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Blood rushed in his ears as Neil was shoved between dancing bodies and getting second-hand glitter stuck to his sweaty skin. The music was loud, pulsing with his heartbeat. It was the type of loud that he could feel in his stomach.
The Monsters were nowhere to be found. Kevin and Nicky were somewhere on the dancefloor and Andrew had gone to get them while Aaron went to the bathroom, but it had been half an hour and Neil had gotten tired of sitting alone at the table.
A hand on his shoulder, too firm to be a mistake, made him turn and elbow whoever was behind him--in this case, Andrew. He seemed out of breath and only just dodged the projectile. Neil’s elbow grazed his ribs.
“Come on.” Andrew pressed himself close to Neil’s side. “Already sent the idiots back.”
Neil let himself be towed to the table. Andrew’s hand was just as clammy and warm as his own. Even in late October, everyone was half-naked and drunk. Hot wasn’t unusual in South Carolina, but this was severe.
The others were waiting at the table. Kevin looked dull in the eyes and swayed a little, while Nicky was alight and smiled wide when he saw them. Aaron just looked pissed that they were leaving.
“It’s only twelve,” Aaron said. It was almost nothing more than a blatant statement.
“Work on your beauty sleep, you need it,” Andrew muttered. Only Neil heard, leaning against his side. Over the summer into his second year, Neil had spent a lot of time with Dan but even more with Andrew. Slowly, they had gotten comfortable enough that places like Eden were okay, they could touch and push like this without asking. It seemed like nothing, but every little brush of their knuckles meant the world to Neil.
The drive was silent after Kevin batted at Nicky until he shut up about whatever text he just got from Dan. Neil didn’t care all that much at the time.
The house was dark and cold; Nicky never put the heat on and Neil wasn’t even sure that it worked, but Andrew said it did. He wasn’t sure how the house was so cold. There were wooden floors and thin walls, sure, but it was too warm outside for it to be chilly.
Neil didn’t mind, especially once Andrew and he were in bed and reaching to each other for warmth.
The next morning, he saw what Nicky’s hype was about. Dan had declared in the group text, which he didn’t often participate in or even look at, that Halloween was a couple days away and it was open season, but don’t be mean. Neil wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he was sure he would find out soon.
Mornings in Columbia were slow, especially these days. Neil went for a run and came back to coffee, made by Andrew usually, but today it was Aaron. He slid a mug across the counter to him when he returned from a quick shower.
“Where’s Andrew? He’s not in bed.”
“Probably smoking,” Aaron muttered. He was reading something from a food magazine that Nicky had in a drawer with a hundred others.
Neil made a face. “Early. Are the others up too?”
“I’m not sure Kevin will be up for another couple years,” he said dryly, a faintly humorous remark. “Nicky is alive at least. I don’t think he really slept, he was talking to Erik and planning something for Halloween.” He took a long sip of his coffee and kept leafing through.
Andrew walked in through the back door smelling like cigarettes and wearing Neil’s Fox sweatshirt. Aaron looked up at the sound of the door and got a mug for him.
He looked between Aaron and Neil. “The text?”
“About open season? Yeah, I got it,” Neil said.
“Dan is fucking nuts. I thought we called this off last year for a reason.”
Neil cocked his head to the side. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“Oh, you are,” Nicky’s voice called from the doorway. He walked in and got himself a mug of milk and a splash of coffee. “We skipped it your freshman year, so you’ll be rightfully inducted along with the other freshies this year. And Kevin will be too, I guess.”
“What does ‘open season’ mean, though?”
Nicky seemed to shudder. “Prank war,” he said. “Not too many rules. We call council if something seems out of bounds and must consult with at least two people first so we can maybe be talked out of dumb shit. Other than that, it’s a spooky war.”
His hands tightened around his mug. Andrew seemed bored of standing and sat beside Neil at the breakfast bar. He was about to ask about the skipped year, but Nicky was one step ahead.
“During our freshman year, Seth and a couple other fourth- and fifth-year seniors decided to reenact Carrie on the soccer team.” Neil pretended that he got the reference. “Dan tried to keep it under wraps, but Wymack got wind and had a strong word with her. She announced that it was called off next year, probably to weed out the current seniors.”
“But now she knows what a menace we are, so god knows why she isn’t keeping it off,” Aaron added.
Nicky hopped up to sit on the counter. He didn’t have to jump too far. “Actually, I heard that the upperclassmen were planning a revolt if she did.”
Andrew made a small sound like a hum, leaning forward on his elbows with both hands around his cup, looking in like it would splash cold water on his face and rub the sleep out of his eyes for him.
Nicky made a wounded sound when he saw Kevin walk down the stairs, phone in hand and the group texts open. He was obviously hungover and tired, but that didn’t stop him from entering the kitchen and asking the cousins, “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s a--”
“I know what it is, Nicky.” He turned to Neil. “You aren’t participating in this, right?” He looked towards each twin, and back to Neil. “We have to practice, we don’t have time for this shit.”
Neil had recently been partaking in the joys of always taking any side that isn’t Kevin’s. “I don’t know, I’m already coming up with a couple ideas.”
“Andrew?” Kevin looked at him like he was his only hope. He just shook his head and took a long sip of his coffee. Kevin scowled and look around at them. “You’re all fucking idiots,” he mumbled, walking back out and up the stairs.
When the shower cut on, Andrew looked at Neil and made a sound like a scoff that could have been laughter. “Surprised you’re taking part.”
“I’m putting shaving cream in your pillowcase.”
“You’re sleeping on the couch.”
Aaron and Neil rolled their eyes simultaneously, both for different reasons.
-
The first “prank” was quickly struck. When they got back to the Tower and went to their rooms, everyone found little jars of candy on their nightstands. There was a note on each one that said “TRICK OR TREAT! -Renee” in blocky letters. Most of them were balls of chocolate with wrappers that looked like eyeballs, gummy brains, and severed limbs made of hard candy. Andrew’s, however, was full of bite-sized Snickers.
The second strike was by Matt. Everyone was surprised that he lived. He had meant to spray someone with silly string but was not expecting Andrew to come around to bring a revision paper to Aaron. He got a bruised shin and a warning, this time.
Pranks were being pulled left and right. Neil decided to forego the shaving cream, electing to sit back and watch for the time being as the upperclassmen had at it. The girls had completely renovated Matt’s closet with lingerie and scandalous skirts and dresses, forcing him to wear that to class because they wouldn’t tell him where his clothes were. Nothing was long enough to hide the garters. Allison did get shaving cream in her pillow, courtesy of Nicky after he asked Neil if he could use it.
On the roof, only a couple days after the war had started, Neil and Andrew were looking over the campus and smoking, letting the cooling South Carolina air wash over them.
“Surprise attack,” Neil said, kissing Andrew’s cheek in the middle of his sentence.
“What?” He raised an eyebrow at Neil, who was grinning like an idiot.
“I pranked you. Now that that’s off my itinerary, I can prank Kevin and Nicky. You were saying?”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “You have a list?”
He shrugged a little. “A short one. You were talking about what Aaron had said yesterday?”
Neil was met with narrowed eyes. “What are you doing to them?”
A shrug. Neil knew exactly what he was going to do, but Andrew didn’t need to know that.
He lept into action the next day. He had long conspired with Matt on this one. He took the Maserati to get juice boxes, brussel sprouts, and rubber rats, bringing them to the dorm while Kevin was in class. He took all the liquor into Matt’s room in a laundry basket and replaced it with juice boxes, saving only Andrew’s chocolate cake vodka. It was precious, he could only find it at one store in Columbia. He hid it in their room.
He had printed out a picture of Pennywise from It, which Nicky claimed had led to his fear of clowns, and taped it to the outside of his window. Renee agreed to dip the brussel sprouts in chocolate and make truffles for him, as long as she got to give some to Allison, because she seemed to genuinely think it was funny as he confided in her at practice.
Kevin found out first. He got back to the dorm and was looking to drink away the apparent pain Dan had caused him by gluing cockroaches to his locker, looking like they were coming out of the vents. He went to find nothing but Juicy Juice in place of his vodka and looked around, confused.
His eyes met Neil’s, who raised his eyebrows and resisted a smile. “Need something, Kev?”
“What did you do?” he asked, his voice more grave than Neil had possibly ever heard it.
He could only shrug. Kevin proceeded to unbox a strawberry banana juice and stab a straw through the top.
Nicky fell victim next. He went to get something from his room and screamed so loud, Andrew looked up and at a laughing Neil.
“Why?” was all he asked.
“Pennywise,” he replied. “I’ll be honest, I had to look up who that was.”
Nicky walked out with the cutout computer paper, depicting the clown in question. He seemed thoroughly spooked, but not serious. “Didn’t Dan say not to be mean?”
“Well, she glued bugs to Kevin’s locker, so.”
Nicky laughed. “Yeah, sure, that was just Dan.”
The rats were for the egg carton. Aaron wasn’t amused but he didn’t seem scared either, which ruined Neil’s mood until Renee brought over a container of chocolate-covered brussel sprouts.
He figured, dying by Andrew’s hand was a noble death.
“Want one?” he asked, holding out the container and chewing on a chocolate that was specifically not the sprouts. He took one and nodded his thanks, not looking up from his calculus textbook. He popped it in his mouth and chewed for a second before pausing. Neil took a couple steps back.
“Neil?”
“Yes?”
“Is this a brussel sprout?”
“Trick or treat,” he said weakly, trying to hold back a laugh. Andrew got up to spit it in the sink and grabbed some real candy from their bowl. On the way back to his chair, he stood close to Neil and flicked him on the forehead.
“That was such a non-reaction.”
Andrew shrugged and sat. Monotonously, he said, “My heart is broken, only to be repaired if you give one to Kevin.”
Neil couldn’t help the twinge of happiness he got at “my heart,” mostly because it was unexpected and in part because it was so dramatically Andrew, a side of him that Neil didn’t get to see as often these days.
The war came to a cease at the Halloween party, after Nicky’s hair was tinged blue and Dan was stuck in a cellophane door trap, after Neil, Aaron, and all the girls found glitter bombs in their books from an anonymous benefactor.
The Foxes and Vixens partied in the basement of the Tower. No costumes required, but everyone who wore one got chocolate martinis courtesy of Nicky. Andrew and Aaron both managed to hawk one off of him anyway. Aaron told him he was his favorite cousin to get one while his brother stuck to intimidation, but Neil got a taste of Andrew’s nonetheless. Not that he drank it.
They sat on the roof in the early hours of the morning, thankful that they both only had afternoon classes the next day as they traded cigarette smoke for secrets and kisses for drags.
Andrew dug into his pocket and pulled out a baggie of Oreos. He offered one to Neil, who took it with a small “thanks” and bit into it, only to spit it off the edge of the roof.
“You’re a child,” he said, trying to get the taste of mint out of his mouth. Looking at the piece of Oreo still in his hand, it was clearly toothpaste between the cookies.
Andrew kissed him quickly, as they had been doing moments before. “Payback,” he muttered, before biting Neil’s lip and melting the offence away.