“You sound like my mother,” Julian answered, and there was the faintest undercurrent of hurt, which made Archer wince.
“That’s not what I meant. I think teaching is amazing. I was never good at it.”
Julian turned his head to glance at him, his eyes glinting in the faint glow of the radio panel. “You went to school.”
Archer opened his mouth to defend himself and the years he spent killing himself for his degree—then he remembered, he wasn’t that man. Not tonight. Not this week. “Being an escort put a lot of people through college,” he said. It wasn’t entirely a lie, but it didn’t feel much different than one.
After a beat, Julian sighed. “I get that. A lot of people think I’m an asshole because I can’t relate to money struggle, and they’re not wrong,” he said before Archer could try and defend him. “My best friend went to school with me. It was this absurdly expensive private school. I think tuition today is like forty grand a year.”
Archer choked on his own tongue. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah.” Julian huffed a tiny laugh. “His dad was the office manager, so Ilan got to go to school there for free, but it was obvious he didn’t belong. It was probably the only reason we became friends. He was poor, and I was ugly and had a weird accent.”
Archer blinked. He wanted to defend Julian—say that a scar on his lip and a faint deaf accent didn’t make him ugly or weird, but he knew perfectly well the cruelty of humanity, especially in the young. “People are assholes.”
At that Julian sighed. “They are. But life is easier now.”
“And now he’s a doctor.”
“Yes.” Julian said nothing as he put on his blinker and took a sharp corner, nearly throwing Archer into the door. “He worked his ass off for it. He did his undergrad at the same university as me, on an academic scholarship, but he lived in the dorms and my parents paid for an apartment. I think he resented me sometimes, but he’s also the person who cared about me because of who I am and not because I could give him something.”
He felt cold right to his very core because he was there for that reason. Even if he didn’t take the money, it was still a paid transaction. And if he refused payment, it would have been done out of pity, and that might be worse. “Money,” Archer said.
“Makes the world go round,” Julian replied in a half sing-song voice.
“Is that Shakespeare?”
“Cabaret,” Julian answered, and Archer laughed. “There are more quotes condemning money from dear William than singing its praises.”
Archer leaned his arm against the window and rested his head there, looking at Julian in the dark as best he could. “Is he your favorite?”
“Shakespeare?” he asked, and Archer made soft, uncertain noise. “He’s fascinating. His works are over-valued and over-analyzed and he’s never been held accountable for that. In every literature classroom, he supersedes men of color, and women, and queer writers who have far more to say and do it better than the Bard. He’s heralded as the peak of literature and I find myself…curious to unravel the mystery as to why.” Julian cleared his throat and flushed. “Sorry. I get passionate.”
Archer’s lips quirked into a grin, and he turned his head, hiding it in his arm. He loved it, loved hearing the passion. He didn’t understand the Bard, but he did understand how something other people considered small and insignificant could crawl under your skin and make you itch for, and want, and crave answers. He hadn’t expected to find that in the stoic, defensive man, but he adored the fact that he had.
“So…” he said after a beat, “not your favorite.”
There was a long pause, then Julian said, with the hint of a smile, “Not really, no.”
“But you chose him for me,” Archer pointed out, and Julian’s throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly.
“Sometimes my mouth reacts before my brain does. It’s gotten me into trouble before.”
“Well,” Archer said, leaning against the door, “will it help if I promise not to live up to his historically accurate self?”
Julian made a soft noise, something like the ghost of a laugh, and he shrugged. “Maybe a bit.”
They quit talking after that, but it was only ten minutes before they reached the venue. Archer hadn’t known what to expect, but he thought it would be more sprawling