Work Text:
The first thing Neil sees upon waking is Andrew’s unimpressed glower.
The second and third things he sees upon waking are the sheaf of paper and pen thrust unceremoniously at his face, and the fourth is the snarl twisting Andrew’s features as he hisses, “Sign this.”
“Um,” Neil rasps, because he’s been conscious for less than ten seconds. “What?”
“Mr. Josten, welcome back,” says another voice, and the fifth thing Neil sees upon waking is a man in pastel pink scrubs with pineapples all over them frowning disapprovingly at Andrew. The tableau strikes Neil as patently bizarre—not the disapproving frown, because despite Neil’s extreme displeasure, that seems to be one of the two default expressions most people wear when confronted with Andrew, the other being abject fear—because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t know anyone who would wear an outfit like that. Up to and including Nicky.
It’s only then that Neil registers the bed he’s laying on, and the wires hooked into his arms, and the low steady beeping that’s keeping time with the pulse thudding in his temples.
He returns Andrew’s glare back on him. Based on the slight uptick in Andrew’s unamused brow, it doesn’t muster up to his usual standards. “You brought me to a hospital?” he demands, shakily pushing himself up to sitting. Andrew doesn’t help him, but he doesn’t move his intense gaze from Neil as he tries to settle himself into a comfortable position.
“We had to put fourteen stitches in the back of your head,” pink-pineapple-guy, now obvious to Neil as a nurse, says, ignoring the weight of Andrew’s stare with the kind of ease of long exposure that tells Neil he’s been here at least a day—more likely several. “Of course they brought you to a hospital.”
Neil doesn’t look away from Andrew, who plucks the question straight out of his head (or off his unguarded, drugged-to-the-gills face, because now that he’s more aware he can feel the sluggish swim of his blood, dragging like molasses through his veins, and he hates it, hates the syrupy feel of his thoughts, the way his body takes an age to respond, and he wishes briefly for the fiery burn of vodka licking through him instead) like he always does. “Coach insisted,” he says flatly.
Which means Abby insisted, and Coach caved to her demands rather than listen to whatever Andrew had to say. Or maybe he hadn’t said anything, Neil thinks, because why would he?
“Idiot,” Andrew scoffs, and flicks him in the forehead. “Don’t be stupid.”
“But it’s my default setting,” Neil says, automatic.
“Don’t make me kill you.”
“Good thing we’re already in a hospital.”
“Really,” the nurse huffs. Neil hadn’t realized he was still here, and is distinctly uncomfortable with his own lack of awareness right now.
“You can leave now,” Andrew tells him. It sounds less like a suggestion and more like a threat. “We’re fine.”
“If I can’t use that word,” Neil grumps, “then you shouldn’t be able to either.”
“Shut up,” is all Andrew says. He raises an eyebrow at the nurse as if to say, Well?
The nurse opens his mouth to argue then apparently thinks better of it. He mumbles something about going to inform the doctor, not that either Andrew or Neil are paying attention to him anymore, and takes his leave.
The door closes, and Neil waits five seconds, then ten, before letting the tension seep from his shoulders, keeping his eyes locked on Andrew’s all the while. Andrew stares back unblinkingly, and the sight is almost more reassuring than Neil knows what to do with.
He lifts an arm slowly, grimacing at the pull of the IV, and gestures uselessly at the back of his head. “Where…?”
Andrew reaches forward, pausing scant millimeters from Neil’s wrist, and waits for Neil to nod before gently guiding his fingers to a patch of skin behind his ear, shaved down and bumpy with stitches. Even that faint touch of his own fingertips makes him recoil, and he shivers when Andrew lets his hand trail down to cup the back of his neck, grip firm and grounding.
Neil shudders his way through a handful of deep breaths, soaking in the warmth from Andrew’s proximity. His eyes fall on the papers Andrew had shoved at him earlier, now slightly crumpled and teetering off the side of the bed. “What’s this, then?” he asks, not bothering to gesture.
Andrew doesn’t answer right away, leaning forward to rest his forehead against Neil’s temple. He breathes in once, and it doesn’t shake but Neil can feel the hitch in Andrew’s shoulders that tells him how close he is to losing his composure. He reaches out blindly, grabbing the pages and thrusting them roughly into Neil’s lap.
Neil blinks. Brings a hand up to rub the crust from his eyes. Blinks again.
“Um,” he says eloquently.
“You’ve been here for three days,” Andrew tells him tonelessly. He sounds unflappable once more; the minute tightening of his fingers on Neil’s nape is the one thing that betrays him. “They only let me in to see you today, and that was because Coach wouldn’t stop arguing with the doctors and they finally got sick of listening to him.”
“Three days?!” Neil yelps, and Andrew pulls back from him to glare, though he keeps his hand clasped at Neil’s nape. Now that he’s looking properly, and has been awake longer than two minutes, he can see the dark bags under Andrew’s eyes, the tufts of hair sticking up that speak more to hands tugging through it than sleep, the rumpled state of the clothes Andrew had packed for after—“Wait, the game!”
“I will smother you here and now,” Andrew threatens, gaze narrow and menacing. Neil disregards the threat immediately—if Andrew ever gets to the point where he’d want to murder Neil, he definitely wouldn’t wait for Neil to wake up first.
He knows better than to point any of that out, though. “Andrew, what happened?”
“Oh, now he asks,” Andrew mutters, then grunts when Neil digs a finger ruthlessly into his side. “What do you remember?”
“We were playing… the Jackals,” Neil says slowly, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he tries to think back. “We were up… six-two at halftime?” he asks, hesitant, and Andrew hums his agreement. “And then…”
His head throbs. He sways further into Andrew, who doesn’t even bother pretending to push him away.
“I don’t remember,” he finally whispers.
“I’m not surprised,” Andrew says, nails scratching through Neil’s hair, “considering Harrison swung his racket at you ten minutes into the second half.”
The Jackals’ starting dealer, Neil’s brain supplies after just a moment too long. “Wonder what I said to piss him off,” he muses. Andrew snorts, but the way he clutches Neil tighter to him speaks volumes. Neil buries his face in the crook of Andrew’s neck, breathing in the scent of boy and comfort and home.
“I’m sorry,” Neil says, ten minutes or twenty or an hour later. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Andrew doesn’t scoff or threaten dismemberment or otherwise protest Neil’s choice of words, which tells him more than anything else just how rattled he really is. “It won’t happen again,” he says instead, as if simply speaking it aloud will make it so.
Neil peers down at his lap, where the words APPLICATION OF MARRIAGE LICENSE FORM stand out from the top of the crinkled pages.
“It won’t,” he agrees.
The idea sticks with Neil for the rest of the day. It distracts him throughout the visits from each of the Foxes, Wymack, and Abby, and though Andrew doesn’t bring it up again, it sits heavy in the scant space between them.
He’s never really thought about marriage; it, like romance and sex, always seemed like something that was never meant for him. Even after Andrew, after finding home in him and choosing him, choosing them, he never considered anything like marriage as an option.
For one, he never thought he’d ever get to an age where he could get married.
He looks down at his scarred and calloused fingers at one point, trying to imagine a band of gold or silver or platinum adorning one of them, and the imagined tableau strikes him as patently bizarre. He glances over at Andrew’s hands, twitching and clenching together atop the flimsy bedspread alongside Neil’s, trying to picture the same, and the tide of yearning and desire that crashes over him at the thought almost bowls him over.
Well then, he supposes. He never thought a lot of things before Andrew, so why should marriage be any different?
The hospital staff only try to evict Andrew from his room once, stating that visiting hours are over and only family members and spouses can remain, and Neil pitches a fit so epic it’s a wonder he doesn’t end the night restrained to the bed like his first and only other hospital visit. He can’t bring himself to regret his tantrum, though, when the dead, resigned look in Andrew’s eyes at the thought of being forcibly separated from Neil will haunt him worse than any of his usual nightmares.
He checks himself out of the hospital AMA that night amid protests from the team and Abby, but Coach only looks resigned and Andrew doesn’t say anything, so he doesn’t bother with any more than an eye roll at the rest of them. He’s not even concussed this time; he’s fine.
Not that he’ll say that out loud. Despite everyone else’s opinions to the contrary, he can learn.
Neil suffers the process of getting discharged with as much ill grace as he thinks he can safely get away with without landing himself back in the hospital. He grumbles about the wheelchair to everyone within hearing distance but lets the nurse—not the one with pink scrubs covered with pineapples, but instead a no-nonsense older woman in purple who snaps at him to “shut up and quit bitching before I make you, pipsqueak, this is standard policy” and to whom Nicky proposes his undying love on the spot—roll him over the front entrance before he attempts to make his way toward the parking lot on shaky legs.
Andrew keeps a firm grip on his elbow the entire time, and Neil will never admit just how much he needs the support, how relieved he is to have it.
He lets himself get bundled into the passenger seat of the Maserati, Andrew’s hands a warm and familiar brand as they gently guide his head down and buckle him in. Neil huffs but otherwise stays silent, and Andrew rewards him with an ironic little twist of his lips. He darts in quick, quicker than Neil’s tired eyes can follow, and presses his mouth to Neil’s hairline, as light and fast as hummingbird wings.
“Two hundred and thirty-seven,” he rumbles as he takes a step back. Neil’s sure he’s not imagining the thread of fondness in his voice, even through the lingering haze of pain and drugs.
“Is that all,” Neil murmurs back once Andrew situates himself in the driver’s seat. “And here I thought I’d be pushing at least two-fifty by now.”
“Keep it up, Josten, and you just might.”
No one else joins them in the Maserati. Neil doesn’t bother to wonder why, is just grateful for the silence beyond the growl of the engine. He closes his eyes as Andrew peels out of the parking lot, and when he offers his hand palm-up over the center console, blunt fingers tighten over his almost immediately.
“When?” Neil asks once they hit the highway.
Andrew doesn’t need to ask for clarification. “Is that a yes?”
“To your very unromantic proposal?” Neil opens his eyes again, pausing just long enough for Andrew to bare his teeth at him. “Yes, Andrew. Always yes.”
“What have I said about saying always?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
Andrew tears his gaze away from the road long enough to fix Neil with a flat stare. Neil grins at him, resting back against the headrest and only wincing a little at the pressure on his stitches. Andrew rolls his eyes as he turns his attention back to driving, but his thumb rubs comforting circles over Neil’s for the rest of the journey back to Fox Tower.
“As soon as we can,” Andrew finally answers him when they turn onto Perimeter Road.
“Okay,” Neil says simply, softly. He smiles, and a corner of Andrew’s mouth turns up in response.
“Okay,” he says.