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It takes about a year for Neil to find the pattern, and once he does, he wonders how he didn’t notice it sooner.
Things end, and Andrew… leaves.
He’s still there, physically. Neil can only tell some part of him is gone because when it happens, Andrew begins to treat him the way he does everyone else. The wall goes up. His mouth stays shut. His body language screams: Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me.
Otherwise, he’s normal. He gets out of bed when his alarm goes off. He starts the coffee machine and makes his usual bowl of cereal and performs the rest of his morning routine (which, unfortunately for both of them, includes moisturizing Neil’s face. By force, if necessary.) Class, practice, homework — everything that has structure continues to have structure. Every responsibility and duty is fulfilled.
The difference is in the in-between. That is when Andrew leaves. No video games, no ice cream runs, no tugging Neil off to the bedroom or some other private-enough corner of campus. Just cigarettes and liquor and staring unseeingly into the distance.
The morning after they move out of the dorms — officially marking the end of Neil’s sophomore year — Neil wakes up first. He shifts up onto his elbow so that he can look at Andrew, who is on his side facing away from Neil. Sunlight floats in through the windows of Andrew’s small bedroom in Columbia, glinting off Andrew’s soft, white-blond hair. Neil wants to reach out and run his fingers through it, but he resolves to wait.
He knows the pattern now. He watched it play out only a month ago. The week leading up to the championship, Andrew was the calm eye of the storm. He smacked the anxiety out of Kevin, kissed it out of Neil, and played so spectacularly that by the last ten minutes of the game, Neil knew they’d hold their lead.
When they got home, Andrew didn’t lose his steady presence. But Neil lost the rest of him for days. Eventually, they all geared up for finals, and Andrew came back to Neil like nothing had happened.
Now, Andrew’s face looks softer than it ever does when he’s awake. Neil stares. Andrew once said it was creepy for Neil to watch him sleep, but when Neil asked if he should stop doing it, Andrew told him he didn’t care. It’s permission enough.
The bathroom door bangs shut downstairs, and Andrew tenses, eyes blinking open. He relaxes almost immediately, rolling onto his back and frowning when he finds Neil already looking at him. He reaches up a hand to cover Neil’s eyes, and Neil’s mouth twitches in amusement.
Andrew yawns, giving Neil his sight back so that he can cover his mouth. Neil watches Andrew’s eyes squeeze shut, the flutter of lashes as they open once more. His gaze is clear when it settles back on Neil — focused, present, not as convincingly irritated as Andrew would like to believe. Neil reaches out, finally, to run a hand through Andrew’s hair, and Andrew leans into the touch.
The school year has ended, but Andrew hasn’t yet left. It’s not always immediate, Neil knows. After the holidays this year, Andrew stayed until four days into the new year. Neil hadn’t understood what triggered it at the time — if anything, he’d been waiting for it to come earlier, as they both lived through a series of awful anniversaries.
Andrew studies Neil’s face.
“It’s too early for you to be thinking,” Andrew rasps. He rolls onto his side again, this time facing Neil. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
Neil settles his head back onto the pillow, fingers still working through Andrew’s hair as he searches for the words he wants to use. Andrew’s eyes narrow as his patience runs thin.
“I’m thinking about how you’re probably going to go away again,” Neil says. Andrew’s brow furrows. “It’s okay if you do. I don’t mind when you need space. I just want to know if I can do anything to make it easier.”
Andrew takes Neil’s wrist from his hair and holds it in the narrow space between them.
“I never go anywhere,” Andrew says.
Neil grimaces. “I don’t know what to call what I mean. Like, after championships. Or New Years. After big things. You get distant.”
Andrew shoves Neil’s wrist into his chest and sits up, putting more mattress between them. Neil curses internally. If Andrew hadn’t been on his way to shutting down before, Neil may have just pushed him to it himself.
But Andrew doesn’t get out of the bed. He sighs, pushes his hair out of his face, and stares blankly out the window.
“They’re called mood episodes,” Andrew says, voice flat. “What goes up must come down.”
It’s therapy speak, a vocabulary Neil does not possess.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
Andrew flicks his gaze to him before looking back out the window. He twirls his pointer finger around his own ear a few times. “My wires are crossed. Bee says the best way to treat it is with medicine.”
Neil sits up at that. Andrew meets his eyes.
“Don’t,” Andrew says, even though Neil wasn’t even going to do anything. “I’m not taking it, and she’s not going to make me.”
“Okay,” Neil says. “What are other ways to treat it?”
Andrew’s nostrils flare in irritation. “Routine. Exercise. Distractions. Sunshine and rainbows. Asking for help.”
Acidity drips from that last bit. Neil raises his eyebrows. Andrew scoffs and looks away again.
“You can ask me,” Neil says, quietly. “If you need to.”
Andrew is eerily still, face illuminated in the light from outside. His already-pale eyelashes look as if they’re glowing.
“I know,” Andrew says, jaw clenched. He stands and crosses the room, but pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “You already help. Do whatever you normally do.” He turns to Neil, and his expression is unexpectedly intense. “But do not act like I’ve left. I am not going anywhere.”
He waits for Neil to nod before opening the door and heading downstairs.
Ten minutes later, when Neil joins Andrew in the kitchen, coffee is ready and cereal boxes are on the counter.
Twenty minutes later, Andrew rubs lotion onto Neil’s face, adding a second, fouler-smelling cream to the part of Neil’s deepest scar that still stretches painfully when he smiles.
Two days later, Andrew is quiet, but he is not gone. He sits on the steps of the front porch as the sun sets, far from Nicky, Kevin, and Aaron’s loud squabbling in the living room, and his body language says: Keep out. Do not enter. Fuck off.
Even so, Neil sits at the other end of the step and helps himself to a cigarette from the pack at Andrew’s feet. After a moment, Neil places his hand, palm up, on the step between them. Minutes pass — enough that Neil nearly pulls away and leaves Andrew alone — before Andrew reaches down and wraps his fingers around Neil’s hand. He doesn’t look at Neil. He doesn’t look at anything, really. But he lightly squeezes Neil’s hand. Neil squeezes back.