Chapter Text
Professor Perlman — no, Samuel now — calls once a month or so, always on a Sunday, always in the afternoon. Even now, a full year after his time in Italy, Oliver has a strange premonitory sense for when he is about to call; even now, a full year after his time in Italy, he sits on the edge of his couch for the entire half hour of it, waiting for scraps of news from Elio like a starving man sucking the rind of a fruit.
In June, Samuel’s call starts out much like any other; he says Oliver’s replacement is due in a few weeks, and wonders, since she is out of NYU, if they have any friends in common. Oliver is afraid for a moment that Samuel will suggest he meet up with her for coffee before she goes — the last thing Oliver wants, he is realizing, is to stare into the face of someone who will sleep in the room he still haunts from thousands of miles away — but instead, he tells Oliver that Elio would like to speak with him.
“Oh. Okay. Yeah, put him on.”
There’s a shuffle, and then a pause. Oliver can practically hear the gears turning in Elio’s head from where he sits.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” says Oliver, in a strange voice that isn’t his own. Forced. Measured. Brimming with a strange kind of exhilaration, the kind that makes him feel like he is running at full speed even though he hasn’t moved an inch. “How are you?”
“I’m well. And you?”
“I’m — yes, me too.”
Elio’s voice is every bit as calculated as Oliver’s, every bit as formal. It feels like talking to a stranger.
“I — well, I just thought you should know, I’m starting at Julliard in the fall. I’m moving to New York in a few weeks to get settled in.”
“You’re — ” His heart stops. No, just seizes, and then starts beating in his throat. “Congratulations. Julliard. Elio, that’s amazing.”
Elio seems disappointed in the reaction, for some reason. “Well,” he says.
And then it hits Oliver — Julliard. Elio, in the same city; Elio, presumably a subway ride or a few dozen blocks away. Elio, who must have auditioned sometime in the winter, a few mere miles from where Oliver teaches, and never said a word.
“Well,” Elio says again, his voice a little stronger. “I figured — I just — I thought it might be weird, if we ran into each other on the street or something, and you didn’t know. So now you know.”
Oliver’s mouth is open, but words aren’t coming out of it. Then he hears Elio suck in a hesitant breath and comes back to himself.
“What if I — I mean, we don’t have to run into each other by accident. I can show you around.”
“Oliver, you don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” he says, standing suddenly, with some misdirected energy that he has nowhere else to put. “If you do, that is. We’ll be living in the same city. No point in being strangers.”
He’s playing a dangerous game here and he knows it. Given the time to think about it — given space away from the sound of Elio’s fidgeting on the other side of the phone, his voice so clear in his ear that it’s dizzying all the other more logical thoughts that usually rule him — he might never do this. Might never make this offer, or say these words.
“Right,” says Elio.
It’s clear that this is not the way he was expecting this conversation to go; heartbreakingly clear. He was expecting Oliver to dismiss him, expecting that “congratulations” to be followed by the same stony silence they’ve observed now for over six months.
And maybe it should.
“Call me when you’re settled in.”
“You’re sure?”
It’s his last chance to back out. Or some kind of chance, maybe, that hasn’t taken shape yet.
“Elio. I’m sure.”
Elio calls the second week of July; he’s moved into his dorm and mostly unpacked, but still has a few days before his summer intensive starts.
“Wanna meet up at the 72nd street entrance to the park in an hour?”
“Like, today?” Elio asks.
It’s pouring down rain, Oliver realizes a beat too late.
“Why not?”
Oliver arrives precisely an hour after they hang up the phone. Elio is already there, leaning against the stone wall barrier between the park and the road; the sight of him knocks his breath into the wrong places, outside of his body, stuttering and uncertain. Elio's hair is longer, the dark curls slick with rain and framing his face, that face, the one that has woven in and out of his dreams and waking mind in infinite beats that somehow did not do it justice. He looks like something timeless, something precious — something painted and preserved in a memory, brought back to life by some kind of magic Oliver doesn’t understand.
He composes himself within the second, and crosses the street. Elio looks up; the smile he offers is close-lipped, hesitant, but his eyes are bright and genuine.
Oliver doesn’t say hello. Just reaches out and hugs him. There’s a beat, then, when Elio is in his arms again and he smells that familiar sweetness of him that Oliver feels displaced in time, displaced within his own body.
Elio pulls away first. “You look the same,” he says, evidently pleased by this.
Oliver wants to hold Elio’s chin in his hands, tilt his face closer for inspection. “You don’t,” says Oliver, also pleased by this; pleased that Elio can look any way, any age, any hairstyle, and still be as familiar and skin deep to him as he was before.
Elio rocks a bit on the heels of his sopping wet shoes. They’ve both neglected umbrellas; Oliver mentioned a few places he wanted to show him on a walking tour, and the way it’s raining right now, an umbrella is pointless. It’s coming down in humid, heavy sheets, soaking them under their raincoats.
“This is where John Lennon was shot, isn’t it?”
Oliver follows Elio’s gaze to the Dakota across the street. Of course Elio knows that, the way Elio knows most things; he wonders why Elio is asking, pretending not to be as well-informed as he is when the last time Oliver saw him, he wouldn’t dare pretend anything at all.
“Yes,” says Oliver. “It’s been here since 1884. One of the most prestigious residences in the city; the architecture is from the same firm that built the Plaza Hotel.”
“I take it the co-op didn’t accept your application?”
Oliver cracks a grin, relieved at the barb. “Still waiting to hear back, actually. Fingers crossed.”
Elio huffs out a laugh and falls into step with him, somehow at ease and uneasy, like Oliver’s favorite song is playing on the radio and he’s just anticipated that he can’t remember the next line. They walk along the edge of the park, Oliver leading them up to the Museum of Natural History, then weaving in and out to show him his favorite coffee shops, the bigger cinema and the small screen that shows independent movies, the little bookstore that he’s gone out of his way to shop in despite living closer to Harlem.
They duck into the park, then, so Oliver can show him the reservoir; he leads him up to the northernmost part of it, their shoes sticking in the mud, their toes squelching with every step.
“From here you can usually see the tops of all the buildings in midtown,” says Oliver. “But with the fog …”
“Well, I’ll have plenty of chances to come back,” says Elio. He leans his arms on the gate between the reservoir and the gravel path, propping his head on it and staring into the foggy abyss. Oliver stands beside him, feeling suddenly awkward, like he doesn’t know how to move his body or position it when he’s this close, when there is this stillness and there are so few people around that it feels like they are the only people for miles.
It’s Elio who breaks the silence: “So my father says you’re not getting married.”
Oliver opens his mouth; to say what, he isn’t sure.
Elio pulls himself away from the gate abruptly. “Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t.” His lip quirks upward with irony. “No speeches.”
“Elio.”
“Let’s go get coffee from that place you were talking about,” says Elio, already walking away.
Oliver follows, a step behind, letting Elio lead even though this is Oliver’s city and Oliver’s job. He wonders how he should explain himself; the explanation he gave Samuel was bare at best. That the decision was mutual. That the wedding is off. But Oliver didn’t tell him the whole truth: that the marriage itself may not be. That his parents are still attempting to pull strings, and Carly is still hovering in the fringes, her eyes sincere and filled with a poignant kind of sorrow: I still love you. We could make this work.
He’s blinking the sight of her out of his eyes when they’re crossing Central Park West. Elio reaches the curb before Oliver does, then pauses, glancing back — Am I going the right way? Oliver is expecting to see a shadow there, some reflection of the misery that he himself is feeling, but Elio seems calm. Not resigned, but accepting.
He used to be able to see every emotion that crossed Elio’s face, to be able to feel them as profoundly as though they were his own; he worries in light of this. Either Elio is far less invested in Oliver than Oliver still is in him, or in the last year he has become someone who can lie with a smile. Oliver isn’t sure which idea hurts him more.
Oliver nods, and Elio turns back, slowing his pace a bit so Oliver can catch up.
And then Oliver hears the screech of a brake, the telltale whine of a car starting to hydroplane. He turns around before Elio does, sees the trajectory of the delivery truck, sees his whole world cave in on itself in less than a second.
He’s reaching out before he can fully process what’s happening, grabbing Elio’s hand and yanking, pulling him back so far that they both end up spilling back into the crosswalk. No less than a beat later the delivery truck comes barreling through just where Elio was standing, jumping the sidewalk, coming to a stop just before it slams into the florist’s shop.
Oliver’s body is a live wire. He’s scrambling back to his feet, his hand empty, slipped out of Elio’s once they went down because of the slickness of the rain.
Elio’s there, still on the ground, laying in the crosswalk. Oliver leans over him, his hands on his face — ”Elio, Elio” — but Elio’s eyes are wide open, and all of him seems to be accounted for, please, god —
After a moment Elio wheezes, and Oliver realizes it’s that the wind has been knocked out of him.
“C’mon. I’ve got you,” says Oliver, offering his hand.
Cars around them are screeching to a halt; the light is green and they need to move. Elio seems to register this, taking Oliver’s hand, letting Oliver secure the other one around his shoulder and haul him up to his feet.
Only then does Elio gasp and cough for a moment, clutching at his chest.
The driver of the truck spills out. “Is everyone okay? Is he okay?”
“Fine,” Elio manages to say, waving the hand that isn’t wrapped around Oliver’s. Oliver realizes his grip on Elio’s is vice-like, or maybe it’s Elio whose hand is too tight around his, but he’ll be damned if he lets it go now.
Elio is still wheezing, looking a little stunned, his eyes flitting from the truck to Oliver — and there, when their eyes connect, is everything. The weight of all of it. Like the fear and the adrenaline cracked some visage, and he is staring right into the heart of Elio again, as wary and hopeful and hurt as he was the moment Oliver’s train pulled away.
“It’s okay. Everyone’s okay,” Oliver tells him.
Elio nods, and Oliver pulls him down the block, past the driver and the florist and the people who have collected on the sidewalk to gawk at them. A few people stop them — ”Are you two okay?” and “That was quite the save, young man” — but Oliver is on autopilot, answering politely for them both, pushing down the street until they hit 98th and then putting as much distance between themselves and Elio’s near death as he can.
As soon as they’re alone, Oliver stops abruptly, letting go of Elio’s hand only so he can secure them on Elio’s shoulders. They’re both shaking, Elio’s eyes so wide on his that they seem bottomless.
“You’re okay?” he asks. “You’re really okay?”
“You — you saved my life,” Elio gasps.
“Barely,” says Oliver, an edge in his voice. He’s furious, with a violence that scares him — he wants to go back and punch that driver in the face. Wants to make him feel the same horror that Oliver just did, wants his eyes to be branded with his worst nightmare the way Oliver’s will be for the rest of his life.
Elio’s face wobbles for just a moment, his cheeks already flush with embarrassment. Only then does Oliver understand just how cultivated, how planned his whole persona has been this whole afternoon; how he was clinging to it like a lifeline to save his pride, and now the only thing he could not have prepared for has shattered it. Oliver pulls him in to end his misery, to let him have some privacy in the moment the terror finally hits him.
Elio falls into him in that same inevitable way he always did, their bodies pressed like they were grown to fit into each other’s, even as Elio’s shoulders shake and Oliver stands as tense and rigid as a stone. He glances down the street to make sure they’re still alone and then gently, hesitantly, strokes his fingers through Elio’s hair, the way the once did when Elio was his to calm and his to move.
The rain is still streaming around them, bone deep, stripping them bare. The roar of it is suddenly so loud that it drowns out his own thoughts.
Not for long enough, though. Because that one damning thought is back, the way he knew it would be, the way he always will: Elio is his everything. And despite his fear, despite his rage and his self-loathing and every unfathomable feeling he has had since the moment he knew Elio was coming, there is still no truth more certain to him than that.
Elio starts shaking in earnest then, to an alarming enough degree that Oliver pulls back, worried Elio is in hysterics. And maybe he is — his face is cracked open, his eyes pinched shut, his whole body bending in laughter.
“What?” asks Oliver, incredulous.
It takes Elio a few moments to collect himself. When he does, he casts an almost careless hand on Oliver’s chest, leaning into him and still laughing as he says, “I was just imagining — you having to call my parents and tell them I’d been killed by a doughnut truck.”
“It’s not funny,” Oliver protests, but he’s laughing now too, against his will.
“What would they even put in the obituary?” says Elio, leaning so far that Oliver has to lean back to steady himself, the two of them in a veritable fit of laughter.
“Your parents would never be able to eat doughnuts again,” says Oliver, trying to sound grave for comedic effect but bursting into another peel of laughter halfway through.
Elio nearly loses it at that. “And you would?”
“Well, I got over it the last time someone I knew was hit by a doughnut truck, so.”
Elio cackles and swats at him, and just like that, the distance has been bridged; just like that, they are Elio and Oliver again, for better or for worse.
They eventually collect themselves enough to get coffee and split two sandwiches at the coffee shop, sitting soaking wet in their booth, the place looking abandoned. They talk without inhibition, Elio gesticulating in that familiar way of his, so bright and eager that Oliver might have imagined that he looked older when he first saw him this afternoon; here is Elio again, suspended in time, exactly the way he left him.
He walks Elio back to his dorm, under the pretense of knowing where it is, but privately because he is suddenly terrified to let Elio out of his sight — suddenly all too aware of all the harms, big and small, that can befall him in this city, beyond Oliver’s control. Elio seems to share this same sense of unease when they pause outside of his building, turning to each other to say goodbye.
Oliver doesn’t do a sweep of the street the way he did before, and that’s how both he and Elio know this hug will be brief; the kind of hug that is so achingly hard to wrench himself from that he wishes they wouldn’t hug at all.
“If you say Later, I’m going to kill you,” Elio warns as they pull away.
“I thought you said I just saved your life.”
Elio nudges his shoulder with his. “Thanks for that, by the way.” There's both a sincerity and a lightness in his voice; neither of them wants to fall apart again.
Oliver shrugs. “Anytime." Then he pivots on his heel, casts Elio one last glance, and smirks. “Later.”
He hears Elio’s indignant scoff, but there isn’t any real irritation in it; only a fondness. A memory revisited, softened at its edges, cast in warmer colors.
Oliver shoves his hands into his pockets and heads back out into the rain. Within a few hours, he knows, he will be a wreck. Maybe as soon as when he gets back on the train he will second guess everything he just said and did, will dissect every intention he should and shouldn’t act on, will pull this entire afternoon apart with a fine-toothed comb and find some way to sabotage this easy rapport he and Elio might have.
But in this moment, he allows himself a small peace. Elio is safe. Elio is whole. And for now, that is more than enough.