Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Curly, messy auburn hair caught Andrew's sight first. Blinding bright blue eyes second. Several scars over his face next.

Neil had aged a bit, but he hadn't changed one bit.

Neil's hand dropped down, the knife now dangling uselessly from his fingers. The silver of the blade reflected the moonlight streaming through Andrews windows slightly.

Andrew felt like he was getting sick. Stomach acid burned in his throat and his chest felt like it just got ripped open and stabbed several times over. For a moment he didn't even remember how to breathe. Forgot what breathing was, forgot what his lungs were for, forgot everything except the face standing across from him in the yellow light of his own living room.

Neil stared at him. He opened his mouth only to close it again.

His eyes darted between Andrew's, he looked like a deer caught in headlights, like a child that just lost its mother in a store. His chest rose and fell way too quickly, way too rapidly, way too-

He choked out a breath which ended up being a cough. His free hand rose to clutch at his own chest tightly, like he was trying to physically hold himself together.

"Andrew-" Neil almost whispered. He stared Andrew down as if he didn't believe what he was seeing, as if he thought he was imagining things, as if he wasn't the one who-

"You broke into my apartment and came to kill me. What a pleasant way to see you again after four years." Andrew commented drily.

The previous panic- the panic of a stranger being in his apartment, of hands that shook and a chest that wouldn't expand properly- was completely gone, washed away by a gut wrenching, tearing anger. Something that had been coiled very tightly inside him for a very long time was slowly, dangerously unwinding.

Neil took a step forward before he stopped himself. He glanced down at the knife still hanging from his fingers and dropped it. His knees buckled slightly, he looked like he was about to follow it to the floor, like he was about to drop down onto his knees in front of Andrew. In the end, he didn't.

Andrew pinned him down with his eyes.

"You became a lawyer.." Neil muttered.

"You became a murderer. How ironic." Andrew huffed a dry laugh.

Neil watched him, his eyes overflowing with so many emotions at once that Andrew thought he might drown in them as well. He felt his flower losing its last dry leaves. He'd throw it out and bury it somewhere later so nobody could ever pick it up again.

"Andrew I-" Neil stopped again. Unable to form a single sentence after everything he'd done. Good.

"You what?! Tell me, Neil. Say it to my face!" Andrew snapped.

It felt as if the small band holding everything together finally snapped. Andrew had always clung to a thread- a small, fraying thread of hurt and self blame and wondering. He had held onto it. It had kept him above the water, it had stopped him from drowning completely. But seeing Neil in front of him like this finally made it snap. It snapped clean in the middle and dropped Andrew into ice cold water, washing his mind clean, making him see and feel and realize with horrible clarity exactly what Neil had put him through for four whole years.

It wasn't a gentle drop. It was sharp and sudden and it hurt so, so much and it turned everything in his mind upside down.

Neil watched him. He didn't flinch, didn't step back, his expression didn't change in any negative way- instead he almost looked relieved, like he was about to start crying from pure relief at being screamed at.

"Neil." he muttered. "I haven't heard this name in four years."

Andrew frowned. What the hell was he talking about? Was he playing with him? "I don't fucking care. What the fuck do you think you are doing here?!"

Neil bit the inside of his cheek, the relief immediately replaced by guilt. It settled over his face like a shadow.

"I can't tell you." he said after a moment, his voice regaining some of its strength. "I didn't know who I got sent to. I was just told the location and to.. Take you out as fast as I could.."

Andrew huffed a dry, unamused laugh. "Who do you work for?"

Neil's eyes snapped up to his.

Fuck, he'd missed them. He could get lost in them every single time. He hated that. He hated it so much.

"Andrew if I tell you, you will- we will-"

"I don't fucking care. Who do you work for? You've been making my work really fucking hard lately. I'd like to get this over with."

Neil flinched back. Not from Andrew's raised voice, not from the anger in it- Neil had never flinched from Andrew's outbursts, had never stepped back when Andrew clenched his fists or raised his voice. He flinched when Andrew's words hurt him. Always had. For one short, idiotic moment Andrew felt sorry about it. He shoved the feeling away as fast as it had come.

"My father. You found out about Lola Malcom. He sent me to kill you. You got too close to the case."

Andrew paused.

His father. The one Neil used to talk about back then- how he was running from him, how one day he would escape him and finally live a free life. With Andrew. Back then Andrew had told Neil that his thoughts about their shared future were stupid, that he was delusional, that this would never work. He had meant it as self-protection. He had meant it as the only wall he knew how to build.
Now he'd give anything to go back and let himself believe in it. Now he'd give anything to have let Neil keep his stupid, foolish promise.

"What happened to running from him?" Andrew asked drily.

Neil's body hunched together. He looked so small. So fragile. So-

He was a fucking asshole.

"Andrew I never meant to leave you- I never wanted to, I swear-" Neil started.

"You haven't answered my question." Andrew replied flatly.

"The day I left, Lola took me with her. She made me sign out of college, threatened to kill you if I didn't listen." Neil's voice stayed level but something underneath it wasn't. "They kept me with them and made me start fighting. They taught me how to kill and forced me to work for them. Messy work- mostly taking out people who got too close.."

Andrew took a step back.

He could visibly see the desperation creeping over Neil's face as he watched Andrew put more distance between them. As if every step back was something being taken from him.

"None of this is my choice- I tried to run, I tried to fight back- I tried so much.." Neil started stammering.

Andrew felt nothing. Or he felt everything and had learned so well how to feel nothing that even he couldn't tell the difference anymore. Only cold detachment toward the boy he used to..- toward Neil.

"So what now? Are you going ahead and killing me? You dropped your knife. Better pick it up and get your job done." he said.

Neil froze. "Don't talk like that- you sound like you want me to-"

"This was a yes or no question." Andrew interrupted him. He froze the second he heard himself say it. Wrong choice of words, fucking idiot.

"No." Neil said.

And it was the first time Andrew had ever heard that answer from him.

The memories that flooded back nearly made him nauseous. Yes or no had always been their language- their barrier, before anything else. Before anything physical between them, no matter what. Andrew had always needed to hear it from Neil's lips. Needed to know Neil was okay, needed that verbal confirmation before he did anything. He had always needed it and Neil had always given it, immediately and without hesitation, no matter the circumstances.

It had always been yes.

Always.

"Andrew I-"

"Stop saying my name like that. It makes me sick hearing it from you." Andrew said quietly.

Neil shut his mouth. Of course he did.

Andrew watched him. There was a new scar on his face- it ran from his eyebrow down to his cheek. It was impressive that he wasn't blind in that eye. The scar looked serious, the kind that came from something that should have been much worse.

The rest of Neil's body was covered by his clothes. A black oversized hoodie, some jeans. He didn't look like a murderer. He never had, even now. That had always been the thing about Neil- he looked like someone who needed to be taken care of, and underneath that he was someone who had survived things most people didn't.

Andrew hated how both of those things were still true.

"Are you behind the murders lately?" Andrew asked.

Neil's gaze snapped back up. He frowned before he shook his head. "No- I knew of them but I wasn't the one carrying them out." he muttered.

"You know Marcus Hale?" Andrew continued.

"Yeah. He works as an investigator. Meets my father's next victims and finds out personal information about them in order to.. you know. Find out when they'll be home and things like that." Neil said.

Then suddenly his head snapped to the side and he looked around the room, eyes moving quickly. "You can't know about this- they'll kill you- fuck-"

Andrew watched the panic rise in Neil's chest. He watched it and told himself he felt nothing.

"They'll kill you too, hm?" he asked.

Neil looked back at him. "Yeah.." he muttered. "If I don't follow orders I face consequences. I guess that's why nobody told me your name when they sent me here.."

Something in Andrew stilled.

"They hurt you when you don't follow orders?" he asked carefully. He wasn't worried. He was interested. That was all. An idiotic, stupid thought forming quietly in the back of his mind and nothing else.

Neil frowned. "They did. I'm surprised I'm still alive." he muttered.

"Prove it."

Neil's frown deepened. Andrew crossed his arms over his chest and waited. After a long moment, Neil reached for the hem of his hoodie and pulled it over his head.

His body was covered in scars.

Neil had always had scars. Back when they had started sleeping together in college, Andrew would trace every single one of them, kiss every single one, would make sure Neil never felt any less than completely wanted just because his body showed that he had a rough past behind him. Andrew had never made him feel like they were something to be ashamed of. He had never let Neil believe they were.

But this was new.

This was so, so much worse.

Andrew stepped closer. He schooled his face into something neutral and held it there through sheer will. He could feel Neil's eyes on him the entire time and refused to let it show what that did to him.

There wasn't a single part of Neil's upper body that wasn't covered in scars. His skin looked rough, worn out, cut open and stitched back together so many times it had stopped looking like skin and started looking like a record. He looked awful.

He looked so awfully beautiful.

Andrew hated himself for thinking it. He hated himself with a specific, targeted fury that he tucked away for later.

"Give me a location." Andrew said as he raised his eyes back up.

Neil's eyes flickered between Andrew's. He shook his head slowly. "You're underestimating him. No matter who you send there, they will kill them and cover it with money." he said as he reached down and picked his hoodie back up off the floor.

Andrew ignored the tight pull in his chest and took a few deliberate steps away from Neil.

No. Never again.

"You underestimate me if you think I'm dumb enough to send people there." Andrew said drily. "You got a phone?"

Neil hesitated. He pulled his hoodie back on and watched Andrew through his stupid big eyes. Then he reached into his pocket and held a phone out.

"What are you planning?" he asked as he handed it over.

It was almost ironic how compliant he was. He did as he was told, hadn't used Andrew's name once since Andrew told him to stop, hadn't killed him even though his own life was on the line.
Andrew grabbed the phone and typed his number in. He gave himself a quick call so he'd have Neil's number saved on his own phone and handed it back.

"I will fulfil my job as a lawyer." Andrew said.

Neil didn't tense. He accepted that within the blink of an eye, taking his phone back without a word.

"Does your father watch you? Is there any way he knows what you're doing right now?" Andrew asked. Neil shook his head. The fact that his father already trusted him enough not to monitor him told Andrew that this wasn't the first murder Neil had been assigned to. Of course it wasn't.

"Tell him I wasn't home and let me work this out." Andrew said flatly.

Neil frowned. "How-"

"Don't ask stupid questions." Andrew interrupted him. Neil swallowed. He nodded slowly as he turned toward the balcony.

"You can use the door." Andrew said.

Neil stopped. "Right." he muttered, and turned back around, walking past Andrew toward the hallway.

Every part of Andrew's mind yelled at him. Stop him. Pull him back in. Don't let him leave again. Don't let him walk out of that door again. His fingers twitched. The voices grew louder and louder until-

The door clicked shut.

The second it did, the world tilted.

Andrew grabbed for the shelf next to him and missed it half, his shoulder catching the edge hard. It rattled. Something fell- a book, something ceramic- and he heard it distantly, like it was happening in another room, because his legs were already giving out underneath him and that felt more urgent.

He caught himself on the shelf with both hands and stood there, hunched over it, breathing.

His chest felt like something was sitting on it. Something heavy and alive and pressing down harder with every inhale, squeezing until his lungs forgot how to do the one thing they existed to do. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat, in his temples, behind his eyes, like his body was trying to beat itself apart from the inside.

Andrew pressed a fist against his sternum.

It didn't help.

His stomach twisted- a slow, sickening wrench, like something being wrung out- and the nausea that followed it was immediate and overwhelming. He pushed off the shelf and stumbled sideways, caught the doorframe, used it to drag himself toward the kitchen. His feet didn't feel like his feet. The floor kept coming up wrong.

He couldn't breathe properly and he couldn't think properly and the only coherent thing in his head was Neil's face in the lamplight, the way time had carved itself into it, the way it was still so unbearably the same underneath all of that, and Andrew's knees nearly buckled in the middle of his own hallway.

Four years.

Four years of walls. Four years of learning the shape of the absence and routing himself carefully around it, of being furious instead of devastated because furious was survivable. Four years of waking up on the left side of the bed because the right side still didn't feel like his.

His vision was going dark at the edges. He blinked hard and the black spots scattered and came back.

The kitchen counter. He grabbed it with both hands and held on. His knuckles went white. His stomach churned again, worse this time, a rolling sickness that started somewhere deep and moved upward slowly and with complete intention. His head was pounding- a thick, heavy throb behind his eyes that pulsed in time with his heartbeat- and his hands wouldn't stop shaking no matter how hard he gripped the counter, wouldn't stop, wouldn't-

His eyes found the little box on the shelf.

He knew it was stupid. He knew it the way you know things when your brain is still half working and the other half has already stopped caring. He shook pills into his palm- two, then a third- and looked at them for a second that lasted a long time.

Then he slammed them into his mouth, grabbed the rum from the counter and washed them down in a few long swallows. The burn scraped all the way down his throat and hit his empty stomach like a lit match and the dizziness spiked so hard he had to grab the counter again just to stay upright.

He stood there waiting for something to get quieter.

It didn't.

What got quieter instead was his stomach- and not in the way he wanted. The nausea rolled up hard and fast and Andrew shoved off the counter and made it to the bathroom by a margin that was closer than he would ever admit to anyone and dropped to his knees on the cold tile and was sick, violently and completely, his whole body convulsing with it. His ribs ached. His throat burned. His eyes were streaming and he couldn't tell anymore if he was crying or just reacting, couldn't tell anymore which feelings belonged to which part of this, couldn't separate the panic from the grief from the humiliation of being on his own bathroom floor falling apart over a boy who had walked out of his life four years ago and then walked back into his apartment tonight holding a knife.

He hooked his arm over the toilet and rested his forehead against it and breathed.

His chest still felt squeezed. His head still pounded. His hands were still shaking against the cold tile and his stomach hurt from the inside out and underneath all of it, underneath the wreckage, one thought kept surfacing no matter how hard he pushed it back down.

Neil was alive.

Four years of not knowing- of convincing himself it was better not to know, of building his whole life around the shape of an absence- and Neil was alive, and had been standing in his living room, and had looked at him like something in him had cracked straight down the middle the second the light came on.

Andrew had spent four years being furious.

He didn't feel furious.

He felt nineteen and completely alone and so unbearably, shamefully relieved that it made him sick all over again.

The darkness at the edges of his vision pressed inward slowly.

Andrew let it.

...

When Andrew woke up, he felt sick. His entire body ached. He had passed out next to the toilet, his cheek pressed against the cold tile, his arm still hooked over the rim. His head throbbed awfully, a dull heavy pounding that radiated from behind his eyes all the way down his neck. His muscles and bones felt sore and painful in the specific way that came from hours in a position no body was ever meant to hold.

He took several slow, deep breaths. Closed his eyes for a few moments. His body felt hot, his clothes were sticking to him from sweat and everything else.

Fuck.

After several attempts, Andrew managed to sit up.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly. Time hadn't stopped. The world kept on spinning for a man whose world had just violently collapsed and dragged him all the way down with it.

When Andrew finally managed to get up, he stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the shower. His legs felt weak, his body was way too hot. A fever. Of course.

Andrew turned the temperature down, the cold water burning on his skin. He let himself soak under it for what felt like a very long time before he finally reached for his body wash and his shampoo.

The day was slow and unnecessarily long. Andrew decided to work from home since he was running a fever. He could have simply let himself rest for once, allowed his body what it was clearly asking for. But his mind was running a million miles an hour and he knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he'd worked out what to do with this case. With all of it.

The easiest way to solve it would have been handing the entire organisation over to the police. Walking in, laying everything out, watching the whole thing unravel from a professional distance.
The only issue was that Neil would probably end up in prison.

And as much as Andrew hated himself for it- as much as the thought made him want to put his head through a wall- he didn't want that.

He wanted to protect Neil.

He knew Neil hadn't been there voluntarily. He knew Neil had suffered things that made what Andrew carried look small by comparison. He had seen the proof written all over Neil's body. How could he let him get locked away now, now that he had finally found him again? Now that Neil was alive and real and standing in his living room and not dead in a ditch somewhere the way Andrew had quietly feared for four years?

He couldn't.

He hated that he couldn't.

He hated how easily it overrode everything else- the anger, the four years of silence, the fact that Neil had broken something in him that had never fully healed. He hated how none of that was enough to make him stop wanting to protect him.

Andrew knew he was a good lawyer. He understood exactly how his job worked and had managed to defend worse cases than this. Defending Neil would be hard- harder than almost anything he'd taken on, because this time the professional stakes and the personal ones were completely tangled together and he couldn't separate them no matter how hard he tried.

But it was manageable.

Duress. In legal terms- a situation where a person is coerced or wrongfully threatened into acting against their free will. Where someone commits a crime because they were improperly pressured and the law excuses their criminal liability as a result.

Neil had proof. His body was covered in it. And Andrew was certain that if he sent a therapist to speak with Neil, that therapist could fill several pages with everything that was wrong, everything that had been done to him, everything that Nathan Wesninski had systematically dismantled over the course of years.

Andrew just needed to talk to his boss and get the stone rolling.

He had this. He knew he did.

He glanced at his phone. 3pm. He decided against calling his boss and wrote an email instead because the thought of having to speak out loud right now was more than he could manage.

His head was pounding and he was fairly certain he'd never struggled more in his life to write a simple email. His fingers kept stopping over the keyboard. He rewrote the opening line four times.

...

The following two days were awful.

Andrew felt better physically but his mind was still driving him insane.

He even declined his weekly free treat from Nicky. Didn't feel like facing anyone. Didn't feel like performing, like keeping his expression neutral, like pretending everything was fine in front of someone who knew him well enough to see through it.

Of course this worried Nicky. He tried calling at least five times before Andrew lost his patience and sent him a message telling him to fuck off. He knew Nicky was just worried. The mere thought of having to interact with someone in his current state was enough to make his skin crawl. So instead he settled for isolating himself and stared at his ceiling a lot.

Discussing the case with his boss was more complicated than he'd hoped.

Three days after his breakdown, Andrew had to show up in his boss's office and explain everything from the beginning. It was a messy conversation. Andrew tripped over his own words more than once, had to backtrack, had to reframe things. It took them ages to work around it all.

In the end, his boss agreed. Andrew was allowed to proceed.

On his drive home he felt his thoughts drifting back to Neil again and again and again, the way they always did when he didn't have enough to occupy his hands. What was Neil doing right now? Did he get punished for not killing Andrew? Was he in another stranger's apartment right now, a knife in his hand, carrying out the job he'd failed to finish here? Was he..

Was he still alive?

Andrew cursed under his breath as he hit his brakes, nearly missing a red light.

The car behind him honked, nearly drove straight into his rear. Andrew flipped him off through the rearview mirror and clenched his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles ached.
God. When would Neil ever just leave him alone? When would he ever allow Andrew a single quiet day in his own head? It didn't matter if Neil was there or not. Present or absent, alive or possibly not- he had always managed to drive Andrew completely insane, and apparently four years of practice hadn't changed that in the slightest.

The car behind him honked again when Andrew missed the light turning green.

"Fuck off!" Andrew yelled, knowing the driver couldn't hear him. He honked back anyway, just to make a point, then sped off.

When he finally got home he messily parked in his assigned spot. Practically it wasn't his assigned spot. But after picking enough fights with whoever dared to park there, his neighbours had learned very quickly that avoiding it was the safer option. With how badly he'd parked right now, he was pretty sure no one would fit a car next to his.

A slight satisfaction settled in his chest at that.

He locked the car, went inside and headed straight for the coffee machine.

It was a stupid habit he'd picked up from Kevin. Back when they'd shared a dorm room, Kevin drank coffee every single morning without fail. Andrew had been constantly exhausted back then- the medication he'd had to take in college kept him awake at night and made him slow throughout the day. So he needed something. Energy drinks were a reasonable option, except that Aaron drank energy drinks. Out of pure spite, Andrew refused, and started drinking coffee with Kevin each morning instead.

Now it was a strict part of his daily routine. He couldn't imagine surviving a morning without his sugary, heavily milked coffee and he refused to examine what that said about him.

Andrew watched the dark liquid drip into the pot and thought about the case.

Marcus Hale was still in custody. And soon, many others would join him. First, Andrew needed to get Marcus to talk- he knew a few unethical ways to push that and at this point felt desperate enough to try them. Then he would switch with a colleague, hand Neil over to the police, and take over Neil's case himself.

Marcus would stop being his problem.

Andrew had never failed defending a client.

There was no way he was wasting his talent on Marcus Hale when Neil was standing in the picture.

Andrew groaned, already feeling the headache forming again in the back of his skull. He reached for his coffee, poured it, added the milk, added the sugar, and slumped down in front of his laptop.
He was tired of sitting in chairs all day. He settled on the floor in front of the couch instead, using the cushions as a surface for his laptop. He put his coffee down beside him and went back to work.

Drowning himself in work had always been and still was the most efficient way of making his head shut up for once. With the fun side effect of earning money while doing it. It was like getting paid to go to therapy, except that therapy actually helped and work just postponed the problem until 3am.

His thoughts drifted to Mrs. Dobson. Bee, his former therapist. Maybe she could help- find more evidence of Neil's emotional trauma, provide the kind of professional documentation that would hold up in court. With that thought, Andrew spent the rest of the day writing emails. To Bee. To a colleague, explaining his plans and asking about taking over from Marcus Hale's case once the switch was made. To a few other people whose help he would need along the way.

Then, he let his mind drift to how to get Neil out of there without risking any more dead people. Andrew knew not to take Neil's warning lightly. When Neil stood in his living room, he had made it very clear that sending anyone after Nathan Wesninski was a guaranteed death sentence. Andrew couldn't risk that.

So the safest option was Neil handing himself over to the police.

The only question was how long it would take Nathan Wesninski to act. If he found out his son had spilled everything, had walked himself into the arms of the police- he would act. Andrew knew that. But how much time would it take for him to find out?

And who would Nathan go after first?

Killing Andrew first could be an impulsive decision. Nathan had wanted him dead for a while now- had already sent people after Andrew before Andrew had even gotten this close to the case. Nearly took out Aaron back then, mistook him for Andrew in a dark club because Nathan's people apparently couldn't be bothered to do basic research on their targets.

So it was possible. Nathan going after Andrew first was possible.

But it would also be stupid.

By now, everything Andrew knew was already stored, already documented, already in the hands of people above both of them. Killing Andrew wouldn't erase any of it. It wouldn't slow anything down. It would just be one more body on a pile that was already getting very hard to explain away.

Except for simple revenge, perhaps.

Andrew took a sip of his coffee.

He doubted Nathan was the revenge type. Revenge was emotional, and from everything Andrew had pieced together about Nathan Wesninski- from Marcus, from James Hale's offhand comments, from the pattern of the killings themselves- Nathan was not an emotional man. He was a calculated one. The kind of man who hurt people not out of feeling but out of efficiency.

Which meant Nathan's first instinct wouldn't be Andrew.

It would be Neil.

Andrew paused.

Neil was the weak point. Neil knew the most, had seen the most, could testify to the most. And more than that- Neil was his. Nathan had spent years making sure Neil understood that completely. Walking away from that kind of ownership wasn't something Nathan would take quietly, regardless of how pragmatic he was about everything else.

Andrew set his coffee down.

The next question was one he didn't have a good answer to yet, and it bothered him.

How far did Nathan's reach actually go?

Because there was a significant difference between a man who had power within a city and a man who had power within a system. If Nathan had people inside the police department- which wasn't an unreasonable assumption, given how long his organisation had been operating without serious interruption- then handing Neil over to the police wasn't safe at all. It was just delivering him somewhere Nathan already had eyes.

And if Nathan had people in the legal system-

Andrew's jaw tightened.

He needed to know the extent of it before he moved. Going to the wrong person, trusting the wrong channel, could get Neil killed before any of this ever reached a courtroom. He needed someone he trusted completely. Someone with enough authority to actually act on this and enough integrity to not already be on Nathan's payroll.

The problem was that list of people was very short.

Andrew reached for his coffee again and stared at the wall.

He also needed to understand the timeline. Specifically- how Neil communicated with Nathan's organisation. Whether there were scheduled check-ins, regular contact, anything that would flag as unusual if Neil went quiet. Because if Nathan expected to hear from Neil and didn't, the clock started immediately. But if Neil had relative freedom, they might have more time than Andrew initially feared.

More time to do this properly.

More time to do this without getting anyone else killed.

Andrew rubbed the bridge of his nose and let out a slow breath.

...

The following day, Andrew finally dragged himself back into the office.

He didn't mind working from home in general. The issue was that doing it for too long stopped home from feeling like home. It started feeling like an extension of the office he could never escape from, like the walls had closed in on him when he wasn't paying attention. Working from his actual office at least gave him somewhere else to go- somewhere that was supposed to feel like work, so that when he came home it could feel like something else.

He didn't get far before his impatience got the better of him and he drove to the police station.

He was ready to corner this fuckface.

Only a few minutes after arriving, Andrew found himself back in the interrogation room. Marcus Hale looked bored- though considerably less polished than the first time. His hair was unwashed and messy, his face paler. He was wearing prison clothes now, not his fancy suit. The easy confidence was still there, but it was wearing thin in a way Andrew found deeply satisfying.

Poor soul.

"Hello, Hale. Missed me?" Andrew tilted his head as he set the recorder between them.

Marcus frowned. "You look like you'd belong in my place." he commented drily.

Andrew shot him a brief look before returning his attention to his notebook. A fresh empty page. A new, big step toward the end of this whole mess.
"I don't have blood on my hands, Mr. Hale." Andrew said calmly.

Get something out of him.

"Neither do I." Marcus replied.

Andrew sighed. "Are you fine with me addressing you by your first name?" he asked. Get personal. Corner him.

"I don't care."

Andrew nodded. "See, Marcus.. I really just want to do my job. And you are standing in my way. Over the past few days I've found quite a lot of evidence. Everything speaks against you."

Marcus tensed, just slightly. "Aren't you supposed to be defending me?" he snapped.

"Why so scared all of a sudden? I thought you had nothing to fear?" Andrew tapped his pen on the notebook.

"I don't see the point in getting a lawyer if said lawyer tries everything to get me behind bars." Marcus said, his voice rising.

"It is my job to defend. But it is not my job to lie. Lying in court is not fun, I assure you. So besides defending, my job is to find the truth and act on it. And if I know you're guilty, you can't seriously expect me to lie for you?" Andrew asked.

Marcus frowned. "You have no proof."

"Lola Malcom."

Marcus flinched.

A small, satisfied smile spread across Andrew's lips. He was thriving.

"You know her, don't you? Tell me about her." he said, almost bored about it.

Marcus shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know her." he insisted.

"Liar. Your reaction just told me everything. So who is she? Another woman you found at a bar? Or perhaps someone you work for?"

Marcus bit his lip. "You're making things up."

Andrew shook his head slowly. He put his pen down and folded his hands on the table, leaning forward slightly. "I've spoken to a lot of people, Marcus. You don't work at your little restaurant, do you? Subordinate of Lola, perhaps? And what about Nathan Wesninski? Ring any bells?"

There it was.

Marcus's facade cracked. His eyes moved fast around the room, fear crossing them. Raw, real fear. The kind that lived deep and didn't perform.

"Hm. You don't seem to like Nathan. Why is that?" Andrew asked.

"What the fuck are you trying to do here?! What kind of sick games are you playing?!" Marcus snapped. He jumped up, the chains around his wrists and ankles rattling loudly. Then he sank back down into his chair.

Andrew watched him, his expression giving away absolutely nothing.

"I asked you a question. Marcus, the more cooperative you are, the more cooperative the judges will be. Sounds promising, doesn't it?" Andrew asked.

Marcus leaned forward. A cruel smile crossed his face. "You've got a name. But that's probably all you'll get. Getting too close to the core isn't survivable. I'm surprised you're still standing."

Andrew leaned back. He glanced at the recorder, then looked back at Marcus.

"Good. You're talking. Now tell me about Casey Bloom. You've already cornered yourself- lying will only make this worse from here."

Marcus bit his lip for a long moment, then mirrored Andrew and leaned back as well. "I killed her. I'm not behind the other murders." he said flatly.

Maybe at this point, prison sounded better than walking back into Nathan's arms for him.

Andrew watched him carefully. "How did you kill her?" he asked.

"I followed her home after the club. We were making out, she thought- it doesn't matter what she thought. In her apartment I shot her. Apparently I left my fingerprints on her." he muttered gruffly.

"Nathan Wesninski instructed you to do so?"

"Yes. He keeps an eye on a lot of people. He had been watching her for a while and then randomly sent me to take her out when she was at the club."

"Why? Why did he want her dead?"

"I don't know. Questioning him is dangerous."

"So you blindly obeyed and carried out his mission like a good little puppy?"

"What was I supposed to do?!"

"Refuse."

"I've seen what he does to people who refuse. So no."

Andrew scoffed. He was relieved that Marcus would soon stop being his problem. Defending his case would have been significantly harder anyway- Marcus hadn't been under the same kind of direct, sustained coercion as Neil. The comparison wasn't even close.

"Was this your first murder?" Andrew asked.

Marcus sighed. "No. It was my first outside murder."

"Outside murder?"

"People inside the organisation get killed too. When someone misbehaved and Wesninski didn't feel like getting his hands dirty, it was my job to handle it."

"And you never once thought about refusing?"

"Of course I thought about it. But it was impossible. Easy for you to say from your comfortable little throne."

Andrew closed his notebook. He wouldn't give Marcus the satisfaction of reacting to that. "Anything else you'd like to tell me?"

"I hope you rot in hell."

Andrew scoffed. He simply got up. "See if you'll find me down there." he said as he took the recorder, switched it off and left the room without looking back.

"You okay, sir?" a young police officer asked outside the door. She must have heard Marcus through the wall.

"All good. I got everything I wanted." Andrew said, and left the building.

...

The paperwork after that interview was sickening.

Andrew immediately regretted not just leaving it for his colleague, since Marcus was about to stop being his case anyway. Writing protocols had always been the least enjoyable part of his job, and this one was extensive. It took him the entire day. Around ten in the evening he was finally done. He wrote a report for his boss, shut down his computer and sighed deeply.

God, this was exhausting.

Andrew sat up straight, stretched his back, his neck, rolled his shoulders until something cracked. Then he got up and stretched again. He collected his things, finally allowed himself to leave his office- only to come back tomorrow. Maybe he should just ask for a small bed in here and save himself the commute.

He picked up Indian food from a local place near the courthouse on his way to the car, got in and drove home. The smell of chicken curry filled his car and made his stomach growl.
For someone who loved food as much as he did, he had a stupid tendency to forget to eat when he was too buried in work. His body always found creative ways to remind him of this.

At home he reheated the food, slumped onto the couch and turned the TV on for some mindless background noise while he ate.

Andrew barely got any sleep that night.

At four in the morning, his phone rang.

He was very close to throwing it through the window until he looked at the screen.

Neil?

Andrew groaned as he sat up. He ran a hand over his face, cleared his throat and accepted the call.

On the other end, someone was breathing heavily. Panting.

"Neil?" Andrew asked, his voice rough from sleep and slightly irritated at Neil's ongoing streak of not allowing him a single peaceful moment.

"Andre- sorry-"

"God, just say my name. I didn't forbid you to use it forever. You better have a good reason for calling at this hour." Andrew muttered.

Neil went quiet on the other end.
"Andrew I don't know what to do-"

He sounded panicked. His voice sounded strange, off in a way that Andrew couldn't immediately place.
"What are you talking about?"

Another moment of silence.
"I killed him."

Andrew sat up straight. The sleepiness washed away in an instant. Neil had spoken so quietly, still breathing too loudly- Andrew wasn't even sure he'd heard correctly.

"You what?" he asked.

"He is dead- Andrew- I.." Neil interrupted himself with a pained groan. Andrew's brows furrowed.

"Give me some context." he said.

Neil took several sharp, shallow breaths. "My father- he lost control- I think I'm bleeding out." Andrew heard Neil huff a dry, strange laugh.
"I didn't know what I was doing. I just grabbed his gun and shot.."

Andrew ran a hand over his face as he got up. This fucking mess.

"You killed your father?" he asked as he wedged the phone between his shoulder and his ear to pull on his jeans.

"And Lola.." Neil coughed. A wet sound.

"Call a fucking ambulance, you dumb fuck." Andrew hissed.

Neil was bleeding out and called Andrew instead of an ambulance. Did they remove his brain at some point? Was that one of the injuries?

"I.. I wanted to talk to you before I couldn't anymore.." Neil muttered. His voice was getting slower. Heavier.

God he was so fucking stupid.

"You did. Now call a fucking ambulance and we can talk once you're back on your feet." Andrew snapped as he put the phone on speaker to pull a hoodie on.

"I don't think there's any saving this time, Andrew.."

Andrew stilled.

"What did they do to you?" he asked tightly, grabbing his phone and his car keys.

"Shot me and-" Neil coughed again. "Stabbed me. Through my stomach.."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Neil, I swear to god, if you don't call an ambulance right now I will strangle you to death myself." Andrew hissed as he shoved his feet into his shoes and slammed the door behind him.
The sun was only just beginning to think about rising. The sky outside was a deep, bruised blue.

Neil huffed- actually huffed. "Is that a promise?"

Andrew got into his car, turned on the engine and put the phone in the holder. Where was he even going? He had no idea where Neil was.

He turned the engine off again.

"Are you seriously trying to flirt with me while bleeding out?"

"Is it working?"

"No. Call the ambulance."

Andrew turned the engine back on. Police station. He hated the police but they were the only option if there were corpses and armed people and he had no idea where Neil was.
Neil paused the call- probably actually calling for the ambulance at last. Only a few minutes later Andrew heard his heavy breathing return.

"Aren't you supposed to stay on the line when you call an ambulance?" Andrew asked, slightly annoyed.

Annoyed at how scared he was. At how badly his hands were shaking around the steering wheel. At how the thought of arriving too late sat in his chest like something with teeth.
He wouldn't survive losing Neil a second time. He'd barely survived it the first time and that time Neil had at least still been alive somewhere.

"Yeah.. I hung up." Neil said. Andrew could almost hear the stupid grin underneath it.

"You're driving me insane." Andrew muttered under his breath.

"Now you're trying to flirt." Neil huffed another weak laugh. It ended in a wet cough.

"Stop joking around, you absolute idiot." Andrew snapped as he cut around a corner. He clipped off another car. The driver leaned on their horn.

"Stop driving recklessly." he heard Neil, mimicking his own words back at him from what felt like another lifetime.

Andrew feared the only time Neil would ever properly stop talking was when he was actually dead. He refused to let that happen. Not now. Not after everything.

"What about Romero Malcom?" Andrew asked, just to keep the conversation going. Keep him awake. Keep him present.

"Got killed. My dad had a really bad day. So many people are dead- maybe some of this blood isn't even mine..?" Neil's voice was drifting, getting slower, the words blurring at the edges.

Fuck.

"How many? Count." Andrew said gruffly as he pulled up in front of the police station.
He wasn't going anywhere until he knew Neil was in safe hands.

"Counting corpses instead of sheep.." Neil murmured. He went quiet long enough that Andrew's grip on the phone tightened. Then, quietly: "Six."

Holy fuck.

"Took you long enough." Andrew muttered.

Keep him awake. Don't let him drift.

"Press something against the stab wound." Andrew said. "Whatever you can reach."

"Already done. Doesn't really help though.."

And then, finally, Andrew heard sirens on Neil's end of the line. Only then did he realize he probably didn't even need to be at the police station. If Neil had called an ambulance and mentioned corpses, the police would already be on their way with them.

Neil had genuinely taken away his ability to think straight.

"I'll be at the hospital. Don't you fucking die on me." Andrew said, and hung up. Keeping Neil on the line would only get in the way of the people trying to help him.

He sat in his car for a moment in the early morning quiet, his hands still on the wheel.

Then he drove to the hospital.

The following hours felt endless.

The paramedics had brought Neil in unconscious. By the time they'd arrived he had lost a lot of blood, and they rushed him immediately into emergency surgery- the stab wound to his stomach had damaged internal organs. Andrew used his position as Neil's lawyer to get brief information from the paramedics who'd brought him in.

Shot in the shoulder twice- probably broken bones. A new deep cut on his cheek. His left hand broken. Every single finger. One stab wound to the stomach. And beyond all of that, a collection of other cuts and injuries that the paramedics described as minor only in comparison to everything else.

The second they told Andrew that Neil would survive- that the surgery was expected to be successful- Andrew felt as if an entire mountain rolled off his back.

Relief hit him almost harder than the fear had when the call first came in. He stood in the hospital corridor and breathed through it, and didn't examine it too closely, and went outside to smoke a cigarette.

He stood in the car park in the early morning light and sent his colleague a message that he'd no longer be handling Marcus Hale's case. His colleague didn't reply. It wasn't even five in the morning yet.

While Neil was in surgery, Andrew drove home to pack some things. Neil would need clothes that weren't covered in blood, and he doubted very much that Nathan Wesninski's organisation had a very thorough packing list for its people. Neil had always been bigger than Andrew, but Andrew had always bought things too large for himself anyway. He shoved a few changes of clothes into a bag, added some snacks and basic hygiene things, and drove back.

He had to wait another thirty minutes before a nurse told him Neil was in a room.

Andrew took the elevator, found the room, and stepped inside quietly. He set the bag down on the empty spare bed carefully, moving slowly, as if noise might disturb something fragile even though he knew Neil was unconscious from the medication and couldn't hear him.

He stood there for a moment.

Then he approached.

Neil was real. He still existed. His chest was rising and falling in a slow, medicated rhythm, attached to IV lines, a monitor tracking the steady beat of his heart. Andrew stood close enough to see him properly for the first time since the night in the apartment- the last time they'd been in the same room they'd both been so shocked, kept such careful distance, that Andrew had barely let himself look.

Now he looked.

Neil's face was pale. Everything visible was covered in bandages, stitches, wound plasters. He looked terrible. His cheekbones were too sharp, his jaw stood out too much. Neil had always been slim- not weak, never weak, there had always been quiet strength underneath the lean frame- but now it almost looked like there was nothing left of it. Skin and bones at most.

Andrew found himself already mentally planning how to make sure Neil ate properly once all of this was over. He caught the thought and shoved it away immediately.

Slow down, fucking idiot.

Neil took a slow breath in his sleep.

He looked like a broken child that had finally found a safe place to rest. And underneath all the change, underneath the years and the damage and everything Nathan Wesninski had done to him- he looked just like the idiotic boy Andrew had fallen in love with.

Andrew froze.

He stepped back as if something invisible had burned him, his eyes never leaving Neil's sleeping face.

Love.

He had always known. Somewhere deep and deliberately unexamined, he had always known. He had just never let himself think it, never let the word form anywhere he could hear it. Love was a foreign concept to Andrew- had always been. Everything that word had ever meant in his life was hurt, loss, damage. He had sworn to himself that he would never be stupid enough to get tangled in something like that. But when did feelings ever wait for permission? When did they ever ask before arriving? They never did. They didn't so much as warn you. They appeared suddenly, like a wave that had been building for a very long time, and they knocked you clean off your feet and gave you no choice about whether you went under.

You either swam with them or they drowned you.

Andrew clenched his fists at his sides.

He turned away and left the room. Left the hospital. Got in his car and drove home and curled up in his armchair, wrapped in a blanket, and spent the next several hours staring at the floor in front of him.

Not asleep but not conscious either. Something fragile and awful in between.

...

The next time he was dragged back to reality was by his phone chiming.

He flinched and stared at it for a long moment, as if waiting for it to do something worse. When it didn't, his curiosity gave in. He found a message from his colleague, asking if they should meet to hand Marcus Hale's case over properly.

Andrew sighed. He glanced at the clock. 9:45am.

His eyes stung and his throat was dry. He replied, agreed on a time and forced himself out of the armchair.

Just get this over with.

His legs screamed when he tried to straighten them- several hours folded into a chair at whatever angle he'd ended up in had apparently done real damage. It took a few attempts and a lot of swearing before he could walk properly. He went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror for just long enough to confirm that he looked exactly as bad as he felt.

He decided he didn't care.

He stepped into his shoes, didn't bother with the suit, and left in his hoodie and sweatpants. He wouldn't lose his job over a pair of sweatpants. Probably.

He stopped at the coffee shop on the way. The woman behind the counter took one look at him and dropped her usual cheerful act entirely. She made his coffee without a word and handed it over with a look that was almost gentle. Andrew paid and left before she could say anything about it.

The meeting at work was draining. Sitting through it with his colleague and his boss, going back through everything from the beginning- every interview, every document, every protocol from the Marcus Hale case- printing, signing, explaining. The office had no air conditioning and the summer heat pressed down on all of them in a way that felt almost personal. Andrew nearly fell asleep at the table twice. Nobody mentioned it.

He told them the outline of what had happened with Neil that morning. His boss already knew Andrew would be taking Neil on as a client. Nobody pushed for more than Andrew gave them. They went through the paperwork for Neil's file together, and Andrew got handed it at the end with a quiet reminder not to break his winning streak.

It took nearly three hours before they were finally done.

From this point, Marcus Hale was no longer Andrew's problem.

Andrew walked back to his car, sat in it for a moment, and allowed himself exactly five seconds of relief before he drove to the hospital.

Another creative parking situation just to irritate the other drivers in the lot, and he went inside.

The cool, disinfectant-smelling air hit him like a wall and he didn't mind it at all. They had air conditioning in here and it was working perfectly. He could have kissed whoever was responsible for that.

He stopped at the reception, got a brief update on Neil's condition, and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. A quiet hallway that smelled faintly of coffee. And then Neil's room.
Neil was asleep.

According to the nurses he had been awake briefly, but the medication had pulled him back under. He had survived the surgery. Now they just had to get through the case together and then everything could-

Could anything ever actually be fine again?

Andrew managed a whole five minutes of watching the steady rise and fall of Neil's chest before he lay down in the spare bed. He was asleep before he'd even managed to get his head onto the pillow properly, the steady beeping of the heart monitor settling over him like something almost peaceful.

He woke to movement.

His neck ached. He had fallen asleep without a pillow, his head at an angle that was going to punish him for the rest of the day. The aluminum protective cover on the spare bed made a small crinkling sound when he moved, which he hadn't noticed when he'd collapsed into it.

Andrew yawned and looked over.

Neil was awake. Lying on his back, head turned toward Andrew, watching him with an expression that was difficult to read- like he was very far away inside his own head and had been for a while.
He didn't react when Andrew caught him staring.

"Don't watch me while I'm sleeping. It's creepy." Andrew gruffed as he sat up and stretched as well as he could without standing.

Neil's eyes followed his movements quietly.

"I can't believe I'm still alive." he muttered. He didn't sound happy about it particularly. He didn't sound unhappy. He just sounded like someone stating a fact they hadn't fully processed yet.

"Yeah. Thank the fucking ambulance you refused to call." Andrew muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The stress and the bad sleeping position had left his head pounding dully again.

A small, sly smile appeared on Neil's lips. Andrew felt the immediate urge to wipe it off his face. There was nothing to smile about.

"Why are you here?" Neil asked after a moment.

Andrew knew exactly what Neil wanted to hear. He refused to give it to him. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"Got lost on my way home." he said drily.

Neil huffed a short laugh.

"We've got a case to work on." Andrew said, determined to keep this somewhere manageable. Somewhere professional. Somewhere that didn't require him to acknowledge anything that had happened in the armchair this morning. "As soon as you get out of here you're a prisoner. You've killed people."

Neil's smile faded into a frown. "Yeah. I figured. It was worth it though. Killing him felt better than-"

"Shut up." Andrew interrupted him drily. Neil sighed but closed his mouth. "How are you feeling?" Andrew added, reluctantly.

Neil looked up again, and Andrew was careful not to look at him for too long.

"Fine. How long do I have to stay here?" he asked.

Andrew shrugged. "A week, maybe. I don't know."

"What are you planning? About the case. You're still working with Marcus, right?"

Andrew sighed. He wanted to make Neil sit with it for a while- wanted to let him wonder, let him feel at least a fraction of the uncertainty he'd imposed on Andrew for four years. But he couldn't do it. His heart had always been the inconvenient part of him, and it was apparently no different now.

"I dropped his case." he said. "You're my new client."

Neil's eyebrows rose.

"I will defend you. You won't stay in prison. I don't lose my cases." Andrew said. His voice came out steady. Professional. Like this was any other client and not the person who had broken something fundamental in him four years ago and was apparently still capable of making him fall apart on a bathroom floor.

Neil watched him quietly. He had always been able to do that- look at Andrew in a way that felt like being seen through, past every wall and every carefully maintained expression, right down to whatever was underneath. It had always unnerved Andrew. It unnerved him now.

Andrew got up.

"I'll leave you to rest. I'll stay in contact with the doctors and I'll reach out soon." he muttered, not looking at Neil directly. "Try to sleep."

Neil opened his mouth. Closed it again.

There were so many things sitting in the room between them. So many unsaid things, so many conversations they would have to have eventually- whole cities of things that had been destroyed and would have to be rebuilt from nothing, if they were ever going to be rebuilt at all. Andrew didn't know yet if he was capable of that. He didn't know if he wanted to be.
He knew that Neil wanted it. He could see it- could see Neil wanting to say something, wanting to close the distance that Andrew was very deliberately keeping between them. And he knew that Neil wouldn't push. That was the thing about Neil- he had always pushed on everything except the things Andrew genuinely needed space from. He had always known the difference. Even now, after everything, after four years of absence and everything it had done to both of them- Neil would wait. Patiently and quietly and for as long as Andrew needed.

And somehow that made the ache in Andrew's chest so, so much worse.

Andrew left.

He spent the entire week buried in the case.

Meetings with officers, other lawyers, detectives, doctors. Discussions about the organisation, the victims, the people who had been found at Nathan's base, their injuries and their testimonies. It was relentless and Andrew was grateful for it, because relentless left no room for anything else.

He met with Bee and explained the whole situation. She agreed to work with Neil without hesitation, and Andrew felt a tension he hadn't even fully registered release from somewhere in his shoulders. She began visiting Neil at the hospital while Andrew used those visits as a convenient excuse not to go himself.

He told himself it was professional distance. He almost believed it.

Bee sent him reports after her first two sessions with Neil. She noted clear indicators of depression, OCD, and something that pointed toward a personality disorder- all consistent with prolonged trauma and sustained coercive control. They weren't final diagnoses yet, but they were enough. More than enough. Andrew read through her notes and felt something settle in his chest that wasn't quite relief and wasn't quite grief but lived somewhere between both of them.

They had the evidence. Neil's body, Neil's history, Bee's professional assessment. This was winnable. Andrew knew it was winnable.

He just had to get through it first.

...

Eight days after the surgery, Neil was released from hospital and transferred to custody.

Andrew knew he couldn't push it away much longer. He'd been using the hospital, the paperwork, the meetings with officers as barriers between himself and the conversation he'd been avoiding. But there was a case to build and he needed to build it with Neil, and that meant sitting across from him in a professional capacity and functioning like a normal person.

He could do that.

He was a professional.

Ten days after he'd last seen Neil, Andrew found himself in an interrogation room that looked almost identical to the one he'd sat in with Marcus Hale, though he knew it was a different one. The same bare walls, the same flat overhead lighting, the same table that was slightly too small and chairs that were slightly too hard. Andrew had been in dozens of these rooms. They always made him feel like he was on the verge of going insane.

Neil entered a moment later. An officer led him in by the arm and attached his handcuffs to the metal ring on the table. Andrew waited until the officer had left before he looked up properly.
He frowned immediately.

Neil had a black eye and a split lip that hadn't been there before.

Andrew reached for his pen and wrote the date in the upper right corner of the blank sheet in front of him. He kept his voice carefully neutral.

"What happened to your face?" he asked.

Neil tilted his head and then seemed to remember. He raised his hand- stopped halfway when the handcuffs caught- and shot the metal ring a deeply offended glare.

"Had a fight with someone here when I arrived. This fucker thought he could insult me." he said.

Andrew sighed. "You're in prison. Most people there won't be treating you with particular care. Get used to it and stop picking fights."

Neil's frown deepened into something that, if Andrew didn't know better, looked almost like a pout. "He started it. I should've punched harder-"

"Josten. You're not a child. Stop acting like one." Andrew interrupted him.

Neil huffed, offended, and leaned back in his chair to listen.

And underneath the professional distance, underneath everything Andrew was holding carefully in place- he felt something that might have been the very beginning of something he wasn't ready to name yet.

He ignored it, and opened his notebook, and got to work.