Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I dream of him. Often.”

It’s true.

A lot of the time, they’re murky, as if Andrew’s watching him through mottled glass. But he knows the shape and shade of every curl, wet or dry. He knows how the striker would die before standing up straight, and has a habit of pulling on his hoodie strings. It might be something in the way he breathes. The point is, Andrew thinks he could recognize Neil by how the air shifts around him when he walks in a room. No dream can hide him away; it’s a comfort just to know he’s there.

There’s the good dreams, where he bares more skin and speaks more words than he thinks he’s capable of. A surreal warmth finds its way into these, a bright white glow behind Neil. In reality, the light would be blinding, but something about dream-Neil rounds it out. There is no way to tell the time, or the place, or the weather. It doesn’t matter. They are all they need.

But then there are the nightmares. Sometimes the good dreams funnel into them, when things get so hazy he can no longer remember what’s happening. There’s bruises and darkness in this wicked place; Andrew never thought he’d miss the sunlight so much. Neil is gone, replaced by a shapeless figure with shifting names. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. 

Then there are those that are bad from the beginning. You would think it’s better, knowing what you’re getting into—but it’s not. Because he remembers Neil’s ashes being that of a cell phone and duffel bag; he remembers how lonely he felt in a crowdful of people; he remembers the sound of a door splintering; he remembers the feeling of blood.

“When you fall in your sleep, you’re not really sleeping at all. Did you know that, Bee?”

Most nights, they share a bed. Andrew never imagined it was something he could have, nevermind want.  

“You’re not awake either, though.”

But he does. He does want. And that’s almost scarier than the bad dreams. 

“It evolved as an instinct to survive. To keep the predators from becoming the prey.”

Perhaps that’s why he’s so afraid. This thing with Neil is not something easily found or kept, especially for a man like himself. It’s been over a year since everything that happened during sophomore year, and Neil feels like both a permanent fixture in his life and something ephemeral all the same. Whenever he wakes with the other half of the bed empty, he checks to make sure it’s still warm. When he wakes and it’s not, he checks for the telltale flickering beneath Neil’s eyelids—the reminder that he’s not dead, just dreaming.

He has a perfect memory, but he often finds himself forgetting how it feels for someone to stay. 

“Do you know what else evolved as an instinct?”

“Hm?” Andrew hums.

“Love.”

“Yes, well.” Andrew slumps back into the couch, eyeing the clock. “Not all instincts are helpful.”

“Not if you’re the prey.”

It’s hard to look away most nights. Something heavy hangs in his sternum, a feeling between drowning and burning alive. If he closes his eyes, when he opens them, will Neil still be there? Will his phone still sit, drained of battery, on their bedside table? Will he wake Andrew up with the squeak of his shoes against the floorboards?

Bee sighs. “Andrew, I want you to describe what love is to you.”

In Baltimore, a switch inside of him had flipped. Some light inside him grew brighter with time, and more intense. There was something inside of him that felt utterly attached to Neil, something squeezed at his heart every time their eyes met. He’d never seen Neil smile so much; he never knew how much Neil could laugh if he let himself. 

He hated it. He hated the way the room felt empty without him. He hated the way loneliness felt contemptible in his absence. He hated that nauseous feeling he got whenever they so much as looked at each other. He hated how much trust he put in him. He hated how stupid it made him feel.

Most of all, he hated the fact that it wasn’t hatred at all.

“Love is like…an appendix.”

Words are hard.

The thing is, there isn’t one apt enough to describe what they have. It all tastes foreign on his tongue, too sharp against his gums. It’s not that he needs the words for Neil to know. He knows. Andrew knows this.

“Go on.”

Their relationship grew from quiet. It was trust born from truth born from secrets. The quiet was all they ever knew, and it’s all they really need. A yes, a no—that’s it. Life has often driven them into silence, but it’s not all bad. Some of their best days were roadtrips without a word being passed between them. It wasn’t lonely. It was comforting. It was calming. It was them. 

Their relationship grew from the quiet, yes. But perhaps Andrew wants to grow some more.

“It’s fine when it can be ignored. But when it bursts—well.”

He’s never wanted anything, or any one, like he has Neil. 

Andrew never thought this was something he would want. Someday wasn’t a tangible thing for him; usually, not even the next day was. He’d let too many people in to keep them as any more than warnings now. The things that he wanted never worked out for him, so why try? Why try to be happy for a moment if he could remember how it felt when he pressed against his bruises, waiting for the pain to drown it out? 

There were certain things that just weren’t worth the sacrifice. 

He used to think that. He used to, until Neil.

It wasn’t as if Neil solved all his problems—really, he only added to them—but he was the key. Somehow, stars shone brighter because of him. Somehow, touch wasn’t a solely poisonous thing. Somehow, he made him want to try.

He’s been so ready to die for people his entire life, yet he’s never known what it’s like to want to live for someone. 

“You have to cut it out of you.”

They stare at each other. Bee blinks. Bee sighs.

“Andrew,” she says, shifting in her chair. “You have dreamt a thousand dreams. You have run through all the timelines and universes and possibilities in which you’ve lost each other. And yet, somehow, someway, this is the world you found yourself in. Despite everything, you’ve found each other.”

“Despite everything,” he repeats.

Bee nods, her lips tilting upwards in what is not quite a smile, but something prouder. “And despite everything, you are still here. You are still breathing. You are still alive. Nevertheless, you are still you.” 

He looks down at himself, his body. He has hated it for so long, the way it felt so impermanent and empty. Suddenly, he doesn’t know what fear was plaguing him: was it Neil leaving, or his own self drifting away?

“Even with your memory, you seem to forget that. You can only hold onto somebody—truly hold onto them—once you can hold onto yourself. Whatever that means for you.”

But Bee—if Bee is right, if this world is one he can build a home in, a place he can reclaim, then maybe his body is a good place to start.

“The world has taken so much from you, Andrew. Let it give you something in return.”

His hands still don’t feel quite like his own, his face all but distorted shapes. But he trusts Bee. And if he trusts Bee, then maybe he should listen to her advice. It hasn’t done him much wrong so far. The least he can do is try. 

And if she’s wrong, at least he can say he told her so.

“Your life is yours now, Andrew. Live it.”

The cold echoes around him. The wind is harsher today, pushing against him to reach the gray Carolinian skies. Even with his coat on, he’s shivering, his fingers trembling as they bring the cigarette between his lips. The smoke meets his lungs with a bitter warmth, and he almost finds comfort in it. Almost.

The door slams open at his back. 

How peculiar that he always does that. Andrew suspects he knows why, but he enjoys entertaining the thought that Neil is just being a nuisance instead. It’s not as if it’s unlike him.

And he speaks, as if Andrew wouldn’t know him by the footsteps he left in the doorframe. As if the sound of his breathing isn’t the most soothing sound he’s ever heard.

It’s surprising, really, how truly peaceful two violent men can be together. Their tumbling into bed, their waking up side-by-side—in that brief time they are given, they are one another’s. They are themselves.

He’s thought about it before, of course. It had taken him years to allow himself to touch another man; to allow Neil to touch him, though, was something else entirely. It was trust, and fear, and letting himself go, and letting someone in. 

And that was where he always stopped. The haunting.

The haunting—isn’t that a funny word for it? The feeling of letting someone else settle in your bones; to hear the creaks of weakened wood and know its them. The haunting: to let them become the beating heart of your house, and recognize it as home.

It’s funny, because the haunting isn’t letting someone in at all. It’s accepting that they’ve been there all along. It’s accepting that you want them there, too.

To be haunted isn’t to let something go, but hold onto it for longer than you’re meant to.

Perhaps this is no haunting at all—it’s a reckoning.

He looks beside him, and Neil is there against the now-darkened sky. Time slipped past Andrew, but Neil is still here. He is still here.

“Neil,” he says, breaking their perfect silence. 

Neil turns towards him, eyes calculating. Always calculating. “Andrew?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but chokes on the words. He wants to—he wants this. But how?

Neil, like always, knows. “The stars are brighter than normal tonight.”

Andrew blinks up at him. “No.”

“No?” he replies.

"They are the same as always."

He sends a glance towards the sky. “Maybe I’m being optimistic, then.” 

“That could be considered character development.”

He scrunches his nose, freckles blending together. “No, I don’t think I’m there yet.”

“Bee would say that it is better than being a pessimist.”

“I don’t think either are good,” Neil says, turning back towards him. The wind blows curls across his cheek. Andrew likes the longer hair; time adorns him well. “A pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist expects it to change.”

“And you would just march right against it, wouldn’t you?”

“We’ll have to see,” he laughs. Time’s brought that in abundance, as well. Andrew can’t help but be grateful. “Character development and all.”

They fall into silence once again, only existing in the breaks between the wind.

“Neil,” he whispers. 

“Andrew,” Neil whispers back. 

“Can we try something?”

He looks at Andrew, brows furrowed. “Are you okay?”

If they are going to do this, then Andrew owes him the truth. “Something close to it.”

Neil watches him, contemplating. “What do you want to try?”

Where’s a better starting place? “Can I see your hand?”

“Yes,” he says, sliding his palm into the space between them.

Andrew is careful when he lays it on top of his thigh, watching Neil for any sign of discomfort or disapproval. Instead, Neil looks back at him with pure curiosity. “Tell me no.”

“Go ahead.”

He begins by tracing his finger against each one of Neil’s. He hates that he knows them so well: where each scar is, why his ring finger is crooked, why some of his nails are indented. Calluses have made a home in his joints. Andrew likes the rough feeling of them against his fingertips, the sweet sting they leave behind.

He moves onto his palm. It’s just as calloused, if not more. He remembers the way it looks cradling a racquet, and how it feels against his nape. He knows how it folds and creases; how it bends and breaks. If he turned it over, he’d see the crosshatches Lola left behind, but he doesn’t. She has no place here. 

He drags three fingers across his hand, and Neil shivers almost imperceptibly. If he weren’t so focused, Andrew might do the same.

And then he does it. There is no grand realization, no sudden becoming. He is still the same, and Neil is too. They are here, together. They are here, and Andrew slips his fingers between Neil’s, and they are here, and Neil squeezes tight, and he hasn’t disappeared. 

They are still here, watching fire dot the sky. 

“I don’t know,” Neil whispers after quite some time. “They look brighter to me.”

Chapter Text

The worst parts of living tend to be the reminders that you are.

The anniversaries have always hit him hard. Those times of year approach like an incoming wave, and all Andrew can do is hold his breath until it’s over. There is no preparing for it. There is no stopping it. There is no amount of time that can separate the two of them enough for Andrew to see the other side. All there is is him and history, and there’s nothing that can be done to change that. He knows this.

But it’s the small reminders that hurt the most.

He can’t look at shards of glass now and think of anything else but a pulsing temple and his bloody reflection. If he finds himself in halls a bit too white, all he can think of is Proust and cloudy days broken apart by the pain of withdrawal. There are some days he can’t exist without everything around him feeling like kaleidoscopic pieces from his past, a puzzle just not meant to fit together.

It’s on days like these that he finds himself wishing that not everything had to be this traumatic fucking thing. It’s days like these that he’s at his angriest. It’s days like these that he cannot stand the thought of another human’s breath. 

It’s the curse of remembering, he thinks. 

Because there are some beautiful things. If he were anyone else, maybe he’d believe that they outweighed the bad. But he’s been on the end of too many thorns to reach for the roses. 

He wishes—he wishes that he could be thankful. He does. He wishes he could see the snow and not think of blood that stains it. He wishes he could slip off his armbands and hold onto the present rather than the past. He wishes he could take Neil by the hand and pull him in. But he doesn’t need to wish to want.

The thing is, he wants more than anything. He wants until he’s drowned by it. He wants until he’s sick. It’s never been the wanting that’s the problem.

He wishes that he could accept it.

He wishes he could accept that he wants, and is wanted in return. 

The door opens.

For once, he’s not on the roof. As per usual for the Carolinas, from the cold grew a storm. It wasn’t snow, not yet, but something worse. The rain chilled Andrew to the bone, although that might have something to do with the open window. And the screen he tore off. And the fact that he’s sitting on the windowsill, doing his damndest not to let the rain blow his cigarette out. 

The footsteps by the door pause, and Andrew can almost feel it punctuated by Aaron’s rolling eyes. “You have problems.”

He lets the smoke crawl from the bow of his lips. “Last I checked, we are twins. We’re bound to have some things in common.” 

Aaron scoffs. “I’m no match for your stubbornness.”

Andrew sends a look over his shoulder, mouth drawn thin and eyes hooded. It’s a sad attempt of bored. All he is is tired.

His brother watches him for a moment, searching. Whatever he finds, it makes him move on. He begins shuffling through various belongings around the room. “Are you packed yet?”

“We’re barely leaving.” 

“Planning on going to Wymack’s then?” 

Andrew hums. It was a tacit agreement between the twins and Nicky that they wouldn’t spend Thanksgiving together this year. Nicky would fly out to Erik, while Aaron spent the few days off at Katelyn's. There were murky plans of a later dinner once they were a week or two out from it all. It was disguised as a team dinner on Nicky’s behest, but Andrew knew what it was for.

“Found it.” Aaron’s keys clang against each other as he pulls the lanyard from under a bean bag chair. “You need to tell your boyfriend to stop stealing my keys.” 

“And you know it’s him how?”

“The only people that have a key to this dorm are you, Neil, and Kevin. Knowing your so-called allergy to the library, that leaves Neil.”

“Not Kevin?”

“Kevin is either there with me or playing exy. So no, not Kevin.”

“Mm.” Andrew returns his gaze out the window. The sight of the pavement below stirs his stomach, even without the open air surrounding him. He notices that the rain has put out his cigarette; he thought he’d just lit it up. 

He feels Aaron draw near. It’s tentative, like a fox to a hound. It’s hesitation, but not fear. 

They’re making progress. 

His eyes are drawn to his brother’s fist, clenched around his keys. Bee’s grounding techniques have apparently rubbed off on them both.

“I have nightmares about it,” he says. “I have ever since.”

Aaron pauses as if he expects Andrew to say something. But what is he supposed to say to this? Or maybe he expects him to lash out. That would be the more likely response, wouldn’t it?

For whatever reason, Aaron speaks again. “The blood. The smell. The anger.” The keys jingle together, and Andrew wonders whether his hands are too shaky or if he’s finally standing his ground. “I remember you.”

Well, well. He is a little braver than he used to be.  “You are a step ahead of me, for once.”

Aaron steps into his peripheral, leaning against the other side of the window frame. Whatever this is—this attempt at connection, this attempt at comfort—makes him feel violent. He feels that familiar twinge of hurt spark inside him, the rage that had become the only consistent thing throughout his life. He knows anger; he doesn’t know this. 

But Bee wants him to. Neil wants him to. Apparently, his brother does, too.

And despite it all, at the very least, Andrew finds himself wanting to try. 

“I don’t know if it will ever get better,” Aaron says. 

“It won’t,” he replies. The words come out raspy, as if his own body doesn’t want to let them go. Perhaps, to a certain extent, it doesn’t. “But it will get lighter.” 

Aaron’s quiet. Maybe it’s the rain that gets him; maybe it’s the height. For once, Andrew doubts it. “You think so?”

He takes in the fresh scent of rain, hoping it will wash away the words he wants to let go of. He misses when it would mix with soil, the flora around him. There was a sort of escape in it—one he found himself longing for now. As much as he harps on Neil for his skittish tendencies, he is just as bad himself. 

But he doesn’t find that here. There is only the long drop towards the pavement, raindrops dancing on sheets of metal and cement. There is no earth; just gravity. Perhaps it’s for the better. 

“It’s a weight,” he says, gaze flickering towards Aaron. He doesn’t know where the words came from, nor where they’ll return to. Maybe it’s something he’ll keep close. Maybe he’ll keep it as a reminder. “Not an illness.”

Their eyes meet, and Andrew finds himself on the end of an emotion he’s not sure how to name. Aaron’s face bleeds with it. Eyebrows twitching, jaw clenching, eyes struggling to stay on Andrew; it’s cacophonous in its movement. There’s a pinch of hurt there, and Andrew knows that feeling well: self-betrayal.

For once, they are at a complete understanding. Two brothers, with two addictions: one to family, and one to grief. Neither knows which is his own. 

Twins.

“Right,” Aaron murmurs. He swallows, grip tightening on the backpack slung over his shoulders. “I should go. Katelyn's waiting for me in the car.”

Andrew waves a hand of dismissal towards him, though it's more towards this intimacy than anything else. He pulls out the last cigarette in his pack.

“Chain-smoking isn’t good for you,” Aaron says. Because that will certainly change his mind. 

Andrew takes a hefty inhale, savoring the burning in his chest. It hurts a bit less than he’s used to. 

He doesn’t watch Aaron go to leave, but he knows when he pauses over the threshold. There’s something about the air, he thinks. Something still.

“Andrew,” he says. It’s cut off, almost as if his lungs can’t hold the two syllables that close together. He doesn’t look at his brother. He won’t. “You did it, you know.”

The door closes. Maybe he thought Andrew would stab him, but—but no. They both know something’s shifted. They both know that’s not who he is anymore. Not really. 

He tosses the cigarette out the window, watching the embers fade under the heavy rain.

He’s trying.

Their room at Wymack’s is almost as nice as the one in Columbia.

There’s a sort of warmness to it. He knows this bed and these sheets; he knows there’s a lock on the door; he knows where Wymack sleeps, where the kitchen knives are, and which couch cushion is the one with the dip. While the house in Columbia feels like home, this feels like a shelter. 

Steam pours out from under the bathroom door. Andrew and Neil had barely spoken since that morning, only breaking for Andrew to shove him into the shower after picking him up from the court. It’s almost uncomfortable how well Neil knows Andrew’s mannerisms to know when he cannot speak. There’s no malice, no judgment, no expectations. It’s nice.

He’s left him time to think.

As much as he hates to admit it, this is a hard time of year. Bee has tried to bring it up during their sessions, only to be shut down with either silence or a strange observation on part of Andrew that was even more of a refusal. 

He could talk about the past—to an extent, at least. It had taken a long time for Bee to drag it out of him, of course. But somehow, she did. It was less difficult to talk about it when the bruises were far past healed, and the blood bleached from the drain. It was less difficult to talk about the things he knows with certainty. It was less difficult to talk about because he remembers.

With what happened last year—the haze of the drugs pulled at him. His memory, usually so precise and neat, has failed him. He, too, remembers the blood. He, too, remembers the smell. But he cannot remember much past that.

***

Between the drunkenness and the medication and the severe concussion he apparently suffered, there wasn’t much there past the white of the sheets and the crimson of his hands. In the moment, at least. He doesn’t remember how he reacted at the first glance of Drake. He doesn’t remember if he screamed, or if he cried. He doesn’t remember if he felt hurt.

He remembers the pain of seeing Aaron, coated with blood. He remembers the foreign softness in Neil’s movements, pulling a sheet around him. He remembers the aftermath, and the sirens, and the indelible rage. He remembers the bruises, the secrets, and the heat of the hot chocolate in his hands. 

What he doesn’t remember is himself.

***

It’s the worst part, he thinks. The curse of remembering. The curse of knowing you can remember, you should, but you caught the world at its worst. When all the cards are stacked against you, built up hand by precise hand. 

And maybe he shouldn’t want to remember, but he does nonetheless. He does because the broken pieces he is left with is no remedy. He is always going to be stuck with the what ifs, but never certainties. His body, traitorous as ever. 

Sometimes he thinks he holds a sort of resentment against Bee. He trusts her implicitly, but she did put him on the drugs. She is the one who gifted him that haze. She is the one who buried those memories.

But he reminds himself: it was the court that ordered it. They pulled the trigger; she just picked the bullet. 

So yes, it’s not quite something he would like to talk to her about. Maybe in a year’s time; maybe when the leaves have turned back over, grown and colored and fallen again. 

Maybe it’s not something he can talk about at all. But then again, isn’t he trying to find a way to put meanings to feelings words cannot? Isn’t he trying to bring this wretched body back to him, to make it feel like himself? To make his conscious feel like a soul? 

He handed Neil a key and called it home. He just needed to make it feel like his, too. 

The warmth pours in from the bathroom as Neil steps out, toweling off his hair. Andrew watches with a sort of fascination only he can draw from him.

Neil catches him, giving him a half-smile. “Enjoying the view?”

“Aaron wants you to stop stealing his keys.”

He flops across the bed, shaking his head with all the grace of a sopping wet dog. Andrew glares. “How does he know it’s me?”

“You are getting lazy in your old age.”

“Better to grow older and lazier than not grow at all.” Neil shifts, moving to lay parallel to Andrew. His head almost reaches Andrew’s shoulder. He tilts it back to look up at him, throat bared. “It’s something I’m learning to appreciate.” 

“Mm,” Andrew replies articulately. They watch each other, content to just stare. These are his favorite moments, he thinks. The ones where they can just fall in. 

Neil blinks slowly. “Do you want to talk?” 

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he sits up, reaching for the lamp on their bedside. It’s all so much easier when they turn out the lights. 

It used to make things worse. For how much Andrew liked to be alone, the light always felt like an entity of its own. A companion, neither malevolent nor benign. But in the dark, there was nothing left between him and himself. It was just as vicious as the memories. It was just as empty as the forgetting.

But here, now, there is nothing between him and Neil. It is more naked than any shedding of clothes can bare. 

If he is going to let his truths spill, then he will uncover them like skin; it is only the absence of light that lets them be absolute. 

He pulls himself together. He turns towards Neil, pulling a knee to his chest. “It is a…difficult time of year.”

Neil sits up slowly. Cautiously. He mimics Andrew in the way he sits. He wonders if it is conscious or not; was it supposed to be comforting? Did he know it was? Time passes, and he allows Andrew to collect his thoughts.

How are you supposed to organize a conversation such as this? When you carry each word like a boulder, pushing up and up and up only to know it will roll back down. Even if not spoken, it will live in his memory. The truth-bearing.

“Aaron told me he has nightmares.”

Neil clenches his jaw. He doesn’t have to speak for Andrew to know what he’s really thinking. Instead, he asks, “Did you tell him about yours?”

“No,” Andrew breathes. “He told me that he is afraid it will never get better.”

“Did you tell him it doesn’t?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I told him it gets easier.”

Neil looks at him then: a symphony of curiosity and hope and—pride. That’s pride. 

He swallows harshly, letting out a small laugh. “It does.” 

Andrew keeps his gaze. The words are struggling to form now, the shapes not quite fitting in his mouth. “It—”

That familiar anger rises up. No, not anger—frustration.

Words are supposed to be the one thing he can rely on. The one thing he can trust won’t hurt him, no matter the way they change. They are something he can never forget. 

It was supposed to be the one thing. But here he is, looking at the second. 

“Abram,” he rasps out, reaching towards him. 

He stops himself, hands hovering near Neil’s shoulders. He’s not sure what he’s doing. But there is a comfort here, a homeliness. A form of trust. A key.

Neil nods slowly. “Yes,” he says, falling onto both his knees. Andrew, a mimicry.

He follows what feels right. He drapes his arms over Neil’s shoulders, wrapping them loose around his neck. Tentatively, Neil follows suit, arms coming into a relaxed loop around his waist. His palms press gently against Andrew’s spine.

It feels foreign. It feels like something they were never meant to do, a line they were never meant to cross, but did so anyway. He is so used to hands against his back leaving bruises behind. For once, though, they bring warmth. 

There’s discomfort. Of course there is. No person used to such violence can intertwine themselves so wholly with another for the first time without the fear of danger, no matter who the other is. But there is a feeling overwhelming it. A feeling that buries the tension deep into the ground. A feeling that lets it burn.

It feels like coming home.

There is a timelessness to the way he wraps himself tighter around Neil. His fingers crawl into Neil’s curls, finding the damp texture familiar. Something in the other man lets loose, arms snaking up his back and head pressing into his shoulder.

How are they to feel more connected than this? It is as if they are inside each other already, body and soul. Together at once. 

Sometimes Andrew believes he dreams so he can be closer to Neil than he can in real life. But this—if this is something he is allowed, Andrew thinks he might not ever sleep again.

Neil pulls back a bit, dragging a hand to his cheek. Andrew almost resists, but stops when he realizes the separation is only to place a kiss against his forehead. Neil knocks theirs together, and he closes his eyes.

“You might kill me for saying this,” he whispers. “But I am proud of you.”

The best parts of living are very much like the worst: the reminders.

He can feel his heart stutter, his breathing halt, the oh-so human accidentals that prove this is real. He is awake. This is no dream, but he is dreaming. He is alive, and the dreaming has a purpose. It has a shape. It has a meaning. 

“My murderous tendencies are waning a bit these days, too.”

It is hope.

There is a hole in his memory, so he fills it with this: how the rain beats against their window, like it’s shielding them from the rest of the world; how Neil’s hand feels against the curve of his spine; how his lips taste against his own; how it feels to try.  

There is a gift of remembering, too.

Chapter Text

Andrew doesn’t believe in religion. But in knowing Neil, he understands why people do.

There is no God. He knows that with certainty. If there were, it would be a cruel and wicked one. He’s seen too much of the world, been on the end of so much proof, that denial simply doesn’t exist in him. All it is is truth. 

Truth—now, that is something he could believe in. 

It is something to hold close. Something concrete. He can wrap secrets with metaphors and lock them away, but without dilution, without the tint of black and blue, without the years of running and hiding, they become truths. It is a case for evolution, really. 

It’s strange how it feels like sacrilege. Like his secrets were all he had, the only truth he had ever known. In a way, they were. If his family, if his body couldn’t be his own, his secrets were something that could. No amount of hurt would be able to strip that away from him.

The secrets and truth—they’re not so interchangeable. The secrets were barriers, as much as the scars and knives that pressed oh-so-softly against his wrists were. They were true, undoubtedly, but they were not truths in the way that Andrew viewed it. They were shields. Perhaps that’s what religion is, too: a shelter for the lonely and the hopeless. 

But the truth was different. 

The secrets—they have been ripped away from him. It has stripped him bare, all broken bones and silvered skin. His past put to words put to paper, prepared in questions and documents for the sake of proving someone’s innocence. But not his own—never his own.  

They weren’t his. They had never been his. They weren’t from Cass’s first fake smile, eyes acting blind to the bruises along his collarbone. They weren’t from his first forced therapy session in juvie. They weren’t when doors were broken down, blood splattering his spine, brother shaking under his hands. 

The secrets were fact. They were the deconstructions of his soul, his memory, put on display. They were true, but they were not the truth.

He would never admit it, but it was Neil who taught him this.

He remembers the day they met through the blurry haze of the drugs. Brown hair, brown eyes, baggy clothes: a portrait of a man who wanted nothing more than to hide. The most honest lie he’s ever been subjected to.

He remembers him taking apart the locks and his attempt to run and his wicked tongue and his mocking salute and and and—

He remembers it all. He remembers Neil trading brown eyes for blue. He remembers the feeling of his hand against Neil’s chest that first time. He remembers Abram. He remembers you’re amazing. He remembers always. 

Even all his secrets spilled, the truth of him remained. No sacrifice, no name, no lie could change that. 

He’s no God, but he is Neil. He is the man who had helped Andrew find hope, find shelter. One not given, but built together. So yes, Andrew can understand why this feeling is something people have died for. It is sacred. It is holy. It is the one thing that Andrew cannot bear to live without. 

“I wasn’t aware that you’re capable of going the speed limit.”

The rain spatters harshly against the windshield. The Maserati creeps—yes, going 50 is creeping—along the highway, the odd headlight reflecting off the water. Highways signs attached to overpasses, fading streetlights, scratched pavement markers—everything glows with the amber inherent in late-night drives. Maybe it is the moon. 

Whatever it is, it eases something in both of them. 

“I would say I wasn’t aware that you had a death wish, but I am no liar.”

Neil doesn’t answer for a minute. In the dim light, Andrew can see his mouth quirked to the side. 

“I don’t, really. Not anymore.”

“News to me.”

“Can a man not compliment his boyfriend’s driving anymore?”

Andrew bats his hand off his own, admonishing. He switches lanes harshly just because he can. 

The music died out a while ago. It’s a game Neil plays: turning it down increment by increment when he thinks Andrew isn’t paying attention until it’s silent. Andrew would never tell him, but he prefers it. The symphony of air rushing by mixed with Neil’s slow breathing—it’s calming.

Neil doesn’t react. “Would you prefer me to call you friend? My best friend? My…” He takes a moment to think, sighing dramatically in the process. “My darling? My Prince Charming? My lover?”

“Shut up.” His cheeks flush. He flicks a hand at him. “You are doing nothing to prove that little death wish theory of yours.” 

Neil hums. “Found a nice ditch for my body yet?”

“I am driving. I do not have the patience for your fucked up flirting.”

“Right, right,” he says, sinking back into his seat. Andrew feels his eyes on him. “Lest we forget your record with vehicular manslaughter.”

Andrew sends him a glare, though it lacks much bite.

They lapse into silence once again. Neil’s gaze burns against his skin, crawls across it. It’s heavier than the one he granted him that bus ride to Binghamton. It’s heavier still than the ones on most drives now.

Heat simmers lowly in Andrew’s stomach.

Neil can tell. He knows Neil can tell. It would be typical of him to tease Andrew for it, to make some sort of off-handed remark. Andrew wasn’t sure when he’d become so good at reading people for anything other than threats. He said as much to him a month or two ago. Neil, the idiot that he was (is) just said that it wasn’t him becoming better at reading people; he was just getting better at reading Andrew. 

Maybe one day I’ll become fluent, he’d told him.

Andrew didn’t tell him that he was afraid he already was.

This time, Neil lets them sit in it. The blush creeps down his neck, his chest. Neil knows what he is doing, Andrew is sure of it. It’s all but confirmed by the sly smirk he doesn’t try hard to suppress.

The darkness around them feels heavy.

“You are staring.”

“Am I?” Neil quips, not taking his eyes off him. “I didn’t realize.”

His chest twists. The rain is beating down harder now; he focuses on the sound of water meeting metal, as if it could drown out the man beside him. 

“We should pull off, Andrew.” 

It is by the will of God that he doesn’t crash into the median then and there. “You can’t wait until we get there?”

Neil scoffs. “I meant so we could get out of the rain. This is dangerous and we have another hour to go. Like I said, I don’t particularly have a death wish anymore.”

His heartbeat slows. Minutely. “Where?”

Through the dark, he sees Neil’s outline shrug. “Motel, I guess.”

“Haven’t had enough of those?”

“It’s fine.”

“Naturally.”

He quiets for a second. “And who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to disturb some neighbors.” 

Andrew closes his eyes, breathing through his nose. “You are a pest.” 

He can hear the grin in Neil’s voice. “Eyes on the road, sunshine,” he says. “Eyes on the road.”

He doesn’t know how it starts. 

Well, okay. That's not true. Of course he does. 

Neil turns the lock on the door, throwing the key at a table towards the center of the room. Andrew watches the arc of it. The seconds feel slow. He stands only a few feet away from Neil, and turns to face him once the key lands. 

It is silent barring the sound of the rain and their own heavy breaths.

His eyes trace Neil’s silhouette. He’s tempted to turn on the lights just to see what he looks like. He knows, of course. He knows the way his blue eyes deepen, and how his skin begins to warm. He knows the odd twitch of his fingers as he slowly loses control. He knows his gaze is wandering, just like Andrew’s own. 

“I cannot believe that criminal records do it for you.”

“Well,” Neil says smugly. “Yes.”

Andrew approaches slowly. Neil watches with a smile.

His eyes lower as Andrew twists his hands in his lapels. “That, and it’s you.”

He doesn’t know how many more words he can bear to choke on. “Yes or no?”

Neil’s smile is something lighter now. “Yes.” 

And this, this is how it feels to find religion. Hands tugging at hair, jackets falling to the floor. It’s the two of them, wrapped up in each other, burning bright. Something sacred. 

Neil’s body thumps against the door, arms curved around Andrew, lips trailing down his neck, and Andrew is not sure where he begins and Neil ends. He’s not too sure that they do. Perhaps they never have.   

Andrew grabs at Neil’s waist and walks backwards toward the bed. Neil laughs as they stumble, and Andrew’s sure he can feel the outline of a smile against his cheek. And they fall back, and Andrew’s stomach swoops, and this is the feeling he chases on the roof. This is what he’s been after.

He wants more.

It’s funny how the rain quiets the world. All of it, except for them. 

But it’s deafening to Andrew. It’s furious. 

The world is moving fast. So fast.

His heart. Something wicked lines his lungs. A weight pressed down on him. He ignores it, rolling them over, ghosting his lips across Neil’s chest. He’s not sure where their shirts went. He’s not sure how they got here.

There is a ghost in the corner of the room, watching him. A specter. Or maybe it’s above him? He’s not sure. But the look is appraising, a sneer, and he hears a name he hasn’t heard since he was fourteen. 

He’s falling. 

Falling is a strange concept in itself. You can fall in love; you can fall from grace; you can fall to pieces. You can fall asleep, and can fall in your dreams. The feeling, though, that accompanies that fall, means you’re not really sleeping at all. You’re only somewhere in the in-between. It evolved as an instinct, a defensive mechanism to help prey stay awake.

And there’s weight. Not above him. No, no, all around him.

He wants to forget. He wants nothing more than to forget. So he ignores it.

It’s not anything like a dream, where you’re caught in the slow pull of gravity without anything to hold in reach. The soft plummet of your heart in your chest, forever caught in free fall. 

For him, the fall feels nothing like that.

It feels more like a poison. The slow burn of it through his veins, indecipherable between his genetics and his own innate brutality. The line between anger and grief was thin, and even in his view from the void, he couldn’t tell the difference. He watches, now, between the distance of how far he has fallen and how much he’s left behind, as his younger self begins his descent, ignorant and wingless.

“Andrew.”

He can’t breathe.

Was this how Icarus felt as his waxwings gave way? Was the suffocation too heady to notice the air rushing up beneath him?

The rain has been replaced by static, the music long fallen away. The static is loud, so loud, so harsh, and he brings his hands up to his ears, the sound too much for a boy like him, black spots painting his vision.

He’s falling. He’s falling. He’s falling.

Memories flicker past them as they go. The greater the space between them, the darker it gets. He wonders if the faces have blurred into one for his younger self yet, or if he’s too caught up in trying to forget. 

He’s twenty-two, and thirteen, and seven, and they fall together as one.

He wants to forget. He wants to keep going. He wants this touch. He knows this touch. 

But how do you make someone forget when they remember everything? How do you tear the past from the present? How do you hold onto the good things when the bad ones are so strong?

“Andrew!”

There’s hands on his face, cross-hatched and callused. He knows them. He knows them blind. They crawl out from the dark, and suddenly Andrew does too, and it’s him, and it’s them, it’s them, and Neil is holding on.

His chest is stuttering with breath. Neil’s scarred thumb swipes beneath his eye, a wet streak glossing his cheekbone. “Is this okay?” he whispers.

Andrew nods. He can feel the tears sticky against his face. He doesn’t remember the last time he cried; certainly before juvie. It sparks something vicious in his chest. And it’s not a matter of Neil seeing him like this, no, but it’s the principle.

That door was supposed to be closed.

He’s choking. He says something along the lines of “Clothes,” and suddenly there’s a t-shirt being pulled over his head. It’s soft, so soft. 

He’s moving, he realizes. Rocking back and forth a bit. It’s calming. Easing. Neil watches, standing a foot or two from the bed.

“What do you need?” he asks.

Andrew’s not sure.

And he wishes that Neil would step closer, that he’d come back to bed, just so Andrew can know that he’s there. He hates him; he hates knowing that he is respecting him. He hates that he’s remembering every time before this. 

What he hates most is that he needs him. 

Touch had never been a comfort to him, especially in times like this. But there are times now that Neil’s is a calming presence. Somehow, it holds back the storm. Maybe it’s because his touch is indistinguishable from anyone else’s most of the time; maybe it’s just because it’s him.

Words are too much. They always have been. But so has touch. And he’s been learning. He’s been trying.

He’s trying.

“I need to be close to you,” he murmurs. The rest is left unsaid.

But I don’t know how.

Neil opens his mouth, and Andrew knows that he’s going to fight him on it. He knows that he’ll push back, knowing how Andrew works during these episodes.

But he sees something there. He does. 

He does, and he reaches out, and Andrew does too. He holds on. He pulls him in. 

They sit next to each other, staring in the dark. 

He wants to say I don’t know what to do .

He wants to say This is not a language I know how to speak.

He wants to say This is not a path I know how to take.

He wants to say You are all I know.

He wants to say Don’t let me go. 

Don’t let me go.

“Don’t let me go.”

Neil doesn’t let him float away.

“Give me your weight,” he says. “I’ll carry you.”

And then there they are, arms wrapped around each other. Hands clutch at each other, twist in their hair. Their breathing, the pain mixing with relief, is the only reason he knows this isn’t a dream. This crown of thorns is beautiful, he thinks. The sacrifice was worthy. 

Maybe it’s true. He doesn’t know how they got here.

He’s realizing that he doesn’t know much at all.

They’re on their sides now, heads pressed against the same pillow. Lungs sharing the same air. He didn’t think he could have this. He never did.

And for the first time since his last name was Doe, he lets himself cry.

It is them. It is them and the rain. That is all. No whispers, no ghosts. Just them.

Neil rubs a scarred hand against his back, holding back the breakers. As if he’s telling him I’m here. 

I’m not leaving.

I’m going to hold you like needed then.

I’ll hold you like you need right now.

I’m not going anywhere .

Andrew had read somewhere that the light we see from the stars is hundreds of thousands of years old. It is entirely possible that some of the stars have died, have already burned out eons ago, but still somehow reach towards the earth. Somehow, they still shine.

They curl around each other, and yes. Andrew knows. This is something he would die for.

And the truth—well, it’s him, isn’t it? It’s his memory; it’s his soul. It is every part of himself, gnashing teeth and claws. No amount of prying or hurt could dilute it.

His secrets may not be his. They may never have been, no more than his body or heart was. But things are getting better. Despite it all, they’re getting better.  

He has his family. He has his home. He has Neil. 

Things may have been taken from him time and time again, but these are his. He knows that now. 

Truth and secrets are not the same.

The truth, as hard as it may be to hold onto, was only ever his to give away.

Neil holds it like something precious.

Chapter Text

“There is a poem my mother read me once.”

His eyes remain closed, wrapped hands resting over his stomach. His knuckles are raw and bruised. They’ll be sore tomorrow, but Andrew doesn’t mind. The release was worth it.

“Did she now?”

“Stephanie, of course,” Renee says. Her head knocks against Andrew’s from where they’re laying on the mats. “Who else would it be?”

“Indeed.”

She doesn’t speak again.

Andrew remains still. “What is it?”

“It’s called Wild Geese,” she says.

He hums. “Mary Oliver.”

“Yes. Have you read it?”

“No, I have not.”

“Would you like to hear it?”

He keeps his eyes closed. 

“You do not have to be good,” she says.

He focuses on the smell of the single candle lighting the room. Burnt cloves and apples. Autumn, though it had passed. He’d found it with Neil.

“You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”

It had been a few weeks since that night in the motel room. The melting of stars beneath the rain; the melting of men.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

They hadn’t spoken about it since. Both knew well what these episodes were like. They settled like heavy blankets on their spines for days, weeks, months after. It felt difficult to move; it felt difficult to eat; it felt difficult to breathe. As if there was no coming back from it.

“Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”

But there is. Time and time again.

“Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.”

For him, the memories wash over him like a wave. He drowns in it, suffocating, fighting against the current. It coats his lungs with scum and teeth with dirt, the only thing able to scrape it away being time. It feels like dying. 

“Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”

They hadn’t spoken about it since, but they didn’t need to. There’s no solving it—there isn’t. But Neil had been there, and that was enough.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Andrew breathes her words in, letting them settle.

“You memorized it.”

“It was our moment,” she says, like it’s simple. “Of course I did.”

He understands. The moment when things make sense.

“And what will you do when the geese come calling, Renee?”

Andrew feels her fidget. She’s playing with her knife, most likely. “They did. A long, long time ago.”

“And are you good now?” 

“You know, Neil asked me something very similar.” He can hear the smile in her voice. It’s fond. “I’m not, but I’m trying.”

“Is that so?”

She rolls on her side, breath warm against his temple. “I felt guilty for a long time, Andrew.”

“For?”

“Wanting,” she replies softly. “That, mixed with the memories, was so much. It still is, sometimes.”

“Tell me about your despair and I will tell you mine,” he echoes.

Her laugh is more of an exhale than anything. “I’m just saying, Andrew. There are times I hate it. I hate it so much I can’t breathe. I don’t want anything to do with touch, or knives, or words themselves.”

He picks at the skin around his thumb.

“But then there’s times I want it so bad it hurts. I want it so badly that I don’t think I know how to live without it. Do you ever feel that way?”

He flexes his hands just to feel them ache. “Do not give away your words so freely, Renee.”

This time, her laugh is bitter. It is rare to get that sound from her. He wonders what he has provoked. “Be careful, Andrew. Your truths may not be wound as tightly as you’d like.”

“It’s funny,” Neil says, “how scars can tell the future.”

It is the first word passed between them in hours. The night had settled around them in quiet companionship, a hopeful psychopomp. It led them nowhere but this bed.

“I can feel the rain coming on. I always can.”

Andrew rolls over, filling the empty space between them. Neil is staring back, eyes blinking through a tired haze. Even in the low light, the blue burns. Two sapphires, unyielding. He thinks it might be his mind playing a trick on him. Can he truly see them, or is the memory of him stronger?

For his sake, he hopes it's the former. The truth, though, coils tightly around him.

Neil’s breath is warm against his face. “So do I.”

“And the cold?”

Andrew watches him carefully. His stillness—both of theirs—is with intent. A fragile moment, like the slow embrace of a doe and light. “The cold just as well.”

Neil pushes up onto his elbow. The blanket slips. In the dark space between his body and the bed, his eyes fall on something that gives him pause.

He doesn’t move, though. His gaze stays where it lands with the knowledge that Andrew knows he’s staring. Staring at him, to be exact. Low, low, and lower.

He feels the pinprick of Neil’s attention on his bandaged hand, half-hidden under his abdomen. 

Neil looks with the implicit knowledge that Andrew is looking back.

Andrew gives him a slow nod, allowing him to reach out. Neil does so just as slowly, hand coming to slip over his own. He is coming to learn that Neil’s wariness is not so much out of fear that Andrew will slip away. He knows just how precious these moments, and how quickly they can fall away. Touch has always been a careful thing between the two of them. No exchange of warmth is done without care, without thought behind it. Neither had ever known touch to be something kind. 

The touch of a lover is something else entirely. Fortifications were broken over time, skin thinning down as time wore it away. Somehow, it becomes more vulnerable over time. Andrew has never felt more naked than he did before Neil, scars and secrets laid bare. 

It isn’t kind. Not really. 

It comes with the pain that honesty does. In a way, it hurts more than bruises and the laying of scars. It was a ghostly visitation. It is the entrance of a bullet with the knowledge that it was you holding the gun.

Consent, the admission of desire, is perhaps the scariest thing of all. 

Neil is not careful with the fear of Andrew wanting it to stop; he is careful with Andrew’s fear of wanting it to begin at all. 

He brings Andrew’s hand between them, using the dim moonlight to inspect it. He doesn’t typically keep them bandaged; usually, there’s no need to. But today’s spar was particularly brutal. As a result of a long break and the events that fell between, neither of them got out of the fight particularly unscathed.

“The flesh is just as alive as us.” Even in the dark, Andrew can see the blood that has soaked through. “It has memories. It has a conscience.”

Neil strokes his thumb across Andrew’s knuckles. The sore pain from the bruises is a familiar comfort. “That doesn’t mean you have to treat it as cruelly as you do yourself.”

He thinks of how often the rain comes here. He wonders how Neil aches. Does it gnaw at him, like a bruise does under pressure? Is it scathing? Does it feel numb under the spray of water and thick layers of sweat, or does it sting? Is it the weakened skin that harms him most, or are the memories worse?

He finds himself wondering how Neil hurts. For a brief, regretful moment, he wonders if the scars hurt like his own.

Andrew sinks into him, pressing a barely-there kiss in the hollow of his throat. His eyelashes flutter against the rise and fall of Neil’s swallow.

“You’re so light.”

“The weight you carry?”

“That is heavy.” Andrew stills. Neil adjusts, head rising and Andrew’s arm with it. He grazes his nose against his wrist, a blush finding its way to Andrew’s skin. He hides his face against the sheets. “You and me. But the way you touch, the way you move. Everyone worries. You think it is wicked. You think you are mean.

“But I know you better than that.” His lips part, the bottom dragging along the first raised scar. Andrew shivers under the wet heat of it. It’s not enough for his arms to be stripped bare. Neil indulges in exposure, in silent admission. “And these bruises are proof. But you,” he murmurs, punctuating the word with a kiss, “are careful. You are warm. You are more kind than you know.”

Neil’s breath abandons him to the cold. For a moment, it is just Andrew, and skin, and scars, exposed to the night.

And then the heat returns, crawling into the space between his ear and jaw. The words are too intimate to be a whisper. “Is this okay?”

His cheek brushes Neil’s as he nods. 

Fingers push lightly against his shoulder. It is given the amount of strength and time necessary for Andrew to ignore it, but he gives Neil what he wants. His spine stretches across the mattress, curving beneath the weight of Neil’s presence. Neil leans in, an echo of Andrew with a kiss against his throat.

“I’m not—” Andrew rasps, interrupted by his own stubborn mind. “I’m not—good.”

Neil looks up only briefly, all physicality focused on the slow drag of lips and breath against silvered arms. “The world never allowed you to be.” He presses his forehead against a stretch of particularly marred skin. It is harsh, as if he can soak it all in. Not with the belief it could heal, but the hope that this is a piece of Andrew he could always know. “The world—the people—were cruel to you. You were never given the chance.”

He burrows himself into Andrew’s neck, auburn curls grazing softly under his chin. It is with a desperation he has never known from Neil. All he can do is push a hand into his hair, gripping with a purchase familiar to cliffsides. “And yet. And yet, despite it all, you have found a way to be kind. You have found a way to be gentle. No one, not even you, may see it that way. But I do.”

The familiar words cause him to shudder. He sunders beneath the weight of Neil’s words, is cut by the raw edge of them. They leave blood in their wake.

Andrew holds him tighter, holds him closer, with the hope that he can taste it.

“The look in your eyes is cold because you are not used to warmth. Your grip onto people is strong because that is the only way you know how to hold on. Your reactions are violent because that is the only way you’ve been taught to respond.

“But you love like you may never get another chance. You are loyal to the point of abandon. You bite because you are starving.

“And it is all you’ve ever known.” His lips trace the path from Andrew’s collarbone to his shoulder. The kisses are no longer apparitions, but pinpricks of light. He wonders if Neil can taste the memories. He wonders if Neil can see them flicker behind his eyes. He wonders if that is the point. “It is all you’ve ever known.”

He doesn’t know how to tell Neil that he is the single most beautiful thing he’s ever had the chance to.

“You have carved out benevolence from which there was none. You have molded love from a loveless life. You are you, just as you’ve always been.”

He kisses his bruises like he kisses his lips. It is sweet, incandescent; there is something Andrew adores about such a wicked tongue being used for something so pure. It should be a sin, he thinks, to see Neil like this. To see Neil, vicious and unflinching Neil, tongue licking flames from his skin. To see him brought to his knees, to see him in such an undiluted form of worship.

Andrew feels undeserving. He is not God; just a man. 

He doesn’t confess to this, recognizing the need in Neil like he does in himself.

“You are good, Andrew. You are cold, not cruel, and only because you have to be.” He reaches Andrew’s unbandaged hand, a trail of violets and artemisia blooming in his wake. He noses into it, curls against it, like it’s never wished him harm before. He tilts his head, looking up at him beneath dark eyelashes. “I won’t hurt you, just as you won’t hurt me.”

Something flares inside Andrew at that. He still feels Neil’s ghost against his skin, and his words cut him with the familiarity of knives. He wonders how strong the flood must be to wash this feeling away. “I can.”

Neil is motionless for a moment. Andrew can’t read the thoughts behind his eyes, shut away. The sparks burn into something brighter, something more violent. The line between anger and desire is slim between them.

Slowly, he crawls up the length of Andrew’s body, hovering just above him. With his hand still wrapped around Andrew’s wrist, Neil raises it, an echo of his earlier cradlings. This time, though, a current of danger colors his veins maroon. 

Neil controls him. He wraps his fingers around his throat, arranging it in the way Andrew would do with a knife. He’s not so sure the scratch of his nails is accidental. 

He watches Andrew with a burning. “Do it then.”

Andrew flinches. Neil could be wrapping his hand around his own throat, could be pressing in, and he would be none the wiser.

He could do it. He could leave pretty bruises against Neil’s skin, dark against the olive. He could let the oceans of his eyes sink into him, could watch it burn away. He can feel it. He can feel them. Them, on a precipice. Them, leaning over an edge.  

He slides his hand along Neil’s neck, cold fingertips bathing in his warmth. His skin is smooth beneath his palm, a river-bathed stone. His bandaged hand comes up to meet the other, mirrored images. There is no breath beneath them. No coordinates could have led them to this.

He wraps his fingers around Neil’s throat, and he pulls him in. 

His questions lie in the unspoken whispers between them.

Is this what you hoped for?

Is this what you know?

Would you like me to fall?

Would you like to watch?

“You are good,” Neil murmurs between kisses. “You are good.”

Andrew doesn’t speak. Language is not enough for a moment like this. 

Their bones find shelter in one another. They bend, and curve, and fall into one another, until they are two shapes all but melded into one. Their bodies press against one another, arms snaking between them. 

How the sweetest words taste so bitter, he is not sure. But if this is what he can be left with, if he can trade abandonment with the aftertaste of Neil’s lips, he will let himself burn with it. 

He may not feel it yet. But perhaps living with the hope of it being true is enough. If he’s as lucky as he is in this moment, maybe he’ll go believing. If this goodness is something he can receive, perhaps it is also something he can accept.

Above him, Neil smiles.

Chapter Text

The dream has returned. 

It never left—not really.

The setting changes sometimes, but the bare bones of it are always the same.

Neil, there and gone again. Neil, there in his arms. Neil, there in a grave. Passports and documents and IDs and licenses and none of them are identical but they are the same. They are all the same. 

He wonders if he and Neil have ever shared the same name before. 

Tonight, his dream is painfully reminiscent of Baltimore. It’s a common one, that. It’s more of a memory than anything else. You’re not supposed to feel pain in dreams, but Andrew does. He doesn’t think that’s normal. 

It’s not about the night—that night. It’s almost worse. It’s them, lying in bed with the knowledge that when they wake nothing will be the same. There is no blood or countdown, no bodyguards or phone calls. All there is is the unspoken truth that when the sun rises they will be states away, one bloody and bruised but the other just as raw. 

It’s Neil, with that small, crooked smile of his that leans more into a smirk. It’s himself, allowing touch despite being aware that he will never feel anything like it again. It’s them, cradled against each other, time and circumstance the only space between them.

And he’s holding on. It isn’t right—he’s known that since he was young. But for some inexplicable reason, he does so anyway. He pushes back the sleep that weighs down his eyes, prising himself open so Neil can take one last look. So they both can, in a way. 

Andrew knows that he will never be able to bare himself like this again.

The strangest thing is that he wants this. He wants to stay this way: taken apart but not broken, in pieces but still whole. He wants Neil to have this. Not as a gift to him, but one to himself.

It is something that he has wanted for a while now. 

There is something so utterly frightening yet arresting in being seen so clearly.

He fights against the sleep that threatens to take him, and Neil with it. Words pass between them, the ones audible being unintelligible in that peculiar language of dreams. Something he can almost parse, like words played in reverse and repeated, the shapes and sounds of it almost clear, but always fails to. 

The familiar touch winds around him. He knows it’s a ghost because it’s weightless. He knows it’s Neil because it’s kind.

Yet he feels more like a phantom than Neil ever could. All he is is a shadow, building a home in skeletal remains.

Still, he is haunted just the same. Still, he hears the footsteps in torn capillaries and the chambers of his heart. Still, he feels him in his bones. 

No matter the darkness inside, he is flesh and blood, slow dancing with a ghost in the middle of his chest. Despite the intrusion, it makes him feel like he can call this body home.

But hauntings aren’t meant to last. There is no giving yourself over, no letting someone in. It is holding on while your fingers beg you to let go.

And he wakes, and Neil is gone. It is how it was supposed to be. It is how it was always meant to be.

Was.

He’s become far too accustomed to Wymack’s living room ceiling for his own good. 

He had finally been given his own key after spending the better part of his first two years at Palmetto picking the lock. There had been nothing cordial about it, just Wymack’s habitually exasperated demeanor and the metal bouncing against his chest.

The beginning of sophomore year was filled with late-nights spent hunched over his coffee table, intoxicated ramblings and sandwiches cut into bits. Wymack had been the first to realize that Neil was something more to Andrew than a simple blip in interest. The complaints saturated by stolen whiskey certainly didn’t help. 

There was something about his presence, his harsh and implacable attitude, that calmed something in Andrew. It wasn’t like Bee or Renee, who would offer firm but candied insight and advice from the inklings of truth he gave them. None of them gave into the petty beliefs of the upperclassmen or the stubborn exterior Andrew put up, but Wymack just had a way of letting the rough edges burn him when need be. He was an asshole, and sometimes that was simply what Andrew needed. 

Wymack had promised to stay out of the Foxes’ personal issues when he’d signed them on. He had, for the most part, stuck to it. He didn’t intend to analyze every move Andrew made or every word he spoke. There was no latent intent behind his words or actions. It was only him cutting through appearances and judgment to expose them for what they truly were.

It made Andrew vulnerable in a way he didn’t particularly enjoy, but knew was necessary. 

“Again?”

Andrew pushes up onto his elbows to look at him from where he’s lolled across the couch. Stolidity masks his discomfort, a skill he’s honed from a young age. He has spent the last week or so here, so he doesn’t quite know what Wymack is expecting.

“You said you were leaving.”

He has also said that every day for the last week. Again, what was he expecting? “Interrupting a date, am I?” he murmurs. “Give Abby my regards.”

Wymack heaves a sigh, settling himself in the armchair across from Andrew. Whatever reason he had woken from sleep was abandoned now, bedshirt crinkling as he holds his head in his hand.

“Whatever is going on—”

“There is nothing going on.”

He trains Andrew with a pointed stare, softened by the bags beneath his eyes. “You need to get it together.”

“And why do you say that?”

“Your whole group is in Columbia, but you’ve instead decided that breaking into my house is a better alternative.”

“You gave me a key,” Andrew says plainly.

“Whatever lover’s spat is going on, you need to fix it.”

Andrew goes still for a moment. It would be imperceptible to anyone but Neil and, unfortunately, the man sitting across from him.

When the tension of his body is bearable, he narrows his eyes. He doesn’t respond at first, only moving to sit up and reach out for the bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table. He savors the burn of it against his throat, how his nostrils flare with the sharp aftermath of the whiskey. The presence of it in his stomach is tangible.

“There is no lover’s spat.”

And there wasn’t. Really. Instead, he feels heavy with the exhaustion of realization, just as he has been for the past few weeks. Neil had known something was going on, knew that something was at work within Andrew that he wasn’t ready for anybody to see. Not then. 

And as the time approached, as it arrived for when he did want to, both of them knew he needed to be alone for it.

“Call it what you want,” Wymack says, taking the bottle for himself. “But only that boy would drive you to be like this.” 

“'This?’”

Wymack scoffs. Rubbing his face against his hand, he says, “I’m not here to play games, Minyard. I could care less about what's going on between you two. But you need to get a grip. I don’t know if you’re scared of how you’re feeling, or what. I don’t want to play a guessing game with you. So either talk to me so I can help you, or figure it out.” 

His words are garish, but it is what Andrew wanted. It is what he needed. 

The realization had rocked him. It wasn’t unexpected in the least, but it still defied all that he knew about himself. He had anticipated it feeling like a necessity, like one more thing to get out of the way. An expected part of a relationship, another box to be checked off. To him, it always had felt like an impending doom, and he’d resigned himself to it. He had accepted what he always thought would be an obligation, a reason to close his eyes and pretend like the hands on him weren’t pressing against bruises that would never heal. 

He had never thought that it could be something he could want.

He hadn’t thought that this experiment with Bee would help. He had expected setback after setback, memories released in a cacophonous symphony. They were there, of course, lingering by the surface. There were weeks where touch wasn’t something he could stomach; where he couldn’t leave his bed. There were also weeks where he couldn’t look at Neil without feeling sick. Where he couldn’t look at himself without feeling even worse. 

But those weren’t the memories at work. He knows that now. Instead, he was sick with himself for allowing it, for accepting it. More than anything, by the knowledge that he was doing so happily.

He couldn’t sleep beside Neil while the truth was so raw. He had to be alone. Before he could confront him, before he could be honest, he needed to let the self-betrayal transform into what it was: desire, and something desired in turn. 

And in his lonesomeness, he found that the meaning of desire was no match for the feeling that burst inside of him now.

“He doesn’t know,” Andrew says, hesitant. 

Wymack looks back at him, something approving hidden within his gaze. Something proud. “Then tell him.”

The ride to Columbia feels both like a second in time and an eternity.

There is no rain, but no sun either. The night stretches out before him, stars cutting in and out of existence as he draws closer. There is no thrumming of music, no rev of the engine. His thoughts are deafening enough.

The house is silent as he walks in, just as he thought it would be. It was too late for even his family to be awake.

He takes in the familiar creak of the floorboards. The house is brought to a chill that he usually enjoys, but now unnerves him. He wraps himself tighter in his jacket, desperate to hold onto something. Anything to keep himself from floating away.

For some reason, he feels out of place. It’s as if this house, the one in which he has built another life around himself, doesn’t belong to him. Or rather, he doesn’t belong in it. But he pushes past it, because it’s not true. It’s not.

And above all else, Andrew believes in honesty.

“Andrew?”

Neil says his name before he can even see him. He peeks from behind a corner, the one that winds its way toward the stairs. Andrew wonders whether he was already awake, or if the sound of a car running over pavement woke him up. He wonders if he had seen the Mas, or could just feel his presence. 

He thinks he knows the answer.

They haven’t seen each other in a week. It didn’t happen often that they were separated for that long. Following everything in Baltimore, they had seemed to come to a tacit agreement that time, though they had it now, was too fickle to waste. But Neil knew that this distance was something Andrew needed. It would have angered him a year ago to think someone knew him that well, but here they were.

He was as captivating as always. His beauty, sure. Those merlot-tinted curls tangled with bedhead, and eyes so blue they pierced through the dark. But his presence—enigmatic yet something Andrew feels he has always known. It is commanding, yet gentle. It is sweet, yet true.

“I—” He stops, frustration and anxiety leaving him to choke. After a moment, he starts again. “Hi.”

Neil steps forward, moving to lean against the wooden archway of the hall. Shadows soften his gaze. “Hello.”

For a fleeting moment, he wishes they had the rain. At least then it wouldn’t be this quiet. At least then he would have an excuse for the warmth he longs for. 

Neil, because of course he does, senses the struggle in Andrew. He tilts his head towards the staircase and says, “Would you like to go upstairs?”

Those words are so usually of little importance; now, it feels like everything wrapped in a simple phrase.

He pushes off of the wall, though he doesn’t dare to come closer. Not yet. “Or get a drink? We could go on a drive, or—”

“Upstairs is fine.”

Neil pauses for a moment, expression incomprehensible. “And you?”

It takes Andrew aback. “Me?”

“Are you fine?” he clarifies, pronouncing each word as if they are something fragile. 

Maybe they are. “I am better.”

Neil smiles something small. Once again, he jerks his head towards the stairs, hidden out of sight. “Let’s go then.”

He follows him up in slow steps, each one feeling more monumental than the last. There is something enchanting to see Neil above him, haloed by a cloud of crimson and silver. It feels like a dream he didn’t know he was lost in.

Though, not even a dream could be as ethereal as the man who stands before him.

There’s the hallway, and the click of the lock at his back, and there is them.

He stands in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do. How do you tell someone that you trust them with your entire being? How do you give them your heart, and know that they will treat it tenderly?

When he turns to look at him, he knows with certainty.

“I—”

“I want it,” Andrew says. It’s quick, almost incoherent. If he doesn’t say it now, he knows that he never will. Neil blinks back at him, expression carefully stoic. He feels the tips of his ears warm. “I want you.”

Carefully, Neil steps away from where he’s pressed against the door. He keeps his hands behind his back. It’s an echo of how they began so long ago. Something about it is comforting.

Voice low, gradually clearing the space between them, he says, “You want…what exactly?”

He hates him. He hates the careful way he holds himself. He hates the way he doesn’t presume. He hates his respect.

And still, it is not hate at all. 

It never has been. Not towards Neil, at least—even when he thought it was. Even when he was convinced. Slowly, with each word clearly pronounced, he says, “I want to fuck you.”

The words aren’t clean nor polished. Neil is unaffected. Outwardly, at least. The control over his demeanor is practiced, expert. Only the slight tremor in his voice gives him away. A whisper: “And if I wanted you to fuck me?”

Something settles in Andrew’s chest. It feels like resolution. “Do you?”

Less than a pace separates them. Their breath is almost one, their bodies so close they could be tangled. Instead of answering, he says, “This is why you were away.”

It’s not a question. Still, Andrew nods. Heat flares deep within him. Beneath the fright, there is something exhilarating in being known so well. It is more carnally intimate than any touch between them could ever be. “I had to think.”

Neil raises a brow. “And do you have any reservations?”

He shakes his head, their noses brushing. “Not one.”

Neil’s fingers glide across his cheek, knocking their foreheads together. “And now?” he asks, more breath than words.

Andrew raises his hand to meet Neil’s, fingers locking into place. He closes his eyes. “I want you.”

I always have goes unsaid. I just had to let myself.

He meets Neil’s eyes. The sharp exhale leaves his lips, coating Andrew’s, and he is certain that he can see the painful honesty reflected back at him. 

When Neil speaks, it is with an aching only Andrew can understand. “Then have me.”

They kiss, and it is nothing like Andrew had expected. It’s not brutal. It is not quick and rough like how they began. It is sweet, and true, and gentle, and commanding, and the most honest thing Andrew has ever known. It is beautiful, so beautiful, and Andrew is not sure how he can ever move past this.

But they do. They do when Neil trails his lips hotly down the line of Andrew’s neck. They do when Andrew crowds him against their shared dresser, hands cradling his back to soothe any harsh edge. They do when Neil tugs on the hem of his shirt, and Andrew his, and their skin meets in a press too warm for people who have only been raised to be cold. 

With every kiss, with every touch, Andrew feels more and more anchored. He didn’t know it could feel like this. He had never understood desire as anything more than perfunctory or malignant. 

But then, he’s never been able to predict anything when it comes to him and Neil.

Andrew mouths at Neil’s neck as he strips the armbands away from him. It is disarming, both physically and emotionally. He feels each knife leave its place, replaced by the touch of another. By Neil’s touch. 

It was one he used to think was lethal; now, he doesn’t know how he ever lived without.

Neil stutters in his movements as Andrew nips at a particularly sensitive spot, laving his tongue over the bite to soothe it. His gasp lights something within Andrew. The heat pools lowly, molten and glowing.

With the armbands stripped, he pushes lightly at Andrew’s chest, moving him a half-step away.

He knows the concern is etched into the features of his face. Neil only laughs. “I have to shower.”

“Oh,” Andrew says. He presses a hand to his neck, a cooling touch to the blush there. “Okay.”

Neil laughs again. “Okay?”

Andrew looks up at him, and something in his expression seems to ease Neil. He feels—soft, almost. Almost. “Be quick.” 

Neil smiles. He walks backwards, keeping his eyes on Andrew the entire time, only looking away once he bumps into the doorknob.

Fondness blooms inside Andrew. 

He only lets himself sit once the shower starts running, and he lets himself think.

There is no doubt in him, not like he thought there would be. He thought that the past would be stronger than the present, overwhelming and incapacitating, just like that night in the motel. They are there, naturally. There was no way they wouldn’t be; Bee had assured him as much. She had told him that it is completely reasonable for the memories to linger beneath his skin. She had told him it was reasonable to wait for sex. She had told him it was reasonable for them to never have sex.

Was it weird to talk about the intricacies of sex so often with his middle-aged therapist?

No, he decides, it isn’t. These are the cards he’s been dealt. These are the memories he has to live with. If he has to strip them down detail by detail in order to heal, then so be it.

And he has. A year ago, this was unimaginable. A month ago, even, it wasn’t something he could bear. Yet he is here, half-naked, waiting for Neil on their shared bed. He is here, wanting.

He thinks back to Neil removing his armbands. As he took each weapon away, as removed his defenses like the walls of a citadel, only to replace them with the gentle press of his fingers. It felt like affirmation, in a sense where he could strip down to his scars and still be wanted. More than that, to want in return.

For the first time, he feels at home. This body, this soul—it is his and his alone. To be able to give it to Neil is simply a gift of its own. It is him inviting Neil in, and allowing him to stay.

It is in this he realizes that there is no ghost. There is no haunting. He had hoped there had been, for how else could he endure sharing the darkest truths of himself?

But it is his. Despite everything, it is his. Despite everything, his body is his own. 

The door is opened and quickly closed behind Neil, who is dressed in a towel.

Just a towel.

“You are only wearing a towel,” Andrew brilliantly observes.

Neil peers down at himself, as if this was a simple fact he had forgotten. “Yes.”

It hangs low, revealing the carved V of his abdomen. Andrew blinks. “Why?”

“Well,” Neil says, tossing his clothes on top of the dresser, “I figured I would be naked soon enough. I thought it would make the process easier.”

Andrew hates him. “Come here.”

The air thickens with every step he takes. Andrew stops him a foot or two away, rising to place his hands on his hips. Deliberately, he curves his fingers into the fold of the towel.

Leaning in, with temple against temple, he whispers, “Yes or no?”

He falls to his knees before the hiss of the s can even leave Neil's lips.

There is something sacred in this, he thinks, to kneel before someone he adores so viciously. It is not the first time, but it feels like it is. There is a new light that shines on them now, neither sun nor moon. 

He doesn’t know the word for it. He doesn’t think he needs to. 

It is them. It is Neil’s sharp breaths, and a slight tug on his hair, and the knowledge that he would never use it to hold him down. That is perhaps the most provocative part of this whole ordeal.

Time melts between them, and they trade one piece of sacrilege for another.

Andrew presses him into the bed, their hearts beating in synchronicity and their kisses no more than breathing. Neil’s hands map across him, hot and heavy. Are these the coordinates he desired? Is an atlas enough?

He’s had it. He always had.

Andrew’s thumb presses against him, tender but firm. 

Neil nods with haste, gasping and red. It is still a wonder to Andrew how little gets Neil worked up.

Sparks flare with knowledge that he will see him fall even further from the edge.

And he does. Andrew didn’t think he could be more aroused, but seeing a man so controlled break apart like this proves him wrong.

His grip on Andrew’s arms tighten as he curls his fingers against a spot that causes him to jolt. His breathing is panting, and quick, and then it's gone, and his chest heaves, and—

“Neil.”

He pauses, allowing Neil time to come back to himself. Slowly, Neil lets go, running a hand across his face. He laughs a bit. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Andrew says. He looks for any sign of fear in Neil’s face, any sign of regret, but finds none of it. “Are you alright?”

“More than,” he breathes. “It’s just—”

“Overwhelming?” Andrew says.

Neil nods, almost curiously. “Yeah.”

Andrew sighs. He rolls to lay next to Neil, propping himself up on his elbow. “I feel it too.”

Neil’s features soften. Like a truth for truth, Andrew allows his to do the same. Lightly, he grazes a hand along Neil’s jaw. “You were hardly breathing,” he whispers.

“Well," he laughs, "you are known for taking my breath away."

In lieu of a smile, Andrew leans in, kissing him sweetly. 

He backs away, only minutely, and Neil says, “Do you still want to do this?”

More than anything. “Yes.”

And they do. 

And when Andrew presses into Neil, nothing changes. Nothing existentially, at least.  There are no ghosts or nightmares. There is no reckoning or catastrophe. There is no doubt, or reservation, or resentment.

There are gasps. There are kisses. There is the entwining of hands, the curling into each other. There are whispers between them. Neil says, “I’m holding on.” Neil says, “I won’t let you go.” Neil says, “I won’t let you disappear.”

Andrew says, “I know.”

It is them, just them, like it has always been. It is a culmination of all the truths traded between them. It is the warmth of Neil that he has always known.

It is the difference between one second and the next, and it is no different at all.

They are here. They are together. They have beat circumstance time and time again. What is one more? 

They did it. 

He did it.

He had someday. He had Neil. 

Despite it all.

And they sleep, and wake, and they are by each other’s sides. Forever stretches before them, and for the first time, Andrew accepts it. 

He’s not dreaming. He’s alive.

Neil scrunches his nose at the cracks of sunlight that peak through the blind. Andrew watches him, warmth a feeling he is becoming accustomed to.

“The sun,” Neil laughs. He laughs, and he laughs. “It’s so bright.”

Andrew allows the corners of his lips to tilt upwards. It is not a smile, but he will get there someday.

“The brightest star of all.”

He is awake. Yet, here in this bed, cocooned between Neil and the sun, he lets the knowledge take over him like a dream.

There are beautiful things.