Olivia
It's been several months - almost an entire year - since they've spoken at all.
He still has all of their messages – from first to last, not a single character wasted. He copy-pastes them meticulously from his e-mail and into a Word document that he carries around in a little red USB in his pocket. (because that was his favorite color, most of the time)
Perhaps he's just paranoid, but he can't handle the idea of losing a single word.
It's a hundred bucks and twelve hours on one bus or another, sitting cramped beside strangers, with crying babies and crinkling bags of vending-machine tide-overs that they eat with their mouths open; he clutches his camera in his lap and he watches out the window, ignoring the nausea. He's not sure that it's motion sickness.
It doesn't freeze over like he expected it to. He arrives on a sunny day, albeit cold, ambles up an unfamiliar sidewalk.
Sitting on the step, he takes out his phone and scrolls through the year-old e-mail again, just to be sure. The address is exact. He's at the right place.
Eli probably doesn't remember, but that's okay too.
Maybe it's best that they don't meet, after all…
I got my acceptance letter today!
There had been one, and then a flood, and Harvey had slipped gradually to the sidelines, into drugs and clubs and older men. They'd had so many plans together, so much left to learn. He wants to know him, but he's not sure he does anymore.
Harvey doesn't have an acceptance letter. He barely has a diploma.
What good was school to him, anyways?
Eli, he's a quantifiable genius. He's brilliant and beautiful, and perfect, and he'd promised Harvey that one day he'd be the first person to stroke his fingers through his hair and hold his hand and look into his eyes, and he could hear the wedding bells even through the plain text.
He waits until the sun is going down. There's a distinct ache at the tips of his fingers and toes.
The digital clock on his homescreen reads 5:57.
"You're a little early," teasing, and that's a voice he hasn't heard in a while, and never quite this close, and – Harvey's head shoots up and there he is, everything, the very center of his gravity –
Tears are welling up faster than he can restrain them.
Sap.
"I didn't want to miss you," he hears from his own mouth, a frosty cloud, but there is a hand over his and it's warmer than the sun could ever be, and Eli beams brighter than he'd ever imagined was possible in his darkening world.
"I really missed you," he says, sincere, and curls his fingers possessively around his.
Harvey flushes.
"Yeah. Me too."
"I love you," he reminds him, leaning closer with that same shy bat of his eyes. Some things never change.
"Me too," he chokes out again, and rests their foreheads together. Eli's hair is dark, damp, dusted with white.
It's beginning to snow.
