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In the end, it all melted away. Nothing remained but the stars and the darkness. They were a capsule of two, floating not untethered, but free.
In the end, Harry was safe. He felt Adam’s arms strong around him, the beat of his heart, his breath warm and sweet, felt Adam speaking words that weren’t even words anymore but just the feeling of them, bringing a comfort deep and pure, as the knots deep within him loosened, untied, strings that once held him in place sparking into the night.
::
Living in this building is deeply strange. There’s the sterility of something brand new - Harry has never been the first to live in a space before - and that alone is unsettling in a country where one can take for granted the tremendous age of things. He wonders if a new building can have ghosts. The isle is full of noises floats through his mind, but there are no noises here but the hum of electricity and the sounds he creates himself. Sometimes the quiet makes him want to be quiet too, and sometimes it makes him want to make the biggest sounds, to shake the foundations, to make someone complain, to acknowledge him at all.
If he screams and no one hears him, has he screamed? It’s impossible to know, even with his throat raw, his eyes watering, his fingernails cutting half moons in his palms.
He experiences the world outside as framed by the window, a giant screen showing him a favorite character. He watches Adam long before they meet - irregular hours, always alone - and he watches Adam after, and he imagines he looks brighter. He hopes it will last. He worries it won’t.
There are other people. At least, one assumes there must be other people. But Harry doesn’t remember any of them from one day to the next, ghosts passing through.
::
The cinema has been showing old Christmas films on the slow December weeknights, and they find themselves at one about adult children going home on Christmas Eve, about all the things families don’t say to each other, and because it’s a Christmas movie, about hope for change by the end. It’s a little too apt, Harry thinks, for all that the neatness comforts him, and he knows Adam feels it even before he muses aloud that it’s lucky none of the children were queer. “What could the parson have said to that,” Harry agrees, catching Adam’s hand as they walk.
They ponder the idea of carolers (neither of them has ever gone caroling) and the questionable lyrics of the carols themselves. The next moment or an hour later, back above the city, Harry growls “bring me flesh and bring me wine” as he works his way down Adam’s torso, slow kisses and then a bite at his hip, and he smiles to himself, warm satisfaction as Adam’s laugh rumbles through him.
::
There is one other noise in this building: the eternal fire alarm. Harry never leaves when he hears it, a part of him trusting that it’s not real, and another part not caring if it is.
Harry’s lights are off, or more accurately, he hadn’t yet turned them on as the sun set, the room fading into darkness almost without him noticing. He pulls his cardigan snug around him as he watches the man come out of the building alone, looking up, wondering. Harry wants to step back, but worries that the motion will give him away, wanting and fearing being seen.
The man looks away, eyes never catching.
::
Adam is writing and Harry is pretending to read, but instead is watching the light on Adam’s face change with the weather. He could get lost in the lines around his mouth, in the deep wells of his eyes, and then he does a bit, until Adam’s glance flicks up, and he closes the laptop. “Read to me?” he asks. “Just from where you’re at.”
Harry looks down, feels himself flushing a little like a child getting caught, and starts with the word next to his left thumb, mid-sentence and all.
It becomes a bit of a game then, no context, no questions, just dropped into the middle of a story like passing someone on the street. Harry jokes he’s going to start reading the filthiest things he can find, but he never does, just picks up where he is and pulls them into another world, through a portal in time, like a train, like magic.
::
It’s one thing to think that you’ve drifted to the edge, that you’re a cold distance from the center star your family orbits around, but it’s quite another to see it proved quite harshly true, when the holidays pass without a call or a note. “I could be dead and they wouldn’t even notice,” Harry thinks, and then laughs so hard the tears come, and he doesn’t know why he laughed and why he can’t get the tears to stop.
::
“We need to breathe different air,” Harry decides, pestering Adam into going for a run.
“You might have to carry me back,” Adam warns, but he’s already getting up to change.
It feels good to be out in the world together, the soles of their shoes hitting in rhythm, passing by all the people they’ve never met and never will. Sweaty in the elevator after, Adam surprises him by tugging him close by his waistband and kissing him deep and heated. “No security guard, no one to watch the cameras,” he says off Harry’s look, tugs him from the elevator and right into bed.
::
Harry finds himself in front of the man’s door, a snarl of a knot in his chest. He doesn't remember anything about how he got there, doesn't remember knocking, doesn't remember where half the contents of the bottle in his hand went, but none of that matters as the man opens the door. As Adam opens the door, just a crack at first, then wide.
As he smiles nervously.
As he lets him in.
As the door closes with a soft snick, and the world outside them melts away.