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In the light of dawn, the melting snow looked like sugar crystals, the kind that Andrew loves to put on top of cookies. Crunchy and buttery, even Neil likes to eat them from time to time.
He blows out a breath, watching the mist of it evaporate like smoke as he brings his mug of hot chocolate up for another drink. Beside him, wrapped up in an oversized blanket, Andrew’s silent presence keeps him centered and present.
He’d woken up sweating from a nightmare, one he can’t quite remember but can’t entirely shake off either. His fingers curl tighter around the handle of his cup even as one of his legs starts restlessly bouncing up and down.
They’ve been out on the porch of the Columbia house for a while now. Neil can see the sunrise peeking out over the horizon, and he feels like he’s been somehow left behind. His heart has long calmed down, yet he aches to run, to be faster than whatever’s pinning him down here in this moment.
“Junkie.” It’s quiet, Andrew’s voice, something secret kept so near and dear that Neil would never be able to turn away from it.
People always say that Andrew doesn’t care; Neil thinks that they never even bothered trying to understand him in the first place.
He has never been safer than here, beside the man he chooses to stay for. Andrew is the one guiding star he can see when it all goes dark, the light left on, the hand on the back of his neck proving that he’s not alone.
He’s home.
“I don’t think today is going to be a good day,” is all Neil can think to say. “Sorry.”
“Abram,” Andrew says, “I don’t care.”
He feels some hidden ache suddenly unspool and fall apart, undone as always by Andrew just being himself. Even if no one else ever understands, he does, and that’s enough.
When he’s lost, Andrew always, always goes and finds him, and that matters more than Neil will ever be able to put into words.
“Get over here.”
Neil finds himself being tugged inside of Andrew’s blanket, held close to the blond’s chest. He closes his eyes on a shudder as he burrows down deeper, trying to make himself as small as possible - he knows Andrew has him. It's fine to lean on him, because Andrew wants him to.
Andrew likes taking care of him.
“Stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault,” Andrew murmurs into his hair, lips resting there on his scalp afterwards. And Neil knows that it’s something Andrew’s said over and over now, that he hates repeating himself - but he says it for Neil anyway, and it never fails to make him feel warm.
How is it possible to be so cherished and loved, and yet doubt if it’s really for someone like him? A runaway, a ghost, a rabbit with two cursed feet. Nothing and nobody, somehow still here and still breathing. It's surreal, strange and unknown.
He cried the first time he realized that Andrew loved him just as much as he did, because the depth of it all surprised him. He had never before thought that he was worth loving, but Andrew proves him wrong with every day they wake up together. The tears had come not from pain, but from its absence.
For a boy who had gone an entire lifetime as someone else’s person and never his own, it had been healing.
So when he smiles now, even in the face of the night before and the day ahead, Neil knows it’s real. “I’m tired,” he confesses, and he feels free.
Neil Josten can be anything, but no matter what, he will always, always be loved.
“Go to sleep, then,” Drew tells him, his familiar, even voice a comfort. “We can watch that new documentary you were talking about when you wake up.”
It sounds perfect. It sounds like everything Neil could ever want.
(He thinks he’s a bit delirious from the lack of sleep.)
“I love you,” Neil quietly says, and it’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud.
There’s a brief pause, and then a hand carding through red curls. “I know.”
He falls to the darkness behind his eyes, to the brief touch of a kiss pressed to his forehead, soft and sweet and soothed to sleep. It's exactly where he wants to be, safe inside of the arms of the person he trusts more than anyone else.
Andrew holds Neil as he watches the sky turn from dark to light, and he lets out a sigh, content and too fond for so early in the morning.
“Idiot,” he mutters, the sound lost to the wind.