Chapter Text
It starts the second week of Neil’s senior year. He’s at the grocery store, and he sees Andrew’s favorite kind of jelly beans on sale, and he doesn’t think twice before he’s putting a few bags in his basket.
It’s not until Neil is on his way back to Fox Tower that he remembers that Andrew isn’t there to eat them. Neil briefly considers giving them to one of the sophomore girls on the team that always brings jelly bean vodka to parties, but he discards that idea. He bought the jelly beans for Andrew, so he’s going to give them to Andrew.
The postage for the box ends up costing him more than the jelly beans themselves did, but that’s fine. Anyways, there’s a certain sense of satisfaction garnered from using blood money on something as innocuous as sending his boyfriend candy.
Neil hands the box across the counter to the worker at USPS, and he’s practically forgotten about it by the time he gets out of evening practice.
He’s reminded a few days later when his phone pings with a message from Andrew; Neil opens the text to see a picture of his box staring back at him, his messy handwriting visible on the address label.
Andrew has only sent the picture, but the question after it is implied.
A minute later, he gets an answer.
Neil rolls his eyes, but smiles.
Andrew’s response takes a while to come, but when it does it reads only one thing.