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The first thing that should have tipped Andrew off that something was up with Neil was that he pulled his hand away from Andrew where their pinkies were linked.
Neil needing some space from him wasn’t alarming per se, but it was unusual. There could be any number of reasons he’d pulled away. One of which could be the foxes that were around them in the girls’ dorm. Although, the only lighting in the room was coming from the animated movie playing in front of them so he doubted that anyone would be able to see them. So it probably wasn’t that.
It could be for no reason at all.
Andrew didn’t dwell on it.
The second thing that should have tipped Andrew off was when, a few minutes later, Neil climbed off of the couch altogether and sat on the floor, craning his neck forward as if trying to get as close to the action as possible.
That movement did give Andrew pause. Andrew narrowed his eyes at the top of Neil’s head, trying to see if Neil would give him any hints as to what was going on. The fact that Neil couldn’t feel Andrew staring at him and didn’t turn around was another significant clue.
He wondered if he was getting too dependent on Neil. With that thought, he elected to ignore Neil entirely.
Until the third and final sign. Which was less of a subtle sign and more of a blatant siren.
Olaf onscreen was rapidly changing shape as Kristoff shouted out the different objects he was turning into. Until–
“Ooh, Elsa!” Kristoff yelled.
The most delighted squeal of a giggle that Andrew could ever remember hearing pealed out from somewhere in the room.
It took Andrew a second to figure out the source of the sound. He finally stared down at Neil and he could tell he wasn’t the only one who did so, although the others likely had more shock on their faces than Andrew had.
Neil was oblivious to the stares for a few seconds. Then he abruptly became aware of them, and his head swiveled around the room, swiftly taking in all the foxes’ stares in the relative darkness.
“Neil, that was adorable!” Nicky exclaimed.
Neil’s shoulders pushed back as he tried to gain a few inches of height from his position on the floor.
Andrew waited for what was bound to be a scathing retort from Neil. But–
“Um. O– Okay,” Neil stammered.
Andrew could tell the foxes around him were frowning down at Neil and Andrew felt himself mirroring their sentiments.
Neil’s voice sounded off. It was slightly pitched up, and Andrew was certain he’d never heard Neil audibly sound that nervous in the entire time they’d known each other. It almost sounded like some anxious child was doing a Neil impression and failing miserably.
In fact. That was exactly what it sounded like. And that was probably exactly what was happening. Neil had mentioned to Andrew that he’d been front-stuck for a few days now, but it wasn’t like Andrew would forget that his DID existed entirely.
Andrew slid down from the couch and sat in front of Probably-Not-Neil. As soon as Andrew was situated, Probably-Not-Neil ducked their head to stare down at the bit of floor space between them.
Which, if this person were trying to convince everyone to calm down and believe that they were Neil, was the exact opposite thing to do.
“You’re not Neil,” Andrew declared.
Probably-Not-Neil shrunk in on themself and their eyes briefly met Andrew’s face as they peeked up.
“Am too,” Probably-Not-Neil murmured, again in that voice of a child trying to seem older than they were.
This was definitely not Neil then.
Andrew was quiet for a moment, deliberating how he should approach this situation. He heard the movie pause behind him. With how much time he spent one-on-one with Neil, he’d been the first point of external contact for plenty of Neil’s alters, but he’d never met someone as young and unaware as this person seemed.
Andrew was not a fan of meeting new people but, he begrudgingly admitted to himself, he knew that he would do whatever it took to help Neil navigate his DID.
Andrew decided that it was probably best if he started from the beginning.
“Do you know what DID is?”
Definitely-Not-Neil perked up in excitement. Their eagerness at being called on like they were the goody-two-shoes in class seemed to overshadow their insistence on playing the part as Neil.
“O’ course! It’s, um, Dissocive Identy Disorder.” They beamed.
Close enough. If they knew what it was called, they probably already knew something about what it was. “Right. Do you know that you have DID?” Andrew asked next.
“Um.” They shifted in their spot. “Yeah.”
“Good. Do you know who I am?” Perhaps it was presumptuous of Andrew to start with himself, but he was the one who interacted most with the alters, so it seemed like a logical opening.
They nodded nervously. “Andrew, right?”
“That’s right.” Andrew nodded back. If they knew who Andrew was, then maybe they knew to trust him too. “Now, listen carefully. Everyone in this room knows that you are not Neil.” Andrew was glad they spent most of their movie nights without the freshmen. “And that’s okay. You are safe here, with me and with these people. We will not hurt you for being yourself, alright?”
Definitely-Not-Neil finally looked up and made eye contact with Andrew. Naked hope and disbelief shone in their blue stare. Their eyes made a sweeping gaze around the room at the foxes around them and then settled on Andrew’s again.
“Really?” They were barely hiding the childish lilt to their voice anymore.
“Yes,” Andrew replied.
“Okay,” they said, wiggling a little in their spot.
“Okay.” Andrew paused. He wanted to ask them more questions, but he didn’t want to overwhelm them either. Maybe the best approach would be to leave it up to them. “Do you want to tell me about yourself?”
“Yeah, okay!” They beamed. “Um, I’m Johnny. I’m nine.” Nine? Andrew did not let himself hope that Johnny wasn’t a trauma holder. Hope would get him nowhere in a situation like this. “Um… My hair is blond. But not like your blond, like a different blond.” With every sentence Johnny said, they seemed to get more comfortable. “And, um, I’m smaller than this so these legs and arms are too long for me.” Johnny waved the aforementioned arms around as if in demonstration. “Um… Oh! I use he/him pronouns.” He said each syllable meticulously, like he was quoting someone who’d taught him to say it. “Um… I like planes and cats and chocolate.” He ended his incongruous list with another full body wiggle.
When it seemed that nothing more was forthcoming, Andrew nodded. “Thank you for sharing, Johnny.” Andrew searched for something else to ask or add and came up empty for now. “Do you want to keep watching the movie?”
“No,” Johnny replied, indignant. “It’s your turn now.” He blinked at Andrew.
“My… turn?” Andrew said.
“Yeah! Can you tell me about yourself, Andrew?” More blinking.
Andrew heard huffs and coughs around the room that he was aware were just the foxes trying not to laugh at him lest they get a knife to the stomach. With how focused he’d been on Johnny, he’d almost forgotten they were still here. At least they’d kept their mouths shut and their reactions to themselves so far during this interaction.
“Yes,” Andrew decided. It was only fair after all. Andrew wouldn’t be the one to teach a nine-year-old that life wasn’t fair. “I am Andrew. I am twenty. My hair is also blond but apparently a different blond to your blond. I am 5 feet tall. I use he/him pronouns. I like ice cream and cars and knives.” He added the last one to remind the foxes that he was armed and would not take being made fun of for playing along to a child’s wishes lying down.
“Thank you for sharing, Andrew,” Johnny replied sincerely.
Andrew tried to inject the same amount of sincerity into his voice as Johnny had. “You’re welcome.”
“Okay.” He did a full body turn and sat cross legged with his hands in his lap to face the opposite end of the couch. “Your turn,” he said to Kevin brightly.
Kevin’s eyes widened. “My turn?” he said, flabbergasted.
“Uh-huh. Can you tell me about yourself?” Apparently Johnny’s anxiety had worn off as soon as he’d realized he was allowed to be comfortable around them.
Panic swept through the room as the other foxes grasped what fate was likely coming their way.
“Uh, sure, Johnny. Uh, I’m, um, Kevin. I’m twenty-one. I’m 6 foot 2. I use he/him pronouns. I, uh… I like exy and history and, uh, apples.”
“Hair,” Andrew prompted.
Kevin turned to Andrew. “Hair?” He frowned. “My hair?”
Andrew stayed silent.
“Why would I– He can see what my hair looks like,” Kevin muttered.
“Hair, Kevin,” Andrew repeated, accompanying the statement with a glare this time.
Kevin huffed. “And my hair is dark brown,” he added reluctantly.
“Thank you for sharing, Kevin,” Johnny answered, just as sincerely as before.
Kevin nodded awkwardly.
Johnny turned to Nicky, who was seated on the chair next to Kevin. “Your turn,” he encouraged cheerily.
Nicky, as expected, responded with as much gusto as if he’d had days to prepare this bio, even going so far as to list five things he liked instead of three.
Johnny, as was now becoming expected, thanked him for the information, and then moved onto the next person in the circle, which was Dan.
And so around it went, with some people’s answers more animated than others (Aaron gave his bio with the same enthusiasm he would give pulling his own teeth out, but he did participate, which wasn’t an insignificant step), and with people chipping in to remind each other of the prompts or to argue over details like heights (Matt insisted he was 6 foot 4 and a half, but Dan maintained that it was maximum 6 foot 4 and a quarter) and likes (“Alli, just because you wear a lot of green doesn’t mean it’s actually your favorite color,” Nicky asserted).
But eventually, after they all had taken a much longer time than probably anyone expected, Johnny ended off with a sincere, “Thank you for sharing, Renee.”
“You’re welcome, Johnny.” Renee gave her most beatific smile.
“Can we get back to the movie now?” Aaron grumbled.
“Uh-huh!” Johnny turned back to the screen, seemingly unaffected by Aaron’s lack of excitement. “I haven’t seen this one.”
“Have you seen the first Frozen movie?” Dan asked.
“No! There’s another one like this?” Johnny was clearly ecstatic over this news.
“Yeah! There is.” Dan deliberated. “Do you want to see it first?”
Aaron groaned softly. Andrew guessed that it was quiet enough for Johnny not to have heard but he assumed Johnny wouldn’t work out what the huff was for anyway. The foxes had just watched the first Frozen movie a couple of weeks ago, so a repeated viewing so soon wouldn’t be ideal.
“No, um, I like this. It’s funny. We can keep watching.”
“Okay. We’ll do the first one another time then, huh?” Dan promised.
Johnny’s eyes widened and his mouth popped open.
It was perhaps a disproportionate reaction to the casual suggestion Dan had made. But Andrew supposed it was confirmation that they wanted him around. Confirmation that Andrew was telling the truth when he’d said that Johnny could be himself.
Johnny gathered himself after a few seconds and nodded vigorously, moving his entire upper body with the action, flashing a grin.
“That would be awesome!” he exclaimed.
As someone pressed play on the TV, Andrew rearranged himself so that he was sitting next to Johnny in front of the space he’d vacated on the couch. It was a facsimile of the positions he and Neil had been in before, but there was now some distance between their arms where previously their pinkies had interlinked.
Andrew was once again struck with the thought that perhaps he was too dependent on Neil. He tried to dismiss the thought as not worth considering but then some part of him that sounded eerily like Bee advised against it.
So maybe he was dependent on Neil. Was that actually a bad thing? He didn’t know how the situation with Johnny would have panned out without Andrew there, but it probably wouldn’t have ended up going as well as it did. So, he reasoned with himself, maybe Neil and his system were dependent on him. It couldn’t be a bad thing if they weren’t being unhealthy about it. If it was reciprocal.
He decided that he’d thought enough about this. It wasn’t a bad thing, and that was good enough for him.
He tuned back into the movie as Johnny snickered at Kristoff doing the Sven voice to appease Olaf.
That was far from the only reaction Johnny had during the next hour and a half. He laughed at the funny parts and sang at the singing parts and sniffled at the sad parts. Andrew was surprised that there wasn’t a lack of sadness in this children’s movie. Andrew himself didn’t shed a tear, but he could recognize that shedding a tear wasn’t an atypical reaction to the events happening onscreen, as evidenced by the amount of sniffing he could hear from around the room.
Eventually, the credits started rolling, and as the movie ended, Johnny’s near-monologue began. The foxes did their best to participate in what was becoming an almost scene-for-scene recap of the film as Johnny reviewed his favorite parts, but Johnny was barely letting them get a word in edgewise and he seemed content to keep going on his own.
After a few minutes of this, when it was clear Johnny wasn’t letting up any time soon, Aaron got up to leave without saying a word.
Johnny let out a “Goodnight, Aaron” in between two of his thoughts but didn’t leave any time for Aaron to respond or anyone else to echo the farewell before he kept going on about Olaf calling for a ‘Samantha’ who didn’t exist.
Kevin left shortly thereafter and was granted the same sendoff of “Goodnight, Kevin” from Johnny.
The remaining foxes gave Johnny their full attention for as long as they could, but it was clear that they didn’t have Johnny’s youthful energy, and also it was later in the night than any of them had prepared for, after the ‘Can you tell me about yourself’ discursion that they’d had.
Matt was seated on the floor between Dan’s legs, and it was on the third time that Matt shook himself awake after hitting his head on Dan’s knee that Johnny seemed to notice something was up.
He stopped himself mid-word, turned to Andrew and requested, “Can you take me to my bed now?”
Andrew imagined there was an inaudible sigh of unanimous relief in the room.
“Sure,” Andrew acquiesced.
They all staggered to their feet, exhaustion making their motions sluggish. Except for Johnny who bounced up like he was ready to run a marathon. They said their ‘goodnight’s to each other, and Nicky, Andrew and Johnny left the girls and Matt to the dorm, Johnny walking slightly like Bambi in an effort to get used to his aforementioned abnormally long limbs.
As they dropped off Nicky at his dorm on their way to the one Andrew and Neil shared with Kevin, Andrew noticed Johnny start to lose steam. By the time they made it through their door, Johnny was barely paying attention to where he was walking, instead fully focused on blinking repeatedly and rubbing his temples.
“Are you okay?” Andrew prodded.
Johnny glanced at Andrew for a second before going back to focusing on the middle distance. “Yeah. Just– someone’s here.”
“Okay. Do you know who it is?”
Johnny was silent as he presumably asked the alter for their name.
“Oh! It’s Neil,” he said.
“What is he saying?”
“He’s confused. He’s asking me what’s been going on. I’m tellin’ him about the movie.” Johnny grinned.
Andrew wasn’t sure that that was the recap Neil had been hoping for, but if Andrew had had to go through basically watching the movie twice with how thorough Johnny’s retelling was, then it was only fair for Neil to hear it.
Andrew went through his nighttime routine with Johnny as a silent shadow. Andrew wasn’t entirely sure if the silence was because he was so absorbed in the recitation of Frozen II’s best plot points to Neil or if it was because of dissociation, but Johnny was going through the motions nonetheless, which Andrew decided was the important thing.
When they were done, Andrew guided Johnny into Neil’s bunk and started the climb up into his own. As he was halfway there, Johnny whispered a “Goodnight, Andrew” keeping his voice down so as not wake Kevin who was snoring lightly in his bed.
“Goodnight, Johnny,” Andrew replied and completed his ascent.
He got himself under the covers and just breathed. He listened to Johnny’s breathing below him, waiting for it to even out. He didn’t want to fall asleep until he was sure Johnny and Neil were okay, because he knew Neil and his alters sometimes needed help grounding themselves when they felt particularly switch-y.
Andrew was not quite asleep and not quite awake a few minutes later when he heard Johnny get up out of the bottom bunk. Andrew turned his head, and even in the darkness he could see the attentiveness in Neil’s eyes.
“I think Johnny finally went to sleep,” Neil told Andrew quietly, in obvious relief. “Can I come up there?” he asked.
That was Neil, alright. Always asking, never assuming. Andrew could count on one hand the number of times he and Neil hadn’t shared a bed in the past few months and yet here was Neil, still making sure it was okay with Andrew.
“Yes,” Andrew answered, because what else would he have said.
Neil climbed the ladder, and he and Andrew shuffled until they were laying side by side under the sheets. It was a tight fit, made even more so by the bit of distance they left between each other, but they squeezed up against the railings on either side of the mattress to make it work.
Andrew breathed deeply, finally at ease, and felt his muscles relax as his eyes closed.
Just before he drifted off, he felt a light prod at his hand. It went away quickly. It was just a request. No insistence. No pressure.
Andrew linked pinkies with Neil, squeezed once and let sleep take him away.