Oh, look, Gerard sobriety genfic!
...apparently this is my subgenre of choice. Whee! Also, check out the icon strangecobwebs made me just for this story! She also betaed, as did the fantabulous missmollyetc, and iuliamentis was her usual terribly patient self while I lost my mind over this. Thank you all!


Gerard, August 2004.
Gen. PG. 1,962 words.
It's no surprise that there's someone else in the bed.


Seventeen Days Time

Gerard wakes up to an awful taste in his mouth and someone else in his bed.

He's wearing pajamas, too warm and sweat-damp, leaving him feeling smothered. He's got his own pillow, but he's not in his bunk, so he must be in a hotel. He doesn't remember where and he's not sure he ever knew. His head pounds and his mouth tastes like the floor of their old van.

It's no surprise that there's someone else in the bed. Gerard can't remember the last time he was left alone. Whoever it is, they're holding awfully still, but he can feel the presence of another body behind him. When he turns his head a little--not enough to be definitively awake--his closed eyelids are dull red. Whoever it is left the lamp turned on.

Gerard turns back toward the darkness on his own side of the bed, curling in tighter on himself. There aren't that many people it could be, lying in bed with him, and he doesn't think he's ready to face any of them yet.

He reaches for memories and can't come up with anything coherent. He yelled a lot at some point, which seems like a long time ago but probably wasn't. He remembers Frank's stubborn, expressionless stare... Mikey's face crumpling when Gerard hit just the wrong (right) nerve... Ray rolling his eyes and scowling. He thinks he might have hit Ray. He thinks he might have been crying.

"Gerard?"

The voice doesn't belong to Frank, or Mikey, or Ray, though, and Gerard moves before he can think, thrashing over to his other side.

"Bob?"

His voice comes out small and rusty, the name barely recognizable even in his own ears, but it is Bob, fully dressed and sitting on top of what covers are left on the other side of the bed. He has some of Gerard's Hellboy comics in his lap, and he looks uncertain in a way that none of the others would have, no matter what Gerard did before he passed out.

Gerard wonders whether he's being punished, or Bob is being hazed. "What'd I do?"

Bob smiles a little at that and seems to relax, and Gerard abruptly remembers why they all like Bob so much.

"You acted like a guy ten days into kicking three addictions at once, and then you fell asleep for an entire day."

Gerard licks his lips, which doesn’t help the taste in his mouth, and squints past Bob at the alarm clock, trying to make sense of the glowing numbers. They're blue, which is the wrong color--he tries to remember if they changed hotels, if they drove somewhere, if he did something to the last alarm clock. He cringes at the thought of being that rock star, trashing hotel rooms, but when he looks back at Bob he's there, waiting patiently.

"Does that mean now I'm eleven days in?"

"That's it, keep looking on the bright side."

Gerard nods against his pillow, but it's not much of a bright side. Eleven days into what, exactly? Into the rest of his life without any of the things that make life bearable (make this life possible), a chemical investment at the beginning of the night that pays off for hours, on stage and after. It's not even like he'd have to kill himself to end this death march. Rock bottom isn't the only other option. He won't do coke again--that was stupid. He gets that.

But he could have just one drink for courage, just enough so he can deal with Frank and Mikey and Ray and whatever Bob doesn't want to tell him he said--Jesus, they're supposed to be on tour, and he's fucking things up for everyone, blowing all this time trying to be something he doesn't even want to be--

He doesn't notice he's closed his eyes until Bob says "Gerard?" again really softly, like he doesn't want to wake him.

Gerard looks up at Bob, backlit in gold like an angel with a lip-piercing, the silhouette effect making his blue eyes dark as he holds Gerard's gaze. Gerard clenches his shaking hands between his knees and thinks that if he could just get his shit together--just one drink and he'd be better--he could try to draw that. It would probably still come out wrong, but...

"Do you want something to drink?"

Gerard's mouth falls open, and he tries to say yes and just starts laughing, pushing up on one elbow and nodding and laughing. It sounds deranged--it's a stage laugh, a character laugh, a laugh meant for a mic and a crowd of thousands, and it's just ripping itself out of him with no one to hear but Bob. Bob raises his eyebrows and smiles a little, like he thinks Gerard is actually laughing and the joke is on him.

Gerard's stomach hurts and he can hardly breathe, and his hair is plastered to his cheeks and clammy on the back of his neck. He pushes himself half-upright, trying to choke back the crazed giggles, and Bob just keeps watching him, calmly, like this is a perfectly normal reaction. Later, Gerard thinks with a clarity like the light shining off a comic book's glossy page, later he'll ask Bob what he did just now and Bob will say he acted like a guy eleven days in. He wipes his mouth against the arm of his pajamas and tries to catch his breath.

"Yes. Please." His mother would be so proud.

Bob's smile widens. "We've got water in bottles and water on tap. What'll it be?"

Gerard lets out another hoarse little burst of laughter, but it sounds more like an actual laugh this time. He feels light-headed and dizzy, but it's better than feeling crazed. He'll take it.

"Bottle."

"You got it," Bob says, and reaches over to pick one up from the nightstand. He opens it for Gerard with a bartender's flourish.

Gerard forces himself not to gulp--the first sip just tastes like his mouth, and he wants to spit, but there's nowhere to do that except into the bottle or all over himself or Bob, none of which seem like good ideas. He swishes and swallows instead, and tries again.

Bob is still watching him. Gerard's attention is caught when Bob finally looks away.

"Do you, um, want me to call someone else?" This question, Bob asks carefully, and Gerard gulps water and wishes it was anything that could make him not know what that might mean.

"Everybody told me to wake them up if you asked for them. I think Mikey wanted me to wake him if you talked in your sleep."

Gerard's stomach turns uneasily at the disjointed memory of his nightmares. They're never as simple as the nightmares he writes. The others have heard him, in the van, in the bus, in the last ten days, but Bob isn't the other guys. The other guys left Bob with him, and he feels for an awful second like he's been on stage without realizing it.

"Did I?"

Bob shrugs. "I was reading."

Bob's a tech. Being on stage in front of Bob is just... sound check. Gerard breathes again.

He looks past him again, and this time the clock tells him something: it's a little after three in the morning, too early to be awake though he's already feeling like it's too late to get to sleep. It's definitely the wrong time to bug any of the others, not after yesterday, no matter what they told Bob, though he feels bad about keeping Bob awake and on watch. Bob's a friend, but he's not really one of them.

Gerard scoots up and curls against the pillow, half upright and clutching his bottle of water. Bob's still watching him, and normally the silent scrutiny would be driving Gerard crazy, but in this weird middle-of-the-night bubble, in the midst of every other way he already is crazy, he feels like it might be driving him sane.

He kind of wants to write that down, but he knows that in the morning--or whenever he finds it again and tries to make something of it--it'll just be an incoherent scribble divorced from this moment and Bob's steady presence.

Bob says, "Can I ask you a stupid question?"

Gerard nods.

"How do you feel?"

Gerard looks away--the question brings his nightmares creeping up again, and the need that's too big to express with any variation on I really fucking need a drink.

"I feel like I know exactly how to make this stop," Gerard says, addressing Bob's outstretched feet. Right this second, what he feels is weirdly detached, if not quite comfortably numb. "I feel like I'm missing something," and he shakes his head, because that's it, but that doesn't cover it.

"I just--I feel like part of me is missing, or I just--I can't get my balance, I can't figure out how to get through this, I just want it to be over but it's been eleven days and it just keeps going."

Gerard cuts himself off before he can sound more incoherent and suicidal than he thinks he already has--and he's over that, at least. He's not dying to get out of this, he just doesn't want to be doing this recovering thing forever. When he looks up, though, Bob isn't backing away.

He looks kind of enlightened, like Gerard said something that meant something to him, and if he did, Gerard hopes Bob will share. Bob sets the comics aside on the night stand, and Gerard stares at the stretch of his back, the calm, smooth way Bob moves, the light on his hair and skin and faded t-shirt.

He turns back to Gerard and looks him in the eye again. "Okay if I touch you?"

It's not the follow-up Gerard expected--his mouth goes dry and his heart lurches--but he nods and tightens his grip on the bottle of water. Bob doesn't really move in, though, just reaches out one hand and bumps Gerard's chin up. His hand moves on past, curling around Gerard's throat, warm on his skin, and then all Gerard feels is a firm, steady pressure up under his jaw, pressing against his pulse. It's racing.

"Feel that?"

Gerard nods against Bob's fingers, and Bob's fingers don't move away.

"That's your beat, right there," Bob says. "Hold on to that. You singers always get lost without somebody to give you the beat."

Gerard's hands clench on the bottle of water, but he holds it out to Bob's free hand, and Bob takes it from him gently and reaches back to put it on the nightstand. His fingers don't leave Gerard's throat. When his other hand comes back, Gerard reaches for it, pressing his fingers clumsily to the underside of his wrist. Bob's pulse is steady, far slower than his own.

Gerard holds on, leaning closer, until Bob tugs his arm back, taking Gerard's gripping hand with it. Bob shifts his hand to curl around the back of Gerard's neck and pulls. Gerard tumbles into him, practically in Bob's lap, and Bob gathers him in and holds onto him, though Gerard knows he's sweaty and disgusting and probably smells like week-old tour laundry. Bob's heart is steady under Gerard's ear, a rhythm that can carry him forward as long as he can hear it.

"You're our drummer," Gerard murmurs. "We're keeping you."

"Oh yeah?" Bob says, ruffling Gerard's hair, getting it blessedly off his neck for a second. The words are skeptical, but he can hear Bob's smile. "That the royal we, Gerard?"

Gerard just closes his eyes and smiles and holds on to the beat.