All That I’ve Known to Be of Love (Call Me By Your Name)

[starfishstar]

ALL THAT I'VE KNOWN TO BE OF LOVE

Fandom: Call Me By Your Name

Summary: Oliver leaves. Oliver gets married. Oliver is gone. But, one day, they begin to write each other letters…

Characters: Oliver/Elio

Words: 6,500

Notes:

Written as a Yuletide treat for boywonder, who asked:

What if Oliver came back?
What if Oliver’s marriage didn’t work out and he came back then?
What if they wrote letters to each other for years?
What if they saw each other again after years?

(Note: one small bit of book canon slid its way into this: that Elio and Oliver went to Rome together at the end of Oliver’s stay. But it’s otherwise set in the world of the movie: namely, that the future is left open and we can decide what happens beyond that final winter scene!)

My great thanks to asuralucier for helpful, detailed, fast betareading at quite the 11th hour!


Read this fic on AO3, or here below:


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


18 June, 1984

Dear Oliver,

I know it’s been too many months since we talked. And I know that’s as much my fault as yours.

Probably I should have written you my congratulations. But I couldn’t bear to write to you when – but we won’t speak of it. It’s probably better if we don’t speak of it.

I suppose I mostly wanted to tell you that I was offered a spot at a conservatory, and I’m going to be studying there starting this autumn. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, in Rome. Just thought you might want to know.

That’s all, I guess. I hope you’re good, Oliver. I hope you’re good.

Elio

~

June 27, 1984

Dear Elio,

It was good to hear from you. Wow, you’ll be studying in Rome. I’m jealous! Wish I could do the same. But more than that, I’m proud of you. Clearly the conservatory recognized what a great musician you are, and how much greater you’re going to become.

As for me, I’m good. Yeah, things are good. I’m applying for a couple of positions, one here in New York and one in New Hampshire. Cross your fingers for me, okay?

Stay in touch. I’ll talk to you soon.

Oliver

~

5 January, 1985

Dear Oliver,

Something about the sunset this evening, as I was walking home along via Vittoria, made me think of you. I don’t know why. Well, I know why, but I don’t know why tonight in particular.

The little slice of sky visible between the buildings was a strange shade of salmon, somehow bright and dusky at the same time. The air was unusually cold for Rome, the kind of wind that bites your face, and then there was that sky: strange and pink and washed with tiny, fast-moving clouds.

And for a moment, the whole world felt wide open. I don’t know if you can imagine what I mean.

Elio

~

January 16, 1985

Dear Elio,

Yes, I think I can picture what you mean. There are days when the sky seems different, bigger, stranger, as if it’s opened up for a moment and given a glimpse of somewhere else. An impossible shaft of light comes down, or the clouds sweep aside to reveal the moon, and it’s so unexpected that for a moment you stop and really see, instead of taking the world for granted. I have days like that too (maybe too many of them), where I stop and wonder if things mean at all what I think they mean.

Or maybe that’s ascribing entirely too much significance to clouds.

How are your studies, Elio? I don’t even know what questions to ask; music is your area of brilliance, not mine. I never even asked: I assume you’re studying piano, right? Or is it something else, like composition, or…?

I like the mental picture you’ve painted: of you, walking home in the evening along one of those narrow Rome streets, maybe your hands shoved in your pockets, maybe a scarf wrapped high around your throat, in the winter cold with dark falling early, and those high, narrow buildings rising up around you on all sides. That’s how I’ll picture you, when I think of you in Rome.

Hope you’re doing well, Elio.

Yours,
Oliver

~

24 January, 1985

Oliver, I still go to that café sometimes. Do you remember? The one where we went, wonderfully drunk, one of your last nights in Italy. Long past midnight on a summer night that seemed to go on forever, expanding and expanding to hold everything we could possibly want from one night. Sometimes I think I’m still living in that night. I visit that café and I remember drinking coffee there, standing pressed against your shoulder in the middle of a crowd, and loving everything.

I would go back to that night if I could. Would you?

Elio

~

February 4, 1985

I don’t know what you want me to say, Elio. I’m married, even though I know you don’t want to talk about that. There’s no going back to that night, so is there any point in speculating?

I don’t mean to be harsh, I just…I don’t know what you want me to say.

I hope you’re doing okay otherwise.

Oliver

~

12 February, 1985

I shouldn’t have said anything. Just go ahead and pretend I didn’t say anything, if that’s what you’d rather.

~

October 28, 1985

Hi Elio,

I’ve been thinking of you lately, which made me think I ought to write. Well, I guess first I should admit the reason why I was thinking of you: I was in Greece earlier this month. I was asked to serve as one of the chaperones for a group of undergrads on a course-related fall break trip; they got seven full days to see statues and ruins, and have their minds blown and their hearts expanded. Lucky kids – I’d have killed for a chance like that as an undergrad!

I should have told you I was going to be so nearby, I know. I have plenty of excuses: that there wasn’t enough time. That I was there for business, not pleasure. That it would have taken too many additional logistics to arrange a stop in Rome.

But the truth is that I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I don’t know if I could see you and not be – well – not have it be like you said in a letter a while back, a letter that I think I answered badly: I’m not sure I could be in Rome, see you in Rome, without getting confused about whether perhaps I, too, am still living in that beautiful night two years ago.

It wasn’t fair of me, I know, to refuse to talk about it. I’ve been thinking about that, too.

I do think about those days. I think about them all the time. It’s like there was a parallel life I lived, those six weeks in Italy. Those six weeks with you. Like maybe there’s another Oliver out there somewhere, who continued on and lived that life, instead of turning back to home and to what he knew.

I’m not unhappy, though. I don’t want to give the wrong idea. I’m just trying to say that it meant something to me, and it isn’t right of me to pretend otherwise.

It’s been a long time of silence, and I’m sorry. If you’d like to write and tell me how you’ve been, I’d like to listen.

Yours,
Oliver

~

2 December, 1985

Hi Oliver,

It was a surprise to hear from you, as I guess you can imagine. And kind of a shock, too, to think you were here in Europe and I didn’t know. I suppose I always imagined that if you were nearby, I would simply know somehow. What strange things we imagine.

I’m sorry for the long silence, too. I was asking too much of you and that wasn’t fair either. I would say, let’s start over with a clean slate, but is there really any such thing? I can’t erase who you were to me.

But I can try to write to you as a friend, the way it seems like you’re asking me to.

I don’t think I ever answered your question from one of your earlier letters: yes, I’m studying piano. I did wonder in the beginning if it was the right choice. Studying music is such an intense, specific, all-consuming pursuit. Nothing like what I imagine a liberal arts course to be; or maybe I just don’t know. So I spent the summer before I started asking myself if I should have chosen something broader, English or history or even Classics, maybe even at a university in the U.S., instead of committing myself irrevocably to a life of music.

No. It turns out, no. This choice was the right one, the only one, and one I would never take back. I can no longer imagine wanting any other life.

That’s not what I set out to tell you about, though. I wanted to describe Rome to you, to try to put into words my feelings for this city. For the old buildings and the narrow lanes and the layers and layers and layers of history, all of it close enough to touch. For the endless summer nights, spilling out of cafés with expansive crowds of friends, drinking coffee, then wine, then grappa, then maybe coffee again, far into the early morning hours, talking of poetry and music and love and art. Maybe you can imagine. Maybe you can remember, a little.

I hope you have something in your life like that, too. Something that makes you feel alive.

Yours,
Elio

~

December 11, 1985

Dear Elio,

It’s really good to hear from you. Thanks for writing.

My life is okay, truly. I do love my work. Living the small-college-town life is a trip after New York, I’ve got to tell you, but I think I can honestly say I’ve come to like it. I have some good friends; I have some good hobbies. Other things are more complicated, but we won’t get into that.

What a soaring feeling, though, to experience Rome through your letters; to feel your love for the city, for its history and its people. You’ve always been so open in that way, willing to throw yourself into the world. I admire that.

Thank you, too, for being willing to consider me a friend. It’s probably more than I deserve.

Anyway, thanks for writing. Your letter brightened a rather overcast New England day.

Yours,
Oliver

~

21 December, 1985

Dear Oliver,

Let’s not talk of deserving, okay? Who can even say what that means, what any of us deserve. We deserve to be treated as humans by our fellow humans, that’s about all I can think to say about that. Let’s just write letters, if we want to write letters, for as long as we want to write letters, and let that be good enough.

I don’t know if I’m making sense.

I can’t really picture your life – you’ve described it in only the barest terms. You have “hobbies.” You have “friends.” But they have no details or life to them. I wish I could see them in my mind’s eye, because then I could see you, by looking through the lens of the world you’ve built around yourself. I wish I could see that. You’re a writer – don’t forget that I know that! I know you could sketch me a picture that would draw me inside your world. But only do it if you want to.

That’s all, I suppose. It’s raining here, too. An overcast Rome sky to match your New England one.

Yours,
Elio

~

December 29, 1985

Dear Elio,

I’m writing this from the desk in my study at home. Our house is not very big, but it’s full of “charm”: by which people generally mean that the floors all slope and none of the doors sit quite right on their hinges and there’s always at least one place where the roof leaks when it rains. But I love it. It has, in your words, history.

My study is at the back of the house, which overlooks a little sloping lawn and then the neighbor’s apple orchard. How I love that apple orchard. A sea of pink blossoms in spring, a conflagration of brightly colored leaves in fall. I think you would like it, too. (It’s no peaches or apricots, no, but it’s so clearly rooted in exactly this place where it is. It’s right, somehow.)

Right now it’s sunny, but everything is covered with the dusting of snow that fell yesterday. Snow on the ground and sunny skies: it could be a postcard.

Speaking of things that belong to winter, happy Hanukkah (though it’s pretty far past by now) and happy new year (almost). You must have some sort of winter break right now. I don’t know if you’re back home with your parents or not, but that’s where I picture you: in that wonderful old house, full of all that easy warmth I admired so much about your family. Surrounded by that beautiful countryside, but now blanketed in snow instead of garbed in green.

Sorry, I’m waxing poetic. I guess thinking about Italy does that to me. But I like to imagine that wherever you are, whether it’s at home or elsewhere, you’re surrounded by warmth and laughter. I hope your life is full of happiness.

Yours always,
Oliver

~

6 February, 1986

I don’t know, Oliver, you say you’re happy but you don’t sound happy. You describe places beautifully, but when you talk about your life, it sounds empty. No details about your friends or your wife or how you spend your time. (Or maybe those things are great, but you just don’t want to tell me about them. That could be, too.)

Am I overstepping? I want to push you on this, I want to push you to do the things that will make you happy, but I know that’s not my place anymore. Or maybe it never was.

I don’t know what else to say.

Elio

~

March 12, 1986

Elio,

You’re right, of course. I think you know that you’re right. I’ve got a lot to think about before I know how to answer. Give me some time, okay?

Always,
Oliver

~

June 5, 1986

Dear Elio,

Here’s my attempt at an answer.

No, I’m not happy. Have I ever been happy? I don’t know. (For six weeks, maybe. But happiness on borrowed time, can that even count as real?)

Then again, I never really looked for happiness. I looked for the path that seemed right, or maybe just the path I’d been told was right. Be successful. Get things in order. Get your life together. Don’t veer off course.

I could have veered, three years ago, as you know. But, as you also know, I didn’t. I have never been as daring as you. I could lay blame for that fact in any number of places; I could point to your parents who are so open to unexpected possibilities, and to mine who are the opposite, two rule-bound people who never gave me any sort of model for what it might be like to live from the heart.

Or maybe I should stop slinging blame at others; maybe I’m just a coward, and the story is as simple as that.

No, I’m not happy. I don’t tell you great things about my life or my marriage because there aren’t great things to say about my life or my marriage.

Yes: my marriage, the topic you and I have always skirted around. The truth, Elio, since you’re demanding the truth, is that it’s all ended up how you probably predicted. I love my wife; I don’t want you to think I’m some cad. But she and I can both see that things aren’t as they should be. All the time, I’m missing a part of myself, but I think it may be too late to get it back.

I don’t know a way out, or maybe there shouldn’t be a way out. I’m the one who made this mess – it’s not like I can blame anyone else. I’m successful, I’m all the things I’m suppose to be. It’s only that I’m empty at the same time.

And now I wonder if I’ve been too forward. None of this is your burden to carry. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather hold onto my image of you living your carefree life in Rome, studying music like you always wanted and living your dreams. I want that for you probably more than I want happiness for myself, something I wouldn’t know what to do with anyway.

If, in turn, I’ve overstepped, then disregard all of this.

Always,
Oliver

~

14 June, 1986

Dear Oliver,

I’ve just arrived home for a summer visit with my parents. Your letter reached me just in time, the day before I left Rome. I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

I’m kind of shocked by your honesty. Thank you for it, though. And no, you haven’t destroyed my carefree innocence, or whatever it is you thought you were doing. (I am neither as carefree nor as innocent as you imagine, by the way.)

Oliver, I don’t know what else to say, though. I want to tell you to do whatever it takes to break free of the things that are keeping you unhappy. I want to tell you that surely it can’t be that hard, or even if it is that hard, it’s worth it. Because what else matters more than your life?

But I know it’s easy to say that sort of thing when standing safely outside of someone else’s life. Only you know what it’s like to actually live it.

All I ever wanted you to do was to act from your heart. And now you’re saying that’s the one thing you can’t do, because you didn’t learn it as a kid. As if that were some kind of death sentence. As if you couldn’t choose to learn now if you wanted to. But if you don’t want to learn, then I guess I don’t know what else to say.

I want your life to be more than it is, but I know I can’t force that to happen. But I hope that for you. I hope you can find your way to something better, whatever that might mean for you.

I’ll be thinking of you. It’s not like I could help it: I’m at home, in the summertime, and everything here reminds me of you.

Always,
Elio

~

June 23, 1986

Dear Elio,

You, at home, in summer. I want to ask you a thousand questions, but then I would never stop. I picture you by the pool, at the piano, drinking with your friends at night at some pop-up party, or sitting at one of those rickety café tables on the piazzetta, watching the town go by. You can’t imagine how much and how often I dream of being there again.

Elio, the way you talk about making truer choices, about acting from the heart! I wish it were that simple. I wish it were as easy as just untangling the threads I’ve snared around myself these past few years and letting them fall away, as I step out ahead to something new. I wish I weren’t bound to promises I’ve made, tied to obligations. Frankly, I suppose what I wish is to be a college student again, like you, with everything still ahead.

I wish I had more to offer than the could-have-beens of a man who chose wrongly, even while thinking all the while that he was only doing what was right. And I wish I had your clear eye for the truth; or, even more, that I’d had it back when it mattered most.

What a useless letter this is, nothing but empty wishes. But that picture you’ve put in my mind of Italy: I would be there in a heartbeat if I could.

Always,
Oliver

~

2 July, 1986

Oliver, the way you talk about Italy: Then come here. If you want to be here so much, just come.

No, I know it’s maybe not that easy. I don’t know what other obligations you have in your life. You haven’t even told me if you have kids by now, though I hope you would tell me something like that, at least.

Maybe you’re right that I can’t understand what the obstacles are really like, because my life doesn’t have those kinds of ties and obligations in it yet. The grown-up kind.

But I hope you know, too, that you’re hopelessly idealizing my life. I think you picture me just strolling the streets of Rome in the sunlight every day. Do you even remember what it’s like to be a teenager, or to be a student, or to be 20? I do nothing but wonder if I’m making the wrong decisions.

I date people, I get my heart broken, I make friends and yet I wonder all the time if anyone likes me. I lie awake asking myself if I really believe I can make my life mean something. Or for that matter, if I’ll find anything in life that really makes sense. Does anything mean anything? What are people? That’s the kind of shit I think about, Oliver. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with my brain.

So don’t – I don’t know – don’t make me into some perfectly composed photograph, set aside on a shelf somewhere to admire, a symbol instead of a real person who’s alive and confused just like you are.

I didn’t mean that to sound angry. I just don’t know if I understand how you think of me anymore.

I hope you’re finding your way, somehow. I hope you’re happier than the last time you wrote – whatever that might mean for you. I hope you’ll keep writing to me, even when neither of us knows what to say.

Elio

~

July 10, 1986

Dear Elio,

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel like I don’t see who you really are. Too wrapped up in myself, as usual. Sorry. Tell me stuff about your life, okay? I want to know. I want to know everything about you – that’s a thing that’s never changed, despite whatever other messes I’ve made.

You are far more than a photograph to me, far more than some sepia-toned nostalgia for the past. I’m glad we’ve been writing to each other again. You make me think, in ways that are terrifying in the moment but probably good for me in the end. Funny that you’re still such an important person in my life, even though you’re so far away.

Oh, and to answer your question, God, no, I don’t have kids. (We agreed in the beginning to wait a while, and then it was never the right time, somehow. Which is maybe a sign in itself.) What a disaster that would be if I did, right? I mean: kids wouldn’t be a disaster. But how many hundreds of times harder that would make it, now, to disentangle my life.

Tell me something about you. Something beautiful you encountered today, or something terrible that haunts your thoughts at night. I don’t care, just let me know something more of you.

Always,
Oliver

~

21 September, 1986

Dear Oliver,

Hi, and first of all sorry for how the summer got away from me and I never wrote! I ended up traveling almost all of this summer, instead of the drowsy months at home I’d been expecting. I’m only now finally back home, for a few days before I have to return to Rome.

The unexpected travel was because some friends from the conservatory asked if I wanted to join them on their trip, and it all came together last-minute. They’d decided to spend the summer visiting friends in different cities, seeing a lot of concerts in each of the places we went, that sort of thing. Staying with friends or former classmates or sometimes even former music teachers, all of them people who wanted to talk all night about music just as much as we did.

We saw the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra and went to the Gewandhaus and the Royal Concertgebouw, just to name a few. I probably shouldn’t still be awed by a beautiful concert hall, since by now I’ve seen so many of them, but I am. I always am.

My parents have been laughing at me, because I arrived and said “I just want a quiet summer this year” and then almost immediately left again. I think I’ve spent more time on trains this summer than on solid ground.

But it was extraordinary, Oliver, extraordinary. I thought my eyes were open before, but now they’ve been opened even more. You know I grew up around culture – with my parents, I couldn’t have avoided it. The house was always full of their friends, who were distinguished and clever and experts in their fields, and we traveled all through my childhood, too. And then, on top of that, now I’ve spent two years in Rome. So I thought I knew an awful lot. Maybe I do. But I didn’t realize how much more there is still to learn until I spent a while out in the world on my own, not under my parents’ wings, seeing things through my own eyes.

I want to know all of it. I’ve got one more year at the conservatory, and I’m looking forward to it as much as ever. But now I’ve seen how much more I want to know about the rest of the world. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things to be curious about. That’s either my great strength or my fatal flaw, and I suppose I won’t know until the end of my life which one it turned out to be.

I’m sorry, though, that in all of that, I let our letters drop. It isn’t that I wasn’t thinking about you. Being interested in the world has never stopped me from being interested in you. Actually, it would probably be fair to say you’re one of the things in the world I’m most curious about. But there was never a quiet moment to sit down and write and give it my full attention, and when I write to you I want to give it my attention.

I know that’s a weak excuse, to try to convince you that when I never bothered to write it was because I cared too much, not too little. But for what it’s worth, it’s the truth.

What was it you asked in your last letter? For one beautiful thing? I don’t know if this counts as beautiful, but I’m going to go with Mafalda’s baking. Because I’m home such a short time, she’s been fussing and making every favorite she can think of. She even made Rosh Hashanah challah, since I’ll be back in Rome by then.

I know how fortunate I am, Oliver. There’s a lot I took for granted when I was a kid, but I don’t anymore. I know how lucky I am to have a home like this to come back to, where I am loved, and cared for, and accepted exactly as I am.

Please write – I want to know how you are.

Always,
Elio

~

October 1, 1986

Dear Elio,

It’s really good to hear from you. I hadn’t quite convinced myself that you suddenly hated me and had decided never to write again. Though, give it another month and I might have started to wonder. No, I’m joking (mostly) – I figured you must be busy with your life, and would write when you could.

And boy does it turn out you were busy! Sounds like you’ve had an incredible summer. I’m happy for you, Elio. I mean, sure, I’m also jealous: of your travels, of your voracious enthusiasm for the world. But more than that, I’m glad to hear you’re doing wonderful things that delight you.

Shana tova, slightly in advance. May we be inscribed in the book of life and all that. And as my grandmother always said, may it be a sweet new year for you. Congratulations on all that work, Elio, and on heading into your final year at the conservatory. I want to ask you how it feels, what your plans are, what you imagine for the future. But probably everyone is asking you that these days, so I won’t inflict that on you.

I also want to ask you – no, I’ll save that until I’m sure.

The semester here has started already. I’m teaching the same courses as last semester, but I’m also working on a new book, so at least I’ve got something new to sink my teeth into. Well, to call it a “book” might be putting it a little too strongly. But I’m pulling together some ideas and seeing what shakes out. It feels good to have a big project again. Something that could demand my whole attention and then some.

Hope your new semester starts well. I look forward to hearing how it goes.

Always,
Oliver

~

October 3, 1986

No, strike that, I’m not waiting any longer.

Elio–

What if I did want to come? To Italy? What would you say?

Oliver

~

11 October, 1986

Oliver, wow – you mean as a visit? Over one of your breaks or the winter holidays or something like that? Because I can’t tell if you mean…

Okay, maybe what I want to ask is, and I don’t know any better way to say it, but: Is it just Italy you want to visit? Because if you just want to spend a few days at the house, chat with my parents, hang out in town – whatever things you’d do to recapture the feeling you always talk about so nostalgically – you don’t need my permission. Obviously I’d love to see you. But you don’t need to go through me, if you want to visit. Write or call my parents any time, you know they’d love to have you. And I’d try to arrange it so I could come up from Rome while you’re there, but you don’t have to plan around me.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t feel you have an obligation to me. I’d like to think it’s that way, and maybe there’s some other world where it could have been that way, but it’s okay if it’s not. I can consider you just another one of my dad’s old visiting scholars, back to say hello while passing through.

Well. No. That’s a lie. I’ll never be able to think that. But I can pretend pretty convincingly, if I have to.

Or if you meant something different when you said you want to come to Italy… Then forget everything else, because that’s the only thing I want to know.

Always,
Elio

~

October 17, 1986

Elio, God, no, I don’t care about Italy or your parents’ house. I’d come to Rome if that’s where you are. I’d invite you to this sleepy college town, if I thought you’d come. I’d ask you to meet me in New York if that would make it more appealing.

That thing you said, about a world where it could have been that way? This is that world. At least, I want to make it be.

I was trying not to say anything yet; I was trying to spare you the details, because the legal stuff is still in process. But the upshot is that I’m not a single man yet, but I’m going to be. Very soon.

Divorce is an ugly word, or at least a less than lovely concept, and it’s certainly not what I ever expected for my life. Is it wrong, then, that I can’t bring myself to feel bad? No, that’s not quite accurate. I feel bad about a lot of things. I feel terrible about them. Especially about the woman I married, who deserved none of this. But I can’t bring myself to feel bad for veering away from the expected. The one thing I thought I would never be able to do.

You made me think, with the questions you asked back in the winter. You always make me think, but especially then. You were right that my life isn’t the way I want it to be, and that the only person keeping it from changing was me.

I’m not demanding or expecting anything, Elio. You’ve got your own life, and I know I can’t go back to what was. I just want to see you.

All I want to know is if that would be all right.

Always,
Oliver

~

23 October, 1986

Elio.

~

October 29, 1986

Oliver.

Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.

Good, you haven’t forgotten. I haven’t forgotten.

~

6 November, 1986

Did you think I could possibly forget even a second of the time we spent together?

When are you coming, what are your plans, tell me everything.

I want to see you, Oliver. Of course I want to see you. Could you possibly have doubted that?

Elio

~

November 14, 1986

Dear Elio,

I haven’t forgotten either, not a second of it. I think I’ve been living in a dream these last years – I’m not even sure where I’ve been. I want to see you. I want nothing more than to see you. I want to hold you, and touch you – but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I shouldn’t assume any of that.

I want to say I’ll come now, today, this instant. Drop work, leave everything. It would be madness, wouldn’t it? But I’m feeling ready for madness. (Finally.)

Probably, though, it would be better not to blow up my career, while it’s still comparatively young. So I’ll offer the next best thing.

Winter break? I’m free from December 22nd. Tell me what you think.

Always,
Oliver

~

21 November, 1986

Oliver,

Yes. Yes to the 22nd, yes to anything. My break doesn’t start until the 24th, but you can come any time. We can meet in Rome, or I can meet you at my parents’ house. Yes, yes, yes, Oliver. Anywhere. You can assume everything.

I want you everywhere. In every moment. In my little flat in Rome with its small rooms and high windows. In my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house, only this time we won’t have to be a secret. In some bar or café in some nameless city that neither of us has ever been to before. All of these, Oliver. As long as it’s you.

Always,
Elio

~

November 29, 1986

Elio,

My flight arrives in Rome on December 22nd, at 11:10 a.m. Just tell me where you’ll be, and I’ll come to you.

I want to hold you again. I suppose I’m allowed to say that now? It’s strange to be able to say it. But I haven’t forgotten a single thing. I remember the soft way your hair curls at the back of your neck, and how you would arch into my hand when I touched you there. I remember how your head tips back when you laugh. I remember how you can slouch carelessly at the piano and yet still play more perfectly than anyone else I know. I remember the sharp, delicate wings of your shoulder blades, and I remember exactly how they taste under my tongue. I remember the way you sigh when my mouth touches you, as if you’ve just discovered something wonderful.

I wonder how much will be the same. I’m sure there are ways you’ve changed over these past years, and I know for sure there are ways I have. Please don’t think I expect you not to have changed at all. I only want you to be you.

I’ll see you very soon.

Always,
Oliver

~

7 December, 1986

I’ll meet you at the airport. You don’t have to do or plan anything else, just come.

First, I’ll take you to the café where we went that night. I’ll buy you a cappuccino, since it’s supposedly the best in Rome, and we’ll stand up front by the counter. I want you to stand there amid the press of people, feel all the humanity of Rome around you, and know that out of all of them, the only one I want is you.

Then I’ll walk you along a few of the streets I love most. By then it will be afternoon, with the winter sun in the southern sky, casting warm light from just above the buildings. It may be cold, but there will still be people out enjoying the cafés and shops and the wonderful light of a Rome afternoon.

Or maybe we’ll skip all that, bypass anything that has to do with the world or other people, and I’ll take you straight to my flat.

I want to relearn you, Oliver – everything about you, not only your body. I want to know the way your eyebrows lift when you laugh and the way you tilt your head when you say something you know I’ll disagree with and the way you smile when you kiss me.

I’ve never forgotten how you touch me. Every day since then, in one way or another, has been waiting for that touch again.

Until always and until very, very soon,
Elio

~

December 15, 1986

I can’t wait. There’s nothing else that needs to be said. I’ll see you in Rome.

Always, always, always,
Oliver

~

January 6, 1987

Elio. I’m still drunk from you. I’m still dizzy with it. I think I only slept two hours last night. I’m writing this on the plane – couldn’t even wait until I get home to write to you. I think we’re somewhere over France right now, and there’s some kind of airplane meal happening, and I can’t pay attention to any of it. My head and my heart and all the rest of me are left behind, with you. In your cramped Rome apartment, with my feet nearly hitting the wall at the foot of your bed. In your parents’ house, lighting Hanukkah candles, seeing the way your mom and dad smile at you, how they’re happy simply because you’re happy. And by the sea, watching you laugh as the cold ocean spray hits your face, in that little town whose name I’m never going to remember, where we spent the last few days. I think we got all our wishes, Elio. I think I know what it is to be happy.

There’s still a lot to talk about. I’m going to start looking into university positions in the U.K. the moment the plane touches down. Because if you’re serious about doing a master’s in London this fall, then I’m serious about it too. There’s the summer to figure out, too: where you’ll be, where I’ll be. There’s the work of packing up my life in the U.S. – I’m already suspecting I have more belongings than I realize. But there’s enough time to figure all that out. For now, I just want to be happy.

And I am.

I love you, always.

Oliver

~

6 January, 1987

Oliver. You’ve just left. I’ve been walking around the city in a daze. Lessons start again tomorrow. I’ll need to concentrate and I can’t even imagine how.

Every moment, I’m thinking about the way your fingers feel when I take them in my mouth; the way your laugh rumbles through your chest, late at night when we’re squeezed together on a narrow bed; the way your sweat tastes when I rest my lips against your shoulder.

I still can’t believe you came back – and yet already it seems like the only possible thing. Of course you came back. Of course I was here. Of course. Already I can’t wait to see you again: in New York this spring. Maybe in Rome again in the summer. And then London or whatever we choose next after that. The world is ours, Oliver. I finally feel sure of it.

I love you, Oliver. I always have.

Always,
Elio


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


End notes: The title – because I can never resist the CMBYN/Sufjan Stevens connection – is from “Mercury” by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and James McAlister.

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