Better This Present
by Lucy Gillam 

"Three is the number of your fate, gunslinger."

Eddie sought him out three times along the quest. There were other private conversations, other times that he tugged on Roland's sleeve or called him over, but these three times the gunslinger remembered. He remembered them until the moment he opened the topmost door of the Tower and Eddie became something that appeared in only the vaguest and most confusing of dreams.

The first time was at the end of the beach, when Eddie told him that the only useful thing he'd ever learned from his brother was that those who kill the ones they love are damned. Roland, who'd been damned from the moment his bullets tore through Alain, or maybe from the point they tore through his mother, or perhaps from the time Susan's hair had first caught fire from the char-you tree, has always known this. Still, the reminder has stayed with him.

The second time was between the town of River's Crossing and city of Lud, when Eddie declared his commitment to the quest and demanded his free will. This was the moment that Roland returned to over and over when deciding what to share about their situation, about plans and problems and dangers. He remembered not just because Eddie had surprised and, frankly, shamed him; he remembered because he knew Eddie had spoken true.

The third time was above Algul Siento, the night before they saved the Beam.

Ka-shume weighed heavily on them all, sai Brautigan's story still in their ears. Jake had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and Roland listened from the mouth of the cave as Eddie and Susannah's whispers eventually gave way to silence.

He also listened as someone, Eddie by the sound of it, carefully unzipped a sleeping bag and got out, walking from the lit portion of the cave to the rocks that concealed it. He leaned on the butte wall opposite Roland, and the gunslinger could just make out his features in the dim light from the gas lamps in the inner cave.

They passed a long moment in silence, broken finally when Eddie said, "You think Sheemie's going to tell us to handle the Breakers first, don't you?"

Roland considered the question. "I do," he answered.

"We're going to be really outnumbered." There was neither argument nor emotion in Eddie's voice, just a dry statement of fact.

"We have been before. And we have surprise on our side. They expect us to come, but not now, and not with allies among them. Not with," Roland inclined his head towards the cave and the unexpected wealth of weapons.

Eddie nodded slowly, then turned back to face Roland. "That wasn't actually why I came out here. I mean, I know we have to talk strategy soon, but that wasn't why I left a warm sleeping bag."

"Why, then?"

Eddie drew a deep breath and took Roland by the shoulders. "This," he said, and pressed his mouth to Roland's.

It was nothing like the kiss Roland had given him earlier, a kiss between warriors, given from dinh to bondsman before sitting an-tet, a token gesture to reaffirm their bond. It was hungry and wet, and when Roland would have pulled back, Eddie gripped the back of his neck to hold him in place -- and Roland let himself be held.

Then it was Eddie that broke the kiss, but he didn't pull away. "Tell me you don't want to," he said. "Tell me, and I'll walk away right now. It's just' Well, let's just say the phrase 'now or never' is flashing really bright in my head."

Roland's eyes flicked towards the cave where Susannah (he presumed) still slept.

"She knows I'm here," Eddie said. "She," he paused and smiled wryly. "Well, she didn't exactly send me, but close enough." Roland just stared, words sticking in his suddenly dry throat. Eddie laughed. "Roland, she had your baby. I think we're kind of past worrying about cleaving only unto, don't you?" And he pulled Roland down into another kiss.

For a brief moment, Roland thought of other nights before other battles, gunslingers outwardly calm in the face of death, but with blood high and minds racing. But it was Eddie's mouth hungry on his, Eddie's hands already tugging at his belt, and Eddie was here, now, on this night before this battle. This was Eddie, and ka was ka.

Roland pulled Eddie's shirt from his jeans, sliding his hands up his back. Eddie had not been here long enough for the sun to roughen him even where his clothes protected, and his skin was still warm from the sleeping bag. His hand, though, his hand was strong and sure with countless chores and practice and Roland gasped when Eddie touched him.

Eddie pulled back from the kiss to grin. "Y'like that, huh?"

Roland answered by gripping Eddie's shirt to pull the two of them first to their knees, and then to the rough butte floor. The small rocks dug into his back, and Eddie's belt buckle dug into his stomach, and he found he didn't care about either as long as Eddie's hand stayed where it was. As long as Eddie stayed here, with him, now, alive in this moment, whatever the next day would bring.

He gripped Eddie's hair and pulled to expose his throat, tasting dust and salt and skin. Susannah's smell was mixed with Eddie's here, and that was good, it was right. He arched upward into Eddie's hand, and Eddie answered by slowing his movements.

"Aren't you supposed to be the patient one?" Eddie said with a grin. "Wait for it." Roland bit lightly at the joint where neck met shoulder, and Eddie hissed. "Or, you know, you could just do that again, say thankya."

Roland could feel Eddie pressing into his hip (a hip for the moment blessedly free of pain) even through the double layer of denim, and he made quick work of Eddie's belt and jeans with the same left hand he'd trained to load guns and tan hides.

"Atta boy," Eddie encouraged him hoarsely. "Knew you could do it."

Knowing Eddie could talk his way through this as he did everything else, Roland rolled them over, pinning Eddie beneath him and pressing them both down on the dirt and rocks. Their pricks pressed together between their bellies, and even the faint bite of a metal zipper against his thighs was good. Eddie's hand was still trapped, and it only took a few strong thrusts before Roland spilled between them, burying his face against Eddie's shirt, telling himself that the stinging in his eyes was only the dust of the butte.

Roland pressed his face into Eddie's shoulder to catch his breath, and Eddie hooked a leg around his and arched up against him. "Don't you," he grunted, "dare stop." Never one to leave a task undone, Roland reached between them and covered Eddie's hand with his. He perhaps should not have been pleased by the shout that Eddie muffled against his shoulder as he came, but he was.

After, Eddie laughed weakly against Roland's throat. "I was going to say that this wasn't exactly a bed at the Ritz, but you know, I can't even begin to picture you someplace like that." Roland rolled away and felt the cold air on his belly. He'd heard enough of his companions' world to understand at least the sense of what Eddie had said, and to grasp its rightness. In a room full of pillows and clean sheets, this could not have been.

"You belong somewhere more alive than that. Someplace...bigger," Eddie said quietly.

Roland thought on that for a while while they lay there companionably. Then cloth touched his hand, and he looked over to see Eddie sitting up, offering him a kerchief. "Jake could come out. Might be awkward, trying to explain."

Roland wiped away the evidence of what they had done and straightened his clothes. Ka-shume was pressing against him again, and he looked up to see Eddie gazing at him thoughtfully.

"Penny for 'em," he said, expecting a joke, or perhaps one of Eddie's rare declarations of affection. Even the joke would have pleased him at this moment.

"I was just thinking that it's probably good that I never had a father," Eddie replied, proving that he could still surprise his dinh.

Roland turned the statement around in his mind. Jake had called him Father upon their reunion. His blood-son stalked them in the cold desert night. Eddie'"How do ye mean?"

Eddie shrugged. "Jake may have had a bad father, but he knows what one is, and what they're supposed to be. I never did, except second-hand. I'm thinking that's probably a good thing right now." He stood, picking up Roland's dirty kerchief and balling it with one of his own. "I'll get rid of these." He paused for a moment. "We do love you, Roland of Gilead." Eddie leaned over to press a kiss to the top of Roland's head. "I love you."

Roland gripped the back of Eddie's neck and pulled him down to press their brows together. The words that had come easily during the sharing of water stuck in his throat, but the squeeze of Eddie's hand on his wrist told him Eddie knew.

And with that, Eddie went back inside the cave.

Even in the total darkness, Roland knew where Blue Heaven stood, and he turned his gaze to the place where he knew his ka-tet would break on the morrow. His last ka-tet, whom he would carry with him to the top of the Dark Tower, even after they'd gone. He would carry Jake, who called him Father; he would carry Susannah, who huddled with him in the cold; he would carry Oy, who stayed with him to the last. And he would carry Eddie, who was the first to fall; who would never stand in the field of roses. And who, in the end, had learned one true thing from his brother.