Archive of Our Own ^beta

I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map, 
And knew that somehow I could find my way back.

1.

One of the many, many things about Neil Josten that made Andrew want to kill him and then himself was the way Neil’s body went pliant with trust each time Andrew looked at him. 

The worst part of it all by far wasn’t the trust itself, but how blatantly obvious it played out through Neil’s features. It was incomparably nauseating, how his limbs grew lazy, how wide his grin spread across his scarred face, how brilliantly his eyes glimmered as they glazed over with unyielding faith in his safety in Andrew’s presence and beneath his weight. 

Sometimes, most times, Andrew wanted to grip his arms like a vice and shake some goddamn fucking sense into him. But he feared it would only make Neil looser, more willing, more open to anything at all Andrew was willing to give or take from him. 

How revolting was that?

Andrew was particularly overwhelmed this evening, seemingly by nothing at all, his chest aching with some emotion he couldn’t be bothered to parse. He noticed the slight tremor in his fingers as he took a pull from his glass of whiskey, and he gripped it tighter to hide it from present company.  

His brother and Nicky had disappeared among the throng of stinking bodies gyrating on the dance floor at Eden’s Twilight and Kevin was slouched in his rickety chair, eyes closed and having already inhaled the better half of a dozen tequila shots. That left one wretched witness to Andrew’s movements. 

And, oh , was he witnessing. 

Neil's elbows were propped up on on the table, his chin resting in his hands as he gazed unflinchingly at Andrew. His lips were upturned in the ghost of a smile, and he blinked sleepily, slowly, almost feline. Normally, under the multicolored flashing lights of Eden’s Twilight, Neil’s eyes were such a bright, unfettered cerulean that they were almost extraterrestrial. Demonic, even.

Tonight, that brilliant arctic ice was swallowed up by the inky black of his pupils as he stared at Andrew. They glittered like obsidian, dark as night and just as dangerous. This was a new terrible habit of his, the way he let his eyes lock onto Andrew at any given moment and all hints of tension or awareness melted from him as his gaze grew unfocused but impossibly heavy. 

“Stop,” Andrew ground out in German, his own eyes flicking away from Neil.

Just as he’d suspected, Neil’s mouth cut further across his face, lips paling as they pulled taut in a fierce grin. The Foxes had won 7-6 earlier that night against the Texas Longhorns, and Neil was always unbearable to be around after a good game with a close call. “Stop what?” He asked, fingers tapping an even beat into his cheek. 

Those same fingers were riddled with deep burn scars and knife wounds, the exact reason why he should be loathe to trust even a single soul with his safety and his truth. With his targeted back and his hot mouth and his skittish heart. 

But, he trusted Andrew. Unwaveringly. And it set Andrew’s teeth on edge. “You know what you’re doing.” 

“I don’t think I do.”

“Contrary to popular belief, you’re not as stupid as you look.” 

“A rare compliment,” Neil said on a sigh. His body swayed slightly, and it only took Andrew a moment to realize it was because he was kicking his legs back and forth slowly beneath the table in the same way a cat would flick its tail. “What’s the occasion?”

“Placating you so that you’ll be easier to murder.” Andrew was half serious. His blood bubbled beneath his skin. 

Neil hummed in satisfied delight, bringing his glass of soda to his mouth. He wrapped his lips around the rim, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. 

Andrew considered other situations in which Neil’s throat might make the same motions, in which his pupils would dilate just as wide, wider even, than they were right now. He considered. He had been considering. He couldn’t force himself to stop.

Neil knew it, too, by the way he relaxed so instantaneously, everything about him liquifying into something malleable and eager. He pulled his glass away from his mouth, and his lips glistened, wet with cola. Andrew knew exactly how he’d taste; sweet and biting, ice cold and scorching hot at once. Neil dragged a finger up the side of his glass to catch a stray drop of his drink, then brought it to his mouth, lapping it up while his coal-black dilated gaze bore into Andrew.

Andrew planned half a dozen ways to kill him in his sleep. 

Neil’s impromptu performance was interrupted by a sudden movement in Andrew’s peripheral, and Andrew was barely fast enough to prop his body up beside Kevin before he could slip from his chair and fall to the floor. 

“Time to go?” Neil asked, too pleased with himself for Andrew to look at. 

It was a short drive back to the house after Neil had fetched his teammates from the dance floor. The crew pulled themselves from the car one by one. Aaron and Nicky stumbled drunkenly into the house first, disappearing into the darkness without bothering to flick on a light in favor of collapsing into bed. By the time Andrew had gotten the porch light on, Neil had Kevin out of the car and draped over his shoulder. He closed the car door behind him with his foot and nearly buckled beneath Kevin’s limp weight. 

“A little help?” He called, jamming his elbow into Kevin’s ribs in an effort to rouse him. 

Andrew considered locking the door and letting them both sleep on the porch. In the end, an hour or two later, he drifted off into unconsciousness to the sound of Neil’s gentle breathing at his side. 

2. 

Andrew didn’t have much capacity for hatred, as he was far more inclined towards disgust, but if there was anything in the world that he truly despised, it had to be the first 10 minutes of a flight. 

Statistically, a plane’s mechanisms were most likely to fail during takeoff or landing than they were at any other period of the flight. And, while landing brought the satisfaction and relief of finally returning to steady ground, takeoff was a torturous, turbulent nightmare that sent his thoughts sprawling towards the most gruesome possibilities. His seatbelt slicing him in half. A broken window sucking him into the sky. A support beam skewering him on impact before the flames swallowed him whole. 

It was something he should be used to, having taken a number of flights since signing with the Foxes. But the familiarity never made it easier. 

By now, all of the Foxes had filed into the plane and fastened their seatbelts as the flight attendants recited their speeches about plane procedures in the case of an emergency. Neil got twitchy when he was boxed in, so he normally took the aisle seats. Andrew couldn’t stand to have the warmth of bodies pressing in on either side of him, so he regularly opted for window seats—with the shades closed —and the two planted Kevin between them despite his protests about the correlation of leg cramps, confined spaces, and the deterioration of court performance. 

Today, however, their flight to Oklahoma City was relatively sparse, and the Foxes had the rare opportunity to spread out slightly among the rows. Neil, as always, lounged in the aisle seat, and Andrew, as always, had taken up post in the window seat. But Kevin had opted to sit by himself a couple rows back, and his grating voice floated above the seats as he discussed game strategy across the aisle with Dan. 

The plane was moving now, the pilot steering it towards the runway. The pen clicking in Andrew’s hand made an interminable racket that served to steady his nerves only slightly. 

“Wanna bet on tonight’s final score?” Neil asked suddenly, after twenty minutes of staring at his Elementary Spanish workbook with a vacant, glazed-over stare.  

This got Andrew’s attention. “You don’t bet.”

Neil considered this. “I would with you.” 

If Andrew weren’t so averse to the idea of plummeting thousands of feet to his bloody death, he’d kick the emergency exit open and throw Neil out of it. “I’m not betting with you.”

“You bet with everyone else.”

He knew what Neil was doing. Stealing Andrew’s attention from the way his heart dove into his stomach as the nose of the plane tipped precariously towards the stratosphere. 

The audacity of it made Andrew consider strangling Neil with his own seatbelt. “It’s easy money. They’re all fools.”

Neil raised a questioning brow. “And I’m not?” 

He’d practically handed Neil that win. He hated himself for it. “Don’t say such stupid things.” 

Neil’s head lolled lazily against his seatback as he stared at Andrew smugly. The sun filtered in through the window shade just enough to cast a strip of light across his bothersome face, and Andrew could see it then. 

When he was a child, Andrew used to stand in the bathroom and stare at himself, fascinated, in the mirror at whichever foster house he found himself in. He’d get as close as possible, nose brushing the glass, and watch his pupils burst wide each time he flicked the lights off and back on again. It had only taken a single firm hand chastising him for wasting electricity to abandon the habit, but the memory, like all the others, had stuck with him ever since. 

It was a different thing altogether to watch it happen to someone else, as if he’d traded places with that childhood mirror.

Neil’s comfortable, leaden expression was complementary to the way his irises narrowed to thin rings encompassing pitch dark pupils. It was like staring into glittering pearls of sunstone, and the worst part was that he was entirely unaware of what he was doing. It was out of his control and completely unforgivable.

“I’m putting my money on 9-6,” Neil said after a brief musing. “Foxes’ favor of course.” 

“No faith in the goalkeepers of your team?” 

“ Our team,” Neil reminded him. “And that’s what betting’s for. If you think you can lockdown our goal, bet on that then.” 

“Such a blatant attempt at fooling me into compliance.” Andrew stared at Neil’s cheeks in favor of his beaming eyes.

They were too luminescent to ignore. “Well, is it working?” 

Andrew wanted to press his thumb into the whorled burn scar at the corner of his eye. He couldn’t take it any longer. “Enough,” he said, shoving a hand into Neil’s warm cheek and forcefully turning his face towards the aisle. 

Neil’s shoulders shook with mirth. 

“Hey, Neil,” Matt called from several rows ahead. He held his laptop up above the seats and pointed at the screen. “Wanna come watch a movie with me?” 

When Neil unbuckled and pushed himself out of his seat to head for Matt, Andrew realized with a twinge of consternation that the plane had finally leveled. And he hadn’t even noticed.

3.

Sportsmanship was abandoned with only fifteen minutes left of the second half of the Foxes’ Friday night game against the Breckenridge Jackals. 

Goodman, the Jackals’ striker sub, had smashed Nicky between himself and the court’s plexiglass exterior after Nicky had popped the ball from his racquet just far enough for Neil to intercept it and shoot down the court like a bullet. He scored, and the Foxes took a one-point lead as Nicky crumpled to the ground in a groaning heap. 

After a brief timeout to ensure he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries, Nicky lined up for a foul shot. He fired, and the Jackals’ goalie missed the ball by a scant hair. 

The rest of the game was downhill from there. In the space of 14 minutes, the Jackals’ were handed 2 red cards, Matt and Allison had a yellow card, and Aaron was given a vicious verbal warning. The score was 6-6 and the Jackals were too busy starting brawls and bruising the Fox lineup for any player, Jackal or Fox, to score. The thought of the game moving into overtime was revolting, and Andrew wasn't sure he cared enough to participate wholeheartedly in a shootout. Actually, he was sure. He did not care enough. 

The clock hit 60 seconds, and Dennings, a Jackal dealer, carried the ball far too close to the Foxes' goal for comfort. He dodged Aaron's attempt to barrel into him and plowed further down the court, pulling his racquet tight to his body to protect his prize.

Andrew’s pulse was steady as he bent his knees and tightened his grip around his racquet.

But, with 40 seconds left on the clock, Matt shouldered Dennings hard enough to pop the ball from his racquet. Dan caught it as quick as a whip, passing it to Neil on the same swing. 

In the past few months, Andrew and Neil had been slowly studying the Russian language. It was Neil’s idea, an effort to learn a dialect that no one on the team aside from them could understand. It was a piss-poor choice, however, as they’d both found the fickle concepts of grammar difficult to grasp. Though, they’d learned a few key phrases that came in handy at times such as this. 

“Давай! Давай!” Neil called out above the noise of the scuffle, and Andrew braced himself. Neil utilized the brief confusion of his backliner mark at the unfamiliar language to aim and fire straight at Andrew’s goal.

Andrew put every ounce of weight behind his swing, and the ball cracked off the end of his racquet as he sent it careening back down the court towards Kevin. 

Neil was slowing down, ready to turn and make a beeline for the Jackals’ goal, but Dennings took advantage of the loophole in the rules to body Neil as hard as he could only a single second after the ball had left the safety of Neil’s net. Dennings was 6’5”, and 270 pounds of pure muscle mass. He sent Neil sprawling. 

The Foxes were halfway down the court when Neil slammed into Andrew, twisting the hardest parts of his armor away from him as they collided. Andrew gritted his teeth at the impact, grabbing at Neil in an effort to keep them both steady, but the two of them tipped backwards to the ground anyways. They landed in a messy heap in the goal, all limbs and armor and helmets and racquets. 

"Fancy seeing you here," Neil said in greeting, and it was so obnoxious that Andrew considered slipping the knives from his arm bands and gutting him right here on the court floor. His hands were planted on either side of Andrew’s head, and he made no move to get up, despite the hundreds of thousands of eyes on them at this very moment. 

The prospect of tomorrow’s headlines made Andrew’s eye twitch. “I’m going to bash that backliner’s skull in with my racquet, and then yours, too, for good measure.” 

“So you're having fun, then?” Neil asked gleefully.

Andrew sniffed, but for some incomprehensible reason, he didn't move to shove Neil off of him. "If you get even a single drop of your putrid sweat on me, you're going to wake up tomorrow without your vital organs."

That's when it happened. His eyes. Through the grate of Neil's helmet, his eyelids drooped, and a slothful smile spread thin over his face. He blinked, slow as molasses, and when he opened his eyes again, they were black and white like film noir. It was as if the entire Atlantic Ocean had gone missing over night. All that blue—gone without a trace. This side effect was a combination of adrenaline and ecstasy fueled by his one true love: exy. It was all for the game. It had to be. There were no other possibilities that made even an infinitesimal amount of sense. The words falling from Andrew's mouth were not kind nor affectionate. They were bitter and biting because he knew nothing else, could never be anything but this.   

Neil was lucky his eyes were hidden from the crowd and the rest of the players on the court. They'd think he was under the influence. He'd be dragged from the stadium and drug tested in an instant. Andrew wanted to tell him to fix his face, but he didn't think it'd do him any good. If anything, Neil would grow even more pleased with himself, and his dazed expression would shift further into dreadful territory. 

He couldn't reward such rancid behavior. Even if Neil's weight on top of him was a balm on old wounds. “Get off me before I hang you from the goalpost and leave you for dead.” 

Neil had just pushed himself back to his feet when a commotion sounded from the other side of the court at the Jackals’ goal and a buzzer echoed off of the plexiglass walls, followed by a second only a moment later.

Kevin had scored, and the Foxes won. 

4.

It was too goddamn fucking hot in Bumfuck, Alabama to be standing on the side of the road, but that’s exactly what Andrew was doing.

The team’s bus had broken down suddenly on the way back from the previous night’s game, puttering to a slow stop and smoking from beneath the hood. Abby had ushered her Foxes from the bus while Wymack stood off to the side with a hand on his hip and his phone at his ear. 

It was a good thing the bus decided to kill itself on the way back rather than the way there, or Neil and Kevin might have gone into harmonious cardiac arrest at missing the game. Disappointing, Andrew supposed. He would’ve found some modicum of pleasure in their collective temper tantrum.

The Foxes spread out, leery of trekking too far lest they encounter snakes or rodents in the tall grass. Allison had laid her towel out from her duffel bag onto the concrete and was sprawled out to get some sun. Renee sat on the towel between Allison’s bent knees and fanned them both with her Environmental Studies textbook. The others wandered around dazedly, unsure of what else to do but twiddle their useless thumbs.

The August heat radiated from the asphalt in dense waves. A bead of sweat followed the length of Andrew’s spine all the way to the waistband of his dark jeans. The sensation of cloth adhering stickily to his skin made him even more irritable than usual. 

The hulking bus cast a sizeable shadow across the ground, and he perched himself against the tail end of it, leaning against the hot metal and closing his eyes to pass the time. 

It wasn’t long before he was interrupted.

No one spoke to him, but he heard the scuffle of shoes against concrete, and then the bus creaked slightly at his side under someone’s weight.

He opened his eyes to find Neil’s shoulder propped up on the bus next to him, his arms crossed as he casually studied Andrew’s profile. 

Andrew studied him in return.

Neil had let his hair grow out slightly longer than it had been last year, the auburn strands curling beneath his ears, and he’d taken to pushing his bangs out of his eyes with a hideous orange bandana. 

Andrew wanted to tear that bandana to shreds with his knives and burn it in a fire. He wanted to press Neil into the hot grass, hold his hands above his head, and tie his wrists together with it.

He needed a fucking smoke. “You are intolerable.” 

A drop of sweat traveled down Neil’s neck from behind his ear, detouring into his clavicle and sparkling as it pooled there. By the dip of his eyelids and the twitch of his mouth, it was clear Neil had noticed Andrew watching, enraptured and disgusted, by its trajectory. “You wound me.”

“Not yet. I haven’t decided which method would be the most favorable.” 

“Strangulation?” Neil offered.

Andrew waved away the possibility. “Fingerprints.”

Neil hummed. “Poison?”

“Paper trail.”

“Stabbing?”

“Blood spatter.” 

It was a moment before Neil made another suggestion. “How about defenestration?”

Andrew turned his head slowly to stare at Neil. “Where did you learn that word?”

Neil feigned offense. “I know things.”

“A jock like you?” Andrew squinted into the bright sky. “Sure.” 

When Neil didn’t answer, Andrew looked back at him. It was an incalculable mistake.

Neil had forgotten himself, and every single emotion was written plainly on his face for the entire world to see. His body was angled towards Andrew, drifting closer each second as if urged by some inconceivable gravitational force. The curve of his mouth dripped with unchecked delight. And worst of all, his eyes were dreamlike, nearly cartoonish in nature, as he gazed at Andrew with something far too fond to stomach. Watching them bloom from apatite to onyx with the dilation of his pupils was nothing short of horrific.  

He fought the urge to check if their teammates were watching their exchange. He didn’t need them to see this. If Nicky or Matt or any of those unruly clowns made an off-handed comment, he’d be forced to filet them. “Get that look off of your face.”

A rumble in Neil’s chest sent vibrations through the metal at Andrew’s back. “Make me.”

Andrew was going to blow up the bus. “I hope we’re stuck here for a week. We’ll all die of dehydration before next Friday’s match.” 

“You wouldn’t let me die of dehydration,” Neil countered, too smug in his conviction. 

Andrew had no retort. He grabbed the bandana on Neil’s forehead and tugged it down over his eyes before stalking away towards nothing at all. 

5.

In an amusing turn of events, Kevin got food poisoning.

It was his own fault, really. He’d been urged by his wiser teammates not to order the salmon plate at the sketchy burger joint they’d gone to after practice the previous night. But he’d fallen victim to his own hubris—and his steadfast refusal to consume something as blatantly unhealthy as a cheeseburger—and ordered it anyways. 

Twelve hours later, he’d woken Andrew up with the sheer force of his retching. He’d gotten lucky, as he didn’t have class on Thursdays this semester, so he holed up in the dorm next to the toilet until it was time to pile up in the car to head to practice. It was a miracle that he hadn’t ruined the Maserati’s interior. Andrew had briefly considered making him walk.

The luck and the miracles didn’t last long, because Wymack had practically bodied Kevin off the court at practice after he’d frozen in the middle of a drill to throw up in his mouth and swallow it. The Foxes barely kept their own lunches down as he was hauled away to Abby’s office. 

Now, he was indefinitely camped out on the bathroom floor of their dorm with a case of water bottles and a towel to soak up his sweat. Someone, Nicky likely, had snuck him a laptop, and he was curled on his side on the filthy tile as he watched an old USC versus White Ridge match.

Even with Kevin out of commission, Neil had pestered Andrew into continuing night practice with him anyways. Andrew didn’t remember saying yes, but he found himself in the goal that night, twirling his racquet in his hands as Neil approached the goal. 

Neil sidestepped a row of cones, darting between and through them as if they were active opponents. When he aimed for the goal, he twisted his racquet around his body, and put everything he had behind the swing. 

The ball flew towards the corner of the goal, and Andrew narrowly avoided defeat, clipping the projectile with the edge of his racquet and sending it spinning away towards the plexiglass wall. 

“You getting tired?” Neil questioned, and Andrew could imagine the raised brow behind his visor. 

“I’m getting bored.” Andrew considered this statement, then tacked on a belated, “Of you.”

Neil snorted as if it was the most egregious thing Andrew had ever said. “As if you could ever.”

The next time he deflected Neil’s shot on goal, he aimed the ball at Neil’s helmet. 

This went on so long that Andrew had a brief flashback to the night that Neil had blown his arms out trying to score on Andrew. Neither of them had known, then, what the sparking tension between them would become. 

Neil had thought he’d be dead by now. Andrew had thought he’d be the reason why. 

Neil slammed the last ball from the bucket towards the goal, and Andrew deflected it with ease. With a crackle of a laugh, Neil spun and headed for halfcourt. When he reached the fox paw painted onto the wood, he pulled his helmet off and dropped to the court floor in a mess of tanned, scarred limbs. 

Andrew refused to entertain this madness for five entire minutes before giving up. He propped his racquet on his shoulders and strolled lazily to stand in front of his vile teammate. 

He looked so…so blissed out and dazed . Like he wanted to be defiled in the middle of the court floor in some holy, sacrificial ritual to the exy gods. 

“Junkie,” Andrew observed, leaning over to catch a stray ball and toss it at Neil’s chest.

Neil pulled his bottom lip between gentle teeth, twisting his mouth in a clear move to try and hide the affection from playing on his face.

He’d grown into such a terrible liar.

“Maybe you really are a fox,” Andrew ruminated. “A rabid one.” 

Neil laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard all year, baring his pointed canine teeth. Neil’s laugh was a nasty thing, a whip crack of a muscle that had grown rusty with disuse. When he clutched at his chest, his jersey rode up to reveal a strip of skin at his hip, sharp where his bones jutted out, rough where knives had cut deep and the wounds hadn’t healed quite right. 

Andrew’s blood boiled with the ferocious craving to grip him there. It was such a vicious shockwave of need that he took a startled step backwards. He was glad Neil hadn’t seen it.

When Neil finally opened his eyes again, the court lights reflected off blown pupils, not a hint of blue to be found in their depths. It shouldn’t have been possible. With the LEDs blazing down on him, his pupils should have narrowed to pinpricks. His eyes should have been unnerving pools of Pacific blue. Except, there they were, carbon black to boot, and Andrew shouldn’t have been surprised. But, still, the desire to put his heel to Neil’s throat and lean his body weight onto it was searing. 

And, yet… .

It wasn’t exactly the same angle, but this picture was a  familiar one. Neil looking up at him, blinking slowly through thick lashes, heady gaze black with need. It wasn’t something that Andrew had actually seen, but rather that he had imagined. Had thought of at length to himself in the dark. 

…Could he? Did he have the capacity to withstand something like that with someone like Neil? 

Andrew glanced towards the ceiling, glaring at the security cameras. He flexed his fingers, then stalked towards the court doors without another glance towards Neil.

“Car in five or you’re walking back.”

The hasty squeak of tennis shoes on the court floor behind him was a heavy weight in his chest that followed him to bed. 

+1 

As Andrew had previously observed, everything about Neil was unbearable after taking the victory in a raucous, toss-up match. 

But sometimes it worked in Andrew’s favor. 

Andrew had his hands on Neil as soon as the dorm door closed behind them. Kevin was out partying with the rest of the team and the cheerleaders, and wouldn’t be back for hours. That left Andrew plenty of time to take Neil apart, to unravel him as slowly as he pleased.

Neil went almost limp beneath Andrew’s touch, and Andrew shoved a knee between his thighs to keep him upright. He threaded his hands into Neil’s unruly hair and thumped his head back against the door, then followed him there, sliding his mouth over his. 

Neil’s lips fell open at the first touch, too hungry, too fervent, for his own fucking good. The greedy, breathy little sounds that escaped from his throat were infuriating enough for Andrew to pull back and level a scowl at the beast in front of him. 

Neil stared back at him with hooded, spellbound, eyes. His mouth glistened with Andrew’s saliva.

He was familiar enough now with this look to pick apart the pieces of it. Trust. Honesty. Attraction. Affection. Contentment. And something else too unbelievable for Andrew to name, to put even the ghost of a thought to for the icy, bone-chilling terror of eventually, inevitably losing it. 

On a good day, Andrew tolerated it. On days like today, when the world in front of him felt so blindingly out of reach, he wanted to pry it off Neil’s face with jagged nails. Instead, he placed a hand at Neil’s throat and pressed bruising fingers into the soft skin. “I hate the way you look at me.”

He didn’t. He should. 

Neil was too confident, high from a close call and the adrenaline of the final buzzer heralding a Fox victory. That self-assurance oozed from his pores, dripping over his languorous features. Even through his sleepy, wanton expression, the warm lamp in the corner caught his irises, and Andrew watched in grim abhorrence as they were swallowed whole by his dilated pupils. His stare was as black as an oil slick, flammable and ferocious with want. 

Few drugs could do this to a person. Andrew refused to believe he was one of them. 

“You don’t,” Neil said on a catlike grin. He twined Andrew’s hair around his fingers and tugged at the roots, tipping his head back just slightly. “You like it.” 

Andrew’s grip tightened around his throat. “I could kill you.”

If it were possible, Neil’s eyes grew even blacker as his lips parted on a laborious breath. He was enjoying this, the wretch. “You wouldn’t,” he rasped, and his eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks as those loathsome pupils rolled back slightly into his skull. “You like the way I look at you too much.” 

Aside from killing Neil and stashing his body in the trunk of the Maserati, Andrew had an idea then. One he’d been ruminating on for months, that he had prevented himself from voicing thus far. But, he couldn’t help himself any longer. Not when Neil looked at him like this every single fucking time, with hope and clarity and such unabashed trust that it made Andrew nauseous. And further still, a soft mouth was far more inviting than rough hands. 

Neil, the reckless fool, would say yes to anything Andrew asked of him. But that meant that, first, Andrew had to ask . His jaw worked as Neil waited, and in the end he settled for an angry, “Yes or no, Neil?” 

Neil’s instant and desperate, “ Yes ,” was a jumpstart to Andrew’s heart. He wanted to rip it from his chest, pumping and bloody, viscera dripping onto the floor between them, and force Neil to look at the havoc he wreaked. To understand what he’d done. To know what he couldn’t take back. 

But, maybe he did know. Because he was pliable as putty in Andrew’s hands when he guided them to switch places. Before, the door at Andrew’s back would have felt like a cage. Today it was an unyielding weight holding him steady. Unwilling and unable to tolerate Neil’s calm patience any longer, he moved his hands to the waistband of his own sweats. “Your mouth,” he said indignantly, and he didn’t need to elaborate further. 

Neil’s eyes widened, lips parting on a too-quick moment of stupefaction, and then his features morphed instantly into lethargic gratification. He slid to the floor easily, readily, eagerly, entire worlds in the blacks of his shining pupils. His knees thumped on the hard tile, and the sound of it could’ve been Andrew’s stomach bottoming out at the sordid sight.

Andrew pushed his sweats down to his thighs, hesitated briefly, and then shoved his boxers down, too. The anticipation had already hardened him, and he pushed against the urge to grip himself to ease the aching throb of want. 

Neil wet his lips, a mind-numbing sight that forced Andrew to look away. “I’ve never—”

“I know.” Satisfaction was a slow, repulsive heat in his gut. 

Neil looked up at him through dark lashes. His hands curled into the hem of his shorts, knuckles white. “Yes or no?” 

“Just your mouth.” When Neil continued to stare at him, he hissed a fierce, “ Yes .” 

Neil swallowed, blinking rapidly, and leaned forward to test the waters. He licked a cautious stripe up the underside of him. The sight of it was picturesque, a photograph that Andrew wanted to burn. On his knees, cheeks pink as roses, mouth wet and ripe like fruit. 

Andrew’s hand shot to Neil’s hair, tugging sharply at the strands. “ Don’t tease,” 

Neil grinned, amused, against Andrew's length. 

Andrew needed a gun. 

But thoughts of homicide and other miscellaneous acts of violence went up in smoke the second that Neil swallowed him down. Andrew jolted, biting back a curse and fighting to stay upright as his legs went numb.  

Neil’s mouth was hot and soft and greedy, exploring every inch of him and humming in satisfaction when he found something he liked. It shouldn’t feel like this, shouldn’t feel so life-altering with all its clumsiness and inexperience. But ravenous bolts of pleasure raced up his spine anyway, scorching his veins and burning his skin. 

Bursts of technicolor decorated Andrew’s eyelids each time he blinked, and his vision went fuzzy enough around the edges that he hadn’t noticed Neil’s eyes had fallen shut. 

“ Open your eyes ,” Andrew ground out, digging blunt nails into Neil’s scalp.

Neil obeyed, opening his eyes on a moan that nearly sent Andrew to his knees. He'd momentarily taken Andrew too deep, and tears warbled at his waterline, threatening to spill down his cheeks. The shimmering moisture only emphasized the twin shadows of his scintillating pupils. He fell back all the way to the tip so he could ask, “Is it good?” 

Good. Was it good ? Andrew couldn’t fathom such stupidity. “I’m going to break your neck.”

Neil took him down again in response, hollowing out his cheeks as he sucked long and hard. His mouth made sloppy, hideous noises that punched the breath from Andrew’s lungs and, shamefully, that was it. 

“ Neil ,” Andrew bit out, tapping two fingers to his temple in warning to pull away. But, Neil stayed where he was, staring up at Andrew with glossy, affectionate eyes, and Andrew came in his mouth with a near-silent shudder. 

Neil coughed once, twice, but forced even breaths through his nose as he swallowed every last drop. It wasn’t until Andrew hissed at the bite of overstimulation and tugged Neil off of him by his hair that he leaned back on his heels and smiled dopily up at him. 

Andrew’s chest heaved. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t fucking think. His fingers itched for a cigarette. He refused to look at Neil, still kneeling with that horrid expression marring his features. 

“I liked that.” Neil sounded sated. Andrew hadn’t even touched him. He wanted to choke the life out of him.

“I don’t care.” He did.

Neil’s smile bled into his infuriating voice. “Can we do it again?” 

Andrew didn’t answer, choosing instead to untie the knot at the waistband of Neil’s shorts. When he finally looked up, he knew what he would find. Two eyes darting between his own. Bright stars winking on a gleaming black canvas. A new, unrecorded constellation decorating the night sky.

A roadmap to home.