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It’s Saturday night, the campus alive and electric after a week of classes and part-time jobs and internship responsibilities and tedious research and student org meetings. It’s buzzing with nightlife, an undercurrent of heavy bass seeping from the strip of bars, an undulation of numerous, chaotic rhythms that confuse Adam’s heartbeat and make him feel apart from himself somehow; his heart a separate entity away from the cage of his ribs and the casing of his skin.
There’s something wild about the students that pass them, heads thrown back in loud, unhinged laughter. Logically, Adam knows they are whole, contained beings like himself, like Gansey. But somehow they seem bigger than his perception allows, all of them merging together, bursting at the seams of their eyes and mouths; so demandingly present that they are difficult to comprehend.
Gansey is one of them, Adam thinks, watching his best friend as the other strides a step in front of him. Gansey's entire being is kinetic, arms held above his head like they belong to the moon and the stars. He holds his palms to the night air, fingers spread like he’s reaching to join the constellations, his legacy preserved in a past that’s since bypassed their present and already embedded itself in the sky above their heads.
Adam feels trapped in Gansey’s gravity, drawn to the cadence of his bounding steps, drawn to his princely gait and kingly stance as Gansey stops suddenly at the center of the expansive campus courtyard. Adam’s eyes trace the breadth of the other boy’s shoulders, the way the October wind ruffles his hair and lifts the collar of his jacket just slightly.
He’s a paradox, a double image. A boy and a king. Young and old.
Something pulls taunt behind Adam’s breastbone. A confusing emotion that’s close to envy but stops somewhere near blatant admiration. As Gansey tilts his head back and back and back, spreading his arms wide to this night and this life, Adam has to convince himself that the Gansey before him is real and a part of his attainable world and not simply a mirage of all he’s ever envisioned in his greatest aspirations.
“I love this city and I love this night and— God.” Gansey pauses and lifts his head to look back at Adam, bright-eyed, the universe condensed to fit his irises. He looks at Adam like he can’t quite bring himself to stop; like despite the cloudless night, galaxies and constellations a beautiful chaos above their heads, Adam is the most wondrous thing between the stars.
“Adam.”Gansey says, breathing Adam’s name with the same emphasis he’d placed on God, invoking the higher being and the boy with the same desperate urgency, “Adam.” he repeats simply, as though he’s contained all meaning in the two syllables. Adam looks at him expectantly, waiting for a translation, waiting for the give of the other’s eyebrows, the quirk of his mouth. He waits for Gansey to speak in a language that he can understand, a language that’s theirs and no one else’s.
Gansey turns on his heel, ungraceful, off-balancing himself and suddenly the double image focuses to singularity in Adam’s mind.
He sees the tail of the other's sweater untucked from his jeans, the way one sleeve bundles at his elbow while the other cuffs at his knuckles, the pink at the tips of his ears and his nose, the wind flushing his cheeks with brilliant color. He sees the Gansey who burns himself on bowls of tomato soup, fresh from three minutes in their grimy microwave. He sees the Gansey who consistently forgets his umbrella and returns to their common room at late afternoon a heaping, soggy mess. He sees the Gansey who hums slightly in his sleep, when he does sleep, soft and imperfectly off-key.
He sees Gansey as eighteen, not a day older or younger than the boy pacing towards him. He sees his best friend, ridiculous, and marvelous, and every definition that lies between.
“I just—” Gansey pauses, a full-stop between what he wants to say and what he believes he’s allowed. Adam raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest. Gansey begins to reach out but doesn’t complete the motion. Opens his mouth but doesn’t speak.
“Gansey.” Adam says, swallowing hard. The other’s name feels heavier that usual in his throat. It’s this night, the liminal space of reality and non-reality that they’ve somehow stumbled into. Where Adam is Adam and Gansey is Gansey but also not. Something feels charged in the way Gansey himself is charged, the same charge that begins to spark under Adam’s skin as the other’s eyes drift over the features of Adam’s face like he’s put them to memory but could never pass up the opportunity for more practice. Adam clears his throat, startling them both out of the lull of the moment, “Just say it. Whatever you want to say.”
Adam can see Gansey’s tongue working worry circles against the inside of his cheek. Slowly, as if hardly trusting himself, he says, “You know how much you mean to me, don’t you?”
The words work themselves into a furious knot in Adam’s mind, his subconscious attempting to separate the words from the strained expectancy in Gansey’s tone. Adam doesn’t let himself think the gaze Gansey settles on him is of longing, barely bridled in the twitch of the other's fingers at his sides.
Adam shrugs, noncommittal as his gut does something complicated beyond defining to any specific source. He glances over Gansey’s shoulder to the sprawling lawn, speckled with other students splayed in various states of intoxication and intimacy. Adam tugs the cuffs of his too-short corduroy sleeves as far as they’re capable, curling them in his fingers.
“Don’t you?” Gansey repeats, stepping closer. He smells like mint and the evening surrounding them. He smells like the Gansey of the moment and the Gansey Adam’s always known him to be. Adam tries to compromise the two in his mind and finds them both vastly the same and distinctly different. His gut does that same complicated motion, close to fondness, closer to dread. Gansey’s words drip with question and Adam’s mouth is dry of an answer.
It’s the feeling of impending doom, he realizes. The knowledge that he’s going to screw this up, whatever this is, before it even begins.
“Do I?” Adam asks, a question for a question. He can't seem to get his arms to unlock from themselves, can’t seem to move towards Gansey as Gansey moves towards him.
Adam lets Gansey lift a hand to cup his cheek. He feels the thin layer of calluses on his palms, cool and coarse on his cheeks. Adam closes his eyes and sucks in a breath slow through his nose. Up close, he can feel Gansey’s adoration radiating from him, too blinding to process, so he doesn’t. A bad habit.
“I want you to.” Gansey replies, barely audible. Suddenly the bass from the bars seems nonexistent, the students apparitions and their chatter nonsensical. Suddenly everything in Adam’s world is Gansey, his palm cupped to his cheek, his breath close but not close enough. “God.” Gansey says again, voice breaking as his intentions unstitch from something composed to something ripped directly from his chest and placed in Adam’s care, “More than anything, Adam. I want you to.”
Adam leans in first because he knows Gansey won’t unless given permission. This is something Adam allows, something he wants in this pocket universe they’ve created.
He finds Gansey’s lips with a fluidity he’s never known himself to possess. He finds them like this isn’t their first discovery by his lips. On whatever circular plane they’re walking, Adam has kissed Gansey before. Perhaps not these same lips in a physical sense, but the same soul they inhabit.
There’s nothing rushed about the kiss, nothing that hurries them to its completion. It’s exploratory without being tentative, as if checking coordinates they’ve already written down, confirming their existence. Gansey’s thumb brushes against Adam’s temple and Adam’s arms finally unfurl to curl at the nape of the other’s neck, encircling the topmost knob of his spine. Their lips open against each other, and Adam hears Gansey breathe deep through his nose, reminding Adam of the same necessity.
Warmth settles heavy in Adam’s limbs, blanketing him in the otherwise cool night. He feels lazy, content in the moment, as if kissing Gansey fulfills some unnamed, physical need he had been depriving himself of to the point of deterioration. He indulges in it, drowns himself in it. He tries to engrave the feeling of total contentment in his memory in case he forgets, in case he’s never given the opportunity to remember it.
They don’t speak afterwards.
They let the night carry the kiss in its memory, let it preserve itself in the shallow roots of the grassy courtyard where in two months it’ll bury itself under snow and freeze to permanence until spring. They go back to their dorm where Adam shucks off his jacket and shoes near his desk and Gansey does the same but while also fishing for his cell phone in the back pocket of his jeans, making a comment about how they should have gotten food while they were out.
Neither of them say how the thought couldn’t have possibly crossed either of their minds out there in the October air. They don’t speak about how still they feel the ghost of each other’s lips opening to their wanting mouths. They don’t speak about how they still bristle with the need of it, the craving to satisfy the gnawing restlessness that’s since pitted itself under their ribs.
Gansey asks Adam if he wants pizza or Chinese takeout. Adam tells him to choose while he showers. When he returns, Gansey informs him that he decided on neither, and Adam replies that he wasn’t hungry anyway.
When Adam sits next to Gansey on the futon, flushed from the shower, hair wet and dripping minuscule droplets from his hairline down his spine, they don’t say anything, but Gansey settles his index finger in the crook of Adam’s.
They don’t say anything, but Adam allows himself the indulgence of Gansey’s finger entwined with his.
They don’t say anything, but finally, they don’t have to.