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Ransom has the whole flight to Boston (one-and-a-half hours) to pretend to do work and actually consider the problem. Holster has never been weird about shit like this before. They’ve been friends for, what? Almost a decade? And Holster has never said anything bad about guys who date other guys. Hell, they lived in a house with Jack and Bits. But Ransom goes on two dates with a guy and Holster goes ballistic. They haven’t even spoken in a week. He hasn’t even told Holster yet that he ended things with Daniel. Fuck Holster. It’s not even his business.
When Ransom looks up, the plane is at the gate. He gets his bags and puts his suit jacket back on. He texts Lardo from the rental car counter. “In Boston. Meeting now, but then booze?” She just responds with an emoji of a thumbs-up.
He’s been working for Merck practically since he graduated, worked his way up from office lackey to where he is now, in Washington, helping to shepherd pharmaceuticals through the approval process. But he thinks that this the best part of his job, going to universities to talk to other bio nerds about their research. He’d been excited for his trip before the whole mess with Adam and Dan. He shakes himself out in the parking lot at MIT, gets his suit jacket out of the back of the car, and puts the mess back home far out of his mind.
When he gets to her apartment, Lardo is on the phone, ordering Chinese food. She still doesn’t cook. As soon as she’s done and his stuff is dumped in the guest room, she reaches up on her tiptoes until he hugs her. “Hey, there,” he says.
“Hiiiii. We’re drinking wine.”
“You know I’m not picky.”
Two glasses later, Ransom thinks that maybe he should start being picky. “This stuff is phenomenal,” he says. Lardo is opening all of the extra fortune cookies that the restaurant sent along.
“I fucking know, right? It’s like a hundred bucks a bottle and we have half a case.” She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a fresh bottle. “You should totally marry a lawyer. They get the best gifts.”
After another bottle, she sits up and fixes him with her serious, no-bullshit look. “Okay, tell me what’s going on.”
Justin looks at her and Lardo just tilts her head. He can try and pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but news travels fast in any social circle containing Eric Bittle. “I started going out with a guy. Dan. Pretty cool. Whatever. Except I told Holster and he just fucking flipped.” Justin’s aware that his hands are flailing, but he’s had, like, a whole bottle of wine. “He told me that I could do whatever I wanted, and that he hoped it worked out, but he was all weird and closed-off and then he just fucking bolted. Totally weird, right? But then he stopped talking to me. He hasn’t respond to my texts or my calls or my emails, and it’s been a week. Like, I was confused. And then Bits calls to check on me, which means that Adam called about me, which means what exactly? Like, ughhhhh.” He falls back to sprawl on the couch. “This couch is nice. What is this? Microfiber?”
“What happened with Dan?” Lardo upends the second bottle into her glass.
“Oh, we broke up. I mean, it was only like two dates, and the sex was nothing to write home about.” He flails toward his half-full wine glass, just out of his reach on the table. “Don’t tell Adam that,” he says, pointing at her. “I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
“You think that’s it? That he didn’t want you seeing Dan?”
“Dude’s never even met Dan. Dan’s cool. And I know it’s not the part where it’s a guy.” He grabs his glass and frowns. Vertical glass, horizontal Ransom.
“How? You might have surprised him. I was a little surprised.”
“Nah, he wasn’t surprised. Trust me.” Horizontal glass is not going to work, for sure, and vertical Ransom sounds hard as hell. After a minute or two, he rolls onto his back and lifts his head enough to get the wine in without spilling on the nice couch. He pumps his fist in celebration.
When he’s swallowed and put the glass on the floor, Lardo asks, “Did you come out to him?”
“Nah, we kissed once.” He turns his head and sees Lardo’s eyes go wide. “Like, forever ago, but if he thought I didn’t like dudes after that, then he’s stupid.” She just purses her lips and lifts an eyebrow. “It was... So, you weren’t even at Samwell yet. Frog year, we all stayed like a week after graduation to move into the Haus. So, we moved into the attic, and then we had a party. The inugural. Onagural. Annagural.”
“First.” Lardo has been dealing with drunk Ransom since neither of them were old enough to drink.
“First party! It was awesome. And we got all kinds of wasted. So, after, we went up to the attic and stuck my head into his bunk to say goodnight when he kissed me. Or I kissed him? There was kissing. It was good. We made out, I slept in his bed, we woke up, and it was awkward, so we just never talked about it. We could still be friends.” It’s so late and Ransom has been up since six. He should definitely be asleep.
“Hey!” Lardo yells, jumping onto him. He opens his eyes as she lands on his stomach. “Stay awake.”
“Why? You’re heavy.”
“I need you to focus because you will freak if we talk about this sober.”
“Where is your husband? Can he come get you off of me?” He tries to close his eyes again, and then he opens them with a yelp when she slaps him.
“Give me five minutes. Focus up for me for five minutes and then you can go to bed.” He opens his eyes and she’s bent down so that she fills his whole field of vision, their noses almost touching. “Do you know why Holster kissed you?”
“’Cause he was drunk? Because even then, I was hot?”
“And why has he never gone out with any other guys?”
Ransom smirks. “Because no other guys are this hot.”
Lardo just rolls her eyes and stands up. “Okay, fine. Up with you.”
He lets her pull him to his feet and then slumps on her shoulders, even though he has to bend uncomfortably to do so. She staggers him toward the guest room. “Oh man, how late is it?”
“It’s like 9:30.”
“Is this what being old is like?”
She pushes him down onto the bed and sighs. “Good night, Ransom.”
Ransom never really forgets what he does when he’s drunk, so, as soon as he's boarded the flight and buckled in, his brain replays his conversation with Lardo.
“Do you know why Holster kissed you?”
He had been looking forward to this day since his taddy tour. And now it was for real. Justin was an official resident of the Haus. He’d even secured the top bunk, thanks to his prowess at rock-paper-scissors. He didn’t even mind sharing a room with Adam. Adam was maybe the best friend he’d ever had, so getting extra hang time with Adam was a bonus. They were already planning to go to Niagara in July.
They leaned on each other on the long walk up to the attic, having killed most of a case of Keystone between the two of them. “We should get a table,” Adam said. “Like, a real coffee table. Then we could invite people up and hang.”
"We need to go to Ikea. We need a mirror.”
“A mirror and a painting or something. Some goddamned art. Make it nice. We deserve nice. We’re gonna be in there three years.”
Justin grinned and bumped Adam with his hip. Three years. This was going to be awesome.
They detoured to brush their teeth and for Adam to wash his face. (Even drunk, he was religious about his acne regimen.) They had to go single-file up to the attic, and then they separated to, for the first time, get ready for bed. Holster was stripped to his boxers and in bed before Justin had picked out a sleeping shirt. (He had separate, softer sleeping shirts.) On his way up into his bed to sleep for the first time ever, he paused and stuck his head into the bottom bunk. He grinned at how homey it already looked in there. There was a cup of water next to Adam’s glasses on the little ledge. His blanket had trees on it. “Goodnight, roomie!”
Adam, softly lit by his reading light, grinned back. “Goodnight!”
Justin should have pulled back, gotten out and climbed up into his bunk. But he lingered for some reason. Their eyes met. This had happened a couple of times over the course of the year, a moment stretching out, them too close or touching oddly, feeling like it was just the two of them. Something else always broke the moment, a shout from Jack or a slamming door or, once, the Athletic Director coming up to slap their backs. But now it was just them, nothing in the attic but this moment and the somehow dwindling space between their mouths.
He’d thought about it before, sure. Justin had always thought guys were attractive and Holster was built like a god, but he’d never thought Holster would actually go for it. And their friendship was too important to him to jeopardize it by bringing it up. But in the moment, he wasn’t thinking about that at all. He couldn’t think of anything but the fact that their mouths were definitely touching and Holster’s hand had slid around to cup the back of his head and pull him down, sealing their mouths together for real. Making this real.
Adam’s tongue was cold when it touched Justin’s and Justin felt something inside him break a little bit. This was happening and why wasn’t he taking full advantage? He climbed into the bottom bunk, straddling Adam, and Adam groaned, low and throaty and like he had maybe been thinking about this for as long as Justin had. Justin kissed harder, licked Adam’s bottom lip and wanted to purr at the feeling of Adam’s big hand spanning his lower back to keep him in place. They broke apart for a second and Adam whined. Justin grinned, and then leaned down again.
They kissed until their mouths were sore, until Justin’s stubble had rubbed Adam’s skin faintly pink, until Justin was glad he was too drunk to get hard and make this weird. They rolled onto their sides at some point and the kisses started to slow, getting lazy, sleepy. Adam fell asleep in the middle of a kiss, his hand fisted in Justin’s shirt and his mouth still open. Justin smiled and shut his eyes.
By the time he woke up, Adam was gone, an email saying that his mom had already come to get him and he’d see Justin in Niagara. And by Niagara, it was like it had never happened. They smiled and hugged and checked into a hotel room with separate beds. Neither of them ever mentioned it again.
“And why has he never gone out with any other guys?”
Boston to Washington takes ninety minutes, which gives him time to think about the last words Lardo had said, her cheek pressed against his as she hugged him goodbye. “Ransom, why can‘t you just let yourself want for once?” When he arrives in Washington, he takes his bags and goes directly to Holster’s place. The doorman waves him up and he knocks on the door. He hasn’t really considered what he’s going to do if Holster isn’t home, but Adam is always gonna be kind of a homebody, so he’s probably just spending this beautiful Sunday holed up inside, watching baseball with his cat.
Adam’s door doesn’t have a peephole, so he opens the door and then pauses. “Rans. Hey.” He holds on tight to the doorknob.
“Hey. Can I come in?”
Holster nods and backs up a little. Justin leaves his bags by the door and goes to the sofa. “You want water or something?”
“Sure.” Adam’s fluffy white cat, Evgeni Malkin, is perched on the arm of the sofa and meows for petting as soon as Justin is close enough. He sits and scratches behind Evgeni’s ears until he purrs.
Adam looks distinctly uncomfortable as he comes back into the living room, but he’s wearing his glasses, a threadbare t-shirt and his ridiculous Lululemon Men’s sweats, so Justin still wants to smile. He hands over a glass of water and sits at the other end of the couch. “So. How was Boston?”
“Good. Lardo sends her best wishes.” Adam nervously turns his water glass in his hands. Justin takes inventory and realizes that the one thing he doesn’t feel is nervous. Terrified, sure, but … calm. “I was thinking about why you haven’t returned my calls since Monday.”
“Rans, I—“
“And I don’t think it was anything I did. I don’t think it was anything either of us did. You freaked out because I told you I went out with a guy. I knew it wasn’t the guy thing; you’ve always known that I like guys. But the thing is, I was thinking about it, and we both like guys, right? And yet neither of us have ever dated one.” Adam refuses to meet his eyes, which Justin knows means he’s on the right track. He leans back against the armrest. “So, I had sex with Dan on Tuesday.” Adam jerks back like he’s been hit. He looks at Justin, offended. “And then we broke up. The sex was only ok. It was fine. But I wanted it to be, I dunno, mind-blowing. I wanted it to be like The Kiss.”
They trade a conversation with their eyes, in which Adam telegraphs that he’s about to deny remembering it and Justin tells him that he isn’t going to allow that. Instead, Adam just looks down, the tips of his ears red in the way that they always get when he’s embarrassed. “I think we fucked up back then,” Justin continues, “by not going further. Not seeing what this could be or where it was going.”
“So, what are you saying?” Adam is worrying at his lip in a way that looks painful. Justin wants to reach out and make him stop.
Justin doesn’t even pause. He’s been ignoring his own feelings and his own questions for so long that the truth has been fighting its way out ever since it all crystallized for him, somewhere over Baltimore. And he knows it’s the truth. He wants this out in the open. He wants things to change between them. He wants. “I think you’re mad because you wanted to be the one dating me, and I think I dumped Dan because he’s not you.” Adam freezes, his hand around the glass and his mouth half-open.
“So, what, we should just go out?”
“Yeah.” Justin shrugs and then takes a sip of his water. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. We can just be friends still. But I think this is a better plan.”
The corner of Adam’s mouth twitches. “You always think your plans are better than mine, but we know that’s not true.”
“Oh god, the bank flag incident was six years ago. You gotta let that one go.”
“Just sayin’. My only run-in with the law came from a plan of yours.” This is safer territory, more comfortable. It feels like them again, but with the acknowledgement of the elephant that has been growing in the room since May of 2013. Adam tilts back against the arm of the sofa and stretches his leg out a little. “So, what happens now?”
“Well, I’d like to kiss you. Just to make sure that wasn’t a fluke. For both of us. If we kiss and either of us doesn’t like it, then we’ll reassess.”
Adam rolls his eyes to suggest that it’s unlikely the kiss will be awful, but Rans grins and ignores him. He sets Evgeni Malkin on the floor and then rolls forward onto his knees. It’s just like last time, him propped over Adam, those huge blue eyes looking right at him and displaying nothing but approval and desire. He sighs heavily, gathering up his courage, but Holster is the one who tilts up and closes the circuit.
Ransom’s toes curl. He didn’t think that was a thing that happens to real people, but Adam licks his mouth open and his toes honest-to-God curl. “So what you’re saying,” Adam says, his voice dropping into that sexy lower register that had been Justin’s favorite part of that night forever ago, “is that I get one kiss to convince you to take a shot.”
“Not exac—.” Adam’s clearly uninterested in the rest of the sentence. He fits his mouth against Justin’s and he’s clearly learned some things in the last seven years. His tongue is everywhere, his hands are everywhere, and yet the pace seems hypnotically slow. Justin isn’t even sure what is going on, just that he’s being pulled into Adam’s lap and one of Adam’s hands is curving over his ass, squeezing through his slacks. He clearly likes what he feels, because he responds with a growl and a harder kiss. Adam uses that hand to push Ransom down into his lap, grinding up against him. Justin’s eyes snap open, but Adam is still kissing him, methodical and confusingly intense, while he rocks an unmistakable bulge against Justin’s unmistakable bulge.
“Good enough?” he asks, pulling away only far enough to speak.
Ransom nods and blinks. “That was very better.”
“I always pick the smart ones,” he says with a sigh, even as he takes off his glasses, settling in for what he clearly intends to be a long make out session. They both run through their whole repertoire: Holster kisses down the line of Justin’s neck, tests the sharpness of Justin’s teeth against his tongue, and pulls on Justin’s hair. Adam licks Justin’s clavicle, slips a hand into his pants to rub a thumb over the thin skin at his hipbone, and blows into Justin’s ear. Evgeni Malkin gets bored and wanders off after the first half hour.
Later, when they’ve quit with the kissing, but are still touching, stretched out together on the couch, Justin confesses. “This is all Lardo’s fault. She suggested that you didn’t date guys because you were hot for me.”
Adam’s huge hand rests, still and warm over Justin’s hipbone. “Bitty helped. He skyped me last night and we talked for a long time about what was going on. How I felt. And what I should do when you got back.” He rolls him closer so that their chests touch. Justin curls up a little under Holster’s chin. He’s still built like fucking Thor. “He made me promise to go over tonight and tell you the truth. He pulled out the watery eyes.”
“Man, the watery eyes are so unfair.”
“Tell me about it. I think they conspired.”
“We need new friends.”
Adam ducks his head down to kiss the top of Justin’s. “We do.”