Fic: He Told Me I Could Never Go Back
title: He Told Me I Could Never Go Back
pairing: Frank/Gerard
rating: PG-13
words: ~2100
summary: Everything was fine until Frank disappeared.
beta: giddy_london, who understands my bandom brain.
disclaimer: I’m quite sure this never happened in real life. The Umbrella Academy belongs to Gerard, and the boys belong to themselves. Title taken from a line in the comic.
a/n: This was heavily inspired by a character in Gerard’s comic, The Umbrella Academy. You’ll probably get more out of this fic if you’ve read the comic, but it’s totally not necessary.
warning: supernatural elements (it’s a surprise)
Everything was fine until Frank disappeared.
There was literally no trace at all. All of his belongings-his wallet, his ID, his keys, his cell phone-were still on Gerard’s coffee table, and Frank’s clothes were tossed all over the floor in the guest room, even the ones he’d been wearing the last time Gerard saw him. Everything. And nothing of Gerard’s things had been touched, either, and Gerard would never have thought that Frank would steal from him anyway.
Gerard called Mikey in a panic. Mikey called Brian, who called the police, and then the rest of the guys, Frank’s parents, and all of Frank’s close friends that he could remember. After talking to Mikey, and then briefly to Brian and the detective who’d come to his door, Gerard just sat on his couch staring at the pile of Frank’s things on the coffee table.
The police had dusted them for fingerprints and had found, just as they had expected, Frank’s own prints, Gerard’s, and that’s it. There was no sign of struggle in the apartment, and Gerard had only been in his bedroom, he would’ve heard if anything had happened. He thought he would’ve heard Frank leave-his front door squeaked. But maybe he just wasn’t paying attention.
And why would Frank have run off with no clothes and no money?
The police kept an eye on Frank’s bank accounts, but there were no charges made, no withdrawals, and Frank didn’t have any identification anyway.
There were wild speculations about Frank and the band and aliens, but then it started to die down and Frank was just… gone.
***
Gerard had his earbuds firmly wedged in his ears, an old Iron Maiden song filling the silence, as he fumbled with his keys and the take-out personal pizza box and a grocery bag full of milk and cereal. When he finally managed to get the door open, he dropped his keys, iPod, and the pizza onto the coffee table, as per his usual routine, and proceeded to the kitchen to put away the groceries. Without the music blasting in his ears, the apartment seemed too quiet, but that would change as soon as he made himself comfortable on the couch in front of the TV with his pizza box on his lap.
Back in the main room, Gerard looked down at the table and started fishing things out of his pocket: his wallet, overstuffed with bits of paper and useless receipts and expired gift cards, his cell phone, which had a crack in the screen from one too many drops onto unforgiving concrete, and a handful of pennies he could never resist picking up off the ground. They were supposed to be lucky.
When he looked up, Frank was coming out of his bedroom, dressed in Gerard’s clothes, an apologetic expression on his face. He raised his eyebrows. Gerard’s jaw dropped.
“Dude, did you get a haircut?”
“Frank?”
“Whatever, it looks good. Is that pizza?”
“Frank. Frank. You’re wearing my clothes. Frank.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry, um… So here’s the thing, I woke up like, naked, and I couldn’t find my suitcase in the guest room… You don’t mind, do you?”
“Frank.”
“Gerard, what the fuck?”
“Frank.”
“That’s my name, yeah. What’s going on?”
“Holy shit.”
Gerard’s knees buckled, and he was lucky he was already standing in front of the sofa. He collapsed onto it, and Frank was at his side in two seconds.
“Gee? Hey, man, you okay? You look kinda pale. Like, more than usual.” He put his hand on Gerard’s forehead-his hand, which was real and warm and tattooed and exactly how Gerard remembered it. “You’re not warm… Gerard, you okay?”
Gerard turned his head and studied Frank’s face. It, too, looked real and normal and exactly how Gerard remembered it. Frank was staring at him worriedly, his hand still resting on Gerard’s shoulder.
“Where were you?” Gerard asked disbelievingly.
“Um…” Frank’s forehead creased in confusion. “In the guest room? Naked? I honestly don’t know how that happened. And dude, where’s all my shit? The room was like, empty when I woke up.”
“But… Frankie…” Something crashed over Gerard like a wave. His face went blank. He hoped to god he was just being a sci-fi/horror geek. “What day is it?” he asked in a monotone.
“Uhhh… Tuesday, I think,” Frank replied.
“What’s the date?”
“The… twelfth? Oh, no, wait, the tenth, ‘cause I flew in on Saturday and it was the seventh.”
“Oh shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Frankie… it’s September.”
Frank scoffed. “What, like I slept through a whole year?”
“No… Three.”
“Gerard-”
“You disappeared.”
“I was in the fucking guest room, Ger-”
“No, Frank, you disappeared without a fucking trace. It’s been two and a half fucking years, and you still think it’s the day you left.”
“I didn’t go anywhere!”
Gerard shot to his feet, grabbed Frank by the wrist, and yanked him into the kitchen. On the refrigerator was a picture of Frank. Gerard pulled it off; taped on the back was a short newspaper blurb about Frank’s disappearance, and Gerard had written the date in Sharpie underneath.
Frank’s face fell, and his jaw slowly dropped open.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked in a soft voice, not looking up to meet Gerard’s eyes.
“I have no fucking idea.”
***
It was much the same routine: Gerard called Mikey, who didn’t believe a word of his story until Frank himself got on the phone and confirmed his existence. Then Mikey called Brian, even though he didn’t work for them anymore, and the rest of the guys. Ray and Bob didn’t answer, but it was evening, and they would be working, their phones on silent or turned off completely. Mikey promised he’d keep trying them and spread the word around.
Gerard and Frank sat next to each other on the couch, staring blankly at the television, which was on mute and playing an infomercial about workout machines.
“The band?” Frank asked timidly.
Gerard almost didn’t want to answer. “We… tried, Frankie. It just didn’t work.”
“What happened?”
“We asked Matt to fill in as like, a sort of temporary replacement, but… none of us could write, Frank, it just didn’t work.”
“Bullshit,” Frank muttered. “You wrote music before you met me, I wasn’t your fucking muse.”
“It just didn’t work, Frank,” Gerard repeated bitterly.
“So My Chemical Romance… it’s just done.”
“We’ve been on ‘hiatus’ for a year and a half,” Gerard confirmed. “Ray’s a guitar tech for MSI, and Bob’s with Linkin Park on Projekt Rev. He’s doing sound again.”
“Mikey?”
“He and Alicia got married. He doesn’t really play anymore, at least not with any band or anything. He sometimes works tech for Fall Out Boy with Alicia. They’re pretty much settled down, though. He bought a house with like, a backyard and shit, close to a school.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Frank turned to him. “What about you?”
Gerard shrugged. “I don’t really have any skills in the music industry, Frank. Without a band, I’m just… a lyricist. I helped produce an album for one of Mikey’s friends, but that’s about it.”
“What happened to saving the world?” Frank asked softly.
“I didn’t have a sidekick?”
“Bullshit.”
“Frankie, you don’t understand, okay? You were just gone. I worried myself sick for like a year, and then I just kind of sat around while everyone else started picking up their lives and moving on, and I didn’t know what to do. I pitched a shitty idea for a cartoon to CN, but they turned it down. I’ve just been… drifting, I don’t know.”
“Fuck, Gerard.”
They were quiet for several minutes before Gerard said, his voice a whisper, “I still have your guitars.”
Frank looked at him, his eyes soft and lost, and Gerard practically leapt off the sofa. He kept the guitars in his bedroom by his desk, and he thought he still had an amp in the hall closet… Frank hadn’t moved when Gerard reappeared in the main room, holding Frank’s polished white guitar out for him.
Frank settled the guitar in his lap and strummed an easy chord. Of course it was easy, Gerard realized; for Frank, it hadn’t been that long since he last played.
“Did you finish that song we were working on?”
“What song?”
“‘Candles burning bright, your ghost haunts the flame…’” Frank sang under his breath. “We pretty much only had the chorus and one verse… when I left.”
Gerard vaguely remembered those words, and variations on them, but he couldn’t place the emotion or the idea behind them, and he couldn’t remember the melody at all. Frank played a few chords, a slow riff, but it didn’t jog his memory.
“Jesus, Gerard,” Frank hissed, “it was just…” He trailed off and looked down at his hands, which had stilled on the strings. “I’m sorry. It just yesterday for me.” He sighed. “It was our song, Gerard, we hadn’t told anyone else about it yet. We wanted to write it by ourselves. Remember?”
Frank looked up at him hopefully, and Gerard found himself nodding. He remembered their excitement, their determination. It was meant to be some sort of surprise for the others, or something. Gerard remembered that he loved collaborating with Frank, that he loved Frank’s melodies and his stubbornness with songwriting, and that it had just been fun. The two of them playing around together, like best friends do.
“We should finish it,” Frank said.
“I don’t know if I can,” Gerard whispered. He was a different person, now, and Frank was still exactly the same. As much as he remembered about Frank, Gerard couldn’t remember anything about his own thoughts and feelings during the few days Frank had been at his apartment to work on the song.
“I’m sorry,” Gerard breathed, “I need-” He stood up and ran for his room, shutting the door firmly behind him but taking care not to let it slam. By the time he reached his bed, he was almost hyperventilating.
A few minutes later, Frank knocked on the door. “Gee? Can I come in, please?”
“Frank, I can’t-” Gerard called back to him.
“Gerard, if anyone should be having a mental fucking breakdown, it should be me, okay? Let me in, please.”
***
Three weeks later, Frank was messing around on his guitar almost nonstop, picking out melodies and chords for Gerard to hear and approve of, and Gerard was slowly getting back into the habit of songwriting. They’d had extensive talks with Ray, but concluded that they weren’t ready to just pick up where they left off, and that Ray should stay on tour, keep up with his job, until they sorted things out. A similar message was passed along to Bob, who was more hesitant about dropping his tour on a whim anyway.
Frank’s mom sent over two boxes of Frank’s clothes and personal things, and Frank was making no move to leave Gerard’s apartment. Gerard couldn’t say he minded.
***
Another month after that, all the guys were back together again, and they had regular, almost daily practice sessions in a studio near Bob and Ray’s short-term apartments. Both of them were looking for more permanent residences and seemed confident in the return of My Chemical Romance.
Mikey was staying in Gerard’s guest room, and sometimes Alicia would make an appearance, but for the most part, she stayed in New York with their pets and her own job at an indie label.
Frank had moved into Gerard’s room. They hadn’t had sex, they hadn’t done much of anything besides kiss a few times, and it was more of a comfort thing than anything else. Frank liked to curl around Gerard and twist his fingers in Gerard’s t-shirt, and Gerard liked to hear Frank breathing and feel the warmth radiating off him in the night.
Sometimes Frank hid his face in Gerard’s hair, his nose smushed against Gerard’s neck, and Gerard could feel him trying not to cry. He petted Frank’s hair during those times and murmured quiet things that probably didn’t make any sense, but provided comfort nonetheless.
***
“I wish I could go back,” Frank whispered one night, and Gerard knew that Frank thought he was asleep. “I love you,” Frank continued, “but I wish I could go back.”
Frank slid his hand across Gerard’s chest to rest on his shoulder, and Gerard moved sluggishly, as if he were really asleep, and gathered Frank in his arms.
He didn’t want to tell Frank, but he wished the same thing.
fin.
pairing: Frank/Gerard
rating: PG-13
words: ~2100
summary: Everything was fine until Frank disappeared.
beta: giddy_london, who understands my bandom brain.
disclaimer: I’m quite sure this never happened in real life. The Umbrella Academy belongs to Gerard, and the boys belong to themselves. Title taken from a line in the comic.
a/n: This was heavily inspired by a character in Gerard’s comic, The Umbrella Academy. You’ll probably get more out of this fic if you’ve read the comic, but it’s totally not necessary.
warning: supernatural elements (it’s a surprise)
Everything was fine until Frank disappeared.
There was literally no trace at all. All of his belongings-his wallet, his ID, his keys, his cell phone-were still on Gerard’s coffee table, and Frank’s clothes were tossed all over the floor in the guest room, even the ones he’d been wearing the last time Gerard saw him. Everything. And nothing of Gerard’s things had been touched, either, and Gerard would never have thought that Frank would steal from him anyway.
Gerard called Mikey in a panic. Mikey called Brian, who called the police, and then the rest of the guys, Frank’s parents, and all of Frank’s close friends that he could remember. After talking to Mikey, and then briefly to Brian and the detective who’d come to his door, Gerard just sat on his couch staring at the pile of Frank’s things on the coffee table.
The police had dusted them for fingerprints and had found, just as they had expected, Frank’s own prints, Gerard’s, and that’s it. There was no sign of struggle in the apartment, and Gerard had only been in his bedroom, he would’ve heard if anything had happened. He thought he would’ve heard Frank leave-his front door squeaked. But maybe he just wasn’t paying attention.
And why would Frank have run off with no clothes and no money?
The police kept an eye on Frank’s bank accounts, but there were no charges made, no withdrawals, and Frank didn’t have any identification anyway.
There were wild speculations about Frank and the band and aliens, but then it started to die down and Frank was just… gone.
***
Gerard had his earbuds firmly wedged in his ears, an old Iron Maiden song filling the silence, as he fumbled with his keys and the take-out personal pizza box and a grocery bag full of milk and cereal. When he finally managed to get the door open, he dropped his keys, iPod, and the pizza onto the coffee table, as per his usual routine, and proceeded to the kitchen to put away the groceries. Without the music blasting in his ears, the apartment seemed too quiet, but that would change as soon as he made himself comfortable on the couch in front of the TV with his pizza box on his lap.
Back in the main room, Gerard looked down at the table and started fishing things out of his pocket: his wallet, overstuffed with bits of paper and useless receipts and expired gift cards, his cell phone, which had a crack in the screen from one too many drops onto unforgiving concrete, and a handful of pennies he could never resist picking up off the ground. They were supposed to be lucky.
When he looked up, Frank was coming out of his bedroom, dressed in Gerard’s clothes, an apologetic expression on his face. He raised his eyebrows. Gerard’s jaw dropped.
“Dude, did you get a haircut?”
“Frank?”
“Whatever, it looks good. Is that pizza?”
“Frank. Frank. You’re wearing my clothes. Frank.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry, um… So here’s the thing, I woke up like, naked, and I couldn’t find my suitcase in the guest room… You don’t mind, do you?”
“Frank.”
“Gerard, what the fuck?”
“Frank.”
“That’s my name, yeah. What’s going on?”
“Holy shit.”
Gerard’s knees buckled, and he was lucky he was already standing in front of the sofa. He collapsed onto it, and Frank was at his side in two seconds.
“Gee? Hey, man, you okay? You look kinda pale. Like, more than usual.” He put his hand on Gerard’s forehead-his hand, which was real and warm and tattooed and exactly how Gerard remembered it. “You’re not warm… Gerard, you okay?”
Gerard turned his head and studied Frank’s face. It, too, looked real and normal and exactly how Gerard remembered it. Frank was staring at him worriedly, his hand still resting on Gerard’s shoulder.
“Where were you?” Gerard asked disbelievingly.
“Um…” Frank’s forehead creased in confusion. “In the guest room? Naked? I honestly don’t know how that happened. And dude, where’s all my shit? The room was like, empty when I woke up.”
“But… Frankie…” Something crashed over Gerard like a wave. His face went blank. He hoped to god he was just being a sci-fi/horror geek. “What day is it?” he asked in a monotone.
“Uhhh… Tuesday, I think,” Frank replied.
“What’s the date?”
“The… twelfth? Oh, no, wait, the tenth, ‘cause I flew in on Saturday and it was the seventh.”
“Oh shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Frankie… it’s September.”
Frank scoffed. “What, like I slept through a whole year?”
“No… Three.”
“Gerard-”
“You disappeared.”
“I was in the fucking guest room, Ger-”
“No, Frank, you disappeared without a fucking trace. It’s been two and a half fucking years, and you still think it’s the day you left.”
“I didn’t go anywhere!”
Gerard shot to his feet, grabbed Frank by the wrist, and yanked him into the kitchen. On the refrigerator was a picture of Frank. Gerard pulled it off; taped on the back was a short newspaper blurb about Frank’s disappearance, and Gerard had written the date in Sharpie underneath.
Frank’s face fell, and his jaw slowly dropped open.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked in a soft voice, not looking up to meet Gerard’s eyes.
“I have no fucking idea.”
***
It was much the same routine: Gerard called Mikey, who didn’t believe a word of his story until Frank himself got on the phone and confirmed his existence. Then Mikey called Brian, even though he didn’t work for them anymore, and the rest of the guys. Ray and Bob didn’t answer, but it was evening, and they would be working, their phones on silent or turned off completely. Mikey promised he’d keep trying them and spread the word around.
Gerard and Frank sat next to each other on the couch, staring blankly at the television, which was on mute and playing an infomercial about workout machines.
“The band?” Frank asked timidly.
Gerard almost didn’t want to answer. “We… tried, Frankie. It just didn’t work.”
“What happened?”
“We asked Matt to fill in as like, a sort of temporary replacement, but… none of us could write, Frank, it just didn’t work.”
“Bullshit,” Frank muttered. “You wrote music before you met me, I wasn’t your fucking muse.”
“It just didn’t work, Frank,” Gerard repeated bitterly.
“So My Chemical Romance… it’s just done.”
“We’ve been on ‘hiatus’ for a year and a half,” Gerard confirmed. “Ray’s a guitar tech for MSI, and Bob’s with Linkin Park on Projekt Rev. He’s doing sound again.”
“Mikey?”
“He and Alicia got married. He doesn’t really play anymore, at least not with any band or anything. He sometimes works tech for Fall Out Boy with Alicia. They’re pretty much settled down, though. He bought a house with like, a backyard and shit, close to a school.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Frank turned to him. “What about you?”
Gerard shrugged. “I don’t really have any skills in the music industry, Frank. Without a band, I’m just… a lyricist. I helped produce an album for one of Mikey’s friends, but that’s about it.”
“What happened to saving the world?” Frank asked softly.
“I didn’t have a sidekick?”
“Bullshit.”
“Frankie, you don’t understand, okay? You were just gone. I worried myself sick for like a year, and then I just kind of sat around while everyone else started picking up their lives and moving on, and I didn’t know what to do. I pitched a shitty idea for a cartoon to CN, but they turned it down. I’ve just been… drifting, I don’t know.”
“Fuck, Gerard.”
They were quiet for several minutes before Gerard said, his voice a whisper, “I still have your guitars.”
Frank looked at him, his eyes soft and lost, and Gerard practically leapt off the sofa. He kept the guitars in his bedroom by his desk, and he thought he still had an amp in the hall closet… Frank hadn’t moved when Gerard reappeared in the main room, holding Frank’s polished white guitar out for him.
Frank settled the guitar in his lap and strummed an easy chord. Of course it was easy, Gerard realized; for Frank, it hadn’t been that long since he last played.
“Did you finish that song we were working on?”
“What song?”
“‘Candles burning bright, your ghost haunts the flame…’” Frank sang under his breath. “We pretty much only had the chorus and one verse… when I left.”
Gerard vaguely remembered those words, and variations on them, but he couldn’t place the emotion or the idea behind them, and he couldn’t remember the melody at all. Frank played a few chords, a slow riff, but it didn’t jog his memory.
“Jesus, Gerard,” Frank hissed, “it was just…” He trailed off and looked down at his hands, which had stilled on the strings. “I’m sorry. It just yesterday for me.” He sighed. “It was our song, Gerard, we hadn’t told anyone else about it yet. We wanted to write it by ourselves. Remember?”
Frank looked up at him hopefully, and Gerard found himself nodding. He remembered their excitement, their determination. It was meant to be some sort of surprise for the others, or something. Gerard remembered that he loved collaborating with Frank, that he loved Frank’s melodies and his stubbornness with songwriting, and that it had just been fun. The two of them playing around together, like best friends do.
“We should finish it,” Frank said.
“I don’t know if I can,” Gerard whispered. He was a different person, now, and Frank was still exactly the same. As much as he remembered about Frank, Gerard couldn’t remember anything about his own thoughts and feelings during the few days Frank had been at his apartment to work on the song.
“I’m sorry,” Gerard breathed, “I need-” He stood up and ran for his room, shutting the door firmly behind him but taking care not to let it slam. By the time he reached his bed, he was almost hyperventilating.
A few minutes later, Frank knocked on the door. “Gee? Can I come in, please?”
“Frank, I can’t-” Gerard called back to him.
“Gerard, if anyone should be having a mental fucking breakdown, it should be me, okay? Let me in, please.”
***
Three weeks later, Frank was messing around on his guitar almost nonstop, picking out melodies and chords for Gerard to hear and approve of, and Gerard was slowly getting back into the habit of songwriting. They’d had extensive talks with Ray, but concluded that they weren’t ready to just pick up where they left off, and that Ray should stay on tour, keep up with his job, until they sorted things out. A similar message was passed along to Bob, who was more hesitant about dropping his tour on a whim anyway.
Frank’s mom sent over two boxes of Frank’s clothes and personal things, and Frank was making no move to leave Gerard’s apartment. Gerard couldn’t say he minded.
***
Another month after that, all the guys were back together again, and they had regular, almost daily practice sessions in a studio near Bob and Ray’s short-term apartments. Both of them were looking for more permanent residences and seemed confident in the return of My Chemical Romance.
Mikey was staying in Gerard’s guest room, and sometimes Alicia would make an appearance, but for the most part, she stayed in New York with their pets and her own job at an indie label.
Frank had moved into Gerard’s room. They hadn’t had sex, they hadn’t done much of anything besides kiss a few times, and it was more of a comfort thing than anything else. Frank liked to curl around Gerard and twist his fingers in Gerard’s t-shirt, and Gerard liked to hear Frank breathing and feel the warmth radiating off him in the night.
Sometimes Frank hid his face in Gerard’s hair, his nose smushed against Gerard’s neck, and Gerard could feel him trying not to cry. He petted Frank’s hair during those times and murmured quiet things that probably didn’t make any sense, but provided comfort nonetheless.
***
“I wish I could go back,” Frank whispered one night, and Gerard knew that Frank thought he was asleep. “I love you,” Frank continued, “but I wish I could go back.”
Frank slid his hand across Gerard’s chest to rest on his shoulder, and Gerard moved sluggishly, as if he were really asleep, and gathered Frank in his arms.
He didn’t want to tell Frank, but he wished the same thing.
fin.