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It feels like days before Andrew can even manage to pull himself out of bed.
Absentmindedly, he wonders if he can live on without a heart. He’s so certain that he’s given up all the essential pieces of himself to Neil and left them behind when he walked out on his own happiness. And yet here he sits, with fingers pressed hard to his neck and a beating pulse beneath them.
Perhaps Neil had been right when he said that they had never been nothing.
When he was younger, Andrew thought himself invincible from a hurt like this. This was meant to be nothing. He was never meant to pour emotion and trust into nothing. He had thought, foolishly, that if he had said it was nothing, then it would truly be nothing to him.
But nothing wouldn’t have hurt as much as this.
It’s on the third day when Kevin’s contact lights the screen of his phone, but he can’t find the strength inside of himself to answer it. He doesn’t want to hear about how he’s missing exy practice right now. He doesn’t want to hear about how he has a career to worry about. He doesn’t want to hear how he’s supposed to be better than this now. He doesn’t want to hear any of the misplaced worries that Kevin will undoubtedly tell him.
He’s so tired of hearing people’s worry when he knows that he doesn’t deserve it.
His hears his phone chime with another text he’ll leave unopened and unanswered. He wonders who it is now. He wonders if it will even matter.
The apartment he’s staying in doesn’t feel like his anymore, but he had never broken the lease and had paid the year forward in rent. It no longer feels like home and he finds himself wondering if home was ever a place.
Maybe it was always just a person.
He feels a sharp pain in his chest at the idea and shoves the thought away with a spoonful of ice cream. He bites down on the ice cream until the pain in his teeth distracts him enough from the pain in his heart.
He had always thought that heartbreak was a lot easier than this.
He wonders if you could call it that when you broke it yourself.
Andrew draws his knees to his chest as he wraps the blankets tighter around his form, ice cream balanced between his thighs with his gaze distantly focused on the far wall.
He remembers pressing Neil up against that wall when their time together had been limited with clashing schedules. He remembers sinking to his knees to undo the other. He remembers the way that Neil had slumped against that wall like it was the only thing keeping him from falling. He remembers thinking him beautiful and feeling those three words sit awkwardly in his throat.
He doesn’t want to remember it anymore.
Instead, he draws his gaze from the wall to his phone as it sits idly on the bedside table. He watches the screen blink to life with another text and lets himself imagine if it were Neil.
He knows it would only be his imagination because he’s certain Neil has let his phone die by now, the way he always did when he was stressed. It pains Andrew to know that he was the cause of his stress.
Before he can even process the motion, he’s holding his phone, eyes squinting as they try to become accustomed to the light and make sense of the words on his screen.
His cycles through texts from his management team, Kevin, a couple of his teammates, and, oddly enough, Matt, before he finds a text from Bee.
‘Call me when you feel ready.’ It reads.
He wonders how she knows. Maybe Kevin, he muses. Perhaps he told Wymack and the old man went above his paygrade again to inform the psychiatrist. He toys with the idea of Neil being the one to tell her, but he knows that Neil doesn’t even keep the doctor's number saved in his phone.
Maybe she just knew he was feeling bad again. Maybe it’s because she realized that their weekly phone calls were becoming more and more biweekly until they become monthly and then obsolete. Maybe she tuned into one of his games and saw the bags under his eyes, the unkempt hair, the tired stance and drew her own conclusions.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Andrew’s finger hovers over the call button and presses it before he chickens out because he knows this is good for him. He knows that he needs to talk about his problems because he’s an adult and he can’t keep bottling things up inside anymore. He knows that this amount of hopelessness he feels isn’t healthy. He knows that feeling this tired after sleeping in all day isn’t healthy. He knows that cutting himself off entirely isn’t healthy.
He knows all of this and maybe that’s the only reason why he allows himself to press the phone to his ear and wait for the ringing to stop.
“Andrew? Are you okay?” Her voice rings out like a windchime and he feels relief seep into his bones.
He clears his throat before speaking, but his voice still comes out scratchy. “I think I really messed up, Bee.” He manages and feels a fifty-pound weight being lifted from his shoulders. He missed hearing her voice.
“Oh, Andrew…” She breathes and he can register the sound of her walking and the sound of her making hot chocolate. It’s been too long since he’s last had her hot chocolate. “What happened?”
He ignores the knot of nerves his stomach twists itself into, begging him not to tell her the truth for fear she’d just hate him too, and manages to let out a weak laugh.
“I broke up with Neil, but I think I’m the one who broke.”
Hours later, he finally sets his phone down on the coffee table, next to his mug of hot chocolate, prepared just the way that Bee did, and feels a little better.
Maybe he’s not okay, but maybe he doesn’t need to be. Maybe he’s not broken, but maybe he never way. Maybe he’s afraid of being in love, but maybe he still feels it.
It takes weeks before even he feels ready to talk to Neil about all of this. It’s weeks of practiced silence, of sharing a locker room and still feeling like strangers. It’s weeks of being able to finish each other’s sentences but swallowing the words before they do. It’s weeks of being heartachingly in love with Neil to the point that it hurts not to say those three words.
It feels weird to stand in front of a house he paid for half of and still need to knock. He regrets throwing his key at Neil’s feet the last time they spoke more than casual pleasantries towards each other, but maybe it's suiting. He needs Neil to invite him back into his life one last time.
Andrew feels the urge to turn back and walk away creeping up his spine before the door opens to reveal Neil. He looks, well, like shit. He looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s rest in days if the bags under his eyes tell any story. His hair is mused in a way that shows he hasn’t done anything but run his fingers through the strands for the last hour. His eyes, which normally swell with emotion his mouth can’t speak, are dull and lifeless.
Absentmindedly, Andrew thinks that he is beautiful and means it.
He clears his throat, trying for nonchalance as he shoves a hand in a pocket and finds the teeth of keys biting into flesh. “Can I come inside?” He asked, even if it is his home on paper. He knows, more than anything, that he needs to give Neil the opportunity to say no right now.
Instead, Neil steps aside and Andrew takes it for the invitation it might be and steps inside. He fights the urge to card his fingers through Neil’s hair. There’s a time and a place for that and it is not here nor now.
He lets himself inhale slowly through the nose and remembers what Bee had told him.
You can’t control what Neil will say, but you can control what you say and that is enough, Andrew.
He lets the door close behind them and exhales slowly through the mouth.
“Neil Abram Josten, I want to say I love you, yes or no?”
Maybe they aren’t perfect, but maybe they were never meant to be. Maybe they still fight when recovery takes a nosedive to rock bottom, but maybe everyone does. Maybe they still don’t have a name for what they have together, but it’s theirs and it isn’t nothing.
Maybe they don’t always say it, but they love each other and that’s more than enough for them.