John wasn't sure how Ocelot had found him out in the Rockies. Everything in him wanted to be suspicious, but the way he'd barged in and immediately passed out on John's ratty leather couch spoke volumes about his intentions. When he woke in the morning, John greeted him with a lukewarm cup of coffee and a couple of waffles. At first, Ocelot didn't speak, he just blinked up blearily at John through a shaggy mop of white-blond hair until the coffee finally kicked in.

"Adamska," John was corrected. "Not Ocelot. Adam or Adamska."

Noted.

Where Adam had come from and how he'd found this place, John didn't question. "Why me?" was the only thing he asked, and even then, Adam just shrugged. "Get lonely without me?"

"Yeah."

There were quite a few weeks of wordless serenity between them. John enjoyed the company whether he wanted to admit it or not; it was nice to have someone keeping the living room warm, it was even nicer to wake up in the morning to breakfast even if Adam was a terrible cook. When they did speak, it was comfortable but brief. John figured that Adam just wasn't sure what he wanted to say after all this time.

The first night that it stormed, John woke to the living room light flickering on. He stumbled out of his room to find Adam had dragged a chair over to the window, his eyes scanning the mountains nervously, and each time the lightning flashed John could see him brace for the thunder.

"It's not like this in Moscow," Adam told him, having heard John shuffle in. "Thunder seems a lot louder here."

"It's the mountains. Makes it echo. You nervous?"

Adam didn't answer, he just squinted out into the dark.

"Sometimes it gets to me. Makes me think I'm about to get nuked again," John grumbled, rooting through his fridge. "Want a beer?"

Adam nodded. John pulled another chair up next to him and offered him a beer, flicking the lamp off before he sat down.

"It's nice to watch it," John reassured him. "Look out there. Between the shed and that pine tree. You might see something neat."

John could tell when the isolation began to take its toll on Adam. He became restless, pacing John's cabin, roaming the yard and all of John's hunting trails until he'd run the trails bare and his cowboy boots had rubbed raw spots on his feet. John considered his options for quite some time until an idea sparked in the back of his mind one clear August day.

"Pack your stuff up, kid," John told him, nodding at Adam's little hoard at the end of the couch. "We're gonna take a little trip."

"Where?"

"Don't worry about it."

Adam gave him a look, that look that John imagined a spurned cat would give him, but John just grinned at him and began packing his own bags.

The ride to town was a quiet one, one where Adam groused the entire time and rooted around in the trash in John's junky old truck, but John didn't care. When they finally reached the valley, he went straight for the car dealership. Again, Adan eyed him suspiciously the entire time, until it came time for John to pick something and suddenly he had an opinion.

"The red one," Adam said quietly, peering out from behind John as John negotiated with the salesman.

The red one it was. They left in a shiny new Ford Bronco and Adam rooted around in the shiny black and grey leather interior the entire way to the truckstop until he finally parsed that they were stopping to gather supplies.

"John?" he asked nervously, following him into the truck stop at a near run. "John, how far are we gong?"

"I dunno."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean I really don't know."

The little jingle of spurs followed John through the whole store and each time he looked at Adam, he could tell that he was trying to ask questions but where would he even start? Instead, Adam settled for picking up his own snacks and drinks.

"You don't wanna sit up there all stuffed up in that cabin, do you?" John asked him, dropping an armload of food on the counter.

"Not really."

"Then trust me."

They drove day and night, until the mountains dwindled and the sparse desert began. Down to New Mexico until they hit Route 66 and headed west. They stopped in every tourist trap along the way and John bought Adam a real, supposedly authentic cowboy hat, and John had never seen a happier person. It was out of place on Adam with his red scarf and striped shirt, but with his jacket closed at night the persona was a little more believable. But John liked that he was so thrilled with it. It fit him somehow.

The afternoons were white-hot and blinding, the evenings cool and painted brilliant purples and pinks as they trudged through Arizona. At first they slept up front until John figured out the bed of the Bronco was comfortable with a nest of blankets and the tailgate down. The hardtop kept the weather off even if they had to sleep in a ball to keep their feet pulled in.

John wasn't quite sure how many times they'd listened to the same song on the radio or if Adam ever stopped asking questions about John before Tselinoyarsk, but it became par for the course while they drove. If Adam wasn't questioning him, John was worried, but usually it just meant he had fallen asleep with his feet tucked up in the bucket seats and his face buried in his red scarf that he never seemed to take off, even in the blistering heat.

The salt air of the California coast was refreshing. They spent quite some time in San Diego, sleeping on the beach at night and scouting the city during the day. Adam purchased a camera and some film and began snapping pictures where they went, but he took so many of the sunsets that John wondered how much film he even had left. The sun had tinged his pale cheeks pink and John thought it was funny how much more pink they looked in the orange sunsets.

"If you keep staring at me like this, I'm going to have to start charging you by the minute," Adam said one night, stretched out on his favorite blanket. He stared up at the stars as if he was disinterested, but John could see the smirk on his face in the bright moonlight.

"What's your rate?" he shot back.

"Every time I catch you looking over here, you have to buy me some more cheesecake cookies. Like the ones we ate in Tucson."

"Do you ever stop eating?"

"Only when I'm asleep. Why are you staring at me, exactly?"

That caught John off-guard. He paused, mulling over it, wondering if Adam was looking up at the same constellation but he couldn't give him an answer that felt right. "I guess it's just that you look so different. Compared to Tselinoyarsk," he tried, but Adam huffed.

"So I haven't cut my hair in a year. Is it that drastic?"

"Well, that and the civvies."

Adam shook his head then, mumbling something in Russian that John thought vaguely sounded like 'dense' but he let it slide.

When he woke in the morning, he found Adam crammed against his back, face buried in the dip of his shoulder blades.

When faced with the question "North or East?" Adam immediately chose East. North, he said, seemed pretty boring and that he'd been to Washington and Oregon on the way into the US from Russia. So East they went, back through the desert on a different route until they came to Texas.

The Texas culture was right up Adam's alley. They spent a night on a cattle ranch and the owner was nice enough to let Adam ride his fancy white Andalusian, which apparently was quite a novelty as they had been restricted in the US until just a few years before. Adam fell in love with the horse and John secretly hated leaving it there when they left, but how was he going to haul a horse around the country? And what was Adam going to do with it anyway?

They neared the Louisiana border, headed for New Orleans, and Adam was astounded by the dense lowlands and swamps. New Orleans was like an alien planet to him. The architecture, the culture, all of it was completely exotic and the wonder on Adam's face as they explored old John they'd made the right decision about heading back East.

Their first night there, John found Adam curled up in a ball at his side, but the southern humidity eventually deterred him.

The food was something neither of them was prepared for, but Adam had no qualms about beignets. After an afternoon of wandering the city, they found themselves in a seedy bar, sipping bourbon after bourbon until it was all they could do to stumble back to the Bronco in the dark. Adam had a paper sack full of pastries and they snacked for a while in an attempt to sober up, fumbling over each other as they scrambled onto the tailgate, but then the paper sack was spilling all over the truck bed and Adam was kissing John and John wasn't quite sure what was going on - all he knew was that right then, in that moment, he liked it, until the alcohol was too much and they passed out in a pile sprawled out in the back of the Bronco.

It wasn't until they reached the Mississippi coast that Adam decided it was okay to talk to John again. They stopped to eat in a town called Gulfport and Adam picked at a plate of boiled shrimp until he absolutely couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"I made it weird, didn't I?" he asked, sort of at no one, sort of at John.

John grimaced at his first taste of "sweet tea", trying desperately to drown out the sugar with a bite of fried oysters. "No," he mumbled, glancing over at Adam, but Adam was staring listlessly out into the harbor. "Quit worrying about it. You wanna go see that fort?"

"What fort?"

"There's this fort on an island off the coast here. That little tourism book we got on the way in said it was built in 1812. Thought you might like to see it."

And then they were on their way out to a barrier island. Adam sat with his body angled away from John the entire time, his head leaned against one of the boat's portholes. He didn't wear his cowboy hat.

"I hear the far side of the island has black sand," John tried, but Adam gave him a wary look before resuming his slump.

The island was no different. They meandered for a while on the pebbly beaches of the north side of the island, Adam remarking how strangely brown the water looked compared to the Pacific, but a park ranger overheard his observation and informed them it had something to do with the Mississippi River emptying out not far from them and stirring up dirt in the ocean. The fort was quite interesting to them both and they climbed every tightly wound spiral staircase they could find, up to the grassy tops of the fort where they could barely make out the mainland and the old cannons lay in fragments.

"See? It's nice," John said, nudging Adam as he circled one of the cannons. "You like it."

"I like history."

"Exactly."

Adam gave him a weary smile before disappearing back down the brick stairs, his spurs jingling as he went.

John followed close behind, wondering where he was going, but they ended up wandering through the old seaward side of the fort where damp seeped through the bricks and the ports looked off into the dingy gulf. The official tour was far behind them and Adam lingered over what looked to be an old rail system where a smaller cannon sat.

"You just gonna give me the silent treatment?" John asked, nudging his arm, but Adam shook him off. "Adam."

"What?"

John felt his feet moving before he registered the rest of his body moving; there was a brief scuffle of soles on brick, of hands pushing against his chest, but suddenly his hands were flat against the cold brick wall and his lips were on Adam's again. Adam protested quietly at being pinned in such a way but he dissolved into John's kiss, his fingers tangling in the front of John's soft shirt.

When John stepped away from him, unsure of what had just happened, Adam's cheeks were pink again like they had been in San Diego but John knew it wasn't sunburn.

When they were nearing Tennessee, somewhere in the northeast corner of Mississippi near the Alabama line, Adam seemed exceptionally uncomfortable.

"John," he started, staring out the window of the Bronco, "have you noticed the men following us since Jackson?"

"Sort of. Kind of hoped it wasn't what I thought," John answered.

"They probably want me back."

"Were you working for someone?"

"Sort of. I...don't want to get you involved."

"Who is it?"

But Adam didn't answer.

They slept in Nashville, curled up against each other comfortably, but John felt uneasy the entire night. He mulled over who could possibly be following them and sat up occasionally to make sure that no one was sitting in the rest stop with them, only falling asleep after he was absolutely sure nobody was staring at them from the cover of the woods.

In the morning he found himself tangled with Adam, his heart hammering in his ribcage as Adam kissed burning trails over his chest, but then they were sitting silently on the tailgate with clothes askew and lips sore and puffy.

"I have to go, John," Adam said softly. "You know this, right?"

"I don't see why you have to."

"It's more than I can say right now. I... I'll ride with you to Chattanooga, and then I have to go."

John sighed, looking over at the man next to him wistfully, but somewhere deep in the back of his mind he understood whether he wanted to admit it or not.

Chattanooga came faster than he wanted.

John chewed his cigar angrily when they came to their final rest stop, watching Adam rake his things out of the truck bed and into his duffel bag. Really, he told himself, he had no right to be angry, but he couldn't help it. He had just gotten used to this, whatever this weird thing was that he was feeling, and just as quickly as it had began, it was over.

"You're going back to Russia?" John asked, staring across the rest stop blankly.

"No. Not even. I'll be here in the US but..."

"But what?"

Adam's glacial blue eyes settled on him and John finally realized what he was feeling was sadness.

"...They're here," Adam said suddenly, glancing over his shoulder as a white vehicle pulled into the rest stop. "I... I'll find you. Wait for me."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Just don't forget me. Don't give up on me." He smashed a harsh kiss against John's lips. "Bye."

"I... See you later," John mumbled, absently acknowledging that Adam had pressed something into the palm of his hand.

He watched as the Russian ducked into the white car, squeezing the plastic thing in his palm as they disappeared down the highway. A deep pang of...something settled deep in his chest and he leaned back against of the tailgate of the Bronco, taking a long drag of his cigar, mulling over what had just happened.

It wasn't until he had dragged himself back into the driver's seat that he glanced at the roll of film in his hand. He sighed and shoved the Bronco into gear, unsure of how to make it back to his cabin without Adam navigating from the passenger's seat.