Author: D.K. Archer
Fandom: X-Men Evolution
Rating: PG-13
For: language, homosexual content
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God.
Damn.
It.
There wasn't much light in this room but he could see them; tiny black dots scattering frantically under his fur, running from exposure. They were everywhere. Kurt wretched the faucet open and the whole sink shuddered, the pipe jerking and vomiting a slew of rusted sludge out onto the porcelain, swirling and collecting over the stains instead of running down the drain like it ought to. He pushed it shut again with a snarl and jerked open the shattered mirror on the medicine cabinet. Inside there wasn't anything but a ball of bloodied tissue paper and a half empty bottle of crusted antiseptic, probably packaged ten years before either his or Todd's birth. He glared over his shoulder. Todd was sitting the same place he'd left him, half on and half off the stained, reeking mattress, already naked and bruised and thoroughly fucked. The one window in the room was high up on the wall, and the diffused, reddish light of a smoky evening was filtering though the buildings, casting him and all of this filth in bloodied colors.
The apartment was full of fleas. Kurt's eyes narrowed. Yes, there, around Todd's legs, on the backs of his arms, those tiny, circular scabs; harassed bitemarks he hadn't seen earlier in the fluster of having Todd under him, sweating and straining. Those tiny scabs overlaid those tiny scars, marks of previous infestations, and Kurt slammed the medicine cabinet door, causing broken glass to fall down into the backed up muck in the sink.
Todd jumped at the noise he made, but not by much.
"You have FLEAS? AGAIN?" Kurt shouted, already feeling a real or imagined itching on his left shoulder. He scratched it unconsciously. Todd just stared up at him, eyes partially obscured behind his stringy, unwashed hair. The last time Kurt remembered him cutting it was when he was 17, and it had been Kurt himself holding the scissors. That was two years ago now.
Todd's response was to reach over to the floor by his elbow, finding his slightly mashed and likely stolen package of Camel unfiltered and sticking one in his teeth. His gas-station matches seemed nowhere to be found, though. "What do you mean, 'again'?" he said finally, pushing over a stack of questionable magazines with his foot. The matches weren't under them.
Kurt stalked over to his boxers and grabbed them off the floor, stepping into them angrily. "Again as in, you were supposed to get rid of them! I gave you the flea powder, didn't you use it?"
"Not on ME! How stupid do you think I am, dawg!" Todd snapped back, finding the matches wedged under the edge of the mattress. He lit the cigarette. "Think about it! If soap makes me puke, whaddaya think POISON is gonna to do me, asshole."
Kurt scowled. "You're supposed to put it on the mattress! And your clothes! And everywhere else! You don't put it on YOU."
"I DID put it on everything else. Not my fault it wore off." He coughed once, snorted, and spit onto the bare floor, leaving a slick spot of slime and tar next to the used condom. He made a face. Kurt rolled his eyes, disgusted.
"Well why didn't you ask for more?"
Todd leered at him. "Yeah, when? I look like a got a quarter for the pay phone, dawg? Or did you mean in the ten seconds between when you came in the door and when you grabbed my crotch?"
At an angle from the light, Todd was casting a muddy black shadow against the brick, a shapeless mass that wouldn't solidify until true sunset. On the wall above, in red paint that almost disappeared in the red light, someone had sprayed FREAK in jagged, dripping letters. It was a new addition since the last time Kurt had been here, almost three weeks ago.
It didn't look like Todd's work.
Todd bit the cigarette, mashing the wet end flat. "Besides, what do I care about fleas? It's not like anyone comes here but you and me, dawg." He sneered. "Everybody else, we use the alley."
Kurt grit his teeth, and decided to pretend he didn't hear that. It wasn't easy. He picked up his trousers, ignoring Todd's own scattered clothing, and struggled into them. It was never easy with a tail, and agitation made it worse.
Todd flicked his cigarette, sending ashes to smolder quietly through the top layer of mattress fiber. "So where you got to run off to tonight, huh? More X-men shit? Xavier got another mission for your furry ass tonight?" he said, showing his crooked, yellow teeth. Kurt had heard that enough time to catch the implication. But he'd also heard it enough times not to give Todd a reaction.
"Well nowhere, now." He said instead. "I've gotta go buy a FLEA BATH, thank you."
Todd snorted. "And where would you normally be?" He let a moment's quiet slink in as Kurt untangled his tail from a beltloop. "It's Sunday, huh?"
Kurt just gave him a dirty look, which Todd ignored.
"Sunday night." He took a drag off the cigarette. "Evening mass starts in about an hour. Great timing. A quick fuck then off you go to pray, your convenient excuse for ducking outta here already in place. Shit, dawg, who'd have thought YOU'D ever get religion, huh?" He smiled, but it looked nasty. Kurt looked away. They'd had that argument before, too, after Kurt had casually mentioned that he was thinking about joining the priesthood someday. Todd had taken it personally.
Kurt pushed his arms into his shirt and started on the row of buttons. Todd casually turned and lay down on the flea ridden mattress, staring up at the rotting ceiling of his room and forgetting to smoke the cigarette between his lips. The sun was starting to slip behind one of the buildings, making the red light steeper, more desperate. When it went down, it would be dark here. The single lightbulb in the ceiling had burned out months ago.
"Kurt." Todd said simply, almost like it was a foreign word. His lover of two years and fucker of three looked over with irritated disinterest. Kurt could have sworn he had a tie when he came in here. Not that it mattered much; he'd probably have to burn these clothes now, anyway.
"Kurt." Todd said again, voice slipping darker.
Kurt sighed. "What is it, Todd?"
For a moment Todd didn't answer him. Kurt spotted his tie across the room and went after it, stopping down to fetch. From behind him, Todd's voice came quietly. "I'm thinking about going back."
Kurt straightened slowly. "…Going back where?" he asked carefully. He knew the answer.
Todd snorted. "Where do you think, dumbass?"
"The Brotherhood." Kurt said, without hesitation. He didn't hear a response from Todd. Putting his tie back around his neck, Kurt tied it off easily, mind anywhere but on his neckwear. Only when the thing was properly in place did he turn to look at Todd. His friend was still naked, still laid out like it didn't matter to him, a cigarette burning to a cylindrical ash between his teeth.
Stomach feeling heavy, Kurt asked a stupid question.
"Why?"
Todd lifted his head a little to look at him. It WAS an unbearably stupid question.
"I dunno, dawg. You tell me." he said.
Kurt didn't. He stood there staring at him dumbly, the light quickly fading from the window. He could still make out the bruised bitemark over Todd's left hip, a mark that had been nearly healed before today, when Kurt had renewed it. His fangs had left two sharp puncture marks in the upper row, covering the old bruise.
The original wound hadn't had those fang marks. Whoever had given it hadn't had fangs.
Kurt had noticed.
Todd sighed and pulled the cigarette out of his teeth, flinching as the ash was shook loose onto his cheek. The room smelled like mold and sex and unwashed body, supplemented by the urine smell of an empty but unrinsed piss bucket in the corner, used in lieu of a toilet (there was, in theory, a common bathroom down the hallway, but the door had been nailed shut as long as Todd had been here). Stale cigarette smoke made it worse. Todd couldn't smell any of these things anymore, but he knew they were there, and if he concentrated he could pick them out again. It was all the smells of a human trapped in a cage. He put the cigarette out of his tongue, and flicked it away.
"I'm sick of this, dawg." He said casually, folding his arms behind his head again and examining the ceiling. "This was a shit idea when we had it and it's a shit idea now."
Kurt said nothing. For the first time in almost a whole year, Todd had shut the boy's mouth. It was a slightly liberating feeling.
"I shouldn't have ever left. Dunno why you thought things would be better if I'm out floundering on my own. Easy for you to say, huh? You ain't had to live here. You've STILL got that nice shiny mansion and that dumb, preppy college. You've got no shortage of places to go." His eyes slid over to the window, which was rapidly turning dark. Soon all he'd be able to see of Kurt was that bright white dress shirt and the pale green glow of his holowatch, yet unactivated. Kurt could see all of Todd, though; boney, pale, thin, and bruised. Some things never changed.
"I don't know how well they'll take me." he continued. "I looked them up. They've moved to a new house. I guess you knew that though, having to go up against them all the time." He squinted up at a crack in the ceiling. "…I think it's about time I move out anyway. The landlord is no longer accepting the 'fuck-for-rent' idea. Something about a mysterious crab infestation." He shot Kurt a sharp look, and Kurt grimaced, despite himself.
Todd moved on. "Hey, it'll give me a place to live, work to do. You'll probably see me more, too." He added dryly. Kurt just stared. After a long moment Todd rolled over to face the wall, presenting Kurt with his reddened, scratched back.
"I guess I won't bother filling out a change of address, huh?" he muttered towards the wall. It was getting too dark. Kurt could see his shape only, none of the details mottled across his skin. The mole on his right ankle. The scar on his shoulder he'd always suspected came from an electric cord, but had never gotten up the nerve to ask about. He supposed it would always be speculation, now. His stomach was feeling tight, looking at the pale place along his back where he knew that scar had to be. The scar he'd always been able to feel under his fingers when he touched him, pulling him to his chest in some dark room out in the night. He wondered what would happen if he knelt by him now and touched that place, that scar. If he'd shrug him away.
It had been three years since he'd first placed a tentative hand on Todd's shoulder: the whole world had changed in three years. They'd graduated from High School (well Kurt had anyway; Todd had dropped out four weeks before finals, though he had been, for the first time, doing well) and Kurt had moved on to become a full time X-Men. Conflicts had been obvious.
He didn't really understand WHY Todd had agreed to quit the Brotherhood for him. Oh, he had at the time, of course. Things always made sense at the time. Perhaps if the boy knew where he'd be two years later he wouldn't have accepted so easily. If he'd known the little one-room-shithole they'd found him 'just for now' would become his permanent residence, collecting magazines and condoms and cigarette butts. That his enemies would stalk him, even though he'd dropped out of the picture.
Maybe, now, he would have made a different choice.
So maybe something had changed this past year. It seemed like they could be divided into three distinct eras, the first being the easiest; stupid teenage lust and insecurity. It was the one he understood the best, the one where study sessions turned obscene, where double meanings ran rampant and secrecy was of the utmost. It was the year he was embarrassed by Todd. The year he would never admit if he felt anything. And it was setup, for the better year. The one where he thought he might have loved him. Just a little. Though he didn't say it. Neither of them did. How did you voice something that absurd?
He had been fairly confident, though, that Todd had loved him. What other explanation was there? If maybe he clung to him a little too tightly at times, maybe tried a little too hard to get him to smile, it had been good. That had been the year he had imagined impossible things, wondering for a few brief moments one night when he was alone in his room where they'd be living when they were 30, but he'd banished the thought. He'd known, even that year, that there would be no 30. But it was the year he felt more comfortable to dream.
He had, of course, moved into college, though not quite full time, unable to balance school and duty to the X-Men. There had been new faces. There had been pretty girls. And Kurt had found other things to do with himself. Of course, his distraction had been unconscious for the most part, and stayed that way until maybe six months ago, when Todd had come to meet him after class. He'd been walking down the glittering white steps of the lecture hall, avidly arguing a point and swapping notes with the boy who had been sitting next to him. The boy had cast a furtive glare at the foot of the stairs and Kurt had glanced that way, unthinking. Sitting at the bottom of the stairs was Todd. He was smoking next to the prohibiting sign, three more cigarettes butted out by his feet, and ignoring the dirty looks he was getting from the students going in. Todd looked like shit. It had been a week, and he was still wearing the same clothes Kurt had last seen him in, a stained t-shirt whose reek was wafting up towards them with the smoke. Todd was looking the wrong way. He didn't see them.
So he'd grabbed the elbow of his friend, tugged, and detoured them.
If Todd had brought it up, he would have said he missed class that day. But Todd never said a word. Something was different, though, and it was weeks later when it occurred to him that maybe Todd had seen. And he'd felt horrible.
But maybe not as horrible as he should have.
Todd, facing the wall and presenting Kurt with that ever-so-familiar spine, dragged an arm up over the side of his head and let it lie there, his wrist bulging out a little from his forearm. He could see all the tendons in the back of his hand. He wondered when the last time was Todd had gotten a decent meal.
"See ya around, fuzzy." Todd mumbled. "Don't let the door hit ya on the way out."
And that seemed to be that. Could things really end so simply? Kurt just stood, staring, feeling frozen to the floor. What was he supposed to do? Wasn't a part of him, a part he liked to pretend WASN'T him, relieved?
Something nipped at the small of his back and he twitched, resisting the urge to scratch himself raw there. Gut hurting, he fished in his back pocket for his wallet and pulled it out, looking inside of it. He had 80 dollars, fresh from the ATM. Kurt pulled out 40 of it and walked back to Todd, kneeling beside the mattress. Todd tensed up. Kurt reached over him and put the 40 dollars into his hand, folding his fingers down onto it. "You still need to buy fleapowder." He muttered, standing back up.
He turned to go and Todd jerked upright behind him, pulled on puppet strings, and threw the 40 dollars back at him. It fluttered to the floor.
Kurt could feel Todd's glare on his back. He was furious. But what was he supposed to do?
He thumbed his inducer on and left, quietly, leaving the money lying there on the floor.
Todd glared after him for a long time, until the red had gone out of the sky completely and the room was dark. Then he stood up, picked up the bills, and tore them into little pieces.