Archive of Our Own ^beta

"If you tell me you're fine one more time, I'm going to kick your ass," Clarke huffs at him from the next treadmill.

"You could try to kick my ass," Nate says, and ups his speed by another mile an hour.

Clarke groans, but matches his pace. "You are the worst gym buddy in the world."

"It's almost like -- I didn't want to be -- your gym buddy," Nate pants. "Almost like -- you hacked my calendar -- and started following me."

"To be fair to Clarke, you use the same password for everything," Wells cuts in. Wells is jogging a steady, sedate pace on the other side of Clarke. He looks and sounds more reasonable than both of them put together, but what else is new. "It's not really hacking."

"To be unfair to Clarke," Nate starts, and increases his speed again.

"I hate you." Clarke grimly paces him. "I hate you so much."

"If you can talk -- you're not running -- fast enough."

"You're only delaying the inevitable," Wells tells him, talking to Nate over Clarke's head, which she has bowed with intense concentration, like she can outthink the machine. "You're going to have to get off the treadmill at some point. And when you do, Clarke is going to make you talk about your feelings."

"Not if one of us has a heart attack."

Wells shakes his head and looks away from Nate. "Unless you want to have a heart attack, don't look at the TV right now."

So of course Nate looks at the TV, right on time to catch the same damn photo of Bryan that's been following him around all day.

"Shit!" Nate starts to trip, because today wasn't terrible enough already, but he manages to catch himself before he can fall and break his face.

"Ha!" Clarke shouts, punching both fists straight up in the air. "I win! I win, I win, I win -- "

Passersby are staring at her, but that's never stopped her before.

"You didn't win, Wells cheated," Nate protests.

"I told you not to look at the TV."

"Yeah, well, don't think of a pink elephant," Nate says. "Now what are you thinking of?"

"The white cliffs of Dover," Wells says, because he's a weirdo and a cheat.

Nate stands on the sides of the treadmill long enough to shut it off. "Come on. Weight training time."

"What? Not fair," Clarke pants. She's still running flat out, as if the race they weren't having wasn't over already.

"Too bad," Nate says, looking back at the television for a split second. There's another photo up now, and Nate hasn't seen that one yet; that's what he needs, another angle on the same fucking scene. "I want to lift something heavy."

"Fine," Clarke says, slowing to a walk before she hops off her treadmill. "We can talk while we lift."

"If you try to play shrink I will drop the barbell on myself. You want that on your conscience? You want to explain to my dad how I died because you pestered me to death?"

"Please, I'm an excellent spotter," Clarke brags. "And your dad loves me."

Nate rolls his eyes, but he can't dispute the facts of either of those statements, so he focuses on finding a bench press that's available, and preferably as far away from any TV screens as possible.

-

Nate isn't bitter.

Really.

And he isn't using gruffness and sarcasm to hide the deep pain of a broken heart, whatever the fuck Clarke says about anything. Like she knows his life.

The break up with Bryan had been painful but not cruel, and also it had been two years ago. Sure, they never see each other and Nate blocked Bryan on all forms of social media, but that's not spite, that's common sense. It's awkward, running into someone you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with after the rest of your life has moved on without them.

He'd even heard from some mutual friends that Bryan was serious about his new boyfriend, and that's great. Nate wishes him all the happiness in the world. He just doesn't want to witness the whole 'ex-fiancé being happy without him' thing.

So obviously Bryan's cop boyfriend proposes to him in the middle of a Pride parade and the damn thing goes viral.

Nate's already heard about it from his morning news podcast, every single one of his coworkers, the hosts of whatever shitty radio station his favorite lunch place tunes into, his Facebook timeline, the television in the elevator at work, Reddit, and his well-meaning but severely out of touch great-aunt Linda, who had forwarded him a link with an all caps comment that MAYBE YOU'LL FIND A NICE BOY LIKE HIM SOME DAY, NATHAN.

It would have been expecting a miracle to ask Clarke to let it go without comment, but the universe owes Nate a miracle or two by now.

"You know you can talk to me about anything," Clarke tells him. She did at least let him finish his workout before she brought it up again. Although now he can't pretend to be too out of breath to answer. That's probably why she did it.

"Okay," Nate says. "I want to talk to you about your refusal to respect my boundaries."

"Not how it works," Clarke says. "I help you with your issues, Wells helps me with my issues, you -- actually, no, you don't help Wells. Wells takes care of himself because he's good at being an adult."

Nate scowls.

"Look," Clarke says, grabbing her gym bag and throwing the strap over her shoulder. "I'll drop it, okay? But I know what you get like when you're embarrassed. I worry that you're going to bottle everything up and then do -- I don't know. Something stupid."

"When have I ever done something stupid?" Nate asks. "Aside from breaking into Wells' dad's office, and shoplifting that Playstation, and punching John Murphy during choir practice -- "

"See, it's almost like you agree with me."

"It's almost like that," Nate says. "Almost like it's possible to agree with someone's opinion but not with their actions."

"Nathan Miller, are you saying that I'm right?"

"That's not what I said."

Clarke rolls her eyes at him. "Well, anyway. Consider the subject dropped." Then she frowns. "Punching John Murphy was definitely not stupid. I would have if you didn't."

"Right in the middle of choir practice was pretty stupid," and Clarke laughs at that.

Nate's mood picks up long enough for him to get home from the gym and reheat leftovers for dinner, but then he makes the mistake of checking his Twitter feed.

Twitter is one of Nate's favorite time sinks, which is not something he'd expected when he signed up. He'd gotten one mostly to hassle Clarke and tweet sarcastic customer reviews to corporate accounts, but he'd ended up sticking with it. 140 characters is just about his attention span for most of the people he ever has to interact with, plus lately he can tweet snarky comments to Donald Trump and pretend that he's making the world a better place.

Except today, even Twitter has betrayed him, because in the space of about three minutes he sees at least a dozen retweets of that stupid fucking photo, the parade, the boyfriend on one knee, and Bryan with the biggest smile Nate's ever seen.

Nate can still remember when he used to make Bryan smile like that. Can still remember when Bryan said yes to him. He hadn't bought a ring; he'd always thought it was kind of weird and hokey, the big public proposal. He'd though Bryan agreed with that sentiment. Obviously he'd been wrong.

Nate sighs, thinks about signing off. Instead, something -- his flair for the dramatic, maybe -- makes him compose one tweet before he goes.

This has been fun and all, but there's only so many 100s of times you can watch your ex get engaged. I'm out.

It's less than a minute before his phone notifies him that Clarke has tweeted at him. Because she's apparently confused by the words "I'm out". Also by the entire day's worth of aggressive refusal to talk about his feelings.

He mutes his phone before sitting down to watch Die Hard at top volume. He could use some explosions.

-

Nate's brushing his teeth the next morning when he hears his phone trill its text message alert. He's curious enough about who's texting at seven in the morning that he actually goes to look at it.

Okay so please don't be mad at me, Clarke says.

Now I'm mad at you for texting that, Nate types back with one thumb. Be more specific. Unless you're trying to give me an anxiety attack, in which case good job and I'm FURIOUS at you.

He phone gives him the little Clarke Griffin is typing warning, which goes away and comes back and goes away three times before she sends him a link to Buzzfeed.

He tells her Mad again because you're making me read buzzfeed before he clicks the link.

Then he chokes on his toothpaste, because the headline is screaming That Awkward Moment When Your Ex's Proposal Goes Viral at him in 70 point bold font.

It's not a very long story -- of course it isn't, because it's Buzzfeed, it's not like they could write anything with actual content if their lives depended on it. Probably about a hundred words recapping Bryan's engagement, the internet's response to it, and then there's a screencap of his own tweet last night.

He's not entirely sure how long he stands, staring at his phone in his underwear with his toothbrush in his mouth, before his phone rings and startles him out of it.

It's Clarke, obviously.

"What the hell, Griffin?" Nate demands.

"Look, I'm sorry," she says.

"I don't want to see this shit first thing in the morning, it's like my whole day is ruined. I can't take a sick day for Buzzfeed-induced trauma, you know."

"I thought you should hear about it as soon as possible," Clarke argues, while Nate spits and rinses out his mouth. "Unless you wanted to be caught off guard at the water cooler at work, in which case, sorry I didn't let you have a heart attack and/or murder one of your coworkers."

"That would obviously have been the polite thing to do." Nate's face flushes, and his heart beats way too quickly. He switches the phone to speaker and drops to the ground to do some push ups, which usually helps him burn off nervous energy like this.

"Well, next time I want to warn you before you walk into a life-threatening situation, I'll remember not to bother." Clarke huffs. "Look, I am sorry."

"Whatever," Nate says. The push ups are not helping. "I'm glad I know, okay?"

"I mean, uh," Clarke stops.

Nate freezes, halfway off the ground. "Clarke," he says. "What are you really sorry for?"

"I didn't fully consider the possible outcomes of my actions."

"Griffin."

"I forgot that one of my college buddies writes for Buzzfeed," Clarke says in a rush. "And who even thinks about stuff like that? I wanted to show you my support. I didn't think that anyone else would even notice or care, besides the people who know you, and they're all following you on Twitter, anyway."

Nate drops himself onto the ground and rolls to his back. Maybe if he closes his eyes this will all turn out to be some freaky stress-induced dream.

"Okay, let me get this straight," he says slowly. "I tweet to my friends. You retweet me to your thousands of Twitter followers -- "

"I don't have thousands of followers," Clarke insists.

"Everyone who's ever met you for three seconds is following you," Nate replies. "Plus a bunch of people who just get off on blondes with strong opinions."

"That's not thousands of people."

"That's not the real problem I'm having here," Nate says, and Clarke sighs. "So you retweet me to your, whatever, hundreds of followers. Then that gets sent out to all of the people who read Buzzfeed. Which is definitely at least thousands, don't argue with me on that."

"Oh, yeah, no, millions at least," Clarke says. "Probably tens or hundreds of millions."

Nate grinds his teeth. "Great, thanks. That's so helpful. Is there anyone else who knows about this that I'm missing? Obama? My boss? Principal Jaha?"

"Um, yeah, no, it's not Wells' dad that I was thinking of," Clarke says.

"Oh, shit." Nate covers his face with his hands. "I need to call my dad."

"I told him that you were okay, just embarrassed."

"When did you tell him that?"

"Last night. He tried to call you, said he recognized Bryan on the news and wanted to see how you were doing. He thought maybe you were upset since you didn't pick up the phone. So I told him, don't worry, Nate probably turned off his phone to watch Predator."

"Die Hard," Nate corrects her.

"Yeah, that's the important part of what I said."

Nate opens his eyes. The world continues to exist. Damn.

"Okay, so, damage control with my dad," Nate says. He checks his phone log and sees, sure enough, a missed call from his dad. He wonders if there's anyone else he needs to worry about, so he starts scrolling through his messages. "Then, what, plastic surgery and legally changing my name? Do I need to leave the country? Would that even help? They have Buzzfeed everywhere. Where could I go that doesn't have Buzzfeed, North Korea?"

"I am shocked to find that you're overreacting. Shocked." Clarke does not sound shocked. "Look, I know this is embarrassing, really, I do -- "

"You would know how, exactly?"

"Observation. Logic. Empathy. But it's going to blow over in no time, it's not like you're that interesting."

"I think that's even worse," he says. "If everyone's going to be paying attention to me anyway, I'd rather they're impressed."

That's when he checks his Twitter app.

"Oh, shit," he says.

"What?" Clarke says.

"Do you know that I have like a thousand Twitter notifications?" he demands.

"I mean, yeah," Clarke says. "Are you honestly surprised?"

"Yes," Nate says heatedly. He's torn between wanting to read what people have been tweeting at him and wanting to throw his phone in the garbage disposal.

"Oh my sweet, ignorant Nathan."

Curiosity wins out. "You have lost all rights to condescend to me," he informs Clarke. Most of the mentions amount to lol look at this guy. Nate supposes it could be worse, but he's not sure how.

Well, not until he sees the tweet calling him cute. Or the second tweet. Or the third one. That, Nate decides, is worse. um this guy is a hottie!!! way hotter than that cop, who would pick him when they could have this guy????

"Nope, I locked down condescension privileges in sophomore year chemistry," Clarke is telling him, but he's too distracted to argue with her about how he had saved her ass in chemistry.

"You ruined Twitter for me," he says instead.

Clarke snorts. "I didn't make you tweet that the current viral darling of the internet was your ex."

"That was for me and my small little circle of followers. If you hadn't retweeted it, no one would have seen it."

"So now it's my fault that you're unpopular?"

"I'm exactly as popular as I want to be," Nate says. "Or at least I was. Fuck, do you know how many people have followed me in the last day? What the hell do they get out of following me? Why would anyone possibly want to follow me?"

"People love train wrecks," Clarke observes.

"Thanks."

"Volcanos. Forest fires. Any kind of major disaster."

"Thanks."

"Anything I can do to help," Clarke tells him. "Look, stay off Twitter for a few days, and everyone will forget about it."

"Yeah," Nate says, not believing it for a second. "I should go, I have to get ready for work and come to terms with the fact that my life is now fodder for internet gossips, okay?"

"Okay." Clarke hesitates, and Nate can picture her biting at her fingernail like she does when she's thinking. "I understand if you want me to butt out. But on the off chance you don't, I want to reiterate that I am here for you."

"Yeah, got that," Nate sighs. "We'll do drinks tonight or something. Okay?"

"Okay," Clarke says, and Nate hangs up.

He's still got Twitter open, and his fingers twitch at the screen, unsure of what to do.

He should just delete his account at this point, right? There's no coming back from this.

But if he deletes his account now, it'll be like admitting he's embarrassed. And that's never been his style.

So he tweets at Buzzfeed wow, slow news day, even for your loose definition of 'news' and tweets to his general timeline you guys have way too much time on your hands, go catch a pokemon or something.

Then he gets up to go about his day, trying not to panic.

-

Work's a lot smoother than he'd worried it would be. His tweet hasn't received anything like the amount of news coverage as Bryan's proposal, so there's only a couple weird looks, and one conversation in the break room that halts abruptly when he walks in.

He thinks about looking to see if anyone besides Buzzfeed is talking about him, but the thought of someone catching him at it makes him shudder.

So instead of vanity Googling, he spends his downtime checking his Twitter. That's certainly not any healthier, but he screencaps the weirdest tweets he's gotten, to guilt Clarke with later, which does make it more productive.

He ignores any tweets that ask him about Bryan, but decides the ones that are mocking or mean deserve to be responded to in kind; ugh i hate assholes like this like why can't you let it go gets Buddy, I'm not even the biggest asshole in this conversation.

A couple of the other ones are strange enough that they merit a response; you'll find someone!!!!! I believe in you!!!!!!!!! gets find someone, like, a missing person? should I become a detective?

Put good vibes out into the universe, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar gets Yeah, but then you have a bunch of flies, don't act like you're winning at life.

But mostly they're repetitive, and a lot of the fun goes out of it.

It's time for him to clock off and see if Clarke and Wells want to go out -- with his arsenal of bizarre tweets, he's pretty sure he won't have to buy any of his own drinks for a month -- when he sees the weirdest tweet yet.

If it helps, the guy proposing to him is my ex, so I know how you feel.

Which is bullshit, because Nate doesn't know how he feels, so how could some random internet user? And even if he did, what would be the point of talking about it? Does this guy want to bash on their exes together? Nate's not down for that.

Hell, this guy might not even be real. Nate's not paranoid, but in a universe where Catfish and Munchausen by Internet are things that exist, there's every chance in the world that @montygee just wants attention.

Which is stupid, but Nate believes very strongly in the stupidity of the internet.

The smart thing would be not to respond, but he's morbidly fascinated. And if he were playing this smart, he wouldn't have responded to any of his tweets today.

Why would that help? he replies to @montygee's tweet.

He gets a response by the time he's at his car. Misery loves company? Singles solidarity? Getting to laugh at someone else's problems? I don't know, now I'm just spitballing.

If I laugh at you doesn't that mean I'm laughing at myself, Nate replies.

Laugh and the world laughs with you

what if I want to punch the world

oh, then punch yourself in the face, definitely

Wouldn't that be a Pyrrhic victory?

I think it depends how badly you want to punch the world
Not really my thing but if it makes you happy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nate snorts, but before he can think of a reply, his phone starts ringing.

"Griffin, tell me we're getting drunk," Nate says.

"Isn't it leg day?" Clarke asks. "Are you telling me we're going to skip leg day to drink? Because that's some shitty personal training."

"I'm not your personal trainer," Nate responds. "You just follow me around the gym doing whatever I do."

"Fine, you're my impersonal trainer. I definitely feel neglected and unmotivated by you."

"Good. Tonight I'm going to the bar. You are free to follow me around the bar and drink whatever I drink."

"Fine, but I still think you're a lazy quitter for skipping leg day," Clarke says, and Nate hears something in the background about potato skins.

"Tell it to the bar that you're not already at," Nate says. "You didn't even wait for me? This is my darkest hour, Griffin."

"Really, because I distinctly remember someone telling me a thousand times that you were fine," Clarke snaps. "Get over here before Wells eats all the mozzarella sticks."

There's a beer waiting for him when he gets to the bar, an IPA that he takes a huge gulp of before he's even sat down, and that goes a long way toward making him forgive Clarke for starting without him. Not that he'll tell her so.

She watches him with a look of disgust. "I don't know how you drink that stuff," she said. "Too bitter."

"Just like me," Nate says, and Clarke rolls her eyes while Wells lifts his own glass to hide a smile.

"Nate likes his beer like he likes his men," Wells says.

"No I don't," Nate retorts. "I'm bitter. I like my men -- not bitter."

"Well, I like my drinks like I like my people," Clarke says. "All kinds." She frowns at herself. "No, wait, I can do better than that."

"I feel like the joke suffers from the use of the word 'people'," Wells comments. "Like you're talking about your tribe rather than your romantic conquests."

"I like my drinks like I like my people," Clarke says stubbornly. "Non-gender specific."

"Uh, yeah, I also don't like when my drinks have genders, that would be gross," Nate says. "You guys know you're picking up my tab, right? Clarke specifically."

She sighs but doesn't dispute it.

"What about 'dates'," Wells suggests. "That's non-gender specific. 'I like my drinks like I like my dates.'"

"You have to finish the thought," Clarke tells him.

"Uh, I like my drinks like I like my dates." Wells drums his fingers on the table. "Bubbly."

Nate squints at him. "Dude, you're drinking a vodka cranberry."

"I like bubbly drinks, too," Wells says, unfazed.

Clarke shrugs. "Nate, your turn."

Nate finishes his beer, putting down the glass slowly and waving at the server for a refill. "I thought we'd already established that my taste in men and my taste in beer are not the same thing."

"So make something up," Clarke says. She's aggressively trying to be 'fun drunk', which is exhausting to watch. "No one's going to fact check it, god."

"Fine," Nate sighs. "I like my men like I don't like my drinks. Sweet."

Clarke frowns at him. "That's too pat."

Nate sighs again. "Sweet and fruity?"

"That's offensive." Clarke wrinkles her nose at him. "Oh, wait, I got one! I like my drinks like I like my dates: strong, mysterious, and something I'll regret in the morning."

Nate shakes his head. "You're a mess, Griffin. How were valedictorian, again?"

"She campaigned the counselors to not count yearbook against her grade," Wells says, like Nate hasn't heard this argument a million times already. "Besides, the smart kids are all huge perverts, everyone knows that."

"I didn't know that," Nate says. "You were salutatorian so that makes you, what, the prince of the perverts?"

Clarke snorts. "Buy him a drink, maybe you'll get to find out."

"Nah," Wells says. "Nate's not bubbly enough."

"And I refuse to date anyone related to Principal Jaha," Nate says. "No offense."

"You think I'm offended? I lived with him for eighteen years. I wouldn't date me either."

Someone switches the television over to the Yankees game, which is a blessing as far as Nate is concerned. Clarke is too busy arguing with him about how the Yankees are great, Miller, not that YOU would know anything about greatness, to pester him about his emotional health or tell stupid jokes about drinks. Not that Clarke cares about baseball, but she likes arguing, and Nate's strong "anyone but the Yankees" stance lets her quit pretending to be a fun drunk and embrace the crotchety old man that she really is.

By the time that Nate next thinks to check his phone, he's a couple of beers in and the Yankees are up three runs. Which on the one hand means that tonight is successfully distracting him from the shit show that is his life. On the other hand, the Yankees are winning and everything is terrible.

When he does check his phone, he sees that @montygee has starting following him.

He doesn't know what to do with that. It doesn't mean anything, right? He had a short, amusing interaction with a guy online, so the guy followed him. It's happened before. It doesn't mean anything. Even if the guy in question is single and the former boyfriend of the current fiancé of Nate's ex-fiancé.

He should turn his phone off.

But Clarke is laughing at him, the Yankees steal third base, and the server puts down another beer in front of him with him even asking, like she just knows.

Nate follows @montygee back and sends him a DM:

how do you do that little shrug thing

The Yankees are up by five runs and Wells is making them all eat salad to compensate for the fried appetizers when Nate's phone buzzes. He isn't even thinking about @montygee when he picks it up; just, at that point, anything would be a change for the better.

you need Japanese characters. Or, you know, copy&paste.

It takes Nate a few minutes to remember what the hell they're talking about. When he does, he feels cheated. You gave me a recycled emoticon? now I don't feel special

it's better for the planet
don't you know there's an emoji drought in California right now?

yeah and the starving children in Africa didn't make me eat my spinach when i was five either
i want a new emoticon

like, brand new? Do I have to invent an entirely new emoticon for you?

yes, Nate sends back. and it must have at least five characters

ah see you think you're making it harder
but actually that's easier
because the more characters there are the more possible combinations
the more likely I am to find one that hasn't been used by anyone before

right, like that thing in math with the exclamation point

...
...
...
I'm trying to wrap my head around this
five points to Gryffindor for name dropping factorials in casual online conversation
twenty points from Gryffindor for calling them 'the thing with the exclamation point'

fuck you i'm not a gryffindor

I assumed from the bravado
my apologies
how do you sort yourself

none of your business

so, Hufflepuff

what
no
who said anything about Hufflepuff

that's the only house anyone ever denies being in
Ravenclaws and Slytherins got mad house pride

are you accusing me of being a self-hating Hufflepuff

which part bothers you
the self hating or the hufflepuff

fuck you, Cedric Diggory was a GOD, which, Nate doesn't give a shit about Cedric Diggory, except maybe to have vague anti-Twilight feelings for the actor, but he's the only positive thing Nate can remember about Hufflepuff. No wonder no one wants to admit to being one of them.

eh, god is a stretch. maybe a demigod, @montygee replies. like his dad was Zeus and knocked up his mom by turning into a laser light show

Nate snorts at that, because what the actual fuck. Apparently @montygee likes his men like he likes Pink Floyd concerts, which is way too much information.

"What's so funny?" Clarke asks, pulling his left arm over her right shoulder and then -- leaving it there, her hand tight around his wrist.

"Arguing with someone who thinks I'm a Hufflepuff," Nate says.

"Hmm," Clarke says, and Wells says, "I don't know, maybe," so Nate has to scowl at both of them, even if his own arm gets in the way of Clarke being able to see the look on his face. She'll feel it. His scowls are tangible.

"I am not a Hufflepuff," he insists.

"I feel like your secondary house is Hufflepuff," Clarke says, and then Wells argues, "Hogwarts doesn't have secondary houses, you don't get to use Eaglecrest rules," and Clarke asks "Why not?" and Wells answers "You have to stay within the rules established in the universe, that's the whole point," and that sets them off arguing about some new horrendous bullshit that, as far as Nate can tell, they are making up as they go along.

He turns back to @montygee, because even if he's a creepy internet weirdo, he's better than whatever the hell is happening in this booth right now.

did you know that there's made up houses for other wizard schools?

um yeah
like at least three that I know of that are decently popular
did you not?

great, now I have to learn a bunch of new shit to be angry about

are you SURE you're not a gryffindor
because that is the most gryffindor thing I've ever heard
also you refuse to quit even when you should and you didn't actually tweet anything mean about your ex
even when people asked you to

Nate blinks down at his phone. That's a disturbing amount of insight from a creepy internet weirdo. In the length of time that Nate's been chatting with him, he's only discovered that @montygee is a nerd who likes math. Granted, he hasn't bothered to check out the guy's profile, while @montygee has -- what, read all of Nate's tweets from the last day?

That should probably make him feel creeped out, or violated, but it's not like he talks about anything more revealing than his favorite Subway sandwich on his Twitter. Or he didn't until this whole mess.

Mostly, it makes him feel bad, like @montygee is a better friend or a better person than he is, which against all logic makes Nate feel like the creep.

Screw this shit. This is not the time or place for real talk.

joke's on you he sends back. my idiot friends have decided i'm something called bluthyonce

ask them what your secondary house is, which, what the hell, @montygee might actually be psychic.

I think if I do they will start a bar brawl

in other words, it's a win/win

maybe, Nate sends back, but the conversation has moved on to Everything Clarke Hates About The Harry Potter Movies, which is another conversation, like How Clarke Stole The Valedictorianship From Wells, that Nate could recite from memory at this point. what house are you in though? Then follows up with, real house, I barely know Harry Potter shit, I definitely don't know all the stupid made up ones

eh, I don't know, @montygee replies. everyone says I'm a hufflepuff though.

so now YOU'RE the self-hating hufflepuff

Not really, I genuinely don't think it fits me. but no one believes me when I say that so I usually just roll with it

let me guess: you're a Ravenclaw? which feels like a safe bet; @montygee's clearly a nerd, and seems pretty smart.

That doesn't get a response, but then the Yankees win and Clarke gloating is at least Clarke being comprehensible, so Nate doesn't worry about it.

He still hasn't responded by the time Nate has gone home for the night, way too late for a work night, and Nate feels a stab of worry, like maybe he offended @montygee by saying he was a Ravenclaw. He probably calls himself a Gryffindor and wanted to bond out of shared house pride or whatever.

"Yeah, or he went to sleep," Nate mutters to himself. He doesn't even know if the guy's in the same time zone as him. Maybe Nate was keeping him up late. Maybe he got bored and moved on with his real life, like Nate should be doing.

Nate strips down to go to bed, but with his eyes closed he can feel the room spinning around him, just a little, just enough to keep him from falling asleep. Too much to drink, and now with everything that's been happening the last few days, he's thinking about Bryan, and fuck, he's never going to fall asleep now.

He turns the light on and sends a series of increasingly ugly Snapchats to Clarke, hoping they wake her up. That makes him feel a little better, so he switches back to Twitter to see if @montygee has messaged him back.

He hasn't.

What the hell. Nate can spare another five minutes of stupidity, right?

He means to pick back up with the Harry Potter thing, but what he ends up sending is How do you balance wanting them to be happy and wanting everyone to shut the fuck up already?

He still can't get to sleep, so after some more tossing and turning he gets up to use the bathroom and sees that @montygee has responded to him, even though it's the middle of the night.

I mean, that's begging the question, do I want them to be happy?
maybe i am a spiteful hateful little ball of rage who wants them to be miserable

Maybe Nate's not the only one feeling overly honest. ...are you?

well, no
or not about that
i'd like to say not about anything
but I don't know if that's strictly true

go to sleep, little Slytherin

now you're just guessing

look it's a one-in-four chance, I'll get it eventually
or is there some fancy math word I don't know for that
like a quad probability or some shit
and you're going to get all offended at me getting it wrong

SUCH a gryffindor
good night

yeah you too
go to sleep
you have to make me an emoticon tomorrow

I have a deadline?!

obviously
totally unprofessional of you
what do you think I'm paying you for

my wit and charm, duh
now GO TO SLEEP

He does, eventually, fall asleep.

-

Nate wakes up, tired and stiff all over, but otherwise feeling good about his situation. Clarke's probably right that the best way to make everyone ignore him would have been not to engage, but this way he got to blow off steam. The worst thing Buzzfeed can do is run a story that he's an angry asshole, and it's not like he doesn't know that already.

He thinks he prefers "angry asshole" to "heartbroken ex", anyway.

Since the universe can't let him have even a minute of optimism, his phone starts ringing while he's in the shower. There is no good reason to call someone at seven in the morning. None.

He cheers up the tiniest fraction of a fraction, or whatever the proper math term for that is, when he sees that it's not Clarke. But it's Wells, which might be worse, because it'll be the same bad news as whatever Clarke would tell him but he'll feel bad about swearing at Wells.

"I don't even want to know," he says, instead of hello. "I'm just going to lay down and die."

"Our production of Romeo and Juliet ended like ten years ago," Wells says. "You don't have to be a dramatic teenager all the time. I release you from that burden."

"Just because you were the apothecary," Nate starts, but then sighs. "You know what? Get it over with already. Say what you have to say."

"All right," Wells says. "Clarke says this time it's not her fault, or it's only her fault to the extent that it was already her fault and that no additional liability can be placed on her. Also that you hate Buzzfeed so I should link you to one of the other websites."

None of this falls within Nate's definition of getting it over with already, which he'd quibble about, except: "I'm on Buzzfeed? I'm on Buzzfeed and also on other websites? Am I really that entertaining to laugh at?"

"I don't think they're laughing at you this time," Wells says. "I think it's an improvement, but you and I don't always see eye to eye -- "

"Out with it, Wells."

"Would you rather read it yourself?"

"I swear to God, if you send me a link to some shitrag internet news site, I will drive to your childhood home and burn it to the ground."

"You say that like I'm attached to the place," Wells grumbles. "It's that guy Monty that you were tweeting."

Nate blanches. There's one horrible, heart-stopping moment where he thinks about that too honest conversation last night, on display for the entire world to read, and he actually can't breathe.

But Wells is still talking to him, "he said that Bryan's new guy is his ex? You guys talked for a minute, I don't know if you even care, but," and Nate almost misses everything after that, sits down on the side of the bathtub because he's dizzy with relief. Or maybe that's the hangover.

The relief passes soon enough, anyway, because the rest of what Wells is saying sinks in: "People on the internet think you're cute. Together. The two of you."

"What," Nate says.

"There's a bunch of people tweeting that the two of you should date."

"What," Nate says again, then adds "Why," for good measure.

"Got me," Wells admits. "Clarke said something about pairing the spare. I tried to ask her what she meant but she started ranting about Mean Girls and how Janis Ian should have been a lesbian, I fell back asleep for part of it."

"What."

"I guess the short version is, you're two attractive men who have spoken to each other for five seconds. The internet has shipped a lot more with a lot less."

"What."

Nate thinks he might never say anything else for the rest of his life. It would be totally justified.

It would also mean he doesn't have to admit to anyone, ever, that he gets hung up for a second on the word attractive, and the realization that he doesn't even know what @montygee -- Monty -- looks like. His profile photo is some 'artistically framed' bullshit, where all you can see are his eyes and his forehead. All Nate can tell about Monty is that he needs a haircut. And that's if the photo is even of him. It could be some actor or singer Nate's never heard of that Monty likes.

But Wells says that he's attractive, which means there is a photo of him, somewhere, that shows enough to make a judgment, and Nate could go look for it, could probably find it in ten seconds flat.

Except that he needs to move on with his life, and stop giving the internet stupid fodder for them to gossip about his love life, and that's not going to happen if he goes looking for pictures. Not even if it wouldn't take very long. Not even if Wells says he's attractive.

"Did I break you?" Wells asks. "Clarke figured by now you'd be cursing and threatening to burn down the internet or something."

"What."

"I'd say your taking this well but probably that means you aren't."

"What," and Wells says it with him this time, so he adds, "Fuck you, Wells, I'm allowed to freak out about this."

"You are," Wells agrees. "Your feelings are valid because they're yours."

"My feelings are valid because people on the internet are idiots."

"They're having fun," Wells rationalizes. "It sucks that they've picked you as the object of their fun, but that'll pass soon. Until then, you can complain to me."

"You're not fun to complain to," Nate says. "You listen. Who can be mad when someone is listening and being sympathetic and shit?"

"Yeah, you should definitely call Clarke," Wells says. "Fair warning, she was still worked up about Mean Girls when I rung off, so she she'll likely rant over you."

"See, that's how you support a friend."

"Noted. I'm rolling my eyes right now, by the way."

"Yeah, I can tell. You're the worst, Jaha," and Nate stays on the phone with Wells for another minute or two, Wells being frustratingly reasonable and supportive. It makes Nate want to break something.

Instead, once he hangs up on Wells, he grits his teeth and goes to check out Buzzfeed.

Breaking something would have been better for his soul, Nate thinks, as gifs explode all over his phone. It takes some scrolling before he gets to the story. How did Clarke even find this? At seven o'clock in the morning, no less? She has way too much time on her hands. Nate resolves to find something to keep her busy, like a hobby or a girlfriend or a drug habit.

It's the same as yesterday, basically, with a screen cap of the half-dozen tweets he'd sent back and forth with Monty, plus a picture of Nate from Clarke's Halloween party last year, when he'd gone as "shirtless".

There's also a picture of Monty, grinning brilliantly at the camera and holding a puppy, which is not playing fair. Anyone looks good holding a puppy. And he still needs a damn hair cut.

Their conversation, screencapped and put on display for all the creeps and weirdos to see, is shorter than he'd remembered. He's simultaneously glad that he switched to DMs and perplexed how anyone could get the wrong idea from that short of a conversation.

He's got Twitter pulled up to message Monty can you believe this shit before he realizes -- he can't.

If a bunch of strangers on the internet could get the wrong idea from the one short conversation they'd had in public, then there's no telling if one particular stranger couldn't have gotten the wrong idea from the longer conversation they'd had after.

He doesn't think Monty would have gotten that impression. But he can't say for sure. He's not great at telling when people are flirting with him. Bryan used to tease him about that constantly, how hard it was to ask Nate out for the first time.

And if Monty does have the wrong idea, then Nate owes it to him to not lead him on.

Nate shuts his Twitter app without sending anything and gets ready for work, feeling cheated.

-

Nate's decision to forget about Monty gets derailed during his morning coffee break.

He hasn't tweeted anything today or even checked his mentions, and he should turn off his Twitter notifications, except he's worried that he'd miss -- something.

So he sees that someone named @coolkidjasper has tweeted at him when he puts his phone down to pour a cup of coffee.

By the time that he's finished pouring, he has two more tweets from @coolkidjasper.

Five more come in while he's stirring in some half & half.

By the time he's taken a seat in the break room, scowling at his phone, he has twenty-four tweets from @coolkidjasper in the space of three minutes, all of them in all caps:

WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS TOWARD MY MONTY??????!??!!!!
ANSWER ME
I WILL FIGHT YOU
WELL I WON'T BUT I HAVE POWERFUL FRIENDS
WELL, FRIEND
BUT SHE'S VERY SCARY

...And they just go on like that, fuck, Nate's not reading all that. He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Counts to ten. Opens his eyes. Nope, still annoyed.

He navigates his way over to Monty's profile and sends him a DM: Your boyfriend is harassing me

Monty must be online, because he gets a response in under a minute:

Um then he is also a time traveler
Since I don't currently have a boyfriend
Good to know I'm going to date/have dated a time traveler tho
Always wanted to do that

okay, you don't have a boyfriend
does coolkidjasper know that?

Ah.
yeah
that's my best friend
not boyfriend
You would not be the first person to make that mistake
I had to beg him to stop wingmanning me because guys would always assume we were together and I'd never get laid

He's not secretly in love with you is he?

If he is, he's doing a very convincing job of pretending to be in straight, monogamous love with his girlfriend

All the good ones are straight or taken?

Let's not go overboard
I wouldn't call Jasper "the good ones"
more like "the super embarrassing and bad at boundaries ones"

oh yeah I have one of those
she decided to support me in my time of "crisis"
by retweeting me to her thousands of followers
which is how I became a fucking buzzfeed headline

ouch
well, good intentions anyway?
and yeah sorry about jasper
I'll tell him to step off

whatever
I'm not scared of him
but going to block him if he tweets me again

probably a good idea, i'll talk to him anyway.
just think
if it weren't for your friend with boundary issues you wouldn't have to deal with MY friend with boundary issues
it's the gift that keeps on giving

Nate has the weirdest impulse to write back but then I wouldn't be talking to you. This whole internet voyeurism thing has broken him.

He puts his phone away.

-

"It's not a bad idea." Clarke is slurring her words a little, which, along with the possessive way she curls around her drink, is the only physical sign that she's drunk. She looks as put together and composed as she'd ever been at mock trial or one of Abby's intense 'career day' activities. "I mean, look at it this way: you dated Bryan for a long time. Like, a loooong time. Soooooooo long."

"This is not helping." Nate scowls at her, but since he was already scowling, he's afraid it doesn't have the proper effect.

He hadn't exactly planned to have another drinking night so soon after the first, but Clarke had followed him to his car after the gym, saying "if I'm buying your drinks for the rest of your natural life they're going to be cheap drinks," and steered him toward game night at the home of a friend of hers.

There are actual games being played somewhere in the house, but there's also a strong "unashamed to be drinking on a Wednesday" contingent, and it's not like there was a lot of doubt where Nate was going to end up.

Except now Clarke is siding with the internet creeps, so maybe Nate should have tried to figure out King of Tokyo instead.

"Clearly Bryan is your type," terrible lies and abominations continue to fall from Clarke's lips, "and you're his type. And if he's marrying this new guy, this new guy must also be his type, and he has to be his type." Clarke frowns. "Pronouns are confusing when everyone's the same gender."

"Oh, yeah, that's going to be the argument that turns me straight, won't anybody think about the syntax."

"Fuck you, you don't get to go straight on me," Clarke pokes him in the chest. It feels a bit like getting stabbed. "Where was I?"

"Types," Wells says, and somehow that gets Clarke back on track.

"Right," she says, taking a long sip of her wine. "Clearly you two have the same type and are the same type -- "

"I don't think you know what 'clearly' means," Nate says, because it's at least worth a shot trying to derail Clarke, even if she's more focused drunk than most people are at the top of their games.

" -- and if he dated Monty then Monty is his type which means Monty is your type, and you're Monty's type. QED, bitches."

"That is some grade A drunken bullshit."

"It's not bullshit, it's math. It's the transvestite property of dating."

Nate snorts into his drink. It's a mess.

"Transitive," Wells corrects her. "Transitive property of dating."

"What did I say?"

"Transvestite."

Clarke frowns. "What's the actual word again?"

Nate recovers, barely. "Is this the same property that says since you and Wells hooked up with the same girl, you've hooked up with Wells?"

"WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THAT," Clarke yells. It says something about the quality of their social circle that no one even looks over.

Nate snorts again, because Clarke is ridiculous, and because Clarke is not the only one who's a little drunk, and because he's picturing what Monty would have to say about the transvestite property of dating. He really wants to tell Monty about that, which wouldn't be a problem except for how that would contradict his whole "no more talking to Monty" thing.

Which hasn't been going so well, anyway.

First there was the Jasper conversation, which admittedly had been necessary for Nate's sanity and soul; he hadn't heard anymore from @coolkidjasper and he didn't know what he'd have done if he had.

Then Monty had sent him a link to some online conspiracy that Dumbledore and Ron Weasley were the same person, which is a level of weirdness that demands a response. It would have been plain rude not to tell him about the theory that the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park weren't real dinosaurs. Monty had agreed wholeheartedly with that one "as a scientist", which nearly made Nate ask what Monty did for a living. He missed his chance because Monty told him about the idea that Bill and Ted gave Rufus the name 'Rufus' and he just went with it because what are you supposed to do if the legendary founders of your utopian civilization call you by the wrong name, correct them?

Nate had sent back yes and Monty had sent him a rolling eyes emoji and okay obviously YOU would but the REST of us, and Nate had to remind himself that he didn't care if Monty thought he was special.

Clearly the 'cut off all contact' plan is a failure. And maybe that's for the best. Nate doesn't want Monty to get the wrong idea, but he also doesn't want to hurt his feelings. He thinks that Monty might be going through a rough time. There nothing definitive Nate could point to, but -- the way Monty reached out to a total stranger to offer sympathy. The self-effacing jokes. The middle of the night doubts about whether he's a good person.

And when Nate thinks about Monty going through a rough time with no one but coolkidjasper to help him out, it's -- not pretty. So can't exactly ghost on Monty.

Maybe it's time to reevaluate the plan. There's got to be a middle ground, right? Like, Nate can talk to Monty, but only twice a day. That's a -- that's a friendly amount of talking. Not enough for anyone to get the wrong idea, but not enough for Monty to think that Nate's mad at him or hates him or something.

He frowns at his phone. He's already used up both Monty conversations for today.

Nate puts his phone away, annoyed without knowing who he's annoyed with.

"Oh, crap," Clarke says, peering at her own phone screen. "I have like five friends in common with this guy."

Nate leans over far enough to see that Clarke is looking at Monty's Facebook page. It has the same profile picture as his Twitter account.

He decides he's annoyed with Clarke.

"You have five friends in common with everyone," Wells says to her. "Kevin Bacon is jealous of your networking mojo."

"You could probably swing us an invite to meet Vladimir Putin by sending two emails," Nate says.

Clarke glances up like she's the one who has the right to be annoyed. "Do you want to meet Putin or do you want to meet Monty, because I could make either of those happen but you have to pick one."

Nate pretends to consider this carefully. "Do I get to punch Putin in the face?"

"You can absolutely punch Putin, as long as you don't care about getting back to America afterwards."

"Wait, I'd have to go to Russia? Fuck that, I'm not traveling that far. I hate airplanes."

"Okay, so, you want to meet Monty," Clarke says.

Nate scowls. She's waiting for him to say no, so he can't say no. Because that would be letting Clarke win. "Do I have to travel?" he asks, because it isn't a yes, either.

"No, it looks like he lives here," Clarke says, and pulls up a photo of Monty standing in front of that hipster doughnut shop on Maple Street.

Nate bats the phone away.

Clarke can't take a hint when she's drunk, or else she doesn't want to. "I'm telling you, I could set it up. Look, he knows -- Octavia Blake, you remember her."

"No, I don't. Stop putting words in my mouth."

"Yes you do," Clarke insists, "from my self-defense class, she's the one who broke my wrist."

There might some day be a day where that's funny, the irony of Clarke getting hurt in a class designed to teach her how not to get hurt, except it was just last year and Nate vividly remembers picking her up from the hospital. Abby calling while Clarke's unwashed face still had tear tracks on it. Nate plucking the phone out of Clarke's good hand to take over the conversation because Clarke looked like she was going to cry again.

But he and Clarke don't talk about things like that, and that's the way they both like it, so Nate just asks her, "and you're friends with this chick on Facebook?" and knows that Clarke knows what he means.

"I get off on brunettes with strong opinions," and if Clarke is mocking him, they're okay, they're back on solid ground. "You want to meet this guy or what? Because I can message Octavia, no problem."

"Do whatever you want, Griffin, you always do." Nate stands up and goes to get a new drink.

-

Thursday is a new day, and Nate is allowed to tell Monty about the transvestite property of dating.

On second thought, he takes out the bit about dating, and ends up with something he's sure no reasonable person could take as a romantic overture.

Pretty sure.

last night my friend gave me a drunken lecture about the transvestite property of math
thought you'd want to know

He's halfway to work before he realizes that he sent Monty a message at seven in the morning, as soon as he'd woken up.

Right. No way that could give anyone the wrong idea.

But Monty's response doesn't come for another three hours, and it doesn't give any indication that he noticed what time Nate had messaged him. And it sounds more like he wants to hit Nate than hit on him.

LEAVE MATH ALONE
YOU DON'T DESERVE MATH
WHAT DID MATH EVER DO TO YOU

got me sent to principal jaha's office, like, twenty times. Nate's phone tries to autocorrect Jaha into JAAAAHAAAAAA, which tells him something about how often he's used that name as a wordless howl of rage.

THAT IS YOUR FAULT, NATE
YOU DID NOT TREAT MATH WITH THE RESPECT SHE DESERVES

math is a "she" now

OBVIOUSLY
LIKE A SHIP
OR A COUNTRY
sorry i meant to turn off caps lock several messages back but i was worked up
someone was wrong on the internet

Wow, imagine that

Ten minutes later, when Monty hasn't replied, Nate kicks himself for giving such a vague reply; it's a conversation-ender if he'd ever heard one. And that's one conversation with Monty down. To be on the safe side, he'll wait for Monty to initiate the next one.

And if Monty doesn't, well, that would be even better, because it would mean that he doesn't think about Nate that often, that he wouldn't even mind if Nate stopped talking to him. And that would be for the best.

Nate stabs the delete key so hard that he breaks it.

Several minutes and one long conversation with the office manager later -- apparently Nate breaking his keyboard is hilarious and requires the office manager to loop in everyone who passes by her office to tell them about it -- Nate's hunched over in the break room, waiting for IT to come set him up with a replacement.

It's something of a relief when Clarke texts him. Talk now?

Nate hits the call button. "Some of us have real jobs, Griffin."

"Go screw yourself," she tells him cheerfully.

"At work? You know how much trouble I could get into?"

"Is it sexual harassment if you're sexually harassing yourself?"

"It is if anyone sees me," Nate says. "What do you want, anyway? Or did you just miss my smiling face?"

"No one has seen your smiling face since 2004. Or if they did they didn't live to tell about it. I wanted to get your approval on something."

"Are you role playing I'm your boss or something? Because I did not consent to this role play. Keep your weird sex games to you and Wells, he's a pervert too."

Clarke sighs. "First you say I don't respect your boundaries. Then you say I'm being a creep. I can't win with you, Miller."

"That's the point."

"Look, I wrote myself a note last night to invite Monty to hang out with us," Clarke says. "I was insistent, I guess it was important to me when I was drunk. I wrote in Sharpie."

"So?" Nate asks. Clarke's an artist. If she'd smeared a message on her wall in foot-high glitter glue letters, that might be remarkable; Sharpie seems pretty tame.

"I wrote it on my own stomach."

"Shit, really?"

"Yes, really, why would I make that up? Hang on." Clarke's voice falls away, the line filling with room tone, and then Nate's phone buzzes. He has a text from Clarke, one picture attachment, and opens it to find a photo of her torso, with the promised Sharpie note.

"Wow," Nate says. "My handwriting isn't that nice even when I'm not drunk and writing upside down and backwards on myself."

"You know me, woman of a thousand talents."

"Some of them even useful."

"But I mean it about respecting your boundaries," Clarke says.

"Ugh, you sound like Wells."

"I mean it about respecting your boundaries, you stupid asshole," Clarke says again. "I can message Octavia and ask her about Monty, but I'm not going to do it if you don't want me to."

Nate shuts his eyes, pulls the phone away from his face so it won't catch the huff of annoyance that escapes from him. He doesn't want to say no, because that's as good as admitting that something bothers him. No one quits a game unless they're losing. Although he's not sure who wins in this scenario. Clarke, maybe, except as much as she loves playing chicken, she loves making her friends happy more.

"You're going to message some Valkyrie from your self defense class and tell her -- what, exactly?" Nate asks.

"I think of her as more of a berserker than a Valkyrie."

Nate waits.

"I was going to say, I don't know, my friend wants to meet her friend?"

"You're the one who wants me to meet him."

"Fine, I'll say that." Clarke's annoyance is audible through the phone. "I take full responsibility for all of it. Unless you don't want me to, then I won't do it at all."

"Whatever," Nate tells her.

"Do you want me to?"

"I don't care," Nate says.

Clarke sighs. "Fine, I won't do it. No message, no Monty."

Nate's body gives an involuntary jerk, and he nearly topples off his chair. "I didn't say not to," he says.

"You also didn't say for me to do so," Clarke says. "Enthusiastic consent, Nathan. Yes means yes."

"I wish I never met you," Nate tells her.

"So you do want me to message Octavia," Clarke says.

"I regret every day of our association."

"You want me to message Octavia, but you're not going to tell me to do it," Clarke adds.

"I'm only friends with you because Jaha makes me."

"You want me to message Octavia, but you're not going to tell me to do it, and you love me," Clarke finishes.

"I know better than to argue with you, Griffin," Nate says.

"Because I'm brilliant and right about everything, all the time."

"Yes, you are."

There's a long pause, like Clarke has no idea how to process Nate complimenting her, or agreeing with her, or both. "Oh. Okay. Well, I'd better get composing this Facebook message. It's, um, probably going to take me a while, I'll be tweaking it for another few minutes. You know, in case you change your mind."

"Whatever," Nate says, striving for nonchalance. "I got better things to do than hold your hand."

"Sure you do."

-

Nate doesn't go around giving people advice, okay.

Largely that's a personal choice; you start giving people advice and they think that you care about their problems and their goals and shit.

Partly it's a lack of opportunity. He doesn't exactly have his life together to the point where people are lining up to ask him the secret to his success, except for Clarke's intense obsession with his fitness routine. Even if someone explicitly walked up to him and said, "Nate, I value your input, what should I do?", which no one ever has, he'd feel like a fake for answering.

But if he were the kind of person who gave advice, probably his biggest life hack is: if you're already nervous about something, you might as well knock out something else you're nervous about at the same time.

Which is why, T-minus one hour to meeting Monty in person for the first time, Nate calls his dad.

That, and it gives him a semblance of an excuse for lurking in the alley behind Clarke's friend's coffee shop and spares him from having to admit to anyone that he got to said coffee shop an hour early.

"Nate! Hang on one second, I've got the game on," and there's a lot of rustling on the other end of the line. "How are you doing? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine." That always happens when he calls his dad, the what's wrong? And sure, Nate had called his dad for help once or twice -- or three times -- okay, a lot of times -- in his misspent youth. But it had been years since he'd gone to his dad with an emergency, and he'd only had to call from a police station once, which should count for something. "I saw you called me the other day, I meant to get back to you before but -- I've been busy."

"Oh, Clarke told me about your big work project."

A question for the ages: is Clarke a respectable person who acts out around Nate, or is she a hot mess who pretends to be respectable around Nate's father and other people she wants to impress?

Nate hadn't realized Clarke even knew what he was working on. He really needs to change his email password.

"It's not that big of a deal," Nate says. "Clarke exaggerates so you'll be proud of me."

"I'm already proud of you."

Nate shuts his eyes. He has to bite his lip a few times so he doesn't stammer in response. "Thanks."

There's an awkward moment of silence before his dad says "I saw Bryan on the news," and even if Nate knew that's why his dad had called him -- even if that was why he called back -- it still knocks him down for a second.

And he's grateful that he can talk to his dad about guys, but that doesn't mean he likes talking to his dad about guys.

"It's been weird." Nate clears his throat. "Great-aunt Linda told me I should find a nice boy like that."

"Well, we knew we were going to have to put her in a home someday." There's a pause and Nate can feel his dad building up to something. "How are you holding up?"

Most people probably wouldn't consider that a hard question. Nate tries to imagine how one of those people would respond.

"I'm fine."

"Now how did I know you were going to say that?"

Nate guesses, "Clarke ratted me out?"

His dad laughs, quietly. "She didn't, actually. You think I don't know how you cope with pain?"

"I'm not in pain," Nate insists. "I'm not. I'm happy for him. I don't want him back. I just -- "

He trails off, holding the phone in silence while he gathers his thoughts.

David listens. He's patient. He'd have to be, to ever wait out something long enough for Nate to be ready to talk about it.

"I thought I was doing okay with my life," Nate admits. "Now it feels like I'm losing."

"You're doing just as well as you were last week," David tells him. "Life's not a competition."

"I know that. I do. But sometimes it doesn't feel like that." Nate sighs. "That's why I don't like to talk about stuff like this, I know it's ridiculous."

"If you talked to people about this more you'd know that everyone feels like that sometimes."

"Yeah, but then I'd have to talk to people about their feelings." Nate shudders. "I'll pass, thanks."

"Well, if you change you're mind, you have my number."

"If I ever decide to talk about emotions you're first in line," Nate promises him.

"Good," his dad says. "I like to hear about how you're doing. Good or bad or 'same old'."

"I call with good news," Nate says.

"You call when you have news. But sometimes it's nice to just chat."

"Yeah, but then Clarke wouldn't get to spy on me for you," Nate grumbles. "It's not like my life is that interesting."

"I'm just happy when you share things with me," David says. "They don't have to be interesting. That's what television is for."

"Actually." Maybe if he stares at his feet hard enough he won't notice the words he's saying. "I think I met someone."

"That's -- good, Nate." His dad is trying hard to keep a neutral tone of voice, but Nate can hear the surprise all the same. "If you -- you think you met someone?"

"I don't know if it's real." Nate shrugs, because that gesture translates great over the phone. "It might all be in my head. I want to make sure I'm not just imagining it because the whole Bryan thing is getting to me."

"You don't have to talk yourself out of something before it even starts," his dad says. "Nate, when you feel good about someone -- you feel good about them. That's okay."

Nate licks his lips. "Then -- yeah. I like him," he says. "He's funny. Really smart."

"How did you meet him?"

Is there a good way to admit to your father, 'I haven't met him, I'm just over-invested in Twitter messages?'

"We met online." If someone else looked him in the face and demanded an explanation for that, Nate would happily tell them to fuck off, and yet he still feels compelled to justify himself. "He knows one of Clarke's friends. So if he's a serial killer he's hiding it well, and that counts for a lot."

"Clarke's always been a good judge of character."

That's a debatable point. Clarke's dating history is some 'learn from my mistakes, do what I say not what I do' shit.

Not to mention the fact that she has, for unknown and inexplicable reasons, spent over a decade of her life associating with the juvenile delinquent who took a joyride in her mom's car, tried to destroy her best friend's dad's office, and got suspended for punching John Murphy on his smug baritone mouth.

"Most of the time, anyway," Nate says, because that's where honest and hopeful intersect for him. "I think she's probably right this time, too."

-

Clarke finds him in the alley after all.

"You're so predictable, Miller," she tells him, falling to a seat next to him on the ground, pulling her knees up and leaning her back against the wall. "It's boring."

"Fuck you, I'm not predictable."

"I didn't even go into the coffee shop. I walked straight around to the back because I knew you'd be here."

"Lucky guess."

"I challenge you to say one thing that's surprising to me."

Miller puts his hand on his chin like he's thinking. "My name's not Nathan Miller. I'm an undercover spy for a top secret government agency."

Clarke rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I'd never expect you to make up a badass lie about yourself. Try again."

"Clarke, I am your father."

"Nightmare fuel, but somehow I saw it coming."

"Your mind is seriously messed up."

"Both true and a digression." Clarke tilts her head until it's resting on his shoulder. "I know all your tricks."

"What tricks?"

Clarke ticks off points on her fingers. "Have emotion. Ignore emotion. Act tough so no one asks about emotion."

"I don't talk like a caveman."

"Try to distract Clarke. Fail." Clarke elbows him in the side. "Show up early and then hide so people don't realize you show up early, because you want people to think you're cool."

"I am cool," Nate says. "I'm -- fuck, I'm nervous, okay? Happy?"

"About as happy as I deserve to be, yeah."

Nate scowls and puts an arm around Clark's shoulders. "Then you better be fucking ecstatic."

Clarke laughs. "You're going to be fine."

"How come when I say that, you decide I'm lying, but when you say it it's the gospel truth?"

"Think of it as peer review."

"You're going to be fine, too," Nate tells her. "With life and shit."

"You're such a sap." Clarke straightens up, pushes herself to stand. "I'm going inside to get more caffeine than is wise. You come in when it's exactly ninety seconds to seven o'clock."

"What, like I have a watch with a second hand?"

"You have a phone, Miller, god." She rubs the top of his head with one hand and then ducks out of the way when he tries to take a swipe at her. "See you inside, cool guy."

Miller does check his phone after a few minutes, because there's nothing wrong with punctuality, and he's just decided it's time to go inside when someone rolls up on a bicycle.

He stands up to move out of the way, because he's sitting close enough to the bike rack for it to be weird, and then it gets weird anyway because the person on the bicycle is Monty.

Nate blinks at Monty, glad he has a pretty good poker face.

Monty slows his bike and comes to a stop about ten feet away from the bike rack. There's a long second where they're staring at each other, and then Monty laughs at swings his leg over his bike, dismounting, and takes his helmet off. He seriously needs a haircut.

"Okay, I knew my friends were planning something, but this didn't make my top three guesses," he says to Nate. He has a nice voice.

"What did?"

"I thought Jasper and Maya might be throwing me a surprise birthday party."

"It's your birthday?"

"Oh, not for four months, but that's the sort of thing Jasper thinks counts as a 'surprise'." Monty runs a hand through his hair, which doesn't help it lie flat at all. "I also thought we might be having an intervention for Octavia's brother. Or that Octavia wanted help plotting someone's downfall."

Yeah, this Octavia person is absolutely a friend of Clarke's. "But you knew something was going on?"

"Octavia's not very subtle and Jasper is even worse."

"So they tell you, what, come to this coffee shop at seven for reasons I'm not going to explain to you, and you do it?"

"Well, no, Octavia said six-thirty, but otherwise, yeah, that's how it went down."

"You know it's seven o'clock right now, right?"

"Not really," Monty says, then ducks his head. "I'm mean, it's really seven, but I'm not really late."

"You're super late," Nate tells him. "I mean, damn. I was here at six-thirty."

"I'm not really late because everyone knows I'm always late so they tell me the wrong time." Monty frowns. "Wait, why were you here at six-thirty?"

Nate shrugs. He hadn't meant to admit to that. That was the entire point of hiding out behind the coffee shop. "I have a problem with being early to shit."

Monty looks like he's fighting a smile. So it could be worse. Laughing at Nate is better than running away because what the hell kind of person arrives half an hour early, probably. "Does that even count as a problem?"

"I don't think so, but Clarke just called me out on it, so apparently it is."

"It does make the rest of us look bad," Monty tells him. "Who's Clarke again? Sorry, I'm late and tremendously under-informed, you're going to have to catch me up. After I put my bike away. Did I mention I'm a mess?"

Nate shrugs while Monty rolls his bike to the stand. "You heard the part about me getting here stupid early, right?"

"I'm not convinced that's a real problem, but I appreciate that you're humoring me." Monty squats down to put a lock around his bike. "Clarke?"

"My friend with the Buzzfeed connections," Nate explains.

"Ah. Bad at boundaries?"

"That's the one."

"So what's the upside?"

"Hm?"

Monty looks up at Nate, smiling. Nate tries to tell himself that doesn't have an effect on him, how Monty's face lights up like that, except the time to lie to himself about this is way past over.

"If you complain about her, she must be a really good friend."

"I'd say that's messed up, except it's true."

"It can be both." Monty stands up. "I'm imagining that the two of you grew up together, by the way, but that might be because I've conflated her with Jasper. Who is almost definitely lurking inside the coffee shop at this very moment, by the way."

"Yeah, I'm not going in there," Nate says, propping himself against the wall.

Monty laughs again, and Nate feels a thrill at the sound of it. "Honestly? I don't blame you."

Monty steps around the bike rack and leans up against the wall, too, not quite in arm's reach of Nate. And if Nate keeps talking, maybe he won't have to process his feelings about that.

"High school," he says, and when Monty raises his eyebrows Nate clarifies, "I met Clarke in high school. We weren't friends or anything, she just lived on my street and had all the same classes as me." He shrugs, because that feels like too much and not enough detail, all at once. "And then we went to the same college, so it made sense to carpool home on vacation. And then she needed a roommate. Suddenly I look around and I've known her for a decade and, shit, at that point if I hadn't gotten rid of her yet I might as well get to know her."

Monty shakes his head, but it doesn't feel like disagreement. "You know you don't have to justify having friends, right, most people are pretty happy about having friends."

"Most people have friends who aren't totally embarrassing."

"Did I mention that Jasper's probably waiting to jump out of a giant cake right now?"

"Uh, you left out the part about the cake."

Monty waves a hand. "Everyone's friends are embarrassing. Because who your friends are says a lot about you, and no one likes having that much information about themselves on display."

Nate frowns at him. "I figured out why you don't have a Hogwarts house." Monty blinks, and god, he is not going to follow this at all, but it's too late to reverse course now. "You're not a wizard. You're an oracle. Like, Greek mythology, look at a person and read their soul type shit."

"I don't know how I feel about that," Monty says, and yup, Nate lost him. Or maybe not, because the next thing he says is, "that always turns out so badly for the person involved. And sometimes for the oracle, too. I don't want to use my gift to ruin people's lives, and I definitely don't want to spend the rest of my short, doomed life telling the future and no one believes me."

"Maybe you won't be doomed."

"If I've learned anything from Octavia's brother ranting about the Trojan War, I will be."

"Yeah, but we're not in a Greek tragedy," Nate argues. "I mean, Buzzfeed is the worst but it's not 'kill your dad, sleep with your mom' bad."

Monty shakes his head again. Maybe he doesn't need a haircut after all. Nate's starting to like the way that his hair falls into his face when he moves.

"On the other hand, what the Iliad needs is the Buzzfeed treatment," Monty says. "You Won't Believe What This Trojan Prince Did To Get A Girlfriend."

Nate scowls at him. Monty grins back, which is fortunate, since ability to withstand being scowled at is pretty much the main indicator for whether anyone can tolerate Nate's presence for more than a minute.

Even if he's finding it hard to keep scowling at Monty.

"I did not sign up for Buzzfeed headlines."

This does not deter Monty. "23 Pictures of Animals That Were Actually Zeus Trying To Get Laid."

"Seriously, this is the worst."

"14 Frescoes that Only Athenians Will Understand."

Nate laughs, one hand coming up to cover his face too late to stop the sound. "Goddammit."

He can't see Monty's face, but from the sound of his voice he's pleased with himself. "Okay, I assumed you were mad about the whole internet spying on you thing."

"I was. I am."

"But that's not all, is it? You hate Buzzfeed, specifically."

"It's the worst," Nate rants. There's a tiny little corner of his mind that thinks maybe he should try to play this cool, play some of his 'overreacts to stupid things and has rage issues' cards closer to his vest, but he's not paying attention to it. "It's not even content, they string together five words and eighteen gifs and call it a day and then everyone else forwards it to each other a thousand time and doesn't say anything else either."

"No, but that's what's so interesting," Monty says, and Nate looks up at him to see if he's being fucked with. But Monty looks completely earnest, excited even, and it turns out he talks with his hands when he's excited, which is not something Nate had ever found endearing until now. "It's like a whole new evolutionary stage of language, adapting to the way people use the internet. Gifs are this really compact form of communication, because they come with all this extra information that everyone knows already. Instead of saying all of that other stuff you can represent it in a little three second loop of moving pictures. Um."

Nate's wondering how anyone could ever care about anything as much as Monty cares about Buzzfeed gifs when Monty's hands drop back down to his sides and his face goes suddenly bashful.

"I think about this stuff a lot," Monty adds, apologetically, while Nate realizes that he was staring. "Sorry if I'm being -- weird or boring or whatever."

"You're not being weird or boring, you're being rude."

That seems to snap Monty out of his shame spiral, if only by confusing him. "I'm -- sorry? Rude?"

"You heard me," Nate says, doing his best to sound annoyed. "I'm trying to be pissed off about something and you're sitting there being all enthusiastic and optimistic and shit." There's a ghost of a smile back on Monty's face, so Nate keeps going, wants to see if he can push it along to more than a ghost. "That's rude. I don't come over when you're ranting and try to cheer you up."

"Well, except you did, sort of. I wasn't ranting but I was throwing myself a pity party and -- I didn't think you'd end up talking to me. But then you did cheer me up."

Monty still looks self-conscious, but it doesn't stop him from looking Nate in the eye, and Nate gets a sudden burst of courage.

"Did you know there's people on the internet who want us to date?"

"Yeah, but there's people on the internet who think that gif is pronounced like the peanut butter," Monty responds. "You can't listen to people like that."

"Wait, so, when I say Buzzfeed isn't real communication, you're all about the evolution of language, but when someone pronounces a made up word in a totally valid way, suddenly you're the language police?"

"I think of myself as more of a language vigilante," and Nate scowls again, for real this time. He's something of an expert at deflecting, which means both that he can tell when someone else is doing it and that he does not enjoy having it happen to him, even if Clarke or karma would say that's what he deserves.

"Monty."

Monty shrugs and looks away. "There's about eighty-four different things that are messed up with this situation. I wasn't going to bring it up. I know this is uncomfortable for you, the whole invasion of privacy thing."

"And it's not uncomfortable for you? I distinctly remember your photo on Buzzfeed, too."

Monty shrugs, like it hadn't even occurred to him. "That's different."

"Says who? Why?"

"Me, right now, because I messaged a guy that I was about 95% sure didn't want any public attention and then when I was 100% sure he didn't want any attention I kept messaging him anyway, so." Monty makes some kind of complicated hand gesture, which Nate thinks is probably a tactic for avoiding eye contact. "Once you've gone to the Dark Side of the Force, you don't get to complain about other people acting like creeps."

"Okay, but if anyone's a creep here, I don't think it's the guy who didn't even know his friends had set him up," Nate points out.

"Hm." Monty tilts his head, considering this. "Okay, if we establish an axis of creepiness, we could plot relative creepiness on a scale of, say, zero to fourteen -- "

"Why zero to fourteen?"

"Logarithmic scale," Monty says. "Like for pH of a solution. Seven is neutral. Zero is super creepy. Fourteen is -- what's the opposite of creepy?"

"Nice? Wholesome? I don't know, I've never met anyone like that." Nate thumps the back of his head against the wall. "You realize that all of our friends are, like, negative five on the creepiness index and they're all inside waiting for us right now."

Monty blinks. Nate's pretty sure he genuinely forgot where they were. "Oh. I guess we shouldn't keep them waiting."

"I was thinking more like, let's get the hell out of here?" Nate has to fight the urge to clear his throat. "Okay, telling somehow how creepy you are is not a great segue to asking them to go out on a date with you, but -- it's pretty clear by now I have no idea what I'm doing."

"I'd say you were nailing it until you admitted your ignorance," Monty says. "But I'm maybe not a great judge of, uh. 'Game' is the word I'm looking for, I guess."

"Right now you're the only judge of 'game' that I'm worried about."

"Okay, that was smooth again." Monty drums his fingers for a second, thinking, and Nate has enough time to get nervous before Monty smiles at him, bright enough that Nate smiles back without even thinking about it. "Let's get out of here."

They step away from the wall, Monty walking toward his bike while Nate feels the tiniest prickling of his conscience.

"I'm gonna text Clarke," he says. "So they know not to wait for us."

"Good idea," Monty says.

Nate texts Clarke, Monty and I are ditching you guys.

Her answer pops up immediately. Sweet, now Wells owes me ten bucks.

You did not predict we were going to take off.

I know ALL your tricks, Nathan.
ALL OF THEM.

Keep telling yourself that, Nate sends back, and is trying to think of an appropriately cutting sign off when Monty asks him, "Everything okay?"

Nate tilts the phone so Monty can read the screen.

"Maybe Clarke's the real oracle," Monty says.

"She's not an oracle, she just likes telling people what to do," and even as Nate speaks Clarke proves his point by texting back, Stop texting me and GO ROMANCE YOUR BOY.

He shoves his phone in his pocket, annoyed, but Monty's eyes are bright when he says, "I don't know, I think she might be on to something."

What the hell. His life is a mess and none of this has played out how he planned it since the moment Monty popped into his inbox. Instead of getting annoyed with Clarke or deflecting or any of his usual instinctual responses, he takes a step closer to Monty, and another one, until he's right up in Monty's space.

He goes slow, watching Monty closely in case he's way out of line, but Monty turns slightly, puts himself closer to Nate. Tracks Nate's movements with his eyes.

Nate gets close enough to murmur in Monty's ear, "You think so?"

Monty draws in a quick breath and turns to press his lips against Nate's.

There's a crash from somewhere inside the building, and Nate is really, really inclined to ignore it, but there's a second crash a moment later, louder than the first, and Monty steps back, looking at the door to the coffee shop with some degree of alarm.

"So, there's a good chance that our very embarrassing friends are about to come flying out that door," he says, sounding a lot calmer than he looks.

Nate thinks about that for all of a millisecond before he grabs Monty's hand. "Ditch the bike," he says, and runs for the end of the alley, pulling Monty along behind him.

They round the corner of the building just as the door of the coffee shop flies open.

Nate presses his back against the wall, trying to catch his breath as quietly as possible.

"What the hell?!" yells someone that Nate is ten thousand percent sure is @coolkidjasper. "They really just left?"

Someone Nate doesn't know says, "Wow, it's almost like they don't want all of their friends spying on them, who does that," so Monty has one cool friend, at least.

"Exactly," Jasper says.

Nate turns his head to catch Monty's eye and finds Monty desperately trying not to laugh. His shoulders are shaking and he's pressing one hand, the hand Nate isn't holding, against his mouth. It's a lot cuter than it ought to be.

Or maybe there is no ought to be.

Maybe he gets to feel good about this.

He reaches up with his free hand and pulls Monty's hand away from his mouth before he leans in to kiss him again. And, okay, that feels a little strange, holding both of Monty's hands like a Disney prince or something, but -- also good.

"Someone could see us," Monty says, quietly, but he doesn't let go of Nate's hands.

"Yeah, well, that's the price of fame," Nate says, and Monty laughs and kisses him again.