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Andrew has always known that Neil doesn't understand how he looks - the way people stare as he walks past, the way he can hardly ever recognize someone flirting with him, even compliments either get a brief moment of wide eyes or amused dismissal. As if Neil genuinely can't comprehend the sincere appreciation and affection even his precious Foxes try to shower him with.
He's not proud to think back to the moment where he finally had to spell it all out for Neil - doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you; it makes his fists clench and a slow moving flush travel up to his ears, remembering that moment, Neil's shocked expression and his own steady stare masking something much more vulnerable. Andrew doesn't do regret. And he doesn't regret it, telling Neil, not when it's given him a man who wants him, who wants to stay.
But as Neil has reiterated for the Foxes multiple times, he doesn't swing. Before Andrew, the most experience he had in regards to whatever this was were a few stolen kisses from two girls and one boy, spread years apart with next to no feelings hanging onto them. While Andrew had nearly torn himself apart over finding himself and getting to a point where he could admit to being attracted to men, to exploring his sexuality in juvie and club backrooms, Neil had gotten beaten if his mother ever even thought she'd seen him looking at someone like that.
Neil hadn't been allowed to experiment; the losses outweighed whatever gains there were, exponentially. And so all thoughts of romance or sex were repressed and thrown out of a young boy's head. Mary Hatford refused to give him a choice. Even now, Neil still didn't have an answer as to whether that part of his identity came before or after that woman. Some days, he struggled more over all the scars she had left than any of the others, and it was no wonder.
Neil was used to pain, to running. But it was different coming from someone who was supposed to love you - from someone you weren't able to escape from. Andrew wasn't sure if Neil hated or loved her more, but either way he saw every nightmare, every panic attack, every single time Neil would freeze thinking back to her and her words.
Andrew was no stranger to trauma, but it still burned to know he couldn't just use his knives or his fists to deal with it all. (It never got any easier, having to just fucking exist with it. Being powerless to change anything, it felt like. It always felt like failure, seeing Neil hurt.)
If only he had been the one to kill Mary Hatford. If only he'd been there to kill Nathan, Lola, Romero, all of the demons still haunting his junkie. (Sometimes, he had nightmares of his own - ones where he was too late. Ones where he was left with a body and a broken promise.) But thoughts like that were useless. Life wasn't fair, especially for people like them.
The point was, Andrew was well aware of Neil’s insecurities regarding his scars and his body in general. He could understand the times when Neil shied away from mirrors and wrapped himself up in clothes too big for his body - he’d used to do that, too, even if for different reasons. He’d hated having people stare at his wrists, at the bruises left on his skin. It was different with Neil: he’d always had to hide every part of himself but his love of exy away (even that, he’d had to protect from his mother). Neil had had nothing but his mother and her ‘love’ to cling to, a promise to survive and then he’d been on his own, shrinking back into worn clothes and glaring out at the world.
Andrew had grown big enough to fight back, to flip a middle finger and stab someone if they came too close or tried to do anything he didn’t like (most of the time, the threat was enough). Neil had a mouth too smart for his own good and a pair of rabbit’s feet. While Andrew stood and fought, Neil had always had to run.
Maybe Nathaniel had known how to make people bleed, once upon a time. But Neil was a martyr, through and through, and Andrew had never witnessed the idiot having any sort of self preservation instinct in all the time he’d known the man. Foolishly, Neil had never learned how to protect himself.
It drove Andrew mad.
Why duck your head and ignore the snide comments, the whispers too loud to not be heard? Why avoid a confrontation when it was inevitable? Why try to delay something that was easier to settle?
Oh, Neil would run his mouth. He was always the one to start the fight - he just never seemed able to finish one. For what reason, Andrew didn’t know. Either way, it pissed him off. Neil could say that their deal was broken all he liked, that there was no need for Andrew to protect him anymore, but the truth of the matter was that Andrew didn’t care. If Neil could sacrifice himself and go off to die with a smile, then Andrew would keep him close.
(Thank you, you were amazing.)
(Neil was Andrew’s - unless his idiot martyr told him no, he wasn’t letting him out of his sight again, not when he couldn’t trust the world to give him back.)
Neil wasn’t naive or innocent, like the Foxes he’d wrapped around his fingers liked to think. They seemed to forget that this was the man who’d had no reaction to a teammate of theirs being murdered. That this was the man Andrew had allowed into his family. That because Neil smiled and let them hug him it meant he wasn’t the same man who’d grown up between two abusive parents and on the run from the fucking mafia.
There was a reason Neil understood him, but they all collectively seemed content being blind. Did they all think that Andrew would let someone like them so close? They called him a monster and a psychopath and yet never wondered just what that made Neil, who loved him.
They were deluded to think they would ever understand. It was boring watching them try.
The Neil who Andrew had watched come alive was fierce and harsh, strong enough to want to live and to stay. Secretly clumsy, when he was allowed to be. Sweet and soft, only with him. Stupid enough to trust Andrew wholeheartedly and with no reservation. And yet, he couldn’t be called a pipedream or a hallucination anymore, not when just a smile or the quirk of a brow could make Andrew’s heart trip over itself.
The kind of man who looked at him like he was home, and who was bold enough to say, “I love you,” even when Andrew couldn’t say it back. That was who Neil Josten was.
Sunrise, Abram, death - those three constants were still the same. And yet Andrew felt changed. Blame it on the man who still fiddled with his keys like they were a lifeline. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Andrew hated him. More and more, every day, until the feeling felt too big for his body. It was still so unbelievable, the way he was affected by nothing. (Except, well, that wasn’t true anymore, now was it?)
Just like Neil would never understand suicide, Andrew would probably never understand the way his junkie clung so tightly to being alive. He still struggled with wanting, these days. But he knew that even a few years ago, looking down from a rooftop and holding onto his scars - the person he was back then wouldn’t have even been able to comprehend who he is now. He’s still alive, still living, and it isn’t horrible.
Surreal.
“Three hundred and forty three percent,” he says, breaking the silence the two of them had been lost in. Neil, who’d been trying not to stare at himself in the mirror for too long, well, Neil stops - just for a moment. Just for long enough that he can see Andrew step closer, reflection on reflection. And yet, he still doesn’t look away from the mirror.
Andrew wonders if it’s exhausting, the way Neil always has to twist himself into knots trying to find out who he is. Or maybe it’s just some kind of nostalgia, fucked up and familiar. All he knows is that it’s exhausting to watch.
Neil likes to say that he’s patient, but Andrew knows the truth: he’s only patient when it suits him. (With a hand to a neck, with smoke in between two bodies, with the night making him blind but the scars his fingers find all he needs to see.)
He has no patience for whatever that look on his idiot’s face is. Andrew steps up beside the other man, side by side in the mirror, and he scoffs at what he finds there. “Quit staring. Your face isn’t going to suddenly change.”
Neil has a complicated relationship with the scars on his body. Some days, it’s like he hardly notices them - others, they’re all he can think about. It’s not so much like or dislike as much as the way other people perceive them, Andrew thinks, which is stupid and just like his junkie.
His rabbit blinks and then exhales, staring at himself one more time before quickly looking away, only to turn to find him. Then there’s suddenly a wry smile and cold blue eyes. “I know. I’m alive. He’s not.”
There you are.
Andrew lets himself lean against the counter and breathe back, imagining the smoke blowing in Neil’s face and the junkie closing his eyes and breathing it in. Instead, the both of them simply stand next to each other in silence as Neil puts down his ghosts. It’s familiar, the way he does it, every time; whether panicked or furious, determined or tired, Neil always comes back. To himself and the name he’d fought so hard for. The life he’d nearly died to keep. Nothing could keep him away.
“Finally, he gets it,” Andrew mutters, nearly to himself as he watches. They are not each other’s answer: they do not need someone telling them that everything’s alright or that it’s over. They don’t fight each other’s battles.
“Staring,” Neil says with a smile as he tilts his head back and catches him on the way there.
Andrew turns and makes his way out of the bathroom, a second set of footsteps letting themselves make noise behind him. Neil doesn’t bother to shut the door on their way out, but it doesn’t matter. The mirror can’t follow.
The scent of sweetness seeps in through the air and Neil’s nose scrunches up a bit as he smells it. Andrew refuses to find it cute. “Pancakes?”
“Next time, be quicker if you don’t want syrup and whipped cream on yours.” Mercilessly, Andrew brushes past a stunned Neil and takes his place at the table, where his stack wobbles precariously, the sight of chocolate sauce and nutella both making his stomach rumble hungrily. He doesn’t waste any time digging in, only for Neil to let out a put upon sigh as he takes his own seat and starts eating.
That morning, Neil ends up drinking a lot of water. Both of their mouths taste sweet, as they find out.
(Neil has to go and brush his teeth again before he can agree to another kiss. It tastes disgusting after that, and Andrew flicks his nose for it. Neil smirks.)
That day, Neil doesn’t look away when someone stares at his scars. No, he looks back at them, blank faced until they flinch and look away, refusing to turn back around.
Andrew lets their pinkies touch, a tentative question that Neil answers by slowly entwining their fingers together. They end up walking the whole way back like that, and as Andrew stares straight ahead, he tries to strangle the instinct and the impulse to smother the feelings the situation, that Neil, brings out.
It’s so much easier to be angry. To feel, to be nothing. But if Neil can try to look in a mirror without flinching or panicking, if he can start standing up for himself and asserting his boundaries, then Andrew can want to hold his hand without pulling away. He can feel proud that Neil is healing.
Fuck Bee and fuck Neil too. Andrew tightens his hold and holds his breath when his junkie squeezes back, just as firm.
Fuck.
Andrew comes back to their dorm room (home, because wherever Neil is - ) from class early, on account of the professor having canceled. Far be it for him to question it, if it means not having to sit bored in an enclosed space filled with idiots for an hour. He went and picked up some snacks after realizing he was free, the plastic bag crinkling as he holds it in one hand. Although it’s mostly full of chocolate and candy, he did manage to find some twizzlers, because as disgusting as it is, the idiot actually liked them. God forbid someone ever got him started on real licorice. (If that happened, Andrew refused to buy it. Twizzlers were one thing, they actually had some sort of strawberry flavoring, pathetic as it was. Authentic licorice? The sort of hell reserved for other people.)
It took Neil a long time to finish a package of twizzlers, mainly on account of him disliking the way they stuck to his teeth and not being used to being able to snack between meals, but Andrew didn’t care. Neil had finally been gaining weight now that he wasn’t stressed to hell and back, and it showed in his slightly softer thighs and the stretch marks along his hips and chest. It was a relief to everyone to see him now compared to when he’d first arrived, not a drop of fat on his bones.
It made something buzz in him, to see Neil looking happier and healthier, to see him enjoying eating. It was still an experience finding what foods he wanted to eat and what kinds they could eat together, but it wasn’t bad. One of the Foxes would have called it fun, but Andrew just called it as it was: necessary.
(He couldn’t quite admit to himself yet that he was grateful. He had his own issues with food. He never wanted Neil to experience them too.)
Andrew unlocked the door and walked in, slinging the bag across the counter where it clattered and almost fell, but he didn’t stick around to watch. Instead, he headed for their bedroom, where Neil must be either sleeping or reading, since he hadn’t been in the living room or the kitchen, and his shoes had still been near the doorway.
He stopped for a moment when he noticed their bedroom door was closed. Usually, Neil left it cracked so that Andrew or anyone who came over would know it was alright to come in. He fished his hand through his pocket to pull out his phone, to make sure that Neil hadn’t texted him anything.
He hadn’t, but the message he’d sent earlier to let him know he was coming back early was still left unread. Nearly rolling his eyes, Andrew put his phone back and felt that familiar exasperation rush through his chest, the kind that only Neil could inspire. Whatever this was, bad day or wish for privacy, whatever, he wouldn’t know until he asked.
He knocked on the door. “Neil?” All of a sudden, the sound of clothes shifting, almost too quiet to hear. Well, he wasn’t asleep then. “Can I come in?”
“No!” It was a very fast, almost panicked answer, and it made Andrew straighten up as soon as he heard it. And as much as he’d rather slam the door open and go to him, to find out what was wrong, to fix it, Neil had said no. He’d set a boundary. Andrew refused to be someone who ever disrespected that.
So he clenched his fists and let out a breath through his mouth, too quick to be called a sigh. “Do you want me here or not?”
Silence, for a few moments where Andrew strained to hear, to be sure that Neil wasn’t in a spiral or a panic attack, that he was unhurt, that he was still there. (It unnerved him and unsettled him to not hear his rabbit breathing.) Anxiety crawled up his bloodstream all the way to his brainstem, and his hands curled and uncurled, over and over.
“I don’t want you to go away, Drew, I swear, it’s just - I need.” Neil let out what sounded like a frustrated noise and then, a smack sounded out, flesh upon flesh. Andrew grit his teeth and leaned forward, as if by getting closer it would help in any way.
“Abram,” he said, voice flat, “do not hurt yourself. Do you have Mittens? Your new book? Breathe. In, out. In, out.” He talked Neil through taking more breaths until he calmed down enough to be able to talk. In his chest, his heart ached - a phantom pain that asked him, how can you protect him if this is all you’re worth?
Andrew said shut the fuck up and let it die. He was past listening to all his worst impulses and past letting them control his life. This wasn’t the time; Neil needed him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Neil’s voice was subdued in a way that caused his lips to twist downwards. The sound of pages being flipped filtered through the door between them, and Andrew knew that his junkie was letting the sensation and the sound of the book ground him, along with the plush jellyfish Andrew had gotten for him what felt like ages ago.
Anger struck him suddenly. This idiot, always saying sorry for everything that wasn’t his fault. “Shut up.” They slipped out before he could stop them, those words, and he just got angrier when he said them. He knew that Neil didn’t need them, didn’t need him like this, and yet -
“Drew?” Neil’s voice was quiet.
“Abram, what do you need?” Andrew didn’t apologize. He let the sick feeling in his stomach match the antifreeze in his heart; poison for poison. He didn’t do sorries or regrets (he refused to). All he could do was this.
(The truth was, Andrew still really hated himself.)
“You.” Was the answer he got, blunt and steadfast as always. It made his heart stutter, his lungs catch, his body freeze in a flash frame.
“Is this the truth, from a liar?”
Neil had a smile in his voice, impossibly. “I’m not a liar. Not anymore.” Not to you, was left unsaid. But Andrew heard and heard and heard, pulse racing. Here he was, standing in front of their door, a mess; this is what Neil did to him (this is what Andrew let him do to him, every time).
It seemed like they were both done running.
“Yes or no?” Andrew asked, the words themselves a comfort, a sudden return to them and this. No matter anything else, there was still this - the two of them and all the things they didn’t need to say.
“Yes, Andrew,” Neil replied, and Andrew wasted no time in flinging the door open and marching straight over to Neil and scanning him from head to toe to make sure everything was still attached and functioning. When he came to the other man’s face, there was a fond smile and warm eyes waiting for him.
A hand painted with clear nail polish pat the space next to him on the bed and Andrew sat, only then being able to take the time to truly take in Neil and what he was wearing: it was a knee length red and green plaid dress which didn’t actually clash as much with his hair as one would expect. Somehow, he made it work.
“Is this why you were having a breakdown, rabbit?” He gestured a hand to the dress. Neil let out a huff and nodded, watching his face.
“Do you… how does it look?”
Andrew leveled him with a bored look. “As usual, your fashion sense is atrocious.”
Neil stroked a hand up and down Mitten’s soft fur a few times before saying, “I saw it in a store and I don’t know why, but I bought it. I’ve never wanted to wear a dress before. I can hardly remember the times I did as a child, but none of them are good memories.”
His rabbit set Mittens down only to grab a book, resting his palm on the glossy cover and letting it stay there. “At first, when I put it on, I felt… warm. Like I was floating. Like I was taking all ten steps and shooting for the goal.” His head tilted, and then ice blue eyes were back to staring. They were confused.
“And then I felt wrong. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be wearing this.” His free hand ended up clutching onto the fabric of the dress, twisting and bunching it up.
Andrew took a moment to let him process and then asked, “Were you embarrassed?”
Neil hesitated, then shook his head in a no. “I think… I was ashamed.”
“Because you liked wearing it?”
Neil’s eyes widened and he stared at Andrew before nodding, his hand beginning to dig into his thigh before Andrew hovered a hand over it, waiting until the other man said yes before taking it and entwining their fingers together. He let Neil squeeze as tight as he needed.
They sat there for a few minutes, just breathing.
“Do you think I’m wrong for wanting this?” Neil asked him, facing him head on. Idiot martyr. One day that trust was going to get him killed (but Andrew refused to let it).
Neil wasn’t cowering or shrinking back. His voice wasn’t weak or wavering. He didn’t look like he was bracing for a blow - but then again, Andrew knew him. Andrew knew trauma.
When Neil expected to be hurt, he leaned into it. (His bitch of a mother had conditioned him until both his body and his mind remembered. How could he forget?)
It wasn’t fair. Andrew thought back to childish wishes of big horns and sharp claws (fangs and fire and blood). Neil must have wished too - but for much different things. If Andrew had been a snake bound to eat its own tail, then maybe Neil had been a hummingbird, too fast and not built to last.
Fuck that. They were still here, despite everything. Here he was, flipping a middle finger to his past self and saying, that matters. It does.
Andrew squeezed Neil’s hand back and leaned in until their faces were merely inches away, hazel on blue. “This is your body. These are your choices. Do not ever let anyone say otherwise. Do you understand?” It didn’t matter if Andrew liked it or not. It didn’t matter what others said.
Neil slowly smiled and nodded, looking a bit dazed. Good. That was much better.
The only thing that mattered was -
“How do you feel?”
He watched as his rabbit stood up and then spun, causing the dress to flare out and above his knees until it slowly fluttered back down when Neil stopped and then quickly turned back to face him, grinning. “Like I just scored.”
Andrew scoffed, ignoring the prick of fondness picking away at his organs. “Junkie.”
Standing over him, smiling with bright eyes, in the dress he’d picked out for himself and wearing it now with confidence, Andrew let himself lean back with lidded eyes, relaxed. “Drew, yes or no?”
“Yes, you idiot,” he breathed, grabbing him by the waist and pulling until Neil was situated on his lap. He got a hand around the back of his junkie’s neck and squeezed, causing blue, blue eyes to crinkle down at him in another smile.
“Your idiot,” Neil teased, making Andrew pull him in for a kiss, hard and fast, almost as much as his heartbeat was, seeing Neil like this. Having him in his lap and those blue eyes shining with mischief as much as affection.
He wasn’t saying that all it took was Neil saying yes and feeling the warmth of him against his body - all he was saying was that he was very gay and Neil was a fucking trial. Every day it felt like he wouldn’t survive him, because just when he thought he’d gotten used to that hair or those eyes, his body and his smart fucking mouth - that was when his rabbit smiled and leaned into him, trusting him with everything. Like now.
Those were the moments that Andrew knew he wouldn’t survive losing him. He had a handful of people to go back for but only one to come home to.
“What else would you be?” Andrew said, and if he was teasing too, well. Neil would never tell.
They chose to stay with each other. It was a choice he wanted to keep saying yes to, over and over again. Andrew had finally found a future he wanted and someone who wanted him back.
Having hope that he would get to keep it was hard, but Andrew never went back on his word. They were in this, together. For as long as they had, for as long as they got.
They had each other, and that was enough.
The door to their dorm slammed shut with a thunderous bang as Neil stomped in, the chunky all black heeled boots Andrew had given him for a weekend at Eden's (and that his menace then decided to where everywhere else) making loud thumps as he paced around the room. Calloused hands attached to long fingers (piano hands, no matter what Neil said to the contrary) mussing up red hair to the point the blond is shining through.
His idiot let out a strangled, frustrated noise before storming over to flop onto the floor at Andrew's feet, sharp blue eyes looking up to silently ask, yes or no?
He nodded, rolling his eyes when Neil immediately plopped his head on his thigh, sighing out like the mere action of touching let something in his head flick off like a switch, his muscles gradually relaxing as he sunk further down, the warm weight of him calling to mind lazy Saturday mornings in Columbia where Andrew would read by the light coming in through the curtains and Neil dozing beside him, safe and sound.
He lets himself tangle his fingers in the thin air at the back of his junkie's neck, watching Neil shudder and close his eyes. When he went lower and dug firm pressure into the muscles connecting to his shoulders, the other man seemingly went boneless, mouth slack.
"You'd better not fall asleep," Andrew tells him. When his rabbit gets truly relaxed in sleep, he tends to drool.
"Mmnot," Neil mutters into his pants, and wordlessly Andrew grips at his neck and squeezes, tugging a bit until Neil grumbles and gets up only to arrange himself right next to him on the couch, holding his knees to his chest, his head burrowed down into himself.
Andrew lets the silence linger for a while, wondering which of the myriad issues that his junkie has accumulated like cats it is this time. He woke fine this morning, excited and raring to go, that gleam in his eyes that Andrew had disgustingly come to know as the 'exy face'. That he had become familiar enough with it to recognize it just made him silently raise the percentage higher.
Then again, he knows well that just because a day starts out good doesn't mean it can't morph into something bad. It can be as simple as anxiety or a flashback, an off feeling or the look a stranger gives you. It could be that, but Andrew doesn't think it is.
He knows what that looks like on Neil - he's come to know his tells and he won't ever forget what fear, panic, distress, or grief looks like on his face and the way his body braces itself and tenses throughout, forgetting for a moment where the person it’s attached to is. The way it sweats and flinches from nightmares. Legs bouncing and jumping up, restless. Nails scoring bloody red trails across tanned skin, anxious. The stock still fight or flight response that stalls Neil in his tracks when all his rabbit wants to do is run - the body forgets, but Andrew remembers.
He's there with his hands and with late night ramblings, with silence and smoke and the reminder that if he's not okay, then at least Neil isn't alone. He has Andrew, and to a man who used to live off nothing, subsisting only on exy and a promise he'd long broken - he's not arrogant enough to claim that his presence makes things better (sometimes it makes things worse). But even when he can't help, even those times when Neil has to struggle against life just to remind himself he's still breathing, Andrew stays.
This is not that. This is Neil frustrated and fed up. This is Neil letting himself express anger, and for a man who used to be afraid of turning into his father, that's something. (That's progress, Bee would say. That's a step on the journey to healing.)
It makes something move in him, to see Neil like this, upset and unafraid and only moving closer to Andrew's hands. It causes a pain that's unlike violence - it is different, somehow. He's not grateful because seeing his junkie upset still causes pangs of sympathetic discomfort to run through him like a stomachache. He refuses to be thankful that Neil is leaning on him, because it feels wrong to ever benefit from Neil's pain; he won't be like them. He won't let Neil let him be.
And he will never give Neil a reason to regret saying yes.
So he says, firm, "Neil," an open ended question and a reassurance all at once. As always, it is up to his rabbit to take it or not.
Predictably, Neil lifts his head just enough to peer over at him, blue eyes glaring. "It's nothing."
Andrew lifts a brow, staring back.
His menace raises one back before smiling, a slow traveling one that lights up his face like Christmas lights. "Okay, it's something. But I can handle it. I'm fine."
It's Andrew's turn to glower now, scowl lining his mouth and his eyes like flat river stones. "Your stupidity is overwhelming."
Neil was always an idiot, but it usually wasn't this fucking bad. He was getting irritated now.
(He wanted to fix this. He wanted Neil to look at him like that again, all soft and sure.)
I'm here, he wants to say. I’m not going anywhere. Instead, he waits. Sometimes, that is all Neil needs: the certainty of having someone there and what has become an immutable, unchanging fact - Andrew Minyard still has Neil Josten’s back. He lets a few minutes pass while his junkie stares at him and he stares at the home renovation show he was watching before his day got interrupted by the menace he calls his own.
The words come slowly, because the man saying them still isn’t used to letting other people in even when he trusts them more than he trusts himself (even when it’s Andrew). “It’s just… this girl in one of my classes.” From the corner of his eye, he sees Neil digging his nails into his calves and without even turning to look, Andrew lays his hand between the two of them.
A rough and scarred hand, familiar as his own, finds him. He squeezes, ever so slightly increasing pressure until his hold has become tight. It makes his stupid rabbit breathe out a sigh, so content that Andrew wants to grit his teeth and - but he stifles those useless self destructive tendencies he’ll probably be battling the rest of his life. It doesn’t matter. (Part of his brain wonders if he’d even still be alive without someone like Neil. But then he remembers that he chose this, pain and memories and nightmares and living with it all anyway. If Neil had never come into his life, maybe he wouldn’t be as satisfied or feel more settled than he has in years, but he’d still have Aaron and Nicky and Bee. He’d still have himself, for whatever he was worth.)
He knows that the urge to pull away, the sudden and lately, irritating aversion he gets whenever positive emotion is involved is only a part of himself trying to protect the rest of him from any more pain. It’s his brain telling him to cut and run before he can be hurt anymore than he already has been. It’s an instinct ingrained by persistent and incessant abuse. It’s his heart’s one holdover clinging desperately to life - or it was. Because he’s not a child anymore, and he can decide whether someone is good for him or not.
(To him, self preservation and self destruction had always been one and the same.)
Neil is part of his life for good now - if he tried getting rid of him at this point, it’d be more trouble than it’s worth. So Andrew tells himself fuck it and that part of himself still wanting to pull away to fuck off, and then turns to face Neil head on, hazel on blue.
He makes the choice to trust Neil, because Neil has never once given him cause to regret it.
With Andrew’s eyes on him, his rabbit lets a little puff of laughter escape him, smile widening, and all he can think is, oh. His heart flutters against the cage of his ribs and there are no thoughts in his head now except for the way Neil looks holding onto his hand, free.
A squeeze to his hand, and then the junkie tilts his head, allowing flyaway red curls to move this way and that. The way they frame his eyes sends a hot shock that feels like lightning looks to Andrew’s nervous system. “She keeps trying to talk to me, even when I don’t say anything back. And she keeps looking at me - it’s not threatening, I don’t think. I just don’t understand why she won’t stop.” The annoyance and apprehension comes back to Neil’s face once more, which stokes the quick fuse of Andrew’s heart.
(Neil thinks that Andrew is patient and steady; Neil never saw him during Baltimore.) When it comes to Neil, even his own family thinks that he’s ‘a bit too overprotective, really, Andrew’. And he knows that Neil can fight his own battles; there’s a reason he survived for this long (he couldn’t run from everything). He knows this, and he’ll respect the fact that Neil doesn’t need him to step in front of him to take the blows.
Still, he has Neil’s back. Neil is his. If he needs to, he’ll fight for him. He’ll fight to the death to keep him here, at his side, safe and free to keep choosing.
Naturally, he’s totally cool and composed as he asks, “Who?” Neil’s sudden look of intrigue and confusion has no right to be so annoying. “Give me her name,” he says, because he doesn’t repeat himself but sometimes his idiot needs things spelled out.
“Gardner,” Neil tells him, because even if he doesn’t understand, he also doesn’t care about what happens to her when Andrew finds her. (This is what the rest of the Foxes don’t understand about the two of them: they are survivors, yes, but they are also used to fighting down in the mud and the dirt. If they come back up while someone else stays down, so what?)
Neil doesn’t like killing people. It still sticks under his nails and in the back of his throat, the memories and the blood. It reminds him of the life he left behind and the father he'd left dead and buried right next to all his former selves. But Andrew still has his knives and he’s never once been afraid to put them to use.
Of course, he won’t actually kill her, this girl who won’t take no for an answer. (Even if he did, Neil would help him hide the body. He wonders what all those ‘normal’ people with ‘normal’ relationships would say to trust that feels unbreakable and the certainty down in your bones that comes with knowing someone. What they would say to him and Neil, together. But they’re not for anyone but themselves, and so he brushes the thought away because it’s less than nothing.)
Andrew will just have to remind her that she has no claim to Neil or his time.
“I’ll take care of her,” he says, tension dissolving inside him now that he has the solution. Next to him, Neil settles deeper against the couch cushions, letting out a hum. “Okay,” he replies, closing his eyes again.
Without saying anything else, the two of them gradually move closer until they’re both tangled up in each other, laying with Neil’s back to Andrew’s chest. His rabbit quickly falls asleep but he doesn’t, eyes half lidded as he relaxes and brushes his nose against red hair. The scent of oranges fills his nose and he nearly scrunches his face up at the thought of the fucking too strong bottle of body wash Reynolds had given Neil a few weeks ago. Of course, the junkie adored it, and so Andrew was opposed to it on principle. He’d tried multiple times to pique his rabbit’s interest with a different scent, to no avail.
Andrew sighs, a barely there gush of air. He tightens his hold around Neil’s stomach and lets himself hold his idiot.
A few days later, Neil comes barging into their dorm, equal parts thrilled and smug when he tells Andrew all about how a girl named Eva Gardner suddenly transferred out from his statistics class in the middle of the year, not even letting a hint of her face be seen by the other man. And Andrew will roll his eyes as Neil’s excited ramble starts to shift to exy and the plays he and Kevin have come up with lately, and how it’d be nice to have Andrew try some of them out sometime as well, on and on.
And that will be that.
There is nothing but the darkness and rough hands grabbing, pinching, shaping his body into whatever they want. There’s pain he’ll never forget and there’s words he’ll never say - his body thrashes and hits something. Bedrock or, no, this is warm. Skin. Another body beside his.
But before the terror and the fury can swing to the surface, his fingers catch on rough and textured scar tissue. His ears tune back into the frequency that plays, over and over on repeat, “Andrew. You’re in our dorm at Palmetto. It’s four in the morning. You had a nightmare, but you are not there. You’re here.”
You’re here, Neil tells him so firmly, and so it must be. There’s a lingering chill in his head and the warmth under his hands nearly scalds him but he just holds on tighter. Until his frantic breaths slow to a crawl and for the coughing that comes after that to die down too. His heart is a heavy thing tethering him to the here and now, but it also weighs him down. It burdens him with all the things he’d rather excise and exorcize.
It is his head that refuses to let him go. It drags him back to places he doesn’t belong. It picks him up like there’s nothing to him at all, for it to be this easy. It hollows him out and leaves him with half a foot over a ledge and the other doggedly determined to stay.
He knows who, where, when, and what now. He just doesn’t want to know what happens next. The way Neil will ask if he’s leaving or staying, the offer of a late night smoke on top of the roof, blue eyes and boundaries and the usual. Whatever he needs.
Sometimes it’s comforting. Right now, it’s not. Here in this moment, there’s nothing he wants more than to not exist. To pull the covers over his head and lay with his eyes open until morning comes and then do nothing, his body just dead weight and water. He wants to be nothing. He wants the feeling of eyes on him to go away. He wants to tear off these clothes sticking to his sweat and itching against his too hot skin, but he wants a barrier between himself and the world even more. He wants to be alone forever. He wants to forget.
There is nothing, nothing, nothing. He and his hand on Neil’s stomach - a matching set. Two matryoshkas of bad memories and trauma. Somehow it’s funny and almost right.
“That one’s from when I had to jump out the car, remember? Mum in the driver’s seat but two tailing us from behind, closing in and shooting right in the open. Bullets bouncing off the metal; it was loud, the way it hit and the bang. She told me to jump and so I did; one followed her and the other followed me. I was bleeding but I could still run. I must have run for miles. He kept shooting until I made it to the woods, and then we were both trying to find each other first. He had a gun but I still had the knife in my boots. I got him from behind; one stab in the neck and he went down, but I couldn’t stop until I knew he was dead.”
Andrew remembers. He’ll never forget a word his junkie says (the only good part of his brain). He already knows this story, but Neil tells it differently every time; a new detail here, another perspective there. Little things that catch his attention and then keep it, because Neil knows he’ll listen. Neil knows him when he can’t understand himself.
Andrew can find Neil under his fingers in the dark, in panic and fear and when his own body tries to trick him. Even now, even when the thought of that is overwhelming - it is. It just is, down from his weary eyes all the way to his tense muscles, screaming at him to uncurl himself and straighten out, just a little bit.
“Drew,” Neil breathes out, quiet as Andrew moves on to another scar, another story, another memory. A different name and a foreign place. Neil, he wants to say, but there are no words. Not when it’s like this.
He brushes a thumb silently down the edge of the iron burn marking Neil from shoulder to a little bit down the collarbone. In the light, it’s red and angry looking, but in the night all he can see is the feel of it under his hand and against his own rough skin. A lifetime of feeling numb and away from his own body meant he had tiny scrapes and scars and calluses lining his hands, from learning how to fight and all the trouble he never cared enough not to find.
Their scars touch and meet with their bodies as silent observers and Neil and Andrew as the shadows that the darkness makes.
He thinks there will always be a disconnect between himself and his body. There are separate states and places for where they belong and usually, they are good at occupying those same planes. He can’t be his body and his body can’t be him - otherwise, he simply wouldn’t function. So he must exist somewhere outside of it, but still tethered.
He used to find comfort in the idea that it wasn’t him being hurt. It was his body. It let him survive long enough to understand that that wasn’t the entire truth. (As a child, he’d been very good at finding the loopholes in the rules.)
Sometimes Andrew can stand to coexist with his body. Frequently, he does not want to. Other times, he refuses.
It is hard to think about and articulate even to himself. Would he feel differently if he had lived differently? Obviously. Does it matter? Obviously not, when this is what he’s stuck with.
And so he decided that he’d have to learn how to live with himself before he could think about living. It is still a slow moving process.
The scars on his hands and down his wrists are some of the only things that belong to only him and not his body. He made them and he likes to watch the way the light turns white lines into something silver and shining. They are as much a part of him as they are him. Neil will trace them when he lets him, the same way Andrew is tracing his scars now - they are truth, acceptance, survival. They're not just his anymore either; these days he shares all of his scars with Neil, who is fiercely reciprocal and devoted to sharing his everything right back.
Andrew's hand tumbles out of Neil's thin sleep shirt and then he directs it to the sharpness of Neil's cheek, holding it and being held in return when blue, blue eyes turn to stare. His hand on this man's cheek is the only point of contact between them, and yet Andrew feels further away from the memories the more time that passes. The burn scar under his fingers is the one that takes up the most space on Neil's face and the one most people first notice. The other scars surrounding it are much thinner by comparison - long white lines, uneven and desperate. They were meant for pain but Neil survived them. Now they are not meant for anything more than nights like this, where the feeling of them under his hands lets him close his eyes and remember all the truths he's been given by a rabbit. They're a part of Neil.
And Neil has admitted to him before that he likes them best when they're like this: meeting Andrew's hands after he wakes up sweating and swinging. To Neil's scars and his gravelly, still sleepworn voice whispering the facts.
"You know… I never told you, but." Neil's cheek moves as he talks, and he can feel the firm bone of his jaw under what precious little fat there is.
"I used to have a cat." Left unsaid is the reason why he doesn't anymore. Andrew already knows: either Nathan or Mary is to blame.
"She had red fur, just like me, with little brown patches everywhere. Her feet were black, and so were the tips of her ears. She liked to sleep on top of me or beside me whenever she got tired, and she was so quiet whenever she meowed." In Neil's voice is nostalgia and a bittersweet finality both.
Andrew flops over onto his back and tilts his head just to watch the way that Neil's eyes follow the movement before resettling on his eyes. "What was her name?" He asks, voice hoarse and dry.
Neil smiles and says, "Leaf." The way he says her name sends a shock of warmth through his whole body, and he shivers before pulling the covers up to his shoulders. He's too tired to do anything else.
So he says, "Tell me more," wanting to keep hearing the way Neil's voice dips and then rises, the way it almost shudders when he gives a quiet, whispery laugh, and how he sounds so happy to finally be sharing this with Andrew too.
He ends up falling asleep in the middle of a story involving a young Leaf and a ball of yarn - he has no dreams. When he wakes, it is to early morning sunshine and the voices of Kevin and Neil arguing in the kitchen.
He lazes there in silence for a while before changing out of his clothes from last night with a grimace. If he puts on one of Neil's sweaters, it's no one's business but his own. The way the ends of it dwarf his hands and create what Neil likes to call 'sweater paws' (because Neil is a dumbass who gets curious and therefore must investigate every new meme and popular fad immediately) causes amusement to bubble up in him, even if it's still a bit quiet.
The shadows are still lingering, but Andrew smells coffee and so he slowly makes his way out of the room, rubbing at his paws as he does.
When Neil sees him, he smiles wide and bright, that look he always gets when faced with Andrew appearing. It causes something in his heart to ease with a relieved sigh.
It's not a good day, not yet. But it's not a bad one either. It's one somewhere in the middle.
It doesn't matter. He feels more present in his body now, and he's faced with eggs, bacon and nutella toast for breakfast, much to Kevin's consternation. Andrew clears his plate and looks Kevin in the eye, blank faced, as he puts the last of his chocolate laden bread in his mouth. The nearly mournful cry that leaves the junkie's mouth is music to his ears.
Beside him, Neil grins and opens his mouth to start a fight. Andrew lets himself bask in the noise that follows, and he sits there wondering if Neil would be open to adopting a cat of their own in the future.
He won't ask right away. He'll let the idea sink in his subconscious and think it over for a while. There's no rush.
They have time.
He and Andrew let the conversations and laughter of the rest of the Foxes follow them out the locker room, the door closing with an absent minded click. They’ve already changed out, but when they made no move to go with them, Aaron rolled his eyes while Nicky smirked knowingly, and Matt gave him a grin, saying, “I’ll miss you buddy!”, despite the fact that he knew Neil wouldn’t be long. But that’s just how he and Matt are - gentle teasing masking quiet friendship. He wouldn’t have had the words for it even a year ago, but now Neil can understand the phrase ‘ride or die’ and find it apt.
The silence settles between the two of them like the after-moments of a whistle, of the growling engine of the Maserati. Like the end of a game; he and Andrew only needed to trade a single glance to understand.
Andrew sits on the bench between the lockers, and Neil finds himself still standing, the anticipation and adrenaline of the coming game getting his blood pumping like nothing else does. But even with his heart pounding, the thump thump thump of the life he gets to keep, the look that Andrew gives him makes his breath catch.
“Come here,” Andrew says, hazel eyes golden in the light as he holds the goalie’s helmet in his hands, having not yet put it on. Neil wordlessly takes his own helmet off, letting it clack onto the bench where it wobbles precariously, but in that moment Neil wouldn’t even care if it fell. Not when he’s faced with Andrew looking at him like that - all steady, intense regard, familiar as it is something he will never get used to.
He hopes he’ll keep getting surprised by it for the rest of his life. For however long it ends up being; he is lucky to have this.
Neil lets his eyes fall closed as Andrew’s firm hands cup his cheeks, thumbs brushing his skin ever so slightly. They find his scars but never hesitate, silently treating them the same as the rest of him.
“Yes,” the words tumble out of his mouth softly, almost like a promise. He can hear Andrew’s little huff of a scoff, and it makes the corners of his lips turn up in a smile.
“I didn’t ask,” the blond replies, voice flat.
“Yes,” Neil repeats, opening his eyes to find hazel staring, the both of them taking a moment to get lost in each other before Andrew lets out a long sigh, like the very sight of Neil disgusts him. It merely causes his smile to widen into a grin, giddy warmth traveling along his veins and straight into his chest.
“What happened to your precious stickball?” Hands pull him closer and he follows eagerly, leaning down until both of his arms are on either side of Andrew’s thighs. He stares back and nearly laughs.
“Right now, all I want is you,” Neil tells him, and in response Andrew drags him down into a kiss that stops and starts in the middle of the Palmetto State Foxes locker room, the position unconventional and slightly uncomfortable if held for too long, but the both of them were too lost care. There’s the heat of their hands, holding on - there’s the safety and trust they always find in each other, and the way that they’re still learning themselves together.
Living by yourself is hard. Living with someone else is simultaneously better and worse. It’s a choice you make. It can be terrifying, but it can be more amazing than anything else. It’s up to you whether it’s worth it or not - if you think you can be happy, living.
Neil doesn’t know whether Andrew is happy or not, but he knows that he’d never go along with something he didn’t like. The fact of their relationship still stays. If Andrew never gets to a place where he can openly smile or laugh, or if he and Neil never end up settling into something ‘normal’, then it doesn’t matter. Andrew can stay just the way he is; Neil only wants what he gives him, always.
They don’t need to be boyfriends or go on dates or anything else they don’t want to do. They don’t need to make any more promises to both know that they’ll never leave each other.
They’re home to each other, and that’s all that Neil needs.
They pull back after what must have only been a few minutes but whose seconds felt like the slow drizzle of honey washing over him. Andrew’s eyes are half lidded as the blond traces imaginary paths over Neil’s face - stopping and then starting again every now and then until they eventually wind up back at his eyes. Hazel on blue.
“One last kiss for good luck?” He asks, a bit breathless, and feels more than sees the way Andrew rolls his eyes, those firm hands pushing him away as the other man gets up from the bench, collecting their helmets.
Neil takes his with an amused breath of air, not quite laughter yet. Andrew moves to walk past him towards the door, but then turns around and raises a brow. “So confident you’re going to win?”
Neil turns the knob of the door and as it opens, they can hear the muffled noise of the court and the crowds, ready and waiting for the moment they step out. He gives Andrew another smile before he exits, his parting words the only thing left behind as they both make for the rest of the Foxes.
“We will.”