Chapter Text
Andrew is in Germany when the new guy starts. Wymack sends him an updated schedule with Neil written in slots that used to be empty or only penciled-in. There’s a (?) next to the name on the line for Kevin’s two-hour sports block. It’s written in right after Andrew’s 2am - 5am weeknight show, too, during those hours they could never find anyone to stick with long enough to develop them past bleary introductions of random music and a pathetic attempt to hype the morning commuters: Neil
Andrew says it out loud. Neil. Neil. Neil who is, according to a later email, now consistently covering Andrew’s slot while he’s on vacation. Is he playing music from the pre-approved playlists Andrew had set up before he left? Ten of them, contents not that different but the flows varying, three-hour blocks that require the host only to press play and occasionally cut in to give the name of the song or the band.
He doesn’t care that much about the job, but he doesn’t want anyone getting the bright idea to put on some sort of overplayed hipster shit and chip away at his late-night cred.
There are a few texts about the new guy, too, but the group chat is oddly quiet on the subject. Andrew gets out of the shower once to find that Neil J has been added to the thread. Allison introduces him with a weird set of emojis that Andrew assumes are intended as a grand entrance; Neil J says thanks and then nothing again, ever, or at least for the rest of the ten days Andrew is in Berlin. His little-used thread with Allison gets a notification only once: dibs. His more frequently visited thread with Renee gets: definitely a fox. might be one of yours. needs careful handling. Kevin sends: new sports guy you’re off the hook.
Wymack’s message is more formal. A full email.
To: Andrew Minyard
From: David Wymack
Subject: New Employee
For once in your life take it easy on someone. He needs to be here. Don’t scare him off.
David Wymack
Program Director, KFOX 93.9
There must be something about this guy that’s setting them all off. Some fragility that they’re worried Andrew will take pleasure in exploiting. Neil J is probably one of those lanky emo boys with the haunted eyes and the floppy hair and the pouty mouths, tiptoeing around the station, maybe crying every now and then, one dignified tear after another slipping down his pale cheek. Images of newborn foals taking their first wobbly steps come to mind. Little baby birds lifting their gaping mouths to the sky in screeching pleas for sustenance. He needs to be here, Wymack said. He’s one of us, Renee said. What they’re not saying reads as clearly between the lines as every gray bubble on his phone screen does: he’s fragile, he’s been through too much, he needs a second chance, don’t break him.
They all think his cruelty outweighs his apathy. They’re wrong. Andrew wants to lay eyes on Neil Josten now, wants to parse him and label him and set him aside. But if they think he’s going to get some kind of joy out of crushing Neil’s delicate spirit, they’re inventing that out of whole cloth. New guy is at best a curiosity, at worst an irritation.
Andrew doesn’t reply to a single one of their texts or emails.
But the first time he lays eyes on the new guy, his foot takes half a second too long to hit the ground. The guy—Neil, Andrew reminds himself—is up on the counter in the kitchenette, hands turned inwards and tucked under his thighs. He’s almost all silhouette against the bright light streaming through the window, graceful profile and lean muscles, and then he turns and looks right at Andrew, his expression as smooth as sleep. Andrew sees the eyes, a flat, unconvincing brown even from this distance, and the still-healing scar that curves over Neil’s jaw, and the fresh bandage peeking out from under his long-sleeved shirt. He looks not quite real. As ethereal as a fever dream. A goddamned fucking mirage. An enigma, wrapped in a mystery, inside of a thirst trap.
His first thought is: fuck Allison’s dibs
His second is: Lets see how easily he breaks.
“Neil Josten,” Andrew says, stopping short of tripping on his own feet to lean against the door frame. “I keep hearing about you.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Neil replies.
“Did no one think to explain to you how radio works?” Andrew asks.
Neil blinks at him.
“They can hear but not see you,” Andrew explains in a mockery of patience, “so it isn’t actually necessary to look like that.”
“Like what?” Neil asks.
“Like you are going undercover as a train-hopping vagabond. Like you fear a demon who lives in the mirror and will steal your soul if you look at one. Like you are dressed by color-blind squirrels in the mornings.” Andrew keeps his voice flat, impassive, lets each word roll off his tongue as precisely spaced as items on an assembly line. Each one drops into the air between him and Neil and sends ripples through the small room, ripples Andrew can feel the way he always does when he talks to someone normal, the psychic clash of person v. monster, the harshest vibe check, but Neil doesn’t seem to sense them. They affect almost nothing on Neil’s face except the right corner of his mouth, which pulls up and then down again. Up and down.
Neil asks, “Why color-blind?”
Andrew waves at the faded grayish-blue of Neil’s jeans, the faded grayish-green of Neil’s battered henley, the faded, frayed edges of Neil’s black-on-black-on-black sneakers. “Look at yourself.”
“Can’t,” Neil says. His brow pinches a little and his mouth slopes downward and Andrew thinks, ah, there it is, that was easy, and then Neil continues, “I promised my dying mother that I wouldn't succumb to the demon."
“Did she live to dig through thrift store clearance bins another day?”
“Nope.”
Andrew supposes this is what they’d all been afraid of—that he’d start talking about Neil’s dead parents within thirty seconds of meeting him. The offhand way Neil says it, though, that throws him. Before he can respond, there’s movement behind him and Matt’s bulk comes within inches of slamming into him. Only the vitality of Matt’s body, the pulsing presence of him, stirs Andrew’s clothes, but he steps further into the room anyway, into the deeper rings of what should have been the splash of Andrew’s rudeness into the calm waters of Neil’s face.
“Andrew,” Matt says sharply. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
“You’re early.”
“I am punctual.”
“You’re something,” Matt mutters. “Neil, this is Andrew. He’s mean. Don’t take it personally.”
“Good to know,” Neil says.
“Come with me,” Matt insists. He casts a suspicious sidelong look at Andrew. “I want to show you something.”
Show him literally anything other than Andrew.
Neil pushes himself off of the counter. He is shorter than Andrew had realized, almost level with Andrew himself, only a few inches closer to the impressive peaks of Matt’s spiked hair. He favors his left side, not wincing but taking short, careful steps that betray some hidden source of pain. Two of the twitchy fingers on his right hand are missing most of their nails, only little nubs grown back over the pink, shiny skin. The scar on his jaw is new and tender, still vivid against his wan complexion. A few tiny hairs catch the light along its length—places it must hurt too much to shave. And then there are the unconvincing contacts and the too-dark dye job.
Neil Josten looks like he’s been to hell and back.
But he’s not fragile. Andrew knows broken. This guy is something else.
What are you? Andrew wonders. There are no answers in the lifeless green of Neil’s retreating back.
—
At the staff meeting, Wymack says, “With Nicky and Erik gone, we have a soundboard shortage.”
“Very uncool of them to quit on us like that,” Matt says. “What could possibly be better than working here?”
“Germany,” Allison says drily.
“Yeah, but did they both have to go?”
“They’re married.”
Glumly, Matt says, “You have an answer for everything.”
“Anyway,” Wymack interrupts loudly. “These are the hours we need coverage.” He taps a large board with the end of his pen—several areas are colored-in red, chunks of time where there aren’t enough bodies to do all the talking and all the button pushing at the same time.
The room is silent other than some rustling. A number of people become suddenly very interested in their fingernails or the seams on their bags.
“I can do some,” Neil says after a long moment. “I’m a quick learner.”
“Fine,” Matt says, sighing heavily. “I’ll help too.”
“And me,” Renee adds, “though not on Sundays.”
“Great, I knew you’d step up,” Wymack booms. He looks at Neil thoughtfully and then around the room again—skimming over some of the employees who had managed to keep their enviable loner status by virtue of not having their summer-camp-counselor-friendly cousin present to drag them into unwanted socializing. Wymack’s eyes land on Andrew for a moment, linger, and then he says, “Neil will need training.”
Ah. Andrew knows that soundboard inside and out. Almost as well as Erik, their resident expert, had. Aaron had been good, too, before he left for medical school. As a teacher, though, Andrew is—
“Me,” Allison says, raising her hand insistently in the air. “I will teach him everything I know.”
“So he will know how to press the on button,” Andrew says.
“This is ridiculous,” one of the loners grumbles. “I thought this was going to be a serious radio station.”
“Why?” Wymack asks her.
Renee says, “Cross-training is always good. I’ll help, but I think we all know Andrew is the most experienced.”
Andrew glances briefly from skeptical face to skeptical face, soon landing on Neil’s. His eyes lock with Neil’s bland brown ones; they’re too flat, none of the richness and depth of walnut or earth or stone. Andrew itches to find out what’s beneath that artifice. He wonders if he could find out Neil’s real hair color, too, in glimmers at the roots, if he dug his fingers into the thick waves and got close enough to smell Neil’s shampoo.
Wymack drops his pen onto the table and claps his hands with finality. “So, we’re all set. Renee and Allison can train Neil on the soundboard. You won’t have to do anything complicated, kid. We just need someone to sit in the chair and push the buttons sometimes.”
Neil nods, but his eyes don’t leave Andrew’s. They don’t skitter or slide away, he doesn’t blink his way out of the contact and pretend it hadn’t happened, he doesn’t blush or blanch or clear his throat. He holds steady, undaunted by the threat that Andrew knows lives in his own eyes.
—
Kevin can easily talk about sports for his whole slot all alone, reciting stats and preaching strategy and teamwork to a faceless mass of worshippers, but his ratings do better when he has someone to back-and-forth with. Sometimes that’s Dan and they fill the time with impassioned and earnest debate. Sometimes it’s Matt, who riles Kevin up by asking him deliberately obtuse questions and pretends not to know the answers. Sports for Dummies, Allison suggests as a new title. Once it was Andrew—it had only taken the once to discover that his bored, monosyllabic responses weren’t exactly what the daytime sports-freak listeners were showing up for.
He turns the show on anyway that Monday, crams his knock-off Airpods into his ears, and sets to adding weights to the squat bar as Kevin’s cheerfully intense voice breaks through the fading conclusion of the last song.
Welcome to By the Balls! I’m Kevin Day, here with my fellow sports obsessive, Neil Josten. A lot went down at the Clemson/Alabama game this weekend and Neil and I were there to see it, weren’t we?
Andrew slides another 15lb plate onto the bar, clamping it on just in time to avoid dropping it on his toes when the rich, resonant sound of Neil’s laugh pours over him. Had he sounded like that in person? He’d been quiet, mostly—blending, avoiding notice, saying almost nothing other than what was necessary.
We were, Neil confirms. The buttery tone slides down Andrew’s spine, melting everything with its heat. You refused to buy me popcorn.
You were going to throw it at Alabama.
Yes, Neil says easily. The y rides his breath in a smooth arc.
Andrew closes his eyes. He opens them. He decisively moves to the other end of the bar and picks up the first weight. So Neil gives good radio voice. So it feels like he’s murmuring every word right into Andrew’s ear for only him to hear. That’s the whole fucking point. That’s how everyone feels. That’s probably why Wymack hired him.
Bad sportsmanship, Kevin chides. And disrespectful to the field.
You threw your beer.
Just the cup. And not at the players. And it was empty. Really, I dropped it.
You wept at the Alabama sweep in the third quarter.
It was a thing of beauty, Josten.
Something is different about Kevin’s voice, too, Andrew realizes. It’s as familiar to Andrew as his own, from the almost musical sway of its vowels to the clipped consonants of Kevin’s anger. But now it’s also—teasing, maybe? Comfortable. Confident. Usually, Andrew can hear the tone of it see-sawing between apologetic and defiant during Kevin’s sports talk; apologies for the intensity with which he approaches the subject, for the thread of shut the fuck up already he knows all too well runs through heads when he’s talking; defiance when he decides he will not, in fact, shut any fucks up. Even with Jeremy as a guest, Kevin doesn’t sound like this. There’s too much awe in his voice then.
But with Neil, well. Kevin doesn’t outpace him. Neil lets the sharper barbs bounce off of him, always coming back with some point that Kevin has to take on its merits, all in that bourbon and honey voice that sears through Andrew’s veins and then soothes the burns. The gym’s too-loud music pounds away on the other side of his headphones. He pushes himself hard. Pushes his muscles to their limits. Does an extra rep when Neil laughs. Adjusts his grip when Neil makes Kevin sputter in outrage. Rips his headphones out when his workout ends and chugs half a gallon of water and tells himself that the heat in him is all exertion.
—
Andrew plods through the last hour of his shift that night, unusually antsy, waiting for Neil to show up, waiting to see what happens when they’re face-to-face again, but when the door outside of the booth opens, it’s Dan who comes in. He checks the clock: 4:34 a.m.
She waves halfheartedly through the glass and then brings her hand up quickly to smother a yawn into the back of it. Her hair is messily tied on top of her head, her sweatsuit is very obviously sleep-rumpled, and her shoulders are hunched from exhaustion.
Andrew has no fucking idea what she’s doing here.
And neither does Neil, if the surprise on his face when he walks in a few minutes later is any indication. He frowns and says something. She smiles and says something back. Neil frowns a little harder and then seems to give up, shrugging and passing into the larger studio space that adjoins the smaller, darker room that Andrew prefers.
He queues up a couple of songs and stands, stretching out his aching back and shoulders, his legs still protesting from the punishment he’d put them through earlier. By the time he opens the door, Dan has settled herself into one of the plush rolling chairs and strapped a travel pillow around her neck.
“Why are you here?” Andrew demands.
“Keeping Neil company,” Dan says, cool and calm and typical Wilds.
“Neil is a big boy. Or are you still afraid of monsters under the bed?”
“Knock it off,” Dan says. “What do you care?”
“It is curious that you have never come to keep me company,” Andrew muses.
“You don’t need it. You definitely don’t want it.”
Neil mutters something under his breath but remains stubbornly and studiously focused on surveying the board in front of him.
“Maybe I get lonely, Danielle.”
“Or maybe you want to sharpen your knives on me.”
At this, Neil stills. Stiffens. It’s only a moment, but Andrew catches it from the corner of his eye, catalogues the jerkier movements of Neil’s hands on the board.
“How old are you?” Andrew asks Neil. “Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Twenty,” Neil answers flatly.
“Surely twenty is old enough to supervise oneself, Danielle?”
Dan’s eyes narrow but her mouth widens into a smile. She says, sweetly, “Oh, but Andrew. You never know what kind of monsters you can run into in the wee hours of the morning.”
She’s here because of Andrew, he realizes with absolute clarity. She’s here to stand between him and Neil, to mother hen, to protect poor, delicate, tragic Neil from whatever heartless depravity Andrew will inevitably inflict on him. It’s so pathetic he could almost laugh about it—almost, but not quite. Almost, but not if he thinks about it too hard. Almost, but he’s never done one thing to Dan Wilds and she’s still looking at him like a wild beast. Almost, but Neil’s shoulders are stiff and his movements are sharp and Andrew thinks, maybe, that he’s more annoyed by this than Andrew is. That he is chafing under the supervision. That he is less a baby bird and more of a hawk in his own right.
That he is, for some reason, not telling Dan to fuck off.
That he doesn’t think Andrew is anything to be scared of.
Andrew shrugs and steps back into his booth. They can’t keep this up forever. Someday, alone in the soft hours before dawn, Andrew will get a chance to see what Neil is made of.