Chapter Text
There was a pile of dust collecting on the receptionist’s desk, waiting for someone to notice it. Andrew dragged his finger through it, leaving a long trail across the faded wood from where he had disturbed it. He dusted the entire front office in a fit of boredom last week, but already it needed to be redone. For how little people came and went, this rinky-dink place really seemed to track in a lot of dirt. Someone must have left the windows open again.
As if on cue, the moth-bitten curtains fluttered and Andrew heard a car door slam outside. It couldn’t have been his own car, as he was sitting in the chair behind the dusty desk in a dusty, empty lobby. As far as Andrew ever saw, his car was the only one that sat underneath the glaring southern sun, alone in the parking lot. Strangers to the motel were rare.
Andrew was almost surprised when the door opened with a gust of hot air that ruffled through his hair before disappearing somewhere down the hall. The breeze, Andrew noticed irritably, brought more dust with it.
He had only owned the place for a couple of months and was just getting settled as a new business owner. The whole process of going from not having a motel to being in charge of one was such a headache that Andrew didn’t even want to think about how he had come to own this place.
Most of his days were spent fixing broken windows or leaky pipes with Aaron, or knocking on locked doors and looking for the keys when no one answered. Usually he found nothing but a fine layer of dirt, the same as the kind coating the lobby, when he went searching through empty drawers and barren closets. He would pick the locks afterwards to reveal bedrooms completely undisturbed aside from wrinkly sheets and dirty windows, and once, an upturned chair in the middle of the room. Andrew would leave and inexplicably, the doors would be locked again the next morning.
Most people that found their way onto the long driveway with destination Court Motel at the end didn’t take very long to turn right back around where they came. There was nothing here except long, winding roads and highway signs that reported the closest town to be just over ten miles away. It was a desert; a place people came to disappear or to die. Whatever this place was, it was the opposite of an oasis, and Andrew was smack dab in the middle of it.
The man that walked in was nothing like the landscape around him. He was tall, shiny and new in a way the aged wooden walls and the faded velvet seats crammed into the lobby weren’t. He gave the lobby a cursory scan, eyes glancing over old paintings and ugly furniture Nicky had tried to arrange into something homey to lighten the atmosphere. Andrew could tell he was uninterested, but was pretending not to be. He had a certain air to him, a swagger that Andrew identified as a cop’s arrogance. He bristled and didn’t bother with a greeting.
“I’d like to rent out a room,” the man said when he approached the front desk. He set his suitcase somewhere off to the side and was about to fold his arms across the counter before thinking better of it when he saw the dust. Despite the polished smile on his face, something Andrew knew was fake the moment he saw it, he looked rumpled in the way that days of travel would do to a person. Though his gray suit and fancy tie were recently ironed, his eyes were dull and tired.
Andrew quirked an eyebrow. “We don’t usually rent out rooms for longer than a week,” he said. It wasn’t strictly true. The motel’s only other resident, a skittish man named Neil, had been there for longer than Andrew had even scoped out the place.
“I can pay in advance.” The man set a fat envelope on the desk between them. Andrew picked it up and shuffled through the stacks of cash. It looked like quite a bit of money, and Andrew really had no business turning anyone away. When he looked back up, the man looked disgruntled at the rifling.
“Fine. Just you?” Andrew looked the man up and down. His nicely-pressed suit told Andrew that he wasn’t just some low-level cop, and nobody came here for vacation when there was nothing around except for desert and more desert. There wasn’t even a convenience store for another several miles. He was here for business, and cops usually came in pairs.
“Just me,” the man said. He flashed his badge when Andrew asked for ID and cleared his throat. “That should cover six weeks, then I’ll be out of your hair.”
The ID had FBI stamped in bold letters across it and the badge was as shiny as the man himself. Andrew made a show of going through the envelope again. “No, actually, I think this only covers four weeks. You will have to pay more if you want to keep your room.”
The detective’s eye twitched, the first crack in his mask of professionalism. “The sign outside said it’s ten dollars a night. This should cover that.”
“We’re under new management. We have continental breakfast now, you see, so it’s going to be seventeen dollars a night.” Andrew tapped something onto his computer and waited for the screen to load. When it didn’t, he smacked it on the side a couple of times. With a voice he didn’t try to pretend was polite he said, “Can I help you with anything else?”
The detective smiled thinly. “No. Put the rest on my card.”
Andrew finalized the transaction and slid the envelope full of cash into the drawer under the desk.
“Room 206 to your right,” he drawled, reaching behind him to grab the room key from the pin board. “You’ll be all way down the hall. Continental breakfast is from 8am to 10am, quiet hours are from midnight to 8 am, I don’t care if you enjoy your stay. Goodbye.”
With another strained smile, the detective picked up his suitcase and left out the door he came. Andrew watched him through the faded curtains as he searched the numbers on the doors for room 206. He struggled with the room key before jostling the door open and stepping inside.
“What are you doing letting a man like that stay here?”
Andrew turned at the sudden voice at his side. Neil leaned against the desk on his elbows and Andrew noticed that he didn’t leave any tracks in the dust when he moved. His eyes were fixed on the door Kevin disappeared into, like a mouse assessing whether or not it should leave to avoid getting eaten.
“He’s hot,” Andrew said. When Neil wrinkled his nose at him, Andrew continued, “I don’t like cops any more than you do but we need the money. If I turn down the only customer we’ve gotten in weeks, I’d have to sell this place by January.”
“Is my business not good enough for you?” Neil teased. His tongue stuck out between his teeth as he grinned. “And here I thought you took care of your loyal patrons.”
“You don’t even pay rent,” Andrew retorted. “Fuck off with your loyal patron bullshit.”
Neil laughed. It sounded oddly faraway, like listening to someone talk over a staticky radio. “Yet you keep me around any – ”
“Who are you talking to?”
Andrew almost jumped at the sound of Nicky’s voice. He’d poked his head through the door that led to the kitchen, dark curls pulled back into a bun at the top of his head. He stared at Andrew in confusion, but Andrew turned back to where Neil had stood ten seconds prior. He was met with empty air and dust motes drifting to the ground to add more layers to the growing pile. Andrew blinked, wondering how Neil had left so quickly with hardly a sound, and looked back at his cousin.
“Nobody,” Andrew said. When Nicky opened his mouth, brow creased, Andrew waved him off. “I rented out a room to some detective. I promised breakfast every morning.”
Nicky’s eyes flicked to the window, to the car parked outside. It was one of those muscle cars from the 70’s, despite whatever year it was made, it looked newer and more expensive than anything inside the lobby.
“A detective?” Nicky cooed. He had a considerably different expression on his face than Neil had. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Leave him alone,” Andrew grunted. “He has a stick up his ass.”
Nicky smirked but before he could say anything inappropriate, Andrew shooed him away. Alone again, Andrew grabbed a cloth from the supply closet across the lobby and started wiping up the dust. When he glanced down the hall, he thought he saw a flash of Neil’s dark red hair. But when he blinked, it was gone and Andrew was alone.
~
Andrew didn’t see the detective again until the next day, when the sun was just starting to rise over the faraway desert plateaus. He was in the back room when the incessant ring of a bell pulled him from his sleep. At first, he thought he imagined it. He shifted in his favorite armchair, lumpy as it was, and started to fall back asleep when he heard the annoying ding-ding! again.
Scowling, Andrew pushed out of the chair and rolled his neck to the side, grimacing when the muscle there pulled. He shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the chair, but the quiet night and lonely dust bunnies had lulled him to sleep as he stayed up late trying to add up this month’s expenses. Massaging the kink out of his neck, Andrew peered out of the back room with a glare.
“What do you want,” he said, not bothering for the uptick at the end that would turn the phrase into a question.
The detective matched Andrew’s glare with a cool look of his own. He was apparently done with playing the part of the polite customer looking for a place to stay. That, or he wasn’t much of a morning person. “If I’m paying seventeen dollars a night, I expect there to actually be breakfast.”
Andrew squinted at the analogue clock on his desk with bleary eyes. It was barely past seven in the morning. “Maybe you couldn’t hear over your ego, but the continental breakfast starts at eight.”
The detective’s face smoothed out into a smug look and Andrew had the feeling that he’d been had. “Excellent. We have about an hour to get this business out of the way. Let’s make this easy for the both of us. You cooperate, and this will be over in no time.”
“Whatever you’re looking for, you’re not going to find it here,” Andrew said, but he wasn’t so sure. He had no idea if the last owners had done anything illegal while they were in charge, he didn’t even know why they sold the place. Just that they did so quickly. And at an extremely low price. Shit, what had Andrew gotten himself into?
“I’m not so sure about that.” The detective reached for something in the inside of his jacket. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Detective Kevin Day. I’m working on a missing person’s case and I think you could help me out.”
Before Andrew could even process any of that, the detective – Kevin – flashed his badge at Andrew again and stuck his wallet back in his jacket. He traded it for a pen and notepad.
“Mind if I ask a few questions?”
Andrew’s response was lodged in his throat like an old chicken bone. All he could do was regard Kevin with suspicion as he waited with a pen poised over paper.
“Fantastic, I knew you wouldn’t. First things first, can I get your name?”
“I’m not giving you shit,” Andrew said. Kevin’s jaw clenched.
“Don’t be difficult,” he said. “You’re not in trouble unless you refuse to comply. Because at this point in time, the last known location of my missing person was this motel and you happen to be the owner of it.”
When Andrew still said nothing, Kevin sighed and set his notepad flat on the counter. He steepled his fingers and leaned in close, as if to cut anyone that could be listening out, even though the room was empty except for them.
“Look,” he said, voice pitched low. “I have reason to believe that this person could be in very real danger. I’m just trying to help them. But I need your assistance to do so.”
Internally, Andrew cursed Kevin, the FBI, and whatever missing person who brought this on his doorstep. “Fine,” he snapped. “What do you need?”
“Just your name and for you to answer my few questions to the best of your ability.” Kevin picked up his notepad and waited.
“How about we make a deal first,” Andrew said. Two could play at this game, and Andrew wasn’t about to let himself get backed into a corner. For a split second, shock and outrage warred on Kevin’s face.
“That’s not how this works – ” Kevin started to protest before Andrew cut him off.
“I’ll tell you how this works. I’ll answer your questions and cooperate or whatever, but after you have everything you need, even if you don’t have everything you need, you will leave this place and never come back. You leave my name, my family’s name, and this motel out of it. No – ” Andrew held up a hand when Kevin opened his mouth to argue. “If I’m going to help you out, those are my terms.”
Kevin muttered angrily to himself, flipping through his notepad with abject agitation. “Deal,” he said eventually through grit teeth. “What’s your name?”
“Andrew Minyard,” Andrew said, and watched as Kevin scribbled it down. He raised his eyebrows when Kevin looked up.
“It’s just procedure,” he said hastily.
“It better be.” Andrew didn’t hide the note of dark warning in his tone. “What next?”
Kevin flipped open to the back of his notepad and pulled out a creased photograph. Unfolding it, Kevin held it up for Andrew to see. Andrew froze. Kevin’s eyebrow twitched as he caught the movement. “You recognize him?”
The ground tilted under Andrew’s feet. His fingers tightened around the edge of the desk as he held on, knuckles going white with tension.
The picture was glossy and obviously printed out recently. But it had been folded and stuffed between the pages of the notepad too many times, the corners bent and the creases no longer sharp and new, but starting to fray and rip at the edges. It looked like it was taken in an airport, people dotted the background and Andrew could see blurry airplanes through the glass in the back.
Half-turned away from the camera, the boy in the picture wasn’t smiling. His face was grim as he stared back at Andrew from the photograph. He was younger in the picture and there were no scars marking his face, but Andrew could see the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, even in the shitty quality of the security footage. What gave him away most of all was the shock of auburn hair and blue eyes locked on the camera.
Andrew’s eyes slid past Kevin to the dark hall behind him where he usually saw Neil lurking. As if summoned, there he was. A shock of auburn hair and blue eyes. His scarred face was eerily blank, his mouth set into that same, solemn line, just five years aged. He held Andrew's gaze and gave a single slow, shake of his head before slinking back around the corner and vanishing into the gloom.
“Well?” Kevin prompted. He tapped his finger impatiently. “The picture is from a couple years ago, but this was the most recent one we could get of him. I have another one that’s better quality but it’s from when he was ten – ”
“No,” Andrew interrupted. “I don’t know who that is.”
“You’re lying. You recognized him. I know you did, I saw that look on your face. Wait – ” Kevin rounded the corner of the desk and blocked Andrew’s way when he made to leave. “You said you would help me. His name is Nathaniel Wesninski, does that ring a bell?”
“I already told you no,” Andrew said, pushing past Kevin’s bulky frame. Kevin tried to catch his arm but Andrew stopped his wrist in a vice grip. “I said I would help you but I can’t. If you can’t accept that then I’m going to have to ask you to leave and take your business elsewhere.”
Kevin tried to pull his hand away but Andrew held tight. “Are you threatening a federal agent?” he asked with another yank of his arm.
“I’m telling you no.” Andrew squeezed until Kevin curled his hand into a fist. “Don’t make this mistake again.”
Andrew released him, throwing his arm away from him so Kevin stumbled back. Kevin rubbed his wrist and shot Andrew a scornful look. “The only reason I’m not arresting you right now…”
Andrew let the threat hang in the air before placing the “closed” placard on the counter and sliding past Kevin. “Breakfast is at eight,” he reminded him as the door to the backroom closed behind him with a solid thud.
~
There was a knock at Andrew’s door.
It was sharp, startling. Three short raps on the wood. Andrew looked up from where he was slumped on the couch. He had just settled in for the night and was on the verge of falling asleep, television still tuned in to some cheesy sit-com, remote-in hand, falling from his lax grip, his chin resting against his chest when the knocks jarred him awake.
Andrew rubbed his forehead, smoothing away the lines and the building headache. “What?” he yelled, irritation coloring his voice. When no one responded, he turned the TV volume down and listened. When he heard nothing, he powered the TV off and threw the remote somewhere to the side where it would undoubtably get stuck between the cushions. He could relocate to his bed where it would be a more reasonable place to sleep, but instead Andrew kicked his feet up and curled up against the sagging cushions of his old couch.
Three more knocks on the door, just as loud and even as the first set. Andrew peaked open an eye. He thought he saw the door knob turning, but the lock was in place and would prevent anyone from getting inside. It must have been a trick of the light. Still, the knocks were unmistakable.
Running his thumb and forefinger along the fabric of one his armbands, searching for the familiar outline of his knives, Andrew pushed up off of the couch and went to see who it was. His hand was over the door knob when whoever was behind the door knocked again, the same as before. “Jesus Christ – ” Andrew snarled and wrenched the door open, but was met with nothing but an empty hallway and a wall of darkness.
Before Andrew could wonder where the lights had gone, Aaron rounded the corner with a supremely unimpressed look on his face. He was still dressed in what he was wearing earlier today, despite the hour nearing midnight. Andrew was dressed in his sweatpants and ratty t-shirt, ready to relax for the rest of the night, but Aaron seemed to have had other plans.
His hands were smudged with blue pen ink, his eyes tired from squinting at the tiny print in textbooks all day. Andrew didn’t think he noticed, but there was a piece of tape stuck in his mussed-up hair.
“What the hell, Aaron,” Andrew said. “Were you trying to hurt your knuckles?”
Aaron shot him a strange look and walked through the open door without waiting for an invitation. “Why is the FBI questioning you?” he asked without preamble.
“It doesn’t concern you,” Andrew said. He clenched his jaw, his fists, then released. Could he not catch a break? “So how about you go on your merry way and leave me alone.”
Andrew held the door open in an invitation for Aaron to go politely fuck himself but Aaron kicked it closed with the toe of his sneaker.
“This is serious. If we get dragged into something, the motel won’t survive. We have bills. I have a tuition to pay.” His forehead creased the way it did when he was trying to keep a hold on his temper. Andrew decided he was done with his brother’s attitude.
“There is no ‘we’ about this,” Andrew said, motioning with his finger to indicate both of them. “I’m the unfortunate owner of this dust pile and you’re the freeloader college student who I allow to live here.”
“You told me to stay here,” Aaron pointed out. “I barely had a choice in it.”
Andrew elected to ignore that.
“So?” When Andrew didn’t respond, Aaron made a jabbing motion with his finger. “How about you answer me for once? Why is the FBI asking questions?”
That was interesting. Hadn’t Andrew told Kevin to leave his family out of it? Someone seemed to be breaking their part of the deal.
“Ask our resident detective, maybe?”
“Andrew.” Aaron held Andrew’s gaze. Andrew wondered when Aaron had gotten so bossy.
Flicking his fingers in dismissal, Andrew said, “He’s working a missing person’s case and his guy was last seen here. He asked me if I recognized him, I said no. Happy?”
“Not particularly.”
When Aaron didn’t budge, Andrew let out of sigh of exasperation.
“I’m handling it,” he said. He all but shoved Aaron out the door. The lights, he noticed, were back on. “You worry about becoming a doctor, and I’ll worry about this. Now scram.”
Aaron rolled his eyes but complied. He was half-way down the hall when he turned back around. “You should fix these lights by the way,” he said. “They flicker.”
Andrew watched him disappear around the corner and shut the door.
His room was empty now, apart from himself and a small pile of dust that had somehow found its way in. If he listened carefully, he could hear the sound of the wind blowing outside his window, waging a war against the sand. There was no point trying to fall back asleep, not when Andrew knew that sleep would evade him.
There we no cigarettes for him to smoke since he’d run out earlier that morning and hadn’t had the time to go into town to get more. Maybe he should finally take Aaron’s advice and cut down on the smoking. He considered the thought, and threw it out. There was nothing that he could do about it now.
No cigarettes left the second-best thing.
Grabbing his wallet and keys, Andrew left his room and made the winding trek to the stairs that led to the roof. It didn’t go up very high since there were only two floors of the building, but it was still enough for his heart to quicken when he looked over the edge. Gravel crunched under his boots when he walked to the ledge and sat down. Breeze whipped through his hair and buffeted him every which way, trying to throw him off.
Andrew dangled his feet over the side, needing a little more caution thrown to the wind than he usually did. He leaned back on his hands and tipped his head to the wind-swept sky, ignoring the tiny pebbles digging into the palms of his hands in favor of studying the stars.
Counting constellations was really the only thing someone could do out here, unless they liked watching the dust devils dance and fight, which was a drama that got old real quick. But tonight, with the half-moon hidden behind a thick curtain of clouds, it was too dark to even do that. Andrew could just make out the stars through pockets in the clouds, the holes that looked like they were poked through by a giant finger. Thousands of stars shining like forgotten jewels in a sea of black.
He stared out at the night sky in peace as he let the minutes trip by. If he had slept, he would have missed this. Who knew if the clouds would cover the whole sky tomorrow night or if a dust storm would roll in and kick up such a fuss that no one would be able to see two feet in front of them, let alone millions of miles into the heavens?
It wasn’t long until the scent of cigarette smoke drifted over to him, faint enough it was nearly whisked away by the light breeze. He would have thought he imagined it if he didn’t also feel the tingling feeling of eyes boring holes into the back of his neck.
They weren’t invasive or expectant like most people who watched without wanting to be seen. They were eyes that were curious, waiting for an invitation but willing to leave if there wasn’t one. These eyes were familiar.
Andrew ignored the sudden buzzing in his veins, the itching under his skin whispering to him to pay attention until it was too much. Resisting the urge to rub the side of his neck and brush the feeling away, Andrew said, “You can come out now.”
Footsteps behind him. Andrew didn’t turn around. He didn’t even twitch until he saw Neil in his peripheral, moving to sit next to Andrew with a comfortable distance between them.
Neil wore the same thing he always did, jeans with hems that were becoming undone from treading on them too much and a dusty old hoodie that wasn’t much better. The red fabric was patchy and worn; the trim just as ratty as his jeans. Andrew thought the zipper must have broken a long time ago because he’d never seen the hoodie anything but open, revealing a faded gray tee underneath. Andrew was pretty sure it was the only outfit Neil owned, since he’d never seen him wear anything else. Once, Andrew had offered to buy him new clothes but Neil had only looked at him with a small, wry smile until he let the subject drop.
Still, he looked good.
Andrew watched him play with the fraying ends of his hoodie sleeves before he lost his patience. “Out with it,” he said, tired of pretending to not look at Neil. The stars couldn’t compare to him.
Neil’s hands paused in their fiddling but he didn’t look up to meet Andrew’s eyes. “I didn’t think you’d want me here,” he said, his voice so quiet it was almost swallowed up by the wind. The smell of cigarette smoke was stronger now, but it was accompanied by something else Andrew couldn’t put a finger on.
“Because Detective Asshole is looking for you?”
Neil hesitated, back to fidgeting with his hoodie. He nodded. “You didn’t tell,” he said.
“No,” Andrew replied. Neil’s gaze flickered to his, electric blue then gone in an instant. “You told me not to.”
Neil was quiet for a very long time. He’d moved on from playing with the sleeves of his hoodie to plucking at the stray strands poking out of his jeans. He was always in motion, always plucking or fiddling with one thing or another. Andrew wasn’t sure if he had ever seen Neil completely still.
Neil’s head was bowed as he hunched in on himself, a defensive posture Andrew recognized from when they first met. His hair, too long, curling around his ears, had fallen over his eyes and Andrew’s hand twitched to brush it back. He didn’t. He wouldn’t let himself. Neil seemed irritated with it anyway because he flicked it away with his scarred hands before shoving them in his pockets. He caught Andrew looking, so Andrew held his stare.
“Truth for a truth,” he said. Neil blinked, surprised at the mention of their old game, before nodding slowly. Andrew chewed on his words. He knew what he wanted to ask, but he had to get the wording right. He didn’t want to scare Neil off. He decided on, “Why are you a missing person?”
Neil grimaced. “Don’t ask me that,” he said.
“Fine. Are you running from something?”
Neil Josten was a conundrum. He had been at the motel before any one of them and Andrew couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t move on. He was a runaway, that much was obvious from his clothes and seemingly lack of people who needed to check up on him, but Andrew couldn’t figure out why Neil hadn’t chosen a better place to hide.
“My father was a bad person,” Neil began. Andrew felt the hush fall around them. Whatever was out in the desert, it wanted to listen too. “He was abusive, and worse. My mom took me in the middle of the night and we left. I was twelve? Thirteen, I think. We ran for about ten years until I ended up here and now I don’t know how to leave.”
Andrew wondered at his strange choice of words, but decided not to press him about it. He also noticed that he didn’t mention where his mother had gone. Instead of asking, he said, “Your turn.”
Neil worried his lip as he thought. Andrew filed it away as one of the many things Neil did when he wasn’t paying attention to himself. Eventually he asked, “Why are you here?”
The motel, as Andrew was beginning to learn, was a place that was hesitant to let its people go once it had a hold of them. It had called out to Andrew, and apparently to Neil too because they were both here and unwilling to leave.
Andrew heaved a sigh and looked out toward the parking lot. It was empty except for the two cars and the dust that covered them. Only four and a half street lights still worked, flickering and too dim to properly light up the lot, but operating all the same. The sign that declared the motel’s name was missing a couple letters so that it read “ou t Motel” instead of Court Motel. Andrew found it rather ironic.
It was a shoddy place. A horrible, dusty, barely functioning place. But it was still his, and he had grown a bit attached to it.
“I’m not really sure why,” he said. “I think I’m still figuring it out.”
Somehow, in the moments between their words and the howl of the wind, the inches of space between them had disappeared. Neil’s knee was pressed against Andrew’s, and Andrew’s wrist bumped Neil’s every time he moved his arm.
Somehow, Neil’s fingers began to trace the lines of Andrew’s hands. Over his knuckles, scarred from a past of having to fight for everything he had and wanted to keep, down to the base of his wrist, where he skirted the edge of Andrew’s armband. His fingers were cold, too cold to be normal, but somehow Andrew didn’t want to pull away.
Andrew knew that Neil wasn’t normal. He knew it the moment he first saw him but kept pushing the thought away to analyze at a better time. He’d stopped believing that Nicky was pretending not to see Neil the fifth time he walked right past him, his eyes seeing through him, focused on Andrew as he started up a conversation despite Andrew already being in the middle of one. He was too good at sneaking around, disappearing into the shadows behind him and materializing somewhere else, too fast to have simply walked. Andrew always passed it off as him being tired, unfocused after a busy day of repairs and maintaining a building that did not want to be maintained.
Even now, Neil didn’t even look normal. Everything about him was desaturated, like Andrew was looking at him through a screen. He should have looked more vibrant than he did, but he didn’t. Something about him was off-putting.
Now that Andrew was really looking, really intent on seeing Neil, the more he realized he shouldn’t have been able to see Neil at all. If Andrew screwed up his eyes, he would have seen the night sky right through his head.
Neil gave him a sad, knowing smile. He moved to withdraw but Andrew flipped his hand over so his palm was flush against Neil’s. He curled his fingers around Neil’s hand and squeezed. He really was freezing to the touch. But he was still there, he was solid, and Andrew could hold onto him, cold or not.
Neil squeezed his hand back. Andrew found that he didn’t really care about the rest.
~
The smell of breakfast wafting from the kitchen was good enough to wake the dead. Bacon sizzling, eggs frying in the pan, the mouth-watering scent of greasy foods good enough for a diner. Andrew stuck his head into the kitchen to see if Nicky needed any help, but grabbed a cup of fresh coffee and continued to the dining room when Nicky waved him off. Aaron was already seated at the table when Andrew walked into the dining area.
The “dining area” was a phrase Andrew used loosely.
Before it had been repurposed, the area was being used as a large storage room. Andrew had organized the chairs and tables that were crammed into the space a couple weeks after he bought the motel. It was hard work, the room being so cluttered with random boxes and cleaning supplies, extra toiletries that needed to be thrown out and reordered, and spare sheets and blankets that were no better than the ones already on the beds. He had Aaron help him, once he was able to tear him away from his studies, and the two spent three days clearing the place out and selling all the extra things they didn’t need so they’d have money for the things they did.
It looked better than it did then, now with the curtains drawn back and the windows cleaned so sunlight could filter inside. There was an access door that led out to the deck where Andrew had placed more chairs and tables. It still wasn’t particularly grand, and probably never will be, but it would have to do.
Aaron glanced up from his books and papers spread out across the table long enough to give Andrew a nod before he was absorbed into his work again. Andrew sat down across from him and squinted at a loose paper near his elbow. It was a list of medical terms and definitions written in Aaron’s messy scrawl.
“You’re doing homework on a Sunday?” Andrew asked, plucking another paper with a labeled diagram depicting what looked like all the muscles in the leg.
Aaron snatched the paper away from him. “Yes,” he said irritably. “I have to work twice as hard since I only have online courses this semester. If I could just go to class everything would be so much easier – ”
“Out of the question,” Andrew interrupted, ignoring the acidic look Aaron shot him.
“You’re the worst,” he muttered, shuffling his papers and notebooks into one pile and moving to a different table.
Before Andrew could follow and antagonize Aaron further, Nicky appeared with a tray laden with food. He set it out on the long table at the front next to the plates and the silverware. He brought a plate to Aaron, too distracted by his work to pay attention to feeding himself, and plopped down next to Andrew with a plate of his own.
“Are you getting any food?” Nicky had just settled down, fork in hand, about to dig into a fluffy stack of pancakes when he asked. Andrew knew that if he said no, Nicky would give him the Aaron treatment and wouldn’t let him leave until he finished everything on the plate.
“In a minute,” Andrew said, setting his cup of coffee on the table in front of him. Their new guest had just arrived.
Detective Kevin Day looked well-put together considering the early hour. His hair was neatly combed and his blue suit jacket was in immaculate condition with polished gold cufflinks emblazoned with KD. Internally, Andrew scoffed.
Kevin didn’t look up when Andrew approached, and he hardly spared Andrew a glance when he slid into the seat across from him. “Good morning,” he said, shuffling through various papers he took out from his suitcase.
Andrew grabbed one of extra pens on the table and flicked it to the floor. Kevin looked deeply unimpressed. “Mature,” he said.
Andrew ignored him. “I thought I told you to leave my family out of this.”
“You said to leave your family’s name out of it. You said nothing about questioning them,” Kevin said.
“I didn’t know I had to spell it out for you. I thought they taught common sense at the academy.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Kevin grumbled.
“And I told you that there’s nothing for you here,” Andrew shot back.
“I don’t believe that.” Kevin dug something out from his suitcase. He placed it on the table in between them and smoothed it with his fingers. It looked like some sort of report dated a couple months back. “Look at this. Nathaniel Wesninski was spotted here on March 3rd. And then the trail ends.”
Kevin looked determined as he tapped on the report with his finger. “I know he’s here. He has to be. But it’s just like he up and disappeared. No trace, nothing. This is the last place anyone has seen him.”
It was like the air had been squeezed out of Andrew’s lungs. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew why the trail stopped dead.
“How do you even know he’s still alive?” Andrew asked. He measured his words carefully weighing them in his mouth. He needed to know how much Kevin knew.
But Kevin’s expression twisted into a grimace. He looked the most human than Andrew had seen him since he arrived at the motel. “I don’t. I just have to hope that he is.”
Andrew didn’t know what to say to that, but Kevin wasn’t finished.
Taking a stack of papers out and spreading them across the table, Kevin said, “If he’s not here, then I at least hope he got away. I’d hate to see what happened to him if the Butcher caught him.”
There was a stone in Andrew’s stomach. “The Butcher?”
Kevin pursed his lips. “I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” he said.
“Tell me anyway or my help stops here,” Andrew insisted.
“Fine,” Kevin sighed with resignation. “Nathaniel’s father, Nathan Wesninski. We’ve been trying to pin the guy for years, but we can’t get anything substantial. But I think Nathaniel is the key. I think he could help us lock up his father for good.”
All the pieces added up to a picture that didn’t look so pretty. Andrew thought about Neil’s words on the roof almost a week ago - My father was a bad person. They echoed in his head, Neil’s faraway-cadence.
Something horrible had been done to Neil, that much was clear. Neil never talked about it, but it didn’t take a detective to know that Neil had been hurt too many times to count. Andrew wouldn’t delude himself with childish hopes that Neil was just strange, just a little odd, that he was still a living, breathing person rather than someone who used to be alive.
If Andrew could help get Nathan Wesninski locked up for good, if he could do anything to help Neil, even if it won’t bring him all the way back, Andrew wanted to do it.
Kevin hadn’t looked away from his paperwork the entire time Andrew thought over this, but his head shot up when Andrew spoke up.
“I’ll help you,” he said quietly.
~
Andrew found Neil in the empty dining room that night. He stood alone in the middle of the room, his head tilted back to look past the large windows to the clear night sky beyond. His head inclined in Andrew’s direction when he drew close.
“I assume you’ve figured it out,” Neil began.
Andrew stood shoulder to shoulder with him and craned his neck. The edge of the moon was just visible from his short vantage point, before it was blocked by the window’s edge.
“It wasn’t that hard to figure out. You are not subtle.”
Neil laughed softly. “I suppose not.”
They lapsed into an easy silence, unbroken from everything but the wind beating against the glass panes. Neil’s shoulder brushed against Andrew’s.
Andrew looked at him from the corner of his eyes. The light from the moon lit his face and made him look paler than he was, his eyes were almost colorless. He looked gray, like the color had been bled out of him. Andrew had the sudden thought that moonlight revealed the truth of things. For some reason that bothered him, but Andrew didn’t look away. Even dead, Neil still looked beautiful.
“What are you going to do now?” Andrew asked.
Neil turned so he faced Andrew. He looked bewildered for a moment before he said, “I don’t know. I should probably go soon.”
“Where would you go?” Andrew didn’t want Neil to leave, he wanted him to stay, he wanted.
“I don’t know,” Neil said again, voice barely above a whisper. “No one ever told me.”
He was close, so achingly close that Andrew could feel his lack of warmth. He bridged the gap just a tiny bit more, so that only centimeters stood between them. Andrew grabbed a fistful of Neil’s jacket and tugged just enough for Neil to feel it.
“Stay,” he said.