telaryn: (Nate - Thoughtful)
[personal profile] telaryn
Title: Like God
Author: [livejournal.com profile] telaryn
Word Count: 746
Fandom: Leverage (pre-series)
Characters: Nate & Father Paul
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: No ownership implied, no profit obtained.
Summary: Nate is finally forced to confront his growing crisis of faith.
Author's Note: Written for [livejournal.com profile] angst_bingo, for the prompt "ennui".


”What are you doing here, Nathan?”

The question had been plaguing him for months; now that the dean of students had finally added his voice to the din, Nate literally couldn't focus on anything else. Finally he'd retreated to his favorite hiding place on the roof of his dormitory. Safe from prying eyes and wagging tongues, he slipped a flask out of his jacket pocket, and took a sip of the whiskey he'd bought off an enterprising sophomore earlier in the week.

The night was clear, and there was a hint of frost in the air. With his back safely against the parapet wall, he tilted his head until he could see the stars. There’d been more of them at his boarding school, but St. Jerome’s hadn’t been nearly in the heart of a major city.


God’s handiwork. His laugh was soft and bitter as he realized the words didn’t even sound like his own mental voice anymore. He could run the entire argument from memory, as easy as pushing play on a cassette recorder: Stars are balls of gas reflecting light from billions of miles away…who made the gas…the gas was made when… And so on and so on, until he wanted to throw something.

“How’d the meeting go?”

He’d been too lost in his own head to realize his best friend had joined him on the roof. “Jesus, Paul!” he cried, once the adrenaline spike started leveling off. “Cough, burp – do something!

The stocky young man Nate had known since his earliest childhood sat down a few feet away and held out his hand for the flask. Nate dutifully passed it over; Paul sniffed the contents, then wiped the mouth on his shirttail and took a swig of his own. “You know they’re gonna kick you out if you don’t start getting with the program.”

“Thanks for the news flash,” Nate grumbled, taking the whiskey back. “And if you drink too much of this, you’re gonna have to chip in. Fredricks is a shark, but I didn’t feel like trying to sneak off campus.”

Paul nodded, his expression understanding. “Too many eyes on you right now?”

Nate snorted and took a healthy sized drink of his own. “Father Ryan suggested that I might want to pray about whether or not my calling is genuine.”

“Your grades that bad?” Paul asked.

Grinning ruefully, Nate nodded. “It’s hard to put the work in when I want to argue with everything we’re being taught.” He sighed. “Please tell me I’m not the only one who caught that conflict on keeping the Sabbath holy.”

Paul drew his knees up to his chest. “You look for problems, Nate,” he said. “Father Jacobs says that the devil is in the details – we’re supposed to be keeping our eye on the big picture.”

Nate gestured with his flask. “That would be my shrink talking.” He paused. “Not the ‘devil in the details’ part, of course.”

Paul reached out a hand, and Nate dutifully handed over the whiskey. “You’re supposed to have faith that God knows what he’s doing.” He took another drink and handed it back. “Your faith is supposed to be growing the farther along we get in this process, and from where I sit it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.”

He couldn’t exactly argue with his friend’s assessment. “It would be nice if God’s plan…” He put verbal air quotes around the word, even though he was reluctant to upset his friend by making the accompanying physical gesture, “…made a little more sense.”

“If we could understand God’s plan,” Paul countered, “we’d be like God.” His expression slipped into a careful neutrality. “Is that the only thing that will make you happy, Nate? Getting to be like God?”

Nate wondered if Paul would be surprised to learn that it wasn’t the first time he’d considered the question. Probably not, he decided. At this point there probably wasn’t anyone alive who knew him as well as Paul. “I’d like to feel like my destiny is in my own hands, for a change,” he admitted. “That I have some say in what happens, instead of trying to please my parents, my teachers, society…or God,” he added.

Paul was quiet for a long moment. Nate took the opportunity to drain the flask. When his friend spoke again, there was a thread of sadness in the words.

“Then I guess you really do need to figure out what you’re doing here.”

(no subject)

15/8/11 14:58 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com
I like Paul. We really should see more of him in the show because he's the moral compass Nate really needs sometimes (whether or not one agrees with his religion)

(no subject)

18/8/11 09:18 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] telaryn.livejournal.com
I agree. The one thing Nate needs is somebody capable of calling him on his crap. The show tries to make it Sophie and Eliot, but that's emotionally messy (which makes for great drama, but runs the risk of making Nate even more of an asshole than he already tends to be).

Paul would be great in this role.

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