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On Wednesday, the sky goes gray. The air is cold and humid and weirdly heavy. Andrew has always lived in warm states and doesn’t do cold. He buries his face in his scarf and does not set a foot outside aside from absolute necessity.
It’s their first winter in the house, and Nicky keeps saying how glad he is that they listened to Erik’s father’s advice, that they went a couple of grands over their limited budget for a smaller but freshly renovated house. It’s true that it’s comfortable inside, and Nicky’s more or less happy with the heating bills so far.
On Wednesday night, Nicky closes the door on a gust of wind and cheerfully announces, “It’s going to snow!”
“No, it’s not,” Aaron says, bundled into three different sweaters. He doesn’t look up from his textbook. “This is South Carolina.”
Nicky tuts, then hounds them until they help put aside the groceries.
On Thursday morning, Andrew wakes up to white light seeping inside trough the blinds. He checks his alarm clock three times before his tired mind can accept that it’s seven, and that the sky should barely be fading.
A knob rattles loudly in the house, then Aaron pounds once on the door of Andrew’s bedroom. He opens it without waiting for an answer and sneaks his head in, his bed hair haloed in the light coming from his bedroom.
“Nicky was right,” he says with a scowl.
Andrew blinks, and waves a hand at Aaron to leave, who does so with another scowl. It’s cold in the house, more than it should be. The air has a different quality to it, crisp and silent like everyone’s lying in wait.
Andrew puts on pants, socks, a sweater and drags his blanket from his bed before he makes his way to the window. He pulls the blinds up to a vista of pure, unaltered white.
I did not leave California for this, he thinks.
There’s at least two inches on his window sill alone, protected as it is by the edge of the roof, more on the ground.
Nicky too is awake when Andrew make his way downstairs, dressed but still made grumpy by the cold. Andrew heard the Christmas carols from be cut off while he was taking his shower; he understands why as he steps into the kitchen and hears German.
“—seven centimeters,” Nicky’s saying with the assurance of someone who’s had to learn the metric system. “It hasn’t snowed that much in years. Ever.”
“You can build a snowman,” Erik says.
Nicky glances at Aaron’s disgruntled face next to him at the kitchen table and laughs. “I think we’ll try to stay out of the wet,” he says more diplomatically. “How’s Stuttgart?”
“Same old. Mom sends love to you all.”
“Oh, I love her. Tell her I’ll call her tonight for that recipe she told me about. Well, tonight her time, not ours. Tell her hi from the twins as well, okay?”
“Hi,” Aaron mutters in his cereals when Nicky pokes him in the side. “Stop hitting me.”
“I’m poking you at most,” Nicky says, but he stops.
Erik laughs, saying something lost to wind as he turns his head away from his phone. “I have to go,” he says as Andrew pads into the kitchen. “Lunch break is over.”
Andrew’s bread is fully toasted and he’s applied a generous layer of Nutella on it by the time their goodbyes are over and Nicky slams his laptop shut.
“When’s he coming back?” Aaron asks as Nicky cranks the radio back up.
“Next Friday. They won’t send him back before February, though.”
Aaron nods. “Nice,” he comments.
He isn’t overly fond of Erik, Andrew knows. Erik is constantly trying to rope them into hiking and biking and going out when the weather is very clearly set against it, but seeing Nicky so down whenever Erik has to go back to Germany for work—which is often—is even less appealing.
Nicky’s swaying gently to the music as he puts away his dishes. “Yeah, but they’re not giving him more than five days at Christmas, so we’ll have to spend the break here.”
It’ll be the first time since Nicky took in the twins three years ago that they spend the holidays in America. To be fair, they lived in Tilda’s house until seven months earlier, a small and run-down place that depressed anyone stepping inside. Aaron and Andrew were already using any opportunity they could to spend as little time as possible inside the house that was quite literally falling apart. Nicky decided to sell when a possum fell through the roof into the twins’ room in the middle of the night. The buyers were a couple of self-proclaimed “sledgehammer enthusiasts” who were looking for the opportunity to knock a house down.
“We just really love the neighborhood,” the man had said after they’d signed the papers.
“The next-door neighbor deals crack,” Aaron had replied, which might just have been the kind of news they were after.
“Ready?” Nicky asks as Andrew’s turned to the jar of Nutella, fighting Aaron to plunge his spoon in it. They ignore him.
“Andrew, stop it,” Aaron scowls. “It’s fucking disgusting.”
“You don’t eat it,” Andrew says, tugging the jar against his chest. He turns in his chair so Aaron can’t reach him anymore.
“Yes, I do. I just don’t slather my saliva inside like you do.”
“Same DNA,” Andrew shrugs, and he sticks his spoon in his mouth.
“That’s not how it works!”
Nicky slams the lid on the jar. “You’re both going to make me go white-haired before my time. Hurry up. Driving on snow takes forever.”
Aaron is still sulking by the time they brave the driveway. Snow crunches under Andrew’s heavy boots, but Aaron had to change from his usual high-tops, which makes him even grumpier. Andrew cedes him the passenger seat because it’s not worth listening to Nicky’s blabber at eight in the morning.
“If this keeps going I’ll have to look into snow-tires,” he says almost happily as he slowly pulls out of the driveway.
It’s early enough that the snow hasn’t been plowed yet. The roads in their neighborhoods are still white and slippery, but soon enough they hit the bigger roads where early risers have cleared a path. Nicky swears every time someone brakes in the middle of the deserted road.
“Come on,” he keeps repeating. “It’s just three inches.”
There’s a pause as he glances at them. Aaron cuts him off as soon as he opens his mouth. “Don’t you dare say it,” he threatens, stabbing his uncapped highlighter in Nicky’s direction.
“Put that back,” Nicky scowls. “I’m not buying you new jeans because you were studying in the car. What, do you have a test?”
“No,” Andrew says. “He’s just that big of a nerd.”
There’s no traffic around the school. Nicky parks in front of the entrance, as close to the doors as he can, and waves at them through his window. He waits until they’ve made their way to the front doors to start the car again.
The school is silent and dark. Snow is slowly falling around them. Aaron tugs at the door handle. The door rattles in its hinges but doesn’t open.
“Andrew,” he says, “I think the school’s closed.”
They turn back like one, just in time to catch the red of Nicky’s tail lights speeding past the stop sign and turning left toward work.
Weariness settles in Andrew’s bones, heavy like a sponge left in water. He closes his eyes, wishing the ground was dry so he could drop there and catch up on sleep. His new meds made him stay up too late last night. They’re terrible, really. He should ask Bee to change them, or maybe stop taking them.
“Kate says there’s no bus running,” Aaron says next to him. Andrew opens his eyes; he’s typing away on his phone. “The school’s more or less closed. It was on the radio.”
They share a look. Nicky’s spent six years in Germany, and goes back as much as he can. He’s forgotten a lot of typically American things, such as the fact that warm states like South Carolina stop functioning once snow touches the ground.
Andrew runs his gaze on the deserted school grounds, considering. They could walk back, but he keeps it as a last resort, because he has no desire to go trekking through snow for half an hour at least. Or—
“Where are you going?” Aaron calls.
Andrew points ahead. “The cafeteria lights are on.”
Aaron jogs to catch up with him, catching himself hard on Andrew’s elbow when he trips over a covered step. Andrew waits until he’s regained his balance then shakes himself free.
The cafeteria is almost empty when they walk inside, but at least it’s warmer than outside. There’s a group of seniors sitting on a table in a corner, laughing around watery hot cocoa cups, and a few freshmen scattered around room.
They make a beeline for the counter, where a single kitchen employee is distributing free hot cocoa. It’s sweet and thin, prepared with water rather than milk, but it burns Andrew’s tongue deliciously.
“Oh,” Aaron says. “Look, there’s your boyfriend or whatever.”
“Die,” Andrew answers.
Aaron rolls his eyes leaves him for a group of people he takes chemistry with. Andrew takes his time sipping his cocoa, staring at the employee’s back until she turns back and gives him another. He glances at his phone. Only then does he look up to see Neil Josten hunched over a table like he’s guarding the cup resting there.
Andrew makes his way across the room slowly. Neil glances up before he’s even halfway there, jumpy as usual. He’s a runt of a kid, even if he has three inches on Andrew on a good day, skinny and lean in his too big clothes. There are rumors his parents were in the mafia, but the school rumor mill is still divided on whether he killed them himself or he escaped the people who did.
Neither, but only Andrew knows that.
“Hey,” Neil says, swinging his backpack to the ground so that Andrew can settle in the chair next to him. Andrew looks pointedly at the wet trace the fabric’s left on the plastic and sits on the other side, leaning sideways in his chair against the wall.
He’s surprised for a second that Neil didn’t take this seat. Their current position forces Neil to turn his back to the room and the door, but he does it without hesitation.
“Didn’t stay home?” Andrew needles as he takes a long sip of cocoa.
Neil pillows his head on his arm, staring up at Andrew. “I’d rather be here,” he says, cryptic as always about his home situation.
He’s an emancipated minor, and Andrew knows he lives alone, but for a long time he refused to say anything more. For some reason, he’s now much more open about the fact that he regularly breaks into school to sleep there. It’s not enough: there has to be somewhere else. Andrew surveils the cafeteria, bleak and full of echoes from the too small number of students, and raises an eyebrow.
“Heating broke,” Neil lies.
Andrew suspects he never had any. “So you’re not sleeping in the locker room anymore,” he asks. It’s not really a question.
Neil shakes his head as much as he can when he has one side of it burrowed in his coat. Actually, not even a coat, but what looks like three hoodies layered atop one another. Skinny as he is, Andrew bets Neil put on all four of his shirts under them.
Pathetic. Andrew glances away.
“I’ve been here since the school opened,” Neil says unprompted. “They canceled classes but they’re putting us all in study hall or something. Brought anything to study?”
“No.” Andrew resigns himself for a full day wasted to boredom. He’s used to it. Past a certain point, everything in life becomes boring.
The bell doesn’t ring at eight thirty to signal the beginning of classes. Instead, a teacher who looks about as thrilled to be here as Andrew feels appears on the doorway of the cafeteria and shepherds them to the library. It has the advantage of being comfortable and warm, which is more than anyone can say about some of the old classrooms.
The seniors spread over the beanbags in the reading corner immediately. Andrew looks around long enough to see Aaron settle at the computer station with his friends, then follows Neil as he steps down the stacks. The library isn’t a square room; it has its nooks and crannies, and Neil leads Andrew to the back of the room, next to the fire exit. It’s the math section, a place where no one ever comes to, because what’s the point of borrowing books about math in high school?
The carpet is plusher here than at the front. Neil drops his bag and settles against the wall. It’s only when he imitates him that Andrew notices the heating pipes running a few inches above the floor. They warm his back quickly.
Andrew takes off his coat and scarf and uses them as pillows, reclining away from Neil until only their legs meet in the middle. Neil’s taken out a book in Spanish and two chocolate bars from the vending machines.
“Don’t make too much noise,” he advises as Andrew rips his open.
Andrew takes a bite and lets the chocolate melt on his tongue. He looks at Neil, matching the carpet in his gray layers but somehow still standing out, like a stain that’s been washed too many times.
“You’ve been sleeping there,” he realizes.
Neil shrugs. “The locker room got too cold,” he admits. “And the camera doesn’t work.”
“Don’t the feds keep an eye on you?”
“Not really. They got what they wanted from me, and me from them. Legally, I’m free and independent. The case’s closed, too.”
Andrew stares at Neil for a long time, his extensive collection of scars and the striking blue of his eyes.
“I need to read this for class,” Neil says finally, holding his book up. “You should go get something. I’m sure they have stuff.”
“I don’t like reading,” Andrew answers.
“Alright, then stare out into nothing, I guess.” Neil’s tone is amused. It’s a gentle rebuke, mainly because they both know it’s what Andrew’s going to end up doing. He’s gotten really good at passing time by dissociating and coming back more or less in one piece.
Andrew slowly finishes his chocolate bar, counting the tiles of the ceiling, then he finishes Neil’s when Neil thrusts it toward him without a word. As far as Andrew know, cafeteria food and vending machine snacks are the main components of Neil’s diet, and Neil doesn’t even like snacks. They’re far enough from the front that noise only wafts toward them in snatches, unintelligible voices and conversations.
Neil turns his pages rhythmically, drumming his fingers on the back of the book. Andrew’s pretty sure he isn’t even aware he’s doing it; it’s one of those quirks of Neil’s that he thinks are low-key and unnoticeable, like the way he always looks in the corners before entering a room, but that stand out to Andrew.
Neil pretends he used to dye his hair and use contacts to disguise himself and blend in, but there’s no way he ever blended in anywhere. Not with this face or his graceful demeanor despite his hunched way of sitting in the back of rooms.
Maybe Andrew has been paying a bit too much attention to Neil.
He shifts on the floor, closing his eyes. Neil moves just when Andrew’s managed to put him aside at the back of his mind, his foot bumping against Andrew’s.
“Sorry,” he says when Andrew sits back up.
Andrew waves his concern aside. “Any math homework?” he asks, because as much as he hates it, he’d rather have something to occupy his thoughts.
“Actually, yes.” Neil marks his book with a finger and reaches into his bag, pulling out one battered binder. Sheets of paper are slipping out from every side, but Neil gets it right on the first try.
“Here.”
Neil’s a mediocre student at best. He’s far from being dumb, but like Andrew, he doesn’t care. He’s also never learnt to study, which means his attention span is even shorter than Andrew’s. The only thing he’s good at are languages, although he unconvincingly claims to like math.
Andrew grabs a pencil from his own bag and starts on the sheet of problems. He’s in the same class as Neil, so surely it counts as doing his own homework. Neil picks up his book, but every time Andrew’s pen stops, he can feel Neil’s gaze on him. He looks up twice to see Neil dart his eyes away. After the third time, Andrew throw his pen in his bag and folds the sheet of paper in two.
“Already done?” Neil asks.
“Boring.”
Neil accepts it as he wants and slips the paper back in his bag. Andrew follows the trajectory of his hands, but the insides of the bag snatch Andrew’s gaze. It looks far emptier than usual; Andrew can see Neil’s second pair of pants folded at the bottom of it and nothing else.
Neil really is wearing all of his clothes.
What an idiot.
Andrew takes out his phone and plays Snake for the rest of the morning. At ten thirty, the teachers call them to watch a movie projected on the white wall of the library. Seeing as it’s a high school, they’ve chosen some kind of Shakespeare adaptation; Andrew’s mind disconnects when the women start undressing for a bath. He looks back briefly when some muffled laughter from the girls’ group warn him that men are the ones undressing, but then he gives up for real and spends the rest of the movie timing his breathing with the ticking of the clock.
At one point his hand slip from the armrest. He lets it hang from the side of his chair, too tired to care about the awkward position. His skin tingles when something brushes against it without warning. The urge to withdraw is too strong to ignore, a knee-jerk reaction Andrew doesn’t repress, not even when he sees that it’s Neil’s hand that is hanging by his side, playing with a fray in seam of his jeans.
Andrew breathes deeply. He crosses his arms against his chest and leans forward on the table, annoyed.
The movie ends with music and a wedding. Andrew leaves as soon as the teachers tell them to go to the cafeteria for lunch.
Neil sits down next to him without prompting. They’re friends, apparently, in a weird, twisted way that explains that they trust each other and that they trade secrets on top of the science building’s roof when the weather allows them to. But Andrew doesn’t know where Neil lives—if he has an address at all, which seems less and less likely—and Andrew’s never felt the need to bring him home.
Or rather, he has, but he’s never deemed it worth Nicky’s invasive questions.
As per their usual arrangement, Neil slides Andrew his dessert, some small square brownie piece wrapped in plastic that sticks to the gooey insides, and Andrew gives Neil most of his meat. It’s not like Neil can afford to miss a meal; he’s skinny enough that Andrew would fear for his stability in the wind, if he hadn’t seen him clock four minutes a mile.
That transaction completed, they finish eating in silence. It doesn’t mean they don’t communicate: silence is never quiet with Neil. He meets Andrew’s eye when one of the freshmen drops her glass on the floor; they’ve both jumped in surprise. He drums his fork on his empty plate as his eyes run across the pages of his book.
When Aaron approaches the table by the end of the period, Neil is the one who sees him first, nudging Andrew’s knee under the table.
Aaron doesn’t sit down; he pauses by Andrew’s seat, glancing at Neil in that furtive way of his.
“I’m going to Kate’s for the afternoon,” he says. He has, as always, his phone in hand. “Her sister will drive me back this evening. Don’t wait for me.”
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Really.”
The teachers know he’s here: there are too few of them not to notice that one half of their only pair of twins is missing.
“Yes, really. That’s why I need you to go too,” Aaron says. “They’ll let us go if they think we went home together.”
“Where’s he supposed to go?” Neil asks.
“I don’t know. Home? Your place? Do you both really want to spend the day stuck at school?”
Andrew doesn’t, but he also doesn’t need his brother’s permission to skip classes.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, sitting back in his chair.
Lunch period is almost finished. The clock is ticking if Aaron wants to escape quietly. “Andrew,” he says. “Come on.”
Andrew turns toward Neil. “Coming?”
“I might stay, actually,” Neil says, voice low. “I don’t really feel like going home yet.”
“You mean you don’t have one?” Aaron asks.
“Fuck off.”
“Come with me.” It’s out before Andrew can think about it more seriously. “I can finish your math homework.”
“I can do my own homework myself,” Neil replies, but his tone is amused. He gathers his trash in his plate, glancing at the clock. “Let’s go then.”
They’re not even stopped on the way out. Aaron speeds ahead when they’re out, splitting left when Andrew and Neil turn right toward the house.
“See you tonight,” he throws over his shoulder. “Don’t get pneumonia.”
“Enjoy your wet feet,” Andrew answers.
Neil glances at his own dismally thin shoes. “How far?”
“Thirty minutes.”
A shrug. “Okay.”
They start down the wet sidewalks. People and pollution have cleared most of the snow away, transforming it into slippery brown sludge. They almost fall four times in the first ten minutes, catching each other by the arm or their bags.
“Sorry,” Neil pants the second time he catches himself on Andrew’s sleeve. He’s twisted the fabric in his grip but he doesn’t let go immediately.
“Walk,” is all Andrew says. “It’s still twenty minutes.”
It starts snowing again when they’re turning into Andrew’s street, small snowflakes that are soon fiercely billowing around them. They run past the last houses, up the driveway, and crowd onto the porch as Andrew’s frozen fingers try to work the key in the lock.
“You good?” Neil asks, as though he’s not himself dancing from foot to foot and blowing on his hands. At least Andrew has gloves, even if they’re not that warm or dry.
Andrew pushes him inside without a word. They drop their bags in the hallway, bypass the kitchen, and Andrew leads Neil up to his room. Nicky isn’t scheduled to come back before at least three hours. Enough time to get Neil’s soaked clothes into the washer and dryer.
“Here,” Andrew says, pushing a change of clothes against Neil’s chest. “Change and wash your clothes.”
“Is this your way of telling me I smell?”
“It’s my way of telling your four hoodies stacked on top of each other don’t replace a fucking winter coat. You’re soaked.”
Fortunately, Neil doesn’t press the matter further.
“Bathroom?” he asks, and disappears down the hall when Andrew points it out to him.
He comes out with his clothes in a bundle, looking too comfortable in Andrew’s clothes. The sleeves, which are often too big on Andrew, are almost a perfect length, though the fit is too large, as usual. Andrew turns on the washing machine quickly.
They settle in Andrew’s bedroom with, as promised, Neil’s math homework between them.
It’s stupid, really. Andrew doesn’t even like math. But it’s a kind of tradition between them by now, some nonsensical one that gives Andrew a frame of acting and a comfort zone. He’s cautious with his words and actions, measuring their impact on himself if not the others. Neil enables this carefulness, presenting a blank slate at time or a conveniently malleable set of reactions.
That’s what prompts Andrew to push away the math homework a second time today, getting up for the window. He leaves Neil on the floor, leaning against the bed, to perch on the window sill.
“Bored again?” Neil asks.
Andrew watches his reflection in the darkened window.
“I’m always bored,” he says. It’s not a lie. Andrew doesn’t lie.
He hears Neil put aside his language homework, clicking his pen rapidly. Andrew recognizes the noise from too many classes spent next to the constantly nervous ball of nerves that is Neil. If he’s not sleeping, then he’s fidgeting. School doesn’t agree with him.
Andrew takes out the butterfly knife he keeps in his pants in response and starts flipping it back and forth. Neil’s eyes are a heavy weight on Andrew, but he doesn’t stop.
“What?” Andrew asks after a while.
He stops his flipping, tucking the blade against the blade and closing his fist against the whole. When he finally turns to meet Neil’s gaze, he finds it, blue and intense, fixed on his hands.
On anyone else, Andrew would have interpreted such a look differently. In Neil, though, it’s a different sensation that settles in his stomach. Something a little deeper, a little sharper. Something he’s felt too much and learned to relegate it to the back of his mind. Fear.
“It’s just a knife,” he says.
“In your hands, maybe,” Neil answers.
He doesn’t object when Andrew slides it back in his pocket and turns back toward the room. “Nicky bought it for my fourteenth birthday,” Andrew says. “He missed his kitchen knives.”
“What were you doing with them?”
Andrew’s tongue curls in his mouth around the untold admission. He’s never formulated the words aloud outside of Bee’s office. “Smuggling them under my pillow.”
Neil doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t ask when Andrew stopped or if he stopped at all. Instead, he offers a truth of his own:
“My father liked knives,” he says. “I told you he was in the mob—he cultivated a certain… reputation.”
“He’s dead,” Andrew says.
It’s not comfort but it’s the truth. Neil nods slowly and traces the rugged scars along his right cheek. He catches Andrew’s gaze and lets out a bitter laugh.
“He’s not the one who gave me this, but he did do some damage of his own.” He starts wriggling on the floor, tugging on his shirt’s sleeves.
“Don’t show me if you don’t want to,” Andrew warns.
“I do.” Neil bares his right shoulder, turning so Andrew can see it in the dim lighting. Night has almost fallen while they worked and Andrew hadn’t even noticed.
On Neil’s right shoulder is the shockingly distinct trace of a hot iron, red and bumpy. It’s imprinted on the skin. Andrew can almost feel the ghost pain just by looking at it.
He wants to get up and touch the ridges left behind by the iron’s holes. He’s already standing before he thinks about refraining himself.
Neil shrugs his shirt back on. Andrew’s shirt, technically—Andrew is perfectly aware of how Neil fills the familiar garment and where he doesn’t.
The washing machine slows down in the hall, beeping to announce the end of its cycle.
Neil starts, looking behind his shoulder and back again at Andrew. “Dryer,” Andrew says. It takes him a second to start moving, and he doesn’t look at Neil when he passes past him.
Neil slips into the bathroom to shower and change back into his dry clothes. It’s the cleanest, most comfortable and least wrinkled Andrew has seen him in a long time. Apparently, he doesn’t use laundromats, and sleeping in the school library takes a toll on a person. With permission, he lounges on Andrew’s bed. Andrew stays sitting on the floor and does his best to ignore the sounds of his sheets rustling under Neil Josten’s loose limbs. He doodles on the margin of his math exercise sheet, mind wandering.
When Andrew looks up, Neil’s face is very close to his own, on the edge of the bed.
“Hey,” he says, dropping his Spanish book on his stomach.
“Hey yourself,” Andrew answers automatically.
“I want to take a turn at our truth game.”
Andrew’s nerves are so frayed that he almost says no. “Why?”
“I want to know something.”
“Then just ask.”
“Do you like me?”
The lead point of Andrew’s pencil snaps, leaving a deep indent in the paper. He struggles to keep his composure aside from that one tell.
It’s useless to wish Neil hasn’t noticed. He notices everything, especially when it’s related to Andrew. It’s infuriating and sometimes even a little worrying, to be seen so clearly. Andrew doesn’t think he could stand it if he hadn’t been thawed from the raw twelve-years-old he had been by Nicky’s love and care.
“Why,” he asks at last, because he has to say something.
“You’ve been doodling my initials for the past ten minutes,” Neil says. Andrew looks down. Ns and Js loop around the edges of his sheet. He feels his stomach dropping; he doesn’t usually space out like that when he’s not dissociating, and he wasn’t. This is new—it’s something else.
Andrew balls up the sheet of paper and lobs it across the room into his garbage bin. He resolutely doesn’t look at Neil until Neil says, “Sorry.”
His voice is too small and quiet. Andrew turns his face around, staring at him in the dim light coming from the gray light of the day. They’re very close, Andrew’s brain registers, until his mouth betrays him by saying: “Yes.”
It’s Neil’s turn to look confused. “What?”
“The answer to your question,” Andrew explains. He doesn’t repeat himself, just lets Neil accept the word and its consequences.
Neil nods. The way he’s lying on the bed, his burned cheek drags against the sheets, out of view. He looks like a statue, chiseled in a half-resting position like one of those Greek muses. His scarring is impressive, and turns off a number of people, but Andrew does not need to look past them to find Neil pretty.
“Do—” Neil clears his throat. “Do you want to kiss me?”
“Do you?” Andrew asks to buy himself some time.
“I don’t know,” Neil admits. Before Andrew can open his mouth to tell him that here’s his answer, he adds: “but I’ve been wondering about it, and it’s more than I’ve ever done with anyone.”
“You don’t swing,” Andrew says, an echo of a conversation they’ve had before.
He gets a shrug in response. “I might. I didn’t think I was, but how do I know until I try?”
“I won’t help you determine that you’re into girls and then fuck off on my way,” Andrew warns.
“I don’t even want you to—and I didn’t think you would. And I know I’m not interested in any girls. What I don’t know is if you’re special or not.”
Neil has rolled on his stomach and pillowed his face into his arms. He looks a bit ruffled from lying down, his hair drying in messy curls at the top of his head. He looks eminently kissable. He looks like he has no idea of the turmoil he starts in Andrew because of his words.
Andrew sits up on his heels, leaning on the edge of the mattress until their faces are just a few inches apart.
“Yes or no?” he says in a low voice. This is Neil’s last chance to back out, but he just nods.
Neil pushes up on his elbows so that their faces are at the same height—something that wouldn’t happen if they were standing, something inside Andrew tells him. The next moment they’re kissing.
The first thing that goes through Andrew’s head is how unremarkable it feels. He’s kissed a few boys since the panic of admitting his own sexuality left him—it’s clear Neil hasn’t. The second thing Andrew registers is how eager Neil is in everything that catches his attention. Andrew has. This is no exception.
The fact that he’s kissing Neil Josten, the half-homeless boy with a tragic and violent past who Andrew has spent the last few weeks dreaming of, hits him with the weight of realization. It sparks something in Andrew that he didn’t know he had and erases any other thought from his mind.
It’s a long kiss because Andrew makes it long.
Neil follows suite diligently. He parts his lips when Andrew shows him to, quickly understands how to tilt his head to make the best of their awkward position.
When they break apart, Andrew’s breathing is as irregular as Neil’s. He looks at Neil, taking in the shine of his mouth—Andrew did that—and his wide pupils. Andrew licks his lips, realizes what he’s doing, and dugs his thumb in his lip as if he could erase the weight of Neil’s mouth against his from his memory.
“Andrew,” Neil starts.
Andrew stands up. His thoughts have been blown all over, leaving bits and bouts in every corner of his brain. He doesn’t know what to think, do, or say. He walks to the window, turning his back to Neil to give himself some time to get back his composure.
He’s still breathing deeply.
“Verdict?” he asks as blankly as he can.
“I think—I like kissing you.”
Andrew closes his eyes.
“No, you don’t.”
“What do you know about it?” He can almost see Neil’s eyebrow going up. “It’s not for you to decide.”
“Two minutes ago you didn’t swing.”
“Two minutes ago, I’d never been allowed or given the chance to explore my feelings,” Neil says. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand.”
Andrew does. He understands so clearly that it’s painful.
“Did you like it too?” Neil asks after a short silence, a little hesitantly. Then, knowing Andrew won’t answer such a direct question: “Would you want to do it again?”
Andrew turns around at that. Neil is still looking at him with that stupid look on his face, as though Andrew is as precious to Neil as Neil unattainable to Andrew.
He walks back to the bed. Neil is sitting up, twisting the extra fabric in his too large tee-shirt between his fingers. His hands still when Andrew stops in front of him, and his eyes very noticeably flick down to Andrew’s lips.
“Yes or no,” Andrew asks. Neil nods, leaning forward. Andrew refuses him the contact. “You have to say it,” he says.
“Why?”
Andrew mulls over the truth—the names and faces, the hands touching in the dark, memories pushed back. No one has touched him in that way since he was ten—and decides on its simplest iteration: “Consent is important.”
Neil nods. He looks at Andrew as if he can see more than the words Andrew has just given him, as if he can look down and see the darkness of Andrew’s childhood.
“Alright,” he says, taking that part of Andrew and tucking it aside. He’ll remember it, Andrew knows. It’s the reason why Andrew’s knees are bumping against his legs as he steps closer to his bed, why he’s cupping the back of Neil’s head and tilting it forward. “Yes.”