Chapter Text
Andrew perches on the windowsill of the boy’s bathroom and stares out the glass as the others run around like chickens. He doesn’t own a rain jacket. Maybe he wouldn’t mind the chicken pen so much if he did.
He’s busy trying to telepathically urge some kid trip over his shoelaces (untied, so rightfully so), when someone barges into the bathroom, loudly and obnoxiously, and breathing like Nicky after chasing Aaron down for a bite of his take-home.
Andrew hops down from the sill and curses at the way his left ankle rolls out from under him, and also at the pang in his old grandpa knees. Bad form.
He looks up, cigarette held behind his back even though the sweet smell of it isn’t fooling anyone. It’s just another student though, hair too dark a shade for how strikingly blue his eyes are. That’s the first thing he notices. The second is the blood caked to his nose and cheek, smeared haphazardly like he couldn’t be bothered to really try.
“Shit,” he mumbles in greeting. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” the kid says. Even from this distance, Andrew can tell his pupils are blown.
He shrugs. “Thought you were a teacher.”
The kid quirks an eyebrow. Andrew isn’t certain how to interpret that gesture, so he holds out his cigarette. An olive branch of sorts, just in case the kid’s a loudmouth.
He takes it gently, as though afraid to touch skin, and inhales a small, quick drag before passing it back. Andrew notices his hand trembles, but only enough to spot if you’re practiced at it.
“Thanks,” he says.
“No problem.”
There is a silence then, not awkward but unfamiliar. And a feeling as though something else should be said, but neither of them can think to articulate it. The moment passes, and the kid walks backwards towards the door.
“Well, see you around,” he says, spoken like a guarantee even though Andrew has never seen him before in his life. He would’ve remembered.
But he’s gone before Andrew’s “yeah” even leaves his mouth.
There’s blood on his cigarette now. He shrugs and brings it to his lips.
“Is there a new kid?” Andrew asks over Chinese takeout. He sneaks a piece of orange chicken from Aaron’s plate, though there is an entire half-carton sitting in front of him.
“How should I know?” Aaron says, grabbing at Andrew’s wrist midair and chomping down. Foiled.
“Because you pay attention,” Andrew says, and steals another. Aaron frowns but doesn’t stop him.
“Whatever. I heard someone transferred last week. Some kid from Oregon.”
They’re almost halfway into the school year. Weird. “Name?”
“Stop stealing by chicken.”
Nicky laughs from his side of the couch. Andrew ignores him.
“If you tell me his name,” he says to Aaron.
“I literally don’t know,” Aaron says, annoyed. “Why do you care so much?”
Andrew shrugs. “I don’t. Just curious about the bloody nose.”
“You met him?”
“Yeah,” Andrew says. “And he had a bloody nose.”
“Probably picked on Rudy or something.”
“Rudy doesn’t throw punches anymore.” At least not since Andrew twisted his wrist enough to sprain it.
“Stop taking my fucking chicken,” Aaron says, and removes himself from arm’s reach with his plate. Andrew watches him go, smiling around a mouthful of orange chicken.
Andrew cares about very little. Not that he didn’t try, only that he seemed incapable no matter what odd hobby or habit he’d pick up in an attempt to avoid catatonia.
With a piece of paper and a pen it would take him less than 30 seconds to make a list.
- Keeping his promises
- Weed (not a stoner)
- Driving
- Ice cream
Which all goes to say, he could not give less of a shit which direction DNA is translated. He also has no idea why he is enrolled in this class. Maybe because people had a habit of equating him with Aaron and Aaron was a nerd. It must blow their minds to realize how little they share, beyond appearances.
He blows on Aaron’s neck from the seat behind him, bored. Aaron turns around and hisses at him.
Andrew leaves him alone for now, shifting to stare out the window instead. Five minutes into watching the leaves rustle, a rather riveting thing as compared to the lecture, he spots a figure emerging from the side of the building.
He excuses himself by leaving the classroom. The teacher must be used to his lack of announcement, because she says nothing to Andrew as he leaves.
He walks down the hall to the front of the building, where the boy was most certainly heading, grazing his hand on the walls as he goes. Soon enough, he hears sniffling down the hallway, and approaches the sound.
He is hunched over and so skinny Andrew could count the vertebrae of his spine through the thin cotton of his shirt. He coughs and it’s wet.
"Shit,” the kid mumbles, turning to him. He’s got the hem of his shirt up to his nose, soaking up blood as he also stands in a small puddle of it, leaving his belly exposed. Andrew takes a moment.
He has odd scars, mostly unrecognizable in origin and riddling almost every inch of his exposed skin. Andrew wonders what else could be hiding underneath the fabric of his clothing, then flicks his gaze away.
“You scared me,” he says, voice gross with blood.
“Gotcha back,” Andrew says, and closes the distance. He peers at him from a half-foot away, assessing the situation and avoiding his uncomfortably intense gaze.
“Why the bloody nose?” Again.
“Dehydrated,” he says, head tilted back. Wrong. You’ll swallow your blood that way.
“That account for the black eye, too?”
The kid groans, annoyed or pained or maybe both.
“C’mon,” Andrew says, and beckons with his hand. He looks back only once to ensure he is following, and holds open the door to the bathroom.
He turns on the faucet and tests its temperature until comfortably warm. Then directs the kid towards it.
“Neck down, or you’ll swallow your blood.”
“I prefer it inside of me,” he says, but complies.
Andrew allows his bleeding to stop before he speaks again, watching as he wipes off the remaining blood with a paper towel. He might suggest sticking some up his nose, more for humor’s sake than for practicality, but he has a feeling the kid wouldn’t heed the suggestion regardless.
“You pick fights often?” He says, eyeing him as he pats at his face in the mirror, wincing at the press of his fingers to his bruised face.
“No,” he says, frowning at Andrew in his reflection. “They usually pick me.”
Andrew snorts. “They’ve seemed to make a habit of that.”
“I guess so,” he says, and then gives up on the rest of the blood, evidently, because he begins to leave with half of it still caked to his face.
“Hey,” Andrew says to his back, and waits for him to turn around before asking. “What’s your name?”
He thinks, perhaps, curiosity may be the only thing keeping him alive. That and a couple promises to keep.
The kid looks for a second like he won’t answer, or like he doesn’t know how to, mouth parting and then closing and then parting again to speak.
“It’s Neil,” he says after too long a moment.
Neil. Andrew likes how it sounds in his head and on his tongue. It is simple. Easy to remember. Fitting. He wonders why Neil hardly seemed to know it.
“Andrew,” he offers himself.
“Thanks for the nursing, Andrew,” Neil says.
This time he stays long enough for Andrew’s “no problem,” but only barely before he is gone again.
Curious.
The photos of the principal’s dogs on the walls of the administration office are in poor taste, Andrew thinks. He wiggles in the chair to get comfortable, and ignores the beady stare of dog as best he can.
He could leave, he thinks. It was easy enough. But he’s bored and it was funny making Aaron wait for a ride home.
“Mr. Minyard,” the principal calls from his office. His face reminds Andrew of a mouse, like he’s just bitten into something real sour.
“Coming,” Andrew singsongs, and rises from his chair. He passes the man into his office, to the chair in front of his desk, and plops down into it with an exaggerated sigh.
He expects the man to quickly follow him inside, to begin his reprimand and then get caught up in the sound of his own voice for fifteen minutes before sending Andrew away with a stern warning of expulsion, the fourth in about 3 months. If they wanted to they’d have done it by now, which is why Andrew doesn’t pull his punches when someone bothers to bother him.
Except he isn’t followed. He turns his head and Principal Mouse Face is leaning outside his office door, head down, and whispering something to the head of Campus Safety, with whom Andrew is familiar.
He perks his ears.
“… some student sleeping…”
“Where?”
“Locker room. Been trying to…”
Interesting. They were dealing with a squatter in the boy’s locker room, and he thinks he has a pretty good guess of who said squatter might be.
“Thank you,” Principal Mouse Face says, and then closes the door before turning to address Andrew.
“Mr. Minyard,” he says, walking to his chair and sitting down. “Another fight?”
Andrew would not call it that. A fight implied some level of equal exchange between two or more parties, a struggle of sorts. There’d been no struggling on Andrew’s part. Only a pair of badly bruised knuckles. He flexes them just to feel the ache, and says nothing.
“This is getting to be excessive.”
Andrew thinks exactly the same.
walk home , he texts Aaron after leaving the office. Aaron responds with a fuck you a nd then a why , both of which Andrew leaves on read.
He decides to stick around, waits at his favorite perch on the bathroom windowsill for the building lights to turn off and for the last of the school’s staff to depart. It’s 6 o’ clock by the time the building is empty. He’s got at least another few hours to kill before investigating the mystery of the locker room squatter.
He roams the halls, smokes a couple cigarettes and puts them out in the water fountain. There are enough art projects in the school halls to constitute a small museum, so Andrew occupies himself with those for a while.
When he is bored of that, he crafts a wire contraption from some supplies in the art room and steals a butterfinger and a rice-krispie from the vending machine for dinner. At ten, he makes his way to the locker room.
Andrew holds the door as it closes so it won’t make a sound and steps past the benches, eyeing for any lump suggestive of a human in the dark. His eyes adjust quickly, and he steps lightly.
He doesn’t spot anything of interest until he reaches the very end of the locker room, in the far right corner underneath a bench. He steps lightly towards it, kneels down and tilts his body forward, close enough to touch but not touching.
“Squatter,” Andrew says.
Neil bangs his head on the underside of the bench and curses, a bad habit of his, it seems. He ruffles around in his cocoon of a blanket, glaring up at Andrew like an angry raccoon.
“I was just taking a nap,” he says.
“Sure,” Andrew says. He’d anticipated a better excuse. This was kind of a let down.
“Why is it every time I’m minding my own business you inexplicably appear out of nowhere to be all probey and annoying?” Neil says, a rather lengthy and heated question, and one that makes him want to laugh. He refrains.
“Why is it your always in places I’ll be?” He says instead. Just to be annoying.
“Jesus christ. Can I go back to sleep?”
“Depends. Were you even sleeping in the first place?”
Neil frowns at the accusation. “I was trying to. Before you interrupted.”
“You know, they suspect a squatter. Heard the principal mumbling about it earlier.”
“Liar.”
Andrew shrugs. He’s been accused of worse. “If you say so.”
Neil doesn’t look like he believes his own accusation, though. He’s wide-eyed and fearful, of being caught maybe, but the look in his eyes suggests something more.
“Whatever,” he says, the expression quickly disappearing, and rises from his makeshift bed, blanket hung around his shoulders like a cape. “I was leaving anyway.”
“Where to?”
“Home.”
“Where’s that?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Only because you don’t answer any of them.”
Neil grabs at a duffel bag that’d been sitting on the bench and swings it around his shoulder. It’s twice the size of his torso, not because it’s huge but because Neil is tiny. He clings to it like he’s afraid Andrew might try and take it from him. Andrew could guess it held most, if not all, of his belongings.
“Go away,” he says, turning to leave. Andrew follows him, thinks about stepping on the train of his blanket just for giggles but decides against it.
“You know, there are more comfortable places to sleep.”
“I don’t mind it.”
“You’re back probably does.”
Neil turns to speak to him, anger in his eyes. “Why do you care so much where I’m sleeping, or if I’ll swallow my own blood? What do you want?”
“Nothing. I’m bored.”
“So you want entertainment.”
“Sure.”
“Nice. Good to know I’m so entertaining.”
Andrew follows him into halls and then outside the building. He is surprised it’s not locked on their way out.
Neil stops to fold his blanket and toss it over his shoulder. It’s a bad fold, would come undone in minutes, but he’s too hurried to care, it seems, because he quickly continues walking. Andrew follows at his heels.
“You know, this town is small but we do have a shelter,” he says. It sounds stupid.
“It’s not safe,” Neil says, rounding the corner to a side street and picking up the pace.
“Where is?” Andrew asks.
“You’re so nosey,” Neil says, and turns into an alleyway. He tosses his duffel onto a fire escape and then his blanket. And then begins to climb it, movements agile and practiced.
Something hits him over the head then. Andrew sees black and then the pavement. His head feels like a giant watermelon. 60 cents a pound at Winco.
From his vantage point on the cold, hard pavement, he can see Neil’s feet dangling off the ground, and a little higher up, a forearm digging into his throat, his back pressed to the wall, a man sneering into his face.
Evidently, he didn’t make the climb to safety.
“… who’s this, hu?” The man says. “Collateral, it seems. A shame.”
“Don’t…” Neil snarls, even through the arm pressed against his windpipe. “Don’t touch him.”
Aw. Heartwarming except not really. Andrew thinks he’s really going to loathe himself later for taking so long to rise and kick the guy choking Neil in the shins. His head might explode. Little pink bits everywhere.
The man curses and drops Neil, turning to face Andrew with a look of murderous disdain. He hadn’t even kicked him that hard. His hands rise too slowly. Now he really thinks his head has exploded, like a watermelon after one too many rubber bands wrapped around it. He wants to laugh. It sounds bloody.
He steps backwards, dodges the throw successfully but not so much the next. His hands become fists, a familiar thing, but before he can throw them the man stumbles backwards. Andrew watches, fascinated, as Neil clings to his back, body small but heavy enough to throw the man off balance. His legs wrap tightly around the man’s torso, arms around his neck and squeezing.
Andrew rushes forward to grab at the man’s hands before they can move to pry Neil off. He manages long enough for Neil to pull out a switchblade, flip it open, and slit the man’s throat.
Gross. There’s blood on Andrew’s shirt now as he releases his grip, instead reaching for Neil to pull him away from the man’s falling body and to steady him as he lands.
Together they watch him bleed out in silence, sputtering and reaching for them even as the life drains from him until finally going still. He feels a spike in his chest, adrenaline and a tad bit of morbid fascination. Andrew is no stranger to death but he’s never witnessed one quite like this.
He points to Neil’s hand, where he still holds the bloodied switchblade, tightly as though he is afraid to let go.
“Pretty sure those are illegal,” he says. At least, the ones that flip open like that.
“So is murder.”
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem too perturbed about it.”
“Neither do you.”
Andrew looks at him, face smeared with blood but at least not his own for once, then shrugs. “Do you need help with the body?”
Neil tilts his head, assessing. Andrew allows him the moment, though he hates to be observed.
“I should kill you,” he says at length.. Again, heartwarming.
“Whatever for?”
“You’re a witness”
“So do it.”
Neil frowns at him, as though the very idea offends him. Andrew is tempted to point out it was his to begin with. He needs some Tylenol for his watermelon head.
“I don’t kill civilians,” he says. Like he’s some masked crusader with an inflexible moral compass. Batman. Andrew laughs. That hurts his head, too.
“Is that what I am?”
“Listen,” Neil says. “I trust you not to say anything-- I would kill you. But you don’t have to help with this.”
“Okay. Except I’m bored and you have actual spaghetti for arms. Do not forget you have to move him to bury him.”
“My arms aren’t spaghetti,” Neil says.
“They’re tiny.”
“No.”
“Yes. Jesus. Are you going to bury him or not?”
Neil frowns, clearly still annoyed about his spaghetti arms but choosing to move on.
“Fine. Do you have a car?”
They use Neil’s blanket to wrap the body. Andrew leaves him to bring the car around, returns with a shovel from the school’s shed tossed in the backseat, and parks as close as he can.
It takes them about a quarter hour to move the body into the trunk. The town is asleep this late but they are still cautious. Andrew is pretty certain that murder, even assisted, might be solid grounds for expulsion. Not that he would mind much.
“Where to?” Andrew asks when Neil gets in, turning the key to ignition and releasing the emergency brake.
“The woods behind Fischer street.”
He puts the car in reverse.
It is not a densely populated area, with a couple stray houses and an abandoned park a few streets down. Still, Andrew squeezes the car in beside the wooden blocking labeled a dead-end, and into the woods until he will hit a tree if he drives any further. He gets out and lights a cigarette.
Aaron always says he’s going to die of lung cancer. Andrew thinks it wouldn’t be the worst way to go out.
“You could start a fire,” Neil says, moving to open the trunk.
Andrew shrugs. “Gotta calm my nerves.”
“Yeah, you look really nervous.”
Andrew smiles and puts the butt out, then meets Neil at the trunk. They look down at their human burrito for a long moment, assessing the best way to proceed. Neil sighs and moves to lift the head.
“You get the legs?”
Andrew moves to get a grip, and on Neil’s three lifts the body out of the trunk and dumps it on the ground.
“You weren’t supposed to let go,” Neil says, staring at their handiwork.
“It was heavier than expected,” Andrew says.
“Whatever. We can roll him.”
Andrew watches Neil bend down and begin rolling, surprised the blanket’s wrapping doesn’t come undone as he manages to get the body a few feet away from the car and then further into the woods.
“Are you gonna help?” Neil asks, breathing hard already.
Andrew kicks at the blanket. “I’ll bring the shovel,” he says.
Neil sighs but doesn’t argue. Andrew takes his time retrieving it, allowing Neil ample time to move the body further into the woods and to a spot he deems acceptable for burial.
He takes the shovel from Andrew and stabs it in the ground with an exaggerated grunt. Andrew lets him start, before finally taking pity and removing the shovel from his hands.
Andrew has never put much thought into how long it’d take to dig a hole big enough to bury someone dead. His only experience with death was made to be an accident, and they cremated her, spread her ashes in the backyard because Aaron would’ve had a fit otherwise.
It takes forever, though, and by the time the hole is deep enough to Neil’s satisfaction, his arms are aching, he stinks like death, and he is covered in dirt. Neil looks far worse.
They roll the body into the hole and then cover it, and then scatter some leaves around the area and call it a night. Neil takes a moment to stare at the work when it is done, mouth set in a grim line, eyes tired and back hunched. Andrew lights another cigarette and offers it to Neil, who takes it with shaky hands.
“Aren’t you worried?” Andrew asks, watching Neil bring it to his lips. In the car’s headlamps Andrew observes a ring of purple-red around his neck, colored in the vague shape of fingers.
He only shakes his head.
“He’s a lackey,” Neil says. “He doesn’t technically exist. No one will know to come looking. Anyway, he went rogue a few years ago. I did his bosses a favor.”
Andrew believes him, though the entirety of it sounds absolutely outrageous, like something out of a mob movie except a bad one. Low budget, sloppy writing, messy protagonists.
His chest heaves from exertion. His mouth is dry and tastes like a bird took a shit in it. He has a stamp card to the drive-thru coffee shop down the street from his house.
“Cool,” he says to Neil. “You thirsty?”
“Extra sweet double dark German chocolate freeze.”
Andrew turns to Neil in the passenger seat. He’s got dirt or blood streaked on his nose.
“Water.”
Andrew turns back to the window.
“And a water.”
He walks into Aaron playing Super Smash Bros. and Nicky asleep on the couch beside him, snoring over the sound of the game’s incessantly repetitive music.
Aaron is mumbling something under his breath, eyes fixed to the bright screen and fingers twiddling angrily at the controller. He watches as Aaron jumps off the stage to attack his opponent midair only to miss and die. He laughs. Aaron throws his controller at the screen, miraculously not breaking it but waking Nicky in his angered yelling.
“What’s wrong with him?” Neil asks from behind him.
“He’s grieving.”
“Fuck off, Andrew,” Aaron says. “Why are you covered in dirt? And who are you?” The latter of those questions is directed at Neil.
Neil ignores him, to Andrew’s delight, and Andrew ignores him for Neil, nodding his head in beckoning and leading him towards the kitchen.
He pulls out a carton of pistachio almond ice cream and a spoon.
“Hungry?”
“Not for that.”
“Suit yourself,” Andrew says, and shovels a spoonful into his mouth. Nicky saunters into the kitchen then, eyeing Neil curiously before approaching him with a cheerful smile.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m Nicky.”
Neil looks at Andrew in question. Andrew shrugs.
“Neil,” Neil says slowly. Again, like he is uncertain of his own name.
“Nice to meet you. Sorry about Aaron. He’s grumpy.”
“‘S fine,” Neil says.
“Andrew, please don’t pick out all the almonds again,” Nicky says to him.
“Too late,” Andrew responds. Nicky sighs, but it’s less irritated and more fond, which irks Andrew.
“I’ll get another carton tomorrow.”
Andrew says nothing. Nicky turns back to Neil and smiles again. “Are you staying the night?”
“No,” Neil says, the very same moment that Andrew says “yes.”
“I mean,” Neil corrects, speaking slowly. “I guess. If that’s okay.”
“Of course!” Nicky says, too excited. “We haven’t had guests in… actually ever. But I’m sure we could find a couple pillows and a blanket for you.”
“I got it,” Andrew says to Nicky.
Nicky looks at him then. The expression on his face is odd, like he is happy but doesn’t want to show it, and for the first time Andrew doesn’t have the urge to wipe it off.
“Okay,” he says easily. “Just let me know if you need anything.”
His bed is queen-sized, big enough for the two of them and about two more bodies in between. Only because Neil is a twig and Andrew is admittedly also smaller than he would like to be.
“I can sleep on the floor,” Neil says.
“Do what you want. The cat’s puked on the floor four times in the last week, though.”
He didn’t have to tell him that. He’s feeling extra courteous, though.
“I’ll take this side,” Neil says. A smart decision. He was usually lazy cleaning cat puke. Neil places his duffel on the floor beside his chosen side of the bed and sits down.
“Need a toothbrush or something?” Andrew says.
“No.”
Andrew shrugs and goes to shower. He wipes the grime off his skin and tries his best to get the blood out from underneath his fingernails. And then he stands in the shower until the water threatens to prunify him and his skin is tomato pink.
He changes into sweats and a raggedy sweatshirt, tousles his hair with the towel until adequately dry, and brushes his teeth until his gums bleed a little. He doesn’t feel clean, but it will have to do.
When he returns Neil is underneath the covers, blanket up to his chin and scowling at the ceiling. He’d laid out like a corpse in a casket, stiff and straight-legged.
“You gonna shower?” He says.
“Tomorrow,” Neil mumbles. Andrew could point out he’s getting dirt on his covers, probably staining them with blood. But he doesn’t actually care. And the bruises around Neil’s neck have gotten darker.
“Comfy?” Andrew says. Neil looks at him without shifting his head.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Andrew says, and crawls into the sheets on his side of the bed. He moves to face Neil on his side.
“Goodnight,” Neil says, unmoving. Andrew wonders how long it will take Neil to fall asleep. And also how long it will take himself.
“Goodnight,” Andrew says, and turns off the light.
It takes Neil no time at all. Maybe murder and subsequent burial takes a toll, because Neil’s breathing smoothes not five minutes after the lights are out.
He talks in his sleep. Andrew is fluent in three languages but he doesn’t recognize whatever Neil speaks. The desperate tone of his voice is always the same, and Andrew can guess he doesn’t dream anything good.
He wakes quietly, blinking away the sleep and rolling out of bed with the grace of an underslept ogre. Neil is gone from his side of the bed, but his duffel is still sitting at the floor, so Andrew guesses he hasn’t booked it yet. Surprising.
He makes his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash cold water into his face, then downstairs, where Nicky is still passed out on the coach, and Aaron is grumbling at the coffee machine.
“Where’s your guest?” Aaron says when Andrew sits down at the counter.
“Dunno.”
“This isn’t a halfway house.”
“Why are you here then?”
Aaron ignores that to counter him. “Why is he here?”
“Why do you care?”
Aaron glares even as he pours himself coffee. It is remarkable he doesn’t burn himself in the process.
“Because I live here, too.”
Andrew shrugs. “He’s interesting.”
“So, what? You’re bored?”
Andrew doesn’t grace him with a response. He wanted to avoid admitting that besides boredome, which Aaron had already guessed, he did not know the answer to his question.
Neil had murdered someone and then said the rain would wash away the blood come morning. And then he’d buried the body, like he’d done it before. He’s still got the switchblade he used to do it. Sloppy. But something tells Andrew it was actually anything but.
He steals the rest of the coffee.
“See you at school, brother,” he tells Aaron on his way out, keys in hand.
“Are you not driving me?”
“Walking is good for you.”
“Fuck you.”
He salutes as the door closes behind him.
He finds Neil in the library, hunched over a book titled Molecular Biology of the Cell. Boring.
“Hey, stranger,” he says in greeting.
Neil shuts his book and looks up at Andrew.
“What do you want?”
“Not so nice for someone who helped you bury a body,” Andrew says, sitting on the table.
“Quiet,” Neil whispers. “Jesus. You want to be caught?”
“What, you don’t enjoy my morbid sense of humor?”
“I’m starting to pick up on that,” Neil says, though it’s with something of a smile, or maybe a grimace. Either way, Andrew’s chest does something unfamiliar, leaving him with an urge to punch it with his closed fist.
“You left your stuff,” he says instead.
“I’ll come get it after school,” Neil says.
“Or you could just leave it.”
Neil looks at him, curious. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“I almost got you killed. And then you took me home. What else would you call it?”
“Curiosity.”
“This again,” Neil says.
“Sure. You killed a man.”
This time Neil doesn’t shush him. Only smiles again, less of the grimacing sort.
“You helped.”
Andrew shrugs, turns a page of Neil’s notebook and uses his pen to doodle a cartoon face, complete with x eyes and a stuck-out tongue. A dead man.
He’s tempted to admit it was not his first. That he’s come close to death himself, though always accidental, and kept a tally of the times, scratched with a safety pin into the wood of his bed frame. Somehow he doubts the school library is a great place to make such a confession, or if it’s so smart to give into the urge to.
Neil’s face is open and teasing, his cheeks rose-pink. His lashes are too long and his eyes are too blue, and he’s wearing a scarf that looks weird on him, until he shifts in his seat and Andrew is reminded of the finger-shaped bruises on his neck.
He’s gorgeous and doesn’t know it, and that makes it worse. Andrew kind of hates him. Kind of hates himself.
“Well then I guess we’ve both got something on each other.”
Neil actually laughs, quiet and light. It’s captivating, annoyingly so.
“So, are you coming back tonight?”
“I left my stuff, didn’t I?”
That, he did.
They order pizza instead of Chinese for dinner. Nicky is upset his curry recipe was a failure. Andrew, weirdly enough, doesn’t have the heart to tell him that maybe the 14th time isn’t the charm, that maybe he just doesn’t have it.
Neil picks off the mushrooms and only eats one slice. Andrew eats the mushrooms for him, and then forces him to eat another. He does, albeit reluctantly.
Aaron says nothing during dinner but eats half of one pizza and an entire bag of Lay’s by himself. Andrew doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone eat so angrily. It would be funny if it wasn’t so miserable to watch. Neil doesn’t seem to notice the atmosphere.
“How was school?” Nicky asks in an attempt to lighten the mood, but still eyeing his curry concoction sadly.
“Fine,” Andrew says, because no one else will and it’s better than the silence.
“Learn anything new?”
“It takes less than a minute for someone to pass out if you slit their carotid artery. They’d be dead 30 seconds later.”
He didn’t learn that today, but it worked.
Neil snorts (morbid sense of humor, who? Andrew thinks). Aaron huffs something under his breath, rises from his seat, and leaves.
Nicky watches him go. “You know,” he says to Andrew. “He’s still hurting.”
“He’s too sensitive,” Andrew says.
“Yeah, well. It’s only been 4 months since your mom died. I think he has a right to be sensitive.”
He doesn’t. And. “She wasn’t my mom.”
“Okay,” Nicky says, easily because they’ve had this conversation before. And it always ended the same. With Aaron crying in the bathroom, Nicky teary-eyed and Andrew unaffected.
You’re a psychopath , Aaron had told him the first time he’d said something about Tilda he hadn’t liked. They’d just discharged him. He’d had a concussion and his wrist in a splint, four stitches to his eyebrow and a bottle of Vicodin he’d dumped down the toilet before Aaron could get to it.
She hit you, he remembers saying.
I loved her.
It wasn’t mutual.
He has a scar on his hip from where Aaron had shoved him into a table.
“I think I should go,” Neil says.
Andrew rises to leave, grabbing one more slice before he goes.
“I’ll come with.”
Andrew can’t sleep. For a number of reasons, but the nearest one being Neil. He wonders what the best way to wake him might be without startling him into punching him in the face.
He’s mumbling something in what sounds like French. He sounds young and afraid and pleading. Andrew is just about to reach over, tap him with one finger and say his name until he wakes up, when he startles awake.
Andrew allows him a moment in silence. His breathing is shallow, eyes afraid as he stares at the ceiling. He moves to sit up.
“Wanna go for a drive?” Andrew says once he’s caught his breath.
Neil shudders. The shape of his body reminds Andrew of a potato bug, curled up like they do when you poke them. Like how people do when shielding themselves in a fight, knocked to the ground and beaten.
“‘K,” he says, so quiet Andrew has to strain to hear him. He doesn’t move for another minute. His hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat, eyes red-rimmed. Andrew wants to know how to wake him the next time, wonders if Neil would have an answer if he asked.
Neil rises from the bed and throws on a hoodie, then moves past Andrew to the door. Andrew follows him down the stairs and out the house, grabbing his keys on the way.
He puts the radio on, volume high enough to drown out Neil’s shallow breathing, the involuntary sniffles.
He drives. For an hour and then a little more, until the suburbs disappear and the only source of light are the straggled street lamps lining the freeway. Until his tank is empty and he has to stop to fill it.
He leaves Neil in the car and goes inside for snacks. He settles on a bag of Bugles, a coffee for Neil and a slurpee for himself, and a bag of sour skittles, before returning back to the car with his prizes. Neil takes the coffee from him and cradles it with two hands.
Andrew opens the bag of skittles and drops a few into his slurpee. Neil gives him a look. Andrew moves forward to drop a few in his coffee, too, but Neil swats him away with a grotesque noise.
“They’re good in vodka, too,” Andrew says, and starts the car.
“You’re gross,” Neil says, as Andrew pulls back out onto the highway.
“Your loss,” Andrew says. Neil laughs gently and takes a sip of his coffee, hissing as it burns his tongue.
“Stupid,” Andrew says, and offers his slurpee as a balm. Neil takes it and then a sip before passing it back.
“Where are we going?” He asks, a little belated given they’ve been driving for upwards of two hours now.
“Figured we’d make it to the beach before heading back.”
“Are you not tired?”
“No. Are you?”
Neil shakes his head in Andrew’s peripheral. “Couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“I gathered. Do you ever not have nightmares?”
“Not really. Usually they’re quieter, though. Sorry.”
Andrew shrugs. “I don’t actually care.”
A lie. Two and a half hours of driving evidence of that.
Neil doesn’t seem to mind the remark. Maybe he’s grown used to Andrew’s seeming indifference in their three odd days of acquaintance. Andrew isn’t sure how he feels about that, only that it scares him less than he thought it would.
“I don’t know why they’ve gotten worse,” Neil admits.
“Can’t help you there.”
“No,” Neil agrees. “Though I kind of wish you could.”
He parks in the sand of an abandoned beach. He grabs the plastic bag with his pipe and weed from the glove compartment, and the skittles, and then makes his way down to the water, far enough the tide doesn’t threaten to swallow them, but close enough that the sand is wet to his bare toes.
He plops down on a piece of trunk. Neil beside him.
Neil watches his hands work in silence. He puts his own hands up to shield the lighter as Andrew lights the bowl, and pulls away only when Andrew taps his wrist to. He keeps it in his lungs longer than necessary, but it exhales smoothly.
Andrew offers the pipe. Neil takes it, to his surprise.
“Could you light it?” He asks, bringing it to his mouth. Andrew nods and flicks the lighter, holding it to the bowl with a hand cupped around to shield from the wind, waiting for Neil to take his drag before pulling away.
Neil tilts his head up and blows upwards. He coughs once and then hands the pipe back.
“Thanks.”
They only take a few more hits before stopping. It takes Andrew five minutes. Neil maybe a little less.
“This is nice,” he says. “I don’t ache everywhere.”
“Do you usually?”
“Yeah. Torn cartilage in my knees. Broken a few ribs that didn’t heal quite right,” he speaks like the list goes on, but ends it there.
“Isn’t it sort of amazing. You could break your nose or an arm and even unset it would heal right over. Everything heals eventually, even if it heals wrong.”
“You’re high,” Andrew says.
“Only a little.”
It’s true. Not enough for Andrew to dismiss him, surely. He’s not sure why his words bother him so much.
“How’d you get to heal so badly?” He says in lieu of thinking about it.
“Bad luck, I guess,” Neil says, tosses a skittle in the air and catches it in his mouth. He looks proud of the accomplishment as he chews.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah. And stupid mistakes. I definitely could have bought a brace for my knees, but it would have caught attention. Maybe I could have dodged him better. He got me in the stomach with a freaking butter knife, of all things,” Neil says, and then groans in longing. “Those pancakes were so good.”
Andrew is confused but following. He wonders what sort of person would attack a sixteen year old child in a diner as they ate pancakes, and with a butter knife. What sort of kid would speak of the pancakes with more feeling than getting stabbed with a butter knife.
“Why are people stabbing you with butter knives?” Andrew asks.
Neil tosses another skittle in the air, but it bounces off his front teeth and into the sand by his feet. Neil stares at it in mourning.
“It was crowded,” he says, grabbing another skittle and chewing. “Quieter than a gun.”
Fucking christ. Not quite the answer Andrew was going for, but he would take it. He arranges a pile of skittles on his thigh in the shape of a large fish, and then eats them, swatting at Neil’s reaching hand.
“You know,” Neil says. “I’ve talked you up about myself, but I don’t know so much about you.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Doubt all you want.”
“Have you ever been stabbed?”
“No.”
“Do you like pancakes?”
“Only with chocolate chips.”
“We should make some.”
“Maybe when we get back.”
“Okay,” Neil says. He doesn’t look away. “Thank you,” he says after a moment’s silence. Andrew exhales his next hit into his face, just to be annoying.
“For what?” He says, because it’s the obvious follow up to something like that, and he’s too lazy to come up with something else.
“Dunno. For the warm bed. Breaking the law for me, and not in a small way. You saved my life, you know.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he says. Although he would have, if it had been him with the knife.
“Sure,” Neil says, a smile in his voice. “We’ve had this conversation before, I think.”
They have. Andrew is so easily bored with the monotonous repetitions of life, but for some reason he’s not bored of any conversation with Neil.
Andrew won’t drive high. But he has a feeling it’ll be another few hours before either of them suggest leaving anyway.
The sun sets on the drive home. Neil offers to drive but Andrew won’t let him, so he sits watching the scenery pass.
“Are you staying?” Andrew asks to the silence. This, too, is a question he’s asked before.
“Will you let me?” Neil says.
“It’s up to you.”
“Then, yeah. I’d like to.”
So he stays. For a while at least.
two months later
Andrew’s spoonful of oatmeal plops down on the counter. He shovels it back onto his spoon with his fingers and eats it. Aaron makes a face of disgust. Andrew snickers.
“Heathen,” he grumbles.
Neil laughs into his bowl of fruit. Aaron turns to him. Andrew knows from the swiftness of his movement that he’s about to pick a fight. It wouldn’t be the first time. He wonders if he should stop him. Except Neil doesn’t seem to acknowledge his existence. Also wouldn’t be the first time.
“What are you still doing here?” Aaron says, all anger. “Do you even pay rent?”
“Mortgage is paid, little brother,” Andrew says around a mouthful of oatmeal. “Courtesy of mommy’s life insurance, remember?”
“Shut up, Andrew.”
“Get over it,” Andrew says, because he’s sick of this. “She’s dead. Might as well reap the benefits.”
“Which include what exactly? A stray? Who even are you?”
“I’m Neil,” Neil says, slowly as though he is speaking to a child, hand to his chest and eyes wide in mocking. Andrew snorts.
Aaron scowls. “Who decided he could stay here for half a fucking year?”
It’s actually only been two months. Besides the point, really.
“I did,” Andrew says.
“Why?”
“Because I got sick of seeing you mope around without someone to distract me.”
“What about me?” Nicky says from the living room.
“Too cheerful,” Andrew says.
“Aw,” Nicky says, but makes no move to further insert himself into the conversation.
“Andrew,” Neil says. “I can leave.”
A generous offer. Neil is genuine about it, too. It is not Aaron making him, though. He’s looking for an excuse. He’s been looking for weeks.
“No.”
Neil shrugs.
“You have no right,” Aaron says.
“You don’t like it, then leave. Have fun shooting up in the streets, yeah?”
“Fuck you.”
“Thank you,” Andrew says.
Aaron leaves. Andrew watches Neil watch him go. His expression is flat, unreadable, but there is a tension in the way he’s holding himself. He turns to Andrew after the door is shut.
“I don’t think he likes me much.”
“I don’t think it’s personal.”
Neil does not look convinced. He leaves the rest of his breakfast untouched, and leaves for school without him.
Andrew finds him in an empty classroom during lunch break, chin resting in his hand and staring absently at the pages of his textbook. His hair has grown out since they’ve met, and it is stuck up like a cockatiel’s.
He spots Andrew from his peripheral and gives him a weak smile, moves his books out of the way so Andrew can seat himself on the desk.
“What’s with you and molecular?” He says, eyeing the book. It’s the only one Neil ever opens. “Why the fascination?”
It did not bother him. He simply found it interesting that he and Aaron shared the interest and neither of them knew it.
“I just think it’s neat,” Neil says, with the sort of casual tone that implies anything but casual. “There’s so much intricacy in how our bodies operate. Molecules working against a universe that literally craves disorder. It’s amazing that everything remains contained, that we don’t just come apart.”
“Isn’t that what death is?”
Neil smiles. It is a small, sweet thing to see. “Yeah, I guess. Just molecules losing free energy.”
“Aren’t you tired?” Andrew asks, less of a non-sequitur than it sounds. He is sure Neil would agree.
“Of what?” Neil says, ever the evader.
“Of running.”
“Who says I’m running?”
“You do.”
Every time you check for exits. Sit at the outside of the booth. Every time you neatly pack away your laundry in that stupid duffle like you’re going to catch the earliest bus tomorrow. Every time you look at me like it’s the last time you ever will.
He had been ready to leave this morning, if Andrew had asked him to. It wasn’t about Aaron. He would use it as an excuse. Andrew wonders, absently, why he’d stayed even this long.
He could say that. And more. But Neil knows it already. And knows more so that Andrew does not like to waste his breath speaking the obvious.
“I don’t want to,” Neil says.
“Then don’t.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’m not… I don’t belong here. I can’t keep pretending I do.”
“Don’t be stupid. You think I belong here either?”
“You have Nicky. And Aaron.”
“And you,” Andrew says, before he can stop himself.
“A runaway? Hasn’t your interest tired already?”
Andrew taps the pen to Neil’s paper. It is a gesture reminiscent of an earlier meeting of theirs. He remembers things too well. Too easily. He recognizes the red in his eyes as anger, though it’s a pinker shade than usual.
“Fuck you,” Andrew says, but it lacks any punch. Neil laughs.
“Okay,” he says.
There was more to Neil than what he knew. A story to each scar he so vigilantly kept from sight. Why he couldn’t look anyone in the eye for too long and didn’t look at himself in the mirror at all. His roots were beginning to show. Andrew might offer to help him dye them dark again.
“Aaron is a dick,” he says.
“I guess it runs in the family.”
Andrew laughs, anger dissipating. He should be worried at how easily it goes. He is not.
Sometimes Andrew wanted to die out of spite. But the living breathed the air decay made possible to breathe. They ate the food decay made possible to eat. They wore death, consumed death, slept because of what death made possible.
He’d do less for anyone alive than he ever would a corpse. So he stayed breathing. For that, and another couple reasons.
He spends his time trying to subtly convince Neil to pick up a racquet and play Exy. You stare like it’s your long lost lover. Just ask the coach, jesus. And grocery shopping. Tending to bruised knuckles and watching Neil study. Sometimes he would cook and Nicky would swoon. Sometimes he would wrestle drugs out of Aaron’s hands and block his subsequent punches. Sometimes he would watch dumb cartoons with Neil until they fell asleep on top of the covers, touching pinkies but nothing else.
Neil. A nuisance, Andrew would say to anyone who asked, but it was a more nuanced sentiment than that. Neil. In three months he’d managed something no one else had before. To get under his skin. Make a home in his ribcage. Hand wrapped gently around the bone.
He wanted to leave Neil the warm water. To bring him towels right out of the dryer after a shower. He wanted to leave him the last bite of take-out, sneak veggies onto his plate, pick fuzz off his sweaters. He wanted to kiss his collarbone and his chest and his stupidly pouty lips. He wanted a lot. The list had grown longer than it had ever been. He would have to start writing in the margins.
He wonders if Neil would understand the sort of sentiment behind such gestures. If he would recognize them enough to find them gestures at all.
Neil says his name from beside him and kicks at his socked feet.
“What?” Andrew says. Neil paused the movie and he hadn’t noticed, too caught up in his own stupid tangent.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” Andrew says. Neil’s shirt has ridden up a little as he lays with his head on the pillow. He’s gotten less cautious with this sort of thing, although he still changes in the bathroom after a shower and never wears clothes that reveal skin. But his roots have grown out and he hasn’t bothered to dye them again. He sometimes leaves his dirty socks out instead of in his duffel. He lets his shirts ride up.
Neil follows his line of vision. Andrew does not bother correcting it.
“You can feel them,” he says, shifting in the bed to face Andrew on his side. “If you want.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Andrew says.
“What if I want to.”
And just like that.
“Okay,” Andrew says, shifting to face him, too. Heads sharing a pillow, nose to nose.
Neil bites his lip, flicking his gaze down and then up again, and Andrew decides not to read into that.
“Can I take your hand?” Neil says. Andrew nods. So Neil holds Andrew’s hand and guides it to the hem of his shirt and then underneath. He lets go then, and Andrew places his palm flat to Neil’s stomach, spreading his fingers.
He has to close his eyes at the sharp inhale of Neil’s breath, at the way he’s looking at him. It is too intimate, too unguarded for the both of them, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. He moves to feel the raised skin of Neil’s scars. There is so much of it.
“Why do you always wear long sleeves?” Neil asks. Andrew opens his eyes.
He’s sure Neil knows already. But Andrew has his hand against Neil’s torso, and that’s the most vulnerable thing Andrew has ever seen him allow. Neil trusts him. Andrew, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, trusted him back.
He takes his other hand, the one not pressed to Neil’s skin, and maneuvers it so Neil’s fingers are at his pulse. It’s a clumsy movement, but Neil understands. His fingers shift to touch the skin just underneath the hem of his sleeve, but stop there.
He says nothing. They lay there for maybe seconds, maybe minutes or maybe hours. They breathe together, and when Neil finally pulls away Andrew is left colder than he’d been to begin with. He shifts closer, maybe imagines Neil moving to be closer, too.
“What were you thinking about,” Neil says. “Before I paused the movie?”
Andrew doesn’t lie. But Neil’s pupils are blown and his lips are chapped and his hair is falling onto his forehead messily, and he can’t bring himself to speak the truth either.
“I was thinking about Sir,” he says.
Neil wrinkles his nose. He didn’t much like Sir, mostly because Sir never learned to keep his claws in and also because Nicky had asked Neil to start cleaning the litter box a few times a week.
“What about him?” He says.
“He does this thing,” Andrew says. “He’ll roll over to be pet but at the very edge of the bed. Expects me to catch him before he falls off.”
“Do you?” Neil already knows the answer. He’s seen it happen more than once.
“Yeah,” Andrew says anyway. “I always see it coming.”
They cannot fall asleep after that. Andrew goes downstairs to make himself a milkshake with espresso ice cream and vodka, and brings Neil a glass of water on his way back up. They watch another ten minutes of the movie before growing bored again.
Neil tries his milkshake and admits it’s pretty good. And they spend the rest of the night drinking. Not nearly enough to be hung over in the morning, the both of them heavy weights, but enough that they can both finally fall asleep.
After that night, Andrew falls asleep quickly four days in a row, and stays asleep until the early morning, at which point Neil’s rustling will usually wake him.
But Friday he cannot sleep. He stares at the ceiling and is reminded of icicles. He contemplates getting high, but he doesn’t think he could stand the loose feeling right now.
Usually he is awake for the same reasons. But tonight is different. His skin doesn’t itch. His clothes don’t feel too tight. His scars don’t sting from the memory of a blade dug into them.
The reason, he thinks, is that Neil has become increasingly more distracting. Andrew will spend too much of his days wondering if he’s seeing things only because he wants to, and hating himself for the possibility of it being true.
Except Neil looks at him weirdly. He licks his lips until they’re wet and red. He messes with his hair more often and sometimes goes quiet in the middle of a conversation. Neil has always been careful about touch, even without Andrew asking him to, but lately he’s been more cautious, keeping the space between them larger than usual.
It’s annoying. Confusing. And it’s making him stupid. He kicks at Neil’s feet on the bed. Neil makes an affronted sound and turns over to glare at him. Andrew wonders if it’s possible for glaring to be soft.
“What?” He says, voice sleepy but eyes not.
“I’m gonna go for a drive.”
“Okay. Want me to come?”
“Yes,” Andrew says.
Neil nods and throws on a hoodie. It belongs to Andrew. Andrew has contemplated taking it back, for his own sake, but Neil looks soft and warm in it, so he hasn’t
He enjoyed driving at night, when it rained. How the lights reflected green and reds off the water, and he almost couldn’t see the lines in the street and his eyes burned a little trying to.
He shouldn’t when it’s pouring like this. But then, there was something about driving at midnight in the rain and the street lights that made him want to keep going. Right up until he hit the very end.
Except Neil is beside him. And he wants to do something but he can’t do it driving. He stops at the drive-thru first, for his stupid nerves and a dose of sugar.
He orders his regular and a mocha for Neil. And then he drives to a viewpoint, somewhere downtown, past all the expensive houses on the hill. He keeps the windows closed. The rain pours down hard, drowning out any noise from the radio down low, almost loud enough to drown out his own heartbeat.
“You okay?” Neil says, taking a drink from his mocha and looking at Andrew from the side.
“What gave me away?” Andrew says.
“You forgot to ask for extra sweet,” Neil says. “And you drove the speed limit all the way here.”
Andrew almost smiles. Neil knows him and that scares him more than anything. More than what he wants to ask, which makes it easier to, somehow.
“I want to kiss you.”
In his peripheral, Neil is quiet. He takes another sip from his drink. Andrew hears his swallow.
“Okay,” he says, placing his drink in the holder beside him.
“Okay.” Not quite a question. Neil will hear it as one anyway.
“I want you to,” he answers.
“Okay,” Andrew says. And when he turns his head Neil already faces him, eyes bright in the darkness of the car’s enclosed space.
Neil closes his eyes, because he trusts Andrew and Andrew almost doesn’t know what to do with that in the moment. So he does what comes naturally, bridges the space between them and presses his lips to Neil’s lips. Neil presses closer, parts his mouth and makes a little noise in his throat.
Andrew pulls away. Neil looks dazed, and then, for a moment, disappointed, lips a small pout. Andrew puts two fingers to those lips. Neil takes them into his mouth. So he can feel the warm of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth.
After a moment, Andrew pulls his hand away from his mouth, places it on his cheek instead.
“C’mere,” he says.
“But the seat warmer,” Neil whines, even though he’s already unbuckling his seat belt and climbing over the center console, careful to not knock over their drinks.
“My lap is warmer,” Andrew argues, even though Neil has already settled in it.
He puts two hands to Neil’s back underneath his shirt, smiles when Neil shivers and dips his forehead so it presses gently to Andrew’s.
“Okay?” Andrew says, because his body is loose and he has never wanted something more, but he wants to be sure.
“Yeah,” Neil says. “You?”
“Yes,” Andrew says, and shifts so Neil can settle more comfortably in his lap, legs braced at Andrew’s sides. He is short enough his head doesn’t threaten to hit the ceiling. He’s perfect, really.
His eyes flutter closed as Andrew leans forward to meet him halfway, and the contented noise he makes his stomach do something odd.
Andrew hums against his lips. “You taste nice.”
“Like what?” Neil breathes, leaning in for another kiss. Andrew takes that time to think of an answer. It’s not easy. He’s very distracted.
“Sweet,” he finally mumbles into Neil’s mouth.
“Like you,” Neil breathes, smiling. He’s so dumb. Andrew wants to say that and more. Instead he kisses him harder.
His teeth feel fuzzy like sweaters. He forgot to brush his teeth last night, too busy with his hands in Neil’s hair and on his torso and down the front of his too loose sweats. The noise he made when Andrew put his hand on him. It’s still stuck in his head.
“You look good in the morning,” Neil mumbles, awake already and smiling into the pillow.
Funny. Andrew had thought the same of him.
His lips are swollen still from last night’s making out. His eyes are half-hooded in sleepiness, the purple underneath them prominent. Andrew snakes an arm around him, slow in case he wants to pull away. He doesn’t, only shuffles closer underneath the blanket, pulling it over so it canopies them.
“You’re gross in the morning,” Andrew mumbles, pressing a kiss to the very edge of his lips in teasing.
“And yet,” Neil says, grinning like the smart ass he is.
“And yet,” Andrew agrees.
Anyway, life was boring but Neil made is less so. And the monotonous things he’d thought he would hate forever we’re better now, didn’t make him want to rip his head off his shoulders in boredom.
He liked grocery shopping. Neil in the shopping cart telling him to go faster down the aisle until the cart tipped over and sent the both of sprawling. He liked driving, one-handed because Neil was holding the other, and kissing in the back seat, windows fogged up. Neil had once written ‘A + N’ in the condensation. Andrew had threatened to kick him out of the car, but he didn’t run his hand over to erase it.
He liked taking showers because he often took them with Neil, the heat of the water mixing with the heat of their breaths. He liked playing Smash now, to Aaron’s dismay. He liked baking sometimes, and reading stupid books with his head on Neil’s lap and Neil’s hands in his hair.
He liked laying in parks to smoke or eat or both. Picking grass out of Neil’s hair. Laying in bed, blanket up to their chins, legs tangled, watching stupid cat videos until they got bored and Andrew would sit on top of Neil and Neil would pull the covers over them. Andrew would learn the map of his scars and let Neil learn him, too. Slowly. Softly.
All those court-ruled therapists would say he was making progress, finding meaning in the trivial things of life. He’d be inclined to agree, except he had hated every single one of them. Still.
He hadn’t been looking but he’d found something anyway-- reasons to wake up in the morning.
Andrew has grown tired of Neil’s longing stares. They’re smoking by the court, listening to the ricochet of balls against the walls from outside.
“You know,” Neil says when Andrew puts out his cigarette against the court wall. “Smoking kills.”
“Secondhand is worse,” Andrew says, tossing it to the floor. “Why don’t you play?”
“It’s risky,” Neil says with a shrug. “People recruit this time of year.”
“I hardly think you’re good enough,” Andrew says. Neil shoves him lightly and Andrew snickers.
“I’m good,” he says.
“So play,” Andrew says, and when Neil does not immediately answer, “or not.”
“It’s too late in the season to start now.”
It is in fact, halfway into the season, and less than two months until graduation, a fact which Andrew had been adamantly ignoring.
“I don’t think they care,” he says.
“Okay. I’ll play if you do,” Neil says.
“Nope.”
“Why?” Neil looks disappointed. Andrew doesn’t feel bad but he wants to kiss the pout off his lips.
“Boring,” he says.
“Even with me there?” Neil says.
“It might surprise you to know my interests don’t revolve entirely around you.”
Neil leans forward, obnoxious and needy.
“Don’t they, though?” He says, voice teasing.
“Quiet,” Andrew says, squeezing his face but gently, so his lips are just so slightly puckered and his cheeks are squished and pink. Neil tilts his chin upwards, an offer and a request all in one.
“You look like a fish,” Andrew says.
Neil huffs laughter. “A cute fish?” He mumbles through squished lips.
“No.”
“Kiss me anyway?”
Andrew does.
He agrees to accompany Neil to the court. The coach assigns Neil striker and Andrew the bench, which he’s glad to warm. Neil doesn’t like it but Andrew swats him away, and he goes with some light arguing.
He watches Neil play from the sidelines. He’s clumsy, footwork sloppy, out of practice but clearly accustomed to the rules of the game. It takes him two minutes to score a goal, another five to score a second, and fifteen minutes to trip some other kid with his racquet.
It almost looks accidental. Andrew knows better.
Still, he is good. Better than good even. He plays with a sort of recklessness that implies there’s more to the game for him than just that, and it’s remarkable to watch.
It is remarkable for the coach, too, since he assigns Neil a starting position as striker after three practices, and tells him to be ready for the next game or else.
“I’m nervous,” Neil admits the night before.
“You’re better than every player on that team. It’s stupid to be nervous.”
“I want to win, though.”
“Why does it matter?”
Neil shrugs. Andrew feels the movement beside him, even though he’s got his eyes on the stars. It’s cold out. Neil stole his favorite hoodie before they’d climbed out onto the roof.
“It doesn’t,” Neil admits. “It would be nice, though.”
“Sure. But it’d be fine if you lost, too.”
Neil says nothing. Andrew turns to look at him. His eyes always glow in the darkness. Stars just like the ones hanging above.
“Hey,” Andrew says. “Look here.”
Neil turns, smiles, small and sad for a reason Andrew doesn’t know. Neil closes his eyes. Andrew kisses him.
“You’re being dumb,” he says, pulling away. He brings his hands to Neil’s hair, runs his fingers through them.
“I’m always dumb,” Neil says, sighing at the touch.
“True,” Andrew says, and moves to traces the line of Neil’s jaw. “I don’t know why I like you.”
“So you do like me?” Neil says, feigning shock.
Andrew quiets him with another kiss.
As Andrew predicted, he plays well. Better than well, in fact. He carries the team. Punches a player in the face and is awarded a yellow card in the first half. And then wins the game in the second.
He is flushed as he makes his way into the stands, breathing heavily and face a lovely shade of pink. He’s removed his gear already, but carries his racquet with him like a shield as he maneuvers his way through the crowd towards Andrew.
“You look like a tomato,” Andrew says when he reaches him.
“Aw,” Neil says, smiling. “You’re so sweet.”
“Shut it,” Andrew says, and kisses him. Neil is sweaty and gross but Andrew thinks he might like this version of him best, the one high on adrenaline, happy in ways he wouldn’t otherwise allow himself to be. He should’ve kicked him onto the court months ago.
He takes Andrew’s hand and squeezes.
“I have to meet with the team for debrief but I’ll sneak out fast. Meet you in a sec?”
“Yeah,” Andrew says.
Neil gives him another peck and then pulls away to leave. As he leans out Andrew spots a man over his shoulder, standing like he’s been waiting some time for them.
“Neil,” Andrew says, nodding his head over his shoulder. Neil turns around to face the man.
“Evening Mr. Josten,” the man speaks, and puts his hand out to shake. He is dressed in a crisp blue suit, hair gelled back and face impeccably handsome.
“Hello,” Neil says, ignoring the man’s extended hand, his demeanor shifting instantly. He sounds cold and looks it, too. He puts a hand on Andrew’s arm to guide him behind his back. Andrew pinches his wrist lightly in annoyance, but Neil doesn’t seem to care.
“You were quite impressive today,” the man says, letting his hand drop back to his side.
“Thanks,” Neil says, wary.
“I’m a recruiter from Southern California. Are you interested in playing Exy at a college level?”
“Sorry,” Neil says. “But no.”
“Are you sure? I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Fuck off,” Neil says. A bit brash, but not unusual for him. He holds himself stiffly, also not unusual in a crowd like this. But he thinks something about this entire interaction is more wrong than immediately evident.
Neil turns to leave, but the man reaches for him as he steps away, gripping his forearm tightly. Andrew shifts forward to remove it, and then there is something cold and hard pressing into his stomach. He is not as familiar with guns as he is with knives, but he could guess what was pressed into his body easily.
“Andrew,” Neil says, his voice breaking. “Don’t move.”
“Listen to your boyfriend, yeah? We wouldn’t want to make a scene,” the man says.
Andrew contemplates kicking him in the shins. He decides to heed Neil’s request instead.
“What do you want?” Neil says.
“Only to kill you.”
“Fine. Just let him go.”
Stupid, stupid Neil. Acting a martyr when that was the furthest thing Andrew wanted from him. He should have seen this coming. It’s his own fault there is a gun pressed to his stomach. A finger on the trigger.
The man tsks. “No can do, Nathaniel.”
Nathaniel. Neil flinches at the sound of that name.
“Let him go and I’ll make it easy for you.”
“Sorry, but your boyfriend’s collateral now. Maybe I’ll kill you first if you come quietly. Leave the racquet.”
Neil’s expression is stoic, his only tell the look in his eyes. He nods once and leans his racquet against the bleachers. The man pushes Andrew forward with the gun. Andrew is tempted to step on his toes and also rip his head off. Again, he refrains.
They walk through the unsuspecting crowd, the people too busy soaking in the glory of their first win of the season to notice two boys, a man, and a gun making their way through. They are led to the far end of the parking lot, where a grey car is waiting. It has no license plate.
“Get in,” the man says to Neil, who complies, climbing into the driver’s seat. The man shoves Andrew into the passenger side, then gets in behind them. He presses the barrel of his gun to the back of Andrew’s head through the gap between the headrest and the seat.
“Drive where I tell you. Try anything and I’ll kill him before you can wreck the car to do it yourself.”
Neil stews. He looks, at this point, more angry than afraid, but then he will spot Andrew in the rear view mirror and his expression will shift to something of despair. Andrew wants to pinch him or kiss him or maybe both. He can’t do either.
“I’m sorry,” Neil says, hushed over the sounds of the road, which have gotten bumpier the further they drive outside town, less road and more gravel.
“Shut up,” Andrew says. “You’re not the one holding a gun to my head.”
“I might as well be,” Neil says.
“Do we make it?” Andrew says, because he doesn’t know who this man is or where he’s taking them. If there are more men or why they’ve been taken in the first place. Neil, gorgeous runaway Neil being as honest as he dared to, because of Andrew. Staying because Andrew had asked him to. And now.
Neil shakes his head. “Maybe.”
Andrew says nothing.
The man directs Neil to drive them outside the main town, into the city and then past that, too. They arrive at an overgrown meadow past the farm houses. Classy, Andrew wants to say. A rather cliche place to murder a couple kids and dump their bodies. Still, they wouldn’t be found for a while.
“Out,” he says, gesturing with his gun. Neil turns off the car and gets out first, followed by Andrew and then the man. He leads them into the grass and directs them to stop halfway into the field, where they stand shoulder to shoulder, a gun pointed directly between the space between them.
“Where’s Mommy Wesninski?” The man says.
Neil bristles. “Dead,” he says.
“Ah,” the man says, and smiles. “So that’s why you’ve been so sloppy.”
“How did you find me?” Neil asks.
“You’re stupid without Mommy around to keep you alive. Exy? Surely you knew the family has ties.”
Andrew has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. He wants to sew his mouth shut with twine. Or maybe slit his throat. He can feel Neil’s body shaking beside him. Out of anger or fear he does not know.
“I killed Corbi,” Neil says. Andrew thinks it is meant to provoke.
“He deserved it,” the man says. “The little shit went berserk, couldn’t even follow orders.”
“He was your brother,” Neil says.
“Do you think I’m mad about it? I don’t give a shit who you kill. Only that it’ll be fun to watch you squirm. It’s been awhile since I’ve killed a kid. Should be fun.”
“So why haven’t you done it yet?”
“Oh, I will. I’m just drawing it out.”
“Or you’re a fucking pussy,” Neil says.
The man hits Neil over the head with his gun. Neil makes an awful sound, curls his body up and coughs. There is blood coming from his mouth, dribbling onto his chin, and a giant gash on his forehead now. Andrew puts a hand on his back and leans into him. Neil curls his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, maneuvers to stand in front of him.
“My father isn’t out yet,” Neil says, voice bloody. “You don’t want to kill me and find out he wanted to be there for it. So you won’t.”
The man punches Neil, hard enough to knock him to the ground. Andrew makes a noise he didn’t think himself capable of, and moves to shove the man and pull Neil back up. Before he can do either, there is a gun pressed to his forehead with one hand, a knife to his neck with the other.
“Maybe not,” he says, to Neil at his feet but his eyes trained on Andrew’s face. “But what about your little boytoy?”
“Don’t touch him,” Neil says from the ground. “I’ll kill you.”
“Is that so?” The man says, and digs the blade into Andrew’s skin. It hurts like fuck, but Andrew makes no sound.
“Stop,” Neil pleads. The man kicks him hard in the ribs, and then again in the face.
“Leave him,” Andrew says. It hurts to use his throat. He can feel blood trickling down his neck and collarbone, staining his shirt with it.
“He speaks,” the man says, tilting his head in assessment. “Interesting.”
Andrew doubles over when he slashes him in the stomach. He really wants to kill this guy, but the gun is an unfortunate obstacle. The man kicks him when he joins Neil on the ground, hard and directly in the ribs. Andrew brings his arms up to shield himself.
Neil is saying something but he can’t make the words out through the rush in his head. He is kicked again and again, and by the time it stops Neil has screamed himself raw. It would be heartwarming if it wasn’t so miserable.
“Please,” Neil says, and Andrew wonders if he ever did tell him he hated that word. “Just let him go. He doesn’t know anything.”
Rude, Andrew thinks. He knew Neil. Evidently, not as much as he thought.
The man grins and snags Andrew’s forearm, pulling him back onto his feet.
“He really cares about you,” the man says, so close Andrew can see the yellow of his teeth. His vision blurs as the man brings the gun to the side of his head, familiar enough now that Andrew doesn’t flinch at the cold press of it to his ear. He has never wanted someone dead more in his life. Not Aaron’s mother. Not the foster families. Not even himself.
So he throws his neck backwards and then forwards with as much force as he is able, knocking his head so hard with the man that his vision blackens. The man stumbles backwards, startled for just a brief moment. Long enough for Neil to grab his wrist and twist it.
The gun goes off and Neil cries out. Andrew moves forward and yanks it from their struggling grips, takes a step backwards, and fires another shot. The man hits the ground with a thud. A hole right through his brain.
Neil is making noises behind him. Andrew turns to him, grips him by the shoulders so he won’t fall over. He says his name once and then again. He does not recognize his own voice.
“You’re bleeding,” Neil says, gripping Andrew with one hand, the other pressed to his side. Andrew hates him. He can’t feel his body except where Neil is touching him. He hates him.
“You got shot, Neil,” Andrew says.
“It’s fine,” Neil says, looking at his hand, bloodied and pressed to his side. “It just grazed me, look.”
He removes his hand so Andrew can better see. A small chunk of flesh has been torn clean off his waist. Neil looks pale. The dead man at their feet looks paler.
“Let’s go,” Andrew says. He steals the keys off the dead man and leads Neil to the car, where he deposits him in the passenger seat and buckles the seatbelt for him.
“Keep pressure,” he says, and when Neil nods, presses his lips to his forehead.
Then he starts the car and drives.
Neil says no to the hospital, so Andrew stops at a 24-hour Winco instead. He leaves Neil in the car with a list of requested items memorized. He tosses some floss, a small fishing kit, and a large bottle of water into the basket, moving quickly through the store so Neil won’t bleed out before he gets back to him.
He tosses a bag of M&M’s on the belt during checkout. The clerk assesses him with prying eyes. Andrew flips him off on the way out.
He has Neil in the upstairs bathroom, seated on the toilet lid. Neil insisted Andrew wrap his torso before getting started on him, even though the slash on his stomach had stopped bleeding in the car.
Between the two of them, they’ve got two sets of bruised ribs, a third concussion, a pistol-whipped face, two split lips, and a gunshot wound. Amongst a few other bruises and cuts. Andrew thinks the collection is pretty minuscule, given the circumstances. Still, he is beginning to feel it worse now that the shock is wearing off.
“Drink,” Andrew says, handing Neil the entire bottle of vodka stolen from Nicky’s supply. Neil takes it, grimaces at the taste, but keeps his hold on the neck of the bottle.
Andrew has already super glued most of Neil’s cuts and his own, except for the one on his torso which Neil said he would stitch. He has a couple ice packs wrapped around his forearms with the sleeves of an old shirt, and Neil is holding one up to the cartoon-sized lump above his eyeball.
“You look like shit,” Andrew says.
“Thanks,” Neil says, laughing and then wincing when it hurts.
Andrew sterilizes the fishing hook with his lighter and threads dental floss through it. The non-mint kind, Neil had clarified before he’d gone to get it. He wipes the wound on Neil’s waist with tissue paper and water, and then brings his hands up to thread the hook through his skin.
“Andrew, wait.”
“Okay?” Andrew says, hands paused.
“Yeah, just…” Neil says. “Nevermind.”
“Okay,” Andrew says, making a note to pry later. He starts the first stitch.
“Your angle is bad,” Neil says, after a minute of Andrew’s handiwork.
“Forgive me,” Andrew says, pushing the needle through skin. It’s tougher than he thought it would be. “It’s not like I’ve practiced.”
“Maybe you should’ve,” Neil says. Except that’s stupid and Neil knows it, because immediately he says, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Just tell me how to do better. I’m not inept, Neil,” Andrew says.
“I know,” Neil says. “I wish this could last forever.”
Which is an odd thing to say, and awkward in the context, given that they almost just died and Andrew is badly stitching closed a gunshot wound. That they’re bleeding onto the linoleum floor of the upstairs bathroom and that Andrew probably has permanent brain damage now.
“Nothing does,” he says, instead of me, too. And he hates the look in Neil’s eyes because it is like looking in the mirror. Neil says nothing, and Andrew works in silence for the next few minutes, the only sound of them breathing.
“Who was he?” Andrew says after he’s finished the fifth or sixth stitch. Neil shifts in his seat.
“I didn’t recognize him at first,” he says. “When I left he wasn’t… he was just a few years older than I was. He used to sneak me snacks from the kitchen. I guess they got to him.”
“Who?” Andrew asks.
“My father.”
Oh. Plot twist. Except Andrew had seen it coming. “You’re running from your Dad.”
“He wants me dead,” Neil says.
“I gathered.”
He looks away from Neil to begin the next stitch. His work is sloppy, but when he’s finished he is a little too proud of it. He helps Neil up from the lid and takes his place to sit.
Neil begins sterilizing the next fishing hook and threading it through as Andrew removes his shirt and unwraps the gauze wrapped around his stomach. He presses light fingers to the gash and hisses at the sting. It’s a familiar kind of pain, at least. But he’d hoped never to feel the sort again.
Neil is quiet as he works, expression unreadable. There is a tension in his shoulders, though his hands work deftly and quickly, like he’s done this a million times. Andrew is struck suddenly by how little he truly knows about Neil.
It should anger him, but looking at Neil now, how he bites his lip in concentration, how half his face is purpling and how quiet he has been, he is the furthest from angry he’s ever been in his life.
Neil starts on the fourth stitch, at the deepest part of the cut, and Andrew makes a noise he doesn’t mean to. Neil stops moving then, looking up at Andrew. His eyes are red and wet. Andrew recognizes guilt easily. This is something deeper.
“I hurt you,” Neil says. His voice cracks. Andrew cradles his face and leans forward to press his forehead to Neil’s.
“You didn’t do this.” he says.
“He came for me,” Neil says, his voice desperate and so, so afraid. “He would’ve killed you.”
“Neil,” Andrew says, and moves one hand to the back of Neil’s neck, fingers in the soft curl of his overgrown hair. His breath is hot and panicked, his chest rising and falling too rapidly. Andrew recognizes this.
“Stop it,” he says. Neil hiccups and laughs. It sounds awful and wrong. He clenches and unclenches his hands, fists them into the fabric of Andrew’s pants. Andrew breathes slowly, audibly, waits for Neil to breathe with him.
“I’m sorry,” Neil says. “I’m sorry.”
Andrew shakes his head and closes his eyes. When they kiss, he tastes salt and blood and home.
“You don’t have to be.”
That night, their bodies ache as their hearts do, and they move carefully so as not to break open and bleed all over the covers. Andrew revels in the small sounds that Neil makes, how his hair falls into his eyes, the graze of his fingers at the small of his back and his mouth gently to his collarbone.
It is like the first, all those months ago, raw and desperate but more. And when Andrew leans forward to kiss him goodnight, Neil closes his eyes and his lashes brush Andrew’s cheeks and they are wet.
And maybe if Andrew had asked him then. What was wrong. Maybe then.
He should have. Neil was always teasing him for his seeming curiosity, for answering every question with one of his own. But in the end he couldn’t even ask the most important one.
Stay.
He is gone in the morning.