Would I Die For You? *UNDER CONSTRUCTION*

Pushing Frank away was an all too familiar yet sickening feeling for Gerard. He felt bad on top of everything else. He was supposed to be telling Frank about these negative feelings, not skipping class, running off to the bathroom, and hurting himself, which was exactly what he was doing. It was making him feel like complete and utter shit. Hell this whole situation was making him feel like shit. Mikey was crumbling again and Gerard couldn’t even protect him from Justin’s stupid comments. He was supposed to be protecting his little brother from stuff like that and he was failing. Worthless, insensitive, failure, the list just kept growing. He wanted it all to go away, wanted to make it stop. He wasn’t going to kill himself, not this time, but his razor seemed like the only comfort right now. He needed his release.
Gerard was surprised when he opened the door to the bathroom to find a small group of people. The bathroom was near the theater so it was out of the way of all the classrooms. Nobody just “went there” unless they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be. And by the looks of it these kinds weren’t up to any good.
There were three boys in the bathroom, two boys with mousy brown hair who couldn’t be older than 15, and the other… the other Gerard knew. Well not like knew as in they were friends, more like Gerard had a class with him. That and he was pretty well known for being the school’s drug dealer. And it seemed like the rumors were true because, fuck, there was Bert McCracken handing two freshmen a bag of white powder that Gerard suspected to cocaine. Damn.
Gerard probably should have left and like found a different bathroom but he wouldn’t move. The two freshmen were walking toward him now, eyeing him suspiciously, as they pushed past him to the door. The bell rang as soon as the door closed behind them and fuck now Gerard was stuck in there.
He looked up upon hearing a lighter flick and saw Bert lighting up a cigarette. “Fuckin’ hate the lunch rush” he mumbled, the cancer stick hanging from the corner of his mouth. Gerard couldn’t help but stare at it.
He hadn’t smoked in like four or five months, since his parents found out and made him quit. It kind of sucked since that was once of the ways he found stress relief from all the shit life was throwing at him.
“You wanna smoke?” Bert asked and Gerard drew his hungry eyes away from the cancer stick to see Bert pulling his pack back out of his pocket of his hoodie. Gerard opened his mouth to tell Bert that, no he did not want a smoke. What he did want was to get the fuck out of this bathroom and forget this ever happened but the only thing that came out of him mouth but all that came out of his mouth was a choked off stuttering sound, before he was reaching out for the cigarette which was now lit. Fuck.
Bert was smiling at him as he took his first breath and blew it out into the air above their heads. Gerard testingly did the same with his own smoke, hoping it wasn’t laced with anything and ended up in a coughing fit. “’s been a while” he spoke for the first time since entering the bathroom when he noticed Bert looking at him with an amused look on his face. Bert chuckled and shook his head before hopping up onto the counter.
“So then, I’m assuming you’re here for drugs” he said raising an eyebrow and knocking some of the ash from his cigarette into the sink. Gerard’s eyes went wide and he franticly shook his head. “No?” Bert cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Then why’d you…”
It was then, Bert trailed off staring at the older boy, that Gerard realized he had wrapped his arms around himself and was tugging on his jacket sleeves, subconsciously trying to hide his scars. He stopped instantly, letting his arms fall to his side and he noticed Bert’s daze follow them. Suddenly the younger boy was setting down his cigarette and hopping off the counter, and walking toward Gerard with purpose.
Gerard flinched as Bert grabbed his free hand and pulled down his jacket sleeve and gasped as all the faded white scars marking up the older boy’s forearm were revealed. “Gerard…” Bert whispered sounding hurt and surprised. Gerard didn’t even stop to wonder how Bert knew his name, instead ripping his arm away and pulling his sleeve back down. He turned away from Bert, trying and failing to blink back the tears that were threatening to spill.
Someone knew. He was probably going to tell everyone. Mikey would find out. Fuck, Frank would probably find out that he was cutting himself again. He’s see how useless and incapable of living he was. Frank would view him as nothing but a freak, and then again, he was a freak. Not to mention Gerard had broken his promise to his boyfriend, betrayed his trust. Frank would leave him for sure.
“Hey, you okay” Bert was suddenly right in front of Gerard. His breath reeked of booze and Gerard would have pulled away in disgust except he was to upset to care. Instead he wiped at his eyes with his jacket sleeves. He opened his mouth to answer the younger boy but all that came out was a sob. He hadn’t realized he was actually crying until right then.
“Hey, Gerard, I won’t tell anyone” Bert was saying. Gerard looked up and could tell he wasn’t lying. “Bert leaned down and took the cancer stick from Gerard’s hand and set it on the counter next to his own forgotten.
“I understand what you’re going through” Bert said turning back to Gerard. “I want to help you” Gerard raised an eyebrow “You understand…?” “It was a few years back, but yeah” The younger boy was digging in his backpack now, talking quickly. “My brother found out and told my parents. They made me start going to counseling but it didn’t help. Talking about my feelings just made me more upset ad angry. It was around that time that my friend, Dan, had gotten some coke from his cousin and let me and our other friends try it.”
Bert finally immerged from his backpack holding a sandwich in a little plastic bag which he pulled out and took a huge bite out of. Gerard figured it was his lunch. When he swallowed he continued.
“I had never felt so good, so alive.” Bert smiled. “It felt so much better than hurting myself so I stopped and started doing that. Maybe if you’d do the same it would work.”
Gerard could think of several reasons why that was a bad idea. Drugs were bad for your health and he was pretty sure we would be more likely to accidentally die than if he were cutting himself. He wanted to be in control of when and how he died. Plus he was pretty sure Frank wouldn’t be okay with it, or like anyone for that matter. Besides he wouldn’t have any money to buy drugs anyway.
On the other hand, he really, truthfully did want to stop cutting. He wanted to stop feeling guilty for breaking his promise every time he did it. Maybe… No. No and more no.
“I… No, I can’t. I’m sorry” Gerard mumbled his cheeks turning slightly pink. Bert pouted for a minute before shrugging and Gerard was surprised we wasn’t getting a fight out of the guy. “Okay whatever. But if you change your mind you know where to find me.” Gerard gave him a small hesitant smile before turning to leave.
“Wait” Gerard turned back upon hearing Bert’s voice and had just enough time to raise his hands to catch the object that had been tossed to him. In his hands was an unopened pack of cigarettes, still in their plastic wrapping. “Thought you might need them.” Bert explained with a smile. Gerard tucked the pack into his back pocket and nodded his head in thanks, before hightailing it out of the bathroom, to hurry to his next class, hoping he wasn’t too late.
He promised himself that he would never open the pack of cigarettes.

Notes

Hi there friends. Before I start the note I would like to say that Bert will be returning and he is not supposed to be a bad guy in this. I like to think of him as a St. Jimmy (from American Idiot) type of character. He really is trying to help Gerard he's just doing it in the only way he knows how. I really like The Used and I really dislike that people always make Bert the bad guy because of something that happened between him and Gerard like 10 years ago that we don't even know the full cause of. I just wanted to say that before you guys start hating on him and shit.

Okay now to the important stuff. As you may have noticed this chapter is in 3rd person POV instead of 1st. I like writing like this more and I feel like my writing quality is better this way. That being said, as some of you know I started this story a little over two years ago and I couldn't write for shit back then. I have decided to completely rewrite this story. The plot and format will in no way be changing although I might add or take out a few minor things such as dialogue or actions. I am going to leave this fic up on the site until I finish and then repost all the chapters. I'm not sure how long this will take but I hope to be done before Christmas. I will however be posting the rewritten chapters on my AO3 account (I'll get to that in a minute) as soon as I finish them since it's easier for me to post things to there on my phone than it is to here. So if you want to read them there. Have fun with that. I have a little over a week left before I go back to Florida so I should be able to work on it a little. I will be doing this construction thing to my other fic "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" except I will not be posting that to AO3 because I've made a series and its at the end of the series so I haven't quite gotten there yet. "Get Me The Hell Out Of Here" will remain the same and I should hopefully get a new chapter of that posted soon. Thank you all for understanding.

Other news:
AO3: I made an Archive Of Our Own. My username is "cemxteryeyes" so if you want to subscribe to me on there that would be great.
Twitter: Some of you may know of my twitter account (@cemxtery_eyes), but I would like to announce that I started a Frerard Imagines account (@frerard_imagine). I figured you'd all be interested in this since you know, this whole fic thing is really like one big imagine. So yeah check that out if you want or can, and send in imagines, because I'm shit at coming up for stuff on that on my own and I probably should have made an imagine Pete account based loosely off the imagine Ryan account but I did the frerard thing instead. Sigh.

Anyway that is all. Read, comment, rate, subscribe all that shit. :)

Song of the Moment: Home- Pencey Prep

~Kerry