Rating: PG
In the dark blanket of an early summer night, rain had already touched the ground and the clouds hid all the stars. In this place smells were already beginning to seep into the clean air. The thick, heavy stench of pond water rolled through them like a damp fog, creeping across the grass from the place that had been, in it's glory, a shallow, blasted duck pond. In intervening years the reeds had begun to creep further and further out, the edges become less defined, and the water too choked to attract waterfowl. It had become a haven for flies and writhing larvae. At it's edge, the bench that had been set there in 1952, the one with the corroded In Memoriam plaque, was disappearing under the vines.
Over the tangled, treacherous summer grass and before the park drifted back into the trees, a deep, struggling sandpit sat underneath the swing set, the park's last offering to a town that had forgotten it. At the time this place was made, Bayville had been sprawling towards it, new, brilliant residential districts bleeding out across the county side and promising brighter better tomorrows, tomorrows where your mundane cares would disappear and Norman Rockwell paintings would become a reality. The districts had oozed and begun to falter, the park had become encompassed, and fallen into disrepair as the illusionary dreams of the 50s began to falter. Something had gone wrong on this side of Bayville. Family homes turned into low income housing; fenced in yards began to overgrow and leak through the planks, looking more and more like the wilderness they had overcome. The duck pond with it's waiting swings and its field of soft green grass had become a source of mosquito infestation, on the wrong side of town to warrant any action from the city council.
The swing set creaked, the cracked rubber seats too high because the rusted chains tangled at the top from misuse. Todd was on one anyway, the left one, his untied sneakers dangling off the ground like a little boy's. Kurt only watched him. Away in the houses that had separated themselves with a wall of tangled lilacs a dog was barking, shrill and incessant, the sound of it drifting through the streets and echoing across walls. It was late, later than Kurt should be out, and if anyone were to do a room check at 2am on a Friday night he'd have some explaining to do. Mosquitoes from the fetid pond buzzed irritatingly in his ear, making his skin twitch. Todd, however, seemed completely oblivious to them. Maybe they left him alone. Or maybe he'd just gotten used to it.
Todd stretched his leg out, pushed his toe against the ground, and set the swing lolling back and forth, squeaking unevenly in the chains. Kurt shoved his hands in his pockets. This was an ugly place. When he'd found Todd's note in his locker that afternoon he'd figured Todd had plans, though his teenage hormones had had other ideas for what Todd wanted him to sneak out in the middle of the night for. A long walk and a decaying park hadn't been anywhere on his mind.
There had to be a reason. Todd was squinting at him in the dark. The swing set squeaked.
"So what's with the park?" He asked finally. The conversation had died out several blocks from here, a silence that would have been comfortable if Todd hadn't kept fidgeting. Something was up.
Todd wrapped his webbed fingers around the swing chains, back bent in a vaguely defensive position. It made Kurt nervous. "'s a good place, dawg." He mumbled eventually, looking at his swinging sneakers.
Kurt, standing knee deep in the thicket of uncut grass, looked over it all again with a wrinkled nose. That smell. The stench rolling off the pond was powerful. For Kurt, who had spent his childhood hidden, that smell of festering ponds held no fond summer memories. It smelled like something had drown in the water and rotted there.
"Did you used to play here when you were a kid or something?" Kurt asked, momentarily forgetting Todd was as foreign to this place as he was.
Todd snorted. "Fuck no. I ain't from here; you know that."
In truth, other than 'New York City', Kurt didn't really know where Todd was from at all, and sometimes that bothered him. Even now, after this strange thing had begun with a fight and a grope and a broken nose, Todd wouldn't tell him anything. At first Kurt had assumed it was because they were still so close to being enemies. They were on the wrong sides of every conflict, and sometimes meetings would turn into shouting matches, and sometimes outright violence.
But for every fistfight and dangerous mission there were study sessions where Todd fell asleep on Kurt's legs, and sneak attacks in the back of the field house when Todd tasted like cigarettes and sugar. There was a day he discovered Todd was ticklish, and a night spent looking up at the stars talking about things you couldn't think about in the light of day.
It was that night, more than any other, when Kurt had told Todd where he was from. He'd told Todd about the attic bedroom, about the circular window cut into fourths that looked out on the only road Kurt had ever known. He told him about summer nights on the hot roof, and the sound of cars filtered through the night.
He'd also told him about the burn scars on his legs, the ones Todd had found, where the fur hadn't grown back quite right. It was thinner there than anywhere else, and stunted. Todd hadn't come up with anything else to say after that except 'well shit.'
Todd had told him nothing.
It wasn't that they didn't speak. They did. But nothing ever came from Todd but disconnected fragments when the boy's guard was down, anecdotes told for a laugh that Kurt had never been able to assemble into a neat and coherent whole. He suspected not all of them belonged to Todd; the details were too different. And the real things, the things that carved out a person, Todd kept to himself.
Kurt had asked him about it, once. A simple question, about his family.
Todd had tidily deflected and distracted him. It wasn't until some time later, back against the alley wall with Todd on his knees in front of him, that he realized his question hadn't been answered.
"I just like this place, is all." Todd muttered from the swing, looking past Kurt at the porch light visible through the fence. It glowed, pale and broken, reflecting little slivers of light off the glass beer bottles tossed callously over on to their side. The mosquito swarm was getting worse, but still, Todd didn't seem to notice. "It's like they built these things, right? Something nice in the neighborhood, someplace you could put your little kids and let 'em play around without having to worry about pedophiles snatchin' em up or gangs shootin' the shit outta them. But it didn't work out, you know? All this stupid butterflies and rainbows shit. Everybody went broke, the park went to shit and nobody comes near it anymore. Just lock it up and pretend that never happened. Like if you don't have to see it, it isn't there."
Todd was staring at a place behind Kurt, a place where the light from a sinking back porch filtered through the fence in bars. The house it was attached to was a wreck. Kurt looked back at Todd, but the boy wouldn't look at him. Something behind his face looked wound tight.
"This….it's one of those places you never hear anybody talk about fixing up, you know? But you always hear them bitch." His voice was a little quieter now. "Always saying someone oughta get rid of it. All because of the bugs and the smell and they're afraid something bad's gonna happen, like a little kid'll wander in and get killed, but they never say somebody oughta go in there and fix it. Too much work. It's already fucked up, so why bother? Easier just to get rid of it…"
Todd trailed off and scuffed at the sand with the toe of his sneaker. Kurt blinked at him. The dog barked on unabated.
"I dunno." Todd concluded, mumbling at his shoes. "Just thought…it's still a good place, you know? Even if it's nasty and dangerous and nobody wants it. It could still be a good place."
Kurt frowned, and after a moment picked his way carefully through the high grass until the shifting, muddy sand started to slip under his sneakers, and he had to grab the leg of the swing set for balance. He turned. From the swing, next to Todd, the grass rose up and meshed with the untamed shooters from the lilac tree, hiding the locked gate they'd climbed over to get here. The porch light shined through it, on the other side of the fence.
Kurt, hesitantly, reached out and grabbed the rusted chain of the second swing. It was wet from the rain, and left a red stain on his palm. It had been left out here a long time. He hopped up into the rubber seat anyway, steel groaning under unaccustomed weight, and waited for something to collapse. It didn't.
Todd stared at him. Kurt managed a shaky, lopsided smile, and nodded. "Yeah. It's still a good place."
Todd grinned.
It was the only time in their brief relationship Kurt would ever see him look really happy.