Paul leaves work right after he finishes his interview with James Neal. He packs up his bag, gtis in heis car, and drives to Sammy's. He wals inside, parks himself on a bar stool in front of the largest tv and demands three shots of tequila and after they're  placed in front of him and he downs the first two, he demands that  Flower find puts the Oilers versus Flyers game on, because if he feels like crying, he might as well go the whole nine yards. Flower pu

Paul has no idea why he decided going into academia was a good idea. Why he wanted to work at a university for the rest of his life. He really could not tell you at all, because sitting at his desk at five in the evening on a Wednesday afternoon with a caffeine headache building behind his right eye and a shortage of red pens and an over abundance of Anthropology 101 essays, it didn’t seem like he made a good choice at all.

                Sure, picking your future path based off of the Indiana Jones movies probably wasn’t a good start, let’s be honest. But Paul didn’t regret majoring in archeology and anthropology, or doing the grad work, or going on expeditions all across the world. Nope, those were pretty much the greatest things ever. It was when your research was stalling and you didn’t have leads to anything and you were stuck teaching three sections of Anthropology 101 and you could hear the entire scientific community breathing down your neck that oops, there you were, washed up at thirty.

Paul pulls off his glasses and drops them on the stack of papers still to grade. He  rubs his hands over his eyes, rubbing at the throbbing behind his eye, and thinking that he would probably blow the next person to walk into his office with a cup of coffee.

A knock on his door startles him out of his thoughts, with Geno standing there , six plus feet of gangly Russian with a cup of coffee held out in his hand, and a smirk on his face.

                “Coffee, Paulie?” he asks, his smile twitching slightly.  

                “I was literally just thinking that I’d blow whoever brought me coffee, give me that,” Paul says, reaching his hand out.

“Not sure Sid okay with that, Paulie,” he says with a laugh, before walking over and sitting in the chair squashed in front of Paul’s desk in his tiny office before placing the cup next to Paul’s glasses.

                “Well, Sid can do it himself then. You just deserve something for delivering me from the hell that is ninety Into to Anthro papers. You can tell which people are taking this class because they think it makes them Indiana Jones.”

Geno raises an eyebrow. “You mean like you?”

Paul opens his mouth to respond, and buries his nose in the latte Geno had brought him instead.

                “Yeah whatever, he mutters. “ I never should have told you that. I don’t know what you made me drink but that sure as shit wasn’t vodka.”

“We argue booze at other time. I have good news.”

“Oh, so you’ve finally set a date for the wedding then? The two year engagement finally getting to you?”

The smile on Geno’s face falls slightly. “Not yet. Sid still working on book. When he finished, we set day.”

“Well if it’s not that, and I know that the university hasn’t approved your request for Hostess products in the vending machines yet, it can’t be all that great then can it?”

“I think you find it very good,” Geno replies, as he places an envelope next to the now nearly empty starbucks cup.   

Paul glances at it as he takes another gulp of coffee. The envelope is addressed to him, the university’s seal in the upper left corner.

“Geno, I’m not getting fired, am I?”

Geno’s smile returns. “No, Paulie.” He gestures toward the envelope. “Open, open.”

With a sigh, Paul drinks the dregs of the coffee, tossing it towards the garbage can on the side of his desk, picking the envelope up with his left hand. He slips a finger under the flap, and rips it open. Slitting the top, he pulls out the sheet of paper inside, unfolding it to see the university’s letterhead at the top.  It starts off simple enough, but slowly his eyes widen as he reads further down the paper, sure that the lack of caffeine is making him see things.

Dear Dr. Martin.

We are pleased to inform you the funding for your expedition to South America  has been  approved by the university.

Please begin to submit your travel plans, if you intend to be in the field during the winter semester. Also, please inform the business or registrar’s office if you hire a student assistant, and if they  will be accompanying you for class credit or for pay.

Congratulations and best of luck on your research.

Paul looks up at Geno in shock. “This is your good news, you asshole? You couldn’t tell me, instead of giving me the fucking letter?”

“What good being department chair if not take advantage of opportunity?”

Paul huffs out a breath, and wills his heart rate to calm down. “Well, you’re a crap friend, if giving me a heart attack is your idea of fun.”

“Paulie know he not fired. Favorite professor to many, no need to fire!” Geno said, truth shining through his words.

“Well, thank you, seriously, so much. I never would have thought that you’d actually approve my funding,”  Paul says with only a tiny shake in his voice, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “I mean, I know that I don’t have so much to go on, and it’s so much of a shot in the dark and it’s just wow I didn’t think that you’d even want to send me, since you’d want me to teach a bunch of sections again next semester and,”

“Calm down, we be fine. You deserve chance to find this. You write doctoral thesis on this, correct?”

“Yeah, I did,” Paul says, glancing at the bound copy he keeps tucked on the top shelf of the bookcase crammed next to the tiny window. “It took me a lot of work to write that.”

“Then you deserve chance to go find, Paulie,” Geno says with a nod as he stood up.  “Now we go out, celebrate! I even bring Sid.”

Paul feels the corners of his mouth twitch upwards into a smile, the moment catching up with him. “Yeah, yeah, okay. The usual place?”

“At eight. Go home, take nap, shower then come out, yes? No staying in tonight. ”

“Yes, yes, I will be there,” Paul says with a laugh, crumpling up a piece of scratch paper and chucking it at Geno as he ducks out the door of Paul’s office. “Now go set a date with your loser fiancée, make sure I’m not still traipsing around South America when you finally tie the knot.”

Paul laughs at the middle finger stuck back through his office door, before capping his pen and stacking the Anthro 101 essays. They could wait. His day just got a lot better than it had been. 

Paul gets to their usual bar a little after eight-thirty, not the eight that Geno told him. His nap went a little longer than it should have, sue him. Getting into work by seven every morning does not leave a lot of time for quality sleep after going to bed after midnight most days. He thought he left that shit behind when he was the one in classes, not teaching them, but apparently not. He pushes through the door of Sammy’s, the bar they’ve been going to for as long as he’s worked at the university. It’s hardly different from any other bar in any other college town Paul’s lived in, the only things changing being the color of the booths, and the jerseys on the walls. At Sammy’s, it’s got black on the booths, and Steelers, Pens and Pirates on the walls.

He nods at Marc-Andre, who goes by Flower, some nickname someone gave him because of his last name, the always chipper French Canadian who owns the bar and works behind it with Kris. From what Paul’s gathered from the sometimes sober, usually tipsy, occasionally smashed on Russian vodka conversations with the two of them, they moved down together and live in the apartment above the bar. Flower’s waiting for his girlfriend to finish school up in Canada before she moves down to Pittsburgh to join him. Kris is a lot quieter in almost every way, from his bartending style to about his personal life, but Paul’s a good listener, and he’s listened to Kris’s quiet complaints about being separated from his boyfriend Marc, who lives in New York City from time to time. Paul knows long distance sucks. He tried it once in grad school, with his…something from senior year of college, Jeremy. They never used the term ‘boyfriend’, but they wanted to try the long distance thing when Paul moved to Pittsburgh for grad school, and Jeremy stayed in New Jersey. It imploded before Thanksgiving break that first year, the distance and wanting different things [and Jeremy wanting to fuck different people] and the everything of a long distance getting to them. Paul was disconnected and couldn’t put the effort into a relationship he knows he should. Looking back, he knows he was a really shit boyfriend, so he maybe can’t give Kris great advice, but he can at least sympathize with him. From the shots of Jack that Kris will sometimes slide across the bar that he never finds on his tab, he can guess that it might at least be a little appreciated.  

He slips into the circular booth in the far corner, their usual meeting spot, where Geno is sitting with his arm over Sidney’s shoulders, with Duper and Beau laughing at something he said. Paul guesses it was about Sid, if the pinky blush spreading across his cheeks is anything to go by.

“Hello, boys,” Paul says as he punches Beau lightly in the shoulder, stealing the beer sitting in front of him and drinking down what’s left. Beau protests and Paul ruffles his hair, the blond strands falling into his eyes as he grumbles. “Sorry Sunshine, you know the rules. Grad student gives up their drink first, and makes runs to the bar.”

Beau blows up, moving his hair out of his face. “Well, Dr. Martin,” he says with as much condescension dripping from his tone as he can, “What can I get for you?”     

“Scotch and soda,” Paul says with a smile, tucking a twenty into the breast pocket of Beau’s plaid shirt as he moves past him toward the bar. “Get yourself something too, since I finished off your beer.”

Beau smiles, big and white and sunny, and claps Paul on the shoulder, walking towards the bar, yelling out for Flower as he does.

Paul settles into the booth, stretching his arms across the table. The faint blush across Sid’s face is fading, but he still looks pissy, while Duper just looks like his usual gleeful self in the aftermath of a joke well told.

Duper turns to face Paul and says, “So Geno tells us we have good news to celebrate tonight, but he won’t tell us what it is. Maybe you could fill us in, Paul?”

                Paul rolls his eyes toward Geno, and chuckles. “I’ll wait till Beau gets back, I don’t want to have to say it more than once.”

Duper frowns exaggeratedly at him, but Beau comes back only moments later, drinks in hand. He slides Paul’s across to him and settles with his in front of him.

“So what is this great news that Geno’s been building and building and building up all night then?” Beau says as he takes a drink. “It better not be that the university approved his push for Twinkies in the vending machines like he’s been pulling for, that is not worth the amount of build up he’s put into this.”

Paul smiles, the truth of it so much better. “No, Sunshine, no Twinkies yet. Give him a few more years and it’ll be there.” He laughs as both Beau and Sid make faces at the idea. “No, but today I found out that…the department approved my funding for the expedition to South America I had proposed? So I’ll be out doing field work for the next few months.”

Sid smacks Geno on the shoulder. “You couldn’t have told me this, instead of jut smiling around the apartment for days? You made me think you were adopting a new cat or something!”

“What wrong with new cat?”

“Nothing is wrong with a new cat! I would have just liked to have been kept in the loop that it wasn’t actually a new cat and you weren’t just being secretive about something!”

“How about the two of you have your little domestic argument some other time,” Duper says, cutting through their argument; one that reads practiced and familiar. “Instead we should be concentrating on the fact that Paulie is getting to do what he’s been working toward since his dissertation. Congrats, Paulie,” he says, holding out his fist for a bump.

Paul smiles and bumps his fist against Duper’s, taking in Beau’s wide-eyed look across the table. 

"You alright there, Sunshine?" he says as he sips his drink. Beau shakes his head, as if he was trying to shake water out of his hair. 

"No, yeah, no I'm good. That's just, that is so awesome," he says, sounding almost spaced out, the awe in his voice obvious. Duper laughs and ruffles his hair. 

"Dreaming big too, huh, Beau? You gotta get through grad school first, buddy."

"But no, I could go be your assistant, right?" Beau says, sitting upright, nodding his head as he talks. You need a grad assistant, right? Or a couple? You can hire me! I can  help you, and you already know how me and how I work and I can get grad credit and this is perfect!"

"Beau, you do remember that you study Europe, and Paul does ancient civilization in the Americas? Your areas of study don't exactly overlap." Sid says. 

Beau scoffs. "That doesn't matter! Paulie wants my help, right Paulie?"

Paul takes a drink, and sighs. "Beau, you know I would love to take you with me." He looks across the table and he really wishes he didn't have to say no. "But Sid is right, it would make more sense for me to take someone along in the same concentration. If I could, I would definitely want to take you, but I don't think it'll work that way."

Beau frowns a little. "I know, it still sucks though." His frown shifts to a smile. "So who are you gonna hire?"

With a laugh, Paul shakes his head. "Sunshine, I only found out five hours ago, I'm still waiting for it to sink in for me. I'll start looking on Monday.  Tonight is just about celebrating, before I hate myself again when I'm sorting through applicants and I hate all of them."

Sid raises an eyebrow in Paul's direction. "Paul, if you think you're going to hate all of the applicants why are you even going to take one? And I'm sure that all the students who would apply are more than qualified."

"Sid, it's not that they're not qualified," Duper says. "It's that if Paul is stuck in the jungles of South America for months with someone he absolutely hates, the university is going to need to pay off a South American government to extradite him when he's charged with murder."         

Sid's mouth drops open into a perfect circle, and everyone else in the booth breaks into laughter. 

"Sid, no need to worry. Paulie kills man, he never caught," Geno says, a shit-eating grin gracing his face. 

"That really doesn't help me feel any better, thanks Geno."

Paul raises his glass toward Sidney. "I promise, on whatever makes you happy for me to promise on, that I will not kill my unsuspecting graduate assistant in the jungles of South  America for being unqualified or otherwise incompetant."

"That really doesn't make me feel so much better," Sid replies as he clinks his beer against Paul's glass held aloft. "But thanks for trying to make me feel better. I do appreciate it." 

"I live to please, Sid, you know that. Also, since your boyfriend is my boss, it would not suprise me that you would withhold sex from him if he had to bail me out of a South American prison, and I'm not sure what he would do is a factor in this promise."

Sid goes bright red, and Geno simply chuckles. He fluffs the hand that has been draped over Sid's shoulder through his hair. "Good point Paulie. You not arrested, we have no problem."

Paul tips his glass towards Geno, laughing before he swallows down the last of his drink.