Chapter Text
Neil is just on a quick grocery run to get ice cream for Andrew and a few other essentials when he spots a forest animal colouring book lying atop boxes of pasta. He usually isn’t one for impulse buys, saving money ingrained in him by his mother, but somehow the book still ends up in his shopping cart and he walks through another few aisles until he finds coloured pencils to go with it.
When he gets back to Fox Tower, he puts all the groceries away and then picks up the colouring book again. They don’t have a table in their dorm and Neil doesn’t feel like sitting at his desk, so he lies down on the floor instead, placing the colouring book in front of him and the pencils slightly to his right. He still has at least half an hour until Andrew and Kevin are done with their classes for the day, which gives him ample time to figure out why he was tempted to buy a colouring book in the first place.
He looks through the first few pages of the book but stops short when he finds a fox. He shrugs, thinking now that he has it, he might as well use it, and takes a bright orange pencil to colour it in.
When the door opens half an hour later, Neil is still colouring. The fox hasn’t taken him long to colour, so he moved on first to the badger and now to the rabbit.
“Finally getting more familiar with your true form?” Andrew teases but Neil can tell without even looking at him that he’s not judging him. It’s a relief because at some point during the last half hour Neil realized that he likes colouring, at least as long as it’s as low stakes as this. He’s seen colouring books made specifically for adults before and they always looked way too complicated and detailed for him to enjoy colouring them.
Andrew putters around the dorm for a few minutes before he sinks into the beanbag chair closest to Neil and turns on the TV, switching channels until he finds a nature documentary.
When he’s done colouring the rabbit, Neil gets up to get himself something to drink as well as a carrot to snack on (yes, he’s aware of the irony). He returns a minute later to the sight of Andrew colouring in the owl on the page opposite from the rabbit in a rainbow of colours. Neil has to stop in his tracks to stare for a second (or ten). Andrew seems focused on the picture and almost relaxed but there’s a bit of tension in his shoulders, probably apprehension about Neil’s reaction. Neil won’t have that.
“That colour scheme doesn’t seem very practical,” he says, easily accepting Andrew’s thievery. It’s not a critique, just him being a smartass and when Andrew relaxes just a tiny bit more, he knows it was the right thing to say.
“Shut up,” Andrew says and stretches to reach a bright green pencil. Neil pushes it into his reach with his foot and just smiles at Andrew when he glares up at him.
Neil has just sat down on another of the beanbag chairs when the door to their dorm opens again and Kevin comes in.
As much as Andrew likes to claim he doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion, least of all Kevin’s, the tension still returned to his shoulders the instant Kevin’s key turned in the lock. Neil feels it creep into his body as well like it is somehow contagious. But Kevin doesn’t look up from his phone when he comes in, doesn’t even really seem to notice them aside from a quick look at the TV that’s still playing the nature documentary. Neil’s shoulders relax again when Kevin disappears into the bedroom, probably to watch Exy highlight videos or edit one of his own. But he knows it’s only a matter of time until Kevin will actually notice the colouring book – or books rather, since he plans to get one for Andrew as well.
The inevitable happens a few days later. Neil has bought two more colouring books – one with sea animals and one with mythical creatures – as well as another pack of colouring pencils the day before and has just settled down on the floor with Andrew to start colouring when Kevin enters their dorm, this time with nothing else taking up his attention.
Andrew puts away the pencil he already picked up and looks up at Kevin, daring him to say something.
Kevin looks at them perplexed for a few seconds before something seems to fall into place. “Oh, so this is why you’re not picking as many fights on court lately.”
Neil throws one of the new pencils – which he was disappointed to find coloured only about as well as a wooden stick someone dipped in paint on one side – at Kevin, hitting him in the chest. A second later another pencil hits Kevin’s stomach courtesy of Andrew. Kevin throws up his hands in exasperation. “Whatever. Just don’t neglect practise because of this.”
“Fuck off,” Andrew mutters.
Kevin thankfully does, disappearing into the bedroom once again.
Neil shares a short look with Andrew, silently agreeing that they should keep the new pencils no matter how terrible they are to draw with and then finally opens the water animal colouring book and starts colouring a baby seal.