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Chapter Text

Neil stands at the top of the wide stone steps that lead to the front door of his house, flanked by his parents. His mother, to his right, nervously smoothing the high collar of her blouse; his father, to his left, hand gripping Neil’s arm so tightly that all he can feel from the elbow down is tingles.

“You will not embarrass me, Nathaniel,” his father hisses as the first black SUV comes into sight around the trees. “You will choose and you will choose well. If you don’t, there are alternative solutions.”

Neil is well aware of the alternatives. Indecision or defiance would be fatal.

“He will.” Neil’s mother’s voice is barely above a whisper, almost too quiet to be heard over the rustle of fingers against crisp cotton. She firms it up to add, “Won’t you?”

“Yes,” Neil says. He owes her for the opportunity to make a choice at all. And maybe for the alliance-building solution to his existence, considering how much easier it would be to off him and get on with life. Clumsily, he gropes for her hand while his father’s eyes are directed elsewhere. Her skin is soft and dry, her hand small, her fingers curling up cool and limp against his own. She used to be the only person who touched him gently. Now they rarely touch each other at all.

The first of the SUVs swings into the generous, curved driveway and comes to a smooth stop just past the stairs. From it climbs a middle-aged Japanese man in an afterthought of a suit. It is odd in combination with the expensive, bespoke cane the man holds.

Neil drops his mother’s hand.

From the second steps a younger Japanese man. His suit is slim-cut, tailored, and screams ‘expensive’ just a little too loudly. He is just the tiniest bit overdressed for the occasion. Ironically, it makes him look cheap. He is Riko Moriyama. Neil’s most complicated option. Neil’s father will be furious if he doesn’t choose Riko—a Moriyama—but he’ll also be furious if Neil does choose him and forever associates them with the lesser, secondary branch.

Neil’s best plan is to fervently hope for Riko’s timely demise.

The sweater Neil had donned for the occasion is a bit too heavy, woven to block more chill than the unseasonably warm Baltimore afternoon has to offer. The fabric crackles like static against the dulled nerves of Neil’s left forearm. Above his head, the autumn sun beats down with the strength of summer stubbornness.

The closer Riko gets, the more the numbness of Neil’s arm spreads through the rest of his body. He watches Riko’s feet slap against the stone, coming closer and closer until they lift to take the first step.

“Butcher,” Riko says, his tone cool and formal. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

Riko’s eyes flick over to Neil, sending a slow trickle of ice water down his spine. Neil has no intention of being a part of that hospitality. He meets Riko’s eyes and keeps his face as numbly blank as the rest of his body feels, refusing to be the first to look away. He isn’t—though Riko’s eyes narrow a fraction before he turns his attention back to Nathan. He’ll want Neil to pay for that later.

He can try whatever he wants. Neil doesn’t intend to give Riko any kind of satisfaction.

“Of course,” Nathan says brusquely. “Your rooms have been prepared for you. Nathaniel will escort you. If you’d like a tour of the estate, he will be happy to accommodate.”

And this, Neil thinks, is Nathan being polite. He’s never cared for Riko, has narrowly tolerated Tetsuji’s transparent maneuverings to position Neil and Riko as besties, has felt the superiority of his position with the main family and found the imposition of the second branch presumptuous. He’ll resent Riko coming here, resent that he’ll have to say no to a Moriyama, even if he thinks Riko marrying into the family would stain their good name.

Nathan waits just long enough to nod at Tetsuji before turning on his heel and striding back into the house. Unlike Riko, his progress is silent.

Neil expects the younger Moriyama to chafe at the slight, but the smirk on Riko’s face doesn’t even falter.

“Nate,” Riko says as he takes the stairs, his glossy shoes whispering against the stone.

“Don’t call me that,” Neil says.

“Apologies,” Riko says unapologetically. “Would you prefer I call you Nathaniel? Junior? Neil?”

Neil does nothing to fill the pauses between each suggestion. There’s no name Riko can use that won’t make Neil want to cut the tongue from his mouth.

“Nathaniel is fine.” He hates the connection to his father, but he hates the unearned familiarity of Riko’s nickname more. And he sure as fuck doesn’t want Riko calling him what Kevin and Allison do.

“There’s no need to be like that,” Riko scolds. “We know each other.”

“Yes,” Neil agrees. “That’s the problem.”

He kicks himself immediately. He’s being foolish. He shouldn’t taunt Riko, shouldn’t wind him up into a temper; he won’t be choosing to marry the lesser Moriyama son, but he’s stuck with him for five days. The smart thing to do is be pleasant.

Be pleasant, Neil tells himself sternly.

“Alright,” Neil says. He shakes his hands a little, trying to get the feeling back in the left one. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

“And then the tour.”

It’s not a question. Riko is entitled to the tour, so he’ll take it. And then some. Neil smiles and then dampens it, worried that the stretch at the corners of his mouth is turning into something a little too murderous.

“The tour,” Neil repeats, nodding. “Of course. You may have forgotten something in the six months since you saw it last.”

“Have you been counting the days until you see me again, Nathaniel? I’m touched.”

Fuck. Neil hates this guy. He’d hated him as a kid with his mean laugh and his pinching fingers. He’d hated him as a teenager with all of his preening and innuendo and the rage trembling eagerly behind every mocking comment and cruel joke. Riko at twenty-four is even worse. He’s grown into the full flush of his impotence. He looks at everything with the same warring intensity of resentment and grasping desire.

He’s looking at Neil like that now, too.

Neil turns and gestures towards the door, following behind so that he can watch the way Riko takes in the foyer—the period mouldings, the tasteful antiques, the irreplaceable ceiling rose. Riko tips his head back, spins in a circle, looks at everything like he’s fucking Mufasa in The Lion King.

It’s grotesque. The room is grotesque—worthy of the cover of a magazine but so dense with pain and fear and anger that just breathing its air can poison you. That Riko wants it, covets it, is here to do his best to acquire it, sends a shock of disgust like a chill through Neil’s body. He has to choose a spouse, has to make an alliance to neutralize the threat of his very existence, but he does not have to choose this man. Will never choose this man.

He steps close enough to Riko’s side that he can speak suddenly and quietly into his ear, making Riko startle. “You must know it won’t be you. I can’t imagine why you bothered to come.”

The heavy sheen of Riko’s suit fabric rustles and resists the movement as he turns to face Neil. He smiles beatifically, raising his hands noisily to cup around each of Neil’s shoulders. “I don’t know that all all, Nathaniel. I think you’re going to appreciate the value of what I have to offer.”

A speedy widowhood and an island off the grid that his father doesn’t know exists? Not likely.

“Which is what?” Neil asks.

“Don’t rush me,” Riko chides. “We have plenty of time to talk this week.”

Neil’s right hand woman is waiting for him by his door when he extricates himself from Riko’s grasp and retreats to his own room to await the farce of the tour. Her pointy-toed red flats stand out like a shock of blood against the pale, polished wood of the floor. The glinting gold of her blonde braid falls over one shoulder; she twists it through her emerald-tipped fingers.

“How’s lover boy?” she asks archly.

“Don’t joke.” Neil grimaces. “He’s very confident.”

“Riko is confident about everything. From the tips of his little feet to the twisted thoughts in his little brain.”

“He’s never been confident about me,” Neil counters. “He seems to think he has something to offer.”

“Is it his little dick?” Allison asks, grinning. “He’s very confident about that, too.”

Neil grins back. “Have you examined it? Closely?”

“Ew, no. I did see it once, though.”

“Little?” Neil asks.

She sighs. “Average. But it was tiny in spirit. That guy has small dick energy.”

“Among other things,” Neil mutters.

“Relax,” Allison says. “The only person who wants you to pick Riko is Riko. Lord Moriyama doesn’t. Nathan doesn’t. I sure as fuck don’t.”

“Tetsuji,” Neil suggests.

“No way,” she says, shaking her head firmly. “What’s the point of being a creepy uncle if you don’t have your juicy nephew around?”

Neil shudders, but the disturbing nature of nearly every word in that sentence is enough to get him moving again, stepping past her to swing his tall, heavy door open. “Tetsuji is gross, but not that kind of gross.”

Allison pushes herself off the wall and follows him in, shrugging. “There’s more than one way to be a creepy uncle. And I don’t think he’d be particularly thrilled to lose Riko to Nathan’s fucked up tutelage. Are you changing?”

“This sweater is too warm.” Neil slips his fingers under the hem, folding it neatly up and over his head, trying to find the balance between stretching out the neckline and hopelessly fucking up his hair. “He’s going to want me to hike the whole fucking property with him just to get his money’s worth.”

“I’ll come,” Allison volunteers. She takes the dark blue knit from his hands and folds it carefully, smoothing the edges of it down against the walnut wood top of the dresser in front of her. “Did he bring Gorilla?”

“Yes. Distract him by casually talking to him about pegging again and I’ll get Riko between the ribs before he can stop me.”

Allison grins and nudges him aside so that she can reach into the wardrobe and retrieve a boxy, asymmetrical cardigan from one of the velvet hangers. “No can do, Neil. Ask me again after he’s opened his eyes to all the possibilities. Try this. Are we sparring tonight?”

“Yes.” Neil grimaces, thinking about the evening ahead of him, the forthcoming hike with Riko Moriyama, the tense, unpleasant family dinner to come. He can’t think of a single way to get out of it, so he slips into the cardigan Allison is shaking at him and arranges the generous drape of the charcoal knit over his loose, still-pristine white t-shirt. It’ll do. “Maybe you could break my leg or something. Get me out of taking him sight-seeing tomorrow.”

“Where are you taking him?”

Neil smiles at the mirror, tweaking the shape of his face until it looks carefree, if a bit vacant. He tries to memorize the way this smile feels in the stretch of his lips across his teeth, the press of lines into his cheeks. “Well, it seems,” he says, still smiling aggressively at his reflection, “that the most romantic move would be to give him more of what he loves.”

“Compliments?” Allison asks doubtfully.

“Tours,” Neil says. He watches the vacancy in the mirror shift inexorably into wickedness. “So many tours.”

The next night, Neil looks across the small, elegantly set table at Riko, who, even having had an hour to change and freshen up, is drooping around the edges. He’d clearly showered—and tried to keep his hair dry—but the fine flyaways at his hairline show evidence of the damp. The suit is wrong again, too. Too business-y for the hour and the occasion, informal but not casual. There’s a touch of color on his cheeks that’s promising a mild sunburn. His eyes are weary and his face pinched as he swirls a bit of red wine around a glass and sniffs it.

Neil buries his satisfaction into a perusal of the menu in front of him. His phone tells him they walked twenty thousand steps today. He’d been fine in his lightweight wool sneakers, as had Allison in her flats and Gorilla in his boots, but Riko had worn (as usual) the wrong thing—firm leather shoes that had predictably rubbed away at his skin until he’d been hobbling.

Riko chooses the wine and then the most expensive steak on the menu, surprising no one and certainly not Neil. Once the menus are cleared away and the wine poured, Neil beams across the table at one of his least favorite people in the world and says, “Did you have a good time today?”

“We went on four tours,” Riko grumbles.

“All the better to see the city,” Neil counters. “And I know how much you love to walk around looking at things.”

“I get it,” Riko says. He shakes his napkin into his lap, carefully repositions what must be aching feet, and then glares at Neil across the table. “You don’t like me. But you don’t need to like me to marry me.”

Neil shakes his head dismissively. “You don’t have anything to offer me. You don’t have anything to offer my father. You don’t even have anything to offer your father. Whatever attention-seeking bullshit you’re trying to pull here isn’t going to work. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Ah,” Riko says, leaning forward as his face lights up. “On the contrary. I can offer you something no one else can.”

“And what the fuck might that be?”

“You could stay home.” Riko leans back, his body language triumphant, his face glowing. “You wouldn’t have to move.”

Dumbfounded, Neil stares. This is actually the ultimate entry on the ‘con’ list of marrying Riko: he has no territory of his own, so he’d be joining the Wesninski empire, merging it with the Moriyama name, and preparing to take it over himself someday. Choosing Riko would mean that nothing changed for the better, at least not for Neil. He’d still be stuck in his father’s house, under his father’s heavy hand, only now he’d be married to a man who repulses him on every plane of consciousness. Two of the other three suitors are unknowns from the west coast, but at least they’re as physically far as Neil can get from Nathan without expatriating—Walker in Las Vegas, Minyard in San Francisco. Neil doesn’t know where they stand on him, or his father, or the alliance, but when the Moriyamas put out feelers, you take the meeting. That is, if you’re smart.

The third is Kevin, a known quantity, a beloved friend, and the obvious choice; Boston is far enough from Baltimore that Neil wouldn’t have to see his father or Lola most of the time, but Neil’s presence may raise Kevin’s profile dangerously. He’ll still probably marry Kevin, but there’s a decent chance he’d choose a tolerable west coast option if one presented itself; he could put an entire continent between himself and this pit of vipers.

But there’s no chance, no reason Neil can think of, that he would choose Riko. Shackle himself to Riko. Endure Riko’s aggressions or dubious affections. Teach Riko one black eye or bloody nose at a time not to touch him. Chain all four of his limbs to the walls of his father’s house and destroy the key with his own teeth.

The low mutter of conversation fills the long seconds Neil spends trying to process the absurdity of Riko’s statement. Forks clink delicately against plates, servers murmur politely at nearby tables, and Riko sits, smug, taking long sips of his wine as Neil stares.

“Are you out of your mind?” Neil asks. It seems like an important thing to know—is he talking to someone genuinely delusional and/or deranged or just someone incorrigibly arrogant and oblivious?

“So short-sighted, my friend,” Riko croons. “You can’t think of a single good reason to stay home with mommy and daddy?”

The skin at the back of Neil’s neck begins to crawl, prickling in proportion to the arrogant set of Riko’s smile and the gleam of triumph in his eyes.

Neil stays silent. It doesn’t irritate Riko the way it usually does, though; the other man leans in a little more, his weight shifting onto his forearms on the table, the spotlight of his eyes widening and brightening until Neil feels pinned by it.

Riko grins. “Particularly mommy,” he says. His words are level but his tone is flushed with satisfaction. “I can only imagine how difficult it would be for her, living so far from you. Of course, she would still have your father as a comfort.”

His mother. His father. It’s not that it hasn’t occurred to Neil before, he’s just been refusing to dwell on it. Some of Nathan’s wild violence and hair-trigger rage had mellowed over the years—or, at least, Neil had become an expert in forestalling it, in avoiding it, in being quick, and quiet, and obedient enough not to incite it. His mother had stopped stitching him up years ago; that task had fallen to Allison instead, and the demolition of the visible Neil-and-Mary structure had seemed to take the pressure off, allowing Nathan to treat them as individual possessions rather than a unified front. Of course, Mary still favors long-sleeved, high neck shirts, but Neil doesn’t actually know if she’s hiding fresh marks or, like Neil, her choices are proof of a painful past.

Neil’s heart pounds in his ears, each thud sending a slick of dread through his veins, smothering the ambiance of smooth jazz and glasses clinking. He wants to close his eyes and mentally step away, to grab a steak knife and butcher his dinner companion, to run home and shoot his father right between the eyes. Instead, he twists the stem of his wine glass through his fingers and takes one, two, three breaths until the reckless rush of guilt and anxiety subside.

“Nate,” Riko says softly. His hand lands on Neil’s wrist, fingertips sliding under the cuff of Neil’s blazer, thumb tracing over the exposed pulse point. “I’ll be so good to you. We can prove our fathers wrong.”

The problem is that Nathan has never been wrong. Not about Neil. And there must be limits to what a person can be asked to sacrifice. This would be too much—marrying Riko, spending the rest of his life on the Wesninski estate, bringing another petty, angry narcissist into his life. Does he owe it to his mother, though? He doesn’t have the power to protect her—and wouldn’t even if he was a lesser Moriyama himself—but does he owe it to her to stand witness? To stay and see and bear his share?

It feels like too much. This is too much, too, Riko’s gently stroking fingers unendurable, rubbing against the grain of the hair on Neil’s forearm, his nicknames and unhinged promises, feverish and sick. Neil lifts his wine glass, dislodging Riko’s hand and pausing before he takes a sip to say, numbly, for at least the third time that day, “Don’t call me that.”

He can feel the whisper of Riko’s proposal burrowing under his skin all through the rest of dinner, as though Riko’s clumsy fingers were infected with it. It creeps up through his arm, across his chest, lodges in his throat. Neil’s steak is prepared perfectly and the wine paired so beautifully that Neil takes to drinking it like water, but he can’t stop thinking about his mother, about the quiet halls leading to the master bedroom at the other end of the house, about the states she wouldn’t be able to put between herself and Nathan.

Back in the car, Riko presses his knee against Neil’s and puts on a one-man show of a conversation, delivering a monologue that lasts the entirety of the hour’s drive back to the estate. It’s them and Riko’s driver and Allison in the front seat, the silent car, and the relish in Riko’s voice as he talks about the plans he’s been making: the house they’d build nearby, the benefits of hyphenating their names versus choosing one or the other, the importance of breaking into the Russian trafficking market. Occasionally, Allison shifts in her seat, making the leather protest. Occasionally, the turn signal clicks a quiet rhythm that punctuates the pauses in Riko’s speech. Occasionally, Riko’s hand lands on Neil’s knee, his wrist, or he leans closer until their shoulders bump.

Neil knows he’s being quiet, is trying to fold in on himself, is conscious of the scooped-out feeling in his chest, but he doesn’t realize how conspicuous it is until they’ve gotten back to the house, said their goodbyes, gone through the motions of a goodnight kiss on the cheek, and retreated to their rooms. Allison is on his heels, stepping through the door after Neil and closing it firmly behind her.

“What happened?” she asks, frowning.

“Nothing. He just talked.”

“What did he say?” she demands.

Awful things. True things. Things that opened up a pit beneath Neil’s feet.

“He made some good points,” Neil answers vaguely. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Absolutely not,” Allison says, her voice raising. “He’s the worst decision you could make. Whatever he has on you, fuck it. I can get more on him.”

Neil shakes his head, but the fog doesn’t clear. What he needs is to sleep it off—all of it: the conversation, the wine, the enormous steak. “He doesn’t have anything on me. Just some hard truths.”

Allison mutters something under her breath that sounds vicious, but bites it off before it turns into a full rant. “We’re going to talk about this.”

“Tomorrow,” Neil says. “I’m a little drunk. I’m going to bed.”

She leaves, with an unhappy look thrown over her shoulder, with obvious protests poised on her lips; Neil closes and locks the door behind her and heads to bed, shedding clothes as he goes and tossing them onto anything nearby that isn’t the floor. He kicks off his shoes just inside the bedroom, drapes his pants around the post at the bottom of his bed, and crawls between the covers in underwear and socks, falling asleep almost immediately through nothing but a desperation to be anywhere other than his own mind.

Neil dodges a vicious jab to his throat, ducking and throwing a wild blow that his opponent has to jump back to avoid. He teeters for a moment, almost capsizing under a wave of uncomfortable heat.

“Sloppy,” Allison laughs breathlessly.

Neil uses her brief moment of imbalance to dart forward, trying to hook a foot around her ankle and bring her down, but she sees him coming and hits him flat-handed on the chest, knocking the breath out of him. His eyes watering, he topples towards her, using his momentum and the blurry shape of her torso to shove a shoulder into her stomach and bring her down with him.

They land with a shared “Oof,” her shoulder jarring his chin, his palm skittering out from under him when he hastily tries to keep it from landing on the delicate bones of her wrist. His teeth click together painfully, his arm twists under him, and she’s bucked him off and rolled him onto his back before he can suck air into his lungs, blink the black spots from his eyes, or swallow the taste of blood in his mouth. He scrambles sloppily for a grip on her but she blocks him, swats his hands out of the way, and wraps her hand around her throat.

Neil looks up at the triumphant gleam in her eyes, the messy blonde ponytail, the pink of her cheekbone where he’d gotten her earlier.

“Surrender,” she demands, slinging her leg over him and sitting heavily on his stomach.

“Never,” Neil wheezes. He doesn’t think it’s very convincing. He’s not sure he could move even if he wanted to, not after he’d chased his hangover away with sake and sashimi at the endless and uncomfortable double lunch date he’d had with Riko, Nathan, and Lola earlier.

“Surrender,” Allison commands again. “You look like you’re going to hurl. This is an eighty-dollar sports bra.”

She bounces a little, for emphasis, and enough of Neil’s stomach revolts that he relents. “Fine,” he moans, draping one of his sprawled arms over his eyes. “I live to fight another day.”

“You live to fight in ten minutes,” Allison says. She dismounts and flops next to him, sending a waft of sweat and strawberry and something sweetly musky his way. “You were distracted. If I had a knife, you’d be dead.”

“I could be worse things,” Neil mutters.

She snorts. “Yeah. Like married to Riko Moriyama.”

“Alli,” Neil sighs.

“Don’t Alli me.” She rolls, landing half on Neil and knocking a little more air from his lungs. “You’re picking for both of us. Where you go, I go. And whatever self-sacrificial Disney princess shit he put in your head, you are not making me live with that pustule.”

This is about the fifth variation on the theme that Neil has heard today, the latest in her relentless efforts to pry Riko’s appeal out of him. He’d like to keep it to himself—if for no other than reason than that her response will be furious and uncompromising—but he probably should know better. Allison hasn’t removed her nose from his business since she’d shown up, nineteen to his sixteen, scanned him, said, “I can work with this,” and started kicking his ass on the regular.

“Mom,” Neil says, finally, gritting the word out. “He reminded me about mom.”

“What about her,” Allison says, the last syllable dropping warningly instead of rising in a question.

“If I pick Riko. If I stay here. She wouldn’t be alone.”

Allison jabs him, sharp fingers between his ribs. “Yeah,” she says sarcastically. “Her life is so fucking great now. You’re single-handedly making sure Nathan is the best husband ever.”

“I know.” He does know. He’s never had any real power in this house. He’s never been real in this house—a way to keep Mary in line when he was younger, a glorified stress ball as a teenager, a tricky, unbalanced line in the account books as he got older. The guilt is still crushing, though; not only about leaving, but about wanting so desperately to get out, to escape, even if he knows it means leaving her behind.

“Listen,” Allison says. He lifts his arm off his eyes enough to peek up at her from beneath it. “You are not going to marry Riko. You’re going to pick Kevin, we’re going to move to Boston, your accent is going to get intolerable, and we’ll only ever see these assholes from a polite distance at unavoidable social events.”

Neil hopes his grunted response will be enough to placate her.

It isn’t.

“Up.” She levers herself off the ground quickly and easily, then holds an impatient hand down for Neil. “I’m going to knock some sense into you.”

“It’s knocked,” Neil protests weakly. “I’m full of sense.”

“You’re full of shit,” Allison counters, unamused. “It’s Friday. He’s leaving Sunday morning.”

“Dinner in my rooms tonight.”

Allison shakes her hand towards him more vigorously. “Order something garlicky, put on an action movie, then kick him out.”

Could it really be that easy? Very little in Neil’s life actually is. He lifts his arm enough for her to grab his hand but doesn’t help at all while she tries to pull him to his feet, leaving his body loose so that she ends up spinning him in a bit of a circle before giving up and hauling him upright by his shirt.

“Mercy?” Neil asks hopefully.

“Oh, sweetie. No.”

Neil grits his teeth through the rest of Riko’s visit, enduring his clumsy, transparent attempts at making himself seem tolerable. Riko cycles through flirting, threatening, condescending, and making promises that cling to Neil’s skin, tacky and sticky and repulsive. Finally, Sunday morning, in the milky light creeping through his south-facing window, Neil pulls on wool socks, brushed cotton pants in a pale gray, a soft, thick white t-shirt, an oversized thistle-colored cashmere sweater, a pair of leather high-rise sneakers, and his slightly too large watch. The pastels are good. The purple plays off the auburn of his hair and the neckline is just a little too loose, sliding to the side and revealing the pristine white cotton of his shirt. It’s good, but not totally right—he tries rolling the sleeves of the sweater, pushing them up his arms. Better. It’s a tricky balance, looking soft and small but not childish. The cashmere clings too much, though, even strategically sized-up. He wants more cover than this.

Off comes the sweater. The t-shirt stays. He pulls on a henley in a muted peach, unbuttoned so the white peeks through, and then a boxy, thickly-knit emerald cardigan his mother had picked up for him the last time she was back home.

Much better.

It’s probably overkill, spending this much time in front of the mirror, strategically concealing and obscuring and minimizing, but. But overkill is the family business and the less Neil reminds everyone of his father—the more vapid and fragile he seems—the fewer reasons there are to suspect him, to challenge him, to see him as any piece on the chessboard at all. Neil is generally indifferent to the clothes, but they’re the armor he’s chosen.

Gratifyingly, every set of eyes he encounters on his way downstairs skid right off of him. Even Lola, whose gaze and fingernails still land a little too heavily on him every now and then, barely registers him before she turns back to the phone in her hand.

There aren’t enough layers and generous cuts in the world to deter Riko, though. The cologne hits Neil first, a heady and disconcertingly alluring breath of spice and old wood that prefaces the hand that lands on Neil’s shoulder. He’s glad, now, that he went with something thicker than cashmere.

“Nathaniel,” Riko says urgently.

Neil exhales to push the scent of Riko out of his nostrils before he turns around, on a wide enough pivot that Riko’s hand has to fall back to him.

“Think about what I said,” Riko says, stepping closer to match his hushed tone. “We could be so good. I know you think I’m a prick, but I’d be your prick. We’d—we both have something to prove. We have something to offer each other.”

“It’s been great seeing you again,” Neil says politely. “I’m sure I’ll have a lot to think about over the next few weeks.”

Riko flushes, steps closer, grabs for Neil’s arm. His fingers don’t quite meet around the thick wool or the muscle Neil hides in loose clothing and layers. “Listen,” Riko hisses. His hand tightens, his expression pinching. Neil watches him breathe, loosen up, feels him relax each finger one by one. “Listen. I need this.”

“I need you to stop touching me,” Neil snaps. “You can’t imagine how much I want to cut your fucking hands off every time you do.”

The shift in Riko happens as fast as it did when they were kids, the same flick of a switch from shitty to sadistic. It chases the color from Riko’s cheeks, hardens his shoulders, pitches his body in to whisper things no one would ever believe he said.

Before he can a word out, before Neil can even brace for it, Nathan’s clipped tones boom through the foyer. “Mr. Moriyama. Your car is waiting. We’ll walk you out.”

Chapter Text

Tuesday finds Neil at the top of the steps again, watching another small caravan of black cars creep through the trees that border their driveway. It’s Allison to his right this time, in black cigarette pants and an off-the-shoulder crop top that are harsh beside Neil’s sage jeans, boat shoes, and oatmeal cardigan. His father hasn’t layered his fingers over the fading bruises he’d left behind when they waited for Riko, but he remains, as always, the focus of Neil’s wary attention.

This time around, Nathan is actually interested, looking forward to meeting the rarely-spotted Renee Walker who rules Las Vegas with more reputation than actual bloodshed. Neil feels the expectation and curiosity coming off of his father like wind against his skin, ruffling the hair at the nape of his neck and his exposed forearms.

The entire welcoming group is holding its breath, hanging on the slow roll of the car to a stop, the slight lurching backwards of the vehicle when its momentum is lost, the first crack of the back door from its frame. The woman who steps out is probably around Neil’s height, with a pastel rainbow dancing around her shoulders. The thin straps of her white jumpsuit ride the jut of collarbones and accentuate the defined muscle of her arms. The only decoration other than the complex wrapping of fabric around the waist and bust of the jumpsuit is a simple gold cross on a chain.

She looks both like the driven snow and like she could bend a pinky finger and transform the scene into absolute carnage. Neil isn’t sure if he’s going to like her or have to beg for his life.

Maybe both.

Beside him, Allison breathes, “Oh.”

Great. Neil can choose Walker and leave his marital duties to Allison.

Renee is followed out of the car by a towering, heavily-muscled man with a bright, very white smile, and a woman around Allison’s height with closely cropped hair and wide-set, dark eyes. It’s the woman who scans the property, making quick and obvious notes of the Wesninski men scattered around, the cameras discreetly installed on the exterior of the building, and probably even the knife sheathed at Neil’s ankle. Their boss doesn’t wait for them, though; she mounts the steps easily, the colors woven into her platinum hair swinging with all the grace of ballet.

She turns her attention to Neil before acknowledging Nathan, smiling kindly. “I’m Renee. You must be Nathaniel.”

Neil almost says, ‘Call me Neil,’ but he catches himself in time. “Yes,” he says. “And this is my father. Nathan Wesninski.”

They both turn, eyes aimed up at Neil’s father—Neil, worried for his response; Renee, apparently unconcerned—but he doesn’t look angry. Just intrigued. It’s possible he doesn’t expect better from a woman this age, no matter what her reputation suggests. Neil knows him well enough to read the composing, revising, and discarding of responses in the minute flicks of his eyes, but all he says is, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Walker.”

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Renee says. She doesn’t offer handshakes, or even, Neil notices, her reciprocal pleasures. It doesn’t seem to matter. She has this bubble of serenity, is untouchable in a way Neil has always aspired to, her voice so smooth and mild that Neil thinks she could probably viciously insult you right to your face and get away with it. Neil can only check one of those two boxes and he rarely tries for either.

“Nathaniel,” Nathan says, nodding dismissively at Neil. “I trust you can make Ms. Walker feel at home?”

Allison mutters something under her breath that Neil doesn’t care to hear, but is sure will be revisited later in some detail. From the way the corner of Renee’s glossy mouth quirks up, he expects she has better hearing than he does.

“I’d be happy to,” Neil says. “Our people can bring your bags.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” her man says cheerfully, holding up a mid-sized suitcase with the ease of a bag of cotton balls. Or feathers. Something very light. “We’ve got it.”

Despite appearances, these are dangerous people. Neil has heard about the coup in Las Vegas, the young woman who came out of nowhere with a sharp knife and a soft word. He’s heard about the initial purge, the lines drawn on the streets in blood, and the way people who get in Walker’s way just seem to poof away, unseen if not unmentioned. There are theories about body dumps, dungeons, severance packages and modest cottages in South America.

Now, face-to-face with someone who isn’t any older or louder than he is, Neil thinks any of those rumors could be true. Any of them. He still finds himself unclenching a little, relaxing his shoulders an inch, releasing the tight grip he’d held on worst case scenarios and letting a few of them be blown away by the wind.

Neil shows Renee and her people around the grounds. The stables, the pool, the pasture where his mother’s horses graze, the light-filled, painstakingly restored public rooms in the house. Matt, more monument than man, is cheerful and enthusiastic, eschewing the typical menacing affect of the muscle Neil is more familiar with. Dan is more watchful and reserved, but seems fondly amused enough by Matt that Neil figures they must be together.

Allison trails, her mouth a lot more shut than usual, her eyes skittering off into the distance any time Neil looks directly at her. It’s out of character, so Neil isn’t particularly surprised when she follows him into his rooms and launches herself at his bed, limbs splayed.

“Oh my god, Neil.”

“I know,” he says, amused.

“Did you see her?”

“I did.”

“I would let her murder me.”

“Would you?” he asks, skeptically.

“I would try.” She rolls dramatically onto her back and attempts, to Neil’s eye, to take up more of his bed with her outflung arms and legs. “I would stand there and get lost in her eyes while she cut me open.”

Neil does not roll his eyes. That would be unkind. Instead, he pulls off one of the shoes she’s keeping carefully suspended above the bedding. She drops the foot immediately, flexing her toes and rubbing the heel against the duvet.

“Surely,” he says drily, “there are better ways to go.”

“You’re so right,” Allison says breathlessly, waving her other foot at him demandingly. “I would let her smother me with her—”

“I think I get it,” Neil interrupts. “Her bosoms.”

“Bosoms?”

“Breasts,” Neil says. “Hooters. Jugs. Ta-tas. Can-cans.”

“Can-cans,” Allison snorts. “You’re hopeless. But I meant her—”

Neil holds up a forestalling hand. “Do you really want me to give you another list of euphemisms?”

“Kind of,” she says. “But seriously, Neil. I’ve met the woman of my dreams. You have to marry her.”

She’s kidding. Neil knows she’s kidding. Allison is prone to proclamations, to demands, to lofty expectations that everyone will arrange themselves the way she wants—but that’s all superficial. Beneath the gloss, she’s fiercely loyal. Protective. If she gives a shit about you, she steps up when you need it, often before you realize the need. And yet. And yet, the joke adds a couple more pounds to the burden of this decision, to the pressure of making the right one, to the list of things and people he needs to consider when he decides who he’s going to hand his life over to next. Walker was supposed to be neutral, a completely blank canvas of a decision, an easy pro and con list devoid of passion or emotion, fear, desire, love, revulsion.

But everybody wants something. All he wants is out.

Quietly, he captures Allison’s waggling foot and strips the shoe from that one, too.

“She’s incredible,” Allison sighs. “She’s my idol. Can you fuck your idol? Is that a bad idea?”

Neil hums noncommittally.

“We’d have better weather, too,” Allison says. “And shows. And casinos. And so many gay bars. We could find you a boy.”

Neil’s next hum is a little more doubtful.

“You just need to find a Kevin you actually want to fuck. Who wants to fuck you.”

“Simple,” Neil says lightly.

Allison props on her elbows, frowning, poking at Neil’s thigh with her bare toes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, sure, Nathaniel Imfineski.”

Neil swats her foot away from his leg, deterring her toes from traveling any higher. “I assume you want to come sight-seeing tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” Allison says carefully. “If you want me there.”

“Always.”

“Neil,” Allison starts. She stops. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Pokes at his leg again. “Are you...do you like her? I didn’t think—but if you’re into her, obviously. I just talk.”

“Oh,” Neil says, taken aback. “No. Not like that. She can keep her bosom to herself.”

“Hmm,” Allison says. “You’re a shifty little thing, Neil.”

And Neil, because she’s right, shifts. “Where are we taking the new love of your life tomorrow?”

Without Lola, and with the focus ostensibly on the family, Neil sits to Nathan’s left, his mother to the right. Renee is next to him, smelling powdery and clean and a little like nights spent under the unblinking eye of the moon and above a wall of climbing jasmine. One day spent lingering over museum exhibits and keeping conversation in the shallows, and another on the boat, gently rocking and eating elegantly carved fruits has brought Neil an appreciation for the quiet, thoughtful way Renee approaches people.

If he’d curled up in one of the cabins after lunch and left Allison to sip white wine in full view of the sun, left her to point out landmarks and tuck Renee’s hair behind her ear when the wind whipped it out of its colorful bun, well. He doesn’t think anyone particularly minds.

Every ounce of confidence he has in Renee’s character is matched by at least a pound of his expectation of arrogant intrigue on his father’s part. It’s not that he’s rude—he doesn’t dismiss Renee, doesn’t scowl at her like he does Riko, as if she’s a child offering her opinions in an adult conversation—but his capacity for taking her seriously is limited. Neil doesn’t think it’s because she’s a woman; it’s that Nathan has never appreciated restraint. For him and Lola, the capacity to inflict harm loses its value if it’s held in check. The knife unused, the bullet unfired, these are failures. Missed opportunities.

Nathan asks, “How’s business, Miss Walker?”

To Neil’s left, Renee sets her silverware down with an echoing clink and dabs delicately at her lips with her linen napkin. “It’s good,” she says. “We’re pleased. How are things in Baltimore?”

“Smooth,” Nathan answers. “We have a well oiled machine here. A troubling number of Moldovans coming over recently, but nothing that can’t be handled. Russians tried to move in but we proved inhospitable. I know Lord Moriyama is very interested in the import/export trade in your area, but I don’t involve myself much in that. Lowers property values. I let New York and Boston get their streets dirty.”

“Of course,” Renee says politely. “Baltimore is a beautiful city.”

Neil very deliberately cuts a piece of chicken and even more deliberately does not think about what or who might be exported or imported.

“Listen,” Nathan says, gesturing towards Neil with his knife. “If I’m being honest, we’re not offering you a real asset here. He’s, well,” Nathan waves the blade more encompassingly, indicating the general everything about Neil, “fairly useless. Give him a task with clear directions and he can probably handle it, if the scope is modest. The real prize is what you get for taking him on.”

“I see,” Renee says.

“You get me. You get the Moriyamas. You get the overseas connection, the limitless capital, all the little loyalists at every level—state, federal, international, you name it. You give a few little back rubs, you get a hell of a scratch yourself.”

The silence that follows is heavy, awkward, and invisible to Neil’s father. He cuts into his chicken again with relish, buoyed by his self-satisfaction, floating above the smooth surface of Renee’s discomfort. And Neil’s. And Mary’s.

Neil sees Renee set her silverware down again, this time on each side of the plate, perfectly parallel. A surgeon laying out her instruments. For a moment, he panics—she wants to defend him, he can feel it coming off her. She’s going to say something kind and encouraging, undermine Nathan’s breezy derision, insist that Neil has a lot to offer, that he’s smart, that he’s going to be a great psychotic mob boss of his own one day.

All descriptions Neil has labored for years to repel. All things that could get him killed if Nathan thought there was even a shade of truth to them.

What he should do is put his silverware down, too, line the utensils up in their proper places, and say something innocuous to change the subject. Add another layer of varnish to the weak, pathetic, vacant picture he’s been painting for as long as he can remember. But he’s gripping the intricate silver handles so tightly that he’s not sure he could convince his fingers to relent. Any number of words riot to be let out of his mouth, so he clamps down on them with similar force.

Renee clears her throat. “Nathaniel has made our stay here very pleasant.”

The feathery, anxious thing in his chest ruffles, then settles, tucking close to itself again. His grip loosens.

“Takes after his mother,” Nathan says. “I suppose it does come in handy sometimes.”

The last prescribed solo date with Renee is a private lunch. Neil arranges bruschetta and a light pasta in the solarium, laid out on a wicker table with deep, padded chairs poised around it. He pulls on a collared shirt in a floral pattern, tops it with a pale gray sweater, and then slides his arms into a white sport coat. Before his foot even touches the bottom stair, Renee intercepts him, stepping out into the foyer and smiling up at him.

“I know we’re supposed to eat at that beautiful table like civilized people,” she says.

“But?” Neil prompts.

“But I’m hoping you’ll buy me a burger and eat it in the car with me.”

Neil looks down at the fine, easily-stained wool of his sweater, the dry-clean only white jacket, and then back up at her. “Yes,” he says firmly. “I can do that.”

He waits until they’ve passed the gates to pull over and peel off everything but the button-up off, tossing it all carelessly into the backseat and refusing to feel guilty about mistreating the fabrics. Twenty minutes later, he shifts the car into park in the restaurant’s lot, choosing a spot with nothing more to recommend it than a view of a barren tree surrounded by barren shrubs. Renee passes out the hot, greasy, foil-wrapped burgers and props the fries up on the dashboard.

They chew and swallow in peace for a bit, savoring the occasional drip of juice past their lips and the contrast of the salty, crisp cries. Ketchup dribbles onto the back of Neil’s hand; he stops eating long enough to lick it off, earning himself a soft, amused noise from Renee.

Neil just shrugs, unapologetic.

“So, Nathaniel,” Renee says. “I have a feeling you won’t choose me.”

“I have a feeling you wouldn’t choose me either,” Neil answers.

“Ah, but that’s not my position. I’m here to submit myself as an option and that hasn’t changed. If you want to come to Las Vegas with me, we’ll sign the papers and be partners.”

“Partners?”

Renee shrugs one shoulder. “I sense you have depths.”

“But?” Neil asks, a gentle echo of his question in the foyer.

“But I’m hoping there’s more for you out there than me.”

“Well,” Neil laughs. “I think you may underestimate how low my expectations can get.”

“Very flattering,” she says wryly.

“Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You’re fine,” Renee says, waving her burger at him dismissively. “There are more coming after me, right?”

“Two,” Neil agrees. “The San Francisco Minyards and the Boston Days.”

Renee hums thoughtfully, then takes another bite and chews it, her eyes drifting over the spiky, bare arms of the tree. “I’ve met the Minyards. They’re challenging, but I like them.”

“Challenging,” Neil repeats, amused by the ambiguity of that description. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

Neil sees the restraint in the small smile she sends towards him. He’s not sure if it makes him want to cancel their visit or actually look forward to it. He asks, stricken by a curiosity too powerful to deny, “If they’re challenging, how would you describe me?”

She does that thing Neil is coming to appreciate about her—the total focus thing where she sets everything down, literally, and turns her attention onto you. The burger is placed gently on top of a napkin, her fingers wiped clean, and then she shifts in her seat and looks straight through Neil. “You’re surviving.”

Neil says, “Oh,” because what the fuck else is he supposed to say to that?

Renee picks her burger up and turns her attention back to it. “I don’t know what you’d be if you were doing more than that. But I think you have a chance to find out.”

He’s too busy staring at her to prevent a spot of ketchup from dripping onto his jeans. It splats against his leg, landing with all the force of a pin. He tears his gaze from Renee to look at the darkening, pea-sized stain on his thigh.

“Whatever may have motivated these arrangements,” Renee says carefully, “they’ve made an error.”

“Oh?” Neil asks. “What’s that?”

“They’ve given you an opportunity. To make alliances of your own.”

Neil snaps from curious to cautious in less time than it takes for Renee’s tone to deepen into something more serious. She seems sincere, but it could be dangerous. It could be a trap. He stays silent.

“All I’m saying,” Renee continues, easing a little lightness back into her voice, “is that I think I like you. And I definitely do not like your father. So, if you need a place to be, consider Las Vegas an option. And I think San Francisco might be another one in a week or two. As for Boston…”

“Boston is complicated,” Neil says quietly.

“Most things are.”

“But—” Neil says, halting, then starting again. “Thank you. That’s very. Nice. Of you to say.”

“Okay, enough,” Renee says briskly, waving a french fry at him. “Tell me about your Allison.”

The next morning, back at the top of the steps, Neil watches as Renee stops before ducking into the car. She catches his eyes and smiles, nodding the barest degree before disappearing from his view.

Something inside of Neil loosens just a little. Just enough to sag, unsupported, and graze another something, hidden, tender and unfamiliar. He thinks—hopes—fears that he’s found a bottom where he thought there hadn’t been one. He has to strain to hear it, this something that is no more than the faintest pop of a pebble dropped into a well days before.

Chapter Text

The only thing that breaks up the monotony of the third meeting of the welcoming committee is the second vehicle in the line: a shiny black sports car. Neil should probably know what it is off the top of his head, should recognize the make in the specific shade of black that glitters in the sun, should be able to identify the insignia from a mile away. Here’s what he actually knows: it’s not an SUV. It glides to a smooth stop just in front of the steps, its passenger door so perfectly placed that Neil could walk straight down the stairs and find himself in just the right position to open the handle.

He doesn’t, of course. He’s not the supplicant. He’s definitely not the deity. He’s just the idol.

The door swings open on its own, anyway, so quickly that it slices cleanly through the flurry of dusty snow the tires have kicked up. A tall man unfolds himself from the seat and shuts the door, reaching next to open the one behind him. Out of this door emerges a small blond man in a black-on-black-on-black suit. A bit of a cliche, if anyone’s asking Neil’s opinion, but he supposes it’s effective enough. The man, who must be one of the Minyards, pauses to calmly, casually adjust the fit of his suit. He pinches the sleeves, smooths the narrow lapels, makes a minute adjustment to the positioning of one cufflink. It’s a bold move. Disrespectful.

Neil can feel his father bristling beside him.

Another door clicks open—the driver’s—and then a second short, stocky blond emerges from it. Neil flits his eyes between the two men’s faces. It’s hard to tell, with the sunglasses they’re both wearing, but he’s pretty sure they’re twins. Very identical twins.

The new twin is in all black too, but denim and leather instead of a beautifully tailored suit. Only the taller guy is wearing color—enough for all three of them: salmon linen pants with a soft white shirt and a blue checked sport coat.

Not knowing who is who should be a little uncomfortable, but Neil finds himself fascinated by the potential mystery. There aren’t that many good surprises in his life—and there’s no reason to think that good will ultimately be the way he describes this one—but he does like a challenge. And Renee had promised him one.

They’re here to greet an Andrew Minyard, but that’s all Neil knows. It has to be one of the twins; he can’t imagine that the boss would jump out of a car in colorful linen and open the door for one of his employees. No, Andrew is most likely the suited twin. The other one, who rounds the car and falls into step as they collectively take the stairs has to be something else. Security, probably. There are a few subtle ridges and bulges in the fabric that indicate he’s carrying.

Suit twin takes the top, leaving the other two poised behind and a level down, feet spanning the stone of the steps.

“You must be the Butcher,” the suited twin says.

“You must be Minyard,” Nathan answers shortly.

The suit nods. He leaves his sunglasses on. Neil can practically hear the echoes of his father’s internal seething. “Andrew Minyard,” the suit says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Mary, her fingers fluttering around the edges of her sleeves, interjects with her smooth, sure, ‘company’ voice. “The pleasure is all ours, of course. I’m Mary. This is Nathaniel. And you’ve met my husband, Nathan.”

Andrew nods and then says nothing, leaving everyone hanging and too stubborn to put their foot into the gap first. Finally, the taller man breaks in, a wide smile on his face, his eyes actually visible. “I’m Nicky Hemmick, Andrew’s cousin. And this is Aaron. He doesn’t talk much.”

Neil’s eyes drift to Aaron. He looks bored. His sunglasses are pristine and perfectly reflective; looking directly at him means looking directly at yourself. It’s not a pleasant effect. His boots are thick-soled, the jacket is well-worn leather, and the black jeans may as well be painted on. But what’s truly uncanny is the way he makes you feel like you’re being stared at, even with his eyes covered. Neil can’t shake the watched sensation, but it’s not an unfamiliar one for him. He’s always checking for eyes directed his way. Tucking it away in the back of his mind, he turns back to Nicky and smiles, taking the extended hand and allowing his own to be clasped.

“We’re delighted,” Nathan says, clipped. “Your rooms have been prepared for you. Nathaniel will escort you. If you’d like a tour of the estate, he will be happy to accommodate.”

Andrew turns his attention fully to Neil now, flipping his sunglasses back to nest in his hair and looking Neil over from head to toe. He is visibly unimpressed. “Nathaniel,” he drawls. “Well, lets get on with it.”

Neil puts on his winningest smile, the least sincere one, the one he usually reserves for when he has the space to be an absolute shithead. He directs the smile at this man he is definitely not going to like, gestures towards the door, and says, “Welcome to our home.”

What Neil knows about Andrew, after the tour, a formal family dinner, and a couple of hours spent wandering the George Peabody library the next day, is that he doesn’t really want to be there. Here. In Baltimore. With Neil. If Neil thought he was walking through the motions of a thing he just wanted to be done with, he’d had no idea of how disinterested another person could be. It’s not even that Andrew Minyard doesn’t talk. He keeps up a politely appropriate level of conversation in the moments where talking is allowed. He asks Neil questions and nods almost like he appreciates or cares about the vague half-answers Neil gives. He smiles empty smiles at Neil, gives Nicky fond, bemused ones, darts his eyes warily to Aaron every so often, and gets much more enthusiastic about life when Allison and her cleavage come into conversational distance.

Neil is starting to doubt Renee’s assessment.

So, they go to the library. They admire the architecture. They look at the private collections. They ooh and ahh over some illustrated Renaissance manuscripts. They pretend not to be already bored to death with each other. All the while, Neil feels the weight of Aaron’s eyes on him and tells himself he’s imagining things or, if he isn’t, that it’s natural for the security twin to be so aware and attentive.

None of this explains why, when they get into the car waiting for them at the curb, Neil impulsively says, “Do you want to skip the art museum and go to the ME’s office to look at miniature crime scene dioramas?”

Andrew shows as much excitement about this as he has about anything else, so, none. Neil thinks Andrew’s going to politely say they can do whatever Neil wants, but his gaze slips easily to Aaron and back again, and then he nods and says, “Yes. Let’s do that.”

The exhibit is supposed to be by appointment only, but they know a guy. It’s the Medical Examiner’s office—they know a lot of guys.

This particular one lets them in through a side door; he’s wearing scrubs, a nametag, and an exasperated expression. His wide brown eyes dart among the group, skittering towards Neil and then away, his glance a winged thing that knows it had best not alight on Nathaniel Wesninski for too long. He lands on Allison and huffs, “You’re lucky I like you, Reynolds.”

“Lucky you like me? Or lucky I got that video of you last year?” Allison muses.

“Lucky he likes you,” Neil interjects firmly. “We’re all friends here. And friends don’t blackmail each other for small favors.”

“Only the big ones,” Allison agrees, nodding. “You’re absolutely right.”

Neil grins at her and then turns the weight of it—what Allison has on occasion teasingly called the devastating weight of it—onto the man still huddled in the closely guarded entrance. He steps forward and wraps a hand around the edge of the door, above the guy’s folded fingers, leans just inside the guy’s space. “We appreciate this, Milo,” Neil says warmly. “We think our new friends will really enjoy your miniatures.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Milo babbles. “I mean, anything you need, Nath— Mr. Wesninski. Mr. Nathaniel.”

Neil wiggles the door gently, just a little shake, but it’s enough to break Milo out of his stupor. He lets Neil take the weight of the door to open it wide and steps back into the building, gesturing for them to follow. “Come on in.”

Allison slips through after him with no more thanks than a flip of her hair. Neil holds it for Andrew, who at least looks curious, and then for Aaron, whose hazel eyes sear into Neil’s as he passes. Neil is careful to make sure the door is closed and latched behind them before he follows Allison, Andrew, and Milo towards the public areas of the building. Ahead of him, Milo looks back, some combination of anxious and dazzled by the company, but Neil forgets about the guy as soon as he realizes that Aaron has fallen in step with him.

“The Butcher’s son,” Aaron says mildly. “Is this the reception that title gets you?”

“Not a title,” Neil corrects. “And couldn’t it be my winning personality?”

The skepticism in Aaron’s sidelong glance has all the punch of a bullet.

Neil can’t help himself. He laughs. Milo throws another look at them over his shoulder.

“Your brother seems pretty straight,” Neil observes.

Aaron’s head turns, his eyes sharpening.

“Recently divorced?” Neil asks. When Aaron’s eyes narrow more, Neil lifts his left hand and taps at the ring finger with his thumb. The tan line on Andrew’s finger is faint—the tan itself is faint, both twins having the kind of ivory skin that Neil’s British ancestors could only dream of—but Neil had noticed it when Andrew handled the books at the library.

When Aaron stays silent, Neil shrugs. “I don’t care. No one’s expecting a love match.”

“Is that why you brought us to a morgue?” Aaron asks. “Giving up on the romance already?”

“Right.” Neil nods. “The infamous romance in alliance-solidifying marriages between mobsters.”

Aaron’s gaze flicks from Neil’s toes to his head, then away to watch the hallway ahead of them. “Mobster is too generous a description of you.”

Which is fair enough. And almost a compliment, actually.

“The miniatures are incredible,” Neil says, dodging the issue. “They were made in the 40s by this woman they call the mother of forensic medicine. Training tools for people in the new field.”

“Fascinating,” Aaron says drily.

Neil shrugs, his shoulders loose, his hands in his pockets. “That’s relative.”

For all of Aaron’s dismissiveness, though, the miniatures draw him in the way they always do Neil. Aaron walks briskly and purposefully towards the first glass-enclosed scene. Neil checks on Andrew, who’s somehow started with one of the signs instead of squinting at a diorama. Probably Neil should go to him and express interest in the history, but the miniatures call to him the way they always do. Before Neil can command his feet to move towards Andrew, or even off to find Allison, Aaron tosses a look at him that all but demands he follow.

So, he does.

Aaron points at the scene—a woman hanging in an attic—and says, “What is your theory?”

“I wonder where her other shoe is,” Neil answers, after he studies the room closely. Aaron bends down and squints. The hanging doll is wearing thick grey socks, but only one foot has a shoe—and that one is dangling half off.

“You think that she would have cared?”

Aaron’s face is close enough to the glass that his breath paints fleeting patches of fog on the surface. He hardly spares Neil a glance before turning back to the model.

Neil says, “I think it would be weird to climb onto a chair in your attic with one shoe off and the other on but untied and loose.” He closes his eyes and tries to imagine himself there, like he has a hundred times. Musty attic, the room a mess around him. He feels the creaking of the chair beneath his feet and tries to imagine the difference between a socked foot and a shoed one. Would it bother him that the room was a mess? Would he want to clean up the scattered papers? If the other shoe was flung somewhere else, the laces must have at least been untied. Would he fix that before stepping off the chair? If he got there himself, was finally pushed or worn or broken down enough to beat his father to the job, would the details matter? Would the view from that height trigger some kind of obsessive need to set things right, or would he just close his eyes and leap? If things felt so wrong that this was your best option, wouldn’t you want everything to feel just right for the moment?

“Stop that,” Aaron says. “You are not supposed to identify with the dead bodies.”

It jolts another laugh out of Neil. He opens his eyes and smiles at Aaron, widening it when Aaron just scowls in response. “What’s your theory, then?” Neil asks.

Aaron turns his attention back to the model, tilting his head this way and that, ducking more to peek under tiny furniture for more tiny clues. Finally, he stands, shoves his hands in his pockets decisively, and says, “Aliens.”

Andrew is already waiting at the entrance to the restaurant, impeccably dressed, his hair slicked back. Neil tugs on the sleeves of his camel-colored vicuña sweater, his fingers slipping over the buttery soft fabric, and steps forward. Andrew looks up from his phone screen and freezes—it’s only a moment, come and gone so quickly Neil thinks he might have imagined it.

What he doesn’t imagine is the familiar way Andrew moves to slide his phone into his pocket. It puts a hitch in Neil’s step, that movement, because he’s pretty sure this is not Andrew at all. It’s Aaron.

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s crazy. Or, maybe he’s right. But if he is, there’s a new question to answer: is Neil supposed to know the twins have switched places or not?

Faced with what he thinks is a test of his intelligence or ability, Neil does what he always does. He fails it.

“Hello, Andrew,” Neil says politely. “You look nice.”

Aaron’s eyes seize upon him with their usual intensity. A romance novel would call them smoldering, Neil thinks.

How he’s supposed to believe this is Andrew, he has no idea.

Or, Neil realizes—or, this has actually been Andrew all along.

Well, fuck.

Neil watches this Minyard watch him, tries to keep his racing thoughts from flashing across his face. They must be flickering there, the possibilities, the reasons why Andrew and Aaron may be swapping now, may be swapping in general, may be un-swapping for this dinner. He tries for a vacuous smile, boosting it when Aaron’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly.

“Nathaniel,” Aaron says.

The rise of Aaron’s voice over the vowels of his name gives Neil an idea. A good one. His shoulders loosen a bit in relief and he smiles again, more genuinely this time. “You can call me Neil,” he says. “My friends do.”

“Are we friends?” Aaron asks neutrally.

“We could be. If we were, what would I call you?”

Hazel eyes slip down his body and back up again, scanning him for—Neil doesn’t know what this Minyard is looking for. He seems to find it, whatever it is.

“Drew,” he says, and then tacks on, warningly, “In moderation.”

“After you, then,” Neil says. He gestures towards the doors, intending to get there first and hold it. Aaron—Drew moves faster than he can, though, slipping in ahead of him easily and pulling the large glass slab open for Neil to step through. It delivers them into a room where the ceiling reaches even more breathtaking heights.

The host leads them to a table in the see-and-be-seen area of the restaurant, but this Minyard walks right past her and towards a private corner with a single table set further apart from the others. The host watches him, a little dumbfounded; Neil waits until she starts walking again to follow her, meeting his date where he’s stopped and waiting expectantly, one hand wrapped around the top of the chair he’s pulled out for Neil.

Bemused, Neil slips into it. He can feel Aaron-Andrew-Drew’s knuckles against his back and this—no, this really won’t do. He can’t go on pretending there’s a Minyard triplet who watches him intensely and pulls out his chair and looks really good in a black sweater with black leather detail around the shoulders.

So, he takes stock. The Minyard in front of him was driving the car when they arrived, is usually armed, gives off an air of complete, bedrock calm, and was introduced to Neil as Aaron. The other one wears crisp, well-tailored suits, is usually visibly struggling not to appear bored by Neil, has a tan line on his left ring finger, and was introduced as Andrew. The thing about that Minyard, the supposedly in-charge Minyard, is that he seems to look to his brother a lot for direction. It’s not ostentatious—it’s just little flicks of the eyes, pauses that are supposed to feel thoughtful but instead feel questioning.

Or maybe he just wants this one to be Andrew. Maybe the real Andrew is the other one, but is some kind of a figurehead. Maybe this is actually Aaron, but he secretly calls the shots. The options lead him back to the beginning over and over again. He could go around and around all night. He needs to focus on the why of it. Why might the twins have switched places? Neil’s first instinct is that Aaron could be an assassination decoy, standing in for the real Andrew in business meetings, but. But that’s probably too cold-blooded. He hasn’t gotten that sense from either of them.

Different approach: what would Andrew get out of being Aaron instead, even temporarily?

Neil thinks: perspective. He thinks about all the things he sees that his father doesn’t, the things that happen on the fringes that you can’t focus on when you’re holding a conversation. He thinks about how easily this Minyard moves among his father’s men, blending in with his careful, coiled movements and his casual black clothes and his armbands. So, information? Access? The opportunity to tune out the exchanges of niceties and pay attention to all flurries of activity happening around the good manners and mob boss posturing.

If this is really Andrew, in front of him now, then it makes some sense that they would have come. This Andrew feels like an option in the way the other one doesn’t—like he’s actually considering Neil, weighing him up, making pro and con lists about Neil as an acquisition, the Moiryamas as allies, the entire proposition as something that must be decided about. And maybe that’s the crux of it: the other Andrew, the real Aaron, Neil suspects, isn’t acting as though he’s here to make a decision at all. He’s just putting in time, giving getting to know Neil about the same effort as someone working a drive through in the early morning hours might.

Neil comes to the most likely conclusion. This one must be Andrew.

The snap of paper on paper, leather on leather, is enough to pull Neil from the haze of thoughts and ambient noise he’d been drifting in. He blinks to find both Andrew and their server watching him; she looks delighted, Andrew looks vaguely amused.

“Sorry,” Neil says, offering them both a smile that he tucks sheepishly into his cheeks. “What did I miss?”

“I’ll be back with your selection,” the server says.

“Do you like wine?” Neil asks, once she’s left them alone at the table again.

Andrew shrugs. “Do you?”

“When I was twelve, Kevin Day and I stole a bottle of something French from his mother’s wine cellar. We drank it all. Every drop of that eight-hundred-dollar bottle.”

“How did that work out for you?”

Neil smiles at the memory. “We were so wasted we hid in a guest room closet. I knew I was fucked, but Kevin kept insisting he could handle his alcohol. I made it to the bathroom early but he...just bolted for the window and threw up all down the side of his house. It looked like someone had dumped a bucket of blood.”

“And then?” Andrew asks.

And then Kayleigh Day downplayed it when she told Neil’s parents. She didn’t mention the price of the bottle, the tell-tale stain on the white paint, or the probably expensive towels they’d ruined cleaning themselves up. Nathan had been furious anyway, too angry even to go for his knives—Neil remembers thinking, at the time, that his father was too out of control to cut him without killing him. It had taken Neil ages to pick up even a glass of champagne after that, but he’d discovered that carrying delicate stemware around with him at gatherings was easily as effective as the looser clothing, the soft fabrics, the combination of colors. He’s going to be a disappointment no matter what he does. Being a harmless disappointment is his best bet.

Gravely, Neil says, “Now I drink it to assert my dominance.”

If it weren’t for the keen focus of Andrew’s eyes, his vague nod might make Neil think he was bored. As it is, though, Neil suspects they’re both a little surprised by the interruption of their server. The wine she expertly pours into Neil’s glass is a Chardonnay, buttery and oaked, full and smooth on Neil’s first sip, then his second.

He orders lobster ravioli to honor the selection, sips more while Andrew asks questions about the risotto, hands his menu over to their server with a smile. Andrew turns back to him once they’re alone and says, “What is that sweater?”

“Um.” Neil looks down at himself in confusion. “A sweater.”

“What’s it made of?” Andrew asks, impatient, as though Neil is being deliberately obtuse.

“Vicuña wool,” Neil says. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m surprised you’re answering them,” Andrew replies, lifting his glass and an eyebrow, the tilt of the wine to his lips pointed in a way Neil can’t quite put his finger on.

“I’m an open book,” Neil retorts lightly.

Andrew huffs an incredulous noise against the rim of his glass. “We will make it fair,” he says, setting the delicate crystal down with a muted thud. “I ask you a question, you ask me a question. No lies.”

“A friendly first date interrogation?”

“The jury is still out on the friend thing.”

“Oh, great,” Neil says, amused. “Then how could I say no.”

“Your turn,” Andrew says. He arcs his wine glass towards Neil, a smooth, gracious gesture, an invitation to begin the game, a move that should look practiced and instead looks as though Andrew just invented it.

“Okay.” Neil leans back in his seat, evaluating. There are things he wants to know. Namely, which twin this is—though he has no intention of revealing that he can tell them apart. And he shouldn’t take a big swing this early in the game. He needs to get a grasp of what Andrew looks like when he’s telling the truth. They’ll start with something easy. “Where would you take me on our honeymoon?”

Something in Andrew’s demonstratively relaxed body language loosens just a little. One loop of tension slipping off the bobbin. “I don’t know yet,” Andrew says. “Ask me again at the end of the week. How many weapons are you carrying right now?”

“Three,” Neil answers easily. “How many languages do you speak?”

Andrew smirks. Just a little. “Three. You?”

“Four and change. What are your guilty pleasures?”

“Cars. Chocolate. Clothes. Do you already know where you’ll choose to go?”

“No,” Neil says. He takes a moment, pausing the lightning round, and swallows the last sip of his wine. “What do you get out of all this? The visit. The alliance.”

“Information,” Andrew says frankly. Neil believes him. “Resources, maybe. What do you get?”

And that is the easiest question Neil has ever had to answer. “Away,” he says lightly. “I get away.”

It’s Neil’s turn to ask another question but he stays quiet, pinned by Andrew’s searching gaze, keeping his own face calm and unruffled. When Andrew looks away, though, it feels more like he’s arrived at some satisfaction than like his focus has broken. He picks up their bottle of wine and tips it invitingly. “Want to get a little drunk?”

Maybe not drunk. Neil hasn’t been sloppy since that time in Boston, but he has developed a pretty high tolerance and can probably keep his shit together while Andrew’s loosens up. So, he says yes. Maybe a little more fervently than he’d like, but it lightens Andrew’s eyes, lifts the corners of his mouth. Andrew’s pour is generous. He tops himself off, assesses what’s left in the bottle, flicks his eyes off to the side, crooks a finger at whatever he finds. He says, “We are going to need another bottle.”

Neil hides his smile behind his glass.

“You’re lying,” Neil accuses.

Andrew arches one pale eyebrow in response. It says, you’re embarrassing yourself with these hysterics.

“Karaoke,” Neil says. His emphasis of this word, he thinks, is his best defense against the eyebrow.

“Yes,” Andrew says.

“You.”

“Yes.”

Neil leans back heavily in his chair, huffing in disbelief. “Prove it.”

“This is not a karaoke bar,” Andrew says, gesturing at the room around them without sloshing any of the wine in his glass.

Neil can feel his face light up with the absurd glee that floods him. He leans forward, lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Everywhere is a karaoke bar if you have the guts.”

“That is unacceptable,” Andrew says coolly.

“Sorry.” Neil smiles brightly at him, not sorry at all. “But it’s true.”

“WALL-E,” Andrew says.

“That’s what I said.”

“The last movie you saw in a theater was WALL-E.”

“Yeah,” Neil confirms. “It was great.”

Andrew’s answering look verges on pained. “It was 2008.”

“Oh?” Neil asks, playing dumb. “Has anything good come out since then?”

“What would you do if you weren’t in the business?” Neil asks.

“This is an awful question,” Andrew says. “Every answer would be adolescent daydreaming.”

“What does that mean?”

“No one longs for a different life path that isn’t idealized in some way. It’s always going to reveal what the answerer thinks makes them special.”

“President?” Neil suggests. “Marine biologist? Astronaut?”

“Barista,” Andrew says.

Neil cocks his head, considering Andrew, his lightly flushed cheeks, his overall don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor, the way he keeps absently pushing the remnants of his dessert around his plate. “Yeah, you do seem like you’d be particularly good at customer service.”

“Somewhere small. Where I could insult people with shitty coffee orders.”

“No pets,” Neil confirms.

“Hmmm,” Andrew says. “Do I want to know why?”

Neil keeps his eyes and his focus on keeping the swirl of pale gold in his glass moving evenly. Just as evenly, he says, “I think you do.”

Swirl, swirl, swirl. He tilts the glass at a steeper angle, bringing in the tide of the wine. Into the silence, Andrew says, matter-of-factly, “I’ll get you a cat as a wedding present.”

“Why a cat?” Neil asks.

“You are very clearly too jumpy for a dog.”

Andrew elegantly shrugs a single shoulder. “I never knew my father.”

Neil resists the urge to say he’s jealous. Instead, he leans a bit closer to pour the very last inches of their second bottle into Andrew’s glass.

“Or my mother,” Andrew continues. “She put me in foster care when I was born.”

“You?” Neil asks. “Or ‘us’?”

“Me,” Andrew says. “She kept Aaron. Died before I met him.”

Neil isn’t going to say he’s sorry. It doesn’t seem like Andrew thinks of it as a loss. Or, at least, not one with the expected emotional baggage.

“Do not feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t,” Neil says.

Andrew eyes him steadily, attentive to any shift in expression, until he’s satisfied. “And now I’m stuck with Aaron and Nicky.”

“I like Aaron,” Neil says mildly. “I think we’re really getting along.”

He blinks steadily at Andrew when his hazel eyes narrow, pinching the mottled amber into a narrow band.

“Is that so,” Andrew says. In no way is it a question.

“Should we have coffee?” Neil asks.

“Neil,” Andrew says. He slides his hand across the table, palm up.

It takes Neil a moment to get it, to understand the request. But Neil is buzzed and having way too good of a time with this man he imagines most people avoid, so he reaches out. Slowly. Cautiously. Even after two bottles and probably two hours, the sharp worry of it, the potential for catastrophe, feels not unlike approaching the hissing mouth of a snake.

He stops just shy, his hand hovering above Andrew’s, wary of any sudden movements. But Andrew stays still, other than the light curling of his fingers against Neil’s palm.

It’s nice.

Neil yields, resting his hand on Andrew’s, feeling the slide of Andrew’s fingers against his wrist. They’re warm and dry and smooth, so much softer than he’d expected, uncalloused, moisturized, the nails neat and clean and buffed.

It’s completely innocent, this play of Andrew’s fingertips against Neil’s pulse point, under the sleeve of his sweater, thumbing over the wool and the curve of his wrist bone, but something shivers through Neil, tremulous and uncertain. A rope bridge swaying across a chasm.

When a low noise comes from across the table, Andrew’s quietly cleared throat, Neil looks up to find that Andrew is watching him instead of their hands.

Andrew says, softly, “I like this sweater.”

Andrew is playing himself again on the boat the next day, which is entertaining primarily because it means Neil gets to watch Aaron pretend to be Andrew pretending to be Aaron. Assuming he has the right name attached to the right twin, of course—this could actually be Aaron pretending to be Andrew and Andrew pretending to be Aaron pretending to be him. It makes Neil’s head spin if he thinks about it too long, so he just doesn’t.

It hasn’t come up with Allison that there might be anything remarkable about the Minyards. It hasn’t come up because he hasn’t brought it up, and he isn’t sure when he will. So, he doesn’t bring her along on the boat with them. It’s just him, an Aaron and an Andrew, their cousin, and the very small crew of the boat. They pass the hours in a sort of half-familiarity that would be awkward if awkwardness meant as much to Neil as it does to normal people. Nicky’s natural enthusiasm is visibly bridled, Aaron half-heartedly engages in conversation the way Andrew does when he’s pretending to be his twin, and Andrew (as Andrew) is usually at Neil’s side, brushing the back of his hand against Neil’s thigh, his fingertips on Neil’s back or elbow. Whether Andrew is gravitating to Neil or Neil is pulled into Andrew isn’t something he can parse, no matter how hard he tries.

They swap again for dinner with Neil’s parents, though. Aaron-as-Andrew is in a suit again this time, which helps. Neil doesn’t need the clothes to tell them apart, but they’re one of the few references he has for which roles they’re playing.

Neil is at his father’s right this time, his mother pushed back to the seat beside him. This puts Andrew (but actually Aaron) at Nathan’s left, right across from Neil. Nicky seems to have been given clemency; Neil wonders if he’s gone out for the night or is taking dinner in his rooms and feels a sharp stab of jealousy. Maybe no one would mind if he took off, too.

Once they’re all settled, his mother smiles at Aaron (but actually Andrew); he gives her a curt nod in response.

Neil prepares himself for a very long, confusing hour or two.

He’s not wrong. Aaron does a good job keeping polite, professional conversation going with Nathan, but a less good job pretending to have any interest in Neil at all. It’s not a problem, really—Nathan’s not particularly interested in his son either, so they have that much in common. Neil spends most of his time either watching the rapid shadows of reaction pass across Andrew’s face or scolding himself for watching Andrew instead of paying attention to what his father and Aaron are talking about. He’s in one of those former stages, fascinated by the annoyance Andrew is transferring from the people to the garlicky hasselback potato on his plate when Nathan’s hand lands heavily on Neil’s neck, making him jump.

“Isn’t that right, Nathaniel?” his father says, iron in his voice.

“Yes,” Neil says immediately, instinctively steeling and hunching in on himself.

Nathan’s hand tightens painfully, each finger pressed deeply enough into Neil’s skin that he can feel the thin crescents of his father’s fingernails digging in. Neil risks a quick glance at the rest of the table; Andrew is dangerously still in his seat, Aaron visibly annoyed.

“At least he doesn’t get in the way,” Nathan says. He gives Neil’s neck a shake—a hard one, Neil drops his silverware to brace against the edge of the table.

Andrew shifts, but before he can shove his chair back, Aaron’s hand flies up to halt him. He favors Nathan with an expression Neil would only expect to see on the real Andrew’s face. It’s pure disgust, laced with nothing other than the willingness to do something about it.

“Mr. Wesninski,” Aaron says sharply.

It’s all he says. It’s all he has to say. The cumulative threat of the pair of them, compact, caught in a rare moment of evident emotion, pinning Nathan with matching expressions of revulsion and disapproval and anger, does the trick. Nathan gives Neil a last squeeze and then drops his hand, settling back into his place at the head of the table with a look of vague satisfaction on his face that doesn’t match the rebuke Neil knows he heard in Aaron’s voice.

Neil picks up his silverware again and studiously cuts his food into even pieces, locking his expression down under martial law, militantly patrolling every feature to be sure nothing shows.

He doesn’t miss a single word of the rest of the conversation.

Neil collapses onto his bed after dinner, his eyes trained on the white of the ceiling, beating back the silent riot of anger and humiliation in his chest. He lies there, staring at the same constellation of bumps in the plaster, until he has the feeling contained, and then he gets up and gets undressed. He neatly folds his clothes instead of ripping them apart and flinging them around the room, and then he changes into toffee-colored cashmere joggers and a long-sleeved shirt in a soft, warm jersey. He adds thick socks, grabs his books, and heads towards the small sitting area that adjoins his bedroom. He doesn’t quite make it before a quiet knock sounds at his door.

He wishes for a world in which he could simply ignore it.

But he doesn’t live in that world, so he forces a polite smile onto his face and goes to open it. Instead of Nathan or Lola or his mother or even Allison, Neil finds Andrew on the other side, changed from his dinner clothes into sweats—a black set, but Neil spots the bright blue of Andrew’s t-shirt peeking out from under the neckline of his sweater.

“Oh,” Neil says, surprised. “Hello.”

“Can I come in?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah, yes.” Neil belatedly gets his shit together and swings the door open, stepping back so Andrew can slip into the room. He thinks about saying any number of inane things to find out why Andrew is here: ‘what’s up?’ or ‘can I help you?’ or ‘did you need something’, but it would be a waste of words. He thinks he knows why Andrew is here.

Neil presses the door closed quietly. “I’m sorry,” he says flatly. “About earlier. He’s—”

“Do not apologize,” Andrew interrupts, turning from his scan of the room to fix Neil with hard eyes. “Don’t do it.”

Okay, maybe he doesn’t know why Andrew is here.

Once Andrew seems satisfied that Neil isn’t going to keep talking, he turns back to his survey, walking the perimeter, running his hands over the antiques and reproduction furniture, the racks of clothes visible in the open wardrobe, the layers of linens on Neil’s bed.

Neil has noticed this about Andrew: how tactile he is, how physically he experiences the world; Neil has noticed, too, the discipline it must take for Andrew to keep himself apart from everything, how conservative his touches are.

It’s three hours—or three minutes, maybe—of watching Andrew’s fingertips play over the fabrics of Neil’s discarded clothes, the carving on the posts of his bed, the satin trim rimming his lampshades, before Andrew turns back to him.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asks.

“I was going to read,” Neil answers, holding his book up for inspection. He absently wonders if it will matter to Andrew that the book isn’t serious or intellectual. If it will matter that it’s a pulpy thriller about people losing their minds in a theme park. Less absently, he wonders why he gives a damn.

Andrew’s eyes take in the cover of the book and then dismiss it. He makes his way through the open archway into a small room that holds a skirted couch, an armchair, and a TV with the faintest beginnings of a thin layer of dust. Andrew skims the dust with his index finger, blows it into the air, and moves on to tracing the intricately carved frame of the paintings on the wall.

Neil sits. He thinks he could probably get through a chapter before Andrew finished committing every detail of the room to memory, but he tosses the book onto the coffee table and watches Andrew instead. Everything feels very still other than Andrew—he moves the air as he cuts through it, setting flurries of specks into tumult in the beams of light coming from the lamps. He traces a detailed moulding here, pinches the crumpled corner of a pillow there.

Andrew is touching everything but Neil, but Neil feels the phantoms of each caress on his skin anyway.

“So,” Neil says, trying to break the spell. He revisits all of the inane things he could have said at the door and blurts, “Why are you here?”

“To see you,” Andrew says easily, without looking away from the thick green plant leaf he’s rubbing between his fingers.

“Why?” Neil asks.

Andrew’s shoulder goes up in that elegant, apathetic shrug he does so beautifully. “It is the reason we came all this way.”

“Is it?” Neil asks skeptically. There are a lot of reasons to throw your hat into this particular ring, but Neil is fully and deeply aware that none of them have anything to do with him personally.

“It is now,” Andrew says.

Something warm flushes through Neil, uncomfortably heating his face, his fingertips, his toes.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Neil says, frowning. “I’m not—” he scans his memory for the appropriate reference, the mistreated princess waiting breathlessly but hopefully for her prince to come. He can’t think of it, so he finishes the sentence lamely. “Disney.”

Andrew finally turns to look at him, his eyes skimming over Neil the way his fingers have the rest of the room. “I don’t.”

“Good.”

“I may kill him,” Andrew says. “But I am not pitying you.”

Despite this, Neil feels pitied. He frowns again.

“Neil,” Andrew says. “I know what it takes.”

What does it take, Neil wonders. Is it intelligence or cowardice? Endurance or hopelessness? He knows he’s all strategy, that every step out of his bedroom is a step into battle, but is there any value in the fight? If he was really smart, or brave, or motivated, wouldn’t he be wooing these suitors himself? They’ve offered him an escape on a silver platter and he just. Goes through the motions. All he’s looking for is the highest degree of benign neglect.

“Neil,” Andrew says again.

Neil blinks him into focus, sees that he’s taken a few steps closer, that his knees are pressed against the arm at the other end of the couch.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” Andrew says. It sounds...oddly raw. Honest.

Bizarrely, Neil’s heart beats a little faster.

“Is that a new experience?” Neil asks. He means it to be dry, a little sardonic, but all of his intentions dissolve under the steady set of Andrew’s shoulders and the immobility of his expression.

Andrew says, “Yes,” and steps around the arm of the couch.

Neil’s mouth is suddenly parched. Everything around him is mundane and familiar but out of focus, blurring into the edges of an image in which Andrew is the center, clear and crisp and taking another step towards him. Neil has felt this before, thumbed at this lighter, but it’s never quite sparked like this.

He doesn’t have a smart comment to make, nothing light or deflecting to say, so he just keeps his mouth shut and watches Andrew approach, watches him settle himself onto the coffee table so they’re facing each other, watches one of Andrew’s knees slot between his own to make room.

“Is this cashmere?” Andrew asks. His hands cup Neil’s knees, smooth up and flatten onto his thighs.

Neil’s spark catches, roars into a flame. “Yes,” he says, and he means the fabric, but he also means yes to the look in Andrew’s eyes, to the heat of his palms through the wool. Andrew is already there when Neil leans in, leaving just enough space for a whisper.

They kiss. He can taste a hint of Andrew’s mouth only in the slickness of his slightly parted lips. The second brush is closer, more assured, and then Andrew’s hands wind into Neil’s hair and his mouth opens for Neil’s. He’s fresh mint and a hint of cigarettes, which should probably be gross, but. Isn’t. Neil tangles his fingers in Andrew’s sweater for balance and lets him in, feeling the warmth of it all the way to his toes.

The front edge of the couch cushion collapses under Neil’s shifted weight, but he ignores the press of the frame into his thighs, ignores the strain in his neck, ignores everything but the sound of Andrew’s shallow breath and the brush of thumbs on his face until Andrew moves twice, quickly—he pushes forward and then stops himself, pulling back just enough to breathe against Neil’s lips.

Neil feels and inhales Andrew’s soft “Fuck,” more than he actually hears it. He tightens his grip on Andrew’s sweater and then forces himself to loosen it. For all that Andrew’s hands linger on him, on his things, Neil doesn’t have to be told not to touch back without permission.

“I should go,” Andrew says, but his hands tighten in Neil’s hair and their mouths brush again, then again. “For tonight.”

Neil knows he’s right, knows that they need to sleep on this, knows that he shouldn’t throw himself and his very sparse experience into bed with this man he barely knows, who’s here to consider an alliance with the Moriyamas, who may or may not even be Andrew Minyard.

What he says is, “Don’t,” even as he forces himself to release his hold on Andrew’s sweater and blindly smooth the fabric down. “Just. Stay?”

This time, Andrew pulls back enough to really look at Neil, touring every corner where Neil could be hiding a lie, his thumbs stroking absently over Neil’s cheekbones.

“Okay,” Andrew says after a long moment. “But not this. Do you have a chess set?”

Neil doesn’t keep a chess set in his room because of course he doesn’t. He makes his way to a storage closet with a meager selection of games, slipping quietly through the hallways like a ghost, avoiding certain floorboards as a matter of long habit and muscle memory. The box is dusty and heavier than Neil remembers. Andrew seems pleased with it, though—he sets the board up, polishes it with his sleeve, and makes short work of lining up the intricately detailed marble pieces.

It’s not until Andrew settles across the table, cross-legged on the floor, and looks up at Neil with gleaming eyes that Neil realizes he is about to lose. Very badly.

“Okay,” Neil says, resigned to his defeat but feeling oddly light. He smiles at Andrew, bright, almost gleeful, and says, “Remind me, which pieces are important?”

Lunch with Nathan, Lola, and the Minyards is bearable only because Neil gets to replay a couple of hours of chess and a very long goodnight kiss in the back of his mind. He nods when he’s supposed to, smiles when he’s supposed to, and offers a very few appropriately placed agreements with things his father says, but his thoughts are focused on the little wrinkle that forms on Andrew’s brow when he’s weighing options, on the confident play of his fingers on the pieces, on the patient way he kept playing matches even after he’d beaten Neil easily again and again.

It’s dangerous, thinking about Andrew like this. Thinking about anyone like this, really.

The problem is the little details that keep popping into his mind unbidden: the faint diagonal scar that crosses one of Andrew’s knuckles, the way he constantly pushes his right sleeve up and out of the way instead of rolling it up, the exact pitch of his voice when he’d finally pulled himself away and said goodnight.

Well, fuck.

He sends a message to Allison: going to kick your ass today.

An hour later, Allison stands in front of him with a colorful bouquet of wide-tipped markers, grinning.

“I’m going to gut you like a fish,” she says cheerfully.

“You can try,” Neil responds archly, plucking a bright purple from the bundle. “If I don’t get your carotid first.”

“Oh, please. Like you could even find it.”

“It’s right around here, isn’t it?” Neil asks. He jabs at her throat with his uncapped marker, grinning when she jerks back abruptly and glares.

“Not cool,” Allison says. “I still have all these fucking markers.”

“Sorry,” Neil says drily. “I’ll wait for the next person with all the knives to choose just one before I attack.”

“Oh, you’re in for it now.” Allison tosses the rest of the markers to the side of the mat and uncaps the green one in her hand, snapping the cap into place with a loud snap. “I’m going to gut you like two fish.”

Neil shifts his weight more evenly between his feet and crooks a finger at her, beckoning her to come and get him. She does, because she always does. Neil is the patient one between them, the one who can circle and circle without getting sick of it, who can hover in the moment before the fight, unburdened by haste, unmoved by the drive to attack.

She’s fast, though. Has been since the first day she’d laid him out flat on his back, his chest heaving. But Neil is faster and he’s ready for her by now, recognizing the flex of her calf as she transfers her weight to her toes and lunges forward, slicing viciously at his stomach. He jumps back, hunching to get more distance between his guts and her marker, quickly enough that the felt tip doesn’t come close to marking his white shirt. His answering swipe grazes her forearm, but isn’t enough to mark her, either.

“Close,” she says grudgingly.

“Closer than you were.”

“Speaking of close,” Allison says, taking a casual step to the side so that Neil has to mirror her to keep the distance. “I haven’t seen much of you the last couple of days. Is there something I should know?”

“You’re telegraphing with your left shoulder,” Neil offers helpfully. “Square up a little.”

“Alright, asshole.” She does, though, rolling the shoulder back and setting it in line with the other. “How are the mini twins?”

“Fine,” Neil says. She rolls her eyes—the way he knew she would—and he darts in, slapping her marker hand to the side and slashing a thick purple line down the inside of the forearm she throws up to ward him off.

She scowls at it and then shakes it off, resetting her stance. “So you’d be fine with marrying the straightest man I’ve ever met?”

Neil shrugs, trying for casual, as though he isn’t watching every tiny movement of her wrists and feet. “Why would that matter?”

Allison comes at him again, straight on, an unusually bold attack that he deflects the worst of. She still gets a vivid green mark on the sleeve of his white shirt. Fuck.

“Because sex is awesome,” she says. “Though I guess you could fuck the brother. I get a vibe.”

They’re circling each other steadily now; Neil tightens his orbit a little, easing closer and slowing his steps. When she goes to shorten hers to match, he surges, catching her in the chest with his shoulder and driving her to the ground. He feels the tip of her marker jab clumsily into the flesh of his upper arm and moves fast, knocking it out of the way and putting his own to her throat. He draws a steady purple line down the side of her neck, adds a dot like an exclamation point to the bottom, and then heaves himself to his feet.

“Good,” Allison says. “But that only worked because we’re close enough in height. Someone with more reach could have gotten you first.”

“I’m not fighting someone with more reach,” Neil says, offering her a hand up.

She takes it, almost pulling him down with her as she rises; Neil has to lean back and use his weight as a ballast. Up, Allison’s hand moves to her neck, tentatively touching the spot where the mark is as though her fingers will come away with blood.They come back clean, but she still scowls at him. “Stop changing the subject. Tell me about Andrew Minyard. Are we marrying him? Are we fucking the twin?”

“We aren’t fucking anyone,” Neil says.

“We could,” Allison muses. “We could ruin anyone in one night.”

“No,” Neil says. “We couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t? Or won’t?”

“You can’t even ruin this shirt,” Neil taunts.

Allison narrows her eyes at him. She stills, straightens, and points the marker accusingly. “You’re deflecting.”

“And you’re dead.”

“Oh, no, motherfucker,” she says. “I’m going to kick your ass for that, but you will tell me what’s up with the Minyards.”

“Nothing to tell,” Neil counters easily. “Are we going to fight or gossip?”

“We’re going to both,” Allison says, her voice stiffening with indignation. “It’s a tradition.”

“Okay,” Neil says, flipping his marker between his fingers and smiling widely at her. “Earn it.”

He gives her nothing for an hour. He is noncommittal, driving her to aggravation with vague half-answers and capitalizing on her irritation until he’s drawn an impressionistic riot of victories on her skin and clothes. He’s streaked with green, too, lines of it spilling his vital organs and maiming him half a dozen ways, but he doesn’t relent until she pulls a tricky move, sacrificing her knife hand to get him down. Her thighs clamp around his neck and she rolls them so that he can’t get his marker out from under him without bleeding himself out in the process.

Neil taps at her thigh, submitting, but she just props up on one elbow and squints down at him.

“Tell me one thing,” she demands. “Do you like him?”

“Yes,” Neil admits.

“Good,” Allison says. The grip of her legs doesn’t loosen. “Are you going to pick him?”

Neil says, “No,” and counts the seconds until she releases him. One, two, three, four, five.

Andrew steps into Neil’s rooms and waits, silently, until Neil closes and locks the door behind him.

“The food?” Andrew asks.

“Will keep,” Neil says, gesturing vaguely to the sealed containers of hummus and other wrap ingredients.

Andrew spares the table a glance and then steps forward, into Neil’s space. His hands are warm and wide; they find Neil’s ribs and work themselves under the drape of his cardigan.

“It’s hummus,” Neil mumbles, sneaking each word into the spaces between the press of Andrew’s mouth against his. “I figured. If we got. Distracted. We could.”

“Uh huh,” Andrew murmurs. He’s maneuvering them slowly towards the couch with short, blind steps, his hands firm and sure on Neil’s back. “Hummus.”

“Wraps,” Neil says, and then shuts up when Andrew’s teeth graze his bottom lip. He almost knocks over a lamp when they spin them around the corner of the couch, but Andrew steadies it without taking his mouth off Neil’s, and then he’s dropping onto the couch and pulling Neil on top of him.

Dinner is room temperature but fine when they break to eat, Andrew pulling away and cupping Neil’s face between his hands when Neil’s stomach rumbles loudly. “Food,” Andrew says. “You spent lunch making fuck-me eyes instead of eating.”

“I did not,” Neil protests.

The corner of Andrew’s mouth rises to match his eyebrow.

“Not on purpose,” Neil says. “Mostly.”

He is starving, though. Eating around his father and Lola always feels treacherous, and then he and Allison had gone dozens of rounds of sparring, so the gnawing ache in his core probably has almost as much to do with hunger as it does the pressure of Andrew’s thigh between his legs.

They assemble wraps and eat cross-legged on the floor while Neil tries to explain the Lord of the Flies meets Hook vibes of the book he’s reading and Andrew points out a dozen ways the entire situation could have been avoided.

Dessert is Neil’s bed, Andrew peeling him out of layers, taking him apart with his mouth and then a hand pushed into the loosened waistband of Neil’s cuffed jeans. Andrew refuses reciprocation but allows Neil to kiss his neck until he draws back, huffing, burying his face against Neil’s chest until his breathing levels out.

Neil thinks, maybe, that Andrew will leave then, but he doesn’t. They curl into each other in the golden light of Neil’s bedside lamp, Neil tracing the lines of Andrew’s face, his shoulder, the definition of muscle down his arms as delicately as the permission he’s been given. Andrew’s hands are more sure, moving in broad strokes and tucking against Neil’s back to pull him closer for lazy kisses that make Neil’s head spin nonetheless.

Andrew will go home the day after tomorrow, so there’s one more night of this at best and Neil intends to squeeze every drop out of it that he can. He’s felt desire before, a shimmering mirage of heat and thirst on the horizon, but not often. And not, certainly, to this degree. He’s never subsumed himself into it. Never felt the weight of hands on him and wanted more.

Steady fingers stroke under his jaw, tipping his head back. They push his hair over his ear, trail down his arm, wrap around his wrist and lift Neil’s pulse point to Andrew’s lips.

“Arts and crafts?” Andrew asks.

“What?” Neil murmurs. “Right now?”

“No,” Andrew says. “You have green on you.”

It takes Neil a moment to make the observation align with his memory of the day, but then it clicks cleanly into place. “Oh. No,” he says. “Allison and I were sparring.”

“With what?”

“Markers,” Neil explains. “Instead of knives.”

“Markers,” Andrew repeats.

Neil blinks Andrew into focus. His deep, hazel eyes are locked on Neil’s face, his expression inscrutable.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “A mark means you would have been cut.”

There’s a long pause where Neil thinks Andrew is going to tell him that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard of, or make fun of him for thinking that turning himself into a coloring book is childish, or ask why he even bothers training if he’s never going to actually defend himself. What Andrew says, eventually, his eyes intent, his fingers still wrapped around Neil’s wrist, is, “Jesus Christ.”

He drops Neil’s arm over his shoulder and pulls him close again, forcing away any space between them and kissing all of the breath out of Neil’s lungs.

There’s little doubt in Neil’s mind that Andrew will come to his bedroom again the next night. He is certain enough that he brushes his teeth, puts on soft clothes he knows Andrew won’t be able to keep his hands off of, grabs a couple of bottles of wine from the cellar. The little black speaker Allison had given him last year pulses with music, stopping and starting songs obediently as Neil tries to figure out what Andrew might actually like. Where do you find sex music that isn’t too obviously sex music? He scrolls through playlists, taps on Billie Eilish, on Lorde, on Taylor Swift, on fucking Prince, but nothing feels right. Tap: Usher. Tap: John Mayer. Tap: The Weeknd.

Neil huffs quietly, frustrated, taps again, and then someone brushes his shoulder and he drops his phone and spins. His hand shoots out, clamps down on a throat, and he uses his momentum to propel the intruder back against the wall. He needs a knife or something, a weapon—and then he realizes his opponent isn’t trying to get loose. Isn’t fighting back. Isn’t touching Neil at all.

He blinks and the scene clarifies before him, appearing suddenly in technicolor, crisp and clear, high definition. It’s Andrew—Andrew’s back against the wall, Andrew’s adam's apple bobbing against Neil’s palm when he swallows, Andrew’s hands up in surrender. It’s Andrew.

Neil should let go. He can’t. But, he can loosen his grip so that he’s pinning but not choking, his fingers twitchy, the lax grip feeling risky and reckless. Drifting from the speaker are the first words of the song he’d tapped on, something low and crooning that Neil couldn’t identify now with a gun to his head.

Andrew’s hands turn slowly, palms inward, moving deliberately and carefully towards Neil’s head.

Neil watches with sharp eyes, intent on the slow arc from Andrew’s space to his own. His heart is pounding, his breath fast and shallow, and he jerks when Andrew’s fingers slide through his hair.

Andrew says, “Neil,” very quietly. The vibrations shiver through Neil’s palm.

Not a threat, Neil reminds himself. It’s Andrew. Neil wants him to be here. Neil wants him. He loosens his grip again, forcing his fingers to relax and leaving them to rest against Andrew’s throat without pressure. He can’t seem to loosen his shoulders, though, can’t convince his body that the light brush of Andrew’s thumbs over his cheekbones aren’t a threat.

He can feel Andrew’s heart pounding, too; it beats a rapid rhythm against Neil’s fingertips that doesn’t match the steadiness of his eyes or his hands.

“It’s just me,” Andrew whispers. “I’ve got you.”

Neil allows himself to be pulled in, lets his hand slide down Andrew’s chest when it’s in the way, and feels all of the tension crash out of him when their lips meet in a bruising kiss.

They stumble clumsily towards Neil’s bed. He puts everything into kissing Andrew that he would have put into fighting him, the same desperation and ferocity. Neil almost falls backwards when his thighs hit the bed, but Andrew keeps him upright with a firm hand at his lower back.

“Off?” Andrew mumbles, plucking at the fabric of Neil’s shirt.

“Yes,” Neil gasps. He shudders when Andrew’s hands slide again, working their way beneath the fabric and pushing up and off. Neil raises his arms and ducks his way out of the shirt when Andrew pulls it over his head.

Somehow, Andrew’s shoes come off. Somehow, Neil is on his back in the middle of the bed, with Andrew’s weight compressing his lungs, leaving him gasping into another punishing kiss. He’s going to run out of air and he doesn’t give a fuck, would be satisfied to close his eyes on this and never open them again, but then Andrew stops and pulls away.

Neil’s throat makes some noise of protest that he’s never heard from himself before, but it cuts off when Andrew sits back on his heels between Neil’s legs and pulls his own shirt off. Beneath all the black is ivory skin, a tapering line of golden hair that glimmers in the lamplight, planes of muscle carved in stunning relief.

Fuck, Neil thinks, but he doesn’t have time for more than a breath before Andrew is ducking to kiss him again, bracing an arm above Neil’s head and keeping them apart enough that he can push his hand down and cup Neil’s half hard dick through his pants.

“Fuck,” Neil moans. “‘Drew.”

Andrew hums into the last, fading notes of the song and shifts, dragging his mouth to Neil’s jaw, his collarbone, down his chest. The only noise that fills the brief silence is Neil’s harsh breathing and the rustle of Andrew moving. When his hands slide into Neil’s pajama bottoms, Neil lifts. When Andrew grabs for one of Neil’s hands and pulls it down, Neil tangles it in Andrew’s hair.

When Andrew ducks and takes Neil into his mouth, Neil arches helplessly, a rough, broken noise tearing itself painfully from his throat.

After, Neil is too wrecked to get up and clean the streaked lines of Andrew’s cum off his stomach; it’s Andrew who slips into the bathroom, comes back with a warm washcloth, works the rumpled covers out from under Neil and pulls them up and over both of them.

He’s too wrecked, too, to mind that his chest is on display for Andrew, every scar visible, from the point of the iron on his shoulder to the curving, organic shapes Lola carved into his upper arm. Unbothered, Andrew’s hand slides over Neil’s ribs to splay on his back. Neil’s heart pounds its rhythm into the gentle shelter of Andrew’s palm.

His eyelids drift closed.

When he opens them again, Andrew’s hazel eyes are still there, watching him. The light around them is different, though, bleeding in through the curtains and bathing everything in pinkish gold.

“Morning,” Andrew says.

“Sorry,” Neil says, smothering a yawn into the back of his hand and blinking the sleep from his eyes. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“It’s fine,” Andrew says dismissively. “You’re a much better conversationalist when you’re drooling.”

“Fuck you,” Neil huffs, amused.

“Hey,” Andrew says. His voice is serious enough that Neil stops rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands and blinks at him. Andrew pushes Neil’s hands away and looks at him intently. “Neil. Come with me to California.”

“Come with you,” Neil repeats.

“Yes.”

“To California.”

“Yes.”

“Kevin will be here next week,” Neil says.

“Neil,” Andrew says flatly.

Neil smiles brightly at him. It’s a little false and a little not. “If I came to California,” he says, “would I be marrying you or your brother?”

Andrew’s eyes narrow. The faint sound of birdsong drifts in from outside. And then, suddenly, Andrew is moving—he rolls Neil onto his back and braces above him. Andrew’s messy blond hair falls down around his eyes. “You,” Andrew says, and then interrupts himself to kiss Neil’s chin, the side of his mouth. “Are going to be such a pain in my ass.”

An hour later, Neil stands on one of the wide steps, the wind at his back, urging him forward and spoiling his view of Andrew by sending clamoring strands of hair into his eyes, stinging tears into the corners. The wind whispers, go, go, go, go with him, but Neil pushes that thought out of his mind, closes and bars the door against the urge. Chemistry is as rare as it is dangerous. Neil would be a fool to let it guide his choice—would be more of a fool to step towards it and trust it.

So, he watches Andrew walk briskly to the driver’s side of the sleek black sports car. He watches Andrew open the door and step into its shelter. He watches Andrew look back at him across the roof, no sunglasses this time, his eyes intent, his face cleanly shaven of the stubble he’d rubbed on Neil’s neck that morning.

No, Neil tells himself. Don’t be stupid.

The smile he offers is weak, he knows—Andrew doesn’t smile back, keeps his face blank and his eyes searching, and then he ducks into the car. It purrs to life. Neil can see Andrew’s now familiar fingers wrapped around the steering wheel through the windshield.

Within moments, they’re gone, rolling down the driveway and disappearing from view, leaving Neil with tender lips, a strange, hollow feeling in his chest, and a new contact saved in his phone.

Chapter Text

Kevin’s welcoming party is just Neil, hands shoved into his pockets, trying not to bounce with impatience. The last ETA Kevin had texted said 3 minutes, and that had been four minutes ago. Almost five. Neil checks his watch again, sees the seconds tick past four and a half minutes, and then looks up at the sound of tires on the driveway—two SUVs, driving at a sedate speed Neil knows must be driving Kevin insane.

The first SUV rocks to a stop in front of Neil and the passenger door is flung open before the dust settles behind the tires. Kevin—tall, built, casually dressed Kevin—steps out with a disgruntled look on his face.

“You’re late,” Neil calls.

“There was an old woman crossing the street,” Kevin grumbles.

“Jeremy wouldn’t run her over?”

Kevin shuts the door behind him with a sharp snap and lopes over, his long legs making short work of the driveway and stairs. Neil jogs down a couple of steps to meet him and then finds himself lifted off the stone, Kevin’s arms in a vice grip around Neil’s ribs, squeezing all of the breath out of him. Against Neil’s ear, Kevin says, “You’re an asshole.”

“I know,” Neil says. He grins over Kevin’s shoulder at the deeply tanned, bright-eyed man emerging from the driver’s seat. “Hey, Jeremy.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Jeremy calls. “There was an old woman crossing the street.”

“Likely story,” Neil says, huffing the words unevenly as Kevin takes the steps to the landing a little too vigorously.

When they reach the top, Neil kicks at Kevin’s calf from his still-dangling position. “You can put me down now,” he points out.

“It’s still my turn.”

“No one else gets a turn,” Neil says. “And yours is over.”

“It’s over when I say it’s over,” Kevin says, but he does give Neil one more bone crushing hug and then sets him down. He moves his hands to Neil’s arms and pushes him back enough for a good once-over, scanning him from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes. Based on the look on Kevin’s face, Neil thinks he’s probably received about a 6.3 on a scale of 1-10.

“I’m fine,” Neil says. From the car comes an alarming whoop—Neil, startled, turns to see Jeremy, thrilled, his arms thrown victoriously in the air. Jean, who’d gotten out of the car and started unloading the luggage at some point, glares half-heartedly. He drops the bag in his hands heavily on the ground, his expression as sour as Kevin’s.

“Fifty bucks,” Jeremy says smugly. “Each. Pay up.”

“Really, Neil?” Kevin says. “No one even asked if you were okay.”

Neil doesn’t bother to offer Kevin a tour. They’ve wandered these grounds for years, finding hidey holes they could pretend were any kind of sanctuary from Nathan.

Unlike with the others, though, Neil follows Kevin into his room. It’s the same space Andrew had been in last week; Neil throws himself onto the bed and surveys the whole picture, far too easily imagining Andrew in here, dressing at the mirror, sitting in the stiff antique chair to lace his boots. Where Kevin has to duck to check his hair, Andrew would have been able to look himself steadily in the eyes.

Stop it, Neil tells himself. No more Andrew. Andrew is done.

Which is, of course, right when Neil’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

Faux-casually, Neil digs it out and glances at the screen. Andrew. Neil has to scroll up to the beginning of the message—it’s a three paragraph block, an impassioned defense of the movie Andrew had told him to watch. Mad Max. Neil had sent a verdict of “meh” when he’d finished it this morning, up at six and too impatient for Kevin’s arrival to have any hope of falling back asleep.

“Who’s that?” Kevin asks as he materializes at the bedside and leans over to read the messages.

“No one,” Neil says. His thumb is still on the screen, though, scrolling back up to read it again.

“No one is sending you text novels?” Kevin asks skeptically.

“Andrew,” Neil says. “Minyard. San Francisco. He was here last week.”

“And now he’s gone,” Kevin points out unnecessarily. “Why is he still texting you?”

Neil shrugs. He knows Kevin will pull it out of him at some point during his visit, but Neil still hasn’t figured how to balance himself on this new ground, so he’s not really ready to talk about it.

“We, uh. I guess we got along,” Neil hedges.

Hedging rarely works with Kevin. He immediately straightens. Neil imagines him sniffing the air like a hunting dog.

“He’s a stranger,” Kevin says. “You can’t possibly be considering him.”

“I’m not,” Neil assures him.

“This whole thing is a farce,” Kevin continues, frowning. “You’re coming with me.”

“Yes,” Neil says. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

“It’s—do you really want to be more tied to the Moriyamas?”

Kevin says, “Fuck—” and then looks around warily before lowering his voice. “Fuck the Moriyamas. We want you.”

“I know. I just…”

“Hold on, stop.” Kevin frowns at him. “If not me, who would you choose?”

And there—well, there’s the crux of the matter. For all of his concerns about bringing heat to Kevin and his family, who else is there for Neil? Not Andrew. It can’t be Andrew. Neil has to follow his head on this one.

“Renee?” Neil offers for the sake of debate. “I liked her. Allison really liked her.”

His phone buzzes again. This time, Andrew has sent him the middle finger emoji in a shower of confetti that takes over his entire screen. Helplessly, Neil smiles at his phone.

“Give me that,” Kevin demands. He reaches for the phone, his hand swiping towards it, but Neil is faster. He crams it back into his pocket and rolls so that it’s trapped between him and the mattress. Kevin points at him sternly. “You have to sleep sometime, Wesninski.”

“Wow,” Neil says, packing his voice with insincerity. “I’m so glad you’re here. I really missed this.”

It had been Kevin who taught Neil how to sail. Neil had been fifteen, had more or less stopped getting taller, but the rage in him had kept growing and growing until he felt disfigured by it, until he thought, surely, he was going to burst, tear apart at the seams. He’d been this close to doing something, anything to get a little relief. Kill his father, maybe. Throw himself off a bridge. Run away. Go to the FBI.

When he’d gone to Boston for a summer visit, Kevin had taken one good look at him and said, “You’re not doing well.”

Neil had said, of course, “I’m fine.”

The next day they went out on Kevin’s new catamaran, supervised by his sailing instructor, a snappily dressed man in his 50s or 60s who’d spent the whole day lounging with a bottomless mimosa, one bare ankle crossed over his knee, calling out instructions and reminders and encouragement that would have sounded right at home in the 1940s.

By the time Neil had gone home three weeks later, his skin had ripped and healed itself over so many times that nascent callouses had formed on his palms and fingers. Neil cherished them. He’d learned how to read the wind and the water, how to work the lines. He’d stood on the edge of the boat with nothing but a taut rope for balance, buffeted by a wind so strong it stripped everything out of him—the rage, the hopelessness, the fear. Compared to the ocean, it was nothing. He was nothing. He was a small piece of a thing without limits. What happened to him didn’t matter. How he felt about it didn’t matter. Everything was wind and water and all Neil needed to do was tie the right knots, make everything small except his sails. Whatever those were.

So, unsurprisingly, they blow off most of the getting-to-know-each-other events on the visit’s itinerary and take out the sleek sloop that Kevin had bought for himself and docked in Baltimore; ostensibly because Kevin is very spoiled and particular, but really because there was no way Neil was going to ask his parents for a boat. Even if they’d bought him one, it would have been something precious that his father could threaten him with. Better that it’s Kevin’s and untouchable in a way nothing Neil had was.

The morning had dawned beautifully, the air crisp and dancing, the sky clear of clouds, a shade of blue you can’t capture on camera, the sun bright and cutting through the early December chill.

The five of them pile out of Kevin’s rented SUV and get down to business. Kevin and Neil inspect the boat, checking for anything that needs repairing or oiling. Allison grabs a black box from the trunk and climbs on board the Something Better, padding around silently, barefoot, and sweeping every inch of the vessel for bugs or cameras. Jean and Jeremy occupy themselves transferring supplies: food, water, towels, the changes of clothes they’d all brought.

By some unspoken agreement, they all work quietly, keeping comments sparse and softly-spoken until the Something Better is free of the dock, free of the company of other boats. At the first snap of the sail, the first surge of the hull against the water, Jeremy whoops and breaks the spell. After that, it’s Kevin and Neil shouting to each other over the wind, Jean following Neil around the perimeter with a hand hovering casually around Neil’s padded vest.

“I’m not going to fall in,” Neil says, amused.

“You are very small,” Jean replies smoothly. “The wind could pick you up and poof.” Jean punctuates this with a little burst of his fingers outward.

“Poof?”

“You would fly away from us like a beautiful kite. Keep your vest zipped.”

“Are you at least going to help?” Neil asks.

Jean smiles very, very charmingly. “Non. I am delicate. The ropes would ruin my manicure.”

In retribution, Neil steps a little too close to the side, wobbling dangerously. He’s only tipped about ten degrees in the wrong direction before Jean’s hand fists tightly in Neil’s vest.

“Non,” Jean says again, sternly this time. “Do not be cute. This outfit is not for swimming.”

“We’re on a boat,” Neil says helpfully.

“Yes,” Jean agrees. “And I am dressed appropriately to stay on the boat.”

“And look pretty?”

“Very pretty,” Jean says. “Are you quite finished?”

Neil gives the rope in his hand another sharp tug, setting and testing the knot. They move to the next winch. Kevin, unsupervised, works the rest of the winches. At the helm, Jeremy keeps his eyes glued on Kevin, adjusting the wheel as the hand signals come, easy, loose twists that Jeremy follows to the degree. The captain’s hat only he ever wears is tipped atop his golden curls at a rakish angle. They’re all moving pieces, making the journey happen, and Neil is a part of it, has a place in it, can sink into it.

It’s the promise of Boston. The Something Better a microcosm of what marriage with Kevin would be—including Allison, reclining, her ankles crossed and propped on the boat’s low railing, the purple glitter on her toes catching the light. It’s freedom, safety, friendship, fun. It’s a preview of the longer trips they could take, sailing down the coast, docking and exploring, sleeping in the bunks of Kevin’s actual vessel, a luxuriously appointed Nordic 40. Days of the wind scrubbing them clean. Nights warmed by alcohol, lying on deck and stargazing.

This is what they want, Kevin and Jean and Jeremy. Allison. Neil, too, except—he wishes there were six of them, that’s all.

By the time they tuck the boat against an island for lunch, everyone’s hair is enormous. Allison’s tidy braid transformed into a frayed rope, Jeremy’s curls blown apart everywhere except where the captain’s hat had them. Neil tugs his fingers through to the ends of his own hair, testing to see how long it will stay standing up straight on its own.

Neil is drawn back into the chatter when Kevin calls Allison’s name, projecting his imperious tone at least half a mile over the water. He looks that way and sees Allison tip her head to the side. Neil has seen that head tip any number of times when they’re sparring.

“Andrew Minyard,” Kevin says. Uh oh. “Tell me everything.”

“What’s an ‘Andrew Minyard’?” Jeremy asks.

“He’s—” Neil starts, but cuts himself off when both Allison and Kevin wave him off dismissively.

“No one asked you,” Kevin tells him.

“But he’s my—”

“What?” Allison interjects keenly. “He’s your what?”

Neil shuts up.

“That’s what I thought,” Allison says. She turns her blinding smile on Kevin and says, “He hasn’t told me anything, but he’s been extremely weird about it.”

“I have not,” Neil protests.

“Sorry,” Jean says. “Some context, please.”

“Andrew Minyard,” Allison says with dark glee, “is the man who decides who gets to come in and out of San Francisco. He was here wooing Neil last week.”

“There was no wooing,” Neil tries to say.

“Not from Andrew,” Allison agrees. “His identical twin, on the other hand. Aaron.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “Um.”

Kevin’s head whips around. He trains narrowed eyes on Neil, who sheepishly clears his throat and says, “They swapped.”

“Swapped?” Jeremy asks.

“When they arrived, they introduced Aaron as Andrew. And Andrew as Aaron.”

Allison’s “Why?” and Kevin’s “Clever” are simultaneous, but Allison shakes it off first. “Well, that’s fucking confusing,” she says. “My story is going to be all wrong now.”

“Sorry,” Jean says again. “Are we concerned about this man?”

“Neil was mooning over his phone yesterday,” Kevin says. “So, yes. I’m concerned.”

The weight of all four sets of eyes on him is awful. Neil shrinks under it and turns his attention to the sandwich in his hands.

“Okay, but.” It’s Jeremy this time. “Neil is still marrying us, right?”

This time, it’s Kevin and Neil who speak at the same time: “Yes” / “Probably.”

“Probably?” Jeremy, again.

“Or maybe Walker,” Neil says defensively. “I liked her. Allison fell in love. She wants to suffocate in Walker’s—”

“Anyway,” Allison interrupts. “Andrew Minyard. Shorter than Neil. Kind of scary, even for me.”

“He’s not scary,” Neil argues.

“Here’s what I do know,” Allison says. “I barely saw Neil while Andrew was there. And I think they banged.”

Neil desperately hopes his face is sunburned enough to hide the blush that creeps hotly up his cheeks.

“We did not bang,” he says, with all the dignity he can muster. It’s not a whole lot.

All the eyes on him now are skeptical. Jean holds up a placating hand. “We must be fair to Neil,” he says. “How is he to address any banging if we’re not all on the same page about what it means?”

“Right,” Allison says sweetly. “So, Neil, if absolutely nothing happened, then you didn’t bang.”

Neil takes a much too large bite of his sandwich.

Allison crows victoriously. Kevin frowns.

“Step-by-step, then,” Jean says. “Twenty questions.”

“Sex questions,” Allison clarifies.

“Perhaps not just sex,” Jean says smoothly. “Neil?”

Neil makes a big show of chewing and points toward his face, shrugging apologetically.

Kevin puts his own sandwich down and leans against the swell of the boat behind him. “We’ll wait.”

They do. Neil chews self-consciously, his mouth drier than it needs to be to get through a bite this big. He swallows, drinks half a bottle of lemonade in one swallow to stall, and then finally sighs. “Fine.”

Allison’s mouth opens, but Kevin holds up a peremptory hand to stop her. Evenly, Kevin says, “Were you and Minyard physically intimate?”

“Am I in court?” Neil asks. “Physically intimate, really?”

“Deflection,” Allison accuses.

There’s no way out of this. If there were only one or two of them, he could probably kill them without taking too much damage himself, weight and dump the bodies just offboard. He’s too outnumbered, though, so he has to do the harder thing: answer the question.

He doesn’t have to volunteer anything extra, though, so he just clears his throat and says, “Yeah.”

Allison’s mouth opens again, but Kevin cuts her off. “Did you have sex?”

“Too vague,” Jean insists.

“Fine,” Kevin says irritably. “Was there nudity?”

Very sincerely, Neil says, “Fuck my life.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Neil huffs. “There was nudity. I hate you all.”

“Did you get off?” Allison asks.

“That is definitely none of your business,” Neil says.

“Were there activities aimed towards that end?” Jean offers diplomatically.

Neil closes his eyes very tight, builds a hard, resolved shell around himself, and then opens them again. “Yes.”

“How long was he here?” Jeremy asks. “Because I’ve seen people hit that iceberg and go right under.”

“The normal amount,” Neil says. “Five days.”

“You hooked up with him after five days?” Jean asks incredulously.

“No, actually,” Neil counters. “It was the third day.”

He doesn’t think everyone needs to actually look this shocked.

“I don’t like this,” Kevin says. “He seduced you.”

“Hi.” Neil waves for their attention and then gestures to himself, up and down. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding with whom to be physically intimate all on my own.”

Kevin frowns harder. “This is serious. Don’t distract me with grammar.”

“No, it isn’t,” Neil says firmly. “I’m not marrying Andrew Minyard. He knows this. It’s nothing.”

“You’re still talking to him,” Kevin points out.

Neil presses the palm of his hand to his chest, straightens his shoulders, and affects outrage. “The gall of me, making a fifth friend.”

The frown on Kevin’s face doesn’t ease, but he does look to Jeremy instead when he claps loudly. “Enough,” Jeremy says. “We have nothing to fear from Andrew Minyard. He can only aspire to the level of wooing we can do this week. We’ll set up a nudity schedule. We’ll put our best foot forward. Neil, do you have time to get naked with Jean tomorrow?”

“Excuse me,” Kevin says. “If we’re going to put our naked best forward, it’s obviously going to be me.”

Allison breaks into a wicked smile. “Okay, boys, I’m in charge of Neil’s social calendar. Send me your nudes and I’ll distribute the appropriate time slots.”

Everyone is exhausted by the time they get back to the house, worn out by hours in the sun, working the boat, walking on tired legs to the seafood restaurant Kevin insists they go to every time he visits. They drop Allison off on the way, leaving Neil and Jeremy to spread out in the backseat while Jean handles the vehicle with an almost arrogant precision.

Neil’s body wants to fall face-down just past his bedroom door and not get up again until noon tomorrow, but the rest of him wants to stay up for six more hours listening to Kevin talk. So, when Kevin beckons Neil to follow him to the guest wing, Neil goes. He lets Kevin stack him up with pajamas and a toiletry bag, watches Kevin slip his feet into the slippers that keep his ice-cold feet somewhere closer to room temperature, and then leads the way back to his own room. Kevin follows, yawning but not shuffling, holding the pillow he’d brought from home in his arms. The plan, then, is to flop into bed with Kevin and talk about everything and nothing until one of them falls asleep mid-word.

Except, when they get to his room, there’s already something on his bed. It’s a matte black box. Neil’s name is written elegantly on it in a glossier black that gleams in the light, a stark contrast to the soft finish of the rest of the package.

“What is that?” Kevin asks.

“I don’t know.”

They stare at it.

“It’s probably not a bomb,” Neil says. “No one who’d kill me would want to blow the house up with me.”

“It’s a present,” Kevin says. “Open it.”

“Good present or bad present?” Neil wonders.

“We’re about to find out.”

All Neil sees when he carefully lifts the thick top of the box off is neatly folded white tissue paper, sealed in the middle with an intricately embossed black and gold sticker. Carefully, very carefully, Neil slides his finger under the edge of the paper, releasing the sticker and parting the tissue paper. When he folds it back, still half expecting a pile of ears or white roses soaked in blood or something awful, he finds a neatly folded square of blue fabric. A small white envelope sits atop it neatly, the paper heavy and creamy. Neil takes in the cramped “N” written on it and flushes.

“Read the card,” Kevin instructs. His tone is rigid, his posture more so. Kevin, Neil realizes, has also figured out who this is from.

Neil picks up the envelope, turns it over, folds it open. There is one line centered in the middle of the paper, the same even, narrow writing: Because I can’t touch you myself. A.

Behind Neil, Kevin swears softly.

Neil slips the card back into the envelope and sets it down next to the box, squaring the edges neatly. Very carefully, he picks up the fabric. It’s a scarf, impossibly smooth, the weave of it tight, the ends of it fringed in delicate threads. Neil already knows that it’s the exact shade of the deepest blue of his eyes. Rapt, he unfolds it, admires its drape, the silk woven in with the cashmere.

“Neil,” Kevin says warily.

“Don’t,” Neil says. “I know, but just. Don’t.”

“I’m going to shower,” Kevin says stiffly. He plucks his toiletry bag off of the pile Neil had set down on his dresser and stalks across the room and into Neil’s bathroom.

There’s a little banging, the heavy sound of Kevin’s boating clothes hitting the floor, and then the rush of water. Neil waits until the pattern of the noise changes, the interruption of Kevin’s body in the flow of the water, and then he puts the scarf down and peels off his ridiculous puffy vest, kicks off his shoes. The light sweater is next and lands somewhere in the corner, leaving Neil in the stiff, salty shirt he’d been wearing most of the day.

He needs to send Andrew something, he knows that much. A picture. Neil wraps the scarf around his wrist and through his fingers, considering the image. It doesn’t feel right. Too distant. If Neil was smart, if he was as careful and detached and strategic as he should be, he would send a picture of it folded up and a ‘thank you.’ It seems, though, that Neil is very stupid. He drapes the scarf around his neck, wraps it, brings a fistful to his face and feels the fabric slide over his chapped lips.

The image of himself that his front-facing camera shows him is...too much. He doesn’t trust the phone to flatten the look in his eyes enough that he’s not raw. What he gets, instead, is mostly the scarf, looped around his neck, its end captured between Neil’s wind-reddened fingers. The faded flamingo pattern of his shirt is in it, too, a slice of muted pink at the bottom of the image. At the top, as much of his face as he can bring himself to show—the bottom half of his face, mostly turned away from the camera. His jaw, his mouth, the constellation of freckles low on his cheekbone that Neil hadn’t realized Andrew was kissing until he’d traced it later, from memory, alone in front of his mirror.

Even that feels impossibly vulnerable.

He sends it anyway.

As much as Neil would like to sleep in that fucking scarf, live in it for a week, wear it everywhere, he puts it away before Kevin gets out of the shower. He half-heartedly bathes himself, throws on pajamas, socks to compensate for the dramatic temperature change between Kevin’s feet and his torso, and, in a bald subject change, asks for all the Boston gossip.

He’s pretty sure he falls asleep first. The last thing he remembers is being curled up on his side, watching Kevin attempt to demonstrate some complex play the Patriots had pulled off in their last game. The image of Kevin’s hands aloft in the dim light from the partially-open bathroom door is imprinted on the back of eyelids all through the night.

When he finally does accept the reality of his consciousness and blink his eyes open, he finds that he’s shuffled closer to Kevin in his sleep, migrating from his side of bed towards the burning sun in the middle of it. Kevin’s slack, pillow-smooshed face is inches from his own. There’s a fine crust at the corners of his mouth where drool has dried. Kevin could stay under for another few hours if left to his own devices.

And Neil, well. Neil has some things of his own to get up to. He rolls, not bothering to be slow or quiet, and gropes for his phone, yawning widely against the back of his hand as he squints at the screen. Andrew’s response had come through a couple of hours after Neil had sent the picture: a single blue heart. Then, a few minutes later, ‘10 Things I Hate About You (1999)’.

Neil sends back ‘can’t wait to start watching movies made this century’ and then texts Allison a list of things he needs.

The gift box Allison brings him is white and gilded around the edges. Neil carefully smooths a piece of tissue paper into it and then sets his crisply, perfectly folded vicuña sweater inside. On top of that goes the small envelope with the note Neil had written, thrown away, re-thought, rewritten, almost bit through his lip about, and then ultimately gathered the courage to tuck into the box: To touch. N.

It’s the sweater Neil had been wearing at that first dinner alone, the one Andrew had liked so much, had touched so gently. It had occurred to him that night, tipsily, that the tawny color matched the gold and amber in Andrew’s eyes. He’d thought he’d keep the sweater, that it would remind him of that night, of the few that came after it, but—he likes the idea of Andrew having it. Maybe it will make Andrew remember, too.

The rest of the tissue paper is layered and tucked neatly. The lid slides back on easily. Neil picks it up and hands it to Allison. Her face is doing something complicated.

“Neil,” Allison says. “Babe.”

“Can you just get it to him?”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Neil says lightly. “It’s not a thing.”

“How is this not a thing?” Allison asks, gesturing towards him with the box.

“He sent me something. I’m sending something back.”

“Neil,” Allison says again, frowning. “If you really like him, you could—”

“A courier,” Neil interrupts. “I want it to get there as soon as possible. And I want it to still look like this.”

Motionless, silent, Allison watches him.

“This is my chance,” Neil says quietly. “I have to make the smart decision. This isn’t—it isn’t a good time to gamble.”

Allison turns, taking in Kevin’s still-sleeping sprawl, and then turns back, shaking her head. She says, “We’re going to talk about this for real. If it’s—you’re going to think it’s too risky but if you’re in love with him, you should—”

“He was here for five days. And he was pretending to be someone else half the time.”

“So are you,” Allison counters.

“And there’s Kevin,” Neil adds.

“What about Kevin?” Allison asks, her voice hardening.

From the bed in the other room, a yawn and then, “What about me?”

“Tell Neil you want him to be happy,” Allison calls. Her voice is iron; he could knock his knuckles against it and hear it ring.

From the bed there’s rustling, the sound of Kevin’s feet hitting the floor, and then his voice, as rigid as Allison’s. “I want Neil to be happy. And he will be. In Boston. With us.”

“Allison was just leaving,” Neil says, willing his words to cut through everything else in the room. “Thanks, Alli. I appreciate it.”

He all but shoves her out into the hallway, careful of the package, mumbling, “Sorry. And thanks,” as he closes the door behind her.

The five of them are back on the Something Better by dawn the next day, loading her up with overnight bags and snacks, plenty of alcohol, and portable battery chargers just in case someone’s phone dies on the journey. The standard agenda would have them all home for dinner with Neil’s family that night, but no one seems concerned with any pretense. There’s nothing about Kevin or his people that Neil’s father needs to learn, and vice versa. The freedom it allows them is heady—this is something Neil has always associated with Kevin, this glow of possibility and permission. Kevin sweeps into Neil’s life like the sun, shining light into all of the dark, cobwebby corners that Neil never explores.

This time, Kevin is sweeping Neil away for the night. It’s three hours on the boat to Smith Island, where Kevin has rented a house with a private dock.

Jean still follows Neil around the boat, hovering, but this time the captain’s hat is jauntily perched on top of his head and the coffee in his heavily insulated tumbler is Irish and he is entirely too giddy about a day in the sun for a man whose general aesthetic is ‘poetic genius exiled to a frozen wasteland for political dissent.’

“One of these days,” Jean says grandly, sweeping his coffee across the horizon, “you are going to need me to save you. And then you will stop rolling your eyes at me.”

“I didn’t roll anything,” Neil says.

“You rolled your heart,” Jean corrects. He presses his own hand to his chest, his fingers splayed dramatically. “I felt it.”

Neil tightens the rope, jerks on it to check it, pushes a little to see how much give it has. Satisfied, he turns square to Jean and pokes him in the chest, stubbing his finger with the impact. “This is why people hate the French,” Neil says.

Jean, beaming, radiant with happiness, pulls Neil awkwardly close with his free arm. “We respect only the opinions of other French people. Your fragile American egos cannot accept the truth of your own inferiority.”

“Jeremy,” Neil calls. “How much do you actually want to keep this one?”

They spend the night drinking, stuffed full of seafood and cake, draped around the mismatched furniture of their rented house and fielding deep, existential questions. Neil agrees with Jeremy’s assertion that world peace can only be achieved by overthrowing the governments, peppers Kevin with questions about some insane new sport he makes up on the fly that seems to be a mix of about three others with a goal that would be physically impossible to defend, and strikes out on a solo mission to convince everyone that it would be fun to spike the food with psychedelics the next time the Yakuza are in town.

So, he’s expecting the morning’s hangover. What he isn’t expecting is the full weight of Kevin’s body rolling onto his and crushing him into the very plush mattress. There’s a muffled buzz, the clatter of something hitting the nightstand, and then Kevin says, “What?” irritably.

Neil starts shoving, but Kevin is very heavy and doesn’t budge.

“He’s busy,” Kevin says. “It’s not your turn.”

For fuck’s sake. Neil turns his head and bites down hard on what he thinks might be Kevin’s general nipple area.

Kevin makes a high pitched noise and drops the phone. Neil tries to grab for it, but Kevin scoops it up first and rolls off of Neil, holding the phone off to the side where Neil can’t reach. It’s Andrew—because of course it’s Andrew, anyone else who would call him is already in this house—but, Neil realizes with horror, it’s a video call rather than a voice one. Neil scrambles into a sitting position and lunges for it, missing by a mile when Kevin jerks his ten-foot arm away.

“Neil,” Andrew says evenly, his voice tinny over the speakers.

“I’m here,” Neil says.

“He’s busy,” Kevin repeats. “Goodbye.”

This time, Neil is fast enough to snatch the phone out of Kevin’s hand before he can move it or, worse, tap the button to hang up.

“Knock it off,” Neil snaps.

“You bit my nipple,” Kevin snaps back.

Neil checks the screen again, but Andrew is still there, his face neutral, mildly interested other than the hard set of his jaw.

“Out,” Neil says. He points at the door. “Go invade someone else’s privacy.”

The door slams closed hard enough behind Kevin that flurries of dust take flight, whirling around the beams of morning light. Neil shuffles over and locks it, tests the doorknob, then takes the phone back to bed with him.

“Sorry,” he tells Andrew’s face. “He can be a dick.”

“Can he?” Andrew asks. “Interesting.”

Neil doesn’t quite know how to interpret the tone of Andrew’s voice. He knows what it’s not: amused, friendly, happy. It’s not quite angry though, either. The tiny version of Neil’s face framed in the corner of the screen creases.

“What’s that look?” Andrew asks.

“Are you pissed?”

“Pissed?” Andrew repeats. “Why would I be pissed?”

Well, if Neil knew that, he wouldn’t have to ask. He frowns a little harder, trying to figure out how to phrase his question, but the pause Andrew leaves is obviously symbolic, because he starts talking again before Neil can even get his mouth open.

“Whose bedroom is that?”

“Oh,” Neil says. He looks around at the heavy wood headboard, the plaid sheets, the weird quilted throw pillows. “Some rental house. Oh—oh, do you think Kevin and I, uh.”

“Did you?” Andrew asks evenly.

“No,” Neil says. “I mean, once, a long time ago, a little, to try it, but generally, no.”

“Hmmm,” Andrew says.

“Not that it matters,” Neil adds.

“Doesn’t it?”

“No. Right?”

Andrew shrugs. “It matters to me.”

Suddenly, everything seems very quiet. There’s no more rustling of the covers, the water whispers against the shore. Neil shifts his weight and hears the bed’s very quiet creak like a siren. Neil blanks.

“Neil,” Andrew prompts. “Did you think it wouldn’t?”

“Uh…”

Andrew’s eyes close. He slides a little down the screen, revealing the top of his desk chair as he slumps. Something darkly muttered doesn’t quite make it through the connection.

“Neil,” Andrew says again, very patiently, a kindergarten teacher’s voice. “I told you, but I’ll spell it out if I have to. I want you to pick me. I want to come back and sign the papers and bring you home.”

“Yeah, but—” Neil frowns. “That’s the whole idea. The reason for the visits.”

The video blurs and then Andrew is a lot closer to the camera, his face filling Neil’s screen, in high enough definition that Neil can see the texture of his skin, a few unruly hairs rebelling against the rest of his eyebrow. “The reason for my visit was information. A look around. I wasn’t trying to be the one. Aaron barely talked to you.”

That’s true enough. Aaron was the opposite of interested in him. The Minyards may have underestimated the degree to which Neil would happily be left to live his own life in their pool house, but certainly if they were hoping Neil would pick them—pick Andrew—Aaron would have pretended to not think he was completely boring and weird. Cautiously, Neil says, “Right.”

“We weren’t going to swap back,” Andrew says. “I wanted to spend time with you. So, no, I don’t like the idea of you sleeping with someone else.”

“I’m not,” Neil says.

On the screen, the Andrew-image leans in closer, meets the camera’s eye. He says, “You want to pick Kevin because it’s safe and easy. But safe and easy does not always mean better.”

Even in two dimensions, Neil feels the weight of Andrew’s gaze. He slumps under it a little. A significant portion of him wants to protest, to tell Andrew that safe is all Neil has ever wanted, that easy would be a miracle, that one of those things is his most desperate wish and the other beyond his imagination. And he could—he could open his mouth and say that Andrew doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that those are things Andrew simply has and takes for granted, except. Except Andrew does know what he’s talking about. Because Andrew knows as well as Neil does how precious those things are. Instead of any of that, anything smooth or evasive, anything that has even one tenuous connection to Andrew’s words, Neil blurts, “I sent you something. It should come today.”

The heaviness in Andrew’s eyes lingers and then dissipates; he sits back again, rubbing at his jaw. Neil thinks he sees a hint of a smile behind Andrew’s scarred knuckles.

“Go,” Andrew says. “Don’t drown. Don’t sleep with Kevin. Call me later.”

The late afternoon sun is drowsy and drooping in the sky by the time they dock back in Baltimore. Even with all the sunscreen that’s been forced upon him regularly over the last two days, Neil can feel the heat baking beneath his skin. His hair is salt-stiff and pressed flat beneath the baseball hat Kevin had tugged over his brow when they left Smith Island.

Neil kicks his boat shoes off and throws them in the back of the SUV before wedging in between Kevin and the door. His phone has been safely in his luggage for the trip, turned off, sealed in a ziplock bag and shoved in between some clothes, but he extricates it now and powers it on. It opens with a flurry of completely unwanted notifications about emails and news and pending updates and one unread message from Andrew Minyard.

His heart is a little bit in his throat when he taps on it. Andrew should have gotten his package by now, but he knows that’s a weird punctuation to the conversation they’d had earlier.

What Andrew has sent him is a picture. Neil’s breath catches, blocked by the rabbiting pulse of his heart in his airway. Neil stares, tries to memorize every part of it. The sweater, of course. Andrew’s wearing it—maybe only it. The shot is angled down—the wool stretched over Andrew’s stomach, the hem fisted in Andrew’s hand, his knuckles pressed against the thigh of one bent knee. There’s nothing to see, really. Nothing other than the faintest suggestion of tension against the fabric between Andrew’s legs. The faint golden hair that thickens as it travels up Andrew’s thigh, densest where his fingers rest. Neil’s throat is dry, his mouth watering inexplicably. He wants, desperately, to be there, to put his mouth where Andrew’s hand rests.

It’s not until Kevin moves next to him, leaning forward between the seats to criticize Jeremy’s driving that Neil remembers he’s packed into a car with every friend he’s ever had. He hurriedly presses the button on the side of the phone, darkening the screen.

He doesn’t need to see it to remember it in explicit detail.

No matter how resolutely Neil refuses to think about the picture, it simmers in him the rest of the day, a low, relentless heat he feels in his core.

He and Kevin have dinner with Neil’s parents. Nathan has long since given up on convincing Kevin that he’d be better off without the worthless Wesninski progeny, so he mostly ignores them in favor of talking about his recent successes and the many complaints he has about the Moriyama’s Brazilian intermediators. There’s no touching, which Neil appreciates—no overly tight hands on his leg or his neck or in his hair.

They endure it, the three of them, Neil, his mother, his best friend and maybe-fiance. Kevin smiles tightly in the right spots. Neil’s mother hums encouragingly in the breaks her husband leaves. Neil stays the way Nathan likes him: silent and as small as possible.

Usually, Neil’s days are pretty level. He moves, ghost-like, through his life, displacing as little air as possible, being seen by as few people as possible. Today has been emotional whiplash. Andrew’s phone call this morning, the highs of wandering unknown around a small island, the exhilaration of sailing, the devastating impact of that picture, and now this oppressive dinner with his father. He’s not sure if he could take many of these days in a row. Wanting too many things is a bad idea. That pithy advice about shooting for the moon and landing among the stars is utter bullshit. The stars are way fucking further away. If you miss the moon, you either burn up on the way down or you float away into nothing.

No, the smart thing to do is lean into what he already knows. What he believes can be good. Warm enough. He doesn’t need more heat.

He looks at the picture again anyway, hanging back a moment before joining the other guys in his sitting room. Jean and Jeremy have somehow crammed themselves into an only slightly oversized leather armchair. Jean’s dark blue pajama bottoms so closely match Jeremy’s jeans that Neil can’t identify which legs in the tangle of limbs belong to whom. Neil is going to offer to take the chair so that they can PDA more comfortably on the couch, but Kevin tugs him down before he can. Kevin’s feet prop on the table and he wraps one thick arm around Neil’s neck, dragging him close and kissing the side of his head.

It’s not that Kevin doesn’t touch him. Kevin is, in fact, maybe the only person who has touched him for years. Other than Andrew, however briefly. But he’s not usually quite this cuddly when he’s awake. Whatever. Neil leans into it.

“We’re watching something French,” Jeremy announces.

“The hell we are,” Jean says. “We’re watching the most American movie we can think of.”

“Independence Day?” Kevin offers.

“WALL-E,” Neil says hopefully.

“Amélie,” Jeremy says.

Kevin holds out his hand expectantly. “Give me the remote.”

“Hell no.”

“I pay your salary.”

“Your mom pays my salary,” Jeremy counters. “And your mom would like you to have a little culture.”

“Point Break,” Kevin says. “Ocean’s Eleven.”

“Ocean’s 8,” Jeremy counters. “And you have yourself a deal.”

Kevin beckons with his hand. Jeremy throws the remote at him, suddenly, aimed right at his face, but Neil plucks it out of the air before it can do any damage.

“Thank you,” Kevin says in his fake wounded voice. “I’m going to dock Jeremy’s pay and take you on an amazing honeymoon.”

“Again,” Jeremy says. “Your mom.”

“I think I might like to watch a movie,” Neil says mildly. “If anyone else is interested.”

They watch Ocean’s 8 and follow it up with some mockumentary called Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping that Jean insists is the pinnacle of modern cinema and is, Neil has to admit, fucking hilarious. As soon as the weird voiceover at the end fades out, Jean shoves Jeremy unceremoniously out of his lap and stands, stretching.

“We’re going to go have sex,” Jeremy says. “If either of you want to join in, just knock first.”

Kevin flips him off without looking away from the remote.

Neil says, “Not tonight, honey. I have a headache.”

They leave with a minimum of fuss, moving quietly through the room and slipping out after habit dictates that they discreetly check the hallway first. Neil tips his head back over the sofa and watches, gratified, as Jean flips the lock on the doorknob before closing it behind him.

He ducks out from under Kevin’s arm, shivering when the cooler air hits the slightly sweat-damp stretches of skin that Kevin has spent the last three hours overheating. He looks at Kevin, clasps his hands behind his back to loosen the muscles, and says, “Do you want to watch something else?”

“No,” Kevin says, a little too carefully. “We should go to bed.”

Bed is fine by Neil, so he shuffles to his wardrobe and shucks most of his clothes, pulling on thick flannel pants and a t-shirt. When Neil turns back, he finds Kevin standing by the bed, sweatshirt off but jeans on. He looks serious and a little nervous.

“What’s up?” Neil asks.

“If it’s important to you,” Kevin says slowly. “We can do it. The sex stuff.”

“What?”

An edge of defensiveness creeps into Kevin’s voice. “We’ve done it before.”

“A little,” Neil says. “And I thought neither of us were in a hurry to do it again.”

“But you are. With him.”

“I—” Neil shakes his head to clear it and then starts over. “What is happening?”

Kevin stands up a little straighter. determined, his shoulders squaring in the way they do when he enters even the most trivial competition. “I can give you orgasms.”

Neil is pretty sure he didn’t ask Kevin for orgasms. “I—” he says again, baffled.

“This is… I guess it’s something you want. I’ve seen the way you look at your phone. That fucking scarf.”

“Kevin.”

“Get on the bed,” Kevin says decisively. “We’re going to try.”

“Is this something you actually want to do?”

“Yes.”

Neil calculates. It’s incredibly unlikely that either of them are going to get what they’re looking for from this. Neil doesn’t even know what that is for him, so the odds plummet even further. On the other hand, it’s as well-considered of a plan as Kevin’s usually are. Andrew came along with a perfectly placed chisel and cracked something that had been bottled tightly in Neil before. Maybe whatever is leaking from him now is more generally flammable than he knows. Maybe it isn’t specific to Andrew. Maybe Neil checks his phone forty times a day to see if Andrew has texted him because Andrew was the first. The first, but maybe not the only. Maybe not the last.

Either way, Kevin wants to, Neil is willing, so. They’ll try.

“Okay,” Neil says. He tosses the thick socks in his hand onto the nightstand and climbs into bed, sitting cross-legged at the center of it and watching as Kevin assesses his position for the best tactical approach. “Kevin,” he says. “Just come here.”

Kevin does. He shifts to the foot of the bed, presses one knee and then the other into the mattress, and crawls until he’s close enough that Neil can feel his breath. There’s a moment of hesitation and then Neil decides to just do it, to go for it, to take this burden off of Kevin. He cups his hands on either side of Kevin’s face, forming them to familiar high cheekbones, covering a faint chicken pox scar with a fingertip, smoothing back wayward locks of hair.

“Okay?” Neil asks. When Kevin nods, he leans in, bringing their mouths together lightly. Kevin is still for a moment, then kisses him back, withdraws, pushes forward and kisses him harder. Neil opens his mouth when Kevin works his lips apart, falls easily onto his pillows when Kevin keeps moving up the bed and presses Neil back with his weight and leverage.

It’s not awful, the weight of Kevin on his body, the lingering dark chocolate taste of his mouth, the conservative curl of Kevin’s tongue against his own. Kevin is...Kevin. He’s beautiful. He smells incredible. He feels like home. But whatever it is that lights Neil up when Andrew so much as looks at him isn’t there. It isn’t there when Kevin braces a hand above him. It isn’t there when Kevin hauls Neil’s knee up and pushes one of his massive hands underneath Neil’s shirt. It definitely isn’t there when Kevin pulls away and charts an efficient trail of kisses down Neil’s neck.

The hand Kevin has under his shirt is too still, just a weight, and Kevin must realize it because he suddenly pats Neil. Right on the ribs. The way you might spare an overly friendly dog a couple of pets on the head.

Neil laughs. He smothers it almost immediately, pulling a hand from Kevin’s hair and pressing it to his mouth.

“What?” Kevin asks irritably. He props up on both hands again and scowls at Neil.

“Nothing,” Neil says. “Sorry.”

“You’re laughing,” Kevin accuses.

“Kevin,” Neil says, swallowing down the next rumble of laughter that threatens to erupt from him. “Is this doing anything for you?”

“Yes,” Kevin says indignantly.

“You just patted me,” Neil says. “Like you’re my grandmother.”

“Oh, sorry,” Kevin snips. “It’s called foreplay.”

Neil laughs harder. He laughs enough that Kevin sits up, disgruntled, crossing his arms and frowning at Neil with formidable disapproval.

“Kevin,” Neil chokes out. “You could not look less turned on.”

Kevin hrmphs, but the scowl disappears and the corner of his mouth tips up before he locks it back down. Neil pats the bed next to him and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to get his shit together.

It takes a minute, but at least by the time he’s stopped hiccuping uncontrollably, Kevin is loose and, maybe, almost amused.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says, once he’s gotten his breath back. “Thank you for trying.”

“I could give you an excellent blowjob,” Kevin says.

“The best,” Neil agrees. “Impeccable technique.”

“And other stuff, too.”

“Everything.”

“I could do porn,” Kevin says. “With a body like this.”

“The best porn.”

“You’re just okay.”

Neil laughs again. This time, Kevin laughs with him, trying to stifle it and failing, shaking with it so hard that the mattress rocks Neil along with the rhythm.

When they stop again, Neil lets out a long breath and wipes a little wetness away from his eyes. He looks at the ceiling, looks at Kevin’s profile, looks back at the ceiling.

“It’s not the sex,” Neil says quietly.

“What?”

“It’s not—we hooked up, but whatever it is about him, it’s not the sex. Not just the sex.”

Kevin is quiet for a long moment and then says, softly, “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Neil shakes his head, feeling his hair catch and drag on the pillow. “He just makes me feel something. Different. I told him shit I’ve never told anyone else.”

“Except me,” Kevin interjects.

“Except you,” Neil agrees. “I know it’s a bad idea, a terrible idea, and I’m not going to do it. But it’s like he gave me something. An idea of a different kind of life. Except he took something with him, too, and I don’t think—I don’t think I’ll ever get it back.”

Kevin sighs heavily. “I do want you to be happy.”

“I know.”

“But what do you really know about this guy?”

“Nothing,” Neil confirms. Except, that’s not exactly true. He thinks he knows everything he’d ever need to know about Andrew. He thinks he could put himself completely into Andrew’s hands, marked as they are with evidence of a lifetime of fighting, and be held there, cradled, shielded from everything outside of them. It’s just a feeling he has. Something his gut tells him. An instinct.

All the most dangerous things.

“We could fly him in sometimes,” Kevin says grudgingly. “To service you.”

Neil laughs again, as much as his strained lungs will allow.

“Allison thinks you love him,” Kevin says.

“Allison thinks a lot of things.”

“Is she right about this one?”

The answer to that is simple. Neil says, “I don’t know. What does that even mean? I just met him.”

“Sometimes you just know.”

“Oh?” Neil rolls, props up on his elbow. “Tell me all about it, famed love and sex guru Kevin Day.”

Kevin raises his middle finger very deliberately in Neil’s face.

“It’s a bad idea,” Kevin says firmly. “It’s dangerous. You could be jumping out of the frying pan and right into the fire. I asked around a little. He’s notoriously cold.”

He isn’t, Neil thinks.

“No one who crosses him lives to tell the tale. He’s beaten people to death with his bare hands. His brother and cousin can’t stand him.”

Wrong, Neil thinks. They love him.

“He’s never been romantically linked to anyone. Even his top people call him a monster.”

He’d touched Neil so gently, the barest brush of fingertips against the scars on Neil’s arms, his ribs.

“But,” Kevin says. “If you’re going to be stupid about this, know you can always come to Boston. Whatever happens, we have space for you.”

“I’m not going to be stupid,” Neil says quietly. “I’ve never taken a risk in my life. I’m not going to start now.”

Kevin darts his eyes towards Neil and then away again, training them resolutely on the ceiling. “Jean and Jeremy are very happy.”

Neil nods, but waits.

“I’m happy, too. There are ways. There are a lot of ways to be happy. I know you haven’t—but you have options. You have more than one option.”

“Four,” Neil says lightly.

“Three,” Kevin corrects quickly. “Probably two. You’re not going to Las Vegas. It’s me or him. Isn’t it?”

“It’s you,” Neil says.

“Listen,” Kevin says, suddenly serious. He turns his head, lifts a little so that he can pull Neil involuntarily into intense eye contact. “It’s your decision. Boston is a sure thing. But if you jump into a fire, we’ll handle it. Anyone can be killed. Even Andrew Minyard.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Neil says, amused. “Can we talk about literally anything else.”

“The New England Patriots,” Kevin starts. “Let me tell you about Gilmore.”

When it’s time for Kevin to leave, Neil leans into him and hugs him tightly around the ribs. He’s never been closer to seeing these people all the fucking time, but it feels like he’s saying goodbye forever.

Kevin holds him back, hard. “Stop it,” Kevin says, squeezing. “You’re embarrassing me.”

The trunk slams shut, footsteps crunch, and then Neil feels himself being wrapped around from behind.

“Group hug?” Jeremy asks cheerfully. He doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s trying to heft Neil off his feet, Kevin and all.

It doesn’t work.

“Wow, Day,” Jeremy marvels. “You’ve really put on a few.”

Suddenly, desperately, Neil wants to get into the car with them and never look back.

“Go fuck yourself,” Kevin tells Jeremy primly. He turns his attention away and grips Neil’s arms, holding him out for inspection in a mirror of his arrival five days earlier. Neil stoically endures another scan. Matter-of-factly, Kevin says, “You look like you’re going to vomit.”

“Thanks,” Neil says drily.

“Whatever you decide, you leave here in a few weeks.”

“Unless—” Neil starts, but Kevin starts talking over him again immediately.

“You leave here in a few weeks,” Kevin repeats sternly. “We are brothers, whatever you choose.”

“Oh?” Neil asks. “Do you always—”

“Shut up. It is not a bad thing to have a choice to make. A real one. I’m selfish and I want you to come home with me. But, and it pains me to say this, you’re allowed to be selfish too. This one time. Make a decision. But make it for you. Not for anyone else.”

“Boston,” Jeremy pipes up helpfully. “I’m actually very selfish and I need someone to herd your boy here.”

“Shut up,” Kevin says again. “We’re being serious.”

“If you don’t get in the car, we’re going to seriously miss our plane.”

“It’s a private jet,” Kevin says scathingly. “You get in the car.”

“Okay,” Neil laughs. “Go away, all of you.”

Something in him still twists horribly when the SUV turns out of view, but Neil is pretty sure he can live with it. It’s not enough to take him down.

Chapter Text

The house is awful without Kevin or Andrew in it. Without anyone in it other than Neil, his distant mother, and his terrifying father. Neil tries to go back to haunting it, phasing through walls to avoid being seen, leaving anything he touches right where it was, but it doesn’t work. It was a callous that had let him do it, a fifteen-year-plus thick barrier of dead skin between him and the world, but it’s gone now. Everything is tender again. Maybe more than tender. He’s been treading water and it worked, it’s worked for a long time, but these days—these days he can’t shake the feeling that his skin has opened up somewhere, scenting the water, calling the predators closer.

Andrew says, “I honestly cannot believe you picked this movie.”

“It was on a list,” Neil says. “The internet said it was funny.”

“The internet says that the Earth is flat,” Andrew points out. “The internet says Elvis Presley is alive and well and teaching beach volleyball in Key West.”

“I didn’t realize this movie was at the center of an elaborate conspiracy theory.”

“You’ll see,” Andrew warns darkly.

“Are there subliminal messages? Will My Best Friend’s Wedding convince me to commit mass murder?”

“Do you need to be convinced for that?”

Neil considers. “Probably not. Depends.”

“It will try to convince you to watch more Cameron Diaz movies. Do you have your headphones?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll count us in.”

“Do you see this?” Nathan demands, shaking a book of swatches in front of Neil’s face. The edges flap against his nose, making him have to sneeze.

“Yes, sir,” Neil says.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, sir,” Neil says.

“Well, tell me then.” Nathan tosses the swatches onto the table beside him and crosses his arms, an eyebrow cocked coldly.

“The party is important,” Neil says. “I won’t embarrass you.”

“Have you made your choice?” he demands.

“Not yet,” Neil says quietly.

“It shouldn’t be yours. I can’t imagine why I agreed to this. You’re probably going to choose one of the men, aren’t you.”

Neil stays quiet, but he ducks his head a little in acknowledgment.

“I heard both Minyard and Day were in and out of your bedroom. Maybe you could be a little useful to one of them.”

Neil ducks a little further.

“I’m talking to you,” Nathan snaps. “What about the Moriyama runt?”

“No,” Neil says, shaking his head. “Sir.”

Nathan’s disgust is palpable, undisguised. It drips from his voice when he says, “This isn’t how I wanted to be rid of you. You should thank your mother that you’ll be walking out of here on your own. Maybe.”

This doesn’t require an answer. Neil nods, keeps his eyes fixed on his father’s shoes.

The bump of Nathan’s shoulder against his own as he leaves is hard, sending Neil stumbling back a few steps. His eyes don’t leave the floor until his father’s footsteps fade into the distance.

“We can actually celebrate your birthday,” Allison says. She gives the trunk at their feet a half-hearted kick.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“We just need to know where,” she says pointedly. “Bricks or gay bars?”

“Are those the options?” Neil asks.

“Here are the options,” Allison says. “Are you going to get well fucked for hours or listen to Kevin talk about the historical significance of the pubs we go to?”

“Kevin offered,” Neil says casually. They’ve put it off long enough, though, so he reaches down and lifts his side of the trunk.

“Offered what?” Allison asks suspiciously as she hefts her side.

“Sex.”

“Oh, shit,” Allison laughs. She laughs so hard she tips to the side a little on her first step, nearly pulling them both off the dock. “If you’re that hard up, just come to me.”

Neil takes a big step backwards, making Allison lurch a little to follow without dropping the heavy load.

“Kevin would want me to tell you that he has an incredible body and a very impressive penis.”

“What about Andrew’s penis?”

“What about it?” Neil counters. The trunk is heavy. The dock is long. Even as strong as they both are, they’re starting to huff a little.

“Is it very impressive?”

“Massive,” Neil agrees solemnly. “Truly huge. Unsettlingly disproportionate. Do you know how hard it is to find clothes that will accommodate a thirty-six inch schlong in a boy’s size twelve?”

“Schlong.”

“I’m short on euphemisms.”

“You joke, but I know dick-slapped when I see it.”

“If you’re so hard for Andrew,” Neil says, “why don’t you marry him?”

“If you’re not hard for Andrew, why don’t you marry Renee?”

Neil stops and sets his end down, stretches out his back and shoulders. He scowls at the trunk. “Who is this fucking guy?”

“Someone unlucky. You’re changing the subject.”

“If you help me get this on the boat and stop asking me questions, I’ll show you the dirty pictures Andrew sent me.”

“Really?” Allison asks, perking up.

“No.” Neil curls his fingers through the handle again and straightens.

“No because you’re mean? Or no because they don’t exist.”

“I wonder if there’s room in this trunk for two,” Neil muses.

“Tell me about Riko Moriyama,” Andrew instructs,

Neil frowns down at the phone resting on his chest. “Why?”

“I’m going to meet him,” Andrew says.

“So?”

“I’m going to take what he wants.”

“Oh, are you?”

“Yes,” Andrew says simply. “I am. Why did he bother? He knows you hate him.”

Neil tries to affect carelessness when he says, “He had a pitch.”

“What pitch?”

“Um.”

“Neil.”

“My mother,” Neil says quietly.

“No.”

“I shouldn’t leave her alone with him.”

They’re not on video, so at least Andrew can’t see Neil shift uncomfortably. There’s a rustling sound at the other end of the phone, though, so Neil knows this has moved Andrew somehow. He says, “She picked him. You didn’t. It’s your turn to pick.”

“But she—”

“Made a bad decision,” Andrew interrupts sharply. “That doesn’t mean you should.”

Neil stays quiet.

“Fine,” Andrew says. “We’ll talk about your instinct for martyrdom another time.”

“Tell me something else,” Neil says softly. “What did you do today?”

Neil is sitting at the top of their long, curved staircase, watching Lola direct a bunch of henchmen who don’t look pleased to be carrying furniture. She and Nathan are so eager to pull this off, to put on a fantastic show of wealth and power, they almost drip with it. When he closes his eyes at night, Neil sees their grinning mouths, wide and packed with sharp teeth. They get a little closer every night.

He’s startled out of his focus when someone sits down next to him. His hand flies to the banister for leverage, but the soft rustle of silk and waft of his mother’s fragrance reach him first.

“Mom,” he says, relaxing a little, but not enough to drop his hand from its hold on the wood. If he needs to put distance between them, he’ll need to do it fast.

“Nathaniel,” she says softly. “A little over a week now.”

“I know.” Awkwardly, Neil looks to her, to her neatly folded hands, her crisply ironed slacks, and then looks away. “I can stay, you know. I can—if I pick Riko, I can stay.”

“No.” One of her soft, small hands lands on his knee. “I don’t want that. Who do you want to pick?”

Neil hesitates.

“Not Kevin?”

“Yes, Kevin,” Neil says. “Definitely Kevin.”

“What about the one from San Francisco?”

“Andrew,” Neil says.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” he answers helplessly. “I just don’t know.”

They sit quietly for another moment, watching bulky, armed men wait until Lola’s back is turned to shoot even the slightest look of defiance her way.

“Your father is cruel,” his mother murmurs to him, too quiet to be heard over the footsteps below. “And I’m so sorry for that. And I know it’s all you’ve known. Him. And me. All of this. But it’s not all there is. I know you love Kevin, but he’s not all there is, either.”

“I know,” Neil says, even though he doesn’t. Not really. There’s a tiny, fragile part of him that hopes, maybe, that there’s more to any of this than he can comprehend. She can’t help him with that, though. No one can.

Her hand squeezes his knee lightly. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known. I can’t tell you what decision is right for you. But I hope you can be a little brave again, if you need to.”

One of the men drops his side of the buffet he’s carrying. It drops to the floor, but the heavy sound of the impact does nothing to cover Lola’s immediate fury.

The closer they get to the party, the more tightly wound everyone is. Lola has dropped any pretence of not being the lady of the house; she tears through the rooms with her chin high, her voice cutting, her pointing finger demanding and unflinching. This is the first event of this size they’ve ever hosted at the house. Neil knows his father is stressed about it, can tell from the extra length of his mother’s sleeves and the thickness of her bracelets. Can feel it in the column-shaped bruises along his own spine.

He’s not doing much better himself, though. Riko has started texting, innocuous and entirely creepy emojis and questions about Neil’s preferences in movies and music, mattress softness, ring colors. Kevin’s texts and calls are weird, frequent but strained, vague about the future. Neil knows he’s trying to be supportive and not add any pressure, but it’s not working.

Andrew is—Andrew is increasingly the easiest thing in Neil’s life. He, too, grills Neil on his preferences, but he follows it up with relentless teasing and mockery that makes Neil, inexplicably, exaggerate the awfulness of his taste. And Andrew isn’t vague about the future at all. Andrew says, “when you’re here, we’ll—”, and, “we should honeymoon in Iceland,” and, “I want to see you again.”

Somehow, the days crawl by. Somehow, Neil avoids the brunt of his father’s temper. Somehow, his mother has earned herself her husband’s general inattention. The rooms they’ve emptied are filled again with a few dozen round tables, elegantly draped with what Neil has come to understand are very expensive rented tablecloths. Riko’s texts come a little more frequently. Kevin sends link after link to stories about the sports teams in both Boston and San Francisco. Andrew sends him pictures of outfits he’s thinking of packing and completely ignores Neil’s opinions on every single one of them.

Neil knows he should be thrilled. He’s so close, so fucking close to escaping. To Boston, to San Francisco, to Las Vegas, to the bottom of the ocean in another one of those fucking trunks. Whatever happens, it’s not going to be this—it’ll be some life Neil had no hope of living before his mother spoke up a few months ago with a solution to the Nathaniel problem.

But he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do. There’s an ache in him when he thinks about telling Andrew no, about sending Andrew back to California with a dent in all that confidence. There’s another ache, though, of turning his back on the only person who Neil has ever dreamed of spending his life with.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He doesn’t know two days before the party, when the rented dishes and chairs arrive. He doesn’t know a day before the party, when Riko, Renee, Kevin, and Andrew all text him to tell him when they’ll be landing.

He doesn’t know when he wakes up the morning of the event, cold in his bed, his stomach in knots that Neil doesn’t have the expertise to untie. He watches the flowers be delivered without knowing. He welcomes Kevin without knowing. He dresses without knowing, knots the tie Allison had bought him without knowing, slips his feet into freshly shined shoes without knowing.

Wanting and trusting are at war. He can’t move towards one without being pulled back by the other. The battle rages on, bloody and furious as Neil joins his father at the front door, to the side and a half-step beside. He smiles one false, frozen smile after another as his father’s colleagues and rivals file in, overlooking Neil just the way he wants them to.

Neil gathers it all up, walls it off, builds a dam in front of the rioting armies screaming at him from inside of his chest.

And then Andrew walks in the door.

Neil’s fragile control slips right out of his fingers as Andrew nods at his father and then turns to him. He takes up more space than Neil had remembered. His shoulders are wide and solid in the exquisitely cut suit Andrew has draped them with. His hazel eyes are more alive than any of their video calls have let Neil appreciate.

Andrew steps closer, tucks his hand under Neil’s elbow, and says, “I need to borrow Nathaniel for a moment.”

Nathan nods dismissively, his attention skipping right over Aaron and Nicky and landing on a woman Neil thinks he recognizes as a New York associate.

“I can’t,” Neil whispers as Andrew leads him away. He feels on the verge of hysteria. “I can’t.”

“Stop it,” Andrew says calmly. His hand slides down Neil’s arm, where he entwines their fingers and squeezes. “We’re almost there.”

Almost where? Neil wants to ask. But Andrew seems to know where he’s going, so Neil follows, anchored by the sure grip of Andrew’s hand. He’s led through a few of the downstairs rooms that haven’t been drafted for the party, down a back hallway, up the narrow, rarely-used servant’s stairs, and into one of the guest bedrooms. Andrew closes the door firmly behind them and maneuvers Neil against it, wrapping one arm around Neil’s ribs and cupping the other around the back of Neil’s neck, using his grip to pull Neil’s head down to his shoulder.

Neil closes his eyes, breathes in the subtle, masculine scent of Andrew’s cologne, and feels something cracked inside of him shatter.

“I missed you,” Neil says, muffling the words against Andrew’s shoulder.

“I missed you, too,” Andrew says. His breath tickles the rebellious hair that never does anything other than stay tucked precariously behind Neil’s ear. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing,” Neil says, with far less breath than he realized he’d have.

“Impressive,” Andrew says drily. He turns into Neil, presses a kiss against his cheek, another against his jaw.

“You’re such an asshole,” Neil says. He’s probably holding on too tightly, but Andrew isn’t protesting. Neil is going to wrinkle Andrew’s suit, maybe crack a rib, and Andrew is letting him do it.

“Yes,” Andrew says. He pulls back enough to look Neil in the eyes. Neil thinks he moves first, maybe, but he blinks and Andrew’s mouth is against his, his hand splaying over Neil’s back.

Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Neil knows that this is stupid. That people feel like this all the time. That there are millions of movies that try to convince you this one incredible moment exists and is actually special. He isn’t a romantic, he probably doesn’t have it in him; he knows that passion is supposed to be fleeting, that kisses like this end in divorces and black eyes.

But he also knows that if he lets go of this now, he’ll never get it back. That the Andrew-shaped ache in him can’t be filled in Boston, no matter how much he loves Kevin, Jeremy, and Jean, or how easy it is to be around them.

A sound breaks out of him, a little more frantic than he’d like. “Sorry,” Neil says, tipping his head back against the door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You decided to say yes,” Andrew says. “And you’re scared shitless to do it.”

“Ego,” Neil murmurs.

Andrew moves his hands to Neil’s chest, sliding them over the fabric of his jacket, digging his fingertips in a little. Mildly, he asks, “Am I wrong?”

“No,” Neil says. “You’re not wrong.”

“Good.” Andrew kisses the underside of Neil’s jaw, his exposed throat, and then steps back, straightening his own suit. “Let’s go tell your father.”

Andrew keeps their hands linked together as he leads Neil back through the house, down the main staircase this time.

Nathan says, “Excellent choice, son.”

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand.

“You can tell the others privately,” Nathan continues. “We’ll announce the engagement later. We can do the wedding in the spring, maybe.”

“No,” Andrew says easily.

Nathan’s eyebrows go up. Neil’s hand is squeezed again.

“When I leave, I’ll be taking my husband with me,” Andrew continues. “We’ll go to the courthouse this week.”

“The courthouse,” Nathan repeats coolly.

“I don’t care for a lot of fuss,” Andrew says, waving his free hand vaguely at the extravagant wonderland around them. “I’m a simple man.”

“Of course.” Nathan smiles stiffly, then looks over their shoulders, his attention caught by something more interesting. “Whatever you want. If you’ll excuse me.”

Andrew doesn’t turn to watch Nathan leave, so Neil doesn’t either. Instead, he stares at their joined hands and waits for something to happen. The sword to fall. His father to change his mind. Andrew to change his mind. A fucking bomb, maybe. The apocalypse.

“Neil,” Andrew says quietly. When Neil doesn’t answer, he lifts their hands, pressing Neil’s knuckles to his mouth and drawing his eyes upwards. “Take me to Kevin. I want to break the news myself.”

“Oh, god,” Neil says. Andrew starts walking. An entirely different apocalypse flashes before Neil’s eyes. “Be gentle.”

“Nope.”

“He’s my best friend.”

“That’s nice.”

“Don’t gloat.”

“I am definitely going to gloat.”

“He doesn’t actually want to sleep with me.”

“Good. Shall we?”

“Andrew.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Oh, no,” Neil says. He feels incandescent. Shock is keeping his face steady, but he can feel the wildness in his own eyes. “We’re going to have to talk about pet names.”

“You can talk,” Andrew says. “Is that Kevin?”

“No,” Neil lies. It’s no use. Kevin’s head whips towards them, whatever radar he has as faultless as ever. His vivid green eyes do their usual scan, up and down, pausing at the handholding, and then shifting to meet Andrew’s straight on. Andrew forges onward, winding through the crowd until they reach Kevin, settled at a table with Allison and Renee.

“Hello,” Andrew says, sliding his free hand into his pocket instead of offering it to shake. “You must be Kevin.”

“Andrew Minyard,” Kevin says, his eyes considering.

“Hello, Andrew,” Renee interjects.

“Renee,” Andrew says warmly. “How long are you in town? We’ll be getting married Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?” Kevin asks.

“Wednesday.” Andrew says firmly.

“Wednesday,” Neil says. They both look at him. “What? Everyone else got to say it.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. Andrew, Neil thinks, almost smiles.

“You don’t waste any time,” Kevin says.

“I do not,” Andrew agrees.

Kevin does another scan, lingers on what must be the giddy shock on Neil’s face, and then nods. “Good. Fuck Baltimore.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Allison says. She waves down a waiter and plucks two champagne glasses off his tray for Neil and Andrew. Her hand settles lightly on Renee’s shoulder and she lifts her glass. “To Andrew and Neil. To true love. To not banging your brothers. And to getting the fuck out of Baltimore.”

Neil tips his glass back and lets the frothy sting of the champagne wash down his throat, clearing the way for the first full breath he thinks he has ever taken. Andrew squeezes his hand again, then lets go. Neil feels weirdly bereft for all of a second, and then Andrew’s hand is snaking around his waist, his fingertips sliding under Neil’s jacket to hook through one of his belt loops.

He feels. Good. He feels, maybe, like he gets both wanting and trusting. Safe and easy and better. Andrew. San Francisco. A sun to watch rising when he runs on the beach. All of it.