Page 2 of Rust of Control

When the worst of it had passed and his breath had come back down where it belonged, Jude did what he knew how to do, the only stagecraft he had ever been genuinely good at. He fixed the eyeliner with the pad of one finger. He did not try to rebuild the rest. He arranged his face into a calm a person could look at without worrying, practiced the calm once in the glass, and it held. He had been painting over the cracks like this since before he had words for what he was doing. It was not a talent. He had just needed it too young, and so he had it.

He unlocked the door.

He did not go back to the band.

He found the booth in the far corner instead, the one half behind a support post where the light gave out. He folded himself into it with his knees up and his arms around them, the messenger bag shoved under the table by his feet. Rand was not in the room. Rand had taken the pretty guy out into the cold to take care of something. That was the phrase Rand used for it, and the band knew, and Jude knew, and not-saying-it had become its own kind of furniture they all walked around.

He got his phone out.

He should call a car. A sane adult with somewhere to be would call a car. He had the app. He had a small careful pile of his own money in an account, kept where the band's hands could not reach it, so there would always be enough to send home to his parents on the first. He could press four buttons and a stranger would come and he would never have to speak to the stranger at all.

He did not want a stranger.

He wanted the one person who, at eleven forty-two at night, would not make him explain.

Jude typed it before he could argue himself out of it.

No punctuation, his thumb hovering and then pressing send because if he read it again he would delete it. He watched it sit there in its little blue shell, delivered, and the wanting-to-take-it-back came up so fast it nearly choked him. Nate was probably asleep. Nate had a life, a whole one, with people in it who were not somebody’s sad kid brother, and Jude had no right to a person at eleven forty-two at night.

He typed again, fast, on top of the shame.

He could not make himself explain past that. He sent the third one a breath later, the only word that would come.

The phone lit.

It was the same thing twice, rattled out and sent before he could tidy it, and that was how Jude knew Nate had stood up the second the texts landed. Nate, who never repeated himself, who chose words the way other men chose tools. He had said it twice because he was already moving.

Jude typed ok, two letters, and looked at them before he sent them, because two letters was all he had and he knew Nate would read the size of the word and understand exactly how much of Jude was left tonight to type with. He sent it anyway.

Then he sat in the dark booth with his knees up and watched the screen as though it might change the darkness of the night, and he waited.

He felt Nate before he saw him.

It was not a swoon and not a hope. Jude had given up hoping years ago, folded it small and put it somewhere he didn't open, because Nate was Easton's best friend and straight as a fence post and fifteen years was a long time to want something you were never going to be allowed. This was lower than hope and older. Fifteen years had taught Jude the exact sound of Nate's boots on a wood floor, the unhurried weight of that walk. His head came up toward it before he had found the door with his eyes.

Nate was already most of the way to the booth.

He had on a Carhartt and jeans, and he was not smiling. Nate smiled the way other men breathed, and a Nate who was not smiling told Jude more than a sentence could have. The clubhouse was loud and Nate moved through it quietly, and the room seemed to make a little space for him without being asked. He stopped at the edge of the table; looked at Jude for a moment, just looked, and Jude made himself hold still under it and not perform anything.

“Hey,” Nate said.

Jude's head came up. He did not have a word ready. The relief had hit him too hard and too fast and emptied his mouth the same way the panic did, except this had no fear in it anywhere.

“Nate,” he managed.

“Get your stuff.”

Jude got his stuff. He got the jacket and the messenger bag. His hand closed around the half-full water glass out of pure habit before Nate said, low and even, “Don't drink anything you set down,” and Jude put it back on the table like it was hot. He filed the instruction somewhere with all the other instructions he had not known he was waiting for.

They were halfway across the floor when Rand came back in from the cold.

After that Jude mostly watched.

He watched Rand notice the bag in his hand. He watched the smile come up on Rand's face, the wide easy one, the babe one, and he watched it stop being able to do its job, because Nate had stepped half in front of Jude without seeming to move at all. Rand was talking. Of course he was. Rand was very good at talking; it was the first thing Jude had ever loved about him and it was going to be the last thing he believed. He's mine, Rand said, somewhere in it, and Jude felt the old reflex twitch in his throat, the apology, the smoothing and fawning, the sentence that would make everyone comfortable again.

He opened his mouth.

Nate spoke before the stutter could even decide whether to betray him. Jude never had to find the word. Nate found all of them, flat and unhurried, never once getting loud. Jude stood in the shelter of that flatness and understood that he was being handled with care, and let himself be.