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It starts, as so many things do, with a bet. It’s Aaron, Nicky, Kevin, the upperclassmen, and a few of the new freshmen players. Neil and Andrew have already fucked off somewhere alone, as usual.
He doesn’t have Andrew’s memory, but he will remember one of the freshmen eying him warily while whispering something at Nicky and then Nicky laughing and saying, “No, that’s Aaron.”
From there, it turns into a discussion of exactly how identical they are and how many people can actually tell them apart. Aaron confirms, of course, that they switch places whenever they feel like it. No one can ever tell.
“No one except me,” Nicky says. “And Neil. And Katelyn, right?”
“Yes to Katelyn,” Aaron agrees. “But probably not Neil.”
And then it somehow devolves. Matt staunchly defends his adopted son’s abilities. Renee quietly says she thinks Neil would be able to tell them apart even if they were dressed similarly. Finally, Allison and Dan take his side. He wouldn’t say they get along particularly well, but it’s nice to have allies.
It’s Allison who monetizes it.
“This is it,” she says, “this is the perfect bet. Can Neil really tell Andrew and Aaron apart?”
“How would we even prove that?” Matt asks dubiously.
“Aaron gets to try,” she says gleefully. “He gets to look like Andrew on purpose and trick Neil into thinking it’s him.”
And that--that sounds fun to Aaron. Neil isn’t the easiest to get one over on, so disproving his whole unholy connection with Andrew thing would be sweet indeed. And the bonus is, he doesn’t even think Andrew will be pissed about it.
“I’m in,” he says, confident that it will be the easiest money he’ll ever make.
“I’m betting on Aaron,” Allison says, making it official. “Anyone else?”
“Me,” Dan says. The few freshmen present follow her in raising their hands, some more tentative than others.
“Aw,” Matt says. “Baby’s first Fox bets. I’m obviously team Neil.”
“Obviously,” Allison agrees. “Nicky?”
“Team Neil,” Nicky says firmly. “Sorry, Aaron.”
Renee nods her agreement. Allison turns to the last hold-out. “Kevin?”
“What?” Kevin says, looking up at them.
“The bet,” Allison explains, tapping her nails on the back of her phone loudly. “Can Aaron get Neil to think he’s Andrew.”
Kevin blinks at her, and then at Aaron, and then at the group of them at large. “Are you still talking about that?”
“Are you team Neil or team Aaron?” she asks.
“I am physically incapable of caring less about this. But if you’d like to talk about something of actual importance, I have notes about everyone’s performance in practice that could really help you get your heads out of your asses.”
“So you’re abstaining?” Allison asks.
Kevin looks at her for a long moment and then turns to Nicky. “You’re leaning too heavily on your heel when you pivot. If you shift your weight forward, you’ll get more speed and agility.”
The group disperses very quickly after that.
. : : .
1.
The first time Aaron tries, he doesn’t put all that much effort into it. He and Andrew have been switching places very successfully for a very long time and it’s always been as simple as wearing each other’s clothes.
He can’t get ahold of Andrew’s armbands, but he lets himself into their dorm room and snags one of Andrew’s long-sleeved shirts, one of his oldest pairs of converse, and a pair of the ripped jeans Andrew favors. Neil and Andrew are, frankly, creepily aware of each other’s schedules and whereabouts on a daily basis, so Aaron has to wait for an opening when he knows Neil is home and Andrew is out but not at class.
Four days later he sees Renee snag Andrew in the parking lot on his way into the dorms. They chat, then Andrew nods and they climb back into his car and drive off, presumably to beat the shit out of each other in some kind of masochistic bonding ritual. It’s the perfect opportunity, though, so Aaron immediately jumps up and throws on Andrew’s clothes. He spends a couple of minutes making his hair look like Andrew’s and practices standing around like Batman for a few more minutes until he thinks he’s doing a pretty decent imitation of his twin.
He’s banking on Neil’s notoriously shitty phone usage to keep him from knowing that Andrew is going off with Renee instead of coming home. He thinks he has a good chance at that, at least.
Aaron forces himself to walk down the hall at Andrew’s speed: brisk but not rushed, no hesitations or false starts or misplaced feet. He swings the door open with a little more force than he would usually use--Andrew, he thinks, is always Making An Entrance when he walks into most rooms.
He quickly scans the room and finds, to his relief, Neil’s phone on the kitchenette counter on the opposite side of the room from Neil himself, who is watching an exy game with such rapturous attention that he could have been watching hardcore pornography.
Neil looks up at him quickly, then back at the TV. Excellent. This is working. He tries to think about what Andrew would do now. He’s always doing lame shit to take care of Neil, so….maybe something from the kitchen. He detours to the fridge and grabs a cold water bottle, then comes and tosses it at Neil on the couch.
Neil catches it smoothly, because of course he does, and looks quizzically at Aaron. It’s time to commit. He has to do something really unpleasant to sell this.
Aaron steels his face into Andrew’s usual blank indifference and sits on the couch next to Neil. Right next to him. He can smell Neil’s stupid ocean-scented shampoo. He can clearly see the small landscape of scars that decorate Neil’s cheek. He forces himself to really look at Neil, because that’s what Andrew seems to be doing all the fucking time these days: looking at Neil.
“Um,” Neil says, looking confused. “What’s up?”
Aaron shrugs, because as far as he knows, Andrew usually answers normal questions that normal people would ask with some kind of dismissive gesture.
“Is everything okay?” Neil ventures again, looking pained.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Aaron asks. He’s pretty proud of how flat he gets his tone.
“Because you’re hanging out here and I’m the only one home? Andrew should have been back a few minutes ago, but he’s probably off sparring with Renee, so if you’re waiting for him it’ll be a while.”
Aaron stares at him. His performance was flawless. He’s dressed just like Andrew. He’s failing to emote just like Andrew. Neil doesn’t even seem to notice this effort. He’s acting like Aaron just walked in the door wearing a t-shirt that says “Hello! My name is Aaron!” with an arrow pointing to his face.
“You’re an asshole,” Aaron says, annoyed. He levers up off the couch and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.
. : : .
Later, he stands in front of Katelyn and gestures angrily towards himself. “I look just like him,” he says. “I look exactly like him, as a matter of fact. It is literally in our DNA.”
“I know, baby,” Katelyn says. She’s curled on her bed, tucked into the corner, but she looks away from her books long enough to study him thoroughly. “I would have known too,” she says. “That you weren’t Andrew.”
“But how?” Aaron asks. This is great. He has an ally. She can help him.
Her eyes kind of unfocus and he can tell she’s about to go into some lovely but completely unhelpful speech about how she recognizes his soul or something. That does him no good. There is no black dye for the soul. And if it’s his soul she’s using to differentiate, then it shouldn’t be applicable to Neil. There is no way he and Andrew have enough between them to constitute a whole soul, and even if they did, Neil has known Andrew for like five minutes. Okay, more like a year, but still. It’s not the same.
“Something concrete,” he amends. “Something I can do something about. Other than reading the news to fuel my rage.”
“Um,” Katelyn says. She eyes him up and down again. “You’re a little leaner than he is, so maybe more layers? And he has that earring, doesn’t he?”
Right. Andrew’s helix piercing.
“Okay,” Aaron says, rallying. “Okay, that’s great. I’ll order a fake one. And I’ll grab one of his hoodies. Thank you. You’re a genius.”
He kisses her quickly, in gratitude, but somehow it ends up with them scrambling to put their clothes back in order when her roommate comes home.
2.
The second time, Aaron is More Prepared. He’s ordered a fake helix ring that is almost identical to the one in Andrew’s ears. He has surveilled his twin and figured out which hoodie he’s wearing most often these days, and then he’s found and ordered a copy of it.
About three days after the last time he’d tried, Andrew had barged into his dorm room, glared at him, retrieved his Converse from under his bed, glared again, and left. So, this time, Aaron orders an identical pair of the stompy boots Andrew wears all the time. He has invested in this now--literally, he’s invested about $120.
He’s already tried ambushing Neil in his dorm room, so this time he’s going to take it to a more neutral location. He figures it out when he notices that Neil’s going to the gym and running on the treadmill after class all the time. It’s like, peak Satan’s ball sack summer weather at the moment, and apparently even Neil has limits to his obsessions.
He leaves his dorm room door open so he can see when Neil inevitably jogs past in his tiny, really very indecent shorts. Aaron hates them. Mostly because Andrew seems to like them so much. He likes them much more than Aaron is comfortable knowing he likes them.
Before he leaves, he texts Andrew: are you home? do you have my bt headset?
The response is immediate, like it usually is. Say what you will about Andrew’s general failure to communicate with others--he answers texts pretty fucking fast. The answers come through in a quick series: y and n.
Perfect. He gives Neil about a 10 minute head start and then follows him down to the gym. He has the armbands on, for veracity. He has the boots and the shredded jeans and the helix piercing and the stupidly expensive black hoodie Andrew likes so much.
He also has sweat pooling in a number of uncomfortable places by the time he gets to the cool comfort of the gym. How does Andrew dress like this all the time? Is it heatstroke that makes him so surly?
This time he doesn’t make the mistake of approaching directly. Instead, he goes over to Andrew’s favorite weight bench and lies on it, staring at the ceiling. Neil’s steps falter a couple of times--Aaron thinks he’s probably looking over and, like, lusting after him or something. Gross.
But that does give him an idea--if he was really Andrew, he’d probably be (grossly) lusting after Neil, too. He turns his head to the side so he can watch Neil run. The shorts really are obscene. He tries to pretend to admire the view of Neil’s ass, which...honestly isn’t that hard, from a strictly objective standpoint. He can appreciate the musculature without wanting to touch it or anything. Maybe he should take up running.
He looks up at Neil’s face and sees that he’s watching him, looking confused.
“Hey,” Neil says, barely even out of breath. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Aaron says flatly. “Bored.”
Was that too much inflection? Maybe it was too much inflection.
“Okay,” Neil says. He seems to hesitate and then hops onto the sides of the treadmill, leaving it spinning dangerously fast beneath him. “Do you want, uh, a spotter? Or something?”
Aaron relaxes a little. It’s working this time. He knew it was just a matter of the details. He’s got this.
Or maybe it’s a trick question. Did Andrew already work out today?
“No,” Aaron says, after a moment of deliberation. He’ll ask Neil to go to the roof. But he’s being Andrew, so he will distill it down until it’s free of any manners or actual interest in what other people want. “Roof.”
“Okay,” Neil says. “We don’t usually go up on this one. Andrew says it’s covered in bird shit. The science building next door is pretty okay.”
Aaron stares. How the fuck. He could send a selfie of himself right now to every person on their team and literally every one of them would assume it was a picture of Andrew.
“Nevermind,” he says glumly. “I forgot I have to. Homework.”
. : : .
Katelyn had been no help. He goes to Allison instead.
“Oh,” she says when she opens her door. “Hey, Andrew.”
“Thank you,” Aaron says, huffing in exasperation.
“You’re welcome,” she says archly. And then, “For what? Neil’s haircut? Because I think I could do a lot more if he let me take him to--”
“No,” Aaron says. “For knowing I’m Andrew.”
Allison squints at him. “Aaron?”
Aaron sighs. “It didn’t work. The first time I half-assed it, I can admit it. But this time,” he gestures from his feet to his head, “I have the boots, the armbands, the earring. I even bought the hoodie. He still knew. I need the opinion of an objective third party.”
“Hmmm. Come in.”
She stands him in the middle of the living room and walks around him in slow circles, lifting his arms out to his side, then pushing them back down. She carefully rearranges his hair with her shiny orange nails. She kicks his feet apart wider. She steps back and considers him carefully, then steps forward--way too close--and smells him.
“That’s it,” she says, sounding satisfied. “You don’t smell like cigarettes.”
Oh god. Aaron is an idiot. Neil spends all his goddamn time with his nose glued to Andrew’s fucking cigarettes. How could he have forgotten that?
“Cigarettes,” he says grimly. “Yes. I’ve got this.”
3.
Aaron doesn’t even have to do research to figure out which brand of cigarettes Andrew smokes. He just goes to the corner store and points at the box he’s watched his brother carry around for years. He waits until game day, because they’ll all be wearing Fox colors and probably even Neil will realize it’s a little weird that Aaron keeps dressing like Andrew if he does it too many times.
He knows that Neil has an 11am class in the building next to him (for normal reasons) so he just makes sure he’s out of his classroom first and semi-creepily lurks until he sees Neil come out and head to the coffee shop he usually goes to. He pulls the armbands he’s been keeping in his backpack for just-in-case reasons and slips them on. Once they’re secure he pulls the cigarettes and lighter out of his backpack and lights one. His first drag is too long and it makes him cough until he feels like he’s irreparably damaged the structural integrity of his lungs.
Fuck it. He just has to smell like cigarettes. He doesn’t need to taste like them. He’s not that dedicated to this cause. He quickly lights three and then waves them around himself, making sure to step into the smoke a few times. It’s like saging a house, except it smells bad and it’s going to make his brother die of lung cancer.
This entire thing has shaken Aaron’s confidence in his ability to be Andrew, so he gives himself a quick pep talk, bounces on the balls of his feet a few times, and then steps into the coffee shop in time to see Neil take one of the small tables in the corner. Neil, with that ridiculous radar he seems to have, looks up and catches Aaron’s eye.
Aaron has been practicing for this, too--he gives Neil Andrew’s signature two-finger salute and then uses the fingers to point at the register. Then he buys the most obscenely sugary coffee they have on offer.
When he has it in hand he winds through the other tables and sits across from Neil, who smiles at him tentatively but doesn’t say anything.
What would Andrew do here?
Probably nothing.
Aaron turns his attention to his coffee and stirs it, making sure to lean well over the table so that the scent of cigarette smoke will drift across it to Neil.
“So,” Neil says eventually. “How’s your day?”
Is this the kind of idiotic small talk they make while everyone thinks they’re off having deep, intense conversations?
“Fine,” Aaron says. Andrew hates small talk, he decides. Andrew would say something cutting. “Did you make anyone want to kill you today?”
“Probably,” Neil says lightly, sounding amused. “It is a day that ends in y.”
“You should really try being less obnoxious.”
Was that too mean? Was it too Aaron? He’s heard Andrew tell Neil that he hates him, that he’s an idiot, that he’s the worst, that he has an attitude problem, but has he ever used the word obnoxious? Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard Andrew say he likes anything at all about Neil. How can that be possible if Neil is this fucking confident in their relationship?
“I didn’t know you cared,” Neil says, still amused.
Uh oh. Is this where he’s supposed to say something loving and affectionate? He tries to think of something fond Andrew would say to Neil. Is that what ‘you’re an idiot’ is? Huh.
He gives Neil one of the dismissive looks he’s practiced in the mirror.
“Game tonight,” he says, deciding to totally avoid the affection issue by changing the subject. Classic Andrew.
“Yeah,” Neil says, brightening. “It’s going to be great. Do you think you’ll be on Vasquez or Shields?”
Vasquez and Shields. Orlando’s strikers. Andrew would need to know who they were, of course, and Aaron has no doubt that Andrew has both communed with their spirits in order to know everything about how they’ll play and also will give no fucks about them and put in minimal effort. The real problem is that Andrew, as the goalie, would never be “on” one of the strikers. He’s on all the strikers. He’s on everyone.
Neil knows who he is. And for some reason, Neil is playing along. No--not playing along. Being friendly. That’s weird.
Aaron shrugs. “I have to go,” he says. “Class.”
“Sure,” Neil says. He turns his attention back to his Russian book as Aaron walks away.
. : : .
Nicky had bet against him, so Aaron goes to him first this time.
“Why?” he asks, flopping onto Nicky’s bed. “How?”
“How what?” Nicky asks.
“How does Neil tell us apart? How do you tell us apart?”
“Ohhh,” Nicky says, grinning. “The bet. Not going well?”
“I tried three times,” Aaron moans. “He always knows. How does he know?”
“He knows the same way I know,” Nicky answers. “The same way Katelyn knows.”
“Psychic powers?”
“Familiarity,” Nicky corrects. “And love.”
Aaron cracks an eye at him and glares. “This is not about love.”
“Of course it is,” Nicky says. “If Katelyn had a twin, don’t you think you’d be able to tell them apart?”
Aaron pauses, considering. He thinks...probably yes. Probably there is something intrinsically Katelyn that Aaron would recognize anywhere. He refuses to believe that’s how Neil is doing it.
“Ew,” Nicky says suddenly. “Are you having one of those weird hetero fantasies about fucking twins?”
“No,” Aaron says indignantly. Well...maybe? No. Definitely not.
“Neil loves Andrew,” Nicky says gently. “Of course he can tell you apart. You’re very different.”
“We’re identical,” Aaron counters.
“Yeah, but that’s not everything. It’s just the surface layer.”
“That’s not helpful,” Aaron says. “How do I get him to think I’m Andrew?”
“Oh,” Nicky says brightly. “That’s easy.”
Aaron opens both of his eyes and looks at Nicky warily. This sounds too good to be true.
“Fall in love with him. Trust him with your life. Be willing to do literally anything to protect him.”
Aaron considers this. “I hate you.”
“Good start,” Nicky says. “Try that on him next time.”
4.
This time, magically, Neil comes to him. He and Andrew had had a rough therapy session with Bee and Andrew had stomped off to the lounge as soon as they reached the stadium, probably intending to sit out the entirety of practice.
Aaron, because he is the conscientious twin who knows what ‘rules’ are and is at least a little bit of a team player, goes to the locker room to change. He’s just put on the shorts and Fox shirt they wear under their padding when Neil comes out from the bathroom.
“Oh,” Neil says, stopping short. “Hey.”
This is a perfect opportunity. Neil is even approaching him for once. But Aaron doesn’t have it in him to care right now. He sits heavily onto the bench and ignores him.
Apparently this was the right move. Neil comes and sits on the bench across from him, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Bad session?” Neil asks carefully.
Aaron glares at him.
“I know it sucks sometimes,” Neil says. “But I think it’s really good for you. For both of you.”
“Oh, really?” Aaron scoffs. “You think we can just hug it out and fix everything?”
“No,” Neil says slowly. “Of course not. It’ll take work. But it’s worth it. Isn’t it?”
Is this how Neil talks about Aaron when he’s not around? Is he giving Andrew pep talks about the importance of his relationship with his brother? Why does he even care? Nothing Neil has ever done has given Aaron the impression that he sees Aaron as anything other than an obstacle to occupying all of Andrew’s time and attention.
But then, on the other hand, Katelyn had said she’d gotten the idea about joint therapy from Neil, way back before Baltimore. Maybe Neil actually does give a shit. Aaron can’t imagine it’s on his behalf, though. Everything about this makes him uncomfortable, so he lashes out.
“Is it?” he asks. “He’s worthless.”
Maybe this is what he should have done all along--shit talk himself. Neil would be so distracted enjoying it that he wouldn’t notice all the differences.
Neil bristles but visibly forces his shoulders down. “I know Andrew can be hard to talk to sometimes. But he cares a lot. You’re important to him.”
It takes Aaron a second to register what’s happening here.
“What?” he asks dumbly.
“I know he doesn’t say it,” Neil says, “but he shows it. I mean, I know he hides showing it pretty well, too, but he--”
“You’re talking about Andrew,” Aaron interrupts. “To me.”
“Um.” Now Neil looks uncomfortable. “Yeah, sorry, I just thought--”
“You.” Aaron stands and points a finger in his face. “You are unbelievable. You’re trying to comfort me about Andrew.”
Neil winces. “I mean, comfort isn’t my strong suit.”
Aaron stares. “I will never understand you,” he declares, and then he walks straight out, realizing too late he’s just gone into the showers for no fucking reason.
. : : .
He’s desperate. Matt, Nicky, and Renee had all bet against him, so he can’t go to them for help--look how ridiculous Nicky had been. Dan and Allison and a few of the freshmen had bet on him, but he can’t imagine Dan will be more helpful than Allison was and the freshmen are totally useless. That left Kevin, who had basically told them they were all disappointments.
Still, Kevin is the second-best option to asking Andrew himself, which seems like a bad idea. At least he lives with them. Maybe he’ll have some insight into how they act when they’re alone together.
Kevin says, “I literally do not care about this, Aaron.”
“Fuck you,” Aaron says. “Just tell me.”
“I can tell you that if you spent half as much energy on your game as you do on this kind of bullshit you might actually have a chance of going pro. A low chance, but a chance.”
“Fuck you,” Aaron says again.
Kevin frowns. “I could be doing almost anything else with my time and it would be more valuable than this. I could be staring at a wall and it would be better for my mental health.”
“Just tell me what they’re like,” Aaron says. “When they’re alone. It has to be different. It has to be.”
“I don’t know,” Kevin says. “I’m not obsessed with them like you are, apparently.”
“Do they talk?” Aaron presses.
“Of course they talk.” Kevin gives him a look so close to Andrew’s you’re an idiot look that Aaron wonders if he absorbed it like second-hand smoke.
“What do they talk about?” he asks, trying very hard for patience.
“Jesus, Aaron.” Kevin sighs. “Normal stuff. Homework. They give each other a lot of shit. They talk in Russian and German a lot. You realize Neil spent his whole life on the lookout for people who seemed a little off, right? This is a waste of your time. You should come to night practices instead.”
“I only have to fool him once,” Aaron says. “And then I get like $400.”
Kevin shrugs. “If I give you $400, will you leave me out of this?”
5.
Aaron tells himself he will give it one more attempt and then he will wash his hands of it. It’s been almost two months since the first time. And it’s not like he’ll owe money himself--Allison and Dan are covering his share of the pot, they’d just promised the majority of it to Aaron if he pulled it off.
He sees Neil heading up to the roof alone. He knows Andrew will probably follow him at some point, but for now, Aaron throws on his Andrew hoodie, slides on his fake piercing, and stomps up the stairs to the roof. It takes him a minute to figure out how to jimmy the door open, but then he has it. Neil looks up at him as soon as he comes into view, smiling weakly.
“What’s your problem?” Aaron asks. This isn’t a look he’s used to on Neil--kind of sad, very vulnerable.
Neil shrugs. “Bad night. The FBI called to ‘check in’.” He doesn’t even bother to add the air quotes with his fingers.
Aaron frowns at him. “Why? What do they want?”
Didn’t they already tell the FBI to fuck off once? Aaron thought this was supposed to be all settled on the legal end.
Neil shrugs again. “Dunno. Maybe they’re hoping I had a change of heart about some of the things I couldn’t remember.”
What’s Andrew going to think about this? Does he already know? Aaron opens his mouth to ask and then closes it again. This is the best attempt yet, he thinks. Neil is talking to him. This must be how he talks to Andrew. It reminds Aaron of the way he talks to Katelyn sometimes, late at night, about the things that scare him, but he pushes that thought aside.
Neil is straddling the low safety wall around the roof. Aaron hasn’t practiced enough to be able to do that without obviously being too clumsy to be Andrew, so he just goes and leans against it instead.
“Don’t worry,” he says awkwardly. “They’re idiots.”
“I know,” Neil says, half laughing. “But they’re idiots who could get me killed.”
Right. Aaron remembers. The Moriyamas probably wouldn’t like it if Neil got chatty with the Feds all of a sudden. He frowns, hard.
“Sorry,” Neil says. “I know you don’t care about this stuff.”
Aaron turns to stare at him so fast he thinks he might have whiplash. “What?”
“It’s nice of you to ask,” he says, “but you don’t have to. Andrew will make it up here at some point.”
Aaron’s mouth works. He was only a little surprised when he thought Neil was opening up to Andrew. Neil opening up to him is mind-blowingly weird.
“How?” Aaron demands. “How do you always know?”
“Know what?” Neil asks, confused.
“How do you always know I’m not Andrew?”
“I--” Neil frowns. “Why would I think you’re Andrew?”
“Because I’m dressed like Andrew,” Aaron points out, gesturing at himself. “Because I’m talking to you like Andrew?”
“Oh,” Neil says, blinking. There’s a long pause. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“Is that what I’ve been--what did you think I was doing?”
Neil ducks his head. Aaron can still see the tips of his ears pinken in the low light. “Nothing. I just didn’t realize.”
“Did you not notice that I was dressing like Andrew?”
“No, I did,” Neil says. He keeps his head ducked but reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. “I guess I kind of thought you were trying to get closer to him. By having more stuff in common, visibly.”
Andrew has been right all along. Neil is an irredeemable idiot.
“You didn’t think it was weird that I was constantly trying to talk to you?”
Neil clears his throat. “I did. I thought--I don’t know. I thought maybe you wanted to be friends.”
Friends. With Neil. Friends with Neil. Aaron can’t decide if that’s the funniest or the saddest thing he’s ever heard. And then, he realizes: Neil was trying to be friends back. Neil was going to go hang out on the roof with him. Neil was really asking if he was excited for the game. Neil was trying to make him feel better after a bad session with Bee.
He can’t decide which one of them is the bigger idiot.
Before he can say anything, Neil’s head shoots up and his eyes lock on something behind Aaron. He doesn’t even have to turn around to know it’s Andrew--he can feel Andrew’s presence cutting through the air. Maybe that’s why he could never fool Neil. He doesn’t have his own gravitational force.
“Meet me at the car,” Andrew says calmly.
Neil just nods and slides down off the wall, heading towards the door. Aaron turns around in time to see Andrew briefly touch his elbow as they pass each other, and then he’s coming over and leaning against the wall next to Aaron.
“I know,” Aaron says tiredly. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re both idiots,” Andrew says. “You should bond over that.”
“I didn’t like that he could tell us apart,” Aaron admits. “I didn’t like him. Don’t. I don’t like him.”
Andrew shrugs. “You don’t have to.”
“I don’t think you could fool Katelyn, either,” Aaron says.
“No,” Andrew agrees. “She’d know.”
“Because we’re different?”
“Very,” Andrew says. “I’m the hot twin.”
“You know,” Aaron says. “If it helps any, he was never fooled. Never even for a minute.”
Andrew cocks his head to the side and considers Aaron for a long moment--it stretches so uncomfortably that Aaron briefly considers simply throwing himself off the roof.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Andrew says finally, in a voice that reminds Aaron very much of therapy. “To be so known.”
“Yeah,” Aaron says, sarcastically. “I’m very happy for you. You found someone else who speaks asshole fluently.”
Andrew snorts. “Both of us,” he says. “They know both of us that well. To tell us apart, they have to know us both.”
Aaron considers this. It’s….true, he realizes. Nicky, Katelyn, and Neil. Maybe the only three people in the world who could really tell them apart without trying, no matter what they were wearing, no matter what they were saying or doing. The only three people to whom they are absolutely, unquestionably individuals.
He’s still thinking about this when the door bursts open five floors below, Neil coming into view as it slams loudly shut behind him behind him, hunched over and walking to the Maserati.
Andrew crushes his cigarette against the half wall and gives Aaron another long look. “The earring isn’t bad,” he says, finally, right before he turns to walk away. “You should get it done.”
Aaron watches until Andrew pushes his way through the front door, walking to his car with that signature gait Aaron now knows he’ll never be able to truly master. He stops at the driver’s side door, though, and says something across the top to Neil. Whatever it is, it makes Neil turn, scanning the roof until he spots Aaron. He gives a little wave and Aaron, without really thinking, returns it.
He guesses he just settled a $500 bet.