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The one Giddy made me post because she is a freak.
Okay, haha, ignore what I said last night about not being allowed to write bandslash: I wrote bandslash. Well, actually I wrote bandGEN, but somehow I doubt that makes it more like writing what I'm supposed to be writing.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
strangecobwebs for saying "Aww, Gerard!" and giddygeek for saying "Aww, Gerard!" and "Post it!" and iuliamentis for saying, "Wait, what are you doing?"
Gerard, Summer 2005. There's a ring of folding chairs and a box of donuts in a particular equipment trailer.
Gen, PG. 557 words. None of this is true.
Hello, My Name Is
Everybody on the tour knows everybody--not just the bands, but the techs and roadies and security, the drivers and the more persistent hangers-on. It's probably like it would be traveling with a circus, though Gerard doesn't think traveling circuses get as big as the Warped Tour. The tour is like a portable small town, set up day after day in the anonymous parking lots of interchangeable fairgrounds. Gerard's been on tour for years now, and it's strange to wake up every day and see the same people, know whose bus is where because they always park according to the same layout. It's a good kind of strange, he thinks, like pretty much everything else about this summer; he bets the tour was the same way last year, but it's no surprise he didn't notice.
This year he spends a lot of his downtime in the bus, but not quite all of it. In the mornings, when the early shows are getting set up and the performers in the late shows are wandering around looking dazed and half-awake, he takes walks through the familiar maze of buses and vans and trailers and smiles at people he knows. Most of them are busy, and no one stops what they're doing just because Gerard is wandering past.
Every other city, t-minus ninety minutes to the first show's scheduled start time, he walks with a little more purpose. Every other city, there's a ring of folding chairs and a box of donuts in a particular equipment trailer. There's no such thing as anonymity, not on the tour, no more for Lucy or Jimmy or Sean than for him, but Gerard believes firmly in the idea of the thing. Everyone else does, too, or they wouldn't bother to be here. He stands up when it's his turn and says, "Hi, I'm Gerard."
The answering "hi, Gerard," is no more or less ironic than the "hi, Danny," or the "hi, Tia," and Gerard says, "I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober 327 days."
Every other city works out to twice a week, three times some weeks, but no one complains. The tour is hard on all of them, the ones who sell t-shirts, the ones who drive vans, the ones who sing on stage. It's hard for the ones who've quit counting days and started counting years, and Gerard feels something like vertigo at the thought that he'll still feel like this, living some days meeting to meeting, fifteen years after his last drink. But he knows if he can't, he'll be pulling up a folding chair two cities from now and saying, "I'm an alcoholic. I'm sober today."
He knows they'll say "Hi, Gerard," the same way they always do, and pass the donuts. He knows they'll listen while he mumbles and stares at his hands, observing in a detached way that his stage presence sucks at ten in the morning for this one tiny audience he needs the most. He knows everyone here knows it might be them, on any given morning in any given city. That's why they're here.
Half an hour later, when they've talked out two cities' worth of temptations and Gerard's licked all the powdered sugar from his fingers, he dares to count ahead. Two cities from now will be 330 days, and his turn to bring the donuts.
Thanks to
strangecobwebs for saying "Aww, Gerard!" and giddygeek for saying "Aww, Gerard!" and "Post it!" and iuliamentis for saying, "Wait, what are you doing?" Gerard, Summer 2005. There's a ring of folding chairs and a box of donuts in a particular equipment trailer.
Gen, PG. 557 words. None of this is true.
Hello, My Name Is
Everybody on the tour knows everybody--not just the bands, but the techs and roadies and security, the drivers and the more persistent hangers-on. It's probably like it would be traveling with a circus, though Gerard doesn't think traveling circuses get as big as the Warped Tour. The tour is like a portable small town, set up day after day in the anonymous parking lots of interchangeable fairgrounds. Gerard's been on tour for years now, and it's strange to wake up every day and see the same people, know whose bus is where because they always park according to the same layout. It's a good kind of strange, he thinks, like pretty much everything else about this summer; he bets the tour was the same way last year, but it's no surprise he didn't notice.
This year he spends a lot of his downtime in the bus, but not quite all of it. In the mornings, when the early shows are getting set up and the performers in the late shows are wandering around looking dazed and half-awake, he takes walks through the familiar maze of buses and vans and trailers and smiles at people he knows. Most of them are busy, and no one stops what they're doing just because Gerard is wandering past.
Every other city, t-minus ninety minutes to the first show's scheduled start time, he walks with a little more purpose. Every other city, there's a ring of folding chairs and a box of donuts in a particular equipment trailer. There's no such thing as anonymity, not on the tour, no more for Lucy or Jimmy or Sean than for him, but Gerard believes firmly in the idea of the thing. Everyone else does, too, or they wouldn't bother to be here. He stands up when it's his turn and says, "Hi, I'm Gerard."
The answering "hi, Gerard," is no more or less ironic than the "hi, Danny," or the "hi, Tia," and Gerard says, "I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober 327 days."
Every other city works out to twice a week, three times some weeks, but no one complains. The tour is hard on all of them, the ones who sell t-shirts, the ones who drive vans, the ones who sing on stage. It's hard for the ones who've quit counting days and started counting years, and Gerard feels something like vertigo at the thought that he'll still feel like this, living some days meeting to meeting, fifteen years after his last drink. But he knows if he can't, he'll be pulling up a folding chair two cities from now and saying, "I'm an alcoholic. I'm sober today."
He knows they'll say "Hi, Gerard," the same way they always do, and pass the donuts. He knows they'll listen while he mumbles and stares at his hands, observing in a detached way that his stage presence sucks at ten in the morning for this one tiny audience he needs the most. He knows everyone here knows it might be them, on any given morning in any given city. That's why they're here.
Half an hour later, when they've talked out two cities' worth of temptations and Gerard's licked all the powdered sugar from his fingers, he dares to count ahead. Two cities from now will be 330 days, and his turn to bring the donuts.