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Andrew’s more than a little familiar with Neil’s habit of running away. He’s spent years memorizing the patterns that might one day take Neil away from him, it’s not something he could ever look away from.
Neil has always carried tension like it’s stitched beneath his skin, jagged edges that match Andrew’s very own tucked behind his ribs, restlessness wound tight through every movement. Andrew knows the rhythm of it. Knows the difference between nervous energy and genuine agitation, between exhaustion and the particular brittle stillness that means Neil is actively hiding something.
Andrew files each observation away carefully beside the thousand others he’s accumulated. Neil rubbing at old scars when the nightmares get bad. Neil pacing when he feels cornered. Neil going unnaturally still whenever escape routes start disappearing.
He knows every warning sign, because if Neil decides to run, Andrew needs to know so he can stop it.
That paranoia settled deep a long time ago, ugly and instinctive. Even now, after promises and shared beds and Neil’s running shoes kicked carelessly beside Andrew’s door like he belongs there, some part of Andrew still tracks exits automatically whenever Neil goes quiet for too long.
It’s not distrust, but it’s a carnal type of fear that the pipe-dream he fought with every inch of himself to keep might not stay.
So when the red flags start getting raised, when the warning signs start glaring, Andrew can see the danger coming a mile ahead.
***
Neil hides pain the way other people breathe. Instinctively, without any semblance of effort. Andrew has watched him play through split knuckles, bruised ribs, a partially dislocated shoulder, all with the same detached stubbornness that makes Andrew want to either kiss him or strangle him depending on the day.
Today is no different. Except it is, because Neil’s stopped fighting. He’s stopped hiding, and Andrew doesn’t want to kiss or strangle him - no, he wants some ugly third thing. To hold Neil close to his chest maybe, and not let go, or drive him to the nearest emergency room. Something in between those.
Neil had spent all of practice this afternoon standing under the stadium lights looking pale enough to disappear into them, sweat cooling gray against his skin, breathing shallow like every inhale took more energy than he had mustered.
Wymack had pulled Andrew aside before they got started - because they all knew Neil wouldn’t listen to reason - and asked what was going on. Is Neil sick? Is he hurt? Why the hell does he look like he can’t bear to stand up straight?
Andrew had wanted to put his fist through the wall. Almost did, actually. Because he had his answer, didn’t he? He took Neil to Abby two weeks ago, and she was sure it was just stress. Neil was overworked, overtired, and all he needed was a break.
So he told his coach as much, told him what he already knew, and Andrew pretended like the words didn’t taste like a lie Neil had curated just for him. And then Wymack asked if Andrew had this under control.
Under control. Andrew wanted to laugh in his face. Or scream. Under control? Neil looks like death incarnate, and he’s asking if Andrew has any control?
Andrew’s felt out of control since the first time he overheard Neil throwing up in the middle of the night. Since he ran his fingers down Neil’s spine, and was able to count the notches he shouldn’t have been able to feel. He felt it the first time Neil told him he was fine, he felt it when Abby confirmed his words, and now he’s staring at a shell of the man he’s obsessed with, and no, Wymack, Andrew does not have any of this under fucking control.
***
The dorm is quiet except for the occasional rustle of fabric and the muted traffic outside the windows. Pale winter sunlight leaks weakly through the blinds, striping gold across the floor and over Neil’s body in fractured lines.
Kevin’s already left for his run and Andrew is going to be late for his appointment with Bee if he doesn’t leave this dorm in the next five minutes.
He bends to retie his shoe, sneaking a glance at Neil as he does.
Neil’s staring up at the ceiling without blinking much. He’s half-curled beneath a blanket Andrew had to drape over him a half hour ago, and Andrew can count on one hand how much he’s moved since then.
Neil usually fills space even when he’s silent. Restless energy leaks off him constantly - talking, moving, twitching, existing too brightly inside his own skin to ever fully disappear. Except now he’s still as stone, his body crumpling in on itself like a crushed star.
Andrew moves around the dorm mechanically, gathering his things for therapy. He’s wasting time, he knows it. But Neil’s looking smaller each day, the bags under his eyes growing darker each morning, and fuck if Andrew wants to walk away from him right now.
Every thirty seconds his eyes cut back toward the couch automatically.
Neil’s skin has gone strange lately, too pale except for the feverish flush high across his cheekbones. His lips look dry, not that Andrew would know. He hasn’t let himself think about kissing Neil until the fear dislodges itself from Andrew’s throat.
A slight shiver racks Neil’s body, and Andrew grips his keys that much tighter.
The dorm is hot, almost too warm to be comfortable, and yet Neil is shivering. He keeps stealing heat like he’s dying of exposure internally. Long showers that leave the mirrors fogged for hours afterward. Hoodies layered over hoodies. Curling against Andrew at night so tightly it borders on desperate sometimes. And still he stays cold despite all of it.
Andrew chews a hole on the inside of his cheek and slowly pulls on his jacket. “You look worse,” he says, because he needs to say something, anything to get Neil to stop looking at the ceiling like that.
Neil huffs quietly. “You get sweeter every day,” he quips, smiling with everything but his eyes.
“You are worse,” Andrew pushes. Because maybe if he can get Neil to admit it, some of the pressure under his ribs will ease and he could breathe again. “You almost passed out at practice today.”
Andrew replays the scene like a knife worrying between his teeth. The image has been in his head all afternoon whether he wants it there or not.
Andrew had been moving before he consciously realized it, racket abandoned somewhere behind him. But he’d gotten there too late. Matt was already holding Neil up for him. And Neil was already lying.
Andrew had watched Neil force down water afterward with growing unease because every swallow visibly made him nauseous. He wondered if Neil managed to keep any of that water down after practice had ended, but he didn’t ask. He was afraid of the answer, really.
Wymack had shot Andrew a look afterwards, a look that screamed fix this before it kills him. Andrew had only just shaken his head.
“I didn’t pass out,” Neil corrects.
Andrew stares at him. The distinction means absolutely nothing.
Neil’s expression stays carefully blank, but even that looks strained now. His face is drawn tight with exhaustion. Sweat still clings faintly near his hairline from practice despite the shower he took afterward.
Something is wrong, Andrew thinks, not for the first time.
He’s officially going to be late to Bee’s. He doesn’t care.
“I can stay,” he offers, because the words “I want to stay” get stuck in his throat.
Let me stay, Andrew thinks desperately. Let me in. Tell me how to help you.
But Neil’s already shaking his head before the words are even fully out. “No.”
“Neil.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just go.”
Worry, he says. Andrew almost laughs at the word.
He’s not worried about Neil. He feels like he’s standing too close to the train tracks and he’s only just realized something enormous is already speeding toward him.
Neil pushes himself higher against the couch arm. The movement looks exhausting. “Andrew,” he says, quieter now. “You can’t skip Bee.”
And oh, how Andrew hates him. Hates that he’s right, that the emotions toying with Andrew’s mind right now aren’t ones he should be burying alone, hates that Neil knows it.
“I’ll survive two hours alone,” Neil adds, a small smile on his lips like the words are meant to be a joke.
Andrew’s chest feels tight suddenly. Is that an option? Is there a version where Andrew comes back from therapy and Neil isn’t right there waiting for him? Andrew’s stomach twists hard enough to hurt.
Neil doesn’t notice the effect of the word choice. Or maybe he does and can’t summon the energy to correct it. Andrew stares at him harder.
Neil looks back stubbornly despite the exhaustion dragging at the corners of his eyes.
“Kevin’ll be back soon anyway. An hour, maybe less.”
“And if you crack your head open on the coffee table before then?” Andrew demands, but he can feel himself starting to cave.
He does need to talk to Bee. Badly. And Neil wouldn’t be alone for long - Kevin would call him if anything happens.
Neil rolls his eyes. “Then you can tell me ‘I told you so’ at the hospital.”
Andrew exhales harshly through his nose. “You’re an idiot.”
“Probably.”
Neil sounds tired enough that the word barely rises above the quiet hum of the dorm. Andrew steps closer before he can stop himself. Neil looks up at him slowly, unblinking. His eyes are glassy enough that if Andrew thinks about it too hard, he can almost see tears against his lashes.
Fear crawls sharp and acidic through Andrew’s bloodstream.
He presses his hand briefly against Neil’s forehead, because not touching him feels impossible right now. He needs to feel that he’s still here, still warm beneath his palm. Alive.
Andrew cards his fingers gently through Neil’s hair, and Neil leans into the touch instantly. The movement is so small, so trusting that it nearly cracks something open beneath Andrew’s ribs.
Andrew feels it happen in real time - the swell of helpless affection mixing sickly with panic until it becomes almost unbearable to hold inside his chest. His thumb brushes once against Neil’s temple and Neil’s eyes slip half closed at the contact.
Andrew wants to stay. There’s an animalistic part of Andrew’s brain screaming not to leave him alone looking like this, to hold him until whatever this is passes. Instead he pulls his hand away completely before the instinct roots too deep to ignore. The loss of contact leaves the dorm feeling colder immediately.
Andrew forces himself toward the door, and he doesn’t let himself look back as he goes. He knows he’ll never make it to Bee’s if he does. Behind him, the couch creaks softly as Neil settles back down again. Andrew listens for the sounds of Neil’s breathing all the way down the hall.
***
“Something’s wrong with Neil.”
There’s a stack of psychology journals threatening to collapse off the side of the coffee table. Two coasters sitting on the wood, one of which Andrew will refuse to use once he releases his mug from the confines of his palms. He’s sitting on Bee’s faded blue couch, hot chocolate steaming, the ceramic warm between his hands. The heat sinks through into his skin and it burns a little to the touch, so Andrew focuses on that rather than the look of concern that washes over Bee’s face.
“I know last week you mentioned he might be sick,” Bee says calmly, schooling her features in that seamless way therapists tend to do. “Has something changed?”
Andrew’s grip tightens slightly around the mug. “No.”
Bee tilts her head. “Is that what’s bothering you? That he hasn’t improved yet?”
“No.”
Bee nods once for him to continue, but Andrew doesn’t.
He watches as steam curls from his mug, washing his face in sticky heat. It makes his eyes water, and he holds the mug that much closer, letting himself feel the sting. Maybe he should’ve made Neil tea before he left.
“What’s going through your mind right now?”
“He isn’t trying to hide it anymore,” Andrew gives. He hears himself speaking and hates how thin the explanation sounds compared to the thing clawing inside his chest. “He eats less than Aaron used to.”
Bee hums. “Is Neil’s illness reminding you of your brother’s addiction?”
“No,” Andrew says. Then, because he’s supposed to be honest, he adds, “Aaron’s problem had a solution.”
A bathroom stocked with non-perishables and plastic water bottles. Two weeks of screaming and begging and words that bled in Andrew’s ears. A solution at a cost, but a solution nonetheless.
Andrew knew how to fix Aaron. He doesn’t know how to fix Neil.
“Is it the helplessness that’s bothering you, then?” Bee asks, her voice gentle, maybe too much so.
Andrew stares into the hot chocolate hard enough the surface trembles slightly beneath his grip. “Yes and no.” The admission tastes rotten.
“Where is the ‘no’ coming from?”
Andrew’s mouth twists.
There’s a lamp glowing warm in the corner beside Bee’s bookshelf, soft light catching on the edges of framed degrees Andrew’s never bothered reading before now. That’s where he sticks his gaze, just shy of looking at Bee.
Neil had looked gray when Andrew left the dorm. Gray, like someone had scooped the color out of him with both hands and left behind whatever was underneath. Every sharp bone in his body has started showing through lately - collarbones too pronounced beneath loose shirts, wrists thin enough Andrew can nearly circle one entirely with his hand.
It’s like watching something eat Neil alive from the inside out. Like termites hollowing through wood.
The details accumulate under Andrew’s skin like splinters.
“Andrew.”
“He looks like a corpse,” Andrew says flatly.
Bee waits.
Andrew hates that. The silence stretches long enough to force words out of him like blood from an open wound.
“He’s cold all the time. Pale. Exhausted. He’s been throwing up more. He thinks I haven’t noticed.” Andrew waves a hand. “Corpse.”
Bee nods and folds her hands loosely in her lap. “Do you think Neil is dying, Andrew?”
Andrew looks down at the mug again because suddenly Bee’s office feels too small, airless in the way locked rooms used to feel at Easthaven. Heat crawls unpleasantly beneath his skin. His ribs feel tight enough to crack.
Neil dying. The thought lives inside Andrew like rusted metal shoved between his lungs.
“He looks like a corpse,” he repeats numbly. The word tastes like glass.
Bee doesn’t react outwardly, though her gaze softens slightly. “Rationally, do you believe that Neil’s life is in danger,” she asks, picking her words with care, “or do you think fear may be escalating the situation in your mind?”
Andrew looks at her, bored. “Yes,” he says dryly. “Because historically, nothing bad has ever happened to anyone because it sounded irrational.”
Bee’s mouth twitches faintly. “That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“I asked whether you think you might be catastrophizing.”
Andrew scowls. “You haven’t seen him.”
“No,” Bee agrees calmly. “And I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong. But I want you to be aware of the things that might be clouding your thinking right now.”
Andrew looks away. He knows she has a point. His mind does this with Neil constantly. Every unanswered text stabs sharp beneath his skin. Every bruise becomes a fractured skull, every late-night phone call a body identification. Andrew has spent two years existing in a state of perpetual anticipation, waiting for the universe to finally realize it forgot to take Neil away from him.
The problem, though, is that sometimes the fear is justified. Neil has died before.
Not literally, but close enough Andrew still wakes up hearing Baltimore in his bones sometimes. A duffle bag left in a patch of gravel while a riot rages around it. Neil bleeding in a dingy motel room beneath white bandages while Andrew sat trapped in handcuffs, unable to close the open wounds festering on his skin.
Helplessness tastes the same every time. Like biting through his own tongue.
Bee studies him quietly for a long moment, hands folded neatly over her knees while Andrew feels like his skin is turning inside out beneath his clothes. The hot chocolate has started cooling in his hands, the heat fading into lukewarm nothing.
“I like to think I’ve come to know you quite well,” she says finally. “So I can guess you have some sort of plan already thought out. Could you tell me about it?”
Andrew sets the mug down too hard on the coffee table. The porcelain clinks sharply against the wood, hot chocolate sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
He’s not sure exactly what it is about the question that’s set him off, but he knows he’s hit his limit. “Buzz off, Bee,” he says. “Our time’s up.”
Andrew stands abruptly before Bee can respond, movement quick and restless and. Energy crackles unpleasantly beneath his skin now, anxious electricity making it impossible to stay seated another second.
Neil is alone. The thought keeps scraping through him over and over like barbed wire dragged across exposed nerves. Alone in the dorm looking half-dead beneath blankets while Andrew sits here talking about feelings that don’t matter.
Andrew reaches automatically for his jacket where he’d thrown it across the arm of the couch earlier. Bee doesn’t stand immediately.
“Andrew.” Her tone is stern, but not unkind. “I’d like you to answer the question before you leave.”
Andrew pulls on his jacket, searching the pockets for his phone. It’s become somewhat of a habit, checking his phone for any messages once he’s released from a session. He hadn’t liked the thought of turning it off when Bee first brought it up, but the constant checking to see if any of his people got themselves into trouble quickly made her put her foot down. Andrew respected the rule, one of the few he does these days.
Bee doesn’t look away. “What is your plan, Andrew?”
Andrew looks toward the office door instead of her, exhaling harshly through his nose. “I’m going to drag him to a doctor,” he mutters once he can feel the weight of his phone in his hand.
Bee waits.
Andrew glares as he waits for the device to power back on. “Tonight.”
“Okay,” Bee says softly. “That’s a good plan.”
Andrew rolls his eyes like the conversation annoys him instead of feeling like someone peeled his ribcage open under fluorescent lighting. The screen flashes on, and the unread messages come flooding in fast enough to make something in Andrew pause.
His stomach drops down past the floor beneath his feet.
Fourteen missed calls. Twelve from Kevin. Two from Aaron. A slew of frantic texts from Matt, and one from Aaron that just says “call me right now.”
For one strange second, Andrew’s brain refuses to process the words correctly. They sit there on the screen like something written in another language, meaningless black text against bright light.
Then every muscle in his body locks at once. Heat flashes white-hot beneath his skin, then disappears just as quickly, leaving him cold all over. His pulse slams hard enough against his throat that he can barely breath around it.
Neil, he thinks. Something’s wrong with Neil.
Andrew is moving before he consciously decides to. His thumb hits Kevin’s contact so hard the screen creaks beneath his finger. Bee says something behind him. He doesn’t hear it.
The call rings once, only once, before it’s connecting.
“Andrew? Holy shit - why weren’t you answering?!” Kevin voice filters through the phone, static-filled and hysterical.
“What happened?” Andrew demands. The words should sound like a question, but they don’t, not even close.
There’s noise behind Kevin’s voice - shouting, footsteps, some kind of overhead announcement muffled through speakers.
Kevin starts talking too fast for any of it to make sense, words tripping over themselves.
“There was so much blood - I didn’t know - I made him eat, but he just kept throwing up -”
Andrew’s vision narrows. He can’t breathe. “What happened,” he repeats, louder this time. “Where is he?”
Kevin makes a broken noise into the phone. “He just started throwing up blood everywhere, I don’t know, Andrew, there was so much fucking blood -”
For a moment, Bee’s office sways sickeningly sideways around him, walls stretching too far in his vision. Andrew braces himself hard against the back of the couch before his knees can betray him. Something horrible and animalistic claws up his throat, but Kevin keeps talking before it can escape.
“Aaron said we had to take him to the ER but then Neil stopped answering us and -”
Andrew hangs up on him. His hands shake violently while he dials Aaron instead. The call connects immediately.
“Andrew.” Aaron sounds breathless. “Where the fuck are you?”
Andrew grips the phone so tightly his fingers ache. “Talk.”
Aaron exhales shakily through his nose. Andrew can hear movement in the background, rubber soles squeaking against tile. “We’re at the hospital,” Aaron says quickly. “They took him back maybe ten minutes ago.”
Relief washes over Andrew so fast he almost sways with it.
Alive. Neil is alive.
The feeling lasts less than a second before Aaron continues. “He’s in pretty bad shape.” He keeps talking, words clipped together too fast, oblivious to the way Andrew’s lungs have stopped taking in air, to the way his vision has tunneled. “He lost a lot of blood. They think he’s been bleeding internally for a while now and - fuck, Andrew, he should’ve come in sooner.”
All at once, every detail he’s noticed over the last month rearranges itself into something monstrous and self-loathing crashes through him so violently it almost makes him nauseous.
Andrew hangs up on him too and heads straight for the door. Bee steps into his path before he reaches it. Andrew stops short hard enough his shoes squeak against the hardwood.
“Move.”
Bee’s expression hardens as she takes him in. “Andrew, breathe for one second and tell me what’s happening.”
“Get out of my way.” His voice sounds wrong even to himself, flat in the same way a snapped bone looks flat beneath skin.
Bee doesn’t move.
Andrew can feel panic shredding through his nervous system now, vicious and electric. It crawls beneath his skin like insects burrowing under flesh. His thoughts are moving too fast, all sharp corners and blood-soaked images.
Neil unconscious. Neil bleeding out. Neil dying in some hospital room while Andrew left him alone. His hands won’t stop shaking.
“Andrew.”
“Move.”
Bee’s gaze flicks downward briefly. Andrew realizes distantly that he’s already pulled his keys from his pocket.
He’s half a second away from physically shoving past her, but Bee must see it too, standing a little taller in front of the door. Her voice changes quickly, turning firm in such a way that somehow cuts through the static roaring in Andrew’s ears. “You are in no condition to drive right now.”
Andrew’s grip tightens around the keys hard enough the metal edges bite into his palm. “I don’t care.”
“I do.”
Andrew tries to step around her, but she shifts, continuing to block his way. Andrew bares his teeth. “Get the fuck out of my -”
“Andrew.” Her tone leaves absolutely no room for argument. “If you get behind the wheel like this, you are going to wrap your car around a tree before you ever reach Neil.”
Andrew can barely see straight through the adrenaline flooding his body. His pulse is pounding so violently it feels detached from the rest of him, like another living thing trying to escape his chest. Every instinct inside him is screaming run run run.
But his hands are shaking too badly to even unlock the car properly.
Bee softens slightly when he doesn’t argue immediately. “I’ll drive you,” she says. “Okay? Let me drive.”
Andrew’s jaw clenches so hard pain shoots up the side of his face. Every second standing here feels unbearable. Neil is hurt. Neil is bleeding. Neil asked Andrew to leave anyway and Andrew fucking listened. The guilt is a living thing now, chewing through him from the inside out.
“Andrew.”
He tosses his keys at Bee, and forcibly shoves his way past her and out of the office.
***
The second his car jerks to a stop beneath the emergency room awning, Andrew is out the door. Cold air slams into him hard enough to sting his lungs. Bright fluorescent lights wash the hospital entrance in sickly white, automatic doors sliding open before him with a mechanical hiss that sounds unbearably slow.
Andrew doesn’t wait for Bee. He storms inside fast enough that someone behind the reception desk startles visibly at the sight of him.
Antiseptic burns sharp in the back of his throat. There are phones ringing, monitors beeping behind curtains. Voices overlap into meaningless noise, but all Andrew can hear is his pulse pounding violently in his ears.
He spots them clustered near the far wall of the waiting room.
Kevin is pacing in short frantic circles, hands buried in his hair hard enough to yank strands loose. Matt sits slumped forward in one of the plastic chairs, elbows on his knees, expression shell-shocked. Nicky’s talking rapidly at Dan, voice pitched too high with panic while Allison sits rigidly beside Renee, both of them eerily silent.
Andrew’s stomach drops lower at the sight of them like that. He looks around for the one person missing, but Aaron sees him first.
Relief flashes brutally across Aaron’s face before it gets buried beneath exhaustion. He immediately pushes away from the wall and heads straight for Andrew.
“Where is he?” Andrew demands before Aaron can speak.
Aaron makes an aborted motion to grab Andrew’s arm, trying to slow him down, and he settles for standing directly in front of him instead. “They’re running tests right now.”
“What happened.”
Aaron scrubs a hand over his face hard enough to leave red marks behind. Up close, he looks almost as bad as Kevin - blood dried dark across the sleeve of his hoodie, exhaustion hollowing out the skin beneath his eyes.
“He started throwing up blood,” Aaron says quickly. “A lot of it.”
Andrew looks at the dried red patch on Aaron’s sleeve.
“He’s been sick longer than we thought,” Aaron continues. “The doctors think he’s had bleeding ulcers for a while now. They said stress probably made it worse and -”
The image of Neil alone on the couch flashes through his head so vividly it almost blinds him. Neil leaning tiredly into Andrew’s touch before he left. Andrew should have stayed.
The guilt crawls through him like acid.
“Where,” Andrew says again.
Aaron points down the hallway. “Last room on the left, but -”
Andrew is already moving.
Someone behind the nurses’ station immediately stands. “Sir -”
Andrew ignores her completely. Another nurse steps into the hallway directly in front of him, palms raised slightly. “Visiting hours are for family only -”
Andrew walks past him anyway, utterly unwilling to stop and explain himself.
The nurse sputters behind him. “Sir!”
“Don’t bother trying to stop him,” Aaron calls from somewhere behind Andrew, voice exasperated. “Seriously. It won’t work. Just let him go.”
The hallway stretches endlessly ahead of him. Every door Andrew passes spikes something ugly and panicked beneath his ribs.
He hates hospitals. Always has. Too many memories live inside places like this. Too many ghosts soaked into white tile and antiseptic air. Handprint bruises and sprained limbs, a dislocated shoulder when he was six, a concussion when he was eleven. Easthaven and its pastel-painted walls and blue beddings.
And now this.
Andrew’s thoughts feel flayed open, raw nerves sparking violently against each other. Every possible image keeps crashing through his head in ugly flashes.
Neil unconscious. Neil hooked to machines. Neil pale beneath hospital sheets.
Neil dead.
The last thought hits hard enough Andrew physically stops walking for half a second. His jaw clenches viciously. He forces himself forward again.
At the end of the hallway, a doctor exits the last room on the left holding a clipboard.
Andrew heads straight for him. The doctor barely has time to look up before Andrew says, “Neil Josten.”
The doctor blinks once. “Are you family?”
“Yes.” The lie comes easily. Too easily, but maybe that’s because it's not a lie at all.
The doctor studies him briefly, gaze flicking over Andrew’s rigid posture and white-knuckled hands before something in his expression softens. “He’s stable,” the doctor says.
Andrew almost fucking collapses from relief. Something inside him caves inward all at once, sudden and harsh. The panic doesn’t disappear, but it softens slightly, loosening just enough for him to breathe around it again. Barely.
“He lost a significant amount of blood,” the doctor continues carefully. “But we’ve gotten the bleeding under control for now.”
“What caused it.”
“Peptic ulcers,” the doctor explains. “Multiple. His condition was likely aggravated over time by stress, poor nutrition, and physical strain.”
Every sentence feels like another accusation shoved directly between Andrew’s ribs. Poor nutrition. Physical strain. Neil starving himself between practices while Andrew watched it happen.
The doctor keeps talking, but Andrew’s attention fractures the second he catches sight of familiar auburn hair through the partially open curtain behind him. He barely catches the rest of what the doctor says - sedated, monitoring, gastroenterology consult in the morning - words without shape or meaning, all of them drowned beneath the violent rush of blood in Andrew’s ears the second he sees Neil lying motionless in the hospital bed.
Andrew shoves the curtain aside and walks into the room without permission.
Neil is asleep. Sedated, apparently, but Andrew’s brain still catches for one horrible second on the unnatural stillness of him. Hospital blankets pulled to his waist. Skin pale enough to blend into the sheets beneath him. There’s an IV taped to the inside of his elbow, clear tubing snaking toward a bag hanging beside the bed. A heart monitor pulses steadily nearby, green lines dragging across a screen in rhythmic peaks.
Alive.
Alive alive alive -
The relief hits so hard it feels almost violent. Andrew stands frozen just inside the doorway while something deep beneath his sternum tears itself open all at once.
Neil’s scars stand out sharply against bloodless skin, dark enough to almost look fresh. His lips are dry and slightly cracked. There’s a faint smear of red near the corner of his mouth that someone missed when cleaning him up. Andrew stares at it.
For a long moment, he can’t move at all. The monitor beeps softly beside him.
Alive.
Andrew forces himself forward before his legs lock completely. The chair beside the bed screeches faintly against tile when he drags it closer, the sound harsh enough to make one of the nurses glance briefly through the doorway.
Andrew sits, leaning his elbows on the very edge of the bed, inches away from accidentally brushing against his skin.
Part of him wants to grab Neil hard enough to bruise, shake him awake and demand an explanation for every ignored symptom, every lie, every swallowed wince Andrew apparently hadn’t pushed hard enough to uncover. Another part of him is suddenly terrified to put his hands anywhere on Neil at all, irrationally convinced he’ll break something already damaged beyond repair, terrified of making contact without that whispered ‘yes’.
So he settles for staring.
The sedatives soften Neil’s face strangely. Without constant motion and tension, he looks younger. Too young. Andrew hates that too.
Andrew looks at the IV again. Liquid replacing what Neil apparently couldn’t give himself.
He returns his eyes to Neil’s face, to the steady rise and fall of his chest, and he doesn’t look away for a long time.
***
The hours pass by in a blur after that.
Nurses drift in and out at intervals, checking monitors and blood pressure and IV lines. Andrew ignores all of them unless they touch Neil for too long. Then they earn his full attention until they leave again.
The Foxes rotate through eventually too.
Nicky cries immediately upon seeing Neil unconscious and tries very hard to pretend he isn’t crying at all. Allison stands at the foot of the bed with her arms folded tightly across herself, face pale beneath expensive makeup. Renee murmurs something soft to Neil despite knowing he can’t hear it.
Kevin doesn’t come in at all, but he lingers just outside the door nearly the entire time, and Andrew catches him speaking hushedly with Neil’s doctor more than once.
Aaron appears sometime later carrying two coffees neither of them drink. He drops into the second chair beside Andrew with the exhausted posture of someone whose adrenaline has finally burned itself out.
For a while, neither of them says anything. The monitor continues its steady beeping.
Aaron rubs tiredly at his eyes. “Kevin’s losing his mind, you know.”
Andrew doesn’t look away from Neil. He can’t. “Should he be?”
“No,” Aaron says easily. “He did everything right. If it wasn’t for him, Neil probably would’ve bled out silently or something without anyone knowing.”
That gets Andrew’s attention.
Aaron exhales. “He doesn’t see it that way, though.”
“Why’s that.”
Aaron shrugs, his elbows braced against his knees. “Don’t know. He isn’t talking much. Every time he remembers the blood on his clothes, he pukes.” His mouth twists faintly. “Wymack’s babysitting him right now.”
Something cold slides beneath Andrew’s skin at the mental image of Kevin covered in Neil’s blood.
Aaron seems to read his mind and glances toward Neil. “He’s gonna be fine,” he says quietly. “You know that, right? Because you don’t look like you know it.”
Andrew’s jaw clenches.
No, he doesn’t know that. And he won’t, not until Neil wakes up and he can hear it for himself from his lips.
Aaron takes Andrew’s silence in stride, though his expression tightens briefly. He stands, sighing. “I’ll, uh, keep an eye on Kevin for you, I guess.”
Andrew grunts something dismissive, and Aaron takes that as his cue to leave. Andrew doesn’t move.
***
Abby arrives with Wymack maybe an hour later.
The second Andrew sees Abby’s face, rage detonates hot and immediate beneath his sternum. She freezes slightly in the doorway under the full force of it.
Wymack notices too. “Easy,” he warns.
Andrew stands so abruptly the chair legs scrape violently across the tile. “You told him it was stress,” he accuses.
Abby’s expression melts with guilt. “Andrew, I -”
“You said he was overworking himself.”
At the hospital bed behind him, Neil remains unconscious and pale beneath white blankets while Andrew feels something furious and poisonous climb steadily up his throat.
“You examined him,” Andrew says. His voice comes out horrifyingly calm. “You said he was fine.”
Abby flinches. “I know,” she says quietly. “And I missed it.”
Missed it, she says. As if Neil’s body hadn’t been actively destroying itself right in front of all of them.
Andrew smiles, the motion cold and twisting. He feels the way he used to on his meds. “Get out.”
Wymack straightens. “Andrew.”
“Get out.”
Abby swallows hard. Guilt hollows visibly through her expression, but after a long moment, she nods once. “Okay,” she says, sharing one last look with Wymack as she turns to go.
Wymack shoots a glare at Andrew.
Andrew sinks back into the chair without looking at him.
The silence stretches.
Then Wymack sighs heavily enough to sound about seventy years older than usual. “It’s not her fault and you know it.”
“I believed her,” Andrew replies simply.
Wymack snorts. “No, you didn’t.”
Andrew keeps staring at Neil instead of the coach standing beside him because looking anywhere else feels impossible now. Neil’s chest rises slowly beneath the blankets. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Alive.
“I should’ve brought him here sooner,” Andrew says flatly.
Wymack is quiet for a beat too long. “Yeah,” he admits finally. “Probably.”
Andrew’s throat burns.
“But this ain’t all on you. We both know damn well the kid would’ve made the trip hell. He probably woulda convinced the entire ER he was fine if he was conscious enough to do it.”
Andrew says nothing. Wymack lingers beside the doorway a little longer than usual, thick arms folded across his chest while he watches Andrew stare holes through the side of Neil’s face.
Wymack scrubs a tired hand over his jaw. “Am I gonna get a knife pulled on me if I tell you to go home?”
“Yes,” Andrew says easily, watching Wymack wince out of the corner of his eye.
The room goes quiet again.
Andrew looks back toward Neil, attention snapping to him with magnetic force. He can’t seem to stop. Every tiny movement drags his focus back automatically. The slight twitch beneath Neil’s closed eyelids. The steady pulse visible at his throat.
Wymack sighs heavily through his nose again. “Kid’s stable, Andrew.”
The words mean nothing. Neil had looked stable curled half-asleep on the couch earlier too, right up until he started vomiting blood all over Kevin. Andrew feels sick all over again at the thought.
His gaze catches briefly on the faint bruise beneath Neil’s IV tape where someone missed the vein the first time. Tiny, barely noticeable. Andrew hates it irrationally.
Wymack shifts his weight beside the door. “You know,” he says slowly, “if you keep staring at him like that, he’s liable to wake up outta pure spite.”
Andrew’s mouth twitches once before flattening immediately again. It’s the closest thing to a reaction he’s managed in hours. Wymack catches it anyway.
“Fucking finally,” he mutters.
Andrew flips him off without looking away from Neil.
“Yeah, yeah.” Wymack rubs at the back of his neck. Exhaustion drags heavily through his posture now, age showing in the creases around his eyes and mouth. “Listen. Abby feels awful.”
Andrew shakes his head. He doesn’t care what she feels.
“I know,” Wymack says before he can respond. “Still doesn’t make her psychic.”
“She’s a medical professional.”
“And Neil’s a lying little shit.”
That almost earns another twitch from Andrew. Almost.
Wymack studies him for another long second, expression unreadable. “Alright,” he says after a minute. “I’m sending Kevin back to the dorms with Nicky and Matt. The girls want to stay.”
Andrew hums in acknowledgment.
Wymack hesitates before leaving. His eyes drift once toward Neil, something paternal and deeply tired flickering briefly across his face. Then he nods once to himself and heads out into the hallway.
And Andrew is alone again. Mostly.
Andrew settles deeper into the chair beside the bed, bowing his head down until his forehead hits the mattress. The hospital lighting paints everything pale and washed-out, turning Neil almost ghostlike beneath the sheets.
***
A soft knock sounds against the wall sometime later. Andrew looks up immediately, instincts sharp as exposed teeth.
Bee stands there, poking her head through the closed curtain. She takes one look at Andrew sitting rigid beside the bed with his hands knotted in Neil’s blanket, and she steps fully into the room, closing the curtain again behind her.
Andrew looks wrecked and he knows it.
Bee takes in the untouched cafeteria coffee beside him, the rigid set of his shoulders, the blank sheen to his eyes. Her face softens. Andrew hates that expression.
Slowly, sarcastically, he says, “Still think I’m catastrophizing?”
Bee’s expression softens further, exhaustion and something faintly regretful settling into the lines around her mouth. She steps closer to the bed, careful and quiet.
“No,” she says simply. “I don’t.”
Andrew huffs something humorless through his nose. The sarcasm drains out of him too quickly to even feel satisfying. He looks back at Neil immediately, eyes tracing over every visible inch of him again and again and again.
Bee follows the movement.
“I’m sorry for implying otherwise,” she says after a moment. “I didn’t mean to make you feel dismissed."
Andrew shrugs one shoulder stiffly. The motion feels mechanical. “Buzz off.”
Bee almost smiles at that. “Thank you,” she says in return, understanding Andrew’s words as the forgiveness they were meant to be.
Andrew doesn’t answer.
The room settles into silence again, broken only by the steady beep of the monitor and the occasional hiss of oxygen through the wall unit nearby. Neil remains motionless, calmly asleep.
Andrew keeps waiting for him to disappear. It feels irrational and entirely logical at the same time. Like if he looks away for even a second, Neil’s heartbeat will just stop.
“Do you want me to stay?”
Andrew’s answer comes without hesitation. “No.”
Neil doesn’t trust Bee, not the way Andrew does. He tolerates her because she matters to Andrew, because Neil has always treated Andrew’s people like his own. But hospitals already make Neil skittish in strange ways, all jagged watchfulness hidden beneath false calm. Waking up sedated and disoriented to find Bee standing over him would only make it worse.
Andrew won’t do that to him.
Bee seems to understand without needing the explanation. Her eyes flick briefly toward Neil before returning to Andrew. “Okay. Call me if you change your mind.”
The room feels colder after she goes.
Andrew settles back into the chair beside the bed. One hand remains twisted tightly in Neil’s blanket, knuckles aching from the force of his grip. He lets his head fall back down, closing his eyes against the scratchy sheets of Neil’s bed.
The clock on the wall crawls forward in miserable increments. And when Neil’s eyes start to flutter open, minutes later, Andrew takes his first real breath in hours.