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The metaphorical dust settled on the scene of yet another set of brutal and messy deaths, and Dirk pet the small murder kitten’s head nervously. Todd’s breath was frantic as he adjusted to dealing with the insane situation he just witnessed and he eventually nudged Dirk’s shoulder, motioning back to the jeep.
“We should go. Who knows if there’s more of those guys on the way…” Todd grabbed the weird device off the ground and rushed to the back of the jeep, sitting it in the back, gently. Dirk slowly made his way to the passenger’s side, carefully stepping into the seat with the kitten held gingerly in his hands like it was going to explode if he moved it the wrong way, which for all they knew, it definitely might do that. Todd looked at him with a weary expression, glancing down at the kitten. “Don’t drop that thing.”
Dirk rolled his eyes and let out a breath. “Yeah, wasn’t planning on that, Todd. Let’s go.”
Todd shook his head, raising an eyebrow, and quickly drove them back through the woods. He drove them for about fifteen minutes before they realized that they were going in circles and Dirk decided that he didn’t really have the hands or attention to be able to figure out the map while they were moving and he was trying to deal with the kitten climbing up his shoulders. Todd pulled up next to a creek that seemed somewhat familiar, and grabbed the map from Dirk, while Dirk got out and stretched his legs, setting the kitten in the back of the jeep to wander around for a few minutes. Todd heard Dirk let out a soft wince. He looked up from the map, twisting around to see Dirk facing the other direction, a small line of red in the center of his back, soaking into his shirt.
“Dirk, you okay? Did one of those guys get you?” Todd frowned. He set the map down on the center console and pushed the door open. Dirk turned around, frowning, and rubbing his hand over his face.
“Uh… no, I don’t think so… I think it was just the little spots on my face here,” he pointed at the small burns on his cheek and forehead from where the sparks had hit him. Todd walked over, shaking his head.
“There’s blood on your back, hang on, turn around.” Todd tried to walk around to look at Dirk’s back, but he turned, keeping his front facing Todd, his expression shifting to a similar look he had when they were at the diner earlier and Todd had been asking about his “powers”.
“Honestly, I can’t even feel anything, that was probably there already…” Todd raised an eyebrow and shook his head.
“Dirk, just let me look at it. I saw a first aid kit in the jeep. It’ll take two seconds. I’ll help you get your face cleaned up too.” Todd turned back to the jeep, folding open the tailgate, and digging around for the first aid kit. Dirk pressed his lips together, hesitating a moment before he walked over, sitting down on the tailgate quietly. Todd gently pushed the kitten away as he found the first aid kit underneath where it was laying down, and started rifling through it for anything useful. He glanced over at Dirk, who seemed to be hunched, angled away from him, looking out at the creek. “Can you get your shirt off?”
“I don’t really… this isn’t really necessary, Todd. I can just… I’ll clean it up when we get back.” Todd frowned, looking at him slightly confused.
“Look, if this is like a body image thing or whatever, like no judgement from me, okay? I mean I still have acne scars all over my shoulders, which I’m not happy about, but like, I don’t really care about whatever. I just want to make sure you don’t have some huge gash in your back or something that’s going to get infected.” Dirk sighed and nodded. He loosened his tie and pulled it over his head and started to unbutton his shirt.
Todd swallowed, turning his attention back to the first aid kit. He could see Dirk’s movement in the corner of his eye, and tried to focus on not watching as his fingers nimbly passed over his chest, and he pulled the button down off of his arms. Todd looked over once Dirk was sitting there in his undershirt, looking a bit more vulnerable than he had down in the death maze when he’d been in a similar state of undress. Todd frowned.
“Can you turn around?” Dirk nodded, pulling his legs up and scooting around in the back of the jeep so he was sort of cross-legged, his back facing Todd now. The kitten wandered over in the back of the jeep, climbing over Dirk’s legs, purring as he scratched over his back. Todd looked over the Dirk’s back, the undershirt sticking to his skin a bit where the scratch was, a small tear in the middle of the fabric. Todd took a breath, noticing the undershirt was still tucked into Dirk’s pants. “Do you mind if I pull the shirt up? Or… I mean, or you can…” Todd could see both of Dirk’s hands were occupied trying to keep the kitten from climbing over the seat.
“Uh, no, it’s okay… you can.” Dirk said softly, his voice so uncharacteristically vulnerable and quiet that Todd couldn’t help but wonder what he was hiding, if there was some massive secret he’d written across the skin of his back that he didn’t want Todd to see. Todd’s chest tightened as he reached down, Dirk flinching slightly as Todd’s fingers gripped the bottom of the undershirt, tugging it out from where it was tucked into Dirk’s pants, exposing the pale skin of his lower back. He pulled the undershirt up, trying to keep himself from overthinking, focusing on just doing what he was doing. Undressing Dirk. NO. Fuck. The cut. He was dealing with the cut on Dirk’s back. First aid. Yes. That. It was easier to focus on that task when the shirt reached the small cut, peeling easily away, revealing a thin scrape across the center of Dirk’s back, a little bit of blood smeared around it. Todd sighed.
“Looks like you’re going to live,” Todd said lightly. Dirk’s back was tense, but he seemed to relax slightly as Todd tucked the shirt at the top of his shoulders, leaving the top of his back still covered. Dirk huffed a soft laugh.
“You must be disappointed,” Dirk said, and it sounded like it was supposed to be a joke, but without being able to see Dirk’s face, all he could hear in his voice was a scared vulnerability. Todd still wasn’t sure where he stood with Dirk, wasn’t sure how he felt about all this stuff, and how Dirk came into his life like a wild ball of crazy, but he felt a kinship with that fear he heard in his voice, the expectation of rejection, and Todd wasn’t really sure how to respond. He rested a hand on Dirk’s shoulder while he grabbed a cleaning wipe from the first aid kit.
“Nah. Saves me the work of finding some other crazy stranger to drag me out into the woods and almost die.” Todd saw the edge of Dirk’s lips turn up into a smile, and wasn’t sure how to feel about it, the urge to push away, to keep people as far as possible from his toxicity roaring up inside him, but it also felt nice, which Todd didn’t deserve to feel. Dirk didn’t say anything else while Todd cleaned up the cut. He winced a couple of times when he brushed over a more sensitive spot, but Todd finished quickly, moving to grab some bandages.
Dirk’s shirt started to slip back down over his back, and Todd quickly grabbed the bottom of it, pulling it up further, revealing more of Dirk’s back, and revealing what Todd assumed Dirk had been so nervous about him seeing. A patch of raised and discolored skin a couple inches wide and a few inches tall that seemed to have lines of black, like there had been something tattooed there, but it had been crudely burned away. Todd could faintly make out what looked like a square shape faded and distorted in the scarred skin. Dirk tensed, feeling the shirt uncovered over the scar, and Todd could see his breath quickening as he was sitting there.
“Are you finished?” He asked nervously, and he glanced back, looking down at Todd’s hands, but not daring to meet his eyes. Todd recovered quickly.
“Uh, not quite, just going to put a couple bandages on there, and that’ll be it.” Dirk nodded.
Todd gently applied the pink bandages to the cut, smoothing them over Dirk’s skin. He carefully pulled the shirt back down over Dirk’s back, letting out a sigh. “Okay, your back’s alright.” Dirk relaxed, twisting back around with a nod. He set the kitten down in the jeep next to his leg.
“Thanks, Todd.” Todd nodded, and frowned at the small scrapes on Dirk’s face.
“Should probably clean those up too.” Dirk raised an eyebrow. “The ones on your face.” Dirk hesitated and then nodded.
“Oh… yes, right.” He seemed to tense up a little again. Todd took a step closer, picking up another cleaning wipe. Dirk swallowed as Todd placed one hand on his chin to steady him as he wiped over the scraped with the other. He was also definitely not looking at Todd, staring out anywhere but him as Todd was working gently over his face. Todd could feel the awkward tension, weighing down over them heavily. He let out a sigh.
“You know when I was eighteen, the friends I had at the time, we were in a band, not the Mexican Funeral, that was a little later, but we were called…” Todd rolled his eyes and let out a soft laugh. Dirk looked at him finally, looking more curious than tense and fearful, which was a nice change. “We were called, ‘The Screaming Assholes,’ which very cool name, I know… My parents hated it so much.” He let out another soft laugh and Dirk smiled slightly, his expression a little confused as to why Todd was bringing this up, but happy to have the conversation, learning more about Todd. “Anyways, when we were eighteen, we all decided to show our commitment to the band, we’d all get tattoos of the band name… on our butts, and we did… just, ‘THE SCREAMING ASSHOLES’ right on the cheek.” He shook his head. “Still there now.” He grabbed one of the pink bandages and looked back at Dirk, who looked less amused now with the story, looking away again.
“That’s… funny, Todd… but why did you… why’d you tell me that?” Todd raised his eyebrows, shrugging and looking down at his hands.
“I don’t know, I mean, I just wanted you to know, like I’ve got a tattoo I regret getting, so if you’re embarrassed about-”
Dirk turned back to Todd with a frown, and shook his head. “I’m not embarrassed by…” He said sharply before cutting himself off with a long breath, and pressed his lips together, pausing for a moment. “Sorry, it’s just… it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, okay? Are you finished with the…” He motioned at his face. Todd shook his head quietly, holding up the bandages. Dirk let out a sigh, holding up his head again, and Todd carefully applied them to his face. They were both quiet as Todd finished.
“There,” Todd said softly. Dirk blinked, his gaze heavy as he watched Todd putting the supplies back into the first aid kit.
“Thank you, Todd.” Todd shrugged.
“No problem. It’s just band-aids.” Dirk shook his head.
“That and trying to make me feel better about the…” He stopped himself, sighing. “You know for someone that’s constantly saying he’s an asshole, you’re a pretty good friend.”
Todd frowned and shook his head, the shame and guilt from his lies picking up again, the toxicity he couldn’t keep hiding away, not from one more person that looked at him like he was some salt of the earth angel.
“No. No, Dirk, you’re wrong. I’m a terrible friend. You just… project that friend stuff on me. I am an asshole.” Todd stepped away, looking out at the creek, his heart pounding. He could feel the truth bubbling at the surface of his throat, boiling so close to spilling out. Never this close before. He turned back to Dirk. “You know what I was thinking when I was staring down the barrel of that gun?”
Dirk frowned, confused at the sudden shift in the conversation. “Bullets?”
“Amanda.” Dirk cocked his head. Todd continued. “How if I die, there will be no one to take care of her.”
“You’re a good brother,” Dirk said, trying to pull Todd back from the edge he was tumbling over, his well-intentioned reassurance pushing Todd further. Todd shook his head.
“No, I’m a terrible person, I’m a terrible brother. I was thinking about how if I die right now, I’ll never have a chance to make up for all the stuff I’ve done to her.”
“Done to her? Todd, I think with both of you sharing the disease, you taking care of her has been-”
“I didn’t have the disease. I didn’t have pararibulitis.”
And there it was. Out in the open. Dirk listened, confused, trying to understand as Todd walked through his story, the source of his shame and guilt and self-hatred, the scars that rested inside of him since he’d started those lies. He listened and Todd talked until Todd finished, retreating back to the jeep with a firm, “I am and always have been a total and complete asshole.”
Dirk sat on the rock by the creek, feeling the itchy soreness of the cut on his back, the cut that Todd had gently and carefully cleaned and placed bandages over, and let out a sigh, waiting there a moment until Todd called out to him about the kitten being missing.
About an hour later, after wandering through the woods searching for the little shark-ghost-kitten unsuccessfully, and having another heart-to-heart, which ended with Todd saying words that made Dirk’s heart do little nervous excited flips in his chest, they were back in the jeep, driving down the road back to the Ridgely building. Dirk replayed the words in his head.
‘Dirk, I am your friend.’ He smiled to himself. ‘I am your friend.’ He felt the press of the seat against his back, against the patch of raised skin scarred over his shoulder and sighed, looking over at Todd.
“It was a tattoo.” Todd frowned, glancing over from the road for a moment.
“What?”
“What you saw on my back. The… the scar?” Todd nodded.
“You don’t have to-”
“No, I think I do… honestly, I’m pretty sure it’s going to come up anyways, and you should probably be prepared in case something happens… to me… or you guys.” Todd frowned. Dirk’s heart raced.
“What are you talking about? What’s going to happen to you?”
“Do you remember how I told you I used to work for the CIA?” Todd rolled his eyes.
“Uh, yeah? Was that not just a lie? I thought you were trying to make yourself sound cool or something.”
“It does sound cool, doesn’t it? I mean technically it was sort of a lie because I wasn’t like technically an employee of the CIA, more like… an experimental test subject imprisoned in a program run by the CIA that was used to try to help with government interests.”
There was a pause where they were both quiet. Todd stared out of the windshield, looking at the road, trying to connect the words together in his head.
“What?” Dirk looked over, raising his eyebrows.
“I said I was an experimental-”
“No, yes, sorry, I heard you, I’m just…what does that even mean?”
“Yes, I guess it is a pretty odd thing… uh… I honestly really haven’t explained it a whole lot of times… It was called Project Blackwing. I was brought in when I was seven, after they heard about-”
“Wait, seven… years old? You were a kid when you were there? Why would the CIA want a kid working for them?” Dirk pressed his lips together, rolling his eyes.
“If you’d let me explain, I’d get there, Todd… and as I said, I wasn’t really working there… it wasn’t really a mutually agreed upon situation, and they definitely weren’t paying me anything.” He laughed bitterly. His voice was casual, but Todd could tell that he wasn’t really comfortable talking about this. “Anyways, yes, I was seven… uh… I was there until I was fifteen, escaped, the program was shut down for a while, but they’ve had some people watching me, and I’d assume some of the others, I’m not exactly sure because I never met many of the other ones…”
“Other ones… what other ones? You mean like you? There’s other people that do what you do?” Todd wished he wasn’t driving right now because his brain was going crazy trying to process what Dirk was saying. Dirk shook his head.
“Not like me, exactly. I mean you already sort of met some of the others… not the best first impression on that one given they destroyed your apartment, but-”
“Wait, those guys, the Rowdy Three or whatever? They were in that place too? Because of that weird glowy thing they do?”
“Yes, Todd. The weird glowy thing. Project Blackwing sort of collected all sorts of strange people that could do things like that. One of my best friends could change their body into all sorts of different things. Other people, chairs, animals, whatever they wanted.” Todd blinked, shaking his head.
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain, the other things you said, the tattoo, that something might happen to you?”
“Right, the tattoo was their way of identifying us. Symbol, ID number, the names they gave to us,” Dirk pressed his lips together, his expression tight. “property of the US government. The whole thing. After I got out, it was just a constant reminder of what they’d done, and I needed it off of my body. So I found someone that would get rid of it for me.”
Todd’s chest tightened, remembering the burned lines of the scar on Dirk’s back, the pain that it must have caused to have someone do that to him.
“You had someone burn it off?” Dirk nodded, looking down at his hands. He drew in a breath, shifting in his seat.
“Anyways, I hadn’t seen or heard from them since I escaped, but I knew they were still hanging around. Anytime I’d get into trouble with the police or whatever, they’d get word from some higher up that I’d need to be released and off I’d go.” Todd frowned at the quick change of subject, still trying to keep up with Dirk’s flavor of conversational style. “But three nights ago, they showed up in the lobby of your building trying to bring me back in.” Todd looked over at him, shocked and confused.
“Wait, what? The guys from Blackwing? What happened? Why didn’t you say something?” Dirk looked surprised by Todd’s concerned response and shook his head.
“Don’t worry, Todd. If I thought that they’d be any danger to the rest of you, I would have said something, but they really just seemed interested in me.”
“That’s not…” Todd let out a frustrated sigh at Dirk’s lack of concern for himself, feeling upset and protective, but also confused as to why he was immediately so upset. He pushed the feelings down and shook his head. “So, what happened? Did you know these guys?” Dirk nodded.
“Oh, yeah. Well, the one, Colonel Riggins. He’d been there when I was a child… we had a… complicated relationship. He was with some other guy, I didn’t know him, but he didn’t seem like he was one of their best and brightest. I told them I wasn’t going to go with them, and walked out to my car, and when I came back inside, they were gone, but I have a feeling that isn’t the last I’ll be seeing of them…” Dirk frowned, the realization settling in. Nothing happened unintentionally in his life and Blackwing showing back up was a bad sign of things to come.
“You don’t want to go back there, right?” Dirk raised an eyebrow.
“The underground government prison that practically tortured me for years as a child? Uh, no. I don’t think so.” Todd rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Alright, just making sure I’m understanding all this…” He shook his head. “Do you think they’ll try to take you? Like… unwillingly? Can they do that?” Dirk narrowed his eyes.
“I don’t think my willingness will really stop them from bringing me back in if they really wanted to, Todd. Riggins was always a little softer on me, but he wasn’t the only one that they sent out to bring people in.”
“Okay, well… after we deal with the whole Lydia thing… we can see about figuring something out with… all this. Okay?” Dirk’s brows furrowed together.
“Why? Like I said, I don’t think they’ll come after-”
“They might not come after me, or Farah or Amanda, or whatever, but… I mean, Dirk, I told you, I’m your friend, right? This is what friends do. We help each other with problems.”
Dirk gave Todd another shaky smile, once again surprised by Todd’s willingness to care, by finding someone that not only tolerated him, but was telling him that he would help him going against Blackwing, even if he didn’t really understand what that meant, the sentiment was still more than anything he’d gotten from anyone in his life, and it made his chest feel warm.
They kept talking as they drove, Todd asking some more questions about Blackwing as they drove, sharing theories about the machine they dug up, and talking through the plan once they got back to the Ridgely.