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There are some days when looking in the mirror is easier than others. In some ways, the scars actually help, even the dramatic strangeness of the burn scar. They’re not anything Neil would have chosen for his face, but they’re also not something the Butcher of Baltimore would ever have allowed on his, and there’s something comforting in that. The resemblance is always going to be there, but it also couldn’t be anyone but Neil himself looking back at him through the glass.
…
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
The words feel like they’re burned into his brain by now, he’s been sworn in to give evidence at so many trials as the investigation of his father’s people winds down that they’re starting to blur together. Not this one, though. This one, Neil has been dreading, and he has a feeling the memory of it is going to stand out. Verbally, Neil swears himself in, loudly and without hesitation. In his head, he adds a few caveats. He can feel Andrew’s blue, blue eyes boring into him from the bench in the back of the courtroom, and the intensity there would be steadying any time, but it feels especially important today. From her place sitting at the front of the courtroom, slowly and deliberately, Lola licks her lips at him.
“Harrison, control your client,” the judge snaps to Lola’s lawyer, and Neil remembers the feeling of Lola’s leg wrapped around his own, pinning him at the hip and ankle in the darkened trunk of a car. He thinks of the crawling feeling in his skin everywhere her body had been pressed against his own, and they way they’d been drawing inexorably closer to a house Neil had hoped he would never have to see again. Idly, he wonders what has happened to the house since his father’s death. A little less idly, he hopes someone has the presence of mind to burn it down.
…
After Neil has given the kind of testimony that should mean Lola won’t be a free woman for the rest of her unnatural life, as they’re walking out of the courthouse and towards Andrew’s car, Andrew tells Neil, “Let me know if you’re going to hurl.”
It’s not quite a question, and it’s not quite concern, except, maybe, for the car’s interior, but it’s Andrew, so it’s as close as Neil’s getting to either, and he’s quietly, desperately grateful for both—that Andrew is showing as much caring as he has in him, and that there’s no one else around to offer a more conventional or effusive version.
“I won’t,” Neil tells him, and, “Just give me a minute, okay?”
Instead of going for the door right away, Neil leans against the car’s back bumper and doesn’t think about the time Lola told him he was almost her type. He lights a cigarette and doesn’t think about the pointed tip of her tongue in his ear, or the musty smell in the trunk, or the way her hips had tightened around him as the car went over a pothole. He keeps on not thinking about it as Andrew joins him leaning against the car’s back bumper, and for good measure, he doesn’t think of the way the aching burn on his face had bounced up and down off the carpeting in the back of the trunk with every movement of the car as he lights a second cigarette and passes it to Andrew.
Andrew takes a long drag, and Neil decides to trust his voice long enough to ask, “Hey, what number am I at now?”
Andrew turns towards him, smoke spilling from his lips, and there’s something cruel in his eyebrows that Neil can’t help but think is attached to the neediness implied in his question, but Andrew only says, “Now? Maybe ninety.”
Neil thinks that’s probably some kind of kindness, some kind of reward for all the truths he had to tell today, all the buried parts of himself he had to dredge up, and Neil isn’t against taking advantage of that kindness, so after a moment, he lifts the open hand that’s next to Andrew just slightly, palm up, not asking, just offering. After a moment, Andrew transfers his cigarette to the other side and laces the fingers of their free hands together lightly, quietly finishing the rest of his cigarette. When it’s gone, he flicks the still-glowing butt into the bushes, releases Neil’s hand, and says, “Let’s go.”
…
It does not turn out to be a good week for Neil and mirrors.
…
It’s nine days later, and literally no one is thinking about Lola and her perfectly cruelty-colored lip-stain, especially not Neil, when Aaron marches into Neil and Andrew’s room, face flushed and hair disheveled, and announces that he needs to borrow the car.
Andrew, who has been busily highlighting every use of the word “the” in his assigned reading for his physics course while Neil and Kevin watch game tape, doesn’t even look up as he answers. “No,” he says.
“That’s it?” Aaron asks. “Really? Just ‘no?’”
“Really really,” Andrew answers.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Alright, asshole,” Aaron says. “Don’t suppose you want to lend me a condom?”
“Not really,” Andrew drawls. “You know how important safety is to me, I wouldn’t want to be unprepared.”
Neil has no idea how serious Andrew is or isn’t being, there—they certainly haven’t gotten far enough for condoms to be an issue yet, but the others seem to just assume otherwise, and neither Neil nor Andrew has decided it was enough of any of their business to tell them otherwise.
“Why can’t you just act like a normal person for once and just give me the damn car keys?” Aaron asks.
He’s clearly not expecting Andrew to say, “You’re right.” Neither are Neil or Kevin, both of whom look up when he does. “What kind of monster am I, not to care about my own twin’s sexual health?”
He’s got that slightly manic light in his eyes, that tone in his voice like he’s smirking somewhere you can’t see it, and when he turns his head to take in Neil and Kevin and says, “Do you think we should all go? Let’s all go,” Aaron looks resigned about it.
Kevin shakes his head, bowing out, and Neil reflects on how much things have changed in the last year—how much less haughty trailing in Andrew’s wake Kevin does. Neil thinks about refusing, too—it’s possible that whatever has set of this mood today between the twins is something they could use a little time and space to work out, and Aaron still isn’t thrilled to spend too much time with Neil if he doesn’t have to. He actually does have a few things he needs to pick up at the drug store, though, and he mentioned it to Andrew earlier, which makes him wonder if this particular instance of Aaron-baiting is at least a little bit with him in mind, even if most of it is Andrew’s never-ending quest to be less bored. Neil shrugs and nods.
…
When they get to CVS, Aaron stalks off through the aisles like they’ve all personally offended him. Neil expects Andrew to follow him, expects him not to want to waste the chance to needle Aaron in the family planning aisle, but Andrew has been pretty quiet since they all got into the car, so Neil concludes that this stunt is at least mostly just an exertion of his power over his brother to remind himself it’s still there.
In any case, it’s Neil he follows through the sliding, automatic doors and into the bowels of the store, eyes tracking Neil as he grabs toothpaste, pens, and some bar soap, easily and automatically honing in on the second-least expensive model of each item in the impulsive interest of both traveling cheap and not standing out. He doesn’t always think like that anymore, but there are days when it slips in more than others.
Stack of soap bars in hand, Neil lets his gaze linger a moment on the rows of hair dyes, and Andrew snorts.
For a second, Neil considers playing dumb, pretending to Andrew like a part of his mind isn’t yearning for the smell of peroxide, but lying to Andrew isn’t going to make either one of them feel better, so he sighs instead, and says, a little exasperated and far too honest, “It doesn’t have to be a lie, you know. People die their hair all the time without ever pretending it’s natural.”
Cool blue eyes stare back at him, quietly unimpressed, until Neil adds, “And you know I’m not planning on running anywhere.”
Really, Neil doesn’t know that Andrew knows it as much as he wants him to know it, is willing him to know it.
“You can hide, but you can’t run?” Andrew asks, sardonic, tone arch, and Neil kind of wants to walk away, kind of wants to kiss him.
He does neither, though, just chips off another piece of truth, Andrew’s usual toll to keep a conversation going. “I’m not going to act like him, I don’t carry his name, and I don’t carry his knives, so I don’t see what I have to look like him for all the time.”
Andrew is silent for a moment, and his gaze slides away from Neil, and maybe the conversation is over, maybe he gave the wrong piece, but it’s alright, anyway—it was just a passing thought, it’s nothing Neil needs.
He turns away to head up to the register, and from behind him, Andrew calls, “Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
Andrew’s gaze is knife-sharp and amused when Neil turns again to catch his eyes, and it flicks to the row of neon colors on the bottom shelf. “Pick a color you’d never choose if you were on the run.”
Now that Neil is all-natural Renee is the only fox who goes for hair dye, but there are plenty of other students at Palmetto with rainbow-colored hair. And why not? Neil wonders. His face is on national TV often enough that his days of blending into any crowd are long gone, anyway. And hasn’t he chosen that? He can revert to habits designed to melt into the background all he wants, but everywhere it matters, he’s already made his choice.
Letting his lips quirk up into a smile, Neil asks Andrew, “Why don’t you pick one for me?”
Andrew’s eyebrows lift in the barest hint of surprise, but he turns back to the shelf as quick as if he’d been expecting it, and zeros in on the luridly-colored box like it’s the only possible choice. He tosses it to Neil, who catches it and laughs, reading the label. Stoplight Red.
“Subtle,” He tells Andrew, tucking the box against his body behind his elbow.
Andrew shrugs, miming innocence. “I just thought it would match your eyes, is all.”
…
Andrew sits cross-legged on the counter beside the sink while Neil applies the dye. Nicky had been with them for a while, FaceTime-ing Erik and trying to convince Neil to pick a less horrifying color before it was too late, but he’d declared them to be incredibly boring and wandered off a few minutes before, and now Neil is leaning back against the counter next to where Andrew is sitting, eyes closed, reveling in the smell of the bleach, and the familiar, pricking sensation against his scalp.
He’s relaxed enough that he doesn’t even jump when Andrew’s hand lands against the back of his neck, where his tension headache usually lives, and the feeling of Andrew’s cool fingertips against his skin is enough to make him aware that the bunched up ropes of muscle that are usually in residence there have actually relaxed. Neil opens his eyes slowly, and catches Andrew peering at him curiously.
“Guess I needed this,” he tells Andrew’s quiet, curious face, and because it’s probably true, he decides to indulge himself just one step further. He rummages in the pocket of his jacket that’s been flung carelessly over a towel rack, pulls out a cigarette and book of matches, and offers them to Andrew, who waves him off. Shrugging, Neil lights it anyway, holding the match in the tips of his thumb and forefinger even after the cigarette is lit, until it burns down and nips unbearable heat against the tips of his fingers, and he drops it in the sink, to smoke and sputter out in the drips of water stuck to the sides of the basin.
The cigarette he sets down to burn away in the empty soap dish, but Andrew twitches fingertips at Neil impatiently until he passes it back. “If you’re just going to waste it,” Andrew grumbles, like leaving it to burn away in a soap dish is more of a waste than letting it burn off between Neil’s fingers without taking a puff—who knows, maybe for Andrew, it is.
It feels a little silly, a little ritualistic, almost stupidly sentimental, but it also makes the bathroom feel right, and Neil moves on through the motions of dying easily, gracefully. When he bends his head under the water running from the bathroom faucet, and lets the tricking head of it run across his scalp, breathing in the scent of smoke and chemicals, he feels calmer than he has in weeks.
Turning around, Neil catches a glimpse of the fire-engine-red thatch on the top of his head, but at this point, the end result almost feels incidental, and in any case, his attention is caught by Andrew as he uncrosses his legs and lowers them from the top of the counter to kick against the cabinets below, stubs out the cigarette in the sink, drops to the floor, and stalks towards Neil, catching Neil’s still-damp neck in his dry palm and pulling him down into a biting kiss.
…
Neil is actually enjoying the process of watching the dye fade out and the roots grow in, now that he’s not trying to convince anyone that the rapidly-washing-out vermillion is natural, but it’s pretty clear that there’s only so much more scruffiness Allison will stand before she takes matters into her own hands, whatever that means. Neil isn't particularly interested in finding out, so he agrees to do something about it by the end of the weekend.
“What color are you doing next?” Dan asks him over breakfast, and Neil nudges Andrew with his elbow.
“I don’t know, what am I?”
Andrew doesn’t look up from where he’s gazing vaguely out at the dreary March morning as he answers, “Don’t know—probably something seasonal.”