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Andrew had never been a runner. That was Neil’s thing. In fact, in his good moments, when the quiet fog rolled in to cushion the blows he regularly dealt himself, Andrew prided himself on this little corner of the world he had created, carved out of a mountainside with his bare hands. He didn’t run, never had, not in any way that mattered.
Andrew stood his ground and let other people leave first, if he didn’t chase them away himself. He had lost paradise once before, lost everything he had thought he wanted, bathed himself in his own blood to keep. Neil had lifted the shroud of grief and shame that had been eating away at him, pulling him to pieces until he no longer recognized himself in the mirror. How could he run from this? He would wait here, rooted to the earth, and hope he could be enough for this trainwreck of a man to tether himself to, even if only for a moment.
But Neil has always been good at testing his limits, reminding him that he is not in fact made of stone, not a deity of suffering millennia old. In the end, all it takes are three words from Neil’s lips to make him feel more like a coward than he has since he lost Cass. Three words to send everything crumbling. Just three words.
They are lying in bed, a rare lazy Sunday at the end of a frankly anticlimactic senior year. Andrew has been trying, really he has, to learn that the quiet will always fade, but it doesn’t always have to serve as prep time for the next inevitable disaster. (Bee had simply hummed at his weaponized silence in response to that pearl of wisdom. She had become far too used to this tactic.)
“Andrew,” she continued, “I know life hasn’t shown you any different, I know I'm asking you to trust me here, but you don’t have to live life always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He would never tell her this, but he does. Trust her that is. More than anyone aside from the half naked idiot laying beside him. She’d taken in the jumbled mess of rage, grief, shame, and torn skin he’d become without judgement, hadn’t treated him like what he was, a lost cause. She had waited patiently for him to finally start letting her show him how to stitch himself back together when he fell apart or started to fray at the seams. So he was trying, for her.
For Neil.
This is what trying looks like: Neil curved into Andrew like a parenthesis, close enough to touch but not. He was shirtless. There was no real light to see him anymore, but Andrew swore he had some inner luminescence, a sun drop forever lingering in his tanned skin, freckles, and red hair. His dangerous eyes were mellowed, hooded with a sleep too far away to catch despite the early hour of the morning. Nights for them were often like this.
Neil’s full lips quirked at the edges, something too soft to be a smirk, but too smug to be anything else. “Staring,” he says, eyes crinkling from the effort of holding back that satisfied grin he got every time he found hard evidence that Andrew wanted him, wanted this.
Andrew lifted his hand, hovered it just so over the warm skin of Neil’s chest until he received a nod. Neil’s eyes closed as Andrew’s fingertips grazed the soft skin of his chest, down his sternum, and lower to the waistband of Neil’s stupidly threadbare boxers. Neil released a sigh that sunk his body even further into the mattress, muscles relaxing just from the minimal contact. There was no heat here. The darkness allowed Andrew to explore this now familiar comfort with a gentleness he didn’t usually afford himself. Neil’s breath slows, Andrew can feel it in the rise and fall of his chest, the caress of his breath across his face, his neck. Looks like sleep will take him first tonight.
These nights are Andrew’s favorite. Nights where he can stare his fill, allow the confusion to fill his head, to question how his life had become this. A warm body in his bed every night has come to mean safety, has come to mean home, come to mean so much more and he’s so overwhelmed by it all sometimes.
Neil is beautiful and stubbornly unbroken, idiotic at the best of times and a fucking martyr at the worst and Andrew chooses to come home to this every night. Andrew gets to choose. It’s remarkable, something he can’t quite ever make himself feel deserving of. That’s something not even Bee can talk him out of. He knows this will end, that this is stolen time, that he’ll lose everything yet again, he knows it will be worse this time, but he gets to choose. Neil gets to choose. They chose this together.
Andrew thinks Neil is asleep by now, nights like these sleep is slow to creep up, but tends to pull Neil under in minutes if he lets it. He’s tracing random quotes into Neil’s pecs now, bits of books he’d read years ago, hands on autopilot. He’s embarrassed when he realizes how sappy they are. Grateful Neil is gone from this plane and drifting off into dreams. (He hopes they are dreams, not the nightmares that have him screaming himself awake.)
He isn’t prepared for Neil to speak, mumbly and sleep slurred. He isn’t prepared for Neil to say “I love you,” before sleep finally claims him.
Andrew’s fingers are slow to pause their course, a testament to Andrew’s lack of armor in this room, this bed, with this person. Suddenly everything is sharpened, too sharp, like the knife Andrew can feel stuck in his ribcage, twisting as it tries to free itself. He doesn’t- This isn’t- They don’t do that. They don’t do this and for the smallest fraction of a second all he feels is utter betrayal. Like Neil has flipped everything he knew on its head, turned the tables on him and now he’s lost and alone and feeling pathetically small.
He knows this is ridiculous as soon as he thinks it, but the thought has claws and they’ve drawn blood. He knows logically that this is what normal people do when they invest in a romantic relationship with another human being. He did not know that this is what they were doing.
The disturbingly quiet frenzy in his mind latches onto the fact that of course Neil has the audacity to drop a bomb like this right before he passes out. In fact, it’s just like Neil to say something life ruining before losing consciousness. Still there’s a part of Andrew that wants to shake him awake, beg him to say something, anything, to overwrite this memory. He wants to beg him to take it back, beg him to piece back together what he’s ruined here.
Andrew’s fingers are still hovering in the air above Neil’s chest, still rhythmically rising and falling and the disastrous need to destroy something consumes him. He clenches his fist. He can’t trust himself like this, on edge, on fire, charred skin on ice, desperate to feel anything, but this slow creeping rage in his chest.
He does his best to get up without a sound, movements wound tight, slow and precise, anything to get out of this bed and get to somewhere he can breathe again. Neil doesn’t stir as he leaves the bed or dresses clumsily in the dark, doesn’t even so much as turn over when Andrew leaves the room. Here, in this room, this bed, with Andrew, Neil has learned to drop his armor at the door too. Andrew feels something within him wither into dust at the thought.
He grabs his cigarettes from the shared living space and a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen and fucking books it to the roof like his life depends on it. Maybe it does. Andrew huffs a laugh, it sounds manic, the same giddy apathy the medicine had him trapped in. Of course, now it’s resurfacing in a moment of utter weakness. He’s choking on it, this misplaced mirth at his own misfortune. He has to get out.
He practically sprints up the stairs to get to the roof, props the door open and there- there is that dizzying, smack of reality. The combination of sharp fear and fresh night air that cuts through the twisting wrongness, the surrealist hellscape his mind becomes on his bad days. The smothering glee is gone and now Andrew can sit on the edge of this roof and finally fucking think about how things could have gone so horribly wrong tonight.
His feet dangle over the edge. The strange sensation of vertigo grips him tight and his stomach is finally twisting for a different reason, less like a knife and more like his insides have been scooped out of his torso by some maleficent god and placed in his parched throat.
He opens the whiskey, cap rough on his chilly hands. No warmth, none since he heard those words leave Neil’s mouth. He has the absurd thought: Everything is being taken from me, there is no life left. He drowns this voice in whiskey, chugging until he forgets the vertigo, feeling like he could vomit for yet another reason. He lights a cigarette with fumbling fingers. A physical show of weakness that surprises him. The spiraling thoughts come rushing back in to fill the vacuous silence.
He knows he can’t give Neil a life, not like that, he can only give him a choice. Andrew will always be a choice. He knows how this goes. People choose to love him and then people choose to leave. Loving him has only ever been a choice and it’s only ever been the wrong one. His bitch mother had sensed it off of him from the start. Cass hadn’t been so lucky.
He survived Cass even though that had almost ruined him beyond redemption. He can survive Aaron. He’s kept track of all the signs pointing to his brother crossing that graduation stage and telling Andrew to fuck off forever. There’s only so much Bee can do to fix the sinking ship of their relationship. He does not think he can survive Neil.
He’s known it from the start, that this stupid fucking traumatized martyr of a boy would ruin him. The boy who cares too much for everyone but himself, the boy who never learned to stop giving even when he himself was left in scraps. This boy who tried to save him from himself when he was perfectly happy to die alone, red on his ledger, and anger crystallized in his veins. The boy who made him see another way out of this labyrinthine madness. The boy who made him choose himself in small ways and then bigger ones until Andrew had found himself quite dumbfounded by his own newfound will to survive instead of withstand.
For the first time in his life, Andrew wants to run away.
Of course it’s then, once that blindingly life altering thought crashes through his defenses that he hears footsteps heading to the open door. Neil has bundled himself into a small pair of black running shorts and an overly large, blindingly orange knit sweater. Jumper, he’d say and fuck, but Andrew hates himself for the normalcy of that thought, the small pang of warmth it had sent through his chest.
“Drew, what are you doing out here?” He walks up to Andrew’s side, but hesitates to sit. Andrew knows he’s waiting for an invitation, knows he’s taken note of the half full bottle of whiskey, the pack of cigarettes, the lack of welcome. He’s pegged this as a bad night and he’s waiting for Andrew’s permission, not sure he’s going to get it. Andrew hates him a little for this, but he hates himself for it even more.
He nods, a small dip of his chin, and Neil gracefully unfolds his lean body next to him. He chose to sit a respectable distance away compared to their usual routine, but Andrew can still feel his warmth seeping into his chilled bones. And fucking fuck, of course if he could feel anything besides this burning hatred and grief right now, it would be Neil’s warmth. The golden boy, the sun personified.
“I’m waiting for a strong breeze,” he finally replies, late, but all too honest for his current state of mind, this tailspin Neil had thrown him into so carelessly. Not fair, he thinks and of course it’s not, he knows it’s not, but he feels a little too much like a caged animal right now, backed into a corner, defenseless and wholly underwhelming in the face of a stronger predator.
If only Neil knew that he held Andrew Minyard’s fate in the palm of his hand, that Andrew would gladly live a life as his puppet if it only meant he got to keep him, even if it meant hating himself for it, hating Neil for it. Andrew has never known a love separate from hate.
Andrew lights another cigarette and Neil studies his face, lit up by the small flame of the cheap lighter. He must find whatever it is he’s looking for. He moves slow, like he knows one wrong move might send Andrew falling even deeper into this cyclone or self-hatred turned outwards, turned inwards, and repeat ad infinitum. His elegant fingers steal the cigarette from Andrew’s lips, careful not to touch, and bring it to his own mouth.
It’s one of Neil’s favorite moves to steal his attention, direct Andrew’s irritation towards himself to distract him from the swirling thoughts inside. Andrew turns to face him like he always does, caught in a trap of auburn curls and scar tissue and freckles, ice blue eyes, a full smirking mouth he wants to reacquaint himself with even when it’s the source of all of his troubles.
Neil has always had this effect on him, this quieting ability, a dulling of all of his senses. He can only focus on the delicate bones of Neil’s face, pointed jaw, straight nose, and cheekbones out of a fantasy novel. The long lines of his body, the lean muscle. His almost dainty features colored in like a painting of a perfect autumn’s day come to life in the shape of a 5’3 psychopath. A veritable Pandora’s box of a person masquerading as the disastrous prodigal son of exy. A lying criminal with a heart of gold who’s never been allowed to want anything and yet he wants Andrew of all people.
A pipe dream made reality.
Andrew doesn’t even try to light another cigarette. He waits, as he always does, for Neil to pass it back to him, allowing their fingers to brush and Andrew wants nothing, but he also wants to feel those hands on his body once more, fill himself full to bursting on Neil’s touch, Neil’s trust, before it’s ripped away from him. Before Neil wants more than he has to give.
Here’s the truth: Andrew would rip himself to pieces trying to be whatever Neil needs, he knows this about himself now, this will never change. He will always want to kill himself for love, he knows this.
But here’s another truth: Neil asks Andrew if he can rest his head on his shoulder, question cut off by the biggest, dumbest looking yawn Andrew has ever seen. Neil waits for his yes. Neil does just what he says he will. Neil rests his head on Andrew’s shoulder, nothing more, and Andrew can smell his cheap drugstore 2-in-1 and it makes his chest burn with something he can’t name. Neil always asks, Neil always waits. Neil has never asked for more than he knows Andrew can give in the present moment. Neil stayed.
Neil knows all of him, all of the ugly, twisted up parts of himself the others never even tried to see. Neil knows him and he chose to stay. Even if it’s just today, even if they have to talk about this tomorrow or next week or years down the line, even if this destroys them, Neil is here with him on this stupid rooftop smoking his cigarettes and touching him softly and Andrew aches.
For the first time in his life, Andrew chooses to stay.