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Neil is standing in line next to Andrew at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, tapping impatiently on the strap of his backpack where it sits against his collarbone as he waits for the queue to move forward. He can’t help glancing over his shoulder every few moments, scanning his surroundings until his eyes come to rest again and again on the arrivals and departures board—and the ticking clock at its center. The boarding for their flight ends in less than fifteen minutes, and they’re not even in the right terminal yet.
Neil looks over his shoulder again as they finally move to the register. Andrew orders himself two cinnamon pretzels and a sickeningly sweet strawberry lemonade. He casts a bored look at Neil and asks for a bottle of water, too.
Andrew takes his time pulling out his wallet and sliding over a twenty, reaching over with his other hand to stop Neil’s fingers from continuing their restless pattern. He squeezes just slightly on Neil’s hand and then accepts his change from the cashier, taking his time to fold the bills precisely before putting them back where they belong.
They wait for almost four minutes—Neil is anxiously counting—before Andrew is handed his order.
Andrew casts a vaguely amused eye at Neil’s tapping foot as he tucks the pretzels into his bag before straightening and taking a sip from his bright pink drink. “What's the rush?”
“We have ten minutes before they close the doors,” Neil says, tugging on one of the ties of Andrew’s hoodie as he tries to pull them both in the right direction.
Andrew takes another sip of his drink before setting off in a slow amble after Neil. He, apparently, will not suffer to be rushed. “And oh, what a shame it would be if we missed our flight,” he says. If his sarcasm was any thicker, Neil would be able to cut through it.
Neil turns to walk backward so he can say to Andrew’s face, “If we miss it, you'll be the one calling and explaining it to Nicky. And then you can schedule our new flight, and a hotel for us to stay at tonight.”
Andrew, after raising a thoroughly unimpressed eyebrow, starts a brisk power walk.
Thankfully, they make it to their gate a minute before the door closes. They receive a glare from the attendant that scans their tickets, but Neil honestly couldn’t care less what some stranger thinks of them. He and Andrew head down the ramp together to the plane door, soon playing the fun game of trying to squeeze down the aisles to their seats. Andrew has no qualms in hitting people with his backpack on his way through if they’re leaning into the aisle, though Neil tries to use just a little more tact and grace.
Andrew plops himself down in the window seat, slides the window cover down, and uses his feet to shove his backpack under the seat in front of him. He sarcastically reaches over to pat the seat next to him when he sees that Neil has waited for him to get settled before sitting down as well.
Neil can't help but smile as he takes the aisle seat, not even bothering to try and hide it as he leans down to grab his phone and earbuds from the front pocket of his bag before stowing it away.
He takes his time to put on his seat belt and adjust the tiny air vent above his seat, offering with a silent gesture to adjust Andrew's for him as well. Andrew gestures for him to close it, so Neil does.
After getting settled in his seat, Neil turns his phone on—a new model foisted on him by the rest of the Foxes as a graduation present—plugs in his earbuds, and picks one of his running playlists.
He offers the right side earbud to Andrew, already seeing the nervous energy he's trying to suppress in the bouncing of his leg. Andrew accepts it and slides it into his ear, sliding just slightly closer to Neil so that the cord isn't stretched too far between them. Neil puts the phone down between their seats so that Andrew can easily reach it if he wants to change the song.
When the flight attendants begin going over the safety procedures, Neil makes sure to raise volume just a notch so that their words become unintelligible background noise. Neil himself has heard this spiel more times than he can count, and he knows that hearing about what to do in the unlikely event of a plane crash is sure to only escalate the tension he can already see setting into Andrew's shoulders.
Andrew shoots Neil a knowing glance at this, but doesn't move to change the volume. Instead, he picks up the water bottle and drops it unceremoniously in Neil's lap before grabbing his pretzels and shoving them into the seat pocket in front of him. Neil takes Andrew’s offering and similarly tucks it into the seat pocket for later. Then Neil wiggles in his seat to try and find the comfiest position he can and leans his head back against the headrest, waiting for the plane to take off.
He does his best to keep from looking directly at Andrew. He knows that the other man won’t appreciate the overt attention during what he’d probably defines as a moment of vulnerability, never mind that Neil has seen him like this before. (Never mind that Andrew has borne witness to Neil himself having more breakdowns than he can count.)
It’s not long until the plane is veering towards the end of the tarmac, picking up speed as it goes so that Neil is pushed back against his seat. Then they’re off the ground, tilting up towards the sky, and Andrew’s hand is gripping the armrest between them so tightly that his scarred knuckles are bone-white.
It takes a good fifteen minutes for the plane to level off, and by then Neil wonders if Andrew’s fingers have become one with the plastic under them. He hovers a hand above Andrew’s, watching the way Andrew purposefully relaxes his muscles after Neil draws attention to them.
Andrew turns his hand to face upwards and reaches for Neil’s, twining their fingers together and resting them back on the armrest. Neil brushes his thumb back and forth over the skin on the back of Andrew’s hand in what he hopes is a calming manner.
Eventually Andrew lets go of some of the tension in his body, seemingly settling into the long flight ahead of them. Neil hopes that Andrew can maintain that sense of calm. While an eight hour flight isn’t that long in the grand scheme of international travel, he knows that it’s long enough to get a little stir-crazy even when you aren’t afraid of heights.
The first hour or so passes that way with minimal interruption—the flight attendants are their annoying peppy selves, of course, and Andrew does pull his hand back at one point so that he can eat a pretzel—until Neil notices that his hearing has gone slightly muffled. He takes his earbud out so that he can plug his nose and try to pop the bubble of pressure in his ears, but he doesn’t immediately put it back in afterwards. After a few minutes, Andrew follows suit and removes his side of the earbuds too.
“Excited to see Germany?” Neil asks, leaning closer so that his voice can be heard over the hum of the plane and the circulation of air around them. Neil doesn’t bother asking if Andrew is excited for Nicky’s wedding, or the chance it represents to see the rest of the foxes; though Andrew’s relationship with them has improved over the years, he still treats most of them with tolerant indifference.
“Neil, Neil. When have you ever known me to be excited?” Andrew retorts.
“I thought you would at least be excited to drive on the autobahn—I did see the email about what car you picked from the rental service.” Andrew had picked some sporty two-door thing, all sleek lines low to the ground. Though they’ll barely be able to fit the suitcases in the trunk, Neil can just imagine Andrew flooring it on the highway, watching the speedometer tick past 80 miles an hour.
“What use is an athlete’s salary if you’re not living up to the stereotyped indulgences every once in a while? I’m just fitting the script.”
“Because we’ve been so good at fitting the script, historically speaking,” Neils says with an amused quirk of his lips.
Andrew sighs. “And, historically speaking, whose fault does that usually end up being? Historically speaking, who has the greater habit of poking the proverbial bear?”
Neil can at least concede the point on that one. “If this is about what I said to the press the other day—”
“Trust me, Neil. I am more than used to you back-talking reporters by now. I just do not think that management has gotten the memo on that yet.”
“I’m sure that they’ll have cooled down by the time we get back,” Neil reasons.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Andrew parrots back at him with a slight roll of his eyes.
Neil can’t help but laugh a little. “Anyways, I’m looking forward to our vacation. And since I’m not being chased by the mob at the moment, I’m sure that Germany will be a more enjoyable experience than the last time I was here.”
“You don’t talk about it much. When you lived there before.”
“There’s nothing much to tell, really. When you’re on the run for so long, everywhere starts to feel the same. Your name changes and the people around you are different, yeah, but your habits stay the same. Keep to yourself, don’t give too much away, don’t let yourself get complacent…” Neil shrugs. “What do you want to know?”
“What you’re willing to share,” Andrew answers.
One after one, the memories start to come back to Neil. They spill from his lips, a little stilted from how long and hard he has shoved them away from himself.
Neil remembers shortly after the start of their life on the run when his class at school had taken a trip to the Cologne Christmas market. After a lot of contemplation, his mom had decided it would look more suspicious if he was the only one in his class to not attend. And so, after hours of her telling Neil over and over again to keep his head down, keep an eye out, stay in the center of his classmates where it would be more difficult to pick him out—he was allowed to go.
After a couple hours of walking around with his class and seeing them all spending their money, smiling and laughing, Neil had bought a stuffed bear from one of the many vendors lining the streets. It had been small and white with a blue ribbon around its neck, and its softness reminded him of the plush blanket that sat on his bed back in Baltimore—one of the few comforts he had been able to rely on, no matter how hellish the day had been.
When Mary had seen the bear, she'd slapped him upside the head for wasting money.
We don’t know when we’ll be able to reach another cache, you stupid boy, she had said. She had painfully broken down the costs of their lives for him—how much it took for each fake ID or passport, how much it took to pay off suspicious landlords and car dealers, how she had to pay extra to get guns and bullets without tracking numbers.
When Mary had come to pick him up from school a month later, a panicked look in her eyes, duffle bags packed and new identities tucked in alongside them in the back seat, she had left the bear behind.
By the end of the story, Neil can see that Andrew’s jaw is clenched, and his grip on Neil’s hand has tightened. Not enough to be painful, but enough to be a grounding pressure anchoring Neil to the present.
Andrew is silent for a few minutes, but then he’s giving up a memory of his own. Andrew tells Neil about the set of toy cars he’d had when he was younger and still bouncing from foster home to foster home. He’d kept the three of them for years even as the paint had begun to chip off, as the wheel axles had started to loosen.
That was, until one of his older foster brothers had taken one and broken it beneath his foot. He’d tried to use threats of doing the same to the others to gain leverage over Andrew, get him to do as he was told. Instead of giving in, Andrew had taken the other two cars outside and he had smashed them himself. He’d gathered the pieces and buried them at the bottom of the trash, knowing that at least then they couldn’t be held against him.
“What a pair we are, huh?” Neil asks, voice rough, knowing that his own grip on Andrew’s hand has tightened as well. He’d gladly put the effort into finding that motherfucker and hurting him for the hurt he did to Andrew—for being one of the many who taught Andrew that it was better to get rid of his happiness than let other people take it from him and use it against him.
“It’s not the world that’s cruel,” Andrew responds, seemingly reading Neil’s thoughts.
“It’s the people in it,” Neil finishes, and they’re silent for some time.
Eventually Andrew starts to tense again, and before Neil can ask what the problem is—is he just now remembering how high up they are, or does he maybe need Neil to stand so that Andrew can get up and move?—Andrew says “What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now.”
Ah, right. With how close their connecting flight had been and Andrew’s insistence on getting food, they hadn’t had a chance to seek out one of the designated smoking areas. Neil checks the time and sees that they haven’t had a smoke for a good six hours by that point.
Thankfully, he had planned for this. Neil loosens his seatbelt so that he can bend over to reach his backpack, and within moments he’s straightening up with a small box in his grasp.
“What the fuck, Neil,” Andrew says as he’s able to make out the lettering on the box.
Neil sticks out his tongue as he opens the box and peels off the backing of one of the nicotine patches inside before gently poking it onto the back of Andrew’s hand.
“How would you feel about being pushed out of an airplane 35,000 feet above the ground?” Andrew casually inquires.
“I’d be dragging you with me, so I guess I could ask you the same question.”
Despite his threat, Andrew doesn't remove the patch. As they choose one of the shitty in-flight movies to watch together, Andrew gradually begins to relax again.
After a while, Neil’s neck and back start to complain to him about their position. Neil folds himself into his seat, for once grateful for his smaller stature.
Andrew wordlessly raises the seat divider between them, allowing Neil to scoot closer and lean his head down on Andrew’s shoulder. It’s not the most comfortable resting spot—Andrew’s arms are corded with muscle from daily exercise and conditioning, so they’re not that soft of a cushion, and airplane seats are by their very definition uncomfortable.
But Neil manages to nod off despite all that, his head pillowed on Andrew’s shoulder and their hands resting tangled together on Neil’s thigh.