Chapter Text
“What the fuck, Edgar?”
Curtis steps closer, slaps the Kronol out of Edgar’s hand. Kicks it as far away as possible. Edgar’s head lolls down and his eyes become narrow with a hateful intensity that has Curtis shivering. He bends his knees to be on Edgar’s height, comes to grip both his shoulders and doesn’t notice his fingernails digging into Edgar’s skin.
“Did you lose your brain when you hit your head?”
“Fuck off,” Edgar hisses. He doesn’t sound like Edgar anymore. Edgar has never been unkind.
“What’s wrong with you? Taking this shit?” Curtis gestures to the broken blocks of Kronol he has kicked into the bog. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Edgar laughs, dirt shining in the lines on his sweaty face. “Why do you care? No need to pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“I know I’m just a burden to you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Really? Shut up, Edgar. Sod off, Edgar. None of your business, Edgar.”
Curtis stares at the wall, some spot over Edgar’s shoulder. He has said those things. More than he can count.
Edgar gets up, swaying, stumbling forward. Tears have left a clean swath in the dust on his cheeks.
“It makes me see things. Real things. Green and blue and the sun.”
It takes Curtis a second to realise he’s talking about the Kronol.
“Not real,” he mumbles. Edgar’s always been prone to make believe. Makes up memories until he thinks they are his.
“I saw my mother,” Edgar says, bottom lip jutting out. But Curtis shakes his head. He can’t have.
“Your mother died before you turned a year old.” Can’t. Shouldn’t. Mustn’t.
“I saw her.”
Curtis backs away into the shelf with every step Edgar is taking towards him. He’s learnt to assess the intent of someone approaching him. Are they friend or foe? Friendly or aggressive? Armed? Poised to kill?
Edgar is neither. Unreadable. Blank. His pupils are wide enough to reflect Curtis’ face, and all he sees is his own fear.
“What did you see?”
“I saw her smile.”
Curtis swallows his words. Relief has never tasted bitter like this.
“Where are you going?” Curtis’ hand finds Edgar’s wrist the next night, after the counting. Edgar didn’t go to take his protein bar, just turned straight round while the others lined up for their ration.
“You have to eat,” Curtis says. He can feel Edgar’s pulse in the vein on his wrist.
“Do I?” Edgar asks. He looks like a corpse. Pale and thin.
Tanya’s passing them, brown jelly in one hand, Timmy on the other, and throws them a concerned look. Curtis nods for her to go on.
“’S all right, Tanya.”
“Are you sure?”
Curtis nods again and Tanya’s swallowed back into the stream of people trotting to their bunks. He wishes they’d just have a moment of privacy.
“Can you let go?” Edgar asks. He’s not even looking at Curtis, eyes fixed on some point on the ceiling, head thrown back in exasperation.
“We need to talk. You need to eat. Kronol isn’t a food source.”
Edgar snarls like an animal, bared teeth, lips pulling back over his gums. He twists out of Curtis’ grip and spits on the ground. “You’re not my mother.” At least five other people turn round to look at them. “Don’t fucking act like you care. You don’t need me, okay? I got it. Sorry I pushed you. I won’t do it again. Now if you’d just keep the fuck out of the rest of my life that’d be appreciated.”
The monster in Curtis’ gut breaks through again. Growls, lashes out. Makes him tremble in anger and shame and guilt and they’re surging inside him, higher and higher until it’s spilling out. And the monster takes form in Curtis’ hand across Edgar’s face.
It’s dark in Gilliam’s space. The musty smell of old man hangs in the air like a heavy curtain. Gilliam’s sitting there, propped up against the wall, the very back of the train. To his right, there’s a smudged ‘W’ engraved in the metal.
“Ah, Curtis.” The light from the small electrical torch on the makeshift table is flickering across the old man’s face. His skin looks like paper, features made from Origami.
“What’s troubling you?”
Grey pokes his head in through the curtains and makes Curtis jump. “It’s all right,” Gilliam says. “Grey, a moment of privacy, please.” Grey arches an eyebrow and vanishes.
It’s cold. It’s always been cold. But Curtis feels hot and itching. There’s sweat on his forehead. Maybe he’s got a fever.
“I hit Edgar,” he breathes. “He’s taking Kronol, I don’t know what to do. I just… fuck.”
“Sit down,” Gilliam says and Curtis sits down on the tipped barrel next to him and swallows air in large gulps.
“Something snapped. I’m not myself.”
Curtis thinks of the load of responsibility that’s Edgar. He’s carried him around on his shoulders since the beginning. Back then he was a baby. Now he’s grown up, he’s not a soft six pound bundle of skin anymore. No, with every year, he’s gotten heavier and heavier and heavier.
“It’s too much to bear,” Curtis says.
“It’s too much because you hate yourself too much,” Gilliam says.
Curtis snorts. “How couldn’t I?” He’s done things too ugly to think about.
“For Edgar. Push back your self hatred for Edgar. Don’t turn let it out on him. Deal with it.” He’s banging the handle of his walking stick arm on the table. His voice gets raspy like he’s out of breath.
“I do the same for Grey.”
Suddenly he looks his age. The youthful spirit in his eyes is gone and replaced by a dark kind of sadness. Curtis wonders what Gilliam hates himself for. Because to him, the old man is practically a saint.
“Edgar, let’s talk.”
“Let’s fuck off.” All right, Curtis didn’t think it would be that easy.
“I owe you an apology,” he mumbles, and catches Edgar by the hem of his shirt. The boy struggles forward, the fabric close to tearing, but before it rips Curtis wraps his arms around Edgar from behind and pulls him up against his chest. The two of them stumble back with the force. Edgar yelps. Then the back of Curtis’ legs hits something hard, the edge of a bunk bed, but before he can fall, he sits down, with Edgar on his lap.
“What the fuck’re you doing?” Edgar hisses. Curtis doesn’t let go. The weight of Edgar presses down on him, too heavy, much too heavy again. He takes a deep breath. No, he can do this.
“I’m sorry for hitting you,” he says against Edgar’s neck. “I don’t know what happened. I was worried about you. I was angry.”
Edgar has stopped struggling, but he doesn’t say a word. So Curtis picks it up again.
“What you said wasn’t true.” I care about you, he thinks.
There’s a blush creeping up Edgar’s neck, and Curtis loosens his grip. It must be a little humiliating to sit on Curtis’ lap like this. Edgar isn’t a baby anymore. But to Curtis surprise, he doesn’t get up immediately. Instead, he turns around and straddles him. Curtis’ hands fall limp to his sides. He doesn’t know what to expect, if it’s for Edgar to say something, hit him, kiss him. But he does neither of that. Just looks at Curtis with a probing curiosity that makes him more than mildly uncomfortable and more than aware of Edgar’s weight on his thighs. And yes, his thoughts start to wander in inappropriate directions. But after what’s happened between them, sex would be the worst possible next step. And of all the bad things Curtis is, he’s not a child molester.
The corner of Edgar’s mouth tugs up in a tiny smile. He looks beautiful like this, even with cheekbones a little too evident, and eyes set a little too deep. He looks as if he saw something even Curtis isn’t aware of.
And then the weight is gone, and Edgar leaves. Without saying a word. Fucking Edgar.
But he smiled. He smiled. That’s worth something, isn’t it?
The next few days, Edgar is back to being his cocky self, full of energy, full of life. And Curtis thinks that maybe everything will go back to normal eventually. That he can forget he hit him, forget he kissed him, and just be there for Edgar like he should have been all along. But things are never that easy.
It’s night. Bunks creaking, people snoring and the rattling of the train a constant background cacophony Curtis has learned to shut out. He’s been waiting for Edgar to fall asleep, to stop touching himself in the bunk below. Because however often that sound is added to the mix, Curtis will never get used to it. He stares at the ceiling.
Then the springs creak and his mattress dips. He turns around to Edgar wiggling into his bunk, crawling in next to him.
“Aren’t you getting a bit old for that?” His voice sounds hoarse even to his own ears.
“What, are you getting too fat? No space for me anymore? Cut back on those protein bars.” Edgar’s back fits into Curtis’ chest perfectly, like it always has, but everything is different now. Curtis thinks of the kiss again, of what would have been if he hadn’t been triggered. Would he have kissed Edgar back?
He catches himself stroking the curls of hair at the nape of Edgar’s neck. Edgar starts purring.
“You should probably get down to your own bunk,” Curtis says with a sigh.
“Why?”
“You’re having a phase. You’re a hormonal teenager. You even smell like it.”
“What does it smell like?”
“You smell like sex.”
Edgar laughs. “I didn’t know that was a bad thing?”
“It… I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“So that’s your problem? What a load of crap.”
Curtis feels Edgar turn around so they’re face to face. He can make out the contours of Edgar’s mouth in the darkness, and Edgar runs his tongue across his bottom lip. Curtis swallows.
“Edgar…” he says, warningly.
The next moment, Edgar has climbed on top of him, breathes against his neck and makes him shudder.
“Edgar, what are you doing?”
“Well, contrary to you I don’t have any qualms about taking advantage.” Edgar shrugs. And with that, he softly bites Curtis’ throat and nibbles on his earlobe. Curtis thinks he’s going to die. His next breath comes out raspy. “Edgar, no. Stop.” He takes Edgar’s face in both of his palms, forces him to look him in the eye.
“We can’t do this, you’re not old enough, you… oh fuck.” Edgar grinds his hips into his and makes Curtis feel his need for him, all the while wearing a cocky smile that makes Curtis’ jaw clench.
“That doesn’t sound like you want me to stop,” he whispers. He’s pushing again, his hands under Curtis’ shirt, grinding into Curtis and it’s too much. Too soon. Curtis growls flips them around. He presses Edgar into the thin, hard mattress with his weight and traps him. Edgar struggles against him with needy desperation, hisses like an animal, digs his nails into Curtis’ arms. Until Curtis’ sneaks a hand up his neck and grips it. Then he goes docile as a kitten.
“Please, Curtis,” he begs. And something feral in Curtis takes over, the monster he’s been holding down for so long. It breaks out. It growls, it bites, it claims.
In the end, Edgar is a shivering mess tangled in the bedsheets. Sticky with sweat. With a peaceful look on his face that Kronol alone would never have been able to put there.
“Tell me something,” Edgar whispers. He’s wrapped in Curtis arms, their legs intertwined. Curtis thought Edgar would have fallen asleep by now, his soft breathing almost sounds like it.
“Tell you what?”
“I don’t know. Something. About you.”
“You know everything about me, Edgar. We live inside a tiny, tiny train section.”
“Before that.”
Curtis has been dreading that. He sighs. Waiting for his muscles to tense up. They don’t. Edgar’s warmth against him keeps him loose and calm.
“You know I don’t like to talk about that.”
Edgar’s head turns almost imperceptibly. There’s a faint line of light catching in the ends of his hair, his lashes, the tip of his nose. “For me?” he asks. “I don’t have a past like you do.”
“You’d be glad you don’t remember some things.”
“Tell me only the good stuff.”
Curtis thinks he knows what this is about. Giving up something of his to Edgar that belongs to nobody else. The same way that Edgar just did. And he wants to, he really wants to, but there’s something stuck in his throat, sealing off his vocal chords.
“Hey,” Edgar says, his hand coming round to rest on Curtis’ thigh. “Let’s start off with something easy, yeah?”
Curtis nods.
“How old were you when the train took off?”
“Uh, seventeen.” He shuts his eyes and tries not to think of the chaos, the bloodbath, the squirming can of worms that was the Tail Section in the early days.
“I’m almost seventeen,” Edgar whispers.
“I know.”
“What was it like when you were sixteen?”
Curtis pulls his arms tighter around Edgar’s middle. “I’d moved out of my parents house. I had a small place of my own.”
“Why?”
“This is not good stuff, Edgar. Things weren’t great. I had to leave. I needed money. I joined the military.”
Edgar flips round, his brow furrowed. “You were one of them? Counting people?”
“No. It was different. I don’t know. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Little things, okay? Small steps.”
Curtis laughs. Here’s Edgar, sixteen-year-old Edgar, telling him to take it slowly. Reassuring him. Something good, he thinks. Remember something good.
“There was a forest where I grew up. Lots of trees. You know, when they put the CW-7 in the atmosphere, that’s what they wanted to save. The forests and the lakes and the oceans. People can’t live without that.” If Curtis thinks back really hard, he can still remember the way the sunlight fell through the leaves, the splotchy pattern it painted on the forest ground, like freckles on the face of the earth.
“We’re still alive,” Edgar says. “Without all that.”
Curtis buries his face in the side of Edgar’s neck. “This isn’t life,” he mumbles. “This is holding out.”
This is desperately clinging to each other in an endless plunge down a dark chasm.
“Then you better not forget,” Edgar says. “And you better start telling me all about forests and lakes and oceans. Because I want to live.”
Against his will, Curtis smiles. You should live, he thinks. If anyone should, it’s you. I will tell you. I love you.
For the first time in sixteen years, Curtis feels as if something is really, truly his. Feels like he belongs. He tucks a strand of hair away from Edgar’s face. His eyes are dark and ocean green.