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The cool part about it was that most of the people that had flown out to assist the band flew back when Jeph and Branden did. Quinn hadn't really been aware of how much extra space other people were taking up until everyone packed it in to head east again. Sharing bedrooms, sharing practice space, sharing the studio -- that's just what he'd gotten used to over throughout the past year. But when Jeph and Branden left, so did almost everyone else, album basically finished with three new songs tracked and roughly mixed. Suddenly Quinn walked back into the hotel room, and there was all this room to stretch out until he flew back to the States a couple days later.
"Fuck! Oh, fuck, I want window now." Bert dove across the mattress and rolling himself in the covers.
He was still there, too. It would be Quinn and Bert, and their manager was in a room down the hall with one of the label reps, so there was still some sharing, but at least he and Bert now had a choice of mattresses.
;;
They were still in London, and they'd finished the record. They could do anything they wanted, anything in this place where they had never been, so of course they stayed in the hotel room, and stripped the sheets off the mattresses. Bert started doing front flips from one bed and landing on the other. Quinn did the same until his feet scraped along the ceiling, thunking, and he landed in the space separating the beds. The fall graceless, Quinn propped himself against the bedframe and groaned, gritting his teeth.
Bert laughed. He peered over the edge of one mattress, and they both crouched low to see if someone would come to yell. He whispered, "Are you okay? Do you want me to kiss it?" harshly, not really very quiet at all, but that was fine, because no one came knocking.
Quinn wasn't in much pain once the intial blow of it wore off but, nevertheless, he held out his wrist and Bert cupped his forearm. Bert licked along Quinn's forearm like a pet cleaning the meat off table scraps, sloppy, and as soon as Quinn tried to shake him off, he said, "No, okay, okay," and kissed Quinn's wrist over and over.
;;
Bert had lingering bruises on his back from tracking "Greener With The Scenery" back home. They were mostly faded, and he didn't complain about them hurting. Still, Quinn braced his arm on Bert's back when he took off his shirt, mentioning the heat. Bert squawked as Quinn pressed into him, asking, "Huh? Huh, huh, what," and they ended up wrestling on the bed before Quinn pinned him with one of Bert's legs brought up to his chest.
Quinn said, "I think the record's going to sound good."
Bert snorted, and then he scrunched his face and farted with his ass angled up at Quinn's stomach. He said, "Dude, that was a loud one. Make a wish."
Closing his eyes and rolling away, Quinn said, "I wish that Pringles and cookies and Coke would fall out of the sky."
"Pssh, you could do better than that," Bert said, flopping against the bed and then shifting sideways to bump his forehead hard on Quinn's shoulder. "So, you're hungry? Do they even have Pringles out here? Let's get a pizza."
"Cheese and olives?"
"And mushrooms," Bert said. "Fungus. I like the fungus on mine."
"As long as there's none of that pineapple bullshit," Quinn said, and Bert frowned. He leaned over and pretended to dry-heave.
Quinn laughed, and Bert stuck to his routine even as Quinn grabbed the phone and dialed the lobby to ask if anyone knew where to get good pizzas. Sitting up on the bed, Quinn hunched over as Bert draped himself around Quinn's back, making weird buzzing sounds and singing nonsense until it melted into the chorus for 'Noise and Kisses.' Quinn couldn't help smirking into the phone. He found himself smiling at the floor when Bert stopped to say, "I think you're right. Our own song is stuck in my head. That's a good sign."
;;
"John was saying that they're going master to it in reverse order, probably. Maybe," Quinn said, dribbling a mouthful of cheese onto his hand, because the pizza slices kept falling apart. "So they're going to start with 'On My Own' and maybe the other two we just did."
"Who fucking ever thought we'd get money for strings?" Bert asked, and he wasn't even bothering with trying to keep his slice intact. He just folded over sections at random and chewed. Quinn watched for a moment and decided that that was actually the best strategy. It was good pizza.
What John had really said was that they'd probably start with the final mixes of 'On My Own' and "then we'll do your song" like Quinn would know exactly what that was referencing. Not that he hadn't known. That wasn't the point. It was the fact that John used 'your song' and Quinn didn't know if he meant that he thought he and Bert had written it together or -- or, well. The funny thing about it is that Bert played the song for John first, and then came to Quinn later and said, "I wrote this. It's about you, but you can tell me if you hate it," and Quinn wondered if John had been introduced to it the same way. Your song. Quinn's song. It could be taken a number of ways.
Quinn hadn't hated it though. That was still the most important part.
"But it's a good thing, because I know I can't play a cello well," he said in the hotel room then, grabbing a third slice.
Bert giggled, manic airy laughter bursting in between bites. He said, "We have cello!"
"That's a whole other -- we do, I mean, it's a huge -- we should celebrate." Quinn waved one greasy hand around. They had sort of celebrated with everybody. They had drinks and cucumber sandwiches that only Jeph actually enjoyed, and then somebody bought hotel porn, during which Bert just mimicked all the accents. It wouldn't hurt to try toast more or something. They were still in London.
"Show me the city," Bert said, like he was picking out the thoughts in Quinn's head as they came to him. He tried to affect the accent again. It was terrible, and Bert spoke with his nose in the air.
"Yeah, okay," Quinn said. It sounded like a good idea.
;;
The day after Bert moved into Quinn's bedroom back in Utah, Quinn had woken up to Bert playing something familiar on the keyboard.
"Wait," he said, sleepily. His face felt heavy, his limbs slow. "What is that?"
"It's, um -- Brahms? Brahms. It's weird that I remember that." Bert pressed on the keys harder, making the sound louder, sharper. He sang, "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little baby."
"Are you playing me a lullaby?" Quinn asked, half-smiling, his chest bouncing around the pulse of groggy laughter.
Bert banged on the keys once, and then dropped his hands to his lap. Looking at Quinn, he had asked, "Who said it was for you? Maybe I had a song stuck in my head."
Except Bert had kept it up. From then on, Quinn would sometimes wake up or fall asleep with Bert humming and murmuring, "Go to sleep, go to sleep." Depending on his mood, his voice was either soft or shrieking right into Quinn's ear, and depending on how gracious he felt, Quinn either punched Bert in the side for it or threw an arm out and pulled him closer until he calmed himself. Bert was the worst person in the world at being still until that was the only thing he wanted to be doing, and then it was hard to get him to budge. He slept like a fucking log, too, once he was settled. Quinn had found himself trapped by Bert's unexpected weight enough times already to know that the guy was heavier than he looked. Quinn didn't really mind that either though.
In London, Quinn slowly woke to that same thin humming, and it took him a moment to realize that they were still in the bathtub. That they had decided it was better to finish off their bottles of wine sagging along the porcelain. Bert's knee was stabbing the shit out of Quinn's thigh.
"Mm," Quinn mumbled, opening his eyes just slightly. The bathroom light shone somewhere above them, unfairly bright. "Do you want to move to the bed?"
"No," Bert said, and resumed the humming between his words with little pause. "I like you here."
;;
So, what they did was they went to Kyoto Gardens even though they had already been, but they needed to get out of the hotel at least once more. Jeph had wanted to go the first time, and the second time, Bert sat down in the middle of the path, cross-legged, mimicking him.
"What the hell are you doing?" Quinn asked, nudging Bert's thigh with his sneaker.
Bert smiled, eyes closed. "Jepha's getting in this peace and tranquility thing. Or, he wants to. He could be."
Quinn held out his hands, closed his eyes and said, "Ommmm."
"Fuuuck yooouuuu," Bert said, voice lilting. He hit Quinn in the calf. "You have to sit down."
The ground was warm, hard and uncomfortable. Quinn continued making a show of his bad meditation, he and Bert facing one another. They could visit anywhere, and Quinn had no idea why they'd chosen here again, really, resting his elbows on his thighs and letting out a steady stream of sound until it was easier to be quiet. He listened to the sound of the waterfall and thought about being back in Utah, about how his bedroom was still a mess of clothes and nothing in its right place, and when Quinn open his eyes, Bert was looking at him.
He smiled slowly and said, "Dude, I'm twenty -- we're twenty. Twenty and in London. The UK. I've never been out of Utah."
"Neither have I," Quinn said.
"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," Bert said, because there was no way he wasn't going to say it. He smirked, chuckling, and then stretched a leg out to bump against Quinn's. "Come on, this is a good place to fall in love. I just saw a couple making out over there. Fall for me, Quinn, do it."
"Yeah, right," Quinn said, and Bert flopped back on the ground, arms spread. Shot down. "No, okay. How does this work? What, do I have to say your name three times or something?"
Bert laughed, kicking his leg out again. He said, "What -- what, hey, fuck if I know. Try rubbing your stomach and patting your head and kissing your elbow."
Quinn attempted and got two out of three. Bert lifted his head, asking, "Anything?"
"Nope," Quinn, shaking his head.
Frowning, Bert sat up fully and tried himself. Despite his enthusiasm for contortion, Bert couldn't reach his own elbow either. He said, "Maybe it's kiss a baboon's ass, not elbow. I always forget. It's just not meant to be, buddy; we're just going to have to stick to meaningless sex."
"Ah, break my heart, why don't you," Quinn said, and he held out a hand for Bert when he stood.
;;
Quinn's perspective -- the way he saw it was that it wasn't like Bert hadn't ever written something either with Quinn or dedicated to Quinn before. The first week that Bert lived in his bedroom, Quinn would come into the room to find some new jumble of lyrics. Bert hadn't said that most of them were for Quinn or about him, but he kept scratching the back of his head and saying, "It's not like you have to keep them," so Quinn folded them all in half and stuffed them in his pillowcase.
He hadn't even heard Bert sing a few of them. He wasn't sure which ones were complete songs and which were ideas, but until he moved them to a box in his closet, Quinn would sometimes turn his pillow over in the middle of the night to find the cool side and accidentally slide his face against creased paper through cotton covering.
So it wasn't as if having some tune from Bert was entirely new. It shouldn't be a huge deal, right? It was fucking weird -- the weirdest fucking thing -- having John say, "Yeah, yeah, record that one tonight. We'll use it."
;;
They sucked at tourism. After more food and a little more wandering, they went back to the hotel, because Quinn wanted to change his shirt, and ended up lying out in the hallway. Bert was short enough that he could stretch his legs out to either wall and try to work his way toward the ceiling, then slide down on the balls of his feet. Quinn watched him do it three times, and during the fourth he belly-crawled underneath Bert only to have him fall and land on Quinn's back.
"Ughf!" All the air shot from Quinn, and he bumped his forehead on the thin carpet. "Get off me."
"You liked it," Bert said, slapping Quinn on the back. He bit his shoulder blade, and Quinn moaned, trying to wriggle away with no success. Since he wasn't going to get away, Quinn did his best to at least roll over, Bert settling his legs around Quinn's middle, ass on his stomach.
Leaning forward, Bert growled, all teeth, and then took the opportunity to bite Quinn's cheek, hair tickling Quinn's mouth and chin. Bert blew a raspberry against Quinn's skin and sealed it all with a quick kiss, shifting along Quinn's stomach, and Quinn inhaled at the tingling in his torso and arms. They had never -- they'd never. Except for one kiss in Quinn's bathroom, one of them toothpaste minty and the other still plagued by morning breath, everything remained on the right side of friendly, but Quinn's anticipation increased more and more lately. He slung an arm over Bert's back, and turned them sideways so that he could move his hips back.
Bert squawked at the sudden movement, disoriented, and the few seconds of reprieve gave Quinn enough time to stand up and go back into their room.
"Hey," Bert said. "Hey!"
"Shut up. Come on," Quinn said, and Bert rocked forward and to his feet.
;;
Bert smoked a lot of cigarettes. Quinn didn't think they were supposed to have it in the room either, but Bert sat by the window and blew the smoke outside. In between pulls, he fogged up the glass with his breath and drew crooked shapes in the hazy clouds.
"Look, it's nice outside. We should be out again," he said, ducking back and turning to get Quinn's attention.
"Ehh. Fuck it; I'm comfortable," Quinn said, lying on the bed and flipping channels. He wondered how sensitive the detectors were. He could definitely still smell the cigarettes really well even from a few feet away.
"Fuck it," Bert said, and then coughed. He finished his smoke, put the butt in his soda can and left it on the ledge.
At the bed, he got onto his knees and hovered over Quinn until Quinn took his eyes away from the television -- just news, anyway -- and then snatched the remote. He flung it to the other bed and grabbed Quinn's arm when he reached after the control. Bert tucked their hands at Quinn's stomach and trapped them between their bodies, giggling. Quinn groaned, pushing at Bert's shoulder until Bert let go of his hand to creep his fingers downward, blunt nails scratching at the waistband of Quinn's pants, and Quinn's stomach dropped. He sucked in a breath and choked on the air.
Bert grinned.
"What -- " Quinn said. "Hey, uh --"
"I don't know," Bert said.
"Huh?"
"You know."
Quinn was confused. "Um?"
"The fuck," Bert said, emphatic. "Yes. Look at me." He waited again, and Quinn was already looking at him. Bert was so fucking strange sometimes, but Quinn blinked and lifted his eyebrows, not fleeing, and Bert muttered, "You, you," and the way it turned out, Quinn actually leaned up and kissed him first.
"Mm," he said, bringing the hand at his stomach high to smash his palm over Bert's cheekbone, fingers clutching the hair that fell forward. Bert wrote him a song. Bert wrote a song, and everyone heard it, and more people would hear it, and that terrified the shit out of Quinn.
Against his mouth, Bert said, "Mhm," agreeing.
;;
Their extension was only for the weekend. So they stayed in London for two days, spending most of the time indoors, and when they packed to go home, they didn't bother making sure everything was separated. Quinn stuffed clothing into his bag at random, and he probably had a lot of Bert's things mixed in with his, but a lot of Bert's shit was Quinn's anyway. He wasn't worried about it.
They flew out of London on time, but their connecting flight in the States got delayed. Quinn laid down on the floor, as close the wall as possible to maybe take a nap. Bert wedged himself into the non-existent space between the two.
"Aw, seriously," Quinn said, complaining, because there really was no room. Bert still had on his backpack even. The positioning was entirely uncomfortable, and if Quinn never had to have his thighs bruised up by Bert's bony knees ever again in life, it would be too soon. "Maybe you could -- "
"Suck it up," Bert said. "So fucking whiny, kid. Would you like some cheese with that whine?"
"Bert."
"Did I tell you I have our stuff stuck in my head again? The other one though. Your song," Bert said, mostly talking somewhere over Quinn's forehead because they couldn't get lined up evenly here.
"Bert," Quinn said again. He snuck his arm behind Bert's back, trying to find some level of control in this situation.
Bert said, "One more time."
"Huh?"
"Three times," Bert said, and he rested his chin on Quinn's temple. Quinn slid his finger along a zipper on Bert's backpack, and it took him a moment to understand. Oh.
He said, "Bert, Bert, Bert," one after the other, and then laughed. He felt stupid. He felt good.
"Quinn, Quinn, Quinn," Bert said. He kicked at Quinn's leg lightly with his shoe. "That was like five times for you."
Quinn yawned and stretched his free arm over his head. They were in the middle of an airport. Everyone could see them squirming on the floor. Quinn shrugged.
He said, "I know."