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Their ritual went like this: twice a month, Edward Nguyen would come to Destiny City Central Library and have lunch with Anthony Darrow. Sometimes it slipped down to once, depending on how busy they were, but it never got up to more than twice. Twice was familiar. Three times would have bordered on admitting a lack of other people to lunch with, or bit into Edward's workaholism, or just generally tripping up some arcane mathematics wherein twice was friendly but three times would have had Edward approving of Tony's choices.

He didn't, was the thing -- they had learned a lot from their younger days, when they had been different people and lead different lives. Edward sometimes thought that Anthony dipped back into the old days because there was nothing else to know, or worse because it was comfortable and familiar which was the same thing as enjoyable. He disapproved. He disapproved as much as a younger man (eight years still -- the gulf between thirty-eight and thirty was a different gulf to twenty-four and sixteen, but it was still a gulf) could disapprove, which in Edward's case was quietly and pointedly. Otherwise they stuck together because --

-- well, he liked Tony Darrow. That was the thing.

Edward Nguyen was a familiar twice-a-month sight at the circulation desk now. He wore his taxpaying citizen work clothes, he was a respectable friend. Sometimes this made him a little depressed and he didn't even know why. Sometimes he stood a little awkwardly in front of Anthony's desk waiting, like he did today, though today he was more preoccupied with touching his cheeks and forehead as he waited.

"I think I'm coming down with something," he said by way of hello. He pulled a face. He also checked his cheeks and forehead again, as though doing so would reveal to him the mysteries of his temperature. "Do you have any Tylenol? I have a killer headache right behind my eyes, one of those pressure ones."

(Edward Nguyen: not shy about telling you the unasked details of his killer headache.)

He did not disappoint with the Advil bottle. "Thanks," said Edward gratefully, and dry-swallowed two with the ease of someone who could dry-swallow painkillers all day long. He looked much more cheerful after the Advil. "I'm fine. I mean, if you don't want me passing it on..."

That also trailed off awkwardly. They made awkward trail-offs. It was their wont. It was probably a little sad for two men over thirty, but then his (friend) said: "I wouldn't mind the non-teacher conversation." A grimace. "That sounds ugly. I wouldn't mind the conversation."

The Advil bottle was passed back. The little girl with the book was standing in the foyer with her parents, painstakingly showing them the label where it had been scanned and hovering before the book detectors you were meant to leave through. Eventually she made the plunge to pass the gate, and when no siren went off her delight was obvious. Edward was smiling. "Besides," he said lightly, "what's the bet you're not feeding yourself enough?"

At least it didn't come with a disappointed face.

Generally he and Edward took turns being worried. (How are things for you? No, how are things for you?) They both lived the same life of an apple on lunchbreak, though knowing Edward an apple probably constituted 'pack of sour-apple gummi worms'. "It's work," said the younger man, skimming the menu. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."

He probably even meant it. "I don't know what's in the water, Tony," he was suddenly saying. "It used to be I'd get two kids out of ten coming in with bruises. They'd all be from the same school. Now it's ten out of ten coming in beaten-up and not saying anything from every school, and it's ten more kids than we had last term -- I don't even know."

The menu dropped down to the table. Edward looked tired. Not fluey, just tired, though he did keep on hopefully pushing at his glands from time to time unsurreptitiously like they'd swell with prodding. "It's not like how we were," he said, which was probably the most he'd ever dared to start a conversation on the bad old days. Awkward pause. In a fit of regret he smoothed out his face and forced a smile: "What about you? Books coming back late, people mangling spines?"

They shared the brief smile of two people whose fortunes had changed, who had careers they did honestly love inasmuch as it brought them irritation. And Carol. "I bet she's not that bad," said Edward, who refused to ever believe that Carol was as bad as Anthony made out. At this point, there was a possibility his bland smile was him making a horrible joke of it. "Maybe she's just trying too hard."

The waitress came over. They ordered. Edward got a side salad, as he always got a side salad, though he tended to chomp through it with a martyred expression on his face of one who would have preferred to have drenched it in Thousand Island. The open tiredness was masked now; sometimes at the precipice of showing he was a real person with real human emotions Edward backed away hurriedly from the edge. Emotionally unavailable. The only thing he really let himself complain about was whether or not he thought he had mono. "It's the same old, same old for both of us, I guess," he said. "Not enough funding. Too much work. No desk space."

He'd avoided Anthony's eyebrows when they'd lifted. Too much, too close to the bone, and he'd pretended that he was interested in staring over at a plastic flower arrangement the other side of the diner. His voice was cheerful again when he said, "You haven't been sleeping in your office again, have you? I told you to quit that, Tony."

"No," said Edward easily, and he was lying through his teeth. "I don't have a comfortable couch in the back to sleep on, remember. Your couch? Is comfortable." (Edward had lain on it before saying, awed, 'This is a really comfy couch.' At that point you had to worry.) "I'm just a poor slave of the education department who gets no couch."

Sometimes he acted as though he were older than Anthony. At times it was endearing, at others outright patronizing when Anthony might remember that he'd known Edward age fourteen with knobbly elbows and a snivelling, haunted expression of anger. Middle finger. Dangling butt of a cigarette. He said, "You should rethink Carol. When are you going to settle down and have some kids?"

The waitress made him pause in this opening diatribe to refill their water jug. Edward smiled at her, then returned to the naggy job at hand. "You should find someone. I'm not always going to be around to remind you not to sleep at work or that crullers aren't -- a breakfast food." He tossed a piece of ice into his mouth and crunched. "And before you ask, I'm happy with my grass and flowers."

Liar. They danced this time every time, Edward thought; get out more -- you should get out more -- no, really, you should get out more. Their solitude stuck when they were in each other's atmosphere, like two bits of chewing gum glommed together.

"Tony, Tony, Tony." Edward was smiling benignly. He had that trick of looking saintly when in fact he was proposing untold horrors, ie Carols. "I'd never take that chance away from you."

Another piece of ice was tossed in his mouth, crunched down. The younger man had a need to chew. It was probably him trying to put off chomping on whatever candy was in his pocket before his salad got there. "Besides," he added, "it's bros before..."

The expression on his face when he realised what hos meant in that context was classic. In any context, actually. Weregild for a misspent youth in which he'd sworn so incoherently that he'd created new offcolour linguistics, or at least tried; memory said that he hadn't been that great at it. Edward finished, "Bros before ladies." This still didn't work. "Bros before possible girlfriends. Bros before, um, complicated girl choices -- you can stop me any time you like."

Another half-smile. "You know you're not grizzled either, Tony, the grey makes you look distinguished -- you can stop me any time you like right now too." (Thankfully he wasn't trying to screw up 'no homo'.)

They had both cracked up. It was a relief, a dissolving of any lingering ice. Edward was pinching the bridge of his nose by the time their laughter died away, self-deprecating, and they were still snickering when the food arrived. The food provided a distraction. Edward had at his grass and flowers, consented to eat Tony's garnish, and ate forkfuls of leaves with a faintly martyred expression.

His smile had blossomed. "We are nice guys," he said. Apparently where we've come from didn't really faze him this time around. "We're clean. We do our own laundry. We pay our taxes." A forkful was pushed around on his plate. "We work in the public sector -- we make the rest of them look bad with our. Neatness. Niceness. Punctuality."

Obviously Edward was in a good mood now. If you pointed out the fact that they were nice guys who did nice things, it always gave him a boost. Edward always had needed validation, didn't he? Validation for anything, back then, no matter what was going on. "Maybe we should get out more," he said, though the idea of both of them in any kind of bar was a really hilarious one. Better than Edward trying to convince him to come to church. "When was the last time you went out to do something you really wanted, Tony, as selfish as that sounds?"

(Answer was most likely: a previous night. To hotwire a car.)

The conversation was cut off so that they could swallow their mouthfuls. In reality, Edward looked into Tony's eyes and his harried, faltering expression, and it was like chewing icecubes all over again.

He didn't have a lot of friends. He got on well with his workmates and colleagues, which was good because they worked in incredibly close quarters and spent more time carpooling together than any work generally demanded. He liked his kids. He was fond of his kids. Some he was fonder of than others, but they were his life -- so was his church and so was his youth group and so was his coaching. He gave back of himself, he stubbornly said to nobody at all. He gave it back. He was giving it back.

"You know," he said easily, "I know you, Tony. I know you don't actually like -- hitting cars." (Edward Nguyen: thought police.) "Deep down, I know you realise that. So. I don't really understand why you keep on... coming back to this... when it's not. Something. You like."

He was still smiling. It was a different smile, though. It had iron filings in it. "I know you," he said again, doggedly, as though his Tony would somehow replace the actual Tony. "You know we're not like the others. We're not like the others because you got out. Remember that? You and me, we made the decision to get out."

There was something a little frenzied in his expression. There was also something a little bit sad, and it was still the Edward Nguyen teenager Anthony had seen all those years ago: don't do this and leave me by myself. The last two members of some kind of Alcoholic's Anonymous. A historical guilt trip.