Work Text:
The stranger is on the train this morning, too.
Essek doesn’t notice him immediately. His phone buzzes in the pocket of his coat as he climbs on the car, out of the rain and into the warm, smelly, painfully bright interior, a moment before the signal chimes and the doors close.
It’s a crowded day. Essek might be a public transit novice, but he’s been learning that some days are more passenger-heavy than others. If this goes on, he’ll need to change his alarm to anticipate that. He ignores the wave of nausea that overcomes him at the thought of pushing his 5:50 alarm further back.
Before he’s had time to hang onto anything, the train lurches forward, nearly making him bowl over.
“Apologies,” he says to the commuter he knocked into while trying to balance himself and his backpack. He probably sounds more resigned than apologetic.
A pair of blue eyes blink at him from the phone the other passenger is holding in one hand. The other is wisely wrapped around the overhead railing. Not one of the plastic handles that dangle from it, which would still be uncomfortably high for Essek: the tall bastard is clinging to the metal bar itself.
The next moment, irritation is quickly replaced by recognition: it’s the train stranger.
‘Stranger’ is the wrong word for him, actually. At this point, after meeting for five days straight on the southbound Northeastern at the same ungodly time in the morning, Essek is aware that strictly speaking they’re not strangers anymore. But they’re surely not acquaintances either, since they’ve barely exchanged a glance. Essek isn’t sure the stranger even recognizes him.
He opens his mouth to put a little more effort in his apology, but before he can make a fool of himself, the stranger’s blue eyes crinkle in a smile. “I’ve been there many times,” he says in a warm baritone. “My friends say you get train legs after a while, but I’ve been taking this line for years and I haven’t cracked it yet.”
None of those words makes any sense to Essek, who stares back wondering if he hasn’t hit his head without realizing.
“You know, like sea legs.” The stranger slips his phone in a pocket of his long brown coat, lets go of the railing and stands for a moment without holding onto anything, swaying along the movements of the car. His hair is long enough he can tuck it behind his ears, Essek notices.
Then he grips the railing again, expertly anticipating a curve, and catches Essek around the shoulders with the other arm before Essek can lose his balance. It’s so smooth, and the arm is gone so soon, that Essek is left questioning if it even happened.
“My friends usually catch the T-line, though,” the stranger specifies in a casual tone. “Not as old and twisty as the Northwestern.”
“I see,” Essek says as soon as he catches his breath again.
He tears his eyes away from the lanky, kind, odd stranger, looking around for a handle. He’s surrounded by people, either chatting or looking at their phones. Almost everyone is taller than him, a fact he’s used to by now but that never ceases to irritate him. Gripping the nearest gritty pole with the peeling paint would require elbowing his way to it. Neither idea is attractive.
He turns towards the stranger again, just in time to see him raise an elbow. It’s such an incongruous, unexpected gesture that Essek needs a moment to understand what it is: an offer.
“Or I can keep catching you at every bend,” the stranger says in good humor. His smile is faint, almost shy. It makes Essek feel as if they’re sharing a joke. It’s disconcerting. “I don’t mind, but I should warn you I am not particularly dexterous and I might miss you.”
Essek’s phone vibrates in his pocket again, and the floor under his feet sways dangerously. With a huff of disbelief at his own self, he finally hooks a gloved hand around the stranger’s elbow. “This is disgraceful,” he says, looking at the crowd as he tries to scrape some dignity back together. “How do they expect to cram all these people in three cars?”
“It’s just a Friday,” the stranger observes calmly. “Tonight will be worse.” He laughs at Essek’s dismayed expression, but not in an unkind way. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I should hope not,” Essek finds himself saying. He is looking at the stranger’s lapel, which is at eye level for him. The brown coat is old but clearly well-cared for, and the scarf that covers the stranger’s neck has big, irregular stitches. Essek realizes after an embarrassing amount of time guessing the designer or brand that it must be hand-made.
“You won’t be joining us for long, then?” the stranger asks. It’s an idle question, the kind Essek recognizes as small talk.
His phone buzzes again, and he huffs. “Excuse me,” he says, twisting his free arm around to fish it from his pocket.
As he thought, it’s Jester again. Trying to mask his exasperation, he clicks the screen off and puts the phone back where it was.
“I wasn’t joking when I said you get used to it, after a while,” the stranger says.
“I would really rather not,” Essek snaps, more harshly than he intended.
The train slows down and stops to let a few people down and even more up. Before the car is filled up again, though, Essek slips his hand from the crook of the stranger’s elbow and steps aside, reaching a handle of his own.
He takes his phone so he can answer Jester, and doesn’t look at the stranger anymore, with his ironic eyes, frumpy coat, and hand-made scarf. He doesn’t want to risk seeing annoyance — or, worst of all, sympathy — on his long, kind face. It’s a while before Essek looks up again, mindlessly checking the stop on the overhead monitor, and he finds him gone.
Essek spends a horrible weekend, and not just because his workload is like a hydra, three new tasks sprouting from the severed head of one. He’s also terribly distracted, and for once it isn’t entirely Jester’s fault, even though his best friend keeps texting him.
By the time Monday comes around, he’s resigned to catch up on work during his hour-long commute; that is, if he can find a place to sit down and a way to prop his laptop up. He forgoes breakfast and shuts the door of Verin’s apartment fifteen minutes before his usual time. He’s already halfway across the five minute walk to the train station when he notices the absence of his cane, which he had intended to bring with him today.
The 7:15 train should already be at platform 6 when he makes it there at 7:01, according to the huge analog clock hanging from the metal archway above the ever-changing timetable. Essek maneuvers around the crowd that always seems to be assembled beneath the timetable and speeds towards his usual platform, where the southbound Northeastern is indeed waiting for him. His knees and hips are not happy about the pace he’s kept, and he’s slightly out of breath when he gets close enough to see it was all for nothing: he can already spot people standing through the open doors.
If the twinge in his left hip joint is anything to go by, the next hour will be atrocious. He feels the sudden urge to cry, which he swallows down like a bitter pill.
As he anticipated, all the seats are taken, mostly by people, though some ill-mannered passenger is occupying one of them with a big leather satchel. Essek can’t help but stare at it for a moment, disbelief warring with anger inside him.
Then the satchel is taken away, and Essek’s attention caught by its owner. Essek blinks: it’s the train stranger. And he’s waving him over.
There’s a moment of stillness. They are making eye contact: Essek can’t very well pretend he hasn’t seen him. And his legs are killing him. So he moves in the stranger’s direction, trying not to grimace.
“Monday mornings are the worst,” the stranger says as Essek sits down next to him. “Pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look well.”
Even sitting, the stranger is taller than him: their shoulders are not even vaguely at the same height. To be fair, Essek’s are slumping. “I am—” he starts. The words doing fine refuse to leave his mouth.
“I understand.” When Essek looks at him skeptically, the stranger pats his own left knee. It’s a little awkward, with the satchel he’s now holding in his lap. The thing seems full to the point of bursting, and its balance precarious. “This one is very moody, especially when the weather is changing. I’m… sorry for assuming,” he backtracks immediately, seeing something in Essek’s expression that Essek probably shouldn’t have let him see. “I promise I’m not in the habit of diagnosing strangers on the train. But I’m doubly happy I saved you a seat.”
There are many things going through Essek’s mind, and none that he can actually put into words. Is this man a doctor? Should Essek be concerned by the fact he was in the stranger’s thoughts this morning? Is all of this a common human experience he’s just never partaken of before? His heart is beating fast and he can’t say if it’s fear or exertion or an imminent heart attack.
“Thank you,” he says eventually, with detached politeness.
The signal beeps and the doors close. As the train jerks into motion and pulls away from the station, they continue the journey in silence. Just to pretend to have something to do, Essek pulls out his phone and opens his most recent conversation. The screen is filled with a wall of text. Most of the bricks are from Jester.
Jester: also hes a professor, so hes super knowledgeable
Jester: you would rlly get along
Jester: i know ur reading my texts even if ur ignoring me i can see the checkmark
Essek: When has that ever stopped you, Jester?
Jester: just give him a chaaaaaance i also told him about u
Jester: hes totally into youuuuu ♥
Essek sincerely doubts his unfortunate counterpart in Jester’s matchmaking schemes is ‘into him’ as she claims, but even if it were true, that’s just another reason to keep avoiding the blind date his best friend is planning. Unlike many other things about Jester, this isn’t a habit: it’s the first time she’s tried so insistently to set him up with someone. Essek hopes that if he ignores her for long enough she will finally respect his boundaries.
He can almost hear her manic laugh at that last thought.
Closing the conversation, he sees a bunch of email notifications from his work account, which reminds him of his intention to work over the journey. The idea makes his heart physically sink somewhere in his stomach.
Five more minutes, he thinks. At the Archways stop, he will take his laptop out. His eyes are drawn to his left, where the stranger has knitted his long fingers together over the overstuffed leather satchel. The backs of his hands are freckled, dusted with fine copper hairs that are just a shade lighter than the chestnut brown of his hair. He’s wearing the same old coat, but this time Essek notices also the hem of a gray knitted sweater poking from one of the cuffs. It looks slightly felted after too much washing, but soft. Well-loved.
In the end he doesn’t wait five minutes before slipping his laptop out. The surface of the backpack is flat enough to provide support for the sleek, ultralight device, and soon Essek is typing up answers to the emails that piled up in his inbox overnight. He’s oblivious to the stops and departures around him, blind to the people shifting and sitting and standing up. The sway of the Northeastern is almost meditative, lulling him into a state of flow that he only emerges from when he casually hears the metallic voice of the announcer calling the stop before his.
With a small gasp, he closes his laptop and looks to his left. The seat next to his own is occupied by a small woman with dark hair and wireless earphones, who’s looking at a video on her phone. He looks around fruitlessly. The stranger left without a trace.
Something lurches in Essek’s chest in unison with the train’s graceless braking.
In the week and a half that Essek has spent as a commuter so far, he’s never met the train stranger at night. He assumed they simply clocked off at different times. But on Tuesday night, when the 20:35 train is mostly empty, he spots a familiar head of chestnut hair bent over a book in the stranger’s usual seat.
Essek stops in his tracks. The stranger hasn’t seen him.
He looks around. There are plenty of other seats. He could pick a different car, even.
The stranger’s head lifts when Essek stops next to him. “Is this seat taken?” Essek asks, pointing to the seat where the stranger’s old leather satchel lies.
The smile on the stranger’s face makes the corner of Essek’s own mouth quirk in reaction. It’s mostly out of self-consciousness, but also… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that, faced with the choice to be alone or interact with someone, which is usually a non-issue, he opted for the latter.
Still smiling, the stranger removes the bag and places it at his feet, then removes his left ankle from his right knee, politely tucking his long limbs to the side to make room for Essek. “Good evening,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this late.”
Essek could say the same. He slips his backpack from his shoulders and sits without taking off his coat. He glances at the satchel, which seems even more stuffed than usual. “Forgive my curiosity,” he says, “but what do you keep in that?”
The stranger’s laugh is deep and dense like honey. He tilts the book he was reading, which is now closed save for a finger he’s still keeping between the pages. “More of these,” he says, “and a lot of essays that sadly won’t grade themselves.”
Tilting his head to read the title, Essek arches his eyebrows. “Ancient Aeorian poetry,” he says. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
“Part of my curriculum.” The stranger seems uncertain whether to say more, so Essek puts on his best expression of polite but eager interest. “I teach the stuff.”
There’s no way around it: Essek is impressed. “Is there a huge request for Ancient Aeorian poetry, academically speaking?”
The stranger shrugs. “The Zemniaz philology course has a moderate affluence, since it’s a required subject for literature majors. As long as my students learn the staples — the three consonant shifts and all that jazz — the board allows me some leeway with the rest of the curriculum.”
“You teach at Soltryce,” Essek says.
The open admiration in his voice seems to fluster the stranger a little. “I’m not tenured. At least not yet.” He rubs his neck, distractedly slipping a hand under the scarf. “Maybe not ever. But I like the job. Not everyone is in love with glottology and consonant shifts like me, though, so I try to keep it interesting.”
“I took an elective in linguistics,” Essek finds himself saying. It’s been so long since the last time he’s thought about it, let alone talked about it with someone. He feels a strange excitement buzzing through him. “I couldn’t justify a literature course, but linguistics is closer to a science, is it not?”
The stranger’s eyes narrow, but whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t say it. “It very much is,” he replies. “Who was your professor?”
“It was in Rosohna. I doubt you know her.”
The stranger smiles. “Is Professor Olios still at the Tomes?”
“Yes, she is.” Essek shakes his head with an amazed smile. “I keep underestimating you.”
The stranger shifts in his seat to face him. His eyes are twinkling with amusement. “Oh? How else have you underestimated me?”
Suddenly aware of his blunder, Essek wills himself to not blush. His only recourse is to mirror the teasing tone of the stranger. “I would have largely downplayed your knowledge of Ancient Aeorian, if you’d asked me this morning.”
This makes the stranger laugh, which fills Essek with a bigger sense of accomplishment than any of the deals he’s closed today.
After dinner — which consists of a takeaway consumed with Verin on his brother’s couch — Essek retires to the guest room and opens up his laptop again. Instead of a spreadsheet, though, he opens a browser tab and searches the Soltryce Academy website.
Despite Essek’s experience with Jester’s hugs and the fact he even remembered to brace himself, the impact still almost sends him reeling.
“Hello, bestie!” She squeezes his middle. Essek wouldn’t be surprised to hear a rib crack. “It’s so good to see you, gosh, it’s been forever, how are you?”
He pats his best friend’s back before she finally lets him go. “We spoke last night on the phone.” They do so every night; when they can’t call, Jester leaves him long, rambling voice messages. Sometimes he falls asleep to them.
To describe Jester as the best thing that ever happened to him would be dramatic but not inaccurate. The woman’s cheer and generosity are only matched by her intrusiveness, but it was exactly her lack of any sense of boundaries that allowed her to crush Essek’s barriers and inextricably lodge herself in his life. Their Wednesday lunches are without a doubt the thing Essek looks forward to the most in his whole week.
“How’s your baby brother?” she asks after they’ve sat down. Her favorite table (the one close to the window and next to the dessert cart) was available, which put even more of a spring in her step.
Essek is busy breaking a breadstick in several tiny pieces. “Verin is fine. Busy, as always. Trying out a new diet.”
“Does it involve anything nice?”
“If you like chicken, then yes. It’s 99% chicken.”
Jester wrinkles her nose. “That’s a bit too much chicken. But it works! We had a watch party last Saturday. He was amazing during the game.” She steals a bit of breadstick and speaks with her mouth full, catching the crumbs with her free hand. “We have lots of watch parties, by the way. Also dinner parties. All kinds of parties. We watch old movies sometimes, too. You should definitely come, one time.”
This is a song they’ve been singing for the entire duration of their acquaintance: Jester trying to cajole Essek into joining her large, loud, colorful, happy group of friends, Essek politely but firmly refusing.
“I am very busy, but thanks,” he says, bringing a breadstick bit to his mouth. This restaurant makes the best olive and walnut breadsticks he’s ever had in his life.
“You know, I’m glad you’re, like, reconnecting with your brother and everything,” Jester says, “but I wish you moved in with me. We would have so much fun.”
“You would have so much fun,” Essek corrects her, softening his reply with a smile.
“Aw, come on!”
Normally, Essek would deflect. But he loves her, and she deserves the truth. “You live with six other roommates,” he reminds her calmly, “plus all the people you host on a whim. Moreover, you live farther from my office than Verin does, and the train station is nowhere near your apartment.”
Jester pouts. “It would still be fun. Hey! How do you like taking the train? Have you met anyone interesting?” She wiggles her eyebrows.
For a moment, Essek considers telling her about the train stranger. But it feels strangely personal, and he wouldn’t even know how to talk about it. Are they acquaintances? Friends? He doesn’t even know the man’s name. “Commuting is not a social gathering,” he says eventually.
Thankfully, Jester immediately jumps to the next topic. “Do you have a favorite seat?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Oooh! Have you got train legs yet?”
Essek almost drops his breadstick. “What did you just say?”
“Train legs! Like sea legs, but for trains. I like to pretend I’m surfing when I ride the train!” She raises her arms, almost knocking the tray out of a poor server’s hands.
As she apologizes in her unique Jester way, Essek tunes her out and slowly reaches some conclusions. By the time she focuses on him again, she has forgotten all about train legs.
“How are you going to get to work tomorrow?”
It takes a moment for Essek to register the question, mostly because he’s focused on the email he’s writing. His typing speed slowly decreases to a stop. “The usual way,” he replies, looking up from the screen. “Why?”
On the seat beside him (that Essek now thinks of as ‘the stranger’s seat’ just like his favorite seat is ‘his seat’), the man shakes his head. “You don’t know about the strike? I’m glad I brought it up.” He looks serious. This is not a joke.
“Excuse me,” Essek says. “What?”
“It’s a proud Rexxentrum tradition to have strikes on Fridays every now and then. To keep us on our toes.”
His attempt at humor, which normally would have made Essek reply with the same level of irony, this time meets worried incomprehension. Noticing that, the stranger closes the book he was reading (a monograph on the Codex Forenius) and turns towards him a little. “You really don’t have a plan?”
“I didn’t know about this until ten seconds ago.” Essek would normally make up an excuse, but he’s completely out of his element here. Unlike someone else. He turns towards the stranger again. “What will you do?”
He shrugs. “Drive to work, I assume.”
Essek deflates. Of course. That’s not an option for him. “I could take a cab.”
The stranger grimaces. “Like everyone else who will have the same idea.”
Trying not to panic, Essek looks at him. “Any suggestion is welcome,” he says, and he means it. If the stranger he’s going to suggest he takes a hot air balloon to work, Essek might look into it.
He lights up when the stranger looks about to speak, then frowns when he changes his mind.
“Please,” Essek says. “I cannot take a day off.” Someone on the seventeenth floor would have a conniption, and he would probably be fired.
“If it doesn’t make you uncomfortable…” the stranger says slowly, then hesitates. “Don’t feel pressured into accepting just because I’ve asked.” The expression on Essek’s face might be eloquent, because he finally gets to the point. “You could carpool with me.”
Oh.
“I’m going to make the trip anyway. We should leave a little earlier than normal, the traffic on the interchange is going to be awful, but I can try and leave you where it’s most convenient for you in the city. And then pick you up again at night, of course, if that works for you.”
For the second time that night, Essek needs a moment to process the words and turn them into ideas that he can consider or discard. Question upon question pile up in Essek’s mind. Why is the stranger offering? Why does he commute every day by train if he has a car? What should Essek say?
When Essek looks at him, the stranger is looking at him with a doubtful expression, as if waiting for a refusal.
“What time do you think we should leave?” Essek asks.
“How long have you been seeing him?”
It’s too late in the season to have a beer on the balcony at this hour, but the sunset from Verin’s apartment makes it worth it.
Essek accomplishes the feat of rolling his eyes while taking a sip from his bottle. Trust his brother to immediately jump to the worst conclusions. “I haven’t been seeing anyone.”
Since Essek moved (was forced to move) in, he’s rarely seen Verin around the house, and when he does, his brother is usually too exhausted from training to do anything but crawl into bed. Essek has had to admit he never took Verin’s career seriously, but now he sees firsthand how much it takes out of him.
On the rare evenings when Verin is not at the gym or on the football field and Essek isn’t working late, they usually have drinks on the couch while they ignore whatever’s on TV, or on Verin’s balcony, which is actually more like a terrace. Another thing that made Essek reconsider his dismissive attitude towards his brother’s job, since an apartment this large and comfortable can’t have been cheap.
The chairs are large wicker numbers, with thick, fluffy padding. The view from the seventeenth floor is also nice, high enough that the view of the starry sky isn’t completely ruined by the bright street lamps that line the paths in the park below.
There’s a whole minute of quiet following Essek’s reply. Unlike his brother, though, Verin is patient. He got it from Father. Irritation builds until Essek decides he doesn’t care for it, and swallows it down with another sip of beer (a foul drink he’s unfortunately acquiring a taste for). “Two weeks,” he says.
“Two whole weeks,” Verin repeats, arching his eyebrows. His muscular legs, inexplicably bare despite the chill, are propped on a spare chair, crossed at the ankles. “That’s your longest relationship yet.”
“I see him on the train,” Essek says tiredly. “It’s not a relationship if neither party has a choice.”
“But you’re going out tomorrow.”
“He’s giving me a ride to work.” Keeping his tone neutral is not an effort. Essek’s best friend is Jester Lavorre: if he got riled up easily, he wouldn’t have lasted a day. “I was just informing you that my timetable might vary tomorrow because of traffic.”
Verin cranes his neck to look at the book in Essek’s lap. He doesn’t even know why he carried it outside, since it’s too dark to read. “What’s that?”
“Poetry.”
“Since when do you read poetry?”
“Since when do you care about what I read?”
“Mom put all your books in storage,” Verin replies, changing tack. “You complained about it a lot.”
Mother did put all of Essek’s books in storage, and a lot more of his things beside those, when, without giving notice, she emptied the apartment her eldest son had been living in, effectively evicting him. The place is technically owned by the family, and she has the right to operate renovations on it whenever she pleases. The complete disregard for the disruption it caused in Essek’s life was not taken into consideration at any point.
He’s lucky Verin had a spare room and isn’t the kind of brother who holds grudges. Except for a quick, polite chat at the odd family reunion, they hadn’t talked for years before Essek called him from the curb in front of his apartment building. ‘Who died?’ was his first question when he answered Essek’s phone call.
Essek sighs. He supposes he owes Verin a little. “He’s teaching a course on Ancient Aeorian poetry at Soltryce.” He tilts the book so Verin can see the cover. “I expressed my interest, and he insisted I read this.”
“Oh.” Verin sounds genuinely surprised. “I was absolutely just taking the piss a minute ago, but it sounds like you really made a friend.”
“I have friends.”
“Jester doesn’t count. She could befriend this chair. I mean it, Es.” Verin’s tone is not sarcastic anymore now. “You hated commuting.”
“I still do.”
“Sure.” This sarcasm, they both got it from Mother. “Don’t mess it up.”
Essek sighs. “Yes, coach.”
In order not to miss the 7:15 train, Essek normally crosses the park at a brisk walk — or the closest he can manage if it’s a bad pain day. This morning, as he walks to the train station where a car is waiting for him, Essek takes his time.
There aren’t a lot of people usually, except for a few joggers and dog owners. It’s earlier than usual, too early even for Verin’s morning run: he’s alone today. Dawn is half an hour away. He isn’t looking forward to the winter months, when he will go out and come back home in the dark, but for now he has a lavender sky, a few cottony clouds, the mist that lingers on the pond. His shoes crunch the gravel, whisper on the grass he prefers to the dirt path, thunk satisfyingly on the wooden bridge. Unknown birds sing and call each other from the trees, and something wails plaintively far away.
Here, where nobody can see him, Essek allows himself to find things beautiful.
There is only one car parked in front of the station, an old, beaten up baby-blue beetle. Nothing about it fits the idea Essek has of the stranger, but when he looks at the driver he sees his familiar profile. The sense of calm that had surreptitiously made itself at home in his chest suddenly vanishes, replaced by the realization he’ll have to spend hours in that small car alone with the stranger.
It feels like something a little to the left of fear.
Whatever it is, it’s not rational. Essek grabs the handle of the passenger seat’s door. The thing doesn’t budge, but the rattling gets the attention of the stranger, who looks up from his phone and leans over to open the door from the inside.
“Sorry, it’s broken,” he says as Essek removes his backpack and takes a seat. “I always mean to get it fixed, but I never carry people around since…” He gestures towards a random direction. “Since my best friend moved to another city. Sorry. Hallo, good morning.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be cheaper to just get a new one?” Essek throws a cautious look to the tape keeping the rearview mirror in place, and to the cassette player. It has a cassette in it. At least one thing in this car might still be functioning. “Good morning,” he adds, feeling suddenly hot. The walk’s fault, no doubt.
The stranger smiles at him, and for a moment the soothing feeling that everything is mysteriously, inexplicably going to be okay is back. “Hallo,” he repeats, less frantically, more full of the simple pleasure of seeing Essek again. Or at least that’s what it looks like. “It occurred to me we should have exchanged numbers last night, in case of an emergency. It would be good to have a way to contact each other, in case anything happens tonight.”
As the car comes alive coughing and purring, Essek saves a new contact in his phone. His thumbs hover over the keyboard for a moment before typing in Train Stranger.
Having someone’s phone number isn’t odd per se. Neither is riding in a car with another person. Both things feel momentous.
They talk. The strange, electric silence of the first few minutes is dotted by logistics (“Are you cold? Traffic is always a nightmare. Sorry, she’s old but I promise the brakes will work.” “I’m fine. I can see that. I dearly hope so.”), and then other observations follow: isn’t the sky beautiful at this time? Almost worth waking up at 5:30 for?
And then, “I haven’t always lived in this city, but sometimes I feel like I did.”
Essek, who’s warm but too comfortable to take off his coat, turns from the window to look towards the driver’s seat. “I’ve always thought you were from here,” he says, thus willingly offering both this assumption and the fact that he does, when he’s not with the stranger, think about him.
“The village I was born in is not far away from here.” The blinker click-clacks, keeping the tempo of their slow merging. The stranger was right: traffic is atrocious. They stop after five seconds, surrounded by other cars. “I got into a special school program when I was very young.”
“Gifted kid?” Essek asks, and his sad, knowing smile is returned. They’re stuck: there’s nothing to pay attention to on the road. Cocooned in his coat, Essek feels like a child listening to a bedtime story. “How old were you?”
“I was admitted at the Soltryce Academy at 15. Burned out at 19, when people usually enroll. The irony was not lost on anyone. In the end, with all that head start, I only graduated five years ago.”
Essek straightens up a little. “Really?” The stranger’s expression is sheepish, so he adds quickly, “I am impressed. Not just that you were a senior student and are already a teacher, but because most people wouldn’t have gone back.”
The stranger smiles weakly, but at least he doesn’t look ashamed anymore. Only a little sheepish, endearingly so. “It tells you something about my sense of self-preservation, ja?”
Unprompted, Verin’s words from last night pop up into Essek’s mind. How long have you been seeing him? Not long, it feels: it’s like Essek were truly seeing him just now. How long has he been seeing me?, Essek wonders.
Friendship has never been something Essek is, or was, interested in becoming proficient in. But he instinctively senses that there has to be a give and take, in these sorts of moments. The stranger has offered something about himself. Essek thinks about what he can give in return.
“I hate my job,” he says. He doesn’t realize how true it is until he says it out loud.
“What’s your job?” the stranger asks. “Is it spreadsheets? It must be. You always have one open.”
Essek snorts. “Something like that. I’m a corporate financial advisor in merges and acquisitions.”
The stranger visibly tries not to wince. “Condolences.”
“It’s what all my family does. Except my brother.”
“The black sheep?”
“Something like that,” Essek says again. “Except that everyone likes him. I never thought I had a choice until he went and did his own thing, but then it was too late.”
“These assumptions don’t come from nowhere,” the stranger says gently.
It’s not your fault for not realizing, Essek hears. He hums and burrows a little deeper in his seat. “Regardless, there has never been any doubt on the career I would choose, or that I would excel at it. And I do,” he clarifies. “I’m very good at what I do.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
Essek is almost uncomfortably hot now, but for some reason his fingers are freezing. He sticks them between his thighs. The car in front of them moves, and they inch forward.
“It’s easier, in a way, to have the choice taken from you. Sometimes having too many directions to pick from is worse than having only one.”
“Paralysis and inertia,” Essek murmurs. Words that should only make sense in his head, but the stranger nods.
“If you could go back…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, letting Essek free to pick it up or ignore it.
“It will sound weird,” Essek says slowly, cautiously stepping into the space the stranger left him, “but I’ve never thought about it.” He couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford to wish for it, more specifically. The impossibility would have killed him long ago.
“Would you do me a favor?”
The impulse to say yes without question scares Essek. He catches himself just in time.
The stranger must be able to hear the unsaid, because he goes on. “Would you think about it now?”
A car is a much more intimate space than a train, but just as liminal. In this bubble, Essek lets his eyes close and drifts off, half thinking, half dozing, detached from reality, not dreaming but almost, following his thoughts wherever they may go. As he does, the radio is turned on, at a low volume, its voice a pleasant background noise, lulling him even more in this floating state of consciousness.
When the car stops again, this time at the congested toll station, Essek says, “I’d be a historian. Or a linguist, like you.”
There’s no surprise in the stranger’s expression. “Archaeology, maybe?”
The thought, sudden like an explosion, is so bright he can’t stare at it directly.
“Did you know Soltryce has the best antiquities department in the continent?”
“I don’t see what difference it would make.”
The stranger pauses, visibly thinking, before he says, “Forgive me for assuming that you’re not holding back for a lack of material means. You do a complicated job that I’m sure pays well. Why, then?”
“Why am I not upending my whole life and everyone’s expectations to follow a pipe dream?”
A shrug. Yes, it means. Why not?
Essek, who’s also good at hearing the unsaid, looks out the window. The profile of the city is hazy and powdery against the orange-peel horizon.
“There are many senior students every year. I was one, and I’m teaching a few currently. You’d be surprised at how many people get fed up with their disappointing lives and try to change them. Most times, they succeed.”
These assumptions are making Essek a bit peeved now, even though (or especially because) they’re right. “Who said I’m disappointed in my life?”
The stranger lifts his hands from the wheel in a conciliatory gesture. “I’ll stop questioning your life choices, sorry. We can talk more about my mistakes for a while, if that makes you feel better.”
It wouldn’t, and they don’t. In the end, they spend the rest of the journey — an hour, give or take — listening to the radio and exchanging harmless comments. Essek should find it inane and boring, but as the car pulls up next to the curb in the business district, he’s disappointed it ended so soon.
According to the clock on his phone, he’s fifteen minutes late. Instead of getting out and rushing to the office, he turns towards the stranger and stares for a moment. He desperately wants to say something. Even talking about nothing, who’s always been awkward and tricky to master for him, was easier than trying to say something meaningful now.
The stranger saves him from himself with a kind smile. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Essek nods, defeated. “See you tonight.”
Essek: Good evening, Jester. I need to ask you something
Essek: (Please don’t make me regret this, and don’t get excited. I just need to double check something)
Essek: Have you talked to your friend recently?
Essek: You know the one I mean.
Essek: Did he give you permission to share his telephone number with me?
Messaging Jester on Saturday night hasn’t been his wisest choice, because it means spending the night staring at the ceiling while waiting for his best friend to come back to her phone at the end of whatever activity fills her calendar tonight. He somehow ends up falling into an unsettled sleep plagued by stress dreams.
He wakes up on Sunday morning to a 3:36 text. Its contents confirm what Essek already knew, deep down, and his whole body starts shaking before he sternly tells himself to stop. It almost works.
He spends the day crafting a message that he ends up sending way too late. It’s impulsive and stupid and unnecessary. But he has allowed others to control his existence for too long, mindlessly following the rails someone else laid down for him. And although the series of coincidences that have brought him here feel like fate, like some strange magic, he doesn’t feel trapped by it. Much like a stranger’s encouragement to think about what Essek really wants, they feel more like an invitation.
The answer comes three minutes after he sends the text. That night, Essek falls into a long, deep sleep with his phone still clutched in his hands and a smile on his face.
The 7:15 southbound Northeastern is not the only thing waiting for him on platform 6 the next day.
Essek’s heart is threatening to beat itself out of his chest as he gets on the train. His eyes scan the crowded car, and for a moment fear supersedes everything else. Blood is rushing in his ears louder than the din of the station.
Then the stranger, who hasn’t been a stranger for a while, sees him and smiles. The moment is still and quiet, a bubble of familiarity. For the first time in a long time, Essek feels exactly where he’s supposed to be.
“You got my text,” the stranger says when Essek reaches him.
Breathless, Essek takes the seat that was saved for him. Yes, he got the text. He’s read the whole conversation between him and the stranger — all five messages of it — so many times he’s probably worn out his phone screen.
~ Friday ~
Train Stranger: class ran a little late, my students are brilliant and have many questions
Train Stranger: i’ll be waiting at the same spot as this morning
Essek: I’m still in the office, so no worries. I’ll meet you there.
~ Yesterday ~
Essek: This is Essek, but I think you already know. Our mutual friend Jester has been quite insistent I messaged you. Until very recently, I saw no reason to do that. I would like to meet and talk to you with no pretenses.
Train Stranger: Hallo, Essek. Would tomorrow morning at 7:10 at the usual place suit you?
Finally, Essek feels confident enough that his voice might work again. “You knew,” he says.
The stranger smiles apologetically. It always makes his eyes crinkle in a way Essek doesn’t think he’ll ever get over. “I glimpsed your conversation with Jester on your phone two weeks ago without meaning to. I’m sorry.”
Essek shakes his head — slowly, or he might faint. “It’s alright.”
“You also knew.”
“I suspected.” He could have made sure so many times: asking Jester the right questions, actually looking at the Soltryce website instead of closing the tab in a panic. “I was afraid of knowing the truth.”
The stranger looks at him with gentle curiosity. “Why?”
Essek’s thoughts have been running in circles trying to determine the answer to that very question. Here, on the train, in his seat, next to the person that gave him the confidence to try and push his life off the rails, it comes out of him as easy as breathing.
“I am tired of facts and numbers,” he says, looking straight into the stranger’s eyes in a way he’s probably never done before. “For once in my life… I wanted magic.”
The fact that he, an adult man with a job in finance, can say something like that with a straight face, is by itself a miracle. The stranger’s answering smile is another.
They look at each other for what feels like an eternity. Around them, people stand and sit, chat, talk on the phone, read, listen to music, do all the little things that make up all their little lives, unaware of the seismic shift that just occurred in Essek’s own.
The door signal pierces the bubble around them. The stranger starts as if waking up from a dream. “Well,” he says, “I think I better introduce myself.” He offers Essek his hand. “Hallo. I’m Caleb Widogast.”
Delight and fondness seem to bloom in Essek’s chest for the very first time, and maybe it’s true. With a smile he can’t seem to tame, he takes the stranger’s — he takes Caleb’s hand and shakes it solemnly. “I’m Essek Thelyss,” he says. And then, fully meaning it, “It’s very nice to meet you.”