Nathan and Simon - Backdated
Jan. 18th, 2014 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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om_mainNathan realises that Simon is not planning to stay at the school after graduation. Oops?
Simon was glad that his roommate was not in right then. He was toiling away on his essay, for his portfolio for SVA, and he was not making much headway as it was. He felt as if everything he was typing was terribly unoriginal, and not worth a read. Not for the first time, he selected the few paragraphs he had written and erased them all, then rubbed at his eyes. Maybe he ought to take a break...
Since they'd got the new phones over the holiday (and seriously, what the fuck kind of school was this where rich kids gave the entire student body the latest mobile tech?!), Nathan still didn't know half the crap his was supposed to do. But he'd got it to place calls, and he'd got some music loaded onto it, so that was a start. It wasn't unusual to see the pair of cheap drugstore earbuds crammed into either side of his curly head, and to still hear the leaky blaring of the tinny speakers spilling out around him like a crashed oil tanker of sound, leaving a wake of ear-pollution behind him. If you didn't like your music loud and abrasive as the lanky teen passed in the corridor, well, that was on you to deal with, apparently.
Meaning Simon had all of about thirty seconds of warning tunes bleeding loud enough to be heard through their door before Nathan whipped it wide open, head still bobbing as he more or less shimmied himself into the room with the beat of his music blaring. "Glad I didn't get you in the middle of beating yer meat, man," Nathan half-yelled over the noise. "One day, we both know that shit's gonna happen!"
When Simon heard the music, he amended his earlier thought. Whether or not he ought to take a break, he clearly was about to. His wince when Nathan spoke had more to do with the volume of his voice than the words themselves; Simon had heard a lot worse coming from his roommate. "That's why we have the only-in-the-bathroom rule," Simon reminded him, although he doubted that Nathan followed (or remembered) it.
Nathan screwed up his face and shook his head at his roommate, still overly loud as he answered. "I don't want to hear how you feel about mules! The donkeys are bad enough!" He finally yanked one the earbuds out, the other dangling at his chest as he had a glance around the room to see what he'd interrupted. The writing of a school paper, from the look of it: boring. The edge of some glossy pamphlet on the desk, though, caught his eye... Nathan moved to snatch it up. "What's this?"
Simon sighed, but trusted that the interrogation would be short-lived; Nathan would not likely be very interested in film schools. "The School of Visual Arts. In New York. I thought I might try for it."
Nathan had started to flip through the pages, but stopped with an upward jerk of his head when Simon said it was in New York. ...He was leaving the school? Maybe it did make sense, to get the fuck out once he'd graduated here, but it hadn't really occurred to Nathan yet as a thing that would actually happen. "Never happen. That's a bitch of a commute, without a car," he said after a long moment, flap-tossing the pamphlet back at Simon. "Where d'you think you'll get the cash for that kind of a school, anyway? It's not like you can take student loans when you're not even here legally."
"Sage has set me up with a fake identity that is here legally," Simon replied, after picking the pamphlet off the floor where it had fallen.
Nathan hadn't expected that, and the heft of his eyebrows said as much. "What about this place? And your little training squad? And... Won't those Facility fucks be all over you, if you do that?" He finally tugged out his buzzing earbuds, pawing for his phone without looking at it to turn the music off.
"That's the point of the fake identity," Simon answered evenly. Of course, Nathan was asking all the questions he had asked himself. "They won't know which name to look for - if I even get in."
"So then you're just going to bail out on the freakshow? And the other ASBOs? And... Well who the fuck's gonna be my roommate if you aren't?" Simon was acting all cool and nonchalant about this. Oh, sure, he had school and some some sort of film career ahead of him. Of course he did. What did Nathan have? "I certainly don't want to go to all the trouble involved with housebreaking some snotty-nosed little freshman. I like the way I've broken you in already!"
"Are you going to stay here?" Simon asked with a frown. He had assumed that they would all move on - apart from Curtis, until he mastered his mutation well enough - since he couldn't see any of the three of them staying on as teaching assistant.
"Wh-" Nathan huffed an annoyed sound at the perfectly reasonable question, making a face at Simon before moving to drop onto his bed with a groan. He'd been putting a lot of work into not thinking about it, thank you, and didn't like that he was being forced into it by Barry and his freaking uni leaflets from out of nowhere. And Alisha wanting his picture for her portfolio for a fashion school. And Curtis... Curtis didn't particularly give two shits what he did anyway, but that was beside the point.
"Well obviously not," Nathan insisted from a sprawl on his bed. "There are loads of opportunities for immortals out there, you know. I just haven't decided which circus act or TV programme I want to give first crack at all of this natural un-dying amazement. You think I should get the agent first, or wait until I'm proper famous so I'll have the best one?"
Simon frowned; for all of the time he had spent with Nathan, and how much better he had got to know him, sometimes he was still unsure how to interpret his words. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Enh, probably not," Nathan admitted after staring up at their shared ceiling for a few moments. He would in a heartbeat, if not for their Scooby villains, the Facility. Why shouldn't someone get rich and famous for having the best power you could ever hope for? But after the last time... He supposed he was done with all that. "I'll figure out something."
The truth was that Nathan didn't know what there was to even do with himself. He guessed he could get around the not being a citizen in the way Simon was planning, getting some funny papers to pass as ID. But he was a shit student, he had no work experience, he couldn't use his power without a fuss of drama... So what, then? Some minimum wage piece of crap corner shop in an apron kind of a job? He wasn't sure he could even afford to live in the city like that. Everyone knew that New York was expensive as fuck.
Simon was silent for a moment, as he thought things over. "I don't even know if I'll get in," he finally settled on, since it seemed to matter to Nathan. It was weird, trying to comfort him with a possibility that was so depressing to him. "And I'm not applying for anything that isn't in or around New York." That cut down his chances of getting in anywhere.
"Pffft, whatever, man. You'll get in." Nathan really didn't mean for it to be complimentary. It just seemed like as not to happen, solely because it'd put him out on his arse once he was done here. Stuck in the boy's dormitories at Xavier's was one thing, but he wasn't fooling himself into thinking that he could sneak into Simon's dorm to live at one of those arty film colleges once he'd got himself assigned roommates and all that. "You're nervous and pale and British... That's like an ideal candidate for them. They're going to eat your shit right up."
"I think they look for more than that," Simon replied pragmatically. Like talent. Despite Mr Jinadu's encouragement, he still wasn't sure that he had what it took.
"So shoot in black and white, have some naked people, some animals, throw in a few of the girls dressed as whores and nuns or something," was Nathan's self-confident advice. "The weirder it gets, the more brilliant you'll be! Oh, AND," he sat up on the bed, pointing at Simon enthusiastically, "if they don't act like it's brilliant straight away? Tell them they don't understand the hidden meanings, or the psychology or whatever!"
He stopped and nodded to himself, considering it. "Fuck, maybe I should apply to film school. I'd be a goddamned bloody natural."
"I'm thinking of asking Alisha to shoot something, actually," Simon answered, cheeks pinkening slightly at the admission. She would be neither naked, nor dressed as a whore or a nun. "Something simple."
"I guess it's better to go with one of her than a few ugly girls," Nathan agreed as least that far. "The hotter the girl, the better a filmmaker you look like, after all. And you can't ask for a better excuse to get her clothes off, can you?"
"Oh, Barry," he sigh-moaned in his best false female falsetto. Nathan stuck the toes of one shoe against the heel of the other, effectively kicking it off to tumble to the floor - and repeated with the other. "An art film?! Well, if it's tasteful," he gasped, tugging off his socks with something very poorly approximating slinky, stocking-revealing seduction, throwing each of them at his roommate, "this is how all great actresses get their start, isn't it?!"
Simon couldn't help but smile at his roommate's antics, even as he batted down the socks thrown at him. "It's not like that," he protested.
"Two and a half of us ASBO boys knew her before the school," Nathan countered, wriggling his toes to air them out and twisting to prop up on an elbow where he looked over at Simon. Curtis being half, all things considered. "One of us ought to get in on that," he suggested purely conversationally.
His money was on the half. Alisha always gave him the stank-face, and Barry was... Barry, for god's sake.
The smell from his toes rather did remind Nathan he should have a splash in the bath, and he stood, peeling his shirt off of his skinny frame without any theatrics this time.
"I won't hold my breath," Simon assured Nathan, as he turned back to his computer. The only one Alisha seemed interested in was Curtis, and given her power now, and Curtis's past, he would be surprised if it were to happen. Then again, human beings were unpredictable. Who knew.
Nathan frowned softly at Simon's back as he returned to his typing on his application, still not sure of what to make out of the realization that the people he cared about were starting to move on from the school.
He flung his shirt at the back of Simon's head, and went into the bathroom to not-think about it some more.
Simon was glad that his roommate was not in right then. He was toiling away on his essay, for his portfolio for SVA, and he was not making much headway as it was. He felt as if everything he was typing was terribly unoriginal, and not worth a read. Not for the first time, he selected the few paragraphs he had written and erased them all, then rubbed at his eyes. Maybe he ought to take a break...
Since they'd got the new phones over the holiday (and seriously, what the fuck kind of school was this where rich kids gave the entire student body the latest mobile tech?!), Nathan still didn't know half the crap his was supposed to do. But he'd got it to place calls, and he'd got some music loaded onto it, so that was a start. It wasn't unusual to see the pair of cheap drugstore earbuds crammed into either side of his curly head, and to still hear the leaky blaring of the tinny speakers spilling out around him like a crashed oil tanker of sound, leaving a wake of ear-pollution behind him. If you didn't like your music loud and abrasive as the lanky teen passed in the corridor, well, that was on you to deal with, apparently.
Meaning Simon had all of about thirty seconds of warning tunes bleeding loud enough to be heard through their door before Nathan whipped it wide open, head still bobbing as he more or less shimmied himself into the room with the beat of his music blaring. "Glad I didn't get you in the middle of beating yer meat, man," Nathan half-yelled over the noise. "One day, we both know that shit's gonna happen!"
When Simon heard the music, he amended his earlier thought. Whether or not he ought to take a break, he clearly was about to. His wince when Nathan spoke had more to do with the volume of his voice than the words themselves; Simon had heard a lot worse coming from his roommate. "That's why we have the only-in-the-bathroom rule," Simon reminded him, although he doubted that Nathan followed (or remembered) it.
Nathan screwed up his face and shook his head at his roommate, still overly loud as he answered. "I don't want to hear how you feel about mules! The donkeys are bad enough!" He finally yanked one the earbuds out, the other dangling at his chest as he had a glance around the room to see what he'd interrupted. The writing of a school paper, from the look of it: boring. The edge of some glossy pamphlet on the desk, though, caught his eye... Nathan moved to snatch it up. "What's this?"
Simon sighed, but trusted that the interrogation would be short-lived; Nathan would not likely be very interested in film schools. "The School of Visual Arts. In New York. I thought I might try for it."
Nathan had started to flip through the pages, but stopped with an upward jerk of his head when Simon said it was in New York. ...He was leaving the school? Maybe it did make sense, to get the fuck out once he'd graduated here, but it hadn't really occurred to Nathan yet as a thing that would actually happen. "Never happen. That's a bitch of a commute, without a car," he said after a long moment, flap-tossing the pamphlet back at Simon. "Where d'you think you'll get the cash for that kind of a school, anyway? It's not like you can take student loans when you're not even here legally."
"Sage has set me up with a fake identity that is here legally," Simon replied, after picking the pamphlet off the floor where it had fallen.
Nathan hadn't expected that, and the heft of his eyebrows said as much. "What about this place? And your little training squad? And... Won't those Facility fucks be all over you, if you do that?" He finally tugged out his buzzing earbuds, pawing for his phone without looking at it to turn the music off.
"That's the point of the fake identity," Simon answered evenly. Of course, Nathan was asking all the questions he had asked himself. "They won't know which name to look for - if I even get in."
"So then you're just going to bail out on the freakshow? And the other ASBOs? And... Well who the fuck's gonna be my roommate if you aren't?" Simon was acting all cool and nonchalant about this. Oh, sure, he had school and some some sort of film career ahead of him. Of course he did. What did Nathan have? "I certainly don't want to go to all the trouble involved with housebreaking some snotty-nosed little freshman. I like the way I've broken you in already!"
"Are you going to stay here?" Simon asked with a frown. He had assumed that they would all move on - apart from Curtis, until he mastered his mutation well enough - since he couldn't see any of the three of them staying on as teaching assistant.
"Wh-" Nathan huffed an annoyed sound at the perfectly reasonable question, making a face at Simon before moving to drop onto his bed with a groan. He'd been putting a lot of work into not thinking about it, thank you, and didn't like that he was being forced into it by Barry and his freaking uni leaflets from out of nowhere. And Alisha wanting his picture for her portfolio for a fashion school. And Curtis... Curtis didn't particularly give two shits what he did anyway, but that was beside the point.
"Well obviously not," Nathan insisted from a sprawl on his bed. "There are loads of opportunities for immortals out there, you know. I just haven't decided which circus act or TV programme I want to give first crack at all of this natural un-dying amazement. You think I should get the agent first, or wait until I'm proper famous so I'll have the best one?"
Simon frowned; for all of the time he had spent with Nathan, and how much better he had got to know him, sometimes he was still unsure how to interpret his words. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Enh, probably not," Nathan admitted after staring up at their shared ceiling for a few moments. He would in a heartbeat, if not for their Scooby villains, the Facility. Why shouldn't someone get rich and famous for having the best power you could ever hope for? But after the last time... He supposed he was done with all that. "I'll figure out something."
The truth was that Nathan didn't know what there was to even do with himself. He guessed he could get around the not being a citizen in the way Simon was planning, getting some funny papers to pass as ID. But he was a shit student, he had no work experience, he couldn't use his power without a fuss of drama... So what, then? Some minimum wage piece of crap corner shop in an apron kind of a job? He wasn't sure he could even afford to live in the city like that. Everyone knew that New York was expensive as fuck.
Simon was silent for a moment, as he thought things over. "I don't even know if I'll get in," he finally settled on, since it seemed to matter to Nathan. It was weird, trying to comfort him with a possibility that was so depressing to him. "And I'm not applying for anything that isn't in or around New York." That cut down his chances of getting in anywhere.
"Pffft, whatever, man. You'll get in." Nathan really didn't mean for it to be complimentary. It just seemed like as not to happen, solely because it'd put him out on his arse once he was done here. Stuck in the boy's dormitories at Xavier's was one thing, but he wasn't fooling himself into thinking that he could sneak into Simon's dorm to live at one of those arty film colleges once he'd got himself assigned roommates and all that. "You're nervous and pale and British... That's like an ideal candidate for them. They're going to eat your shit right up."
"I think they look for more than that," Simon replied pragmatically. Like talent. Despite Mr Jinadu's encouragement, he still wasn't sure that he had what it took.
"So shoot in black and white, have some naked people, some animals, throw in a few of the girls dressed as whores and nuns or something," was Nathan's self-confident advice. "The weirder it gets, the more brilliant you'll be! Oh, AND," he sat up on the bed, pointing at Simon enthusiastically, "if they don't act like it's brilliant straight away? Tell them they don't understand the hidden meanings, or the psychology or whatever!"
He stopped and nodded to himself, considering it. "Fuck, maybe I should apply to film school. I'd be a goddamned bloody natural."
"I'm thinking of asking Alisha to shoot something, actually," Simon answered, cheeks pinkening slightly at the admission. She would be neither naked, nor dressed as a whore or a nun. "Something simple."
"I guess it's better to go with one of her than a few ugly girls," Nathan agreed as least that far. "The hotter the girl, the better a filmmaker you look like, after all. And you can't ask for a better excuse to get her clothes off, can you?"
"Oh, Barry," he sigh-moaned in his best false female falsetto. Nathan stuck the toes of one shoe against the heel of the other, effectively kicking it off to tumble to the floor - and repeated with the other. "An art film?! Well, if it's tasteful," he gasped, tugging off his socks with something very poorly approximating slinky, stocking-revealing seduction, throwing each of them at his roommate, "this is how all great actresses get their start, isn't it?!"
Simon couldn't help but smile at his roommate's antics, even as he batted down the socks thrown at him. "It's not like that," he protested.
"Two and a half of us ASBO boys knew her before the school," Nathan countered, wriggling his toes to air them out and twisting to prop up on an elbow where he looked over at Simon. Curtis being half, all things considered. "One of us ought to get in on that," he suggested purely conversationally.
His money was on the half. Alisha always gave him the stank-face, and Barry was... Barry, for god's sake.
The smell from his toes rather did remind Nathan he should have a splash in the bath, and he stood, peeling his shirt off of his skinny frame without any theatrics this time.
"I won't hold my breath," Simon assured Nathan, as he turned back to his computer. The only one Alisha seemed interested in was Curtis, and given her power now, and Curtis's past, he would be surprised if it were to happen. Then again, human beings were unpredictable. Who knew.
Nathan frowned softly at Simon's back as he returned to his typing on his application, still not sure of what to make out of the realization that the people he cared about were starting to move on from the school.
He flung his shirt at the back of Simon's head, and went into the bathroom to not-think about it some more.
