without mythologies
without mythologies
frank/gerard, pg-13
2,375 words
by girlintheband
set in japan in january/february of 2008. gerard takes some time out. all the geographical details &c; are correct, apart from the udon-ya in akihabara. i don't know if that exists. everything else does.
if you do visit the little coffee shop on the left-hand side of the road after you cross the bridge in hiroshima (walking away from the a-dome), try their waffles. they're really good. also, those chocolate donuts i refer to? they exist too, and are amazing. eat them.
the title of without mythologies comes from the weakerthans. thank you to violentfires for the beta, and to ficklish for general encouragement.
suspend your disbelief, pretend we were both here once. pretend that you weren't sick and didn't have to go home, pretend that i wasn't drunk, pretend that i wasn't going through withdrawal. pretend it worked out and we are both here, right now, just this time, just this once. it's only the two of us, and we spend all morning lying in bed and drinking the poor impression of brown water the japanese call coffee until midday, until we deem it time to go out. we go unrecognised in the streets, and no-one even cares if i hold your hand in public sometimes. pretend this is it.
gerard stares blankly at the ticket machine until a group of teenage girls come up to him. he can feel them hovering around him, can hear their giggling and hushed chatter for nearly a whole minute before one of them approaches him. in broken english, they ask if he needs help. he manages to mumble something about akihabara, electric city, and the girls nod eagerly.
one of them presses a few buttons on the machine and holds out a hand for cash after tapping the screen, pointing at the price. gerard hands over a five hundred yen coin and the girl slots it into the machine, then passes back his change and ticket, all hai, hai, douzo and winning smiles.
they chat awkwardly for a few minutes and the girls snap a couple of camera phone photos of themselves with gerard. gerard finds himself surprised to realise he doesn't even mind, that he actually smiles genuinely when they ask if it's okay. they bow quickly and thank him afterwards -- arigato, sank yuu! -- then run off laughing, clutching tight to each other. they disappear into the surging crowd within seconds. gerard suddenly feels indescribably alone.
he catches the subway to akihabara anyway. the buildings aren't any more impressive here than they are anywhere else in tokyo, but they're lit more brightly and everything coming from within them is definitely, definitely much louder. gerard walks out of the station in awe, and thinks he can see why they call it electric city.
gerard browses for nearly three hours, until suddenly he looks at his phone and realises it's already gone nine p.m. he's suddenly starving. he eats vegetable tempura udon perched on a bar stool at a wooden bench in a noodle shop down the end of the main street, probably a good five blocks away from the station. he practically gets shooed out of the store when he's finished, and when he looks back from the doorway, another customer has already taken his seat.
on the train back to the station near his hotel, gerard sifts through the bags he's accumulated, going back over the evening's purchases. he catalogues them in his mind, filing them away for when he gets back home. futuristic manga comics and a rare edition of a morrissey cd for mikey. hentai manga filled with girls with overly large breasts for ray and for bob that gerard giggles over for a good ten minutes. an electronic organiser for brian. more manga and a plug-in usb graphics tablet for himself. a new digital camera, also for himself, 10.2 megapixels, the latest, greatest, tiniest he could find.
gerard packs up all the bags and sets them to the side. he reaches for the last bag, and pulls out the items in the bag carefully, looking at each one closely as he tries to figure out if he made the right decisions. fancy digital photo frame. three rare japanese-release-only cds. a device that supposedly informs the holder of their body's vitamin levels. a few carefully-chosen doujinshi. all are for frank.
gerard can't decide whether it's too much or not enough.
sometimes i think i could be really comfortable here. that maybe i could even live here. i think i'd like to try it some day. you'd come with me, right? or at least visit? you'd visit, wouldn't you?
without mythologies, we are nothing, gerard taps out on his phone. i miss you. he presses send, and sits back, waits. he gazes out the window. the sky is blue, slightly misty, but mostly empty, no planes or helicopters or anything, not even birds. gerard frowns and wonders where all the birds are.
you have enough mythologies for the both of us, frank texts back, a minute or two later. i think you'll be okay. i miss you too, for the record.
gerard smiles. his phone buzzes in his hands again almost immediately, and a second message appears in his inbox. gerard presses select and brings it up.
bring me back a present? frank asks.
duh, gerard types, rolling his eyes and smiling. i've been writing you letters too but i can't find anywhere to buy stamps. lots of postboxes tho. typical. i might have to hand deliver them. maybe email?
frank's reply simply says i'll be waiting.
gerard can practically hear him saying it in his head, and he has to close his eyes and take a deep breath against the want and the homesickness that floods through him.
it gets dark early but i stay up late. the hotel room is small, and the bed is even smaller, but it still feels empty without you in it and mumbling in your sleep next to me. i wake up and expect to see you there every day. it's hard to break a habit, i guess. can't stop thinking about the way your hair looks against the pillow, or the way your eyes look first thing in the morning when you smile at me.
gerard catches the bullet train -- shinkansen, his combined phrasebook-guidebook informs him -- to osaka, but makes a last minute snap decision to get off in kyoto instead. he's pretty sure he'll have to buy another ticket to get to osaka, but he figures he'll deal with that later.
he wanders out of the station, and pulls on his sunglasses automatically, protection. it's windy, and his hair blows in his face when he looks up at kyoto tower. the tower glows faintly yellow against the grey cloudy sky, dotted with little red lights around a section gerard guesses is a viewing platform. he thinks he should probably go up there at some point.
gerard turns and walks down the street, dragging his black suitcase behind him awkwardly, apologising quietly in mumbled half-japanese half-english whenever he bumps into someone; sumimasen, sorry, sumimasen. he's spent enough time in japan over the years to have picked up some basic japanese, at least. he's thankful for that, and quietly, he's also pretty impressed at his ability to remember it.
gerard picks a hotel on the main road at random. he's not even sure if it's a hyatt or a hilton or a radisson until later on, when he reads the letterhead on the notepad next to the phone in his room.
two men help him with his suitcase and take it up to his room while he checks in. they're waiting for him when he steps out of the elevator -- ni-jyuu san kai, the lady chirps over the elevator music. floor twenty-three -- and they hold the door open for him, too, when he walks up to it. gerard smiles tentatively at them; arigato, thank you. hai, arigato.
the men bow and leave as soon as gerard's inside.
the door clicks shut softly, but it sounds to gerard as if there's some sort of finality to it.
in kyoto today and the weather is cooler than tokyo. very windy. the people are still nice but i never know if it's because maybe they know who i am or because that's just the way japanese people are. i really hope it's the latter.
gerard stays in kyoto for three days.
he visits the golden pavilion, a zen rock garden he promptly forgets the name and location of, heian jingu shrine, and a number of large and expensive department stores with impressive food halls in the basements.
gerard takes a photo on his brand new digital camera of the red torii gate in front of heian jingu -- one of the largest torii gates in japan! his guidebook says, exclamation mark and all -- and prays for good fortune and good health at kiyomizu temple. he ties a piece of white paper to a tree, goes down tens of steps into a pitch black cave in the middle of the temple and touches a rock, and pours water on his hands from a wooden bucket on a stick over a pond.
he doesn't feel any different when he leaves, but he figures maybe these things take time.
he does see a pair of maiko, apprentice geisha girls, on the way out of the temple, though. he stops and smiles at them, bows a little. they bow back and smile politely behind their hands.
gerard wonders whether they're real geisha or whether they're just paid models doing a photoshoot when he continues past them.
his shoes crunch on the gravel of the path as he heads back towards his hotel, and he makes a mental note to tell frank about the geisha.
geisha girls in pale kimono. the bottoms of their kimono flutter when they walk, it's really pretty. apparently they actually have to learn how to walk in this certain way, because the japanese believe it makes them look like they're floating. it looks kind of like ripples in a river after you throw a rock in. remember that time in london when you chucked that bit of cement into the thames? it's like that. the ripples go on forever.
the girls in the mr. donut store bow and cry irasshaimase! every time gerard walks through the door. he grins at them, laughing a little, scratching at the back of his neck with one hand nervously.
gerard buys four angel-french chocolate donuts -- real chocolate donuts, he texts to frank the first time he discovers them. not just chocolate icing. the whole fucking donut has got chocolate through it, like the mixture's got cocoa in it or something. they cut them in half and put fluffy creamy icing in the middle. i'd bring you some home but you wouldn't eat them anyway, you boring vegan -- and plans on eating two now, at a booth in the store, and two later.
he does the same thing every day, for the whole week he's there in hiroshima, and every day, he ends up eating all four donuts in one sitting.
gerard justifies it by telling himself that the walk to this particular mr. donut is long enough that it cancels out the calories. it probably doesn't, but gerard can't really bring himself to care all that much.
he buys a golden peach fanta from a vending machine outside afterwards, and wanders along the street. it's a pedestrian-only street, with a roof of sorts overhead sometimes, so he takes his time. he stops at the hmv a few shops up even though he was only there yesterday, and browses for half an hour before he heads back towards the river to get back to his hotel. gerard wanders through the peace park on the way, and smiles when he sees a group of school children singing in front of the sadako shrine off to his right.
he cuts through the park and takes the long way back, past the a-bomb dome and over the bridge. he gets a coffee to go from a tiny little cafe on the left-hand side of the road, and pulls his scarf tighter around his neck as the day begins its descent into evening.
i know it's a cliche, but i can't stop thinking about lost in translation here. remember that time we tried to watch it on the bus, just you and me, when everyone else went out to that party? and you kept trying to stick your hand down my pants and i wouldn't let you because i wanted to watch the movie. i got so mad at you and you stormed off and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night. you pretended you were asleep when i got into your bunk with you. i remember i kissed the back of your neck and you didn't even move, but i could see how tightly you were clenching your fists. i'm sorry. i didn't mean to upset you. i don't know why i'm thinking about that right now, but i just thought you should know, that i didn't mean to make you angry. i wish you were here to watch lost in translation with me. i wouldn't even mind if you wanted to make out instead, promise.
gerard reads murakami on the flight back to new york. he falls asleep after dinner, seatbelt done up over his blanket so the flight hostesses don't wake him up to check he's wearing it. he falls asleep, and dreams that frank is waiting for him at the airport.
he wakes up just minutes before landing, and leaves the plane with his mind in a haze. he looks around tentatively when he steps out into the lounge, his carry-on bag clasped tightly in his right hand. his heart sinks when he can't see frank.
gerard ducks his head and starts walking slowly towards the baggage carousel, his feet moving on automatic.
he's halfway there when his phone buzzes against his thigh, and he stops to pull it out, flick it open. his heartbeat speeds up when it flashes frank at him.
you can't see me can you
gerard reads the text and looks up immediately, glancing around. his eyes catch on a human-shaped bundle of black, leaning back against a pillar off to the right, and he breaks into a wide smile, walking over quickly.
he's still grinning when he reaches frank, who pushes off the pillar and pulls gerard into a hug without hesitation. gerard's heart stutters with relief and he drops his hand luggage to the floor, hugging frank tightly. frank presses his face to gerard's neck, and gerard can feel his grin against his skin.
gerard breathes out slowly, closes his eyes, and feels like he's home for the first time in months.
frank/gerard, pg-13
2,375 words
by girlintheband
set in japan in january/february of 2008. gerard takes some time out. all the geographical details &c; are correct, apart from the udon-ya in akihabara. i don't know if that exists. everything else does.
if you do visit the little coffee shop on the left-hand side of the road after you cross the bridge in hiroshima (walking away from the a-dome), try their waffles. they're really good. also, those chocolate donuts i refer to? they exist too, and are amazing. eat them.
the title of without mythologies comes from the weakerthans. thank you to violentfires for the beta, and to ficklish for general encouragement.
suspend your disbelief, pretend we were both here once. pretend that you weren't sick and didn't have to go home, pretend that i wasn't drunk, pretend that i wasn't going through withdrawal. pretend it worked out and we are both here, right now, just this time, just this once. it's only the two of us, and we spend all morning lying in bed and drinking the poor impression of brown water the japanese call coffee until midday, until we deem it time to go out. we go unrecognised in the streets, and no-one even cares if i hold your hand in public sometimes. pretend this is it.
gerard stares blankly at the ticket machine until a group of teenage girls come up to him. he can feel them hovering around him, can hear their giggling and hushed chatter for nearly a whole minute before one of them approaches him. in broken english, they ask if he needs help. he manages to mumble something about akihabara, electric city, and the girls nod eagerly.
one of them presses a few buttons on the machine and holds out a hand for cash after tapping the screen, pointing at the price. gerard hands over a five hundred yen coin and the girl slots it into the machine, then passes back his change and ticket, all hai, hai, douzo and winning smiles.
they chat awkwardly for a few minutes and the girls snap a couple of camera phone photos of themselves with gerard. gerard finds himself surprised to realise he doesn't even mind, that he actually smiles genuinely when they ask if it's okay. they bow quickly and thank him afterwards -- arigato, sank yuu! -- then run off laughing, clutching tight to each other. they disappear into the surging crowd within seconds. gerard suddenly feels indescribably alone.
he catches the subway to akihabara anyway. the buildings aren't any more impressive here than they are anywhere else in tokyo, but they're lit more brightly and everything coming from within them is definitely, definitely much louder. gerard walks out of the station in awe, and thinks he can see why they call it electric city.
gerard browses for nearly three hours, until suddenly he looks at his phone and realises it's already gone nine p.m. he's suddenly starving. he eats vegetable tempura udon perched on a bar stool at a wooden bench in a noodle shop down the end of the main street, probably a good five blocks away from the station. he practically gets shooed out of the store when he's finished, and when he looks back from the doorway, another customer has already taken his seat.
on the train back to the station near his hotel, gerard sifts through the bags he's accumulated, going back over the evening's purchases. he catalogues them in his mind, filing them away for when he gets back home. futuristic manga comics and a rare edition of a morrissey cd for mikey. hentai manga filled with girls with overly large breasts for ray and for bob that gerard giggles over for a good ten minutes. an electronic organiser for brian. more manga and a plug-in usb graphics tablet for himself. a new digital camera, also for himself, 10.2 megapixels, the latest, greatest, tiniest he could find.
gerard packs up all the bags and sets them to the side. he reaches for the last bag, and pulls out the items in the bag carefully, looking at each one closely as he tries to figure out if he made the right decisions. fancy digital photo frame. three rare japanese-release-only cds. a device that supposedly informs the holder of their body's vitamin levels. a few carefully-chosen doujinshi. all are for frank.
gerard can't decide whether it's too much or not enough.
sometimes i think i could be really comfortable here. that maybe i could even live here. i think i'd like to try it some day. you'd come with me, right? or at least visit? you'd visit, wouldn't you?
without mythologies, we are nothing, gerard taps out on his phone. i miss you. he presses send, and sits back, waits. he gazes out the window. the sky is blue, slightly misty, but mostly empty, no planes or helicopters or anything, not even birds. gerard frowns and wonders where all the birds are.
you have enough mythologies for the both of us, frank texts back, a minute or two later. i think you'll be okay. i miss you too, for the record.
gerard smiles. his phone buzzes in his hands again almost immediately, and a second message appears in his inbox. gerard presses select and brings it up.
bring me back a present? frank asks.
duh, gerard types, rolling his eyes and smiling. i've been writing you letters too but i can't find anywhere to buy stamps. lots of postboxes tho. typical. i might have to hand deliver them. maybe email?
frank's reply simply says i'll be waiting.
gerard can practically hear him saying it in his head, and he has to close his eyes and take a deep breath against the want and the homesickness that floods through him.
it gets dark early but i stay up late. the hotel room is small, and the bed is even smaller, but it still feels empty without you in it and mumbling in your sleep next to me. i wake up and expect to see you there every day. it's hard to break a habit, i guess. can't stop thinking about the way your hair looks against the pillow, or the way your eyes look first thing in the morning when you smile at me.
gerard catches the bullet train -- shinkansen, his combined phrasebook-guidebook informs him -- to osaka, but makes a last minute snap decision to get off in kyoto instead. he's pretty sure he'll have to buy another ticket to get to osaka, but he figures he'll deal with that later.
he wanders out of the station, and pulls on his sunglasses automatically, protection. it's windy, and his hair blows in his face when he looks up at kyoto tower. the tower glows faintly yellow against the grey cloudy sky, dotted with little red lights around a section gerard guesses is a viewing platform. he thinks he should probably go up there at some point.
gerard turns and walks down the street, dragging his black suitcase behind him awkwardly, apologising quietly in mumbled half-japanese half-english whenever he bumps into someone; sumimasen, sorry, sumimasen. he's spent enough time in japan over the years to have picked up some basic japanese, at least. he's thankful for that, and quietly, he's also pretty impressed at his ability to remember it.
gerard picks a hotel on the main road at random. he's not even sure if it's a hyatt or a hilton or a radisson until later on, when he reads the letterhead on the notepad next to the phone in his room.
two men help him with his suitcase and take it up to his room while he checks in. they're waiting for him when he steps out of the elevator -- ni-jyuu san kai, the lady chirps over the elevator music. floor twenty-three -- and they hold the door open for him, too, when he walks up to it. gerard smiles tentatively at them; arigato, thank you. hai, arigato.
the men bow and leave as soon as gerard's inside.
the door clicks shut softly, but it sounds to gerard as if there's some sort of finality to it.
in kyoto today and the weather is cooler than tokyo. very windy. the people are still nice but i never know if it's because maybe they know who i am or because that's just the way japanese people are. i really hope it's the latter.
gerard stays in kyoto for three days.
he visits the golden pavilion, a zen rock garden he promptly forgets the name and location of, heian jingu shrine, and a number of large and expensive department stores with impressive food halls in the basements.
gerard takes a photo on his brand new digital camera of the red torii gate in front of heian jingu -- one of the largest torii gates in japan! his guidebook says, exclamation mark and all -- and prays for good fortune and good health at kiyomizu temple. he ties a piece of white paper to a tree, goes down tens of steps into a pitch black cave in the middle of the temple and touches a rock, and pours water on his hands from a wooden bucket on a stick over a pond.
he doesn't feel any different when he leaves, but he figures maybe these things take time.
he does see a pair of maiko, apprentice geisha girls, on the way out of the temple, though. he stops and smiles at them, bows a little. they bow back and smile politely behind their hands.
gerard wonders whether they're real geisha or whether they're just paid models doing a photoshoot when he continues past them.
his shoes crunch on the gravel of the path as he heads back towards his hotel, and he makes a mental note to tell frank about the geisha.
geisha girls in pale kimono. the bottoms of their kimono flutter when they walk, it's really pretty. apparently they actually have to learn how to walk in this certain way, because the japanese believe it makes them look like they're floating. it looks kind of like ripples in a river after you throw a rock in. remember that time in london when you chucked that bit of cement into the thames? it's like that. the ripples go on forever.
the girls in the mr. donut store bow and cry irasshaimase! every time gerard walks through the door. he grins at them, laughing a little, scratching at the back of his neck with one hand nervously.
gerard buys four angel-french chocolate donuts -- real chocolate donuts, he texts to frank the first time he discovers them. not just chocolate icing. the whole fucking donut has got chocolate through it, like the mixture's got cocoa in it or something. they cut them in half and put fluffy creamy icing in the middle. i'd bring you some home but you wouldn't eat them anyway, you boring vegan -- and plans on eating two now, at a booth in the store, and two later.
he does the same thing every day, for the whole week he's there in hiroshima, and every day, he ends up eating all four donuts in one sitting.
gerard justifies it by telling himself that the walk to this particular mr. donut is long enough that it cancels out the calories. it probably doesn't, but gerard can't really bring himself to care all that much.
he buys a golden peach fanta from a vending machine outside afterwards, and wanders along the street. it's a pedestrian-only street, with a roof of sorts overhead sometimes, so he takes his time. he stops at the hmv a few shops up even though he was only there yesterday, and browses for half an hour before he heads back towards the river to get back to his hotel. gerard wanders through the peace park on the way, and smiles when he sees a group of school children singing in front of the sadako shrine off to his right.
he cuts through the park and takes the long way back, past the a-bomb dome and over the bridge. he gets a coffee to go from a tiny little cafe on the left-hand side of the road, and pulls his scarf tighter around his neck as the day begins its descent into evening.
i know it's a cliche, but i can't stop thinking about lost in translation here. remember that time we tried to watch it on the bus, just you and me, when everyone else went out to that party? and you kept trying to stick your hand down my pants and i wouldn't let you because i wanted to watch the movie. i got so mad at you and you stormed off and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night. you pretended you were asleep when i got into your bunk with you. i remember i kissed the back of your neck and you didn't even move, but i could see how tightly you were clenching your fists. i'm sorry. i didn't mean to upset you. i don't know why i'm thinking about that right now, but i just thought you should know, that i didn't mean to make you angry. i wish you were here to watch lost in translation with me. i wouldn't even mind if you wanted to make out instead, promise.
gerard reads murakami on the flight back to new york. he falls asleep after dinner, seatbelt done up over his blanket so the flight hostesses don't wake him up to check he's wearing it. he falls asleep, and dreams that frank is waiting for him at the airport.
he wakes up just minutes before landing, and leaves the plane with his mind in a haze. he looks around tentatively when he steps out into the lounge, his carry-on bag clasped tightly in his right hand. his heart sinks when he can't see frank.
gerard ducks his head and starts walking slowly towards the baggage carousel, his feet moving on automatic.
he's halfway there when his phone buzzes against his thigh, and he stops to pull it out, flick it open. his heartbeat speeds up when it flashes frank at him.
you can't see me can you
gerard reads the text and looks up immediately, glancing around. his eyes catch on a human-shaped bundle of black, leaning back against a pillar off to the right, and he breaks into a wide smile, walking over quickly.
he's still grinning when he reaches frank, who pushes off the pillar and pulls gerard into a hug without hesitation. gerard's heart stutters with relief and he drops his hand luggage to the floor, hugging frank tightly. frank presses his face to gerard's neck, and gerard can feel his grin against his skin.
gerard breathes out slowly, closes his eyes, and feels like he's home for the first time in months.