Chapter Text
Remember: life is not an emergency
The second half of summer– cicadas buzzing, heat warnings, Andrew’s arm bands damp and itching with sweat– is when he first notices something is wrong.
It starts small, as these things always do. Imperceptible changes in behaviour. Neil’s eyes, darting around a little more than normal. His leg tapping more. His brain working harder. Andrew always told him it would malfunction in a heap of metal and smoke eventually. Andrew had thought, at the time, that Neil was just not sleeping enough. That being back on campus for summer training as vice captain, with a league of new volatile recruits on his hands, was an additional pressure he hadn’t really considered upon acceptance of the role when he was planning to die in the spring.
His anxiety was increased, and so, his paranoia was too. That was natural for a flighty creature such as Neil. He started checking the locks once or twice at night before they went to bed. Pulling on the door handle when they left the dorm. Patting his pockets for his keys more, like he was afraid he had dropped them or that they were stolen.
Andrew ignored it, at the time– it was just Neil being cautious. A little rabbity, a little over-alert, but warranted given the past year. Andrew understands it. Even he checks that his bedroom door is locked in Columbia by pulling the handle once. The two of them were damaged specimens, never trained to trust at face value.
But the typical-grade paranoia doesn’t last. It morphs before Andrew’s eyes, before he can even consider intervening. Before he can really be sure things have changed.
It really starts with the staring.
Neil standing at the dorm door and staring at it for over a minute. Completely still.
Andrew watches him from over the back of the couch. This is the fifth night he has done this. He’s in his pyjamas, sweat shorts and a baggy shirt from his homeless days– Andrew hates that grey mottled monstrosity, but it’s the last one left and he refuses to throw it out, despite his new wardrobe paid for by the team card and Allison Reynolds’ Credit Card – and a pair of thick knitted socks from Abby despite the blistering heat that the aircon is barely keeping up with. The windows are fogged, Andrew is dripping, and Neil wears knitted socks.
He just stares at the door. The door handle, more like. It’s been… a while. An uncomfortable while that makes Andrew even itchier under his arm bands. They are supposed to be watching a new nature documentary about jellyfish that he has been waiting for (though only Neil knows that).
“Neil,” he says, patience be damned. Neil recovers with grace, turning around with a small smile like nothing is out of the ordinary. He leaves the door behind and throws himself onto the couch next to Andrew, on Andrew’s hot ass feet. He shoves Neil off and pins him with a bemused stare. Neil doesn’t notice it, or he’s avoiding his stare on purpose, readjusting himself on the other end of the couch and staring at the paused television. When Andrew doesn't press play, he looks over at him expectantly.
“What?” he asks. His tone reeks of wilful ignorance and subterfuge. A classic Neil Josten concoction.
Andrew shakes his head and leaves it be. If he is going to ignore it, so will Andrew.
-
Except Andrew can’t ignore something that is in front of him all of the time. And that's what it becomes– All Of The Time.
The checking becomes constant within a week. The long staring. The paranoia. It makes Neil late, it makes him slow. It makes him obstinate and bitchy because he is clearly pissed off with himself. It makes him mopey above all, and Andrew hates when Neil is quiet. It means something is wrong. Something that can’t be solved with his usual endless supply of words.
A few nights later, Andrew watches Neil again from the back of the couch. It's been another couple of minutes of staring at the door handle. Andrew waits to see just how long Neil will stand there if uninterrupted. If he’ll stand there all night.
He’s so busy watching Neil watch the closed and locked door (It’s locked. Andrew locked it himself.) that he doesn't notice Kevin’s migraine inducing figure enter the room from the bathroom down the hall. He looks from Andrew to Neil’s tense frame.
“Neil, what the fuck are you doing?” he snips. He’s wearing a sheet face mask and his hair is pushed back with a bear-eared headband from Renee, so his vexed judgement carries zero weight. “I thought we were watching the game?”
Neil recoils nonetheless, spinning with flushed cheeks. He looks caught doing something dirty, hand in the cookie pot, porn on his computer. He looks ashamed. Andrew starts to hate this new development. Whatever it is.
Kevin, blind and deaf to all social cues, raises his arms in exasperation. Neil shakes his shame off slower than when Andrew interrupted him last, but he does. Literally. He shakes his head and shoves his hands in his shorts pockets, walking over to him. “Stop harassing me, I was waiting for you to finish primping.”
“It’s completely reasonable to take care of my skin when I'm in the lime-light,” Kevin starts his new tirade-soon-to-be-lecture, turning back down the hall towards the bedroom. “Really, you should be doing this aloe face mask too. We are going to be on TV a whole lot this year, and the interviews are going to be constant, and, come on Neil, your face could use a little healing aloe–”
“Kevin, shut up,” Neil says, following after him, but not before turning around and looking at the door again. And then catching Andrew’s eye, blanching, and scurrying down the hall after the still-chattering Kevin.
The bedroom door shuts behind them. Andrew stares at it – maybe he does have a staring problem – and considers his options. Ultimately, Neil is a big boy. He can figure out whatever this is on his own. Unless he asks for help– but he hasn’t asked for help. So it’s not Andrew’s problem. He should just forget it.
–
Andrew watches Neil a little closer. Andrew doesn’t forget anything.
Neil’s been hiding other strange new foibles.
When he drives, his eyes constantly scan the dash board for lights. The maserati is new. It never has lights on unless Andrew misses his oil change. When they park, he touches the parking brake ten times in succession while staring at it like he can glare a hole through the premium Italian Poltrona Frau leather.
He starts checking for his keys more than Andrew originally noted. He pats his pockets every five minutes now, but he also grabs the strap of his orange PSU lanyard hanging from his pocket.
He starts asking inane questions. If they remembered to lock up, three times within a ten minute window, like he doesn’t remember the first two affirmative responses. He asks if Andrew thinks the person across the street is watching them. A college kid, nodding their head to the music in their headphones, waiting for the bus. He asks if Andrew thought the waiter slipped something into his drink. He played that one off as a joke, but Andrew heard the hint of fear in his tone nonetheless.
He always scanned his surroundings before, always looked for exits, but now it’s ritualistic. Turn right, left, right again. Behind once. But as he does it, he looks distracted, like he’s thinking consciously about the order in which he does it more than what is actually happening right, left, right, behind. Like he’s… counting. Andrew distracts him once, in the middle of the protocol, and asks him a question. It makes Neil shake his head and start the process again.
These could be written off as Neil’s nervous tics. But these are so much more intentional than Neil’s paranoid tics from before.
Andrew doesn’t want to get involved until Neil admits that he needs help. But he has no choice as this development starts to harm Neil.
He starts getting up in the night. Andrew stops sleeping because Neil isn’t sleeping. Below Andrew, on the bottom bunk, Neil twists and turns.
Eventually, he huffs an exasperated puff of air and climbs out of bed. Leaves the rooms. Comes back. Gets back into bed. Gets up again. Comes back. Leaves again.
Every time, his quiet steps head toward the front door.
He stops sleeping, and it starts to affect exy. The next day, he is clumsy-footed. He trips when Kevin tests him with a complicated rebound, resulting in shouted choice words that started with mother and ended in fucker. Neil doesn’t flinch the first time, but he does the fifth. Andrew, on Kevin’s team for the scrimmage, sits down in his net with his racket on his lap. The ball never passes half court.
He starts miscounting his steps as he runs with the ball. He holds it too long 3 times in a row until Wymack is blowing his whistle and raising his arms behind the plexi glass like what the fuck are you doing, Josten?
Then, the hesitations. His eyes are far away, thinking about something else (and when something distracts Neil from exy, you know it’s bad). When he finally approaches Andrew, close enough to attempt scoring, he twists his hands on the racket thrice before shooting, giving any little league brat— let alone Andrew, best goalie in the Eastern district— more than enough time to see where Neil aims.
Neil shoots. Andrew blocks. He rebounds the ball up the court with a vicious THWACK and raises his arms at Neil as well, as if to say “what was that?”
It is rare Neil gets under his skin well enough to care about exy.
Neil’s jaw tightens as he chews furiously on his mouth guard, ignoring Kevin’s incensed shouting across court. He glares at Andrew.
“Ooh~ lovers quarrel!” Nicky jeers to Neil’s right, leaning on his racket.
Neil turns around, fast as a whip, and stalks back to centre court.
After practice, Neil disappears. He texts Andrew “safe,” meaning he’s out running somewhere, or hiding in some dark corner of the library to avoid everyone he knows. At least he has his phone.
When he returns to the dorm later that night, he doesn’t take off his arm bands. He ignores Andrew, sat on the couch writing a paper, and locks himself in the bathroom. Andrew leaves him alone; clearly, he’s fighting with something. If Andrew steps in, it will result in Neil fighting him.
Before bed, Andrew catches Neil in his frozen spot in front of the locked door. He isn’t aware of Andrew’s presence in the kitchen by the fridge, or he doesn’t care. From this position, in the dark lit only by the LED light of the old fridge, Andrew can see Neil’s face.
He isn’t just staring, as Andrew had thought before. No, Neil is blinking, fast. In succession. His lashes blur. When he finally stops, he huffs, jaw clenching, and he starts the process again. He blinks ten rapid times. Huffs again, more frustrated than before. Starts blinking. It must be dizzying, blinking that fast, but he doesn’t stop. He grinds his teeth, frowns, growing increasingly tense, and then Andrew notices his fingers under his arm band on his left arm.
He is scratching his scars. Punishing himself.
Andrew decides it’s time to step in, help sought or not.
He closes the fridge and walks four terse steps over to Neil, steps between him and the door, and stares hard at him. “That’s enough,” he says. No room for argument.
Neil, shocked out of his peculiar reverie, looks at Andrew’s glower and cringes away, face red. Embarrassed. He surreptitiously pulls his fingers out from his arm band.
Andrew waits for Neil to explain, but he doesn’t. He hasn’t said a damn thing since this thing started.
“Bed,” Andrew says. Neil opens his mouth like he wants to argue, and then, horribly, it looks like he might cry – but that can’t be right, Neil doesn’t cry, or at least he has never cried in front of Andrew, not even when his face was bloody and melted, the two of them don’t cry– but he swallows that too and concedes. He slinks back towards the bedroom without a word. Andrew watches him go without following, makes sure he goes in and turns the light out. Andrew looks at the door. It’s locked. It’s always locked.
When Andrew enters the bedroom, Neil is already in bed and facing the wall. Kevin snores. Andrew accepts this and climbs into his own bunk.
Ten minutes later, Neil is up again.
These are the things Andrew lists to Bee next time he sees her. Wednesday morning, he tells Aaron to fuck off and distract himself with something else. Andrew knows Neil won’t go to her himself, and Andrew doesn’t understand what’s happening or how to deal with this foreign behaviour.
Bee, sitting behind her desk, fiddling with a pencil topped with a bumblebee eraser (from Andrew), considers this list. She hums.
“Well, considering I don’t know what he is experiencing from his point of view, as I haven’t seen him since our last mandatory visit,” she says, but they both know she means he dislikes her. Strongly. “But to me, this sounds like OCD.”
Andrew files through his memories, searching for what he knows about OCD. It isn’t much. Girls in his high school bragging about their neat handwriting, their need for their gel pens to be perfectly lined up. Aaron watching Big Bang Theory at 8:00 in the house at Columbia (because he has the worst sense of humour ever manufactured by God), the main character knocking on his neighbour’s door three times in a row. Nicky watching Glee, and the so-called guidance counsellor who never has good advice washing her grapes one by one. None of these things sound like Neil. He isn’t clean or precise. He’s a minimalist, but only because he had been forced to be for so much of his life. Neil doesn’t care about germs. He’d once eaten a wet piece of deli meat off the locker room floor. Everyone in the locker room had gagged. Neil had just shrugged and kept shovelling food in his mouth.
“No,” Andrew shakes his head. “Not like that. It’s paranoia, but it makes him… freeze up. He can’t get out of his head.”
Bee nods. “Still sounds like OCD to me. Do you know what OCD is?” The kind way she asks makes Andrew think that maybe he has fallen prey to representational propaganda. Instead of listing off the memories he had conjured, he just shrugs. He isn’t a fan of being wrong.
Bee nods again, and smiles softly. She never makes anyone feel stupid. “OCD is not as simple as counting to three and colour coordination. It’s.. a fear cycle, often disabling. As a mental illness, it’s characterized by obsessions and compulsions, often both. Obsessions are recurrent, persistent fears, ideas, impulses, images. They are often irrational, paranoid, senseless, or just absurd, but having the thought so constantly makes the individual believe they are veritably true,” she explains, and starts writing symptoms onto a notepad as she speaks. “These thoughts are not just every-day issues, and they typically have a theme based upon the individual's personal fears. The more they try to suppress or ignore them, the louder they become, and, in many cases, the more they believe they are a bad person for having such thoughts. In many cases, these thoughts can be ego-dystonic, as in, completely inconsistent with the individual’s core values and beliefs.”
“I know what ego-dystonic means,” Andrew gruffs, folding his arms defensively. He grows uncomfortable with how little he knew about this.
“Yes, of course. I know you too have struggled with ego-dystonic intrusive thoughts,” she nods like it's nothing, like those thoughts haven’t left him incapacitated in bed, or cutting his arms open. “Compulsions therefore are typically a response to these obsessive thoughts. They are repetitive, and often an attempt to relieve the anxiety that the thoughts are causing. However, the more often these compulsions are repeated– Like Neil’s counting, checking, paranoid questions– the more the thoughts are reinforced. The compulsions are like a… waterlogged bandaid, if you catch my drift. They don’t work for long. They soothe the anxiety but at the same time, they reinforce to his nervous system that his thoughts are true, that they need to be taken seriously.”
“But some of the things he does have nothing to do with his fears,” Andrew argues.
“That is common too. They can be completely unrelated, but they feel they must do them to prevent something terrible from happening. They have a two-fold use, to calm the nervous system’s anxiety, and to prevent whatever their obsession has told them would happen if they didn’t check the door, or the stove, or the plugs in the house.” Bee finishes writing a list of symptoms and pushes it across the desk. Andrew doesn’t take it.
“He wasn’t like this before,” he says. Before, as in before he was in the Nest, before Baltimore, before Riko tried to kill him on court.
“It is a mental disorder that is often genetic, when it is early onset,” Bee admits. “However, it can also be triggered. It seems to me– as it seems to you– that this is new. You said he is increasingly frustrated, confused.”
Andrew nods, and starts gnawing at the skin of his thumb.
“OCD can be really scary,” she says, suddenly quite serious. “It’s fight or flight all of the time for no reason at all. It feels completely out of control, involuntary. You start to mistrust your own senses, your eyes, your “gut” feelings. You know it’s irrational, but you can’t stop. You feel a constant dread, panic. You can get stuck in “loops” that feel exhausting and never ending, and that starts the cycle of self-deprecating thoughts, self-harm–”
“Stop,” Andrew says, heart thudding and dropping into his stomach. His brain involuntarily flashes with the image of Neil’s nails digging into the skin under his arm bands.
Bee sits back, and resumes her soothing voice. It grates on Andrew. “It might not be at that point. It might not ever get to that point. Again, I can’t know,” she amends, but Andrew is already spinning. “It usually stems from not feeling safe.”
Andrew’s brain translates that as, he doesn't feel safe with me anymore. What have I done to make him lose trust in me? But before he can spin completely out of control, Bee interrupts. “Of no one’s fault, especially yours. Neil has experienced the worst of humanity this year.”
Andrew uncrosses his arms and sighs. There is no point in being angry right now. “What can I do?”
Bee considers, hums again. “Take his fear seriously, but also try to stop the cycles. Try to be gentle, but firm. Try not to fall prey to constant reassurances– it only reinforces the thoughts, makes them feel actually dangerous. See if he will talk about it, try to get him to stop avoiding it all,” she lists, and then adds, “see if he will come see me.”
Andrew scoffs. Like he has any control over that. “And solutions?”
“OCD is a long-lasting disorder. Much like yours, it cannot be entirely solved, just helped. But therapy and medication are the best solutions.”
“Fantastic,” Andrew says dryly. Neil’s two favourite things. Walk in the park.
—
Neil is still in class when Andrew returns to the dorm. On Wednesdays, he meets everyone at practice.
Today, he puts up a good front. Gone are the hesitations, the tripping, the mistakes. He plays like he remembers the rules of the game. But he’s masking. Andrew can tell; he knows what it looks like, he’s the master. Neil grins and snaps at Kevin in french, laughs at Matt’s trick shot.
Every time he turns away from them, his smile drops and his jaw clenches.
When Neil catches Andrew watching him, he scurries away. The stupid martyr is playing normal for the rest of the team, but he can’t lie to Andrew.
Neil showers with his arm bands on even though Andrew knows Neil hates the feeling of them wet and rubbing on his scars. It makes the new scars inflamed and puffy and red. It makes them hurt. It hinders the healing process.
At the beginning of summer training, he had started changing out with the team, but he doesn’t today. He locks himself in a bathroom stall and doesn’t exit as the boys start to filter out one by one, until Matt is flashing Andrew a smile and ducking out of the room. Andrew follows him, but stands right outside the door. He waits for twenty minutes, listens against the door. He hears Neil pull on his locker. Again. Again. Unlock it, look inside, slam it shut. Lock it again. Pull it. Pull it.
Eventually, he must get to that “just right” pull that makes him believe it is actually locked, or safe, or maybe he’s just too frustrated to continue. Andrew takes a calculated step back, hands in his pockets as Neil shoves the locker room door open with a thunderous look on his face. He nearly collides with Andrew, but Andrew stands his ground, crossing his arms and staring pointedly.
Neil mutters some excuse about his lock not working and skitters away.
Andrew follows him out the building at a slower pace, scuffing his feet. He feels a bit stroppy, if he is being honest with himself. He won’t show it, but it’s there nonetheless. He doesn’t understand why Neil won’t tell him something is wrong. They promised to tell each other stuff like this, after Baltimore.
In front of him, Neil throws himself into the passenger seat. Andrew stalks to the driver's side and opens the door with the same amount of force, both of them throwing silent tantrums. Andrew starts the car with a roar and revs the engine as he tears out of the parking lot. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He ignores Nicky, who is retelling a joke Erik made that no one finds funny. Neil stares out the window with his arms crossed, ignoring Kevin who is talking about some exy strat no one finds interesting.
When Andrew parks, Neil tries to bolt from the car with the rest of his family. Before he can, Andrew, staring straight out the windshield, says “stay.” Neil freezes, body halfway out the door, and reluctantly– and rather petulantly– slumps back into his seat, slamming the door shut. He doesn’t look at Andrew either.
Nicky looks back at the car, notices tension, and tries to alert Aaron, tugging on his shoulder with gossipy excitement. Aaron shoves him off and shoves the front doors open with equal levels of rancor. Kevin flips Nicky off and disappears. Nicky gives Andrew and Neil one last questioning look before he mopes inside, excluded.
Once they are gone, Andrew finally looks at Neil. His arms are crossed. He taps his foot. He still won’t look at Andrew.
Andrew pulls out of the lot and drives.
They sit in silence accompanied only by the sound of the Maserati’s violent engine for half an hour. They leave campus; they leave town altogether. It’s golden hour, blue and green and glowing fields. It does not reflect the tension in the car.
Eventually, Andrew breaks. “Neil,” he says, looking over at him. “Truth.”
Neil, like he’d been waiting for the opportunity to drop his mask, exhales a heavy breath. His shoulders drop for the first time in weeks. His defensive arms drop to fidget with his lanyard. He is listening.
Andrew doesn’t need to ask what’s going on with you. He doesn’t need to ask why are you so paranoid, why are you acting strange, why don’t you trust me anymore, why don’t you trust me to have your back, why don’t you trust me without a promise.
Andrew can finally read him. Neil’s mouth screws up to the side. Upset, angry, afraid.
“I don’t know,” he says. Confused, above all else.
Andrew waits him out, staring at the gold and green fields. Neil’s breathing picks up, he fidgets and scratches.
“I don’t,” he stresses. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try.”
Neil chews his lip. Looks out the window. “I’m safe. I know I’m safe. I know it’s over. I know you’re here,” he recites like he has been cycling through this same mantra in his head. “But I can’t make my brain… get it. I feel like he is around every corner. That if I don’t do things right, something… I don’t know, bad will happen,” He says and cringes at the juvenile turn of phrase. “But that’s not it. It’s not just bad. It’s bad, and my fault.”
Andrew mulls this over, tries to connect it to Bee’s loose diagnosis. Neil takes the silence as space to further explain.
“And I don’t know why I’m doing it– I’m tired of doing it, there’s no reason for it, no logic– but I can’t stop. If I don’t make sure the door’s locked, then someone will break in and kill us in bed. And I know it sounds stupid, for every plausible reason, but it’s all I can think about, and I see you dead, and Kevin dead, and- and my ankles slashed,” he pants, choking on the last one. He swallows and tries to continue, but finds he can’t. Slumping back in his seat, he chews his bottom lip to ruin.
“But you don’t just check once,” Andrew challenges. “Everyone checks things. You have always checked things,” he says, and he means, what changed?
Neil stares at his lap. “I don’t know. I don’t trust my eyes. I know that’s stupid. I looked, and it’s locked, go to bed. But I can’t. I try to walk away and suddenly I’m thinking, but what if you imagined it was locked. You are wrong. You just saw what you wanted to see. You have to make sure,” he shudders. “If I don't, something bad will happen,” he stresses again.
“Bad things happen all the time,” Andrew counters.
“It would be my fault.”
Martyr.
“So what,” Andrew throws casually. “You make sure the door is locked,” he says, even though he knows it’s more than just checking. He’s seen how long it takes. The fear. “How will counting your steps stop something bad from happening?”
Neil looks up at him sharply, and back down at his hands just as fast. He didn’t think Andrew had been watching him that closely. Foolish. Andrew can’t keep his eyes off him.
After a minute, he says, quietly, “I told you. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” Ashamed.
“OCD,” Andrew intones.
Neil scoffs sarcastically.
“Not a joke,” Andrew doubles down.
“I don’t have OCD, Andrew.”
“Bee begs to disagree,” Andrew says, turning onto a pine-forested road. He wonders if he should drive them down to the beach, somewhere with palms. Somewhere with a sunset, to get Neil to relax.
“You told her?” Neil accuses, shackles rising once more.
Andrew lets that one sit, because Neil knows Andrew only tells Bee about him when it’s necessary. Neil scoffs and crosses his arms again anyways. “I don’t have OCD. I don’t give a shit about germs.”
“You clearly don’t know what OCD is,” Andrew says, despite also not knowing what OCD was that morning.
“And Bee doesn’t know me. I don’t need a diagnosis, Andrew, I need to stop being a paranoid freak. Bee’s gentle parenting isn’t going to snap me out of it,” Neil lashes out, a vicious attack, and Andrew riles with him.
“Like hurting yourself does?”
Neil bites down on his next words with an audible clack. “Not the same.” He swallows, and he means, as yours.
“Very much the same,” Andrew argues.
“Scratching myself to remind me that I’ve checked something doesn’t count as self harm,” He says, like he’s an expert on the subject.
“So why haven’t you taken your arm bands off around anyone this week, including me?” Andrew debates, voice sharp. Neil splutters. “I think you’ve drawn blood.” It’s a wild guess, but Neil shuts up. Andrew’s stomach roils. His knuckles start to hurt. He’s been clenching too long. He tries not to push down on the accelerator and fails. Their speed climbs.
“It’s not the same,” Neil says again, pettishly.
Andrew takes a very controlled, very deep breath. “It’s trying to regain control. It’s exactly the same. And it’s not going to fix it.”
Neil grinds his teeth, slinking farther into his seat.
Andrew’s own shackles are so far raised that his skin is goose bumped and red. He tries to breathe through it, focus on the hot pavement in front of the car, center himself. Getting triggered while attempting to help helps no one at all.
“So what was your plan,” he asks conversationally.
“Wait until it went away,” Neil grumbles.
“And if it didn’t?”
“Make it go away.”
“Because that’s been working so far.”
“You’re being a dick,” Neil finally snaps, turning on Andrew.
“And you’re self harming to cope with an undiagnosed condition. Did you know, when you go to a doctor, they fix conditions?” Andrew shoots back.
“Betsy is hardly a doctor,” he scoffs again.
“Her PhD would disagree,” Andrew counters.
Neil shuts up in a stubborn rage, only just stopping himself from saying something cruel. Andrew can feel the echo of the words not being said. He almost wishes Neil would. But that would snowball into a whole different argument. Andrew is always too self-destructive.
After five minutes of tense silence, Neil says, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I will figure it out on my own.”
Suppressing a growl, Andrew makes a too-fast U-turn and heads back to campus.
–
Neil attempts to hide his checks and counting, but Andrew knows where to look now. He doesn’t openly tap his pockets; now he keeps his hand by his hip at all times and squeezes the keys every five minutes. He plasters a harsh smile on his lips at practice, but Andrew sees the counting all the same. He doesn’t check the door until Andrew is already in bed, playing it off as needing the washroom or a glass of water.
He is running low on sleep, and it’s making everything worse.
He won’t stop avoiding Andrew because he doesn’t want Andrew to confront him again, to tell him to go to therapy or get any sort of help. Or even admit what it is. That is something Neil just cannot do.
Andrew then starts finding Neil sleeping in random places. The library between shelves of Russian maps and veterinary science textbooks. The lounge couch, mouth open in abandon. Between the stadium seats, face pressed into the dirty concrete. In class, drooling onto his desk. One notable time, folded on the sidewalk curb in front of Fox Tower, waiting for Andrew to pick him up for practice. Every time Andrew nudges his foot, his shoulder, or says Neil’s name, Neil wakes up slow and bleary eyed, dragging himself reluctantly to follow Andrew. Nothing like his usual rabbity alertness.
At practice he starts picking fights– or falling into them. He has lost patience with everyone because he has lost patience with himself.
The next Tuesday night practice, things start to fall apart.
Neil’s exhausted. It’s clear to everyone. He stumbles, he loses time staring at things, he doesn’t answer questions pointed at him. Matt shoots worried glances to Dan, who looks over at Andrew with a “What the Fuck is wrong with Neil?” question in her eyes and her eyebrows in her hairline. Kevin is barking more than normal, at both the new recruits and Nicky, who is so distracted by Neil’s foul mood that he keeps missing catches. Aaron is agitated by the Bad Vibes. Allison gets cattier, insulting everyone in her path as Renee battles to keep things copacetic with encouraging words. Andrew watches quietly from the goal and waits for the imminent cataclysm.
At the halfway mark on the scoreboard timer, Aaron snaps.
“Aaron, you’re not even trying,” Neil shouts as Jack (the new snot-nosed, stuck-up brat Kevin chose as a striker) dives past him towards Renee in goal.
“Worry about yourself,” Aaron growls back, halting his chase for the ball.
“What was that?” Neil turns, stalking towards Aaron.
“I said,” Aaron enunciates. “Worry about yourself, you poor excuse of a vice captain. You can’t even keep up with Nicky.”
“Hey–” Nicky rebuffs quietly.
“Fuck you–” Neil says, tearing off his helmet and stomping up to Aaron’s with his racket braced in front of him. Kevin cuts in before he can start anything. Instead of taking Neil’s side, he defends Aaron and pushes Neil back.
“He’s right, you are a disappointment today,” he barks. Matt blows air through his teeth at the words as Neil throws his racket and pushes Kevin back, shoving his chin up to get in Kevin’s face. “Your footwork is shit, you aren’t communicating, and you look like a walking corpse. Get the fuck off my court.”
“Your court?!” Neil jeers back, pushing Kevin again. Everyone stands around the two of them, watching the show down, but not interrupting. Never interrupt rabid foxes, lest you are bitten. “Last I checked, you joined this team because you knew no one else would take your sorry ass–”
“Ok, ok,” Dan says, arms raised, “that's enough boys.”
“Fuck off, Danielle,” Neil spits, turning on her. Dan’s eyes turn murderous.
“Whoa,” Allison laughs in shock, as Matt mutters, “shit…” and steps in.
“Buddy, buddy. I think we’re all a little worried about you,” he says, putting a hand on Neil’s shoulder. Neil flinches back from it, so Matt flinches too. Neil backs off from all of them.
“There’s nothing fucking wrong with me,” Neil growls. With that, he rips off his gloves and storms off the court. The plexiglass door slams shut and echoes in the shocked silence of everyone on court. All of the original foxes turn to Andrew with paired looks of shock and concern. Like he has the fucking answers.
“So there's, like, definitely something wrong with him,” Jack says. Everyone groans.
–
“Where is Josten?” Wymack asks in shock at the boys locker room, sans Neil. Everyone, again, looks to Andrew. That shit gets annoying fast.
“I am not his keeper,” Andrew reminds the room. The room looks dubious. Wymack raises a thick eyebrow, like, yeah, sure.
Andrew endeavours not to roll his eyes and goes into the bathroom to figure out which stall Neil locked himself in. When he enters the bathroom, the motion activated lights flicker on. Every stall hangs open.
He sighs. Perfect. The runaway has run away.
He strolls back out of the room and shrugs expansively at Wymack. Wymack shakes his head wearily at the predictability of it all, fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. He mutters, “his name will be written in my obituary for cause of death, I swear. Fine. Look for him. Or don’t. I don’t fucking care.” He leaves the room, harried and exhausted by his life choices.
Andrew looks for him. He always does.
He drives around campus for an hour. He checks the dorm, the roof, the library, the different buildings he’s had classes in in the past year that he has found crevices to tuck into. He drives out on the interstate to make sure he isn’t hitchhiking to Canada. By eleven at night, he gives up and drives back to Fox Tower. He folds into the couch and watches the door until he falls asleep.
Neil doesn’t walk in until 5am the next morning, the sky already glowing a soft blue, the birds already singing their songs. The door unlocking wakes Andrew. In the dark, he watches Neil peel off his running shoes and socks, the heels bloody from blisters. He’s still wearing his uniform; he never changed out, he just ran.
“Neil,” Andrew says, quietly in the sleeping dorm. Neil jerks up, shocked to see Andrew waiting up for him in the dark. “Come here.”
“No,” Neil says, and disappears into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. The shower cuts on.
Neil… has never said no to him.
–
From then on, Neil starts to avoid everyone on the team. They only see him at practice. Andrew doesn’t know where he goes at night.
Nicky sidles up to Andrew in the cafeteria on Thursday. He moves to jostle Andrew’s hip, and then thinks better of it. He drops a bag of jalapeño cheetos from the vending machine onto Andrew’s tray as a peace offering. Andrew stares at him.
“I’m worried about Neilio,” Nicky pouts. “Is he ok?”
“Ask him yourself,” Andrew says through a mouthful of burger, pulling open the cheetos.
“I would if I ever saw him these days,” Nicky pouts deeper, looking off in the far distance. Neil hadn’t joined them in the Maserati since the fight on Tuesday, and he’s ignored absolutely every one off the court. Matt is worried. Dan is still pissed off from how he spoke to her. Allison is pissed off too, but only because that is how her worry takes shape. Renee is contemplative, and clearly waiting for Andrew to ask for a sparring session so he can talk it out.
Kevin is ignorant, as always. “As long as he can play.” Neil is lucky they haven’t started up night practices yet, or Kevin would be a nightmare.
On Friday they are meant to drive to Columbia for a night out at Edens. Andrew kiboshes the date. Neil is still nowhere to be found.
Aaron and Nicky bitch and moan and decide to bother Allison about it. She rolls her eyes and drags them and Kevin (reluctantly) out to a party on campus. Andrew waits alone in the dorm for Neil to come home.
He tries to read, tries to watch tv, but he’s on high alert and he can’t slow his heartbeat. He wants to fix, to control, protect, but Neil is just a ghost these days, incorporeal and distant.
Neil does slip in eventually. He looks dead on his feet, hair sweaty and flat. His eyes gleam in the dark, but not in the sharp, searching way they usually do.
“Why are you still awake?” Neil asks gruffly, toeing his sneakers off and kicking them against the wall like an animal. He won’t face Andrew.
“Perhaps because you’ve been a missing person all week,” Andrew says nonchalantly, despite his warring anxiety and irritation.
“Just… just leave it,” Neil says, moving into the dimly lit kitchen. He shoves his face under the tap and gulps some water. It spills over his chin and drips onto the neck of his sweaty shirt.
Andrew’s temper flares. All of this worrying, this staying up late and waiting for him to come back. What is it for? He isn’t grateful. He doesn’t want it.
Andrew stands up and leaves the room. He doesn’t need to yell “Fine!” like his brother would, but it rings through the room behind him anyway. He climbs up into his bunk and glares at the blank wall opposite to him. If Neil doesn’t want his help, he will stop fucking offering. There is no use– no help– in giving his all for nothing. If he really wants to figure it out on his own, then by all means, Andrew will let him.
Neil comes in behind him eventually, after fifteen minutes of door checking, Andrew is sure.
He doesn’t turn to face him, but he doesn’t close his eyes, either. It takes a very long time to fall asleep.