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It starts as most annoyances start: with a blow to the head.
“Fuck, I am so sorry,” Random Assailant hisses quietly at Justin, scrambling to grab the hefty book that had just fallen, rather unceremoniously, on Justin’s head from the bookshelf behind him. They’re in the medical library, and while it’s no silent study in terms of the noises you are and are not allowed to make in there, it’s also an exam week. They get a few angry looks from their classmates all trying desperately to memorize cardiac physiology.
Justin blinks the stars out of his eyes and turns toward his apologetic attacker. “It’s okay,” Justin winces, rubbing his temple. “I played hockey in college, I’ve had way worse.”
It’s true: hell, Justin’s noggin has taken a bit of a beating through his years of varsity sport at Samwell. A random book to the head? Child’s play.
Random Assailant sticks out his hand to shake. His palm is about the size of Justin’s entire face. “Offensive lineman. I feel you, dude.”
Random Assailant sits down next to Justin and starts talking about being a varsity athlete in college, and while Justin is all for reliving glory days (God knows he thinks about his time at Samwell more often than not), he really, really needs to rock this exam and he’s nowhere near understanding Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. “I don’t mean to be a dick about it, but I’ve gotta get back to this,” Justin shrugs, gesturing toward his copy of The Only EKG Book You’ll Ever Need and a massive pile of flashcards and all his hopes and dreams of honoring Cardio.
“Cardio is fucking hard, right?” Random Assailant continues, and Justin thins his eyes at him.
Please leave, he says telepathically.
Justin’s phone buzzes against his desk. He doesn’t have to glance at it to know it’s Holster doing his perfunctory exam week check-in (a simple thumbs up emoji and a question mark; Justin always seems to respond with the skull emoji because that encapsulates his life these days). He can’t help but warm when he sees that Holster has added a new emoji to their usual pattern: the two guys holding hands emoji.
Random Assailant tilts his head at Justin’s smile. “Special lady?”
Justin makes a face. “It’s just Ho—” He cuts himself off because outside of hockey context, Holster sounds fucking weird. “My be—” he starts again, but best friend doesn’t really cover it. “It’s Adam?” Justin ends up saying, voice ending in a lilt like he’s asking a question and it sounds so fucking weird not to just call him Holster that Justin wants to bite his whole tongue off.
“Oh,” Random Assailant nods, pursing his lips. “I get it now. See you, man.”
Justin doesn’t even get his name, but he mostly doesn’t care because at last he can get back to EKGs and arrhythmias.
They finish Cardio and have a rager that rivals an Epikegster, which is fairly remarkable considering that basically every person in Justin’s class is a giant nerd. Justin donates his patented Tub Juice recipe which knocks most of his classmates on their ass (Crystal Light powder and lots and lots of Everclear are the two most important ingredients: everything else depends on what you have in your fridge).
“This is dangerous,” Abby tells him warmly, pointing at her cup and hooking an arm around his neck as she joins him out in the backyard where a punch of beer pong tables are going strong. Abby is five years older than Justin and hella fucking married but she chugs as well as any co-ed.
“Hell yeah,” Justin grins. “I need something to bleach my brain of cardiac malformations.”
“You know we’re gonna need that information for boards,” Abby reminds him, but Justin can’t think nine months ahead of himself. Instead, he stares out at the faces in the crowd he doesn’t recognize and fondly thinks of the time Bitty did his first ever kegstand. He likes parties like this, raucous and fun and exuberant after a job well done, but it’s obvious that having fun without his bros is just a little emptier.
So he calls Holster.
“Gotta talk to my boy,” Justin tells Abby, who nods and heads off to chill with some of the other older members of the class.
Choosing to go to med school in the States over Canada had been a tough call, but once he got the admit from Boston University the idea of leaving Massachusetts became unthinkable. Granted at the time Justin had thought Holster might be living in Boston with him, but that was solidly before Holster began the Great Job Hunt of Senior Year and hell, it might have been a little pie in the sky of him to think that they could spent their entire lives together, broing out and having fun.
Holster picks up on the second ring. “I hope you’re celebrating, bro,” Holster says warmly, and Justin can feel the grin across the line so strongly that he has to smile in turn.
“Bro, you know it,” Justin laughs.
Holster lives in New York City these days. He’s an economic analyst for Bank of America and whenever Justin asks him what exactly that entails, Holster says in a dull voice, “So many graphs.” It makes Justin sad sometimes, thinking about Holster in such a dull job, considering how un-dull Holster is as a person.
“Exam went okay, Rans?” Holster asks loudly over the phone. He’s always a little too loud and Justin has to hold the phone a little off his ear so that his ears don’t ring.
“It’s over,” Justin shrugs. “I think I passed.”
Holster laughs. “You probably got the best grade in the class, man. Don’t sweat it.”
Justin bites the side of his cheek and brings up what only his drunk self would ever bring up again: “You ever think about going to Myrtle Beach?”
It’s an old argument of theirs. Each summer between school semesters, they took some kind of road trip and chilling out at Myrtle Beach had been Justin’s goddamn white whale: Holster’s complaints that the South Carolina town was hella far had nipped his dream in the bud.
“But hella parties,” Justin had offered.
No dice.
“Myrtle Beach?” Holster laughs incredulously over the phone, and Justin’s chest tightens a little bit. “What are you talking about, dude?”
“We could still do it,” Justin slurs a little. “We could still make the trip. I have… like, a week’s vacation between boards and rotations this summer. You could take some sick days from work.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Holster finally submits in a clear lie to placate a drunk Justin.
The line is quiet. “Come on, don’t do that, man,” Justin groans.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Holster says. “I’ve got some work I need to finish.”
Things were a lot easier before they became real people.
“How’s the boy?” Abby asks him as Justin saunters up to the flip cup table.
“Stupid,” Justin shrugs.
“I believe there’s a saying along those lines,” Abby nods sagely, her braids bouncing as she tilts her head back and forth to an imaginary beat. “Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider?”
“Your genius, it astounds me,” Justin laughs.
“It should,” Abby grins, but she squeezes his shoulder in commiseration all the same.
Justin high passes Cardio and Integ and he honors Resp, Neuro, and Heme/Immuno which makes his mom really happy. Holster sends him a bottle of really nice whiskey after he honors Resp (it’s not like Justin brags about it, but he is pretty sure that Holster and his mom exchanged phone numbers at some point and now is part of the Justin Did Well In School phone tree) but they don’t talk much now that Justin’s in the thick of it for boards studying. Holster does his daily emoji check in, and Justin replies with his classic skull emoji as if to say, I’m still alive but it hurts to be this way.
Which is dramatic, obviously. But it’s a mindset his entire class is in.
Holster has taken to adding on a third emoji in their conversation: the biceps emoji.
You can do it.
“I can’t believe your semester’s fuckin’ over already,” Shitty sighs in jealousy.
“Yeah, but the USMLE—I mean, the boards aren’t for another couple of months, so it’s not really over,” Justin says miserably, pushing the food around his plate lamely. “It’s never really over.” They’re at their favorite tex mex place about equidistant between Harvard’s law campus and BU’s medical school and Justin hasn’t seen Shitty since before GU started. Justin has taken to measuring time by system. A system takes about a month and a half to complete. It’s been three systems since GU.
You do the math.
“I won’t ask you how studying’s going because I fucking hate when people ask me that,” Shitty says, rather wisely. “But I will say that I’m behind you one hundred fucking percent, brah.”
“Thanks, Shits,” Justin smiles. “Hey, you seen any of the team recently?”
Justin asks not to reminisce, but to distract from how utterly exhausted he is. It’s less energy for Justin to listen to Shitty tell him about how Bitty’s faring as captain, how Chowder is finally back together with Farmer after “several months of having goddamn shit fucking luck,” or how Lardo is putting together a new art show that they could “totally go to, if you’ve got any free time, brah.”
“What is this phrase, ‘free time?’” Justin says, eyes narrowing, and Shitty shrugs knowingly.
“You’ll get through this,” Shitty says with all the confidence Justin wishes he had.
Shitty gives him a long, more than a bro hug outside the restaurant before they depart. It’s weird, at first, and when Justin tries to pull away Shitty just clings to him and says, “No, nope, we’re gonna live in this here for a fucking minute.” So Justin relaxes into the hug, burrowing his face into Shitty’s long flow and closing his eyes tightly.
He’s not going to cry into Shitty’s hair because that’s definitely not buddies. He’s not going to cry at all because if he starts to cry, all the emotional armor he’s built over the past few months will fall away and he needs that. He needs to be strong and focused and resolute.
Justin is certain there are better ways to do it, to study and have a life at the same time. He just doesn’t know how. He’s not smart enough, probably.
“Don’t say that. You’re the smartest person I know,” Shitty replies, and Justin realizes that he’d been voicing his thoughts out loud. “You’re more than smart enough.”
It feels like Justin has been in full-on coral reef study mode for months when he overhears Abby and Ben whispering about him.
“—like, Justin needs to take a break,” Ben says from just around the corner. Justin stops in his tracks and listens, out of sight. “Poor guy looks like he’s gonna explode.”
“He’s just cranky because he hasn’t gotten laid in a while,” Abby soothes, and Justin raises an eyebrow. While it’s true he hasn’t gotten laid in a while, most of his med school friends just don’t understand how taxing, both physically and emotionally, being in this kind of frenzied state of study is on him. Yeah, everyone is under stress in his class, but Justin always manages to take it to some kind of next-level hellscape. It’s not his intention to make things harder on himself. It just happens. Holster had understood.
He sends Holster a preemptive skull emoji to check in. Still trucking.
“I guess that’s what happens in a long distance relationship,” Ben suggests and Abby hums in agreement, which is odd. Considering that Justin is very single. “Have you met the boyfriend?”
Boyfriend?
“No, but I’ve seen Justin’s profile pictures on Facebook. The guy’s big and blond and super cute,” Abby says proudly.
Justin backs away, forgetting about the lunchbox in the fridge that he’d especially packed for dinner full of goodies like leftover pad thai and three nectarines (okay, sue him for packing the remnants of what was left in his fridge, it’s not like he’s got time to shop for groceries). Retrieving said lunch box would mean confronting Abby and Ben and Justin would rather just sit by himself and try to process what he just heard.
By the time he settles back into his carrel in the library, Justin has decided not to think about why his friends think Holster is his boyfriend. Instead, before getting back into antifungal pharmacology, he allows himself the bizarre fantasy of imagining a world where Holster is actually his boyfriend.
It’s weird, but it’s not that weird.
Holding hands is fine, he’s done that with Holster before. They’ve slept in the same bed too on occasion, when mattresses had been scarce or bros had been way too drunk to care or when the Haus Ghosts had come a’haunting. A sudden image of Holster with a rose stem through his teeth flashes in Justin’s mind and he almost bursts out laughing. No, that doesn’t seem right. They’ve kissed, once, on a dare by Lardo. Justin vaguely remembers the sensation and can only recall the repulsive burp Holster had blown in his face immediately after the face-sucking.
Justin closes his eyes and thinks of Holster.
It’s weird, but it’s not that weird.
Justin almost buys a train ticket to New York the night before his USMLE.
“You should be sleeping,” Holster says so gently over the phone.
“Can’t sleep,” Justin says, all jitters and nervous energy. It’s mild in Boston at this point in the year, even in the pitch black darkness of the late evening, and Justin doesn’t even bring a coat with him: just his wallet and a few flashcards. “Won’t sleep until it’s done, I don’t think—”
“Where are you?” Holster asks. There’s a little bit of background noise: the noise of a comforter shifting, the click of a lamp being turned on.
“Train station.” It’s stupid, it’s self-sabotage, it’s everything Justin wanted to avoid, it’s setting himself up for failure. “I just wanted to see you, I guess.” Justin bites his lip a little. “I think this exam melted my brain a little.”
“Okay,” Holster says easily. “We can FaceTime while you walk home.”
Justin probably uses up most of his data for the month and the angle at which he holds his phone is atrocious from Holster’s point of view but he doesn’t care much. The only thing getting him through the next day is the sound of Holster’s voice. “You’ve got like thirty chins from this angle and I’m screenshotting like every three seconds, just FYI for your future embarrassment,” Holster laughs, his eyes crinkling at the edges.
“You’re going to be done in twelve hours,” Holster tells him. “And you’re gonna feel so fucking good.”
“Don’t you have like, a job to wake up for in the morning?” Justin asks after letting out a shaky exhalation. He turns the key to his front door and makes his way inside after a thirty minute walk through late spring Boston.
“Some things are more important,” Holster says simply.
The USMLE is an eight hour exam and Justin seems to shake throughout its entirety, his knee jerking in a bouncing beat under his desk enough to cause the proctor to come out and ask him to settle down. It’s eight hours of wringing his brain dry of any and all knowledge Justin managed to cram in there over the past two years of med school, over the past six months of intensive study, over the past three months of dedicated bootcamp.
It’s eight hours, and then it’s done.
He flies home to Toronto and sleeps for two days straight under his parents’ roof in his childhood bed. It’s a mattress that’s way too small for him so Justin has to curl himself up into a little shrimp ball to fit, but he doesn’t care much about anything beyond being unconscious for a long, long time.
He sleeps and eats and sleeps and when he wakes up, his father is sitting at the foot of his bed.
“I love you very much,” his dad says, squeezing Justin’s ankle.
“Okay,” Justin smiles. “I love you too.”
“You make us very proud,” his dad adds.
“Okay,” Justin says, clutching a little bit at his pillow. He’s still half-asleep, but that’s how his dad expresses affection and love most of the time: he get you just when you least expect it, when you’re at your most vulnerable. Justin thinks that it’s his dad’s sly way of having the upper hand in these odd, tenuous moments of emotional upheaval. “Good.”
Justin’s younger sister, Ilana, is coming home from New Jersey at long last after finishing up her junior year of college, so when the doorbell rings and Justin sprints to answer it, he’s not exactly expecting Holster to be standing there with a large duffle and a smug expression on his face.
“Hello,” Holster warbles. “It’s me.”
Justin doesn’t quite attack him, but Holster does drop his bag as they bro-hug it out on the front porch.
“I missed you,” Justin groans, and Holster nods, patting him solidly on the back.
“Let’s not do that again,” Holster says, and Justin is pretty sure he means not see each other for a long time and not the whole hugging thing, but Justin’s not one hundred percent sure so he backs off a little, letting Holster inside and closing the door behind him.
“Are you going to let him inside, Justin?” Justin’s mother calls from the family room.
They haven’t seen each other face to face since like, last summer, and it’s almost sensory overload to see Holster here in the flesh. Justin feels himself flushing thinking about the night before his exam when he’d almost bought that train ticket down to New York to see him.
“So,” Holster says. “How’s it going, Bon Jovi?”
It takes Justin half a minute to get the joke and Holster has to start doing some impressive air guitar but Justin laughs so hard he nearly cries.
“Wooooah, you’re halfway there,” Holster scream-sings and Justin smiles so widely it feels like his face is breaking.
They fuck around for the rest of the day, playing street hockey in the backyard with some old sticks of Justin’s and a well-worn net from Justin’s pee-wee days before jumping in the pool when Ilana finally arrives. Holster helps Justin’s mom make dinner and talks about how his job remains the most boring thing on the planet and Ilana and Justin set the table together while Justin prods Ilana for details about her last semester.
“Physics sucks and I’m so happy I never have to take it again,” she says solemnly, and Justin gives her a high-five.
“Amen to that,” Justin grins.
They set up an air mattress in Justin’s room for Holster and they talk about nothing for a long time. It feels good to just shoot the shit with Holster like they used to in the attic of the Haus. It feels like old times.
Justin wishes this could last forever.
“Any chicks?” Justin asks, and Holster narrows his eyes at Justin.
“Not really,” Holster admits.
“What, New York too small a dating pool for you?” Justin grins.
“Dick,” Holster rolls his eyes. “You?”
“Too busy,” Ransom shrugs, and Holster throws a pillow at him. “I mean. I did make a friend named Abby. She’s older and married, though.”
“Sucks,” Holster commiserates.
“No,” Justin corrects. “It’s not like that. She’s like… my med school mom. But like, cool.”
“So, she’s med school Lardo,” Holster thinks aloud, and Justin is weirded out by how right that is.
Justin falls asleep once the adrenaline of Holster’s here! finally starts to wear off. It’s good that they’ve been reunited: it feels like the world has finally righted itself on its axis. They’re a matched pair and no matter the distance, no matter how long it’s been, they’ll always be important to each other. The question is how that importance will evolve over time. Bros are forever, but this friendship feels like more than just a bro. Maybe Justin is reading into it, or maybe he’s been influenced by Abby and Ben, or maybe Justin is finally feeling the isolation of med school and wants something stable he can sink into forever.
Justin awakens to Holster’s hand on his shoulder. “Move over, the air mattress deflated,” Holster murmurs. Justin doesn’t overthink it, just scoots himself closer to the wall and lets Holster spoon around him in a sleepy haze. He tucks his knees up and Holster slots in behind him. Everything is warm and nice and Justin doesn’t mind when Holster throws his arm over Justin’s waist. The weight of him is oddly comforting and he knows there’s not that much space in his twin-size bed.
It’s the best night of sleep he’s had in months.
Woodbine Beach is a close drive and fairly easy to get to from Justin’s house, so they throw on some swim trunks (Holster ends up wearing an old pair of Justin’s with Spongebob Squarepants printed across them, and that sends them on a tailspin of Spongebob and Patrick impressions that make Ilana groan) and head out early in the morning to see if any beach volleyball games are going. There aren’t, but the beach is beautiful before noon, uncrowded and warm in the early summer like Canada is so unaccustomed. Holster brings an American football and they toss it around in the sand for a while arguing who’s going to come in second place in the Frozen Four (because obviously Samwell’s going to win, it’s just a matter of who they’re going to crush in the process).
Ilana is a great tagalong to have partially because she has a wicked spiral that Holster is incredibly jealous of but also because she finds a few of her local friends rather quickly. “I’ll text you later!” she shouts to Justin across the sand as she runs to meet a couple of girls in cut-offs and bikini tops.
Justin sits himself down by the sand and Holster follows, leaning back in a very paint me like one of your French girls pose that would usually make Justin laugh. Right now it’s making him want to swallow his own tongue.
“So,” Justin starts ominously.
Holster spins the tail of the football in the sand, carving out a small divot. “Yeah?”
He purposefully doesn’t look at Holster, just stares out at the sea in the faint hope that it will give him strength. “So everyone in my school thinks we’re dating?” Justin says with a half-wince. “And it’s super annoying because we’re not. So it’s all the rumor and none of the fun.” Justin says it as casually as he can. The last thing he wants to do is scare Holster off, so he thinks maybe, if treats it like not a big deal, things will work out. Or he can say it was all an elaborate joke.
Yeah, you thought I wanted to date you?
No, me neither.
All Holster does is huff out a laugh. “Yeah. My coworkers think you’re some kind of needy girlfriend.”
Justin puts his hand on his own chest and squawks in disbelief. “Needy?”
Justin finally looks at Holster, who is staring at Justin with a knowing smile and the hint of blush on his pale cheeks. “You know, I mostly came to Toronto to tell you that I’m moving to Boston. There's a Cambridge branch I'm transferring to. Trust me, it’s not for you, it’s because the humidity in New York City is brutal in the summer and my hair can only take so much.”
“Loser,” Justin smiles, and it feels like his heart might actually burst.
“You’re the loser.”
Holster puts his hand on the ground, wide and flat against the sand. In a moment of bravery, Justin links their pinkies together. It’s such a small gesture, but it feels enormous. Holster doesn’t move away, which feels equally enormous.
“Yeah?” Justin asks, tilting his head upward. “It’s not too weird?”
“Trust me when I say that nothing can be weirder than your sixty-something year old bossman figuring out that your best bro is also the love of your actual life. That was an awkward memo,” Holster says sagely and Justin just has to kiss him. It’s way, way better than the burp kiss, and it makes Justin tingle happily. It’s a wonderful mix of trust and happiness with an edge of romantic attraction and Justin could get used to feeling like this all the time.
“So we’re doing this,” Justin says, putting his head on Holster’s shoulder. Holster turns his head to press his lips against Justin’s temple.
“Yeah, bro,” Holster laughs easily. “Call me an environmentalist. I gotta protect my coral reef.”