This Could Be On Broadway

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Ooooo best and worst memory, interesting!

For best memory, I do have one very clear idea for both of them together.

They're in Wales. I don't know why, it's just Wales in my head. Driving through the Welsh countryside, pretty early on in their relationship. Owen is driving-- not because he wants to, but because it's his car and he's being a bit of a prick about it. Curt is irritated and whining because Owen claimed to know exactly where they are, but as the night drags on it becomes very clear that he does not.

Work stress has been getting to them both, but they don't talk about missions that they aren't together on, so they're both just silently stewing in it.

Eventually it's like 2am, and they are really lost, and Owen pulls over on this gravel back road in absolute fucking nowhere, Wales. They both get out of the car and just start screaming at each other. Really going at it. Not even mad at each other for the most part, just frustrated and stressed out and tired to the point that neither of them are able to hide it.

And it's sort of liberating. In a safe house, or hotel, or one of their places, they can't do that. They can't argue loudly, can't argue like lovers. That's an enormous risk. So instead of doing that, they usually find other ways to uhh... deal with it.

But since they are in the middle of nowhere, and each of them are at their breaking point, they end up yelling at each other. Like couples sometimes do.

And it's weirdly intimate. It's like this tiny little piece of normal. They will never live together or get married or get to tell their friends (theoretically at least-- they do not have friends), or do anything like that. They will always be on the edge of each other's lives. They have to be.

All they have is whatever time is left on the margins of missions, always closed off in a room somewhere, hidden out of sight. They used to bicker and banter all the time, but the dynamic changed when they got together. They don't quite know how to be together yet. They don't want to implode this weird, beautiful, fragile thing they have going on, so they try to play nice, to suppress all those little grievances they used to bicker over, because who knows when (or if) they're going to see each other again.

And it has the effect of making it all seem like an affair. Something nebulous, something that isn't real and isn't meant to last. But arguing on the side of the road after an unpleasant road trip is such a mundane right of passage that it's like... the first time it really feels like a relationship. It's the first time it feels like them in a relationship.

Eventually they run out of steam, and they're both exhausted. It's a warm summer night, no clouds or light pollution in the sky. And they sit on a grassy hill, each a little embarrassed over how petty they were being, and a little relieved at the emotional catharsis, chatting and passing Curt's flask and Owen's cigarette between them until they eventually end up falling asleep out under the stars.

And later on in their relationship they bring up that night, and laugh trying to remember what the hell they were even arguing about to begin with, but the thing that always sticks with them is how weirdly close they felt afterwards. How it went from feeling fragile to finally feeling real.

For the worst memories... I mean I think they probably had a fair few deeply personal, hurtful fights, but honestly the only ones I have distinct ideas about I'm planning to use for fics, so I'm gonna do a bit of a cop-out here and focus on some good ol foundational childhood traumas

So for Curt-- He's a teenager, probably around 15 or 16, and the reality of his sexuality is starting to hit him full force. He's popular with the girls precisely because he doesn't initiate anything with them, so for a few years there he just constantly has a new girlfriend every few months (source: every closeted gay guy I did theatre with)

Now for him, this is a way to hide what he is. Surely the guy who always has a new girl on his arm must be interested in girls. And it works well enough that nobody suspects a thing-- least of all his mother.

But mama Mega does not want her son to be like his father, to be the kind of man who gets a girl "in trouble" and leaves her to manage on her own. As well-intentioned as she is, she is also pretty overbearing when it comes to commenting on her son's relationships. And to Curt, it very much adds to that constant pressure he feels to be ~normal~, adds to the idea that his mother would reject him if she knew who he really was. He loves his mother, and admires her, so that is very painful for him to think about, and it only gets worse for him the more he starts to experiment with guys.

After awhile, he starts to really resent her for the expectations she places on him. The way teenagers often do. He's angry, and confused, and doesn't have a very clear idea of what a man is ~supposed~ to be. He has big emotions and poor emotional regulation. And one day it just boils over.

He's been taller than his mother since before he started hitting puberty, and one day she makes a comment at exactly the wrong time, and it just sets him off. He gets too close, towering over her, wanting (in that petty teenage boy way) to assert himself, but it very much comes off as intimidating.

And it's not like they haven't argued before, but it's the first time Curt really tries to throw his proverbial weight around with her. The first time he feels like he has the upper hand.

And he screams at her, not really thinking, just impulsively saying the most hurtful things he can think of-- that he'd never listen to her about a relationship because she couldn't even manage to keep his dad around. That his dad probably left because of how unbearable she is to live with. That he can't wait to get out of her house and never come back.

And there's this look of pure, raw anguish in her eyes. Disappointment and a little bit of fear, and Curt is still so angry, but now he's also deeply fucking ashamed of himself. He takes off, slamming the door behind him, walking off as quickly as he can until the adrenaline wears off and the regret makes it hard to breathe.

They don't ever talk about it again, but Curt leaves that house as soon as he is able. Not because he doesn't love his mother, but because he believes she wouldn't love him if she really knew him.

And for Owen-- this is a canon event for chwm, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to actually writing about it so...

his father is an RAF pilot at the start of WWII, and he gets shot down in North Africa early in the war. It's an ignominious death for a guy who absolutely sucked shit, and Owen isn't sad about it. It's a relief to him. But it does significantly impact his life, because he now considers himself (at eleven years old) the man of the house.

Before the war they were sort of nominally middle class. But after his father's death, money gets much tighter. His mother (a woman I made up in my head and have soooo many thoughts and feelings about) was sort of bright and bubbly and kinda flaky, a bit of a good time girl. But she's also sort of delicate, emotionally, and after his father's death she just kind of falls apart. She works nights with the ambulance service, and when she's home she is mostly shut up in her room, sleeping.

Owen has a sister who is five years younger than him. And very suddenly he finds himself effectively being her only parent. He has to figure out how to cook meals, how to make groceries last, how Britain's complicated ration books work. And he messes up pretty consistently to begin with, and for the first year or two they're just sort of constantly hungry. Not starving, it isn't a life or death scenario, but it's enough to put everyone on edge.

Now to manage wartime food shortages, the British government introduced things like victory gardens and a program of backyard rabbit hutches to supplement the waning supplies of meat. Owen lives in London, so he doesn't have room to grow anything (and wouldn't have the faintest idea how even if they did), but they do have enough space for the rabbits.

By 1942 Owen is nearly fourteen, and the German army has conquered most of Europe. And it very much looks like it's only a matter of time before they invade Britain.

[Animal death content warning!!]

Owen has been the one to raise these rabbits, but he hasn't been able to bring himself to kill any of them yet, because despite his best efforts to remain detached and view them as food, he's also a weird lonely kid, and he's more sentimental than he wants to be, and he got attached to them.

He begins to fixate on the idea that an invasion is going to happen-- an anxiety that he tells himself is just thinking ahead. If he can't kill a rabbit now, when they aren't actively starving, how would he manage it if the war comes to Britain? If he can't kill a rabbit now, how would he be able to kill a German soldier if he had to?

So over the course of a few days he psychs himself up to do it. Tells himself the rabbits were always meant to be food, tells himself nobody else is going to do it for him, that it is his responsibility, that it's a kindness because they don't have enough food scraps to feed the rabbits and they're overcrowded in the hutch already.

He weighs each rabbit to make sure that he kills the one with the most meat, instead of making that decision based on sentiment. Trying to be practical and efficient. It just so happens that his personal favorite is also the heaviest.

He reads the little booklet, he mentally prepares himself, but when he finally does it it isn't the quick, clean death he planned on. I won't get too graphic here, but it is not pleasant. He vomits afterwards. The sound sticks with him for a long time.

But as unpleasant as it is, he also feels a strange sense of pride. Pride in his own self-sufficiency. That he could put aside that weak, sentimental part of himself and do what needed to be done. It's the first time he really understands that violence can be distasteful and distressing, but still necessary. And it starts him on the path to believing that violence is a legitimate means of gaining control over an uncontrollable situation. Of feeling powerful when you have no power.

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