Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jimmy is panicking. He's fucked, actually. He's fucked and he's so, so tired of pretending he's not. Of acting like he'll amount to something, like he could ever manage anything on his own, without the saintly help of Grant Fucking Curly. So when he enters the cockpit after being alerted of a nearby wormhole, it's with speed and purpose.

Curly would've gotten the same message, but Jimmy got here first. He unlocks the autopilot with shaking, scrabbling fingers. A cold sweat breaks out on his brow.

Diverting course and disabling autopilot.

Captain, you are on a direct collision course with a temporal anomaly.

Jimmy snarls. Always captain this, captain that. Oh captain, my captain. That fucking piece of shit.

He locks their course to collide with the anomaly head-on. From afar, it's beautiful. A whorl of sucking, warping space, dragging in stars and churning them up like butter. It reminds him of his life. A constant battle against the inevitable - his own self-destruction.

Well, here he is. Taking responsibility. There's no need to wait another year in limbo. They all know this is the end of the line. For everyone except Curly. Jimmy is doing what needs to be done.

He is taking

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“Jim,” Curly’s voice washes over him like a blanket of white noise. It's too late now. It's too late. 

“Tell me you didn't.” Grant's voice cracks, fracturing like glass. 

Time feels funny. There's a sucking sensation in his very atoms, he thinks. 

“I shouldn't have…” Jim mumbles. His lips feel numb, and he's looking at Curly, but he's not, really, because he's looking through him. 

The blonde's breathing starts to end on a wheeze, labored with adrenaline. When Jim looks into his friend's eyes, the Captain's pupils are like needlepoints in a cerulean sea - terror-tight. 

“I didn't -” there's some sort of excuse forming in Jimmy's mouth, on his serpentine tongue - a ridiculous final attempt to earn Curly's benediction - but Grant isn't having it. 

The Captain roars.

“What the FUCK did you DO?!”

Because Jimmy is lying. Jimmy always lies. Lies and lies and lies. 

He did.

He fucking did.

He doomed them all.

When Jimmy is eight years old he watches his father beat his mother until she's nothing but a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor, drip, drip, dripping blood from her nose like a leaky faucet. It isn't the first time. It isn't nearly the first time. 

Jimmy doesn't cry for her. He doesn't feel much of anything at all. She cries for him, when he takes the brunt of his father's anger. When his father claps him across the face with such force his vision goes spotty and his ears ring. 

Jimmy's mother titters and blots the blood oozing from his lip with a damp cloth, blubbering all the while.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Jim. I wish things were different. Daddy loves us, okay, sweetheart? I promise things will get better someday, okay? Look at me, Jimmy. Tell Mommy you're listening.”

He's eleven when he spits in her face and tells her not to fucking touch him ever again. 

She should've protected him. She should've done better than taking a punch for him once in a blue moon, like that helped either of them. She should've divorced his shitbag father and moved them across the country, or shot the monster point-blank in his sleep, like a dog. She should've gotten an abortion the moment the test came back positive, should've killed herself during her pregnancy and saved everybody the fucking trouble. 

Jimmy never asked to be born. 

He vows that year to escape their stinking, collapsing, shithole of a home, if it's the last thing he does. Then, he'll never see his parents again. They can rot for all he cares.

Jimmy isn't the one who drugged Curly. He wouldn't do that, probably. But he did watch it happen - a scruffy, unremarkable nobody knocking into his friend, stumbling and apologizing for being inebriated, all the while covertly slipping a tablet into Grant's glass. 

He could've said something. He could've found an excuse to dump Curly's drink, or laid the punk out flat the moment he saw what happened. 

Jimmy didn't.

He watched his best friend take the cup to his lips and swallow. The mystery pill hadn't even fully dissolved yet, still fizzing away, but Curly didn't bat an eye. He was too busy grinning, laughing heartily at somebody nowhere near funny enough to have earned it. It made Jim's blood boil, seeing him so happy. Charming and radiant, the star of their graduating class.

His jubilance didn't last long.

Jimmy has him halfway up the steps to their shared apartment when Curly stops, lunching over the old, wrought-iron railing to vomit. Jimmy can see a couple notches of his spine pressing through his thin t-shirt, ribs hitching and heaving as he empties his stomach. 

Jimmy sighs. “You're lucky I'm willing to put up with this bullshit, you know?”

Curly coughs wetly in reply, still hacking and spitting.

Grant’s would-be-rapist tried to take the blonde off of Jimmy's hands as they left the venue. He'd hardly processed the man's snivelling lies before he looked him in the eyes, stating simply, “I know what you did to him, you sick fuck.”

That was all it took for the man to turn tail and run.

“J’mmy…” Curly groans.

The older man rolls his eyes. “What?”

“I don't feel so good…”

Curly slumps into the railing, his knees buckling with all the finesse of a newborn deer, as opposed to a healthy grown man. 

Jimmy catches him, because of course he does. The motherfucker is huge. 

“Jesus, Curls. When did you get so heavy? Fuckin lardass,” he wheezes under his friend's dead weight. 

Maybe his cardio wasn't the best, but he wasn't exactly training to be a fucking fireman, sue him. Ironically, hauling his intoxicated, delirious, brick-shithouse of a roommate up the stairs, is making him really want a cigarette. 

He manages to single-handedly unlock the front door, before dumping Curly unceremoniously onto the entrance rug. Leaving the door open, he lights up a smoke on the front porch. The smoke swirls around his teeth and gums, burning the back of his throat and filling his chest in a delicious, choking haze that nothing else compares to. Except drugs, maybe. But he hasn't been doing those for a while.

He's a little jealous of Curly right now, actually.

The man in question huffs against the floor, making a grunting, whining sort of noise. Like a sick dog. His shirt is sweaty, sticking to his shoulder blades and visibly damp around the back of his neck. Jimmy can't see his face from this angle, just the mop of his dirty-blonde curls and his legs akimbo. It's endearing, in the bittersweet way that Curly's misfortune often is to Jimmy. 

He looks good this way. Knocked off of his pedestal, crumpled like a doll with its strings cut. Below Jimmy in a way he rarely is, given that he stands a good three inches taller than the other. 

At the party, a myriad of concerned graduates had gathered around them as the roofie hit. Curly was stumbling and flushed, pupils blown like dinner plates. Making a whole scene.

“Seems like Mister Valedictorian had a little too much to drink,” Jim had dismissed their concerns, one of Grant's bulky arms thrown over his shoulder. “I told him to slow down, but he never listens to me. Idiot.”

He hoped - hopes - that this humiliates Curly tomorrow, when he has to apologize countless times for his early departure. Hopes it ruins his celebration, dirtying an otherwise proud memory. And every time Curly remembers this event in the future, he wants the man to remember Jimmy leaving the party to take care of his dumb ass. Only God knows what would've happened if he hadn't.

That's a lie. Jimmy can imagine, very well, exactly what would've happened. 

He finishes his cigarette in silence, watching as his friend whines progressively less over time, eventually going completely limp on the ground. Then, he ashes the butt into the potted begonia Curly had bought months prior. To “spruce up the place” or something. Jimmy hadn't been listening. 

His boot makes contact with the blonde’s ribs in a tactless nudge. 

“Curls. Get up.”

Curly doesn't so much as twitch. 

“For fuck's sake.”

Jimmy grabs the larger man by the ankles, resorting to hauling him to his bedroom to sleep it off. As he starts dragging his friend's body, the entrance rug comes with, trapped under Curly’s mass. Un-fucking-believable. 

“This is ridiculous. I should be taking pictures right now, just to show you what a pain the ass you were, tomorrow.”

Curly, still unconscious, does nothing to ease the transportation process. He slams unceremoniously into corners and catches his clothes on furniture as they pass through the living room, and then down the hall. 

“Maybe I'll take one with my dick in your mouth. You fucking asshole.”

They reach Curly's bedroom and Jimmy shoves the door open. It smells like Curly in there - woodsy and musky, with something uniquely human and warm underneath. The floor is clean, laundry piled neatly into the hamper, and the bed is made military-sharp.

It's nothing like Jimmy's messy den, with its blackout curtains perpetually drawn. Empty cans and bottles litter most of his surfaces, the smell of mildew and stagnant, humid air permeating the space. 

Sometimes, when Curly isn't home, Jimmy comes in after a smoke and lays down in his friend's perfectly made bed, just to make it stink. To wrinkle the powder blue bedspread and dent his roommate’s perfectly fluffed pillows. It's a small act of rebellion, but it happens frequently enough that Grant ought to have noticed.

He never says anything about it.

“Come on, big guy,” Jimmy takes Curly under the arms, heaving to lift him up onto the mattress. “Up we fucking go.”

Curly hits his head off the wall when Jimmy lets go of him, but it wasn't hard enough to dent the wall, so Jim figures he's fine. He looks at his friend, slumped in an uncomfortable position, and groans. 

He should be able to just walk away, at this point. He did the right thing: Got Curly home safe to sleep it off. Yet, looking at his roommate's crumpled body, he feels like kind of a dick. There's this irrational niggling in his hindbrain, telling him to take care of the larger man, to dote some kind of nurse. Curly doesn't need him to. He never has. Has never needed Jimmy in any of the ways he wishes he did. 

It's never stopped Jimmy from wanting Curly to need him, though. 

With a put-upon sigh, Jim straightens Curly's limbs so he looks less like a game of pick-up-sticks. The other man's flesh is soft under Jimmy's dry palms, radiating heat that borders on feverish. Jim pulls his body lower, so that Curly's head actually rests on the pillow, instead of being smushed up against the wooden headboard. His t-shirt rides up in the process. It exposes a pale sliver of his skin, milky and soft like fresh cream. There's a faint dusting of auburn hair along his naval, trailing down to the elastic of his boxer briefs. 

Curly’s body is nothing like his own. Jim is all sharp, angular hip bones and dark, thick body hair. His skin is tanned, but lacking in warmth - more of a sallow, sickly shade of grey. Curly has perfect posture, giving him the look of somebody important, taller than he is. Jimmy, on the other hand, slumps and slouches, gnarled like the knots of a tree. 

In short, Jim is aware that he's ugly. And Curly… he might as well be carved in marble. He's flawless. So goddamn unfairly perfect.

Jimmy's thumb is trailing along his friend's bare skin, a gentle back-and-forth he hadn't even noticed starting. He presses down, and finds that Curly is not made of marble, but in fact, a living, breathing being. Jimmy pushes his thumb down harder. He pictures his digit sinking into Curly’s flesh - an easy glide, like pudding - and feeling hot blood welling up around his knuckle. Maybe the slip of wet, writhing guts against the pad of his thumb? 

He's not sure how deep he'd have to go to feel such a thing. He doesn't have any medical training. The only certainty is that he wants to understand Curly, to know him from the inside out. To burrow under his skin like a parasite.

If the pressure of his thumb hurts at all, Curly doesn't show it. His muscles aren't tensing, even in sleep. He has no reaction at all. 

Isn't that something? 

It's as if he didn't even know it was happening. As if he would never know anything had happened. As if Jimmy could do whatever the hell he wanted. No consequences.

… He really shouldn't. 

But he's been taking care of Curly's ungrateful ass all evening, after the idiot let himself get drugged like an easy whore on prom night. What grown man lets himself be drugged by some scrawny, fairy rapist? Maybe Curly should take some responsibility for his own actions. 

“This is what can happen when you're not careful, Curls. This is why you shouldn't be so trusting. I'll teach you. I'll help. I always help you, right?” Jimmy hooks his thumb into Curly's waistband.

He shouldn't be doing this.

He shouldn't - he shouldn't - he - 

His heart is beating in his chest, and in his ears, and between his legs, in his groin, and he's shaking, his hands are shaking, how much did he have to drink, again? 

Curly - that bastard - that slut - he has freckles on the bridge of his nose that are so painfully pretty. 

“Congratulations, Curly!” sings the choir, from the back. "Three cheers for our Valedictorian!"

Curly should really take some fucking 

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Chapter Text

Grant is a Captain when he confronts Jim about the collision course. He doesn't look at the other man as his friend, but as a threat to the ship and to his crew. A liability. 

He slams through thecockpit like a whirlwind, struggling with the controls as he tries to override the forced collision course. To unlock their route and get them the fuck out of there. 

His fingers start wavering before his eyes. He refuses to look up, up and into the yawning maw ahead. Beyond the viewport - the end. He won't acknowledge it, because he is focused. 

He can fix this. 

Buttons swirl in watercolor patterns, like alcohol in ink, and his head hurts like it's about to explode - his brains painting the console and chair behind him like a Jackson Pollock painting. 

The Captain's head doesn't explode. 

His neurons stretch and fire within his skull, and his brain matter swells and shrinks like chewed bubblegum. It feels like that, anyways. Because suddenly his senses blur, and he can smell colour, and taste the plastic keyboard under his calloused fingers. He can hear his own cells dividing and dying, a cacophony of life and death.

The electric currents flowing through the circuitry under his palms feel like his own veins. He can hear the grinding of metal as the cockpit door warps in its frame, distorting beneath the sucking pressure ahead. Beyond that, a heartbeat.

It's Jimmy. 

The heartbeat thrums like a livewire, like a flame in Curly's palm. There's waves of emotion rolling off of Jim, the tides physically lapping at Curly’s nerve endings.

Mourning, terror, shock. Resignation, regret… vindication.

Grant feels his own rage well up like magma in response, erupting into the atmosphere and drowning them both. The sensation rings out like a lightning strike, crackling and sizzling - wet meat in a hot pan. 

Jimmy flinches, as though physically struck. 

Concentrate, Curly, he thinks to himself. Focus, focus, focus.

The captain feels along the buttons, not trusting his eyes, and tries to remember the emergency override code through the haze in his mind.

He has to save his crew.

They're his responsibility.

When Curly is fourteen he realizes that his parents spend most of their time lying to him. 

Their happy marriage? A lie. Their happy family? A lie. Their unconditional love? Much more conditional than advertised. 

It hurts, at first. It hurts a lot. He feels like everything he knows - everything he thought he knew - could be a lie. What is the truth if you're wrong about everything? Why would they lie to him his whole life?

Curly’s parents always told him that lying was wrong. 

When he's sixteen, he finally understands them.

It's the same reason he pretends not to hear as they scream at each other in the garage. The same reason he excels in school even though he isn't a natural academic, and smiles warmly even at people - even those he dislikes. It's why, when he gets into a car accident with friends and breaks his collarbone, his parents won't stop ranting about how he's ruined his high school’s football season. 

It's because they're looking at the bigger picture. A man's worth isn't measured in moments, it's measured over a lifetime. Greatness requires hard work and discipline. It requires faking it, until you make it. It means lying through your teeth. Lying until you are more of a concept than a person, and then lying until you become the very lie you've told. A metamorphosis.

Smile, Grant. You've been awarded a scholarship. Isn't that great?

Curly stands in front of an audience of parents at his high school graduation. He expresses how thankful he is for this opportunity, how he will never forget his community or what they've done to help him on his journey through adolescence. He thanks the organization that awarded the scholarship to him, giving a special mention to his parents for “always believing in me”. It's all very sentimental. Performative. His parents shed a few proud tears.

Grant doesn't hate lying, anymore. He'd be a hypocrite if he did, because Grant lies through his teeth.

It's what great people do.

The problem with Jimmy is that he's kind of an asshole. Grant knows this. Jimmy also isn't very good for his public image. The amount of excuses Curly has had to make for this man - it borders on criminal.

But Grant likes Jimmy. 

There's a certain appeal to him and his jagged edges. You spin Jimmy's wheel and see who get that day - friend or foe. Like playing russian roulette. 

The thing about Jimmy is that he lies like nobody Curly has ever met. Covering up his redeeming qualities and confessing the truth about his greatest sins in the same breath. Grant always thought lies were supposed to make you look better, but somehow, Jimmy's make him seem worse.

The truths:

Fine! I'm a fucking drug addict. Who gives a shit! 

Listening to this fat cow gives me a migraine. 

Must feel good in pictures, standing next to an ugly fuck like me, huh?

God, I hate you.

The lies: 

I don't need your charity.

Fuck it, do if whatever you want. See if I care. 

You're the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

I wish you'd fuck off and die. 

God, I hate you. 

For some reason, Jimmy likes to pretend Grant is holding him metaphorically hostage in their friendship. Hilarious - as if Jimmy would ever let him leave. 

Curly isn't stupid, you see.

He knows that Jimmy's posture relaxes when he enters a room, sees Jimmy crushing a can of beer in hand when Grant spends too long talking with nameless classmates. He even knows that Jimmy naps in his bed when Curly isn't home, leaving the sheets rumpled and smelling like an ashtray. 

Jimmy hates physical touch, rejects it in all forms except sexual, yet on movie nights his feet will worm their way into Curly's lap. Sometimes Curly will risk reciprocating, and gently massages the slender joint of his ankle. Jimmy doesn't always kick him.

Jimmy likes Grant, too. It's obvious.

Currently, though, Curly is having a bit of a crisis. Because Jimmy is an asshole, but he's his asshole, and Curly doesn't want to upset him. He knows Jimmy will be pissed when he tells him he's gotten a job - a position with The Pony Express. His first flight leaves two weeks from now, and won't return for an estimated eight months. 

Grant doesn't want to leave Jimmy, either. 

He's not sure he wants to be a freighter Captain, at all, in fact, but this is what his parents raised him to do. All of his teachers, telling him, “you'll be great, Curly!”

If he quits now, he’ll have let them all down. Every person who ever put their faith in him. 

And fuck, there's been a lot of them. 

So, what Grant wants and by extension, what Jimmy wants, doesn't really matter. Not in the grand scheme of things - the bigger picture. 

“Hey, asswipe," Jimmy enters their shared apartment with his usual charm, carelessly kicking off muddy boots. "They were all out of limes at the grocery store, so I had to get you lemons. Hope that doesn't ruin “the cohesive-ness” of your cuisine, or whatever.”

Clumps of muck tumble out over the edges of their freshly vacuumed entrance rug. Jim has a couple grocery bags hooked over one arm, and is gripping the neck of a paper bag with the other. A new bottle of whiskey, Curly presumes.

“Lemons are fine.” Grant's mouth feels dry and pasty.

Jimmy frowns. “Ooookay. What's up?” 

He dumps the groceries on the counter.

Up close, Jimmy's cheeks are flushed from the cold. It's reaching the chillier part of Autumn, where the wind bites and the puddles freeze over at night. His lips are red, too. Bruised and cracked from neglect. His oily, dark hair frames a gaunt face. 

“Jim… I have something to tell you.” It leaves Grant's lips like an admission of guilt.

Jimmy sneers, defensive already. “Get the fuck on with it, then. Don't be a tease.” 

Curly takes a deep breath.

“I took a job.” 

There's silence. 

He can hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, the whistle of his own breath through his nose. He wonders if Jimmy is even breathing. It's so quiet. 

“Okay,” the older man replies. Jim blinks, reptilian. Too calm.

Curly bites his lip. “You're not… mad?” 

Unwrapping the paper bag from around his latest bottle of Crown Royal, Jimmy takes the entire bottle to his lips and swallows, one, two, three times. When he’s finished, he wipes his wet mouth against the back of his hand. It leaves a glistening smear in its wake. 

“No,” Jimmy replies, blandly. “Why would I be? It's what we went to fucking school for. We graduated, you got a job, you're leaving me. Congratulations. That's great.”

Somehow, this passive-aggressive surrender hurts more than a tantrum would've. Although, Curly isn't naive enough to think he's out of the woods with Jimmy yet. 

The older man turns away, stomping down the hall, bottle in hand. 

Left alone and feeling unfairly guilty, Curly does all he can think to do, and makes supper as planned. He knocks on Jimmy's door when it's ready to offer him some. Jim doesn't answer. Grant eats alone and then cleans in silence.

When Curly wakes, it's to darkness and a hot, human weight pinning him beneath his blankets like a mummy. 

“Jesus Christ! Jimmy!?” Grant squirms under his friend's drunken form. The stink of cigarettes and liquor burns his nose. 

“F'ck you, you fuckin… fuck.” Jimmy fumbles at Curly's face in the dark, poking him in the eye in the process. The blonde flinches, bucking to free his arms and wrangle them around Jim's gangly form.

“I knew you'd get like this…” Grant huffs irritably. His digital alarm clock cuts red numbers through the dark, reading 2:31am. Of course. 

“I hate you! I fucking hate you!” Jimmy thrashes. He frees himself from Grant's hold, kneeling back to look him in the eyes.

No, you don't, Curly thinks. He says, “I'm sorry, Jim.” 

“You're not,” Jimmy snarls, gaze molten.

Grant isn't sorry. He shouldn't have to be sorry for getting a scholarship, or graduating with honors, or being offered jobs on a silver platter for his novel talent. He’s earned it. He’s worked his ass off for years.

That doesn't stop Curly from wishing that he was sorry, though. Because Jimmy's hurting, and it's his fault, and it makes him sick.

“I am. I'm sorry. But I had to, you know I had to. I can't wait for you forever. Maybe, if your attitude was a little better, or if you actually followed up on those resumes you handed out…” You'd have gotten a job, too, goes unspoken.  

That was the wrong thing to say. 

Jimmy's face turns blotchy and red with anger, as his eyes bulge from his skull. He looks half-mad in the night, like a rabid coyote shaped into a man.

He punches Grant straight in the face. 

It's not a powerful punch, considering how deep Jim got into the liquor, but it's enough to split Curly’s lip. The taste of iron goes shooting across his tongue, teeth aching in his gums, and head snapping to the side. 

“Fuck!” Grant cries out.

“You bastard. You goddamn bastard. I'll fucking kill you. I will.” Jimmy rages, slurring his words. 

They grapple at each other, and Curly could overpower Jim if he had to, but he doesn't want to hurt him. This is Curly's own fault. He deserves this. 

“Jimmy, calm down, okay?” The blonde tries to de-escalate.

Jim doesn't calm down. He wraps his hands around Curly's neck and squeezes.

To an outsider, this would all sound very dramatic. But the thing is, this happens sometimes. It's not entirely surprising. Jimmy is great. He's funny, sarcastic, and loyal to a fault. He's a good person. Curly loves him. 

But he's also troubled. No matter how far they come, how fucking well things seem to be going for both of them, Jimmy will find a way to ruin it. He'll ruin it, and then turn around and blame it all on Curly.

Jimmy's fingers feel like steel around his larynx. Blaming Curly. 

“J’mmy,” Grant growls, bucking his hips. It's futile.

His hands wrap around Jimmy's wrists, and the brittle bones of his friend groan under the pressure of his grip. Jimmy doesn't flinch. He might be too drunk to feel anything at all. 

“Jimmy, stop. Let - let go.”

Curlys vision is getting a little hazy - his pulse pounding in his temples - and he becomes abruptly disturbed by the realization that this is turning him on.  

Jimmy seems never the wiser, still snarling demeaning expletives, peppering Curly's purpling face with saliva. 

“You're nothing without me. Nothing! You can't leave me, Grant. You can't. You think you can pilot a fucking freighter? I know you didn't get straight A’s for your bright intellect. 

Tell me, how many dirty cocks have you shoved down this throat of yours? You must be pretty good at it, by now. You fucking faggot!”

The older man presses his full weight down on Curly's neck, then, and the blonde’s vision goes abruptly spotty. Curly thinks his eyes are bulging, even though he can't see. There's a gurgling noise that might be him, too. 

He loses everything at once. Darkness envelops the world like a blanket of snow. His lips tingle, hot and almost wet. It's a funny feeling. 

Somewhere far away, Jimmy releases him. 

Breathe, in and out. Gasping. Wheezing. Light comes back to Curly in bursts, technicolor eruptions like fireworks. He's coughing so hard he feels like he's going to lose his guts right there onto the bedding.

“Jim,” he croaks, thoughtlessly grasping for his friend, for some kind of support. 

Jimmy isn't on the bed anymore. 

Curly’s door is open, a beam of light shining in through the opening. 

Jimmy left.

Curly doesn't get up. He sits on his bed, working through breathing, as shocks of pain slam through his neck. Every twitch of muscle renews his agony. He feels lightheaded. 

When he lays back down, he's humiliated to realize he's still at least half hard. He rubs at his tender neck, fingering the blooming bruises there, and sneaks the other down to his waistband. 

He's too tired to feel ashamed. 

He jerks off with his own hand around his throat, trying to fit his fingers to the invisible shape of Jimmy's. To remember the smell of his friend's acidic breath. He had been so close to Curly's face, mere inches from his lips. Grant swears he can taste it, now. He swears it.

It takes Jimmy twelve days to return home after the incident. That leaves two days before Curly's departure. 

When Jim waltzes through the door, they crack a couple beers, watch bad reality TV, and don't talk about it. 

It's great. 

It shouldn't be, but it is. This one of their better nights - nachos and reminiscing, snickering laughter at the expense of bimbos on television, and a shared joint on the porch to wrap it all up. The stars break through the smog of the city to twinkle dimly down on them. 

It's peaceful.

Then comes the morning that Curly leaves. It's before sunrise, so Jimmy doesn't bother to send him off with a goodbye, electing instead to stay in bed. 

And that's fine. They're fine. Everything's fine. 

Grant spends the next nine months cumming into a shirt he'd accidentally borrowed from Jimmy. He excels during the excursion, and is commended for a wonderful first flight by his superiors. 

At present, he holds his sweaty phone in one hand as he deboards their docked aircraft. Being on solid ground again after so long, feels, admittedly, kind of awful. Curly doesn't care - he only has one goal in mind. 

The cellphone powers up slowly in time with the groaning of the bay door opening. A poster on the wall smiles at him through a mouthful of horse teeth. 

Polle says, don't be daft! It preaches.

The cell screen floods to life, and Grant finds Jimmy's number. His fingers are twitchy and reactive as he types out the following message:

To Jim 

Hey, I just landed. Want to get together and catch up?

Chapter Text

Jimmy has never had a very good record with mental health. 

When he was going through rehab, he got prescribed some medications. He can't remember what they were called, anymore. But he recalls being told that he would require further examination after getting sober. Apparently, you can't properly diagnose mental illness when somebody is out of their mind from withdrawal. 

He knew, at the time, that it was a mistake to open up to those doctors. He shouldn't have spoken so much. 

Unfortunately, when he came to work at Pony Express, they acquired those records. Perfectly legal - all part of his mandatory background check. And while Curly had essentially hand-waved away any of the usual hiring protocol to fast-track Jimmy into this co-captain position, he couldn't wave away the mental health assessments Pony Express deemed necessary from then on.

Curly insisted that they were always required and it had nothing to do with Jim's hiring, but Jimmy had never heard him speak of them before now. Smells like bullshit.

Thus, Jimmy is forced to take mental health assessments quarterly.

He hates them.

The only thing worse than being forced to take a position underneath Grant Fucking Curly, is having to answer personal questions about himself to some quack who hardly passed medical school. 

The Doc marks his stained, old clipboard with notes, which get reported back to management. Things such as, “Displays poor attitude and lack of enthusiasm for work”, or “Refuses to take his evaluations seriously”. Once, it read, “Antisocial tendencies - potential cause for concern.”

Of course, the people who perform his evaluations don't know that he breaks into Curly's office and reads all their nasty little comments. They're supposed to be confidential.

It’s Jimmy's brain being picked apart - he deserves to hear what they're saying about him.

In the present moment, Jimmy wonders if they were in fact onto something. Maybe he has lost one too many marbles over the years. He's not sure what he expected approaching a black hole to feel like, but it wasn't this. 

His head fucking hurts.

It feels like a gentle pressure at first, like his brain is swollen in his skull, but then it escalates to the point that he loses his vision. Jimmy wants to say he's never felt this bad in his life, but he's experienced some pretty nasty overdoses. 

His breathing gets choked, and kind of wet, as he holds in a wail. Agony. Agony splitting him through the temples like an axe blow, rendering him helpless and writhing.

He can feel so much of what's around him, like his edges are melting into theirs, and somewhere that includes Curly. It's surreal, melting into Curly's consciousness. Like Jimmy's edges are blending into his, blurring them into one entirely new thing. 

Grant feels angry. 

It's overwhelming, in that Curly has hardly ever been truly angry with Jim. Disappointed, yes. Frustrated, often. But never the burning, corrosive vitriol Jimmy's being accosted with now. 

The rage Curly feels physically stings to Jimmy, like rubbing alcohol in an open wound. He gasps.

Despite how much it hurts, there's a bittersweet, masochistic edge to it. They'd been drifting apart for so long, it feels right that Jimmy's final act to keep Curly from leaving him would physically, mentally, and atomically merge them beyond repair.

Jimmy and Curly. Curly and Jimmy. JimmyandCurly. CurlyandJimmy.

Curly and his stupid, useless mutt. His pathetic fucking dog, milling about and begging for his table scraps. 

Fuck you, Grant, he thinks belligerently. This is the end of the line for both of us. 

Curly is still in the cockpit, pushing buttons and flicking controls. Jimmy can feel him there. The Captain still thinks he can save them. His determination, his hope, is bitter-salty on Jimmy's tongue - so blatantly pointless. 

Curly is warm, now that his rage isn't burning Jimmy from the inside out. He's focused on the ship, and his spirit is radiant - a glowing, proud thing that warms and flickers like a torch. 

Jimmy is cold. He's always fucking cold. Something about bad circulation and low body fat content. It's more than that, though - more than a physical chill. It's a bone-deep, aching cold that extends into his miserable soul. 

Looking at Curly, being near him, burns. But Jimmy could never stay away. 

He gets up, with some difficulty. His limbs don't want to cooperate, Jim’s head filled with too much sensory input to process. His vision is warped and useless, but he doesn't need it, because he can just feel Curly, now. His heartbeat. His breath. His thoughts.

He follows the light, a palm pressed into the wall to guide himself, until he gets to the cockpit doorway. Grant didn't lock it. Didn't bother - too frantic to deal with the hazard at hand. 

Jimmy opens the door by muscle memory alone. 

Curly is blinding. 

Jim remembers one overdose above all others - the first. 

He'd been hazy at the time, lost in the fog of drugs pumping through his veins, but he remembers seeing Grant's face. 

He was crying, sobbing so hard his cheeks were flushed and snot smeared around his nose. Ugly, like a child. His curls were in disarray, as though he'd been running his hands through them, tugging at wheat-gold. 

They were riding in the back of an ambulance. Grant's hand was gripping above his knee, like Jimmy would disappear if he let go. His baby blues focused on Jimmy's bile-smeared face like a supplicant at church.

He remembers thinking, I'm going to die. I'm going to die and I feel amazing. I'm going to die and it's going to ruin him,  because he'll know I would've wanted it to. 

He remembers specifically because it was one of the few moments in his life that Jim felt really, truly happy. 

Jimmy's first year working for Pony Express is a record low. 

And it only gets worse from there.

At least when you're struggling with active drug addiction, you get to break up your misery with, well, drugs. 

Jimmy had gone on a nice, merry relapse after Curly left on his first expedition - without him. It had been heavenly, to fall completely off the rocker. To let go of the careful facade of function he'd been working at for the past few years.

Now, he's sober again, and working under Grant. What a joke. 

Jimmy knows by now, what Curly must think of him. 

Jimmy can't do anything without me. He's like my personal charity case. If I don't help him, who would? After all, he doesn't have anybody else.

It makes Jim feel sick. It makes him leery with resentment, tunnel-vision rage burning through his chest whenever the blonde enters the same room. Which is a problem, when he's the fucking co-captain of their meager crew. 

The rest of their team aren't much better. There's Daisuke, the cheeky, naive intern they'd been bribed into taking on. Must be nice to have wealthy parents. The little fucker's been stealing all of their sweetner packets. Then, there's Swansea, the cranky old mechanic. He doesn't bother Jimmy as much, mostly because he doesn't talk to him unless strictly necessary. He hopes they can keep it that way. And finally Anya, their absent-minded, dreary excuse for a nurse.

Once, The Pony Express had doctors on board. Now, they've had so many budget and staff cuts, Anya is the best they can get. How pitiful.

Together, the five of them make up the entirety of the crew left to run The Tulpar. Three fucking years they're going to be trapped together. It's hardly been one month and Jimmy is already feeling like a caged animal at the zoo. Antsy. Pacing. Teeth grinding in his skull.

He wants to take a chunk out of something.

Often, he finds Daisuke trailing after Anya like a lost puppy. Blatantly slacking off, far from Swansea and the Mechanical Room. Seems like their intern has a little crush. How nauseating. 

Jimmy understands, in some way, he supposes. Being isolated for so long, with only one woman on the ship, he's pictured things. Wondered what Anya’s nasally voice would sound like crying out in pleasure (or pain), and what her breasts looked like under that frumpy, thrifted turtleneck. 

Ultimately, he decided that she's not much to look at. Her personality is dull, and her face is long and downturned, with nervous, flickering eyes. Like a skittish horse.

Daisuke can have her.

Shamefully, Jimmy finds his sexual fantasies, much like his entire goddamned life, have been taken over by Captain Curly.

When Jimmy rubs one out - too often, perhaps, but how else should one pass the time marooned in space? - he thinks of blonde hair and a deep, caramelized laugh.

It makes him livid, that Curly has ruined even this. He used to crank his hog in peace, at least, but now he doesn't even have that. Grant is everywhere. Everything. Like a cancer that's spread through Jim's entire body, mutating him into something more gruesome than he already was.

When Jimmy jacks off, he likes to picture Curly as a woman, sometimes. With a bushy, hairy cunt, and big tits. Broad, but still weaker than him. Jimmy would grab her by the hair and force her to suck his cock while she cried. 

“I trusted you,” she'd gag and wail, in between him brutalizing her throat. “Jimmy, please! Stop!”

He'd laugh and smear his wet, slimy prick across her cheek, and she'd flush dark and humiliated. Indignant. It would feel so good, ripping her down off of that pedestal. Showing her where she belonged - at his feet. A warm set of holes to fuck.

Other times, though, that fantasy isn't enough. His imagination can't quite capture Curly in those feminine curves. As much as Jimmy is adamant that he's straight, deep down, he can't deny that who he wants to ruin is Curly. Not a woman who looks like Curly. Just Grant Curly, the man. 

He likes to picture Grant flushed, all down to his nipples. Thinks about those bulging, obscene tits he has. And really, what kind of self-respecting man has breasts that large? Jimmy imagines he could fill out a bra, no problem.

He dreams about piercing those perky tits. Tugging at the metal as it heals, irritating healing flesh and making Curly whine like a dog, huffing and drooling. He'd want to take pictures, proof of what a sick fuck their perfect Captain was. Maybe, Jimmy woul'd post them online and read Curly the comments. Really make him squirm.

Look, Captain! This guy says he'd pay money to rape you. Should I message him?

Once in a while, he dares to think about the past while he jerks off. 

He thinks about Curly, unconscious in bed, and his hand burning a brand onto Grant's abdomen. His skin was so soft, like even his cells were superior to Jim’s. 

He had complete control over him in that moment. Jimmy could've taken anything he wanted from him. He was owed it, too. 

Jimmy could've done… anything. 

What he did do was slip a hand into Curly’s pants. Then, he touched his friend's flaccid length through his boxers. It was a gentle exploration, and it felt foreign to Jimmy's fingertips - ones that had only been taught to tear things apart. 

He'd leant over him, bleeding a shadow across Grant's angelic face, and stopped his lips millimeters from Curly's. Their breath mingled. Curly's was laced with the tang of bile. 

Jimmy had gazed down at Curly's closed eyes, where his lashes fanned out over his cheeks. He had a freckle just below his eye socket. A scar on his forehead. Curly's groin felt hot under Jimmy's fingers, perhaps growing imperceptibly harder. Barely waking up. 

Jimmy kissed him. He’d stuck his tongue in his mouth, first gently, tracing his lips as though Curly would wake up at any moment. Then he'd plunged deeper, licking into tongue and teeth to claim his prize. Grant had tasted terrible. Terrible and delectable.

Jimmy had been anxious after that, leaving the room jerkily, metaphorical tail between his legs. He knew he'd done something wrong, but the throbbing of his cock protested otherwise. 

If he had known that Curly planned to leave him in the dust only a month later, Jim wonders what he would've done differently. He dreams of a timeline where he'd taken things further. Rolled Curly over and bullied his way inside of him, carving out a space for Jimmy that nobody else could fill. 

You can never leave me, Curly. You need me. You need this. Don't you dare forget that.

He hates the reality - that he'd been tossed aside like a used toy. Not fun or interesting anymore. Worthless.

The nice thing about Jimmy's fantasies of Curly, is that they disappear during work hours. Grant smiles and says, “good morning,” as they meet in the cockpit. Jimmy thinks it's stupid, because there’s no true day or night in space. He grunts affirmation anyways. 

He does not think about Curly’s tits during that time. He doesn't think about how Curly's jaw flexes as he concentrates - grinding his teeth - or about how he still uses the same deodorant as he did in college. Jimmy can't remember the brand name, but he knows the scent like the back of his hand. When he slept in Curly's bed, it smelled exactly like that. Oak and musk. Maybe hints of orange peel.

It doesn't matter. Jimmy doesn't think about it. 

Mostly, when Jim is working alongside Grant, he thinks about how much he wishes the other man would drop dead. 

Everything the Captain says and does feels like a spit in the face. Insulting, demeaning, and degrading. 

How can one man be so proud? So full of himself? The very way Grant carries himself speaks to his own self-importance. High off his own farts, Jim's father used to say about people like him. 

He thinks, at one point, he found Curly's inherent goodness charming. Compelling, in a naive, gullible, boy-next-door kind of way. That was before Jimmy had realized it was all a charade. A ruse to hide the fact that Curly was really nothing at all. Just a wriggling, spineless smooth-talker. A politician. An actor. A costume that Grant wore to hide his true, hideous face. 

Jimmy wants to smash his mask like a mirror, and carve out the parasite inside. He wants Grant to look like what he really is - flesh and blood and bone. Horrifying. Beautiful.

No, Jimmy doesn't think about Grant sensually during their work hours, because he's busy fucking hating him. 

The next time Jimmy notices Anya, she's talking with Curly in the hallway. They're laughing, and she tucks her choppy, dark hair behind one ear. When Curly smiles, his dimples show. They only do that when he's sincerely amused. 

Jimmy can't fathom what the ditzy bitch could have to say that's so entertaining. 

She blinks, big brown cow eyes. She doesn't wear makeup, Jimmy's noticed, but she has long dark eyelashes nevertheless. Like a sad doll. If you tipped her back, they would flick closed all by themselves. 

Curly places a hand on her shoulder - a friendly, authoritative kind of affection. She shies away from it, like some delicate fucking flower, and Jimmy is suddenly extremely aggravated with the two of them.

Could they be any more obvious? They might as well be fucking right there in the hallway, for how subtle their exchange of looks was.

Jimmy wonders how long they've been sleeping together. Did Anya, the sulking, willowy thing, proposition Curly? Or did Curly court her with his warm, gentle presence, touches growing bolder every time they were alone?

He knew this would happen. Jimmy knew that if they brought a woman on the Tulpar, somebody was bound to end up fucking her. 

He had known that Curly, with his crinkling blue eyes and chiseled jaw, would be any woman's first choice. But he'd thought that his friend would be above that. Would see dalliances with the crew as an abuse of power. 

Apparently, Captain Grant was just as fallible as any man. Just like Jimmy and the rest. 

He stomps his feet as he passes in the hallway, alerting them to his previously silent presence, and sneers when Anya cowers against the wall. Sniveling little cunt.

The next day, he wakes up, brews his coffee, and sits next to Curly in the cockpit. He looks out at the stars, blankly. They wink at him, vast and expansive. 

Jim hardly slept. He can't stop thinking about it.

He glances at Curly out of the corner of his eye. The man is checking various screens, making micro-adjustments with the controls here and there, as needed. His brow is furrowed, little wrinkles starting to appear on his forehead. Age is catching up with him. 

Jimmy hasn't touched the other man, beyond the occasional bumping of shoulders, in six years. Why would he? He hates Curly, most of the time. They talk, masquerading as best friends, but Jimmy feels like he's on the other side of a glass pane. He can hardly hear Grant. 

“What kind of woman do you think agrees to work on a ship full of men, all by herself?” Jimmy hears himself ask. 

Curly pauses. Turns to him, considering. 

“I think Anya is brave, and wouldn't let something like that hold her back from pursuing her dreams. And I also think she trusts us. She's a strong girl.” He speaks slowly, as though searching for the right words. Clearly, he's spent more time speaking with Anya than Jimmy realized.

“Oh, come on, Curly. Put down the “Captain" masquerade for a moment and be honest with me. She has to either be stupid, or a whore, right?” Jim snorts.

He pictures Anya holding Curly’s face, touching him tenderly. Pressing a thumb to his lips before leaning in for a kiss. She would be feather-soft, nervous, with lips like butterfly wings. Gentle with him. Curly would be gentle back, holding her tenderly. His broad hands on her supple curves.

The thought makes him ill. 

“Fraternization between crew is a violation of company policy, Jim,” Curly murmurs, low, before adopting a more casual lilt. “Besides, I don't think you'd get very far, speaking about her like that.” 

You. The word repeats in his brain, echoing. You, you, you. You wouldn't get very far.

“Yeah. You're right. I probably wouldn't, Captain.”

How far have you gotten, Grant?

Jimmy confronts her about it. 

“Anya,” he grunts, a nasally rumble. “There's something we need to talk about.”

They're alone in the medbay. The ship is quiet, everyone settling down for the evening. Metal clinks and plastic crinkles as the nurse methodically organized her supplies.

“Oh!” she startles. “Hi, Jim. I didn't hear you come in.”

She smiles at him, awkwardly. Her haircut is uneven. There are shadows under her eyes.

“You look tired. Late night?” He taunts. He has his suspicions about what she's doing in those late hours - fucking slag. 

She takes off her gloves, before rubbing her hands together, dry with translucent skin.

“You could say that,” she nods, ducking her head. Her cheeks flush. Embarrassed, or coy?

He stalks closer, using his height to his advantage to loom imposingly over the woman.

Jimmy cuts right to the chase. 

“Listen. You need to back off of Grant.”

“I… p-pardon me?” Anya blinks, dazed.

Jim snarls, angered by her lies, and steps forward, crowding her into the table. She shrinks, despite being a taller woman, folding into herself like a newborn colt with eyes wide as saucers.

“I said, back the fuck off of the Captain, if you know what's good for you. Whatever little game you're playing,” he presses an accusatory finger to her chest, in the space between breast and collarbone. “you're going to knock it off, right now. Before anybody regrets it. Do you understand me?”

“Jimmy, I really don't know what you're talking about,” Anya denies, voice trembling. Her fingers press into the table behind her, white-knuckled. “Please, just calm down, and give me some space, okay?”

Anya's eyes are prey-wide, all whites around the edges, darting to the door between stuttering words. She looks a little bit like Shelley Duvall, from The Shining. Ready to take flight, to seek help.

That isn't what Jim wants. 

He backs down. Before she goes squealing to Curly about his behavior.

“Don't play coy with me, Anya,” he says, stepping away. “You know exactly what I'm talking about.” 

The nurse breathes a sigh of relief as she regains her personal space. Anya wraps her arms around herself, nails digging into her forearms. She's fine. Everything is fine. Right?

As Jimmy strolls out, he throws up a lazy, two-fingered wave.

“See you for those quarterly evals, yeah, An?"