Chapter Text
We both know you're leaving
You just don't want to say it yet
'Cause you don't want to hurt my feelings
So you gnaw your little holes in the net
And you torture me with those big eyes
And you punish me with pity
But I'm going to Cleveland
You say you wanted to strike first
Because one of us was leaving, that's what you say
But I've always been real fond of you
So I never would have treated you this way
And you torture me with those big eyes
And you punish me with pity
But I'm going to Cleveland
I hear the Cuyahoga calling
Now I know what I was born for
And you say "Hey John, where are you going?"
But that's not my name anymore
And you torture me with those big eyes
And you punish me with pity
But I'm going to Cleveland
Going to Cleaveland
-------
The Welcome To Ohio sign passed in a blue and red blur by the side of the road. A monument to empty land and corn fields.
“You called me Gerard when we met, even before I introduced myself.”
Jon startled, shaking half formed revelations about the size of America out of his head. “Yes, I did. I was familiar with you from statements.”
The car fell silent for several seconds until both Jon and Gerard tried to speak at the same time.
“Was that, ah, weird?”
“What was I called in all the statements?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t think you were still…” Jon trailed off moving his hand in an apologetic gesture.
Gerard snorted, “No it’s fine, it wasn’t weird. Sort of nice, actually.”
Jon nodded, “All the statements that named you used Gerard Keay.”
Gerard’s mouth sprung up into a bittersweet almost-smile. He mumbled something under his breath about Gertrude coming through in the end. Jon thought it was too private for him for clarification.
-------
Jon saw the small rest stop on the horizon and pulled into its miniature parking lot without saying a word.
He looked at Gerard, and nodded once before getting out of the car and walking towards the bathroom.
The world buzzed around him, every sound louder than it should have been, every light bright and blaring. He stumbled into the bathroom, relieved to see it was empty. Nothing but fluorescent lights, rows of urinals, off white tile, Jon, and his reflection.
His knees buckled as he reached the sink. Jon held himself up on straining arms, eyes glued to the drain at the bottom. He cupped his hands, bringing water to his mouth. He swished it around, trying to rid himself of the taste of vomit before spitting it out. He was reminded, vaguely, of bible studies of his youth. Pontius Pilate washed away his sins with a bowl of water. Jon took another desperate handful and wondered if that was what redemption tasted like. He remembered his freshman year of Uni, discovering himself, specifically discovering he might not have been the good catholic girl his grandmother raised. He found himself to be not catholic, not a girl, and certainly not good.
He wondered if he could ever go back to the Church of his childhood. If the priest was still the same as he had been decades ago. He wondered if he could even walk into the confessional, if he could ask for redemption. If he was able to receive it.
With a strength he did not have, he dragged himself away from the sink and made eye contact with his reflection.
He barely recognized the thing in the mirror. Was this the Archivist, he wondered? Sallow cheeks and hollow eyes, a face that was more the Eye’s then it was his. What a horrible cruelty, he thought, to rip his face away from him so soon after he had begun to recognize it as his own.
He spit another mouthful of water back into the sink and turned, avoiding the eyes of the two people milling around the rest stop.
-------
Gerard cleared his throat. “You, uh,” he paused, looking nervous for the first time since Jon had met him, “are we friends?”
Jon moved his hands up and down the wheel, “Yeah, yes, I’d say we’re friends, after everything.”
“Right, well, nice.” Gerard said, nodding his head and looking elsewhere.
“Why do you ask?”
Gerard cleared his throat, “Well, uh, I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”
“Gerry?”
Gerard--No, Gerry-- nodded his head.
Jon smiled, small and private between the two of them, “I think it’s a lovely name, Gerry.”
Gerry tugged at his coat and smiled as well.
-------
It was five hours into the drive that Jon started to have trouble breathing, the tightness around his chest becoming evident.
Sweat beaded on his brow, pressure laying thick on him. He couldn’t take off his binder. Gerry didn’t know. Gerry couldn’t know. Jon could feel the change in the air instantly. He could see how Gerry’s eyes would linger differently, how he’d search Jon’s face for the last clinging shreds of femininity. How he’d see Jon differently, how their little friendship would fracture and shift, unable to accommodate what Jon was. Gerry might say Jon was the same, might even try to believe it, but he’d never see Jon as anything more than the lingering touches of the girl Jon once was. He would no longer be a man to Gerry, no, he’d be something lesser, something lower, something--
“It’s not healthy to bind this long.”
Jon startled, pulled out his thoughts. “W-What?”
“I, uh,” Gerry scratched his earlobe, “I saw you had a binder on earlier and I think you should probably take it off after all this time.”
Jon’s mouth went dry. Gerry saw his look of panic and quickly continued, “Oh, I’m-- Well, I, uh, I used to bind as well.” He ducked his head as he finished, pulling a hand through his hair.
“You did?” Jon asked, tone quivering.
Gerry nodded.
Jon wordlessly pulled the car over and crawled into the windowless back, quickly slipping off his shirt and wiggling through his binder. He mourned his lack of a sports bra, or of any kind of bra really, and had to make due with simply throwing his loose shirt back on.
He sat back in the driver’s seat and took a deep breath, letting the freeing feeling linger. Jon rubbed the heel of his hand between his clothed breasts, trying to get rid of the slight soreness.
“I got top before, well, getting ghosted, but I still remember how much binding sucked.” Gerry said.
Jon nodded, stretching the muscles in his back and shoulders. “I’ve been on the waiting list for about three years now.”
Gerry nodded as well, “I remember how long the waits were. After my mum passed, I just took the last bit of money I had and paid to get it done.”
Jon started the car, making a sound of agreement, thinking of how quickly money tended to leave him, constantly being sucked away by rent, bills, and, quite recently, first aid equipment. “I nearly did the same after Uni, but I never had the money to do it.”
“The one good thing my mother did for me was leave me some money after she ‘died’.”
Jon snorted in agreement.
“Do you know the tongue lashing I got when I got my name changed? For a woman without a physical throat she could shout real loud.”
Jon half laughed, in the morbid way only men standing on the familiar gallows could. “My grandmother refused to see me after I started to transition. I didn’t even learn she passed until I got a letter about her will a month after the funeral.”
“That’s harsh.”
“To be fair, I don’t know what I would have done if I was invited.”
Road and time rolled by below them in a car moving seventy five miles per hour across the interstate. Every mile brought them closer to the and every minute took them further from the remains of shattered families. A dance, back and forth, slowly becoming strangers to the people who were theoretically supported to know them best of all.
-------
“We should eventually talk about the Unknowing.”
Jon nodded.
“We need a plan, how many assistants currently work at the-“
“No,” Jon shook his head, “We’re not involving the people at the Institute. I can’t do that.”
Gerry picked at a thread on his jeans as he thought of what to say. “Alright. No assistants.”
“Did-did Gertrude leave anything? Any plans or statements?”
Gerry fell silent for a moment, before a memory from the base of his skull began to stir. He turned to Jon, his grin devilish. “No statements, but she did leave a storage unit full of C4.”
“C4? Like explosives?” Jon asked, tone spiking into disbelief.
“Exactly. There isn’t a ritual in the world that C4 can’t solve! If you think there is, you just haven’t tried enough C4.”
“So what? We get all these explosives and what-- blow the Unknowing up?”
“Exactly! We’re going to reduce those clowns to smithereens.”
“And you think that will work?”
“I know it will.”
-------
The road was quiet as they entered Cleveland. The city itself was noisy, people moving, cars going from place to place. The sounds of urban life. But the road itself, the inside of the stolen van that crept down the highway, was quiet.
“Do you have any music to play?” Gerry asked.
“Hm? Oh, yeah, I think I have something on my phone.”
Jon pulled out his phone and slowed the van down to open his music app.
As Jon’s music loaded, he had a horrible realization. Jon’s taste in music was obscure and had to be acquired. The ten Mountain Goats albums Jon had downloaded the night before his promotion glared back at him. Jon adored the Mountain Goats, he’d had multiple breakdowns while listening to the hard, rough guitar and reedy, emotional voice of John Darnielle.
Jon also realized that the music could be a hard sell at first.
Goddamn it Jon, where are your punk albums? Why didn’t you download any of those, Jon thought.
“Actually, I don’t have any music.”
“No, no, no, Sims, what’s on that phone of yours? You have something and I want to hear it.”
“It’s…” Gerry moved his hand in a go-on gesture. “Bad. I don’t think you’d like it.”
“Jon, play the music.”
Jon plugged in his phone and threw a more modern Mountain Goats album on. The music filled the car, a guitar beat that folded around Jon like a blanket. His shoulders sagged, comfortable in familiarity.
Gerry’s brow wrinkled. He swished words around in his mouth for a moment, letting the music play.
“Is this Southwood Plantation Road?” Gerry asked.
Jon shot him a look, shocked, “Yeah, it is.”
Gerry’s smile broke across his face, “I love this track, hell I love this album.”
Almost as soon as Gerry had finished, John Darnielle cut in, singing the opening line.
Gerry glanced at Jon, and joined in.
“You’ve got whatever’s left of me to get.”
Jon smiled, then Gerry leaned over, attempting to elbow Jon’s side although he was incorporeal.
Jon leaned away from Gerry’s elbow, before joining in as well.
“Our conversations are like minefields. No one’s found a safe way through one yet.”
Gerry cheered, singing along with both Jon and John.
After the track ended, both Gerry and Jon began to sing when the next one started. They didn’t sound good, per say, and they didn't know all the words, and they stuttered over lines and stumbled over words every once in a while. But they sounded like themselves, like two men barreling from a painful past towards an unknown future, like two people with nothing but what was in the car and on the radio, like Jon and Gerry.
-------
“Hey, look, you can see the Rock and Roll Home of Fame.” Gerry pointed to the black pyramid on the horizon. “I’ve always wanted to go sightseeing in these kinds of places.” He continued.
Jon flicked on the blinker and agreed, “I’ve never been much for that kind of thing, but I could see the appeal.”
“D’you know if there’s anything else really interesting in this city?”
“No, I’ll admit I don’t know much about American cities--”
“No, I mean can you Know if there’s anything going on.”
“Oh! Yes, I can try?”
Jon’s shoulders hunched and his eyebrows slanted inwards in concentration.
“There is…. A witchcraft museum somewhere around here.” He said after several minutes.
“Huh, interesting. Wish we could stop.”
-------
After all of Tallahassee played through, Jon flipped on Sunset Tree. Broom People began to fill the car. Gerry didn’t join in singing immediately, instead turning to Jon and saying, “This album always reminds me of my mother.”
“Do you want me to turn it off?” Jon asked immediately.
“No, it's, well, it's not a bad kind of memory. Not really a good one either.”
“Just a complicated one?” Jon offered.
“Yeah.”
“It reminds me of my grandmother a little.”
“I understand.” Gerry moved over and bumped an ethereal shoulder to Jon’s, “I don’t miss her at all, but I still get tied up in knots thinking about all of it. I wish she was better, I wish things had been better.”
Jon made a sound of agreement, “My grandmother wasn't, she didn’t hurt me, she wasn’t nearly that bad. But she was tired, and the house was…”
“Cold?”
“Yes.”
Gerry nodded, and Jon nodded as well. Jon leaned over a little, letting his shoulder phase through Gerry’s in a facsimile of touch. They both understood there was nothing they could do to change the other’s past, nothing they could do to change past coldness, but there could be warmth between the two of them.
“I’ve never really told anyone about my mother.”
“Would you like to?.” Jon asked, sincere.
Gerry nodded, “I know what I look like. I’m six foot something and built broad. I’m a big guy, I’m intimidating. I took on this mantle of masculinity, and how am I supposed to talk about,” he waved a hand in the air, “all that?”
“Being abused doesn’t make you any less of a man.”
“I know and I believe that for anyone else, but it never seems to apply to myself.”
“I understand,” Jon said, “I’ll admit my own experiences are different, but being open, being what is thought of as ‘weak’, it feels like you’re less of a man.”
“Exactly. I’ve worked so hard to get here, admitting that- that all of that happened and affects me, feels like watching everything crumble away. Hell, she was a small woman and she was old when she had me. I towered over her at fourteen, but I was terrified of her,” Jon nodded, allowing Gerry to pour himself out, to release things that had built up behind his teeth for decades.
“For years I wanted her to love me and even after I realized she wouldn’t, I still stuck around. I still got books for her, still cooked meals for her, still helped her around the house, and I have no idea why.”
John Darinelle’s crooning voice rang out the lyrics to Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod.
“Does it make me weak?” Gerry asked.
“No, absolutely not.” Jon reached over, aiming to put his hand on Gerry’s shoulder. They met eyes for a second when Jon’s hand went through Gerry’s body, gazes heavy with a comfort they could not give nor receive. Jon’s hand settled on Gerry’s page, rubbing slow circles into it with his thumb. Gerry couldn’t feel it, but the action caused phantom warmth to grow thick in his chest and climb up his throat.