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It’s a bad day. There are good days, and normal days, and bad days, and today he is sinking through the floor. Time is slow and thick around his neck, constricting and burning until he is eight years old and his father is holding him under the water until he—
No.
He is eleven years old and his mother is gripping him so tight she leaves bruises, dragging him headlong into the parking lot. Her voice is a beacon: "Nathaniel, go, quickly, don't look back, don't ask questions," and they are running and running and--
No.
Don’t look back, don’t ask questions, don’t look back, don’t slow down, don’t trust anyone, don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t slow down. Don’t look back—
No.
He is seventeen and his body is a car on fire. His security is the familiar weight of a gun. His mother is dead. His mother is dead. He takes what he can and runs and does not look back and—
No.
He is nineteen years old and every part of his body is sore and broken and bleeding and Riko is standing over him with a knife in both hands and he—
No.
He is nineteen years old and Lola’s grin is lit up by the red glow of the dashboard lighter in her hands and she is leaning in, too close, too close, just like when he was seven years old and she—
No.
No, no, no.
He’s in the bathroom. The tile is cool under him. He leans forward to put his head between his knees and his stomach is a ship at storm, rolling and rocking until he has to scramble to the toilet, not for the first time.
Earlier he punched the mirror. There's glass all over the floor. It's not the first time one of them has done any of this. He knocked over shampoo bottles when he climbed in the bathtub and knocked over more when he scrambled out, frantic and gasping.
Andrew won’t be home for another hour, he thinks. The last time he checked his phone it was—
No. It’s later now. Andrew will be home in a few minutes. The bright screen of his phone makes his head pound, makes him shut his eyes so tight that tears leak out of the edges.
There are messages he can't read, can't respond to. He rarely does, but he should still--
God, he can't breathe. The taste of bile still burns in his throat. Every atom in his body is on fire, every scar lit up like a road map to the best way to make him feel like he's dying. No, he's died, and it was much quieter than this.
“Abram.”
He flinches. He hadn’t even noticed Andrew’s arrival, but it’s all he can notice now. The way Andrew takes up all the spaces where Neil’s demons used to be crouching with their pointed smiles. The way his skin seems to feel so much more like skin now, instead of just a canvas for terrible things to happen. Andrew’s jaw is clenched, body one harsh line. “Yes or no?” he asks.
“Yes,” Neil gasps. They’re the first words he’s said all day, and the inhale burns all the way to his lungs. He feels off-balance and wrong, everything is wrong. “Yes, yes, yes—“
Andrew moves quickly, his hand heavy on the back of Neil’s neck. “Breathe,” he says, and it’s like the command shocks Neil’s lungs into cooperating. He comes back to himself in stuttering, hiccuped gasps of air, and Andrew doesn’t move until his heartbeat is even again, slowing with exhaustion. “Keep breathing. Don’t try to move.”
He cleans up the mess Neil made of the bathroom, and then leads him to the bedroom. Andrew strips him of the sweat-soaked clothes he’s in and changes him into clothes that Neil vaguely recognizes as not-his, so they must be Andrew's. His old palmetto jersey, riding just the littlest bit too short on Neil’s torso, and Andrew’s faded gray sweatpants. It’s a soothing feeling, something he doesn’t examine too closely, too exhausted to do more than follow. His brain isn’t tracking much, but he knows that Andrew is moving around him. The whole world is moving around him.
“Lay down,” Andrew says, and Neil does.
“Breathe,” Andrew says, and Neil does.
“Sit up and drink this,” Andrew says, and Neil does.
“Sleep, idiot,” Andrew says, and Neil does.
He wakes and isn’t sure how much time has passed, but it’s night, now, and Andrew is on the balcony. His head hurts and his mouth tastes like death, so he goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth, swallows two Tylenol, winces when they scrape down his raw throat.
Andrew is smoking, and by the looks of the ash tray, he has been for a while. “Where’d you go?” he asks.
Neil considers it. “Everywhere.”
All of Andrew seems to tense, and Neil wants to reach out. “Yes or no?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He touches Andrew’s hand, feels the pulse thrumming under his palm, and something in him snaps. Andrew ashes the cigarette and twists, tugging Neil to him in one fluid moment. One of them is shaking, and they’re too close together for Neil to say who. Maybe they both are.
Neil’s arms are caught between them, hands fisted in the thin fabric of Andrew’s shirt, and his breaths are shallow and shuddering against Andrew’s neck, but neither of them mind.
“Idiot. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I thought I’d be—“
“If you finish that sentence, I’ll push you off this balcony.”
Neil smiles. “It’s only the second floor. I wouldn’t die.”
Andrew’s grip on him relaxes slightly, but he doesn’t pull away. Not yet.
“Then I’d have to jump down after you. Finish the job.”
Neil huffs. “We could always jump together. Thelma and Louise.”
“How would I have the pleasure of pushing you if we jumped off together, Josten? Hm?”
Neil pulls back, runs his hands up to either side of Andrew’s face slowly. Andrew’s eyes are tracking every emotion that must be broadcasting in neon over Neil’s face.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he says.
Neil raises an eyebrow. “You first.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Mhm,” Neil says. “I’m starting to think you’re just a chronic liar.”
Andrew makes a low warning noise in his throat and Neil shrugs, leaning in closer. “Yes or—“
He doesn’t get to finish, because Andrew closes the gap himself, grip bruise-tight on Neil’s hips as he kisses him long and slow. When he pulls away, Neil is warm all over.
“Never,” says Andrew, and his eyes now burn brighter than before, “never fucking do that again. I don’t care if I’m shaking the hand of Jesus Christ himself. You call me.”
Neil nods, hands shaking just the littlest bit too hard, so he moves them back down to Andrew’s shirt, focuses on breathing normally again. He can’t quite get a grip on it today.
“Look at me like that another second and I’ll bite your tongue off,” says Andrew, but there’s no heat in it, and his hands are rubbing slow circles on Neil’s lower back.
“Promises, promises,” Neil says.
“You’re not making a good case for me keeping you around.”
“I’m not worried,” says Neil, “you like my ass too much to get rid of me now.”
Andrew hums, “It’s your fucking mouth I can’t stand.”
Neil flutters his eyelashes obnoxiously and Andrew rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitches. Andrew’s never going to be able to kill all of the shadows lurking around Neil’s corners, but he can do this. He can help Neil fight them off. He can talk him through the aftermath. They can do this for each other.
“Bed?” Neil asks, hyper-aware of the exhaustion seeping into every one of his muscles.
Andrew nods, and they go back inside. The cats have claimed their spots at the foot of the bed, and Andrew doesn’t even complain. Instead, he settles on his back, and tugs Neil to lay on his chest.
“Okay?” Neil asks, as he relaxes into Andrew’s grip. Andrew can only handle Neil laying on top of him sometimes, and he doesn’t want to push any boundaries just because he had a shitty day.
Andrew hums, and Neil rolls his eyes. “I need a yes, Minyard.”
“Yes, Josten. Go the fuck to sleep.”
And Neil does.