Fic: Light up the trenches where my heart lies (until I can see again) - part one.
i.
Nate thinks that everything really went downhill since the invention of twitter. Before that, all that his stalkerish tendencies amounted to was an occasional google search. He managed to avoid Myspace like the plague, fortunately, considering the seizure inducing backgrounds and fonts, but with the twitter, well.
Brad’s twitter is not run by him. The occasional turn of a phrase hints at Ray, possibly extensively edited by Walt, judging by the absence of four letter words. Nate’s not desperate enough for the information to visit it often, or to make a mistake of following, but he visits sometimes. Often enough.
And it is from the twitter account that he learns Brad has signed on for Screwby. The news comes three hours after Nate called Janice and said that yes, his schedule problems have been dealt with and he can definitely take the role. It’s five minutes before Mike calls and asks how Nate feels about working with Brad Colbert once again.
Mike’s probably not the first person who’s going to ask this in the upcoming days, but he’s the only one who knows something akin to the truth. He probably suspects the truth, too.
Mike’s been the one constant in his life, for the last six years. You could make an argument that so has Brad, but Brad isn’t exactly in Nate’s life anymore.
“You could always back out,” Mike says, in a tone that’s reasonable and calm and makes everything sound like a very good idea, like the smart thing to do.
“I want this movie,” Nate points out. They both know that, they’ve been badgering the scheduling agreement for weeks now, and Mike has had a few very irritating calls from Vancouver. Nate wants this role. The question that remains, the question Mike isn’t asking, is whether he wants to stay away from Brad Colbert more.
“You’re going to be pretty much useless anyway, if you’re going to mope all the time.”
“Have you read the script? Brokenhearted and shattered is exactly what they’re looking for.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, a hint of worry in his voice. And by hint Nate means it’s really fucking obvious. “Nate.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He realizes those are famous last words. He has said them in the sweeps episode of the second season, right before he got stuck in another reality with no way back.
Good times.
ii.
It says ‘Executive Assistant’ on Walt’s business cards. It probably says so on his contract, too, but neither he nor Ray ever paid attention to that one, really. What it should be saying is ‘Damage Control, Babysitting, and Primadonna Wrangling’.
At least he’s paid rather well, in both money and blowjobs. He’s been offered other positions more times than he can count, but Ray always counters with a ‘position’ of his own, and, well. Brad says Walt should have his brain checked, because latent masochism could stem from some serious underlying issues, but Brad hired Ray as his publicist, so he has absolutely no higher ground to stand on.
Speaking of Brad, who is responsible for the latest crisis... Well, not actually responsible, but that’s how Ray will see it, in-between a few rants about Nate fucking Fick and his artistic fucking choices.
At least Mike Wynn had the presence of the mind to call them first, before one of the journos asked Brad about his feelings on once again working with Nate. It’s the end of summer, the blockbuster season is almost over, the comic con is over and done with, and the news are slow. Someone is bound to remember the show and go for a puff piece on reunited friends.
Yeah. Walt needs caffeine. And Ray will definitely need caffeine, or he’s bound to start looking for nicotine patches, and that never ends well. (Oprah still avoids Ray and it’s been years. It takes skills and Ray has them in spades.)
“You have that face,” is the first thing Ray tells him when Walt enters his office.
So much for easing him into the thing. Walt sighs and places the coffee cup on the desk, right next to Brad’s action figure. Walt thinks Ray keeps it to piss off Brad whenever he comes by, but if that’s not the case then... so many jokes, so little time. “What face?” he tries for the innocence. It never works, Ray knows him too long and regrettably too well.
“And coffee. I told you, when you have bad news it’s best to distract me with a blowjob. Or you know, a quick fuck over my desk. I know you think Brad’s Thor figure is watching us, but seriously, he wouldn’t judge. Well, he would judge, the repressed bitch he is, but he’d like it anyway.”
Walt isn’t even going to dignify that with a response.
“More cast members for Screwby have been announced. You’re not going to like it.”
“What, did they hire Miley? That was a rumor that didn’t want to die..”
“Worse.”
“Worse? Seriously, Brad would go into an epic bitch fest if he had to work with Hannah Montana, you know he once caught one episode when he was stoned and it traumatized him for life. I know, I was there. I might have been the one to bring the joint and put on the Disney Channel, too, but you didn’t hear that from me,” he pauses to take a long sip of his coffee. A sip that deals with half of the cup, Ray has absolutely no gag reflex. Walt is happy to share this bit of information, he really is. “So, who’s fucking worse than Miley Cyrus?”
Walt shows him the screen of his blackberry.
Even he is impressed with the string of obscenities. Years of working with Ray, and years of...doing something else with Ray, and he still can be surprised. It’s good, keeps them romantic and shit.
“Yeah. That’s seriously fucking worse than fucking Miley Cyrus,” Ray says, after a good few minutes, when he’s slowly running out of steam.
That, yeah.
iii.
They met two weeks before the shooting of the pilot on Alternate. It was short notice, but Nate had come in to the project late, after they decided the previous guy just wasn’t a good fit for the character or some other bullshit. Brad didn’t like the previous guy, but that wasn’t saying much, he hated most people on principle, until they could prove they weren’t complete idiots.
The guy wasn’t really a complete idiot. Some parts were missing. Like, his brain. Or any kind of a sense of humor. And as Ray had so helpfully pointed out, when Brad Colbert called you on being humorless...
But then there was Nate.
Nate, who was really fucking smart, and whose sense of humor was occasionally so dry you shouldn’t strike a match around him. Brad probably was a goner during the first week, he just didn’t know it yet.
He vaguely remembers their first meeting. He’s been meeting people the whole week, the cast and the crew, all the unfortunate ones stuck in Vancouver in the worst weather in years, and Nate hadn’t really stuck out. Brad remembers thinking he looked like he’d need parents’ permit to be there.
Two weeks later they were waist deep in the mud, in a heavy rain from the rain machine, doing what seemed like the hundredth take of the same bit because Ferrando just wasn’t fucking happy with anything, and they were fumbling for the gun again and again while Brad’s fingers were turning into icicles.
He wasn’t even going to think about the state of his dick and balls. Not the best day ever.
“Why the fuck are we even doing this?” he muttered under his breath, rubbing his forehead and quite probably getting mud all over it.
“Raising the artistic value of the piece,” Nate told him earnestly. “I’ve been assured of this,” he added, and his face was guileless, serious and eager, and for a moment Brad bought it. For a moment he wanted to groan and slap his palm over his face, except he didn’t want to inhale more mud than he already had.
And then Nate smiled, starting with a small tug at the corner of his mouth, his eyes shining like he couldn’t contain his mirth and Brad shook his head, couldn’t help it but snort. “You fucker,” he told Nate, who seemed to be taking this as a compliment. It might have been meant as a compliment.
Nate laughed and ducked his head, right before Ferrando stopped talking to his assistant and turned back to them. “Let’s try this again,” he told them.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we? I’m pretty sure the next scene you’re shooting is the hotel room one, and I definitely don’t want to stand in the way of those artistic values,” Nate said, moving on to his spot, long fingers tightening around the gun.
When Brad tackled him that time, he might have been doing it with a little more intent.
iv.
Before Alternate, Brad had done two other tv shows. One was a short-lived drama on Fox, cancelled after six episodes, after Brad appeared in the fifth one, in what was supposed to be a recurring arc. It was there to be seen on dvd, with four more episodes in which he actually had something else to do than smile ominously and make vague threats towards the main character.
The other one was a sitcom on CBS. Yes, he still can’t get over that one.
It lasted for a season, ensured him an obscene Christmas card every year from Lizzie Caplan, and apparently made certain parts of online fandom very interested in screen capping a certain scene.
Brad didn’t care what the people online were saying, he didn’t remember getting naked at any point of that day, there was no way his dick was on the screen.
Lizzie’s Christmas cards suggested otherwise, but that was Lizzie. What could you do.
Alternate was the first he actually enjoyed doing. There were two movies in between and a few guest spots on procedurals, but he stopped before the full CSI trifecta. There was at least one show that he refused to be seen on, and Ray had backed him up, with a few rather interesting comments on the Sunglasses of Justice. Brad didn’t ask.
With this show, he was actually having fun. And it wasn’t only because he genuinely liked his co-star (the weird sort-of friendship he struck with Caplan notwithstanding. She reminded him a little of Ray, and that wasn’t exactly a compliment), the show wasn’t actually bad. You didn’t often get a chance to play different versions of the same character on a daily basis.
Second season, Nate’s character got stuck in an alternative reality and Brad went through seventeen different universes in three episodes. It was pretty damn epic, if you listened to the fan boards. Which they usually didn’t, but when Poke got drunk, he printed out the fan fiction. It was actually kind of fucking scary.
By the second season Brad was already well and truly gone. He wasn’t stupid, he figured it out during the hiatus, when Nate’s texts were something he looked forward to, something that sent his heart racing.
Four weeks into the hiatus, Nate showed up on his doorstep, heralded by a single e-mail of ‘I’m in the neighborhood, you have time?’ It probably wasn’t even an excuse, Nate’s oldest sister lived an hour away, but Brad could hope regardless, think that he wasn’t just a convenient distraction for an afternoon.
Ray had called it months before, told Brad to fucking watch out, that no one wanted to deal with him losing it and crawling under any vehicles. In Brad’s defence, he only had done that once, after Julie. Nate was nothing like Julie, even apart from the obvious. When Brad pushed, always a bit too far, dry jokes that just bordered on inappropriate, Julie got confused and doe-eyed, sweet but surprised. Nate just pushed right back, wry and bemused. It was surprisingly attractive.
And then there was acting. Julie never understood how Brad could hate almost everything about it, complain about the idiot directors and self-centered co-stars, and yet love it so much. Only other actors got it, and even then not always. Nate, however, Nate came alive when the camera started rolling. Not that he wasn’t fascinating away from the set, Brad could fucking attest that it was difficult to take your eyes off him... but he was something else when inhabiting a character.
Nate had done theatre before the show, and Brad teased him mercilessly about switching to the low-brow entertainment, everyone did, it became a running joke around the set. But fuck, if he had known Nate at the time, he would have been buying front row tickets for every night.
And let him rephrase that one. It hit a little too close to home.
Ray called it months before it started, and he was more than right, even though Brad would never tell him that to his face. Ray warned him Nate would break his heart.
In all fairness, though, he was the one to break Nate’s first.
v.
A few weeks after the first season wrap-up, Nate was visiting Sarah, catching up with his nieces after months of being stuck in Vancouver. It’s not that he didn’t like Vancouver, but it was the same people all the time, everyone knew each other a little too well, the same stories were told over and over again, until the subsequent retelling spun them out of control.
Vancouver, however, had Brad.
He almost didn’t notice at first. Haley and Annie had a new pup, Sarah had a new job, and Charlie was working on a tree house for the girls. It was all rather time-consuming and Nate didn’t mind at all.
Except that on the second day he took a photo of the puppy peeing on the TV Guide with them both on the cover and couldn’t not send it to Brad. They texted each other so often that Sarah started to wonder out loud whether he had a girlfriend in Canada.
She fancied herself very droll.
“It’s just Brad,” he said, and it felt a bit like lying, his face flushing, his ears burning. For an actor, he was a really bad liar, especially when he tried to lie to his family. But he wasn’t, this time, and so it was all very puzzling.
“Just Brad,” Sarah muttered. “The internet has some fun ideas about you two,” she told him cheerfully. At his look, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, go google yourself.”
He didn’t. But he e-mailed Brad and asked whether he had some time to meet up. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
And when Brad opened the door, leaned against the doorframe expectantly, small smile tugging at his lips, Nate’s stomach turned, his body warming under Brad’s gaze. He should have seen it coming then, but he ignored the feeling.
“Obviously, your life isn’t very exciting without me,” Brad said cheerfully.
“I’m still waiting for the glamour of our coveted profession to kick in,” Nate agreed.
“Nothing so far?”
“Nothing at all,” he nodded, stepping inside, his hand brushing against Brad’s side as he did, his fingers aching. “I’m probably just doing it wrong. Or maybe I’m just not a very glamorous guy.”
Brad gave him an indescribable look and shook his head. “Ray says it’s Trombley’s episode on CSI tonight. He plays a psycho,” he added.
“That’s a stretch. We should make popcorn. Are you TiVoing it?”
“Are you kidding? Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Brad said quickly, his tone catching strangely, making Nate look up. That was new.
That feeling, Brad’s gaze, the way he hesitated, lingered a bit too long when he looked at Nate, it was new and terrifying and a bit wonderful.
vi.
People sometimes ask why did Ray come to work for Brad. Or why Brad hired him, or how they met, or whatever the fuck. Some morons ask how on earth is Brad putting up with Ray, but they don’t know shit, because Ray is a fucking brilliant publicist, especially when it comes to the strange and the fucking impossible.
For everyday mundane stuff and damage control he has Walt. When there’s a hooker scandal, Walt’s the person you want to handle the press. But when it’s an unfortunate incident of a drunk soap star finding himself buck naked on top of a palm tree, this is where Ray comes in.
Brad doesn’t do naked on top of palm trees, and the whole town is really disappointed about that, but still. Ray knows how to handle Brad, he’s seen him through the bad (Julie) and the worst (Nate).
When people ask how Ray and Brad met, he sells them one of four stories. Each of them is brilliant, neither of them is true, although Ray is partial to the one about the donkey.
Sometimes people ask Brad, and he just shrugs. “One day I woke up and he was there,” he says, with a put-upon grimace.
It’s something like the truth, but not really all that close.
Back to the initial question, though: Ray came to work for Brad because any other person would start cutting themselves two months into the whole handling Brad business. That, or stabbed Brad in the neck with a fountain pen, only it would be pretty damn hard to stab Brad with anything, the fucker did the intense martial arts training with Rudy fucking Reyes and he liked it. If that’s not a sure sign of insanity, Ray doesn’t know what is.
“You can’t hide from me, motherfucker,” he announces the moment he gets to Brad’s house. Technically, the moment he breaks into Brad’s house. He has a key, but he stole it. But he has had it for two years now, and Brad never changed the locks, and it’s obviously his retarded way of telling Ray he desperately needs him.
Brad is, of course, hiding. In the fucking garage, because where else. Oh, he’d tell you he’s working on something something complete and utter bullshit, but Ray knows better. He sits down on the ground and tilts his head. “So. This shit sucks hairy balls,” he says without a preamble.
Brad doesn’t even bother to look at him, just turns the screw viciously. It probably can’t go any further in, but Brad is just in that kind of mood when he’ll fucking try, and then hit it with a hammer. Sledgehammer, maybe.
Ray is gonna go and hide that Mjolnir replica. And a few other choice things.
“Hairy balls, Brad. It’s going to be a trainwreck, I can tell.”
“You blowjob skills must be amazing, because I’m pretty sure Hasser doesn’t keep you around for your sunny disposition,” Brad finally deigns to answer, pausing in his systematical torture of his favourite bike. It’s really bad.
“Fuck you, I’m delightful.”
Brad sighs and replaces the screwdriver in his toolbox, then lies back, his eyes wide open as he stares at the ceiling, hands still by his sides. Ray shifts, lies down beside him. It’s such a pussy chick movie moment he wants to choke himself. “I think I had a fucking joint somewhere,” he says, patting his pockets.
Brad snorts, rolls his eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he says, and at least he doesn’t fucking try to assure Ray that he is fine now, because Ray would find the fucking Mjolnir and smash his toes.
“Famous last words,” he says absently. He does find the joint in his back pocket.
vii.
Ray thinks his problems started around the time they were shooting the third episode of Alternate.
They probably started a long time before that, when Ferrando hired Nate fucking Fick, or when Brad decided he liked dick just as much as he liked pussy, or when Julie fucked Brad over so well all she left were broken pieces Ray was trying to put together with duct tape and blind hope.
So, the third episode was the symptom, not the problem itself, but this was the first moment Ray took notice. Brad had been uncommonly cheerful for the last few weeks, but Ray had been busy with trying to reign in Rebecca’s tantrums and smoothing things over at the C fucking BS, BS standing for just what you think it would, and he mostly communicated with Brad over the phone, so the cheerfulness could have been explained by, whatever, Brad scoring some good ‘shrooms in Canada.
But Ray was on the set for the third episode, mostly so he could bug Walt into finally giving up his excuse for a job and coming over to the dark side, or mostly just Ray’s side. That side was fucking awesome.
The third episode had Olivia’s character - not her real character, mind, but one of the other versions from the other verses, or whatever the fuck, Ray didn’t care about the plot all that much - tie Nate up in a hotel room. You could tell the show was classy by little things like that, you really could.
They were between takes and Olivia was getting her make-up redone, as you apparently couldn’t be playing bondage games with people from other realities and have your lipstick smudged, and Nate didn’t even bother to get out of the ropes, it would be just a few moments before they were back to shooting. He just sat up a little and chatted pleasantly with the make-up girl and with Brad, and it was Brad’s intent expression that got Ray’s attention.
Seemed like Brad found another human being he actually liked, and that shit just didn’t compute.
Ray was pretty sure Brad loved him, in his own way, but most of the time he sure as hell didn’t like Ray, and that was fine with everyone, because for a good share of time Ray hated Brad’s guts. It was what made their friendship so fucking beautiful, homes.
But there was Nate Fick, saying something with a barely hidden smirk and getting Brad to shake his head, flashing his teeth in an honest to god full-on smile. That was...
Yeah, no. Nate shifted, arms twisting in the restraints, his shirt riding just that little bit up, and Brad’s fingers twitched, edging ever so slightly towards his dick. Not that Ray was watching Brad’s fucking dick, but he was watching Brad, for the signs of the impending apocalypse, and there was one of them, plain as day.
“Alright,” Olivia said wryly, kneeling on the bed and brandishing a kick-ass knife. “Ready when you all are. Colbert, you’ll have your turn,” she added, waving the knife at him teasingly and Ray thought that fuck, that wasn’t actually the turn Brad was interested in having.
And of course Brad would go from moping about Julie to falling for pretty green-eyed straight boys, because that wouldn’t end in a fucking trainwreck.
“I don’t think Brad would need a knife,” Nate said laughingly, sounding like it was an in-joke, making Olivia laugh. But the thing was, the way he glanced at Brad made Ray’s blood run cold. Just about the only thing worse than Brad falling for a pretty straight boy would be him falling for someone interested in him, someone bound to fuck Brad over sooner or later and break his heart into too many pieces for Ray to pick up.
“I don’t fucking believe you,” he told Brad, who looked at him blankly, like he had absolutely no idea what Ray was getting at.
He probably didn’t, and that only made it worse. No advance warning and no way of executing a timely retreat before he was in over his head.
Some days, Ray just thought he would be better off just giving up. And possibly chaining Brad up somewhere where he couldn’t get into trouble.
Too bad there were federal laws against kidnapping and shit.
viii.
They went to the Comic Con during the summer after the first season. Olivia couldn’t be there, she was shooting a movie in New York, and so it fell to Nate and Brad to put in an appearance. Poke tagged along, but disappeared right after their gig because Gina’s movie panel was right after.
There were three important lessons to be drawn from Comic Con, apparently. First one was that while fans were absolutely lovely in the one-on-one situation, en masse they were absolutely terrifying. Still lovely, but really scary. Poke even warned them about the slash questions beforehand, because apparently you couldn’t have a tv show with two male leads and not inspire that kind of fannish reaction, but Nate was still surprised when the question actually came.
Brad, however, just leaned back in his chair, balancing it on its back legs. It seemed like it might topple over any second. “I’ve read one,” he admitted, to the general sound of approval from the audience. “We were pirates. I believe that the author wouldn’t know historical accuracy if it stabbed them with its hook, but some of the things they’ve written about Nate are strangely on the nose. He really is that much of a prissy princess.”
Nate kicked his chair, then sent him a pleasant smile when Brad had to hold on to the table’s edge for balance. “Of course, that’s Brad’s definition of anyone who can actually use a knife and a fork,” he said mournfully, reaching out to stop Brad from tipping his chair again. If his hand lingered a little longer on Brad’s thigh then, well, the table cloth hid it anyway.
The second lesson learned at the Comic Con was that Brad was a giant geek. Nate knew that, of course, no one could have a watch that needed to be plugged to their computer and not give themselves away on that one, but the sight of Brad navigating between the booths with an intent expression on his face because he knows what he wants, thank you very much was definitely a highlight of the whole experience.
Brad turned heads, that much was obvious, some people recognising him from the show or any of his other projects, but some women, and some men, just looking at an extremely attractive guy currently geeking out over some contraption. And yes, Nate had known Brad was attractive, he stood out even in this business, and not only due to the height advantage. But the sight of Brad’s smile, curious and filled with the joy of discovery, aimed at the gadget he was turning in his hands, that was something else.
It wasn’t the slow burn Nate had been familiar with before, or the cautious pleasure of Brad’s attention turned at him. That was almost visceral, an intense need to keep that smile on Brad’s face. To make him happy.
Third lesson learned at the Comic Con, at thinkgeek booth and in the middle of a slowly moving crowd, was that Nate was in love with his co-star.
One hell of a first convention experience.
ix.
Walt never quite understood why Ray was freaking so much about the whole Brad and Nate thing.
When you met Brad for the first time and been around him for an extended period of time, like Walt had on the set, you would be excused for thinking that either he and Ray were functionally married, or that Ray had a well-developed stalker obsession (except that Brad technically paid him for that. Probably.). You could have thought, when Ray took to glaring at Nate over his gigantic travel mug of the worst coffee Walt had ever smelled, that Ray was jealous, and for no reason whatsoever.
“Wouldn’t fuck Brad if you gave me a ladder to climb him,” Ray snorted when Walt tentatively broached the subject.
(Actually, what he did was ask if Ray was desperately in love with Brad and taking a hit out on Nate any time soon. When it came to approaching Ray, that was subtle.)
“I don’t even think they are interested in each other like that,” Walt pointed out. If they were, it was a fucking strange courtship, filled with dry comments, Nate occasionally bringing Brad coffee he picked on his way to the set in that one coffee shop Brad deemed decent, and Brad keeping on tinkering with every piece of electronics Nate owned, to increase their efficiency in the areas Nate never used anyway.
Well, fine, Walt could admit there was something there.
It was called friendship. Someone could explain the concept to Ray, and demonstrate how it didn’t always include a worrying obsession over your friends’ sex lives.
“Yeah, well, fuck you, you weren’t there for the Julie thing,” Ray muttered.
“And I told you, not before dinner, and also, how bad could that have been?”
Walt, of course, knew the story. Everyone did. Ray told it like it was a joke. ‘Brad doesn’t date, didn’t you know? Women suck, and not in the fun way either’, but there was more than mockery to it, there was an underlying warning: Brad was damaged, and you were better off staying away, it was more than you bargained for.
Ray once told Walt that there were basically two reactions to the story when Brad himself told it, as he did sometimes, wry and with a fake self-deprecating smile. In the first case, people awkwardly changed the subject, laughed nervously and moved on. Others nodded, clapped a hand on Brad’s shoulder sympathetically and went for platitudes. ‘Her loss’ or ‘you deserve better anyway’. Like that wasn’t fucking obvious, Ray said. And it was fucking unhelpful, because Brad never quite believed that he did deserve better, because Julie was the picture perfect vision of everything Brad thought he needed in his life, and what do you fucking do when the person you see as the center of your future rejects you?
“Get really drunk?” Walt suggested and Ray shook his head, segueing into his other favorite topic, the one that wasn’t Brad.
“Let’s. If you ply me with enough booze, I might even put out.”
Walt was there, some time later, when Nate heard the story for the first time. Despite himself, he was interested in the reaction. Maybe Ray’s insanity was actually sexually transmitted, but he was becoming overly invested in the Nate and Brad thing.
One of the two reactions, he thought, and Walt was curious which would it be. Ray craned his head, looking up from where he stretched on the floor where he was looking through the CDs and dismissing each one with a scathing comment. But now, he froze, a CD in each hand, watching Nate with suspicion, waiting for what he would say.
Except that Nate didn’t say anything. His eyebrows went up, and he held Brad’s gaze, the moment stretching out for long enough for Ray to mutter a curse under his breath, long enough for Walt to figure that yeah, maybe Ray wasn’t talking out of his ass after all.
After a moment, Nate shifted, leaned back a little, still looking at Brad. “Alright, I’ll just ask. That story bought you many drinks?”
The corner of Brad’s mouth twitched, moved slightly up. Ray looked at Walt like he couldn’t believe this shit. “Not nearly enough,” Brad said.
Nate nodded slowly, moving to stand up. “Come on, then,” he told Brad, and with a mock salute, Brad followed him out. “You guys coming?” Nate turned to Ray and Walt.
“No, we’re good,” Walt told him, holding on to Ray’s arm, as Ray looked like he was going to say something very inappropriate.
The moment the door closed, Ray sat up, dropping the CDs to the floor. “What the fuck was that shit? I’m pretty sure no one signed up for the whole soulful gazing into each other’s eyes made for each other retardation. I told Brad to stick to whores.”
Walt nodded. “You like Nate,” he concluded.
“He’s on probation. Still lot of time to fuck up,” Ray pointed out darkly.
part two