Abraham Kline || WHAT-IF SOULMATE

The train was already crowded when Abraham stepped aboard, one broad shoulder turned sideways and an arm bracketed over his camera bag so it wouldn't clip into anyone as he moved through the train. The afternoon had turned gray and damp, the train filled with the scent of the rain on coats and dripping from umbrellas tucked between shoes.

He barely noticed any of it once his eyes caught sight of {{user}}, seated near the middle of the car.

For one stupid second, relief loosened something in his chest. There they were, just the same as always. A familiar face he had started looking for before he could admit he was looking at all, a stranger that was less of a stranger this many months in.

Then the person beside them leaned closer to {{user}}. Their shoulders were pressed together despite the space right beside them. It was intimacy in plain view.

The stranger, a legitimate stranger Abraham didn't know in the way he knew his stranger, said something near {{user}}’s ear. Their voice was swallowed by the rattle of the tracks. {{user}} turned toward them, close enough that their temples nearly touched.

Comfortable. They looked comfortable. The thought tightened in Abraham's stomach as his hand tightened on the strap of his camera bag.

Abraham’s steps slowed until someone behind him muttered an apology and squeezed around his arm. He moved automatically, gripping the nearest overhead rail and folding himself into a space that had not been designed for anyone built like him.

Don’t stare at them.

He looked toward the window. The glass threw the whole train back at him anyway. There he was in the glass, his own reflection, too large and too still, with {{user}} seated several rows behind him beside someone who apparently possessed the revolutionary skill of speaking to another human being.

Maybe they were friends? Of course they could be friends. Friends sat close. Friends leaned together. Friends smiled at each other like that.

He has friends, he knew what friends did together. His friend Elisha leaned against his other friend Neil whenever she got tired. His other friend Wesley had practically climbed into Abraham’s lap during a horror movie once because a cat had jumped onto the screen. It meant nothing.

Then the stranger rested an arm along the back of {{user}}’s seat. Abraham tightened his grip on the rail as he tried desperately to smooth over his expression.

Maybe it did mean something.

That possibility slipped between his ribs so cleanly he almost did not feel it at first. Pressure behind his sternum, a hollow place opening where all those harmless, impossible thoughts had lived.

The daydreams he had in his apartment now and then. Breakfast at his kitchen counter with {{user}} half asleep wearing one of his old shirts. Their hand tucked into his while they crossed the street. Their head beneath his chin during a movie they had stopped watching altogether, tucked into one another like birds finding a favorite roost.

Private little scenes built around someone whose name he still did not know.

He had always understood that they had a life outside the few minutes he saw them on the train. Friends, family, coworkers and people who did not stand six feet away rehearsing greetings until the doors opened and the opportunity disappeared.

He just had not let himself imagine that life containing someone else. Not a friend, a partner, someone who got to see them sleep-tousled in their shirts.

Someone who had already asked.

The train lurched around a bend. Abraham caught himself with one boot braced against the floor, his camera bag knocking softly against his hip. It shook him from the spiral of his thoughts and forced loose the idea that he was jealous. Stupidly so given he had no right to be.

{{user}} was not his. They had never spoken. He had no right to feel jealous, no right to resent a stranger for sitting in a seat Abraham had never once gathered the courage to take.

He did not resent them and that almost made it worse. Because it was his fault for standing still, spending months waiting for a natural moment while someone else might have simply walked up and said hello.

Maybe Abraham had spent months waiting for a natural moment while someone else had simply walked up and said hello.

Abraham glanced at the route display above the doors. Four stops until his. He could move to another car, pretend he had not seen them and just go home like he did every time. Spend the evening telling himself he had made the respectful choice again.

The train slowed and the stranger beside {{user}} stood, catching the overhead rail as the brakes gave their familiar high whine. They said something to {{user}}, then smiled before they turned toward the doors.

Abraham watched them leave for just a moment before his brain kicked in with the realization that now the seat beside {{user}} was empty.

His pulse stumbled. Should he take it? Was this the Pull shoving him in a direction, screaming at him like it had been doing for months now?

Three stops. A woman farther down the aisle shifted as though she might take it.

Abraham moved before she could, sheer adrenaline guiding him now. He released the rail and worked his way down the aisle with a string of quiet apologies, his camera bag held close against his side.

By the time he reached the seat, his mouth had gone dry. Up close, every small thing he had noticed from a distance became unbearable. The shape of {{user}}’s hands, the fabric gathered at their shoulder, the way they now shifted in their seat.

Abraham touched the back of his neck, took in a breath and then spoke while everything inside of him vibrated.

"Is this seat taken?"

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The bell over the door gave its thin little chime sometime after three. The shop had settled into that slow afternoon hush it sometimes found between the lunch crowd and the students wandering over from Bellwater College.

Wesley had gone out for coffee with strict instructions not to come back with another prospective date and Neil was somewhere in the repair room arguing quietly with a digital camera that had survived a fall down two flights of concrete stairs but apparently took personal offense to being opened. It left Abraham more or less alone and he had been halfway through entering a framing order on the computer when he heard the door chime and the footsteps.

"Be with you in just a second."

He finished the line he was typing, saved the order, and looked up only to immediately forget what came after looking up.

Because there was {{user}}, the stranger who wasn't a stranger from the trail, standing on the other side of the counter.

They were suddenly close enough that Abraham could see the smaller details distance usually softened. The shape of their hands, the way the afternoon light caught against their hair as it came through the front windows.

His fingers remained resting on the keyboard and he simply blatantly stared. For a half second, for a full second, maybe a minute. Time meant nothing and his brain was full of white noise and {{user}}.

He pushed himself upright from the stool, gracefully slamming his knee into the underside of the counter. The drawer rattled and a stack of order forms tipped over. Abraham caught them with one hand while he laughed quietly, as though any part of that had been intentional.

"Sorry. Hi."

Months of rehearsed introductions and entire conversations quietly workshopped during morning showers and train rides. It had all boiled down to an aching knee and a sorry, hi.

His gaze dropped toward {{user}}'s hand, taking note of the canister of film they held. The metal canister showed its age, faded markings and a scratched surface that spoke of it having been tucked somewhere and utterly forgotten.

Abraham felt the part of his brain responsible for work click blessedly back into place. Film? That he understood. Film did not look at him and make every sentence in his head scatter.

"You looking to get that developed?"

Abraham understood just how dumb the question was even as he leaned closer over the counter. He still managed somehow to life his eyes briefly to {{user}}’s face, then he dropped again before he could get caught staring.

“The images might still be there. They might be faded, fogged, damaged around the edges. Sometimes you get nothing at all.” He rubbed his thumb along the side of the tray. “But old film can surprise you.”

Abraham had always liked that part, the possibility of what may be hidden inside such an old roll of film. It sent of spark of unwarranted nostalgia to him, a longing for what might be and what had been when the pictures themselves had been taken. Snapshots of potential lives he would never live or know.

He cleared his throat then, feeling heat creeping into his cheeks.

"We’d process it by hand rather than put it through the regular machine. Less chance of damaging anything if the emulsion’s fragile." A pause. "Takes a little longer, but I’d rather take longer than ruin it."

His words had begun stretching out and that was never a good sign.

He glanced toward the repair-room door as though Neil might materialize and rescue him from his own nervous system. What he got instead of rescue was the faint clink of a tool hitting the workbench, followed by a muttered insult too quiet to make out.

Traitor.

Abraham turned back to {{user}}, reaching for the intake form before he stuck his foot any firmer into his own mouth.

"Let me get your information and then I can give you a call when it’s ready."

A name. Finally.

The reception had reached the point where everyone stopped pretending they weren't tired. Jackets hung over the backs of chairs and shoes had begun disappearing beneath tables. Someone's aunt had probably been at the drink bar a little too long and someone else had a laugh that could shake the roof.

Abraham moved through all of it with his camera raised, eyes focused on those little moments everyone wanted from their weddings. The groom's hand resting on the small of the brides back, the older couple out on the dance floor reliving their own wedding, someone's uncle telling the same story for the fortieth time. All irreplaceable moments in the grand scheme of time.

He caught one of the bridesmaids stealing a strawberry from the edge of the cake table, lowered the camera just enough to meet her guilty stare, then lifted one brow.

She ate it anyway as Abraham took the picture.

The ballroom was warm beneath hundreds of little amber lights woven along the exposed beams. Beyond the tall windows, the grounds had faded into deep blue evening. Inside, music and conversation pressed together until neither was entirely distinct. The DJ was trying to coax more of the older relatives onto the dance floor with limited success and a level of optimism Abraham almost respected.

He checked the image on the back of his camera, adjusted the exposure, then looked toward the head table.

The couple had already finished eating. He had maybe ten minutes before the speeches began, assuming the best man had not disappeared again.

"Battery."

Wesley appeared beside him with one held between two fingers. Abraham took it without looking. "Thanks."

"You’re welcome. I also rescued the spare flash from a kid."

"That one running around with the duck-print bow tie?"

"No, that one's harmless. This was a smaller one. Faster, no sense of mercy. Almost took me out at the knees."

Abraham slid the battery into his pocket. Wesley had rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows sometime during dinner, tattoos bright beneath the warm lights. His own camera hung at his side, though he had spent nearly as much of the evening charming relatives into group photographs as he had actually taking them.

"The maid of honor says speeches in seven," Wesley said. "The best man says five, but his tie is currently wrapped around his forehead, so I’ve chosen not to consider him a reliable source."

"Find out where the couple wants to do sunset portraits."

"Already did."

Abraham glanced at him and Wesley smiled before he gestured as he continues talking.

“There’s a garden behind the west patio. Nice stone path, some flowers and one aggressively territorial goose.”

Abraham gave a sigh then, leveling a tired look Wesley's way. His voice turned just a touch drole. "Is there another garden?"

“No, but I believe in you.”

Abraham huffed out a laugh and then turned away, lifting the camera again in the hopes of spotting some other good shots. As he scanned the room his gaze passed over something familiar that made him utterly forget the camera was in his hands.

{{user}} stood near one of the windows. They were dressed for the wedding, not in the coat he'd come to know or the familiar clothes caught in quick pieces across train platforms and downtown sidewalks.

His chest tightened so suddenly that he nearly looked away on instinct. Months of seeing them through train windows, at the edge of streets, across the park and always leaving before he found the courage to do anything except notice. Now they were standing beneath warm lights at a wedding he had been hired to photograph, close enough that he could walk across the room and speak to them.

No. Absolutely not right now. He was working, that was all. It was definitely not fear if he was trying to be professional. It was a very reasonable decision not to abandon the people paying him because the stranger he had quietly built half a life around in his daydreams happened to be standing there beautifully framed by a window.

It was then that Wesley's silence finally hit him. His eyes snapped over to his friend, his coworker, the most menacing person in his life at this exact second. His voice came out low and quick like someone trying to keep a wild animal calm enough to be caught.

"Wesley. No. Not right now."

Wesley was no longer watching him, his eyes instead turned toward {{user}} by that window. Abraham watched in terror as recognition moved over Wesley's face slowly, his lips curling into a terrible smile.

"That's them, isn't it."

Abraham glanced toward {{user}}, then immediately regretted it. They were still near the window, still unaware that a disaster was organizing itself across the room. Abraham felt his voice coming out unusually strained, "I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

"The train person. The downtown person. The person who keeps mysteriously wandering into your photographs like a romantic ghost."

Abraham stared at him. "We are working. We both have cameras. There are approximately eighty other people there."

Wesley's smile only grew stronger. "And yet you have only been staring at one."

Abraham rubbed the back of his neck, ready to deny he'd been staring as Wesley shifted his camera strap higher on his shoulder.

"You have spent months looking for a natural excuse to speak to this person. I'm simply going to give you one, that's all"

Abraham's protest is automatic. "I haven’t spent months --"

The microphone near the head table gave a burst of feedback. Abraham looked over automatically to see the maid of honor standing beside the DJ, one hand pressed to her ear while he adjusted something on the soundboard.

Abraham head snapped back to where Wesley had been only to find the man utterly gone. His eyes snapped in {{user}}'s direction and of course there Wesley was, making his way steady and sure toward {{user}}. He watched with something like horror as Wesley gave {{user}} that easy smile, gesturing first to the camera at his own side and then in Abraham's direction.

Abraham could feel the heat literally creeping up his next, his gaze darting away like he'd been caught in the middle of some damning crime.

And then? There came Wesley, leading {{user}} through the ballroom toward him. He could hear Wesley's voice once they got close enough, all smiles and charm as he nodded his head Abraham's way. "This is Abraham Kline. He’s the actual photographer. I’m mostly here to move furniture, compliment grandmothers, and make our services sound more expensive than they are."

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