Archive of Our Own

“Torches, torches!” he cried. “So farewell!”

I stood paralyzed for a second, the image of James slamming the door and the sound of his too loud and clumsy steps descending the staircase still hanging in the air like old perfume. He had fled the room like a Victorian heroine going on a quest, disheveled, drunk, and incoherent the moment he finished his frightening monologue. He had barely been making sense, and yet it shook me to my bones and left me in a state of nauseating confusion and anxiety.

 An eerie silence surrounded me, and, not for the first time since that fateful morning at the like, I felt as if the universe was trying to tell me something. But I didn’t know what. I never did, I never do, all these years later.
And I’ve always wondered, in a rather uncharacteristically poetic way; If the galaxy is screaming at you to open your ears and break out of your skin to come into some otherworldly realization – do you let it? Follow the rules of nature, accept your fate, and obey? Or do you run into the other direction as fast as your fragile legs will carry you?

I shook my head like a wet dog trying to snap out of it all, my head pounding as if all the secrets of the world were threatening to spill out, and went to shut the window, my body shivering underneath my shirt (I later wonder if this was from pure terror, and not cool breeze).

It wasn’t as if loud outbursts and sudden mood changes were uncommon at Dellecher – all of us creators attempting to coexist was doomed from the start. Sometimes an artist will break their canvas over the head of a fellow student. Once upon a time one of the dancers caught her partner’s ankle during a practice session, causing a nasty sprain and a barely avoided lawsuit. Capturing artists and teaching them in a constricted environment is placing dozens of rubber bands around the lid of a boiling pot, waiting for the moment it will explode entirely and leave you with burn scars for life.

But this was different. This was James. And I would be a liar to say that I wasn’t terrified.

I picked up the bottle James had left on the floor, thankful it was still intact after his mania, and held it to my lips with trembling hands (liquid courage, and all that). Feeling the burn at the back of my throat made my brain feel slightly less catatonic, and I let myself slump back against the wall, sliding down until I was hugging my knees with the bottle pressed to my chest.

Of all the thoughts and ideas of horrible things galloping around my head at a thousand miles per hour, James seemed to be the only constant. Like when one star is brighter than the rest, a midpoint, an anchor holding me in place. But of all the feelings I had associated with James during my years of knowing him as my roommate and friend, I never thought pure, unhinged fear would be one of them.

I could never be scared of James, exactly. Scared for him? Absolutely. But this seemed deeper, more essential, like the weight of the world and its people were on our shoulders, not as two separate people, but as a unit. Then again, I suppose we hadn’t been separate people for a long, long time. We were we. Us. James and Oliver soon became jamesandoliver, a fact Richard never seemed to let any of us ignore, no matter how desperately the rest of us tried to.
And as the ghost of Richard’s menacing laughter and maniacal grin started to enter my inadequately intoxicated mind, the vodka slipped from my hands and rolled away from my curled up frame as I rose to my feet shakily.

I didn’t have to ask questions. I had no idea what happened, but I knew, in that moment, that this was the end of a beginning I hadn’t been aware of when it had been there.

I took another breath. I felt the beating of my heart, fast as a small bird in my breast pocket, and I made my way out of the castle, hoping the ground wouldn’t break open and swallow me raw.

I began to run as soon as I exited the front door. My heart was in my throat, yet it felt still as ever. James, again, jamesjamesjames, and I had to slow down to avoid slipping on the wet grass. I feared that if I sat down for a moment I would never get back up.

James had been a deer when we first met, careful, collected, graceful yet tragic in a way that pinned my gaze to his every move, unable to look away like when witnessing a car crash.

But lately he had been a feral animal, and I was scared to get close. Of course I did so anyway. There would never be a universe where I steered clear of him. Whatever makes people lose their minds, I had caught it the moment he did. Our souls connected, instant reaction in a way Gwendolyn could never get us to act out on stage.

Right now, somewhere, he was raw and bleeding, and I needed to get my hands on him and unspool his brain. And I prayed to any god that would listen, asking them to keep him safe in ways I couldn’t.

I didn’t have to run far to find him. I hadn’t been paying attention to the way my body was leading me, but I was happy to have lost control the moment I saw a figure in the iced-over grass, sprawled on its back like a morbid snow angel. I caught the sparrow – and I will have to make it fall. It was a terrible thought, and for a moment, I wanted to blame Shakespeare for the whole thing. I suppose I could have, back then. But the sparrow had begun to open its eyes, and I met James’ glazed eyes with my own, scared ones.

He was still visibly drunk, his limbs looking too heavy for his body and bent in odd directions. James, always the Disney prince, suddenly more closely resembled a wounded soldier, and I had the strange urge to cover his body with my own and scream for help until my lungs gave out. But it was only James, as if ‘only’ had ever been a fitting description of the man in the grass.

I don’t know how long I stood there simply observing him, waiting for any indication that he wanted to cry, scream, maybe even hit me. His blue and cold grey eyes never wandered away from me, looking robotic like never before. Wherever he was right now, it was clear I couldn’t follow. But I was still going to. I would have followed him anywhere (I keep this in mind even now, some sort of bitter irony to bite back). If he had snapped right then and there, i wouldn’t have blamed him – then again, I don’t think I was ever able to blame James for anything.

Finally, still trembling, I took the last steps, stumbling into the grass beside him like a newborn calf struggling to walk. The crisp frost layer crunched under my movement, and I suddenly felt the cold I had previously convinced my body to ignore. But I didn’t leave. I didn’t move.

His eyes closed momentarily, and he rolled away from me, facing the dark-grey sky above us. I hadn’t expected him to speak. I think some part of me thought he might stay in that faraway place forever.

When his eyes snapped open again, I wasn’t afraid. Some part of me I had hidden away for god knows how long was unlocked. He fixated his distant gaze on me a moment too long before speaking.

James: Do you know?

And in that moment I understood the poets I had always struggled with. Shakespeare’s romance I had seen played out on Dellecher’s stage so many years with rotating young women and men. The sharing of souls. My hand itched with the desire to push his hair out of his face. I could tell him that I knew, but I was sure the question was already rhetorical. I knew James like I knew how my body worked, like I knew the works of Shakespeare and the lines to King Lear. I knew James, and he knew me. And that was rather a horrible thing. But I think I sort of liked it. I think I always did. I did know. And somehow, it didn’t matter. All of us actors, all of us tragic, bright young things; one of us would have snapped. If not James, myself. Meredith. Alexander. Any victim of his torment. An accident. That’s what they ruled it. They would not believe the terror we felt. The six of us, those last few months. Meredith’s bruises, Alexander’s overdose, Wren …. All of it, a result. I think I understood Gwendolyn now, her harsh training, her desire to make us all lose it for our roles. She needed to keep us in check. I suppose we owed her an apology.

I could confront him. Yell at him, hit him, make him feel the hurt currently making my insides heavy. But I never would. I never blamed him. Forever, I will blame the plays. I will blame the theater. I will blame myself and I will blame Richard, but I will keep James safe.

Me: Worthy prince, I know’t.

He choked on what seemed like a sob, but stayed perfectly still.

James: I was on my way. You can trust me, I promise, I was going to tell them everything-

Me: You’re not doing that.

Only then, he drew away from me. He seemed more sober all of a sudden, but more than anything, he seemed scared. Stoic as he always was, the man before me was broken.

I kept my stare firmly fixated on him, not letting him break eye contact, not letting him run. I wouldn’t let him slip away. I wouldn’t leave.

Right now, we had nothing to lose. Nothing holding us back. Our family of seven had dissolved the day the cast list had read Caesar – Richard Stirling, the warrior tribe broken. Right now, it was us. We. jamesandoliver.

With hands more steady than ever, I grabbed both his slender wrists and dragged him back down to me.

Me: Come on. We have to go before the play starts.

James: Go? Go where?

Me: We’re leaving. Us. Now.

James: You’re fucking insane.

Me: And you fucking killed someone!

He drew his hands back as if my touch had burned. The look we shared then was something I never want to experience again. But it was the truth then,

I collected myself as much as possible before continuing. ‘Look,’ I started, keeping my voice as calm as I could as to not scare him off. ‘They think it was an accident. Let them keep thinking that, fuck, it was! That’s all it ever was. An accident, self defense!’ he visibly relaxed, and slowly lowered his hands back down. They were becoming blue from the cold.

‘You know you can’t stay here. And you know I’m not letting you leave or kill yourself or whatever the fuck you’ve been planning all these weeks.

I’m giving you an out’. His eyes held more confusion than ever before, but he didn’t run, and I knew he wasn’t going to.

James: I don’t know how you can look at me. I can’t even look at me, Oliver, what I did ….

Me: One of these days you’re going to forgive yourself. I’d rather have you and all your sins alive, than see you locked away for nothing. There was never a universe where we weren’t in this together.

Somewhere the sun was setting, the top of James’ dark curls being taken by shadows. “Disney prince”, I thought to myself. More of a tragic hero than ever, now. He would hate that. I hesitated, but placed my freezing hand on top of his, lying in the grass.

He looked back at me, and suddenly the sun setting didn’t bother me. I had all the light I needed. I would never grow cold. His eyes, dark and red around the edges, lit up in a mad and impulsive manner. His face was all the answer I needed. The only possible answer to any question the universe could ever ask me again.

I stumbled to my feet feeling frozen to the bone, never letting go of his hand. He leaned on me, booze fueled delirium still taking over, and we turned away from the lake.

Me: Come, let's away to prison.

James, laughing: I am never letting you read Shakespeare again.

-

The car was a run down thing, rusty around the edges, with a cd player that scratched everything. For a rental car it was decently cheap, and would hopefully get us somewhere. At that point, we were just hoping to get somewhere. These days I can’t stand thinking about what would have happened if we didn’t, and more often than not, I awaken myself at ungodly hours with an ache in my chest and memories of a prison cell I’ve never been in, James’ nowhere to be found. But I have that car stored in a box inside my head, and it wasn’t enough, but it led to a whole lot of things that made it all enough. We were always enough.

The hardest part (at least at first) was to get James to get into the car. Although his arguing had died down, his worry was evident in every part of his body, and he stopped every few meters and started shaking his head, rambling about how this was a mistake and I didn’t need any of this.
What James never understood, was that I always needed him. I always thought that he didn’t need me as much, but it became more and more unimportant the more I came to love him.

How we managed to avoid the others in the castle baffles me to this day – there was rarely a time during our years at Dellecher where at least one room wasn’t filled with monologuing, crackling fires, obnoxious noises, or the kind of laughter that made our ribs ache. I suppose I should thank someone for keeping them out of our way, although that seemed rather horrible at the time. My brain was running a million miles an hour and I was in true agony at the thought of leaving behind my friends, my family. But we needed safety. James needed safety.

When we turned the first corner, I let out a breath from the bottom of my heart that felt like it had been there for years. All the stories about running away or driving into the sunset with someone had been wrong; this was superior. This was love in a time of disaster. And I looked at James as he looked out the window, and I loved him. And I loved him. And I never stopped.

I picked the first CD, considering James’ half-paralyzed and shaken up state – the green cover was scratched beyond recognition, all that remained of the original artwork was a strange tooth with a drawn on face, and an old timey tea cup. The quiet strumming and scratchy voice took me back to some late night last summer, Alexander loudly arguing about which decade was the best for music, a song a lot like this on Filippa’s old record player, James’ face, flushed and tipsy, looking up from my lap.

After a few minutes (the first song fading into something slightly softer and generally calming), James lifted his face up from the window, not quite looking at me yet, and made a strange and hollow sound in the back of his throat. I eyed him with careful concern, before turning back to the road. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him turning to face me, a red mark lining his cheek where it had rested on his hand, and giving me a vague smile.

I laughed quietly.

Me: what?

James: Nothing, just …. You know this is Alexander’s album?

I laughed harder this time, turning my head to look at him.

Me: I know. I think I stole it from him, sometime last year. What is it?

He lightly slapped my arm with the back of his hand, placing the other above his heart dramatically.

“Ignorance is the curse of God!,” he proclaimed loudly, “Knowledge is-“

“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled back. And, for the first time in days, James laughed. Blue eyes lighting up and running a slender hand through his hair, he turned his body over and placed a timid hand on my knee.

“Nick Drake.” He said, grinning slyly up at me. I nodded, thinking back to Alexander’s pretentious ramblings again, suddenly filled with fondness for my friend. “Pink moon.”

He swallowed, and tried to pull back away from me, but I softly grabbed him around the wrist and laced it with my own. An impulsive move, one of my most terrifying ones, that I haven’t regretted for a single second since. We met eachother’s eyes again, and burst out into loud laughter again. Everything was hysterically absurd in this broken car with no working heat, his hand in mine, a stolen CD playing, both of us on the run. For a moment I wanted to live forever. I needed to tell him everything, every piece of my soul. But I had a feeling he already knew.

-

For a while he was quiet in a way I couldn’t read, scarcely moving or changing the way he was sitting. I didn’t mind. It had been a long time since he was quiet in a way that didn’t make me think of him as a ticking time bomb, and I liked it. I liked him. I liked his presence and his body beside mine, even if I ached to touch him again more with every passing second, I liked us in a picture frame outside of school.

After another stretch of lonely road, I leaned over and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped at the touch, and I withdrew quickly, but his expression seemed to soften with fond remembrance in an instant. I cleared my throat and shifted my hand back to the steering wheel, convincing myself that James’ brief look of disappointment was all in my imagination.

“So,” I started “we should get something to eat soon.” It came out as more of a question, and I tried not to wince at the way my voice wavered. I never could relax around him. He eyed me and nodded without a word.

I stopped at a roadside diner with a bright neon sign proclaiming their 24 hour services lighting up the darkness that had ascended upon the highway. I pulled the keys out of the car and stepped outside, my back making a cracking noise at the sudden movement.

“Oliver.” I turned around to face James. He looked pale and unkempt, like he hadn’t been sleeping (which I knew to be true), and with a mildly scared expression covering his thin face (which I also knew to be true).

“Oliver, where are we even going?” he started, making his way toward me with one small step at a time. I furrowed my eyebrows.

“We’re just going?” I wondered out loud. “We could go to yours, but I figured you wouldn’t want that. Or just stay at a hotel until we figure something out. We could always find a place of our own and just-“ “Oliver.”

He was fully facing me now, and I realized that, for the first time in a long time, I had misread him. He didn’t seem scared anymore. He seemed angry.

James let out an exasperated sigh and took a step back, running a hand through his hair in a shaky and frantic manner. Then he laughed. A hollow, humorless laugh, the kind that took me back to that night where he was yelling by the window, the kind of James laugh where he’s never felt more miserable.

“Oliver, what the fuck are you doing? And- no, don’t interrupt me again, I’m fucking serious! You don’t need to do this! You don’t need to-to, I don’t know, be responsible for me. I did something. I did something fucking bad, Oliver, and you’re just ….” He tore a hand down his face, and swallowed visibly. Stunned at his rambling and how he’d never seemed more fragile to me than right then, I waited for him to continue.

“You’re just letting me get away with it! And I …. I can’t fucking take that, you know? Not from you, I can’t, I just can’t watch you do this to yourself when you should be running at 100 miles an hour in the other direction, Oliver, please!” He paused again, trying to collect himself. At that point, I wasn’t sure which one of us he was yelling at.
“There’s still, I don’t know, there’s still time for you, okay? You can leave me here, at this fucking gas station in the middle of nowhere, and I’d be happy! I’d be fucking happy, knowing you were safe. It wouldn’t matter, you’re going to see me for what I did, and then you’ll hate me and I’ll fucking, I’ll fucking die, I don’t know, I don’t know why the fuck you’re insisting on doing this to yourse-“

“Because I fucking love you!”

James shut up instantly. I was breathing heavily, squeezing my eyes shut so tightly I was seeing dancing spots behind my eyelids. Maybe, if I didn’t look, it didn’t happen. I didn’t tell him.

But I did.

“James, I just …. I know you know that. I love you, okay? Despite every part of me, and then you, screaming at me not to. I can’t not do it. I don’t know how not to do it. And believe me I’ve tried, so don’t start that shit with me. I made you leave with me because otherwise I wouldn’t leave. Or stay. Shit, James, I thought you might fucking kill yourself. And I couldn’t live with that, okay, I-I couldn’t live with any of that. So, yeah, I’m doing this. And I do need to. I love you, in a very bullshit Shakesperean way. And I can’t stop doing that any more than I can stop breathing.”

I didn’t wait around for a rejection or an apology I knew was coming. I didn’t look at him, or at anything else. I moved from our rusty rental car, walked past the gas fillers, and into the store.

After ten minutes, I emerged with two bags full of greasy, quick heated sandwiches (cheese and tomato for James, turkey for me. Some things just never change.), coffee, and a pack of cigarettes (Kings. Alexander’s brand.). I didn’t look for James right away, assuming he had headed back to the car, or was pacing around while mumbling under his breath and gesturing, in that James sort of way that made my heart hurt. I leaned against the brick wall, yellow, with half of the paint peeling off, set our food gently on top of an empty crate next to me, and lit a cigarette.

I didn’t particularly want to think any more than I wanted to speak, but I never had any choice in that matter. I believe I always had Gwendolyn to blame for that. It was painful enough to remember. I didn’t want to spiral as well. I smoked slowly, letting the familiar ache fill my chest, until my thought process numbed my body, and the fire burned all the way down to my fingertips.

I finally took my eyes off the ground, only to find James standing next to me, very obviously and purposefully not looking at me either. I only shook my head slightly, any desire I had to explain myself had evaporated when I stepped from the cool kiosk fridges back to the reality of the parking lot, where there was still dust that seemed to be settling all around me.
I took a step away from him, fishing my keys out of my pocket.

“Come on, let’s go. You can smoke in the car.”

We stopped at a payphone after an hour of driving in loaded silence – loaded with what, I wasn’t sure. James was tense, I felt it from the moment we fastened our seatbelts and drove out of the gas station, but I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I always would, it was him, it was me. Jamesandoliver as always, but this time, in a way that sort of frightened me.

The car’s crackling stereo had been playing another of the CD’s we stole from the bookcase in the castle, this time Filippa’s (Mazzy Star, ‘So tonight that I might see’. Memories of white wine filled evenings where the girls were sprawled out on the floor, James, Alexander, and I on the old sofas in some playfully heated argument or another, Filippa’s dress softly swinging around her boney knees as she swayed back and forth, mumbling a lyric or two), and we knew we couldn’t keep this up for much longer. At this point, we had been gone for about five hours, and the sun had all but set, lulling us and the car into darkness quickly growing deeper and deeper.

I was the one who would make the call. James wasn’t up for talking to any of them. I only blamed him a little. I never blamed him for much.

We got through to Alexander first, assuming Pip was either in bed already or curled up with Wren in their preferred spot in the living room. He was startled by the phone, evident in his confused and groggy tone (I was pretty sure he was with Colin, judging by the shushing he tried his best to make sure I didn’t hear, and the footsteps in the background.)

Alexander: You really left us? Shit, Oliver, you can’t just fucking- we were worried like hell, Wren nearly cried when she found out you weren’t on campus or at the bar, we just- I can’t believe you did that to us, I just-

Me: Hey. You know we had to, I had to. I was scared for him, I couldn’t-

There was a tired sigh on the other end, his usual bubbly voice and sharp voice had seemingly melted into nothing throughout the three minutes of vague explanation I had given him. I had left some parts out. I didn’t know what he knew. I had always trusted him like a friend, like a brother, and I still did. But James was at stake. I was at stake. There was a third reason on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it.

Alexander: I do. Of course I do. But I wish I didn’t, and I wish you didn’t either. You don’t have to do this, you know? They ruled it as an accident, they’re not revisiting the case, Oliver, both of you-

Me: Wait, wait. You know? All of it?

There was a long silence, and I think I forgot to breathe, but felt my heart hammering in my chest nonetheless. If he knew, why hadn’t he told me? If he saw it, if he talked to James, if he-

Alexander: I thought you knew. I’m sorry.

Me: Look, we don’t need to fucking argue about this. We’re gone, both of us. We can’t come back, Alex, I can’t do that to him, I can’t do this without him

Alexander: I know that, too. I know you love him, you’re in love with him, I’m not fucking stupid. I just want you here. You and him. We don’t hate him, any of us, Pip and I knew from the start, and we still love you both. We do want you to get your shit together, but that’s another, less important story.

I didn’t have the stomach to process any of that, that both him and Pip had known, and that he knew me. He knew about me. It was all the same, anyway – my love for James was always something I carried. It was heavier than the rest. I opted for a dry laugh and a choked up sound, involuntarily.

Me: We stole your CD’s, by the way. You have terrible taste, you pretentious fuck.

Alexander: *laughing* Yeah, I love you too.  

Alexander promised he would deliver everything to the others, a responsibility I felt terrible for putting upon him, but one he refused not to take. I did love him, just as I loved all of them, our beautifully terrible family. I had made the promise that we would see them, and soon. I didn’t know whether I could keep it. I knew he didn’t either. Somehow, I didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

Back in the car, James was half asleep against the cold window, but startled at the sound of my car door closing. He rubbed his eyes with a closed fist and cleared his throat, fixing his eyes on something outside, anything that wasn’t me, as I started up the car and the stereo crackled back to life.

“How’d it go?” he asked tentatively. I shrugged, unsure of what to tell him. I wasn’t mad, not really. I wasn’t scared, either. I was just so tired.

“Is he mad?” then, after a pause that was just a second too long, “are you mad?”

I closed my eyes tightly and shook my head shakily before fixing my gaze back on the road.

“He’s not mad. Scared, yeah. Annoyed. Confused.” James nodded and sunk back in his seat. I didn’t know what he had expected or wanted to hear. I let a sound that was halfway a sigh and a laugh.

“He told me, by the way. That he and Pip – that they knew? All along.” I really did laugh that time. I didn’t know why it was so funny to me. I suppose it wasn’t, anyway. It was just too much for me. He was too much for me, right there and then. I felt like I held all the power in the world but was too weak to use anything against him.

“It’s funny, I …. I mean, you didn’t tell me. Your roommate, you know, your friend. And I get it, I’m not, like, angry? But I don’t get it, James, I don’t fucking get you or what you want from me or-“

I swallowed and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“I don’t know if you even want me around sometimes. I’m not being self righteous here, I understand. I don’t get it, in the whole universal type of way, but I understand.”

Beside me, James was quiet as ever. I felt like I could hear his heartbeat go too fast (too loud, too fragile, yet too hard). Suddenly, he sat up in a single swift motion, and placed a steady hand on my wrist.

“Oliver, pull over.” I snapped my head to the side, registering the way his voice had cracked, to see his eyes wet and shining in the little moonlight that was burrowing through the car windows.

“What?”
“Pull over. Stop the car.”

I obeyed, annoyed and confused, and turned the key. We were on a country highway with pale high grass surrounding it, nothing but small brick houses and lamp posts for miles already.

The second the key turned, James hand was at the back of my neck, the other never leaving my wrist. There were still tears in his eyes, but he seemed determined like never before, and his eyes didn’t leave mine for a second. Then he laughed. Not the shaky, breathy laughs with too much hurt behind it to be genuine that we had let out since we left Dellecher, a real, slightly hysterical and high pitches, James Farrow laugh. And I loved him for it.

“Oliver, there was a reason I didn’t fucking tell you. I couldn’t tell you. Alex and Pip, yeah, they knew, and I’m sorry, I really am, but I didn’t ever want you to know. Ever.”

He was still chuckling, and had a few glistening tears silently running down his face. He looked wrecked, upset and laughing at the same time, like a tragic hero in battle. Like a Disney prince gone bad.

His eyes hadn’t left mine, but they had softened. He looked at me like I looked at him, and I had absolutely no idea what to make of that. I realized I had been silent a moment too long, because he dug the fingers that had never left my wrist gently into my skin, as if he were trying to shake me awake.

“Why?” I croaked out, voice hoarse and quiet, although I didn’t know who I was trying to hide from.

He moved the hand around my arm to wipe away the wetness covering his face, and laughed again.

“Speak low if you speak love, Oliver. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Suddenly, James’ hand at the back of my neck was burning. Not the kind of burning where you need to get it away from you at all costs and get the fire extinguisher, not the kind of burning where you stomp on it until it goes out or smother it with a blanket – just the kind of burning where you can feel that it’s there. A friendly reminder. A morning alarm. Awareness.

His expression had changed again, anger to softness to looking more like a frightened animal than anything else. He looked at me like he had poured his heart into my hands. Like I held his heart as he did mine.

”But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?”

He looked like he wanted to cry again, but relaxed his shoulders and the grip around me. He sighed, then chuckled like before, but softer, gentler, more like himself than any other time in the last weeks.

“Neither rhyme nor reason-” and that was all he said before pulling my head down and covering my mouth with his own, teeth clashing, and the tear streaks on his cheeks wetting my own.

He kept on kissing me, and I him, and I loved him for it. And I loved us.

And I loved Dellecher as I loved us, and our family of six, the broken up car, the scratchy stereo, the stolen CD’s – I loved it all, from loving him.

-

We checked into a motel around 2 am – a small place with five rooms that looked more like a small suburban home than anything else, with a wooden exterior painted white (although a lot of it was scratched off from years of needing a repaint), yellow flower wallpaper in all the rooms, along with small strange paintings and vases on every surface. The price was cheap for only a night, easily covered with our shared savings (along with the loose cash I had taken from the castle).

The minute we opened the door and put down our suitcases, James collapsed face first on the bed like a dead man pulled to shore. I stifled a laugh with the back of my hand as I walked in and locked the door behind me. He turned his head from the pale pink pillow to face me, and reached out his hand. I ignored him, and started grabbing clean shirts from our luggage. As I reached for a bundle of thin, black fabric in James’ bag, I let out a loud laugh, quickly remembering the time, and settling for a round of hysterical giggles.

James rolled on his back and looked at me with a quirked eyebrow and a confused smile ghosting his lips. “What?” he asked, then a second later “Oliver, what?” with a pinch of laughter as I didn’t answer him. I flipped the tshirt towards him and he groaned. “Fleetwood Mac? You own a goddamn Fleetwood Mac shirt?” he covered his face with the pillow and mumbled something intelligible.

I laughed at him again. “Sorry, what was that? Are you, like, indie now? Does this mean you’re officially entirely better than me?” He removed the pillow from his head and opted for throwing it at me instead, sitting up as it hit me in the side of the leg. “That,” he started “is Wren’s.”

I looked at him questioningly, barely containing the laughter still bubbling in me. My parents and sisters were always particularly fond of Fleetwood Mac and it had played a lot at Dellecher parties and when it was Wren and Alexander’s turn to choose a vinyl – I just liked making him laugh.

“No it’s not.” I said coyly. “No it’s not. Are you gonna give it to me?” he said in a pretend annoyed tone that didn’t fool me one bit. I had a feeling that the expression I was wearing was disgustingly fond, but I didn’t care. It was only us, JamesandOliver, in a shitty roadside motel with horrible wallpaper and even worse cleaning service, only us and this and all of our worries.

“Nope.” I replied. “This is mine now.”

If that happened to be the most sleep either of us got in weeks, we didn’t speak a word of it.

It was foolish of us to waste money and staying at the motel another night – and yet, of course, we did it. It wasn’t that the place was nice or that either of us finally felt some sort of peace, but that running away was tiring us out. Besides, the small room with too many pillows and not enough light was perfect for us, old roommates reuniting. I woke up that first morning with James’ arm slung possessively around my chest (I could almost hear Leah’s teasing in my head once again), his hair tickling my face, my own cheeks growing redder the more my mind woke up.

I didn’t dare move for fear of waking him up (I couldn’t remember the last time I had witnessed him sleep through the night), so I opted for grabbing one of our books from the nightstand and balancing it on the palm of my left hand, my right arm still trapped underneath James’ shoulders.

When he awoke, it was with a tint of pink on his face as he rolled off of me and shuffled wordlessly towards the bathroom. I didn’t bother hiding the small grin on my lips.

We had slept through the motel’s breakfast hours, and while neither of us had had much of an appetite throughout the last dreadful months, I insisted on us getting something to eat, tired of the way James’ sweaters hung around his frame without touching it and the hollowness in his cheeks (although I knew I didn’t look much better, but I didn’t care as much about that), and James didn’t bother arguing.

We got dressed in silence and walked to the car parked outside, smiling at the people in the lobby who didn’t seem bothered by our tired eyes or James’ resting his hand on my arm as we walked.

I pulled over at a small convenience store that carried locally sourced products and had a tiny bakery attached (“Friends, countrymen….” James joked the minute we walked in, and I bit my tongue to hide a laugh. But he was right – we really were out of our comfort zone).

We picked up freshly baked bread and a jar of marmalade (raspberry), some locally made cheese that neither of us could pronounce the name of, and, despite the day only making its way into the afternoon, a bottle of wine (white), which we felt we could use after the drive (and considering we weren’t continuing our trip until the next day).

I drove us back to the motel while James held our groceries on his lap, and from there we walked across the grass until we found a secluded spot where we wouldn’t have to interact with anyone else, and could talk in peace.

We picked apart the bread with our hands and ate in comfortable silence, the bottle of wine being shared between the two of us (“Thank god you’re boring and only drink white, I would never forgive myself if I got wine stains on your precious Fleetwood Mac shirt” I joked, earning me a raised middle finger and a laugh in response). When we had finished eating there was still plenty left for us to take for the road, the bottle was half full, and the sun had begun to set over the grass and ourselves.

James was lying on his back in the field and had his eyes shut gently, hands resting behind his head. I sat for a while looking around and trying to soak in the atmosphere before lying down next to him and letting out a breathy sigh.

“When you leave,” James began quietly, “go easy on me, yeah?”

I raised my head immediately, propping my chin up with my fist. “What are you talking about?”

He sighed, exasperated, and opened his eyes to look at me. “When you leave. Come on, you know we can’t run forever. I can. It’s not like I have anything other than you to stick around for.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he slapped his hand over it, looking me dead in the eyes. “We don’t have to talk about it. But you know you’re it for me. I’m not getting over what happened, or forgiving myself, no matter how much you want me to. I just want this, you, for as long as we can. And then you’ll leave.” I placed my hand on top of his, pulling is away from my mouth and laying our intertwined fingers in my lap. “I’m not going anywhere.” I said, as gently as I could. And it was the truth.

I really wanted it to be the truth.

He smiled at me. Not a James smile, not a James at Me smile. Just a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, a tiny, hopeful one, that was somehow also full of hopelessness. “Just,” he started, inching closer to me. “Just don’t break my heart or anything.” He laughed. I knew he meant it. I knew I never would.

“I think the danger is the other way around.” I joked, completely full of truth. He grinned at me now, full on and reckless, and I ached. “No way.”

I tasted the rest of the wine on his lips instead of my own.

-

A lot of our story was spent on the road. Not necessarily a road in the technical sense, but a road regardless. On the run. Driving away, driving towards, driving and running and and going back again.

And I think of these days as I lie awake or as he awakes me or I awake him with screams in the night or a soft touch on the shoulder. I know he thinks of it too. After all, it’s not like we ever stopped running.

But forgive me if I romanticize these things, even if they were rather awful at the time. It’s how we live, how we always lived. Romantics, poets, actors all in one. Aching for things to be real, beautiful, or simply pretend, but stuffed with truth until it nearly overflows.

Even now that I know I’m here, we’re here and safe, I can’t help but think of us as something dead, not yet buried. Our lives both ended and begun the day we left Dellecher, reborn as travelers, friends, and lovers all in one. And yet, we never escaped – at least not the way we wanted to. We escaped the consequences, but not the actions. Not the pain. Not the memories. But I know that neither of us would have done things differently if given the choice.

It was what we needed to do to be here, jamesandoliver once again.

Some part of us didn’t disappear. We didn’t outrun our family, nor was that ever the intention.

We kept on calling Alexander who made us call Filippa who made us call Wren. And although few things can compare to the agony and self hatred I felt during these conversations, I’ve never been more thankful for anything. We all fell apart, but rebuilt for years and years, until we were almost back in the castle with our legs entangled on the sofas, red wine stains down our clothes, loud monologuing in the middle of the night – because, as we all came to realize, we weren’t a family as a result of being locked in there together, but as a state of mind.

Now we see Alexander and Colin once a month for drinks at their place, calm evenings spent by their fireplace and sharing stories from our now horribly mundane lives that we wouldn’t trade for the world. Filippa and Wren every few weeks when they come to visit us in town, often stringing along their puppy, Horatio, picnics by the beach or window shopping.

It’s calm and sweet and nauseatingly familiar – and we all love it, which is evident, considering we keep on doing it all year after year.

And the days we all see eachother, much younger in eachother’s eyes, as if nothing and everything has changed all at once are the best of all. And I look at James just as he looks at me, and neither of us avert our gazes. We simply smile, and so do the other’s. And our hearts beat loudly and freely, screaming out with steady rhythm; I am home, we are home. This is a home.

-

We left the motel the next morning while it was still dark, our boots hitting the new frost on the grass with a crisp sound for each step. James decided on driving for a while, and, despite my worries for him, I agreed. As always, my concerns for him overpowered me, but the night had been uninterrupted and free of terrors, his face free of its usual dark circles and the mysterious sort of darkness that always spotted his eyes seemed to have shrunken just a little.

To the soft tunes of The Chameleons’ ‘Strange Times’ (undoubtedly one of the few albums from the castle that actually belonged to James), I laid my heavy head against the window, and drifted off.

James at the steering wheel would normally have me sitting upright and trembling with fear for the two of us, but now, after everything. A different kind of trust had bonded us closer than before.

I woke again when the car door shut quietly next to me, and James, cardboard cups in hand, entered with a small smile on his face.

Upon discovering that I was awake, he leaned over and cupped his free hand around my cheek – a sudden movement that startled and excited me at the same time.  He put his face close to mine, and as soon as my eyes drifted to his lips, he placed a slender hand on his chest in dramatic fashion. “Awake, dear heart, awake!”  he beckoned, and I rolled my eyes automatically. “Thou has slept well!” “Please stop.” I groaned, pushing his face away, but unable to hide the annoyed grin on my face. “Awake, awake!” “Shut the fuck up!” I said, without even a hint of real anger to it. He sunk down in his seat, laughing full force as I glared at him. He took my hand and brought it to his lips.

“You’re a menace.” I sighed. He knew I loved it. Loved him and his drama, how the soul of theatre would never leave him for a second. And how I was exactly the same.

“We need to keep driving if we want to make it to town before it gets dark.” I said between yawns. James furrowed his brows while starting up the car. “What town?” he replied, confused.

We hadn’t had an exact plan for our big escape, nor had we talked about it in the three days we had been on the road. “So, my parents used to rent this cabin a couple of summers, back when we were kids. I looked it up, the cost isn’t bad for a week or two. We could find some odd jobs, you know, find a more permanent solution and – why are you looking at me like that?” I stopped my rambling suddenly when I looked back at James, whose eyes had strayed away from the road and had a questioning look on his face. Just as I was about to apologize or take it all back and talk to him, he made a sniffling sound and returned his focus to driving. “So, you were serious?” he started, tentatively, like he was scared of what words might have spilled out of my mouth next. “About …. not leaving?” his voice broke a little, and I was stunned. In this moment he seemed so fragile to me. My next choice of words could break him in half, unspool everything we had built. And I knew, in my heart, that he was expecting me to. Maybe he even wanted me to, just to reach out and hit him, give him some sort of reaction, the kind Camilo had taught us how to work our pain into. But I never would.

Softly and slowly, I turned his face towards me, my hand burning up with the heat that had rose to his cheeks, looked quickly at the road to make sure it was just another empty country highway, and kissed him straight on the mouth with the kind of determination I had wished for during all those years at the university. When I drew back, his eyes were wide as the moon, and his already rosy cheeks were red as ever. My face broke in half with a sincere smile at the boy in front of me.

“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

Shyly, he turned in his seat, and pressed play on the stereo once more. I rested my cheek against the car door, still eyeing him with adoration clearly present. He glanced at me briefly, then smiled.

“Shakespeare should have written about us instead.” he muttered, and I laughed. And I laughed loud and free and in love like never before. And when I looked at James, eyes glittering in the late evening sun beams, I saw that he did the same. We kept driving, and the radio sung us out like the last scene of a romantic comedy;

“Now I’m weaker than the palest blue,

Oh so weak in this need for you”