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Andrew Minyard was not often stunned into silence. It had happened so few times that he could count it on one hand, but despite his typically unshakable nature, nothing could have prepared him for Neil Josten.
Andrew was sitting on one of the worn beanbag chairs in their dorm room. They were a little smushed and sad looking after four years of use, but they were more comfortable than the shitty couch they’d picked up from a thrift store. Neil was on the floor beside him, laying on his stomach in front of a science textbook that he surely was not reading. With an exaggerated stretch, Neil rolled to his side to face Andrew, pillowing his head on his arm. Andrew did not look at him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Neil anxiously tugging his bottom lip between his teeth. There was definitely something on his mind, but Andrew opted to wait him out instead of trying to drag a truth out of the notorious liar and world-renowned flight risk.
“Andrew,” Neil called quietly. Andrew picked up the hesitation in his voice. Interesting.
He flicked his eyes over to his boyfriend–his nothing, his something, his whatever–and cocked his head slightly to indicate he was listening.
Neil met his eyes, looked away, looked back again, like a rabbit standing up to a fox and searching for the quickest way out. Now this was getting annoying. Andrew did not appreciate seeing Neil’s runaway tendencies rising to the surface like this. Neil was not supposed to feel like he had to run from Andrew.
“Spit it out, Neil.”
The redhead sat up and sighed before looking at him again. He’d moved a little closer to Andrew, and his eyes were a little less scared.
“I just wanted to say this once. You don’t have to say it back now–you don’t have to say it back ever. But I love you, Andrew.” Neil scrubbed his hand across his face. “It was driving me crazy. I just needed to say it one time, for you to know.”
Andrew had stopped listening. He might have stopped breathing. Neil was stupid, he didn’t know what he was saying. Nobody loved Andrew. It was a waste of time, it meant nothing, this meant nothing–
“Andrew?”
Neil was looking at him again. Andrew’s hands were balled tightly into fists and Neil kept looking at him– not angry, not expectant, not upset just patient, always patient, and Andrew felt like he was going to be sick if Neil kept looking at him like that.
“Shut up,” he heard himself snap when Neil opened his mouth again. Still clenching his fists, he stood up from the beanbag, snatched his cigarettes off the coffee table, and walked out of the dorm. He probably slammed the door but he couldn’t hear it past the ringing in his ears, and he definitely forgot his coat, but he continued his familiar path to the roof.
He should have grabbed his coat, the chill of the November evening having long settled into the bare concrete he was sitting on. He tried to light his cigarette and blamed his shaky hands on the cold. He wanted to call Bee but knew he wouldn’t have a voice, so he settled on a text.
make some room for me on your schedule tomorrow.
*******
“Neil told me that he loves me.”
Betsy had barely shut the door behind him before the words tumbled out of him. He hadn’t even sat down yet, didn’t have a mug of hot cocoa in his hands, hadn’t made Bee make the first move to break the silence. He was breaking routine, which made him angry, and it was Neil’s fault, which made him angrier. He’d been off balance since Neil had opened his stupid mouth the night before.
“Would you like some cocoa?” Betsy asked, choosing to ignore the outburst for now, to reestablish their well-rehearsed song and dance.
Jaw clenched, he nodded before stalking over to the couch, taking up his usual seat with his usual throw blanket. He searched for comfort in the fuzzy pompoms lining the edges of the blanket and found none.
It was silent aside from the milk boiling in the kettle and the tinkling of a spoon against porcelain as she made their drinks. Wordlessly, she handed him his mug–his favorite mug, which he’d never admitted to but she knew anyway–piled high with marshmallows.
She settled into her armchair across from him before prompting, “You seem to be angry about what Neil said.”
The force it took for Andrew to open his mouth to respond almost had him worried he’d break something. “Of course I’m angry.”
“Why are you angry?”
“Because Neil is stupid. I hate him.”
“Why is Neil stupid? For saying that he loves you?”
“Yes.”
“Why does that make him stupid?”
Andrew would laugh, if that was something that he did with any regularity. Why and when wasn’t Neil stupid, he would say. Instead, he said, “Because those words mean nothing. Not to people like me, like us.”
Bee looked at him and tipped her head slightly, asking him to continue.
“No one has ever said that to me without wanting something I could not give or taking something from me that was not theirs.”
She considered this. “Are you concerned that he didn’t mean what he said?”
Despite Neil’s penchant for lying to everyone about everything, he no longer lied to Andrew, and couldn’t get away with it if he tried. Over the last four years, Andrew had learned his tells, as miniscule as they were. Last night, Neil’s eyes had been clear and his voice had been steady; he hadn’t been lying about any of it, and that made it worse. It was a truth he should not have given, but one he had given without asking for one in return.
“He wasn’t lying,” Andrew finally said.
“I see. When you said “people like us,” what did you mean by that?”
He wanted to stop her from this line of questioning, to nip this in the bud before he had to delve into the root of his insecurity, but five years of working with her had trained him to bite back the bile rising up in his throat and continue anyway.
“Neil and I are not people that the world was kind to. We were not raised on “love” and given a warm, safe place to sleep at night. It’s not something either of us have any business being involved in. ”
Betsy furrowed her brow at him. “Despite that, you and Neil found your way to each other. You’ve built a solid relationship and put in work to navigate your pasts together and support each other through challenges over the last several years, and that is no small feat even for people without pasts like yours. Yes, you’ve both suffered a great deal in your lives, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to find love and comfort in others, does it?”
Andrew swallowed something that tasted like anguish. “He deserves it.”
A small frown colored Betsy’s next question. “Andrew, do you not think you’re deserving of love?”
The silence was enough of an answer. He did not deserve love. It was not owed to him. The only time he thought he’d had it had turned into a nightmare and nearly cost him his life. He was not the kind of person that people loved. He was not the kind of person that Neil should love.
“Would you care to explain?” she asked, frown still on her face. It ached, a little, to see it.
“I don’t deserve something that I can’t return. I don’t deserve truths that I don’t have an answer for. Those words don’t mean anything to me, so I cannot give them to someone else.”
She stuck the end of her pen in her mouth and thought around it. “Is it the words themselves that bother you? Or the feelings behind them?”
“That word is an empty promise.”
“So then, how do you feel about Neil? What words feel more accurate, if not that word?”
“I hate him,” he said, trying for spite and sincerity but falling flat.
“So you’ve said. What do you feel that causes that gut reaction to revert to saying you hate him? Because we both know that’s not true. Are you afraid of the feelings that this word brings to the surface?”
A shot below the belt by Betsy Dobson. She knew he was bullshitting. He’d dropped the “I hate you” act a long time ago. He’d been feeling like an animal trapped in a corner, snarling and pulling out all the defense mechanisms he had come to call home. He was being self-destructive, and she wasn’t having it.
Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Neil is… overwhelming. I used to stand on the edge of the roof of Fox Tower just to see if I could feel anything at all. With Neil, sometimes I feel like I’m still one wrong move from falling off the edge when he looks at me. He never expects anything from me. He gives me space and respects my boundaries without getting upset and he doesn’t take anything that hasn’t been given. It’s bigger than I know what to do with. I never wanted this.” He was shaking. Calling it anger would be easy, mostly believable. Calling it something else–like fear or desperation or disappointment–was harder to stomach.
“Yet here you are. Life has a way of leading us places we didn’t expect, or didn’t want, doesn’t it? So,” she brought her pen back to her mouth, but the frown was gone. “You feel overwhelmed by your emotions for Neil in a way that makes you uncomfortable. What do you want to do about them? Do you want to break up with Neil because you don’t feel like you can say those words back to him?”
“No.”
She considered this. “Do you think that Neil expects you to say it back?”
“He told me that I don’t have to say it.”
“Are you worried that you will lose Neil if you aren’t ever able to say it?”
Andrew stilled. Betsy knew the cost of losing Neil. She’d been on the other end of the phone when Andrew thought Neil was dead in Baltimore. She’d listened to every threat and every curse and every fear that tore its way out of him that night, and had done her best to hold him together until they’d gotten the call that Neil was alive. That aside, if Neil ever chose to leave him, he had no right to make him stay, consequences be damned.
His hands flexed into fists and back again. “If he were to leave because of that, I wouldn’t stop him.”
“Do you genuinely believe that he would? Because I don’t know Neil as well as you do, but I do know that he cares for you a great deal and I do not think this would be something he’d leave over. Like you said, he gives but does not take. He is giving you this truth willingly, without expecting a return.”
“But I… want to give him something,” he ground the word out. He’d made a lot of progress on the whole “wanting” front, but sometimes it was still difficult. “I don’t know how. I want him to know but I can’t say it. That word doesn’t mean anything to me because it has never meant anything and was never enough for anyone to want to keep me around. But it means something to him, obviously. He deserves something for it.”
Before answering, she took a sip of her probably-now-cold cocoa. “You know, Andrew, you don’t have to say anything. Just because Neil said it, or because other couples say it, doesn’t mean you have to. Neil knows as well as I do that you are not a man of many words, and that you often choose to show your care and devotion through actions. Do you think you act in ways that show Neil how you feel about him?”
“If he doesn’t see it, then he’s more stupid than I give him credit for.”
She hid a small laugh behind her mug. “I’ll take that as a yes. Neil is a very verbally expressive person, both positively and negatively. In my opinion, him expressing himself this way was not only an admission of his feelings for you, but an acknowledgement of your feelings for him. He knows you better than you think he does, sometimes.”
Andrew let the silence settle around them for a bit, considering the way he felt for Neil. He’d always known, but it was easier to shove it away to the back of his mind instead of having to acknowledge what that truth could cost him, how he’d leave himself vulnerable. He’d given Neil access to a direct shot at his exposed heart the first time he’d kissed him, and Neil had never once attempted to take it.
“He’s it for me. It’s him or it’s no one.”
Bee finally smiled at him. “And that’s what matters. The words you use to express that, if you use any at all, are not as important as the feelings and the ways you treat each other. The most important thing is that Neil knows that. Whether you choose to verbalize that or not, people need security and validation of their place in other people’s lives. You get to make the choice that makes the most sense to you, and to Neil.”
*******
That night, Andrew laid awake in his bed. He’d taken an aimless drive for hours after his meeting with Betsy, not returning to the dorm until well-past midnight. Neil had been asleep, or pretending to sleep, when he got home and had not tried to talk to him. Always giving him space, always patient. Andrew clawed through the impulsive anger at that fact and dug his hands into the truth at the bottom of everything.
Being with Neil felt like standing at the edge of the roof of Fox Tower, looking at the ground from four stories high. The drop would likely kill him, or at the very least irreparably maim him. But anytime he had swayed a little too close, if the wind picked up at his back a little too forcefully, Neil was there to gently tug him back by his sleeve to safer ground.
Being with Neil was knowing he’d always be there to pull him back from the ledge, that he wanted to stand on the solid concrete next to Andrew with no drop off in sight. Andrew wanted to stop looking down.
Neil had been a runaway, a rabbit, a pipedream. But Andrew had given him keys, a home, a weight to lean against when the world had come crashing down around him. He’d asked Neil to stay, and Neil did. Andrew let himself admit that he hoped he always would.
He turned a small key over between his fingers, tracing familiar patterns in the slightly battered metal. He hoped Neil would understand what they meant.
*******
Andrew sat on the roof, his back leaned against a large air conditioning unit, facing the door. He couldn’t see the ledge from this angle, and he didn’t want to.
Predictably, the door opened, and a blue eyed, red headed impossibility quietly slipped through it. When he met Andrew’s eyes, he smiled, bright with relief and happiness that Andrew would maybe never feel like he deserved. His heart lurched nauseatingly at the sight of it.
Neil walked over and silently settled next to him–within arms reach but not close enough to share body heat.
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Come here,” he said before tugging Neil by the wrist to pull him into his lap. Neil looked surprised, but still said nothing.
Blue eyes bored into him, rendering him defenseless. He gathered the courage he’d built up the night before.
“Hold out your hand.”
Neil obliged, silently placing his palm up between them. Andrew dug the small key out of his pocket and dropped it into Neil’s hand. He watched as Neil studied the key, running his thumb across the ridges and turning it over in his palm.
“What’s it for?” Neil asked, confused.
“It doesn’t open anything anymore,” Andrew said. “When I moved in with Cass, there was an old chest in my bedroom. The bedroom door didn’t lock, but Cass gave me that key for the chest and told me that I could use it to keep anything that I wanted in it, to keep it safe. She promised that she’d never open it, and that I deserved somewhere of my own to put the things that mattered. So I did. I kept my favorite books, my brand new pair of shoes, the small blanket that she knitted for me when I first moved in–everything I cared about, I locked up in that chest.”
Andrew watched as slow realization crossed over Neil’s face, but Neil still waited patiently for him to continue.
“When I left Cass’s house, or rather, when I was taken away, I grabbed that key and tucked it in my wallet. The things that were important to me were still in there, but having the key meant they were still mine and no one could touch them. It was the first key I’d been given. The first thing that gave me some way to protect the things that mattered.”
“Andrew…” Neil whispered between them, clutching the key close to his chest.
“The thing you said,” Andrew started, then shook his head. He gently gripped Neil’s chin and lifted his face toward him. “That key is now yours. Keep it safe.”
Understanding bloomed in Neil’s eyes before Andrew pulled him in and kissed him with all the words he could not say. He didn’t need to say anything. Neil knew him better than he gave him credit for, sometimes.
*******
The final buzzer sounded, signaling the end of the game and a win for the Foxes. Out of breath from shutting down the goal, Andrew leaned against his racquet and looked across the court. The only player that mattered was already looking at him, his grin obvious even through his faceguard. Andrew spotted a flash of silver from the small chain around his neck. Neil reached up and placed a hand against the center of his chest, where Andrew knew a small, silver key was laid, attached to the chain. Neil patted at it twice before raising his racquet to celebrate their win.
Despite everything, Andrew smiled back.