sorry I got distracted by Mardi Gras
Title: The Nine Irregular Adjectives (part 2 of 2)
Fandom: Generation Kill (AU)
Characters: Nate, Ray, some Brad
Ratings: PG-15 (Brad/Nate established relationship)
Notes: More High school AU. This falls between How to Take a Test and Commencement Means Beginning. It has a sort of piece-meal structure, like Test. The epigraph is by Rita Mae Brown, and the cut-tag is from the same poem. Here's part 1
++alter, altera, alterum, the one, the other (of two)++“Nate! Nate…is that-Etruscan?!” Katie hisses and darts across the gallery, leaving Brad and Nate facing a vitrine full of clay amphorae.
Brad watches her go. “Yeah,” he says dryly, walking around the glass box to look from a different angle. He has to duck to read the labels on the lowest shelf. “Family resemblance. Still not seeing it. Nope, not at all.”
“Shut up.” And then, “Hey, do you think they’d let me bring a group here for a field trip?”
Brad doesn’t move out of his crouch, but his eyes find Nate’s from the other side of the glass box. “You’ve got to be joking.” His voice, like his expression, is totally flat.
Nate blinks. “I-wh…no. No, why would I be joking?”
+++Nate asks again as they pull into the lot of his apartment building in Mathilda, because Brad has barely said anything since he wished Katie a safe trip home.
“Why would you think I was joking, Brad? About taking the kids to the Huntington? I can’t teach Latin out of books; that’ll just reinforce the idea that it’s a dead language. And the foreign language department has a budget for field trips, they just never use it…Madame Bruchard used to take French II to a French restaurant until a couple of junior got caught smoking weed in-”
“Nate,” Brad turns off the ignition. “There is a reason Mathilda High School has never had a Latin teacher. Do not spend a year of your life trying to give those kids some…” his hands leave the steering wheel to sketch through the air. “Some idealized thing that they do not want and won’t know how to use.” The cooling engine ticks four times before Brad even turns to look at him. “I can’t let you do that to yourself.”
The decisiveness of the statement suddenly pisses Nate off. Who put Brad in charge? And how does he know anything about Nate’s kids? All he ever did was fix Mathilda’s computers, and then just until that tech grant died. It’s not like Nate hasn’t heard the what good is a dead language argument…he just hadn’t expected it as part of a blanket assumption about what Nate’s students could and could not learn. Brad can fuck around all he wants with Nate, but he had better not fuck around with Nate’s kids.
Nate meets Brad’s gaze cooly, “I don’t think you get to decide what I do to myself.”
Brad sighs-weary, put-upon, like he’s disappointed because he didn’t expect this sort of nonsense. “Nate.”
“Brad.” Nate mimics, and he knows it’s childish, but he’s never dealt well with condescension. Brad blinks. Surprised. Maybe he’s used to people to just giving in when he uses that tone. Probably he expects that at least there will be a discussion…which is basically the same thing, since no one stands up against Brad for very long. Well, Nate is not one of his soldiers.
Brad’s truck chimes in protest when Nate gets out because the keys are still in the ignition. He silences it by slamming the door. He hadn’t even bothered to roll up the window, so when he speaks, Brad can hear every word: “When I want your advice, Brad, I will ask for it. You can be assured of that. But I haven’t asked, so I don’t need your thoughts on the matter. Nobody fucking spoke to you.”
++sōlus, -a, -um, alone++The last day of school is June 13 (June 8th for seniors), and the first back-to-school professional days are in the third week of August, so Nate has roughly seven weeks to fill. That’s what it feels like: a huge, yawning emptiness like a desert that he must cross, step by step. He flies east for two weeks to see his family and attend the annual July 4th picnic in his aunt Patty’s backyard. Katie asks how Brad is doing and Nate says, “He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be fine?” He doesn’t mention that he has not spoken to Brad in two months. Still, he must not sound as casual as he means to, because she does not mention Brad again.
Rudy hires him on again to teach a couple of workshops about bicycle repair at the gym, which will help his Mathilda salary stretch through the summer. “Mid-mornings Saturday are always popular, brother, but you gotta make room for serenity. Let me know what weekends you want off, and I’ll get Mike to pick those up,” Rudy says. The previous year, Nate had taken a week off to go hiking with Brad. This year, he informs Rudy, he is available whenever.
When he's not working, Nate starts lesson-planning. It's still summer, but he's got new classes and, really, what else does he have to do? He doesn’t like any of the commercially available curricula, so he pulls out all his old notes and starts from scratch. It goes well at the beginning: he quickly sorts lessons on number, direct object, indirect object, basic declensions. But once the basics are out of the way, he stalls. Possessive pronouns, the second declension, the nine irregular adjectives…the point where students know just enough to get themselves into trouble. Turns out anyone can handle the early stages, but you’ve got to persevere when things get hard.
There is a lesson here, and it's not just Latin. Nate hadn’t appreciated it until it was over, but being in a relationship with Brad was…easy. Surprisingly so. Had he really thought about it in advance, the idea of dating a former Marine who routinely breaks the speed limit and owns more scuba gear than civilian shirts would have been intimidating. And, to be sure, Brad had the sort of piercing intelligence that suffered no fools. But no demanding phone calls, no passive-aggressive gifts, no but what do you want to do on Friday? None of the drama that had sunk Nate’s college relationships. If Nate had to grade a pile of student essays or write up lesson plans, Brad pulled a book off the shelf or spent forty minutes doing crazy ninja upgrades on Nate’s crappy laptop. At some point, roughly a month after the first kiss, Brad had stacked the tumbled pillows, tugged Nate’s head down to rest on his shoulder, and said, “So, when’re you going home for Christmas? I’ll drop you at the airport if you want.” Nate had shivered as Brad’s fingers furrowed his hair, and just like that, they’d gone from fuck-buddies to something more. Teaching was hard. Living a continent away from his family was hard. Adjusting to a life in which he was no longer a wunderkind was hard. But being with Brad…that was so easy, in the beginning, that Nate was fooled into believing it would be easy forever.
++ ūnus, -a, -um, one, alone; (in the plural) only++California gets a cold snap in late July, some sort of freak weather event blowing in from the Pacific, and for about five days straight, the temperatures in Oceanside drop precipitously. Mornings are cool cool enough for Brad to pull a fleece on when he comes back from the beach. He sits out on the deck drinking coffee and waiting for the sun to reach him. Idly, he flips through one of Nate’s books. He should do the adult thing and just pack up the few things Nate left in Oceanside when they…well, Brad refuses to call it a break-up. It’s been nearly three months since Brad put the truck in gear and left Nate behind in his apartment parking lot. But Nate never actually told him to go away and never come back. Of course, Brad hasn’t called or texted or emailed: he doesn’t want to give Nate the opportunity to tell him to go away and never come back. Still, Nate hasn’t called or texted or emailed, either. Everything is just as they left it on a Saturday afternoon in May, right down to the Dartmouth t-shirt, the toothbrush, the half-dozen books-still in Brad’s house.
Brad puts down Nate’s book. He should start getting ready for work-a part-time gig that requires enough problem-solving to keep his brain from turning to mush but that could never be construed as world-changing. Brad is done with trying to change the world. That's why, when his grant at Mathilda had ended in December, he’d moved on to something else. He hadn’t discussed the decision with Nate, and it hadn’t made much of a difference with their relationship because the job hadn’t made much of a difference to Brad. It was a challenge: he’d agreed to do it to see if he could, and like all of his challenges, he moved right on to the next one when it was complete.
Well. Brad thumbs through the book. Maybe he didn’t move on completely. There’s another gust of wind. It’s July, but it feels almost like fall, which makes Brad think of the beginning of school.
++ ūllus, -a, -um, any++Nate needs Tacitus to finish this lesson plan, and he can’t find his copy. He has a sneaking suspicion that he left it at Brad’s place, but thinking about that feels like a mental bruise: sore when you push too hard. He remembers lounging in the ugly neon hammock Ray brought back from an ill-conceived trip to Tijuana, reading after a run. He’d lost the final sprint to Brad, as he always did, which meant Brad got the first shower (which meant Nate would give him about ten minutes and then go join him under the fabulous water pressure, as he always did). Brad’s house had the Spartan simplicity of a base camp, but the bed, the shower, and all related linens were top-notch…Nate realizes that his thoughts have wandered right up the coast to Oceanside. That’s happening more and more, instead of less. He’s pretty sure that’s not the way a break-up is supposed to work.
Of course, if they were really, definitively broken up, he would just call Brad up and demand the return of his book. Or at least chicken out and buy a new copy. But he doesn’t: somehow that feels like admitting something. Instead, he thinks there might be a copy in his trailer at school on the brick and board shelves that Brad-but he’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about Tacitus. The Mathilda copy is not his preferred translation, but he’ll make do.
++++Someone should have collected the key to the trailer that is Nate’s “extension classroom,” but in the chaos of June, no one ever had. Well, Nate thinks as he crosses the football field, that’s one advantage to Mathilda’s overcrowding. He'd crossed this same field exactly two years ago, as a brand new teacher. But today there’s something… different about the trailer.
Nate can see in greater detail as he approaches. The sides, which had weathered to a scaly, grimed beige, are now a uniform battleship grey. The screen that Mike Guitierrez busted out of the left-hand window (“So on accident, Mr. F. Honest!”) is now repaired with more than duct-tape. And there’s someone-is that Ray?-perched on the roof.
“S’up, homes!” shouts Ray when he catches sight of Nate.
Somewhere inside the trailer, Brad yells: “Ray, a little respect for your betters would not be entirely out of place.”
Ray stretches out on the roof so he can hang upside down in the doorway. “How do you know I’m talking to my betters? I could be out here talking to fucking Trombley for all you know.”
“If it’s approaching on two legs, Ray, I think it’s safe to assume it’s surpassed you, evolutionarily speaking.”
“Even Trombley?” Ray yelps. “Trombley?!”
“Don’t care,” Brad calls, shortly. “If it is Trombley, get him to hold those wires while I try-”
Nate never learns what Brad is planning to try, because he stops talking when he reaches the doorway and sees Nate. He’s wearing jeans and steel-toed boots and an old PT shirt with his name stenciled on it, the kind he retires for chores around the house. Nate knows the back is worn threadbare from his field pack, the outlines of his tattoo vaguely visible through the thin fabric. Nate also knows every millimeter of that tattoo. There is some knowledge you just can’t unlearn.
Brad looks at Nate. Nate looks at Brad.
“Not Trombley,” Nate says finally.
Suddenly, above them, there is a burst of music: Johnny Cash. Ray nearly falls off the roof trying to get to his cellphone. “S’up? Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. See you there.”
“Yo,” Ray slithers off the roof, surprisingly graceful. “Brad, that was Walt. He says to tell you slavery’s been outlawed, for like, a hundred and fifty years. Which I do kinda think I learned all about in Espera’s class, but you know how Mr. Espera likes to go on and on about things and I might not have been totally, like, paying a lot of attention. But Walt takes kick-ass notes, so I really think you should trust him on the slave thing. So, anyway, Walt says you gotta let his people go!” Ray concludes, earnestly.
It takes Brad a moment to reorient his attention from Nate to Ray. “And where exactly will you go, Ray?”
Ray shrugs. “Dunno, probably Dairy Queen. Beth Kilmer works the afternoon shift and she has the hots for Walt, so she gives him free stuff.”
Wordlessly, Brad pulls out his wallet and tosses it to Ray, who extracts some cash, and tosses it back. He looks back and forth from Brad to Nate like he’s going to say something, but finally just gives an awkward little wave-“Peace out”-and sets off across the playing fields.
“Did you actually break into my trailer?” Nate asks at last.
Brad finally seems to realize that he’s still holding a pair of electricians’ pliers is his hand and tucks them away into his toolbelt. But then he’s got nothing to do with his hands, so he settles at parade rest.
“Maybe. I prefer to think of it as liberating the fusebox. The wiring is almost done. You won’t have to teach Latin in a firetrap.”
Nate thinks Brad wouldn't want him teaching under any circumstances, but he doesn't say that. He’s had a lot of time to think about it, and he suspects Brad isn't angry about work-at least, not about Nate's work. What he does say is, “I can be committed to more than one thing, you know.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” Brad allows.
“I’m not afraid of hard work,” Nate replies. “And it would be worth it, to me.”
“I was on the payroll here. Mathilda pay is for shit.”
“I’m not talking about Mathilda.”
“I’ll still hate your job,” says Brad, warningly.
“But as long as I don’t hate my job…?”
Brad shrugs in the direction of the trailer, a casual lifting of one shoulder that is meant to express how completely he doesn’t care-it’s a gesture that Nate didn’t even realize he’d missed until he sees it. “I don’t understand how this can make you happy.”
“Can you just trust me when I say that it does? It really does.”
Brad sits down on the landing of the rickety wooden steps leading up to the trailer. His long legs dangle practically to the ground, but he can look Nate square in the face. “I trust your judgment. I do. But, the thing about work is…Nate, it’s just work. It pays the bills, but even if it feels like you’re doing something worthwhile now-it won’t make you happy forever.”
“Maybe not,” it’s Nate’s turn to shrug as he steps into the space between Brad's knees. “But I don’t need work to make me happy forever. That’s what I have you for.”
Gently, Brad shifts the tips of his left-hand fingers from his knees to the hem of Nate's t-shirt, the only part he can reach without being completely ridiculously gay about touching. “So,” he says, as casually as if the last three months never happened, “Walt and Beth Kilmer?”
Nate grins, flooded by relief as buoyant and encompassing as the tide. “It'll never last.”
Fandom: Generation Kill (AU)
Characters: Nate, Ray, some Brad
Ratings: PG-15 (Brad/Nate established relationship)
Notes: More High school AU. This falls between How to Take a Test and Commencement Means Beginning. It has a sort of piece-meal structure, like Test. The epigraph is by Rita Mae Brown, and the cut-tag is from the same poem. Here's part 1
++alter, altera, alterum, the one, the other (of two)++“Nate! Nate…is that-Etruscan?!” Katie hisses and darts across the gallery, leaving Brad and Nate facing a vitrine full of clay amphorae.
Brad watches her go. “Yeah,” he says dryly, walking around the glass box to look from a different angle. He has to duck to read the labels on the lowest shelf. “Family resemblance. Still not seeing it. Nope, not at all.”
“Shut up.” And then, “Hey, do you think they’d let me bring a group here for a field trip?”
Brad doesn’t move out of his crouch, but his eyes find Nate’s from the other side of the glass box. “You’ve got to be joking.” His voice, like his expression, is totally flat.
Nate blinks. “I-wh…no. No, why would I be joking?”
+++Nate asks again as they pull into the lot of his apartment building in Mathilda, because Brad has barely said anything since he wished Katie a safe trip home.
“Why would you think I was joking, Brad? About taking the kids to the Huntington? I can’t teach Latin out of books; that’ll just reinforce the idea that it’s a dead language. And the foreign language department has a budget for field trips, they just never use it…Madame Bruchard used to take French II to a French restaurant until a couple of junior got caught smoking weed in-”
“Nate,” Brad turns off the ignition. “There is a reason Mathilda High School has never had a Latin teacher. Do not spend a year of your life trying to give those kids some…” his hands leave the steering wheel to sketch through the air. “Some idealized thing that they do not want and won’t know how to use.” The cooling engine ticks four times before Brad even turns to look at him. “I can’t let you do that to yourself.”
The decisiveness of the statement suddenly pisses Nate off. Who put Brad in charge? And how does he know anything about Nate’s kids? All he ever did was fix Mathilda’s computers, and then just until that tech grant died. It’s not like Nate hasn’t heard the what good is a dead language argument…he just hadn’t expected it as part of a blanket assumption about what Nate’s students could and could not learn. Brad can fuck around all he wants with Nate, but he had better not fuck around with Nate’s kids.
Nate meets Brad’s gaze cooly, “I don’t think you get to decide what I do to myself.”
Brad sighs-weary, put-upon, like he’s disappointed because he didn’t expect this sort of nonsense. “Nate.”
“Brad.” Nate mimics, and he knows it’s childish, but he’s never dealt well with condescension. Brad blinks. Surprised. Maybe he’s used to people to just giving in when he uses that tone. Probably he expects that at least there will be a discussion…which is basically the same thing, since no one stands up against Brad for very long. Well, Nate is not one of his soldiers.
Brad’s truck chimes in protest when Nate gets out because the keys are still in the ignition. He silences it by slamming the door. He hadn’t even bothered to roll up the window, so when he speaks, Brad can hear every word: “When I want your advice, Brad, I will ask for it. You can be assured of that. But I haven’t asked, so I don’t need your thoughts on the matter. Nobody fucking spoke to you.”
++sōlus, -a, -um, alone++The last day of school is June 13 (June 8th for seniors), and the first back-to-school professional days are in the third week of August, so Nate has roughly seven weeks to fill. That’s what it feels like: a huge, yawning emptiness like a desert that he must cross, step by step. He flies east for two weeks to see his family and attend the annual July 4th picnic in his aunt Patty’s backyard. Katie asks how Brad is doing and Nate says, “He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be fine?” He doesn’t mention that he has not spoken to Brad in two months. Still, he must not sound as casual as he means to, because she does not mention Brad again.
Rudy hires him on again to teach a couple of workshops about bicycle repair at the gym, which will help his Mathilda salary stretch through the summer. “Mid-mornings Saturday are always popular, brother, but you gotta make room for serenity. Let me know what weekends you want off, and I’ll get Mike to pick those up,” Rudy says. The previous year, Nate had taken a week off to go hiking with Brad. This year, he informs Rudy, he is available whenever.
When he's not working, Nate starts lesson-planning. It's still summer, but he's got new classes and, really, what else does he have to do? He doesn’t like any of the commercially available curricula, so he pulls out all his old notes and starts from scratch. It goes well at the beginning: he quickly sorts lessons on number, direct object, indirect object, basic declensions. But once the basics are out of the way, he stalls. Possessive pronouns, the second declension, the nine irregular adjectives…the point where students know just enough to get themselves into trouble. Turns out anyone can handle the early stages, but you’ve got to persevere when things get hard.
There is a lesson here, and it's not just Latin. Nate hadn’t appreciated it until it was over, but being in a relationship with Brad was…easy. Surprisingly so. Had he really thought about it in advance, the idea of dating a former Marine who routinely breaks the speed limit and owns more scuba gear than civilian shirts would have been intimidating. And, to be sure, Brad had the sort of piercing intelligence that suffered no fools. But no demanding phone calls, no passive-aggressive gifts, no but what do you want to do on Friday? None of the drama that had sunk Nate’s college relationships. If Nate had to grade a pile of student essays or write up lesson plans, Brad pulled a book off the shelf or spent forty minutes doing crazy ninja upgrades on Nate’s crappy laptop. At some point, roughly a month after the first kiss, Brad had stacked the tumbled pillows, tugged Nate’s head down to rest on his shoulder, and said, “So, when’re you going home for Christmas? I’ll drop you at the airport if you want.” Nate had shivered as Brad’s fingers furrowed his hair, and just like that, they’d gone from fuck-buddies to something more. Teaching was hard. Living a continent away from his family was hard. Adjusting to a life in which he was no longer a wunderkind was hard. But being with Brad…that was so easy, in the beginning, that Nate was fooled into believing it would be easy forever.
++ ūnus, -a, -um, one, alone; (in the plural) only++California gets a cold snap in late July, some sort of freak weather event blowing in from the Pacific, and for about five days straight, the temperatures in Oceanside drop precipitously. Mornings are cool cool enough for Brad to pull a fleece on when he comes back from the beach. He sits out on the deck drinking coffee and waiting for the sun to reach him. Idly, he flips through one of Nate’s books. He should do the adult thing and just pack up the few things Nate left in Oceanside when they…well, Brad refuses to call it a break-up. It’s been nearly three months since Brad put the truck in gear and left Nate behind in his apartment parking lot. But Nate never actually told him to go away and never come back. Of course, Brad hasn’t called or texted or emailed: he doesn’t want to give Nate the opportunity to tell him to go away and never come back. Still, Nate hasn’t called or texted or emailed, either. Everything is just as they left it on a Saturday afternoon in May, right down to the Dartmouth t-shirt, the toothbrush, the half-dozen books-still in Brad’s house.
Brad puts down Nate’s book. He should start getting ready for work-a part-time gig that requires enough problem-solving to keep his brain from turning to mush but that could never be construed as world-changing. Brad is done with trying to change the world. That's why, when his grant at Mathilda had ended in December, he’d moved on to something else. He hadn’t discussed the decision with Nate, and it hadn’t made much of a difference with their relationship because the job hadn’t made much of a difference to Brad. It was a challenge: he’d agreed to do it to see if he could, and like all of his challenges, he moved right on to the next one when it was complete.
Well. Brad thumbs through the book. Maybe he didn’t move on completely. There’s another gust of wind. It’s July, but it feels almost like fall, which makes Brad think of the beginning of school.
++ ūllus, -a, -um, any++Nate needs Tacitus to finish this lesson plan, and he can’t find his copy. He has a sneaking suspicion that he left it at Brad’s place, but thinking about that feels like a mental bruise: sore when you push too hard. He remembers lounging in the ugly neon hammock Ray brought back from an ill-conceived trip to Tijuana, reading after a run. He’d lost the final sprint to Brad, as he always did, which meant Brad got the first shower (which meant Nate would give him about ten minutes and then go join him under the fabulous water pressure, as he always did). Brad’s house had the Spartan simplicity of a base camp, but the bed, the shower, and all related linens were top-notch…Nate realizes that his thoughts have wandered right up the coast to Oceanside. That’s happening more and more, instead of less. He’s pretty sure that’s not the way a break-up is supposed to work.
Of course, if they were really, definitively broken up, he would just call Brad up and demand the return of his book. Or at least chicken out and buy a new copy. But he doesn’t: somehow that feels like admitting something. Instead, he thinks there might be a copy in his trailer at school on the brick and board shelves that Brad-but he’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about Tacitus. The Mathilda copy is not his preferred translation, but he’ll make do.
++++Someone should have collected the key to the trailer that is Nate’s “extension classroom,” but in the chaos of June, no one ever had. Well, Nate thinks as he crosses the football field, that’s one advantage to Mathilda’s overcrowding. He'd crossed this same field exactly two years ago, as a brand new teacher. But today there’s something… different about the trailer.
Nate can see in greater detail as he approaches. The sides, which had weathered to a scaly, grimed beige, are now a uniform battleship grey. The screen that Mike Guitierrez busted out of the left-hand window (“So on accident, Mr. F. Honest!”) is now repaired with more than duct-tape. And there’s someone-is that Ray?-perched on the roof.
“S’up, homes!” shouts Ray when he catches sight of Nate.
Somewhere inside the trailer, Brad yells: “Ray, a little respect for your betters would not be entirely out of place.”
Ray stretches out on the roof so he can hang upside down in the doorway. “How do you know I’m talking to my betters? I could be out here talking to fucking Trombley for all you know.”
“If it’s approaching on two legs, Ray, I think it’s safe to assume it’s surpassed you, evolutionarily speaking.”
“Even Trombley?” Ray yelps. “Trombley?!”
“Don’t care,” Brad calls, shortly. “If it is Trombley, get him to hold those wires while I try-”
Nate never learns what Brad is planning to try, because he stops talking when he reaches the doorway and sees Nate. He’s wearing jeans and steel-toed boots and an old PT shirt with his name stenciled on it, the kind he retires for chores around the house. Nate knows the back is worn threadbare from his field pack, the outlines of his tattoo vaguely visible through the thin fabric. Nate also knows every millimeter of that tattoo. There is some knowledge you just can’t unlearn.
Brad looks at Nate. Nate looks at Brad.
“Not Trombley,” Nate says finally.
Suddenly, above them, there is a burst of music: Johnny Cash. Ray nearly falls off the roof trying to get to his cellphone. “S’up? Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. See you there.”
“Yo,” Ray slithers off the roof, surprisingly graceful. “Brad, that was Walt. He says to tell you slavery’s been outlawed, for like, a hundred and fifty years. Which I do kinda think I learned all about in Espera’s class, but you know how Mr. Espera likes to go on and on about things and I might not have been totally, like, paying a lot of attention. But Walt takes kick-ass notes, so I really think you should trust him on the slave thing. So, anyway, Walt says you gotta let his people go!” Ray concludes, earnestly.
It takes Brad a moment to reorient his attention from Nate to Ray. “And where exactly will you go, Ray?”
Ray shrugs. “Dunno, probably Dairy Queen. Beth Kilmer works the afternoon shift and she has the hots for Walt, so she gives him free stuff.”
Wordlessly, Brad pulls out his wallet and tosses it to Ray, who extracts some cash, and tosses it back. He looks back and forth from Brad to Nate like he’s going to say something, but finally just gives an awkward little wave-“Peace out”-and sets off across the playing fields.
“Did you actually break into my trailer?” Nate asks at last.
Brad finally seems to realize that he’s still holding a pair of electricians’ pliers is his hand and tucks them away into his toolbelt. But then he’s got nothing to do with his hands, so he settles at parade rest.
“Maybe. I prefer to think of it as liberating the fusebox. The wiring is almost done. You won’t have to teach Latin in a firetrap.”
Nate thinks Brad wouldn't want him teaching under any circumstances, but he doesn't say that. He’s had a lot of time to think about it, and he suspects Brad isn't angry about work-at least, not about Nate's work. What he does say is, “I can be committed to more than one thing, you know.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” Brad allows.
“I’m not afraid of hard work,” Nate replies. “And it would be worth it, to me.”
“I was on the payroll here. Mathilda pay is for shit.”
“I’m not talking about Mathilda.”
“I’ll still hate your job,” says Brad, warningly.
“But as long as I don’t hate my job…?”
Brad shrugs in the direction of the trailer, a casual lifting of one shoulder that is meant to express how completely he doesn’t care-it’s a gesture that Nate didn’t even realize he’d missed until he sees it. “I don’t understand how this can make you happy.”
“Can you just trust me when I say that it does? It really does.”
Brad sits down on the landing of the rickety wooden steps leading up to the trailer. His long legs dangle practically to the ground, but he can look Nate square in the face. “I trust your judgment. I do. But, the thing about work is…Nate, it’s just work. It pays the bills, but even if it feels like you’re doing something worthwhile now-it won’t make you happy forever.”
“Maybe not,” it’s Nate’s turn to shrug as he steps into the space between Brad's knees. “But I don’t need work to make me happy forever. That’s what I have you for.”
Gently, Brad shifts the tips of his left-hand fingers from his knees to the hem of Nate's t-shirt, the only part he can reach without being completely ridiculously gay about touching. “So,” he says, as casually as if the last three months never happened, “Walt and Beth Kilmer?”
Nate grins, flooded by relief as buoyant and encompassing as the tide. “It'll never last.”