Work Text:
Handwritten, found years later in a warped leather glovebox notebook, smelling of motor oil and pine air freshener — dated July 1994. Postmarked nowhere. Never sent.
Loki,
You’re asleep on the motel bed again with the TV on mute and your foot twitching like you’re running through someone else’s dreams. There’s a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the knob that you spelled wrong on purpose, and there’s half a packet of gas station peanuts spilled across the nightstand next to your paperback copy of On the Road, which you only bought to mock it. You said Kerouac needed a therapist and a shower. I said so do I. You didn’t argue.
I should sleep. We’ve got a long haul in the morning, and the Chevy’s starter’s grinding again, which means I’m gonna be under her with a wrench and half a hangover. But your back is rising and falling steady under the sheet and your stupid black hair is stuck to your forehead like a punk rock saint, and I’ve got too many things in my head that I don’t trust to stay there if I don’t write them down now.
So I’m writing. For you. For me. For that future version of us that I hope gets to sit in a kitchen someday, sun coming through the blinds, coffee percolating, and you pulling this letter out of a drawer like a secret. And reading it. And maybe smiling. Or calling me a sap. Which — fair.
But mostly I’m writing it because somewhere along Route 40 I realized I was in love with you, and that scared the ever-loving hell out of me. Still does.
You know I’m not a poet. Hell, I’m not even a good mechanic. I’m just a guy who made it out of Queens with too many smart remarks and not enough backup plans. I’ve been loud my whole life, because silence has sharp teeth. I fill it with whatever I can. Music. Noise. Women. Men. Tools. Gasoline. Jokes. Bad movies. You.
Especially you.
I met you at that gas station diner in Nevada. Remember? You were wearing sunglasses at night, leaning against the jukebox like a Bond villain with a caffeine addiction, and you ordered black coffee and cherry pie like it was a threat. I watched the waitress flirt with you and you barely blinked, but when you caught me looking, you tilted your head like I was something stuck to your boot.
You told me later you almost didn’t say a word to me. Said I was loud, arrogant, arrogant again (you said that part twice), and had a voice like a malfunctioning radio DJ.
But you did speak. Eventually. And I’ve never been the same.
I don’t think I fell in love all at once. I think I circled it, slow, like a vulture, like a coward. I called you everything but what I meant. Dracula. Sinatra. Professor Doom. Once, when you wore that godawful turtleneck to the laundromat, I called you “Hot Topic Aristotle.” You didn’t laugh, but you smirked. And then didn’t talk to me for two hours, which was fair.
But you never corrected me. Not once. You just looked at me like you knew I was trying to name something I didn’t understand. I think that was your way of letting me figure it out on my own. You always did prefer riddles to revelations.
But I remember the exact moment I called you “kitten.”
It was Missouri. Summer. One of those nights when the air’s too thick to breathe and the bugs sound like they’re revving engines outside the window. We’d had a fight — something stupid about the A/C or the fact that you wanted to listen to Bowie and I put on Mellencamp because it reminded me of high school and too much beer.
You were sitting on the motel porch, curled into yourself like a streetcat who wasn’t sure if it wanted to be let in or left the hell alone. You were wearing my old leather jacket, the sleeves pushed up to your elbows, your wrists pale in the porchlight, and you looked like you didn’t know how to ask to be held.
And I said, “Come on, kitten. Don’t do that thing where you go all cold and poetic just because we disagreed about Scarecrow.”
And you blinked at me once. Slow. Then you scoffed. Then you stood and walked inside. And later, in bed, you rested your head on my shoulder like it was yours by right. Like I had said something you’d been waiting to hear, but couldn’t have asked for out loud.
I haven’t stopped calling you that since. And yeah, it’s stupid. And you always roll your eyes. But you never tell me to stop. Which, with you, is a kind of love letter all by itself.
There’s a specific kind of American romance they don’t make movies about. Not the passionate, sweeping kind with orchestras and doves. Not even the gritty noir kind where everyone dies in the end. It’s the kind you find on highways and back porches and in greasy diners where the coffee tastes like regret. The kind with shared motel toothbrushes and cassette tapes rewound with a pencil. It’s arguing about which route is faster while secretly loving the detours. It’s falling asleep in the passenger seat with your feet on the dash and trust in your bones.
That’s what we have, Loki. It’s not neat. It’s not easy. But it’s ours. And it’s real.
You drive me insane. You drink the last soda. You quote Euripides at 6 a.m. You refuse to learn how to pump gas. You sing under your breath when you think I’m not listening. You write grocery lists in iambic pentameter. You carry five lighters and only one works. You kiss like you’re apologizing for a war I don’t remember fighting.
And I’m in love with you so deep it feels like a fault line running through my chest.
I love you for your hands, and how they tremble only when you think I’m asleep. I love you for the way you bite your thumb when you're reading, and for how you treat gas station hot dogs like a personal betrayal. I love that you always look at the moon like it's watching you back. I love your bullshit. All of it. And you know I don’t love easy. But with you? It didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like gravity.
I want everything. The fights. The long drives. The half-laughed insults. The music. The heat. The quiet. The years.
And I want you to know that I would’ve written this even if we’d never kissed. Even if you’d stayed that untouchable goddamn mirage in the corner booth. Because I loved you before I ever got to love you. I think I would’ve found a way to love you in any version of this world. On any road.
You’re the best wrong turn I ever took.
Anyway. That’s the whole mess of it. My roadside gospel. My love letter in a tank of gas and the space between songs on a tape deck.
I don’t need you to say anything back. I just needed to say it, once, clean and clear.
The air smells like asphalt and honeysuckle. The TV’s still flickering static. You’re still asleep, and somehow even more beautiful for it.
And I’m still here. Still yours. With love. With luck. With both hands open.
—Tony
P.S. If you quote this to me in your fake accent, I’m buying nothing but Folgers for the rest of the trip. You’ve been warned.