Archive of Our Own

“Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material.”

--Jane Austen, Emma

Prologue: Two Lost Birds

“Brian? Brian!”

The noises of the restaurant filtered back in-- where had they gone? -- along with Lindsay’s voice. Brian shook his head.

There was a couple seated across the table. Of course there was. They’d met them here. It was-- fuck . What was her name? Lindsay’s friend. And her husband-- also fuck . Brian wished he could blame this blank spot on the weird headrush that had hit him when he took his first sip of the too-sweet sangria. But he knew that, if he pulled up his Google calendar for Friday night, it would read “dinner w/ L’s friend” for a reason.

“Brian.”

Lindsay’s voice again, at his side. Shit, she was starting to sound pissed. Well, whatever. He’d been pissed at her earlier that week after-- shit. He couldn’t even keep track of what it was this time. They’d started talking again in time for a quickie before heading to the restaurant.

He turned to face her. God, she was cute, though. With her strawberry-blonde bob and the big round granny glasses. She was exactly his type-- for girls, anyway. Women. Which probably explained more than it should, honestly.

He expected them to be squarer, sometimes, though-- the glasses. When he looked at her. Sometimes it felt like they were supposed to be square, or not there at all.

Lindsay took the wine glass out of his hand. He’d been holding on to it too long. She took a sip before putting it on the table-- he kind of hated it when she did that-- and made a face.

“Mmph, that’s like candy. What is that-- apricot?”

“Peach,” he corrected.

“You hate peaches.”

He did. “I don’t know. It sounded refreshing.”

“O kay . Well, Sahil was just asking you about how we met.”

Sahil . Right. Sahil, husband of-- still nothing.

“Uh, right. Right. First meeting.” Brian rubbed his hands together and tried not to think about how much it felt like he was about to start a lecture, the way he put on his charm the undergrads smile. “So. It was at a bookstore.”

“Harvard Square Books,” Lindsay interrupted. She rolled her eyes, like he didn’t remember? He remembered. It didn’t seem that necessary to the story, but whatever.

“Yeah. Harvard Square Books. So, I was picking up some books--”

“For his dissertation.” Lindsay said it like it was cute, like a cat that someone had trained to ride a bicycle. It was rapidly becoming less clear to Brian why he needed to be the one to tell the story.

“Yes, for the dissertation. Anyway . Lindsay walked into my row--”

“ His row.” Lindsay and Lindsay’s friend/Sahil’s wife exchanged looks. Jesus.

“ The row. Fine.” Okay, this was the cute part. Slip a hand around her back. Good -- solid boyfriending. “So, I asked her, ‘are you sure you’re in the right section?’”

Blank stares across the table. Lindsay groaned.

Oh, shit. Right. He doubled-back. “It was, uh. Sorry, I skipped part of it. She had this-- t-shirt on, like--”

Crap. Now he actually could use Lindsay’s director’s track. He licked his lips, waiting to see if she would jump in. No such luck.

“It was, like-- children’s lit,” he filled in gamely. “The um, the Chronicles of Narnia --”

“Jesus, Bri. It was Fillory and Further .”

That was right. There had been a clock and some kind of fucking-- goats or something?-- on the shirt. The clock was the first thing he’d registered: the clock, with a keyhole, for some reason. He’d noticed the keyhole even before the stretch of the design over Lindsay’s fantastic tits. At first, anyway.

Brian put his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot which imperialist-fantasy talking-animal allegory it was.”

Lindsay’s friend made an aww -ing noise and reached across the table to squeeze Lindsay’s hand. “You’re too cute, babe. I loved those books when I was a kid.”

“I know, right? They were batshit.” Lindsay ran a finger against the nape of Brian’s neck, just along the hairline. “Do you know Bri never read them?”

“Seriously? I thought they were, like, middle-school-boy mandatory.”

Lindsay’s fingers brushed the skin just behind Brian’s ear and he grabbed reflexively for the still-full glass of sangria. Peaches-- But the side of his hand skimmed the serrated edge of his bread knife before reaching the glass.

“Brian hates anything with a king or a quest,” Lindsay was saying.

Brian sucked the scraped side of his hand into his mouth. It was bleeding.

“High king,” he murmured, as he licked away the taste of copper. “Fillory has a high king.”

Lindsay turned to him, annoyed. Not cute-couple annoyed, either. Just annoyed-annoyed. They’d fight again tonight. Maybe they could have sex first.

“I thought you never read them,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Brian said.

“Then how the fuck do you know what kind of monarch they have?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, then shut his mouth until the food came.

. . .

It was Friday night-- or, Saturday morning, technically speaking-- so of course Nigel was balls-deep in somewhere he oughtn’t be. But it wasn’t anywhere he really, really oughtn’t be, so it was fine. The perks of being a bartender: he got to check their IDs first. Super-useful in a town that was basically made of the kind of poor-little-rich-boys that Nigel had never had the heart to not seduce, even back when he’d been a poor-little-rich-boy himself.

Now, was it possible that Crew Team Captain-- finishing up any second now . . . any second . . . yup, nice -- had flashed a fake to get into the bar? Um. Maybe. But plausible deniability was a thing, and the more important thing was that Nigel had started his shift 580 days sober, and ended it 58 1 days sober. And if the cost was dragging a cute college boy back to his shitty studio as soon as his shift ended, before he could feel the itching in his fingers after serving other people’s drinks for six straight hours, well. The lesser vice was a worthy sacrifice for the greater.

“Shit, that was hot.”

Crew Captain rolled away and caught his breath, then reached over to run a hand across Nigel’s chest. Nigel scooted off the bed automatically. Physical affection outside the bounds of the sexual act-- not his thing. He didn’t even hug his friends, such as they were. He must have inherited some of dear old dad’s English reserve.

Fortunately, Crew Captain didn’t seem to need any mothering. Not surprising, but a relief all the same. Nigel usually had a very good eye for avoiding high-strung nerd types, that needed to be coached through and held after, but occasionally one snuck through. Never good.

( Always good. Always his favorite. Thus, devoutly to be avoided.)

“So I’m guessing I can’t get your number, then?” Crew Captain sighed, scratching absently at the firm skin of his stomach. Nigel just smiled enigmatically and shook his head, already tossing the skinny jeans and black button-down that made up his more-tips-please uniform into the hamper and tugging on a pair of yoga pants.

Crew Captain made some grumbling noises as he stretched his arms overhead on the mattress-- and damn , not a bad look for him, at all -- but started reaching for his pants without further comment.

While he worked on covering up all those really very nice muscles, Nigel walked the five feet from the bed to the counter that served as his kitchen table, where a stack of six second-hand paperbacks had been sitting since before his shift. Beneath them was a tuition bill with more zeros than he was comfortable acknowledging, even though there had honestly been more zeros on the price tags of some of the jeans that were now folded in the half-broken IKEA cubbies by the bed. Money was so different when it wasn’t your doting father’s.

Nigel picked the top book off the stack and hefted it in his hand. He could start it tonight, finally. Or he could put it off again, preserve the illusion that this was something not beyond his limited capacities for the real or the serious.

He put the book down. He always was fond of an illusion, if not so skilled at maintaining them as he might like.

Crew Captain had finished zipping his fly and crossed behind Nigel on his way to the door. He rested his chin briefly on Nigel's shoulder as he walked past. Too tall , Nigel thought, for no discernible reason.

“‘Kay. I’m going to show myself out,” Crew Captain said.

Nigel kept his back turned and nodded. “Thanks,” he added, an afterthought. “This was nice, um--”

“Idri,” Crew Captain filled in, apparently unoffended.

The overhead light suddenly flickered dangerously. Nigel’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say--”

“Idris. As in Elba, yeah.”

Right. That’s what Nigel had thought he’d said. The overhead light stopped humming.

Nigel gave a half-turn over his right shoulder and smirked. “That’s bullshit. Your name’s, like, Fred. You just use Idri -s to pick up devastatingly hot bartenders.”

Idris administered a light slap to the back of Nigel’s yoga pants. “This whole world’s an illusion, baby,” he said, and the light began buzzing furiously again, and kept doing so until he was gone.

As the door swung shut, Nigel gave one last guilty look at the little stack of books on the counter, before making his way back to the unmade bed, flopping onto his stomach, and pressing his cheek against the old patchwork quilt he’d picked up from somewhere. The patches-- like a collage with no pattern he could identify-- were warm and worn and comforting as always always against his face. He breathed in deep and closed his eyes, feeling desperately alone, and somehow less so than he had with Idri-- Idris ’s skin underneath his fingernails. Why , he didn’t know.

Chapter 1: The Nerd and the Flirt

“Quentin!”

Brian was walking out of the bookstore-- Harvard Square Books , okay, Lindsay?-- when an incredibly tall man with dark hair and a tight black shirt grabbed him by the arm of his button-down and beamed like he had been chasing Brian--or, Quentin, rather?-- for fifty years and finally found him. Which-- one, was aggressive and not-okay. But also-- two, um, hi .

“Uh, no, sorry,” Brian said-- Jesus --reluctantly. “I’m Brian.”

The man furrowed his patrician brow. “Is that not what I said? Brian. Brian Kincaid. You TA English. You’re working on a Ph.D? Kinda slowly, honestly?”

Brian gaped at the man. “Sorry, um--” He paused and peered more closely up into the guy’s dark eyes. “Do I know you?”

It wasn’t a line. And he wasn’t just saying that to assuage the image that popped into his head of a skeptical Lindsay-- who, honestly, might care about Brian hitting on a handsome stranger/ probable kidnapper, but also might not; Brian wasn’t really sure where they were this week. There really was something familiar about the guy. The eyes, maybe. Or. Just, something --

A car backfired around the corner and Brian jumped. The guy just pulled in him in closer by the arm. And, wow, he was really kind of strong. Not great if this was a kidnapping, okay if it was . . .  something else.

“You were at my bar a couple nights ago,” the guy said, just as the backfiring car’s owner got it moving again.

That was it. Brian and a couple other post-grads in his department had gone for drinks the other night and he’d-- well. Obviously. He’d-- noticed. The hot bartender. The place wasn’t one of his usuals; it was relatively new and closer to Porter Square, where they were less likely to run into their students. It was kind of swanky, actually which raised the question--

“Wait, you own that place?”

“Daddy dearest,” the guy said dismissively, waving one hand-- which was kind of typical for Harvard, actually, Brian thought, remembering his own basically happy but relatively unsophisticated upbringing in Scranton. “Not the point,” the guy continued. “You were there with friends. You were all bitching about hashtag grad life or whatever, and then you started bitching about your girlfriend, probably more than someone should bitch about their girlfriend to their single female friends, B-T-dubs--”

“You have-- um, a really good memory,” Brian said, the tips of his ears going a little bit red. The guy paused his ramble and shifted from foot to foot, looking like he didn’t know what to do with that observation.

“Thanks?” he finally said. “ Anyway , your friend with the impeccable kitten-flick-- who’s definitely gay, just in case you were barking up that tree--” the guy kept talking over Brian’s spluttering-- “said you should have just bitten the bullet and asked out one of the undergrads who kept throwing themselves at you after you read Captain Wentworth’s letter aloud in their seminar. And I recognized that name from the syllabus, so when I got home, I did a little Googling and confirmed that you are Brian Kincaid, you specialize in 19th century English chick lit, and two and a half semesters ago, you taught a seminar on Jane Austen and the domestic economy. Yes?”

Oh, it was a question. The last word, anyway. Brian could tell that his face must look he’d just been hit over the head with a two-by-four. But, honestly, maybe he had. He nodded slowly.

“Yeah, that’s-- that’s all me. I mean, I don’t really know about the phrase ‘chick lit,’ but-- Sorry, why are you here ?”

The guy flung one elegant hand out again, like he was sweeping the question aside. “You told your friend you were stopping by Harvard Square Books after Mayoff’s lecture on Thursday.”

“You were at the lecture?” Brian asked inanely, trying to make all the disparate pieces this guy was scattering like confetti--or glitter, he seemed like a glitter person, um -- fit together.

The guy shook his head.

“Then how?”

“ Google ,” he repeated, as if Brian was the space alien here. And maybe he was; maybe he’d come from some other planet and been dropped here in what only looked like Harvard Square. Either way, he was definitely not the same species as this beautiful, otherworldly guy who was either some kind of Holmesian savant bartender, or a serial killer, or both.

“Sorry,” Brian said, shaking his head, “Could we back up? I meant, why are you here? What do you--” want with me , were the next words, but Brian was low-key worried that if he said them, they’d come out breathy, like this was some third-rate porno, instead of a second-rate abduction.

The guy reached into his bag-- and oh Jesus, this was it. This was when the knife or the gun or the syringe or whatever came out. Jesus, after keeping his thumb hovering over the emergency call button every time he’d walked at night in the last ten years, Brian was going to die in a warehouse after being pulled off the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon because he couldn’t stop staring at the six-three, six-four of hell yes enclosing the hell no within.

But when the guy’s (really distracting) hand emerged from the bag, he was holding a dog-eared copy of-- “Northanger Abbey?”

The guy’s smile went tense. “Brian Kincaid. I’m having something of a book problem. And I need your help.”

. . .

“Wait, wait. What do you mean you don’t buy Cathy with Tilney?”

Brian Kincaid-- itinerant Ph.D. student, bleeding-heart patron-saint of panicking pseudo-students, and shitty boyfriend who had checked out virtually every girl who had walked past his perch at the end of the bar (and who’d been at least somewhat suspiciously open to being kidnapped by Nigel, although Nigel wasn’t thinking about that part)-- was apparently also the kind of person who referred to book characters by their nicknames.

Nigel handed a credit card back to the guy who was sitting three seats down from Brian, before letting himself lean back over the paperback that Brian was holding open on the bar.

“Look, right here-- the first scene together,” he was saying. “Tilney is so flirting with her; he’s talking about what she’s going to write in her journal about him later. There’s-- kind of lot of implied intimacy there, for a society in which unmarried men and women wouldn’t even be alone in a room together. Right? I mean, she’s alone, in the dark, in her room, probably in her bed--”

“Don’t read me your kinky Jane Austen fanfiction,” Nigel said, mostly to see Brian go red. It was definitely to see Brian go red that he added, “Wait, what am I saying? Please do .”

Brian obliged by going very red, although only at the tips of his ears. He took too large a swallow of his drink, and choked a little. It was, regrettably, charming.

“Now, Cathy,” Nigel went on, sliding a napkin smoothly across the bar to Brian, “that is definitely a fanfiction girl. The way she’s constantly got her head in her books, keeps trying to make life into one of her stories. If that girl hasn’t done some cosplay, I’ll-- Well. It doesn’t matter what I’d do, because she so has.”

Brian laughed out loud, and Nigel tried not to feel too pleased by the fact. “You mean, you think she’d be one of those people who goes to, like, Comic Con and stuff? Who dresses up as, like, Game of Thrones ?”

“I was actually going to say Fillory and Further ,” Nigel said. He’d never read those books (or Game of Thrones , for that matter, God bless Wikipedia), but he’d slept with a guy once who had actual posters up in his room, reproductions of the old-fashioned book jackets-- kind of vintage-cool, actually. Nigel hadn’t been able to stop looking at them. He only remembered two other things from that night: the sex had been mediocre, and he came harder than he had in his life. Alcoholism hadn’t been a good look on him.

“What is up with everyone and those books these days?”

“Not a fan?”

Brian just snorted his answer. “Fantasy isn’t my thing.”

Nigel bit his tongue and tutted. “I guess that explains why you taught a course on Jane Austen and domestic economy . Not much of a romantic in general, are you?”

Brian shrugged, even as his eyebrows did something complicated and pulled-down at the edges. “No, I guess I’m, uh. More of a realist.”

The opportunity to press was there , but Nigel wasn’t going to take it. That’s not what this was. He needed Brian’s help , that’s all. So he chose the lighter touch. “A realist who actually buys Cathy and Tilney as a couple.”

“You think she’s too much of a nerd for him?”

The question set Nigel back, wrong-footed. “No. No, it’s not that. Cathy is sweet. It’s just-- he doesn’t seem very serious, does he? I mean, he flirts, okay, but he kind of treats her like a kid sister, or like--”

He looked at Brian, who was watching him intently, with his head tilted to the side.

“--a puppy,” he finished.

Brian leaned in, with his arms on the bar. “Maybe that’s just, like, a defense mechanism. He’s obviously got a lot of stuff going on with how bad his parents’ marriage was.”

“A too-clever flirt with daddy issues, what a prize.” He should know .

Brian rolled his eyes, and-- excuse him-- there was no way Nigel had given enough hints that Brian should be able to look at him that knowingly . “I think he likes Cathy,” he declared after a long moment.

“Whatever you say,” Nigel spun on his heel to refresh a few glasses. He only moved a couple feet down the bar, though, and Brian took that as invitation to keep talking.

“Oh! Okay, what about all of the talk about fabric for dresses?” he said. “On the one hand, it’s showing that he understands women and the domestic economies they face-- yeah, ha ha-- but on another level, it’s about, like, what’s going to go on her body , right--”

Nigel couldn’t be sure if it was the lychee cocktails he’d been comping Brian, or if it was just the Austen, but Brian was looser and brighter than the scared, twitchy bunny he’d been when Nigel-- okay, fair enough-- had accosted him outside a bookstore with detailed knowledge of his resume and daily activities. It made Nigel want to push , see how bright he could go. It was only talking, after all. No real harm in it.

“So you’re saying every time two people talk about clothing, they’re actually talking about what they want to do to each others’ naked bodies.” Nigel felt a surge of something almost like deja vu, the rough weave of the rag in his hand suddenly giving way to something silkier ( vests , he knew, somehow), when Brian looked up from his book to give him a look both fond and incredulous, from his spot on the couch. No, at the bar .

“Not always, obviously,” Brian was saying. “But in context here--”

Nigel shook his head to clear away the unplaceable feeling from a moment before. “I don’t get the impression Tilney cared all that much about women’s bodies ,” he said, with a meaningful look.

Brian stopped short. “You’re saying you think Tilney is gay.”

Nigel tipped his head rakishly. He wasn’t testing the waters, not really. He was just-- playing the part. As usual. “ Now who’s writing Austen fanfiction.”

He was being facetious, obviously, but Brian tilted his head to the side, considering. “I mean, you’d need more evidence than the fact that he knows his muslin, but in my experience, that’s the kind of thesis that English profs totally jerk off to.”

Nigel suppressed the obvious question of what one particular English prof-- or TA, at least-- jerked off to. Instead, he faked a little shudder. “I don’t want to pass that badly.”

Except that he did, of course. And, honestly, he’d done worse for less.

Brian narrowed his eyes. Even though Nigel had only been talking to him for-- oh- - about three and a half hours now, actually, he could tell that a question was coming. He took the opportunity to do a refill check at the other end of the bar. When he made his way back, Brian was swirling the rocks in the bottom of his glass.

“Need a refill?”

Brian shook his head. “I should probably go soon.”

Nigel opened his mouth to say of course , you should get back to your (girlfriend) life , you’ve done your good academic deed for the day , but Brian spoke first.

“You didn’t say whose class it was, that has a paper due tomorrow. Finals for spring term finished last week. And summer session doesn’t start for another two weeks.”

Ah. Right . They’d made it here at last. “It’s not at Harvard.”

Brian nodded. He’d put that much together, apparently. “Where is it?”

Nigel made himself stand at full height. He wasn’t his father. He wouldn’t be ashamed of this. This was probably the best thing he’d ever done, other than not taking a drink, every day for the past 593. “Community college,” he said.

Brian’s eyes widened, just a little, but it happened. Of course it did. Nigel had counted the number of his ivies on his resume.

“I couldn’t possibly get into Harvard,” Nigel continued, haughty. Royal . “And I couldn’t pay for it even if I could.”

Brian had clearly been brought up too polite to point out the obvious, but his eyes still made a circle of the whole, happening, clearly lucrative bar.

“I told you,” Nigel said, “my dad owns the bar. Not me.”

“And your father’s not--”

Nigel could see Brian stitching the pieces of the story together all wrong. The unloved gay son, etc., etc.

“He’s quite supportive. Excessively so, actually.” The fourth or fifth exclusive rehab program was probably around the point that “excessive” had become a fair descriptor. “Just-- not for this.”

Brian’s confusion was almost a physical thing. Nigel sighed. “My family consider me-- largely ornamental,” he said. “To be fair, I haven’t given them much reason to think otherwise.”

“Have you-- tried secondary education, before?” Brian asked, with unbearable gentleness.

Nigel scoffed. “No. I informed my whole family after graduating by a thread from a very nice prep school that I was going to become an actor.”

And for a while, he’d given it a real try. He moved to New York, lived off of Daddy’s money. Got a few bit parts in reputable theaters, a few show-your-bits parts in dis reputable ones. He was cast in a pretty trippy staging of Henry V, title role, and when they’d put the crown on his head during the first dress rehearsal, it had felt right in a way he couldn’t understand. Nothing in his life had ever worked , but that-- somehow-- did. Then one of the stage lights took a nosedive, missing him by inches, and the production was suspended, and he spent the next month and a half in a state of near-perpetual blackout, going by the tattered remains of his memories from the period.

“Did that-- not work out?”

Brian was so polite that Nigel wanted to reach out and put a hand on his cheek. But he never did things like that. “No, it didn’t,” he said instead, gently.

“And you don’t want to-- keep trying that?”

Nigel closed his eyes, just for a moment. “I’m not the same person now, that I was then.”

“In what way?”

Nigel made himself meet Brian’s eyes squarely. “I’m 593 days sober. And-- I wasn’t then.”

Poor Brian looked like his eyes might actually pop out of his head. “You’re--”

“An alcoholic, yes,” Nigel said, sparing Brian from fumbling through euphemisms. “Recovering.”

Brian leaned in closer, and Nigel’s pulse sped up a little, in spite of it all. “But you’re a bartender ,” Brian said, almost a whisper, and Nigel wanted to smile and scoop him into a ball and cup him against his chest, if he was a man who did such things.

“Hence why I really, really would like to get that degree.”

Brian’s hand snaked forward across the bar, like he might try to squeeze Nigel’s arm. Nigel pulled back with what he hoped was a sympathetic smile, then found reasons to stay at the other end of the bar for twenty minutes or so.

When he finally made it back to Brian’s seat, it was empty, but there was a note on a cocktail napkin, folded and tucked inside Cathy and Henry’s first meeting.

“You should write the paper about what you said. It’s a good topic. Text whenever if you want to talk about it anymore.” Then there was a phone number, and below that another line of text, scrawled more hastily across the bottom, rounding a corner where space ran out: “I’ll be curious to hear what you think of Sense & Sensibility.”

Nigel placed the note back inside the book and slipped the whole thing beneath the bar, next to the phone he hadn’t checked all night. For the rest of the shift, he tried not to think that he’d gotten exactly what he’d actually wanted, when Brian Kincaid had walked into his bar two nights ago, with his kind eyes and nervous smile, and Nigel had felt more whole than he had since the night someone had rested a crown on his head.

Chapter 2: The Romantic and the Second-Choice

Brian’s day had been-- well. Shit, more or less. Starting with the text-fight with his brother that morning about the plans Brian didn’t have to visit their parents’ graves next weekend, building with yet another disa-fucking-pointed meeting with his dissertation advisor, building further with Lindsay’s not-mean-just-tired question when he walked in the door of the apartment to find her sorting through thumbnails on her macbook whether he wanted to talk about it, and culminating with Brian’s realization that no, he didn’t actually want to talk about it--or much of anything, really-- with the only person he said “I love you” to on a regular basis.

The one bright spot was the string of texts that had come in just as he’d been about to head down the street to pick up some pho while Lindsay went out for the night with her vis arts crew.

i have good news

drinks on me/my dad? any night this week

(but obviously tonight come onnnn)

also buckle up, bc I have *thoughts* about marianne and brandon

Brian didn’t have to think twice before changing direction mid-block, nearly colliding into two women on the narrow sidewalk as he turned. He probably should have thought twice, about that, or about the dumb smile spreading on his face as he tucked his phone back into his pocket. But. Well. It had been a shitty day, all right? Was it so bad not to want to look that hard at a bright spot?

And Nigel was becoming a really, really bright spot. After their first abduction/meeting, Brian had beaten himself up the entire long, not-totally-straight-line walk home for leaving his number on a cocktail napkin like an actual stereotype, and then for the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about it, even when he got home and Lindsay, oddly sentimental for some reason, was wearing just the Fillory shirt and no underwear and Brian spent the rest of the night pumping into her and whispering L, L , but still thinking a little bit about the way Nigel bit down the edges of some of his smiles. Lindsay had left before dawn the next morning, wearing a sexy sleeveless turtleneck and tiny skirt to fly back to Portland for a long weekend with her ex and their old friends, and Brian had allowed himself an extra half-hour to sleep in, which he spent staring stupidly at the Fillory t-shirt Lindsay had left on the end of the bed. It must have been a different one than she’d been wearing when they first met. Because the clock was there, but there was no keyhole. And there had been. He remembered. He’d been reaching for his phone to Google Fillory and Further cover art editions, when it buzzed with a message from an unknown number reading okay but how does one *write* a paper. asking for a friend.

In the two weeks since then, it had been a steady stream of texts-- mostly about freshman-level comp at first, and about Nigel’s increasingly outlandish speculation about Henry Tilney’s sexual preferences, but then also funny observations about people at the bar and don’t forget to eat something other than coffee today and please come rescue me it’s so boring in here tonight (said the recovering alcoholic whose #1 strategy is plying you w drinks) . It was a lot like that period of wanting to date someone and taking any excuse to be near them, but it was also sort of like making a friend, the real kind that you didn’t know one minute and then felt like you’d known forever the next. Brian wasn’t really sure which of those two things Nigel thought this was, which was why Brian was putting off the conversation that he probably needed to have with Lindsay if it was the first one. But Brian also knew exactly which one he wanted it to be, which was the reason he probably should have already had the conversation with Lindsay regardless. But, well. No one had ever called Brian brave.

When Brian finally finished the forty-minute walk from his apartment near Central Square to Nigel’s bar, he was winded-- he really, really probably needed to cut back on the cigarettes, Jesus-- and suspected that he looked it. His suspicions were confirmed when Nigel spotted him in the doorway and beckoned him over with a comically dismayed look.

“Fuck, Bri, did you run here?”

Brian-- Bri , God, he loved that; other people called him that, sure, but from Nigel, it was just, yeah -- slid onto the stool and gave Nigel the finger. Nigel smiled-- the bitten-off kind-- and reached under the bar for a glass.

“What can I make you tonight? And keep in mind-- we’re celebrating.”

That was right, Nigel’s text had said he had good news. Well, at least one of them did.

“Um. Something, like, fruity?”

Nigel smirked and it made Brian want to simultaneously slide to the floor and also reach over and pull Nigel in by the collar, but he did neither.

“Okayyy,” Nigel said. “Do I get anything more to go on?”

Brian shrugged one shoulder. “Surprise me.”

Nigel’s hands, always deft and sure, fumbled the glass for a moment, but he recovered it. “Why don’t you tell me what you don’t like,” he said once he had.

Nothing you’re offering , Brian wanted to say. But instead he cleared his throat and said, “Uh. Peaches, I guess? I don’t like them.”

Nigel nodded. “What don’t you like about them?”

They hurt to eat , Brian thought. “Too sweet, I guess,” he said instead.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Nigel said, already starting to gather ingredients.

“You’ve never eaten a peach?”

Nigel shook his head as he started muddling something with something else. “Allergic. Even the smell’s kind of overpowering, though. I get how they could be too much.”

As Nigel poured and shook and stirred, Brian watched entranced and a little sad that something Nigel did so naturally was so dangerous for him. Or maybe it wasn’t natural at all. Maybe Nigel was just a much better actor than New York had given him credit for.

Nigel finished his creation and placed it on a napkin, before sliding it across the bar to Brian. It was reddish-gold in color, shading down to a deeper purple-red at the bottom of the glass.

“Gin fizz with a plum shrub,” he said to Brian’s inquisitive look. “Anyway. Brace yourself. Good news incoming.”

. . .

Nigel had been watching the door on and off for near on twenty minutes now. Brian had snuck out the back on the pretense of a smoke shortly after Nigel had shown him the bright, shiny “83” in red marker at the top of his Northanger Abbey paper-- because, yes, Nigel was actually carrying it around with him like a first-grader excited to show off his report card, thanks ever so. Brian had made a sweet show of genuine excitement-- once Nigel had explained to him with a sigh that yes , he was very happy about an 83, the little nerd -- but he was clearly in a rough mood tonight.

Nigel caught his fellow bartender’s eye and reached under the bar for his own pack of cigarettes, shaking them until the other bartender rolled his eyes and nodded. Whatever. He could complain when his father owned the bar that provided their livelihoods. Nigel grabbed the paperback he’d stored under there, too, just in case, slipped it in his back pocket, and then snaked his way through the bar, out the same back door that he’d pointed out to Brian earlier.

Brian was grinding a burned-out cigarette under the toe of his canvas slip-ons, looking mad at himself primarily and the entire fucking world secondarily. Nigel thought about reaching out a hand to him, but he didn’t do that. So instead he just tossed his head in the direction of Massachusetts Ave. “Let’s walk,” he said, without giving Brian a chance to say no.

After a moment, Brian caught up to him, walking more quickly to make up for his shorter strides. “Um. Don’t you have a shift?”

Nigel tipped his face up to catch the moonlight. “Daddy dearest may not approve of my newfound academic ambition, but he’s not seriously going to fire me.”

“Oh my God, you’re the worst when you say shit like that, do you know that?” Brian was rolling his eyes and Nigel rolled his back.

“Yeah, okay, double-ivy--”

“Hey, I worked hard to get into those schools,” Brian shot back automatically. “Nobody just-- handed me anything.”

Nigel stopped mid-step. “Unlike me , you mean.”

Brian went tense beside him. “Shit, I didn’t mean-- No. I mean, yeah, you obviously had, you know, some money--”

That was one description for the multiple estates and, until a couple months ago, the very lovely penthouse apartment that was entirely Nigel’s own.

“--but you’ve obviously worked really, really hard. To get clean. And. Everything you’re doing with this class. I just-- Jesus, don’t listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m in a shitty mood tonight and I’m being a dick about it.”

There was something in Nigel that hated it whenever someone pointed out the effort he’d put into his sobriety. Something that felt like it was all bullshit, and he’d somehow persuaded the person in question into giving Nigel credit for something that he hadn’t actually done. Which was ridiculous. Because who else had it been, if not him? But he decided to deflect the conversation anyway.

“Why don’t you tell me what put you in such a shitty mood, then? Maybe it’ll make you less of a dick?”

Brian returned the smile that had been mostly implied in Nigel’s question, but it looked tired. “Maybe later? Why don’t you tell me your hot-take on Marianne and Colonel Brandon instead?”

Nigel lifted an eyebrow enigmatically, shy, suddenly, to talk about that just yet. “Why don’t I jump up on this bench,” he said, with a kick to the object in question, “and show you my Henry V? It’s good for a laugh.”

Brian returned the eyebrow raise, and it devastated Nigel. “Pretty sure that’s grounds for public indecency, and we are surrounded by law students, so…”

“Ha ha,” Nigel returned, jumping on the bench. “I meant my soliloquy , asshole. My Henry proper has never elicited laughter, I assure you.”

Brian gave another of the confusingly hot looks he gave Nigel sometimes, the one that made Nigel think girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend and what do we say to high-strung nerds . So Nigel started declaiming before Brian could say anything that would induce Nigel do something unforgivable like kiss his likely-straight almost-friend like they were soulmates returning to each other across timelines.

The performance was, Nigel could admit, perhaps not his best work, especially with the very sleep-deprived law students (even in summer, apparently?) shouting increasingly vulgar things out of the dorm windows, but Brian nevertheless looked dazzled. When Nigel gave a little bow, and jumped down from the bench, Brian’s eyes were blown wide.

“How are you so good at that?” he asked. “I totally believed you were really a king.”

Nigel fought back a flush. “Well,” he said, forcing himself toward casual. “My father is a lesser British lord, so it’s probably inevitable that there were some royal bastards somewhere in the bloodline.”

“Wait, what?”

Nigel suppressed a smile as Brian’s eyes went wider still. “My father is lesser nobility, my mother was a grad student at Oxford the same time that he was there . . . I don’t know, rowing things and fucking other things. She became one of the things he was fucking, much to his fiancee’s chagrin, and then nine months later . . .” He waved a hand in his own general direction.

“So, you are like, an actual bastard son of an English lord?”

“I know, I know. It’s like I am a Jane Austen character.”

Brian’s eyebrows knitted together, despite his enthusiasm. “Actually, very few of Austen’s characters were actual nobility. Even the wealthy characters tended to be--”

Nigel shook his head. Brian just couldn’t stop himself, and Nigel wished he didn’t find that as adorable as he did. “Always so practical,” he said with a sigh.

Brian’s face went hard to read at that, hopefully not at the fondness that Nigel hadn’t quite been able to keep out of the sigh. (Hopefully Brian hadn’t even heard the fondness that Nigel hadn’t quite been able to keep out of the sigh.) “Sorry,” he said. “I just meant-- it makes sense, you know?” He gestured to the bench where Nigel had tried for rousing monarch. “It’s like-- you’re a high king in your blood.”

Brian’s words-- so familiar, were they from something? -- seemed to hit a tuning fork somewhere in the air between them. Nigel could feel the buzzing in his ears. So could Brian, going by the way his shoulders hunched immediately, like he was trying to protect his ears from the sound. A few feet down the sidewalk, a transformer box exploded in a shower of sparks. Nigel grabbed Brian’s hand on instinct and pulled him away. They broke into a run and didn’t stop until they were a block away.

“Jesus, what was that?” Brian asked, sitting down heavily on a huge stone slab with the law school’s name carved into it.

“I have no fucking idea,” Nigel answered honestly. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and his lighter, but kept fumbling.

“Hey, your hands are shaking,” Brian said, taking the cigarette from his hand gently and lighting it himself. “Come on, sit down.”

Nigel shook his head, and paced a few feet further down the sidewalk, still waiting for his adrenaline levels to even out. When he finally turned around, his breath caught in his throat.

Brian had lit a cigarette of his own. He smoked it half-lying on top of the stone slab, propped back on a forearm, his knees bent up toward the starry sky. Everything about the moment made Nigel feel familiar and turned inside out at once, like walking into a negative image of the place you’d been born. But Brian seemed at peace, blowing smoke into the sky.

“What you said earlier,” he said softly after a moment. “About me always being so practical. I think that’s part of what’s going wrong with my thesis. And with Lindsay. With-- everything, maybe.”

Nigel took a step closer, but didn’t say anything, let Brian keep speaking.

“My whole life, I-- I’ve always tried to be so practical, you know? No romance, no fantasy. Just, like, Jane Austen and the Domestic Economy , right? But. But when I read these books, like I am again, with you. I don’t-- the practical stuff isn’t really what I want to write about. It’s not what I want , period.”

Nigel’s mouth was dry. He threw his cigarette on the ground. “What do you want?”

“I want-- love ,” Brian finally said. “I want-- I don’t know. Magic?”

“So you really are a Marianne, then,” Nigel said quietly. “Despite your mild-mannered Elinor exterior.”

Brian smiled as he took another drag from his cigarette. “Yeah, maybe I am.”

Nigel sat on the stone slab beside Brian. “Then don’t settle like she did. With Brandon. You should-- go for it. Whatever you want to write. Whatever you want to be.”

Brian came up off of his forearms so that he and Nigel were at eye level. “You think Marianne was settling? With Colonel Brandon?”

“Don’t you?” Nigel asked, entirely serious. “She loved Willoughby. That’s who she chose, when both options were in front of her. It was only when Willoughby wasn’t available anymore that--” Nigel trailed off, his voice scratching a bit in a way that must have been down to the cigarette. “She never would have chosen Brandon,” he finished, certain. “Not If her first choice were still available.”

Brian looked distressed at that, more distressed than a little book-club bullshitting called for, probably, but for some reason, it didn’t feel like bullshit to Nigel, either. It felt like it mattered.

“Maybe it wasn’t settling,” Brian insisted. “Maybe she just-- grew up? Figured out that what she wanted once wasn’t actually what she needed now?”

“Maybe,” Nigel allowed, without believing it for a second. “It’s a little convenient, though. That she magically grows up as soon as she realizes that she doesn’t have any other options.”

The thought made Nigel unaccountably sad, so he looked up at the stars. He startled when, a moment later, he felt Brian’s head come to rest on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Brian said, pulling back immediately when Nigel stiffened. “I forgot. You’re not a hugger.”

“No,” Nigel said, bringing his hand to Brian’s jaw and leaning in, staring deeply into nervous eyes. Nigel got the strangest feeling, sometimes, like he had been looking into Brian’s eyes for decades. It made him want to do dangerous things. Like-- “I’m not ,” he said, and that was all that he got out, before his lips-- acting on a memory all their own-- found their way to Brian’s.

Chapter 3: The Prejudiced and the Proud

sry abt the other night

(is it wrong that i kinda miss being able to blame it on being drunk?)

Brian nearly dropped the champagne in his hand. It had been four fucking days of radio silence from Nigel, after Nigel had kissed him-- yeah , that’s right, kissed him . Nigel had gone back to the bar after and told Brian to go home and it was all fine and he’d text, but Brian knew. Brian knew in that sixth-sense way that he had about Nigel, somehow, that it was not all fine. He’d texted Nigel, like, ten times the next morning, avoiding Lindsay’s eyes every time he reached for his phone, and gotten jackshit back ten times before he finally got the message.

Not quite as clearly as Nigel saying he’d rather be off the wagon again than to have chosen to kiss Brian sober, but it was like Brian was always saying. Nigel was a way more effective a writer than he gave himself credit for.

Across the room, Lindsay was talking about a photograph to some stranger (to Brian, anyway) looking beautiful and less bored than she ever did around Brian. Brian’s phone buzzed again.

anyway

there’s no paper on pride & prejudice apparently

so yay for u ur off the hook this week

go be all-knowing tutor to someone else for a while

Brian slipped the phone back into his pocket, wishing he could tuck away the ache in his chest as easily. He downed the champagne instead, and crossed the room to Lindsay. When he put his arm around her, and she shifted away, he tried to make himself feel, again, that it was so much better. So much more practical. When neither party gave a shit about the other. But it was useless. Because Brian had opened himself up to fantasy, had opened himself up to Nigel, and he missed them.

And he had the unsettling feeling that he had felt like this-- exactly like this -- before.

. . .

In his own apartment, Nigel placed his phone very carefully beside him on the patchwork quilt before turning back to the blank word document in front of him. This was fine. This was what he did .

And when had it ever served him wrong before?

Interlude: The Mosaic Makers

“ Q ?”

Quentin’s eyes flew open at the sound of his name. He’d blame it on parental instinct, but there was only one person in this world who called him that name, and it wasn’t their son.

Beside Quentin, Arielle stirred. He ran a hand lightly down her back and she settled, rolling over far enough that he could slip out of the tiny bed and pad across the cottage floor. He paused by Teddy’s new cot-- El was so proud of it, and Arielle hadn’t had the heart to admit that she’d switched out his makeshift creation for one carved by her brother, a person who’d actually used a saw before-- and smiled at their little boy sleeping peacefully, fat little fist half-smushed against his cheek.

The scene on the daybed outside wasn’t so peaceful. Eliot was shifting, restless, against the tangled sheets, his hands reaching out for someone he expected to be beside him, who wasn’t there.

“ Q ?” he whimpered again, and Quentin’s heart broke with it. He crawled onto the bed, pressing himself against Eliot’s back.

“It’s okay, El. I’m here,” he whispered into the tangle of dark curls.

Eliot relaxed against him, settling back into quieter sleep.

Quentin ran a hand over his hair, gently, trying not to wake him. Trying not to wonder what it was that haunted the nightmares Eliot shivered through by himself, out here.

“You know, don’t you?” Quentin whispered to his sleeping partner, ignoring the voice that said he would if you ever told him while he could hear you . “How much I--” Quentin stopped. “El. You know .”

. . .

“ El ?”

Eliot had nightmares of his own , about that voice, sounding that lost and scared. He dropped the flask of dandelion cider he’d been nursing for the last hour and rushed into the cottage. It was so much emptier inside, these days, without any of Teddy’s things. (Without Arielle ’s things, either, of course. But that almost seemed normal now.)

Quentin was alone in their bed, curled in on himself, the same little-boy way he’d had at twenty-five and thirty-five and now at forty-five. When the two of them had first arrived in Fillory, the nightmares had been a mainstay. He’d called for Alice, for his dad-- even for Margo, once, and Eliot had had to bite his own hand hard enough to draw blood to stop from crying when he heard that . They’d come back in force after Arielle-- of course they had. Eliot could still remember those black nights, Quentin calling for Ari , Teddy crying for Mommy , and Eliot wondering what kind of universe could hear those cries and still decide to let their pleas go unanswered, leaving Eliot fucking Waugh as their only consolation prize.

The nightmares were rarer now, thank all things. But they still made Eliot’s chest hurt. Because now the only thing poor Q had left to call for was Eliot himself.

“Come here, baby,” Eliot whispered, as he climbed into bed and wrapped his long arms around Q. Q sighed and turned into Eliot’s embrace, clutching Eliot’s shirt in his fists. Eliot wondered which lost love it was that Quentin was missing so badly tonight, that he’d accept Eliot as substitute.

“El,” Quentin sighed again, and Eliot squeezed his arms tighter.

I would die for you , he thought fiercely, I love you . And then, when the intensity of his feelings scared him (as they always did), quieter, but firm: He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. It’s okay. He doesn’t know .

Chapter 4: The Best Friends

Brian was holding his phone like it might bite. It had been over a week since Nigel had apologized for kissing Brian, and they had exchanged a dutifully cheerful series of texts since then. Always funny, never about anything that had anything to do with that night , never anything that, you know, even almost suggested that the other was expecting a response. A solid week of wickham seems wayyyy more fun than darcy just saying followed a not-desperate number of hours later by a gif of a scowling woman in a bonnet captioned Jane Would Not Approve , then suddenly this .

so

any chance you want another not-peach drink on the house?

slash also to tell me something super deep to say abt emma?

Brian entertained the idea of saying no. He really did. For like, a solid couple seconds, at least. But the laptop in front of him was overflowing with notes on the pursuit of love as heroic quest in regency lit (women writers????) , and there was an actually encouraging email from his advisor in his inbox, and Lindsay had told him yesterday that she was thinking about another trip to Portland and maybe moving back and he had told her that yeah, uh, maybe you should see where that goes . And Brian was.

Feeling brave.

Braver, anyway.

For maybe the first time he could remember.

He tried to keep that feeling in mind, as he walked into Nigel’s bar. It was dead tonight. Which, maybe because it was a Tuesday. Or maybe because Brian had left his perch at Starbucks pretty much as soon as he got Nigel’s text at six o’clock. Or maybe because it was July 4th in a couple days and people were gearing up or heading out. Either way, it was just Nigel at the bar and a couple sharing a plate of some kind of bacon-wrapped somethings on lollipop sticks when Brian walked in.

At the sound of the door opening, Nigel looked up from the notepad and pen in front of him. When he saw Brian’s eyes, he smiled-- a real smile, a full smile. No biting down at all. And then he slipped out from behind the bar and crossed the empty seating area and put his arms around Brian, bending down because he was so fucking tall.

After a stunned moment, Brian brought his hands up to pat at Nigel’s back, worried that Nigel would pull back as soon as he realized what was happening. But while Nigel did swallow loudly when Brian brought his arms around him, he didn’t let go.

“I’m sorry for being so weird this week,” he said after a moment, vulnerable and less put-together than he normally pretended to be.

“It’s okay,” Brian said, even though it kind of wasn’t. But. He didn’t know what else to say, right then. And he didn’t want the hugging to stop.

“I never do this,” Nigel said after another few breaths. “You-- I don’t know. You make me feel different sometimes. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does,” Brian said, laughing a little, relieved to hear someone else voicing it, the way this bone-deep, too-fast, where-did-it-come-from thing when he looked at Nigel made him feel like. Like it wasn’t the thing with Nigel that had come out of nowhere, actually. Like it was him , instead, who’d been missing, and now he was just catching up to what had always been.

Nigel finally pulled back, straightening his hair and then futzing with Brian’s collar-- a gesture that was so fucking familiar, even though Brian was pretty sure no one but his Mom had ever done that. Nigel looked down at his hand, like he wasn’t quite sure what it was doing, then shook his head.

“Okay, enough hugging,” he said. “Let me make you a drink.”

Brian settled into his usual spot at the bar, which was close enough to where the couple was sitting that he could get a whiff of the greasy, smoky, brown-sugar-sweet smell coming from their appetizer. The smell of bacon always made him think of sex, for some reason. Something about primal urges, maybe? Whatever the cause, his stomach growled.

“Actually, um. Do you think I could get some of whatever that is?” He pointed toward their plate. “I haven’t really eaten anything since-- uh.”

Nigel rolled his eyes. “You are incapable of basic self-care,” he said. “But yes, of course.”

“I would take another of those plum things from the other day, too,” Brian said, pushing his luck, but not really, because Nigel seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to mother-hen. “If that’s okay?”

Nigel rolled up his sleeves-- which, oh yeah. Made the whole request way worthwhile. “Your wish is my command,” he said, then. Oh, absolutely . Definitely blushed.

Brian smiled so hard he thought his face might split.

“ Anyway ,” Nigel said, barely paying attention to his own hands as they performed the intricate ministrations that the drink required. “I’m having some difficulty finding a foothold on Emma .”

“Really?” Brian frowned. “I would have thought you’d really like her. She’s kind of--” like you , he almost said. Decisive, magnetic. Too confident for her own good.

Nigel smiled, like he heard it anyway. “I do like her, actually. I don’t know. I might just be-- a little shaken? My last paper . . . did not go well .”

“The Sense & Sensibility one? But you were so keyed up about Marianne and Brandon.”

Nigel looked down, a little shamefaced, as he poured the plum -- shrub? did he call it?-- over a spoon. “Nooo. That one was fine. I kind of bombed the. Hm. Pride & Prejudice one?”

Brian opened his mouth to state the obvious, when the even more obvious dawned on him. Oh, you beautiful idiot , he thought. “You could have still asked for my help,” he said eventually. “I could have kept it . . . professional .”

“Maybe you could have,” Nigel muttered, then shot him an apologetic look with those gorgeous eyes as he handed over the drink.

Brian took a long sip, appreciating the sour twist of plum in his mouth as much as he appreciated the moment to let his heart unclench. When he put the glass back down on the napkin, he leaned forward on his stool to glimpse Nigel’s notebook. Nigel pulled it away and tucked it against his chest.

“Hey, no peeking!”

Brian just smiled at him, with his long arms crossed over his notebook. “You look like a teenage girl guarding her diary.”

Nigel tossed his hair. “We’ll talk about your fantasies later. My problems first.”

“My--?” Brian spluttered. “I-- you --”

“Oh, please. You so have a naughty schoolgirl, quiet-in-the-library thing. It comes off of you in waves . Although fortunately you also seem to have something of a soft spot for classically handsome rakes--”

“I will show you a soft spot,” he retorted, wincing even as he said.

But Nigel’s mouth curled up perfectly. “Oh, yeah? Come at me, Kincaid.”

Nigel looked so fucking good laughing at him that Brian could only laugh back. “Ugh. Fine . Enough.” He settled back against his stool, bringing the glass with him. “Come on. You’ve had an angle on every book so far. Tilney’s gay , Marianne’s settling, Wickham is better in bed --”

“Indisputably.”

“--so what’s so different about Emma ?”

Nigel looked uncomfortable. He leaned his elbows forward on the bar, putting the notebook down in front of him. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said, clicking and unclicking his pen, not meeting Brian’s eyes. “I’m finding it . . . difficult . . . to rise to my characteristic level of bitchiness.”

Brian twirled the stem of his glass in his hand. “Well. You could try being. Um. Genuine.” He raised a hand in defense when Nigel immediately raised disbelieving eyes to him. “I’m just saying-- I’ve, um. Been trying it with my writing. Thanks to what you said, the other night.” He felt a foreign urge to tuck his hair behind his ear, even though it was too short for that. “Just. What do you think of Emma ? Really?”

Nigel still looked skeptical.

“Just try it,” Brian urged.

Nigel heaved a sigh, like he was doing Brian the favor, and started doodling on the notebook in front of him. “Well. I suppose. With Emma. And . . . Knightley. I don’t know. I see it, more than I did with some of the other couples.”

“You get them as a couple, you mean?”

Nigel nodded. “I guess so? They’re-- they’re best friends , right? Emma is bossy and shallow and, yeah, she’s kind of oblivious, but Knightley already knows that. Because he knows her . And he’s . . . ugh, he is such a wet blanket, but it’s mostly because he’s just good , you know? Like, actually good.”

Brian nodded, although Nigel still wasn’t looking up. He kept talking, though, even without registering Brian’s encouragement. “And Emma, she. She just . . . loves him. She always has. Even when she’s actively throwing him at other women. It’s just because . . . she doesn’t imagine that someone like him, someone good and true, could love someone like her . Or should , even. Because what does she have to offer, really? Just some, vapid coward social butterfly--”

Nigel’s voice was miles away, his eyes locked on the loop of his pen across the page in front of him. Brian leaned in carefully to look. At first, he thought it was just-- swirls, or something. But as he looked closer, he saw it was a single letter, repeated over and over and over . . .

“Nigel?” he asked, his brows pulling together as a static hum began to sing at the base of his skull. “What’s Q ?”

And that was when all hell broke loose.

. . .

Brian had been pacing the extremely limited expanse of Nigel’s apartment for nearly ten minutes and it was giving Nigel a headache. Nigel had dragged him back here after literally every glass in the bar shattered and every light bulb exploded in a single second that felt like it had lasted years. One minute they’d been talking about Emma , and then-- Well. He frankly didn’t know how to describe what had happened next, not the high-pitched whine that seemed to block out all other sound, or the suspended-motion feeling of the moment, or the way all the projectile shards of glass and fire seemed to fly directly at the two of them . The cops had said something about a freak sonic boom, but Brian clearly wasn’t buying it. It sounded kind of like bullshit to Nigel, as well, but he didn’t have anything more probable to fill in the gap, either.

“ Bri ,” he said after Brian made another hairpin turn by the hamper, savaging a thumbnail between his nervous teeth. “ Babe , come on. Sit.”

Brian stopped at the endearment, and made his way obediently to sit beside Nigel on the bed. It hadn’t been a play, honestly. There was literally nowhere else to sit in this godforsaken studio. That didn’t mean it wasn’t nice , to feel the compact weight of Brian there, next to him. Even if Brian was still vibrating at a decently high frequency.

Brian turned to face Nigel, his restless fingers drumming at his knee now. Nigel reached out and folded the hand in his own. He still couldn’t get over how strange it was, for him , to do that. And for it to feel so natural . Like breathing, but better.

“Don’t you think,” Brian said, after a moment staring at their joined hands, “that there’s something-- strange about all of this? The transformer the other night? And then-- whatever happened tonight? It’s like-- everytime we get close to each other--”

“Something explodes?” Nigel filled in, trying to sound gentle, and not overly judgmental. “I sort of sympathize, honestly.”

Brian tried to pull his hand away. “I’m serious, ‘El,” he said, then hunched in on himself when the overhead lamp started humming. “Nigel,” he tried again, and it stopped. “ Jesus . You see?!” he did pull his hand away that time, and threw it in the air, along with his other.

Nigel reached out to put his hands on Brian’s tense shoulders, trying to calm him down. Not thinking about how right it had felt. The name that wasn’t his name. He hadn’t even blinked . “Bri, honey . I think you’re getting kind of hysterical. All that stuff is just . . . coincidence. Or, if there’s any connection, it’s the fact that everything on this block has the same shitty old wiring because God forbid anything in this city be repaved or repainted or re-fucking-wired since John Harvard’s day.”

He could feel Brian’s shoulders sag as he breathed out. He rubbed his thumbs over the collarbones. It felt so right .

“You’re right,” Brian said, on a sigh. “ Fuck . Of course you’re right. Sorry. I’m just-- I don’t know. I think I’m kind of freaking out, a little?”

“No kidding.”

Brian gave him a hard look , and Nigel pressed a kiss to his shoulder in apology.

“It’s just--” Brian stopped, and Nigel nosed at his shoulder, a silent it’s okay, go on. I’ve got you . “I feel kind of overwhelmed. And I don’t get overwhelmed. That’s never been me. I get anxious, yeah, but I’ve never been someone who wears my heart on my sleeve? But with you --”

Nigel’s heart stopped while Brian looked for the words he wanted.

“The way I feel about you,” Brian finally said, “it’s not-- it’s not the way you feel about someone you met a couple weeks ago, you know? Does that make any sense at all?”

Nigel did know. “Perfect,” he said, almost a croak.

“And I keep wondering ,” Brian continued, leaning closer to Nigel, so that Nigel could feel Brian’s hair on his own forehead. “Is this-- is this just what-- what two people, when it’s right-- feels like? Because-- fuck , Nigel. I don’t know. It really kind of feels like magic .”

Brian imbued the word with so much meaning, Nigel almost found himself believing it had real power, and all the lights would shatter again, but this time the sparks would dance around them, like flower petals that he could control. It felt all-too possible, at least as possible as this lovely, smart, serious guy leaning into Nigel’s skin.

“I thought you weren’t a fantasy guy,” Nigel ribbed gently, because it was the only thing he could think of to say that he was confident he could actually make leave his throat.

Brian just chuckled, closing his eyes. “Yeah. Well. I guess you bring it out in me.”

And Brian’s face, just then, was so dear to Nigel-- and somehow, had been that dear to Nigel for so long , longer than Nigel had even been alive , somehow-- that Nigel just . . . couldn’t wait any longer. Even though, if you’d asked him a second ago, he wouldn’t have known he was waiting for anything in the first place.

“Hey,” he murmured softly. Then, giving up on whatever other words he’d hoped would come to his aid, he leaned in and pressed a kiss, quick but unmistakable, to Brian’s lips.

He pulled back, half-embarrassed, but Brian was looking at him with the sweetest struck-dumb look, and then he moved his hand to cover Nigel’s own, where it was clawed into the patchwork blanket beneath them, and put a gentle hand on Nigel’s face and he was moving in and in and in and oh --

After that it was two pairs of jeans dragging over skin, and the patchwork warm and known under Nigel’s bare back and Brian’s mouth, his mouth , and the feeling of home home home .

(The light did burn out, with a hissing pop, at one point-- Brian’s eyes going wide, just before his mouth fell open and Nigel, for a wild second, expected him to call out something else - - but by then neither of them really cared much at all.)

Brian fell asleep almost immediately after, and Nigel pulled the quilt over both of them, trying with limited success not to fall in love with the shape of Brian’s body tucked against him. He drifted in and out of sleep, through dreams more vivid than he was used to-- a peacock that was also a man, and a man with a somber face and a deep voice holding out something wrong . And then another man, with longer hair but who felt like Brian , lying in his arms, tracing the hair that Nigel did not have on his chest, because he waxed religiously, because he wasn’t a heathen. “Ari’s been talking about getting married,” the man said, making not-Nigel’s stomach plummet. “Well, so long as I get final say on the gown,” he said instead of the no that was trying to force its way out of his chest, making the other man frown. Something , the man said. A name -- “--if I marry her, then that means-- I can’t marry-- anyone else.” But anyone else wasn’t what he wanted to say. Nigel knew that and not-Nigel knew it, too. “Is that really what you want?” the man prompted, and everything inside not-Nigel screamed no. But his outsides just chuckled, fake and unconcerned and hopefully loud enough to cover his too-fast, too-frantic, too-giving-the-lie-away heartbeat. “Honestly--” something “--who knew you were such a commitment-phobe.” And the other man looked deep into not-Nigel with brown eyes that were sad and understood far too much. “ I’m not,” he said, sighing, and kissed not-Nigel’s forehead slowly so that it felt like goodbye--

When Nigel awoke from the dream, it was to Brian pulling on his pants, quiet in the barely-dawn light.

“Sorry,” he said, when he noticed Nigel was awake. “I, um. Lindsay,” he said, after a moment, gesturing at the phone in his hand. “I should--”

“Right,” Nigel said, pulling the quilt closer around himself on instinct.

And as Brian kissed his cheek before shuffling out the door, Nigel realized that just like Brian’s body beside him in the night and Nigel inside Brian, so deep then deeper and never deep enough, this felt strangely familiar, too.

Chapter 5: The Hero and the Rake

“Okay. So.” Brian waved his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop. They actually ached, a little, probably from all the writing he’d been doing lately, and he shook them to loosen them up. “Tell me again why you decided to move to Cambridge.”

Nigel looked up, intensely put-upon, from his copy of Mansfield Park . “So we’re doing this, still.”

“I just-- you don’t think it’s weird? I’ve been living here for, like, years now, and you’ve been in New York forever, and then suddenly you’re in Cambridge, and one day I walk into your bar and I just happen to say the one thing that would make you pay attention--”

“Is this the wrong time to say that it was mostly your little ass in those jeans that caught my attention, and the Jane Austen knowledge was a fortuitous fringe benefit slash a safer opening line if you were as straight as I assumed?”

Brian tried to shoot Nigel a stern look, but he couldn’t help but a preen a little. Nigel just watched him fake-innocently from under his thick eyelashes, before primly turning a page in his book. Fuck .

“Right,” Brian said, coughing to clear his suddenly parched throat. “Uh, but the antecedent question--”

“Mmm. There ’s that ivy league pedigree.”

“--the antecedent question still stands. Why did you choose Cambridge, of all places? Why now ? You said your dad only bought the bar after you already decided to move here, so it wasn’t that.”

Nigel put down his book and reached for the single iced matcha he’d been nursing in the time Brian had downed three americanos. He played with the green straw, batting around the melting ice, without taking a sip. “Don’t you think that you might be mystifying something that’s all just normal, random chance? Why does anyone meet? It’s all just-- happenstance, isn’t it?”

A month ago, Brian would have said of course, absolutely, what else could it be? But now he hesitated. “It could be,” he said, slow and careful. “But, doesn’t it feel like-- like it’s more than that?”

He tried not to look too hopeful, especially when Nigel fidgeted in his chair and started poking harder at the ice in his cup.

“You don’t think so,” he answered his own question.

He tried not to let himself feel hurt. It wasn’t surprising. Nigel had been-- pumping the breaks, subtly and not-so-subtly since the first night they spent together. And that wasn’t a bad thing, either, Brian had insisted to himself-- multiple times. Nigel was still-- obviously, if (to Brian anyway) improbably-- interested in Brian. The fact that he wasn’t ready to start careening into mad declarations and crackpot conspiracy theories and wadding up and throwing away the sum total of all his previous academic interests because he was so on fire about love he couldn’t think about anything else wasn’t exactly a character flaw. If anything, it was probably a good thing that one of them was keeping their head, in spite of the fast, heady rush of the thing between them.

It still did hurt, though. A little, anyway. It felt like a memory he could no longer place.

Nigel put his cup back down on the table with a sigh and leaned over to squeeze Brian’s hand, just for a moment. And, see-- that . That was good. A couple weeks ago, Nigel would have never .

“I didn’t say it wasn’t great . I just-- think it’s probably not supernaturally-induced.”

“And what about all the--” Brian wiggled his fingers, as if to encapsulate the shattering glass and the exploding fuses that seemed to follow them wherever they went. It might have been his admittedly runaway imagination-- and since when had he even had an imagination, let alone a runaway one?-- but the plate and fork that had formerly housed a blueberry scone began to rattle on the table as he asked the question.

“ That is the redline,” Nigel said definitively, even though neither of them heard the characteristic rumble of the subway trains that ran below the coffee shop. “Aren’t you the guy who hates fantasy, anyway?” he asked, before Brian could point out the holes in his explanation.

Brian sighed. “I was .” He’d always run from anything not firmly rooted in reality. And he’d never been the guy to run toward something potentially wild and dangerous, either, not even in the pursuit of knowledge. Maybe it was just because reality itself felt suddenly wild and-- he helped himself to another look at Nigel’s flashing dark eyes and roguish grin-- yeah , okay, a little dangerous, too, that his instincts were getting all turned around.

“Besides,” Nigel said, “I thought that the seemingly mundane pursuit of romantic partnership bears all the same earmarks of the heroic-quest narrative more typical of male-focused epics of earlier eras.” He smiled cheekily as he recited word-for-word a line from Brian’s prospectus that Brian had begged him to read the night before to see if Brian was making sense to anyone but himself. “That’s what I’ve read anyway,” Nigel added, taking a dainty slurp of his mostly-meltwater matcha.

“You’re so fucking smart, do you know that?”

Nigel’s face went soft and pleased, the way he did everytime someone ( Brian ) said the obvious (that he was brilliant and clever and persuasive and bold), but then he tossed his head artfully and affected his more typically arch look. “You say that to all the boys who literally recite your own words back to you.”

Brian’s chest felt ready to burst into fireworks like that transformer. But Nigel was right-- there was no magic to it. Only Nigel himself.

“So how’s Mansfield Park going?” he asked after a long moment schooling the lovestruck grin on his face into something less obvious.

Nigel groaned theatrically. “Fanny Price is such a martyr. And Edmund -- don’t get me started. What an entirely flaccid noodle. And by noodle , I mean--”

“--no, yeah, I got it.” Brian shook his head, amused as always by Nigel’s unsparing tongue. “Let me guess. You’d rather have Henry Crawford.”

“The Crawfords are fun.”

“They’re terrible people !” Brian groaned.

“Are they?” Nigel parried, unconcerned. “Or are they just too much for boring people to handle? I for one rather like the idea of Henry and Margo living their best life at their own humble cottage, leading all the sad little people who wander through into higher and better forms of debauchery.”

“Mary,” Brian corrected automatically.

“Hm?”

“It’s Mary Crawford. You said Margo .”

Nigel’s forehead creased. “Did I?”

Brian’s answer was cut off by his phone buzzing on the tabletop. Shit . It was Lindsay. He checked the time. She was an hour earlier than she said. But given the nature of their appointment, it didn’t really seem appropriate to put her off.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I have to go,” he said, starting to gather up his things. “Lindsay’s already at the apartment. Listen-- I have no idea how long this will take. I’m pretty sure her flight is tonight, but I don’t know when, exactly, so maybe don’t wait up? I’ll call tomorrow?”

He got out of his chair, hefting his messenger bag onto his shoulder, and leaned down to give Nigel a kiss, but Nigel flinched away. Right . Displays of affection. Still a work in progress. Brian dropped a quick kiss to the top of Nigel’s head, instead. Nigel accepted it, if stiffly.

“Text me, okay? If you need anything. Or just. Whatever.”

Nigel nodded, but his attention was back on his book. He looked strained, and Brian couldn’t really blame him. He ’d be pretty annoyed if Nigel still had an ex lurking around the margins, too. Luckily, after tonight, that wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

“Okay. I’m just going to-- go, then.”

The cover art for Mansfield Park said nothing in response.

“I’ll miss you. Tonight,” Brian blurted out, cringing as soon as he did. So much for pumping the breaks, jackass .

But as he turned to go, Mansfield Park lowered just enough to reveal Nigel’s eyes, liquid and sweeter than he probably realized, and that made it all worthwhile.

. . .

Nigel stayed at the Starbucks for the next six hours. In part because this paper was just pouring out of him for a change, and in part because Starbucks didn’t serve alcohol and he knew himself well enough to know that it was a bad idea to move somewhere that did ( 632 days ), but mostly because he had tricked himself into believing that as long as he didn’t move, he could put off facing the fact that Brian was back at his apartment doing God-only-knew-what with his girlfriend and Nigel was officially the side-piece waiting for a call that said girlfriend had left for her trip to Portland or where-the-fuck-ever and he could go back to fucking her boyfriend now.

Nigel was a person who slept with other people’s boyfriends, apparently. He hadn’t been, before. Well, speaking in probabilities, he almost inevitably had , during his blacked-out periods, but he didn’t really remember the names or faces of most of the people he’d fucked back then, let alone their relationship statuses. This was his first time doing so consciously. And he mostly felt guilty about how not guilty he felt.

Because Brian-- sweet, supportive, self-effacing Brian-- was a Fanny Price, through and through. He was the hero of this piece, because he was earnest and concerned and good in his bones, even if he was a seriously questionable boyfriend. And, yeah, he might dick around with a Henry Crawford for a while-- with apologies to Fanny for the extended metaphor because it didn’t seem like she even got any good dicking out of her deal, and Nigel was always more than ready to find context clues that fictional characters were boning. But at the end of the day, Brian, like Fanny, would settle down with his honorable, appropriate Edmund. Or his Alice , rather.

No-- his Lindsay . Brian’s girlfriend’s name was Lindsay.

( Where had Alice come from? )

Not important. The important thing was, Brian wouldn’t choose an actual rake like Nigel, not really, not in the long run, no matter how many things literally exploded when they touched. And Nigel could live with that. He just-- needed to make sure it all stayed straight in his head.

It was going on ten o’clock and Nigel’s third scone when Brian’s text came in, properly punctuated like the English nerd he was.

All done over here; sorry it took so long.

Then, after the ‘Brian is typing’ notification flashed and un-flashed, and flashed and un-flashed for a minute and a half, another buzz.

I wish you were here .

Nigel’s heart constricted, and he started typing back-- not properly punctuated-- before he could think too hard about it.

i could be

txt me ur address

When his phone buzzed again a few seconds later, Nigel left the half-finished scone on his plate and headed out into the muggy night. Because he was a Crawford, and he would take what he could get, as long as he could get it (as long as Brian didn’t know ).

Brian’s apartment was a short walk from the Starbucks (which was probably why Brian had chosen that one), and it felt like no time at all passed before Nigel was hitting the buzzer by the door then taking an elevator up three flights. When he reached door 305, he raised his hand to knock, but Brian was opening for him before his knuckles hit the wood.

“ Hey ,” Bri said, breathless, pulling Nigel in immediately for a kiss that Nigel returned with verve.

“ Fuck , why do I feel like I can never get enough of you?” Bri muttered, when Nigel finally pulled back to let them breathe. His hands were in the hem of Nigel’s v-neck t-shirt (as an aside, Nigel really had to start dressing a little less schlubishly on days he wasn’t working; maybe invest in some ascots?), and he was pulling Nigel back in, before Nigel had even gotten that breath, but what did Nigel care about a little thing like oxygen now?

The first few times Nigel and Brian had been together, Nigel had initiated, but then Brian had taken the lead. Which was fine with Nigel, because while Brian didn’t have a single shred of game, he was honest about what he wanted Nigel to do to him, and Nigel was only too happy to oblige. Then one night, Nigel, acting on some subcutaneous instinct or past-life-memory or something , had pinned Brian against the one bare wall of his studio, and used his much larger frame to hold Brian in place while he brought them both off, and Brian had come unglued in ways that would haunt Nigel through lifetimes , even if he was still picking shards of lightbulb and coffee mugs out of the carpet.

Tonight, Nigel let Brian kiss and climb him there in the doorway for a little while-- the things he did for -- um. Nevermind. But after a few minutes of that, Nigel fisted a hand in the hair at the base of Brian’s neck and used his other to push at Brian’s chest, walking him back toward what Nigel was assuming was the bedroom.

It was kind of a mess, with drawers open and big blank dusty spaces on the wall, like there had been more things hanging until just recently, but there was no sign that the bed had been used that evening, which was. Good. Better than the alternative, anyway. Ugh -- Nigel wasn’t thinking about it. He threw Brian back onto the black-and-white counterpane and crawled on top of him. Brian was inching his way up the mattress, toward the pillows, when he pulled something out from underneath his back. It was a t-shirt (a woman ’s t-shirt, God ), and Brian moved to toss it to the floor, when he suddenly stopped and peered at the material.

Nigel pulled back, settling on his haunches, and Brian looked up.

“Sorry,” he said, still not putting the shirt down. “Sorry. I just--” He stopped then and-- yup -- actually shoved the t-shirt in Nigel’s face. “Could you just-- tell me what you see, in this design?”

“ Seriously , Bri?”

“Jesus, I know. I’m being weird. Sorry. Just-- humor me? Please?”

You’re a Henry not an Edmund , Nigel reminded himself. Take what you can get .

He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “It’s Fillory and Further .” He rolled his eyes. “Your favorite .”

Brian nodded. “But, um. On the design itself. On the clock. Do you-- is there a keyhole on the clock ?”

Nigel narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t noticed one, when he’d first looked (all the fucking goat heads were a little distracting), but on closer inspection, yeah. There was a keyhole right in the center of the clock’s face. Nigel’s hand reached out to brush against the raised lines of the design on instinct, and he nodded.

“Oh, thank God,” Brian said. “I thought I was losing my shit.”

Nigel looked at the keyhole for one more moment, ignoring the swooping, top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling in his stomach and the way that the bedside lamp was starting to hum, before grabbing the shirt out of Brian’s hand and tossing it to the floor.

“Not yet you haven’t,” he promised, before falling on Brian, teeth at Brian’s neck, tonguing at the salt there and feeling Brian’s pulse flutter. “Now are you going to let me put my key in your hole, or what?”

It was the kind of line that even Nigel, tall and unfairly hot and blessed with a bedroom voice as he admittedly was, could only barely get away with. But Brian’s answer, it turned out, was an emphatic yes, all the same.

Afterward, while Nigel laid half on top of Brian, with his head on Brian’s bare chest, hardly able to keep his eyes open, he found his mind wandering to Brian’s questions to him in the cafe that afternoon.

“I don’t know why I came to Cambridge,” he murmured sleepily in the night-quiet room. He tried to think back to the moment the decision had been made, but it felt blurry and indistinct, like it was covered in film, edged with a feeling of don’t look too closely . “I knew I had to leave New York,” he said, because he did remember that -- the feeling of stagnating in a place he had bottomed-out for so long. “And I just-- I knew I had to be here , I guess. It was like something was calling me. That I couldn’t even hear.”

It sounded like you , he didn’t say. It sounded like the man in my dreams, who isn’t you but is .

Brian dragged blunt nails against Nigel’s scalp and Nigel did let his eyes slip shut then.

“I think you were right earlier,” Brian said softly. “Destiny-- it’s bullshit. It’s all just-- random chance where we end up, who else is there. The important part is what we choose .”

Nigel was glad, in that moment, that his eyes were already closed. It saved him having to hide them from Brian.

“ ‘El? What do you think?”

The large abstract print (-- you know, not everything has to look like something-- ) fell off the wall behind them and landed behind the headboard with an enormous crash, but neither man moved. Nigel just nodded against Brian’s chest, and let his fingers trace a pattern over and over into his skin. A circle with a little line. A circle with a little line. A circle with a little line . . .

Chapter 6: The Same Fucking People They Always Fucking Are

Brian took a break from re-reading the same fucking sentence a fortieth time to dig the heels of his hands into eyes. He could feel Nigel shift beside him, then felt one of Nigel’s long fingers brush a stripe across his wrist.

“Everything okay in there?”

Brian peeked out from behind his hands to see Nigel’s I’m-not-worrying-just-checking face. He smiled back and nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

It was fine, really. More than. Summer was drawing to a close, days getting shorter, gorgeous New England fall on its way; Brian had started preemptively looking for his favorite beanie the other day, happy to see that it hadn’t been lost or inadvertently stolen during Lindsay’s exodus. The apartment was starting to look a less half-empty, too, mostly because of things like Nigel’s chamomile tea in the cupboard (“ Oh, eww-- that tastes like dandelions.” “How do you know what dandelions taste like?” ), and Nigel’s favorite quilt across the bed (gaudy and homespun and not Nigel’s style at all and so sweet that he clearly loved it so much all the same), and Nigel here almost every night.

Nigel had turned in his final Austen paper two weeks ago and was tentatively planning to try two classes during the fall term, around his shifts at the bar. And Brian . Well. Brian was actually scheduled to show a draft chapter to his definitely-puzzled but also definitely-not-looking-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth advisor tomorrow .

Nigel flipped the book in his hand upside down and placed it on the quilt beside him to hold his place. He propped himself on his elbow and turned to face Brian. And how did Brian ever get lucky enough to have a person like that in his bed? Again , a little voice piped in, for reasons that Brian didn’t understand and so, for now, ignored.

“Getting nervous about your meeting?” Nigel asked.

Brian blew out a breath and nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You’ve had this thing written for weeks ,” Nigel said, sensibly. “You need other eyes on it.”

That was right, obviously. But something about showing someone else this felt like-- exposing himself, in a way that nothing else Brian had ever written or done had felt. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he was wrong about this, about his new direction, it would be the end, in some way. And he’d be back to a life with no wonder and no magic and no dazzling man to distract him when his brain started running away with him again. It didn’t make sense, but it was what he felt . He’d never paid this much attention to things he felt before.

He let himself collapse back against the pillows and turned to face Nigel. “What if it’s so bad that my advisor is finally done with me and they kick me out of the program and I’m--”

“--forced to learn literature out on the streets like us non-ivy-educated peons?” Nigel raised an unimpressed eyebrow, but his mouth was soft and kind. His mouth always gave him away, even when ( especially when ) it was saying cutting things.

“I know, I know. I’m being a drama queen,” Brian sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I just-- I don’t know what I’d be without this, you know?”

The phrasing was truer than Brian even knew how to explain. Because while he had the unshakeable feeling that he had known lives other than this one (even though Brian five years ago would have spit out his coffee at the thought ), they always felt just beyond his perception. He couldn’t see them, even if he felt their residue sometimes. Like now , with Nigel reaching out to brush the hair back from his forehead in a way that felt like a home Brian couldn’t name.

“Well,” Nigel was saying with the rakish voice he put on when he was treading toward the otherwise-sentimental, “I think you’ll be fine. But on the off chance that they do kick you out, and you are forced to live your life outside the ivory tower, I promise that I will find you and seduce you so that--”

“-- life retains its sparkle for decades ,” Brian filled in. “What’s that from?”

Nigel frowned at him. “Well, I thought it was from my own exceptional wit.”

“No, I’ve definitely heard that before--”

“ Have you now?” Nigel leaned in with a shark-like smile and Brian pushed him away with a smile of his own.

“Rude,” Nigel said, before settling himself back against his own pillows and picking up his book. It hit Brian again, like a physical weight, the way that this felt so right .

Brian wanted to ask him. He was going to ask him. It was too fast, but there were more or less already there, weren’t they? Time was an illusion, right? He’d heard that, too, somewhere before.

Brian opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Nigel was furrowing his brow painfully and putting the book back down. His headache face. Brian leaned over instinctually to press a thumb to the crease between Nigel’s eyes and rub, feeling his insides swell when Nigel breathed a little sigh and relaxed against the touch.

“You’re gonna need glasses one of these days,” Brian said quietly.

“Bite your tongue,” Nigel returned, sufficiently blissed out that it held no real force.

Brian could see it so clearly. Nigel white-haired and even more steeped in the nobility he carried so naturally, with little wire glasses perched at the end of his distinguished nose. Brian tried to see himself there beside Nigel, stooped and nebbish and not aging anywhere near so gracefully, and found that he could . Or maybe that he already had somehow, seen just that, in another life.

“ The pursuit of a lifetime of partnership is easily the narrative equal of the traditional objects of a hero’s quest ,” he murmured, mostly to himself, as he soothed Nigel’s skin.

Nigel pulled back slightly. “Is that from your paper?”

Brian nodded. “Yeah.”

“Are you revising in your head right now?”

Brian shook his head. “No.”

He leaned in and kissed Nigel sweetly, smiling at the always-surprised look on Nigel’s face when he pulled away. He reached down for Nigel’s hands and squeezed them in his own, took a deep breath, then said, “Move in with me.”

. . .

Nigel blinked at Brian for a long moment, trying to twist his words around into something that made sense. But-- nope. That was what he had said. That was what he was-- looking at Nigel, in breathless anticipation of an answer, for.

“Nigel?” Brian prompted.

Nigel shook his head and said the first words that came out. “Won’t that be kind of a problem for Lindsay?”

Brian’s whole face knotted up in confusion. “Why would it be a problem for Lindsay?”

Nigel’s eyebrows rose. Maybe he’d underestimated Brian. Awkward literature nerd by day, casually polyamorous nerd by night. Nigel tried to wrap his head around the image of Brian with his stunning girlfriend and his-- paramour, all under one roof. It was vaguely European-- the fun, continental kind, not the repressed British kind that Nigel had to deal with on birthdays and the occasional Christmas. Vaguely Oberyn Martell. And, somehow, entirely Brian .

“What does Lindsay have to do with this at all?” Brian was saying, as Nigel contemplated, and well. That was a bridge too far.

“You don’t think she’d have some thoughts about you moving your-- me into her apartment?”

“What do you mean her apartment? Nigel, Lindsay is in Portland . You know that.”

“Yeah, I know she is. But when she gets back--”

“Gets-- Nigel .” Brian moved his laptop to the bedside table and then turned back to Nigel. He put a hand on either side of Nigel’s neck, looking worried. “Lindsay moved to Portland. Did you seriously think that she was-- what? Just going to stroll back in here at some point, and she and I would play roommates? God, even if she was coming back, the real-estate market here isn’t that fucking dire.”

That hadn’t been Nigel’s experience, when he’d been trying to find a place that he could afford on his own salary (or, rather, the salary that he only had because Daddy had moved from directly to indirectly underwriting his existence). That wasn’t really the point. But it was the only part of this conversation that Nigel felt like he could get a firm hold on.

Brian kept staring at him with worried eyes, looking like he was half a second away from checking Nigel for a temperature when suddenly, Nigel saw the pieces slot together in his mind. His eyebrows drew in even further as he searched Nigel’s face. Nigel cast his own eyes down, trying not to look guilty. Brian drew in a too-slow breath anyway.

“ Nigel ,” he said after a long pause, firm but gentle, like he was talking to a dog that had made a mess on the rug. “Babe. You-- you know that Lindsay and I broke up.” He didn’t say the “ don’t you? ” out loud, but it was there all the same, in the way that his tone twitched up at the end, the way his eyes narrowed.

“Well, I know that now ,” Nigel mumbled after a long moment of scrutiny.

“ Jesus. ” Brian pulled back, horrified-- Nigel mourned the loss immediately, even as part of him simply nodded sagely because yes, that was what he deserved -- and scooted around so that he was sitting on the edge of his side of the bed, feet on the floor.  

“Jesus,” he repeated. “ Fuck . You must think I’m a lunatic.”

His shoulders were hunched in on himself and it hit Nigel, right in the stomach. Nigel was shaking his head furiously, but Brian was facing the other way, and couldn’t see him.

“Uh-uh,” Nigel said quickly, crawling across the bed to lock his arms around Brian’s neck from behind. “ No .”

Brian reached up and grabbed onto Nigel’s arm, even as he looked up at the ceiling and huffed out a desperately unhappy laugh. “Jesus. Here I am, going on and on about all this-- crazy shit about quests and soulmates and-- asking you to-- and you--”

He turned rapidly to look back at Nigel. His eyes were wide and confused and sliced Nigel bloody.

“What?” Brian asked, desperately. “You-- to you we were just-- fucking around?” He shook his head at the last words, like he couldn’t believe them, even as he was asking Nigel if they were true.

Nigel felt his eyebrows pull in, helpless, as he searched for words. “I-- I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said after a moment, but it sounded weak even to him.

“Why would you think that?”

Nigel reared back at the accusing tone. He felt, at once, that he had fucking-- decades of answers to that question, but also none at all. Or none that he had words for, only snatches of feelings and images, of a wedding band and lovestruck brown eyes following a cool blonde wherever she went. And voices--all foreign Midwestern twang--shaping no one will ever and you will never , even before he was old enough to really understand what it felt like, to never .

The lamp on the bedside table started rattling wildly, until it scooted off the edge and crashed to the floor. Brian kept his eyes locked on Nigel’s, anyway, and reached out a hand to pull Nigel back in. “Nigel,” he tried again, bringing their foreheads close. “You know that-- you know that I--”

Nigel shut his eyes tight, as if that could block out the words. “ Don’t --” he gritted out.

Brian stopped. But he shook his head against Nigel’s. “Why the fuck not ?” he asked, soft but emphatic.

Nigel didn’t have answer, other than the gut-deep panic that he couldn’t name the source of. “I get that-- we’re both being hit with a lot of emotions, right now, so maybe we should just--”

“We work , though. Right? I mean--” Brian paused, like he was picking his words carefully. “I know it hasn’t been very long. But who needs, like, proof of concept when it feels like this ? Isn’t that worth at least a shot ?”

Nigel was starting to feel dizzy, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of his own twisting emotions, or the way the remaining lights in the room were going haywire, or the way he felt like they were having this conversation in stereo, with echoes of memories that weren’t his ( that were his, that were theirs) doubling every moment. The one thing that cut through the chaos was the certainty that this was not for him.

(There was another thing, too, that cut through, that said this is a moment, and you’re just going to snuff it out , but that thing was sad and quiet, and never, never as loud as the fear , not when it counted.)

“Nigel?” Brian was saying, as he reached up to cup Nigel’s face, where his skin felt like it was going chalky and cold. He looked scared, poor baby. Why did Eliot always do this to him ?

( Who was Eliot, again? And what had he done? )

Those sweet eyes. That Eliot-- that Nigel-- that he loved . God, he’d fallen for him from minute one, the second he’d stumbled through the bushes and walked up to the bar and ordered a vodka soda and looked at him like he couldn’t believe his eyes and Nigel couldn’t stop talking Margo’s ear off about it and looked up at the stars as he caught his breath lying on the mosaic after and asked what have I ever done to deserve this. Bri couldn’t know, though. Because Bri would hate him, would leave him, would never choose him if he knew the miserable ugly thing Nigel was down where the world couldn’t see beneath the crown and the cocktails and the--

The room was tipping them, sharply, and Nigel was falling forward, and Brian was there holding him up, as the lights started screeching, and there was a pounding on the door too, and it was getting louder and there was shouting to go with it. He fell into brown eyes and half-hoped he’d drown and he remembered --

( Three weeks ago, lying with his head on Brian’s chest, smiling as Brian grudgingly took the book from his hands and cleared his throat and started reading--

“With some feeling, hm?” Nigel had teased. “Don’t I at least deserve as passionate a reading of Captain Wentworth’s letter as your cute undergrad girls got?”

“They weren’t all girls,” Brian mumbled and Nigel laughed.

“I always underestimate you.”

“ You pierce my soul, ” Brian continued, “ I am half agony, half hope.”

Nigel shut up then, and closed his eyes, and listened, and when Brian got to the part about “ a heart even more your own than when you broke it,” he finally noticed Nigel’s tears against his skin and stopped.

“Babe? Are you okay?”

And Nigel had nodded with his eyes still closed, because he didn’t know how to say that he hoped that Brian meant the words he was reading, and that he forgave Nigel for walking away and breaking his heart even though Nigel never had done that, had he? So instead he asked, “Do you think it would have worked, if Anne had stayed with Wentworth the first time, instead of running away?”

“I don’t know,” Brian said, carding his free hand through Nigel’s hair. “I think they always had that connection, didn’t they? Circumstances change, and people grow, yeah. But at the end of the day, I kind of think, if it works, it works, right? Because we’re always, just-- the same fucking people we always fucking are.” )

“ Eliot ,” Brian gasped, the moment before the door was kicked in.

“ Q ,” Nigel answered.

“ Get down! ” a tall woman with her hair in a severe bun yelled from the empty door frame, just as the dresser flew across the room and smashed to smithereens against the wall.

As the debris cleared, the woman, who had a badge in one hand and a-- comic book? in the other, stepped into the room, followed by three more people. A stylish woman with an improbable eyepatch, a nothing-guy in a sweater, and a tall man with headphones.

“I’m detective Sam Cunningham,” the first woman said. “And there are some things you guys should probably know.”

Epilogue: Quentin and Eliot

Quentin was sitting with his feet tucked beneath him in the window seat of Marina’s penthouse, staring at noisy street outside.

(He was missing the narrow brick sidewalks of Harvard Square, and the dirt paths of the Fillorian woods, but he wouldn’t have had the heart to admit that right then, even to himself. He hadn’t gotten to that point yet.)

Eliot walked into the room just as a late-in-the-season ice cream truck was passing on the street below. He paused when he saw Quentin, cringed a little (at himself, not at the sight of Quentin). Quentin noticed and gave a little smile.

(This was the first time, you understand, that it was just them . Since the memory spell was broken. Not because they’d been avoiding each other, necessarily. But not because they hadn’t , either.)

“Hey,” Quentin said softly.

(He thought about saying, is this the part where you tell me it wasn’t really us, again? But he didn’t. Because Quentin never seemed to get around to forcing the issue, back then.)

(Eliot didn’t think anything like that at all. Because that conversation, from the last time they got their memories restored, was something he never allowed himself to think about. Not then. He didn’t have his reason yet, then .)

“Hey,” Eliot answered, just as soft, and walked the rest of the way across the room to put his hand on Quentin’s shoulder. Quentin reached up and laced their fingers together, and squeezed. And they both felt like they could breathe, a little easier, than a minute before.

(That wasn’t new, though.)

“I’m gonna run out and pick up some-- supplies,” Eliot said.

(He stumbled a little bit there, because he was going to pick up alcohol, and he felt guilty about it because part of him was still thinking 664 days . But a bigger part of him was thinking better not even to pretend .)

Quentin looked up at him with worried eyes. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? The ambient’s still crazy low and we have no idea who’s looking for us--”

(They really had no idea what was looking for them.)

But Eliot just shrugged and said, “Can’t hide in here forever.”

(Which was fairly rich, coming from him.)

Quentin squeezed his hand and said, “Just be careful, okay?”

And Eliot said of course he would. He bent down and kissed the top of Quentin’s head, then, and let their fingers come unglued slowly as he walked away, holding on until Quentin’s arm was all-the-way extended, and only then letting go.

(He was halfway to the door when Quentin almost, almost spoke up and said It’s always us, El. We’re always the same fucking people we always fucking are. And we choose each other every time. But he didn’t. And for six hellish months after that moment, he thought every night about why he hadn’t just said it, until even that was more thought than he could process, after running ragged after the monster with Eliot’s face and eyes all day, and learning that actually, El, this is what it’s like when we have no choice . Then , he pared it down, and just thought he never knew, he never knew, he never knew , until it felt like his bones were ringing with it.)

(Because.)

(Because Eliot did try to be careful, like he promised. But he wasn’t even a block away when there was a bump of a shoulder and the flash of fire in the eye and then it was all happy place and doorways and he didn’t know, he didn’t know, he didn’t know . And, for the first time in all their lifetimes, suddenly they weren’t . The same fucking people that they always fucking were.)

(But that’s a story for another day.)

(But that story, reader? It ends, too. And it ends like this (it begins like this): Quentin on his tiptoes, caught between kissing and finally saying it was us, it was always us, and Eliot similarly torn, and then, both of them, shedding it all away and clinging and finally saying I know, baby, I know, I know.)