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The first person Gerard tells about him being trans is Bert. It’s late at night and they’re in Gerard’s basement and they’re pretty drunk or pretty high or pretty both and Gerard just… Says it. Just whispers it into the junction between Bert’s neck and shoulder.
“Sometimes I think I’m a girl,” Gerard says, and then clenches his eyes shut real tight, preparing for the worst. He can’t really escape since it’s his room but he could probably make Mikey threaten Bert with his play lightsaber until Bert agrees to leave.
It’s really quiet for a moment or two, and then Bert just shrugs and says, “Cool.” Gerard is so relieved he doesn’t even think twice about suddenly unloading all of it on Bert without any sort of prompting.
“Like, I’m not always a girl, sometimes I’m a boy, but sometimes I am a girl, and sometimes I’m both, and sometimes I’m neither. I’m, like—” He pauses to breathe for a second. “—genderfluid is the word for it. So. Yeah. I’m genderfluid.”
Bert nods a couple times, and says, “That’s awesome, Babe. Do you want me to call you my girlfriend or something? Also, could you pass me my beer?”
Gerard blushes a little at being called babe, says, “Maybe sometimes, but I don’t know when, I guess I’ll just tell you or something. I don’t know, I’m not really used to this,” and grabs Bert’s beer from his side table to hand over to him. Bert takes a sip and then snuggles in under Gerard’s chin and Gerard thinks, yeah. Yeah, okay.
***
Bert is… Well. Gerard’s not entirely sure what Bert is, to be honest, but he’s certainly… something.
Bert is rash, and kind of dumb. Whereas Gerard is terrified of saying the wrong thing pretty much all the time to the point of overanalyzing everything she says, Bert doesn’t usually think before he speaks, even when speaking to authorities. Especially when speaking to authorities. He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it.
The thing is, Gerard and Bert aren’t very much alike. Bert is like the most chill person ever, and Gerard is anxious about basically everything. The number one thing Gerard worries about is school, and Bert could drop out and literally not even care. The only reason he hasn’t dropped out yet, as far as Gerard knows, is that he’d probably be sent to military school, and Bert is not about that life.
Bert likes to drink—A Lot. Like, a lot a lot. Gerard used to like to drink too, more than she should have, but all it took was one night drunk and suicidal, fighting a bottle of pills she stole from her mom’s bathroom, to realize she needed to stop. It took some work, but she did. She stopped, and Bert didn’t. And Gerard doesn’t know what to do about that.
Sometimes, late at night, Gerard thinks about breaking up with him. Sometimes even when Bert’s there in bed with her. She traces the lines of his torso lightly with her finger, and he grunts and shifts in his sleep, and she thinks, I could do it. Bert shouldn’t be blamed or vilified for his addiction, but that doesn’t mean Gerard has to stay with him, does it? But then he grumbles in his sleep and holds her tighter and she realizes she probably couldn’t live without him.
One day she asks Mikey if it’s he thinks it’s unhealthy. “I think it’s you, Gee,” he says, which isn’t exactly a real answer and doesn’t really help her decide if she needs to dump Bert or not, but still makes her feel better.
***
Frank is… something else entirely.
Gerard meets Frank at an LGBT youth group—a town over, because Belleville’s not cultured enough for that sort of thing. Frank is a tiny, punk, aggro trans boy. What Gerard learns in their first five minutes of knowing Frank is basically the things that he’s most proud of about himself, namely that he’s angry about everything, loud and rambunctious as hell, and has knuckle tattoos that spell out Halloween.
The tattoos are the first thing that Gerard notices when they see him, so it’s the first thing they comment on. “Badass,” Gerard says, and points towards Frank’s hands. Frank just grins.
“Thanks! I got them for my birthday. It’s on Halloween, that’s why they say, uh… Halloween.” Gerard nods their head because they aren’t sure what else to do. They hadn’t really been expecting Frank to talk to them, they just said it faster than they could stop themselves from speaking. “I’m Frank! I’m a trans guy, in case, uh, you couldn’t tell.”
“Oh, cool, I’m… Gerard,” Gerard says, and then cringes at how awkward it sounds. “I’m like genderfluid, and also gay, I guess. Like, sometimes. When I’m, y’know, a boy.” Frank nods at them very seriously. This is probably the most awkward conversation Gerard has ever been a part of.
“Nice!” Frank says. He doesn’t seem to detect the tension that Gerard does. “I’m bi, myself.” Gerard just nods again, not really sure what else to do. They don’t really talk to a lot of people other than Mikey and Bert and sometimes Bert’s other friends; they aren’t used to it.
There's silence for a moment and then Frank asks, “So, can I, like, ask you about your pronouns since you're genderfluid?”
“Oh!” Gerard says. “Yeah, of course! I basically just, like, use any pronouns, at any time. Like, you can call me he or she or they or whatever, I don’t really have a preference. It'd be cool if you could switch it up sometimes, though.”
“Awesome!” Frank says, and when he grins it seems to be with every aspect of his being. He looks down into his lap and bites his lip, eyes sparkling, and Gerard thinks, I have a boyfriend, I can't like Frank.
It doesn't seem to do much in the way of dissuading them, though.
Gerard gets Frank’s number and they start texting. Like, a lot. Texting all the time about basically everything, and Frank just makes Gerard smile. Even when the message is just something like ok, it still makes Gerard feel warm and fuzzy inside.
One day Bert asks Gerard who they’re texting, and without thinking, they say, “Mikey.” They don’t really know why they lied, except for the fact that they totally do—but they’re ignoring that part of themselves. They love Bert and they’ve only known Frank for, like, three weeks. It doesn’t matter if Frank’s cute. It doesn’t matter if Bert always smells like alcohol these days.
“I love you,” Gerard says to Bert one day, but Bert’s so drunk he just kind of smiles at Gerard before his eyes go completely unfocused, and Gerard’s chest hurts.
***
The thing is, things don’t get bad. No, things are already bad. Things don’t get bad, they get worse. Bert gets caught drunk at school for the third time, and gets suspended. His parents find his alcohol stash. They send him to the hospital.
He shows up on Gerard’s doorstep one day after school. Everyone in the school knows that he’s been suspended including Gerard. Gerard’s surprised to see him there; they’d assumed Bert would have been grounded for, like, life. “Bert!” They say when they open to door to find him. He looks and smells awful. It’s not till he starts talking that Gerard realizes he’s been crying.
“Hey,” he says in a quiet voice. This concerns Gerard because Bert is never quiet. “Can I, like, talk to you?” This doesn’t make sense to Gerard because Bert never asks permission for anything, he just does what he wants whenever he wants; it’s part of the reason Gerard loves him so much.
“Yeah, of course,” Gerard says, in a small voice. They don’t know what’s going on, but they’re worried about it, whatever it is.
Gerard expects Bert to start down the hallway to the basement, but he just walks into the entryway and stops. He looks like he’s in pain. “I—Jesus Christ. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna start. My parents found my stash. They’re admitting me to a psych ward. They called the facility and I guess were able to direct admit me so we don’t have to go through the emergency room. They said if I don’t go they’re gonna throw me out.” Whatever Gerard’s expecting, it’s not this.
“I’m—wow. Okay. I don’t really know what to say to that, oh my god,” Gerard says. They’re in shock. They don’t know a lot about psych wards but they know it can’t be good.
“Yeah,” Bert says. He looks like he wants to say something else, but after some consideration he decides to grab Gerard and kiss them instead. They wrap their arms around his neck and realize belatedly that they’re crying.
When the kiss is over, Bert swallows hard and then, before he can lose his nerve, he says, “Listen, I know you like Frank. I believe you when you say you love me but I also know you love Frank, too, and here’s the thing, Gee. Frank’s not fucked up. Frank’s not being admitted to a fucking psych ward.
I’m gonna be gone for at least three months. I don’t want you to visit me, I want you to go to Frank and love him and let him love you too.” This is the final nail in the coffin. Gerard sobs, loud and deep, and clings desperately to Bert’s neck.
“Please don’t do this,” they beg. “Please, you can live with us, my mom loves you, I don’t care if you drink too much, I can take care of you when you’re drunk, please don’t do this.”
“Here’s the thing,” Bert says. “I’ve… been thinking about it, and I think, maybe, it could be good for me. Who knows, Gee, maybe when I get out and I’m better I’ll come back to you and it won’t have worked out with Frank. But you can’t throw away your opportunity with him just to wait for your low life boyfriend who’s in rehab for three months.” Gerard’s shaking their head, they can’t handle this.
“Listen, Gerard, I need to leave now, but just know that I love you and I wish I had been in my right mind for most of our relationship so I could have treated you the way you deserved.” Gerard clings desperately to Bert, wanting to tell him that he had treated them the way they deserved, that they love him and they want to wait for him, but he pulls himself gently from Gerard’s grasp and leaves the house without another word. Gerard feels the silence wash over them for a few moments before collapsing to the floor in tears.
***
At the next youth group meeting, Gerard kisses Frank. It feels like betrayal and redemption at the same time. He feels nauseated by his own actions as well as thrilled with them. Frank kisses back without thinking before pulling back and asking about Bert. Gerard explains the situation, and they kiss again, and that’s that.
***
Bert’s gone for three months. In these three months, Frank becomes Gerard’s boyfriend, and they’re happy, but Gerard feels guilty—about dating Frank when Bert’s in rehab, or about still loving Bert even though she’s with Frank now, she doesn’t know. But either way, she feels guilty.
She tells this to Frank one day, and he just kind of smiles at her. He tucks a lock of her long black hair behind her ear before saying, “I’ve got something to explain to you, Gee.” Gerard perks up from her position lying on Frank’s chest. Frank talks a lot, about a lot of stuff, so if there’s something he’s been holding back from telling her, it’s gotta be something important.
“Do you know what polyamory is?” Frank asks, and Gerard shakes her head. “So, like, okay. Polyamory is basically a relationship that involves more than two people. Like, an open relationship and stuff. It can be, like, a relationship where three or more people all love each other, or a relationship that involves multiple people but not everyone in the relationship is involved romantically with each other.” He stops here, with this look on his face like he’s very proud of himself.
“I don’t get it,” she says, because she doesn’t get it.
“I’m saying that, maybe you don’t have to choose between me and Bert. Maybe when Bert gets out, he’ll be okay with you dating both of us.”
“You’d be okay with that?” Gerard asks, and Frank nods.
“Yeah!” he says. “Bert is great, and pretty hot. I mean, I’m not interested in having sex with him or being his boyfriend, but I can appreciate the view sometimes.” Gerard can’t believe this conversation is even happening. She’d never considered the possibility that she could have both Frank and Bert, and now that she’s aware that it’s a thing that could happen, she feels her heart beating a little faster just at the thought. All she needs now is for Bert to get the fuck out of the mental health facility.
***
So much time passes that, somehow, Gerard actually forgets to keep counting down the days, so he’s not expecting it when he and Frank are cuddling on the couch watching Star Wars and the doorbell rings. Gerard untangles himself from Frank and walks to the door, not really sure what to expect; people don’t usually knock on the door at his house. When he opens the door, he sees, for the first time in three months, Bert.
Gerard and Frank had discussed before how things would go down, were they to try to convince Bert to agree to a polyamorous negotiation, and they’d come to the agreement that they would need to start out small; warm Bert up to it. Gerard, however, completely forgets about all of this upon seeing Bert, and launches himself directly into the other’s arms to kiss him as soon as his brain processes what’s happening.
Bert immediately kisses back, and they haven’t even said a word to each other yet but it feels everything’s clicked back into place, like Bert was never even gone, like they were just together a week ago rather than three months ago. They stand there and kiss, exploring the feel of each other for the first time in three months, till Frank walks into the entryway and says, “Who is it, Babe?”
Bert immediately jumps back a step, looking like he’s been burned, obviously freaking the fuck out. When Frank sees Bert, his face lights up. “Oh my god, Bert, you’re back! What’s up? How are you holding up?” Bert looks stuck like a deer in headlights. Gerard just really wants to kiss him again.
“Oh, uh,” Bert says, and then blinks, obviously unsure how to proceed. “I’m, you know… Cool. Yeah. I’m cool. I need to talk to Gerard for a moment alone, though.” He looks like he’s prepared for Frank to decline to request, and also a little like if Frank did he would just go home without a fight, which frightens Gerard; Bert never just goes quietly when someone denies him something he wants.
“Oh, yeah, totally!” Frank says. “I’ll just, uh. Go then.” He walks out and Bert seems to relax some, but not a whole lot.
There’s silence for what seems like a really long time before Bert says, “Um, hi.”
Gerard bites his lip and says, “Hi,” back, voice barely above a whisper.
“So, um. I’m back.”
“Yeah. I can see,” Gerard says, and tries not to cringe when it comes out harshly. It’s been three months. What if Bert’s totally different? What if he’s, like, really fragile now and Gerard has to talk to him all softly all the time? Gerard would do it in a heartbeat if he had to, he just can barely imagine what it’d be like to have to. “What’s up?”
“Well, I, um. I’m an alcoholic, I guess. I kinda learned that pretty fast when I was in the facility. I don’t drink anymore, though. I still want to, I guess, but. I don’t.” It’s all said really quietly. Bert hasn’t looked Gerard in the eye yet.
“Bert…” Gerard says, unsure how to phrase what he wants to say. “You know that I’m in the same boat, right? Like, I’m an alcoholic too. I don’t drink anymore. I’m not gonna judge you or think you’re boring now or something.”
“I know,” Bert says. “I just, I guess I never really processed what you were really going through and stuff at the time because I was so fucked up all the time, but like, I get it now. I kinda want to say sorry. That’s kinda why I’m here, because I realize now what you were going through and I wasn’t really there for you at the time. Hell, I got mad at you when you told me you weren’t drinking anymore, and that was pretty shitty of me, so…” He trails off for a second. “I see you’re still with Frank… But you still kissed me when you opened the door.”
“It’s not what it seems like,” Gerard says, and then says it again when Bert still refuses to look him in the eye. “Listen, Bert, Frank… he’s this really cool guy, and I love him a lot, but I still love you. And he understands that! He’s okay with it! He told me that, like, we could be together. All of us. I could be with both of you and you two could still be friends like you were before you left.” This is what it takes for Bert to finally look at Gerard.
“What are you talking about?” Bert says. His voice sounds hopeful, but Gerard might also just be imagining it because that’s what he wants to believe.
“It’s called, like, polyamory I guess. I don’t know a lot about it but Frank explained it to me, it’s basically like, um—So you know how monogamous relationships are between two people? It’s, like, the opposite of that, I guess. Relationships that involve more than two people, and one way it works is like—I could date both you and Frank, and you and Frank wouldn’t have to date each other but you could if you wanted to. We’ve talked about it a lot, and about what we would do and how we would ask you when you got back.” They’d never really talked about doing it like this, pushing it all on Bert five minutes after he got back, but Gerard’s hoping he can salvage the situation even though it hasn’t gone as planned. “It wasn’t really supposed to happen like this, but I guess I got kind of excited when I opened the door you were, like, right there in front of me.”
There’s silence for a few moments, like Bert’s processing this. It’s a lot to process, Gerard reasons with himself, but still feels like he’s never been more anxious in his life. “We could, like—We could do that?” Bert asks eventually. This time there’s definitely something hopeful in his voice.
“I mean, yeah… If you wanted.” More silence. Bert blinks.
“I—I think I do want, I just. Don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“That’s okay,” Gerard smiles. “Frank’s pretty good at explaining it.” There’s silence for a moment, but Bert doesn’t look quite so much like he’s in pain, so Gerard thinks maybe it’ll be okay for him to step forward and kiss him again. This time, they can kiss, and no one interrupts them. Gerard wraps his hands in Bert’s hair as Bert wraps his arms around Gerard’s back, and they just stand there kissing for a while, exploring each other for the first time in three months.
Eventually, they stop and Bert tucks a lock of Gerard’s hair behind his ear. “We’re watching Star Wars, if you want to join us.” Bert smiles for the first time since he arrived.
“Yeah, I’d like that.”