text: The car shudders in the cold December afternoon, and Tanner drums his fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. The sooner he gets this done with, he tries to reason with himself, the sooner he can leave. And then, the sooner he can get his life together and move on, the sooner he can forget about Holland and his begrudgingly-charmed smile and his warm embrace and- He’s getting off task. Again. This is exactly why he’s been sitting here for twenty minutes and hasn’t managed to unglue himself from the driver’s seat. Step one, he decides, is to shut off the car. That’s easy enough. He turns the key and the engine gives one last, long rattle before going quiet. This car’s been in its death throes since he inherited it when he was sixteen. He and Holland drove it out to Cape Cod that summer, just the two of them and some tents and a cooler full of beer Holland’s moms had bought them under the strict promise that there would be no drinking and driving. They’d watched the sun set every night and rise every morning, their shoulders pressed together, their voices quiet so as not to disturb the peace. Tanner still remembers wanting Holland so badly it ate him from the inside out, still remembers the way the yearning tasted like the backwash of that first gulp he’d taken of the beer and then spit back out in disgust. Step two is harder. Step two is getting cold enough that he actually gets up and climbs the steps to the third floor, where his box of stuff is waiting. He’ll turn the key over to the apartment, he and Holland will bid each other adieu, and then... Well. Tanner hasn’t figured out step three just yet. The problem is that Tanner is stubborn. The problem is that they’re both stubborn in their own ways, but Tanner is like both the rock and the hard place when he wants to be, unrelenting, unmoving. He’s put himself through worse than a little cold to avoid something he didn’t want to do. He’s put them both through worse. He’d stayed up four days straight studying for his SATs in his junior year. Holland had come over to his house on the fifth and thrown all his study materials out into his hallway, despite Tanner’s screams of protest, and pushed him down into bed and laid on him until he fell asleep. They both missed school the next day, Tanner still passed out from exhaustion and Holland refusing to leave his side. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. Twenty. He feels himself shaking: first his feet, then his hands, then the rest of him, until he’s certain he’s going to vibrate right out of his skin. “This is stupid,” he says to himself finally, throwing open the car door with a sense of finality. “Just get the shit and be gone.” He tries not to notice that it sounds like Holland’s voice when he says it. He stomps up to the apartment, proud of himself for hesitating only a moment when he gets to the staircase. Up, up, up he climbs, all the way to the top, and then keeps walking down the hall to the left, and there it is. 302. His box isn’t in front of the door, and he’s going to call that a win. Given the way he left, Holland would have been well within his rights to donate everything Tanner left behind, or better still, to toss it in the garbage. To set it on fire. Still. It means he can’t get out of this without at least a small confrontation. He takes three deep breaths and knocks at the door. Somewhere in the complex, a dog is barking. Two car doors open and shut, the sound echoing across the parking lot. Birds, the ones who haven’t left for winter, chirp in the trees nearby. Their song grows louder and louder in Tanner’s head, and he tries to close his eyes to shut it out. Still it crescendos, and he can’t breathe, and he needs it to stop- “Tanner.” The door is open. Holland stands in the doorway, dressed completely inappropriately for the weather in an A-shirt and sweat shorts that are fraying at the knees. Tanner wants to hug him so badly he aches. “Your key,” he says instead, producing his keys from his jacket pocket and looking down at them to avoid Holland’s eyes. “I brought it back. And came for my stuff. Like I said I would.” Holland’s only response is a grunt that could mean just about anything. It’s been four and a half months since they’ve seen each other. It’s the longest they’ve gone in the eighteen years they’ve been best friends. Tanner’s hands are still shaking. It takes him longer than it should, but he manages to slide it off the ring and hand it over. Holland takes it. “Come in,” he says, and then he’s turning and going into the apartment before Tanner can respond. Tanner scrambles to keep up. By the time he’s in and the door is shut behind him, Holland has tossed the spare key onto the counter and disappeared into his bedroom. There’s no box anywhere in the tiny space that serves as both living room and kitchen. It felt huge when Holland first moved in, when they’d brought up all his boxes and stacked them in a pile only to ignore them while they ate takeout pizza, their knees knocking together under the kitchen island. Tanner had reached over to push some excess cheese into Holland’s mouth, laughing and calling him a brute, and Holland had caught his wrist before he could pull away and kissed it with his eyes intently focused on Tanner. They hadn’t gotten any unpacking done that night. Tanner stands awkwardly by the front door, afraid to take off his boots and overstay his welcome and also afraid of getting the carpet dirty. Holland reappears a few moments later. There’s a cardboard box in his hands. Tanner’s breath catches in his throat. This is it, he realizes. This is the moment that everything they’ve had officially becomes history. This is the end of Them . It hurts more than he’d realized. He thought he’d put it all behind him while he was abroad, thought getting some space was what he needed. He realizes, very quickly, that he has no idea what he needs. Holland crosses the space between them and hands Tanner the box. Tanner looks down to find that it’s empty. His brows furrow. “What the hell?” “I’m not packing it for you,” Holland grunts. “You want your stuff, you find it.” Tanner’s jaw drops as Holland goes into the kitchen and busies himself with something in the refrigerator. He looks down into the box again just to make sure he isn’t having some sort of hallucination, but it’s just as empty as it was before. He grits his teeth. “Fine,” he mumbles. He stomps into Holland’s bedroom and sets the box down on the bed. It remains more or less unchanged from the last time Tanner was here. The sheets are still messy on the bed; Holland never saw the point in making it when he was going to get right back in it the next night. Dirty clothes are in and around the hamper; the desk is crowded with study materials. There’s a single strand of soft white lights above the window that Tanner is surprised to see plugged in, since he was usually the one who insisted on having them lit. The photo collage that Tanner put up last summer is still on the wall. He hasn’t been cut out of the photos or anything. “Are you going to stare or are you going to pack?” Holland asks. Tanner jumps. He hadn’t heard him enter the bedroom. “Pack,” Tanner murmurs. Holland goes to the bed and sits next to the box. Tanner goes to the closet. The majority of his wardrobe had migrated here over the year Holland lived here before Tanner left. He starts taking down items one at a time, folding them as carefully as he can manage with his shaking hands and going over to place them in the box. “So...how was it?” Tanner looks up at Holland, who is intently studying his nails. He bites his lip. “It was good,” he answers, taking down a sweatshirt he accumulated in high school. It doesn’t really fit him anymore, but he used to like to wear it around the apartment. It was fun to catch Holland staring at the way it rode up when he’d reach for something high, exposing his hips and stomach. “I learned a lot.” “S’good,” Holland answers. “And...you got space. Which is what you wanted.” Tanner is glad he’s facing into the closet. He can’t help the way he squeezes his eyes shut, the pain clamping tightly around his heart. “Yeah,” he manages. He hopes it doesn’t sound too strained. It’s quiet for a few more minutes as Tanner packs. He comes across several shirts whose owner he isn’t certain of. He elects to leave them in the end, deciding that if they do belong to him, Holland can toss them if he wants. There are a lot of other things spread out in the bedroom that technically are Tanner’s. The blanket folded haphazardly and shoved into a corner. The few DVDs next to the tiny television. A box of granola bars that he doesn’t understand why Holland hasn’t already thrown away. He collects it all and sets it gingerly in the box, unable to shake Holland’s gaze as he packs up the evidence that he was here. There are tears thick in the back of his throat that he wills himself to hold onto until he’s out of the apartment. Just a few more minutes, he reasons, and then he can cry all he wants- “Tanner,” Holland says, breaking the uneasy silence. Tanner looks up at him. He’s hunched over on the end of the mattress, his arms crossed over his chest. Maybe it’s Tanner’s imagination, but it seems like there are unshed tears in his eyes, too. “H-Holland,” he whispers. “I should-I should go. The rest of this can just...can just stay...” Holland stands abruptly and closes the distance between the two of them, cupping Tanner’s jaw and kissing him. Tanner can’t help the way he melts against Holland. He has years of practice fitting himself against this man, and he knows exactly how to tilt his head, exactly how to move his mouth. Holland lets out a sigh against his lips as Tanner wraps his arms around Holland’s neck. “Why did you go?” he asks, and Tanner must have been right about the tears, because his lips suddenly taste like salt. “I know you, Tanner. I can see that you’re not happy. This isn’t what you want. Is it?” “No,” Tanner admits. He was never able to deny Holland much of anything, much less the truth. “Then why?” Holland urges. “Why are you doing this? I’ve missed you so much, Tanner. Stay with me. Just stay with me.” Tanner can’t help but let out a choked-off sob. “I-I can’t.” “Bullshit.” Holland leans his forehead against Tanner’s. “Bullshit, Tanner. You can do whatever you want. Do you want me?” “Yes,” Tanner answers, “but-” “No buts.” “Holland,” Tanner cries. “I can’t-I don’t want to hold you back.” Holland takes a step back, untangling himself from Tanner. His eyes are wide, his jaw hanging open slightly. “Is that what this is about? You fucked off to Europe for four months because you thought you were holding me back?” “It was a good opportunity for my program,” Tanner answers automatically, the same thing he’d spat out every time someone had asked since he’d gotten home. He’d never wanted to go. He used to say he was going to travel the world with his team someday, so he’d see Europe then. But then he got hurt. Baseball was ripped out from underneath him, and suddenly all he had was school, and the future, and... Holland huffs in disbelief. He’s always been the best at seeing through Tanner’s carefully constructed half-truths. “If it were really about that, we would have video called every night. You would have sent me pictures. You would have brought home a whole suitcase full of souvenirs for our apartment, for-for our house, someday.” Tanner looks up at the ceiling, begging himself to keep it together. The third day he’d been there, he’d bought a print without thinking about it, teal and white and black like their high school colors had been. He’d been imagining a place for it on a wall in a house they lived in together and he’d handed over the money before he could stop himself. “I don’t care, you know,” Holland says. “I never cared that you were going to be Tanner O’Brian, famous baseball player. I didn’t fall in love with him.” Tanner takes a deep breath. “That’s all I was ever going to be,” he says, his voice raw and ragged. “I picked art history because I thought it would be fun, but it wasn’t supposed to matter. I was supposed to play. Without baseball, I’m just...” Tanner jumps as his hands are taken roughly in Holland’s own. It forces him to meet Holland’s gaze again. “You’re just the love of my life,” Holland says. He sounds angry, almost. Determined. “You’re just the man who’s spent his whole life by my side.” Tanner can’t help it. The tears fall from his eyes and stream down his face. “Everything is changing,” he says. “I’m not who I used to be.” “Neither am I,” Holland replies. “Look, Tanner, just-were you happy? When you were without me?” Tanner shakes his head. He’s been a lot of things the last few months, but happy is not one of them. “Do you want to be with me?” Tanner swallows, looking down and away. “I don’t deserve you. I ran away. You shouldn’t give me a second chance.” “I’ll give you as many chances as you need,” Holland says. “I love you, Tanner. I love you so much, and I never want to stop.” Tanner sobs, just once, and Holland pulls him into his arms. It’s the only place Tanner has ever felt whole. “I couldn’t pack your box because I didn’t want to,” Holland says. “I wanted you to stay. I want you to stay. Will you stay with me?” And for the first time in months, Tanner doesn’t hesitate as he whispers “yes.”