Chapter Text
"What's with you?"
In the stillness of the estate, the questioning lilt in Kelly's voice rises like a crack of thunder. Or a gunshot. Unfortunately, Nathan knew all too well about both, and he reckons either would be an appropriate descriptor here.
"Oh, you know," He starts, his words riding a scoff, "Just absolutely knackered from a night of shagging a bunch of— Hey!"
Nathan staggers forward, following the recoil of Kelly's open palm to the back of his head.
"God, I'm trying to be serious here, Nathan!" She returns, stopping in her tracks. Her voice softens slightly, and Nathan feels an uncomfortable knot forming in his stomach.
"I know you went out for a meal with your Dad last night," she starts, apparently deciding to cut straight through the bullshit. Nathan wishes she hadn't, but he also finds that he was too tired to do much about it.
"...Did it not go well?" She finishes, her voice earnest.
He lets out a choked, breathy, open-mouthed laugh at that. Nathan wishes he could take a sharp edge of a cola can and cut the sloppily eye-lined pity that dripped from Kelly's well-meaning words. His eyebrows furrow, and his lips pull into a taut line as he turns his face down to the grey pavement.
"It was fine." He concedes, knowing full well that lying would be a fruitless endeavor. His gaze turns completely away from where he was looking, focusing instead on the community center in the distance.
"…Completely normal," He murmurs, mostly to himself, finding reporting this to be harder than if his daddy dearest had stripped down like a pedophile in a back alley and tried to shag a five-year-old.
What Nathan senses in Kelly's belabored silence is familiar disbelief, but given its familiarity, Nathan shrugs it off as quickly as a jacket.
His absent gaze catches on a shock of orange in the otherwise dull cityscape, and his hand rises to shield his narrowing eyes from the chilly wind. He squints to focus on the owner of the jumpsuit, trying to work out who was on duty.
"Barry!" Nathan calls over the silence, frowning and allowing his arms to drop loosely at his sides as he gets no response.
"Nathan, what did I say about treating Simon—" Kelly's words die in her throat as he looks back up to find Nathan peeling halfway down the promenade.
Nathan's thin trainers dodge a few expected splotches of paint, cans, what have you, to find him next to Simon's hunched over body. Nathan rests his hands on his lower back, leaning back and letting out a small vocalization as he stretches backward. He peers down to Simon, who, with headphones in and looking intently at the rough, weather-worn bench he was painting, had the audacity not to notice Nathan's presence.
A mischievous smile curves onto Nathan's features, and he squats down next to him. Nathan wraps one arm around his lifted knees, reaching out the other to hook onto the nearest headphone wire. Nathan gives it a slight tug and leans in, whispering into Simon's ear: "Hey."
Simon startles, hands flicking up defensively. His horror-stricken eyes follow the device as it falls out of his hand to clatter on the ground before meeting Nathan’s again, "What… What are you…"
Nathan chuckles with a smug sense of satisfaction, "What am I doing?" He asks rhetorically to the air, watching Kelly's ponytail's sideways motion out of the corner of his eye as she crosses her arms and shakes her head as she walks past them.
"Well, my dear boy, I'm reintroducing you back into the world of the living!"
Nathan flashes a toothy grin, and in a moment, he's standing again, walking around Simon to scoop his iPod from the ground. He's flipping the loose earbuds in a circle, catching them on his fingers as they loop around, theatrical concern painting his expressive features.
"If you've always got your head jumbled with—" Nathan pauses a beat, glancing down at the screen, "…this depressing shit, then what brain space will you have left to think about new and inventive ways to woo and pleasure the birds and slags of the world?"
"…It helps me focus," Simon says.
Nathan crooks a dark eyebrow and scoffs, "I admire the effort, really, truly showing character growth and development!" He says, taking on a flippant and exaggerated proper accent. "You're shaping up to be a model member of society!"
Nathan sits on the bench's unpainted side, flicking through the iPod as he absently fishes through his pockets for a joint and lighter he knew he’d stashed there.
"Nothing is going on at the center today," Simon reports, his frown deepening as his eyes follow the device in Nathan's hand.
"No visitors today, eh?" Nathan asks, his voice muffled by the joint he positions in the corner of his mouth. He doesn't speak again until he gets it lit and takes a short drag, "Well, that's good! If we're lucky, that means we won't add to our body count!"
Another drag, and Nathan's gaze meanders back to the promenade, "…Have you seen Alisha and Curtis today?"
Simon shakes his head. Negative.
"Eh, they're probably off fake shaggin' somewhere," Nathan responds, motioning wanking off weakly by his crotch.
"Ew," Simon responds, his face creasing in on itself.
"Tell me about it!" Another breathy laugh punctuated his response to Simon's unfiltered reaction, "They've been doing it so often that it's boring to walk in on them now. Plus, the absolute twats have gotten smarter and started locking the storage unit… That's where I keep my… if they so much as get a splatter of their spunk on…." His voice drifts off as he exhales a plume of smoke.
Nathan doesn't notice the crease between Simon's eyebrows deepen in thought until he murmurs, "…Where were you? I thought you lived here." Cutting off Nathan's rambling, Simon's voice is low and severe in its questioning.
Nathan's face slackens with surprise as his mind processes the question. Still, the characteristic ridges between his eyebrows return as he looks forward, leaving the joint between his lips for another beat.
Thankfully, Nathan was well-versed in the art of deflection.
"Out on the town!" A smile plasters to his face and Nathan keeps his head-trained forward, just-in-case his guise wasn't as fool-proof as it once was. "Just because I live here… temporarily," He adds, taking a moment of emphasis to point at Simon, "doesn't mean I don't have beds all across the estate!"
He captures his bottom lip between his teeth and motions sloppy humping to punctuate his point.
"What, are you worried about me, Barry?" He asks, his voice pitching up a couple of octaves, "That's so sweet!"
"…No!" Simon seems to recoil at the thought, his features tensing at being called Barry. Seizing the moment that he has Nathan’s attention, Simon says with some force, “…can I have my iPod back?”
"Oh?" Nathan returns, the crooked smirk finding a more permanent home on his features. “What was that?”
“Nathan, can I have my iPod back?” Simon sternly repeats, lost gaze finding Nathan’s.
"Exsqueeze me?" Nathan allows the device to fall from its sturdy position in his palm to dangling precariously by his pointer finger and thumb, dangling it over the back of the bench in Simon’s face.
"Now, how you bruise me! That's no way to speak to your leading man, now is it?" He sneeringly prods, jutting out his bottom lip in all-too-fake hurt, leaning forward to begin to close the distance between himself and Simon.
“You’re not my—“
Nathan slyly slips the device back into his breast pocket, and he plants a swift kiss on the tip of Simon's nose.
"Well, thank you, Barry, for your service," He goads, the frown warping back into a smug smile mere centimeters away from Simon's skin. "But no."
Nathan rises from the bench, stubs out the joint's remains against the pavement, and turns on his heels to start toward the community center.
He blows past the unruffled form of the second (third?) probation worke, who doesn't even turn around to watch Nathan disappear behind him. Instead, he merely heaves a heavy sigh, eyes flicking to his clipboard before glancing back up at Simon.
In the dimly lit hallway of the community center, Nathan slows to a stop, and his lips part in a breathless smile. He allows his breathing a moment to regulate, and soon he's fixated on the vending machine. He frowns, gives it a swift, knowing kick to the bottom, and retrieves the soda that pops out.
When he pops the can open, the soda spatters, but he brings the fizzy drink to his lips as he makes his way to the locker room, fingers already at work unbuttoning the button down he was wearing.
"Oi, Nathan," Curtis's voice is the first that Nathan hears, and he removes the drink from his lips to acknowledge, peering toward him and Alisha standing at the far end of the locker room.
"….Wash the shirt before returning it, yeah?" Curtis says, after a beat, pointing at the white splotches that colored the backside.
Nathan scoffs as he walks past them to his locker, putting the can on top and the iPod on the shelf within. He glances around his shoulder theatrically to peer at the wet paint, frowning.
"Sure thing," He says, peeling the named shirt off and slipping on one of his own, sliding his feet into the bottom of the orange jumpsuit. "And I will." He asserts, pointing sternly to the pair, "A few days ago, I figured out how to do my laundry here for free!"
When Alisha raises a disgusted eyebrow and begins to comment about the implication that he hadn't done laundry since he's lived in the community center, Nathan starts: "Hey,” He closes the door to the locker and stands with his arm resting on it, "I'll have you know that my mom's allowed me to use the laundry back home a couple of times—"
Alisha rolls her eyes, arms crossing over her chest as she glances past Nathan to the entrance of the locker room. Nathan turns on the balls of his feet to follow her gaze, landing on Simon’s rigid form lingering in the doorframe.
“Is everything alright, Simon?” Alisha asks, frowning as she glances from Simon to where he was looking, “Why’re you looking at Nathan like that?”
“He has my iPod,” Simon says in an even tone, though his gaze remains unchanged.
"Is that all?" Curtis takes a few steps away from Alisha's side to close the distance between himself and Nathan. He extends a hand, glancing from it to Nathan expectantly. "Come on, man. Leave him alone. He ain't done nothin' to you—"
Nathan scoffs at his open palm, his face returning to the exaggerated hurt that probably characterized too much of his face contortions. But, after a beat, he does turn to retrieve the device from his locker and walks to put it face down in Simon's palm.
Simon's posture seems to relax some as he slips the iPod back into his jumpsuit's breast pocket and turns to focus on his locker.
"Fuck, fine," Nathan says, lifting his hands in fake defensiveness as he walks back to his locker, "I was trying to expand his horizons—"
Nathan's hand, meeting his locker, presses it to close with a slam as he maneuvers away from it, turning on his heels to come face-to-chest with the probation worker.
"You're Nathan Young, right?"
The words are long and drawled, and Nathan can hear, even without looking, the worker’s forefinger and thumb pressing against the bridge of his nose. Nathan looks him up and down and takes a step back, frowning as his hands settle at his hips.
"Who's askin'?"
"Some guy who says he's your father is in the office," He says, without an ounce of humor, "Go or don't go; I don't care."
Nathan's eyebrows knit together, and he can hear the probation worker dully continue droning to the rest as Nathan presses past him in the narrow aisle between the rows of lockers.
"Now, for the rest of you," He's pointing across them, pointing a finger toward Simon, raising an eyebrow, "We'll be finishing painting the benches outside…"
* * *
Part of Nathan thought that when he arrived at the dimly-lit office, he'd come face to face with one of the adult men through his life that had tried to slot themselves into the father role in his life. If asked, he would've said he'd gone for the laugh, for the banter of it all, but he finds he’s just stood there, humorlessly face to face with his one and only biological dad.
"…Nathan," His father starts, his eyebrows knitting as he gets to read the back of his jumpsuit as Nathan turns around as if there was another he could be talking to (Nathan wonders if he'd prefer that).
Mike Young pulls a hand through his scruffy hair, and both father and son fall silent, biting back thinly-veiled snide remarks. For Nathan's part, he stays planted, his face grave as he eventually returns Mike's gaze.
"What do you want?" Nathan tries, "Why are you here?"
Nathan's father frowns, eyes darting around like a man who'd forgotten his line. "Your mother told me to come," Nathan's eyes roll, and he's already nearly halfway out the door, "She said she was worried about you…" Mike flips his hand, clearly searching for the words, "not having a permanent place to stay, and all."
"I'll have you…" Nathan stops, pointing at Mike's chest, "both know: I'm fine."
Nathan can feel his voice rising in aggressiveness, so he stops, resting his chin on the crook of his pointer finger to reset.
"Then, now that's out of the way, why are you here?" Nathan asks, again.
“To bail your arse out," The scruffy probation worker states plainly, “...and I, for one, think you should let him.”
Nathan's father's eyes fall from Nathan and his orange jumpsuit to the gray carpet, either annoyed at the probation worker's interjection or preemptively bracing for Nathan's reaction.
"Ah, no shit," Nathan spits, his voice raising a couple of octaves as eyes roll and fingers lift into air quotes, "Estranged father offers to help social reject son by making him—"
"I'm here to offer you a place to live, Nathan." His father says, his voice probably more forceful than he intended, "A place to live, with me."
"Oh." Nathan breaths, dumbfounded.
"The state thinks a more stable home would be good for your… rehabilitation," the probation worker fills in, and the sigh in his voice seems to ask: why do they have to interfere with something so small?
"Your mother contacted your former probation worker," the guy puts deliberate emphasis on the 'former' bit. Nathan's eyes roll before he could think better of it, but the speaker is undeterred, "…saying something about how a more 'holistic' approach to your rehabilitation would be more helpful… or something."
The explanation seems to do little for father and son, the latter scoffing into his palm.
"And here I was, thinking you were doing it out of the kindness of your heart," Nathan says, his voice breathy and quiet despite the venom that laced his words, "—should've known it was just some bullshit."
Nathan's almost annoyed that he'd already been weighing the implications and whether or not agreeing would be necessitated by the parting wish of his half brother.
Nathan points his thumbs over his shoulder, "Well, if that's all you needed me for, then thanks, but no thanks," The smile that laces his features is a bit more brittle than usual, but he carries on, "I've got to go and finish serving my sentence then, yeah?"
"Nathan—" His father, rising from his seat, extends a hand to Nathan's shoulder, "Please, just stay and…" There's a moment's pause, as Mike Young calculates the proper words, and probably bites back more than a little venom of his own, "…and listen to me, goddamn it, for a moment."
Nathan frowns at the hand on his shoulder, his hands freezing where they were. He had to fight every instinct in his being that told him to shove his father off, but Nathan's green eyes meet his father's.
"Fine."
Nathan does shrug off his hand, but Mike allows this much, replacing it at his side and sitting back down on the ratty couch. Nathan remains standing, his hands sliding into the pockets of his jumpsuit.
The probation worker seems to lose interest in the familial drama unfolding by his catalyst and back steps out of the office, the door closing with a solid click.
Nathan's gaze follows the sound momentarily before returning to his father. He says nothing, merely lifting a dark eyebrow.
* * *
When Nathan emerges from the community center just shy of an hour later, he finds he has to shield his eyes from the afternoon sunlight, finally peering through parting clouds.
He frowns as he slowly makes his way back to the group, chewing the inside of his cheek in a weak attempt to distract from his thoughts— they're boisterous, loud things, and he's become all-too-aware of that, especially given his awareness of Kelly's power.
Slipping a stub of a cigarette between his lips, Nathan abandons the endeavor, walking over to the others.
Wordlessly, he scoops up a paintbrush and a can and sits cross-legged on the pavement, getting to work coloring the peeling benches.
"Right, out with it, then." Nathan does notice Kelly's looming shadow casting over him, but still, he doesn't look up at her statement. "You've been off since this mornin'. You didn't forget that I could read your thoughts, yeah?"
“Like I told you before," Nathan starts, half-heartedly, "I'm just exhausted from shaggin' about all night," He says, his hand languidly pulling the brush across the wood, "—and I've got a killer hangover, so if you could—"
"Bullshit," Kelly says, more forcibly now, "Why can't ya just be honest with us, Nathan?"
Nathan considers this and frowns, dropping the brush into the can of paint. “My dad offered to let me live with him,” He says, pursing his lips, “Apparently, my mom asked him to.”
“Well, what did ya say?” Kelly continues, her arms crossing and gum snapping in her mouth.
“I told him to go fuck himself.” Nathan says, a dry chuckle erupting from his throat.
Kelly makes a face that Nathan can’t place, and after a moment of wordless consideration, leaves Nathan alone with the bench and the paint-soaked brush.