you're too young & eager to love

I wanted to work on Curt's childhood.
This came out instead. I may have to watch Velvet Goldmine for more inspiration at a soon-to-be date.

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Curt is wearing it, the pin. Every green glimmer is familiar, although Jack would never have struck it through plain white cotton. (He is less glorious without the Demon beside him, dressing in old jeans and open shirts, the black polish and the long hair the only remnants of a fading past.) Still, he recognizes it immediately, and he wonders if the gravel-voiced guitarist realizes that once, long ago, it had belonged to Oscar Wilde. Jack thinks of forgotten schooldays and blood lips followed by broken dreams. Then he thinks of histories and futures, twirling his skeletal fingers in the air to some imagined radio tune.

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"That is a part of the past." He points with his bright eyes to the pin.

Curt tunes his guitar, strumming broken chords with agitation. He has never been much for patience and less for riddles. But he has learned Jack, clumsily, over the months. His peculiar silence and the meaning behind his story-book words. (The press of Jack's fragile bones beneath his palms as significant as dust settling. The way they walk around each other instead of with because Curt no longer fathoms straight lines and his heart still leads him astray.)

"When do you get tired of wearing those shackles? You should be reaching for the future, instead. To the dreams and stars."

Curt laughs, the sound disruptive and pitching from the drugs. His veins will protest in a few hours. "There are no stars in the gutter, Jack."

Jack wants to disagree; he wants to tell him that there was and still is, because, as a boy, he found hope buried beneath rotten leaves and hidden against ordinary cement. Curt's wearing it now, but he doesn't understand, so Jack ashes his cigarette and turns his eyes away.