"Hard night." a voice says behind Todd as he flicks ashes over the balcony edge. It isn't a question.
Todd blows a smoke ring as thin and wobbly as he feels, into the fading blue-grey of night rather than answer.
Night doesn't quite cut it, if Todd really sits with it. He's never sure what to call these hard periods, the ones where he's still laughing, still clever and sharp and busy busy busy with his hands, but if he goes still, if there's no one to laugh at the punchline and his voice echoes off the walls back to himself, he can feel that hollow ache, the abscess under a rotting tooth. A pain so deep he'd relive recovering from that time a SHIELD agent put a bullet through his thigh if it meant this hole in his brain, in his soul, would finally close over.
Kurt doesn't crowd him, or say more as he sidles up to the balcony railing, hopping up beside Todd. The steady hiss of the lake in the distance is overlaid with the calls of gulls and the occasional clatter of other people stumbling through the hours in which anyone still in their head and not up for work would be in the arms of dreams. Todd flicks his eyes over to the blue mutant and snorts to see Kurt hasn't bothered with clothes either, though there's a second condo balcony not three feet from theirs. How easy the blue mutant is with his own body, when he's not hiding under that hologram, still throws Todd.
"Hard life." Todd says, stubbing out the end of his cigarette on the railing before tossing it into the tomato can filled with sand in the balcony corner.
Kurt hums, but doesn't say anything. His eyes scan over the courtyard below, watching, the way they always do. Todd wonders if he'll ever leave that little X-Geek habit behind. Or if maybe he was destined to be vigilant. Looking out for what might be amiss, what might be waiting for the moment he’s not paying attention.
Once, Kurt'd pushed back when Todd said shit like this, said something about Todd couldn't keep framing his life as a tragedy and Todd's skin had flared as hot as it did when they were brats kicking the shit out of each other. The dig that talking only about what made him happy didn't make Kurt any less angry or miserable flicked off his tongue like a spitball, and down over the edge they'd gone that night, hard elbows to the gut traded in for harder words that found all the tender parts in the belly.
Todd runs a hand over his face, sighing. His head feels like it's burning from the inside out, a gnawing ache like the hunger that comes on after you've long given up eating anytime soon. He absently flicks the cheap lighter the condo owner left out for guests on and off. Anything to keep moving, to hem in this seeping hole in his brain.
"Sorry. We're on vacation." Todd says, dropping his hand from his face to look at Kurt. He can't bring himself to actually look at the blue mutant's face, staring into the distance over one velvet shoulder instead. Dawn hasn't quite shown up yet, and the sour yellow of the building's balcony lights is all that keeps Kurt from vanishing into the dark.
Kurt snorts, "Ja, I'm disappointed you didn't put in for PTO with your existential dread."
"Hey, I don't qualify for those benefits for another twenty years, gotta put in that suffering time." Todd drawls, and Kurt shifts ever so slightly, like he's plucking up all the little details from Todd. Not that there's a lot to go over, given he's buckass naked with only a lighter in hand, but the blue mutant always manages to read him like a book no matter how heavily Todd blacks out the lines.
"You're in deep." He says softly, like that's meant to make sense. But Todd laughs, a short bark of sound, so maybe it does.
Todd's eyes flick down to the lighter in his hands, then away when the urge to press the hot metal tip to his arm flares fever bright. He sucks in a breath against the iron band around his chest. There's a way through this, there's always a way through this even when he doesn't want there to be, he'll find it anyway. He couldn't do it to the Brotherhood, couldn't imagine their faces, not that he'd be around to see them. His eyes flick back to Kurt.
"I'm not a hostage, you know." He says, pressing his feet hard into the railing, feeling the way his muscles push against each other, "You can leave whenever you want."
Kurt watches him, the cut off, agitated thrash of his tail the only sign he's anything other than calm.
"How convenient, because I don't feel like leaving anytime soon." He says quietly. "Do you?"
Todd's hand comes back to his face, scrubbing his cheeks and brow like all of this is just grime he can smear away, like a miasma he can tear off and he'll be able to breathe again. To remember the good shit about being a breathing thing.
Does he actually feel like leaving? He bites his knuckles at the thought. Shakes his head.
"No. Not really. But it's hard to keep shoving the option off the table when it keeps hopping up and yowling like a hungry cat." Todd says finally, sighing. All of him aches, like his muscles are tired of doing the work of holding him together.
"A persistent little beast, isn't it?" Kurt asks, shadows of his face shifting into a ghost of a smile. Todd remembers long phone calls where his chest felt like ice as Kurt's voice rasped in his ears like cinders. Remembers holding him as he shook so hard no sound slipped from his gasping mouth. Guilt shoots through him at the comfort of knowing he's not the only one with unwanted house guests.
"Everytime it shows up, it feels like it'll never fucking leave. I start wondering if it ever really does or if I just trick myself into the bits of peace I get." Todd says, aware of the bitter venom slipping into his voice. "Until it gets so big it takes all I've got to think about anything else for like ten fucking minutes."
Kurt waits, a still shadow an arm's length away. Todd breathes, future shrinking down to his next exhale, his next inhale. He wants another cigarette, but the steps to roll one feel too much, muscle memory dissolving under the weight of his own brain eating itself. He presses his palms to his eyes, taking in a wet breath.
"Feeling bad feels so big right now, I don't believe any of the times I've felt good, like an ungrateful asshole." Todd says. Kurt makes a soft noise beside him and Todd glances the blue mutant’s way.
Kurt holds out his arms, an invitation for Todd to take or leave. He fights the urge to launch himself into the other mutant's arms, in part to avoid sending them careening naked onto the neighboring balcony, in part because taking the offer feels like theft.
"Does sitting out in the cold actually do anything to make up for the arschloch you've convinced yourself you are?" Kurt asks quietly, like Todd hasn't pulled almost the same line on him, when he's found the blue mutant brooding on rooftops or curled tight in one of their apartment's narrow corners.
Todd groans, but hops down from the balcony, closing the step and a half gap between them. The world vanishes in soft blue as he hides his face in Kurt's chest. Warm arms wrap around his shoulders as broad hands run up and down his spine.
"You don't have to stop feeling bad. Don't force it to go away. It'll only put more cracks in the dam." Kurt whispers, lips pressed to Todd's temple. Todd bites back a sob, pressing his face tighter against Kurt, "But don't crush the places where good feelings pop up because you feel undeserving."
Todd swallows, hating how wet and small his voice sounds, "Everything feels big. Feeling good when I'm like this is like speaker feedback, it rattles my bones so bad I feel like I’m going to fall to pieces."
He feels more than sees Kurt shrug, the hands on his back splaying wide and pressing firm into his shoulders, "Then go to pieces, we can help you pick them up. I can help you."
He runs his hands over Kurt’s back, catching the ways the fur that’s grown over scars lays a touch different. Kurt has that sharp smell of sleep interrupted mingling with the lingering musk from the sweat they worked up in a slick slide against each other earlier before they fell asleep with the sheets half on the floor.
"What do you do, when shit gets too much?" Todd asks, nuzzling his cheek into Kurt's fur.
Kurt hums, the vibration of his chest soothing against Todd's ear, "Depends, but really the answer is anything I can catch myself on as I flail in the freefall.”
One three-fingered hand slides up to stroke through Todd’s hair, nails skimming his scalp in fine lines that send a shiver through him and Todd sighs, pressing a kiss to Kurt’s chest.
“Sometimes, I get drunk until I sprawl out in a sunbeam, then decide things aren't so bad, because at least I can still lie in sunbeams.” Kurt offers, in the low whisper he gets when they’re mumbling nonsense in bed together at the little hours of night, “You?”
Todd snorts, spreading his palms wide over Kurt’s shoulders, savoring the slight tickle against his palms as he runs his hands down the taller mutant’s back, “Get high out of my face until I can look at all my problems from an out of body experience and shit that was crushing me fits in my hand.”
“Find myself in lovers’ beds because I can’t find myself anywhere else.” Kurt says planting a kiss in Todd’s hair.
“Cry til my face hurts, then get tired of that and jerk off til my dick hurts.” Todd offers and Kurt laughs.
“Sleep,” Kurt says, “til I can't anymore, then get up and run until my head is empty of everything but the way my lungs and limbs burn.”
“Bounce myself off every rooftop until my knees are ready to give up on me, then pass out on the couch still marinating in my own sweat.” Todd says.
“Throw darts at a map and book the cheapest tickets to get wherever they land, because if here sucks, maybe somewhere else is better.” Kurt offers.
“Toss my shit in a bag and disappear in the middle of the night.” Todd says, “Only tell anyone where I am when Lance blows up my phone threatening to have Pietro zig zag across the continent til they find me.”
“Port to the middle of the woods and scream until I scare the hell out of some unfortunate campers and end up a local cryptid.”
“Dive as deep as I can before screaming until my lungs are out of air and my skin does all the breathing.”
They catch each other’s eyes and laugh, less a sound and more an exhale with the ghost of joy hiding behind the ache of nights with too little slip from minds’ too busy on the wrong things. Kurt closes the gap between them in a kiss to Todd’s lips that doesn’t quite reach the wound inside of him, isn’t the fairytale remedy part of him clamors for, but it’s still sweet and loving and pulls him back into his body for a moment, gives him a glimpse of all the good things he knows come from being a living, dreaming, breathing thing. That counts. They fall quiet for several minutes, huddled together there on the balcony. Dawn has pulled away the blanket of night that might have made any passersby dismiss their lack of clothing as a trick of the eye, but neither of them make a move back towards the cool dark of the condo. In the scope of things, Todd can’t muster up any concern for whether his bare, dappled ass will get some vacationing retiree’s speedo in a twist.
The icy hollow rot that howls through him like the wind through the burnt skeleton of an abandoned building creeps back into him. Todd scrunches closer to Kurt, as pressing his face to the blue mutant’s neck can shelter him from this wind. Kurt hooks his chin over Todd’s head, shifting to hold him tighter. His breath is that deliberate, deep slowness he does when he’s trying to calm one of the Hellfire kids down from a panic attack. Todd’s watched him pull that trick countless times, watched the way one of their students goes from gasping like a fish to stuttering out sentences, to laughing. He knows the trick, and it works on him anyway, melting the ice in his chest down enough that he can spit it out in a question.
“What about when none of that works?” He asks.
“In the worst moments, where sunbeams, or screaming, or a lover’s bed can’t drive out the ache in me, when I can’t see my way through the mire, I get through for someone else.” Kurt says, quietly, in the voice Todd catches him praying in sometimes, “Because Rogue still checks on me sometimes in the middle of the night, even though it’s been years since I went missing. Because who else will carry Kitty’s shoes and that multi-tool thing she insists on bringing everywhere when we've been out all night and she's sick of heels? Because who else will rate the other's dick pics before they send them to a date? Because who else’s belly will be warm enough to withstand your clammy feet?”
Todd’s laugh catches on the lump in his throat at Kurt’s whispered confession in his ear. He presses a little closer, holds Kurt a bit tighter and the blue mutant folds around him, his body a mantle shielding Todd from the dim stretch of early dawn. He tips his head up to press a kiss to the underside of Kurt’s jaw, feels the warm velvet stretched over muscle and bone, lets his lips linger there a moment.
“I stick around because who else will Forge call at three in the morning when he’s come up with some other bullshit brilliant idea?” Todd says, running his hands up and down Kurt’s back, sighing as the blue mutant begins carding his fingers through Todd’s hair again, “Because the hedgehog still calls me every couple months when something in the Morlocks duct taped power grid or hydroponic system busts and those stubborn fucks will take a decade to ask anyone new for help. Because the others looked more scared the day I got shot than that time Magneto’s fucking meteor resort nearly dropped from the sky with us on it, and I never want them to look that way again. Because Wanda and I haven’t called it quits in our running prank war against Pietro and nothing makes her laugh harder than when she manages to pin one of her jobs on me and Pietro throws a shit fit. Because who else is cool enough for you to lie on when you’re shedding entire cats worth of fur in the middle of summer?”
Kurt smiles into Todd’s hair, and the press of those lips against his crown cracks away a little of the rotting brambles twisting around his heart. The taller mutant holds Todd like he’s precious, like there’s magic in him and it’s so at odds with the brackish slime filling his head it pulls a sob out of him all over again. This will pass. It always does. But when he’s in the middle of it, fear blows cold through him, guttering the fire in his heart. He squeezes Kurt tight and the blue mutant rocks them both, murmuring softly as he curls around Todd.
“If one day, I don’t make it through this, it wasn’t about you.” Todd says, hating the words as they fall out of him but needing to say them, “I never want it to be that, but if it is, never think it was you.”
Kurt’s arms tighten around him as he trembles against Todd, breath shaky as he presses his cheek to Todd’s temple.
“I can say the same to you.” Kurt whispers, soft enough Todd almost misses it. He jerks back to look into pupiless gold eyes. Kurt blinks at him, lips wobbling in a parody of a smile, the fur around his eyes is wet. Kurt cups Todd’s face, running his thumb over Todd’s cheek, featherlight, “I always want to find my way, but, if one day, I don’t catch the bar, don’t swing my way over that chasm, it will never be because of you. I never want you to doubt yourself in that way.”
Todd bites his tongue hard enough to bruise, because the thought of that loss slams into him like a semi, making bile rise in his throat, thinning the air around him as if even naming the idea transforms it into prophecy. Kurt squeezes Todd’s biceps, tipping his head to nuzzle the amphibious mutant’s hand where he grips blue shoulders, and Todd sees his own horror reflected back at him in gold eyes. The shorter mutant barks out a stuttering breath, sucking in air like he’s just broken the water’s surface and his lungs are remembering how to do their job.
“Fuck, I hope that stays wild shit we both said that we never have to actually deal with.” He says, voice watery to his own ears as he presses his forehead to Kurt’s. The blue mutant huffs a sound that’s nearly a laugh as he rocks his forehead gently against Todd’s, sliding his hands along the shorter mutant’s arms.
“Me too, I want to know you when you’re old and pretend to be crotchety but all the local kids know you’re a soft touch.” Kurt says and Todd snorts, flicking the tip of Kurt’s nose with his tongue. The blue mutant recoils, face scrunching though there’s no heat in his snarl and Todd actually laughs, the sound like the first embers when you light a campfire, small, but promising. A reminder of days when he can laugh without making an effort at it, a cackle rolling bright and wild through him.
“Yeah, well, I’m looking forward to seeing you mince around in cashmere sweaters when your fur’s all grey and half the neighborhood’s adopted you as their favorite gay uncle, and the other half as their favorite aunt.” Todd says, and his smirk is a little less brittle on the edges.
Kurt swats him with his tail, though the gesture has no heat to it. He runs a hand over his chin absently, the gesture holding that feigned ease of his circus performances, ruffling and smoothing the fur there, “You don’t think I’ll really turn white do you?”
Todd shrugs, eyes flicking out over the courtyard before lighting back on Kurt’s face, the frayed tightness he caught when the blue mutant first joined him on the balcony, loosening into something tired, but loving, “Dunno, guess we both have to stick around to find out.”
Kurt reels him in again, sliding both hands up to cup Todd’s face, thumbs brushing feather-light against his temples, “I guess we do.”
They stay there a moment, the distant sounds of the lake mingling with the hum of passing cars as the world wakes up around them. Time expands past Todd’s next inhale, his next exhale, moments expanding like a blanket draping over him instead of a sinkhole swallowing him down. He sways into Kurt’s touch, exhaustion creeping back up on him. Kurt dips forward, pressing a soft kiss to his lips before pulling back with a knowing smile Todd wants to curl up in the curve of.
“Back to bed?” He asks, “Then breakfast and we loaf around on the beach until we’re sick of being covered in sand and harassed by waterbirds?”
Todd shuts his eyes, takes a moment alone in the mottled darkness there. The howling in his bones is still there, still a roar through his head, but it’s the temporary rush of wind in his ears as he makes a jump, part of the ride, not the end of the line. A manageable discomfort for the moment, though his eardrums ache from it. He blinks, warm gold eyes watching him, waiting like this isn’t a slog, like Kurt has all the time in the world for Todd to drag ass on simple questions.
Todd breathes in the tenderness in the expression on that lean blue face, holds it like a lantern against the sludgy downpour inside him. Time’s expanding past his breath, but he doesn’t need to push it farther. For now, the answer can be sleep. Can be letting Kurt offer up options like polished shells plucked up from the shore for Todd to inspect.
Todd tips his face to kiss Kurt’s palm, the warmth of broad three-fingered hands a balm on his skin, “Can we take the fast route to bed?”
Kurt pulls him in close, wrapping his arms around him as he ports them away, “Always.”