Chapter Text
But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us.
When Justin first met Holster, he was overtaken by an overwhelming feeling, something akin to awe. At first, he attributed the sensation to a detached disbelief at the instant connection that spanned the two of them, like a cord of muscle stretching heart to heart. To find someone who understood him as easily as Holster, whose wants and wishes and visions of the world so clearly aligned with his own—it was like the miracle his childhood pastor had preached and equally worthy of a biblical, divine awe.
But Justin stopped believing in God years ago, and Holster, no matter how miraculous, isn’t enough to reignite that belief.
Samwell is an excellent academic institution, one of those little beacons of intellectualism huddled away in western Massachusetts. Its admission standards are high, requiring a certain GPA in addition to extracurricular accomplishments, but Justin knows he more than met the criteria. His academic overachievement started day one of kindergarten when he asked his teacher for extra credit reading assignments. Even if he hadn’t been recruited for hockey, he still would have been admitted.
Holster probably wouldn’t be at Samwell if not for hockey.
It’s not that Holster isn’t smart, or even that he isn’t smart enough for Samwell. Justin firmly believes if Holster applied himself to his schoolwork with as much rigor and dedication as he devoted to hockey, or even to his ridiculously vast pop culture knowledge, Holster could have achieved the perfect 4.0 Justin meticulously maintains. Holster’s mind understands quantitative concepts with an intuition Justin frankly envies, and his memory for minute trivia often astounds even the snootiest students. Holster jokes about Justin and his 4.0 despite questionable attendance in class, but Justin does his homework and studies hard outside of class, thank you very much. The same cannot always be said for Holster.
If Holster didn’t play hockey, then maybe he could have devoted all the extra time to school and still would have attended Samwell, but he’s not one to venture too far into fantasy. He knows hockey facilitated their meeting at every level, and he’s never been more grateful
Still, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments where he wishes Holster was just a little softer. Or quieter.
By the time of their first roadie of the year their freshman fall, it’s assumed that he and Holster will sit together. On a bus full of hockey players, it’s inevitable that things will be a little tight, but there’s really no escaping the fact that both he and Holster (especially Holster) are large human beings crammed into seats designed for more average-sized human beings.
Holster grins at him. “This good for you?”
“Just angle outwards a little,” says Justin.
“Okay, but I am warning you, I will fall asleep on you eventually. And I do make noise when I sleep.”
“Like…you sleep talk?”
“Sometimes,” shrugs Holster, “but sometimes it’s not exactly intelligible. Someone at summer camp told me I sang in my sleep, and someone else told me I snored a little, but he was just pissed because I stole the Manischewitz and didn’t share.”
“You stole the what now?”
“Manischewitz—it’s like, really shitty wine that you drink at Shabbat, but when you’re thirteen, you don’t know any better.”
“Oh, so you’re Jewish then?” Justin recognizes the word “shabbat”—some of the kids he knew in middle school complained of having to miss Friday night events for Shabbat services.
“Through and through,” said Holster. “Pretty sure if I took one of those DNA test things, the results would come back with a complimentary DVD of Fiddler on the Roof.”
Justin stares at him blankly.
“Seriously?” says Holster, agog. “You’ve never heard of it?”
“Is it a documentary?”
“Is it a—” Holster sputters, righteous indignation rising in his voice, planting in his arched eyebrows. “It’s a musical, only like, the most quintessential Jewish musical out there. I had to watch it three times in Hebrew school, along with the Rugrats Passover and Hanukkah specials. And Prince of Egypt. And Lamb Chop.”
“I recognized like two of those things,” says Justin.
“Well, uh, I know what we’re doing on the trip back then,” says Holster.
“My chem p-set, your econ p-set.”
“Wrong,” says Holster, almost like he’s proud of himself. “We’re introducing you to the fabulous world of musical theater.”
“I thought we were talking about Jewish things.”
“Musical theater is a Jewish thing,” says Holster, and his voice rises in pitch. “Rodgers and Hammerstein—both Jewish, although Hammerstein was only half. Both Gershwins. Sondheim. Bernstein. Like every musical written before 1950, and a good chunk of them after.”
Justin laughs. A flush rides high on Holster’s cheekbones, his eyes shine fervently beneath his glasses, and Justin doesn’t think he’s seen him this passionate about anything since they last debated Canadian versus American bacon. The whole picture is utterly absurd.
“I’m sorry, is something funny to you?” says Holster.
It’s meant to be a joke, clearly, but Justin hears a hint of genuine defensiveness mixed in with mock indignation, and it’s that along with the tinge of apprehension in Holster’s expression that prompt an honest response from him.
“I just never expected you to, you know, be into this sort of stuff.”
“Yeah, well, I am. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to though.” The apprehension is more than a tinge now, and Justin’s keenly aware of his own experiences in locker rooms, scoffing at anyone interested in something outside sports and video games. Holster played in juniors, living and breathing hockey and little else for two years, and Justin’s sure he never broadcasted this sort of interest to most of his teammates.
“Dude, I don’t care what you’re into,” he says. “You can listen to whatever you want, long as you have my back on the ice.”
Holster beams. “You know it, Rans. Now, I’m thinking for the trip back, we can start with one of the classics. I know Natalie Wood didn’t actually sing and the movie version isn’t as good as seeing it live, but West Side Story is on Netflix, so that’s option one, or we could…”
It’s going to be a long trip, both there and back, but Justin can’t muster any regret for his decision, not with Holster rambling on like a rambunctious toddler, laden with unadulterated joy. He might change his mind by the end of the road trip, but for now, his best friend is happy, and there is only love in in his veins, sweeping through him with a force he scarcely comprehends.
He’s heard of rapture in church before, of people losing themselves in song and prayer, of people ascending beyond the wooden slats of the church walls. His pastor spoke of people drowning in their love for God.
He still doesn’t believe in God, but he understands his pastor more than ever. He doesn’t even listen to Holster. Right now, he’s miles above in the air.
“One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.”
Bitty storms into their lives with a ferocity his short form and perpetual aroma of peaches and baking powder belies. It’s not that Bitty tries to initiate a transformation, but more that change, like pies, magically appears around him. He warps the world, beneath the fingers that mold dough into shape and beneath the feet which move lithely across the ice.
The whole team reacts to Bitty; how could they not? Bitty opens his mouth to call for the puck, for a pass, and a syrupy, Southern drawl spills from his lips. Wicks goes in for a check, and Bitty collapses like one of those fainting goats. Even the way Bitty skates, smooth, evasive, like a sparrow weaving between forest trees, sets him apart.
Bitty is also gay, which is something that Justin suspected long before the declaration was ever verbalized. Bitty comes out under the watchful eyes of Shitty, who impresses them all with the weight of his gaze, narrow eyes like blowtorches threatening to blast away anyone who might question or challenge his friend.
No one does. This is Samwell, after all.
But even within Samwell, it is a hockey team. And Justin knows hockey teams and the locker room like he knows the smell of the greasy spoon diner across from his childhood home, the nooks and crevices of its underbelly simmering centimeters from the surface.
Like he knows his appreciation of other men is no longer as platonic as he might wish.
Once Bitty comes out, he risks exposure.
“Have you ever played with a gay guy before?” he asks Holster one evening. Holster is ostensibly working on his bed, but the reflection in his glasses show flashes of videos instead of a problem-set or reading, so Justin feels no compunction about interrupting him.
Holster doesn’t even bother to look up. “No.”
“You think?”
Holster pauses his youtube video, yanks out one of his earbuds. “Uh, yeah, I do.”
Justin leans back in his chair, tipping the back legs precariously against the creaky wood floor. His knuckles blanche as he clenches his hand, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm. “I mean, I guess you would have known if someone was out, but did you ever, you know, suspect someone?”
“Umm.” Holster removes his glasses, rubs them absentmindedly against his shirt. Little specks of light, reflections from the glass, speckle the floor. Their removal reveals a face which is somehow always younger than he expects, at least without a beard. Holster squints into the light and sets his glasses against the bridges of his nose once more. “I guess I never thought about it much. Most of us were pretty vocal about women. There was one dude who was a bit quieter in Waterloo, and everyone thought he might’ve, but it turns out he was just with this one chick who was like seven years older than him and didn’t want to talk about it.” He tilts his head, grins a little. “There’s always the stuff about Jack and Kent Parson too, but that’s probably just bullshit.”
“Probably.” Definitely, he thinks. He can barely imagine Jack Zimmerman expressing romantic interest in anyone, regardless of gender. The thought just grates against his mind.
“But like, Bitty is still Bitty. Dude was a bit weird for a hockey player even without the whole gay thing. Personally, I think he’s good for the team. Spices things up. Some hot sauce for our scrambled eggs.”
No one ever accused Holster of a metaphorical mind, but Justin likes the analogy, finds it apt. Bitty is a friend, a wonder, an eclectic combination of puzzle pieces which slot together in unexpected ways. Hockey player. Southern. Baker.
He is many things which Justin is not. They are both hockey players, but the similarities come to a screeching halt there on most levels, even those less superficial. Bitty exudes charm, but his charm is entirely incidental, an addendum to his personality. Justin’s charm is only tangible through conscious, careful suppression, through crafted responses. His approach is cerebral, while Bitty lives instinctually.
Bitty was always going to be a curiosity, while Justin has the option of full assimilation, as much as he ever has as a black man in one of the whitest sports outside of golf. Bitty’s sexuality is one of the less interesting anomalies of his personality. For Justin, if he ever chose to reveal his thoughts, it would be one less protective sleeve. Besides, Justin knows data; with only one gay player, there is no pattern, only an outlier.
One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
He’s not ready to start the invasion.
“How does one hate a country, or love one? I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?”
Sometimes, Justin believes he thinks about boundaries too often. The thought begins the summer before junior year as he and Holster are crossing into America from Canada, waiting in line at security as the sun beats down through steel and rubber to coat them both with a fine sheen of perspiration. Holster drips with both sweat and frustration, his glasses fogging with precipitation, and Justin groans as the lady before them nearly trips out of her car, flustered and promising to delay their crossing even further.
It seems absurd that this one stretch of land, one line could wreak so much havoc. The Canadian-American border is usually harmless, certainly free of the overt controversy of the Mexican-American equivalent, but it still strikes Justin as odd that they need to waste time to cross from one patch of dirt to another. Canadian soil smells like American soil, and it sticks between his bare toes with the same squelch during long summer days. Sure, differences exist between the countries, but as with so many other distinctions, it seems to Justin that humans have warped what ought to be a gradient into a thin, artificial line.
When they finally reached the border patrol, he and Holster produce different passports, which feels like another absurd division. Nationality is perhaps the most superficial of divisions between them, but Justin still has to walk through his visa and justify his return whereas they allow Holster off with only two questions.
The Canada-American border is one boundary, in the strictest sense of the word. But there are other boundaries, less artificial.
For example, once they arrive back at Samwell, the height between their bunk beds serves as a physical boundary between them each night. Small demarcations separate their room, segregating Holster’s caustic clutter from Justin’s own fastidious organization. A thin sheet divides the closet, even if Holster rarely hangs up his clothes.
There are other invisible boundaries too, those not physically manifested. Justin waits fifteen minutes after waking up before venturing a conversation with Holster, lest he be cussed out by a grumpy, groggy, and foul-mouthed best friend. It’s best for their friendship that way. Holster refrains from mentioning certain words (“test,” “medical school,” “MCAT”) in his presence, and allocates a certain leeway to Justin’s anxiety levels before interfering. Justin has veto rights on Holster’s shower singing during certain times of the year. Holster has first dibs on Oluransi family care packages before the rest of the Haus, but only after Justin’s eaten at least three cookies. They’d worked last year to establish these boundaries in order to maintain their friendship, their sanity, their equilibrium.
The physical boundaries and the invisible ones—those he doesn’t mind. Many of them he requires. But there are other boundaries, ones which merge both the physical and the invisible where the uncertainty lies.
When Holster arrives at his house in Toronto in January, ready for their road trip back to Samwell, they immediately fall into a tight, lingering embrace. Holster places his oven-mitt-sized hands firmly on Justin’s shoulders, yet despite the crushing pressure of two-hundred plus pounds of large, enthusiastic man, he’s never been able to breathe easier. Holster might squeeze his lungs empty, but his presence also releases a block in his throat, opening his airways fully for the first time in weeks. He inhales deeply, savoring Holster’s distinctive aroma of faded cheap cologne and a vague tinge of hockey gear which never quite disappears beneath hot water and soap. Objectively, he shouldn’t enjoy the scent, yet his body welcomes it as it welcomes oxygen.
His mother clears her throat sharply behind them, and he realizes abruptly that their hug has stretched past some arbitrary mark of acceptability. Holster hasn’t remarked on the length of their embrace, but as they pull apart, he shoots Justin a wry smile before greeting Justin’s mother warmly. Holster slots into Justin’s family with practiced ease, asking after extended family and his mother’s back problems, exchanging tips for alleviating muscle pain. Sometimes Justin thinks Holster fits into Justin’s family better than Justin himself. He certainly seems more at ease among them than Justin ever has been in a long time.
Justin drifts after hour of their drive, long after they’ve crossed the border. Holster hums sporadically, his internal monologue brushing the surface momentarily. They’ve reached the area of New York which blends the standard wintery landscape painting with highway, mile after mile of canvas and asphalt, and try as he may, the passing scenery lulls him to sleep.
He awakens to an eerie glow which encircles Holster’s head like a halo as he gazes up. The car is equally as eerie in its quiet, and Justin realizes they’ve stopped somewhere.
“Where are we?” he mumbles, half to himself.
“My house,” says Holster, surveying the landscape outside. Justin follows his gaze out the window and has to blink several times before he realizes the world hasn’t vanished entirely in a cloud of white ash. Instead, it’s snow outside, thick, wet flakes that fall in a blanket and obscure vision as well as any fog.
“When did it start snowing?”
“About half an hour ago?” guestimates Holster. “It’s getting too dangerous to drive, so I routed us to our house. Had to backtrack a bit, but I really didn’t want to drive the rest of the way tonight.”
“Good call, dude,” he says, levering himself upward and taking a proper look. If he squints past the snow, there’s a house at the edge of his vision. He’s only been there a few times, but he recognizes the ugly garden gnomes guarding the front door. Ugly isn’t even the right word for them—it’s more of an uncanny valley, a sense that they’d emerged half-formed and hungering for anything which might ease the suffering of their tortured existence. Mr. Birkholtz likes to call them his pride and joy; Holster calls them the fodder for his childhood nightmares.
They’re both hockey players with superb balance and coordination, but each of them nearly fall twice just grabbing their bags from the trunk and marching up the front walkway. Holster uses his bag as a shield from the howling wind which impedes their path, and Justin uses Holster himself as a windbreak. Holster fumbles with the lock for a solid-minute, wrestling with numb hands and a tiny key, before the two of them stumble into the house.
“Mom! Dad!” booms Holster’s voice, and Justin winces at the volume.
“Adam? Is that you?” responds a voice from another room, but the words are nearly drowned out by the excited dog’s howl and the clamor of said dog rushing to his feet in sheer delight.
Holster shucks of his winter gear quickly, disregarding where the slush may fall, but Justin tries for a little self-containment as a guest in the Birkholtz’s house and stamps off his boots before setting them off to the side. When he returns to an upright position, Mrs. Birkholtz (Deborah, she insists, but she’s still Mrs. Birkholtz in his head) has Holster wrapped in a tight hug.
“We didn’t know you were coming,” said another voice, and Justin swivels to see Eli Birkholtz lingering off to the side. Holster’s dad is two inches shorter but with a deeper voice and equally imposing physical presence, and if he were to join the fray, he and Holster could easily crush Mrs. Birkholtz. “Good to see you, Justin,” he adds.
A wet nose nudges at his hand, and Justin bends down to scratch the head of Eddie, the Birkholtz’s aging golden retriever. Eddie closes his eyes in delight and presses his waggling body towards Justin where his tail thumps loudly against Justin’s shins.
“Weather was turning quickly, so I reversed course and decided we could stop here for the evening,” says Holster. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Honey, you know you can come any time. And Justin too!” says Mrs. Birkholtz. “Come here, Justin.”
Before Justin (or Eddie) can object, Mrs. Birkholtz has Justin in a hug as well. Her forehead just brushes the underside of his chin, but she and her son share the same dirty-blond hair and ice-blue eyes and sharp cheekbones. And so does the woman standing just beyond them, eyeing him over curiously. He recognizes her from family photographs: Holster’s older sister, Tali.
Mrs. Birkholtz releases him with a fond pat on the shoulder, and then she’s whisking them both into the living room while Mr. Birkholtz puts on water for tea.
“I didn’t know Tali was home,” says Holster to his mom.
“She surprised us too, dear,” says Mrs. Birkholtz. “Called us to say she was not only in the country, but only an hour away on the bus, wondering if we could come and pick her up from the station.”
Tali lives in London, has for the past five years, and as such her time in Buffalo has been more limited. Justin’s never actually met her, but he knows that she and Holster aren’t as close as Holster and his two younger sisters, twins, Shira and Leah. For one, she and Holster are farther apart in age, but they’re also farther apart in personality. Holster once called her the archetype of an older sibling—self-serious, bossy, prone to shouldering more responsibility than she needed to. She and Holster played sports as children, but she swam while hockey consumed Holster’s existence, and so even that provided little common ground. She’s a lawyer at some big-shot law firm in London now.
She’s taller than he expected, even though he’s seen her in pictures. Her hair is also shorter than it was in photographs, but he can’t remember how old the last photo he saw of her was.
Mrs. Birkholtz chatters away the time, asking after Justin and his extended family, and Justin recounts the college acceptance of his cousins, his aunt’s successful campaign to be on the school board, his great-uncle’s latest bird-watching and photography trip to Nova Scotia. She plies him with questions about specifics he’d mentioned last at Thanksgiving, and he begins to suspect that Holster has inherited his memory for minutiae from his mother as well as his inability to be silent.
Mr. Birkholtz brings in the tea and a distinctly less frenetic conversation pace, for which Justin is grateful. One of Holster is fine, two of them even he finds overwhelming. Tali joins them eventually, curling into one side of the couch with her hands wrapped around her own mug, but she stays silent except for a brief correction about her own life when Mr. Birkholtz misremembers the name of one of her friends.
“It’s Madiha,” she says softly yet firmly. “Not Martha.”
“Of course,” says Mr. Birkholtz. “Sorry, sweetie, don’t know why I keep forgetting.”
“It’s fine,” she says, and clutches her mug to her chest.
Justin suspects that the conversation could have lasted the whole night, but Holster makes a point of yawning sometime around eleven. Mrs. Birkhotlz is aghast.
“Of course, what am I doing, keeping you boys up like this?” she says, and turns to Holster. “Adam, you take Justin’s things to your room, and Eli, can you help me with the dishes?”
Justin begins to protest that he can carry his own bags to Holster’s room, but Holster elbows him and murmurs fervently, “Just let me, bro. She’ll never let me hear the end of it if I make a guest do any work.”
Justin lowers himself back down the couch, and then the rest of the family is gone, leaving only him and Tali. She sips at her tea, unconcerned by the silence. Maybe Holster’s rubbing off on him, but an overwhelming need to speak overtakes his mind.
“Nice to meet you at last,” he blurts out, then cringes. At last? It almost implies that he’s been waiting to meet her, that he’s been due to meet her somehow. She owes him nothing.
He can’t discern if she finds his overture strange. Regardless of her impression of him, she sets her mug on the coffee table by the couch and replies.
“You too,” she says. “Adam never shuts up about you, so it’s nice to see who ‘Ransom’ is after all this time.” She quirks the corner of her mouth. “I half-thought he was making you up the first time he mentioned you. Hockey names are absurd. What is it you call him again?”
“Holster,” he says, his mouth suddenly dry.
She shakes her head and reaches for another sip of her tea. Justin fidgets, wishing he still had something to drink, but he drained the last of his mug earlier.
“Better than ‘Birky,’ I guess. One of his high school friends tried to call me ‘birkette’ one time. The dumbest thing I ever heard. He didn’t last very long.”
He’s afraid to ask for more context. Didn’t last long in the conversation? As Holster’s friend? In life? Best not to ask, not if he wants to last longer than the high school friend.
“Still,” she continues, “from what he’s told me, you’re not as much of a Neanderthal as his high school group. I guess that’s nice.”
“Uh, thanks?” he says, though he’s not sure if he should be thanking her. He’s only met Holster’s high school friends a couple times, but they all seemed like typical hockey players, similar to his friends from high school. It wasn’t that they weren’t smart, but the conversation usually devolved to hockey or similar conversation topics when in a group.
“Even the jocks have brains at Samwell, I suppose,” she says. “Didn’t someone from your team just get into Harvard Law?”
“That was Shitty,” he said, and her nose crinkled. If she though Holster and Ransom were unfortunate hockey nicknames, he supposed she was unlikely to enjoy Shitty.
“Right. Mom told me to tell Adam that I’m available to talk to…Shitty. So I guess you can also tell him.”
“Talk to him about what?”
“Law school, I guess. How to have a fulfilling career while selling out your soul to a bunch of assholes in suits. Who knows?”
“You don’t like your job?” he asks. He’s surprised. From what little he does know of her, she wanted to be a lawyer since high school. Holster complained of being dragged to her mock trial tournaments in middle school, trying to play his Gameboy under the seat. Every time Holster did mention her in a more current context, she was getting promoted or being assigned to some big case. Justin’s the oldest in his family, so he doesn’t fully understand the mixture of distaste and begrudging admiration that always seems to seep through Holster’s description of his older sister.
Tali takes her time with the question. It seems to be a difficult one, but one that she’s given thought to before, even if she hasn’t fully come to a conclusion.
At last, she says, “It’s usually interesting, which I enjoy. But someone recently pointed out to me that I could spend the rest of my life doing mergers, and where would I be at the end of all that? What would I have really done? What does it say about me as a person?”
He knows he’s not in any position to provide an answer, he opts for something more neutral. “It’s a good question.”
Tali huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. Well, Madiha’s pretty smart.”
“Your friend?” He remembers that name from the conversation earlier.
Tali hesitates, and suddenly Justin knows without anything more being said that Madiha is not just a friend. He can’t quite explain it, but there’s an energy which floods through him, tingling in his fingertips, and crossing the boundary between them. He’s never had an excellent gaydar beyond the obvious ones, like Bitty, but there’s an understanding between him and Tali now. He knows, and she knows he knows. He’s just not sure who else will share in this knowledge.
“I get it,” he says. He needs to reassure her. He knows how terrifying it can be on the brink, not sure who can be trusted.
“You do?”
“Yeah, believe me, I do.”
“Oh,” she says. Then, “Oh.”
Then she—and there’s no other word for it—deflates, but not in the manner of someone frustrated or upset. Rather, it seems like as she exhales, a burden leaves along with the air. Her shoulders slump, and Justin realizes that she is relaxing, probably for the first time in Buffalo in years. A sharp pang hits his chest, and he wants to describe it as something other than sadness, because that isn’t the full nuance of the feeling, but it captures the essence. He’s sad for her, sad because he knows the feeling, and there’s nothing quite like it, the clawing in his gut which screams at him to say something, anything.
“You know,” she adds, “Adam’s never mentioned that, which is surprising, given how much he talks about you.”
“He doesn’t know.”
She gazes at him sharply. “He doesn’t? Does anyone know?”
“No. You?”
“Not in the states,” she says. “Our friends over there, some of them at least, not as many from my work. Not her family either.”
Justin knows he’s probably overstepping, shudders at the hypocrisy in every word he says, but he blurts out, “I don’t think your family would care. I mean, I’ve been over here for Thanksgiving the past three years, and no one minds about your cousin Mark. He even brought over, whatshisname, Jacob one year.”
Some of the tension returns to her posture, and Justin curses himself. He definitely crossed a line there. Who was he to tell her what she already knew about her family?
“It’s more complicated in my case,” she says, but to his surprise, he doesn’t feel her frustration directed at him. More at the empty air around him. “Jacob’s name is Jacob Silverman. Madiha’s name is Madiha Jafri. I know my family’s openminded about some things, but with this…with all of this put together, I just don’t know. And I don’t know…I don’t know if I want to find out either. I’m just a coward.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.” She says this without flinching, without hesitation. He knows she’s wrestled with this more than he can ever capture in one conversation, but he still needs to push back.
“No, you’re not.” He cuts off her protest. “Or even if you are, who cares? It’s fucking difficult, fucking terrifying, and why shouldn’t you be scared? And it’s not right that some of us have to be scared of saying things like that, of crossing some line, it’s not fair that we can’t just live our fucking lives without having to tiptoe around and hold back everything. Why should someone stop loving us when we cross some arbitrary boundary, huh? Why should there be a point at which their support ends? It’s bullshit, and you know it, but it doesn’t make it less real. If you’re a coward, then so am I, but really it’s them who are cowards. The people who don’t even have the guts to think beyond their small narrow view of the world.” He stops, huffing for breath. “Jesus. Sorry.”
To his surprise, Tali laughs. It’s a little hysterical, not entirely comforting, but he doesn’t think she’s going to eviscerate him on the spot so he takes it for what it is. Her laughs turn wet, then to hiccups, and when she opens her eyes, they’re a little watery, though from laughter or something else he wouldn’t dare guess.
“I’m sorry too,” she says. “I never thought I would say this, but for all that I’ve heard about you these past few years, I don’t think Adam did you justice. I never thought he’d be friends with someone like you.”
He’s not sure whether to take that as a compliment on his behalf, or an insult on Holster’s. Probably both. “I know you two aren’t very close, but it might be worth talking with him for real sometime. I don’t know him exactly as he was in high school, but he’s changed, even these past couple years. You might be surprised.”
She bites the corner of her lip but nods nonetheless. “It’s hard, sometimes. Thinking of your younger siblings as the people they are now. I like London, but I know I miss things.”
“You should tell him,” he says. “Doesn’t have to be now, but it wouldn’t be an issue, not at all. I promise you, you wouldn’t have to worry at all.”
“Then why haven’t you told him?”
He can’t help a grim smile. “Like you said, it’s always more complicated than you want it to be. Maybe I’m ready to tell him that much, but there are other lines to cross, other things it might lead to that I’m not ready for, and I guess I’m a coward. For real this time.”
Understanding dawns on her face, and his cheeks feel like they might burst into flame with the heat.
“Really?” She crinkles her nose.
“What?”
“It’s just—really? Adam? Ugh.”
“I’m not asking you to like him like that because, well, that would be gross. Jesus.”
“No, I know. But no offense to him, but you could do better than the dude who used to slingshot his jockstrap at Shira and Leah’s friends in seventh grade.”
“First of all, it’s not about doing better or worse. We’re way past that point. And second of all,” he pauses, allowing his face to split into a wide grin, “I think it’s fantastic that he used to do that.”
Tali plans her face firmly in her hands. “I forgot, you’re still a hockey player. One of them.”
“And proud of it too.”
Holster’s loud footsteps announce his return to the living room and saves Tali from having to reply to his statement. But when they leave the next morning, she actually hugs Holster, and he feels a little vindication at the look of shock on Holster’s face.
Alone, I cannot change your world. But I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak. Alone, the relationship I finally make, if I make one, is not impersonal and not only political: it is individual, it is personal, it is both more and less than political. Not We and They; not I and It; but I and Thou.
Justin never means to come out, and he certainly never means to come out publicly and in broad view of the wide-eyed, seething student body. A crowd churns before him, people chanting while perched on the shoulders of their peers and thrusting signs into the air with a confidence and purpose that cracks like thunder across the air. A veritable tempest of rage.
It’s been forty-five hours since the emails from the personal email of assistant coach Kindle were leaked to The Swallow. Forty hours since Kindle’s entire written exchange with his friend was blasted to every athletic list serve on campus, then to the LGBT Co-op, and then to the inbox of every other poor soul who hadn’t been subjected to his tirade about the censorship he needed to exercise now that he coached a gay player. Thirty hours since the Co-op released their intent to hold a rally on the quad in protest of Kindle’s continued employment, and twenty-four hours since Samwell’s athletic association agreed to join in.
Twenty hours since Bitty’s spoken more than two consecutive sentences. The Co-op asked him to speak, and the athletic association asked him to speak, and Bitty, the gay player in question, standing there like his freshman self in the face of a brutal check, only nodded in agreement.
The co-op and SAA didn’t question him further. They assumed he would be fine to speak, and Bitty didn’t contradict their assumption.
Justin knows better than any of them. He recognizes the fear in Bitty’s eyes as the fear which freezes his own heart, and he knows that Bitty isn’t out to his family back home. This story already threatens to hit the national news, and if Bitty speaks, then Justin frankly has no idea if Bitty will be welcomed back home to Georgia. For all the time they’ve spent together, for all that Justin considers Bitty one of his closest friends, they’ve never once discussed Bitty’s decision to remain closeted at home. Bitty’s hails from the Deep South and carries with him the deep love and contradictions of his home, and Ransom’s never felt it his place to question his decisions. Bitty is one of the bravest people he knows, but even the bravest must handle fear. He thinks back to his conversation with Tali—Bitty is the last person he’d call a coward.
Ransom receives the email first while sitting in the attic, poring over his biochemistry textbook for a quiz on Friday. Holster chews on his pencil eraser as he paws through his econometrics textbook. His phone chimes in with a brief ding that informs him he’s received an email. He’s expecting notes from Kate Rodney in his study group, so he pauses in his studying to check his inbox, which he normally abstains from during his set study hours.
BREAKING: HOMOPHOBIC HOCKEY COACH’S EMAILS EXPOSED
Once, in high school chemistry class, Mr. Orley paired Justin with Jerry Leech, a boy whose common sense likely rivaled that only of his worm namesake. Jerry earned his reputation within a week after transferring to the high school by dangling himself off the flagpole by a rope of boxers knotted together, where he flapped like a corpulent flag before the fire department could remove him nearly an hour later. The faculty supervisor of the school newspaper forbade printing the story, but it earned local headlines throughout Toronto and even a few mentions on national news.
In chemistry class, Jerry exhibited the same sense of self-preservation and conveniently forgot to label any of the beakers. When Justin asked him which was the water and which the hydrochloric acid, Jerry told him to see for himself, and plunged Justin’s hand into the beaker of very much non-water liquid.
Jerry had been suspended for a week and Justin spent the afternoon in the ER receiving treatment for the burns. It wasn’t so much the lingering pain, or even the mild scarring, which bothered him, most but rather the sensation of something clawing away at his hand; the acid had sunk through his skin and left behind a fiery trail in its wake. The sensation never fully faded from his mind, even years later, and he recognized the same burning now. Like Jerry Leech had plunged his whole stomach into acid.
“Holtzy?” he says, and his voice trembles meekly in the air.
Holster pauses his eraser gnawing long enough to speak. “What’s up?”
“Check your email,” he says simply.
Holster regards him cautiously but pulls out his phone and taps in his password. Justin knows the moment Holster sees the email. A deep scarlet flushes across Holster’s cheeks and drenches his neck, and Justin hears the blood which throbs in Holster’s jugular as clearly as if it were a beating drum.
For a second, they lock eyes. “Bitty,” says Holster, and then he’s sprinting down the stairs to attic in search of their erstwhile friend.
Holster will weather any initial emotional turmoil, but Justin needs to prepare himself further. Once Holster rages against the coach and the culture and has Bitty ensconced in whatever protection or comfort he requires, there will need to be a plan to reach out and move forward. He and Holster captain the team, the team now indelibly branded by whatever information lies within the emails.
So Justin reads.
From: [email protected]
Would you mind sending that info about that open position? Current spot is fine, but things just feel different around here. There’s this one kid who’s gay, and now you have to step around what you say on fucking tiptoes and the locker room just isn’t the same. Didn’t used to be like that. Shoulda known when I took a job at Samwell, but I thought since it was hockey it would be different.
The emails continue, all of them much in the same vein. It is, objectively, not as awful as Justin anticipated. Certainly not the worst he’s read or heard, especially in the world of hockey. He’s intimately familiar with the type of locker room Kindle recalls with such sentimentality; the room, the interaction, each persona constructed carefully to project heterosexual masculinity, even as they drop slurs carelessly. Half the conversations teem with low-grade homophobia, the other half ill-disguised trepidation at slipping up. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s been an active participant in many such locker rooms without ever challenging them.
So, the emails aren’t the worst thing he’s ever read, but they’re still pretty terrible, especially since Justin has been so grateful these past years for the change in the locker room dynamic. Coach Kindle might wax nostalgic for the old ways, but Justin has gladly tossed them away. The specific mention of a one player only compounds the issue, as it singles out Bitty and places him firmly in the spotlight.
He tucks his phone into the pocket and descends the attic slowly. Holster’s loud voice carries easily across the hallway, and Justin follows it straight into Bitty’s room.
Bitty looks up at the door with glazed, baleful eyes, and the acid returns to his stomach with even more fervor. The issue is now not merely political or theoretical, but deeply, intensely personal. From day one, Bitty has been his and Holster’s to protect, even if he’s needed said protection less and less in the past year. Holster has wrapped one enormous arm around Bitty’s shoulder, like a sycamore sheltering its sapling.
“Ransom,” says Bitty quietly. “You don’t…I hope you haven’t felt like I’ve…”
“Kindle is an asshole,” proclaims Holster loudly, and a rush of affection sweeps through Justin. Holster might be a little loud for some people’s taste, but no one will ever doubt Holster’s enthusiastic and vocal support for a cause.
“Of course not,” adds Justin. “You’ve been one of the best things to happen to us. And like, not because of the gay thing, or not only because of it, but because of who you are.” He takes the seat next to Bitty so he and Holster can sandwich him fully. “And as captains, we can say that we speak for the team far more than Kindle.”
“Thank you.” Bitty has always been the shortest member of the team in stature, but Justin has never heard him sound so utterly small. Fury bubbles in his veins, simmering slowly even long after they’ve left Bitty’s room and long after the rest of the campus has chimed in and demanded action.
The campus queer co-op has arranged a rally and they requested that Bitty speak. Justin has his concerns, but Bitty has every right to speak for himself. He is the one mentioned in the emails, after all. The Samwell Athletic Association likes the idea as well, likes having someone in the crosshairs doing the work for them. Justin follows the politics at a distance—mostly, he cares about his team.
Ten minutes before Bitty is set to speak at the rally on the quad, Justin thinks that Bitty might faint. He trembles minutely under a gray October sky, face as white as flour, and he’s crumpled the piece of paper with his speech so tightly Justin fears it may not be readable when the time comes.
Two minutes before, and Justin pulls Bitty away from the crowd of speakers at the top of the stairs and tells him, “You don’t have to do this.”
Bitty stares blankly ahead. “It’s me he was talking about. I should respond.”
“You have the right to respond,” says Justin. “If you want to, you, more than anyone else, have the right to respond. But you’re not the only one affected by this, and you don’t owe Coach Kindle anything, not your time, not your words, not even a nod in his direction.”
“Who else would speak?” says Bitty, and the sheer destitution in Bitty’s voice nearly cracks Justin’s heart wide open. “Someone from the hockey team needs to.”
“I will,” says Justin. The words escape before he can even begin to contemplate what he’s agreeing to do. “I’m serious. Holster and I are captains, we can speak. Or I can.”
“The co-op—
“Fuck the co-op,” says Justin, and Bitty’s eyes widen. “Seriously, they don’t speak for you either, and they don’t speak for every queer person on campus. I promise I’ll say something that’ll satisfy them.”
Speaking of the devil, one of the co-op leaders shuffles towards them. “You ready, Eric?” she asks.
Justin squares his shoulders. “I’ll be speaking.”
The woman frowns. “We agreed that Eric was going to speak, and his speech—
“I promise you, I’m more than capable of handling myself up there. Bitty agrees.”
Bitty nods tightly, his movements as small and timid as before, but the stiffness is tempered by a clear relief.
The pierced eyebrows of the co-op leader—Eve, he remembers now, her name is Eve—clench together, but Justin holds firm. These people don’t know Bitty, for all that they’ve laid claim to him. They have not been Bitty’s family for the past two years.
“This isn’t my first time dealing with discrimination,” he adds, and it’s not, not after his first encounter with an opposing coach who called him words he didn’t fully understand when he was eight, not after he heard the n-word slip from his own teammate’s mouth in middle school. He plays a sport which is dominated at the professional level by more players from Russia than by players who have skin like Justin’s. Normally he wouldn’t conflate the two experience, racism and homophobia, but he knows what he needs now, and he needs it quickly.
Then Eve frowns and he knows his ploy has worked.
“Fine,” concedes Eve. “Don’t fuck this up, okay? This really matters to our community here at Samwell.
And it doesn’t matter to ours? Justin bites his tongue on that retort. He’ll say what he needs to say shortly.
A voice blasts out a megaphone, “And now, speaking on behalf of the Samwell men’s hockey team, we have…Justin Oluransi.”
The announcer stumbles over his name, but then he’s being shoved up on the podium and nothing in his twenty-one years of life has prepared him to speak here. Not his high school debate class, not Shitty’s impromptu lessons on gender and sexuality, not even his friendship with Bitty. The personal is political, he remembers Shitty saying, but he understands now how political the personal is as well. This is more than racist insults and slurs being tossed his way in peewee, this is a rally of people united behind a cause, and he’s about to bare himself before them all, friends and strangers alike, for the good of this cause.
“Hello,” he says, and he has to clear his throat around the ash which has fallen there, like residue from a volcano in his lungs. His tongue tastes burnt. “I’m Justin Oluransi, one of the co-captains of this year’s men’s hockey team here at Samwell. And before I say anything more, I want to acknowledge that I am not the person Coach Kindle was referring to in his email, and while I cannot speak for that person, I can speak for this team as one of its captains.
“I came to Samwell knowing its reputation, knowing that many athletic teams have gay players. I came to Samwell for many reasons, but I certainly came here because I didn’t want a culture like the one Kindle described in those emails. And even if there weren’t any out players on our team my freshman year, I knew I made the right decision immediately. Our team is a family, and it’s one which we couldn’t have built on a foundation of hatred. If I’m being honest, though, the player who is out on our team has changed it.” A quick gasp ripples throughout the crowed, all of them anticipating his next pronouncement.
“He changed it for the better,” says Justin, and the tension releases from the mob before him. “And him being gay has changed things, but only because his sexuality is a part of him, and the changes he’s wrought come from who he is as a person. For those of you who don’t know him, I can truly say, you’re missing out on one of the greatest Samwell has to offer. Everyone on the team affects the team dynamic—that’s the great thing about hockey, you know? It’s a sport which can’t exist alone. Everyone, gay, straight, otherwise, matters. We assumed that our coaches shared this understanding with us, although clearly we have been proven wrong. And this breach of trust is more painful than any loss, including our loss in the finals last year. The team, the people who make up the team, those are what endures far beyond any game or any season. They’re more precious than any trophy.”
He allows himself a moment to breathe because his lungs have lost their rhythm. The mass of people before him is overwhelming, but he knows what he needs, and he finds it. Holster’s face towers above his neighbors, lips drawn in a tight line across his face, expression as devoid of humor as he’s ever seen. Even in anger, the sight of Holster is a balm. He soaks in the sight of his best friend, the tousled bird’s nest which passes for hair on his head, the rumpled hoodie, the slight slouch in his posture he uses to lower himself in a crowd.
Then he turns away, because he knows himself, and he knows he’ll crack if he looks at Holster, at anything other than the faceless crowd.
“I would like to address Coach Kindle directly here. I want to tell him that our team does not have one queer member, but two, and one of those two is a captain of the team. That person, if you have not already guessed, is me. And to Kindle, and to all those out there who share any of his views on the presumption that hockey should be solely the domain of straight men, I know that alone, I cannot change your world. But I have be changed by it, for years, absorbing what was given to me as a child without question, and only recently have I come to realize that these changes need not be permanent, that I can be changed by others, for others. Alone, I have listened for years, and now alone, I am speaking to you, not as captain of a team or representative of a sport, but as someone whom you know. I say this to you know because my decision today, and any relationship I may ever have, is not impersonal and not only political: it is individual, it is personal, it is both more and less than political. But it is always mine.
“I am not the first queer athlete at Samwell, nor even the first on my own team, but I am the one speaking now, and I tell you now, that it has taken me years to unlearn what has been learned, years to accept what I have always denied, and today, I claim what is mine: this team, and this family. It does not belong to you, Kindle, no matter what actions the school may take. It belongs to those who have earned it. It belongs to the people who play, and who have always played, the game we love in spite of people like you.”
The crowd blurs, their colors bright and fractured. His breathing quickens, until suddenly he can barely breath at all.
“Thank you,” he says into the mic, and then it’s all he can do to hold himself together to shove his way out of the group of speakers behind him and run until he can find a suitable place to vomit.