Chapter Text
“Holster. Bro”
“Yeah, Rans?”
Ransom grinned down at Holster where he sat tapping away on his laptop on the bottom bunk. He bent down, dodging between the top of the laptop’s screen and the well-worn slats of the bunk above, and pressed a quick kiss to Holster’s lips, just because he could. When he pulled back, they both wore mirrored dopey smiles, and he lost his train of thought somewhere in the cool blue of Holster’s eyes. He lingered there for a long moment, bent at the waist, his hand braced against the bed that he was already beginning to think of as “theirs,” until Holster cleared his throat pointedly.
“Not that I’m not all for surprise kisses– I want to make it explicitly clear that I am– but you seemed like you wanted to tell me something?”
Ransom shook his head slightly, breaking the intense eye contact, and carefully extricated himself until he was standing upright again. “Right, right. So, you know how we were thinking of Nursey and Dex for attic dibs?”
“Hell yeah man, D-men dynasty. Classic.”
“Sure, sure, I hear you. But listen, I was thinking about some of the loops you’ve told me about.” Ransom had insisted that Holster recount as much as he could remember of the time he spent mired in his weird Groundhog Day repeats of the 19th. He was still feeling a bit put out that he’d missed so much of Holster during those weeks, even though it had only been a day for him, so he’d insisted on hearing the details the same way he did when they were split up over school breaks. Talking about it like Holster had just taken a trip for a few weeks helped them both pretend it was normal, even though it was still strange to hear about his own parts in the stories, since he didn’t remember any of those experiences. “I remembered you mentioned a loop where we got Dex and Nursey together?”
Holster darted his eyes around, as though there could be someone else in the small attic room with them without him noticing, and when he spoke again, his generally boisterous volume had been tamped down to an equally-enthusiastic stage whisper.
“Yeah, a few loops before the end. They just needed a little push. You helped with that by, ah, kissing me. To prove that it could work, or whatever.”
“Dude, are you seriously blushing right now? I literally just kissed you two minutes ago.”
“Shut up,” Holster complained, kicking a white-socked foot at Ransom’s shin in mock retaliation. He danced back out of range, laughing as Holster slid further down on the bed in an attempt to extend the already generous reach of his leg as he wiggled it threateningly toward Ransom.
“Make me,” he teased. Holster slid fully off the bed this time, shoving his laptop onto the foot of the bed as he went, then stood up until he could use his few extra inches (good lord, the man was a giant and Ransom was gone, gone, gone) to bear down with another kiss, this one fiercer than the one on the bed, and better for the more comfortable angle.
“Okay, but for real,” Ransom gasped out when Holster pulled back for a breath, “we do need to talk about this.”
“Hm?”
“Alright so, stop me if I’m wrong here: something about this room can occasionally cause some people to go into time loops.” Holster nodded silently, gesturing for him to continue. “It only seems to happen to pairs of people, at least with our sample size of two. Which is not a large enough sample to draw legitimate statistical conclusions from, but I’m refusing to think about that right now.”
Another nod from Holster. “Ghost-Jenny said that there were a few others, actually, in the loop where the real ones came over to the Haus? Two pairs, I think, before Mandy and Jenny. Sorry, I think I forgot to mention that.”
Ransom took a moment to absorb that, leaning forward until his forehead rested against Holster’s collar bone. He closed his eyes for a count of four, breathing in the lightly musky scent of his boyfriend (his boyfriend!) while refusing to allow himself to succumb to the weird existential anxiety that threatened to crawl its way up his throat when he thought too deeply about the ghosts. He grabbed at the thread of conversation before it slipped away again.
“It happens on February 19th, to pairs of people living in the attic, and if Mandy and Jenny are good examples of the pattern, specifically to pairs where at least one person has unrequited feelings for the other person, feelings that could be requited if they got some sort of push that forced them to confront it.” He trailed off, leaning back to watch his partner’s face as he reached the conclusion Ransom had hit upon earlier that morning. Holster’s eyes went from half-lidded and intimate to bugged-out in an explosive moment.
“Oh shit,” he said, just below a shout, grabbing Ransom’s shoulders with both hands and shaking him, all excitable urgency. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, although because this was Holster, his volume was still such that he could’ve been heard across the room. “Rans, we can’t put Nursey and Dex in the attic next year.”
“Yeah, bro, thats what I figured too,” Ransom laughed, reaching up to peel Holster’s hands from his shoulders, lacing their fingers together instead.
Holster looked thoughtful. “Ollie and Wicks are already dating though, yeah? They should be safe. Even though I hate to break up the SMH D-man dynasty.”
“Like, it’s the safe thing to do, right? I hope Dex gets someone else’s dibs, though, I think the guy has fixed every part of this Haus twice. And Nursey, shit, dude is like, my protege. Fuck weird time shit.”
“Fuck weird time shit,” Holster agreed, a little darkly. “We’ll do the handshake after classes today?”
“Perfect.”