Chapter Text
Andrew thinks to himself that Allison Reynolds has once again proven herself a menace that delights in the infuriating nature of her very existence.
Her newest crusade has been to rehabilitate Neil’s hair from the damage of years of shitty dye jobs. Andrew vehemently opposes this, because Neil is already too fucking distracting as it is. On top of everything else, Andrew does not need to find himself more preoccupied with the idea of running his fingers through those auburn curls than he already is.
Of course, he can’t voice this without having to bear witness to that damn expression on Neil’s face—that infuriating one where Neil’s eyes go all soft and it makes the weight of this thing between them press so heavily on Andrew’s chest. So Andrew stays silent, and Allison’s offensive begins.
Neil disappears to the girls’ room for an hour every few days, where Allison puts mask after mask into Neil’s hair. While they set, they’re apparently watching TV shows together and trying to catch Neil up on some of the pop culture that he's missed. Neil comes back looking like an idiot every time with goopy hair plastered to his head, but he’s always smiling too.
Andrew abruptly realizes again just how fucking screwed he is, because he finds himself thinking that Neil is cute in those moments. Andrew Minyard finding something, someone, cute? He’s doing his best to not have an existential crisis over the implications. He’ll bring it up with Bee next week.
Allison’s hair care offensive doesn’t end there—she lays siege to the boy’s bathroom next. After spending a good five minutes making sounds of disgust over the state of the bathroom, she throws away half of the toiletries within it. Andrew would never admit it, but at least Kevin’s outrage over Allison throwing away his two-in-one shampoo and body wash is amusing.
“I refuse to respect the authority of anyone that uses two-in-one products, Kevin Day,” she says, pointing a threatening finger at him. “If you expect me to entertain the notion of listening to anything that you say ever again, on or off the court, you’ll listen to me now.”
Kevin sputters, but her threat seems to be effective—he doesn’t move to stop her. He flees to the bedroom instead.
When Neil laughs at Kevin’s retreat, Allison turns on him. “Don't forget that you’re the reason I’m here in the first place, Josten. You’re on thin fucking ice.”
Neil raises his hands in a parody of surrender—Andrew is sure that he’s just waiting for the perfect moment to display his rebellion via scathing commentary.
Allison nods, seemingly satisfied for the moment, and taps away on her phone for a minute. “Alright,” she says, “I have a list now. We can leave.” She turns and does so without a backwards glance.
Neil rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but it seems to be fond rather than truly annoyed. “Let me know if you need anything while we’re out, okay?” he says to Andrew as he passes him.
“Oh, so you’ll actually have your phone with you again?”
“Yup, charged and everything.”
Well, this has certainly been a new trend. “And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Andrew mocks.
Neil turns his head and sticks out his tongue at Andrew as he closes the door.
Andrew is lounging on one of the bean bags and half tuning out a Netflix nature documentary when Neil and Allison return a couple hours later. Allison heads straight to the bathroom again to begin unloading the bags in her arms, while Neil comes over to see what Andrew is watching. He passes Andrew the drink he’d requested when Neil said they were stopping for coffee, but leaves his hand extended in Andrew’s direction—an invitation.
Andrew tangles his fingers in Neil’s and uses his other hand to take a sip of his drink. More chocolate and whipped cream than espresso: exactly how he likes it. Andrew savors the feeling of Neil’s touch and the sweetness on his tongue until Allison calls Neil over.
Andrew can still hear them from where he’s sitting, and can't help but listen—the distance between the living room and the open bathroom door isn't that big, for one, and Allison Reynolds doesn't seem to know the meaning of "quiet."
...As evidenced by the noisy clanking of numerous plastic bottles being set on the counter.
"So these two are for Kevin," Allison starts off. "I trust that he's not wholly incompetent, and he'll be able to tell which is shampoo and which is body wash. I'll be back in a week to check that he's actually been using both bottles, and you can tell him that I said that."
"Am I supposed to bring up your threat again as leverage?" Neil asks.
"You bet, baby boy."
Andrew scoffs to himself at her pet name, though he can imagine the shy but pleased look on Neil's face as she says it. Now that he's come to see the other foxes as family, he happily takes every scrap of affection that they throw his way.
"Now for you," Allison continues. "I'll go over everything I said in the store, just to make sure that you got it all."
Neil's sigh is audible and very much put-upon.
"None of that! I told you already, you'll be thanking me when you see what a difference this makes."
Andrew highly doubts that—Neil went 19 years without caring for his hair beyond whether his last dye job was holding up or not. Andrew’s sure that if it wouldn’t make him stand out even more, Neil would probably be happy to shave it all off and be done with it.
"Okay, then,” Neil concedes. “Get it over with."
“‘Get it over with,’ he says, like I’m not trying to do him a favor.”
“Do you really want to argue with me, Allison?”
“Fine, whatever. Here's the shampoo. So ideally, you wouldn’t want to be shampooing your hair every day—more like every two or three days,” Allison says. “Being an athlete, though, you’ll want to at least rinse it after practice to get rid of all the sweat. With your curly hair and color damage, you’re at even more risk of your hair drying out. That’s why I got you this conditioner. Just a little bit when you’re done rinsing will help you to keep it moisturized, and strengthen it so you're not having all that breakage.”
"I still can't believe you got three bottles of each," Neil says.
"Excuse you, I got two full sized bottles of each and then a travel set. This one stays here, that one stays in the locker room, and the travel one is for away games. There's a method to my madness, you know?"
"If the method is madness, then yeah." Oh, Neil—ever the instigator.
From there, Allison and Neil descend into their typical bickering. Andrew tunes them out from that point on, and pointedly turns up the volume on the TV so that maybe they’ll take the hint and argue elsewhere.
The problem with Reynold's interference—and at that, one that Andrew had certainly not foreseen—is that she seems to have chosen the most fragrant fucking conditioner that she could find.
When they kiss, the scent of strawberries and cream surrounds him. When he runs his hands through Neil’s silky soft curls, when they exhale against each other’s mouths, it blends intoxicatingly with the smell of skin on skin—a sugary contrast to the salt of their sweat.
When Neil climbs back into their bed after his morning run and burrows back into Andrew's arms, he always buries his face in Andrew's shoulder. Having just showered, this means that the smell of his freshly-washed hair is right in Andrew's face and impossible to ignore.
Even when Neil isn't in their bed, the scent lingers. It seems to have permeated the sheets, the pillowcases, the blankets. (Andrew won’t admit it, but it helps when he wakes up unsure of where he is and ready to fight. When it is too dark to see, the strawberries and cream smell grounds him and tells him that wherever he is, he is safe and Neil is not far from reach.)
When Andrew is driving the Maserati and Neil sits in the front seat next to him, the smell gravitates across the gearshift to torment Andrew with thoughts of stopping the car and pulling Neil into his lap. It’s even more of a struggle when they’re sharing a row together at the back of the bus and Neil leans close so that he can be heard over the noise of the vehicle. Andrew may have his hands free then, but he knows that the others are always turning in their seats to see what’s going on behind them.
Andrew feels like he's developing a Pavlovian response at this point: he smells the conditioner, and he thinks of Neil and how much he wants to be close to him. Though Andrew is rarely free of thoughts of Neil these days, this recent development has only exacerbated the problem.
When he inevitably talks through this with Bee, he’s going to blame it all on Reynolds.