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The days morph together; seconds no different from hours, days no different from weeks; the bubbling amusement bleeding out along with the drugs. Words murmured by countless faces — wearing the same clothes, the same look in their eyes — hold no meaning, stir no feelings. All the color steadily seeps out, leaving only the gaping hole he dreaded. He can’t decide if it’s unsettling in a way that steals the air from his lungs or if it feels right in some disturbing sense; like a familiar awfulness.
He supposes he has plenty of time to settle the dilemma, but aside from the fact that he spent the first half of his stay puking and going through withdrawal, he also doesn’t really see the point. Every day, from the moment he leaves his room, he starts counting down the seconds until he can curl up in bed again; though he doesn’t hope for easy sleep, this too is a complicated thing. Endless minutes are filled with cold hallways, artificial smiles, and talking, speaking, mouths moving, sentences twirling in the space between them.
Sometimes, besides words, there are hands, and there are teeth — he doesn’t think about them, about their alienness, their terrible wrongness; it’s something he isn’t able to bear. His weakness comes to him as no surprise; an undeniable truth he’s already painfully aware of. With every taunt, every cruel laugh, he drifts farther away; wonders how many breaths he has left until he dies; can’t tell if it’s some kind of twisted curiosity or a vain attempt at consolation.
Most nights, he thinks he’s going crazy. There is this stain on the ceiling, small and faded, like someone has already tried scrubbing it off — he stares at it when he lies in his uncomfortable, cold bed and wonders where it came from. He doesn’t really care, but creating scenarios, one wilder than the previous, is a distraction no less. Sometimes, he doesn’t need it; sometimes, merely glaring at the somewhat chipped tiles on the floor is enough for his mind to go blank; sometimes, he manages to fall asleep.
It’s a different kind of cruelty — there is no release for him in any dream; there are only monsters with claws for nails and dark spaces with clicking locks. He wakes up covered in sweat and fights to calm his breathing; stay in the moment, even if the present is just another poorly lit nightmare. He thinks he won’t last much longer, that maybe death is closer than he previously thought, that, soon, there will be a time when he won’t be able to force his lungs to work, and maybe he should be afraid, but he doesn’t really remember what fear should feel like. He knows he spent so much time paralyzed by terror, but it all seems foreign, like a movie you watched on repeat but paid no attention to; another life you can recall in its entirety, but are eerily disconnected from.
He’s tired, that’s what it all sums up to; he blinks, he breathes, and he tries to stomach the memories that play on the loop behind his eyelids. His whole life; the real and not so real; the emptiness and words, the never-ending stream of letters. Every sound he has ever heard is mashed up together in a pathetic parody of a song; it’s an awful thing, ugly and relentless, echoing in his ears no matter how much he covers his head with the hard, cool pillow. He distracts himself with the past; remembers chasing the pain, trying to forget about anything else but the sharp, cold blade and the violent redness against pale skin.
And then finally — it’s done.
They give him his bag, tell him to pack, and allow themselves sly remarks, then slide him a paper to sign out. The pen is unfamiliar in his grip, and for a second, he thinks he has forgotten how to write — he hadn’t, but it’s a curious thought; one that, weeks ago, would have probably made him laugh. Instead, there is something numb nestling deeper in his ribs; it’s cold and loud as it thumps in his ears. The walk through the hallway seems to stretch into an eternity; he hears the footsteps right behind him and sees the lights creating shapeless shadows, but doesn’t register much else.
Eventually, his legs stop and he snaps out of it, trying to take everything in one glance; greedy for something different from the sterile air and worn down tiles. There is Aaron, sitting on a plastic chair, looking bored out of his mind, though Andrew isn’t fooled; not him, so used to feigning indifference — no, he can see the slight tension in his twin’s shoulders, the unnatural stillness. There is Nicky, wide-eyed and fearful, not bothered or unable to hide the anxiousness that plagues him.
There is Kevin, alive, but with nasty bruises on the side of his face; something that he files away for later, something that needs to be dealt with, but isn’t an immediate priority. And then there is—
—a person with bright, blue eyes and red, red hair that appear even sharper because of the kaleidoscopic-like patches on their skin, a person with bandages climbing up their hands and a band aid concealing a fragment of their cheekbone, a person that is looking right at him, motionless, and he knows that the almost dizzying, terribly interesting vibrant colors must be a cheap trick, because he knows that it shouldn’t be real, can’t be, because he made Neil up, he made him up— Andrew blinks.
Maybe he's crazy after all, but he forces his eyes away, pushes every word down — he wants out. The sun is barely visible behind the countless clouds, and everything is as grey as it has been for the last weeks. Not thinking about it; not thinking about anything; he cuts his way across the yard toward the parking lot. There are two dumpsters sitting against the corner; he recalls seeing them the day of his arrival, hidden but not completely obscured from watchful eyes, and he wastes no time throwing the contents of the bag in one of them. They are just as tainted as his scars now; he ignores the phantom sting on his forearm.
He breathes and, with a quick assessment of the direction the others are heading, wastes no time in catching up. His car looks just the way it did when he last saw it; the promise kept — the thought alone enough for his heart to rush blood into his head — the frantic beat of real, real, real. Distantly, he registers Nicky and Aaron piling into the backseat, but he pays them no mind, instead, turning around with his back to the car and watching the strikers approach.
Kevin stops right in front of him, and Andrew is well aware that while he searches him for any more injuries — besides the two marks on his face — he, too, is inspected in return. He ignores it, and after finding nothing worth attention, he dismisses Kevin with a flick of his fingers, not sparing him another look. He doesn’t ask where he got the bruises from; Kevin won’t be getting any chance to come up with some pathetic half-truth, and, besides, he’ll know soon enough anyway.
He waits for everyone to get in, then slides into the driver’s seat and holds up a hand between the seats; a silent expectation swirling through the air. The keys, familiar and steadying, are swiftly dropped into his palm and, annoyingly, it’s a little easier to breathe — in and out, in and out, in and—
“Sorry,” says Nicky from the backseat, panic coloring his voice. "I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” the Neil-shaped person cuts his cousin off — and, oh, how he wishes he could laugh — just as Andrew puts the key into ignition and turns it, the engine roaring back to life.
“It isn’t,” insists Nicky, and Andrew sees his eyes sliding to him in the rearview mirror. “I mean, Jesus, Andrew, aren’t you even going to ask—”
His hand moves quicker than his thoughts, turning up the radio loud enough to drown out anything the others might want to say. He won’t ask for an explanation; not with everyone else breathing down his neck; not when it’s more likely that all he will hear will be lies. He’ll wait; it’s something he has a lot of practice in.
The music is already pulsing through his head when Kevin reaches for the volume controls, and Andrew swats his hand out of the way, pointing a warning finger at him. He ignores Kevin’s crossed arms and the clear displeasure rolling off of him because, as of right now, it simply seems pointless. He lets the solid rhythm distract him from everything but this — the almost empty road, the increasing speed, the quiet whisper of finally, finally being out in the open.
The drive is shorter than it probably should be, but Andrew couldn’t care less about breaking the speed limit. Instead, he takes in the familiar surroundings and shakes the weird feeling of reassurance, because it’s stupid; he hates Palmetto State — he hates his dorm and everyone near it. He hates the constant fighting, sharp retorts, and the strained tension in the air. He detests it so much that, sometimes, he forgets why it feels like the closest thing to safety he has ever had.
It’s not long before he pulls into his usual spot in the parking lot, before he gets out and begins to close the door, only to be interrupted by a hand shooting out from the corner of his vision, holding it open. He doesn’t need the pitiful sight of bandages wrapped around the wrist to know who it belongs to; the presence itself is almost overwhelming, overfamiliar in a way that causes him to stop moving, stop breathing. Blue eyes are fixed on the inside of the car, and their owner leans in to retrieve a notebook-like hardcover — it takes Andrew a moment to identify it as Neil’s precious binder. And that— that doesn’t make sense, but maybe he shouldn’t expect it to, not when it comes to this puzzling combination of lies and paradoxes of a human.
When Neil straightens, Andrew finds they are a lot closer than they were; he must have shifted, but he’s not sure when. He waits for the wave of unease to wash over him at the heat of another body; the prickly feeling of a thousand needles at his skin, but it doesn’t come. He waits for Neil to move, make a witty comment, or even shove him away, but he’s again proven wrong when Neil seems almost— relaxed; content, like he doesn’t mind breathing in the same air as Andrew, like the closeness isn’t unpleasant. Something warm bubbles in his stomach, and he steps back, out of reach.
It’s not the time, nor the place, so he doesn't dwell on it; there's a lot he needs to hear, and then a lot he needs to find out. He slides his gaze to Nicky. “You stay. The rest go.”
He notes Neil looking to his cousin, something searching in his stare; a question that seems to be silently answered by Nicky’s nod. As Neil goes around the car to join Aaron and Kevin, Andrew tucks this quiet exchange away for later examination and ignores Kevin’s burning stare boring into him. He waits still as Neil forcibly turns him toward the dorm and faces Nicky when the door slams shut.
“Last seven weeks, two minutes. Go,” he says, and Nicky’s eyes widen as he begins to pick at his sleeve, gathering his thoughts.
“Okay, well, um… So after you left Matt’s mom paid for Aaron’s bail, which is like so nice and amazing, and then we got the date for the trail which will be next year, and oh!— we qualified for the finals, which is also so great, honestly, in those assholes faces—” he falters at Andrew’s unimpressed stare, but quickly recovers. “—okay, you don’t want to hear about Exy, got it, um— so then the Christmas banquet happened, and it wasn’t, like, anything special until Neil punched Riko, and shit, you really should have seen it, it was awesome. I don’t actually know what it was about, cause you know how Neil is secretive as fuck, but still, top five moments of the year for sure.”
Andrew wishes he could say he was surprised at Neil’s reckless behavior, but he also expected the idiot to limit himself to running his big mouth, not starting fights he wouldn’t finish. It could explain the bruises, except that it doesn’t — the timeline isn’t adding up, and it looked like there were far too many for a brief confrontation anyway.
“Then we went to New York, because Matt’s mom invited us, and it was a little awkward at first, but she’s actually sorta cool,” his cousin continues. “She told us all these embarrassing stories about Matt’s childhood— oh, and I bought you a jacket, which, you’re welcome by the way, and— okay, don’t get mad, because this is the worse part—” Nicky smiles weakly, tugging at his hair. “—Matt punched Kevin, which was a bit scary, because you don’t usually see Matt this mad, and, um, well, then he punched him again before we picked you up, but—”
Andrew cuts him off by lifting his palm. “Enough.” He says and waits a beat — thoughts swirling through his head, stitching together a picture, examining the missing threads — before adding, “Get Neil.”
Nicky’s face betrays his worry — his eyes darting, brows furrowing and creating deep lines — but he must realize that his time is up and says nothing. Instead, he slumps, some of the nervous energy he’s been harboring at least since the waiting room seeping out, spilling on the sidewalk; grey and useless. Nicky nods and then ducks his head when he starts towards the dorms, leaving his cousin behind.
Andrew lingers for a moment, hesitant to leave the safety of the open sky, the fragile peace of the moment. He has questions that need answering, though, so it’s not long before he climbs up the familiar staircase, before he stops at their floor, before he leans his back against the railing and trains his eyes on the wall in front of him.
While he waits, he allows his mind to drift; follows the ribbon tied to Neil’s mysterious whereabouts after Christmas, questions intertwining with the knowledge he has, the puzzle pieces not quite fitting. Nicky hasn’t mentioned Neil at all while talking about New York, and Andrew knows that it is no coincidence; not with the bruises and the new colors dyeing his features, his disguise shed and abandoned. Still, the whys and hows seem like an endless chase through a labyrinth of countless paths; one guess more outlandish than the other. Something twists unpleasantly in his chest and—
The sound of a door clicking shut brings him back into the dimly lit hallway. Andrew watches as Neil approaches, gaze dropping to the dark bands in his hands. He takes them from his outstretched palm without a word and turns his back as he tugs the black cloth on, his heart contracting violently at the small comfort — it’s annoying, how such a thing makes him settle; even if only a bit. He hates Neil a little more for remembering.
As soon as his sleeves fall, he starts climbing upstairs — the monotony of step after step blurring together — until pausing before the door at the end of the stairwell marked “Roof Access – Maintenance Staff Only”. He struggles with the handle, but manages to pry them open, stepping into the chilly afternoon and claiming his usual spot near the edge in a few strides. Neil comes to a stop next to him a second later.
Andrew looks down briefly, then sweeps his gaze across the campus, taking advantage of the fact that the roof provides a perfect view to study it as a whole. It’s a kind of grounding terror; he allows himself a short second to feel the deep fear — currently a little muffled, nibbled at by the bottomless numbness — born from being so high up, before pushing it down, bottling it up, letting it pass. He accepts a cigarette from Neil and turns to face him.
“I’ll take an explanation now,” he says before taking a long-awaited drag of smoke, its strands twirling slowly in his lungs.
Neil scrunches his face a little. “You couldn’t ask for answers inside where it’s warm?”
The wind howls around them as Andrew thinks about the vastness of space spreading above them; about the endless supply of air and the sharp, bright glow contouring the world, dissolving the illusions created in its absence — away from prying eyes and quiet, suffocating rooms. He thinks about the countless nights he spent here, the sting of cold being the only thing helping him feel less delirious; the only thing that settled the itch to claw his skin off. It all sums up to — no, he’s quite sure he couldn’t have.
“If you are worried about dying of the exposure you’re a little too late,” he says instead, raising a hand to Neil’s face, but stopping with his fingers just a breath from the bandage on his skin, the sensation of something being wrong tugging at his gut as he stares at Neil’s blue, blue eyes. His ribcage aches for answers, want overpowering patience. "Did I break my promise or were you keeping yours?”
“Neither,” says Neil, fidgeting with a tear on his sleeve, and it sounds so much like truth that it feels like a ruse; some sort of clever trick.
“I know you have had ample time in my absence to come up with your precious lies, but remember I gave you a truth on credit in November,” he says, as he recalls standing in the bedroom, spilling another bit of his secrets. “It is your turn in our game and you will not lie to me.”
“Neither,” repeats Neil, grimacing slightly. “I spent Christmas at Evermore.”
Andrew stills, because, well— it does make sense. It explains his disappearance, his new looks being a courtesy of Riko’s cruelty, his bruises an attempt at intimidation or a warning, or simply an aftermath of sick pleasure. It makes sense, but there are still pieces missing, and— Andrew’s thoughts halt to a stop as his eyes fall on the bandage on Neil’s cheek.
And then he’s already moving, already reaching out. It’s an eternity, and it’s a flash of light, and it’s both before he finally tears it off, revealing the ink trapped beneath pale skin, curling into the shape of a dark four; a mark of ownership with a ribbon around its throat, a curse disguised as an honor. His hand falls back, stinging.
“This is a new low for even you,” he says, unable to look away from the tattoo. He knows that if he were to close his eyes, he would see it behind his eyelids; the proof of his failure imprinted in his memory.
“I’m not wearing it by choice,” says Neil.
Andrew exhales, his fist clenching, fingers digging with force into his palm, “You chose to go to Evermore.”
“I came back.”
“Riko let you go,” he corrects, because Neil being here, battered and bruised but present, is nothing more than a part of Riko’s sick game — a show of power. “We are doing too well this year and your feud is too public. No one would have believed you willingly transferred to Edgar Allen mid-season.” Andrew presses the band-aid against Neil’s face, willing the tape flat. “You weren’t supposed to leave Kevin’s side. Did you forget?”
Neil’s stare hardens. “I promised to keep him safe. I didn’t say I’d hound him every step of the way like you do. I kept my end of the deal.”
“But not like this,” says Andrew. “You already said this had nothing to do with Kevin. Why did you go?”
It’s the part that doesn’t quite fit; the reason for this reckless choice blurs on the edges of Andrew’s mind, close yet unreachable. It has to have something to do with his and Riko’s little disagreement during the Christmas banquet; it may have been a warning or a proposal — something connected to Neil’s past; the black hole with never-ending secrets hiding just beneath the surface. It seems—
“Riko said if I didn’t,” says Neil, looking sick, like the words cause him pain, like it hurts to even form them, and then, “Dr. Proust would–”
Andrew clasps a hand over his mouth, frozen underneath the frantic rush of blood echoing through him. The name slams into him, the impact bringing back everything he left in that miserable, awful place — the not-quite terror born from fear being a deformed, forgotten thing; the bruises and the teeth grazing raised, white lines on the skin; the chipped tiles and clinging to the memory of pain, because it felt better than nothing, and—
And why? It seems like a laughable idea; Neil throwing himself to the wolves, because he wants to— what? Protect Andrew? The bubbling laugh gets stuck in his throat; not quite moulded yet; suspended between existing and never being created. It’s ridiculous and absurd and nonsensical, but not false; against all odds, not false, because he can see the grief-like emotion tucked away in Neil’s face; his eyes shining with something akin to guilt. It makes Andrew feel rotten.
He shoves it down, somewhere deep where it won’t climb up and come looking for him in the near future; he lets the all-consuming numbness run through his veins and coat his nerves. When he’s sure he has it under control, he lowers his hand and focuses on the loss of warmth rather than the cold feeling freezing over his body.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking I need your protection,” he says finally.
Neil buries his hands in the sleeves of his dark hoodie. “I had to try. If I had the chance to stop it but did nothing, how could I face you again? How could I live with myself?”
“Your crumbling psyche is your problem, not mine,” says Andrew, letters spilling into the space between them. “I said I would keep you alive this year. You make it infinitely more difficult for me when you actively try to get yourself killed.”
“You spend all this time watching our backs,” Neil tells him. “Who’s watching yours? Don’t say you are, because you and I both know you take shit care of yourself.”
It’s a warped interpretation of an earlier conversation they had and not at all what Andrew was talking about – he’s not sure if Neil is simply deaf or just exceptionally dense.
“You have a hearing problem. Too many balls to the helmet, perhaps. Can you read lips?” Andrew points to his mouth as he speaks. “The next time someone comes for you, stand down and let me deal with it.” Let him fulfill his part of their deal; prove his promises aren’t empty. “Do you understand?”
Neil’s eyebrows pull together, a foreign look on his face when he says, “If it means losing you, then no.”
“I hate you.” Andrew declares, and he’s not lying; he takes a last long drag of his cigarette and flicks it off the roof. It’s a different kind of truth when he adds, "You were supposed to be a side effect of the drugs.”
“I’m not a hallucination,” says Neil, nonplussed.
It’s not a lie; Andrew knows that, no matter how odd or impossible. He can see Neil’s frozen exhales forming mist in the air; he’s certain that if he were to put his fingers to Neil’s wrist, he would feel the even, steady pulse beneath them. But it doesn’t make any of this more bearable; coming back just to see someone he thought was a delusion — the splash of color in his peripheral vision that would undoubtedly disappear if he turned his focus towards it — and seeing it’s a person of blood and flesh; with a beating heart and working lungs.
“You are a pipe dream,” says Andrew, and then, because he doesn’t think he can stand being confronted with his failures for a second longer, adds. “Go inside and leave me alone.”
Neil’s eyes are searching, but he says nothing besides a simple, “You still have my keys.”
He does, but it’s an easy fix; Andrew digs Neil’s keys out of his pocket, pries his car key off it, then tosses the rest after his cigarette. He can feel Neil’s burning stare drilling holes into the side of his head, the sound of metal clattering against the ground echoing in his ears, when he replies, “Not anymore.”
Neil turns away and leaves without a word, and, for a second, the world is unnaturally quiet — Andrew thinks that it should probably feel like a win, but it doesn’t feel like much at all. He buries that thought by leaning over the edge and looking down at the sidewalk — the frozen path betraying people by looking ordinary, just to cause them to slide on the ice and trip; the shadows falling in step with their owners — the time stretching as silence grows teeth.
He snaps back to himself just as the front door opens; Neil’s hair shines in the sun as he steps out and wastes no time picking up his keys. And then, reality blurring around the jagged edges, he moves a couple of meters to the side and plucks Andrew’s discarded cigarette from the ground, sticking it between his lips in fluid motion. Neil tips his head back to meet Andrew’s unwavering gaze and taps two fingers to his temple in a recreation of Andrew’s mocking salute, thrown carelessly at their first meeting and then time and time again.
Andrew’s chest is a jumbled mess when he turns and backs out of sight, but there’s an unexpected warmth at its centre — it’s an odd feeling, stitched together by an even stranger day and tangled beyond recognition. Still, when the door slams shut — the sound echoing through the whole building — he closes his eyes and finds that it’s not the worst.
Perhaps, he thinks, as he breathes through the ice in his lungs, he even quite likes it.