Playing For The Other Team [REMAKE]

Chapter 24

Nathan and Jonathan don't celebrate their anniversaries. A handful of months pass, and Nathan doesn't think much about it until Josh asks him which color the flowers he's getting for Wendy should be.

"It's the little things, Nate. She loves it, I swear." Josh is as cheerful as ever. "Makes my day to see her get excited over it."

"You're too good for her," Nathan says, giving Josh's shoulder a playful punch. "You're going to set the bar way too high for the rest of us."

It's a joke, but part of Nathan wonders if he should be doing things like that for Jonathan. They don't really buy each other gifts, but they go out a lot. They've been to a handful of movies together, and on rare occasions, they eat at a restaurant. But they both seem to prefer the privacy of the car or the solitude of an undiscovered corner of a park.

They don't spend every day together. They both have their own friends and interests to tend to, but it's always nice to meet up for lunch or by the car at the end of the school day.

But with Josh's talk about 'the little things', Nathan decides to do something special for Jonathan and himself.

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It's unusual for Jonathan to not hear from Nathan. It's not uncommon for one of them to be too busy to reply, but when an entire school day has passed without a word, Jonathan can't help but feel like something is... off.

Then he finds a note in his locker. It's a yellow sticky note stuck to the top of his bag. Surprise date? Come to the library, the note says.

Jonathan smiles to himself before he glances up and down the hallway. Most students seem eager to go home and hurriedly grab what they need from their lockers before leaving. Jonathan takes the note and folds it in half before closing the locker and making his way to the library.

Nathan is not in the library. Jonathan walks up and down between the shelves, but his boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. Their usual desk is empty, but Jonathan can see another yellow sticky note on it when he approaches it.

It's still not been replaced... Go to where we met for the second time.

"You are so cheesy," Jonathan mumbles to himself when he turns and heads around the corner. A couple of shelves down the row, a stack of books sits on the floor with another yellow note on them.

What follows is a strange kind of treasure hunt. Jonathan follows the notes and their clues around school. There's one in the hallway corner, by Nathan's locker. There's another one in the gym, taped to a seat near the entrance, and another by the bleachers outside.

The hunt for notes ends in the storage room.

"You are ridiculous," Jonathan says when he steps into the room.

Nathan smiles at him from where he's seated by the piano. "Yeah," he admits. "Was it fun?"

"Your clues are terrible," Jonathan laughs as he walks over and sits down beside Nathan. "Those last few ones were really..."

"Reaching?" Nathan suggests. "I'm obviously not a writer, but I tried my best."

"And that's what matters." Jonathan leans into Nathan's open embrace. "What's the occasion? I know we're not anywhere near any celebratory dates."

Nathan shrugs. "I just wanted to try and do something special, I guess," Nathan says. "And are you, or are you not keeping a calendar of these things? Because it sounded like you do."

"You got me," Jonathan sighs. "I remember all the dates of our milestones or whatever. I don't even need to write them down."

"Well," Nathan says with a wide smile. "Get ready to remember another one. I've got a performance prepared for you." He scoots away and lifts the lid away from the piano keys. "Thank you all for coming," he says, leaving closer to an imaginary microphone. "This next song is for a very special someone. He knows who he is."