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Lucia, Lucia. Come away with me, Lucia.
-The Ghost and Mrs Muir
They're driving to get ice cream late one night. It's summer break, and Holster's staying with Ransom and his family before they go back to Samwell. They're seniors this year; seniors and co-captains.
"Bro," says Holster when they're talking about this very thing. "This is going to be, beyond doubt, the best year of our lives to date."
"I know, bro, right?" says Ransom. "Like, it's as perfect as it's possible for everything to be. We're still rooming together, we're in the Haus, Bitty and Lardo are living with us, Jack and Shitty'll come by sometimes, we both have light courseloads, and we both have the C. It is going to be epic."
"So much more than epic!" Holster laughs. "They will write sonnets about this year! Long-ass, epic poetry! Odes singing of our glory!"
Laughing, Ransom glances at Holster. He's turned in his seat so he can look at Ransom head-on. His baseball cap is on backwards. He's wearing his glasses. His eyes are very blue. His body looks strong and soft and warm in his Samwell sweatshirt with his broad shoulders pressed to the window. He's smiling.
Realistically, Ransom knows that he didn't look away from the road for that long; he knows he was watching the road when the accident happened, and that there's no power in heaven or on earth that could change anything. That doesn't mean that the image he has in his head of Holster just then--- smiling sweet and gorgeous and like they're going to be young forever--- isn't overlayed with unbearable guilt.
It's a combination of a curve, wet leaves, a truck going twenty over the speed limit rear-ending them, and darkness. Realistically, Ransom knows there was nothing he could do.
As soon as it happens Ransom has a split second to see the airbag rushing at him and to know he's going to get knocked out. He doesn't feel it, exactly; it's more like a full-body sensation of simultaneously hitting the ground and going into freefall. He's not aware of his surroundings. All he knows is that he got knocked out, but he can't wake up. He struggles hard, pushes against it, and claws his way back towards his body.
When he fights it off (like waking from a deep, dizzying sleep) he manages to open his eyes. There's something warm and wet dripping into them, and he thinks it might be the rain. He's wrapped around the steering wheel, the airbag a thick weight against his chest and thighs.
He has to get out of the car. He knows this, but for some reason his brain is replaying a compilation of all the times people have commented on the fact that at parties and on the ice he and Holster always, always, always know where the other is without even looking. Stupid stressed-out probably-concussed brain.
He fights to move for a moment, panicking, before he remembers to unbuckle his seatbelt. It's stuck and Jack says, "You and Birkholtz should stick together at practices, okay? It usually takes a lot longer for two d-men to figure out how to predict each other like that." He manages to get the seatbelt unbuckled and to shove the airbag away, but the door's jammed. Or maybe it's locked. Fuck, he doesn't know. "We are never playing hide-and-seek with you two, okay," Shitty says as Ransom grips the handle and starts shoving his shoulder against the door. "It's like you have ESP! Or GPS!" Bitty laughs and Ransom lays down and kicks the door right off.
It's dark and raining and the ground is slick; Ransom doesn't want to think about other explanations for why his legs go out from under him when he tries to stand. He's limping and his whole body hurts but he half-runs, half-falls forwards and sees a red shape in the headlights that's probably Holster's sweatshirt.
Ransom doesn't know this, but years later Shitty will tell Lardo and and Jack and Bitty that the worst thing he's ever heard is Ransom's answer when Shitty gently asks, "Brah, are there any triggers we can avoid for you?" First Ransom tells Shitty he doesn't have any triggers. Then he thinks about it for another minute and says, "No, I take that back. There was this one time we had a bag of saline or something, and for whatever reason we needed it emptied. So one of the doctors poked a hole in it and let it drain out. I lost my shit. But really, nothing like that ever happened again. Guess I got over it." Shitty will never be able to forget the way Ransom says it, nonchalant and monotone.
Ransom gets over to Holster and it's--- it's--- it's bad. He's lying mostly on his back and it's bad. There's a lot of blood, like a lot--- more than Ransom realizes at first, because it's not until he's leaning over to check Holster's other side and his hand slips that he realizes the puddle he's kneeling in isn't rain.
He tries to pull his head together enough to stabilize--- stabilize--- stop the bleeding--- and then---
Sometimes when Ransom's studying he gets so caught in his own head, so trapped in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety and adrenaline, that if he just goes without stopping he retains less than if he takes a break every now and then. However, when he gets into a groove instead of a spiral, he can study for hours and hours and retain every bit of information. So far as he knows (so far as anyone else he's ever asked has been able to tell him), there is no discernible difference between these two states. And yet Holster always knows how to stop him when he starts spiraling out of control.
---And then Holster stops him like a brick wall.
He looks up at Ransom and chokes, "H-Hold me, bro? Just for a little while."
So Ransom does.
He lifts Holster's shoulders onto his thighs; cradles his head in his arms, holds on to his hand tight, tight. There's a terrible noise, and Ransom realizes it's him, crying too hard to scream.
Holster smiles up at him. Ransom can tell he's in a lot of pain, and he's so pale because all his blood is draining out of him and onto the cement. He touches Ransom's face with his fingertips, his face so close to Ransom's own as he curls over him, and he says, "Ransom, I love you, I love you, Ransom I'll never leave you, Ransom, I've always loved you best, Ransom, Rans, Ra-ans, Ran. . ." and then Holster dies.
Right there in Ransom's arms. Just dies. All the blood leaks out of him and his body stops working. His eyes go unfocused, and he stops breathing, and his faces goes slack, and the rain keeps falling, and Ransom holds his body tight and close like somehow that'll keep him here.
One time they were all talking, just goofing around, and the word 'cherubic' came up. Ransom had turned to Holster and said, "You'd look good with wings and a halo, bro."
Ransom's body almost can't take the guilt and the grief. For months, his existence is one long panic attack. Only Holster would know how to end it, except Holster's not here, Holster's dead, and that just makes the never-ending panic attack worse and---
Finally, somewhere in all that, Ransom remembers: he always knows where Holster is.
So he sits down and thinks about it, and that's when he realizes that he does know where Holster is. Holster is right ahead of him. It's the only acceptable answer. Holster is in heaven now--- he was such a good man, and Ransom already knows he'd look good with wings and a halo--- which means Ransom has to get to heaven, too.
So he figures it out. He figures out how to work around it. Work around himself.
He gets his doctorate. He joins every relief organization that'll take him. He works longer and harder than anyone else. He doesn't go out with any of his colleagues after work. He doesn't call his parents or his sisters. Jack and Bitty and Shitty and Lardo keep him in the group chat, but he almost never responds. He doesn't flinch away from injuries and blood and death. Nothing fazes him. One time, one of the interns asks him how he stays so calm.
He says, "Well, the very worst thing that could ever possibly happen to me has already happened."
She says, "But Doctor, you're still alive."
It is the first, last, and only time she hears Dr. Oluransi laugh.
Ransom doesn't know this, but Bitty will cry for hours and hours in Jack's arms one night. When he's finally calm enough, Bitty will tell Jack that earlier that day, when they saw Ransom for the first time in several years, Bitty made a joke and called him Dr. Banner. "Because," Bitty explains, "you know, you like ran away to be a doctor in third-world countries and stuff. Maybe I should get a Black Widow costume and come find you!"
And Ransom did that terrible laugh, the only one he's got anymore, that sounds nothing like it used to. And Bitty's stricken, realizing that's something Marvel-loving Holster would have said. Ransom catches his eye and says, "It's okay, Bits. I can talk about him. You don't have to worry about reminding me of him."
Bitty turns away a bit, unable to look Ransom in the eye and hating himself for it, and says, "But how can I not feel bad about bringing it up?"
Ransom sighs and leans on the counter next to him and says, "Bits, let me tell you something. You're more right than you know. You know how Doctor Banner keeps control of the Hulk?"
And Bitty nods, because he remembers that line from the movie.
Ransom shakes his head and says, "You can't bring it up out of the blue, you can't remind me of him, you can't suddenly make me think about him when I wasn't before. Bits, I'm always thinking about him."
And when Bitty finally gets the whole story out to Jack he's still crying, and all Jack can do is hold him tight and cry, too.
Ransom will take any job, anywhere. He goes to the most dangerous places on earth and patches up soldiers and children and terrorists and nuns. Victims and victimizers. Sinners and saints. Bystanders and monsters. Anyone, any human who needs medical attention, will get it from Ransom. He does not care who anyone is or why they got hurt. He always fixes them up. One year a few intrepid college students spend their senior project trying to get an accurate number of people whose lives he's saved. After a little while the count has reached a tentative several thousand, and they are forced to give up in utter despair.
He gets award after award. He never shows up to accept any of them. At first it's a joke, then it seems noble, then it becomes an insult, then there's just a sort of weary acceptance. Then he stops getting awards at all. He stays in the bleeding parts of the world anyway.
Ransom doesn't know this, but one day his parents and sisters will make all the arrangements, except for the picture boards. Those, well--- those get done by Lardo and Shitty and Bitty and Jack. And making those boards is the hardest, hardest thing any of them will ever do.
There's a plague, because there's always a plague somewhere. This time, though, Ransom gets sick.
He won't let them give him anything for it. He hides the medicine and puts it back in the bottles when no one's looking. He even turns off his saline drip so it doesn't get used up on him. At least, that's what he does until he's too weak to stop them.
He's achy and shivering and can't get warm enough. He rolls over to try and curl in on himself, and realizes that he's not lying on a hospital bed anymore. It feels like cement under his knees, but his chest is on something warm.
"Oh, Rans," says Holster, "I always loved you best."
He's is sitting again, looking down at Holster, only Holster isn't bleeding anymore.
Ransom says, "Hold me, bro, just a little longer."
"Always," says Holster, sitting up and wrapping his arms around him. "I'll never leave you. I told you I wouldn't ever leave you, and I didn't."
"I know, bro," says Ransom. His teeth are chattering. "I l-love you."
Holster says, "I know you do, bro. Never doubted it. And I love you. So much, bro."
Ransom shivers again--- Holster's so warm, but Ransom's even more cold than before--- and says, "We're gonna be together now, right?"
Holster kisses the top of his head, rocks him like a child, rubs his back. "Yeah, bro. I promise. Now we'll be together forever."
"Good," Ransom says into the skin of Holster's throat, nudging his nose against Holster's pulse. "That's good."
Ransom doesn't know this and never finds out, but when Bitty and Jack and Lardo and Shitty make up the picture boards of him and Holster for his funeral, the date they use doesn't match the one everyone else uses. Instead they use the date of the accident, because the truth of the matter is Holster and Ransom both died that night.