Actions

Work Header

fragile

Chapter 5

Notes:

TW: references to nausea

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Andrew pushes his chair down the length of the desk and lifts the phone off of its cradle, stilling the red light flashing next to it. “KFOX 93.9,” he says.

“Ohmygod,” the voice at the other end of the line says. “Oh my god, is this Andrew?”

“It’s 3:15 in the morning,” Andrew says. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No!” The laugh at the other end of the line is tipsy, Andrew thinks. College-aged. Probably heading home from doing college-aged-people things. She says, “I’m just, like, a big fan?”

“Great,” Andrew says. “What is your name?”

“Cass!” she says, bubbly, young, loving life. Andrew’s stomach sinks like lead, dropping to his toes in a rush that makes his head spin. Silence roars in and around his ears like wind through a canyon.

“Um?” she says. This time she sounds very far away. “Andrew? Are you there?”

The next thing he knows, the handset is being lifted gently from his grip. The cord isn’t very long, so Neil ends up leaning across Andrew’s lap—Andrew inhales a deep breath of Neil’s detergent and maybe aftershave and then leans forward enough to rest his forehead against Neil’s side.

“Uh huh,” Neil is saying. He’s tucked the handset against his ear, braced on the desk with one hand, and is writing something down with the other. “No problem,” he says. “We’ll play it in the next half hour or so.”

A pause.

“Yeah, it is,” Neil says.

Another pause.

“Yeah, thanks, you too.”

The handset clicks into its cradle with a soft noise. Neil tosses the pen onto the desk and turns towards Andrew, cups the back of his head with one hand, rubs between Andrew’s shoulder blades with the other. He doesn’t ask if Andrew’s okay. He doesn’t ask what happened.

Andrew wraps his arms around Neil’s hips and buries his face against the front of Neil’s soft, clean-smelling shirt. He keeps the drape of his hold loose, but presses his nose closely against Neil’s sternum until he can’t see anything else.

It’s weird. There has been very little in Andrew’s life that he could reach for without getting bitten one way or another. This seems… too easy. He wants to be wary, but he’s too desperate for it. Whatever else Andrew may feel for Neil, this is maybe something existential—they’re pouring water onto parched, sun-scorched soil. Andrew isn’t quite sure what to do with the flood of it, the sheer quantity. He takes a breath, and then another. A third. A deep fourth that he doesn’t let go until Neil exhales too.

After a long moment, Neil says, “The Jonas Brothers.”

Andrew’s answer comes out garbled against Neil’s shirt. “What about them?”

“She wanted you to play a song. She thinks you’ll like it.”

“Did you tell her?” Andrew asks.

“That you secretly like the Jonas Brothers? I did not.”

Andrew huffs. “Admitting that some of their songs are catchy is not the same as secretly liking them.”

“Sure,” Neil says. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Andrew looks up, just so he’ll be able to see Neil smiling at him.

“Hey,” Neil says. He cups his hands around the sides of Andrew’s face gently. They’re close enough that Neil’s body is a sheer vertical plane. Andrew has to tip his head all the way back and prop his chin against Neil’s chest to be able to see him, all rust and shadow in the dim light. Neil suggests, “Coffee?”

“Sure,” Andrew says. It could be bracing. And a change of subject.

“Great,” Neil says, rubbing his fingers lightly against Andrew’s scalp. “Give me a lot of cream and no sugar.”

Andrew is still in the kitchen when the next song in the queue plays and finishes. He was scheduled to do a little stretch of talking here, but he assumes Neil will just play the next song. Instead, Neil’s voice fills the space around him, crackling in high fidelity over the speakers in the ceiling. It’s his three a.m. voice, a little huskier than his daytime voice, a little bit of a yawn in it. Andrew feels it shiver through him all the way to its bones.

“Hello, insomniacs and shift workers,” Neil says. “This is Neil. Andrew is busy making me coffee, so you and I can chat. Sometimes, when you’re listening to the music he’s playing for you, we talk about the worst things we’ve ever done. This is your invitation to join the confessional. Call us and tell us about the worst thing you’ve ever done. If it could get you arrested, maybe think twice. Andrew and I don’t snitch, but the phone records might. Here’s ‘Cool,’ by the Jonas Brothers. Thanks for the request, listener. You have more in common with your boy than you think.”

“Yeah, uh, ha.” The caller laughs nervously. “I’ve never told anyone about this before, but, um. I bought almost every single one of my college papers online.”

“Shocking,” Neil drawls. “And with so many tragic real world consequences. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Yeah, so—wait, can you maybe change my voice when you broadcast this?”

“No,” Andrew says.

“Fine, whatever. No, you know what, I can’t do it. Sorry.”

“Okay, it’s me again. I changed my mind, I can do this. Here I go. One time, on a family vacation, I peed on my brother’s girlfriend in the middle of the night. I blamed it on being blackout drunk, but that was a lie. I hated her. I did it on purpose.”

“Wow,” Neil says.

“Verdict?” Andrew asks him.

“No, you know what? Good for you. It’s simple, free, straightforward, and probably really effective. Good job caller.”

“Neil,” Andrew says drily. “I know you would burst into flames if you stepped foot in a church, but generally the point of confession is penance and attrition, not an enthusiastic two-thumbs up for pissing on someone.”

“Guys,” the caller says. A man, middle-aged, booze-drowsy drawl. “I know you’ll feel me on this one.”

“Go ahead,” Neil says.

“Look, I send a lot of dick pics. My female friends tell me I should be ashamed, but—ladies, it’s just a dick. It’s not a big deal.”

“No, you suck,” Neil says disgustedly. “Don’t be gross.”

“Completely gross,” Andrew agrees.

“So, let me get this straight,” the caller says. “Cheating and pissing on people is okay, but sending pictures of a good-looking dick is not?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Andrew hits the button to disconnect the call and turns back to see Neil leaning into the microphone. “New plan, everyone: if you get an unsolicited dick pic, send them back an unsolicited picture of your last bowel movement.”

“Colon health is very important,” Andrew adds.

“Yeah,” Neil says, “it’s always good to get a second opinion. Stay on top of your stool, guys.”

“I have a bad one,” the caller announces matter-of-factly. “But I’m not sorry.”

“You have our attention,” Andrew says.

“Yeah, so. My ex-husband got this tattoo on his bicep of the American flag, like, ripped all to hell after a battle, and he wanted it to say ‘your hero’ — and no, before you ask, he did not spend a single moment in an armed force of any variety, unless you count his douchebag paintball friends. This was late in our marriage and I obviously already hated him, so when he showed me the design before he got it, I did not tell him that they’d spelled ‘your’ wrong. It was the y-o-u-‘-r-e instead. Apparently someone eventually told him, because he asked if I’d noticed. At the divorce lawyer’s office. It was really big, too. We hadn’t signed the papers yet, so I lied and said I hadn’t realized.”

Neil starts laughing so hard that he has to push himself away from his mic. His chair spins him halfway around, but Andrew can still see him burying his face in his hands.

“You have broken Neil,” Andrew tells the caller. “So I think we can call that a job well done.”

By now, they’re regulars at the waffle place. The waitress, a white-haired force of a woman named Sharron, smiles her luminous gap-toothed smile at them often, calls them “boys” as a collective noun, and responds to Neil’s more exhaustion-fueled absurdities with a pause, a half-shrug, and an, “Uh huh, honey.” Once, to Neil’s delirious delight, she draws a little devil face with whipped cream on his pancakes.

They’re regulars in the parking lot afterwards, too, kissing with sweet, sticky mouths until one of them starts yawning and can’t stop or until Andrew dozes off with his arms around Neil’s ribs and his face against Neil’s shoulder and once—only once, but Andrew intends to hang onto it for as long as he lives—until Neil got irritated with Andrew for not answering the questions Neil was asking him. In French.

So, these days, Andrew tumbles into bed mid-morning with kiss-sore lips and the taste of blueberries in his mouth and half of a hard-on that he’s usually too tired to do anything about.

It feels delicate on one hand, but as solid as steel on the other. Precarious for how precious it is; unshakeable for how unflinching it is every time Andrew leans any weight into it. It’s everything. It’s impossible. Neil is impossible.

Neil is right there, every time.

The Blueberry Festival is held every year on a hellmouth. Everything is, unsurprisingly, blue. Andrew would give just about anything to Violet Beauregarde his ass out of there—except that, as they drift from booth to booth before their shifts, Neil’s tongue gets bluer and bluer and tastes sweeter and sweeter when Andrew tugs him down for quick, stolen kisses in moments that feel private for no good reason—when they stumble upon an isolated niche, after taste-testing weird candied blueberries, in line to guess how many blueberries are in a jar, after Andrew swats away the dangly blueberry earrings Neil is holding up to his unpierced ears.

His fingers get bluer, too. Andrew can’t stop looking at the smoky stains where they’re interlaced with Andrew’s white, untainted fingers, still clean because Neil had gotten around Andrew’s refusal to handle the berries by feeding them to him.

“I’m on air in fifteen minutes,” Andrew says quellingly when Neil starts moving towards a stand brimming with pies.

“And I suppose you want to get there early.”

“I am very punctual.”

“Fine,” Neil says. He presses a quick kiss to Andrew’s temple. “I’ll try to find something you’ll like.”

“It’s pie,” Andrew reminds him. “Just buy big ones.”

He lingers a little to kiss Neil, steps close and settles his hands on Neil’s ribs, tips his head back and feels the air move around him, the wide-open, small-town charm of kissing a boy in public, where people can see. The world doesn’t end. No one says a goddamn word about them, thinks it’s weird or extraordinary, has an opinion on the weave of Neil’s blue fingers into Andrew’s blonde hair.

They part, Andrew shoving Neil away and pretending like the open affection in Neil's smile doesn't pull at him like a magnet.

The sidewalk gives way easily beneath Andrew’s feet as he journeys back to the booth where the station has been set up. The sun is putting itself to bed, yawning in rose and aubergine across the sky. Andrew weaves around a group of giddy teenagers, patiently paces himself behind an elderly couple shuffling down the street, and ducks between a booth selling blueberry jerky and one selling light-up and inflatable kids toys. The station booth finally comes into view on the opposite corner, just across from a bungee trampoline place packed with kids. Andrew steps off the curb and then stops abruptly when a guy on a bicycle with a DoorDash bag strapped to the back almost runs him over.

Annoyed, Andrew takes a step backwards. The bicycle bell dings obnoxiously and way too late, more of a censure for Andrew almost walking into him than anything else. Andrew scowls after him and then there is a sharp, hot pain in the back of his head and everything goes black.

He blinks his eyes open and sees nothing but the fine grain of the sidewalk. His ears are ringing. His hands are scraped raw from concrete. He reaches for the ache in the back of his head and comes away with wet fingers that blur scarlett when he looks at them. Disoriented, he rolls over and is hit immediately with a violent, vicious roll of his stomach. The light is too bright—blindingly bright. He closes his eyes against it desperately, but it seeps through his eyelids. He squeezes them shut more tightly and it finally goes blessedly dark.

Someone is pulling at him. Andrew tries to open his eyes again, but the light is too intense. Organs that shouldn’t mind react in violent revolt, surging and rearranging, sending a wave of cold nausea through him. He tries to knock away the invading hand but misses, making contact with something that’s probably a face. Someone curses. Everything wobbles.

He’s half-upright, with hands propped under his shoulders, lifting him. Andrew says, “No,” and “Stop it,” but no one listens. He throws his head back to try to break someone’s nose with his skull. There’s a satisfying crunch, an almost incomprehensible flare of pain, and then, more darkness. Andrew tries desperately to keep his eyes open, to force them to confront the light and make sense of the shapes around him, but he can’t. They close despite how badly he wants them to stay open; every time they do, Andrew loses things—time, his voice, control over what happens to his body. It—

People are holding him down. His wrists are pinned to the ground. There’s a foot on his ankle, maybe. Andrew tries to kick out with his free leg but doesn’t hit anything. If he could just figure out when they were grabbing him, maybe he could stop it. But it just happens, changes from one moment to the next. There are no hands and then there are hands. You got hit in the head, Andrew tells himself. He tries kicking with his free leg again, but still doesn’t make contact.

“It’s me,” a voice says. “Calm the fuck down.”

Then someone is shouting, “—the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and the hands withdraw. Neil, Andrew thinks. That’s Neil’s voice, but different from the way Andrew usually hears it. All of its rasp is sharpened and lethal, the vowels twisting into some bastard of English and New Englandish, abrupt and furious. Andrew tries to open his eyes, but there’s a street light or a minor sun above him screaming sickly yellow light that makes his head throb. Neil is saying, “He obviously doesn’t want it from you. Back the fuck off.” There are no hands anymore, only Neil’s barbed, icy voice. Something unclenches in Andrew’s chest, just a little. The lights and shapes imprinted inside of his eyelids fade to black.

When his senses break through the surface again, everything is quieter. Nothing is pinned, no one is touching him. The ground beneath him is hard, too hot, gritty, unyielding. Everything hurts, but he can deal with that. He flexes his fingers. They’re free. He shifts a foot. No one stops him. Neil’s voice is close, flat and uncompromising. He’s saying, “I know. Just give him a minute. He’s been coming in and out.”

Andrew gropes towards the sound. His hands hit fabric, then air, then fabric again. He manages to mumble, “Neil.” It’s not much, but it seems to be enough. A hand finds his — warm and steady and scarred and familiar in a way that Andrew can cling to with more than just his flesh.

“Andrew,” Neil says, winding their fingers together, “some asshole threw a bottle of beer and it hit you. The paramedics are here. Can I let them help you?”

“Mrgh,” Andrew says, hopefully communicating his cautious agreement. He clears his throat and tries again. “Neil?”

“I’ll stay with you the whole time,” Neil tells him. “I won’t let anything happen. I promise.”

Words are hard. Andrew nods. The abrupt, awful pain of it starts to pull him back under the surface.

“Are you—” a woman’s voice starts to say.

Neil cuts her off. “Yes.”

“I didn’t—”

“Hey,” Wymack interjects. “You really want to try taking him alone?

The present drifts away, but Andrew doesn't feel the same sense of panic. Neil is there. Neil is holding on. Neil won't let go.

Andrew realizes that he’s in a cramped box. He can feel the closeness of the people near him—a knee lightly pressing against his leg, another just close enough to his shoulder that he can feel its warmth. It’s got to be an ambulance; there’s a bed beneath him. His fingers are still tangled with Neil’s, both sides of his hand pressed close by Neil’s palms. Neil squeezes and says, “I’m right here.”

There’s a lurch as the ambulance slows. Andrew’s insides rush towards his head like one of those fucking wave machines. He winces and presses his lips together to keep everything from coming out of him. Stay awake, he scolds himself. Stay the fuck awake. “It’s okay,” Neil’s voice says, this time close to his ear. “I’ve got you.”

Andrew lets his eyes close. The light when he opens them again is clinical, tinged with blue. Andrew feels his eyes sizzle against it like eggs in a frying pan. He closes them. Neil squeezes his hand. Andrew grips it back hard. Something beeps. Someone talks in a brisk voice.

It’s better the next time. Everything is still and quiet. The room is dim, lit only by the muted TV hanging on the wall. Andrew squints his eyes open experimentally and doesn’t feel it like a lance through the skull. He moves his body carefully, stretches his calves under the blanket, shrugs his shoulders, squeezes his fingers together and finds that Neil’s hand is still tangled with his. When he blinks his eyes open further he finds Neil in a chair pulled up close to the side of the bed; he’s sleeping with one arm folded under his head onto the mattress as a pillow. Their hands are too warm now, sweaty. Neil’s fingers are loose in sleep.

“Well, good morning,” a voice says drily. Andrew jerks towards it and winces when his brain swishes around in his head.

Aaron. Leaning back in another shitty hospital chair, his feet kicked up on the other side of the bed.

“What are you doing here?” Andrew croaks.

“I was in the neighborhood,” Aaron says. He drops his feet and stands, reaching for a cup of half-melted ice on the counter next to him. “Here, drink this, it’ll help.”

Aaron must have come from the city, so it's been...hours. It's been hours. Someone would have called him, after. He would have driven here. Andrew tries to focus on that. He takes a long sip of the water; it's cold, scraping Andrew’s throat clean of rust. He swallows, clears his throat, swallows again. “Thanks.”

“Uh huh,” Aaron says. “So. How have you been? Anything to share? Make any new friends?”

Andrew looks down the bed. Neil hasn’t moved. He’s still passed out, his lips dry and parted, his eyes moving rapidly beneath the thin white skin of his eyelids. His sleeve is shoved up inelegantly, revealing the jagged tip of one of the worst of his scars, a thick, gnarled red thing that Andrew has kissed the length of dozens of times now.

“What time is it?” Andrew asks, remembering his task. Focus.

“Eleven,” Aaron tells him. “Well, a little after.”

Andrew had been set to go on air at six. He’s lost all but a handful of moments of the last five hours. That feels... not the best.

“Oh, maybe you just haven’t heard,” Aaron says. “This is Neil. He’s been guarding you like he’s the fucking secret service all night. They wouldn’t let him in with you when you got a CT, so he apparently stood right outside the door in case anyone—you know, some opportunistic axe murderer or con man or Bible salesman—tried to weasel their way in there with you.”

“I know who Neil is,” Andrew says drily.

“I would hope so,” Aaron retorts. “Otherwise it seems like he should have lost a hand by now.”

Andrew squeezes that hand. Hard. It wakes Neil up—he squeezes back, blinks his eyes open, buries a yawn against Andrew’s knuckles, and straightens, grimacing at what must be a stiff neck and stiffer back. He's alert immediately, though, registering the presence of a third person with a dangerous snap of attention that releases and deflates as soon as he realizes who it is. Andrew assumes they've met already. He feels a sharp pang of disappointment that he hadn't been awake to watch it happen.

“Hey,” Neil says, “you’re awake. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Andrew says.

“Hungry?” Neil asks. “Thirsty? Cold? Hot?”

Fine,” Andrew repeats.

Neil looks from him to Aaron and then back again. There’s a question on his face when he says, so casually that Andrew could almost be convinced Neil wasn’t asking if he needed guarding against his twin, “I can get you more water.”

Andrew nods. Regrets it. It’s too soon for sharp head movements.

When Neil disentangles their hands, there’s an ache in Andrew’s fingers. It’s difficult to bring the digits back to each other, they’ve been separated so long by Neil’s. He makes a fist, releases it, spreads his fingers out wide. Makes another fist. It feels like half of something, incomplete.

“The others are here,” Aaron tells him after the door clicks quietly closed behind Neil. “Wymack, Kevin, Renee, Matt, Allison, Dan. Jeremy.”

“Why?” Andrew asks.

“I think they were a little afraid of your guard dog,” Aaron says, sounding amused. “I mean, they’d have been here anyway, but I’ve never seen them so cowed.”

“He is…” Andrew gropes for a way to end that sentence. It’s too soon for a vocabulary test, too. “A menace.”

“Listen,” Aaron says. “We obviously don’t have to talk about this now, but. I’m happy for you, okay? If you found some kind of weird thing with that feral, cold-as-ice motherfucker, then. Good. It’s good.”

“Uh oh,” Andrew says flatly. “I think I’m losing consciousness again. What a shame.”

The doctor comes and says things about aftercare and rest and concussions not being like you see in the movies, about taking it seriously and not trying to be a hero or go back to normal in the next couple of days. Neil nods attentively. Aaron watches Neil nodding attentively. Andrew watches Aaron watching Neil and tries to see him through Aaron’s eyes. Neil is rumpled but sharply focused, squared against the doctor like he’s ready to fight him over Andrew’s health—like he would throw down the paperwork in his hands and swing if the doctor said something Neil didn’t like. Hell, he probably would.

Andrew watches Aaron catch it all: the distrust in Neil’s voice, the half-grown-back nails on his hands, the smears of blood on his shirt that Andrew must have left when he reached for him, the scars peeking out from under his shoved-up sleeves.

He knows what Aaron is seeing, but he doesn’t know what Aaron is thinking.

Anyway, Aaron turns out to be right about the party in the waiting room. There are too many coworkers and/or friends to come all back to visit, so they send Wymack and Renee as some sort of ambassadors for the others.

“I’m glad you’re well,” Renee says quietly. “You scared us.”

“You broke a guy’s nose,” Wymack says.

Neil mutters, “He deserved it.”

“Yeah,” Wymack says. “I think we’re all very clear on your perspective by now.”

His voice is considering, his eyes calculating. Andrew puts a temporary stop to it, wincing exaggeratedly and telling him, “Try to keep your voice down, old man. I have a head injury.”

Wymack huffs a quiet laugh. “You can come home with me if you need to.”

“Or me,” Renee adds.

“But,” Wymack continues, “I think between these two you might have it covered?”

Neil says, “Yeah. I can. If you want.”

Aaron says, “I have an early class in the morning, but I could skip it.”

“Go to class,” Andrew tells him. “I’m good.”

Maybe great, actually, despite the throbbing pain in his head, the dry grit of his mouth, and the exhaustion that soaks him even after having spent the last several hours more or less out of it. Who would have thought, though—Andrew Minyard, spoiled for choice in caregivers. Friends who dropped everything to camp out for hours in the waiting room, a brother who would blow off medical school for him, a… Neil who would fight all of the above and the paramedics and the entire hospital staff for him, if it came down to it.

“I’m good,” Andrew says again, except this time he thinks he’s telling himself.

Andrew had driven himself and Neil to the festival that day, which means his car is still parked in the historic downtown, which means he refuses to entertain any agenda for the night that doesn’t start with driving it home so that hooligans and vandals can’t get their hands on it. Aaron points out that it’ll be past midnight by the time he’s discharged and rolled out to the parking lot, but Andrew’s not entirely sure why he bothers—it’s not like he’s going to change Andrew’s mind. For a minute, Andrew thinks Aaron’s going to make them call an uber but he caves and takes them himself.

Neil drives them back to Andrew’s apartment from there, winding them expertly through quiet, rain-damp streets that gleam red and green in vivid echoes of the streetlights. They make a brief stop to run through Steak n Shake for milkshakes and burgers and pull into Andrew’s covered parking spot just as the clock ticks from four digits to three: 1:00 a.m. The grease-stained bags are heavy in Andrew’s lap. The back of his head is sore when he forgets and lets himself tip back against the headrest. Neil looks wiped, too, his scarred hands wrapped around the wheel at ten and two, the skin under his eyes dark and thin, his hair a total fucking disaster.

They sit, still and silent, as the engine settles with a quiet click or two. Andrew realizes that they haven’t actually talked—they’ve been tethered for hours, but there hasn’t been time for checking-in.

“Hey,” Andrew says quietly.

He pauses, half hoping that Neil will fill in the blank for him, will say something like ‘don’t mention it,’ but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Andrew says, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Neil says. A pause. “I think I’m starving.”

Upstairs, Neil over-feeds Almond because he is a sucker and can’t resist the enormous, miserable eyes of a cat who hasn’t eaten food for a long, long five minutes. Andrew had moved to do it himself, but Neil stopped him with a single very pointed and unamused look; instead, Andrew spreads their food out on the coffee table and starts dipping his fries into his strawberry milkshake.

They eat. Every bite settles something in Andrew that’s only just realizing it’s ravenous. His hand gets heavier and heavier, though, his eyelids droop more and more, until it takes heroic effort to lift the last bite of his burger to his mouth.

“Sleep,” Neil says with a tangible finality. “Let’s go.”

“Shower,” Andrew tries half-heartedly.

“Nope,” Neil says. “Tomorrow. You’re dead on your feet.”

Andrew wants to argue for the sake of arguing, but he knows before he’s hoisted himself to standing that Neil is right. He’d need one of those plastic shower seats if he wanted to stay even a little bit upright in his shower. He can’t even take off his boots—Neil has to do it for him, kneeling at Andrew’s feet and carefully loosening each crossed lace, and then the tongue, and then grasping them at the heels so that Andrew can pull each foot out. He peels off Andrew’s sweaty, pungent socks without so much as a shift in expression. He stands behind Andrew and makes sure the neck of Andrew’s t-shirt doesn’t drag on his bandages when he tugs it up and off. He gets a warm washcloth and cleans the dried blood that made its way down Andrew’s neck and back. He takes all the dirty clothes to the hamper, pulls back Andrew’s covers, and waits expectantly. He is matter-of-fact and not coddling and Andrew would pay one million dollars to have met him when he was much younger.

The bed is soft when Andrew slides into it, the bedding cool and smooth and clean. He’d had ideas, earlier, about bringing Neil home with him after the festival, about rolling around on fresh sheets and tracing every one of Neil’s ribs with his tongue, maybe getting him off for the first time and memorizing every single tiny noise Neil made along the way. Instead, he’s climbing in alone, exhausted, saturated with a bone-deep weariness that makes just keeping his eyes open feel impossible.

“Stay?” Andrew asks when Neil starts to lay the blankets back down to tuck him in.

“Where?” Neil asks carefully. “I’m fine anywhere. Couch, the floor in here, bathtub in a pinch.”

“Bed,” Andrew says. “Sleep with me?”

Neil’s body hangs in suspended motion for all of a second as he considers. He doesn’t ask if Andrew is sure—he trusts Andrew to know what he wants and ask for it, a thing so improbable that Andrew’s tender head aches. “Okay,” Neil says. “Let me grab you some water and Tylenol for later.”

A few hazy minutes later—supplies on the nightstand; Neil stripped out of his jeans and changed into a ridiculous purple t-shirt Nicky had bought for Andrew once upon a time, merch for some coffee shop that loudly proclaims thirst come, thirst served—Neil climbs in next to him, leaving a healthy buffer between their bodies.

They stare at each other in the dark. It should be awkward or tentative, but it isn’t. Just flat and featureless with exhaustion. Andrew closes his eyes and the world goes dark again—except this time he slips into sleep instead of dropping off a cliff into nothingness.

Andrew wakes to the whisper of a gray haze seeping through the windows and an unrelenting pounding in his head. Neil is still there, curled up against the other side of the bed. He’s all hair and no face, the way he’s burrowed into the pillow. Andrew thinks, maybe, that he can reach over Neil without waking him and grab the Tylenol if he moves carefully enough.

He’s wrong. He gets all of one limb’s worth of weight shifted and then Neil emerges from his wadded-up pillow, his movements sharp and alert and focused.

“Hey,” Neil says. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Andrew says. The word cracks on a yawn that he stifles mercilessly into the back of his hand. “Head hurts. Drugs?”

“Drugs,” Neil agrees.

Andrew watches Neil twist, lever himself, get the pills, get the water—all tiny, mundane tasks that are exceptional only because they’re taking place in Andrew’s bed, for Andrew’s benefit. He takes the pills Neil hands him and swallows them, then downs half the rest of the water bottle in two gulps. Neil is barely more than a specter in this light, bathed in shadow and weak glow that makes him seem a little unreal. Andrew puts a hand on Neil’s ribs, maybe to make sure he’s really there, maybe to make sure he’s real at all, maybe just because he wants to. He can’t get his head straight enough to tell.

“Go back to sleep,” Neil says. “No insomnia bullshit tonight.”

“Wow,” Andrew says drily. “So effective. Why didn’t I think of that.”

Neil grins at him, a little slice of white in the early morning gloom. Andrew twists Neil’s obnoxious, borrowed shirt between his fingers and tugs.

“Are we cuddling?” Neil asks seriously. “What kind of spoon are you?”

“Big,” Andrew says. “C’mere.”

“So, what do you think?” Wymack asks.

Andrew isn’t sure what he thinks. He stalls. “I think you are losing your mind, grandpa.”

“You’re deflecting,” Wymack says. “You don’t have to answer now, just think about it. The listeners really like you two together.”

“The drunk, insomniac, all-nighter crowd likes us together.”

“I like you together,” Wymack says easily.

“Like I said.”

“Give it some thought. If it’s a hard no, then I’ll drop it. I came to you first.”

“Because I am your favorite?” Andrew drawls.

“Because you have seniority,” Wymack corrects. “And— fuck, I don’t know. If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have said you’d be the hard one to convince. But now…”

“Oh no,” Andrew says in monotone, lifting one bored hand to his chest in what is clearly not horror. “Have I been replaced as chief pain in your ass?”

“Never.” Wymack grins broadly at him. “Now I think you’re clinging to your apathy by your fingernails. I think you have actual fun with him. I think the two of you are fun to listen to. And I think he’d burn this place to the ground for you, so I’m expecting a confetti cannon of a ‘yes’ when I ask him.”

“He would burn a lot of things to the ground for a lot of reasons.”

“Deflecting,” Wymack says again, pointedly. “Should I ask him?”

Andrew considers. A show with Neil. The two of them, their time slot shifted a little earlier in the evening, entertaining the 10pm - 2am crowd. Let loose to do their worst, more or less, carte blanche for Neil to purr menacing things into the microphone and tease cutting comments out of Andrew. Most of the time when he’s on his own, Andrew just plays music, casts aspersions on the taste of his listeners, and occasionally delivers barbed comments about whatever he feels like, but with Neil…well, a lot of things are different with Neil. It’s somehow more intimate with the two of them and Andrew can admit that their listeners feel it, too. They call in more. They suggest songs for Neil to critique. They ask Andrew to weigh in on potential food combinations. On paper, that should make it a lot worse for Andrew, but it somehow doesn’t. He likes the connection this way—on his own terms, unseen, anchored by Neil’s presence. So, maybe it could be...good. ‘Fun’ is Wymack’s word, but Andrew supposes it isn’t entirely inaccurate. Just juvenile.

He doesn’t have a better word for the time he spends riffing with Neil, but there has to be a better option than fun.

“Ask him,” Andrew tells him. “We'll see what he says.”

“Here we go, guys,” Neil says. His mouth is up close to the microphone, but his face is turned towards Andrew. His voice is low and self-satisfied and makes Andrew’s breath catch when it wraps around his name. “It’s 10 p.m. The normies are still awake. Andrew, are you ready for this?”

His enthusiasm is infectious. Andrew tries, and hard, to tamp down on the thrill that dances across his skin at the gleam in Neil’s eyes, but he fails. Miserably. He never even stood a chance—he’d never been able to resist Neil, not for a single moment. Not since the first time Andrew laid eyes on him. Neil has always been unexpected. Always a little more than Andrew had bargained for. A little better.

Caught up in the moment, in the man, in what it all means, Andrew indulges Neil’s sense of drama and leans closer to the microphone. “The better question is,” Andrew says, “is this ready for us?”




Epilogue.

The adirondack chair is orange, faded from its original level of eye-murdering neon by years in the sun. The paint is still smooth, keeping the wood together and un-splintered, even if the edges are starting to peel a little. In the golden glow of the lights strung above, it’s almost a rich coral.

It clashes horribly with Neil’s hair, even though it’s only a few shades off from the highlights that twist their way through the new growth—three or so inches by now, long enough that Neil has been making noises about cutting off all the stuff they’d dyed.

Andrew is an expert on this comparison, chiefly because Neil is blocking his view of everything else in Wymack’s yard with his head as he leans halfway out of the chair to play thumb wars with Matt. Neil’s weight is heavy on Andrew’s right thigh because of the way he’s sitting—one leg over the arm of the chair, the other braced against the ground, neither of them doing anything to alleviate the solid heft of him in Andrew’s lap.

“Best out of five,” Neil challenges Matt. “You have an advantage. Your hands are enormous.”

Andrew pinches Neil’s side, pleased when he jerks and glares back over his shoulder.

“Andrew,” Neil says quellingly, “I’m losing here.”

“I’m losing feeling in my leg,” Andrew tells him. “Which of these is more important?”

Neil hesitates dramatically—an ostentatious display of weighing his options.

Andrew pinches him again.

“Fine, fine,” Neil huffs. He settles back into position, his ribs curving into Andrew’s chest perfectly, like they were made to nest together. “Value your personal comfort above my victory in athletic competition.”

“I always do,” Andrew says.

Dubiously, Dan echoes, “Athletic competition?”

Andrew’s leg is still asleep. He bounces it, jostling Neil until he obediently shifts his weight, slouching down a little, adjusting the fit of his body against Andrew’s, his hip rubbing against Andrew’s zipper in a way that Andrew suspects is not entirely innocent. Andrew slips his arm back around Neil, where it had been before Neil and Matt had drawn each other into a frenzy of grade school gladiator shit. It settles easily, falling into place in a way that's become habit.

In revenge for the rush of heat Neil had sparked low in his stomach, Andrew blows a soft stream of air at Neil’s ear and smirks when Neil shivers and squirms in his lap.

“Should we go inside?” Neil asks in a tipsily indiscreet whisper. “I can come up with a good haircut euphemism.”

“Control yourself,” Andrew tells him mildly. “We’re in mixed company. You can get on my dick when we get home.”

Neil grins at him, bright and beautiful and illuminated by the light and right here, curled against Andrew, pressed close, a familiar, cherished, and still miraculous source of warmth that wards off much of the autumn evening’s creeping chill. He shifts again, wraps an arm around Andrew’s neck, and presses a kiss to Andrew’s cheek. It's dry and sweet and lingers, the soft skin of his lips dragging against the bare hint of stubble.

He drops another one closer to Andrew’s mouth, but halts his hopeful course when the sound of leaves crunching and low muttering approaches. They both look up at the interruption of shadows against the fire’s flickering light—Kevin and Jeremy, linked arm in arm, each of them swaying with the drunken confidence that they're the more sober of the two.

“Guys,” Jeremy says, glancing surreptitiously back over his shoulder. “Listen.”

“The new guy,” Kevin says, not bothering to hush his voice.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says. “Maybe steer clear of him. He’s…”

The last time Andrew had heard this speech, they’d been talking about Neil. They’d been so wrong about him. Neil was—is—bruised, but not brittle. Battered, but not broken. So far from fragile that he’d been able to heft and hold so much of Andrew’s weight, so much more than Andrew had ever thought possible, even for himself.

“An asshole,” Kevin finishes. “He’s a real asshole.”

Notes:

The end.

Happy every single day, @willow_bird. You are incredible. I am so blessed to call you a friend.

Notes:

Thanks to @justadreamfox for, like, everything?