Chapter Text
Andrew was more of a passenger survivor than a passenger princess despite what Neil may say. Neil started calling him that name after he heard it from one of the foxes, probably Pinky, but he didn’t really care, especially when Neil looked this hot with his arm half out of the window, glaring out at the road like it had personally wronged him. He was relaxed but confident, and he looked more like a fox than a rabbit. He was glad to wear the princess crown as long as he got this view and the opportunity to sit back and do nothing for once. No mafia, no potential death threats—just watching the open road or Neil.
Except there was a potential death threat. Neil fucking sucked at driving. He learned how to drive on the run, and it showed.
When he needed to change lanes, he almost lifted the wheels off the road, and he never looked more than once behind him for other cars. He was heavily reliant on other people’s reactions to what he was doing, which resulted in someone honking at them every minute, which made it infinitely harder to relax. He tailed everyone and constantly needed to go forty over the speed limit, to be fair Andrew also did that, but not in a residential area. Constantly, he braked and made Andrew’s seat belt lock up and the tires squeal. At least Andrew’s reckless driving was planned, and even though it seemed like he might get hit to everyone else, Andrew always knew what he was doing, and he could get the car out of that situation. He knew for a fact that Neil wasn't doing it for the thrill or just to get there faster, he was doing it because he didn't know another way to drive.
They took the turn from one of the highways onto a different road they normally took to get away from the traffic, and Neil forgot to slow down going into the turn. He could feel the weight of the car shifting to his side, the wheels losing their traction on Neil's side . For a horrifying second Andrew thought they were going to flip.
The car turned fully, and their wheels were back on the ground.
Andrew broke the silence, "Are we being chased by homicidal maniacs?"
"No, we aren’t." Neil said, looking entirely confused by the conversation.
"Then why are you driving like it?"
"I am?" He looked at the speedometer. "Oh." Without warning, he slowed down to thirty-five in a fifty zone. The drastic change made Andrew grip the seat and a honda civic swerve to the side to avoid rear ending them. The civic passed them on the right and flipped them off before zooming off, and Neil… was completely relaxed.
Neil laughed at his tense legs. "Am I scaring you?"
"You’re drifting into the opposite lane. I’m getting ready to sacrifice you in the event of a crash."
"Oh shit, I am." He was way too calm about this as he jerked back into the other lane, not fully staying in his own lane in the process.
"You're going to slow. Go fifty." Neil listened to him luckily and after that incident, everything was alright for a time. Neil managed to slow down enough that it felt almost normal until he had to turn, but Andrew just programmed the GPS to take the long route with long turns instead of ninety-degree ones. Neil probably didn’t realize that he did it, he was clueless in anything that wasn’t Exy related.
Where everything went wrong was the playlist. It started when Andrew had turned on his own playlist because Neil had no sense of music taste and would actively listen to a train crash. He put one song on and found himself not hating the rhythm and the melody, so he added it to the queue a bunch of times before turning of his phone.
That was the kind of Friday night it was. Just a large full moon in the clear night sky decorated with stars just barely peeking out from the light pollution of the city, and that same song over and over. By the fifth repetition Andrew felt his eyes slowly shut, but he didn’t sleep; he just breathed in the air and smog probably.
At some point, Andrew opened his eyes, but something looked wrong about his surroundings. They were slowly drifting to the left, in the blind spot there was a large white truck and a clueless driver. He figured it was going to be fine until Neil turned on his blinker.
He tried to swerve to the left. Andrew's voice called out before he could even think. "Neil! There’s a car."
It seemed to break the trance, and Neil swerved the car back into the other lane, the back of the car made a loud noise like nails on a chalkboard, and the Mazda seemed to shudder. Neil pulled over to the side along with the other truck. This time he did not look calm in the slightest.
“Neil what was that? Were you trying to-” He stopped when Neil flinched. It took him a second to realize he had raised his voice.
Take a breath Andrew, his inner Bee said, and he did. He couldn’t have a conversation at this moment, he was too angry, and Neil looked about ready to bolt. To make himself less angry he got out of the car and sat on the side of the road looking out at the farm pastures in the distance. The man in the other car wasn’t hurt, not that he really cared, but it would be expensive if he was. Neil gave him the insurance and told him they would be in touch. In that time, Andrew had passed through two cigarettes until finally his hands stopped shaking.
Neil came and sat next to him in the grass.
After he had gained some semblance of control, he asked, “What happened?”
"You were there. You saw the whole thing."
"What happened to you back there?"
"I don't know."
"Neil."
“Why are you worried about me?” He attempted to joke and because Andrew was angry at him, he decided to surprise him.
He guided Neil’s chin until he couldn’t look away and said, “I am constantly worried about you.”
Neil blinked. “You shouldn’t be.” Andrew nearly laughed.
“Because you have such a great track record with not getting into trouble?” Neil failed to meet his eyes. “Regardless, you almost ended us both in the hospital or worse. What. Happened.”
“It wasn’t intentional. I kinda zoned out.”
“How do you zone out bad enough to drift two lanes over?”
He said it quietly like a secret, "The music wasn’t that interesting."
Some of the anxiety left him, "Then why didn’t you change it?"
"You were enjoying the music." Neil shrugged as if that answered his question.
"Neil."
"I wasn’t going to stop something you like just so I can focus on the road."
"Neil, drivers have to focus on the road." Tell me what you need. Thankfully, because Neil is a master at reading his mind (it would be creepy if he wasn’t a hopeless romantic), he understood what Andrew was trying to say.
"I don’t know; it’s just kind of boring. I’m used to there being some kind of danger. Something to run from, there's not much to focus on in there."
"Would you like me to get Aaron to chase you in an ambulance so you can pay attention to the road?" He was going for a sarcastic tone, but it didn't quite hit the mark. He normally lost his ability to control his tone whenever he was in whatever state Bee would call this.
"God, no. I think it’s just English. I could listen over and over when it was in a different language.” Of course, you could, Andrew thought. “I used to listen to this German book called Die Blechtrommel on loop after my mom got it for me for Christmas. It’s how I learned German so fast. We ended up being chased five times with it playing in the background. I can probably recite it from memory.” Neil’s eyes got lost again, spacing out into whatever world he was in with his mother.
"Can’t you do nothing?"
Neil scratched his neck. "When I do nothing, I space out which ends with…” He gestured to the car that now had a large scrape on its side.
Andrew groaned and walked around to the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind him as he got in. He really didn’t want to drive right now, and he still felt drowsy from his not-a-nap. To get out some of his drowsiness, he locked the car just as Neil was about to open the door. Neil looked at him with a frown, like he hadn’t just dented their car, and Andrew unlocked the car. Neil said something like 'thank you' and then reached for the door, Andrew locked it again. After about a minute of toying with Neil until he threatened to lockpick the car, Andrew let him into the car.
They made it to the house in Colombia without issue, he’d convinced Neil that they should watch the Walking Dead third season again, so now he was sprawled out on the couch sitting with Neil’s legs in his lap, before he decided to grab some more ice cream.
Once he was coming back, he saw Neil had put on the Spanish subtitles to concentrate. Part of his echoed what Neil had said before about the different languages. He figured Neil would want a language he didn’t already know and part of him came up with a plan to get him better at driving after all there were always going to be days when he couldn’t drive.
He leaned over the couch and tugged at the strand of hair that never sat right on his head until Neil leaned back to look at him.
"Pick a letter in the English Alphabet." Andrew said.
Neil honestly thought about it for a second. No matter how little context he gave him, he would consider it like it mattered, Andrew appreciated it as much as he disliked it. "R." He finally said.
Russian then.
That night, he went out to the balcony and stayed up until three a.m., listening to thousands of songs. Neil and his little ‘I listen to all music’ stunt—that wasn’t a stunt—made it easy to find artists both of them would like. He found a couple hundred or so songs, all in Russian, saved them to the playlist called Stupid’s Music and went to bed.
That morning, he got to use the playlist when he was too tired to care about Neil’s terrible driving. They had practice in just a few hours and had to get up at an ungodly eight in the morning. Everything went smoothly until he turned on the playlist, Neil paused when he heard a different language: "Why?"
"Impulse."
He apparently learned how to read when he said, "You don’t have to do anything for me."
"K." Andrew rested his head against the glass. Neil made a frustrated huff.
"So, are you going to change the music?"
"No."
"Fine. Whatever, I’ll do it." Andrew kept his eyes closed but swatted Neil’s hand any time it went close to the console; he could hear well enough to time it exactly, it’s how he managed to be one of the best goalkeepers. It happened a few times before Neil gave up. "Andrew, it's fine; I don’t need you to change anything for me."
"Drive, rabbit, we’re going to be late." Because the truth is, he needed to change things for Neil. He deserved someone who could take him into consideration and devise some kind of arrangement that worked for each of them without leaving the other high and dry. He wasn’t something to ignore; he never was, but he didn’t seem to think that.
Neil didn’t move.
Andrew opened his eyes just to glare at him. They sat there for a while until Andrew conceded, "If you really need a reason, it makes Kevin mad when we shit-talk him in a different language, and he’s starting to understand German."
Neil paused mulling it over and managed to grin. "Alright, you’ve convinced me." They sealed it with a handshake, which Andrew used to pull Neil into a kiss.