The weirdest thing about Roland, Eddie had decided was that he never seemed to mention anything that didn't have to do with his damn Tower. Ask what they were doing, they were getting someone else for the Tower. Mention something completely unrelated, and the guy'd just sort of look at him, and then dismiss him like if it was unrelated, then it wasn't worth his time.

It would have pissed Eddie off if he wasn't concerned with other things, like how he was so sick of lobstrosity and how much he needed-

If he thought of it, it was worse. So he didn't think of it.

But now they were sitting, and there were pieces of one of the lobstrosities strewn around them and they should probably get to getting them ready to eat or something, but Eddie held back. He glanced at Roland, who was going about his business even though he probably shouldn't have been doing much more than making sure that he didn't die from that finger loss, and sat down.

Roland glanced at him. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"All I know about you," Eddie said. "Is that all you care about is doing what you need to do. And it's fucking weird, honestly. Also, I'm sick to death of all of this, and I want to go home, and I-"

"What will make you be quiet?"

Eddie glanced at him. He'd paused in his gathering of edible lobstrosity parts and looked straight at him with those unsettling clear blue eyes, and Eddie decided that he'd just drop it. "Never mind," he said, and they continued in silence.

When they started eating, Eddie decided that it was bullshit to just keep quiet about it, and if he was going to be going on some suicide mission with this freak, he wanted to know what sort of freak he was going on a suicide mission with, so he brought it up again.

"No, you know what," he said. Roland looked at him, eyes slightly narrowed, and he was kind of worried that the guy would shoot him, but the moment passed – the moment of his worry, not the moment of Roland staring at him, that was still happening – and he continued. "I do want to know some more. Distract me from all this shit that's going on."

"Why?"

"Well, there is the fact that you're dragging me around on this when I could-"

"You would have been caught if it hadn't been for me."

"Is that really true? I don't think it is. Look, it's not like I'm asking you for a fucking kidney, I just want to know more about you than you're some weird old man that's dragging people into Beachworld Plus The Ocean. I just want to know what the hell I've gotten into before I start eating the sand. Because I don't think there's an asshole captain of our rescue ship coming to save me, and you are playing Rand here."

Roland looked blankly at him.

Eddie stared straight back at him.

"What do you want to know?" Roland asked, and Eddie bared his teeth in a sort-of grin. It probably looked too 'Jack Nicholson' to make any sort of good impression, but he didn't really give a shit at this point.

"I dunno. Guess you didn't have any friends, jackass that you are-"

"I did have friends," Roland said. "They were more than friends. Better than friends."

"So…"

"It's not what you're thinking," Roland said. He passed a hand over his face, and Eddie realized with a sort of horror that he was reminiscing. Fondly. Could Roland feel fondly about something? It didn't seem right. "We were ka-tet. They were…"

Eddie waited. He didn't elaborate for a good ten minutes.

"You cared about your brother, didn't you?"

Eddie swallowed hard, thinking about Henry. "'Course I did," he said. "I-" past tense, man, past tense and it sucks. "I loved him."

"That is how I felt about them. I see your disbelief, but I am telling the truth."

Eddie took a good long look at him – he was pretty sure that Roland was the best liar he'd ever meet, but he seemed to be telling the truth. Not that Eddie could to much other than just take him for his word.

"Right," he said. He sucked in a breath, yawned, and flopped back. "Well, I'll just take your word for it. You're a fantastic conversationalist."

He felt Roland studying him, but stayed as he was. He could have snapped at him, but he wasn't really feeling it. He felt more peaceful than he'd felt since coming here – which was, mind you, still not peaceful at all, but it was… less like he wanted to claw out his eyes and throw himself to the lobstrosities and more… 'I'm uncomfortable and I hate this, but I'll stick it through because Roland isn't actually the worst.'

He was thoroughly surprised when Roland flopped down next to him. "What's the point of this? You're just wasting time."

"Wasting time? You knew what I was doing. What are you doing, proving a point?"

Roland didn't answer his questions. "You need to get up. You have first watch tonight."

Nope. Nope, Roland was the worst.


I haven't read The Drawing of The Three in almost a year, but someone on Tumblr requested a Roland/Eddie, like during that book, getting to know each other type of thing. So this is what I came up with. Some little continuity errors may be present. IDK.