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1389
“You know, it is good to be out amongst the humans every once in a while.” Renee glares and Andrew while Andrew glares at yet another man too drunk to avoid running into him.
Andrew doesn’t bother responding, and the two of them stand in silence for several seconds till Renee decides on her second approach.
“Maybe you will learn something from them.”
“There is nothing they could teach me.”
Andrew has seen humans. He has been around, observing, for thousands of years. He has seen the nonsensical patterns of life. Humans think and act in ways he has never understood. He has done this with Renee before: follow her as she reaps the dead. None of them are ever ready to go. Death is just as natural as birth, yet it is feared. All so they can continue the inane act of living. Still, he didn’t lie to his sister, it’s just that he doesn’t believe the humans have any logical explanations to give to him, rather than Andrew already knowing everything there is to know about them.
She opens her mouth to retaliate, but pauses when a voice pierces through the loud chatter of the pub.
“I’ve seen death. I know what death is.”
It wasn’t hard to find the source of the voice. He was standing, one foot stood on the seat at his table, a mug in his hand, though he didn’t look even slightly intoxicated.
“Death it… is stupid.” the man continues. Andrew doesn’t know what to direct his focus to: The man’s words, or his face. “Nobody has to die. The only reason people die is because everyone dies it. You all just go along with it. But not me. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to die.”
The owner of the voice holds his mug up with a wide triumphant grin that showed off a single dimple in his left cheek. His eyes are a bright blue, easy to see even with a quarter of the room between the two of them. His hair is an almost unnatural type of red and falls too far down his face, though he doesn’t even seem to notice whenever it covers his eyes. Andrew wonders how he hadn’t spotted the man sooner.
And he wants to live, he says. In a voice that sounds like a song, this man says he never wants to die.
“Neil Josten,” Renee informs him, because Death knows everyone who will eventually knock on its door. “I could grant his wish.” She latches onto this third approach—low hanging fruit in Andrew’s opinion.
“Death comes for every man.” The man closest to Neil Josten responds.
“You don’t know that.” His confidence doesn’t wane in the slightest. “I might get lucky—there’s always a first time. There’s so much to do, so many things to see.”
Third times a charm they say. Andrew clenches his jaw and caves in.
“Why would any sensible creature crave an eternity of this?”
“You could find out.” Renee responds with her soft serene smile that says you gave her exactly what she wanted. More flies with honey and what not.
“He won’t last a century before he’s begging for death.”
She looks back to Andrew from Neil, allowing her smile to hit him full force. “Are you going to tell him, or should I?”
Andrew is already walking towards Neil, who hasn’t moved from where he has propped himself.
“You say you aren’t going to die?” He doesn’t bother raising his voice amidst the rowdy cheering. Neil hears him anyways.
Neil pauses for a just moment, not even long enough for his grin to fade. He steps off the table so Andrew doesn’t have to crane his neck up at him, and Andrew is shocked to see that with all that bravado, the man stands barely taller than Andrew himself. Up closer Andrew can see his smile is slightly crooked, but once Neil is sturdy on the ground, he cocks his head just enough his smile looks straight again.
“Yeah.”
“Then you must tell me what it’s like. Here, on this day, in one hundred years.”
Neil’s smile gets bigger, but he isn’t laughing at Andrew. In fact, his eyes sharpen into something serious. For the first time tonight, Neil’s eyes trace over Andrew, sizing him up. Andrew knows the look: looking for a puzzle to solve. Andrew tells himself he doesn’t care whether Neil finds one or not.
“A hundred years’ time, on this day?”
Andrew just stares, unimpressed at the reiteration. Neil doesn’t seem bothered. His eyes lighten up again.
“Then I’ll see you in 1489.”
1489
It isn’t hard to find Neil in the pub. His red hair stands out in the crowd and his voice is loud as ever, even with no one to talk to.
As soon as Neil sees Andrew his eyes sharpen again. It has been a century, but Andrew hasn’t forgotten that look. He has thought about it often since their last encounter.
“How did you know I’d still be here?”
Andrew doesn’t answer and it doesn’t take long for Neil to give up on the question before trying again.
“Who are you?”
The gap before his question gets shorter this time.
“What do you want from me?”
But Andrew is sick of his questions. He cuts to the reason he is here. “Tell me what it’s like; what you have been doing.”
No human in history has lived over a century like Neil now has. Andrew is curious how you even take up the time. He is curious how Neil doesn’t look at him with broken eyes. Andrew has been alive for centuries, millennia, but Andrew has a job to do that keeps him busy, and he will live till that job is done. How can Neil beg for life with seemingly nothing to hold him up?
Andrew is half surprised when Neil actually gives up on his questions and answers Andrew’s.
“Living.”
Andrew doesn’t see how that is an answer. He stays silent hoping Neil will continue.
“Everything is changing: Chimneys, playing cards… it’s brilliant.”
Andrew doesn’t understand that. He didn’t get how this is fun. He doesn’t know why Neil is still smiling.
“But what have you been doing?”
“Soldiering mostly. But I’ve just started learning to sail. I want to explore.”
“So, you still want to live.” Andrew would think there is only one possible answer to the question, yet he already knows it’s not the one Neil is going to give.
Turns out, Neil doesn’t give any answer.
“Is this why you’ve…done whatever you did—made me immortal? You want to understand human life.”
It’s not quite accurate, but it’s close enough to feel unsettling. Andrew keeps his face blank and his mouth closed.
Neil doesn’t seem too bothered by the lack of answer. Andrew thinks Neil has gotten comfortable talking with Andrew far too quick.
“You live your life. And every one hundred years you come back here. Yes, or no?”
Andrew realizes after he said it that it was more of an answer to Neil’s question than he had meant to give.
“Yes.”
His smile is too blinding, his eyes too bright. Andrew stands from the bench and turns away.
It’s too late though, that last smile is burned into Andrew’s memory.
He thinks maybe those eyes will be the death of him.
1589
“What is your name?”
Andrew was already irritated, and he hadn’t even sat down yet. This time he responds to the question with a glare. Neil takes it in stride.
“You come here just to ask me questions. It’s only fair I get to, too.”
Andrew sits down with a little more force than he meant to as his mind stutters.
A century had not been long enough to prepare for Neil Josten.
“A truth for a truth,” Andrew decides. “Every question I ask, you get one in return.”
Neil tries to hide his next smile and doesn’t quite manage it. “Your already ahead though. I should get extra.”
“You get one.”
He looks like he is debating arguing it, but when he opens his mouth only a question comes out. “What is your name?”
Andrew has a lot of names—everyone calls him something else. But ‘Andrew’ is his most human one. It’s what his family calls him. “Andrew.”
Another small, poorly hidden smile. “Andrew,” Neil repeats, and Andrew decides he hates the sound of his name on Neil’s lips.
“What have you done this past century?”
“I finally got to travel. Do you know how big the world is?”
Andrew did. And he knew intimately the vast amount of people occupying the world. He didn’t find it particularly worth mentioning.
“They found new land,” Neil continues. “They call it America; say it’s filled with gold. I can’t wait to visit. It seems like the world keeps growing.”
“It can’t possibly have taken you a century to explore just the Eastern World.”
“You really don’t know much about living, do you? But it’s not your turn.”
Andrew debates getting up and walking out of the pub. Neil speaks again before he’s decided if the rest of this conversation is worth it.
“What do you do when you aren’t sitting in this pub?”
Andrew bites his tongue. “I am King of the Dreamland.”
“Dreams.” Neil looks lost in thought for just a second. “That’s what you are. That doesn’t answer what you do.”
“That is what I do.”
Neil just stares at him, searching. Andrew has no idea what he is looking for in his face.
“I don’t travel just to see; I travel to live. I stay in each country until I got bored or it became too suspicious to stay. I’ve been through most of Europe. Have you ever been something other than the King of the Dreamland?”
“No. Do you still wish to live?”
Neil says yes the same way he did last time: too wide smile, too bright eyes; but there is something else in it too, some kind of hope shines through his eyes, like he had discovered some kind of meaning in the past century.
Andrew had thought just a century would have worn Neil’s soul down to nothing, but he actually seems happier now, after over two centuries of walking the earth.
“Have you-”
“Whatever it is, you can ask it next time. I’m done with this for today.”
Neil doesn’t protest as Andrew stands back up. “See you in 1689.” He says before Andrew can turn away, once again searching Andrew face.
Andrew hopes the next century wears Neil down a little more.
1689
Andrew hadn’t expected his hope to work out.
Neil does look worn down now. In fact, he looks almost unrecognizable. His hair is dull brown now, shorter and messier than it had been before. It looked like he had cut it short at one point then hadn’t bothered to take care of it again. He looks like this century has not been kind.
“What happened to you?” Andrew knows his voice is blank and uninterested, but he can’t quite convince himself he doesn’t care.
“Not your turn.” How Neil can still have that fight in him, Andrew doesn’t know.
Andrew stays silent.
“Your power is in dreams. How have you given me immortality?”
“My sister. You may think of her as the Grim Reaper. Death.”
“Death is your sister.” Neil sounds amazed. He acts like nothing outside of this pub exists to him when he talks to Andrew. He doesn’t seem bothered that he must be starving, or that his hair keeps falling into his eyes. “Your sister, Death, granted me immortality, just because you wanted to see if humans really enjoyed life as much as they acted like it?”
Andrew doesn’t answer him of course, but Neil didn’t really say it like a question anyways.
“What happened to you?” Andrew redirects.
“I stayed too long, talked to the wrong people. They tried to drown me as a witch. I lost everything. More than I thought I could lose was taken from me.”
“No traveling then.”
The laugh that comes out of Neil is something bitter and short lived. “You are just mocking me now. I have been miserable. Do you know how hungry a man can get when he can’t die of starvation, Andrew?”
Andrew had almost forgotten he had given Neil his name—or as close to forgetting Andrew can get, letting the memory fade to the back of his brain, getting too distracted by the rest of what has happened to him this last century.
“I’ve hated ever second of the last 80 years, every bloody second, you know that?”
This is what Andrew has been waiting for. Maybe it came 300 hundred years later than he expected, but every inch of Neil right now is an absolute mess, worn beyond wear. He fought time and time has finally bested him.
“Do you still want to live?”
“Are you crazy?” Neil asks, a little louder than he needs to. “Death is a mug’s game. I got so much to live for. Yes.”
Andrew doesn’t think he can keep the shock off his face this time. He almost asks again, but he knows what he heard.
Andrew realizes he had missed one important detail about the image in front of him: Neil’s eyes are shining. Andrew had gotten so used to that will to live that breaks through his eyes that he hadn’t thought to question that it was still there. He is smiling that same smile he does every time Andrew asks and he can’t wrap his mind around it.
“Why?” His mouth moves on its own, without him deciding to do it.
“You said your sister was who made me immortal, but I have never met her. Do you talk with her often?”
“She is none of your business. Do not ask about her.”
“Ok.” Like it’s simple—and it should be, of course, but it never has been to anyone other than Andrew. “You have never done anything other than be the King of Dreams. Why?”
It’s an infuriating question that Andrew finds almost impossible to answer. He can’t figure out if Neil had known it would be when he asked it, or if he genuinely didn’t understand.
“It’s my job. I made a promise; I will fulfil it.”
“But you could make time for something else while you do whatever you do—a hobby, friends. But you do nothing.”
He thinks about Aaron spending his days on earth, connecting with humanity. He thinks of how Nicky never seems to shut up about Erik and family, inviting them to family dinners and indulging in holidays just for the sake of something to do. He thinks of Renee and her fights for harmony—both in the world and in Andrew. Most of all, he thinks about how he has never thought about it before.
“There is no point.”
Neil opens his mouth, but Andrew asks his questions before he has a chance to talk. Andrew has nothing else he can say on the topic.
“Why would you still want to live?”
“I am not willing to give up on life just because it gets bad. There is still so much to do, and I want the chance to do it. There is always so far to fall, but there’s also so far to rise. That’s life.”
Andrew stays silent for too long. Neil looks like he won something, and Andrew resists the urge to shove his face away. “Ask your next question.”
“Is there anything you want me to try?”
The question stumps Andrew. He is not cut off from the human world, if there was something he wanted he could do it himself. Still, the fact that Neil asks unsettles him.
“You’re living in the gutter. You can’t even get food for yourself.”
“I won’t always.” He rebuts without hesitation. “I will go back up. If you are curious about something I will try it when I do.”
“I want nothing.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to lie.” He hates Neil, Andrew decides.
“I am not lying.”
Neil pauses, but not for long. “Then I will find something you would like myself, and I will come back with a story to tell.”
Now he does force Neil’s face away. He grabs his chin and turns his head, so Andrew is out of Neil’s line of sight. “Do what you want. I do not care. Now get out of my sight.”
He has more questions to ask but he is too tired of Neil now to play another round. They will have to wait.
Andrew can’t quite find it in him to be surprised any more when Neil actually listens to him, and Andrew is left alone.
1789
No one is ever brave enough to ask Andrew anything too personal anymore, but if someone did wonder if Andrew had thought about Neil in any extent this past century, and if Andrew felt like answering, he would have said no.
And if this same nonexistent person thought to question the list of questions Andrew already had prepared for today, Andrew wouldn’t have had a good answer.
“Why are you so desperate to live?”
He does look much better this century. His hair is freshly cut, back to its natural red. He had greeted Andrew like he had been looking forward to this. Andrew hadn’t seen a point in doing the same. To say Neil doesn’t look bothered by it is an understatement; he looks like he had already known how Andrew was going to respond and was content about being proven correct.
“Why are you dead set on hating it?”
Andrew doesn’t bother telling him he’s wrong. Doesn’t say that he has no opinions at all on living or dying, that he is simply here, and he will continue to be here until he isn’t. It’s the way other’s view life that Andrew might say he hates. Or just hates how nonsensical it feels. “Redirection is not an answer. Try again.”
“It is an answer,” Neil argues, but he tries again anyway. “There is so much to it—so much to try. Hope and possibility. Centuries I’ve lived and there are still so many opportunities. I can’t really tell you why I like it so much because I don’t get how you don’t.”
Andrew is trying to figure out how to respond—if he should argue it or not—but Neil moves on to his own question first.
“Why are you still here?” He doesn’t say it in a confrontational way—If Neil was actually frustrated with Andrew’s visits, Neil wouldn’t have shown up, and if he had, Andrew wouldn’t have chased after him. Instead, he only sounds curious. “It’s not because you want to see whether or not I’m ready to seek death. I don’t think I’ll ever seek death, and I think you know that about me. So why do you still show up every century?”
Andrew blinks slow, keeping his expression bored. Neil was asking a question Andrew had been avoiding for well over a century now. This was something Andrew was not ready to answer. If he were better at lying, he might say it was a question he didn’t know the answer too.
But they had promised each other honesty.
He waits a long time to answer. This time, Neil is content to wait him out. Neil just stares at him; not like he expects anything from Andrew, but like Andrew is something worth looking at. Andrew wants to tell him to stop. But that feels like giving away too much right now.
“You are interesting.”
Neil’s smile looks too cocky. “400 years and I still pique your interest.”
Andrew’s mouth twitches, an almost frown. “You are simply slightly more interesting than life.”
“You like me.”
“I hate you.”
“You hate me,” He responds, and he looks like he’s never been happier.
“Do you have a family?”
Neil’s blood relatives are all long dead by now, but Andrew doesn’t consider blood a particularly strong factor in family. He doesn’t know when he started believing Neil would understand the meaning behind Andrew’s words.
“No,” Neil answers, which, knowing everything that he does about Neil Josten, isn’t very surprising. “I have had friends, I think? At different times. Not many, and never for long.”
Neil goes suspiciously silent while Andrew waits for him to come up with his next question. The silence stretches and Andrew refuses to be the one to break it.
“You haven’t asked what I did this century.” Neil says.
If Andrew were the type of person who scowls, he would have now, as Neil looks at him like he uncovered a secret.
“Your stories are not as fun as you think they are.”
Neil, of course, doesn’t pay much attention to that. “I learned about the stars. They have these observatories with telescopes that can see at far as Neptune and people who can tell you anything you want to know about the stars. I always wonder what you are up to every time I look at the stars, so I decided I would tell you about them next time I saw you. The sun is this ginormous ball of fire, the moon has these huge craters—they have pictures of it now on the walls of the observatory. I saw the North Star up close in their telescopes; it was beautiful.”
Andrew knew all of this of course. But Neil said it all like it was worth knowing. It made Andrew feel like he was learning it all for the first time as he listened.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t have to. I wanted to tell you.”
He can’t stand it—him; his eyes, his terrible clothes century after century, the words he says, the grace with which he just accepts everything Andrew says as if he isn’t the first person in all of time to do so.
“I hate you.” He means it.
“Every time you say that I believe you a little bit less.”
Maybe he does mean it a little less each time.
Andrew reaches forward and does the absolute last thing he should do: He kisses him.
Leaning across the table is awkward, but it makes it easy to keep Neil’s hands off him.
“Tell me no,” Andrew whispers into Neil’s mouth.
Neil recovers quicker than Andrew would have thought him able to and he shakes his head slightly. “Yes.”
Neil leans back in, but his hands stay on the table where Andrew had pushed them, unmoving.
Andrew shouldn’t have kissed Neil and he definitely shouldn’t pick Neil’s hands off the table and thread them through Andrew’s hair with only a stern “Just here,” to protect Andrew’s boundaries, but Andrew doesn’t believe in regrets. And Neil’s lips on his does an infuriatingly good job at quieting Andrew’s thoughts.
It doesn’t last of course, in public and leaning uncomfortably across a table, and when Andrew does pull away, leaning back in his seat, his mind is surprisingly calm. So calm that Andrew allows himself to stay.
“You get one more question.”
“You haven’t asked yours yet.”
“I did.”
Neil looks like he doesn’t understand but he doesn’t ask. “Do you have a family?”
Andrew had told Neil before not to mention Renee. This question comes awfully close to that. Neil is pushing his luck.
He holds up four fingers. “Aaron, Nicky, Renee, Bee.” Renee had been the one to push for them to give themselves human names. Bee had been the first one to call him Andrew. Andrew hadn’t understood the point then, but he hadn’t told Renee no, and had gone along with Bee without fight. He wanted to say he still didn’t understand it, but he can admit to himself he had figured it out when Neil had first asked for his name, and that had been the one he gave. “All of them much more persistent and pestering than you.”
Neil’s small smile is one Andrew has never seen before. Soft is the only way he can think to describe it. He expects Neil to ask more but he doesn’t.
“Good,” Neil says in a voice that matches his smile.
Andrew wants to turn Neil’s face away, but before he can it occurs to him, finally really sinks in, that Neil doesn’t have a family. And that perhaps he was a little lonely. ‘Friends,’ he had said, ‘Some. Every once in a while’. Andrew should have realized it then—that he hurt from all the loses he’s had during his life.
Andrew didn’t know what to do with that. He stood up from their booth and walked away.
1889
It’s crowded now, too crowded in this place Andrew considers only Neil’s. It sets his skin on edge. Neil isn’t even sitting down, the tables all already full. He stands near the bar looking much better than he did last century, but just as tense as Andrew feels.
When Neil sees Andrew, he starts walking towards him instead of waiting for Andrew to come to him.
“Roof,” Andrew decides. He will not give this place up, but he also won’t force Neil through an evening where he’s going to look like that the whole time.
Neil looks confused but doesn’t ask. Andrew walks towards the staircase he knows leads up to a lock door, a newer addition to the ever-growing bar.
There are lots of ways Andrew could unlock the door at the top of the staircase. He elects for his knife, messing with the lock enough the door won’t ever be able to properly lock again.
He watches Neil’s shoulders drop as the door shuts behind them as Andrew props himself on the ledge. Neil hesitates for a moment before sitting beside him.
They sit in silence for much longer than Andrew would have expected before Neil asks his first question.
“Who is Matt?”
Andrew had called in a favor this century. Or rather, he convinced Renee to call in a favor for him. Andrew wouldn’t break their deal and see Neil outside of their meetings, but Matt could track Neil down while keeping Andrew’s hands clean.
From what he has unwillingly heard from Renee, Matt and Dan really like Neil.
“Why would you waste a question on something you already know the answer too.”
“You have never introduced me to anyone; you don’t even talk about them. So why?”
“It’s not your turn.”
Neil scoffed but he didn’t look frustrated. His body stays relaxed, his face calm.
“Have you made it to America?” Neil is right: Andrew hadn’t been asking about Neil’s life much at all anymore. But Neil had once said he wanted to go.
“I’ve spent the last fifteen years there. I had other places to go first, and then they got caught up in so many wars. It was worth the wait though. Like nowhere I have been before.”
Hearing about Neil’s life is still as confusing as it had been 500 years ago.
“Why did you send Matt?” Neil asks.
Andrew doesn’t waste time saying Neil can’t know Matt found him because of Andrew. “You were lonely.”
It’s clear Neil doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s got this look on his face like he’s never expected anyone to do anything nice for him. Andrew just stares him down, indifferent.
“How was your century?” Andrew asks, which is really him asking if Neil was less lonely this time.
“I was the happiest I’ve ever been.” Neil almost whispers it. Like it’s a secret; or like if he says it too loud it will stop being the truth.
Andrew has stopped feeling shocked when Neil says things like this.
“Thank you.” He continues, in that same voice.
Andrew will not take gratitude for something he did not ask for gratitude from.
“Shut up.” He turns Neil’s face away by his chin. “And do not look at me like that.”
Another poorly hidden smile, then-
“Can I kiss you?”
It’s not the most shocking question Neil has asked him, but it is the one Andrew takes the longest to recover from. His hand freezes before he can move it away from Neil’s face.
Neil doesn’t push against Andrews lose grip on his chin to look back towards Andrew. He just waits patiently, staring out at the skyline. Absentmindedly, Andrew considers leaving the question hanging in the air, curious how long Neil would wait for an answer before taking or giving up.
“That’s a first,” Neil speaks again. “Do I get a prize for shutting you up?”
“A quick death.”
Neil laughs. “You would be the first one to manage it.”
“Shut up.” Andrew hates him.
Kissing Neil is like coming home. When Andrew pushes him to the ground, further from the ledge of the roof, Neil goes happily. Neil meets Andrew with everything he has, but Andrew notices Neil’s hands stayed resolutely twined in Andrew's hair.
Andrew remembers everything. So, he does not worry about soaking in this moment, does not worry this will be the one memory he won’t be able to recall in perfect detail for the rest of his life. But he does think, briefly, that this is maybe the first memory he will want to remember.
1989
Andrew has never seen his family this active (which forces him to admit to himself that he has never been this active). One small human granted immortality has wormed his way into everyone’s lives somehow.
Andrew does not talk to Matt or the others, but Renee and Nicky alone tell Andrew much more than he cares to know.
It has made this century pass slower than any other he has lived through.
“Ask me about them.”
They are on the roof again, even though it wasn’t nearly as crowed in the restaurant this time. Andrew had gotten here first this time, waiting on the ledge of the roof, looking down and the long drop to the ground, listening for the door behind him to open.
Neil smiles. Cocky.
“Who?”
Very cocky.
“My family.”
The title is harder to use out loud, but Andrew has no other word for what they are.
“You said they were off limits.”
“And now they are not. Ask.”
The longer Neil stays silent, the tenser Andrew gets wondering what question he must be coming up with.
“You say you don’t do anything other than your job and that you aren’t anything else. But you have a family. Every time I saw Nicky all he did was talk about you and Aaron and how much he misses you, even with both of you so close to him.
Of course, Nicky has already wormed his way into Neil’s life under Andrew’s nose.
“I keep them safe.”
“What about happy?”
Neil must know Andrew doesn’t have an answer to that or doesn’t want to give an answer because he only pauses for a moment before moving on.
“I haven’t met your sister. Renee?”
“Who have you met?”
Neil starts counting on his fingers. “Matt, Dan, Alison, Nicky.”
“Renee wasn’t allowed to ask about you. She wouldn’t have gone to see you without asking me first.”
Neil nods along. “So, the seven of you then? Matt, Dan, Alison, Nicky, Aaron, Renee, you.”
“No,” Andrew says, clipped and tense.
“Me, Renee, Aaron, Bee, Nicky.” He holds up one hand. “Five.”
“Then-"
“They are Renee’s” Andrew doesn’t need to hear the question to answer it. “I knew they would attach to you easily. That’s why.”
“Can I meet them?”
Nonsensically, Andrew’s mind sticks on ‘them’ like a broken record player playing the same line over and over. It repeats again and again in his head. Neil doesn’t need to specify who them is because Andrew knows. Because Neil says it like there is only one possibility, like them only has one definition and that is Andrew’s family. He hasn’t even met most of them yet and he has already tied, intrinsically, these people to Andrew and his life.
He stares blankly at Neil.
“If they aren’t off limits anymore,” Neil keeps pushing, “Then can I meet the rest them? I would like to.”
“Why?”
“They seem fun.” Neil smiles wide. “Besides, I could use some friends, couldn’t I?”
“Couldn’t you?” Andrew repeats, needing Neil to spell this out for him.
“I don’t regret a single moment in the centuries I have lived now. And we both know by now I never want to give this up. But Matt, the others… meeting them felt like my life was just starting. This is something new I never guessed could exist, and more than not being able to die, I want this life—with you, and these people that seem to care so much about you.”
Another thing Andrew wants to claim not to understand about Neil Josten. But he had been the one to send Matt to Neil in the first place. And Andrew is above lying to himself about how just being around Neil has made him feel…something. Something important, and impossible to ignore.
“What will you give me for it?”
Neil doesn’t take the time to consider it before answering, though Andrew knows it isn’t because he is not taking him seriously.
“Anything.”
And Andrew doesn’t need to consider before giving his price.
“Stay.”
“What?”
“We make a new deal. You say you want this life then take it. No more once a century. Stay with us.”
Neil smiles and smiles and this is the part where Andrew should push him away, but he doesn’t. “I don’t even know how to contact you.”
Andrew gives him a blank look. “I am the Lord of Dreams.”
Neil leans towards Andrew, propped on an arm resting near Andrew’s own on the concrete. “I need things spelled out for me, remember.”
His smile hasn’t left his face; only soften into something that is somehow harder to look at.
“Call me in your dreams and I will come.”
“And how do you contact me?”
This time Andrew uses silence to convey how idiotic he thinks his question is. It seems to work when Neil moves on.
“Ok,” Andrew can see the unfiltered truth in his eyes. “Ok. Yes.”
There’s that look again, the one Andrew can’t stand.
“I hate you.”
Neil laughs. “You like me.”
Andrew pulls him into a kiss to avoid Neil’s smile and the unspoken answer between their lips.
For the first time maybe ever, Andrew breathes in and it doesn’t feel like a clock, ticking down till his job is done.