Talker's Graduation

really grow there.
    “You don’t get in the way, baby,” Brian said earnestly. “You’ve
    been really patient this last month. But I got the last detail done last
    night, and I promised, today is all about us, okay?”
    Talker nodded, and kissed his shoulder again. “I just, you
    know… I don’t want to be clingy boyfriend on your big day.”
    Brian lowered his head and took Talker’s mouth fully,
    possessively, kissing away morning breath first and doubts and
    fears and insecurities second, kissing until it was just the two of
    them, like it always had been, even when Talker had his doubts.

    BRIAN was working late again tonight.
    Tate had been thrilled at first. When Brian had been given the
    okay to go back to work, he hadn‟t started out applying for
    restaurant jobs. Instead, he‟d gone to the pottery galleries and
    workshops and applied for jobs until he found the same place Tate
    had gotten that first block of clay. It was a gallery with a workshop
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    on the side, complete with wheel and an entire palette of stains and
    glazes.
    Brian had gone in one day to answer the help wanted sign on
    the front and then asked if the wheel was available to work on if he
    had time. The owner of the gallery had asked to see his work, and
    the next day, he‟d not only had a job, he‟d had an offer to sell some
    of his abstract pieces and to learn how to work on the wheel.
    Brian had been ecstatic.
    When school started again, the owner had been good about
    working around Brian‟s schedule, even opening the gallery on
    Sunday so Brian could work the register and have some quiet time
    with the wheel. The pay wasn‟t quite as good as waiting tables, but
    the art supplies were free, and the commission Brian was making
    from selling pieces was enough to make up for the tips he wasn‟t
    getting. It would have been a perfect set-up—and Talker would
    have been ecstatic for something that wasn‟t Brian putting a fifty-
    pound tray on a barely healed shoulder—if it weren‟t for one lousy
    thing.
    The gallery owner was a skeezy perv who wanted Brian‟s ass
    so bad he almost panted whenever Brian walked in the room, and
    who looked at Tate like he had body lice, hepatitis, and halitosis all
    rolled up into one.
    Even Brian saw it, but because he was Brian and he had a
    good heart, he was all stoic and accepting about it and didn‟t see
    the icky parts.
    “He‟s such a perv!” Tate snarled one night after coming to pick
    Brian up. The guy—a decent-looking man in his forties—had
    walked them to the door with his hand in the small of Brian‟s back
    and his thigh pressing up against Brian‟s backside. Brian had kept
    moving away from him (into Tate, who had nearly been tripped a
    couple of times) and Mark had kept invading his space. Brian had
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    practically tripped on his way out the door and Talker had turned
    around and steadied him on his feet.
    “Jeez, man, give us some space!” Talker snapped, and Mark‟s
    reply haunted him.
    “I‟m not the one who‟s bringing him down.”
    Talker had sulked—he freely admitted it—all the way home
    that night.
    “He‟s lonely,” Brian apologized, and then winced at the look
    Tate had given him. “Okay—I‟m sorry. Do you want me to quit?” He
    was sincere, too, and Tate had needed a fierce, tight grip on his
    worry-stone before answering.
    “No,” he said quietly. “You‟re happy there. You have a chance
    to do your homework—you might graduate next year, and that‟s
    huge.”
    It was huge. Brian had missed a semester, but he was in
    position to graduate mid-year the next year. That meant that he
    could actually just work while Talker was going through school, and
    it meant that one of them might actually get a degree.
    At this point, Talker was reasonably sure it wasn‟t going to be
    him.
    Talker was better at school than Brian—quicker, better with
    words, better at getting concepts, just generally better at the school
    game. But he had the attention span of a butterfly on crack-cocaine
    and the staying power of a hummingbird on meth. He‟d taken
    classes—a full load every semester—and he‟d passed them. But it
    hadn‟t been until this last year, when Brian had dragged him to the
    evaluator‟s office, that he realized his dilemma. If he wanted to
    graduate with anything, he was going to have to go to school for
    another three years, and his scholarship would run out