Curly took the time himself to list off the things he had never expected would come from his life, and wondered in tandem whether or not he really had changed. He liked to believe he was still the same Curly that Pockets—Peter, Peter, Peter—would remember and, for the most part, it could be said that he was. When working with the children he did, he still maintained his ebullient sense of humour, his vivacity for life and almost child-like behaviour. He could still out stubborn just about anyone. But then again, when it came down to it, he was very clear about who was the adult. He was even—dare he admit it—responsible.
Curly laughed at that. The very idea that anyone outside of his workplace called him Thomas was laughable, but for Pockets to do so as well was simply unimaginable. “Well, I had t’,” he said, once the laughter had subsided, “Y’should’ve heard Cat, goin’ on and on about how I need t’grow up. I swear, her face was as red as her hair,” he said, recalling with fondness. His mother rarely raised her voice, only tutted in concern, but after months had gone by once Curly graduated high-school and he still had no plans for the future, the woman had finally spoken up.
“And hey, yer different too,” he noted, “look at ya, all tall ‘n manly,” he teased, “what about you? D’ye go by somethin’ else now?” He asked, wanting to make a joke about how certain he was that there was no way he went by Pockets in prison, but thinking better of it. Part of him was hesitant in his asking as if Pockets’ answer would drone home how much things had changed.
He tried not to let his disappointment show. Of course, it wasn’t a good idea, but Curly desperately wanted things to return to how they were. The gang all together again, sans-Peter naturally, having a laugh like the old times. It was a pipe dream, certainly, but a dream nonetheless. Feeling stubborn, he decided to argue, “I reckon not. Ash’ll be happy to see ya, at least. And Nibs, too. Slightly…well, he’s a right bastard so who cares about that one?” He joked, feeling he had made a good enough point, “And…y’know. I’m glad t’see you, too. Did ya guess about that one?”
It took Curly by surprise, but once Pockets had spoken up again, he allowed himself to laugh. “Nah, you? Not causin’ a ruckus, I’m shocked,” he said, faceitiously, “I bet y’spent all yer time in there teachin’ the others like y’taught me, still wearing your pa’s coat the whole time.”
It’s not a hard thing to picture; tiny, red-haired Cat cowing her newly-gangly, idiot son into getting his life together with nothing but the idea that she might be disappointed in him if he didn’t. Nobody else could ever have accomplished such a feat, that’s for sure. “How is she? Cat, I mean,” Three asks, feeling a familiar flicker of fondness for the woman whose home he had invaded so many times in his youth. He could almost forgive her for not writing when he had thought - or perhaps hoped - that she would.
Three scoffs a laugh at Curly’s comment regarding his supposed manliness, but he supposes that he isn’t really wrong. Although he’d been rather slight as a boy, it became clear as soon as Three hit puberty that he was going to inherit his father’s enormous height if not his robust build, and his time in prison had left him with a lean musculature that a person might become vain over, if they had the inclination. Yes, Peter Zolnernowich is a man now, but Curly could have no idea the type of man he’s turned out to be.
“Oh, uh, they called me Three while I was inside,” he says, offering Curly an awkward half-smile as he idly passes his thumb over the tattoo scratched into the base of his ring finger. Three black strikes, one for each of them: Curly, Ash, and Pan. “I don’t know what it is about me that makes people want to give me nicknames, but yeah. Three.” The papers though, they’d never had any problems using his proper name. Three supposes its kind of funny really - people who don’t even know him with his name in their mouths, and his so-called friends incapable of spitting it out.
The idea of being in the same room as his school friends is strange, but the idea that any of them would be glad to see him is more so. Three wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had forgotten him, but it didn’t matter, because he remembered. Cataloguing their perceived slights against him had become nothing short of an obsession over the past ten years. “Ash?” He asks, “Not Soot?” Soot was the only other member of their little gang that he’d call ‘friend’ and really mean it. He was also the only one that ever bothered to visit him in the clink, but those visits had stopped abruptly a few years ago. Three supposes he got bored in the end.
“Give over, you soppy so-and-so,” he laughs, ignoring the way his stomach twists. “I don’t know, maybe we go for a drink just you and I first, then we see about the others. Ease myself back in gently, yeah?”
And just like that, Three’s smile vanishes, his icy blue eyes flashing with something like regret. The one tiny chink in his carefully cultivated armour, and Curly had found it without even meaning to. Damn him. “I… don’t have it anymore. Dad’s jacket,” he says quietly. He’d left it in his mother’s arms, shoved it at her before he walked through the metal gates that would separate them forever. Three hadn’t wanted her to see him cry again. He hoped she would see something of the brave, laughing boy she raised, not the convict she scarcely recognised. His father hadn’t even come…
Tugging at the sleeves of his ugly, borrowed parka, Three shakes his head and tries to recover, “Need to go shopping, eh? Look at the state of me.”
