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If they had gotten their collective ‘shit’ together, as Todd would put it, sooner upon their return from Bergsberg, Dirk wonders if they might have avoided the sea of boxes they find themselves in now. Back then, most of Todd’s belongings had been destroyed by the Rowdy 3, and when they came back to the Ridgely, it was to find eviction notices on their doors after months of nonpayment. To this day, Dirk’s still not sure why they didn’t just move into a two bedroom apartment together then when they had the chance. They could have easily gathered their respective meager belongings – Todd due to the aforementioned destruction and Dirk, well… Dirk due to the fact that until he insinuated himself into Todd and Farah’s lives, he didn’t tend to maintain more belongings than he could carry in a duffel. It would have been a snap.
All of that is neither here nor there now however, because they in fact hadn’t moved in together post Bergsberg, and now they’ve been coupled, rather effectively if he does say so himself, for over a year and a half and their respective leases are up. Dirk is thrilled, honestly, that they are finally moving Todd out of perpetual studio living and into Dirk’s one-bedroom apartment. The downside to the past two years of separate habitation, aside from the fact that Dirk thinks that two years has been two years too long, is just that Todd has managed to build up quite the collection of non-destroyed possessions. And now they have to pack them up and move them. For his part, Dirk has been picking listlessly at the contents of Todd’s desk drawers for a solid thirty minutes, while Todd carefully stores each record in his collection in boxes specifically designed for safe transport of the flimsy vinyl things. He knows that it’s only a matter of time before Todd looks up and calls him out on his lack of effort.
“Do you really need all of this, Todd?” he asks, insistent to himself that he is not whining. “When was the last time you used…” he sneers disdainfully at the mess of administrative supplies filling the wide, shallow center drawer of Todd’s desk. “A staple remover?” he asks, holding up the offending item. “Or paper clips for that matter?” They don’t even use most of these things in the office, let alone Todd’s apartment.
He feels like the battle that it’s taken to get Todd to even consider getting rid of anything throughout this process could envy that of the Trosts and the Dengdamors. For someone with so many things about his past that he regrets, he’s surprisingly attached to any remnants of it that remain and, if he’s being honest, Dirk really doesn’t understand it. He would (and has) done everything he could to rid himself of any physical reminders of his own past and he’s sure that Todd’s dogged insistence on not allowing himself to let go of anything – literally or figuratively – can’t be healthy.
“Come on, Dirk,” Todd sighs, looking up from his meticulously organized record collection. “All you need to do is get the stuff in a box. I know it’s boring, but the sooner we get stuff into boxes, the sooner we can move them upstairs and be done with it all.”
“You don’t even have a stapler…” Dirk grouses and sighs, not bothering to point out that Todd hadn’t even answered his question, and pointedly dumps a handful of office supplies haphazardly into the box of pens and markers.
“I’m throwing away the paper clips though, and you can’t stop me. They’ll just spill out all over the box as is and I’m certainly not tidying them up. We’d end up with paper clips strewn all over the apartment, forever finding them inside cushions and under tables and chairs like an incredibly boring office supply version of glitter.”
“Fine,” Todd snorts with a chuckle, shaking his head with a look of fond exasperation as Dirk stalks over to the wastebasket, unceremoniously dumping the cargo of the worn cardboard container into it. He theatrically wipes his hands against each other, as if washing them of the paper clips’ presence and grins at the laugh it elicits from Todd.
“Okay, can you get the rest of the desk packed up now that the scourge of the paper clips has been eliminated?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replies airily, making no promises and returning to the desk where he dumps the rest of the office supplies into the box, no longer attempting even a pretense of organization for the blasted things, and slumps to the floor..
The day had actually started out incredibly productively despite Dirk’s best, if unintentional, efforts to derail the process. Farah had shown up at the apartment at eight o’clock sharp, rather rudely in Dirk’s opinion, but she had never seen eye to eye with him on what constituted an ‘appropriate’ time to greet the day. She had arrived with coffee in hand, which Todd was grateful for, and an organizational system she walked them through, which Dirk barely paid attention to. He doesn’t even like coffee, but the coffee shop closest to Farah’s apartment doesn’t make tea quite to his standards so he had been left to brew his own as he grumpily half-listened to her explanation of the complicated packing system. She had stuck with them for a few hours before declaring that they seemed to ‘have things under control’ and heading out for some appointment or another, and things had gone a bit downhill from there.
Todd, at the very least, appears to be trying to take the system to heart – in the hopes of making the unpacking easier, he says. Most of the possessions he actually uses in his day to day life have already migrated to Dirk’s apartment over the last several months though, so Dirk doesn’t see why they can’t just throw whatever remains into the nearest boxes, lug the boxes upstairs, and leave the unpacking to be future Dirk and Todd’s problem. It’s not like they have far to go. This seems to be why he has been relegated to the desk.
‘You can’t mess it up,’ Todd had said. ‘Everything is all already sorted by drawer, just make sure there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be and get it into boxes with at least some semblance of organization.’ He had given Dirk that wry smile that he always did when he knew Dirk would manage to find some way to cause disaster, but was realizing he didn’t actually mind. Dirk loves that smile.
He does not love packing, he decides. Packing is boring. Having possessions is overrated if it means going through this whole ordeal every time you need to move to another location. Todd had better love his apartment because they are never moving again, he silently resolves as he petulantly throws a bundle of pens into a box. They will live and they will die in the one bedroom apartment one floor above this studio – unless they die in an appropriately whimsical, if terrifying, case related situation rather than of old age.
With a dejected sigh that is perhaps overly dramatized for Todd’s benefit, he drags open the upper right hand drawer.
This one seems to be full of extra guitar strings and other musical accoutrement which, he will at least grant, Todd actually has use for. In recognition of this, Dirk is somewhat more careful with the way he organizes them into their own box, keeping strings together by the letter on their label, gathering loose picks into the empty Altoid case he had found in a previous drawer, and absently flipping through a few notebooks that seem to have lyrics written in them before tucking them safely inside as well. He’ll have to come back to those when they unpack, he thinks. He looks up briefly to see Todd watching him with a soft smile on his face.
“Come on, Todd, hop to it!” He snaps his fingers at his boyfriend, pointing to the records in Todd’s lap. “Your ridiculously fragile and outdated music storage won’t pack itself!”
“Records are back, dude,” Todd scoffs. “They’re not outdated. This is a new release!” He holds up a sleeve from the top of the pile towards Dirk insistently. It’s bright teal and has two figures on it, one pink and only visible from the knees down, and the other black and kneeling before the other. Dirk merely gives it a dubious look. “Or well, at least relatively new,” he continues, drawing the record back to examine it thoughtfully. “It came out the year we met. A little after we got back to Seattle, actually – I think it was the first new record I bought after moving into this place.”
Dirk swallows the retort that was building up about how whether they’re ‘back in style’ or not, it doesn’t mean they’re any more efficient than they used to be, because Todd is looking down at the record with a little smile that Dirk doesn’t want to see disappear. It’s been nice, seeing Todd start to find happiness in little things again as they settled into life with the agency. As he settled into new and now finally healing relationships with his family. Sure, he doesn’t know exactly what Todd was like before Dirk had blown into his life like a whirlwind, but he does know that for a very long time Todd hadn’t allowed himself to really enjoy much of anything. He likes to think that maybe he helped break Todd out of that particular habit.
“It’s one of my favorite bands, actually.” He’s still looking at the record but now he’s flipped it over and is looking at the tracklist. “Has been since I was a shitty kid.”
“Well you can play it for me while we’re unpacking,” Dirk offers, since the record player is already moved into their living room upstairs and he doesn’t want to risk Todd hurtling headfirst into a guilt spiral as he tends to when thinking about his past. They’ve already narrowly avoided a few of these incidents earlier in the moving process, and Dirk isn’t eager to instigate another.
“Alright, alright,” Todd laughs and carefully places the record into the box. He’s on the final one, and this stack of records in his hands seems to be the last of them. “Should probably start you on an earlier album and work you through the discography properly though.”
It’s Dirk’s turn to roll his eyes when he sees the mischievous grin on Todd’s face, and realizes he’s being teased. Todd knows that he isn’t exactly a ‘music guy’, as Amanda would put it. Dirk couldn’t care less about things like discography, and whether or not a band’s ‘new stuff’ is as good as their ‘old stuff’, or any of that other nonsense Todd and his sister are always going on about when they talk about music. If you don’t like a band’s new album, just listen to their old albums that you do like, for goodness’ sake. But if Todd wants to play it for him, he’ll listen to it, even if Todd’s music is a bit shouty for his tastes. Lord knows Todd has listened to enough of the pop music Dirk tends to gravitate towards when he has control over the radio in the car, and has only complained a little bit about it.
Todd shoves himself off the floor to find a new roll of packing tape and Dirk begrudgingly turns back to the fifth and final desk drawer. He opens it and lets his head fall back with a groan as the veritable jungle of its contents stare back at him, taunting him. It’s the worst one yet, full of tangled cords, loose papers, and god knows what else. It’s clearly the drawer where Todd sends items to die once they no longer serve a purpose and Dirk is once more left wondering why he can’t just throw everything in the drawer away.
With a sigh, he reaches for the bundle of cords and resentfully begins the process of untangling them. He sticks his tongue out at Todd when he makes his way back into the main room from the kitchen and smirks at Dirk, amusement clear on his face. He can feel himself go slightly pink though when Todd leans down to press a kiss to his hair on his way past and just looks back down at the cords in his lap, suppressing the warm feeling rising in his chest like midday sun through a window. When he finally manages to get them all separated and placed into the box, suddenly with a sinking feeling that by the time they unpack this particular box, all his effort will have been undone, he looks back at the drawer.
He tugs out all the loose papers and shoves them in Todd’s direction.
“Decide what you want to keep because I’m throwing everything else away,” he instructs, leaving no room for argument, but this time at least Todd doesn’t push back. He just accepts the chaotic shuffle of papers with a sheepish smile on his face. “I can hardly understand why you’ve kept all of this for so long,” he reiterates.
“I don’t know,” Todd mumbles, rifling slowly through the pile before sitting down. “Sometimes it’s hard to throw stuff away,” he says simply.
Some of them seem to be at least ten years old, if not more, and Dirk can’t fathom the idea of it. A small part of him realizes he’s maybe being a bit unfair – most people, he knows, have had their entire lives to accumulate things and to assign sentimental value to them. Just because the idea of hanging onto so many little things you don’t even look at anymore seems somewhat silly to him doesn’t mean Todd shouldn’t hang onto old concert tickets and gig posters and whatever else might be in that pile. He could at least put them into a scrapbook or something though. Unless he didn’t want to look at them? Just a few days ago, Dirk had caught Todd having a small breakdown while sorting through another box he had found shoved in the back of his closet with mementos from his Mexican Funeral days, which just brings him right back around to why Todd would keep them in the first place…
Never mind, Dirk shakes the train of thought from his head. That’s a question for another day. Now it’s time to face the labyrinth of junk that remains in the drawer before him. He finds a few more old birthday cards shoved towards the bottom that he tosses over at Todd to sort through, and begins to pick his way through the rest of the items within. He absentmindedly drops an old digital camera into the box alongside the cords, making a mental note to find batteries for it so he can look through the photos of presumably teen and college aged Todd later, and the camera is followed swiftly by what looks like a few old video game consoles and some cassette tapes.
Picking up the cassette tapes however unearths something interesting. He’s pretty sure it’s some kind of music player. Dirk thinks he’s seen them before in passing, back at St. Cedd's, but he had never had the money to buy one himself, nor had he really ingratiated himself enough with anyone who did have one. It’s small (or small-ish – he thinks he’s seen other versions that are much smaller), black, and slightly heavier than it looks. Definitely sturdier than the smartphones they have now, if a bit scuffed. He could probably deal someone a decent head injury without damaging it if he hit them hard enough with it, he muses.
“Oh, man!” Todd’s voice behind him startles him out of his thoughts before he has a chance to toss it in the box along with the other old, unused technical artefacts of Todd’s past. “I haven’t listened to this thing in… God, almost a decade.”
Dirk looks over his shoulder to see Todd grinning excitedly down at the music player in his hands. He gives Todd a small, amused smile back and offers it to him. “What is it? I mean, obviously it’s some kind of music player, but—”
“Seriously?”
“Well it’s not like I had occasion to purchase a personal music device when I was spending my childhood being tested on by the CIA, Todd, keep up,” he teases in response to Todd’s shock, and nudges him good-naturedly when Todd’s face falls slightly at the reminder. “Besides, you know I’ve never had much of an opinion about music one way or another. I was hardly going to cough up the money for one once I was an escaped test subject turned broke university student turned wayward holistic detective.”
“Right,” Todd laughs, looking down at the device again, and Dirk nudges him again expectantly.
“So?”
“It’s an iPod,” Todd explains. “An iPod classic. Probably my most prized possession from throughout my early 20s,” he says, turning it over in his hands.
“How did it end up forgotten in the bottom of a drawer?” Dirk asks, genuinely curious, and only realizing that the question may have lacked tact when Todd’s face knits up in a disquieted, vaguely somber expression.
“I mean, technology evolves, you know? I didn’t really need it anymore.”
Dirk gets the feeling that this, perhaps, is not the whole story but despite the vaguely ominous feeling settling in the back of his brain, shoves it off and doesn’t push.
“Well, does it still work?” he asks instead, and that seems to have been the right question because Todd’s face lights up as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Probably, yeah, if I still have its charger! Were there…” he trails off, instead digging around in the box Dirk had been packing up and, after a moment of rummaging, emerges triumphant with a battered cord that Dirk thinks may have at one point been white. It’s torn and the inner wires are peeking out from within, fraying slightly where the cord meets the connection point.
Todd is smiling victoriously as he brandishes it in Dirk’s direction before all but leaping up to find his laptop and Dirk, glad for any excuse to abandon his previous task, follows after him. In the kitchen, he steps up behind Todd, tucking his head over his shoulder and watching as he plugs it in, muttering under his breath and pinching at the frayed end, willing it to connect. They both stare down at the black screen, Dirk crossing his eyes at Todd in the reflection that looks back at them while Todd waits with bated breath.
After several minutes, the little white Apple logo shines out at them and Todd gives a little whoop.
“Let me find some headphones, I’ll be right back!”
Dirk releases him and leans against the table, watching Todd scurry off with an amused smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. He picks the iPod back up, the screen gone black again but when he touches the wheel on the front it lights back up, and he experimentally runs his thumb against the wheel before clicking the center button. He doesn’t have a chance to get much further before Todd is crowding back into his space and shoving a bulky pair of headphones over his ears.
“Sorry, these are all I have on hand!” Todd pulls one side of the headphones back to rest against his head so Dirk can still hear him before grabbing for the iPod and plugging them in.
“But… aren’t you going to listen? I thought that was the whole point of this exercise… Not that I’m complaining about getting away from packing!”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Todd agreed with a chuckle. “But I’ve only got the over ear headphones right now and I can listen to it later. I was thinking I’d show you some of what I listened to back in the day,” he says, and while Dirk is not entirely enthused at the idea of Todd’s aggressively loud music being blasted directly into his eardrums, he’s got that wide excited smile on that makes Dirks insides flutter. “That is, unless you don’t want to?”
Slowly, his face shifts into a self conscious expression that twists at Dirk’s heart and, well… that certainly won’t do.
“I’d love to, Todd,” he promises, and leans back against the counter, gesturing for Todd to continue. “Come on then, DJ away! What’s first?”
He’ll absolutely subject himself to the noise Todd calls music if it means Todd will keep looking at him like he is now. He can’t help a small smile of his own as Todd looks back down at the iPod and starts chewing absentmindedly at his lower lip as he looks through his music history. It’s clear he’s having a hard time choosing where to start but after a moment a rhythmic beat starts playing in his ear and Todd is looking up at him expectantly.
“Am I supposed to know this one?”
“It’s The Clash, dude,” Todd laughs, looking at him with disbelief when Dirk just gives him a blank look in response. “I thought it would be a good starting point since literally everyone has heard this song before, I figured it would be familiar.”
“Well clearly not literally everyone. I suppose you could say figuratively everyone but as I think I’d be included in literally everyone, that assumption is demonstrably false,” he says, looking smugly at Todd but elbowing him playfully and settling in to listen. He does have to admit, to himself at least, that it’s not a bad start. It at least has a melody instead of just shouting and he sees a sly grin take over Todd’s face when he catches Dirk’s foot start to tap.
“One second,” Todd says when the song comes to a close, “I’ve got it on shuffle. Let me find something else.” Dirk dutifully waits as he skips a few tracks before settling on something new, the opening chords of a new song begin playing in his ear.
It’s a different sound than the first one, but Dirk can see why someone might like them both. This one definitely seems significantly less dreary at least and Todd is looking down at the little picture of the album cover with a nostalgic smile that makes Dirk’s heart ache fondly.
“This was one of the first bands I really got into on my own,” he explains when he sees Dirk watching him. “Once I broke out into finding my own music instead of just listening to what my parents listened to. I found one of their earlier albums at a record store – not this one, it hadn’t come out yet – I had to convince a random college kid to pose as my older brother so I could buy the CD because it had a parental advisory notice on it, and I was only twelve,” he recalls.
“Always a rebel,” Dirk laughs, but as it plays he can imagine a young Todd surreptitiously listening to this in his room at night, or perhaps sneaking it into school and sharing it with his friends.
Their childhoods really couldn’t have been more different, he thinks, not for the first time. The sharp pain and anger he used to feel clenching up in his chest when reminded of this however, has dulled to a gentle ache that he’s learned to sit with, and he distantly notices that when the song ends and the next one plays, Todd doesn’t skip it.
“You still with me?”
Todd’s looking at him like he can tell that Dirk’s mind is far away and he takes Dirk’s hand in his, grounding him back in the present, earning a grateful smile in return.
“Yes,” Dirk confirms. “I am here, I am present, and I am enjoying the soundtrack to your teenage angst,” he says with a practiced wink, glad for the sharp laugh he gets in return. He’s sure Todd can see through it but he knows better, at least, than to press Dirk about it. “I’m pleasantly surprised so far actually,” he continues. “I haven’t been shouted at once!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Todd grumbles, entirely without heat, as he skips ahead a few more tracks without waiting for the current one to end. This one reminds Dirk vaguely of the first, if a bit… crunchier, he supposes? Todd sidles up closer to his side, reaching up to twist the unused headphone to face outwards so he can lean in and listen along.
“This is probably one of my favorite bands of all time,” he says, when Dirk looks down inquisitively, and holds the iPod so Dirk can see it. Black Flag is emblazoned across the top of the album art and yes, Dirk has seen both Todd and Amanda wearing shirts for this band. “I used to play their music for Amanda when she was a kid,” he explains with a grimacing smile, “much to my parents’ dismay.”
“I can only imagine,” he laughs, as the chanting of ‘Rise above, rise above, rise above, we’re gonna rise above!’ crows with triumphant rage in his ear.
“I had to make sure she had good taste from a young age,” Todd defends himself, which only draws another guffaw out of Dirk. “Not that she needed the help, I guess,” he admits. “But it was nice. We started here with Black Flag and then music was our thing, you know?”
Dirk does know. He remembers watching the two of them ‘jamming’ the day he first met Amanda and how it was the most relaxed and happy he had seen the tense, angry man Todd had been since meeting him the night before. He remembers how contagious the feeling was and how desperately he had wished he had the skills to join in. Another song starts playing but before he can look at the display to catch what it is, Todd has clicked away to scroll through his library.
“Oh man, I know what I’ve gotta show you,” he says as he searches. For his part, Dirk cringes at the yowling vocalizations he’s being subjected to through his own personal speaker. “Once I knew Amanda was into it, I wanted to find her some female fronted bands to listen to and man, I had not taken a lot of them very seriously before that because I was a pretentious little asshole, but this,” he says reverently, and presses the center button to select another song.
He’s grateful for the change and finds himself greeted by a tight guitar riff that’s quickly joined by the kick of drums and then, not long after, the sharp, powerful voice of a woman singing and yes. Yes, he can see Todd and Amanda listening to this together on the floor of Todd’s bedroom, Todd a spotty teenager and Amanda maybe eight or ten years old, and listening with rapt attention.
“This is what made Amanda want to play the drums,” Todd continues when they’ve listened about halfway through and Dirk tries to listen to the beat more closely. “I got my hands on a VHS tape of Sleater Kinney performing live and played it for Amanda. She took one look at Janet Weiss, and that was it.”
“God, your parents must have loved that.”
“Oh, yeah, they were not not happy with me,” Todd agrees, shining with pride nonetheless. “They didn’t stop her though.”
“I doubt anyone could,” Dirk counters with a raised eyebrow. He can’t imagine Amanda at any age being anything less than fiercely determined to do what she wants.
“You can say that again,” Todd agrees, scrolling through again in search of another song and Dirk is briefly treated to something aggressively loud and almost unintelligible when Dig Me Out ends, and is grateful Todd is looking down rather than at him so he can grimace freely.
“Here we go,” Todd says before blessedly selecting something that, while still not entirely on his wavelength, is much more Dirk friendly. It has a similar punchy beat to the Sleater Kinney song but the sound is distinct, a bit more polished, and the woman singing now has an entirely different tone to her voice.
“God I had such a huge crush on Brody back in the day. So did Amanda.”
“Brody?”
“The singer,” Todd explains, nodding up at the headphones.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wear them?” he offers, sure that whatever Todd is hearing the way he’s listening now has got to be tinny and distant. “Not that I’m not delighted to hear it! But I feel somewhat guilty that you can’t properly listen.”
“Nah, I’m good,” Todd reassures him, leaning his head against Dirk’s shoulder and squeezing his hand. “I can hear it just fine.
“So, should I be jealous of this Brody person?” Dirk teases after listening for a long moment. He can’t see her of course, but he can hear the raw power in her voice, and can imagine what the draw must have been.
“Nah, she’s way too cool for me. Definitely out of my league.”
“And what does that say about me?” he cries in mock offense.
“Just that you weren’t smart enough to know better.” Todd laughs and Dirk lets go of his hand to pinch at his side.
“Rude,” he scolds. “Maybe I won’t let you move in with me.”
Todd just rolls his eyes and they listen in companionable silence, Todd’s warm body pressed up alongside his and Dirk lets his head fall to the side to rest on Todd’s. Todd skips a few more tracks, lets another loud angry sounding song play and regales him with another story about how he met the lead singer of The Mexican Funeral by bonding over the band in question. A few more skipped tracks and another that’s allowed to play with a melancholy voice crooning over the guitars as Todd nods his head softly along with the beat.
He can’t help but notice the way Todd stiffens though when a gentle guitar that Dirk might have otherwise enjoyed kicks in as the last fades out. He looks down to see Todd staring down at the screen, reflecting back album art featuring an astronaut washed in shades of orange and yellow.
“Todd?”
“Hm?” Todd looks up at him, a careful and entirely bullshit expression of calm plastered over his features. For someone who spent so much of his life telling lies, Dirk can’t imagine how he got away with it. He’s terrible at it.
“We don’t have to listen to this one,” Dirk says, and he reaches for the next button but Todd stills his hand before he can get there. This musical trip down memory lane had been going surprisingly well, too. Dirk should have known it wouldn’t last.
“No it’s… It’s fine I just… I haven’t listened to this in a while,” he says, as if that’s an explanation, and Dirk raises an eyebrow in response. “It hits differently, is all. Now that everything's out in the open, I mean.”
He doesn’t say anything else and Dirk chews at his own lip, worried that Todd may end up spiraling today after all, but if Todd wants to let it play there’s not much else Dirk can do but squeeze his hand reassuringly, listen when the singer comes in, and do his best to pick up the pieces. It’s incredibly depressing – not Dirk’s style at all but very much Todd’s, and sure, the lyrics are a little on the nose, but he’s not sure why just the sound of the opening guitar has triggered something so visceral in Todd.
‘And if it makes you less sad we'll start talking again. You can tell me how vile I already know that I am,’ the lyrics continue and Dirk looks down at Todd who is pointedly not looking at him.
“Todd…” he says, feeling uncharacteristically lost for words. Todd doesn’t say anything, just leans back against him. “Talk to me,” he tries. Anything to get Todd out of his head. At least if he voices whatever awful things his brain is telling him, Dirk can contradict them. “Tell me about the song.”
“It’s not the song really,” Todd finally says. “I mean, this specific song doesn’t help, but it’s the band.” Dirk waits patiently for him to continue. “Amanda and I used to love them. It came out a couple years ago that the singer had done some really shitty things, and I mean… Anyone who actually listened to the lyrics wasn’t exactly surprised, most of them are about being a shitty person and doing shitty things.”
Ah.
“We haven’t talked about it really but I know she stopped listening to their music, and I did too. I mean, it’s not like I did… the shit that he did,” Todd clarifies, “but I don’t know that that’s much consolation.”
“I thought things were getting better with Amanda?” Dirk asks, treading carefully.
“In some ways, yeah. They’re never going to be the way they were though,” Todd sighs. “I just… I’m trying. I’m trying so hard to be a better person. A better brother.” His voice is tight and all Dirk wants is to wrap him up in his arms but, getting the feeling that might be too direct for Todd while he’s still getting the words out, settles for another soft squeeze of his hand. “I want to be the person she deserves, but I can’t ever fix it.… I don’t know if there’s even space for me to ever actually make amends. I don’t know… I should just be glad she’s even talking to me.”
‘And if it makes you less sad, I'll take your pictures all down. Every picture you paint, I will paint myself out.’
The wind seems to have knocked out of his sails as the abominably bleak lyrics continue, the music crescendos, and Dirk takes the opportunity to tug Todd closer. Grateful that Todd lets himself be pulled, Dirk folds his arms around him.
“Telling her the truth was the right thing,” he reminds him, and nods at the muffled I know he gets in response. “You’re right. You can’t change what happened. You did something awful, and you can never undo it. But you have become a better person who wouldn’t make the same bad decisions again, and that’s all you can do.”
“You’re just saying that because you love me and you have to,” Todd grumbles as the music fades out and then groans again at the next track that begins playing. “Ugh the Universe is really sticking to a theme here,” he jokes humorlessly and pulls back to hold up the screen for Dirk to read.
‘Do You Still Hate Me?’ the song title on the display reads.
Dirk huffs a soft laugh of his own. “It really does like to get its point across,” he concedes. “She doesn’t hate you.” He presses a kiss to Todd’s hair, who lets the song play.
Dirk knows he isn’t only thinking of Amanda, that he’s thinking about the other people he hurt as well, but there’s nothing Todd can do for them now. Rather than contributing to Todd’s dwelling, Dirk just wraps his arms tighter around his back. If nothing else, he’s not going to let Todd forget that he does have people in his life who know all the worst parts of him and love him anyway.
When the third overwhelmingly morose song in a row takes shape in his ears, Dirk sighs.
“Todd?”
“Hm?”
“Your music is dreadfully depressing.” He’s not joking but he’ll take the effect his words have on Todd as he laughs pulling back enough for Dirk to see him rolling his eyes. “I’m serious! Maybe if you listened to happier music you might be happier!”
Todd snorts at this and Dirk sighs and pulls him back against his chest.
“Fine! Don’t listen to Dirk, what does he know about dealing with grief and anger— hey!” he yelps when Todd pinches him in return. “So ungrateful. Really though, let’s skip this one. Do you have any songs on your iPod that aren’t about being miserable?” he asks, looking down with an indulgent smile.
“Fine,” Todd grumbles and in that moment Dirk can practically see young Todd in his full teen angst glory. “Hold on.”
He’s fully taken by surprise for the first time by the next song that plays. It’s upbeat and surprisingly flamboyant for Todd’s taste and Dirk looks down quizzically at him. Todd, clearly a bit embarrassed and eager to defend himself, is quick to explain.
“I briefly dated this guy from a queer band in the scene once,” he says with a self conscious smile. “He used to listen to this band. Not my usual style but I always liked this album. Some of the songs on it at least. Didn’t last long – I wasn’t ready to come out and he wasn’t interested in hiding anything, so…”
“I like it,” Dirk assures him, and he’s telling the truth. The song is delightfully camp. It’s queer and celebratory of that fact – everything Dirk loves. And better than all of that, he’s seeing a new side to Todd who is slowly starting to let go of the front of embarrassment and is beginning to visibly enjoy it himself. “Shall I add a black jacket to the collection?” he asks with a wink, referencing the lyrics and giving his own jacket an appraising look.
Todd rolls his eyes and pushes Dirk’s face away, wearing an exasperated expression, but it’s a clear attempt to distract from the flush rising on his cheeks. Dirk grabs the hand, pulling it away and grabbing Todd’s face with the other to press a firm, joyful kiss to his lips. His whole body thrums with the way he can feel Todd smiling against him.
“See?” he says, pulling back at the first opportunity to smugly prove his point. “You’re already in a better mood.”
“Don’t get used to it,” he jokes, pulling him back in. Dirk melts into the kiss, breaking away only for a moment to laugh as the song changes and Todd turns the volume up.
“I like this song…” Todd mutters defensively, and Dirk just grins, letting the bright, nostalgia tinted exuberance of it settle in as their soundtrack. He can imagine Todd in his early twenties, blasting this song and feeling like nothing would ever go wrong. Dirk, selfishly, feels glad that they did because whatever wrong Todd had done, it ended up with them here, together. He was perfectly content to stand here, arms tangling up with Todd’s and kissing him forever.
A sudden change of the music very rudely rips him out of the moment however and, now at a much louder volume, it is screaming at him. He wrenches back, a hand quickly leaps to his mouth, swallowing what would have been a startled yelp.
Todd, the little shit, is openly laughing at him and Dirk slaps his arm, pulling the headphones down so they hang around his neck.
“Alright, the Dead Kennedys are not for you, then,” Todd snickers, but at least mercifully lowers the volume and goes back to scrolling through the library. “Here, I think you’ll actually like this one.”
The music now is soft, a combination of the quiet intro and the sound no longer being directly pumped into his ears, but still audible and it has an almost hypnotic quality. Todd tugs at his arm and, following his lead, Dirk sinks down to the floor, leaning his back against the cupboards. When Todd flops down on his back with his head in Dirk’s lap, he lets his fingers tangle in Todd’s hair, threading gently through the strands.
“This one sounds familiar, actually,” Dirk says, smiling softly when Todd beams up at him in surprise.
“Yeah?”
Dirk nods, and Todd settles into a content stillness for a moment as the sound of the dreamy guitar washes over them.
“My dad used to play Bowie for me when I was a kid,” he says eventually. “I couldn’t get enough of it. I used to steal his cassette tapes, go in my room and turn off all the lights, and just stare up at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling while I listened to it.”
Dirk breathes out a soft laugh. Not for the first time, his head is flooded with the image of a much younger Todd losing himself in the music, this time staring up at the simulated night sky. Imagining himself among them, perhaps.
“I used to do something similar,” he admits and Todd looks up at him curiously. “Things weren’t quite so bad at first,” he explains. “When I first got there, I thought they were going to help me. They weren’t overly cruel at first. I was very young, maybe seven or eight years old, and Riggins actually went to the effort of having my room painted with a mural of clouds,” he recalls, smiling ruefully. “And I had toys and things to keep me company when they weren’t running tests…”
He trails off and Todd doesn’t say anything, just drops the iPod on his chest and reaches up to grab Dirk’s free hand, giving him the space to figure out what he wants to say. Dirk takes a steadying breath, grounding himself with the feeling of his fingers carding through Todd’s hair. He’s taken aback slightly by the sudden surge of thrumming anger at the memory. He’s gotten so good at keeping it contained – controlled, for so long. He is a practiced expert at compartmentalizing everything that has happened to him until he could almost view it as something that happened to someone else.
“When it became clear that things weren’t going their way,” he eventually continues, “that I don’t –” He cuts himself off with a tight inhale. “That it doesn’t work like they wanted it to, they’d leave me in the dark for hours as… a punishment I guess. I was terrified of the dark.” He’s not looking at Todd but he can imagine the wounded expression on his face as his fingers tighten around Dirk’s. “I didn’t have the music, of course, or the stars. But even when I couldn’t see them, I knew the clouds were there and I’d shut my eyes and imagine myself becoming part of them and… it helped a little.”
They sit together quietly in the wake of Dirk’s admission. He’s glad Todd has gotten past the point of feeling the need to fill the silence with apologies that aren’t his responsibility to give when Dirk lets slip details about his past. He’s content to simply play with Todd’s hair and feel Todd’s fingers in his as the music plays on, reminding him that he’s here now, not there.
“We should get some stars for your apartment,” Todd suggests as the soft ‘la la la-la, la la la-la,’ repeats in the background.
Dirk looks down and catches his eye. He’s looking at Dirk with a hesitant smile, and Dirk finds it’s easy to return it. “Our apartment,” he corrects. “But yes, I think I’d like that,” he agrees and knows he’s mirroring the pleased look on Todd’s face. “What’s this one?” he asks, as a new melody picks up over the headphones.
“Screaming Females,” Todd replies and then, when Dirk grimaces at the name, which seems entirely in contrast to the almost calm guitar intro he’s hearing. “Don’t worry, it’s not like that,” Todd reassures him. “This is another one that Amanda and I used to listen to together. We saw them live once, actually, a few months before…” the words die in his throat but Dirk doesn’t need Todd to finish the thought to know what it was.
“Did you have fun?” he prompts, trying to steer them back towards hopefully safer emotional ground. “I’ve never been to a concert. Aside from Sound of Nothing, of course, but I don’t think that counts since it was for a case and we didn’t actually stick around to listen to the music.”
“That wasn’t real music anyway,” Todd grouses, ever the pretentious purist.
“Ah, of course,” Dirk replies, dripping with sarcasm.
“But yeah,” Todd answers his question. “It was a great night. Probably one of the best memories I have with Amanda from that time of my life.” He’s quiet for a moment and Dirk lets his fingers continue combing through his hair. “It was hard to spend time with her then. Easier to keep up the lies if I kept her at arm's length – stick to phone calls and lies about being busy, you know? But it was her birthday and they came to the city, so I got us tickets, and it was almost like old times.” He’s grinning at the memory, but it doesn’t take long to shift as Dirk watches the telltale shame sink over Todd like a heavy fog.
“Todd?” Dirk prompts, brushing fingers along his scalp.
“I got knocked out in the pit,” he admits, looking incredibly guilty for something that Dirk can’t imagine having been his fault. “It was fine, really, not the first time it happened and not the last, but it was the first time it happened in front of Amanda. She had to drag me out and when I woke up, we were in the parking lot and she was crying. I didn’t understand why until she punched me and asked why I didn’t have any medication on me.” Dirk’s heart clenched at the distress on Todd’s face as he remembered. “She thought I was going to have an attack. We didn’t go to any more shows together after that.”
Not knowing what to say that would help, Dirk just keeps up his soothing ministrations in Todd’s hair with one hand, and holds tight to his hand with the other.
Another song begins, the sound of a guitar lapping soft and sweet over them like a gentle tide as they sit together quietly. Dirk can’t help but give a dry laugh though, when he listens to the lyrics.
‘There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet no matter where you live. There'll always be a few things, maybe several things, that you're gonna find really difficult to forgive.’
“The Universe is really not pulling any punches today, is it?” he offers and Todd exhales a biting laugh of his own.
“I don’t expect her to forgive me,” he says eventually after a long moment of quiet. “It’s not her job and she doesn’t owe me anything. I’ve got to do that myself.” Dirk has the feeling he’s reciting something his new therapist has told him, trying to convince himself that it’s even possible to do. He just nods in quiet agreement. “But I just don’t know if I ever can.”
Dirk pauses for a short moment, wanting to choose his words carefully but he’s never been an especially patient person. Especially not when Todd is in front of him, twisted up with guilt and shame that Dirk desperately wants to smooth away.
“I meant what I said earlier, you know,” he settles on. “People can change. You already have - you’re not the person you used to be anymore,” he continues and tuts disapprovingly when Todd opens his mouth to protest. “I wasn’t just saying it because I love you, though of course I do, and I don’t love you in spite of who you were, just so we’re perfectly clear.” His tone is fierce and final, and he pauses until Todd stops looking away, catching his gaze and holding it, however uncomfortably. “It’s knowing everything about your past and seeing who you’ve become now because of it that makes you so incredible. And don’t even think about arguing with me, because I won’t hear it.”
Todd looks like he might try it anyway for only a moment before shutting his mouth, instead reaching for the iPod and scrolling through to find another track.
He waits for the current song to come to its close before making any motion to change it. “I think you’ll like this one,” he says again, characteristically brushing aside whatever uncomfortable feelings that are likely swirling around his brain and pressing play.
The sound isn’t exactly something Dirk would gravitate towards. The instruments have a discordant, chaotic quality to them and the singer’s voice is rough and almost hysterical, as if he’s on the verge of going hoarse. He listens anyway and, after a moment, smiles fondly at Todd.
“It reminds me of you,” is all Todd says in explanation, and Dirk can understand why. It’s an unrelenting optimism in the face of a downpour of disaster. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. He closes his eyes to immerse himself in it.
‘Rejoice despite the fact this world will hurt you, and rejoice despite the fact this world will kill you. And rejoice despite the fact this world will tear you to shreds. Rejoice because you're trying your best.’
“I love you too, by the way,” he adds and Dirk opens his eyes to meet Todd’s. “All the parts of you.”
Dirk thinks they probably won’t get around to finishing their packing today, but that’s quite alright with him.