Work Text:
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. They were college students, still kids, really, playing a crazy amount of competitive hockey and drinking beer on rooftops and living in the creaky haunted attic of an ancient frat house - this wasn’t how any of them was supposed to get hurt. If anything, it should’ve been a concussion or a torn ACL or alcohol poisoning.
The thing was, life didn’t really give two shits how it was “supposed” to happen. Ransom was supposed to drive his old sedan down from Toronto a few days after New Years to meet up with the guys already there after break. Holster was supposed to launch himself at Rans as he came in the door with an exuberant “bro!” and a pound on the back as Shitty and Lardo watched droopy-eyed from the couch, a joint poised between them. Bitty was supposed to be texting them urgent demands for pie requests while he pushed a cart around Murder Stop & Shop.
So after shoving his clean laundry in his duffel, checking under the bed for rogue socks, and hugging his mother, Ransom settled in for the eight-hour ride. The distance didn’t really bother him - all he needed was a decent playlist and a few of those fancy Starbucks-espresso drinks from gas stations along the way and he was good. He had his typical stops where he would have a few texts from Holster - mostly varying iterations of bro and are you sure you want cherry pie Rans it’s the worst pie and what’s taking so long - even though Holster is the one person who definitely knows exactly how long it’ll take him to get to the Haus.
Which is why when another few hours go by and Holster’s heard the equivalent of radio static from Ransom, a small seed of nerves starts growing in his chest. He swallows to wet his throat as he sends another text - dude, where are you? - it’s probably nothing. It’s not like Ransom hasn’t driven this route a dozen times before, and the weather’s not even bad. He probably just forgot to check his phone when he stopped. But Rans always texts you when he stops. He pushes the thoughts down, but they keep bubbling up like nausea. It’s nothing - maybe he decided to drive straight through Boston instead of stopping beforehand like he usually does. But even this rationale sits heavy on his chest - the delicate routines that Ransom maintains means that he wouldn’t just change his typical road trip schedule on a whim. Holster turns back to the television, looking but not really seeing.
Ten minutes later he snaps out of his reverie when he suddenly remembers phones aren’t just used for texting. His stomach gives a little lurch (this is so stupid, Holster, why didn’t you just call him before, you know he would’ve answered for you) and he gets up from the couch a little too fast, drawing looks from the others sprawled around the main room.
“I, uh, I’m just gonna…” he trails off as he waves his phone in their direction. They all seem to accept his vague explanation and turn back to the TV.
The phone rings, and rings, and when he hears “Hey! It’s Justi-” he hangs up. Tries again. “Hey! It’s Jus-” He sits down heavily on his bed, staring down at his screen. brooooooooo stares back at him. Stupid motherfucker changed his contact name freshman year and by the time he thought to change it, it was too normal. He dials again.
“Hello?”
Holster jumps to his feet. “Hello? Rans? Who is this?”
“Can I ask who this is?” The female voice on the other end isn’t anyone Holster recognizes, and he’s not appreciative of whoever-this-is taking Ransom’s phone.
“I need to talk to Justin,” he says, his lack of patience coming through in his voice. “He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, so if you could just-”
“Are you Adam?”
Holster pauses, hand still gripping the phone to his head. “Yes. Why?”
He hears a commotion in the background that gets louder and then fades. The girl takes a breath and begins, “Adam, I’m sorry-” His stomach drops.
“What happened,” Holster grits through his teeth, less of a question and more of a demand. “Where is he?”
“I’m Claire, I’m a nurse at Massachusetts General Hos-”
Holster interrupts her again before she can even get her sentence out. “Where is he?”
She sounds only slightly off guard from his brusque interruptions. “Well, he’s currently in the ER, but I have to tell you-”
“I’m coming,” he says, shoving his feet into his sneakers and haphazardly puling a random jacket from the back of his desk chair. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.” Then he hangs up.
He doesn’t slow down as he storms down both flights of stairs, past the boys and Lardo in the main room who all turn with wide eyes and he hears a “Holster, wha-” before the door slams behind him and he’s jogging to the car.
The ride is tense, his left leg jumping in the wheel well and both hands gripping the steering wheel at exactly 10 and 2, knuckles white. He tries to keep an eye on the speedometer, because the only thing worse than this whole nightmare happening at all is him having to take longer to get to Ransom because he was pulled over. Still, it feels like hours before he is turning the wheel into a parking spot with his heart beating out of his chest.
He scrambles out of his car and races up to the automatic doors reading “EMERGENCY ROOM,” almost barreling into them when they open slower than warranted for the situation. Three Holsom-sized strides later he’s towering over the poor nurse at the front desk who’s name badge reads Angela - so, not the girl from the phone.
“Justin Oluransi,” he says, his voice tight, one palm flat on the counter. “O-L-U-R-A-N-S-I. I need to see him, he was here like 45 minutes ago, I spoke to some girl named Claire-” He realizes his words are tumbling over each other, but can’t seem to get them to slow down. He vaguely registers his fist clenching around his key, pressing the metal deep into the flesh of his hand. He relaxes it minutely and looks pleadingly at Angela, who’s giving off the impression of a seasoned ER veteran who also isn’t used to having 6'4 hockey players towering over her at work.
Something in his voice, whether the panic or desperation, must have pushed him to the side of concerned-loved-one and not psycho-killer-here-to-finish-the-job, so she (agonizingly slowly, Holster thinks) types into her desktop.
“I have here a Justin… Oluransi, you said? Pretty nasty crash. We had a few come in from that incident. Let’s see… he was moved to the second floor about thirty minutes ago.” Holster is already scanning the signs on the walls, looking for directions to different wings of the hospital. Before he finds it, she continues. “Do you have an ID? For the visitors badge.”
Holster’s about to vibrate out of his skin but he takes a breath and pulls out his wallet, handing her his drivers license while continuing to stare down the hospital diagram across the room. He can’t shake the feeling that the entire universe is bent on slowing down so it’ll take him longer to get up to the freaking second floor.
“Just so you know,” Angela says nonchalantly and she fills out the final blanks on the form, “typically we don’t allow anyone but family into the rooms, particularly with cases this severe.” She continues quickly when Holster takes a big breath like he’s about to argue. “We’ve made an exception in this case because of Justin’s requests when he first arrived.” Holster feels like the breath he just took has been punched out of him. “There. You can go up - quietly. He’s on a quiet floor. Room 211, up to the right.” As soon as hands him back his license he’s in front of the elevator, toes tapping nervously as he watches the numbers descend.
Even though he’s only going up one floor, the trip seems endless. He would’ve taken the stairs, but the elevator was closer to the reception desk. He regrets his decision.
Freaking finally, he thinks as the doors open to a sign reading QUIET PLEASE - PATIENTS AT REST. Room 211… room 211… 211… 207, 209… He stops outside the door, all of his emotions colliding with him like a freight train as he looks through the tiny window, his heart thumping unsteadily in his chest. His first thought, weirdly detached from everything else whirling around in his head, is that Ransom looks small. He’s not sure he’s ever thought that before.
Now that he’s there, poised on the precipice of this all being real and Rans being hurt with tubes in his arms and the disinfectant smell seeping into his nostrils, he almost panics. Another part of him keeps intoning run run run run like he could just turn around, go back to the Haus and Ransom will be sprawled out on the couch with Bitty leaning up against his shin, like usual, and Holster will give him an Indian rug burn for worrying him like that and then they’ll laugh and-
He presses down on the cold metal handle.
Suddenly he’s at his side, looking down at him with the stark white hospital sheet pulled up to his armpits and oh, Rans - his face is black and blue and swollen, deep bruises running from his temple to his chin on the left like he hit the window, oh my god, and suddenly Holster can’t breathe, he can’t breathe and his knees can’t hold him because what if Ransom wasn’t here anymore because of something so stupid and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, he was supposed to be taken out by some asshole in the league and just get a fucking concussion and Holster would avenge him by beating the guy to a pulp.
His head swims and he sinks into the chair by the bed, hands trembling as he reaches out tentative fingers to brush over Ransom’s laid out over the sheet. His hand is a little cold, but superficially so - like they’ve been out in the chilly hospital air just a bit too long without anyone to hold them - and suddenly tears are pressing out of Holster’s eyes and leaking onto the bedspread before he can stop them. And fuck, he’s not even trying to, really. He bends his head over where he has both hands gripping Ransom’s one as great shaking gasps escape him.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, head resting on his forearms, eyes closed, rubbing his thumb along the crease of Ransom’s palm, letting his shuddering breaths echo off the bare walls and the blinking machinery. As he passes his thumb again over the veins in his wrist, he feels Ransom’s hand twitch and sits up abruptly, brusquely wiping his hand under his eyes like it’ll hide the evidence. “Rans?” he whispers, as if afraid to break the silence. He squeezes his hand a little. “Justin?”
Ransom’s face scrunches in the way it always does when he’s just waking up, but as he goes through the motion Holster can see when the pain of it hits him and he lets out the softest little groan. Holster’s heart just about breaks as he perches up on the edge of his seat.
“Shh, buddy, shh,” he soothes, though he knows his words do nothing to help. He brings his left hand up to softly brush his knuckles along his unbruised cheekbone, and Ransom turns his head into the touch, but doesn’t open his eyes.
“Adam?” and oh, he hasn’t called him Adam since his grandmother passed freshman year and he was one millimeter from tears on the quad. His heart tries to crack a little more inside his ribs.
He opens his palm to cup the side of his face, drawing his thumb along his eyebrow before stilling. “It’s me, bro. How’re you feeling?”
Ransom cracks an eye to give him a Look, then shuts it. “Like shit.” He licks his chapped lips. “Hurts.”
Holster makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat. “I was so worried about you, man,” he says, trying to press down the swell of emotion in his chest. “What happened?” Ransom inhales deep through his nose like he’s gathering his strength to speak and Holster presses on hurriedly. “No, sorry, don’t talk if it hurts.” He squeezes his hand again lightly. “I wasn’t thinking. We can just sit. It’s okay.”
His gaze sweeps over Rans’ face again, cataloging the damage, and his eyes trace over his body lying under the sheets, but it’s hard to tell what else is wrong. Ransom goes through another cycle of breaths before pressing his cheek into Holster’s palm again. “It’s okay,” he says with his eyes still closed. “I was just driving the usual route, you know the one,” he pauses again to inhale. It seems to cause him pain and Holster winces for him. “I was on I-90. Everything was fine. Then -” inhale “- car ahead of me swerved into a truck. Just like that.” Inhale. “I hit them. There was an 18 wheeler behind me.” Inhale. “Don’t remember much after that. Doc says I was lucky.” He cracks an eye to look up at Holster. “Thought of you. Knew you’d be waiting.” He lets his eyelashes flutter back to his cheek. Inhale. Exhale. “Collapsed lung, y’know.” Inhale. “That’s why all the-” Exhale. Inhale. “- pausing.”
Somewhere during the story Holster had essentially stopped moving, stopped breathing, his chest just making little fluttery motions in a frail semblance of lung expansion, even though he is the one capable of breathing just fine. He can see how much that little bit of talking tired Rans out, how his own breaths were now shallower, his cheeks looking sallow grey rather than warm brown.
“Oh, Rans,” he murmurs to him, eyes flicking back and forth across his face as though he hasn’t memorized it better than his own, even with the new bruising. The swollen crest of his eye leaves a feeling like a punch to the gut - and suddenly, he can’t be this far away from him another second. He’s already leaning over further, his forearm resting on the mattress so he can hover, and brings his hand down to cup Ransom’s neck, thumb running along his jaw, and he can’t, he can’t, if he lost him without doing this -
He softly presses his lips to the corner of Ransom’s mouth, a barely-there touch, and Ransom thinks blearily that he could’ve imagined it since he’s kinda loopy after all the drugs, but then Holster presses his lips to the corner of his eye, his eyebrow, his cheekbone. “Justin, I-” he swallows, he doesn’t know if this is okay, because this has definitely crossed some bro lines, but he realizes somewhere in the back of his stupid bro brain that he loves Ransom, not just bro love but love love, and now that he knows it he can’t ignore it. “I love you, man.”
Ransom quirks his mouth in a half-smile. “I love you too, bro.” Holster gives a watery laugh. “Why’re you laughing?” he huffs out, and Holster can’t believe he’s doing this but he’s in too deep already, so, fuck it.
“No, Rans. Like,” now it’s his turn to pause for breath, “I really love you.” He slots his cheek up against Ransom’s, letting his nose press just in front of his ear. He’s trying to take it all in just in case Ransom laughs at him again and says what the fuck, man, no homo or something and this is all he gets for the rest of his life. But instead, he feels Ransom’s cheek grow with a smile right next to his.
“Bro,” he kinda laughs, and Holster’s stomach tightens, “don’t make me smile, Holts. It hurts.”
Holster pulls back, a little chagrined, and Ransom has his one eye open and color back in his cheeks. He lifts his hand and Holster catches it between his two, cradling it and weaving their fingers together. They sit in silence for a minute, both staring at where their hands are clasped together. “I can’t really scooch over, but will you stay?” Ransom’s voice is soft and shy, like he thinks Holster might actually say no.
Holster smiles at him like he hung the sun, brushes his lips along his knuckles. “I’ll be wherever you are.”