lit corridor with flickering overhead lights. The linoleum squeaks under Bert’s bare feet as he walks, watching Gerard sit back a little where he was curled over on himself. He raises pretty hazel eyes and smiles at Bert in an odd, sad way that makes him look so small, curled up with his skinny white legs on show and his green paper dress bleaching him all out.

It’s wrong. It’s just not normal.

‘Gerard?’ Bert tries to say, ‘Gerard, are you sick? What’s wrong with you, what are you doing here..?’

The lights start to flicker out, one by one, each shattering panel whooshing into greyness with an electric sigh. Eyes glassy, Gerard sits back further, leaning against the white wall, slowly stretching out one bandaged arm. Bert stares at him, starts toward him, panic flaring in his gut like vomit. ‘Gerard? Gerard what’s happening to you-?’

And it’s like rewind, but disturbingly chronological. Gerard’s shoulders slump into the flat of the wall, his outstretched arm lax, rust starting to flood through the gauze. Water trickles down the wall behind him, pooling on the floor, soaking into the hem of his hospital gown as his mouth drops open, head lolling to one side, eyes unfocused.

Bert screams. He screams and he runs from the rapidly outing lights, toward Gerard’s crumpled body, shattered and bruised and bloodied again, and he grabs at him and there’s a clench, a sudden warmth and tangibility of the contact and he scrubs at his hair and hauls him bodily into his arms and sobs, chokes and suffocates, feels hands claw at him, breath rush against his neck and he whips around and whispers no



‘Hey…’

Silence. Heart pounding, he wets his cracked lips and blinks a few times, shivering at the warm touch to his arm.

‘Y’okay.’ he breathes, and it’s more of a statement than a question. Gerard smiles at him, the milky sunlight rendering him in monochrome. His hair’s dark again, a little longer, spiking out in silly tufts around his cheeks. He looks about twelve.

‘I wanted to check you were doin’ all right,’ he murmurs. Under the duvet, Bert feels a socked toe brush his shin and it scratches a little. The smooth, dry warmth of Gerard’s palm against his flank is firm but gentle. He blinks at him, and lets him push a strand of stiff hair out of his eye.

‘How did you. How did you find me?’

There’s a pause. Gerard looks around the wrecked bedroom of Bert’s apartment and shrugs. There’s something in his wan smile and silly red blemish that makes Bert really not want to punch him like he ought to.

‘I got your message,’ Gerard says, almost to himself. ‘you just sounded like you needed to see me.’


A/N: Concrit welcome, I know it's really disjointed but I wanted to see whether people would still follow it simply by taking in the words. Tell me how you feel about this kinda style. Is it much too abstract, or could you cope with the changes? I'm just curious. Lay into me if you thought it sucked. Thanks for reading xo.