Chapter Text
Brian doesn’t want to go out that night. But he’s tired of staring at the walls of his office or his apartment, he’s tired of the usual places he visits with his friends. With Erica, when they’re on - they’re very much off again, and he can’t bring himself to care, even though he probably should.
He had the dream again last night. The little cottage in the woods, a child’s laughter and tiny fingers wrapped around his own, sunlight on a woman’s red hair, wicked laughter written all over her face. And the man, dark curls and gold-hazel eyes and his stunned smile by firelight.
Colored chalk all over his fingers, the smell of peaches and the taste of plums.
None of it makes any sense.
So he goes to this smoky little place in Brooklyn, finds a corner booth and hides there, nursing a hard cider through the first band of the night, the second. He has a sketchbook and his pencils with him, and though the light in here isn’t good, it’s not so bad he can’t draw what he’s seeing. He sketches patrons and he sketches the second band, and then -
The third band of the night comes up, the lead singer approaches the mic, and Brian’s pencil slips from his hand because that dark curling hair is a sucker punch to memories that aren’t even fucking real. There’s no way he can be staring at a figment of his dreaming mind, Brian reminds himself as the guy begins to sing. He’s English, surprisingly, with a lovely voice made all the more appealing by the accent.
“It’s been a long time coming/Down this road/And now I know/What I’ve been waiting for…”
Brian can’t look away, not for the entire set. And at some point, the singer’s gaze lands on him and stays there, a fleeting look of confusion on his face familiar like deja vu. They stare at each other from across the room and Brian has another flash - a long, lean figure stretched out atop a sign he can’t read.
Is he losing his mind?
He hasn’t figured out a good answer to that one when someone pulls out the small table’s other chair.
“So, did you like the set?”
Brian looks up from where he’d been staring into his cider as the singer from earlier drops into the seat across from him, a lazy grin on his face. But there’s something in his eyes - his impossibly familiar eyes - that doesn’t match the easy flirtatious note of his words or his smile. Something that makes Brian’s heart stutter in his chest.
“I, uh. Yeah. You’re very good,” Brian says, and grips his glass tighter.
“I’m Nigel Cooper.” And the lilting accent - English, Brian still thinks, but there’s a note of something else in it, maybe Scottish or Welsh, he doesn’t know much about accents - really does just make him all the more attractive. Brian never thought he had an accent kink before, and yet.
“Brian Devlin,” Brian says, and takes a drink, hoping it will ease the sudden dryness in his mouth. It doesn’t, really, but then alcohol really isn’t ideal for that, is it?
“Have we met, Brian Devlin?” Nigel asks, looking at Brian over the rim of his glass - whatever was on tap, presumably. “Because I could swear I’ve seen you before.”
I dreamed of you, Brian almost says, and Jesus, he’s still on his first drink, what the fuck is wrong with him? “I don’t think so, but I could say the same of you anyway,” he says instead, because if they both feel it maybe he’s not as crazy as he thinks he is.
“Hmm. I can’t stay, darling, but call me sometime?” Nigel slips a piece of paper across the table to Brian and then he’s on his feet again, vanishing into the shadowy room with his dark clothes. Brian’s fingers curl round the slip of paper with Nigel’s phone number on it. He tells himself he should throw it out, shouldn’t indulge whatever strangeness this is.
He tucks it into his wallet, then finishes his drink and leaves the pub.
<><><>
The thing is, Brian hadn’t actually meant to contact Nigel. The whole thing is ridiculous, and he’s not going to indulge it. But two days later, he finds himself pulling the folded bit of paper from his wallet, saving the number in his phone.
And that night, he dreams of a cliff by the sea, a man who looks like the musician kneeling and looking up at him with impossibly soft eyes while Brian sets a crown on his head.
The next morning, he texts Nigel an offer to meet at the coffee shop by campus. The [yes] he gets in response makes Brian wonder if he's the only one with dreams. And he goes through his classes that day with about as much interest as most of his students - which is to say, none at all. Well, it’s not the first time he lectured on autopilot and it won’t be the last.
He’s expecting Nigel to be in the blacks he’d been wearing that night at the pub, tight jeans and shirt that covered everything and yet left little to the imagination, curls loose and tumbling around his face. What Brian finds, when he spots the other man waiting at a corner table for him, is a guy in a large, warm looking grey-and-red patterned sweater, his hair pulled back into a small bun at the nape of his neck, reading glasses perched on his nose as he scrolls through his phone.
And, oh. Why does part of him just want to climb in Nigel’s lap and curl up there? Brian doesn’t know, but he adjusts his own jacket and heads over with his usual order. “Hi, I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says as he drops into the other chair, envious of the way Nigel leans back in his with an almost catlike sort of grace.
“How could I say no when the man of my literal dreams shows up out of nowhere?” That accent, as it turns out, is no less maddeningly attractive in a sunlit coffee shop, and honestly it’s just unfair. But Brian focuses instead on what Nigel said, which -
“You too, huh?”
“Afraid so. It’s all very strange, started, oh, two weeks back, give or take a day. There’s this cabin a lot of times, a little boy, sometimes a woman - and you. Or, well, someone like you. Longer hair. He kissed me -”
“- by torchlight, yeah,” Brian says quietly, then sips his latte as much for something to do with himself as actually wanting the caffeine. “And I remember the woman and the little boy too, and waking up together in a narrow bed, and how much neither of us wanted to -”
“- do anything but stay wrapped up in each other, but we had some kind of job to do. I remember looking down at some kind of tile design?” Nigel says, and Brian notices the tea bag tab still dangling from under the lid of Nigel’s cup as he pauses for a drink of his own.
“Colored chalk on my hands,” Brian murmurs, tasting the vanilla-caramel-white chocolate of his latte but remembering the taste of plums instead. He doesn’t even like plums, which makes the whole thing weirder, because in this not-memory he does. “I don’t understand any of this. Tell me it’s as weird for you, because I -”
A long-fingered hand closes over his own, and Brian looks up into gold-hazel eyes that he knows/doesn’t know and sees - all of it, reflected back. “I don’t get it either,” Nigel says, voice soft. “But I think maybe I’m better at just rolling with the punches than you are, hmm?”
“I don’t. Roll with, with anything,” Brian says, and his voice isn’t steady anymore. “I don’t know how, my life is a predictable bore and I like the predictable part if not the bore part. But I think you have to tolerate being bored to keep things predictable so. So I tolerate it.” Tolerates a job he hates because teaching is better than a cubicle at a 9 to 5, and because the paintings and the newly-begun manuscripts that are Brian’s only love won’t pay the bills. “I’ve dated the same woman off and on six times because neither of us care enough to say no the next time one of us is lonely enough to offer, there’s been a man or two in the off points but no one. Nothing like -”
My dreams make no sense, and I feel more in them than I’ve felt in years. It’s not something he can say out loud, though.
“I sing with three different bands and haven’t committed to any of them, because that would mean I can’t just pick up and go. My mother spent her life devoted to a married man and I swore I’d never be tied down like that, it’d be real or not at all. And none of it’s real so far. I always thought I’d just - know, when it was.”
“I don’t think the world works like that, but you’re a romantic.”
“I didn’t think boys of my dreams existed either, romantic or not. So, Brian Devlin, now what?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
Now what turns out to be mostly - texting at all hours of the day and night. About everything from little tidbits of gossip from the three bands Nigel sings with to the idiotic power plays behind the scenes of Hudson University’s English department, from the movie Nigel saw after rehearsal to the TV show Brian’s got marathoning in the background while he grades essays on Chaucer.
Or, when they wake up from half-remembered dreams, comparing them. It’s like having a constant companion everywhere he goes, and Brian finds that he likes it. Finds that he starts hearing Nigel’s voice in the texts - sometimes, when they’re both at home, they call instead of text, after all.
Two weeks of this, before it all shifts again.
<><><>
Brian is in the middle of his lecture on Utopia when he happens to glance up to the very back of the lecture hall. Now, his classes are all intro, so he sees students of all ages. But there is something very familiar about that head of dark curls…
No way. Isn’t he supposed to be in Atlanta? Brian is very sure the text message on his phone from Nigel says quite clearly that he won’t be back until the end of the week, yet here he is, slouched casually in a chair in the back of the lecture hall, half in shadow yet unmistakable once seen. Brian can feel a faint flush creeping over his cheeks and neck, and clears his throat abruptly.
He has ten minutes left of class, he is not going to dismiss them early just because his - his - because Nigel came back from his out-of-state gig early. He is absolutely not going to do that, except that his eyes keep drifting back to that corner, and the shadows really don’t hide how the black jeans cling to Nigel’s ridiculously long legs or the sly grin on his face or -
Oh, really. This is ridiculous.
Brian takes a long drink from the water bottle he always brings to class, then manages a smile for his students. “Right, well, we’re done with this chapter, why don’t I end things here for today?” he says, very pointedly looking straight up the center aisle and not at the corner where he can feel Nigel smirking.
They’ve only known each other for two weeks. He can’t possibly be that accurately aware of the man. But when Brian does look back over, the expression on Nigel’s face is exactly what he’d pictured. Once the last student leaves, Nigel gets up, long legs closing the distance between them in minutes even though Brian feels oddly frozen and can’t seem to move. He almost doesn’t have to, because Nigel crowds him up against the podium, one hand tipping Brian’s chin up as he leans down to kiss him.
They’ve kissed once or twice before, almost chaste presses of lips that nevertheless felt like they set Brian on fire. This - this is different, this is Nigel licking at the seam of Brian’s lips until he opens for him, tilting Brian’s head back and just taking , Brian pressing in close and kissing back just as eagerly.
Like they aren’t in the middle of a lecture hall where he works. Like they’ve done this a thousand thousand times.
They pull back and Brian is breathless, relieved when he sees that Nigel is too. “So, funny thing. Texting mostly tided me over when I knew I could just say ‘let’s meet up for a couple hours’ and did more than once, but being only able to text you for four days is maddening. What have you done to me,” he whispers in Brian’s ear, trailing his lips over his jaw.
“Nothing you haven’t done to me,” Brian murmurs, sliding his hands into the back pockets of Nigel’s jeans. “We can’t - there’s going to be another class in here, Nigel, we can’t stay here.”
“Do you have an office?” Nigel asks with a grin.
Brian opens his mouth to say that this is a terrible idea and no, they are not going to his office to make out like horny teenagers, that is not a thing that they are going to be doing and what comes out is, “Yeah, three floors up, come on.”
They barely get into said office before Brian finds himself pushed up against his office door. He fumbles with one hand to lock it and tangles the other in Nigel’s hair. A flash, then, these curls under his fingers tacky with the remnants of hair product, head swimming with wine and something… he’s not sure of. Then Nigel’s lips are on his neck, teeth nipping at his skin and Brian is utterly back in the moment, one hand in Nigel’s back pocket again to pull them flush together.
“I want - fuck, bloody professor kink, that’s new, you’re bored as hell up there, how are you still fucking hot giving a lecture, that isn’t fair, Brian,” Nigel mutters against his skin and Brian laughs.
“You come in wearing - painted-on jeans and pounce on me, you have no -” Nigel rolls his hips and Brian’s thoughts scatter, a low moan spilling from his lips instead. “God, fuck, I don’t have any -” They’re in his office , why in God’s name would he have any kind of supplies here? Except right now he’s kind of thinking why doesn’t he?
Then he’s being literally lifted up - Brian yelps and wraps his legs around Nigel’s waist because it seems like the best idea, and then the next thing he knows the papers on his desk are hitting the floor and he’s sitting on it. “You’re not kidding about the sudden professor kink, huh?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Laughing in spite of himself, this time Brian pulls Nigel down to kiss him, the rasp of his stubble the kind of thrill he hadn’t known he wanted. Not that he hasn’t been with men before, but for Brian, sex and dating have always sort of been… mildly pleasant interludes, no more and no less. But this -
Nigel steps back and Brian only just manages not to whine like a a sulky child. “Hush, lovely,” Nigel says like he heard it anyway, stroking a gentle hand down Brian’s cheek. “I’m just thinking… hmm. So the traditional fantasy would probably be blowing you at your desk, with you in the chair and all. But I’m thinking, if I’m here trying to win myself a better grade -”
“I would never!”
“I know, but it’s just a fun thought, Bri, relax.” Absolutely no one calls Brian ‘Bri’, and he would point this out, except Nigel’s done it half a dozen times in text already so it’d be silly to object now. “As I was saying,” Nigel continues, “what I’d really want to do is make sure it was something you liked, and I think… you’d like being spread out over your own desk, wouldn’t you?” He leans in for another kiss, bearing down as he does, and Brian lets himself be tilted back till he’s lying on the top of his own desk, blinking up at Nigel.
And, OK, yeah, he has to admit as Nigel trails a hand down his chest and stomach, unbuttoning his shirt and then pushing it so it’s hanging off his shoulders, strokes him lightly through his slacks, that yes, yes this is something he’d like. Brian bites his lip against another whine as Nigel teases him, then fails to keep quiet when he pulls his hand away.
“Oh, I was right,” Nigel says with a dangerous grin - Brian has that dizzy deja vu of having seen that grin before but he doesn’t care about dreams right now - before he undoes Brian’s pants and pulls them down with his underwear. Brian has a moment, feeling the wood against his thighs as he watches Nigel pull actual lube packets from his pocket, where he thinks this is a terrible idea, someone could hear, or -
Nigel gets one hand around the back of Brian’s thigh, tilting his hips up, then presses a finger inside him, gold-hazel eyes intent on Brian’s face. And Brian can only stare back, one hand splayed on the desk top and the other over his mouth because he doesn’t actually want to get caught but. But as Nigel works him open, eyes never leaving Brian’s face, the thrill of the risk only sends Brian’s head spinning faster.
Nigel’s fingers twist and brush against just the right - and Brian sees stars, presses his hand all the harder to his mouth as his eyelids flutter and even that doesn’t fully muffle his moan. But then Nigel draws his fingers out and Brian whines, low in his throat. “God, you’re demanding, aren’t you…” Nigel leans down to kiss Brian till he’s quiet. He sheds his shirt and undoes his jeans, only bothering to shove the tight denim down to his calves before rolling on a condom which must have also been in his pocket and slicking himself up. His hands are tight on Brian’s hips and they’re kissing again when he pushes inside, when he sets a steady pace, so that Brian’s noises are muffled against his lips.
Brian tries to rock his hips, though he has almost no leverage at this angle, trying to get Nigel to move faster. Nigel nips at Brian’s bottom lip for his trouble, then trails kisses down his jaw, sucks a mark on his neck. Brian has to cover his mouth again, especially when Nigel does speed up, working a hand between them to stroke Brian at a matching pace. Brian moans again behind his hand, his other hand gripping desperately at Nigel’s shoulder and then -
He comes with a cry he can’t quite muffle and Nigel follows him over the edge with a moan muffled in Brian’s neck. They stay where they are for a moment, before Nigel presses a friendly kiss to Brian’s collarbone and pulls out carefully, taking off the condom and tying it before dropping it in the trash. He looks back up, smiling at Brian. “You make quite a sight laid out there, you know,” he says lazily as he gets his clothes back on.
“You - came prepared?” Brian manages as he slides off the desk with shaky legs, bracing himself on the desk.
“Course I did. I was planning to seduce a professor, after all.”
Brian should either kill him or kiss him. As he steadies enough to fetch the hand wipes he keeps in a drawer to clean off best he can, he decides the best plan is to kiss him, so they can keep doing things like this.
<><><>
So here’s the thing. In Brian’s world, the world where his late parents met at a mutual friend’s wedding and had a perfectly normal, tame courtship that ended with a proposal, a small house in a ‘decent’ Boston neighborhood, and one child - there were supposed to be more kids, he knows, but it didn’t work out - office sex should be embarrassing. In Brian’s world where he’s well aware that hookups at work between professors absolutely happens more often than anyone likes to think, office sex shouldn’t change anything.
But it pretty much changes everything.
It’s Nigel’s apartment and bed they make it to, that first day, but it quickly becomes incidental whose apartment they’re in, whose couch they curl up on and whose bed they fall into together. They met in February when snow was still on the ground, and then one day it’s June and Brian stands in summer sunlight filtering through his windows and realizes that his kitchen has acquired an electric kettle - because Nigel’s look of horror when he microwaved tea water was hilarious but also earned him a very impressive lecture - several types of tea, a cereal brand he actively despises, a cookie (sorry, biscuit) brand he’d never even heard of before, and -
“It is too bloody early for you to be thinking so hard, cariad .”
And, oh, yes, there’s a musician who had been in his bed until about five minutes ago, probably. This early, the Welsh is thicker in Nigel’s voice - hence the endearment. He knows, now, that Nigel’s father is an English viscount, his mother a legal assistant from Cardiff who was swept off her feet by a wealthy, charming older man. In love enough to be content with raising her son mostly alone, though Daddy paid for fancy schools that make Nigel sound “entirely posh” in his words, unless he’s tired or… er, otherwise wrecked.
“I get broody before coffee,” Brian quips, leaning back into Nigel’s hold and closing his eyes. “Are you aware that you’ve basically taken over half my kitchen?”
Nigel hums in amusement, dropping a kiss to the top of Brian’s head. “Oh, have I? I mean, I am better at using the things in a kitchen than you are, this is only to be expected, really. Anyway, the bookshelves at my place actually have books on them! As if you’ve never heard of a Kindle or a Nook, this is the 21st century, honestly.”
“Says the man with an addiction to vinyl.”
Brian knows Nigel’s backstory, and Nigel knows his. The boy too bookish to follow his father into construction, who wanted to go to art school or at least take up writing. But no, that’s not practical, if he had to be useless with his hands then he had to at least be sensible about it. Teach, some school somewhere always needs a teacher, and Brian had been smart enough to earn being a professor. An adjunct, with a side job online in copy editing, but these are practical things that pay the bills.
Nigel pays his bills with his music when he can, and with the trust fund he ignores until necessary or when he has a whim to buy something, when he can’t. Nigel thinks Brian should start trying to sell his paintings, should take a semester off and see if he can finish a novel. Self-publish if he has to, just to get on his way. Brian thinks this is a terrible idea, even as the boy he used to be longs to do just as Nigel suggests.
“My God, drink your vile coffee if it will stop the brooding, Brian, I am telling you again that it is too early for this,” Nigel murmurs in Brian’s ear, and then he bites his earlobe, which, well.
“It’s also too early for that .”
“Nonsense, it’s never too early for that,” Nigel says, fingers dipping under the waistband of Brian’s pajama pants. After a moment, Brian lets himself be tugged back to the bedroom - the nice thing about summer is fewer classes to teach, the only one he’s got today isn’t till mid-afternoon, so why the hell not?
And that night, after Brian’s done checking over his notes for his next lecture, he pulls a book off a shelf that is located in Nigel’s apartment, but is an old favorite of his, his name written in a still-messy teenage hand in the front cover. He curls up in the corner of a couch as familiar as his to read, listening to Nigel pick out chords on his guitar on the other side of the room.
He still dreams, of course. Tonight, it’s Nigel’s silky-feeling sheets against his skin when he blinks awake in the dark, not his own worn-soft cotton. Brian’s fingers curl into it as remembered anger, remembered heartbreak, still pounds through him.
“That’s not me and that’s definitely not you.”
What isn’t, what happened, why does the memory of words he’s never heard in a voice that is only almost Nigel’s make him feel like someone opened his chest and crushed his heart? The dream is already fading, except for those words, and vague impressions of cool stone under his hands, a flowered arch over his head.
“Bri?” Nigel blinks sleepily at him in the dim light filtering through his curtains from the street outside. Brian stares up at him, his heart in his throat. Some nights, they talk about it if the dreams come back. Some nights they do other things.
Tonight…
“I love you,” Brian whispers in the dark, and really, he’s obvious, he’s sure Nigel already knows, but. But he has to say it.
“Come here,” Nigel murmurs, pulling Brian in against his side. “I love you too. You all right, though?”
“I think… I think I am, yeah. Just a dream.”
And somehow, it can be that easy. Maybe the dream, all the dreams, mean something. Well, actually, they almost definitely do, given the sheer level of strangeness about them. But it doesn’t matter as much as this, Nigel’s heartbeat under Brian’s ear, the pair of them cocooned together in the night.
Whatever else might be real, this, also, is real.
<><><>
Brian knows he should shut up about this. It’s the first night he and Nigel have had to spend together in a week, what with fall semester starting and Nigel getting a steady job composing for a studio of established artists. They were supposed to just be taking it easy, curled together on Nigel’s couch with a movie going. But he just can’t stop ranting about the department chair and the stupid schedule and just - everything.
“And I know I don’t have tenure but for fuck’s sake, I can do things that aren’t intros, freshmen drive me up the fucking wall, Nigel, you’ve got no idea.”
“I think I have some idea, by now.” Nigel is definitely laughing at him, Brian can tell from the sound of his voice, but that’s all right, it’s always fond laughter with him.
Brian sighs. “I mean, they’re eighteen, it’s not like they’re bad kids or anything, it’s just that mostly the basic shit Carlisle keeps giving me are the courses people take for requirements, so half of ‘em aren’t taking it seriously at all. If I could just get a decent class or two it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I keep saying, you’d be happier if you quit.”
“I keep saying you’re a pretty rich boy and that colors your judgment.”
“Hmph. Well, good thing I am, because that means I can do this.” Before Brian can ask what it is Nigel can do, he’s paused the movie and stood up, pulling Brian up with him and into his arms. “Now stop ranting for a minute and dance with me, hmm?”
“I - can’t dance, and there’s no music -”
Except that, apparently, with Nigel singing quietly in his ear and leading him carefully around the living room, Brian’s terrible dancing becomes… manageably bad, instead of a disaster. Granted, they’re mostly swaying together, but still. Slowly, Brian relaxes, until they really have just about stopped and his face is pressed into Nigel’s shoulder, the soft cotton of his shirt and the warmth of his body under it soothing away the last of Brian’s temper.
Nigel kisses Brian’s temple and goes quiet for a moment. Then - “Move in with me? Properly, I mean?”
The question is a soft whisper in Brian’s ear, but he straightens, eyes wide with surprise. “I - you want me to move in here with you?”
“Well, if you want, but actually I was thinking we could find a place together. I’ve barely seen you all week, I want us to come home to each other but I know your flat’s how you like it, and mine’s how I like it, so we should probably find one that suits us both. What do you say?”
And Nigel is saying all this in that careless way he has, like it’s just an idea and what Brian says doesn’t really matter. But Brian knows it does. And - the truth is, he wants it too. He smiles, and when Nigel practically beams back at him, he can feel his own smile turn giddy. “Sure, let’s start looking at places.”
They start looking the next day and finally move into their new apartment on a sunny late September day. Something about the leaves beginning to turn autumn colors against the blue sky gives Brian a good feeling. If he believed in good omens, he would think it was one, somehow.
“Why are you fiddling with your school ring? Also, are you supposed to wear it on your left hand like you’re married to your alma mater?” Nigel asks when they’re taking a break from carrying boxes.
“It just felt more comfortable,” Brian says absently. “Like I was supposed to have a ring there.” He thinks of engraved copper bands, one on his finger, one warm against his fingertips as he slips it on someone else’s hand, and shakes his head to clear the flash away.
Brian’s days are full of his classes - still mostly intro, but somehow they don’t bother him quite so much this fall. His evenings are spent usually bickering, more or less playfully, about where this or that will go. They paint their walls on the weekends and several of Brian’s sketches hang alongside photographs in frames just the right shade of wood to stand out.
“How do you always know?” he asks Nigel, who somehow always gets it right.
“No idea. Just do. Feels like I worked for it, but I can’t remember it being anything but instinct.”
It doesn’t really matter. Brian has a sense for what to put on their shelves, their walls, and Nigel knows how to make it look just right. Like a home that belongs to them both.
<><><>
So, it’s a good thing that they both have steadier jobs now, Brian knows this. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it when Nigel has to fly out to California and he can’t go because he has classes to teach. Their half-unpacked apartment feels too empty, the corner of the living room where Nigel writes his music sits forlorn, sheet music and guitar gone along with the man who owns them.
The apartment is too quiet, so Brian puts on audiobooks to fill the silence. The bed is too big and too cold with just him in it, so he pulls out a spare blanket. He still doesn’t sleep as well as he’d like. He hates how clingy he feels, and yet… It’s not like he isn’t functioning. He’s not unable to get out of bed. He just hates being home alone, like it can’t be home anymore unless they’re both there.
It’s frustrating, but it’s also just true. Since he can’t help it, Brian tries to accept it.
Nigel left one of his oversized sweaters draped over the stool he sits on when he’s working on his music, and on the third night, Brian gives in to an impulse and steals it, curling up on the couch with his hands tucked into the too-long sleeves. He ends up falling asleep on the couch wearing it two nights running, and the third night of that (sixth night), he’s woken by a soft laugh.
“Miss me, sweetheart?” Nigel asks, trailing a hand over the green wool covering Brian’s arm. Brian grumbles and tugs him down by his jacket for a sleepy kiss, which gets him more laughter, but also, you know, a kiss.
“It’s too quiet when you’re not here,” Brian says, and he doesn’t care how plaintive he sounds.
“Oh, well. Next time you’ll just have to play hooky and come with me, hmm? For now, though… I think we can do better than the couch, and cute as you are in my sweater, I’d really rather see you in nothing at all.”
“Aren’t you jetlagged?” Brian asks, waking up enough to laugh as Nigel tows him down the hallway to their bedroom.
“Nope, it’s hours earlier in California, I am wide awake, Bri.” Nigel pauses just inside their bedroom to catch Brian up and spin them around. “And my God, the single is going to be brilliant when it comes out, this girl has the most amazing voice and she brought me in for the part that needed a male vocal, so you know. That makes it even better.”
Brian, who can’t hold a tune to save his life but loves listening to Nigel even when he’s singing a corny commercial jingle that got stuck in his head, has to agree with that assessment. He grins, leaning up for a kiss far more heated than the earlier lazy one.
But, after that, he does have a habit of stealing Nigel’s sweaters now that it’s getting chilly, though he’s not allowed to touch the burgundy one. “You bought that for me, you can’t go stealing it for at least a year,” Nigel says, and Brian only notes it because it happens the same week his school ring went missing for three days after he took it off to clean it and then got distracted by someone kissing the back of his neck.
But, whatever. He steals the blue-and-cream one instead when they go for a walk because Brian wants to sketch autumn scenes and Nigel likes to go walking as new melodies, new lyrics, brew in his head.
It’s good. It’s better than good. It’s the best Brian’s ever had, if he’s being honest.
But then Brian’s world flies apart before they manage to finish unpacking.
<><><>
“You don’t teach classes over winter break this year, right?” Nigel says one Saturday morning as he’s getting ready to run a few errands.
“Hmm?” Brian says, looking up from his laptop. He had a burst of inspiration when he woke up and has been typing away at his novel basically all morning. “Oh. No. Almost no one in their right mind even takes winter break classes, and the ones who do are usually not intro-level kids, they’re seniors who are fucked without that one specific class and winter break’s their only shot. Why?”
Nigel hums, dropping a kiss to the top of Brian’s head as he passes by. “Do you have a passport?”
“Yeah, it’s gonna expire in March but I’ve got one. Again, why?” Brian asks, tipping his head back to look at his boyfriend, who has that mischievous look in his eyes that says he’s planning something.
“How about we spend the holidays in London?” Nigel asks, and he grins because they both know Brian is a pathetic sucker for English royal history and among other things has always been desperate to visit the Tower of London. (Nigel is just as bad, by the way, it’s just that he prefers Ancient Rome. Their Netflix queue is very interesting sometimes.)
“But you hate London,” Brian feels obliged to point out.
“No, I’ve hated going back since Mam died, because I hate my father. I do not hate my stepmother and the half-sibs, but they hate me and I can’t entirely blame them for that. But taking you home, now that’s different, don’t you think?”
Oh. Brian’s heart does something funny in his chest. “In, in that case… we should fly out of Boston, spend a couple days there first. Just, you know. If we’re sharing.”
Nigel grins at him. “Sounds like a plan then. Right, I’ll be back in an hour.”
Nigel… is not back in an hour. Brian doesn’t think much of it until it’s been over two, because Nigel has been known to get sidetracked, or to strike up conversations with random fellow shoppers or store employees. But by the time it’s been two and a half hours, Brian is starting to get a little worried. He gets significantly more worried when his texts and two voicemails go unanswered.
By the third voicemail, Brian was a little worked up. “Nigel, what the fuck, answer your bloody phone,” he says, fingers tight around his own phone. “Where are you, I’m getting worr-”
Nigel literally materializes out of thin air and Brian drops his phone. Distantly, he hears something break, but he’s too busy trying to figure out what the fuck is happening to really think about it. “N-Nigel, what - how -?”
He has a dizzying flash, then, of the almost-Nigel, the dream guy, standing in a kitchen wearing truly ridiculous pajamas, waving a hand as things literally float in the air around him like fucking Jean Grey or something. He has another flash of himself, his fingers moving in a pattern and a broken model plane floating in front of him, repairing itself as his fingers move.
What. What the fucking hell.
Nigel is - staring at him, his head tilted and a smile on his face Brian’s never seen. Something’s not right about his face, it’s the same features but something’s different, his eyes are the same but the look in them, the way he’s holding himself, everything is wrong and Brian can’t understand -
“Quentin. I found you. Do a card trick for me, Quentin!”
What? Brian takes a step back, hands raised defensively though he doesn’t know what he could possibly do. “Nigel, this - this isn’t funny, what the hell is -”
Nigel’s eyes flash red and Brian remembers - different eyes flashing red, his hands flipping cards with ease, footsteps and a gunshot.
“This is not what we agreed on!”
“I didn't actually agree on anything.”
Oh God. This - whatever this is, this isn’t Nigel, not really, but Brian can’t understand what’s happening. He backs up as the thing that looks like Nigel approaches him, until he hits the kitchen counter and he can’t actually move anywhere. It looks at him with something that’s almost a mockery of affection, and Brian feels sick.
“Don't be scared. This is great! There's so much for us to do together. This is gonna be so fun. I think anything is more fun when you do it with a friend.” And before Brian can say anything, can do anything, the Nigel-thing grabs his arm and the apartment vanishes in a dizzying whirl.
It’s a month, more or less, of being dragged around, barely able to eat or sleep even when the Monster gives Brian a chance. And it keeps echoing around his mind. “I’ll be back in an hour, I’ll be back in an hour.”
That, and a question - who the fuck is Quentin?
.... Until, in Greece, a vicious headache strikes and is gone like lightning, and where Brian Devlin was, Quentin Coldwater is back, blinking in confusion with blood on his skin, his clothes. He turns to see Eliot holding up a man, pinned by his throat - but, no, he realizes, dizzy with horror as Brian’s memories collide with his and everything suddenly makes a terrible sort of sense.
No. Oh God, no.
The Monster is hunting gods. It wants the things they took from it, which are… well, unknown, apparently. Right. But Quentin knows, when they’re sitting on that bridge, the Monster snuggled up against his side and laying Eliot’s head on his shoulder, that he should just keep his mouth shut. The Monster taught Brian very well that asking for things is a bad idea. But he can’t help it.
“You really understand me, Quentin. It's good to have a friend like you.”
“You know, speaking of friends, when you get back what the gods took from you maybe... Could I maybe have Eliot back?” Please, just let him go, you can keep me if you want, you probably will anyway if you found me even as Brian but please let him go first.
“The one who tried to kill me?”
Oh shit. Quentin should really have thought of that.
In the end, it works out, sort of. He’s back with the others, no one dies but Bacchus, and then there’s the Push game, and for one goddamn moment Quentin has clarity because when he can’t do shit else he can play cards. Oh, but there’s also a cursed fucking teddy bear that tries to get him killed in ways that wouldn’t be out of place in a Looney Tunes short and then -
Then. Quentin’s world doesn’t shatter, but it cracks down the middle, spiderweb fractures spreading so that one good hit is all it will take for everything to go to pieces.
He knew it was coming, of course. He hadn’t expected to find out after the fact, and hadn’t expected to break all his dead father’s model planes with a Monster wearing Eliot like a cheap suit, but. For a moment, this thing liking him is actually. Actually helpful. Smashing the planes actually helps, it lets out the grief and the guilt and it’s a fuck you to his mother and that fucking bitch she married, and God, he hates both of them but he loved his dad and. And. Throwing wooden planes against the wall with a god-killing Monster is apparently the only thing that lets him feel all of that without it drowning him.
But then.
“You'll be more useful to me if you feel better, so you should know that your friend Eliot is dead.”
“I felt the moment his soul died. It only hurt for a second. I promise he didn't suffer.”
One good hit. And Quentin’s world flies apart.