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The locker room is full of boys who talk like they are at the top of the world.
They talk about fumbling in the backseats of hand-me-down sedans, about sloppy kisses under the Friday night stadium lights, about sex with the crude vocabulary of teenagers trying to outgrow themselves.
Andrea usually just tunes it out. He ties his trainers, offers a noncommittal smile when prompted, and lets the noise wash over him. Because to him, they have it all backwards. They treat intimacy like a race to the finish line, completely oblivious to the quiet of the space in between.
To Andrea, the most intimate thing two people can do is holding hands.
He never really thought about it before, but waiting for the afternoon bus home provides a front-row seat to the observation dock of human connection. Sitting on the damp wooden bench, the sun dipping low and painting the sidewalk in golden strokes, Andrea watches them. He watches couples hold hands in a thousand different ways, and not one variation feels less intimate than the others.
Sometimes, usually for older couples, it’s a full clasp. Palm pressed flush against palm, fingers intertwined, knuckles turning white. It’s an anchor. A silent declaration of I am here, and I am holding on.
Sometimes, it’s just the pinkies. He watches a pair of freshmen standing awkwardly apart, their shoulders barely brushing, but their pinky fingers are hooked together like a secret. It’s hesitant, fragile, buzzing with the electric tension of something new.
Other times, it isn’t even skin on skin. It’s the playful tug of a sleeve. He watches a girl pull her boyfriend back into her orbit by the cuff of his letterman jacket, laughing, her cheeks dusted with a furious blush as he stumbles toward her, entirely willing to be caught.
There’s a whole language to it, Andrea realizes.
You can read the entire dynamic of a relationship just from their hand placement. Who anchors? Who drifts? Who has the palm turned upward, offering the silent question? Who presses their palm down, offering the answer?
Andrea kicks a loose piece of gravel near the curb, watching it skitter across the asphalt. He leans his head back against the glass of the bus shelter, the cool surface grounding him.
Come to think of it, he holds hands too.
With Oliver.
The thought shouldn't feel like a sudden drop in altitude, but it does. It makes his chest tighten, an unfamiliar flutter expanding beneath his ribs. It’s just that they’ve been doing it for so long, that the action has become as invisible as breathing.
It had started long before they knew what it meant to be self-conscious.
Back when they were just kids old enough to walk to school on their own, their parents had told them to hold each other's hand. It was a matter of survival, a strict directive to stick together when crossing the busy intersections. It was tight grips and sweaty palms, yanking each other away from the curb when a car sped by too closely.
But they grew up. They navigated the maze of awkward growth and landed in the chaotic, hormone-fueled halls of year 11, and yet the habit never faded. It just evolved. It turned into a careless, comfortable gravity between best friends.
When they navigated crowded corridors, Oliver would blindly reach back, fingers catching Andrea’s wrist before slipping down to interlock with his fingers, towing him through the sea of students so they wouldn't be separated before first period. When they sat on Andrea's ratty bedroom couch playing video games, utterly exhausted after a long week of classes, Ollie’s hand would inevitably find Andrea’s, their fingers tangling loosely as they dozed off against each other. It was a carefree, clingy sort of affection, playful and instinctive of who they were to one another.
Andrea looks down at his own hands resting on his lap. They are unremarkable. His nails are jagged and uneven, from his habit of biting them. Ah, that too. Whenever Oliver sees him biting his nails, he would take Andrea's hand and put it in a 'timeout'. His own hand completely clasped inside Oliver's massive hand.
He thinks about the faint calluses on Ollie’s palms from rowing, the familiar warmth of his skin, the way Ollie always, always offers his hand palm-up. An invitation. An open door.
A soft nudge on the side of his head, familiar.
"Think harder and you're going to explode, Andrea."
Andrea blinks, startled out of his daydream. Ollie is suddenly there, standing on the curb with his battered backpack slung over one shoulder, looking slightly breathless and too bright for a mundane afternoon. The late sun catches in his hair, turning it into a messy, golden halo.
"Bus is late," Andrea says, his voice sounding a little rougher, a little more breathless than he intends.
"Always is," Ollie replies easily and steps closer, closing the distance between them with the natural pull they’ve shared since they were seven years old.
Ollie doesn't look at Andrea’s hands. He doesn't look at the couples loitering down the street, or the approaching bus in the distance. He looks right at Andrea, offering a small, easy smile. And then, entirely unconsciously, Ollie reaches out.
His hand hovers in the space between them. Palm up.
I am here, the gesture says. Are you?
Andrea stares at Oliver's hand for a moment. For the first time in his life, the action doesn't feel like a childhood habit carrying over into the present. It feels deliberate. It feels like stepping up to the edge of a cliff and realizing he actually wants to jump.
The boys in the locker room can keep their desperate race to the finish line. Andrea doesn't need any of it.
He reaches out, turning his hand downward, and slots his fingers perfectly into the spaces between Ollie’s. The clasp is firm, palm to palm, anchoring them both to the pavement. Ollie’s smile softens, the corners of his eyes crinkling as his thumb instinctively begins to brush a rhythmic, soothing pattern over Andrea’s knuckles. With a gentle tug, Ollie pulls Andrea just a fraction of an inch closer into his orbit.
Yes, Andrea answers silently, feeling the heat rise to his own cheeks as he holds on tight. I'm here.