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“We’re going to die tomorrow, aren’t we?” Cuthbert asks as they sit in Roland’s small tent, in front of a long-dead fire.
Roland hadn’t been expecting that question, mostly because looking at the situation anyone would be surprised of the contrary. They don’t have the numbers, they don’t have the men – Gilead is long gone and most of the people they used to look up to when they were young are as well.
For that matter, a lot of people they grew up with are gone.
“What would you think of me if I answered no?” Roland replies calmly, looking down at the gun he had been cleaning.
(It was his father’s. The same as the other one. He still remembers the day his father gave them to him – it was after he won his title and before he left for Mejis even if Roland hadn’t brought them with him back then. Will Dearborn couldn’t have worn such weapons. His father had summoned him to his chambers, showed them to him, told him I still think that you’re too young, but these are yours now. They will be waiting when you’re back. Roland hadn’t missed that he said when, not if. Roland had been left without words other than thank you as his hands ran along the sandalwood of the handle and the metal of the barrel. They had felt heavy in his hands, but his fingers had closed naturally around the grip. His father’s eyes had looked kind when they met Roland’s again.)
--
Roland won’t understand how his father had felt in that moment until a long time later. But this is another story.
--
“That you’re the same old Roland who could lie in any occasion, but wouldn’t if it meant making a friend feel slightly better,” Cuthbert answers, but it’s not unkind. He sounds fond as he tells Roland that, and most probably he doesn’t mean anything bad by it. Roland has known him long enough to understand what Cuthbert means just by the tone of his voice and right now he knows that he didn’t say it in haste.
It doesn’t make it any less true, though. Roland hasn’t learned that art yet. Maybe he never will.
--
(He will try, in a distant future. Not now.)
--
“I still wouldn’t if I could.” Roland is pretty confident that Cuthbert knows that already – Roland doesn’t exactly relish being dishonest, though he will do that if that’s what it takes. He’ll lie to enemies and he’ll lie to people he doesn’t know if means getting the job done. He won’t do it to his oldest friend.
Oldest living friend.
Cuthbert snorts and moves so that he’s sitting next to Roland and not in front of him.
“You still haven’t answered, though.”
“Well then. Nothing suggests that we won’t die tomorrow. Does that please you?”
“Not really. I mean, who would be glad to hear it?”
Another good question, Roland thinks.
(He thinks about Susan, about the pyre he saw in the pink glass, at the sound of her voice as she screamed that she loved him – sometimes he wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t died, if he had brought her home. He’ll never know. He thinks about Alain, who died with a bullet coming from Roland’s own gun in his chest and who should be here right now. He can’t imagine either of them being glad of it. And still they went to it. Susan had not died telling the world that she hated him even if she’d have never died if not for him. Alain – Alain had the touch, he most probably had known before they did. And he still did his round of recognition near enemy lines knowing that his friends would kill him on the way back.)
--
(They were not the first people who died gladly for him. They won’t be the last.)
--
“I’m sorry, if it’s worth anything.”
“For having gained those guns at fourteen, sometimes you’re really an idiot.”
Roland’s eyes narrow as they stare into Cuthbert’s – he’s smiling, as usual, though not as wide and not as bright.
“And how is that?”
“No one is glad to die. I always thought that it was just mostly lies when they taught us that people are happy to die for worthwhile causes. Who would be? I know I’m fucking not. That doesn’t mean that I won’t do it for a worthwhile cause. And if it means that it happens while I’m watching your back in battle, then I can think of worse ways to go.”
Roland remembers being seven and envying boys the age they are now. They had won their guns, they used to look so tall, and they were gunslingers.
He isn’t sure he envies them now.
(He remembers looking down in the pink glass, seeing the Dark Tower in the distance, feeling its pull, and he wonders, if he was meant to go there then how is it supposed to happen if he dies tomorrow? Maybe it was a lie – the glass had been known to lie.
But it hadn’t lied about Susan, had it?)
“Who knows,” Cuthbert says when Roland doesn’t answer. “Maybe we even win. Imagine that.” He snorts, laughing at his own line, but it’s not his usual carefree laugh. Cuthbert is no idiot, regardless of what Roland might have thought of it at times. He knows that if they survive, it won’t be because they won.
“Don’t rule that out,” Roland settles on, putting his gun back in the holster. After all – if the pink glass hadn’t lied, he will have to go to the Tower, and he’s positive that he was not alone in the vision he had.
If he was not, maybe – maybe the two of them aren’t dying anytime soon. The thought comforts him, even if he shouldn’t let it. But the idea of pursuing that quest with his oldest friend at his side is more appealing than doing it on his own, of that he’s sure.
(He thinks that he’d have liked to go with – with their ka-tet, the way it was in Mejis. Him, Susan, Cuthbert, Alain, Sheemie. It’s just two of them left now. He wishes it wasn’t the case.)
“Is that optimism? Coming from you?”
“Stop that,” Roland says, but it’s plenty obvious that he doesn’t mean it. Sometimes he has found Cuthbert’s chattering a nuisance, but that’s not one of them.
(Roland has envied him, at times. He could never find it in himself to smile as much, to speak as much, to be as open. He isn’t sure if he wants to say honest, it’s not as if Cuthbert doesn’t know how to lie to get his way – he’s a gunslinger, same as him – but after all did he ever keep anything from him?)
“Oh, make me,” Cuthbert says as he winks, and that’s when Roland realizes that they’re closer than they were a few minutes ago. Cuthbert’s leg is pressing against his, their sides touching. His eyes are staring into Roland’s, suddenly turned serious even if he’s still half-smiling. Roland doesn’t know that he has put his hand on the side of Cuthbert’s neck until he’s done it, and Cuthbert doesn’t make an attempt to move it away.
His hair is falling in dirtied, tangled curls over Roland’s hand. If he were to run his fingers through it, it’d be knotted, Roland thinks inconsequently. He can’t remember if Susan’s ever felt like that.
What kind of foolishness do you think you’re doing?, a voice in his head asks. It doesn’t sound like anyone he knows or used to know.
“I think it might be too hard a feat,” Roland says, keeping his voice still, waiting for a reaction.
“And mayhap it would be easier than you reckon,” Cuthbert replies inching slightly closer.
Roland isn’t thinking when he closes the distance. The hint was even too clear, and Cuthbert never was the kind of person who was subtle with him. They know each other too well to attempt to be subtle, most probably, but that’s not the problem. The moment their lips touch Cuthbert presses back against him, one hand grabbing the lapel of Roland’s shirt, his fingers curling tight into the cloth. His tongue traces Roland’s bottom lip and Roland’s lips part at that – and he thinks, this is nothing like Susan. There wasn’t stubble on Susan’s lovely, smooth face, her lips were shaped differently, her breath was certainly less sour – still, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It’s just different, but it feels familiar, as if they have done so much together that this was among the few things that were left. Cuthbert isn’t being gentle but he isn’t pushing it either – it’s strangely comfortable, and his other hand is covering the back of Roland’s neck and it feels warm, it feels good.
When they part for air, there’s barely space left between them. Cuthbert rests his forehead against Roland’s, his breath hot against Roland’s cheek. Roland can feel that his heartbeat has sped up – his own has not, but the hand Roland had on Cuthbert’s neck is shaking just slightly.
“You shouldn’t assume that we’re dying,” Roland says, and he knows that he might be lying, but he wants to believe that he’s not.
--
(In a distant future, he will just straight-up lie. Not now.)
--
“Because of what you saw in a piece of glass that only shows you what it wants you to see? I wouldn’t put my trust in that, my friend.” Cuthbert’s eyes are dark as they hold his stare, and maybe a bit wide, and Roland wishes he wasn’t right, not for the first time.
“I wasn’t alone,” Roland insists. “I wasn’t going for the Tower on my own.” And you’re one of the few who’s left. Who else would I be going with?
“But you never saw the other person’s face.” Cuthbert breathes in, and then he moves, his knees going around Roland’s hips, his hands on Roland’s shoulders, his head still so very close. “But you know what, if I’m dying tomorrow then I don’t want to think about what you saw in a pink glass while I worried myself sick wondering where did you go.”
“And what do you want to do, then?”
“Well, haven’t I made that abundantly clear?”
He leans down then, and Roland is ready when their mouths crash against each other. And again, it feels familiar and warm and safe, the way it can only feel with someone you know like the back of your own hand (except that sometimes Roland thinks that there might be a small side of Cuthbert that he’s never seen, and probably the reverse is valid, but it’s so small, it doesn’t really matter). Ka is not like the wind right now – ka is like bricks, or maybe like the heavy, solid wood that he holds steadily between his fingers whenever he draws out his gun. It’s not sweeping him off the ground and running him over with its force – maybe saying that it’s grounding is a better choice of words.
Then Roland isn’t thinking about ka or the battle or John Farson or anything else, just about Cuthbert’s mouth tracing a line along his jaw and about Cuthbert’s pulse point beating frantically under Roland’s thumb before they fall down to the ground over the blanket Roland had been sitting on. He can barely see Cuthbert’s face in the faint light coming from the dying embers, but he’s smiling as one of his hands moves on Roland’s hip and the other back at his neck before he pushes down to the ground. They’re lying side by side, pressed up against each other.
“You have,” Roland whispers, and then Cuthbert’s ankle hooks around his.
“Then stop talking about towers and glasses and battles and ka. I already know that I’ll come with you whatever happens – I don’t need to hear that now.”
Roland nods – he doesn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence, he doesn’t need to hear what it is that Cuthbert might need.
“Then you won’t.”
He gets rid of his belt as Cuthbert does the same, and then he rolls over so that he’s on top of him, and he doesn’t speak of ka or of the battle or the Tower until morning.
--
I would like you to see them, and see them well. They’re still lying on the blanket, their shirts opened, trousers half-pushed down, hands touching everywhere they can reach, unable to just keep them still. Roland is slower, but he can’t stop himself either. He runs his fingers through Cuthbert’s hair while they move against each other – there’s no time for something more refined, nor they have the patience for it. They’re searching friction against each other, their mouths pressed either against each other or against their cheeks or temples or eyes, and when Roland reaches down with a hand and wraps it around both his erection and his friend’s Cuthbert lets out a scream that is most likely heard by many. Not that it’s an issue right now. Roland breathes in, trying not to lose control too soon, as his hand strokes and moves between them, his mouth sucking on the skin between Cuthbert’s neck and his shoulder, and Cuthbert says Roland’s name all over until they’re both shaking against each other, sweat all over their faces. There are red marks on Roland’s shoulders where Cuthbert’s fingers where digging in, and the fire is almost dead but some of the embers still spark. There’s an intermitting orange glint in Roland’s blue eyes (they’re mostly pupil now, but there’s still blue to be seen), and as Cuthbert raises his head and kisses Roland’s swollen lips, neither of them is regretting it.
--
Roland is about to fall asleep. Cuthbert’s head is pressed against his neck, his mouth brushing against Roland’s skin and it all feels – again – warm and familiar and safe, and there’s nothing wrong if he sleeps for a while before the sun rises.
He wants to believe that none of them is dying in the morning, he wants to believe that the both of them are going to see the Dark Tower, if ka wills it – but why shouldn’t it? A lot of what he saw in that glass was false, but he has a feeling that maybe that particular vision was not.
“We’ll get there”, he whispers. I know we will. With that thought he falls asleep, and he never hears what Cuthbert whispers against his collarbone mere seconds later.
--
I wish it was true, is what Cuthbert had said. Not for the first time, out of the two of them, he’s the one who’s right.
End.