Work Text:
It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
Adam first hears Ransom sing not a month into their time at Samwell. Everyone else has already vacated the locker room, including their almighty captain Jack Zimmerman, but Ransom lingers in the trainer’s room to ice the bruise where a stray puck had struck him during drills. It’s still early into the year, into college, but already Adam knows he ought to remain. Where Ransom goes, so goes his nation, so to speak.
After passing the time with a brief conversation with Coach Hall, he returns to the locker room to wait. The gentle tinkle of the shower fills the room slowly as the sound diffuses through the air. He stretches almost absentmindedly, grimacing when his calves twinge at the motion, and closes his eyes. He’d forgotten, being in juniors for several years, how very precarious the balance between hockey and academics often stood, and already the semester’s workload sits heavy in his mind and in his tired body.
“April, come she will…”
Adam perks up his head in surprise.
“When streams are ripe and swelled with rain.
The voice, a pleasant baritone, meanders slowly through the white noise of the shower until it slips into his ear. It carries confidence and certainty, and moreover, it’s Simon and Garfunkel, something Adam hasn’t listened to in months.
“May, she will stay. Resting in my arms again…”
When the shower handle squeaks and the water flow halts, Ransom emerges from the showers still humming the tune softly to himself. Other than a towel wrapped low around his hips, he’s entirely naked and the water glistens across his burnished-brass skin. He is, for a moment, a slice of heat across the air as his presence fills the space around him before, like his voice before, it spreads slowly, warming the air itself.
“You never told me you could sing,” says Adam, and Ransom nearly trips over a stray sneaker left across the floor as he jerks in surprise.
“Holster, what—“ Ransom shakes his head. “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” he says, eyes flickering between Adam and the door.
“Dude, you can actually sing,” says Adam. “I mean, there were a couple notes a little flat, but like, it actually sounds great.” He needs to impress upon Ransom the importance of this knowledge.
“Uh, I’m not bad, I guess,” replies Ransom. His arms hug his chest, shaking loose some of the glistening droplets.
“You know what this means?” asks Adam.
Ransom’s forehead crinkles. “No. Should it mean something?”
“It means if the team ever does karaoke, we’re gonna kill it so hard!” he crows, and Ransoms’ face bursts into pure delight, like all wide eyes and cheeks stretched out with grinning.
“’Swawesome,” says Ransom, and just like that, Justin Oluransi, with his gentle baritone and the musical lilt to his voice which Adam has only just noticed, buries himself two inches deeper into Adam’s skin.
Later in their years at college, during their long road trips back from Toronto or Buffalo or Niagara Falls or during roadies with the team, ensconced in corner of their own in the bus, Adam will hum a quiet tune. Without fail, Ransom catches the tune in his throat and responds in kind, harmonizing in turns, singing the lyrics if he knows the song and spouting gibberish if he doesn’t. Sometimes he whistles softly, and sometimes, when dusk trembles in the sky and wisps of exhaustion cloud their minds, he just hums back, a few short notes or a phrase. Even in those quieter moments, he never leaves Adam’s call unanswered.
Adam enters their apartment singing softly to himself, the latest Weeknd song latched firmly in his mind and his tongue. He shuts the door gently, twists their lock, and sees Ransom’s still figure perched on their couch, the back of his head cutting a strong image against their pale blue walls. He continues singing as he approaches Ransom, waiting for his response. When only silence meets his voice, like a brick damn against a gentle creak, he pauses.
“Rans?” he says hesitantly. “Babe?” He rests his weight against the frame of the couch and presses a quick kiss to Ransom’s cheek. “Justin?”
Ransom turns gradually, like the slow fall of a pendulum, and when he faces Adam, it’s with eyes so hollow they might contain the entire ocean or the Sahara desert or maybe nothing at all.
“Justin?” repeats Adam, hesitating on the words.
“My father died,” says Ransom flatly. “Heart attack this afternoon. My mom just called.”
Adam’s feet stick to the floor, his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His skin prickles unpleasantly as he searches for words, sounds, anything to say. What comes out is the most useless thing he’s ever said. “For real?”
“Why would I lie?” says Ransom, and he turns away. The hollow feeling remains.
“No—I just meant, I—Justin,” he says. “Justin.”
“I need to go home,” says Ransom. “I need to book a plane, a train, something. I need to be back.”
“Justin,” says Adam, and then he’s around the couch, he’s hugging Ransom and pulling him in, squeezing him until they both can hardly breathe, like maybe if he can squeeze away their air, the grief will leave Ransom, like it’s something which can be exhaled in a single breath.
“I need to be home,” says Ransom.
“I know,” says Adam. “We’ll get you there. Let me do the work.”
Later that night, they both lie motionless and fervently awake across the bed. Justin’s mind is And it’s then that he realizes what has changed the most in Ransom; when he speaks, there’s no inflection. His voice is devoid of music and of the lyrical phrases which seep into his words unconsciously. Adam’s voice is searching for something to echo off of, and Ransom’s skin just absorbs the sound, leaving nothing left behind.
“I love you,” he whispers gently into Ransom’s shoulder.
His words hang static in the air until, like a cloud of perfume, they vanish.
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
The funeral is predictably terrible, almost banal in its inevitable tragedy. Adam loved Ransom’s father, not least because he loved his son and he loved Adam for loving his son as well. Mrs. Oluransi sits still and quiet in her chair, eyes cast down on the striated floor, one of Ransom’s uncles next to her. He is always touching her, a hand on her shoulder a hand in her hand.
Adam endeavors to do the same. When they sit, he clasps his hands, and when Ransom’s fingers twitch with the need to move, he shifts his hand to Ransom’s thigh. Ransom’s muscles tremble beneath his fingertips.
“Next, we will have Justin Oluransi, the beloved son of Aguzani, say a few words.”
Without speaking, Adam follows Ransom to the pulpit. He positions himself two feet back, close enough for his arms to reach should Ransom require contact, far enough for the distance between them to not overwhelm. A lukewarm space.
“My father,” begins Ransom, clearing his throat. “My father’s last words to me were, ‘I’ll be watching the game.’ And by game he was referring to the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team whose sport doesn’t even exist Nigeria. He never saw snow or ice until he was thirty and moving to a strange, cold country. And yet, he never questioned my desire to play as a child. When I told him, ‘Brandon Sullivan from two blocks over is playing hockey, I want to try,’ he went to the library and checked a dozen books on hockey, on the history of the sport and on techniques of the game. So when I joined my first team, he sat next to the other parents, the ones who grew up in the shadow of the Maple Leafs and who watched Gretzky and Lemieux and Orr as children, and he talked to them as if he’d been born two blocks away. He even knew more than half of them, he read so much.”
Ransom gulps heavily. Adam’s hand twitches instinctively. “So my father never loved anything halfway, especially not me. When I wanted to know something, he either learned enough to teach, or he learned it beside me. So when he asked me if was going to watch the game, he wasn’t just being a curious parent making small talk. No, he wanted to know because if I were watching it, then he wouldn’t want to miss it. Because that would have meant he knew less than me, that would have meant he couldn’t teach me anything anymore.
“But my father, I know what he taught me best. He taught me that if you care enough, if you love someone hard enough, then you adapt. You don’t need to change who you are, because he valued authenticity as much as any other person I’ve ever met. But if you love someone, you find a way to show them. You find a way to make their life better, and you show them with small acts of kindness and larger acts of generosity and affection exactly how much you care. You learn to speak their language.
“And I have learned to be better because of him.” Ransom’s voice wavers. “As a child, I always wanted to teach him something new, I wanted to show him what I understood about the world. These past few years,” he glances at Adam briefly, “these past few years, I thought I might have succeeded in some regards. There was so much…there was so much…” His voice cracks entirely, a schism ripping through the middle. “I had so much to say to him. So much to prove.”
Adam waits for Ransom to continue, but Ransom just falls quiet. Several people sniff loudly in the front row, and at least two are openly weeping. After nearly ten seconds of silence, Adam reaches out to Ransom’s shoulder. “Rans,” he says quietly. “Rans, you good?”
Ransom says nothing. He just sort of crinkles in on himself, shoulders hunched and his body paper-thin and delicate beneath Adam’s touch. So Adam does the only thing he knows he can. He uses every inch of his height, every pound and ounce of his oversized body to envelop Ransom in an embrace and he kisses him firmly. Several people in the crowd murmur and titter—he’s belatedly realizing that it’s likely that not everyone present knew Mr. Oluransi’s son was seeing another man—but their opinions have never mattered less. The world narrows until all he feels, all he is aware of, are the small pinpoints of contact between their skins.
“I love you,” murmurs Adam. “You’re going to be okay.”
Ransom just tucks himself into the crook of Adam’s neck, and someone else comes to the pulpit to speak, relieving them of the spotlight. Adam guides Ransom gently back to the pews where they sit, hands clasped tight together. When at last everyone has spoken, the pastor leads everyone in a song, one Adam does not recognize. He turns to Ransom, wanting, if nothing else, to see him sing along. But Ransom’s lips are pressed tightly together, a thin harsh line across his face, sealing off all potential sound.
The two of them stand, a pocket of silence battered by the voices around them.
He hates every inch of it.
A week after the funeral, Ransom returns to class and to his laboratory and Adam breathes a heavy sigh of relief. While he respects Ransom’s need to process his father’s death slowly, there was processing and then there was what Ransom was doing, which is to say, nothing. Every night when he returned from work, he found Ransom sprawled aimlessly across the couch, books discarded haphazardly across the table in a decidedly un-Ransom-like fashion. Now Ransom at least has his work with which to occupy his mind.
Ransom’s father dies in April, and by November, they’ve reestablished some equilibrium. Adam works each day, and Ransom teaches three times a week as a TA for undergraduate biology. When not teaching, he spends his days in lab, and then he too returns to their apartment. Ransom calls home frequently now, at least four times a week, and he speaks almost exclusively in Igbo to his mother. In theory, this isn’t a problem, but Adam know for a fact that Ransom still prefers English, still stutters over the language of his parents from time to time. When Ransom speaks in Igbo, Adam cannot understand him; it wouldn’t matter so much if only Ransom would speak more in words Adam understands. Or speak more, period.
One Friday evening, Adam cracks. He’s sitting on their couch, Falconer’s game flickering brightly across the screen while Ransom works through grading the problem sets of his students. He hums along to the commercial jingle absentmindedly and pauses, waiting instinctively for a response. Ransom scratches away fervently with his red pen, but otherwise proceeds uninterrupted. And it’s then that he resolves to break the silence.
The next day, he brings home Lemon.
Lemon is a German Sheppard-something large mutt, a puppy, eight months old and newly rescued from the shelter. She nips at his hand playfully as they enter the apartment and Adam hands her a long knotted rope with which to play while he assembles her crate, freshly purchased from PetCo along with a bag of food, a food bowl, a collar and a leash. When he tugs at the rope, she growls playfully in response and twists her body enthusiastically from side to side, shaking her thick, fluffy fur majestically.
“Hey, Holtz, I don’t think I’m going to be—what is that?!”
Ransom emerges from the outside with wind-blustered cheeks and slush-dripping boots which spatter brown Boston snow across the wooden floors. He’s clutching something to his chest—notebooks, paper, a thick book—and staring with eyes as wide as pucks at the pile of fur sprawled out panting before Adam.
“Ransom, meet Lemon. Lemon, this is Ransom, your other daddy,” he coos.
“Her other—did you adopt a dog?”
Adam hugs Lemon tight, half-burying his face in the scruff of her neck. “Sure did.” He lifts one of her paws forward in a mock handshake. “Isn’t she perfect?”
Ransom strides over to the kitchen counter and slams his books across the table. “You adopted a dog without telling me? Without asking for any input on my end?”
“You always said you wanted a dog. We agreed on that years ago. Ransom and Holster and large fluffy dog.”
“Yeah, that was in the future. Like, the future once we’d talked about it again and decided our schedules and you know, just talked about it now. Not when we were wasted in the attic or getting coffee in the morning two years ago.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” says Adam simply.
“Not asking me how I felt was the right thing to do?”
“Oh, like you would have told me.”
Ransom recoils sharply. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Adam pulls himself standing, stretches his body to his full height and says, “I mean, it’s not like you ever talk to me anymore.”
Ransom is fuming, his entire body quivering in a way Holster’s never seen off the ice, and never seen directed at him before. His eyes burn in their sockets, and his lips curl in anger. “I don’t talk to you? Holtz, I talk to you more than I talk to everyone else. You’re the one who’s been keeping things from me, clearly.”
“You’re always on the phone with your mom, your sister. I can never understand what you’re saying.”
“So you want me to switch languages just so you can listen in on my private conversations with my family? For your comfort?”
“I am your family, Rans. And you never used to talk in Igbo before—you never minded sharing what you were saying with me before! Because we’re family!”
“You’re not my mother or my sister!”
“No, you’re right, I’m just your boyfriend of two years and your best friend of seven. How dare I presume to consider myself important to you, how fucking dare I!”
Their faces are inches apart, and only the countertop dividing the kitchen from the living room separates the rest of their bodies. Ransom’s hot breath scalds his face as they pant harshly, their exhales coming almost in tandem. Suddenly, Lemon whines plaintively, clearly distressed by the vitriolic words exchanged. Adam sags and offers a hand for her to sniff cautiously before rubbing her head gently with his thumb.
“Hey girl,” he says softly. “This is my fault, nothing to do with you.” She gazes up at him with such broad, unconditional trust that he needs to close his eyes. “Don’t worry, Lemon,” he croons to her.
“Lemon?”
Adam’s eyes flicker to Ransom. “Yeah.”
“Did you name her?” There’s cautious hesitation in his words, surprise more than anger, and Adam latches onto this shard of hope and prays.
“No, that was her name at the shelter. It just…she just reminded me of—
“—Liz Lemon, yeah, I figured,” Ransom finishes for him. “Of course you found a dog named after your favorite character.”
“The best character on television,” he offers in reply.
Ransom gazes steadily at Lemon, eyes narrowed. Then finally he too deflates, his body losing all volume on the exhale. “She is adorable,” he relents.
Adam grin stretches wide as Niagara Falls across his face, and he feels his cheeks tug almost uncomfortably. “She’s the best dog that’s ever existed. I just know she is.”
Ransom crouches low before Lemon and opens his arms. “Hey, Lemon,” he says in a soft voice, and Lemon darts into Ransom’s embrace.
In the end, Lemon stays. A success.
So does the silence. So Adam keeps trying.
I think the hemlock likes to stand
Upon a marge of snow;
It suits his own austerity,
And satisfies an awe.
“Shitty! My dude!” exclaims Adam. He strides over to Shitty and pounds him firmly across the back, grinning broadly. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, dude,” says Shitty, and a smile creeps persistently across his face despite his best efforts. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” says Ransom. “Where’s the lucky Mrs. Knight-to-be?”
“Finding the best way to murder you,” says Lardo darkly from somewhere far below and behind. “You and the next person who calls me that.”
“Give Rans here a break,” says Adam, slinging his arm around Ransom. “We already decided this—you will be Mrs. Knight, and Shitty here will be Mr. Duan. That way, everyone’s happy.”
“Besides, you’ll always be Lardo to us,” adds Ransom. “None of this formal nonsense.”
“Well, the wedding programs will definitely have our real names on them,” says Lardo. “You know, for everyone else in our lives.”
Ransom pauses, and his eyes widen comically. “Your real name…wait, Shits, does this mean we’ll finally get to know what your first name is?”
“I still can’t believe you don’t know what it is,” sighs Shitty.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” observes Ransom. “You’re not…you’re not seriously going to put Shitty on the wedding invites? That you’re sending out to everyone?”
Shitty shrugs noncommittally, and Lardo rolls her eyes. “You’ll get it eventually,” she says. “Hell, he only told me a year into dating. And that was only because he was meeting my parents, and they would have found it,” she slides her gaze over to Shitty surreptitiously, “less than amusing, shall I say.”
“That’s a long ways away, boys,” says Shitty. “I mean, we haven’t even picked a date. We just got engaged last weekend.”
“Shitty’s family wants to have the ceremony in their estate in the Hamptons,” Lardo informs them.
“We are not talking about my family tonight,” says Shitty firmly. He grabs his tumbler from the side table and drains some amber liquid from it in one gulp, shuddering slightly at the taste. “Mi casa es su casa, or something like that. Just don’t let me think about any of the planning I have to do.”
“I think that can be arranged,” says Adam, and he grins wickedly.
Two hours and seven whiskeys later finds Shitty yanking Adam sharply into the kitchen, away from the heated mass of people clumped together loudly in the middle of the living room. The kitchen offers a small reprieve from the thrum of noise elsewhere, and Shitty leans back against the counter and closes his eyes slowly.
“Everything good?” inquires Adam.
Shitty cracks an eye. “Just a lot to think about.”
“Good stuff, I hope,” he says.
“Just trying not to remember about the fifteen messages my grandmother left on my phone today. Honestly, if I loved Lardo even a smidgen less, I would just say screw it and elope. But she cares about it secretly, and her family cares. So we’re doing it, the whole shebang.”
“It won’t be all bad,” he says, sliding over to Shitty to prop himself against the corner counter. “We’ll make sure you have a hell of a bachelor party. One to remember, or maybe not. Depends on what you want.”
Shitty smiles tiredly. “I have no doubt. Epikegster the sequel: mid-twenties edition.” He pours himself a glass of something and swirls the liquid pensively around the cup. “I feel like it’s stupid that I have to ask, but I probably should do this formally. Holster, will you be one of my groomsmen?”
Adam grins widely. “Bro, I’d be offended if you didn’t ask.”
“Oh good,” says Shitty. “I already asked Jack to be my best man, and he said yes, so I’m two for two.”
“Well, Rans’ll make three for three.”
“Actually,” says Shitty, clearing his throat, “Lardo and I decided to split you all up. I got Jack, she got Bitty. We flipped a coin for the two of you, and it landed on heads. Heads for Holster.” He grins crookedly. “It’s just for formality’s sake. You’ll both be at both our bachelor parties, but you’ve got to stand somewhere the day of.”
“Huh. Never thought about that.”
“Yeah, it’s a little tricky when you have the same friends. I imagine you and Rans’ll have to do something similar whenever you decide to get hitched.”
Adam doesn’t respond immediately and Shitty’s hackles rise alarmingly. “I mean, you are going to get married? Like no pressure of course, but I always just assumed…”
“No, I always assumed so too,” he says. “Like, I can’t imagine anyone else ever, and the thought of not having Justin in my life, it’s just not even something I can comprehend.”
“But…”
“But I don’t know what he wants. I thought I did, but things have just been, well, a little different.”
Shitty sets down his glass sharply across the stone counter. “Different how?”
“Well, it started when his father died, last April, you know. And he was so quiet suddenly, which was sort of expected I suppose. He and his dad were so close, and I know he’s still processing it even now. But things—things haven’t gotten back to normal, not like I thought they would.”
Shitty frowns. “You two seem fine to me.”
“We are. We’re fine, we’re great, and I love him. God, Shits, I love him so much it just kills me sometimes. Like, I wake up in the morning and see him next to me—it’s hard to explain. It’s like everything just falls into place. Like a gear clicks and the world starts turning again.” He fingers the edge of his button down shirt absentmindedly. “But lately, it’s like there’s something missing. Like I know he’s all there, and I can touch him and feel him and talk to him, but there’s something I don’t understand. Something I can’t reach. And he’s quieter than he used to be.”
Shitty remains silent for a long moment. “It sounds to me like maybe he’s still grieving. Like there’s something people like us can’t understand, people who haven’t lost someone.”
“It’s more than that,” he insists. “It’s like, he’s on a different wavelength sometimes. Like I say something, and he doesn’t respond when I expect him to. Or he says something, and I have no idea where it came from. Absolutely none.”
Shitty shoots him a strange glance. “I think it’s okay if Ransom surprises you from time to time. I’d be a little concerned if you could predict his every move.”
Adam looses a frustrated growl. “I’m not asking to predict what he’s doing. I just, I’ve never had to worry before. I’ve never had to think about communicating with him or parse out his logic. Something’s changed.”
Shitty pauses. “How long have you two been together now?”
“Two and a half years.”
“No, how long have you really been together? When did you first meet?”
He frowns. “You know that. We met first day of preseason, freshman year. You were there for that.”
“But how long ago was that?”
Adam counts silently in his head. “Eight years, I guess. Somewhere thereabouts.”
“Right, and in eight years, a lot can change. A lot should change, in fact.”
Adam stares intently at Shitty. “Where are you going with this?”
Shitty holds up his hands defensively. “I’m just saying, people change. It doesn’t mean that Ransom’s an entirely different person, but certain things, they alter people. Small ways, bigger ways, but no one’s static. You two have always changed at the same pace. Maybe he’s just skipped a couple of steps.”
“So?”
“So maybe you’re going to have to think a little bit beyond what you know. You two have always been inseparable, but relationships take effort. Sometimes more than others.” Shitty gazes morosely at his tumbler and at the walls which muffle the sound of the party outside. “Just, I don’t know, try to figure out what’s changed with him. If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
Adam nods slowly. They sit in silence for a minute, and the dim lighting of a solitary kitchen light casts long shadows across the ground, across their feet and their faces.
“Since when did you get to know anything about relationships?”
“Since Jack realized he was capable of love and found Bitty,” says Shitty seriously. “Or, alternatively, since Lardo just agreed to spend the rest of her life with me.”
“That last part’s mostly the flow,” says Adam.
“But she loves me even without it, which is how I know she’s the one.”
“The real question is, would she love you without the ‘stache?”
“Dude, I don’t think I would love myself without the ‘stache.”
Adam chuckles softly. “True. That would probably take a saint. Which Lardo most definitely is not.”
“I’ll drink to that,” says Shitty, and he lifts his glass.
They reenter the party and Adam parts the crowd with his size before finding Ransom deep in conversation with one of Lardo’s artist friends. Ransom is gesturing animatedly (and perhaps slightly drunkenly) to a pale, tall man with a half-shaved head and snakebite piercings which, frankly, creep Adam the fuck out, but he’s not about to say anything. Besides, Ransom is actually responding well to conversation, even if it is alcohol-lubricated conversation, and he realizes it’s been months since he’s seen the same sort of abandon in gesture in thought that Ransom is displaying right now.
“Hey, Rans,” says Adam smoothly, sliding his arm casually across Ransom’s shoulder and pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his jawline.
Snakebites’ eyes flicker between the two of them briefly before settling firmly on Adam.
“I’m guessing you’re Holster then.” Snakebites states. “Justin here was just telling me I ought to meet you.”
“Oh?” says Adam.
“What kind of a nickname is Holster anyways? Did one of you bring a gun to college? Are you a marksman or something?”
“Only on the ice,” says Lardo firmly from behind them. She tugs at the sleeve of Ransom’s shirt and motions towards the door. “You’re following me,” she says, a command rather than a suggestion, and Ransom wisely follows suit, abandoning Adam to Snakebites.
“It was a hockey thing,” says Adam to Snakebites when Snakebites still stares at him expectantly. “Ransom and Holster. Lardo and Shitty. Nothing more to it.”
“Figure Samwell would be the place to have sensitive jocks,” sighs Snakebites. “It’s one thing if a man knows poetry, but if a man knows poetry and has abs like that, well…”
“He’s with me,” Adam remarks coolly. “And I don’t know what sort of bullshit Justin’s been feeding you, but I assure you, the last time he took a poetry class was probably in high school.”
“Really?” Snakebites seems genuinely surprised. “I just figured—the way he knew his Neruda and Dickinson, he must have at least taken a literature course in college.”
“Neruda? Dickinson?”
“Pablo Neruda? Emily Dickinson?” Adam stares blankly at Snakebites, who, in a strange turn of events appears to actually be pitying him. A small deposit of bile rises in the back of his throat. “It’s not like I’m referencing Ernest Dowson here.”
“Oddly enough, doesn’t come up much in my day to day life at the moment.”
“Poetry isn’t about the day to day,” insists Snakebites. “And it isn’t about pragmatism or any of that other bullshit. It’s—what was Justin just saying—oh yeah, it’s about speaking in small ways.”
“Ransom said that?” Now it’s Adam’s turn to be surprised.
“Straight outta something my lit professor wrote back in college. Pity your man’s into biology.”
“Yes, a pity,” remarks Adam lightly, but his eyes are already scanning the crowd for Ransom, his mind far away from Snakebites, who is at best pedantic, and at worst the sort of art snob who coasted along the admiration of those more gullible than him. Around them, dozens of people chatter and murmur and sway in approximate time to the music, but Lardo and Ransom are still ensconced somewhere private.
“Dickinson,” he says slowly. “Neruda.”
He wonders what they say.
As if some little Arctic flower,
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes
For Valentine’s Day, a day more an exercise in excessive consumerism than true love, Adam buys them both something they need more than chocolate or candied hearts or even fresh skates.
He buys them time.
Specifically, time far from the dreary Boston cold and deep within the California sunshine. While Ransom has visited California once before as a child, Adam has never been, and the week of reprieve he purchases is instantly worth every cent and hour he spent the moment he looks up at the sky and sees tree trunks wider than his wingspan pressed against a gleaming sky.
“This place is incredible,” he says for the fifteenth time in an hour. “Magnificent.”
And Ransom, he smiles brightly as they trudge forward, trampling moss and damp earth in their path.
“Good thing we brought our tent,” says Ransom.
Adam narrows his eyes. “I’ve already admitted it once.”
“Say it again.”
“No.”
“Say it again.”
Adam sighs heavily, but the sparkle in Ransom’s eye has returned, and its presence alone is recompense enough for the inevitable chirping to follow.
“You were right; camping is a good idea,” says Adam flatly, and Justin’s cheeks dimple in delight.
“Of course I’m right,” says Ransom, and he only yelps slightly when Adam elbows him sharply in the ribs. “Just wait until dark and you can see the entire sky, nothing to block the view.”
“You’re such a sap,” he says.
“There is quite a bit of sap around us,” says Ransom, “but I assure you, my body is only responsible for a very small portion of it.”
Adam rolls his eyes and trudges onwards. Sometimes, Ransom made it very hard to forget exactly how much of a nerd he was. He compensated in other ways, though. Like Snakebites had said, with abs like those…
Magnificent.
The sky is everything promised and more as they stretch out across their sleeping pads. Ransom’s large hand, somehow even larger than Adam’s, clutches his wrist just so that his thumb lands across his pulse. Almost at random, Ransom’s fingers brush back and forth across sensitive skin. An afterthought. A non-thought, perhaps.
When the motion ceases, Adam squints across in the moonlight to see that Ransom has simply fallen asleep beneath the open skies. With no rain predicted and their belongings already stowed away securely and drily in the tent, Adam decides to simply let Ransom remain. No need to displace him from the freshest air they’ve smelt in months.
He wriggles his arm free from the tight grip and pads his way softly to the tent, carefully unzipping the entrance. His fingers search blindly through his backpack, seeking the bottle of insect repellant for one last coat before their exposed sleep. When they knock against something solid, something distinctly and un-plastic and un-bottle like, he removes the item carefully, curiously. Immediately, the object takes shape and texture within his hand. It’s a book.
Enough moonlight has filtered through the trees that the letters printed across the cover are barely legible. The pages feel worn and fuzzy against his fingertips as he opens the book. With a start, he recognizes the short, tightly formatted chunks of writing as poems. He flips to the title page, and his heart lurches when he reads the author: Emily Dickinson.
Snakebite’s Emily Dickinson, and apparently Justin’s as well.
Something is scrawled across the top of the page, and Adam actually needs to fish through the debris scattered around the edge of the tent before he locates his glasses. Once he sees clearly, he trails his fingers across the small letters written in both ink and a distinctly unfamiliar handwriting.
To Aguzani Oluransi, the words read. To my old friend.
There is no signature, no sign to indicate the giver’s name, but that name is hardly important. He brushes his fingernail across the long-dried ink, and the gesture feels familiar. He knows suddenly, with certainty, that Ransom has repeated that very same gesture a thousand times, felt the brush of love and loneliness with as much strength as Adam feels right now. A son for a father. A lover for a lover.
A shifting cloud obscures the moonlight, casting the world into darkness. Adam replaces the book into the backpack and slips silently across the forest ground until he rejoins Ransom in their soft patch of grass and parallel sleeping pads. Ransom doesn’t stir as Adam settles gently into position, doesn’t alter his breathing as Adam reaches for his hand.
He grips Ransom’s arm and moves his thumb across the crease between hand and wrist. Ransom exhales heavily and turns unconsciously towards Adam, towards the space he always occupies in their bed, in their lives. His body shifts towards the warmth, and Adam?
He meets him halfway.
Hope is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul.
“What is this?” says Ransom, staring at the book set before them.
“A present,” says Adam.
“But why this book?” Ransom’s hands hover across the cover, across the author’s name.
“When you love someone, you learn to speak their language,” says Adam.
Ransom’s face flattens, expelling any emotion from his face.
“That was what your dad told you, right? If you love someone, you learn to speak their language.”
Rasom’s expression remains guarded, careful. “And what does this have to do with Emily Dickinson?”
Adam picks up another poetry book from the coffee table, the one which belonged to Mr. Oluransi, the one with edges deliciously worn and pages crinkled and paper stained with a thousand drops of coffee, each one a testament to devotion. He flips through the pages until at last his fingers settle in the naturally carved crevice of the binding, the spot where the book falls open.
“’Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul/ and sings the tune without the words/ and never stops at all.’ You must have read this poem a thousand times, or others like it. And if it matters to you, then I need to try to understand. I need to adapt.”
“Adapt?”
He gestures aimlessly around the room, waving the book haphazardly through the air. “Look, we’ve been lucky, yeah? Friends right away, and that’s easy until suddenly it isn’t and then we date, and that’s easy too. And it’s not that I haven’t cared, but I never had to try. It was like, I always understood you. I never had to think about it, about talking to you. And then, you just changed.”
“If there’s a problem—
“No, no, no. It’s just…it’s you. And even if you don’t sing with me now and even if you’re quiet sometimes, I love you, and I want to understand whatever it is you’re saying. So I’m trying to speak Ransom. If that means reading the same poetry you do, then I’ll read every scrap of poetry Emily Dickinson ever wrote, every single one, until I know what she means to you and what I have to learn.” He shakes his head slowly. “I know I’m not your father, but I thought…I thought perhaps a new book. A new page, so to speak.”
He’s breathless, like all the oxygen in his blood had affixed itself to his words. A light-headed, cotton wool sensation is trapped within his head, pressing at his temples. And Ransom…
Ransom’s gaze is the thin line between the fog and the rain, the boundary between a chilled autumn day and the bite of winter. His eyes are smoldering ashes, warm and smoking and lingering remnants of heat. His voice, when he speaks, is the crack of a spring thaw against winter ice.
“Adam,” he whispers, “Adam, you don’t need poetry to speak to me. You’ve never—all I’ve ever needed is you, and you… Anything else, anything else I can live without. I just…I just…”
Adam takes two steps and cups Ransom’s face, kisses him slowly, kisses him soundly and without any hesitation. His fingers roam the plane of Ransom’s face, smoothing across the fine line of Ransom’s cheekbones and just burying himself in the sensation of warm skin beneath his hands.
And this—maybe this is the poetry others wrote. Maybe this is the way he thinks, the way he speaks to the world. Maybe he writes not letters on a page but lips on skin, one pounding heart pressed against the other.
Ransom’s exhale of breath suffuses the air with sound, echoes against his skin. And at last, at long, long last, the silence disappears.
The next morning, Adam lies in bed long after Ransom has left, curling into the lingering warmth of his pocket in the bed. Outside, it rains. Outside, the March air still whips across the streets and seeps through fissures in their windows and their walls.
Outside, Ransom presses on the keyboard and sings in his clear baritone the perfect mix of poetry and song.
April, come she will…
It’s a language they both understand.
And Adam knows spring is here.