Work Text:
Nathan has been Reagan's best friend for as long as she can remember ever having friends. She'd had playmates before then, other kids her mom forced her to go outside with and invite to parties, but Nathan had been her first actual friend. They'd had private jokes and invented their own language to pass notes in school. (That lasted all of a week before Nathan lost their rubric.) Even now, Nathan can look at her and say the word "Skills" in a particular tone and Reagan will have trouble not bursting out laughing. When they'd met, they'd still been young enough to be allowed sleepovers. They both were long used to the smell of the blankets from the other's house spread out on the floor while they stayed up whispering half the night. That was before Mom got concerned about Reagan spending so much time around him.
"You need a find a nice boy to date," Mom had said, and she'd meant a lot of things with the word 'nice' but Reagan had been twelve and wasn't interested in dating any boys. She wanted to go camping with Nathan.
Other friendships could have been ruined this way but they stuck together. They even had one date, but that didn't count. It was a school dance. Neither wanted to go alone and back then the school had insisted on couples only. (Bobbie goes to the same high school and they go to dances alone when they bother to go. "I like to keep my options open," they say every time.)
Some people would look at what's going on with the two of them now and wonder. Reagan and Nathan live together, they eat together, they spend all their time together. In a way they've both parented Bobbie. Surely that's dating, right? Or even marriage? But the details matter. Nathan is hiding inside the museum that used to be his home and Reagan keeps his secret while he works on bettering himself. The relationship they have has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with a bond that began decades ago.
"There's the Pleiades," Nathan says, pointing at a constellation just visible through the window. They're on blankets on the floor with the lights out staring at the stars and talking about nothing much. It's like being twelve again and finally getting in that last camping trip.
"The Dancers," she says. She learned the name in college rather than in school here. Part of her will always be wistful about things she had to leave home to learn about that home but she loves sharing the knowledge, especially with her best friend.
Nathan makes a noise in his throat while he considers. "I like it."