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Andrew has always been able to find Neil. Even before things were the way they are between them now, Andrew could always find him, from the very beginning.
He wouldn’t call it an ability, necessarily. It’s simply a product of the experiences he’s had and the way that they have in turn, affected every aspect of his being. He prefers being able to watch and survey. To sit or stand near the exits and corners of every room he occupies, to exist in the background where he can see the movements and intentions of each person in the room. To look like he’s staring off into space and not paying attention, but in actuality to be cataloguing the differences in facial expressions and the slight changes in position of bodies, arms, and feet.
What can he say? To have the misfortune of remembering everything is his own special hell. At least he’s adapted his paranoid tendencies into a deliberate and fierce sense of personal security that he wields like a weapon.
But this crystal clear view of his own surroundings doesn’t always translate to being able to pin point the location of a specific person. Like many other things, this is a position that Neil annoyingly holds unto himself.
Before the thatch of auburn hair the color of dried blood and during the lying disks of plastic that the idiot thought concealed the truth underneath, Neil had been a little bit harder to find in a crowd. But not by much. It was vaguely harder before when he looked like a carbon copy of every other brown haired college aged boy Andrew had ever seen, but he could still do it then. He could still find Neil in under a few seconds in a crowd.
It never even felt like he was looking. It still doesn’t. Never felt like a search, not like eyes roaming over rows and rows of people until finding the one he wanted to be looking at. It was simply like opening his eyes and seeing Neil. Like his own body was so attuned to another body that he could turn his head and there he would be, standing with slight discomfort evident in the tension in his shoulders and the line of his neck. An unease at standing around so many other people that isn’t obvious to others, but so clear to Andrew.
They aren’t in large crowds too often, Neil and Andrew, and the Foxes in general. But from time to time it does happen. Out to eat, at Eden’s Twilight, post-game and milling about, rare occurrences where they are in the middle of a group of people that far exceeds their small team.
Andrew doesn’t mind crowds, per se. As long as he’s pressed against a wall or the back of a booth at the side of the room. As long as he knows where his exits are, where the idiots that he came with and is responsible for have the tendency to be. As long as he can count with a practiced ease the number of knives he has on his person and as long as that number is greater than three or four. People en masse don’t make him uncomfortable under these conditions.
He’s aware that Neil isn’t the same. It took him longer to figure this out than he would have liked, but he knows now. Against his will, learning more about Neil’s idiosyncrasies has opened up a world of minor expression changes and hand clenches and body twitches that mean specific things. He went from knowing nothing about Neil aside from the fact that the name that he gave was so obviously fake to knowing that when his eyes crinkle a little bit and he starts to blink slower that he’s about to fall asleep. While Neil can look as though he isn’t affected by anything, Andrew knows his tells. He’s getting better at reading them as time passes, time that neither of them expected to have.
He can see the way that Neil curves his spine in, the way he makes himself smaller despite his already lesser frame and folds in on himself. He noticed from the moment he met him the way that Neil tracks his exits, constantly primed and prepped to escape if something goes sideways. There’s the way that Neil tries to hold himself at a distance from everyone else. Not so much with the Foxes and definitely not with Andrew, but with anyone he doesn’t know, Neil will shy away from direct body contact in a way that he thinks isn’t obvious. It’s evident in the way he angles his body away from conversations, the way that he shuffles backwards a foot or two when people talk with their hands.
It might not be to others, but it’s clear to Andrew. Admittedly, he spends a lot of his time watching Neil once he finds him.
It can’t be helped. If Neil isn’t by his side, either tucked up against him or brushing against him with some part of his person, Andrew is watching him. Making sure that the idiot junkie that unfortunately belongs to him doesn’t attract any more attention or trouble than what is customary. Knowing where he is in a room is integral to the small bit of relaxation that Andrew occasionally feels.
From the very beginning, Andrew could find Neil. He was recognizable in a group because of the way that he carried himself, the way that he still carries himself. Even moving along in the crowd at Eden’s, he has an intensity about him that others do not. A complexity that stems from his desire to blend in and not be seen or noticed and the ever-present knowledge that he can and will survive everything he faces. In the way that he moves, like he has something to hide. Which he does, even now, but no longer from Andrew and the rest of the Foxes. Just from the rest of the world.
To Andrew, especially at first, the unbearable weight of what he was hiding was something that set him apart immediately. As well as the way that he looked like he could no longer carry his own secrets. How he looked like he was being crushed, suffocated by them. Like the things he did not tell were simultaneously a crushing weight and shards of glass inside of him. Something that was sharp and jagged and constantly felt, a nagging pain that persisted and was endured distinctly with every step. Something that had to be hidden lest what it could, what it can still do. A secret that he holds deep inside of him, scarred over and prominent. There are still things about his lives and experiences that he hasn’t told Andrew, and they are seen in the expansion and compression of his ribs when he breathes. These scraps and fragments of past lives are evident behind the too blue of his eyes.
Andrew can always find him instantly.
Over time with the Foxes and their insatiable team spirit, Neil has been forcibly swayed from his previous wardrobe of clothes so worn that they were all grey. Now he wears fluorescent orange hoodies and shirts with paw prints that decidedly clash with his annoying red hair. This helps Andrew locate him by a barley noticeable amount, he is still always so easily found.
It’s like a homing beacon, a magnetism that Andrew has never felt toward anyone else and likely will not ever again. He looks, and there Neil is.
If Neil isn’t already watching him in turn, Andrew will stare at the back of his head until his gaze is noticed. It doesn’t ever take long.
Running for his life for a greater half of a decade has conditioned Neil to a multitude of things. He’s accustomed to being hyper vigilant. Watching people watch him, waiting for them to watch him. Acting appropriately when they do. For all he tries to fit in, to not make a scene out of himself, he still attracts attention wherever he goes. Even in non-exy circles, Neil is someone people watch. Whether it’s for his looks or his scars or the odd way he carries himself that is noticeable yet not understood by those who don’t know him.
When he feels Andrew’s stare, he immediately tenses up. A minute tension that starts in his shoulders and floods down his spine, Andrew can see it from across the room each time. The people around him or the people he’s talking to never notice.
He flicks his fingers a little when he recognizes that he’s been stared at, like he’s shaking out his limbs and preparing for a long run. During these moments, Andrew, who has never wished for any type of power, super or otherwise, wishes that he could be next to him immediately. To circle his own hand around Neil’s wrist and squeeze until he feels the urge to turn and run dissipate. Even with the knowledge that he won’t run, that he was told to stay, Andrew still wants to squash and force the need out of him.
But after a few seconds, he knows it’s Andrew. Perhaps because he also has some unknown sense, that he can feel the difference between the stares of those who want to hurt him or ask him mind-numbing exy questions and those who only want him to stare back. Once the tension in his spine is released and the clear desire to run is gone, Neil visibly relaxes. Pinned down by Andrew’s gaze on the back of his skull from across the room so he won’t drift away.
By the time they finally make eye contact, after Neil has turned and immediately found where Andrew is, the heavy and constant weight that lives in Andrew’s stomach abates just a little bit. Neil smiles at him, a small and cautious thing from across the room, and the weight disappears completely.
When they aren’t standing next to each other, they orbit around each other. Neil talks to a few people here and there, smiles with his Foxes, does whatever he feels like he needs to do before making his way back to Andrew’s side. They do this dance constantly, whenever they go out, at games, at gatherings in the dorms.
While Andrew stays put, Neil bounces around. Yet they always reconvene, a glance, a small touch, a shift in demeanor that most people barely even pick up on. There is a sense of safety in standing together, facing a crowd and the unknown that follows.
He’s not sure if Neil has ever noticed Andrew’s ability to find him almost instantly, or if he would even mention it if he did.
It took Andrew himself a while to recognize it, even after the end of his drugs and the start of something that was also nothing. To recognize that this life sized annoyance who borrows far too many of Andrew’s cigarettes solely for the smell of the smoke, who has a mouth like a firecracker and an apt for getting himself into trouble like no one he’s ever seen was the same person that he turns to in a crowd. The same person that he turns towards to anchor himself in the cluster fuck that is and likely will always be their lives. A desperate will to live and a head of hair on fire making him the most obvious person in the room to someone who remembers and notices everything yet chooses to see nothing.
Neil has always been easy for Andrew to find.