NATE
The reaction he gets has Nate beaming, his face almost aching from how wide his smile is. ”It’s not rude if you laugh.” That was just logic, obviously. Laughing means it was good, and already Nate’s planning all kinds of ways to do this again, a silly, soft prank. ”I didn’t know you were ticklish.” He purrs, fingers threatening Sunjata, even while Nate continues to laugh. And continues, right up until Sunjata gives him his truth, right up until he pauses, hums.
"You know a lot of my secrets." Nate rumbles, deciding to let his mind drift, deciding to let the first thing that surfaced out of his mouth. "You remember, I told you about the uh... the work, I did for my dad?" First thought, maybe not the best one, but there was no turning back. Even now, thinking so close around it, he can feel a twist in his stomach, a moment of panic as his body forgets that his heart doesn't beat, that his lungs don't need to be filled. A moment where he forgets he isn't human, isn't dead himself. Shutting his eyes tight, Nate lets out a whine, and presses his face into the crook of Sunjata's neck. This is a story that can be told without eye contact, he thinks, if only so he can avoid the images his mind will dredge up. "I ran away. Got a uh, bus ticket upstate, out of state, and just left."
With the way the sickness drags him here and there, memories both related and not wander to the forefront of his mind, and he has to focus, really focus to get what he needs out. Nate presses even harder against Sunjata, swirling overtaking the darkness inside his eyes, shapes appearing and fading again before he can make sense of them. ”I got off at the end of the line, in a big ass city, and I... I had a plan, but I didn’t really have a plan, you know?” His hand reaches, unseeing, for Sunjata’s, to hold, to squeeze. He’s not in that place anymore, no matter how it pounds against his senses. ”There’s a lot of bridges there. Lotta big buildings too, but... that seemed worse.” A giddy, shaky laugh leaves Nate, like it’s a joke, and he’s trying so hard to make it one, just laugh, just go along with it.
”I figured I would kinda... enjoy myself first. I was a minor, but I was big, and I had a fake ID, and I find a bar and drink until I can’t tell how shitty the beer is anymore, and I leave.” He’s only just now realizing that that’s not really a good time, that it’s a cry for help, when he’s young and in a place he doesn’t know and he has a plan. It makes the next part clearer, gives it more sense at least. ”I walk to whatever the nearest bridge is, it’s not far, but it’s cold, and miserable, and it all kinda feels... right, you know? And this... woman, I guess, she couldn’t have been much older than me, she follows me. And when I... she, she comes up to me, and she says,” Nate pauses, to cough out a laugh, ”This is a shitty place to kill yourself. Come with me. So... I go with her.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that he was still draped over Sunjata, Nate would have all but forgotten the other man was there, too wrapped up in a recollection, in a memory he barely remembers. This has shifted from game to something he needs to get out, now that it’s started. ”She had red hair, red red, and the ugliest coat I’ve ever seen in my life, and she told me her name but I don’t... I can’t remember. I tried to tell her she was wrong, and I wasn’t gonna kill myself, and she just... started talking about herself. Her family. Her... girlfriend.” The last word is whispered, the same way it had been when he’d repeated it back to the woman, all those years ago. Like it’s something secret, something shameful. ”She let me talk to, about... I don’t know. My shitty teenager stuff, and my sad life stuff, and she let me cry and brought me to a different bar, and it was...” God, even now, in the state he’s in, it sounds stupid. Sounds fake, like some kind of movie scene, or something you’d read in a cheap book, but: ”It was the first time I really knew there people like me who weren’t miserable about it. And it doesn’t, it didn’t fix everything, but... it helped.”
”By the end of the night, I didn’t have a plan anymore. She bought me a bus ticket, and I went back home. I don’t think anyone even really noticed I was gone, except Bart.” And he’d never told anyone, not even Bart. Except, now, he’d told Sunjata. And, with that realization, Nate is shoved out of his reminiscing, back into the present, the feverish moment. He draws back, opening his eye as he does, and before the can say something, anything, he surges up to kiss his fiancé, his lover, his partner. Everything that he can press into the embrace, he does, both hands moving to cup Sunjata’s cheeks, brushing over freckles and stubble both. Just a fraction, a tiny fragment, if he can communicate even a hint of his emotions through touch, he wants it to be this touch.
the last ones here on earth
