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There’s a kind of art that involves putting drops of paint on a canvas and then dragging a flat metal object through the colors down in a line. Each color is separate at first but then becomes more and more muddied the further down you drag the metal through the mess until it is unrecognizable from what it had once been.
That was how the world had felt to Andrew under the drugs, a blurr that spiraled uglier and uglier down-down-down-down.
His attention span was non-existent when he was high like that. Shredded, more like. The colors were oversaturated and grating, and the people even more so. They were all horribly predictable and boring. Smooth, artificial tile; plastic without bumps or texture. So easy to break, so dull when they did.
Andrew didn’t really care about it. He didn’t care about a lot.
He had his hoarded promises and truths, the pillars he clung to, and that was enough. As long as he had them, he could cruise through life, as content as he could be waiting for death in the back seat of the metaphorical car until that too crashed for good.
Andrew calls himself realistic. He doesn’t have faith in people, they’re disappointing, so he aims his expectations low, but he aims true and hits his mark as a result. It still didn’t make it any less boring.
It wasn’t a pleasant life, but it was tolerable, and tolerable was better than bad, so if the ground was where he went, so be it.
The drugs were supposed to fix him. They didn’t, obviously, however, they were also not supposed to start giving him hallucinations halfway through for court-ordered sentence.
Neil, unlike everything else, was interesting.
He was a runaway who was as subtle as a house on fire, unpredictable with those purposefully average brown eyes. His mouth gave him away, the thing that could very well send him to heaven’s gate with the spitfire that pooled in it, spat like kerosine on the flames around them.
Yes, Neil was interesting. He had secrets, and Andrew had eyes. Andrew could see the other’s roots, barely shimmering in the daylight but still shimmering when they should have been dull. Secrets, just under the surface. Lots of them, hoarded in Neil like treasure.
Andrew wanted those secrets. He wanted to make him crack. He wanted to break this new thing because this was fun.
He tried. Neil didn’t break, he was more tenacious than that. He instead leaked like a punctured gas tank, and Andrew somehow leaked with him, but it also didn’t feel like he was about to be ignited from the inside out.
A strange truce, truth for a truth. Ironic, coming from the fact that Neil was a living lie.
It didn’t mean that Neil wasn’t attractive. Or in reach. Andrew was self-destructive, not stupid, he knew it wouldn’t work. He had expected that from the beginning.
What Andrew hadn’t expected was Abram.
Abram, who became one of the simple truths in the world. Sunrise, Abram, Death.
Abram was something so true it was undeniable because the truth of him was inlaid on the scars on Neil’s skin, tangible. Andrew had felt those scars. Neil, who treated his body as if it were the TSA, gave them to him because he had asked.
How many times in the nightmarish blur of rehab had Andrew thought not of the damage, but of the warmth that lay beneath the old slashes and burns? How it had made his fingertips buzz when the world around him swam with chaos?
Sometimes, a lot of the time, Andrew disliked having an eidetic memory. This time wasn’t an exception.
Abram was the core of what Neil was.
Abram was the bone-deep flight response that made him run. Abram was the past of auburn hair and azure eyes. Abram was what had lasted though each changed hair color and name; though every lie.
Abram was the truth, yes, but still, Neil remained.
Neil wasn’t kind, or polite. He wasn’t innocent. He wasn’t pure or demure. He wasn’t naive; he was anything but. Neil has killed people to get where he is now. He has left people in the gutter and would again in a heartbeat if it meant he would survive because he is a rabbit born to survive.
But, Neil isn’t Abram, he’s a conundrum.
Neil is sweet. It shouldn’t have been possible, survival should have killed any sweetness he had left but clearly, it had failed, because Neil is sweet.
Neil is sweet but he’s not sweet in the way Andrew is used to. He isn’t like Renee with her new morality, or Dan with her gritted patience, or Matt with his stubborn loyalty, or even Nicky with his undampened cheer, Neil is just… real. Unapologetically so. Unadulteratedly so.
Neil listens to Andrew. More than that, he hears him. He sees him.
It’s there, that sweetness, every time he looks at him with those eyes. It’s the thing that is nestled within the blue, staring at Andrew doe-eyed and red-lipped underneath the layers of the real world and all the horrors that should have buried it, impossibly alive.
The thing’s fake immaculacy didn’t take away from its realness. Neil looks at him and expects nothing but takes everything. He looks at Andrew like he means something.
Andrew doesn’t want it.
He had swung the racket, yes, he had started this, yes, but he doesn’t want it. He can’t. It’s a pipedream, it’s supposed to be.
It doesn’t stop him from stealing Neil’s breath from his lungs as he kisses him, taking him in.
It doesn’t stop him from tangling his fingers in those cremating curls, pushing them away from his flushed face as Andrew pulls back and simply looks for a moment when Neil has his own eyes shut, overwhelmed, but still so rigidly holding himself within Andrew’s invisible lines.
It doesn’t stop Andrew’s fingers from lingering at the shell of the other’s ear, grazing the skin with a lightness he doesn’t have in him.
Andrew can deal with pain, he has dealt with it his whole life, with loss, but for the first time, he is not sure if he can deal with this. This sweetness.
It makes him feel his heart and how it pounds. It’s uncomfortable. It’s terrifying in a way he hasn’t been numbed to yet. That makes it even more terrifying because he shouldn’t be able to feel like this.
The drugs were supposed to make it fake.
He wants it to go away. He wants to hold it with a white-knuckled fist. He wants to bury it in a hole deep deep down where no one, not even he, can touch it. He wants a lot of things, but he wants nothing most of all.
He wants nothing. He hates it.
But he keeps coming back. Like a moth to a flame, he keeps coming back. Like a junkie, he keeps fucking coming back because it’s so easy.
Andrew wants to consume and Neil lets him, not because he is being a stupid martyr, but because he wants it too. He enjoys it.
Neil fucking sits on his hands and takes what Andrew will let him take. He lets him press him against the wall or floor, wrists pinned by Andrew’s hands or more commonly, by his own willpower, and lets Andrew kiss him, put his hands over his clothes, under his clothes, in his hair, on his face, it doesn’t matter, he welcomes it all.
When he does touch, he presses his fingers into Andrew’s hair, his neck, his shoulders, his arms, with a vigilance that can only be subconscious.
He touches Andrew with something deeper, something alive.
Neil is beautiful as he falls apart under Andrew. He’s bright, like a star burning out in his palms. He’s gorgeous, unstifled.
Andrew drinks all of him in, he can’t stop himself. Just like how Andrew has grown to trust Neil and his promised words, Neil has grown to trust Andrew. He trusts him enough for this, to throw survival-born detachment away for hours, for more than hours.
And there it is again, looking through those eyes. Those fucking eyes.
Too sweet. It makes Andrew’s teeth ache when he bites. It makes him ache when he doesn’t, too.
The air on the roof is quiet, but not still, the wind still stirs around Andrew. It makes him sway slightly, his stomach lurching and his feet swinging in the open air, four stories up. He doesn’t move away from the edge.
Andrew relishes it, both the feeling and the quiet. It’s ten on a Saturday, most people are still too lazy with sleep or hangover to do anything much but, unfortunately, not him. That’s what the half-full bottle of whisky is meant to solve.
It burns as he drinks it right from the bottle the only way he knows how, neat. It takes the edge off of everything, though. It lets him breathe in the smell of cigarette smoke around him, his mind getting lost in its numbing-sparking-soothing haze. It’s familiar.
The night had been loud.
Perhaps, that had been one of the only upsides to the drugs, the quiet dreamless sleep it gave him during the crashes. In his new freedom, Andrew’s mind was a breeding ground for dreams again, memories reborn. They were shadows, yes, but he could remember them with all five senses.
Andrew drinks from the bottle. It stings his tongue.
Only the light had given him some refuge; dawn, melting the shadows to mere memories again.
Their presence still lingered, though.
Andrew drinks again. He smells his cigarettes. He feels the edges of vertigo. He hears the sound of the door behind him opening.
He turns his head towards it, impassive.
Neil half-smiles at him. His face is flushed, the layer of sweat already cooling to nothing in the wind that plays with his hair. The night had been louder than expected not only for him, seemingly.
Andrew doesn’t look at him, he instead lights another cigarette.
The wind is strong enough that the flame barely catches, the paper smoking instead of lighting. Andrew shields it with his hand, holding the flame to it as if it will make the cherry brighter, but it doesn’t work. He brings the cigarette to his lips, drawing in a long breath as finally, the flame catches against it, turning the paper end of it into a bright circle of light.
Andrew holds it out to Neil wordlessly.
Neil takes it with nimble fingers, their skin not brushing even for a moment. He sits further away from the edge, but close enough that if Andrew would reach for him, he would catch his sleeve easily.
He watches Neil cup his hand around the cigarette and breathe in the smoke, his eyes closing as he revels in its haze. His cheeks are flushed but, not like after he plays exy. It’s lighter, higher on his cheeks rather than his whole face, but not as high as it is other times when he’s with Andrew.
Andrew reaches down beside him, picks up the bottle, and takes another swig from it.
“Did you just wake up?” Andrew glances over the neck of the bottle at Neil who is looking at him, cigarette held normally. He still hasn’t taken a drag from it.
“It’s early.” Andrew sets the bottle aside again, but further away. He knows his limits, and he knows he’s balancing the line between self-medicating and something uglier at the moment.
“It’s ten,” Neil says, confused as if he cannot comprehend the concept of rising late.
Andrew takes a drag from his own cigarette, the filter unpleasantly hot as the cherry eats the last of the tobacco away. He stabs it into the concrete, snuffing its life out in a spark of dying orange and grey.
“My point stands.” He glances pointedly down at Neil’s crossed legs, raising an eyebrow at his shoes. “Running, junkie?”
“Not far.” Neil taps off some ash, watching the wind carry it away. “Kevin was getting insufferable.”
“Congratulations on being the last one to notice.” Neil’s lips quirk. He looks at Andrew again, raising his eyebrows in question, mirroring him.
“And you have been here? Feeling? ” Andrew lights a fresh cigarette. He takes his time with it.
“You’re not hopeless yet.”
But it is true. He has, more than he would like in ways he wouldn’t. That’s why the whisky is here too rather than just cigarettes. He comes up here to feel, but he feels too much so he dampens it the only way he knows how.
Neil snorts.
“High praise.”
Andrew scoffs, breathing in smoke anew. It’s warm in his lungs. The wind around them has calmed for a moment. It makes everything hang heavy in the air. Andrew ignores it, absentmindedly gazing out at the campus as he slowly smokes his cigarette.
Buildings stretch almost as far as the eye can see, plastic building blocks from the height, and the few people about like ants. Somewhere, below the tower, someone is singing. He listens to it, engraving the nameless tune in his mind as it slowly passes, a glittering bubble in the sea of the world around them.
Neil is still looking at him, his eyes moving as if minutely searching for something. Andrew breathes in nicotine, waiting. The silence stretches on too long to be insignificant.
“Staring.” Neil huffs, but he looks away, tapping off more ash. His fingernails have just been cut, Andrew can see the unsmoothed ridges, unfiled angles from a clipper. Efficient, not elegent.
He breathes out smoke. The grey haze hangs only for another second before the wind picks up again. It’s not silent anymore.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
Far off.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
Church bells.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
It has been a long time since Andrew has heard them.
They are in the south, there are more churches than there are coffee shops, but he can barely recall the last time he heard them so clearly. They are loud now, announcing something he wasn’t partial to.
But Neil is. He can see it in his rabbit’s gaze, the recognition. Neil taps his fingers to the beat of it on the concrete between them. Andrew watches his fingers with their clipped edges from the corner of his eye.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
He doesn’t ask, he waits. He has always been patient for things like this, interesting things.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
Tap. Tap tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
Ding. Ding dong dong. Ding dong ding.
Tap. Tap tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Do you think it’s a wedding or a funeral?” Andrew glances up from the skyline again. Neil is regarding him keenly. If this is a test of some kind, it’s a shitty one.
“You’re an expert on church bells?”
“It’s a Saturday, it’s not service until tomorrow so it must be something else.”
The only times people really go to church is either if they are getting married or dead, they both know that. Religion was useless in their world, but some clung to it with white-knuckled hands in their most vulnerable moments.
“And which is it?”
Neil pauses, listening again.
The sun makes his side profile stand out. It makes the blue of his eyes glow like pools of ice or like silken rain and his hair light up like strands of the stuff. The wind makes him move - his hair, his body, the natural sway of a person - alive and not a picture.
Not a hallucination.
When he looks at Andrew, the sweetness in his eyes has not faded. Not one bit. When he smiles, it’s a real, true smile.
“I don’t know.”
Neil takes a drag of the cigarette at last, lips sealing around it in the same place from where Andrew had held to light it from. It’s a miracle he doesn’t burn himself.
In the end, if they are wedding bells or death knells, it doesn’t matter; Andrew is scared shitless either way because this is all getting far too real to be nothing.