Oneshot: Pinkerton

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: Pinkerton
Author: andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Uruha/Kai
Rating: 12
Warnings: language, scanty slash, opera references
Synopsis: If I could, I would have talked to you all about how it felt to wake up in the morning after a terrible, adrenaline-spiked sleep, and to get out of bed and put on my fairytale.

Pinkerton

I read it the other day, in the ghostwritten autobiography of some glorious legend or other: that the stage to a rockstar is more of a mental state than a physical place; something that you access inside of yourself, a kind of elaborate fantasy world where the animals talk and the grass is long and the flowers are perfect, and poisonous.

I didn't understand that at all. I wonder how you can possibly do this job and not feel the great and aching change when you stumble into the wings. If the screams were pressing in on you like a thousand insistent hands, then you'll feel how cold your skin gets when they retreat, and you'll shiver. If the lights were wincing in your eyes like a terrible migraine, then you'll watch yourself disappearing into the shadows, like the negative of a photograph of a person you've never seen before in your life.

I heard your song on the radio about a month ago, the one about being really alone for a long time. I'm a student from a small town in Tokushima, where the whirlpools are. Sometimes I feel all alone like that as well.

Reading that to myself and thinking, I'm from a small town, too.

I've gotten fan letters before. I don't read a lot of them. They're full of difficult words like star and love and dream, all buzzing around like static in my head, and if I read them then I feel like I'm reading some hot book with the cover ripped off: these are my tits, this is my cunt, and I can feel all those envelopes with their splotchy heart-shaped kiss marks over the seal shooting through my windows and down the chimney like I'm Harry Potter.

Letters like an old wedding dress that you'll never take off. I've got a big apartment. I feel like I've got it rented for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, with the right to cancel every month. I'm Havisham lonely.

I don't really know who you are, but the radio announcer said your name. I think I'd like to know all about you, and your hobbies and what food you like, and your birthday. My roommate showed me a picture of you. You look good.

I got your letter around this time when all the air felt hot and stale and full of my own stewed, souring thoughts, sort of back when every day had become a hangover and I was always waiting for a party that was never as good as I thought it was going to be. You had smooth pencil strokes on stationery that felt fragile, like rice paper or something.

And I wondered what clothes you wore to class

And what your dorm room looked like; what kind of bed I should imagine you lying on, writing to me; how you decorated it to make it yours

And if you would ever touch yourself with my face behind your eyes.

I think of all the other letters I get that make me stink to remember. Letters from fans who think I should be sitting in a rock out at sea and combing my hair; letters from my PR who say I should wear leather pants and have an affair; letters from my mother father sister brother about how I'm never ever there. Signed your biggest fan, sincerely, with love.

Do you think you'll tour through here in the next year? I'd like to come out and see you in person. Some of the words in your song sounded like they were coming straight out of my own head. I don't know if you're the one who writes the lyrics, but I felt like they were coming from you anyway.

I wanted to touch and lick your envelope; I wanted to crawl inside of it. These days I take it out of its drawer again and again, and I can feel myself crumbling apart every time. What am I supposed to say?

Everybody loves me, but you don't. I can see that I'm another dumb rocker like all the rest, and that I've been doing this for so long that I've forgotten everybody else. I don't know how to make someone fall in love with me. You put in a picture of yourself standing on a misty harbour that overlooked the whirlpools that you told me about, first just a mention and later in more detail, drawing your landscape out of your words. You had very soft, sweet, young eyes, a fall of hair, a pretty mouth, a body I could feel in my hands.

Letters like these are sort of stupid. It was a nice song, though.

I read your letter and get your scent on my fingers, and I keep on smelling it for days. Nothing I do seems to wash you away. I went through Tokushima in the spring, and I saw you backstage and asked you about the whirlpools, if you could show me yourself, and afterwards we walked and talked and had sex under a sky filled with country-fat stars.

If I could, I would have talked to you all about how it felt to wake up in the morning after a terrible, adrenaline-spiked sleep, and to get out of bed and put on my fairytale.

“Tomorrow I need to leave,” I said instead.

“Well, I hope you'll come back.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, I think I know you will,” you said, smiling, and you kissed me very gently on the lips.

I guess you're just as real as me. That was three years ago. You wrote Dear Uruha and I mocked up a line from an old opera; said I'd be back before the robins were building their nests again, before the trees changed their colours.

And I wonder if you still believe that one fine day you'll see my ship's smoke on the horizon

Dodging through those deadly currents

Coming back to you.

I still think about you when I touch myself, and I still read your letter and get you all over my hands. I think about the whirlpools, about the stars; how both of them glittered in the dark.

I learnt all about my life by looking through your kind eyes. You sign your letters, Yours, and I feel like I've got you for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, with the right to cancel every month.

I love you.

I'm not ever coming back.





A/N: Today I was very hungover. I don't know how much you guys are into opera, but this was based a lot around the story of Madama Butterfly. It's a very sad story about a US naval officer, Pinkerton, who takes a young wife whilst in Japan (the eponymous Butterfly) for "999 years, with the right to cancel every month". He goes back to the States, saying that he'll be back when the robins make their nests. It actually takes him three years to return, whilst Butterfly has unwavering faith in him, but when he does come back he has his "real" American wife with him, and he takes the son he had with Butterfly. Subsequently, she kills herself. Anyway, I started thinking about how rockstars kind of live a life like Pinkerton, going into different cities and having liaisons with naive groupies, and how both sides of that must really be quite lonely, so this came out of that.
And was powered by my feverish hangover-sweats.

Comments

[eilonwe2.livejournal.com]

Oh man that was sweet. But I do kind of wish he would go back because he sounds like he really missed him. Anyway loved it, very visual and nice to read aloud.

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
Yeah, I think I struggle a lot to make happy endings. In my head, the story behind this was more that my Uruha character didn't know how to treat Kai particularly, and that having any kind of bond with him would have then negated the image that was such a big part of his career.
It was very sad in my head!

[rosswen91.livejournal.com]

I really loved this. No need for a crowd of words.
Congrats!

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
I've got to admit, I kind of liked it, too. It was pretty different for me. I actually wrote the whole thing again from Kai's point of view, because I just cannot leave well enough alone.

[eilonwe2.livejournal.com]

oh do please send me the link to that, I'd love to read this from Kai's pov.

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure! It's here: http://andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com/63766.html#cutid1

Enjoy!

[kaiser1103.livejournal.com]

It's like both of them are quite lonely, quite sad...