Ransom doesn’t love him, and Holster already knows the reason why.
It took a rugby player, of all people, hitting on him while he and Ransom waited for their turn at the pong table (the soccer house has the shittiest tournament organizers at Samwell, it’s a goddamn disgrace).
“Sorry man. Super flattered, but I’m already kind of seeing someone.”
“Bro! You’ve been holding out on me! Who?”
“Come on, Rans. We’ve been dancing around this thing forever and I think we should just - Why are you looking at me like that, you have to have noticed that we’ve basically been dating for a while now.”
The party bustles around them, people bumping their shoulders and jostling their drinks as they stare at each other. Ransom’s eyebrows are furrowed, his head tilted to the side, his hard-as-granite jaw hanging open in shock.
Holster stands there, silent, feeling too big and too small at the same time. For a minute he swears he’s little again, staring down at a page of big letters jumbled together while his teacher says just read it, Adam, just say the words and he can’t, the letters won’t settle in an order that make sense.
(It took his Bubbe sitting down with him at the kitchen table for him to understand, her wrinkled fingers tracing over the letters as she took him through the story word by word. There isn’t anyone who can guide him through this clusterfuck, though.)
“Just forget it,” Holster says.
“Are you joking?” Ransom blurts out at the exact same time. Their perfect timing is a sick joke. Only the two of them could be so in sync and out of step at the same time.
Holster winces, just for a second, but he knows Ransom caught it. He always does.
He knows he should be grateful for the easy out. It would be so easy to lie, but the second Holster tries to push the words out the sound dies in his throat. He offers up a silent prayer of thanks to Fifth Harmony for the thundering baseline he knows masks the stilted, half-strangled explanation he tries to offer up before he cuts himself off by finishing the rest of his beer in two large gulps.
Holster knows he isn’t handsome (reason #1), or brilliant (reason #2), or personable (reason #3), and Ransom is. Holster is too loud (reason #4) and too big (reason #5) and too ugly (reason #1, but it bears repeating) for someone like Ransom, he knows that. But he isn’t a joke. The way he feels isn’t a joke.
So Holster swallows the beer, the hops sitting heavy on his tongue, and looks the love of his life straight in the eye. Just say the words, Adam.
“I wasn’t joking, but it’s fine. Just got my wires crossed, but now I know, so. Nothing changes.” Holster says, shoulder lifting in a lazy little shrug that he hopes looks natural. It’s the truth, because it has to be. Holster needs it to be true.
“Bro,” Ransom begins, and it takes everything Holster has not to lose it right then and there. For the last few weeks Holster had thought calling each other “bro” was their thing. It felt so special, and sweet, and theirs, and now it’s just a dull, hollow word. He traces over the letters, knowing they won’t rearrange themselves into a sweeter combination.They’re bros, that’s all.
“Ransom.” Holster’s firm this time, shoulders squared and face neutral. “I’m fine, there’s a guy who wants my number and I need to track him down and give it to him. We’re good, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Ransom echoes, “We’re always going to be good.”
Holster needs that to be true, too, so he nods, and smiles, and fist bumps Ransom until he smiles back, and when he sees Ransom the next morning after spending the night at the rugby house he can tell they’re almost normal. They’re good.
He runs his fingertips over that word too, pressing the four letters down so they can’t jump around, holding them in place until his fingertips are bloody, red smeared over crisp black ink.
