Work Text:
Nicky, innocent and ignorant fool that he was, had never stopped hoping.
Andrew had learned not to. Aaron had been on the best way to do the same when they’d found each other and his life had turned around, so now he was in some twilight state of in-between that Andrew regretfully held too much brotherly affection for to knock him out of.
But Nicky…
Nicky should’ve learned. Should’ve learned when his parents sent him away the first time. Didn’t learn the three hundred times after.
And Nicky continued to not learn.
Andrew stared down at the memorial invitation on his kitchen table. At his phone next to it, vibrating with Nicky’s incoming call. The picture his idiot of a cousin had set as his profile the one time he’d managed to get his grabby hands on Andrew’s phone was grinning up at him.
It was a very stupid picture.
He declined the call.
The silence lasted for five seconds before Nicky rang again and Andrew had to decline again. And again.
And again.
Andrew accepted his fate and picked up the fifth call.
“Did you get an invitation?” Nicky asked without greeting or preamble, sounding excited – which Andrew could appreciate, family funerals were a reason for joy – and anxious both, the latter of which Andrew respected less.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Andrew drawled, turning the paper to see if it looked better face-down. It didn’t. There was a psalm on the back. Birds. Crosses.
Maybe it’d look better if he threw up on it.
“For the memorial. It’s at ho- At my parents’ house. They’re holding it after the funeral.” Nicky sounded like he were about to vibrate right through the connection and ruin Andrew’s morning. More than he already had. “I was thinking of bringing Erik.”
Andrew made a sound. It wasn’t even particularly judgmental, just something Nicky could use to pretend this wasn’t a one-sided conversation.
“I know. I know,” Nicky stressed, like the easily manipulated idiot he was. He was probably pacing in his and Erik’s suburban little wet dream of a picture-perfect home right now. “But they sent the invitation! It might be different this time, right?”
Insanity, Andrew’s brain supplied helpfully: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Nicky had always sounded at least a little insane.
Then again, Andrew was no psychiatrist.
And it wasn’t his funeral, it was Nicky’s.
Except- Ha. He turned the invitation right side up again, squinted at the name on top. Paul Wesson.
It was Paul Wesson’s funeral.
Andrew was secretly hilarious. Andrew was also very perfectly certain he didn’t know any Paul Wessons. Had, in fact, never even heard of a Paul Wesson.
“Who is this guy again?” he interrupted Nicky’s sermon about whatever he’d been going on about (Hope? Family? Wearing flower crowns and singing Kumbaya while praying and holding out the other cheek?), not entirely caring but uninterested in the alternative, which was listening to Nicky talk himself into a panic.
“Cousin of my father. My great-cousin? Something like that.”
“Were they close?”
Nicky’s pause was answer enough. “Very.”
“Nice.” Andrew crumpled the invitation up in his hand. Paul Wesson’s face was decidedly unpleasant to look at. The crinkles made it marginally more bearable. “Same circles.”
“Yeah.” Nicky sounded defeated, now. Andrew hated to admit that he liked that even less than Nicky overexcited or panicked. “But listen… I’m going. I’m bringing Erik because I’d like him there. Aaron is coming, he actually knew the guy. And I’d like it if you were there, too.”
“I actually can’t that day,” he said, despite not knowing which day it was and knowing that his calendar was empty for months. He hadn’t yet bothered making friends he hadn’t spent five years playing a stupid sport in college with. “A work thing.”
He had no work thing. He clocked out on the dot, never bothered to interact with his colleagues or boss or clients more than the bare minimum required to keep his job and win his cases.
He didn’t want to be seen talking to lawyers.
He was a lawyer himself, but that was besides the point. He was different. He had to be different.
He refused to entertain the thought that he had anything in common with the rest of them. He'd been cool, once, during his punk slash goth era. His co-workers were neurotic fuckers obsessed with ties. They were not the same.
Fucking lawyers.
“Andrew.” Nicky sounded chiding. “We both know you don’t have a work thing. If you don’t want to come, just say so.”
“I don’t want to come.”
“Well.” Nicky sniffled. As if he were about to cry, which was the worst possible outcome. Andrew sat up a bit straighter. Abort mission. Abort- “You don’t have to-”
“I’ll come,” he snapped, and could hear his cousin’s tears dry up, which shouldn’t be possible but happened nonetheless.
“You will? Oh my god, Andrew, that’s-”
“I won’t be nice,” Andrew tried to save his future self. “I won’t talk to people. If people talk to me, I’ll punch them. In the nuts. And I’m bringing my knifes.”
“You always bring your knifes,” Nicky said, and had the audacity to sound fond about it. Fucker. “That’s okay. All of that. Bring a flag that says glad he’s dead, for all I care. As long as you’re-”
“Now there’s an idea,” he mused. A flag.
There were other types of flags he could bring that’d stir those assholes up just as bad.
Hmmmm…
“What? Andrew, no. C’mon, that was a joke. Clearly. Don’t-”
He hung up the phone. The logistics were dealt with. And handling Nicky’s frazzled nerves was Erik’s job, not his.
A flag.
What an idea.
The idea got better the longer he thought about it.
Not a flag, but, like… a statement. A big, fat middle finger for the group of conservative holier-than-thous that frequented Luther’s life. Booty shorts and a rainbow flag around his shoulders, if he were the type.
He needed something to offend. Someone.
He needed a boyfriend.
And he knew just the man for the job.
Neil Josten had moved in across the hallway three weeks ago. Twenty-three days and nine hours, to be exact, but who was counting.
Andrew had watched through the one window facing the front of his building. It had been the middle of the night and he’d stood at the window because he was an adult who made his own decisions in his own apartment, which meant he’d been smoking and eating ice cream straight out of the tub at the same time.
(He had been kind of disgusted with himself, for that. It had made both things worse, not better.)
A van had pulled up by the front entrance, the obviously-state-owned kind, not the offers-candy-to-children one. Four official-looking men in suits had left the van, obviously pigs. Between them, a fifth one. Shorter. A duffle bag slung over one shoulder. Arms and face heavily bandaged, which Andrew had seen even at night and even from his perch by his third-floor window.
That guy… well. He hadn’t seen much. A flash of cold eyes when he’d raised his head to stare directly at Andrew, despite the fact that he hadn’t made a sound and hadn’t turned on any lights.
A mop of dark hair.
Ratty… everything.
The pigs had been carrying boxes. They’d disappeared through the front door, and Andrew had waited, hoping and dreading and heart racing-
The steps had reappeared on his floor, had stopped in front of his door. Had disappeared into the apartment opposite his, the one he’d known had been standing empty for months.
He’d dropped his ice cream in the freezer, had pressed his ear against the inside of his own door. Arguing, too faint to make out words. A door had slammed open. Then shut. Then again.
The pigs had left.
The man had stayed.
Andrew wasn’t particularly proud of his behavior over the next three weeks (since it could, in theory, by an unkind observer be interpreted as stalking) but he was also too invested to be ashamed. Adult life was kind of boring like that.
He needed a hobby. Or pets. Or both.
The man never showed his face while it was still light out. He did leave his house, occasionally, but only ever during the night. During the day, the door to apartment 3C stayed firmly shut.
Andrew wasn’t bothered by that. (He was.) He could be patient, when he wanted to. (He didn’t want to.)
That man… phew. Andrew had gotten only a short glimpse of his eyes (blue, he thought, definitely blue). It had been half a second, maybe less, but he’d replayed that half second thousands of times since then.
He didn’t know why.
(He knew exactly why, he just didn’t like thinking about it.)
There was no name on the door or down by the mailboxes, he’d checked. But the man did get mail. Andrew knew because Andrew once purloined one of the letters sticking out of his nondescript and unnamed letterbox.
Neil Josten, it said.
Neil Josten.
Neil Josten didn’t get mail as much as he got information. Directives. Court orders.
It was enough to put together a picture.
That fucking picture only made him more intriguing.
Witness protection, was Andrew’s logical deduction. It had to be. The man was shady as hell. Obviously most definitely at least criminal-adjacent. Had been through some shit. Had been dressed like a homeless drug dealer, the one time Andrew had seen him. Or a dollar store enthusiast.
Andrew’s apartment complex was exactly the kind of mediocre he would hide important witnesses in, were he FBI. Not bad enough that the units got broken into on the regular, but not good enough that the elevator always worked, which meant he had to lug his groceries up six flights of stairs more often than not.
He could’ve afforded to move, with how well his job paid. He never saw a reason to. The apartment building wasn’t great, sure, but nothing new locks and two deadbolts on the front door and another in his bedroom couldn’t fix.
He did like to splurge on the finer things in life, though. Those being his car and expensive ice cream. Period.
It was fueled with enough ice cream and caffeine to kill a small horse and definitely warrant a heart attack that he decided to act, two days after the call with Nicky and six days until the funeral slash memorial slash who cared. He hadn’t really put any further thought into his brilliant plan except for the original idea, which was that he needed someone that would offend as many people as possible and that said person needed to make the memorial-thing entertaining.
For Andrew, obviously.
Also, having something nice to look at for a few hours wouldn’t hurt.
Also also, he’d been waiting for a chance to talk to the neighbor. Him potentially checking all the boxes of Andrew’s sinister boredom plan was just an added bonus at this point, really.
Working on a case until late into the night had at some point turned into watching The Great British Bake Off, and it was in the middle of someone’s breakdown over their horrendously ugly cake that he realized he wasn’t someone who waited for opportunities to talk to hot neighbors with pretty eyes.
Andrew was someone who created opportunities.
So, like any reasonable person, he put his ice cream down, turned the TV off, left his apartment to march the four steps across the hall and knocked on 3C. Banged his fist against it, more like, but semantics.
It took less than a minute for the door to open, and there he was.
3C.
Neil Josten.
The hair was auburn, red in the low light coming from behind him, which was a problem.
The eyes were indeed blue, and somehow worse than what Andrew’s imagination had been able to provide over the last three weeks. He’d seen razors less cutting.
It wasn’t only the fact that they were so much prettier than expected that nearly brought him to his knees, though. It was also the way they took him in, flickered from one point to the next without lingering: his stance, the empty hallway behind him, his arms, his face.
Threat assessment.
The bandages had come off at some point. Underneath, Neil Josten looked like he’d lost a round against a meat grinder. Or been mauled by a blowtorch or something. Burn marks on one side of his face. Knife slashes on the other, looping high enough to cut through one eyebrow.
Andrew was too gay to not also notice how hot the man in front of him was despite all that. Or maybe because.
And that was all before his eyes dipped down and he realized that Neil Josten was wearing running shorts that covered only the topmost inches of his legs.
And those were some legs.
“Hello,” Andrew said to Neil Josten’s thighs, like a complete douchebag (he was making an amazing first impression).
He hadn’t felt as gay as he did right then since he’d been a teenager high on both hormones and actual drugs.
“What.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. It was also a very sexy voice. Deeper than expected. Slightly raspy.
When Andrew managed the Herculean task of dragging his eyes away from what would hopefully become the reason for his untimely death – wrapped around his neck and choking the life out of him, he was a man that could dream – and up to Josten’s eyes, he was still being dissected. Taken in. Deciphered.
“Hi,” Andrew tried again. Because. Those eyes.
“It’s two a.m.” Neil Josten told him unkindly. “What do you want?”
“You’re Neil Josten,” Andrew told Neil Josten, slowly realizing that he’d never felt or acted more idiotic in his entire life.
Neil Josten leaned against his doorframe, which made his shirt slip off one shoulder an inch and wasn’t very good for Andrew’s caffeine-overdosed heart at all. “So they say,” he drawled. “And you’re the guy who’s been stealing my mail. Found anything interesting?”
Should he press his hand against his chest Victorian maiden style? Would that help with his impeding heart attack?
“Andrew Minyard,” he introduced himself. It probably couldn’t get worse.
“Didn’t ask,” Neil Josten told him, and Andrew was officially in love. “What do you want? Besides snoop through my mail?”
You. In my bed. Enthusiastic consent. Nowhere to be for at least a week.
Andrew finally got a hold of himself and did not say any of that. Because that would’ve been crazy.
“Go to a funeral with me,” he said instead, which was much better.
Neil Josten’s stare sharpened, which meant it went from razor to like, a diamond blade or whatever other impossible thing was sharper than a razor. He straightened from his slouch and then there was a knife in his hand, suddenly, and Andrew had no idea where it’d come from.
Certainly not from inside those shorts (they were fucking obscene).
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Neil Josten asked slowly and dangerously and sexily. “Because trust me, it won’t be my funeral we’re attending.”
Wow.
Wow.
If Andrew managed to somehow salvage this conversation and make Neil Josten a permanent fixture in his life and if there was any chance he was at least somewhat attracted to men in general and Andrew specifically, he would need to go buy a ring in the morning.
The rest he could figure out later.
For now, though, he had to lock the fuck in. His future husband was looking slightly murder-y.
“It’s not my funeral. Or yours,” he hurried to add when Josten’s expression became stormy. “It’s a family thing. I don’t want to go, but my cousin’s bringing his boyfriend. I want to bring someone worse.”
Okay. He should’ve maybe phrased it… not like that.
Neil Josten, wonderful being that he was, seemed not offended in the slightest. He tilted his head in consideration. “What do I get out of it and why am I worse than your cousin’s boyfriend?”
Andrew’s eternal loyalty. Andrew on his knees for him. Andrew on one knee for him.
“Four hundred bucks,” he suggested (because he liked to splurge on the aforementioned finer things in life).
“For one day?”
“One afternoon.”
Neil Josten looked at Andrew as if he were crazy. Andrew was very grateful that he was only doing so now. He could’ve started five minutes ago, so this felt… merciful. “And the other thing?”
Why was Neil Josten worse than Erik?
“They don’t know I’m gay,” Andrew started. “Bunch of conservative racist homophobes. Problematically Christian.” Neil Josten’s face twisted at the last part, because he got it. “My cousin still thinks they’re going to some day suddenly accept him and welcome him back with open arms, which they won’t. I want to take the spotlight away from him. For the day.”
Josten pursed his lips at him. “You want to take the brunt of their hate? For your cousin?”
Andrew shrugged his shoulders, because that made what he was doing sound nicer than it actually was. “I don’t care.”
“It is still a very nice thing to do.”
“Maybe I am a very nice person,” he told Josten, and Josten’s lips twitched up.
“So it’d be just the fact that I’m new and you’re gay that’s worse?”
“Well. No.” Andrew motioned at him. “You obviously also have a thing.”
“A thing.” Neil Josten raised one eyebrow at him, which was – ha – criminally attractive. “What thing?”
“A criminal thing.”
Neil Josten’s second eyebrow wandered up. “You got that from stealing my mail?”
It was Andrew’s turn now, to level Josten with a deadpan look. Because really.
Really.
Josten’s expression turned amused, then mischievous. “I’ll have you know,” he said, lowly and conspiratorially and leaning a bit closer because he was trying to kill Andrew, “that Neil Josten has never committed a crime. Any crime.”
Andrew blinked. Once. Twice.
He’d guessed, of course. But to have it confirmed like this…
“Tell me your real name,” he demanded.
Neil Josten who wasn’t actually Neil Josten blinked too. Once. Twice.
“Tell me the real reason you want me to go to your thing,” he demanded right back. Which was fair.
Andrew wasn’t a coward, luckily. “You’re fascinating. I’m trying to figure you out.”
Josten’s expression told him he didn’t like that answer. “I’m not a math problem.”
“No,” Andrew agreed, heart beating right through his chest. “I’m not attracted to math problems.”
One beat of silence. Two.
Josten’s gaze narrowed. He opened his mouth, then stopped whatever he’d been about to say. Narrowed his eyes further, until he was downright squinting at Andrew. “What?” was what finally made it out. A question, this time.
A revelation, also: Neil Josten was an idiot.
Which meant Andrew was attracted to morons.
One moron, really. He didn’t think he had a type.
He flicked his fingers at Neil Josten. “Your name.”
Neil Josten’s expression was careful. Considering. He stuck his head further out the door and looked the hallway up and down, making sure they were truly alone.
They were, because it was still two in the fucking morning.
“Nathaniel Wesninski,” Neil Josten told him, and things fell in place with the force of a bombed building collapsing in on itself. “But I like Neil Josten better.”
Andrew had heard about the shoot-out, of course. As had the rest of the country. Nearly four weeks ago, the FBI had stormed a mansion in Baltimore and put a bullet into Nathan Wesninski, notorious crime lord but unpunished as of yet, due to a lack of evidence. That would've been a few days before Neil Josten had moved in, coincidentally.
Andrew was speechless for less time than the lag Neil Josten’s legs or eyes had caused before he nodded. “Neil Josten it is. So. About the memorial…”
There was a glint of something new in Neil Josten’s eyes. Something that, in any other situation and from any other person, Andrew might’ve read as interest. “I’ll come. Might be fun.”
Excellent news. Those were some excellent news.
For Andrew.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m not good with people. Might not be what you’re hoping to gain from all… this.” Josten motioned at the space between them.
“That’s fine. You’re not supposed to,” Andrew told him. “Just make the day as unpleasant as humanely possible for all of them.”
Neil Josten’s grin was beautiful enough to bring lesser men to their knees.
Andrew too, but he managed to hold out until Josten had said his goodbyes and closed the door in his face.
What. The. Hell.
Aaron | 07:15
Have you talked to Nicky?
Andrew | 07:17
Regretfully
Aaron | 07:17
He’s bringing Erik
Andrew | 07:17
I know. He’s an idiot
Aaron | 07:18
I’m gonna bring Kate
Andrew | 07:18
I thought you loved her
Aaron | 07:19
Shut up. She knows it’ll be horrible
Andrew | 07:19
?
Aaron | 07:20
I thought the more people on Nicky’s side the better
Andrew | 07:20
How sweet of you
Aaron | 07:20
Fuck you
Andrew | 07:21
Hilarious also, because I’m bringing someone too
hashtag twin telepathy
Aaron | 07:22
Like… Kevin?
Andrew | 07:22
Why would I bring Kevin?
Aaron | 07:23
Because you don’t have any other friends
Andrew | 07:24
Renee
Aaron | 07:24
You’re bringing Renee??
Andrew | 07:24
No
Aaron | 07:25
…
Andrew | 07:28
His name’s Neil
Aaron | 07:28
Hold up…
Andrew | 07:28
He’s my future husband
Aaron | 07:28
You’re bringing a date?!
Andrew | 07:28
You are too
Aaron | 07:28
You’re dating?
Andrew | 07:29
Not yet
Aaron | 07:30
Fuck’s sake and you thought the family memorial full of homophobic asshats was a good idea for a first date?
Andrew | 07:31
One of my brightest moments
Aaron | 07:31
You’re insane
Andrew | 07:32
He agreed to come
Aaron | 07:32
He’s insane too
Andrew had six days to prepare. Mentally, mostly, but also spiritually.
And fashion-wise. Fashionally.
What was he supposed to wear?
Black was the obvious answer. But he always wore black. And it was a memorial. He didn’t want to look like he cared.
He was about to call Nicky to borrow either a rainbow crop-top or an ugly Christmas sweater at one very desperate point, right before his brain very helpfully reminded him that he still needed to look cool. Because Neil Josten.
He couldn’t show up looking like he’d dressed himself in the dark, even if he realized on D-Day that Josten very obviously had no problem doing just that.
It was almost offensive, the way the bastard still managed to look good. Andrew was offendedly staring when the day finally arrived and he could march across that hallway and knock against that door again.
Josten wore hideous jeans that hid away everything good and nice in the world, converse that were held together by spite and what had to be an entire roll of duct tape, and two layered shirts that were threadbare and not only had holes but were inside out.
Andrew gave himself a moment to stare (offendedly!) while Neil Josten gathered his keys and pulled his door shut behind himself. His ogling was interrupted when Josten squinted his eyes at him, looking him up and down.
Andrew wrangled the urge to preen down and shot it dead because that was how one dealt with urges that made them want to dance around like a peacock showing off their feathers.
You look nice, Andrew imagined he’d say, standing with crossed arms because he just stood like that and not because he knew it made his biceps and shoulders look good. Or Nice outfit (he’d brought out the big guns, a vintage 70s leather jacket Renee had found him in some second-hand shop for a fraction of its original price, worn soft like butter plus very nice jeans plus extra stompy boots).
“Is there a dress code?” Neil Josten asked instead, squinting his eyes in suspicion and thoroughly trashing Andrew’s hopes of him being impressed by his impeccable sense of fashion. “Is this one of those things where people wear all black?”
“Yes,” Andrew said (having decided on black after all because it was his color and he needed to look his best), then: “You’ve never been to a funeral?”
“No,” Josten admitted thoughtfully. “I usually didn’t stay until the bodies were buried.”
Be still, my beating heart.
Andrew needed to seriously calm the fuck down. They hadn’t even left the building yet.
Hell, they hadn’t even left their floor yet. They were still standing in front of the door to 3C because Andrew was a loser peacock and Josten was blind on top of everything else, apparently.
“This is fine,” Andrew told him, even though at no point or time in history would Josten’s outfit have been acceptable for anything but the line in front of a homeless shelter. “Good thinking, actually. Got to set the tone before even doing anything. Passively offensive. I respect that.”
Neil Josten frowned down at his clothes. “This is what I normally wear.”
Well. That was just tragic.
“Who taught you to dress yourself?” he asked while herding Josten down the hall, genuinely curious.
“My mom,” Josten answered lightly. “While we were on the run. From the mob. I can make myself almost invisible,” he finished, sounding strangely proud.
Andrew snorted in response. “Not with that face."
Josten slowed in his tracks. Stared at Andrew, expression blank, then turned his face away, tension rippling across his shoulders and Andrew realized his mistake when Josten’s hand came up to brush against the scars on his face.
“Hey. No.” Andrew caught Josten’s hand in the air, suddenly too panicked for anything but the truth. He needed to rectify this, and now, and it didn’t matter if it made him look like a loser, because- “That’s not what I meant. You’re beautiful. Stunning. You can’t hide that, is what I meant.”
Josten frowned at him but didn’t pull his hand out of Andrew’s hold. “Right,” he said slowly, eyes shifting between Andrew’s.
Suspicious but not entirely unbelieving.
“I don’t lie,” Andrew said, holding Josten’s eyes. “I don’t say things I don’t mean. Remember that, yeah?”
He kept staring until Josten’s posture loosened and he gave an imperceptible nod, then pulled them both into motion again. “Also, nice reminder. You’re supposed to be my boy- partner. Don’t react like you just did when I compliment you.”
Josten scowled at him. “Yeah? What am I supposed to do, then?”
That… actually stumped him. He didn’t usually compliment people. Didn’t really talk to people, besides laying down the necessary ground rules for a quick hook-up in the backroom of some club.
“Like, thank me? Return something?” A sudden strike of genius, even better: “Give me a kiss.”
“Give you a kiss?” Josten sounded scandalized.
“Yeah, is that…” He realized what he’d said, froze. “You obviously don’t have to- If that’s not okay with you-”
“Not okay with me? What if it’s not okay with you?!” Josten’s eyes were blazing. “I’m not going to just kiss you.”
Andrew stared at him. They were still holding hands.
Maybe Josten was a fever dream. A figment of his imagination.
He couldn’t be real, that was for sure.
“I…” He swallowed down a sudden and unasked-for upheaval of emotion. “You have blanket permission. For today. And you can touch me. Shoulders and arms. Hair, if you want to.”
“Okay.” Josten nodded as if that settled the matter. As if his outburst had been the normal reaction, and not an outlier designed specifically to tear down Andrew’s defenses. “You can touch me too. Wherever. Just don’t come at me from behind, and no, like, sudden raised arms. Not good with those.”
“Traumatic childhood?” Andrew asked, but without his usual bite. Neil Josten screamed trauma.
Josten threw him a sideways glance as they reached the stairway. “You’re one to talk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Andrew gave back, not denying. Just curious. He’d thought he’d been too busy making an idiot of himself for Josten to get a read on him until then.
“You’re armed,” Josten told him.
“Of course I’m armed. I’m visiting family. Better to be prepared.”
Neil Josten nodded sagely. “I hear that,” he said, and Andrew kind of wanted to laugh and kind of wanted to smash his face into the stairwell.
He was pretty sure him and Josten’s versions of fucked-up families were worlds apart.
Josten spoke again before he’d made up his mind about how to react. “On that note. How unpleasant do you want me to make this whole experience for everyone?”
That was safe territory. “As much as you want. Go crazy, seriously. You can murder them, for all I care. They’re genuinely bad people. As long as it doesn’t make you uncomfortable and doesn’t get you in trouble…”
“With you?” Josten asked skeptically.
“With the police, dumbass.”
“Ah.” He got waved off for his concern. “Wouldn’t worry about that. I have a free pass for almost anything.”
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, endlessly curious.
“Story for later,” Josten told him with a quick grin. They’d reached the ground floor. “You’re still holding my hand.”
How very curious. He was, indeed. Andrew pretended to be surprised about it.
“Practice,” he told Josten when he held his hand out over the centre console as soon as they were on the road (the bastard hadn’t been impressed with the Maserati, hadn’t even spared his baby a second glance).
Josten’s finger slotted back between his, the knuckles rough and scarred under his hands when he ran his thumb over them.
Who would’ve thought holding hands felt this good?
Not Neil Josten, if the man’s fascinated stare down at their intertwined hands was any indicator.
Andrew gave him a quick briefing on the drive.
Who to offend: Everyone, as much as possible. Luther, most of all.
Who not to kill if he got murderous tendencies: Nicky, Aaron, their partners. Everyone else was free game.
Topics that would enrage everyone they wanted to enrage: Homosexuality. Immigration. Abortions. Veganism. Religions that weren’t Christianity. Human rights, basically.
Behavior that would hopefully kill at least some of them from burst blood vessels: PDA. Gayness. Homosexuality all over the place.
“Wait, so you’re gay?” Josten asked, at the very end of Andrew’s succinct monologue.
He had to look over to check if he was being serious. He was. They were also, for the record, still holding hands.
“Yes,” he said slowly. Are you?
Josten nodded thoughtfully. “So do you have, like, a boyfriend or something?”
Wow. He really was a moron. Andrew couldn’t believe he was going to spend the rest of his life with someone that stupid.
“Sure,” he drawled instead of Do you?, and Josten frowned before Andrew continued, “which is why I’m doing this with you and not him.”
Josten squinted at him as if he wasn’t sure if Andrew was being for real before he picked up on the heavy, heavy sarcasm. “Okay. How did you know?”
“That I was gay?”
“Mhm.” Josten’s expression was oddly intense.
“Are you having a crisis?”
A small frown appeared between Josten’s brows. “About?”
“Your sexuality.”
Josten snorted. “My sexuality does not warrant a crisis.”
“So you’re…”
Josten was back to staring at him in incomprehension. “Neil Josten. I told you. So how did you know?”
Lost cause, that one.
Andrew decided to skip the first trauma-ridden decade and his ongoing and continuously complicated relationship with his attraction to men and cut to the chase. “I kissed a boy and I liked it,” he said, because he was an icon.
The reference went of course right over Josten’s head. As had about fifty percent of the rest of their conversation and all of the subtext thus far.
“Sounds easy enough,” Josten said thoughtfully, and then, as if Andrew wasn’t driving and at risk of running them off the road and into a wall or something: “You have blanket permission to kiss me. Today. If you want.”
Andrew managed to not jerk the wheel because if there had ever been a time not to die, it was now.
He swallowed the first few hundred possible answers. Swallowed Nice and We should start practicing immediately and Will you marry me.
“Good to know,” was what he finally settled on, and managed to sound almost normal.
There was already a considerable number of cars parked outside Luther’s house. Erik’s SUV and Aaron’s shitbox were there, which was good. They’d probably had enough time to get uncomfortable enough to be grateful for whatever was about to come.
Andrew drove past all of the cars and parked on the strip of green right in front of the house like an asshole, misaligned and obnoxious.
Josten was watching the suburban nightmare in front of them as if he were about to storm the place and only needed to figure out what angle to approach from. “That’s it?”
Andrew nodded. I know, he was about to say. It looks painfully normal. Not like it’d be stuffed full of assholes you’d want to shoot in the face. But the truth is-
“Looks creepy as fuck,” Josten said, cutting him off before he’d even started. Okay then. “Makes sense you don’t like whoever lives here. Good thing we’re armed. Is there roof access?”
“If you’re willing to climb out a window. Why?”
“It’s good to be prepared,” Josten told him sagely, then let go of Andrew’s hand and got out of the car.
His hand was outstretched in Andrew’s direction by the time he’d made it around the hood, and he swung their hands between them as they made it up to the front porch.
“Should we, like, kick the door in?” Josten considered said door. He was being serious.
Andrew had made the right decision, bringing him.
“Tempting.” He stared at the door. Last time he’d been here, he’d gotten a lecture on misunderstandings. He’d punched his fist through a window and left, and told himself he wouldn’t come back.
Yet here he was.
Josten’s hand tightened around his, which was unexpectedly comforting. The door was unlocked when he checked. He didn’t ring the doorbell.
They went in.
There were maybe thirty or so people gathered, at least twenty of which Andrew had never seen before. They were spread out across the kitchen, living- and dining room, talking in small groups. Some were holding plates, which meant there would be food, somewhere.
Cake too, if Andrew was lucky.
He found his group of outcasts immediately. They were huddled together around the coffee table like a pack of pathetic lemmings. Nicky’s expression was already pained, and there was nearly a foot of space between him and his blond hunk of a boyfriend, both their postures unnaturally stiff.
Aaron and Katelyn were trying to hold a conversation with Luther and Maria, it looked like, but Andrew knew it was stilted and awkward without ever hearing what they were talking about.
Nicky saw them first. His face showed relief before his eyes found Josten, then flickered down to their hands and widened. Andrew regretfully had to let go of Josten’s hand on their way around the coffee table, and Nicky’s mouth fell open. He nudged Erik, then started slapping his arm in excitement, then whispering furiously. Most of his earlier restraint was gone, washed away by excitement (which was how Nicky was always supposed to be).
Andrew sent him his signature glare before giving the rest of the round a perfunctory nod in greeting and plopping down in the armchair they’d left free for him.
Six pairs of eyes were staring, watching as Josten gingerly sat on the armrest of Andrew’s chair.
“Andrew.” Luther’s voice was grating as ever. Andrew already wanted him to shut up and never open his mouth again, but he turned his head to acknowledge the man, if only to enjoy the way his expression had pinched. Even further. He’d gotten old in the ten or so years Andrew hadn’t seen him. “And who is that?”
Andrew nudged Josten to introduce himself. Josten stayed silent for a few seconds longer, enough to make the moment awkward, before he reluctantly said “Neil”, sounding vaguely offended he was being made to divulge this much about himself.
“It is so nice to meet you,” Nicky jumped in, both desperate for anything that’d distract his parents and genuinely welcoming of any new face. “I’m Nicky, Andrew’s cousin, this is Erik, my-” he faltered, glanced at his parents and continued with a pained smile while Erik gave Josten a nod in greeting. “Those are Aaron and Katelyn,” Katelyn waved with a friendly smile, Aaron squinted suspiciously, “And my parents.”
“Luther.” Andrew pointed at Luther, then Maria next to him. “Maria.”
“Mr and Mrs Hemmick,” Luther corrected.
“Nobody cares,” Andrew told him.
“I didn’t actually want to know any of that,” Josten told the round, which shot what little momentum they’d gotten in terms of communication in the head and left it bleeding out for everyone to watch.
Awkward glances were made. Maria wrung her hands. Luther looked constipated, although that was probably just his face.
Andrew could barely contain his glee.
“Not that he’s not welcome here,” Maria bravely pushed on (because they were usually oh-so welcoming; what a fucking sham), “but why did you bring your friend, Andrew? This is a rather private family matter, after all.”
“I’m not his friend,” Josten said indignantly. “I’m his husband.”
Aaron choked around nothing and started coughing violently, which was a thing of beauty. Nicky let out an ear-piercing shriek at the same time, which was a thing of agony and got them attention from the rest of the room. “His what?”
“To-be,” Andrew amended, because Aaron kind of knew that Josten and him hadn’t even been dating a week ago, and they still needed to keep things realistic. “And he’s here for emotional support, obviously. I’ve been taking the death pretty hard.”
Josten raised his hand to pet Andrew’s hair. He felt comforted in his grief.
The rest was watching the movement like hawks. The only reason Nicky wasn’t still shrieking was because he was holding his own mouth shut with both hands, but he looked like he were about to vibrate out of his bones from barely contained excitement.
“You can’t be serious,” Aaron exclaimed. “Andrew, you weren’t even dating, a week ago. And now you’re engaged?”
He wasn’t, not really. It was, however, a nice narrative. And Luther did look very red and very self-righteously offended on behalf of his institution, so…
“What can I say,” Andrew shrugged, and casually hooked one arm around Josten’s waist (holy shit). “With some people, you just know.”
His brother and cousin were gaping at him (the rest too, but it was less hilarious with them).
Maria was, once again, somehow the first who picked up the conversation. “We didn’t know you were also…” She trailed off uncomfortably.
“Gay,” Andrew offered, and enjoyed her and Luther’s reaction to the word greatly. “Homosexual? Queer? Bent?”
“Living in sin,” Luther finally snapped.
Josten sat up a little straighter. “Careful,” he warned, eyes flashing with something cold and cruel. Something that Andrew wanted to chase and poke and watch explode.
Nicky was closest to Josten besides Andrew, and Nicky was attuned enough to lean away warily. Luther was not.
“I will not be silenced in my own home,” he snapped at Josten. “Especially not when you come flaunting your degenerate-”
“Shut up,” Josten cut in with a scowl, aggressive and unexpected enough for it to actually work. “I don’t like your attitude. Your little cult is known for grown men fucking little boys, so I would be very careful about calling others degenerate.”
Andrew’s fingers twitched at that, dug into Josten’s side for a heartbeat. Enough for him to notice, to shoot Andrew a look, to narrow his eyes at whatever he found on his face.
And Andrew… shook it off. This little moment. Nearly a decade of therapy allowed him to do so, now, and he wouldn’t miss the horrified silence around him for the world.
It was absolute and wonderful. The color of Luther’s complexion, in particular, as well as the vein pulsing on his forehead that was hopefully about to burst and kill him every second now.
“Little cult,” Nicky whispered, sounding almost reverent. “Oh, he’s perfect. Another abrasive asshole. Where did you guys meet?”
“Why do you want to know?” Josten asked, back to being suspicious about the others’ interest in him.
“I care about Andrew,” Nicky explained, patient because he got two Minyards through their teenage years. “And I’m happy when he’s happy.”
“Shut it,” Josten told Luther, who’d been about to open his mouth again. “Or I’ll start talking about the Crusades.” Back to Nicky: “I moved in across the hall. Andrew stalked me for three weeks and then banged on my door in the middle of the night to introduce himself.”
Andrew turned his head to escape Nicky’s admonishing stare, which meant he caught a glance of his brother instead, whose face was doing its best impression of a question mark. Katelyn was openly laughing at Andrew, which on one hand earned her some respect but mostly put her higher on his shit list.
He usually had more game, okay?
“That was a week ago,” Josten continued unrepentant. “We’ve just been having lots of sex since then, really.” Andrew was going to die.
Josten, unaware or uncaring of his peril, side-eyed Luther in a display of horrible acting and elaborated in a way everyone but Andrew would interpret as provocative, “Gay sex.”
“That is lovely,” Nicky said before homophobic and unwelcome elements of their round could find their words, smiling gently at Josten in a way that said he was already part of the family.
Josten nodded. “It was very nice, yes. We have excellent chemistry. We broke both our kitchen tables,” he admitted, sounding very proud for someone lying through their teeth.
Andrew… well. Andrew tried very hard not to picture railing Josten on his kitchen table, even if him getting a boner over his boyfriend would’ve probably killed Luther on the spot.
But no. Not the time, not the place.
“That is all very nice,” Aaron snidely said, voice nasty enough to garner Josten’s attention, “and exactly what I want to be talking about, really.” His eyes were narrowed at his future brother-in-law. “Different question, though: What happened to your face?”
Well. There went Andrew’s enjoyment. He’d have to punch his twin, now.
“Aaron,” Nicky and Katelyn hissed at the exact same time.
Josten, however, reacted calmer than any of them, put his elbow on Andrew’s shoulder with casual grace to keep him in his seat when he made to stand and raised one (attractive) eyebrow at Aaron (who did not deserve that eyebrow), completely nonplussed. “I got tortured,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching in a manner that would’ve been unsettling had Andrew not been so very attracted to him. “What’s your excuse?”
“Ha.” Aaron’s face still looked very punchable right then. “That doesn’t work when you’re dating my twin.”
“You’re his twin?” Josten sounded skeptical, then squinted his eyes as if he needed a better look. “I don’t see it.”
Aaron incredulously pointed at Andrew’s face, then his own.
“Yes, I can see your face,” Josten sounded exasperated. “I’m not blind. But why are you so…” he trailed off as if lacking the words, then pulled a grimace and waved at Aaron head-to-toe in explanation, “when he is so very…” here Josten turned to face Andrew and his face remained almost the same but his mouth gentled and his eyes did a thing that liquefied Andrew’s bones, “beautiful.”
Andrew… wow. Andrew needed a moment. Andrew needed some fresh air.
Josten was either a better actor than Andrew had expected, or…
“I’m gonna throw up,” Aaron said, successfully ruining Andrew’s moment. He luckily got once again almost entirely drowned out by Nicky’s squeal.
“Oh my God Andrew! I’m so happy for you two!”
And he was. Genuinely excited, genuinely happy (because that was Nicky for you).
For one tiny moment Andrew even felt a little bad about the fact that he’d paid the wet dream at his side four hundred dollars to be here with him and deceiving his cousin in the process (was it deception, though, if he had every intention of making everything come true; especially the kitchen table railing?).
But then Luther started in with “You shouldn’t be, they are choosing to live their lives in sin-” and so on and so forth and Nicky shrank in on himself again and Andrew didn’t find it in himself to feel any regret when Josten bristled and tensed in Andrew’s hold and-
“So, Neil.” Erik was faster (sadly). Andrew couldn’t even be mad that he’d cut Josten off at the knees, because he’d done the same to Luther, in the process. “Where do you come from?”
Wind taken out of his sails, Josten did an about-turn and went from anger straight back to suspicion. “Why do you want to know?”
Erik looked to Andrew helplessly, then, correctly surmising that no help would be coming from his corner, simply shrugged. “Small talk?”
“You’re German,” Josten told Erik. It was decidedly not a question.
“Yes. Born and raised.” Both Erik and Nicky had lit up. “Have you ever been?”
Josten considered them a few moments longer before apparently deciding they harbored no nefarious intent. “Yes. A few years ago.”
“It’s a beautiful country, isn’t it?”
Josten shrugged.
“What were you doing in Germany?” Aaron jumped in, back with his bullshit.
“Hiding,” Josten answered pleasantly.
“From?”
“People.”
Aaron shot Andrew (of all people) a glare as if Josten’s uncooperativeness was somehow his fault. Or problem. “That does not sound suspicious at all. Are you some sort of criminal?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“How you define a criminal,” Josten explained patiently.
“I define a criminal as someone who’s committed crimes,” Aaron snapped, less patience.
“Oh. Then yes.”
More silence. Andrew had never enjoyed a conversation as much as this one (had never seen a worse trainwreck of one either, which maybe explained the enjoyment).
“Like… what kinds of crimes?” Katelyn chimed in for the very first time (and Andrew did not miss the fact that she probably correctly assumed there would be more than one kind). “Speeding? Tax evasion?”
“No, nothing like that.” Josten waved her off. “I don’t pay taxes. And speeding isn’t actually a crime if you don’t get caught.” He gave them all a moment to parse through that.
Which was good, because Andrew had a second to remember that he was a lawyer and the potential career-ending ramifications of being found engaged to a criminal. He discarded the thought, distracted by the way Erik’s eye twitched at the tax comment, accountant through and through.
“That being said,” Josten continued, inspecting his nails, “I did kill several people.”
“You what?!” Nicky exclaimed.
“I won’t tolerate-” Luther tried, and got summarily ignored (and drowned out by the lemmings' excited chatter).
“Andrew,” Aaron said admonishingly (maybe because he knew Andrew was cackling on the inside), and had the gall to sound very disappointed. As if he were the older, experienced brother.
Fucking poser.
“Did you just confess to murder?” Katelyn asked, sounding rattled, then shot Andrew a look. “Should he do that?”
He shrugged. “I’m not his lawyer. Probably not, though.”
“You’re a lawyer,” Josten asked, scrunching his nose in disgust (because he had taste and lawyers were boring), which somehow nobody caught in the general chaos. Andrew squeezed his waist a little tighter (in admonishment and apology both).
Josten seemed to forgive him for his choice of career a second later and turned to Katelyn. “I said I killed people. Not murder them. There’s a fine difference,” Josten waved his pointer finger at her. “Although I did also do murder, yes. But no worries! Nothing the FBI doesn’t already know and has pardoned me for.” He paused for a beat. “More or less.”
“I can only imagine what your parents must have been like,” Luther preached heatedly as if anyone was still interested in what he had to say now that they had someone actually interesting to try to pry answers out of. His grating voice cut through even Andrew’s amusement. “To produce a degenerate like you.”
Josten tilted his head almost predatorily, zeroing back in on the man as if his attention had never left. “Funny you should say that. My father was very Christian. Went to church every Sunday. Prayed before every meal. Carried a rosary on him until the day he died. I bet you would've liked him.”
That, Andrew hadn’t read about. He shot Josten a questioning glance, but Josten made no move to back down.
It stumped Luther, if nothing else.
“Did any of that make him a good man, would you say?” Here Josten sounded as if he were suppressing laughter.
And… well. Andrew had read the articles. He could see where Josten was coming from, as fucked as it was.
Luther, for his part, looked very righteous and also very wronged in his righteousness.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Katelyn threw in, and it sounded almost like a question. She was beginning to get it.
“Don’t be.” Josten waved her off. “I’ve had enough time to get over it.”
“When did he die, then? If you don’t mind me asking? You must have been very young.”
“Four weeks ago,” Josten told her cheerily. “Got shot in the face right in front of me.”
The silence had a distinctly horrified quality to it, this time (Andrew had heard enough of them to sample individual differences, now).
“How enviable,” Andrew sighed, because he was an instigator at heart and the more people argued, the less had had to say. “Jealous, Nicky?”
People gasped at him, this time, which was vaguely satisfying. Josten patted his hair some more, which meant he’d definitely done something right.
Nicky let out a nervous chuckle, eyes shooting between his father and Andrew. “He’s joking,” he told the round, as if anyone but Katelyn would believe that.
“He’s not,” Josten told everyone. “Andrew is hilarious, yes, but he does know which matters to treat with necessary gravity. Patricide is one of them.”
“We’re not killing my father!”
“Why not?” Josten tilted his head. “Is he a good father?”
Nicky floundered, stumped. Everyone else kept carefully silent.
“See, I don’t think he is,” Josten continued, and very casually produced a knife from somewhere (making out was not a want but a need, at this point). “I think he’s more like mine: a pretentious asshole with a superiority complex who thinks he’s untouchable…” Here he pointed his blade directly at Luther and grinned, a sharp, dangerous thing, “Until he gets what’s coming for him.”
Luther looked like he were about to faint. From fright and indignation both, which was a good combination.
They ignored him. Andrew plucked the knife out of Josten’s hold, and Josten scowled at him when he realized he wouldn’t get it back, which was ridiculous and kind of adorable.
“This is getting boring,” Josten told the rest, then pointed at Nicky imperiously. “You. Do you know people here?”
Nicky still looked slightly shaken, but nodded. “I am related to most of them.”
“My condolences. C’mon.” He clapped at Nicky as he slipped off his armrest and Andrew’s hold, which was odd enough to actually get his cousin moving. “Introduce me to that pregnant woman. I want to hear her thoughts on abortion.”
Nicky followed, dazed.
Everyone else watched them leave, then turned very judgmental stares Andrew’s way. Everyone but Erik, that was, who had a twinkle in his eyes that told him he knew what Andrew was doing, and approved. Not that Andrew needed approval, but if he’d had a drink, he would have toasted Erik in response.
On that note…
“Is there an open bar or something?” he asked Luther. “If not, where do you hide the good stuff?”
Erik was no masochist and therefore had no reason to stay with Nicky gone, so he excused himself and followed after the two. Andrew told Luther “Great party” and went in search of cake, and could hear Aaron and Katelyn scramble up in his wake, unwilling to be left alone with the fossils.
When Andrew came back from the kitchen armed with a spoon and an entire pie crust, Josten had already managed to make the pregnant woman cry. He looked both confused and satisfied about it.
The lemmings were crowding around him in a (protective?) half circle, expressions ranging from concerned to bemused. Nicky was clutching his imaginary pearls.
“Who was that?” Andrew asked, watching as a very old and very white man gathered the inconsolable woman in his arms to whisk her away, glaring at Josten the entire time, who wiggled his fingers in goodbye.
Nicky sounded stunned. “The widow.”
“Where do you even find people like that?” Josten sounded astonished. “I spent the last fifteen years on the run, and I’m more settled in reality than they are.”
The other four shifted their disbelief from the retreating pair to Josten. Josten shifted his scowl to the pie Andrew was slowly working his way through.
“Are you gonna eat an entire pie?”
“Got a problem with that?”
“You’ll get diabetes.”
“I won’t get diabetes.”
Josten’s scowl intensified. “I’m not marrying you if you’ll make me a widow in a few years.”
Andrew shoveled more pie into his mouth, then pointed his spoon at his would-be fiancé. “But what if those few years are the happiest of your life?”
“Did you miss the part where I said I was on the run for most of my life?” Josten scoffed, but his mouth twitched with genuine amusement. “Won’t be hard to beat that.”
“Sooo is the marriage a thing that is definitely happening?” Nicky jumped in. “Did either of you propose?”
“I will,” Andrew told him (he’d already bought the ring, after all), and something in his voice made Josten tilt his head at him in honest curiosity.
“We’ll do the official stuff as soon as the FBI has legalized my current name,” Josten added with a shrug, committing to the bit (that wasn't a bit). “Those things take a while. Until after the process, at least.”
“The process?” Aaron looked alarmed. “What process?”
Josten waved him off. “My father’s trial.”
“I thought he’s dead?”
“Oh, he is. I’m gonna ask your dad why he has so many sculptures of the same naked man hanging in his living room.” He patted Nicky’s shoulder. “Be right back.”
Nicky’s expression, when he turned back to Andrew, was both alarmed and enamored. “Where did you find him?”
“Across the hall.”
“Can we keep him?”
“I’m keeping him.” Nicky better keep his fingers off Andrew’s future husband.
“What is wrong with him?” Aaron demanded to know.
“Lots of things, probably.”
“I don’t like him,” his brother told him, as if his opinion actually mattered.
“Why? Because he said you were ugly?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Aaron exploded. “We have the exact same face!”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Luther looks like he’s about to take a swing,” Erik interjected mildly, directing their attention to where Luther did indeed look like he were about to punch Josten.
Josten seemed to think the same, because he calmly produced another knife to point at the man.
“And that’s my cue.” Andrew went to do damage control. He didn’t put his pie down.
And that’s how it went.
Josten meandered around the room, picking fights wherever he saw fit, and Andrew trailed after him to glare at people and prevent him from getting more than viciously cursed at.
Which happened. Quite often for a group of people so committed to not using the Lord’s name in vain or whatever.
He had fun. He ate his pie and confiscated knife after knife after knife (where was he hiding them?) and put his hand on Josten's waist or his back pocket in plain sight of everyone and was gay about how that waist (and his ass, Jesus fucking Christ) felt in his hold and watched as Luther became too busy putting out fires and being righteously offended to be a horrible father.
Nicky realized the same thing, after half an hour of Josten wrecking havock. Andrew saw the exact moment it registered, saw Nicky's eyes go from Josten to Luther and back to Josten, saw his shoulders loosen and his laughter at Josten’s latest antic become more relaxed, less anxious.
And that was the whole point, really.
Aaron didn’t like him, which was a plus. He kept sulking on the outskirts of their little group, unable to leave because Katelyn was very much enjoying Josten’s chaos.
What he did was simple: Tell people who didn’t want to know about his and Andrew’s relationship, detail their sex life in a way that was barely believable to anyone who’d ever had gay sex but did the job of scaring the heterosexuals alright. If he found openings for other attacks, he took them. If he found an opportunity to disparage Christianity, he took it. Joyfully so.
Andrew had the suspicion that there were a lot of reemerging deep-buried issues from the aforementioned religious father that had also hunted and tortured Josten and killed a bunch of other people, but it seemed to work out well. As long as Josten stayed blasé about it… who was Andrew to tell him to stop?
Things started winding down after a few hours, and Andrew found himself at the back of the living room, Josten at his side, as people started tapping glasses with knives and giving tearful speeches about the deceased at the front.
Everyone else was watching the speaker. Andrew wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes away from Josten had he wanted to.
Josten had turned his back to the room, was playing with the curtains and peeking out the window at different angles, a slight smile playing around his face.
“Staring,” he told Andrew and looked sideways, and the sun from outside hit his eyes and made them deep enough to drown in. His grin grew the longer Andrew stayed silent.
“Yeah.” He had to clear his throat. “What about it?”
Josten stepped closer. And closer. Took the glass of whiskey Andrew had been carrying around for over an hour and put it on a shelf next to them. Stepped closer still, and Andrew wasn’t breathing.
Josten’s gaze was intent as he lifted his arms and draped them over Andrew’s shoulders, their bodies inches apart. He was close enough to feel his breath, close enough to count the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose.
Where they about to kiss?
Andrew was ready.
Andrew was so ready.
Andrew had probably never been more ready for anything in his entire life.
“I had fun,” Josten told him, his grin having shrunk to something smaller, softer, just for the two of them. Then the fucker started carding his hands through Andrew’s hair, and he dissolved into a puddle.
Or something.
His arms raised on their own, found their rightful place at Josten’s waist. Squeezed, because they were allowed to, and Josten’s breath caught in the space between them.
“Yeah?” It wasn’t even a whisper. It was just pathetic.
“Yeah.” His eyes dropped from Andrew’s eyes for a fraction of a second. He swallowed. “Remember what I said about you kissing me?”
You have blanket permission to kiss me. If you want.
If he wanted. Did he ever.
“Yes,” Andrew said, steadier than he would have expected, and was about to shift his weight and tilt his head because this was happening, code red, it was-
“Let’s not do that right now,” Josten said, which had the same effect as emptying a bucket of ice water over Andrew's head.
Andrew shifted back, experiencing whiplash. Took his hands off Josten, because he must have misunderstood, must have read the signs wrong, must have-
Josten did not let him get very far. Josten had not taken his arms off Andrew’s shoulders or his hands out of Andrew’s hair. Josten was still smiling, the sight enough to calm Andrew’s panicked heartbeat.
“I do want to kiss you,” Josten told him, eyes flighty now and cheeks growing red and- He was shy. That’s what this was. Josten was shy. Josten was blushing.
Andrew raised his hand and tilted Josten’s chin up and… yes. That was not rejection, in his eyes.
“Just not in front of all these old people,” Josten explained.
Andrew swallowed heavily. “We could find a broom closet or something.”
Josten considered that for a moment before shaking his head. His eyes were sparkling with mischief. “I just earned four hundred bucks. Let me take you to dinner.”
“Yes.” Andrew nodded, very emphatically to really get his being-down-bad across. “Absolutely.”
“Lovely,” Josten purred – purred! –, back to combing his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “As to how we’re ending this shitshow…” He threw a contemptuous glare at where the widow had started praying in the middle of her speech. “How would you feel about the FBI storming this place and arresting everyone?”
“Spectacular. A worthy ending to this fiasco,” Andrew replied without hesitation. “I’m guessing you’re hiding them where they knives came from all afternoon?” His fingers slipped below the hem of Josten’s shirt, just so, brushed against warm, scarred skin just so, and Josten shivered in his hold but didn’t pull away.
“Not quite,” he admitted breathily. “They’re waiting outside.”
It took Andrew longer than it should have to process that. He had to pull back a few inches to be able to think, because being able to smell Josten was not doing wonders for his last remaining brain cells. “Say what now?”
“They tracked me down.”
“What do you mean they tracked you down? You’re not a prisoner.”
“Well…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Kind of? You saw the ankle monitor, last time.”
All Andrew had in response to that was a deadpan stare. He hadn’t seen shit. Josten’s legs had been out, which would have been sufficient distraction from a bomb going off right in front of him, let alone a fucking ankle monitor.
“Huh.” Josten’s brow furrowed delicately, then shrugged. “So you didn’t know. Well, I broke it. And got rid of the tracker in my shoes. I figured it’d take them a few hours to find me, and yeah.” Another graceful shrug. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” Andrew repeated blandly, and chanced his own glance out the window. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but between the two of them, Andrew was very obviously not the expert on FBI operations.
“Are you angry?” Josten asked hesitantly when it took too long for Andrew to say anything else, and his head snapped back from where his eyes had been fixed on a shape outside that was either a very deformed rose bush or a man with a gun.
“What? No. Horny, if anything.” Josten’s mouth made a small o-shape in surprise. “Are you gonna get in trouble?”
Josten stuttered a few incomprehensible things before his brain rebooted. “I- No. Maybe. No more than usual.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “They’ll want to interrogate everyone in case I said something I haven’t told them yet. I haven’t exactly been forthcoming with them.”
Pieces started falling into place. “You dropped little bits about your father all evening,” Andrew said, astonished, and wanted to kiss Josten’s impish grin off his face.
“Yeah. It’ll take those idiots forever to realize nobody here actually knows everything. Everyone will be in holding cells for hours.”
“You are magnificent,” Andrew told him in awe, and Josten blushed furiously and his eyes jumped between Andrew’s and then he suddenly darted forward and pressed a kiss against Andrew’s cheek, light as a feather.
He was even more red when he pulled back, but looked very satisfied with himself. Andrew was pretty sure he wasn’t faring much better.
“Don’t tell them you know my real name. Tell them you caught a glimpse of me from across the hall and it was love at first sight for you and you asked me on a date. And you’ve been too distracted by my raw sex appeal or something the entire day to listen to a word anyone was hypothetically saying about crime. Or the mob. Or serial killer fathers.”
“Exactly what happened,” Andrew replied, not even joking, and the flush extended down to Josten’s neck and the hollow of his throat when he realized Andrew was being serious (which was an absolutely delicious sight that Andrew needed to trace with his tongue).
Josten ducked away to hide his face between his own arm and Andrew’s chest for a moment, then resurfaced looking not much more settled but determined. “Tell your family to get on the floor when they come in, in case it gets too chaotic and they start tasing or tackling people.” He pulled out of Andrew’s hold with one last wry grin. “I’ll make sure to stand very close to Luther when it’s time.”
And with that he slipped away and disappeared between the people he’d made enemies of for the last few hours, and Andrew was left to stare after him, helplessly in love and inappropriately aroused.
He had two minutes to inconspicuously make his way over to his family and pull them away from the edges of the crowd and towards the back of the room, and got mild resistance (Aaron) and confused glances (everyone else) for his efforts.
“If, and I’m being purely hypothetical here, cops were to show up in the next five minutes, get down on the floor, don’t resist, don’t talk. You met Neil for the first time today, he’s my boyfriend, you don’t know him under any other name and you don’t know about his family or any crimes he confessed to committing in the last few hours. Capiche?”
“What are you-”
“Nicky.” Andrew widened his eyes at his cousin which made his cousin’s eyes widen in response. “Understood?”
“Yes? Yes.” Nicky nodded. “Get on the floor. No drama. Neil Josten is lovely, he would never, he did whaaat?”
“Perfect.” He gave Nicky a well-deserved thumbs-up. “They’ll let you go as soon as they realize you know jack shit.”
“Is he seriously gonna get arrested?” Aaron grumbled. “Here? He couldn’t have done that anywhere else?”
“I have never been arrested,” Katelyn told Erik, who was nodding emphatically. “How very exciting!”
“Oh man,” Nicky sighed. “And I had such high hopes for him. Does that mean you’re gonna be his prison wife?”
“He’s not going to prison,” Andrew said, but distractedly because if he wasn’t wrong he could hear movement outside, now. “He’s in witness protection. He’s gonna get everyone else arrested for interacting with him.”
They blinked at him. All four. Then they simultaneously turned towards the other group, who had ostracized them the entire day (Nicky’s entire life) and had been nothing but pretentious assholes these past few hours.
Nicky heaved a heavy sigh that was a bit melancholic but not actually sad. “I think that’s for the best, yeah. I’ll just have the two of you walk me down the aisle.”
“Over my dead body,” Aaron sneered.
Nicky only ruffled his hair. “It’s cute that you think you have a choice.”
And that was when a small army kicked down the front door and stormed the place with a shout of “FBI, nobody move!”
“Showtime,” Andrew told his lemmings.
For once, they did as they’d been told.
They kept him a few hours longer than his family because Andrew was a lawyer with an eidetic memory, which enabled him to make their lives significantly more difficult than they had to be. He had a few missed calls on his phone when he finally got his belongings back, and messages from both Nicky (expressing his desire to meet Neil under more friendly circumstances) and his brother (expressing his strong dislike of Andrew’s dating choices). Andrew left them on read.
It was the middle of the night when he made it out of the station he’d been dragged into hours before. He had no idea where he was, his family was long gone, and his car was still parked in front of the Hemmicks’ house.
Except it wasn’t.
His car was right in front of the building, taking up three parking spaces. And on the hood, twirling Andrew’s keys…
“Hey.” Josten watched his approach, smiling but tense. He tossed the keys Andrew’s way and Andrew snatched them out of the air without slowing his pace. “I stole your keys.”
“I don’t care,” Andrew told him because he’d crossed the space separating them and could put his hands on the hood on either side of Josten and crowd against him and feel as the tension bleed out of him, watch as the smile became genuine and reached blue eyes, crinkled the skin around them with joy.
“Hi,” Josten breathed against Andrew’s mouth.
“Hi,” Andrew breathed back, and hooked his thumbs into the belt loops on both sides of Josten’s waist. “I was promised dinner.”
Josten’s hands found their way back into Andrew’s hair. “I was promised four hundred bucks.”
“Did you notice,” Andrew said, as casually as possible while close enough that most of his brain was preoccupied wondering if Josten’s smile tasted as good as it looked, “that there’s no longer any old people watching us?”
“What a coincidence,” Josten said, and reeled Andrew in to close those last few inches of space between them.
And yes. His smile tasted just as good as it looked.
Better, even.
Nicky | 13:52
Just watched the news
Andrew!!!
Is he
Are you????
Wtf?!
Aaron | 13:59
What are you freaking out about?
Nicky | 14:00
Turn on your TV!!
Aaron | 14:05
Fuck
Andrew??
You’re dating a serial killer?????
You’ve got to be kidding me
Nicky | 14:06
Neil’s not a serial killer
Probably
The things they say about his father though…
Andrew, fr
Is he okay?
Aaron | 14:10
Stupid question
Have you met him?
Nicky | 14:12
Are you okay, Andrew?
Did you know about any of this?
Andrew | 14:21
Obviously
Aaron | 14:25
And you didn’t tell us???
Andrew | 14:27
Because that would’ve gone over well
He did tell you he killed people
And that his father got shot
You didn’t expect a normal family background from that, did you?
Aaron | 14:30
Fuck you
Obviously I knew he wasn’t normal
But that’s some next level fucked up shit
Nicky | 14:34
It’s on every channel
All over social media
Wtf the more I hear…
What kind of psycho was his dad?
Andrew | 14:38
Mhm
Aaron | 14:42
Next wtf aren’t those the same guys that basically abducted Kevin as a child and raised him in their cult??
Andrew | 14:47
Yes
They actually knew each other as kids
Kevin met him, recently
That was a fun conversation for everyone
Nicky | 14:48
Seriously Andrew is he okay?
His face is on national television
His face is everywhere
Andrew | 14:51
Neil says its better than it was before
But yeah
We’ll see
Aaron | 14:53
No way is anyone gonna employ him after this
He can’t keep leeching off of you
Nicky | 14:55
Aaaaaaron c’mon
Be less of a dick, every now and then
Andrew | 14:56
He’s actually getting a massive inheritance as soon as the case is closed
His father was loaded
Owns-multiple-mansions loaded
Nicky | 14:57
Hahahaaa karma is a beautiful
How about that, Aaron?
Aaron | 15:00
Shut up
I still hate him
Andrew | 15:02
Wonderful
I’m making you best man