Storm Hits the City and the Lights Go Out (Call Me By Your Name)

[starfishstar]

Fandom: Call Me By Your Name

Summary: Seven years later, in New York, in the midst of a blizzard, Oliver finally lets his feelings take the fore. It isn’t easy. (But it’s worth it.)

Characters: Oliver/Elio

Words: 7,600

Notes: A Yuletide treat for asuralucier; here are the notes I wrote at the time –


Hello again, asuralucier :-) I was a bit sad that I didn’t manage to write you a fic last Yuletide, because I liked the streak we had going! But this idea stuck with me ever since; I tried to finish it for the New Year’s Resolution collection, but didn’t manage even that… So, here, have a Yuletide 2020 gift as a 2021 Madness treat. :D

This fic is loosely/thematically inspired by “With the color of its thoughts” by asuralucier, but takes somewhat different headcanons as a starting point.     

Thank you very much to timkon for beta reading.     


Read this fic on AO3, or here below:


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


The moment I heard his voice on the line, I knew everything would change.

Not that I hadn’t been duly warned. When I’d called Pro and Mrs. P that year at Hanukkah, as I did each year, they’d mentioned Elio might like to get in touch with me and asked if that would be all right. It was Mrs. P who asked it, kindly, with her usual tact, not even hinting there was anything strange about the fact that Elio and I had now lived in the same city for nearly two years without ever arranging to meet.

So, I can’t claim I didn’t have warning that he might call. And of course I’d thought a thousand times, too, about calling him. But I’d never quite dared. Perhaps I’d even hoped he would be the one to take that first step.

Still, warned was not at all the same as prepared, when I picked up the phone and heard his voice.

“I’d like to speak to Oliver”—those were Elio’s first words to me in nearly seven years.

“Speaking.” The words came out automatically, even as my hand tightened on a receiver gone suddenly slick with sweat.

I heard his intake of breath; I fancied I heard, too, the moment when he considered calling me Elio, but then decided the time for that had passed.

That, like so many things, was my own fault.

Instead, he simply said, “Hello, Oliver.”

“Elio,” I replied. Because at least he’d trusted me to know him simply from the sound of his voice. At least there was that.

Here’s what little I knew of Elio’s life in the intervening years: He’d finished his final year of high school, then gone to Rome to study at a music conservatory. After that, he’d spent a year doing something or other in France—I wasn’t sure precisely what, but I felt certain that whatever it was had involved music and Elio being brilliant. Now he was here, in New York, doing a master’s degree at Juilliard. Close to finishing that, in fact. And, just like that, the years had flown by and Elio was in my city.

As always, he cut right to the chase. “Do you want to meet up sometime?” A breath. “It’s okay if you don’t. Only, I’m in New York for just a few more months. So this is kind of the last chance.”

As he spoke, flurries of snow gusted past my window. According to the calendar, it was spring, but in reality winter in New York was far from over. For Elio, though—Elio’s final semester must already be rushing to its close.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean yes, of course. Let’s meet up. I really should have—”

I caught myself preparing to launch into all the banal excuses: that I’d meant to get in touch but time had gotten away from me, that it was high on my list of good intentions. But I stopped, because those were all lies and Elio would know it. I’d always promised myself to at least tell him the truth, if nothing else.

I said instead, “I’d really like to see you.” Now that was a truth. And hearing it said out loud like that startled me probably more than Elio.

“Okay,” he said, accepting that there could be seven years of silence and yet I could also really want to see him, that both of these things could be true.

We went through the steps of establishing a date and time, carving out an evening when both of us could get free from our various obligations. As for a place to meet, I suggested a bar down the block from the new apartment. If he thought it rude that I would make him travel to me, rather than offering to meet somewhere in the middle, he didn’t say so. Why was I so quick to suggest meeting in my neighborhood, on my block, even? I suppose I wanted an easily accessible escape hatch, in case it all turned out to be too much.

But when I arrived at B—’s Bar at five to seven on the evening we’d agreed on, with a late March snow swirling down thick and fast around me and a haze of city lights reflecting off of low cloud cover, there was a sign taped to the door of the bar:

Closed tonight!
Hunkering down for the Storm
you should be too

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. There went all of my carefully laid plans. And it was too late to call Elio to postpone to another night; he would already be on his way, nearly here. I should have—

And then there he was: coming up the block from the subway, coming toward me, smiling. His winter scarf knotted at his throat in that devastatingly dapper European way and his dark curls flecked with snow.

Elio.

“The bar’s closed,” I blurted out as he reached me. Not the first thing I’d intended to say after our long silence.

Elio’s smile slipped a little. “The bar…?”

“Yeah, because of the snowstorm coming. I guess they decided to close early to give the staff time to get home.”

“Ah.” Elio was looking at me, calm and steady. Like after all this time he still trusted me to make things work out.

So the words tumbled of my mouth: “We could go up to my place instead.”

It was the one thing I’d been trying to avoid. The one thing I was probably always, eventually, going to offer.

Elio gave me an assessing look, like he was reading all the layers underneath the words I wasn’t saying: I want you. I don’t want you in my apartment. If I let you that far into my life, I don’t know if I’ll be able to let go again.

“Okay,” he said. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” I reached out to clap him on the shoulder, but changed my mind before I got there. It was too chummy. Too fake. Instead, I used that hand to wave in the direction of my apartment. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

When we got inside Elio looked around with interest, but there wasn’t much to see. I’d moved in only a few months before and the place looked like exactly what it was: the forlorn and under-furnished bachelor pad of a man who hadn’t ever intended to return to bachelorhood.

“I haven’t been living here long,” I explained, though he probably already knew that from his parents.

Elio’s gaze, which had been taking in my record collection, one of the few things in the apartment that showed any personality, returned to meet mine. “You mean, since—?”

“Yeah, since the separation.”

“What about your kids?”

“I only have them every other weekend right now.” I motioned for him to give me his coat so I could hang it up, hoping to move us on from this particular conversation. It was too hard to talk about. My boys were my world; I didn’t know how to live in this new and unfamiliar space that wasn’t built to hold them, only to provide them with an occasional flying stopover.

“That must be hard,” Elio said, but he mercifully left the topic at that.

He shrugged out of his coat, its shoulders thick with snow even after his short walk from the subway. It really was coming down, more so than I’d realized. Elio handed his coat to me with a smile of thanks, then reached up to unwind his scarf. The fabric of it, when he draped the scarf over my waiting hand, was impossibly soft, something rare and refined. Cashmere? Something like that.

I turned to hang our things on the couple of rickety pegs by the door; just our two coats were enough to overwhelm the cramped space. When I turned back again, there he was in front of me: Elio.

Elio at twenty-four was stunning. The gangly boy he’d once been, all angular limbs and abrupt joys and sorrows, had shed that chrysalis and emerged as an assured young man, lithe and lean and so handsome it nearly hurt to look at him. I hadn’t been able to match him for beauty and passion even then; how could I expect to come anywhere close to him now?

“Yes?” Elio said, quirking one eyebrow. I’d been staring.

“I—sorry.” I turned away. “Want something to drink? I’ve got—let’s see—” It gave me something to do, fussing at my drinks cabinet. It wasn’t particularly well stocked, since I hadn’t been expecting guests, but I could probably turn up something passable. “There’s wine, if you want?”

When I turned back to him with the bottle, Elio was smiling, a gentle and understanding smile that cut a little too close to home. “Whatever you’ve got is fine,” he said. “Really, Oliver.”

“It’s Italian,” I added, not sure if that was an offering or an apology. Surely when it came to Italian wine, of all things, Elio was bound to have refined tastes beyond my layperson’s abilities.

Elio grinned. “Ooh la la. Well, if it’s Italian.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

And then we were both laughing. I’d forgotten how good it felt to hear him laugh, and to let him surprise a laugh out of me in return.

“Well, if that’s your position on the matter, then you aren’t allowed to have opinions about it once you’ve tasted it,” I teased, feeling lighter now.

Elio, still smiling, rested a hand very briefly on my arm. “I really don’t care if it turns out to be vinegar. I’m just glad to be here with you.”

As always: devastating in his truth-telling.

I poured a glass for each of us and we settled onto the couch, spaced decorously apart. This couch was a relic from my college days that had somehow managed to stick with me through many successive moves, to New England and back to the city and now out of my married life entirely. Somehow, though, Elio fit well with it. He, too, was a bridge between parts of my life that wouldn’t otherwise have seemed connected.

Elio lifted his wineglass and cocked his head at me. “What shall we toast to?”

All the obvious answers flitted through my mind: to old friends, to good memories. I was abruptly tired of all of it. Instead I said, “To good times still to come.”

Elio looked surprised, but then he smiled. “To good times still to come,” he agreed and touched his glass to mine. He sipped, then settled his glass easily on his knee, balancing it with his fingers around its stem, and turned to me. “So, where do we start?”

This was the moment I’d been dreading, the one where we could no longer pretend we were here only to talk about superficial things like the wine or the bar that had closed in preparation for the snow. The only thing I could think to say was the truth: “I don’t know.”

Elio tilted his head, considering, and swirled the wine in his glass. The light from the lamp beside the couch caught the changing angles of his face each time he moved, turning him from a stranger into the boy I’d known and then back again. “Tell me something about you,” he said.

I must have winced at that. I was my own least favorite topic at the moment and I’m sure it showed on my face.

“Or, it doesn’t have to be about you,” Elio said, correctly interpreting my expression. “Tell me about something that makes you happy.”

“Elio, I’m a soon-to-be-divorced man who’s just watched his whole life come crashing down. What exactly do you think I have to be happy about?”

Elio frowned. And then he just said, “Try harder.”

For an incandescent moment, I was ready to unleash all of my life’s pent-up frustration on him right then and there. How dare he? What did he know about a life like mine?

But the thing was, he was right. Of course I would continue to be miserable if I only ever let myself choose misery.

I threw myself back against the couch and breathed out, hard. Then I set my wineglass aside on the upturned crate currently serving as my end table. The glass was only a distraction in my hands and I didn’t feel much like drinking anyway.

“All right,” I said. “All right.” I couldn’t look at Elio; his expression was probably sympathetic and interested and kind, and I didn’t think I could take it. “My boys,” I said, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall. A Leonard Cohen tour poster from 1970 hung there, slightly crooked. “My sons. They’re my utter and absolute joy, and the best thing I’ve ever done, and I’m terrified of losing them. But I was supposed to be telling you good things.”

Elio’s hand reached over and rested on my knee like it was the most natural thing in the world. Not in a flirtatious way; simply as a gesture of warmth and support. It struck me, then, how long it had been since anyone had touched me in comfort.

“Yeah,” Elio said softly. “Tell me good things about your kids. They must be amazing.”

It came out in a flood of words: Ari’s love of all things that moved and made noise (an exceedingly broad category that ranged from backhoes to pigeons) and Ronen’s almost uncanny ability to sit still for hours and draw, childish scribbles but bursting with color. How much Ari was looking forward to kindergarten although it was still half a year away, and how he had to be convinced anew each morning that, yes, he really did have to stick it out in preschool with the little kids for a while longer. Ronen’s sweet way of leaning into my chest when he was sleepy, watching the world through half-closed eyes but still taking everything in. How Ronen imitated everything his big brother did, and how Ari appointed himself Ronen’s protector whenever they were out in the world. All the bedtime stories and the struggles over bath time and the inexplicable child meltdowns and the Sunday morning pancakes.

Elio’s hand was still on my knee, warm and light. “You love them so much,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Of course,” he agreed. With his other hand, he lifted his wineglass and took a thoughtful sip. Then he said, “I don’t know what it’s like to be a dad, obviously, but the way you talk about your kids does kind of remind me of my parents. The way they were with me when I was a kid.”

“I can’t believe you just compared me to your parents. That’s a high compliment.”

Elio laughed. “I’m going to tell them you said that.”

A little of the tightness in my chest eased, with the bright sound of his laughter. “You’re very welcome to. They know how much I admire them.”

Elio was still grinning. “It’s impossible to embarrass you, isn’t it? Even the threat of repeating your words back to people you’re talking about doesn’t faze you.”

“Impossible to embarrass? I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”

Elio’s hand returned to his own lap but he was still smiling, so the warmth of him stayed with me. “I don’t know, Oliver. You were always so suave and sure of yourself. Back when I knew you, at least.”

“Now you’re definitely confusing me with someone else.”

“Oh, come on.” Elio took another sip of his wine, then set the glass aside—on the floor, since there was no end table at that end of the couch. “I’ll concede my impressions may have been colored by the fact that I was so young and admired you so much. But you were… I don’t know what else to call it but confidence. You strode through the world like you were certain of everything. Like you had an answer to everything. God, I didn’t know if I wanted to fuck you or be you. Well, both, obviously.” Elio flushed a little and for the first time he looked as affected by this, by meeting again, as I was.

I wanted so much right then to reach out and touch him. And for a moment it even felt like I could, like the years in between had vanished and he was the Elio I’d known back then, avid and eager and hungry for the whole world. But then he moved, or the light shifted, and he was once again a man I wasn’t sure I knew.

No, that wasn’t fair—Elio was still himself. Really, it was only that I wasn’t sure he would still have any reason to want me.

“Oliver,” Elio said, and when I turned he was looking right at me. “Talk to me. Stop keeping everything inside.”

Wind rattled the windowpanes and I couldn’t help but glance in that direction. Elio glanced too.

“It’s really snowing,” he observed, his expression transformed, entranced by the whirl of white outside. “I’ve still never gotten used to the way it snows here: nothing at all and then all at once.”

He rose and went to one of the windows, then stood there pressed close to the glass, watching the street and the snowbound world outside. A bit guiltily, I observed him in turn, from my position of safety behind his back. I took in the strong curve of his shoulders, the powerful line of his arm and then his long pianist’s fingers resting against the window frame, the delicate wings of his shoulder blades. Elio, in his sum and all his parts, beautiful and still a mystery.

He turned and smiled at me as if he’d sensed my eyes on him, or maybe just knew where my thoughts were likely to have wandered. “Anyway,” he began, “you were saying—”

The lights in the apartment dipped, then flared back to full strength. Then they went out completely.

“Oh,” Elio said, suddenly invisible to me except as the faintest outline against the dim rectangle of the window. There was a hint of laughter in his voice. “Well, that makes things interesting, doesn’t it?”

I half-rose from my seat. “Here, come back over here. It’ll probably come back on in a minute.”

There was a rustle of movement from the vicinity of the window; that was all I could make out of him. Ruefully, Elio said, “The thing is, I left my wineglass somewhere on the floor over there. And I’m not particularly thrilled at the thought of kicking it over and then having to try to clean it up in the dark.”

“Follow the sound of my voice,” I said, sitting back down, my hands already reaching out toward him even though of course he couldn’t see me. “Your glass is on that side of the couch and I’m on this side, right? So you should be safe if you come this way.”

I heard the light shuffle of his footsteps treading carefully across the floor. “Say something again,” Elio murmured, a little closer now. “So I know where you are.”

“Over here.” My voice came out unexpectedly rough; it was strangely intimate speaking into the darkness like this, even though distance still separated us. I went on babbling nonsense to guide him: “This way, just over here, come over here, this way…”

Elio’s knee collided with mine and he laughed in surprise. “Whoops, sorry!” His hand reached out for balance and caught mine; I grasped it and held on without even thinking. Steadying him. Elio hovered above me, teetering there until he found his footing. Then with a breathy laugh he collapsed onto the couch beside me, landing much closer than before, as he avoided the mystery location of his now-abandoned drink.

He didn’t let go of my hand.

“Oliver,” Elio said again, his breath very close to my ear. “Seriously. Talk to me.”

I could hardly speak past the tightening of my throat. “What do you want to know?”

“You. Just you. How have you been all this time? Who are you now? What do you want from your life?”

“Just the easy questions, huh?”

“Or I’ll go first, if you want,” he said, so infinitely patient, the warm gust of his breath still shiveringly close to my ear. God, I could barely think.

“Yes,” I managed to squeeze out.

“All right.”

Elio settled into the couch, his hip not quite touching mine, but so warm and near. His hand tightened on mine, fingers pressing into my palm, making it clear he wasn’t letting go. His voice settled in too, gentle and low but perfectly clear in the quiet of the apartment, with its usual hum of appliances absent.

“I feel like I’m finally learning who I am, these last couple of years,” Elio mused. “I loved Rome and I loved Strasbourg, too, but I guess it wasn’t until here in New York that I really started to feel like a grown-up living on my own terms, not on the coattails of my parents. Though it’s a work in progress, obviously. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever feels completely like an adult.”

“That part is true,” I agreed, glad to hear my voice emerge sounding more or less normal. “Most of the time I feel simultaneously as old and weary as the mountains, and like a callow kid too inexperienced to keep from fucking everything up.”

“Well, that sounds like an incredibly unfair self-assessment that we should probably circle back around to later,” Elio said, with just a hint of sharpness to the words. Kindly spoken, but still with no time for my bullshit. “But I know what you mean—I used to think the adults around me had it all figured out, but now I think probably nobody has it figured out, not completely.” He shifted thoughtfully in his seat, maybe trying to see out the dim window again. “But whatever the reason, I’m really liking New York. Maybe I’m just more American than I ever realized. But this feels like home in a way I’d never have expected. One of many homes, inevitably, when you grow up the way I did. But still.”

“But you’re leaving after you finish your program here?” I tried to make it a neutral, careless question. I doubt I succeeded very well.

“Yeah? Maybe? I don’t know. There are so many things I want to do and so many places I want to see. And if I start trying to figure out everything at once I’ll panic, so I’m letting myself put that part on hold. Finish my degree first, then everything else can come after.”

It must be nice, I thought, but I managed not to say that aloud. It wasn’t Elio’s fault that I’d tied myself down young, then screwed it all up, and now was stuck staying in one place for the sake of the kids I hardly even got to see. Not that I would trade my boys for all the freedom in the world. But it ached to think how different the path might have been. That in some other world there might have been an Oliver who could throw it all to the wind and tell Elio, I’ll follow you wherever you want to go.

We sat there quietly for a bit. All the lights were still out: in my apartment, in the building across the way, even the streetlights down below. It was looking like this was no passing disruption, more like a major line down somewhere, and there was no saying when the power would return. Obviously I couldn’t send Elio back out into this, but I didn’t know how to say that without making it sound like… I wasn’t even sure what I wanted it to sound like.

I imagined the invisible, snow-filled world out there, just beyond the bounds of my apartment but discoverable only through touch and sound, not sight. I imagined that unseen world wrapping itself around us like a cocoon, preserving this moment for as long as we wanted it to last: the two of us, sitting on that ratty old couch, improbably reunited and holding hands in the dark.

“Anyway,” Elio said. And then he paused for so long, I was no longer sure if he was going to say anything more. When he did speak again, his voice had fallen to a low hush, a soft breath in the darkness. “I’m happy, I guess. Maybe that’s all I’m trying to say. That it turns out I can be happy without you.”

My heart clenched at those words. It was exactly what I’d hoped for him, exactly what I’d wished when I left him standing on the railway platform that day: Go and live your life, be free of me, be happy. But hearing it spoken aloud, even now, felt like it might kill me.

Elio was saying, “And I know that probably doesn’t sound like some great, revolutionary statement. But there was a time when I didn’t think I could be happy. Without you. Because I was seventeen and you felt like the only true thing I’d ever known.”

“Elio—” My voice caught on his name.

“Oliver.” He said it like a blessing, offering absolution with the simple power of my name.

“I tried so hard not to fuck you up,” I whispered into the darkness. Our invisibility, there in that darkness, offered a kind of freedom to speak painful truths aloud. “That’s the one thing I didn’t want.”

“You didn’t. Stop thinking like that. You didn’t. That’s not at all what I mean.”

“You were so young and I should have known better.”

Elio’s fingers clenched harder around mine. “Oliver, seriously, stop it. I’m trying to tell you it’s exactly the opposite.” I could hear him turn toward me in the dark, his voice coming even nearer. “You showed me the world I wanted to be part of. You showed me all the things it could be. And yeah, I wanted that with you, and I didn’t get that, but I’ve gotten it in so many other ways. With so many other people and places and all the things I’ve been so fortunate to experience. And at some point, I realized I was finally no longer remembering you as some great symbol of love and life personified, but just as you, as Oliver, a person I’d loved. And that’s so much better. Can’t you see that that’s better?”

I wondered then: Had I ever learned to see Elio as only himself? Or was I treating him, even now, as the symbol of a life I’d allowed to slip away?

Quietly, fiercely, Elio said, “I’m not going to let you apologize for the things you gave me: joy and wonder and a glimpse of how much more life could be than what I’d known before. So don’t even try to take that away. That’s not what this is about.”

“Okay.” My voice came out rough, out of my control. “Okay. I’m not apologizing for that part. And not for—” It was so hard to get the words out, even though they were true. Especially because they were true. “And not for everything you gave me, either. You gave me joy and wonder, too, more than you can imagine. And you gave me a glimpse of—of what I could be. If I’d let myself.”

The only sound in the silence around us was Elio’s breathing, a thread of life keeping me afloat in the dark sea of the quiet room.

Then he said, his voice very quietly breaking over the words, “The only thing I haven’t been able to forgive you for, Oliver, is that you wouldn’t even try.”

I reached for him then, without pause, on an instinct that bypassed conscious thought.

And, miracle of miracles, he came to me. Pressed his chest to mine, slid his arms up my back to grip me tightly, tucked his head effortlessly into the space between my shoulder and my ear, his hair tickling my chin. It was everything I’d tried for seven years to tell myself I didn’t want or need: a man in my arms—this man in my arms. This man. Elio.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and once I’d started, it spilled out again and again. “I’m sorry, Elio, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His arms clenched tighter around me, pressing the breath from me, a wonderful weight to keep me from scattering apart. His breath was hot against my throat. “Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

I breathed in the scent of his hair and felt dizzy at how familiar it was, how instantly familiar. “Yes,” I said, dazed by the strength of the memories. “I’m apologizing for my fear and for letting it spill over onto you. For all the uptight bullshit I brought with me into a place that should have been heaven. That was heaven.” My hand found the nape of his neck, its curve still perfectly familiar, and he sighed at my touch. “I’m apologizing for being afraid to try.”

Elio sighed again, his breath a gentle gust against my neck. “I’m not saying it would have been easy. I know I was young and naïve and didn’t know anything about how the world worked. I wasn’t thinking about prejudice or what it might have meant to your career, your parents, the whole rest of your life. I know it wouldn’t have been easy. I suppose even here in liberal-minded New York, in the present day, it’s not as though anything is necessarily easy. But God, Oliver, couldn’t you tell how much I wanted you?”

“Yes.” My hands stroked circles on his back, their movements firm and sure now that they’d been set free to touch Elio. Strange how, even now, it was so much easier to speak to him in touches than in words. “Yes,” I said again. I was alight with sensation: the silky smoothness of his shirt and the warmth of him beneath it. “And you know how much I wanted you.”

Speaking into my shoulder, Elio said quietly, not bitterly, “Not enough to stay.”

And what could I say to that? It was both true, and an utterly incomplete version of the truth.

I’d left Italy and returned to the life I believed I was supposed to live. And then wished ever since that there were some way to grasp a second chance. I’d wished it when I heard Elio was in New York. I’d wished it when my marriage finally finished its long, slow crumbling. But I’d never expected to get a chance like that. Or even to deserve one.

And yet: here was Elio beside me.

We were both breathing quietly into the dark. Elio’s every exhale warmed my shoulder through the fabric of my shirt and that alone was almost enough. If this was all I ever got, I could very nearly be content. But what was the point of this slim second chance if not finally—finally—to try?

“I’m going to try to answer your question,” I told him.

I could feel Elio smile against my shoulder. “Which one? I think I asked kind of a lot of them.”

“You know.” I forced my hands to slow down, to touch him gently, savoring everything. “The big, scary one from earlier: You said you wanted to know about me, who I am. I want to try to answer that.”

Beside me, I felt Elio come to attention. He sat up straighter, pulling away enough so that he would have been able to look at me, if there’d been any light to see each other by. One of his hands still lingered, resting on my shoulder, and I could feel his whole attention on me.

“All right,” Elio said. “I’m listening.”

I faced ahead into the darkness of the room, as if that way I could avoid the gaze I knew he had trained on me, invisible though we were to each other.

“I have this clear memory,” I said, and somehow I knew this was the place to start. “I was maybe 12 or so. I don’t where we were or what the context was, but I remember my mom looking at me and saying, ‘Oliver, I just want you to be happy.’ She sounded so sad when she said it. Like she already knew it wasn’t very likely.”

My hands knotted together in my lap, unsure what to do with themselves now that they weren’t touching Elio. His hand was on my shoulder, but the rest of him felt too far away for me to know if I should reach out to him or not.

“You have to imagine,” I told him, “what an anxious kid I was. I’ve told you some about my parents. About my dad. Even at that age, I knew there was really only one approved way to be happy. Or maybe not happy, but at least content. And it involved marriage and children and clearly delineated career steps, and being an upstanding member of society in a very narrowly defined way—which meant whatever my father determined to be the right way.”

Talking out loud about this stuff, this vulnerable childhood feelings stuff, felt like a spoon scraping around at my insides and I hated it. But this was Elio, here next to me at last, and the only way forward was to try to let him in.

“My dad had a lot of opinions about life, and definitely also about what men should be like. But it turns out all of my father’s lectures and disapproving looks were nowhere near as powerful as that one memory of my mother, wistfully telling 12-year-old Oliver that she wished I would somehow manage to get myself onto that normal-person path so I could be happy.”

Elio’s hand shifted down from my shoulder to run lightly across the back of my hand, back and forth, a soothing motion. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry you had to feel all that expectation on you.”

I pushed on, afraid that if I let myself stop talking I might never again muster up the courage to continue. “I don’t think I ever really believed I could be normal, and probably not happy, but I thought at least I could follow the accepted path. At least I could keep from making my mother sad, right, if nothing else? And I did pretty well at it for a while. I never let anything convince me away from the safety of that path. You came closer than anyone, but even so… Elio, it’s the unknown, and the unknown is terrifying. You never had to know what it feels like to dangle your foot over that abyss, because you had the kind of parents who would always catch you if you fell too far. I never had that safety net. And I guess in the end it made me a coward.”

I finally made myself turn toward Elio in the dark. I could feel all his attention on me.

Into that stillness, into the warmth of his listening, I forced out the words. “You asked who I am now and I don’t know, except that I don’t want to be that anymore. I don’t want to be someone who holds back from life out of fear.”

Elio was silent a long time, still running his hand up and down over mine, but I could tell he was thinking. Taking it in.

Finally he said, his fingers stroking warmth along the back of my hand, “For what it’s worth, I want you to be happy, too. I mean really happy, not the pretend kind. And I don’t think it’s impossible.”

“I don’t think I know how,” I whispered. Admitting it made me feel about six years old again, small and feeble against the enormity of the world, and I hated it. I hated that feeling so much. I’d spent a lifetime running from anything that held even a chance of making me feel so weak, and here I was, laying it all out at Elio’s feet.

Elio’s breathing was even and quiet in the dark and his hand was still on mine, pressing life-giving warmth into my skin. He didn’t say anything. He was just there, being there for me, and listening.

Finally I asked the one thing I’d been wanting to ask all this time: “Is it too late?”

His hand stilled and hovered above mine, invisible but near. I tried to picture how Elio might be looking at me right now. Wistful? Hopeful? Pitying? At last he said softly, “I don’t think I can answer that for you, Oliver. You tell me. Is it too late?”

In the dark, I reached—I groped—for his hand. His long, nimble fingers wrapped around mine, gripping hard now, no longer gently soothing, offering strength and assurance and the warmth of skin against skin.

Inside me, it was all crumbling away. My brittle façade of a man who’s too clever and too busy to ever feel lost or alone. All the frightening feelings were spilling out, and I didn’t know if I would be able to cram them back inside again as long as Elio was touching me. But I didn’t want him to stop touching me.

Elio’s hand was hot around mine, his breath speeding up in the dark, and I wanted him so badly, and I was afraid to want him so badly. It left me a child again, small and so frightened of losing my footing and tumbling from the narrow path. But I wanted him, I wanted him, and the longing of it tore away the illusion I projected to the world, the invincible man I pretended to be.

There was a sob caught in my chest, tight and hot behind my breastbone, but I fought it down. Surely even now, broken open like this, I could manage not to cry in front of Elio, not to give up that last defense and show how helpless I really was—

“It’s okay,” Elio said against my ear. And then he whispered, “Elio.”

That was all it took. The sobs tore out of me, ugly and ragged and full of snot, nothing beautiful about these tears. I sobbed into the shoulder of his shirt, then he wrapped me in his strong arms, pulled me to his chest and held me tight, tight, tight.

His hand swept up my arm and found its way to cup the back of my neck, cradling me to him, wrapping me up safely against his chest, as I cried for all the lost years and for everything I’d tried not to feel. Elio held me like a lover, but also like a parent: the kind of parent I’d never had, the kind that’s all cradling love with no constraints. He held me and let me be anyone I was.

I was a frightened child. I was an angry man, a disenfranchised father grieving for my children. I was a guilt-ridden husband, all too aware of the many ways I’d failed. I was a father’s son who only ever wanted acceptance, the one thing it seemed I could never have. I was a self-doubting scholar. A lover of beauty, when I allowed myself to stop and see it. A thinker and a critic and a student of philosophy and a thousand other things, and alongside all of that, I was Elio’s. How had I ever doubted?

When I could speak again, when the sobs had faded to stuttering hiccups and then to ragged breaths, I turned my face up toward him and said, “Oliver.”

I could hear the shape of his mouth move as it rose into a smile. “Hello again,” he said, breathing the words softly down at me.

And it was, it really was like this was our first time re-meeting. Like we’d begun again right in that moment.

By now I’d slid down until my head was in his lap, resting on his thigh, my gaze angled up to Elio’s unseen face. Although I’d bared all the messiness inside myself—this was the worst possible thing I’d been fearing, and now it had happened—I was surprised by how little I felt ashamed. Elio was holding me, and I’d shown my most pitiful self, and he was still here.

“Hang on, I think I have—” Elio’s hand rustled near my head as he fumbled to get at his pocket. “Here.”

Something soft and pliable pressed into my hand: a handkerchief. Like the fine European gentleman he was, Elio had offered me his handkerchief.

I started laughing, but that only made more of a disaster out of my clogged nose and wet face. So I sat up, still pressed close against Elio’s side, and wiped my eyes and blew my nose into his handkerchief. Then I set it aside—I would wash it for him, once there was light to see by. And I reached out again for his hand.

Elio’s fingers threaded through mine, and oh, he felt so good and alive and real. I was the luckiest man imaginable.

Realizing that—how lucky I was, and how close I’d come to letting this go and blundering on through my life without him—gave me the courage to breathe the truth into that warm, safe darkness: “I want this.”

Elio’s hand squeezed mine. “So do I,” he whispered. “But you know that already.”

“You really don’t think it’s too late?” I meant a lot of things with that one question: Not too late for me? Not too late for us? But Elio understood.

He turned more fully to face me. His knee pressed into mine and his hand still held my own. “Honestly, Oliver, I believe we’re only getting started.”

I had to ask it. “You’d really want to try again?”

Elio’s voice was contemplative. “You know, I didn’t, for a long time. I fought against even the thought of it, when I knew I was moving to New York, to your city. I needed my life in New York to be my own, not only a shadow of yours. But I’ve done that. I’ve made my own life here. And I’d be a fool to say no now, only out of some sort of misplaced pride.” Now his voice was a gentle caress. “Because the truth is that I do, Oliver. I do want to try.”

The hope expanding in my chest was growing so enormous that it nearly hurt. “You’d take a divorced man who’s made a mess of his life?”

Elio’s fingers traced my palm. “Well. You’d take a man at the very start of his career, with no idea where and to what it will take him?”

“Of course.”

Elio echoed, a smile in his voice, “Exactly. Of course.”

I lifted his hand to my mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, overwhelmed by this, his trust in me and his belief that this thing between us was still something worth building.

Softly he added, “I want you, Oliver. With whatever history you carry with you, because all of that is part of you. I want to know your kids. I want to learn your life.” And then, his voice nearly a whisper: “Be my anchor, Oliver. Give me reason to keep coming back to New York.”

“Yes,” I whispered back to him. “I want that.” And then, because it was the truth and he deserved to hear it: “I want you.”

Elio sighed, a long pent-up sigh, maybe of relief, certainly of gladness. And then he simply said, “I’m so glad.”

His hand came to rest against my cheek and I pressed into the touch. Elio’s fingers, lightly brushing my cheekbone. Elio’s palm, cupped against my jaw.

Elio, Elio, Elio.

His fingers traced down my cheek and I turned to meet them with my mouth, my lips finding the tips of his fingers.

As I kissed each of his fingertips in turn, Elio murmured, “I don’t think you’re a coward, by the way. I think it’s brave, what you’re doing.”

“And what is it that I’m doing?” I released his fingers and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm.

Elio’s hand sketched upward to stroke my hair back from my forehead. He’d moved closer now and his breath was warm against my cheek. “Choosing to speak, and to live.”

Outside, the city was somber and still, hushed under its blanket of falling snow. It was so different from how we’d first met, in the languid heat of those endless summer days in Italy. And yet this was right, too. Elio belonged here—belonged everywhere—just as much as he’d belonged to that heady, too-brief summer.

My hand found his face in the dark and traced the familiar curve of his eyebrows, the arch of his cheekbones, the beloved bow of his mouth. I traced the shape of his ear so many times that he laughed, then it turned into a sigh as my fingers swept into his hair and cradled his head between my hands. Elio reached up and pressed a hand to the side of my cheek to guide himself closer, searching through the dark until his lips reached mine, soft and warm and full of promise.

Then he kissed me and it was the truest feeling in the world.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


End notes:

Title from Laura Marling (“A storm hits the city and the lights go out before I can prepare…”)

Also, though, there wasn’t really a blizzard in New York in March of 1990. (Or, as far as I know, a blackout.) Instead, I’m mentally borrowing from the blizzard of ’93 (of which I have marvelous memories!) and various other winter storms. Here’s a fun resource that lists all the winter storms in NYC over many decades.

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