Work Text:
It wasn’t a secret that Neil liked soft things. Andrew had seen him run his fingers over stuffed animals, back and forth, back and forth over the fabric until he was left satisfied by the feeling. He’d never had one when he was a child, and so he made up for lost time now - he had an entire collection of plushes, some given to him by the Foxes and some bought by himself. They’d all ended up being a kind of animal: a rabbit, a wolf, a jellyfish, a dinosaur.
Neil had never had a childhood, and so he was slowly letting himself have one now that he was finally safe and settled. Andrew was right there beside him, a silent shadow who kept watch. He wouldn’t let anyone tell Neil that this was wrong or that he was childish, glaring at them with a hand on his knives, just daring them to say a single word more. They never did.
He helped his little rabbit build blanket forts in the dorm’s living room and told Kevin that he wasn’t invited in his blandest possible voice while Neil quietly let himself laugh inside, hidden away nice and cozy. He’d stay up and watch Neil amass a mess of stuffed animals around his body until he fell asleep still holding onto them. Andrew would let the edges of his mouth tick up just the slightest bit whenever it rained and Neil put on his eye searing yellow rain boots, running out until he found a puddle big enough to stomp through, returning a little while later soaking wet but beaming, leaving him to wonder if he should start calling the idiot a dog instead. The two of them cut cookies in weird shapes (he didn’t want to know where Neil had found a set of cupcake shaped cookie cutters; it felt vaguely sacrilegious to make cookies shaped like cupcakes) and then put way too many sprinkles on them when they were done baking.
And sometimes Neil got quiet about it. Not like he was ashamed or embarrassed, but more like he was trying to process things, or maybe he just didn’t want words in those moments. Either way, Andrew was there with a hand to the back of his neck, with a flat voice and that same familiar question of ‘yes or no?’. He bullied his junkie into sitting on the couch with a documentary about mountains while he made grilled cheeses for both of them in the kitchen. The sounds from the TV carried over to him even if Neil was silent, and that combined with the clinking and clacking of the pan as he flipped the bread with a knife soothed him. Sun shone through the curtains and nearly blinded him, but even that felt like something good, like something right.
Plain honey wheat bread and cheese singles weren’t exactly fine dining, but Neil gobbled up his sandwich like the gremlin he was, and Andrew tore off his crust and handed it off to his idiot, who was making grabby hands at it, eyes big and wide as they stared at him. “Shut up,” he told him, but Neil just grinned at him as he ate the crust.
More and more these days, Andrew didn’t have to tear his meals into pieces just to be able to finish them. By making sure Neil ate, he himself was eating more, and somehow the two of them were both making healthy choices for once, which was a bit of a mindfuck. It was hard to eat in front of other people, but with Neil eating with him, it wasn’t so bad.
Eating cheap and simple junk like this felt a little like he was reclaiming a part of his childhood. He knew what it was like to go hungry or not be able to eat anything even when he wanted to. He knew throwing up after eating too much and how empty it always made him feel. He knew how chocolate was safe to want.
Cass had made him grilled cheeses like this before. He had watched her butter both sides of the bread before toasting it, just like he’d done in the kitchen earlier. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. Cass’s food had always tasted so good, but now in his memories all of it was tainted. It clung to the top of his mouth and wouldn’t get out.
Andrew took another bite of his sandwich and let himself focus on Neil, who was watching him with those blue eyes that always saw too much. Something in his chest twisted up and smoothed out, just from seeing him like that. He hated it, hated this, hated Neil. Hated how he was changing and yet didn’t even want it to stop.
He felt soft fabric gently brush against his fingers and he looked down only to find Neil’s stupid jellyfish there. It bumped against him again. He grabbed it only because the way it kept moving was annoying. He hated this thing and how soft it was.
He should never have bought it for Neil.
Andrew kept internally grumbling to himself about things even as he burrowed down deeper into the fluffy blanket he and Neil were sharing. They finished their grilled cheeses and the documentary in silence before letting autoplay put on another.
It was a warm afternoon and there was no one but them in the dorm.
Andrew didn’t hate it.
“Can I hold your hand?” Neil’s voice was soft, and something about it was different. Something told Andrew to be careful.
He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t know how to be soft like all of the stuffed animals Neil owned. But this was Neil, and Andrew knew he would never ask for something Andrew couldn’t provide. And so he trusted Neil and he trusted himself for once, and he said, “Yes.” It came out easy.
All of the tension in Neil’s body instantly evaporated and he sighed, taking Andrew’s hand.
He found himself moving his thumb back and forth over scars and calluses, over skin he knew just as well as his own.
It took a while for his rabbit to speak, but it didn’t matter. Andrew could wait however long it took.
“Sometimes I feel small,” Neil said, quiet and still in a way that made Andrew want to tug Neil closer until they were chest to chest and his rabbit could burrow his way down into his heart. He tightened his grip on Neil’s hand, squeezing.
Andrew thought back to the times when Neil woke up after nightmares and looked around in a blind panic, hands restraining themselves as he called out, ‘Drew?’, eyes tearing up but never letting himself truly cry. He remembers the stillness in Neil’s body the time Andrew gave him that stuffed jellyfish, and then how he relaxed and smiled so happily. How just a look at Andrew can calm him down, and how he still looks to him for reassurance sometimes. How comforted he is whenever Andrew picks out his outfits.
He is suddenly furiously, darkly angry at everyone in Neil’s past for failing to give him a proper childhood. For not loving him, for not even trying to. For hurting him so badly that he looks at Andrew like he’s someone good. For taking and taking and taking from a child who couldn’t fight back. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that they have to live with other people's choices.
He wants to kill them. Anyone who has ever so much as looked at Neil wrong. He dares them to try again; this time, Neil has him.
“Be as small as you want,” Andrew tells him, and the thing is, it isn’t soft or quiet. It comes out harsh and through grit teeth, and yet Neil looks at him like that. Idiot. Menace. Impossible.
He tugs Neil closer, until their legs are tangled together and their faces are inches apart on the bed. There’s a lump in his throat, caught somewhere.
“I’ll take care of you,” he promises, firm and almost angry sounding. How is he the first to say something like this? They’re not children anymore and yet they both feel so young still.
Neil hides his face in the mattress, eyes wet, face stricken, and Andrew stares out over his head blankly. He waits, still holding onto him. Neil squeezes his hand every so often, and he squeezes back.
“Andrew,” is all Neil says, later, overwhelmed and too awake. Andrew gets up and throws various stuffed animals at him and then drapes his weighted blanket over his body. He puts a hand to Neil’s throat and says back, “Neil.”
They stare into each other’s eyes until his rabbit’s start to droop closed, tired and emotionally exhausted. Still, Neil doesn’t fall asleep.
Without a second thought, Andrew starts talking about the ocean. The next time he looks down, his idiot is asleep and his muscles are sore from being so still. He disentangles himself from Neil, who merely rolls over onto his side and starts drooling, making Andrew roll his eyes.
He unlocks his phone and searches up some things.
When Neil wakes up, looking better but still vulnerable enough to make Andrew have a need to watch over him, he sleepily looks around for a moment before catching onto the fact that Andrew is still in the room with him. His face lights up and he says, “Drew,” sweet enough to give someone cavities.
There is something fragile in his eyes even if they are clear and present, and Andrew swallows once before saying, “I’m here.”
This is Neil looking for reassurance, trusting Andrew not to hurt him. He could so easily say something dismissive or walk away.
He doesn’t want to. It’s such a relief that Andrew needs to take a few breaths and tell himself that he’ll never be like the people who hurt them. He refuses.
“Mittens?” Neil asks, looking around again, not distressed but instead curious and content. Andrew reaches down in between the bed and the wall and hands the jellyfish over to Neil, who immediately scoops it up and rubs his face over it. He hums, apparently appreciating the feeling.
Andrew knows they should probably talk about this, about Neil feeling small and what, if anything, he wants to do about it. But something in him relaxes at seeing his rabbit like this. He doesn’t want to hurt him, and so he decides to wait.
Neil isn’t acting particularly different from his usual self, but he does seem more vulnerable like this, without his usual smirks or smart mouth. And Andrew wouldn’t normally ask, but he does this time. “Hungry?”
Neil nods, still fiddling with Mittens, not looking over at him. His clothes are all wrinkled from sleeping on them; he has a bit of dried drool on his cheek that Andrew itches to wipe away.
Neil is usually the one initiating conversation, and so it feels a bit odd for Andrew to be the one doing it now, but it’s not bad, especially not when he feels something warm and fond start to settle in his chest at Neil’s responses.
“First, let’s get you cleaned up,” Andrew smiles, and as soon as Neil looks up and sees it, his mouth drops open wide in surprise before he smiles back, wide and bright. He nods again, blue eyes suddenly excited as he starts to bounce up and down on the bed.
Neil is very well behaved, which is really all the proof Andrew needs to know that he’s feeling small. He picks out an oversized sweatshirt and some shorts for him to wear, asking if he wants to leave his sports bra on or not. Neil decides to take it off, flinging it somewhere on the floor for later. Andrew nearly snorts.
He uses a wet washcloth to clean up Neil’s face, and his little rabbit closes his eyes and leans into it, listing into his hands like a cat demanding affection. When Andrew is done, Neil actually pouts up at him with big blue eyes that make him clench his fists, pretending he’s unaffected when really he’s being bombarded by serotonin.
He thinks he understands what Bee meant by ‘cute aggression’ now.
When he walks out of their room, Neil follows right behind him, eyes watching their shadows as they move.
When Neil tries to follow him into the kitchen, Andrew steers him back into the living room and plops him down on the couch, wrapping him up in a nearby blanket and handing him the remote before he can try to escape again. He doesn’t want to see what small Neil is like in the kitchen when regular Neil is such a clumsy disaster.
“Stay,” he tells him flatly, flicking his nose and watching as Neil blinks a couple of times at that before sticking his tongue out at Andrew.
He ends up making pancakes, because they’re easy and he knows Neil won’t make much of a mess eating them since he doesn’t even like them with syrup. No, his rabbit prefers peanut butter and butter, the weird little gremlin that he is.
He debates for a solid minute over whether or not to cut up Neil’s pancakes before deciding that yes, he should, or else he knows Neil will spear an entire pancake on his fork before trying to eat it whole. Andrew lives with a feral raccoon.
He returns to find Neil absorbed in some anime filled with sparkles and flowing ribbons. “Sailor Moon,” Neil informs him before promptly ignoring him again.
Andrew somehow gets him to eat everything on his plate, mostly by annoying him into it. Whatever, it works.
“It’s me,” Neil tells him a few times as he points to the main character, named Serina or something. Andrew looks at her and then back over to Neil blankly. Press X to doubt.
Sometimes Andrew just has to accept that he doesn’t understand Neil.
It’s not until a few days later that he finds out the character’s name in Japanese is ‘Usagi’, and that it means rabbit.
Andrew silently cuts Neil’s apple slices into bunnies the next time he makes them.
Andrew comes home after classes a few days later only to find his idiot staring down at an enormous box on the floor like it was a bomb he was trying to defuse, all serious mouth and determined eyebrows.
“It has your name on it,” Neil says, not even looking at him, and Andrew has the sudden overwhelming urge to sigh. This is the kind of man he lives with.
“That is generally how the postal system works, Neil.”
Neil shoots him a silent look full of sass, and Andrew levels him a flat one back. As always, Neil cracks first, glaring, and Andrew is left feeling a petty kind of satisfaction at winning.
“What is it?”
Andrew lets the silence stretch. At the perfect moment, he tells him, “Open it,” in classic ominous fashion. Neil takes out a knife from Andrew’s armbands because he’s a dumbass who doesn’t use scissors.
Inside the big box is a smaller box, and once Neil hits it, he looks even more suspicious. Andrew is standing off to the side feeling like all he’s missing is some popcorn. This is even better than he imagined.
The second box gives him more trouble than the first, but eventually Neil wrestles that one open too, cursing the entire time and causing Andrew’s lips to turn up at the corners.
Inside is a plastic bag containing a drawstring bag and then the entire purpose of the boxes: Neil reaches inside and pulls out a giant stuffed stegosaurus that’s blue all over and that weighs about five pounds and then looks over at Andrew accusingly, holding it in his arms like he won’t be putting it down any time soon.
“I’m not cleaning that up,” Andrew says, gesturing towards all of the debris and destruction left over, and then he turns and walks away.
Neil is left looking down at the dinosaur he’s holding, and then at the mess around his feet.
“Fuck,” he curses.
They talk about Neil feeling small. Of wanting to feel young sometimes and make better childhood memories, of wanting to feel safe and loved and taken care of.
Neil will ask him if it’s true what he said. ‘Do you really want to take care of me?’ He’ll ask it like he’s afraid of the answer.
And Andrew has never been more sure than when he tells him, ‘Yes, you idiot.’
It’s hard to put into words how much he likes taking care of Neil. How could he not treasure being the person Neil leans on and looks towards, at being trusted so completely? He’s used to protecting his people, but having Neil actively ask him for it and want it is fulfilling. It makes him feel calm and content.
He talks it over with Bee. He goes over his wants and motivations with a fine toothed comb before he brings it up with Neil again, because Andrew never wants to be like their abusers. She reassures him that it’s alright to want to take care of someone, that at the core of it all, it sounds like Andrew wants to give Neil a safe place to just be.
He’s not wrong for wanting this too.
He’s not wrong for wanting.
He comes back to Neil wrung out and tired that day. He goes up to the roof and smokes, watching the smoke travel up and up and out of him. He stays there alone for hours and thinks of nothing.
When he goes back inside, he finds a plate of sandwiches shoddily wrapped up in plastic wrap, the crusts cut off. He finds a sticky note on top reading, ‘Out on a run!’ with a little smiley face.
He eats both of them in one sitting and then buries himself in Neil’s sheets, smelling his idiot’s shampoo and strawberry lotion. Blueberry the giant stegosaurus leans against him as he pulls a pillow over his head and closes his eyes.
It’s soft.
“Rabbit,” Andrew says, watching Neil as the other man mumble something, still half asleep. They’re in the Columbia house, just the two of them - an entire weekend without anyone else to bother them for once.
“Andrew,” Neil says back, and he says it like his name is a nickname all on its own.
He smooths over the hair brushing against his rabbit’s forehead with a hand. “Get up.”
Neil clings to Blueberry, who he’d demanded to come with them on this trip, and turns away. “No.”
Andrew walks over to the door, not even looking back to know that Neil’s eyes are on him again.
“Drew,” Neil whines. Andrew is silent.
Eventually, his little rabbit huffs noisily and grumpily at him while sitting up, scowling. “Hmph,” he pouts to himself, but Andrew is unmoved.
Neil gets out of bed and stomps over to where Andrew is. “You’re so mean!” he tells him while knowing that Andrew doesn’t care.
After he finishes a glass of orange juice, he stands firm and says, “No affection for you. You’ve been bad, Andrew.” He’s so serious about it that Andrew has to stop himself from laughing.
“Not even if I ask for it?”
Neil eyes him menacingly over his bowl of cheerios. “Villains don’t get hugs, Andrew.”
Neil was such a fucking brat. Andrew wouldn’t change it for anything.
“Oh, woe is me,” he said, no emotion whatsoever present in his voice. His little rabbit bit his lip and tried to look away from him but failed.
“Okay, you can hold my hand,” Neil told him, looking very proud of himself.
Andrew presented his hand, and Neil held it all throughout their breakfast.
They played Animal Crossing together, Neil controlling their joint character and Andrew directing most of their decorating choices while Neil was the one who chose which villagers he wanted on their island. (He seemed to prefer the deer and alligators.)
Neil napped for a while during the afternoon and woke up no longer feeling small, joining Andrew on the porch as he smoked, breathing in the scent and feeling at peace.
They sat there in silence until eventually heading in after being bit by mosquitoes a few too many times, cooling down with ice cream and blocks of ice that Neil held in his mouth until they became small enough to crush between his teeth.
They watched home renovation shows from opposite ends of the couch and Andrew daydreamed about making apple dumplings. Of Neil making them with him and getting flour everywhere. He could almost taste the cinnamon and sugar.
“Yes or no?” he asked, and when Neil said yes, he tugged him into a kiss that tasted sweeter. When he pulled back, Neil was looking at him, relaxed and quietly happy.
“Thank you,” he said, and Andrew knew he meant more than just taking care of him. He scoffed and pushed his idiot rabbit away.
“Shut up.”
Later, they’d go out. Maybe to the park for a picnic. Maybe they’d go for a drive, or they’d make plans for another day for the next town over where they had an aquarium Andrew wanted to visit. They’d probably go for a late night drive through to get slushies - strawberry grape for Neil, and cherry for Andrew.
And they’d take care of each other, like they always did.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad start to a Saturday morning.