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Neil hadn't realized until he was eight years old that his life was not normal.
He didn't realize until he was eight that most fathers didn't leave scars on their sons’ skin, that most kids didn't have a Lola to teach them how to cut innocent animals into remarkably small pieces, and that most kids didn't have to keep the very special family secret that lived in their basement.
Yet, from a very young age, Neil had understood that he was different.
So maybe it hadn't been a product of his upbringing. Or maybe it had. Or maybe he had always been different, but the unusualness of his upbringing had turned up the contrast in the image of little Nathaniel Wesninski, sitting in the front because he was smaller than the others, with his kindergarten class in the gym on picture day. Because Neil knew, at as young as five years old, that he was not the same as his classmates—and that knowledge had nothing to do with the last name he carried.
Nathaniel Wesninski, in kindergarten, was quiet and unremarkable. He didn’t initiate interactions with his peers, and when his peers tried to interact with him, it often ended with hurt feelings and the recovery chair. Nathaniel never meant to be mean. He just said things—true things, and things that seemed quite relevant to him—and yet people took offense to them.
And sometimes Nathaniel did things that his classmates thought were strange, but he couldn’t tell them why he was doing them, because he had to keep the very special family secret. Like how Nathaniel would hide in the tube slide at recess if the rabbits were out in the field, because if he watched the rabbits with his classmates, he would think too much about the rabbit Lola made him dissect last week. Like how Nathaniel cried when an activity required scissors. Like how Nathaniel never went to anybody’s birthday parties and never had one of his own. Like how Nathaniel wouldn’t do the self-portrait assignment in art class.
Other things about Nathaniel were strange, too, but didn’t have anything to do with his father. Like how, sometimes, Nathaniel would stop talking for the rest of the day. Or how, sometimes, Nathaniel would hide under his desk because too many other kids were looking at him. Or how, sometimes, Nathaniel would put his head down and cry, even though he didn’t know why.
Nathaniel Wesninski had been different, even as a little boy, and now Neil Josten, at age nineteen, didn’t feel any more normal.
Neil still had days when he couldn’t seem to get his tongue to work—even though he was supposed to be sharp-tongued, smart-mouthed, and outspoken, he just couldn’t do it some days. And Neil still had days when he wanted to run, run, run, or hide, because he felt too many eyes on him. And he still had days when he felt like crying for no particular reason.
The sad days were different now, though. Neil never cried about them. The lump in his throat would choke him, nearly suffocate him, all throughout the day, but it wouldn’t turn to tears. His mother had beaten that out of him. All that Neil had on those sad days was a heavy weight on his chest, a burning heat in his eyes, and muscles that only moved in slow motion.
Sometimes, Neil would force himself up, out of bed, and off to practice, anyway. Sometimes, Andrew would lure him into the living room with a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream, with some kisses on the side. Sometimes, Neil would lie in bed until his bladder forced him to the bathroom. But even after relieving it, he’d slink back to his mattress, because the muscles in his back were pulling him to the ground, and his legs felt like jelly, and his fingers and toes and the tip of his nose were all numb.
Andrew helped, some of the time. He would lie next to Neil and card through his unruly bedhead hair, press kisses to the hideous burns on Neil’s skin, and read books aloud until Neil fell asleep.
Other times, Andrew would stare blankly at Neil’s unmoving form, hiding worry behind a blank mask, and disappear for the day only after recruiting Matt for help. Neil didn’t really know where Andrew went on those days, but he suspected Bee’s, because Andrew would come back before the sun went down, carrying takeout from one of the few places Neil admitted to liking, and his kisses would taste like hot chocolate. Neil would sit up to eat only because Andrew asked him to, and he probably shouldn’t starve himself if he wanted to keep playing exy, anyway. Andrew would get a little serving tray from the kitchen and place it on the bed between himself and Neil, and they would sit there, cross-legged and silent, eating dinner together.
Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it would last less than a day, and Neil would be feeling better in time for night practice with Kevin. Sometimes it would last for days, and Neil would wish, as he went to sleep each night, that he not wake up.
He knew that was wrong. He knew he shouldn’t think that way.
All Neil’s mother had ever done was try to keep him alive. She had died for his safety. And Neil had fought like hell for his life. His entire body was covered in scars that represented the amount of effort he had put into his survival throughout his entire life.
Who would Neil be if he died now? After everything, to die one evening during his sophomore year, quietly and without a fight. Perhaps even intentionally.
Neil still felt like he had an expiration date, though, and it had long since passed. He wasn’t even supposed to live to adulthood, let alone outlive both of his parents. He wasn’t supposed to get old enough to fall in love, to go to college, to find a family, to prepare for a real career, or to build a life of his own.
Neil had accepted that as the truth years ago. He had absorbed it. Breathed it in, let it sink into his blood with the oxygen. It was a truth. It was as true as the laws of physics, as true as a theorem, as true as math.
Abram + time = death.
Every day, Neil waited for it.
Even on the good days—because there were good days, Neil always had to remind himself when it got bad again—the tick, tick, ticking of a clock went on in the back of his mind. One second closer, one hour closer, one day.
Neil waited and he waited and he waited, and he wondered if Andrew felt like this. He knew Andrew hadn’t been particularly fond of living for a very long time—that Andrew, honestly, was expecting to die with Tilda Minyard in a car wreck—and wondered how Andrew still got on with his life. He wondered if Andrew heard a ticking when things got too quiet. He wondered if, when they sat on the roof and stared at the campus around them, Andrew ever thought, even in the back of his mind, about stepping off the ledge. He wondered if, when Andrew was on those horrific meds, he ever considered taking every single one of them in one go, the same way Neil considered when he stared at the medicine cabinet as he brushed his teeth in the morning.
If Andrew thought those things, and he survived, then surely Neil could, too.
If he was meant to, at least.
The problem was that Neil just wasn’t quite sure if he was meant to.
“Neil, you alright, man?” Matt asked, jostling Neil out of his thoughts with a shake of the shoulder.
Before Neil could say that he was fine, Allison chimed in with a groan. “Ugh. Don’t ask him that, Matt. We all know what he’ll say.” The room laughed, soft chuckles and giggles at the inside joke as Allison mocked, “‘I’m fine.’”
Neil gave a practiced, small, close-lipped smile that he knew from experience would appease the upperclassmen. “I really am, though,” he told them. He unfolded his legs and pulled his knees up to his chest instead, wrapping his arms around his shins as he rested his cheek on his knees. “Just exhausted. It’s late.”
The Foxes were all gathered in Matt, Nicky, and Aaron’s dorm room, taking turns playing against each other on some new game Aaron picked up from GameStop last weekend. Neil hadn’t given it a try yet, but he also really wasn’t all that interested. He was satisfied just watching the other Foxes duke it out. He wasn’t very good at video games, anyway—although he did like pulling weeds and catching bugs on Andrew’s Animal Crossing: Wild World DS game. He couldn’t really screw that up much (except for when he forgot to save and the evil, hard hat-wearing mole would yell at Andrew the next time he logged in, earning Neil an hour of the silent treatment).
“Ooh,” Nicky cooed, leaning across the coffee table to ruffle Neil’s curls, “the baby is tired!”
Neil rolled his eyes and leaned backward, his back pressing against Andrew’s shins. Andrew, sitting on the couch behind Neil, leaned forward to whack Nicky in the forehead.
“Ow! I was kidding, Andrew!” Nicky grumbled through giggles.
“Not to agree with Neil because I’d rather kill myself than do that,” Aaron started, making Neil lean even further into Andrew’s touch as he silently wished he were already asleep in bed, “but it is two in the fucking morning, and I’d like it if everyone got out of my room.”
Nicky whined dramatically. “Nooo, Aaron! It’s my room, too. Just go to bed, you grump. We’ll be quiet.”
Renee stood from her spot beside Andrew, yawning quietly, but just loud enough to make it obvious that she was yawning. “I’m pretty beat, anyway,” she said, prompting Allison and Dan to get up, too, all agreeing with her in some form.
Andrew tugged gently on a lock of Neil’s hair, and Neil scooted out of his space, allowing him to stand up. Without another word, Andrew left the dorm, and Neil followed close behind, not bothering to acknowledge the complaints from Nicky behind him.
Neil hadn’t been totally lying when he said he was tired, so he let out a small sigh when Andrew turned for the stairwell rather than their dorm. He liked the roof, most nights. The shared cigarettes, the quiet, the view. Andrew there beside him. But Neil's mind was loud that night, and when Neil’s mind got loud, the roof only made his thoughts louder. His mind, all day long, would whisper any day now, any day now, any day now, and up on that roof, Neil would think, get it over with.
He didn’t tell Andrew any of that. He never did, because Andrew had enough to worry about, and Neil’s idiotic, self-pitying thought processes didn’t need to be added to the list.
When they made it to the roof, Andrew sat near, but not quite on, the edge and lit a cigarette. Neil sat down beside him, except and inch or two closer to the edge, so he could see over it. It made his heart thump, thump, thump all the way up to his ears. To the formerly numb tips of his toes, fingers, and nose. The ball in his throat was growing tonight, and when Neil swallowed, it made his whole face burn.
Andrew hooked an arm around Neil’s torso and tugged him backward in one rough jerk. Neil rolled his eyes but let it happen. It was worth it, at least, because when Andrew had Neil where he wanted him, he took hold of Neil’s hand and rubbed his thumb over the scars on his knuckles.
“You’re quiet,” Andrew said, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth with two fingers and blowing smoke into the night. Neil breathed the scent in.
“You’re smoking a cigarette,” Neil said. Andrew stared blankly back at him. “What? I thought we were sharing observations.”
It took a moment for Andrew to respond to that, but the thoroughly unimpressed look on his face gave Neil an idea of what he might say. “You are the most irritating person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting,” Andrew eventually informed him.
Neil almost asked, ‘Have you met your cousin?’ but found that his voice didn’t seem to want to cooperate anymore. So, instead, he turned his gaze out toward the campus and stayed quiet.
He didn’t have a solid idea of how far a person could fall without dying. He didn’t know if Fox Tower was tall enough for instant death, or if jumping would run the risk of landing with a dozen broken bones but living to tell the tale. He imagined how badly a broken back would feel, or snapped legs, or even a broken neck. He wondered if he would be paralyzed after that. It would be a much more gratuitous and painful attempt, but it would end with his death either way, because if Neil broke bones badly enough to disable him, he couldn’t play exy anymore. No exy meant no money for the Moriyamas, which meant death.
A gun would be more efficient, probably, but he didn’t have one of those anymore—Andrew gave it to Wymack a few months ago, and Wymack had locked it in a safe only he knew the code for. Andrew didn’t say anything about it when he did it, so Neil didn’t know the true reason, but he worried Andrew could see through him sometimes.
Neil tried not to let his thoughts wander to other methods. The more he considered it, the more the urge would gnaw at him, and the more guilty he would feel about thinking it. Which would only make the urge grow stronger. It was a vicious cycle that Neil wasn’t sure he deserved to get out of.
“Neil.”
Neil blink, blink, blinked, and saw Andrew in front of him. Andrew had one hand on the back of his neck, the other in his hair, tucking it away from his face. His cigarette was crushed against the pavement beside them. Andrew’s face was calm, but his eyes were all worry.
“Neil,” Andrew said again, and it sounded like maybe he’d been saying it for a long time.
“Hmm,” Neil hummed. He wiggled his fingers, blink, blink, blinked some more, and leaned into Andrew’s touch. He watched Andrew swallow and wanted to tell him to stop, to quit acting like something was wrong, because Neil was fine. Neil wasn’t any better or worse than he had ever been. He was okay.
Andrew stared at Neil’s eyes, then pulled him in, keeping one hand on the back of his neck and the other in the back of his hair as he guided Neil’s head down to his shoulder and held him there. “Stop fucking doing that,” he bit out.
Neil didn’t entirely understand what Andrew meant. He hummed again.
“We’re going to bed.”
With that, Andrew stood, yanking Neil up with him. Neil followed along without argument. He was ready for bed, anyway, and didn’t have the voice to talk about this right then.
-
Neil jerked awake with a quiet gasp.
When he was younger, he would wake from nightmares, thrashing, crying, and yelling. His mother had stopped that as soon as it began. Now, Neil only jerked awake at all when the nightmares got really, really bad. Otherwise, he would wake how he always did—body still, eyes blinking open gradually—except his heart would beat loud and violently in his ears.
Tonight, the nightmare was worse than most—Andrew, torn apart and bleeding on the floor; Nathaniel with a dripping cleaver in his hand. The dreams had been getting worse and worse, each night, to the point that Neil wasn’t getting all that much sleep at all. Abby gave him low-dose melatonin gummies to try last week when she questioned the bags under his eyes. Neil hadn’t tried them yet.
But Neil was getting really fucking sick of this.
The gummies were left out on the kitchen counter, half because Neil was lazy and half because he had been avoiding opening the medicine cabinet altogether, afraid that Andrew might read his thoughts if he did. So Neil dragged himself out of bed, pulling on the hoodie that hung from his desk chair before creeping out of the bedroom. He knew Kevin wouldn’t wake to the sound of the door creaking open and shut, but Andrew was a gamble, so he made sure to close it slowly and carefully.
The dorm room was lit only by small wall night lights that were plugged into every few outlets. It made it a lot easier to navigate the dorm at night, and none of them were all too fond of the dark in the first place, so the night lights were a worthy purchase.
When he made it to the kitchen, Neil flipped on the small light that hung above the sink. It lit the room in a very dim glow, but it was just enough for Neil to find the bottle of gummies. He twisted off the cap only to find that irritated, silvery kind of plastic covering underneath. Sighing, he began to pick at the edges, but the attempt to peel it off proved useless.
In the corner of the counter, between the paper towels and the toaster, lived a knife block.
Without much thought, Neil reached over and yanked the smallest knife from its place near the bottom of the knife block and stabbed it through the plastic covering. He used the knife to push away the edges and peel the rest of the covering until the gummies were accessible.
It was then that it occurred to Neil that there was a knife in his hand, and he was Nathaniel Wesninski.
He could use knives, sometimes, and he wouldn’t think anything of it. He could use them to cut up fruits and vegetables, but never to slice meat or to hurt someone. Sometimes, when he was holding them just to cut up fruits and veggies, he had to put the knife down and leave the room to gather himself. Because sometimes the feeling of a knife in his hand was all too reminiscent of his childhood, and he would feel Lola breathing down his neck, dragging cold fingers across the skin of his arms, adjusting his grip around the knife, and pushing it down through the muscle and tissue of a trembling rabbit.
Tonight, though, Neil wasn’t thinking of Lola. He was thinking of Nathaniel Wesninski—the plans his father had for him and how accustomed he likely would have grown to holding a knife if he hadn’t left that house.
Neil swallowed. He rubbed his thumb over the handle of the knife.
Then he thought of Andrew, asleep in the other room.
***
Andrew, who at only thirteen years old, felt just as low as Neil did now. Andrew, who survived anyway. Andrew, who survived by taking a blade to his own skin.
Neil had never thought much about cutting himself before. He had enough scars already, he always thought, and what would be the point of adding more to the collection? Andrew did it on the principle of survival. He did it because he wanted the good things in his life—Cass—so, so badly that he couldn’t kill himself, no matter how bad the bad thoughts got. So he cut.
Now, Neil considered the idea that a cut from this knife in his hand would be a scar of his own.
Not his father’s, not Lola’s, not Riko’s. Neil’s.
Without putting any more thought into, Neil pressed the knife into the meaty part of his left palm, right where it would sting and ache at every pull of muscle in his hand. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t any worse than what Neil was used to. The pain didn’t matter. The pain was nothing.
What mattered was the feeling of driving a knife into flesh.
Neil’s stomach lurched and he gagged as he tossed the knife into the sink.
He practically threw himself across the dorm and into the bathroom, where he dry-heaved over the toilet for a few minutes before giving up on the whole thing. The tile was cold enough to seep through his clothes as he sat against the bathtub, soaking blood up with toilet paper. He pressed down on it and waited, waited, waited until it seemed to slow enough to put a bandaid over. He used one of the larger Band-Aids from under the sink that were really meant for scraped knees and elbows, and he pressed it into the wound, wrapping the end around the curve of his hand and smoothing the whole thing over. The bandaid was only a shade or two darker than his own skin. It blended in nicely and he was sure that if he wore a larger hoodie—big enough for the sleeves to cover his hands—no one would notice.
***
With that over and done with, Neil crept back into the bedroom, not bothering to brave the kitchen and the sight of the knife block again for the melatonin.
Andrew sat up and leaned over the edge of the bunk bed as Neil tiptoed across the room. Neil could only see the silhouette of him, but knew that there was probably a raised eyebrow. Neil waved a hand—a silent I’m okay, go back to sleep.
“Neil,” Andrew whispered, because apparently Neil’s dismissive wave was not enough.
“I’m okay. I went to get one of the gummies Abby gave me,” Neil told him, sliding into his own bunk.
Andrew didn’t say anything else for a minute, so Neil had thought that was that, but a moment later, he opened his eyes again to the presence of Andrew beside his bed. Andrew gestured to the bunk. “Okay?” he asked.
Against his better judgement—against the part of Neil that only ever wanted Andrew touching him at all times, holding him, kissing him, being with him—Neil said, “No. It’s a bad night. I don’t want to wake you up or accidentally hit you if I have another nightmare.”
For a moment, Andrew just stood there, watching Neil like he knew it was a lie. Neil and Andrew had shared a bed plenty of times in the past six months, after that first night in the cabin during spring break. Neil had had lots of nightmares, and he never moved enough to hurt or startle Andrew enough for it to be triggering. It was almost obvious that Neil’s excuse tonight was a lie, but Andrew would never ignore a no, so he climbed back up to his own bunk without another word.
Neil’s entire body ached, but especially that heavy thing in his chest.
-
Andrew Minyard knew Neil Josten.
He knew the ins and the outs of him. He knew him so well we could practically read his mind at times, but lately all that Andrew had been reading were things that scared him.
When the electric blue of Neil’s eyes seemed dimmer and less lively, Andrew knew that something was wrong. When Neil’s mouthy quips and comebacks vanished and their time together was bathed in not comfortable but heavy silence, Andrew knew that something was wrong. When Neil stared too blankly over the edge of the rooftop, Andrew knew that something was wrong. When Neil lay in bed too long, skipped his morning run, and stopped acknowledging anyone’s voices, Andrew knew that something was wrong.
When Andrew said Neil’s name over and over, and Neil wouldn’t respond, Andrew knew that something was wrong.
When Neil woke up in the middle of the night, gasping away that panic that had flooded his body when it couldn’t tell that it was all just a nightmare, and told Andrew no when he asked to lie with him, Andrew knew that something was wrong.
When Andrew got up to make himself and Neil a nice breakfast the next morning and found a bloody knife in the sink, Andrew knew that something was wrong.
Andrew stared into the sink. The younger version of him that still lived inside his head wished that maybe the red was from strawberries, or ketchup, or maybe some kind of meat. But Andrew knew that the only person who had been in that kitchen since last night was Neil, and Neil hadn’t been cooking.
Still, Andrew plucked the knife out of the sink, gripping it loosely at the handle. The red substance was dried and beginning to brown. It was undeniably blood, and that meant that it was Neil’s blood.
A deep, aching sense of panic jumped through Andrew’s chest, speeding the beat of his heart and gripping at his throat. His hands shook as he dropped the knife back into the sink, and his breath faltered as he stalked across the dorm. He didn’t bother to be quiet when he threw open the bedroom door, and he didn’t bother warning Neil before dropping himself down on the mattress.
Neil jumped only minutely at the added weight and turned to face Andrew. Before he could get too far, Andrew was gripping the blanket it and pulling it down, uncovering Neil’s upper body. He didn’t care to address the obvious confusion in Neil’s features, the boy’s auburn eyebrows knit together. Andrew grabbed first at Neil’s left wrist, just where it met the palm, and yanked the sleeve of Neil’s sweatshirt up to his elbow.
“Andrew, what the fuck?!” Neil grumbled, trying and failing to pull his arm away. Andrew could feel Neil’s pulse spike in his wrist just beneath the pad of his thumb as he twisted Neil’s arm this way and that, looking for a cut, a bandage, something, but finding nothing. “Fuck off!”
Usually, Andrew would instantly jump away at a fuck off, but he didn’t this time. Partially because it was hard to understand Neil at all over the static in his mind, and partially because this no wasn’t a no due to boundaries being crossed—it was a no because Neil was trying to hide. Trying to fucking lie after all the truths they had given each other in the past year and a half.
Andrew was just about to switch to Neil’s right arm, letting Neil’s wrist slip from his grip, when he felt his fingers brush against the fabric of a bandaid. He felt sick, but he forced his eyes up to meet Neil’s.
In and out, in and out, in and out. He breathed slowly, silently counting his breaths in his mind until his voice came back to him. “Take off the bandaid and show me what you did,” he whispered, because his voice wouldn’t get any louder no matter how much force he put into it.
Neil stared and stared and stared, and Andrew could see the panic in him. A panic he knew well. The same panic he felt, silently and undetectably, in Abby’s office when she made him take off his armbands for his physical. He knew that panic, and he knew why it existed, but he wasn’t there to punish Neil or to guilt him—he was there because he couldn’t fucking lose him, and he couldn’t let Neil mar his skin the same way Andrew himself had when he was fucking miserable.
Was Neil really that miserable?
“Do not make me say that word,” Andrew said, and he meant please.
The blanket wrinkled in Neil’s lap as he gripped it, tight and violent, before letting go completely. Andrew watched the muscles in Neil’s jaw move as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.
Finally, Neil peeled the bandage off.
Andrew stared at the wound and asked himself a thousand questions. Why now? Why last night, and not a year ago, or a month ago, or a week ago? What had been the breaking point? And why there? Why on his palm? Was it because Neil wanted to feel the sting of it pulling taut every time he flexed his fingers? Or was it something? What had made Neil do it?
“This will get infected,” Andrew told him.
He wanted more than anything to ask all those questions that lived in him, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t subject Neil to that. He wouldn’t force Neil to answer questions that he, quite honestly, probably didn’t even know the answers to himself. Andrew had his own history with this exact thing, and he still couldn’t answer each question. And if someone had asked him that when he was thirteen and had just tried it for the first time, he might have never spoken again. So he wouldn’t be cruel. He would help Neil take care of himself in the only ways he knew how, and Neil would talk when he was ready.
Neil said nothing as Andrew, gentler than he’d ever been, guided him out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. Neil’s eyes shone with unshed tears as Andrew sat him down on the closed toilet lid and cleaned the cut carefully and properly. Neil closed his watery eyes as Andrew wrapped his hand back up with a better bandage and cupped his face.
Andrew whispered, “Neil,” because Neil had been doing this thing lately—this terrifying thing where his eyes would glaze over and Andrew would say things to him and it was like he couldn't hear him at all. “Neil,” Andrew said again, placing his hand on Neil's jaw and giving his head a small jostle. “Neil.”
Neil’s eyes peeled open slowly, and his gaze settled on Andrew. After a moment, he seemed to remember where he was and what was going on. His eyes closed again, and then his shoulders shook.
Never once had Andrew seen Neil cry—he wasn't sure if Neil was even capable of crying anymore—but tears escaped as Andrew whispered, “Abram.”
The sentence could have ended with I don’t know how to help you, or I can’t live without you, or I need you, I need you, I need you. But it ended there, just his name, and that seemed to be enough.
Neil’s chin fell forward and his face scrunched, and he looked so young. He looked so broken down and tired, and he looked nineteen years old because he was. Not quite grown up, but not quite young enough to be seen as a kid. A kid in need of help that he didn’t know how to get. Neil was only nineteen now, and he had practically been a baby when he got his first scar.
Andrew’s heart broke as Neil slid onto the bathroom floor with him, bringing himself closer to where Andrew knelt in front of him until he was completely curled in on himself, face pressed into Andrew’s shoulder and his hands with a desperate grip on the fabric of Andrew’s sweatshirt. Neil’s whole body quivered and shook as he cried into Andrew’s hoodie.
They had never been huggers. They were both touch-starved and discovered recently that they enjoyed constantly touching each other, whether that be wrapped around each other on the couch or simply hooking their pinkies together as they walked. But they had never particularly hugged each other. Comfort usually came in the form of shared cigarettes and soft kisses. They never did anything that Andrew would consider hugging for hugging’s sake. But this was undeniably a hug.
With one arm hooked around Neil’s back and the other lacing fingers through auburn hair, Andrew held shattered pieces of Neil together on the bathroom floor.
Andrew was frozen.
He stayed where he was, unmoving as he held Neil’s sobbing form, but he was frozen. His eyes were glued to the wall across from him, his breath paused in his lungs, and his thoughts screeched to a halt.
Neil was breaking apart in his arms and Andrew was terrified.
All he could do, though, was stay there, a solid grounding force, no matter how scared he was.
Neil cried for a long time. Long enough that Kevin woke from his slumber and passed by the bathroom with an alarmed look on his face, but with a glare from Andrew, he disappeared back to the bedroom.
Eventually, though, Neil calmed. His body still trembled slightly in Andrew’s arms, but there were no longer the jerks and shaking that came with sobs wracking through him. His breathing slowed, smoothing out except for the occasional hitches left over. Andrew didn't loosen his hold. He waited for Neil to make the first move.
“Sorry,” Neil whispered into Andrew’s shoulder.
Andrew wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up. To tell him never to utter the words I’m sorry again. To tell him to say anything else. Instead, he pressed a kiss to Neil’s hair.
Neil curled impossibly closer.
“I just don’t wanna wait for it anymore.”
It took a minute for Andrew to be able to speak, and all that he could get out was, “Bee.”
“No,” Neil said, voice as hoarse as the words were reflexive.
Andrew closed his eyes. He inhaled Neil’s scent, exhaled. He could not force Neil to get help. He could not make Neil do things that Neil did not want to do, no matter how imperative or vital. But he could remind Neil of why this—why his well-being—mattered. “You promised me you would stay,” Andrew said. Because a promise to Andrew meant everything, and Neil seemed to be the only person in the world who understood that.
And Neil must have really, really been crumbling because after one more quiet, heart-wrenching sob, he murmured a soft, “Okay.”
-
Therapy was quite a scary thing for Neil.
It was funny for him to admit that to himself, after all that he had endured. He faced the Yakuza, faced the Butcher of Baltimore, and made it out the other side just to cower in the face of a small, soft-spoken woman with the kind of wrinkles people only get from smiling too often.
Betsy was patient with him. Neil had to get over his loathing for her in order to realize how much he appreciated that. He was beginning to understand why Andrew liked her so much.
It was the same day that Neil broke into pieces on the bathroom floor that he first had a session with Bee. As soon as Neil had pulled away from Andrew, he sent out a text and booked Neil an emergency appointment. They started with Andrew there, listing symptoms to Bee that Neil didn't even know were noticeable, observable things about him. Then, when Neil made it clear that he would not be participating, Andrew pried answers out of him and reported to Bee, and Andrew began to echo the things Bee told him back to Neil. Neil pretended like he wasn't opening up to a shrink, because Andrew was an in-between.
That delusion flashed far too long. But eventually, Neil admitted to himself that it was really Betsy who was helping him and learning about him via Andrew. Slowly, he started telling her, to her face, things that were true and that mattered.
The day Neil confessed to Betsy that he sometimes thought about ‘getting it over with’ (as he worded it), Bee had explained to Neil that now that he was in a safe place, it was likely that his brain and body were only then beginning to process the trauma that he had endured all his life.
Hearing that made Neil feel a little less guilty about needing so much help now after everything he had survived. He still couldn’t completely rid his mind of his mother’s voice in his ear, telling him that he was fine. That he didn’t need anyone else. But he was trying, and he was getting better.
Betsy squeezed him into every open slot she had. After seeing Neil in that bathroom, crying, Kevin didn’t even say anything when Neil left practice early or arrived late due to an appointment with Bee. Neil had questioned Andrew about that, but Andrew swore up and down that he hadn’t threatened Kevin or anything at all. It was strange for Neil to realize that Kevin really, actually, honestly cared about him beyond his exy skills.
Andrew’s support was masked with eye rolls and muttered swear words, but entirely unwavering. To an outsider, it probably looked like Andrew saw Neil as nothing but an irritant and an inconvenience. But the Foxes, and Neil of course, could see the careful eye Andrew kept on Neil, and the gentleness in the way he touched him, and the necessary assertiveness in the way he bossed Neil around when it came to the junkie’s mental and physical health.
With the help of Bee, the understanding of all of the Foxes, and Andrew’s unwavering support, Neil learned to take care of himself.
He unlearned to lie on instinct. He confessed things to Betsy and Andrew alike that his mother would have hit him for thinking, let alone saying it out loud. He no longer responded with a reflexive ‘I’m fine’ whenever anyone asked how he was or if he was okay. He learned not only how to support his own well-being but how to accept help from the people who cared about him.
Neil found ways to remind himself that his life had value, even on the bad days. He was hesitant at first when Betsy prescribed him an anxiety medication, but he eventually got around to taking them, and they seemed to help lessen the constant fear that usually lived inside him. He and Andrew worked together to create plans for their worst days, so that they knew how to best take care of each other.
The cut in Neil’s hand healed into a thin line, almost unnoticeable among the other marks that marred his skin. No matter how faint, though, Andrew always seemed to be able to find it. Neil could tell when Andrew’s eyes landed on it, even though Andrew never said anything else about it. His hazel eyes would pause, fading dimmer for just a moment, before moving up to Neil’s face. Like he needed the reminder that there was still light in Neil’s own eyes. Andrew never asked, but Neil could see the cogs turning in his mind as the memory lingered.
They were on the roof of Fox Tower when Neil finally decided to acknowledge it.
“You can ask about it, if you want,” Neil said, staring at Andrew’s profile rather than off the ledge. “That night, I mean.”
Andrew didn’t say anything for a long moment. He stared right back at Neil, then moved his gaze out toward the setting sun, scooting himself closer until his shoulder was pressed against Neil’s. “I don’t need your permission to ask a question,” he finally said.
Neil almost wanted to roll his eyes, but couldn’t find it in him in the moment. “You don’t want to ask because you think it’s your fault. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“It’s no one’s fault.” Andrew's jaw ticked as it clenched and unclenched. “There is something wrong with our brains. It is chemicals and neurons and irreparable damage. No one is at fault, unless you believe in God, which you don’t.”
“I could blame my parents. For giving me these genes, or for fucking me up so much that it’s worse than it otherwise would have been,” Neil said. He knew, though, that Andrew had no interest in placing blame on dead people, because there was no one he could kill about it. Besides, “That isn’t what I’m talking about, anyway, Drew. You think it’s your fault because I got the idea from you. But you should know better than anyone that I did it because I was trying to survive. I thought that if you survived that way, then I could, too.”
Still, Andrew said nothing.
“It was that impulsive decision, or it was downing every bottle I could find in the medicine cabinet, Andrew. I was terrified and miserable, and it was the thought of you that kept me alive. It’s the one scar that means survival—the one scar that's mine—so stop looking at it and feeling guilty.”
“I don't feel guilt, Neil. It's a pointless emotion.”
“You can say that all you want, but you can't stop yourself from feeling,” Neil whispered.
Andrew’s pinkie tapped Neil’s, then linked with it. He tugged. “I hate you,” he murmured. Neil leaned in close, mouth an inch away from Andrew’s cheek, and only when Andrew leaned into him did he press a soft kiss there. Andrew did not look away from the sunset as he flatly and very quietly added, “I was worried about you.”
Neil told him, “Thank you.”
Not only for admitting it, or for being worried about him in the first place. Not only for pushing him to get the help he needed. Not only for patching him back up and holding his pieces together when he first shattered in the bathroom of their dorm. Not only for not asking questions and waiting for Neil to talk when he was ready. Not only for all those kind, perfect things that Andrew did because he understood, because he had been where Neil was before, but for simply being there by Neil’s side. Being the unwavering force in Neil’s life that reminded him why his heart needed to keep beating—why his life was worth living, even after everything.
Andrew heard all that Neil didn’t say. He always did.
They did not talk again for the rest of the night—the comfortable kind of silence and not the heavy kind—and when the sun went down, they went to bed wrapped around each other.