Archive of Our Own

“This kid,” Kevin says, shaking his head. He pops the tab on his beer deftly and lifts it. Before he can take a sip he stops, shakes his head again. “I think he’s really got it.”

“I assume by ‘it’ you mean a similarly sports-obsessed personality,” Andrew says drily.

“He’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen,” Kevin says. He still hasn’t taken a sip. “And the way he moves…”

“Alright,” Andrew warns. “Settle down, Romeo.”

Kevin blows out an exasperated breath. “Just come see him play, Andrew. If you like what you see, maybe you make a phone call.”

“If it’s on an exy court, I won’t like it.”

“You’ll make the call,” Kevin tells him. “And I won’t say ‘I told you so,’ but we’ll both be thinking it.”

The only thing Andrew can do, really, is lift his own can of beer. It’s more of a challenge than a toast. The victory will be silent, no matter which of them wins.

He makes the call.

He walks into Kevin’s shabby community center stadium, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head with a wince at the antiquated fluorescents and thinking about how good it will feel to tell Kevin no, and thirty minutes later he’s on the phone with his college coach saying shit like, “the kid’s a natural,” and “I don’t know” a lot because Wymack has more questions than Andrew has answers for.

He’s on the phone for eight minutes and forty-one seconds, and he spends all of it with one eye pinned on the kid. Neil Josten. Eighteen years old and on his own, he claims, the only orphan of a matching parental set of orphans, not a second, third, or fourth cousin to be found anywhere in the whole wide world. Pretty, stoic Neil Josten staring up at Kevin’s face while he talks furiously, his hand flinging in Andrew’s direction over and over again.

“Coach,” Andrew says, cutting through Wymack’s heated and ultimately empty tirade. “He’s perfect for you. You’re going to love him.”

“If he’s perfect for me, I’ll barely be able to tolerate him,” Wymack says gruffly.

“Exactly,” Andrew tells him. “How soon can you sign him?”

“January,” Wymack sighs. “We’ll bring him in at the semester break. You’d better be right about this.”

“I am,” Andrew tells him. Neil has turned to look at him now, steady eyes across the court, so still he’s practically slow-motion next to Kevin’s urgent body language. Andrew turns his mouth into his phone and says, “You’re welcome,” before he hangs up.

Kevin had survived Riko and recovery, had graduated and gone pro, only to take a hard fall his third year in the majors. The hand injury, still young, had shattered apart again. It was worse this time, or Kevin was older, and that was it—the great Kevin Day, felled so soon. Andrew’s knee had taken a too-hard hit three years later. Truth be told, he hadn’t fought that hard to keep himself in the league. He already had plenty of money. Aaron was established. Denver was a bummer without Kevin around. It was way too cold. He missed the South. So he’d followed Kevin back to South Carolina, dusted off and renovated the old Columbia house, and started a successful career as someone who does whatever the fuck he wants to, whenever the fuck he wants to do it.

That wasn’t enough structure for Kevin though, and anyway, there’s never been a proven treatment for exy addiction, so the great Kevin Day put all the money the Moriyamas had let him keep into a disgustingly idealistic youth exy program. If Andrew didn’t let the man live with him rent-free, he’d probably be on the streets. The whole thing was an exercise in solid gold idiocy, as Andrew felt morally obligated to remind Kevin of as often as it seemed necessary.

Andrew is never going to hear the end of the gloating now. There’s no way Kevin won’t consider Neil Josten the fruit of his philanthropic loins, the holy grail, the goddamned diamond in the rough Kevin had devoted the last five years of his life to finding.

It was going to be intolerable.

Three days after the call, Andrew is back at the community center, watching Neil Josten set the court on fire against guys a foot bigger than him, both up and across. Wymack keeps his beefy arms folded over his chest, but his fingers tap an urgent staccato as he tracks Neil around the court with his eyes.

Andrew feels something vibrating inside of himself. Is it nerves? Is it thrill? He knows Wymack like the back of his own hand. He knows that face.

Neil Josten is going to be a Palmetto State Fox.

“Just spend a little time with him,” Kevin urges. “You have a lot to offer.”

“I know,” Andrew says. “I’m just not offering it.”

“He’s one of us,” Kevin tells him fiercely. “You know Dad’s going to adopt him. Don’t fight it.”

“Wow,” Andrew says. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

“Andrew,” Kevin huffs.

“You know, I can hear you?” Neil Josten calls from the living room. “It’s not that big of a house.”

Kevin closes his eyes. He breathes in and out very slowly. He opens his eyes again. They are resolute. “You will go out there,” he hisses, “and you will behave yourself because you are a decent human being beneath all of that posturing, and you will treat him like the member of this family that he is about to become.”

“Wow,” Neil Josten says wryly. His voice is clearer, more immediate; Andrew and Kevin turn their heads in unison. There he is, Neil, his head popped through the partially open door. He grins, bright. A dimple presses into one of his cheeks. Andrew doesn’t know which one, he’s never been good at telling one hand from the other in a mirror. Neil tsks and says, “It’s like you don’t know him at all.”

Something sparks and sizzles inside of Andrew. He feels it—a slide and a sudden lurch, a plummeting whoosh of warmth down the center of him.

Oh, he thinks. Oh, no.

Neil is eleven years younger than Andrew, twelve younger than Kevin. It should be enough. It should be enough that Andrew looks at him and sees a kid. Instead, Andrew looks at him and sees him. He feels timeless. He feels infinite.

Andrew tosses a salad and listens to Kevin and Neil talk about exy with the same jittery intensity, scheduling one-on-one practices, analyzing all of Neil’s soon-to-be teammates, obsessively discussing the strengths and weaknesses of all the teams in their conference, the same droning soundtrack to Andrew’s life, novel only by virtue of being a duet.

The dining room table is the same one they’d had in college. It’s the only thing Andrew had saved in the renovation, and it doesn’t quite work with the sleek new chairs. It’s his one allowance to sentimentality, that table, and the way he and Kevin still sit in their spots from way back then—Kevin at the head, and Andrew to his left, his back to the windows, facing the front door.

Neil sits on Kevin’s right, where Nicky used to, but he keeps his feet tucked close instead of sprawling the way Nicky always did, so it doesn’t feel as crowded. He eats the way Andrew used to, his freshman and sophomore years, his head ducked close to the plate, his elbow pointy in defense.

Andrew catalogs every reminder of Neil’s age and builds a wall with them. By the end of the night, that soft, glowing thing, that second heart lodged in his throat, is wrapped up, airtight, just a small, innocuous thing, hard and dark and nearly unnoticeable.

Neil for dinner becomes an every other day thing, and Neil for breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be an every day thing if Andrew didn’t put his fucking foot down on moving Kevin’s protege into Aaron’s old bedroom. He doesn’t know where Neil is living, and he doesn’t want to know, and no amount of Kevin’s puppy-dog eyes or sermons on their obligations to the next generation do anything to soften Andrew’s position on the matter.

They do end up with the kid for Christmas, though, but they’ve got Wymack in residence too, so it’s not as weird as it could be. Andrew has some nightmare visions of Nicky finding out what’s going on and turning up from Germany to play happy families, but instead he wakes up at 10:12 on Christmas morning to a silent house and doesn’t see anyone until the other three come back from Exites just before four in the afternoon. Kevin and Wymack make dinner. One of the obsessives puts an exy game on the TV, but as Andrew is the one correctly enjoying Christmas by putting his feet up and doing fuck-all else, he figures he’s the one who gets to pick the channel.

Kevin changes it back every time he comes into the room, but Andrew changes it again as soon as he leaves. Neil sits cross-legged in an armchair and smiles a little every time the channel changes. Andrew keeps waiting for Neil to challenge him on the channel change, to protest that he wants to watch the game too, but he never does. He just watches whatever weird shit Andrew puts on.

Andrew tries a documentary about a cannibal cop; Neil nods sagely. Andrew tries a telenovela on one of the Spanish channels; Neil laughs along with the jokes Andrew can’t understand, always right on cue.

“So, Neil,” Andrew says eventually.

“So, Andrew,” Neil says. The name doesn’t quite slip off his tongue. Andrew wonders if it’s the first time he’s ever said it. He thinks back—over all those dinners, the practices Kevin has talked him into attending—but he can’t think of another time. It takes a minute. The pause is long enough that most people would be fidgeting, awkward, worried they’d said the wrong thing.

Neil Josten seems content to wait.

They end up moving him up to Palmetto themselves, in Andrew’s Maserati because apparently everything Neil Josten owns fits within the confines of one nylon duffel bag. Andrew thinks back to the day he moved into the dorms. He remembers there being a lot of jumbo packs of toilet paper. Fuck. Should they be buying Neil shit? Duvet covers?

He starts making a shopping list in his head, and then they get to Fox Tower and Neil comes within seconds of throwing himself out of the moving car before Kevin forces them upon him as an escort, and Andrew figures showing up with a stack of Charmin as tall as he is would go over like a lead balloon. He makes a note to ask Kevin if they can tuck a couple of hundreds into Neil’s backpack before they leave, and then follows the parade of jocks into his old stomping grounds. The carpet is new. The walls are a muted blue. There’s still an obvious patch mark where he’d once personally put a fist through the drywall.

By the time they make it to Neil’s fourth-floor room, Neil has managed to bury his obvious distaste for the entire concept of an escort. The room he’s moving into has a homey vibe, and his roommates are queerer than Andrew remembers the lineup being, which makes him feel better about leaving the kid there for some reason.

Before they leave, Andrew slips $300 under Neil’s pillow and pulls him aside.

“I have something to show you,” Andrew tells him, and leads him out the door, down the hall, to the stairs, up to the roof. He shows him how to jimmy the handle just right, and how to prop the door open just a little, and leads him to the spectacularly unsafe edge of the roof, only a few inches higher than the surface. Andrew doesn’t look straight down, but trains his eyes out over the horizon. In his peripheral vision he sees Neil leaning forward, hands tucked into his jeans pockets.

“It’s a good place to think,” Andrew says. “Or to be alone.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Thanks.”

“You have my number,” Andrew says. He risks a glance beside him and finds Neil’s profile, stark against the morning sun.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Andrew?”

“You want advice?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah,” Neil laughs. “Kind of.”

Andrew considers for a moment. Out of all the things he could tell Neil, what’s the most important? Only one thing really feels right. He says, “Have fun with the press.”

The dimple is in Neil’s right cheek, Andrew discovers.

Neil calls him for the first time three weeks later. It’s eleven o’clock at night. Andrew looks disbelievingly at the time, then feels every minute of twenty-nine years old when he realizes he’s doing it.

“Neil,” Andrew says levelly when he picks up the phone.

“Hey,” Neil says. His voice is low, but Andrew can hear it, even over the thump of bass and bodies in the background.

“Are you safe?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Just—sorry, did I wake you?”

“No,” Andrew says evenly. Almost thirty is what he is, really. Ancient. Fuck, when is the last time someone called him after nine p.m.?

“I’m at this club—” Neil starts.

“Eden’s?” Andrew asks.

“Uh, no,” Neil says. “I think it’s called MAX. All caps.”

“You need a ride?”

“No, just. Somewhere else to be?”

“Send me your location,” Andrew tells him. “I’ll come get you.”

“You don’t need to come yourself, I can—”

“Neil,” Andrew interrupts flatly. “It’s eleven. I’m not that old.”

“I—” Neil says, then sighs. Andrew’s phone vibrates with the notification: NJ has shared their location. Neil says, “An Uber would get me out of here faster.”

“Tough it out,” Andrew tells him.

It takes him ten minutes to get to the club, a throbbing blue thing in the middle of the hip new part of downtown. He rolls slowly over the pocked parking lot, tires crunching, until he finds Neil waiting outside. Someone’s obviously dressed him up for the night, and he wears the clothes uncomfortably, hunching his shoulders to make himself even smaller. Andrew gropes in the shamefully cluttered backseat and gets a hold of a clean hoodie, an extra he’d taken along to the gym at some point and then forgotten in the back of his luxury car like some kind of heathen.

“Thanks,” Neil says, sliding into the seat gracefully with one hand hooked over the roof of the car. His jeans are so tight that Andrew can see the divots of his knee.

When Neil pulls the car door shut, the interior is cloistered in a nearly pristine silence, interrupted only by the hushed beat of music left in the few degrees of the volume knob that Andrew left unturned. Andrew is far too aware of Neil’s presence in the passenger seat, of his warmth, the clean, spicy way he smells.

“Everything okay?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah, just, really not my scene,” Neil says. His grimace disappears into the folds of the hoodie, and when his head pops back out again, gelled hair mussed, his expression is smooth.

“Why didn’t you call Kevin?” Andrew asks.

“I did,” Neil says. The grimace is back, but so is the dimple. “Five times.”

Right. Kevin had been a heavy sleeper in college but, as with most things in his life, he’d only gotten better with age. The light chirp of a phone in the night had a snowball’s chance in hell at waking the ridiculous giant.

Andrew asks, “Waffle House or IHOP?”

“IHOP,” Neil answers decisively.

“A man who knows what he wants,” Andrew muses.

“Waffle House is an abomination,” Neil says with no less conviction.

“Let me guess,” Andrew says. He takes a smooth left out of the parking lot. “You and your mother learned to make waffles in Belgium and you’ll accept nothing else.”

“Eggos,” Neil says. “Waffles should be crisp. And also, fuck you.”

“What percent of those stories are true?” Andrew asks. “Thirty? Twenty?”

“Ninety-nine,” Neil says. “Point nine.”

“Very precise.”

“I’m majoring in math,” Neil says solemnly.

“Are you really?” Andrew asks.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“It’s fun.”

“It isn’t.”

“You don’t think exy is fun,” Neil points out.

“Thus establishing my credentials,” Andrew says. “As a person who is often right. What about the point one?”

“One day I’ll lie to you,” Neil says, his voice light.

“But I’ll never know,” Andrew guesses.

“I don’t know. Will you?”

The little edge of challenge in Neil’s voice lights something up in Andrew. He shoves it back down, deep inside, where he won’t have to look too closely at it.

“Stay the night,” Andrew says. “I’ll take you back in the morning. Kevin would love to see you.”

“Yeah?” Neil asks.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, okay,” Neil says, sounding pleased. “Cool.”

***

Andrew knows that Neil is bonding with the team because he can’t actually turn off his hearing at selective moments, such as when Kevin gives an hour’s debriefing of Neil’s movements and activities. It happens at least once a week. Kevin tells Andrew that Neil’s going to be on the starting line before the end of the semester. He tells Andrew that Neil’s managed to heal some rift between his roommates and the upperclassmen. He tells Andrew that Neil is getting better and better and better and will be nearly unstoppable soon.

Meanwhile, Andrew gets a call every few weeks. He takes to staying up on Friday and Saturday nights, just in case his phone rings, just in case it’s Neil, just in case it’s pancakes until two in the morning time again. Neil doesn’t talk about the team on those nights. He talks about the game, obviously, because he can’t help himself. The exy junkies never can. He talks about his English professor, a gruff man Andrew remembers from his own years at PSU. He talks about his father a little, dispassionately recounting some of the worst abuse Andrew’s ever heard of. He talks about his mother wistfully, somehow nostalgic for her harsh words and total lack of compassion. He talks about England and Germany and France, about California and Illinois and Arizona, about trying to pick up baseball in the 10th grade and almost dying of boredom.

Andrew tells him stories from his and Kevin’s Palmetto days, tells him about Aaron, and a little about Tilda, and almost nothing about Luther. They talk about what’s on TV, about when the Marvel movies crossed the threshold into way too much, about Kevin’s injury, about Andrew’s decision to retire on a serviceable knee.

Every time, he brings Neil home with him, sets him up in what used to be Aaron’s room. Every time, Neil apologizes for the inconvenience.

At least he doesn’t know how much Andrew looks forward to it.

On a Thursday, Kevin says, “It’s Neil’s birthday this weekend.”

“His nineteenth?” Andrew asks.

“He says,” Kevin agrees. “But who knows, you know?”

Yeah, Andrew knows. Neil claims 99.9% of what he says is true, but that could be a lie in and of itself. Neil could be seventeen. He could be twenty. He’s almost certainly not turning anything this weekend, not really. And yet.

“Are there plans?” Andrew asks.

“I was hoping you’d drive up with me. They’ve got practice. We could watch, then buy everyone dinner.”

“We?”

“You could buy everyone dinner.”

“Generous of me.”

“You’re rich,” Kevin says blithely. “They’re broke college students.”

“And what’s your excuse?”

“I’m saving the world,” Kevin sniffs.

“You think Neil wants a party?” Andrew asks, a little skeptical.

“I think he’d hate a party,” Kevin answers. “I think he can deal with dinner.”

The Fox lineup is bigger than it had been in Andrew’s day, but still pretty small by league standards. There are enough kids to take up two of the long tables at the Brazilian steakhouse, though, and the number on the bill has more digits than Andrew has seen for a while. He ends up at the cool kid’s table by virtue of paying—sandwiched between Kevin and Neil. The order in which the people to Neil’s other side sit turns out to be a soap opera in and of itself. The one to Neil’s left seems to consider himself some kind of sentinel, a human barricade between Neil and the next two, who spend most of the meal vying for Neil’s attention with tactics that range from flirtatious to downright aggressive.

Neil seems oblivious—or possibly indifferent—to the spectacle, and fidgets like a squirrel the whole time, an obvious flight risk. Andrew stills his jostling knee with the hard knock of his own; he has to do it twice, just to stop it, and a third time to nudge a smile out of Neil.

“Want me to get Kevin started on exy?” Andrew asks.

“Can I get you started on exy instead?” Neil counters.

“No.”

“Why are we doing this?” Neil asks.

Andrew doesn’t insult him by asking what he means. “Kevin thought it would be nice.”

“Ah,” Neil says, nodding. This makes sense to him, it seems.

“Is it?” Andrew asks.

Neil takes a moment, weighing it. His answer starts as a small nod and ends with, “I think it is, yeah. This kind of stuff is important.”

“Is it?” Andrew asks again. It feels like a completely different question.

Neil takes it seriously. He says, “I’ve been alone and I’ve been as good as alone. This is better. But you know that.”

Yeah, Andrew knows that. He sure as fuck didn’t two months into his first semester of college, though. “Good,” Andrew tells him, meaning it.

“They’re great,” Neil says, and he’s intense, his eyes electric. “But sometimes it feels like you’re the only person I can really talk to.”

Andrew swallows hard, then takes another sip of whiskey to burn away the rasp in his throat. What the fuck is he supposed to say to that?

After dinner, Andrew drives Neil, the sentinel, and the pushier of Neil’s two devotees back to Fox tower, then heads to Abby’s—now Wymack and Abby’s—for drinks. He doesn’t bother knocking, just lets himself in the way he has for years. He finds the others drinking in the den, cackling. A tear squeezes out of Kevin’s eye and slips over his flushed, creased face.

“Fuck,” Kevin says. “You have to tell Andrew about this.”

“About what?” Andrew asks.

“About the Neil Josten fan club,” Kevin says.

Andrew heads for the little bar tucked in the corner. Wymack already has the good stuff out, and there’s vodka for Kevin too. Andrew calls over his shoulder, “I think I just spent quality time with a couple of members.”

“Who, Vasquez and Williams?” Wymack asks. “No, that’s a whole other shit show.”

“This is an actual fan club,” Kevin says. “They have t-shirts.”

“They registered with administration,” Wymack confirms, pained. “The Official Neil Josten Fan Club.”

“How big is this club?” Andrew asks.

Kevin cackles again. “Eighteen members.”

“Jesus,” Andrew says. He looks into his glass for a minute, trying to process that information, then gives up and tips back a mouthful. Is it wrong that this makes him feel a little better about life? If it’s not just him who finds Neil so compelling, maybe he can let himself off the hook a little.

“They have an Instagram,” Abby offers. “It’s very sweet.”

“And how does Neil feel about it?” Andrew asks.

“Hates it,” Wymack booms. “Squirreliest kid I’ve ever seen. And the bar was set high.”

Andrew thinks about how steady Neil is over a table full of late-night brunch, how unflinching he is in the face of his own trauma. He thinks, oddly, about Neil leaning over the edge of the roof, unbothered by the five-story drop that still haunts Andrew’s nightmares. He thinks about Neil’s eyes that night, glowing in the low light, looking right into Andrew’s. Wymack isn’t wrong, but he doesn’t have the whole story either. Why does Andrew get the extra pieces?

There’s no way Kevin isn’t going up to Palmetto for Neil’s first real game, and that means Andrew is going up to Palmetto for Neil’s first real game.

If he’s being honest, he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

They drive up early and get there in time to watch the Foxes do warm-up drills in practice gear, when the stadium is still empty other than the staff prepping for the crowds that night. Andrew stands at the Home bench and looks around the cavernous space, remembering how it had felt to tremble on the threshold of a game, the nervous energy, the soaked in gasoline feeling, the match strike of walking out in front of the crowd.

He’s still there when Neil finds him. Neil’s in the soft parts of the uniform. The shorts come to mid-thigh on him. He looks different than he used to—more filled out, more muscular, less the starved little thing he’d been on Kevin’s court that first day. He stands close to Andrew, so their elbows brush. Andrew bumps his shoulder into Neil’s arm, feeling him sway away and bounce back.

“How are you feeling?” Andrew asks.

“I can’t fucking wait,” Neil says. “And I might shit myself.”

“Sounds about right.”

“What if I fuck up?” Neil asks. “What if I disappoint everyone?”

“Everyone? Or Kevin?”

“Isn’t it kind of the same thing?” Neil asks with a half smile and that peekaboo dimple.

“It’s just a game,” Andrew tells him. “Go out there and play the game.”

“It’s a little bit more than a game,” Neil says.

“No it isn’t.”

“It’s everything,” Neil says quietly.

“Even Kevin found something else.” Andrew considers the truth of that statement, then decides it doesn’t quite qualify. “Sort of.”

Neil huffs half a laugh. Mission accomplished.

Andrew says, “If you weren’t ready, Kevin would tell you. He’d say it right to your face. He wouldn’t let you walk out there and make a fool of yourself.”

“Yeah,” Neil says, straightening. Andrew hadn’t even realized he’d been slouching. “Okay,” Neil says. His shoulders are square. He is so beautiful.

“Go,” Andrew says, bumping him again. “You’re going to miss whatever it is Coach does instead of a pep talk.”

Neil walks away. It’s only years of practicing self-control that stops Andrew from watching him go.

They watch the game from the good seats. It’s a fucking thrill. It’s the most riveting game of exy Andrew has ever seen, and even though that bar is low, he still hangs on every move on the court.

Neil is a demon on two feet, faster than anyone else out there. Andrew’s heart ties itself to Neil’s sleeve, and Neil carries it across the court as he ducks and spins, weaving through the defense like he’s dancing the intricate steps to a choreography they’d practiced until they could do it blindfolded. He scores goal after goal, slick and precise, worthy of every drop of Kevin’s faith in him. It makes Andrew itch to get in the goal himself and try to stand his ground against Neil, against those lightning strike shots.

With five minutes left in the last half, Kevin stands abruptly. Andrew follows, nearly jogging to keep up with Kevin’s long, hurried strides. They push through a familiar door and make it back to the home bench just in time to watch Neil score the last goal of the game, sliding it in on his knees, sneaking the ball into the goal between the goalie’s legs.

Beside Andrew, Kevin pumps his fist in silent victory.

Neil comes off the court first, nearly stumbling on a spike or a crash of adrenaline; Kevin grabs him, lifts him off his feet, spins him around. He shouts something into Neil’s ear that Andrew can’t hear over the roar of the elated home crowd.

Kevin sets him down in front of Andrew. Andrew thinks, should I hug him? Should I shake his hand? And then Neil’s arms wrap around him. Neil is only a few inches taller, but it’s enough to put Andrew’s mouth in just the right spot to check Neil’s pulse with his tongue.

He doesn’t.

He wraps his arms around Neil and squeezes him fiercely. “You were great,” he whispers into Neil’s ear. “You almost made exy interesting.”

Neil’s laugh echoes in Andrew’s chest.

A few more weeks go by. Neil solidifies the starting line of the Palmetto State Foxes. He calls Andrew earlier and earlier on team nights out in town. Maybe they’ve all just accepted that Neil isn’t a partier, or isn’t a club guy, or wants to suck up to his coach’s son. Maybe they all know Neil is only using the nights out for a ride up to Columbia.

All Andrew knows for sure is that he checks his phone way, way too often on weekend nights, waiting for a message from Neil.

It comes Friday at 10:12pm.

eden’s twilight

they said it was a tradition

Andrew grins at his phone. If he had to leave any legacy behind at the old alma mater, he’s glad it was regular trips to South Carolina’s finest goth club. He types a response quickly:

the only one worth preserving

Neil’s response is almost immediate:

fuck tradition

Andrew grabs his keys and sends back:

on my way

He hasn’t been to the club in years, but the car practically drives itself there, the route is so familiar. The low, squat building is as seedy as ever from the outside, buzzing with the bass of the music inside. Andrew finds Neil standing outside the club, hands tucked into his jeans pockets, the collar of his fleece-lined denim jacket popped up around his neck.

Andrew pulls the car up precisely by Neil and readies himself not to react to the slide of Neil into the passenger seat, the flood of heat and scent and presence that takes up so much more space than someone Neil’s size rightfully should.

“Hey,” Neil says, once he’s buckled in. “Thanks.”

“Stop thanking me,” Andrew tells him. “Where are we going tonight?”

Neil’s smile is slow but brilliant. “How long do we have to drive to really see the stars?”

Three hours and five minutes.

Kevin bursts into the kitchen, looking frazzled, phone clutched in his hand.

“What?” Andrew asks, because he knows this look. This is the Kevin panic look.

“Neil’s gone,” Kevin says.

“What do you mean by gone?”

“He didn’t show up to practice.”

“Maybe he came to his senses,” Andrew says, but the flippancy is more habit than anything else. Where is his phone? He pats his pockets down, but comes up empty. Maybe he left it in the living room?

“He’s not answering his phone,” Kevin says, frowning. “Not that he’s usually great about it, but…”

Andrew’s phone isn’t in the living room, but it is in his den. He scoops it up, not sure what he’s expecting, but his heart still sinks when he sees he has no new notifications.

“Dad says his shit is gone from the dorm,” Kevin says from the doorway. He frowns down at his phone, taps at the screen, lifts it to his ear. Andrew hears the droning ring, and then the distant garble of Neil’s voicemail message.

Neil isn’t picking up for Kevin. He isn’t picking up for Wymack. There’s no reason to think he’d pick up for Andrew. No reason other than the handful of snatched hours they’ve spent together in the wee hours of the morning. Worst case scenario, Neil doesn’t answer and they go about finding him the hard way. Andrew taps into contacts, taps Neil’s name, lifts the phone to his ear. The ringtone drones, and drones, and then there’s a click and silence. Andrew has to look at the screen to be sure the call didn’t just drop—but no, there’s the call timer. 00:08. Andrew says, “Neil?”

“Yeah,” Neil says quietly. “Hey.”

“Are you safe?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“Um,” Neil says. In the background, Andrew hears traffic and the hum of heavy engines. “A truck stop on 26.”

“Which one?”

Kevin hisses, “Put him on speaker,” but Andrew waves him off. Neil didn’t pick up for Kevin. He picked up for Andrew.

The sound of truck engines fills up the silence at the other end of the line. Andrew hears a horn honk, and the rumble of what he thinks may be motorcycles, and then Neil says, “The Loves.”

“By 219?” Andrew asks. “I’ll be there in forty minutes. Can you sit tight?”

“Yes,” Neil says slowly.

“Stay put,” Andrew tells him. “Forty minutes.”

Kevin is full of questions the moment Andrew hangs up the phone, but Andrew doesn’t stop to answer any of them. He grabs his keys and a bottle of water, shoves his feet into shoes, and makes for the door.

“Am I coming?” Kevin asks.

“No,” Andrew says. He’s not sure why it’s the right answer, but he knows it is. Neil more or less hero worships Kevin. Kevin is the mentor, the guy who plucked Neil Josten out of orphaned obscurity and got him onto a college team. He’s the former top-ranked player who spends hours on the court with Neil, running drills and investing every ounce of that short-lived excellence into Neil’s budding career. Andrew is not that guy. Andrew is the foul-mouthed fuck up who could have had the exy world in his hand and chose to retire early instead.

Kevin’s the guy you call when you’re proud of yourself.

Andrew’s the guy you call when you’re ashamed.

So, he drives the forty minutes to the truck stop alone, parks his car in the first spot he sees, and forces himself to walk, not run, up to the store. Neil isn’t on the side facing the highway, so Andrew cuts through the store, checking all the aisles. Nothing. He looks on the side facing the diesel pumps. Also nothing. He checks the restaurant. Nothing. He’s about to panic—about to assume Neil changed his mind and hitched a ride out—when he spots an auburn head tucked nearly out of sight on the corner of the curb outside. Andrew’s heartbeat settles in his chest. He sends a quick text to Kevin—I’ve got him—and pushes through the exit door of the Subway.

“Josten,” Andrew says evenly.

Neil looks up, guilty and wary. “Hey.”

“You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Waiting for you?” Neil offers.

Andrew stares, silent.

Neil sighs. “Running away.”

“Why?” Andrew asks.

Neil just shakes his head, a quiet thing, apparently as confused by his own actions as everyone else is. Andrew drops down next to him on the curb, folding his achy knee, settling his ass against the cold concrete. He wishes he had a cigarette. He wishes he still smoked cigarettes. He wishes he didn’t give a shit about the nineteen-year-old disaster next to him.

It’s been a long time since Andrew had to wait someone out. Years. It seems he still has the skills, though, even without the nicotine to distract him. Eventually, Neil says, “People keep coming up to me at school.”

Andrew waits.

“They want pictures,” Neil says on an explosive sigh. “Of me, with me.”

“Ah,” Andrew says. “The Official Neil Josten Fan Club.”

Neil grimaces. No dimple in sight anywhere. He says, “Coach told you about that?” When Andrew nods his assent, Neil props his elbows up on his bent knees and buries his face in his hands. His words come out messy and garbled. “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?” Andrew asks.

“Why,” Neil says. “Why me?”

“You’re hot,” Andrew tells him bluntly.

“I’m what?”

“Hot,” Andrew says again. “You know. You have a mirror.”

Neil mumbles, “I hate mirrors.”

“Because of your father?” Andrew guesses.

Neil nods yes.

Andrew asks, “Did something happen today?”

“Three photo ops,” Neil mutters. “One of them had a t-shirt with my face on it. And I swear other people were taking pictures of me. In the cafeteria, in the library, in the halls. I know I sound paranoid, but…”

“You don’t sound paranoid,” Andrew tells him. “You sound famous.”

“Ugh.”

“It’ll just get worse in the pros,” Andrew warns. “And that’s an international stage. Are you going to run away from that, too?”

“Probably,” Neil mumbles into his hands.

“Don’t,” Andrew says. “Call Wymack and let him know you’re okay. Then come home with me. Let Kevin fuss over you.”

“They’re going to be pissed.”

“I’ve used up all of their ‘pissed’ already,” Andrew says. “You’re welcome.”

This finally pulls a smile out of Neil. Andrew sees the dimple press into his cheek even if he can’t see his mouth in the cradle of his hands. Andrew gives him another few seconds to get his shit together and then stands, offering Neil a hand up. Neil considers the appendage for a few more seconds, then finally takes it. His hand is warm and solid in Andrew’s, calloused, his fingers long and elegant, his palm wide. Andrew leans back, using his weight to help pull Neil upright.

Neil gets up stiffly, which makes Andrew think he’d been sitting on that curb for a long, long time. He wonders how long ago Neil ran. If he’d gotten this far hours ago and found himself too torn to move on or go back.

Neil stands, but he doesn’t let go of Andrew’s hand once he’s on his feet. Maybe it’s because their hands fit together so well. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t feel awkward, even though it should.

Andrew’s never been good at comfort, but he knows this is a part of it—the touching, the shoulder to cry on, the literal hand to hold onto. Andrew has never been good at any of it. He feels, suddenly, the desire to be good at it. To know how to show up for Neil. Here, in the gasoline fumes and the hustle of constant movement, Andrew wants to be something steady for Neil. Something solid. So, he doesn’t let go either. He gives Neil’s hand a quick squeeze and turns, tugging so Neil will follow him back to the car and then, home.

It’s Andrew who brings it up, the idea of moving Neil in with them over the summer. He’d been thinking about it ever since the day at the truck stop, when Neil had looked at him like he was surprised Andrew had actually shown up. Where would Neil go over the summer? What would stop him from running? Wymack is probably planning to house him himself, but Andrew has a better idea.

He does it over coffee in April, to the tune of chirping birds and a gurgling coffee machine: “Neil should move in with us for the summer.”

“What?” Kevin asks, his head shooting up. “Really?”

“Your father deserves a break. And if Neil is here, the two of you can entertain each other with exy all summer and leave me out of it.”

“Really?” Kevin asks again.

“Aaron doesn’t need a room anymore,” Andrew says. “He’s a big boy now.”

If Aaron and his adorable terrors come to town, they can stay at a hotel. Aaron has doctor money now. He can afford it.

“Can we make it more Neil?” Kevin asks.

“You mean, not have him sleep on the fifteen year old mattress Aaron used to jerk off on?”

“If we’re going to have an impressionable young mind in the house, you’re going to need to clean up your language.”

“We’ll pull everything out of there,” Andrew decides. “Paint it orange. Buy him an exy patterned sheets.”

Kevin, who thinks about resale value an awful lot for a guy who doesn’t own shit, winces.

“A tasteful orange,” Andrew assures him.

“I can’t wait to tell him,” Kevin says. He’s gotten pretty good, after years of practice, and not letting Andrew rile him up with pointless bullshit. “Can I tell him now?”

Andrew waves a permissive hand. He thinks, even if Neil was an intolerable pain in the ass, Andrew would still let him move in if it would put that much wattage into Kevin’s smile.

Kevin makes the call, but it’s Andrew who puts the key in Neil’s hand. Neil stares at it for a long time before he lets his fingers close over it. He turns those big blue eyes on Andrew and says, “Thank you,” and Andrew, for once, doesn’t tell him not to.

.

Andrew makes it eight days before he caves and goes to the court with Kevin and Neil.

They don’t ask him even once, to their credit. There isn’t a speck of nagging. There’s just the two of them across the table from him every night, famished, scrubbed clean and shoveling food into their mouths. Neil sets a 10-minute timer as soon as the subject of exy comes up and enforces a strict subject change when it goes off. It’s scrupulously respectful of Andrew’s self-professed hatred of the sport, but mostly it makes Andrew feel like he’s missing out on a good time.

“Maybe I’ll come with you tomorrow,” he says casually over spaghetti on day eight.

Kevin and Neil both pause and stare at him—Kevin uncertainly, Neil warily.

“To the court?” Kevin asks carefully.

“Jesus,” Andrew says. “I played the sport professionally.”

“Because no one else would pay you so much to do so little,” Neil says. “And that’s a direct quote. Sports Illustrated, November 2017.”

Andrew lifts his middle finger at Neil, who grins back and swats his hand aside.

Neil asks, “Will you get in the goal for us?”

Will he? Will he? If there’s anywhere Andrew can be honest, anyone he can be honest with, it’s right here and these two. He says, “I don’t know,” and means it.

“Cool,” Neil says, smiling slow and satisfied and only at Andrew.

He doesn’t, not for the first few days.

Here’s something he would never admit out loud: he’s not sure he’ll be able to hold his own against Neil.

For one thing, there’s the fucked up knee. For another thing, there’s the two and a half long years since he’s stood in an exy goal. At his peak? He could have denied Neil goal after goal after goal.

If he steps in there now? God help him. Neil will make an entire meal of him.

Right now he’s Andrew Minyard, legendary goalie, gold medal Olympian. If he gets into that goal and misses shot after shot, what will he be then?

On the other hand, the idea of denying Neil, of shutting down the goal against him? What does it say about him that it’s almost a turn-on?

Andrew starts in the bleachers, just watching. Kevin plays backliner against Neil, dogging him at every step—or trying to, anyway. Neil’s play is fluid. His moves are lightning-fast. Kevin’s good, but neither of them are at the peaks of their game anymore—Andrew can tell how much work it’s taking for Kevin to keep up with Neil.

Andrew spends two days up there, a silent observer, forgotten for long stretches until one or the other of the fanatics remembers, looks up, looks for him. He spends another couple of days on the ground, pacing alongside the court, watching Kevin test himself against Neil—watching Neil test himself against Kevin.

That’s what gets him into the goal, ultimately: the opportunity to test himself, to see what he’s still got. Plus, between the two of them, he and Kevin may have a shot against the fastest new striker in the college leagues.

On day three, Andrew gears up. He digs his old Hawks padding out of the garage and shoves it into a duffel bag, trying to hide it from Neil and Kevin so they’re not intolerably excited the whole ride over. He doesn’t think the effort works; he can feel their excitement idling in the car as surely as the engine. It stokes up to a rev while they all change out, and Andrew steps onto the court with them feeling like he’s about to spin out before they even get started.

He stops them both with a raised hand and says, “It’s been over two years.”

“We know,” Kevin says impatiently.

“My knee,” Andrew reminds them.

“Got it,” Neil says. He’s vibrating with excitement. Literally, jittery, a racehorse pawing at the starting line.

“We’ll start slow,” Kevin promises. Neil nods eagerly. Nothing about him looks slow.

Andrew is going to give Neil what he wants today, even if it means he won’t be able to walk tomorrow.

Nice and easy lasts all of ten minutes and halfway through what Kevin describes as a simple game of catch—Neil firing the ball at Andrew so he can hit it back; Andrew aiming it to where Neil can scoop it into his racquet. What starts as a twenty-foot distance quickly stretches to fifty, then sixty feet. Easy tosses and gentle lobs devolve into brutal rebounds from Andrew and lethally fast shots from Neil. And that’s before they even start going head-to-head.

By the end of the day, Andrew is drenched in sweat and sore in every part of his body. Kevin won’t stop beaming at him, no matter how many times Andrew tells him to shut the fuck up. But Neil—Neil is soaked, hair dripping, t-shirt clinging to his skin. He wins a forty-five minute game of horse against a two-man defensive line, Kevin as backliner, Andrew as goalie. Between the two of them, they make Neil work for it, make Neil wear himself out to make it happen.

But he does, Neil. He fires that last winning shot, the ‘e’ shot, and throws his hands up into the air. Andrew gets to appreciate the pose for all of five seconds before Neil collapses to the floor, laughing, to sprawl on his back and pant at the ceiling.

Andrew feels the urge to go to him like a physical pull. Like gravity. He resists it, a Herculean effort, and gets his helmet off, peels off his gloves.

“We gave him a run,” Kevin says, sounding proud. “For a couple of old guys, we’ve still got it.”

“Not that old,” Andrew mutters.

“In sports years,” Kevin counters.

“One of us is still in their twenties,” Andrew says.

“By a year,” Kevin says indignantly.

“I need to buy a hot tub,” Andrew muses. “Do you think anyone has same-day delivery and installation on hot tubs?”

“Throw enough money at it, I’m sure you can make it happen.”

He makes it happen.

By sunset, the thing is hooked up and bubbling away, saving Andrew (and probably Kevin) from a whole lot of hobbling the next day.

Neil’s the last into the thing, turning up in a t-shirt and running shorts, two beers in one hand, a gatorade in the other. He climbs in carefully but with the easy movements of someone whose years of aching joints and tight muscles are still ahead of him.

“You know what?” Kevin says suddenly, into the gurgle and froth of the early evening quiet. “I’m really happy.”

“What?” Neil asks.

“Life is pretty fucking good,” Kevin says. “Am I wrong?”

Neil is quiet for a long moment and then he says, “No. You’re not wrong.”

“Andrew?” Kevin asks.

Andrew tilts his beer at Kevin in acknowledgement.

“Now,” Kevin says. “Let’s talk about Neil’s overhand shots. You’re not committing to the left-handed ones and they’re falling short.”

Three weeks into the summer, the sentinel shows up at the house to pick Neil up for a night out.

Andrew forgets it’s happening and he’s disoriented to see the guy when he opens the door, expecting a package delivery or religious missionary, and instead coming face to face with 6’1 of backliner. Well. Face-to-chest. Andrew tries to remember the guy’s name. Ben? Randy?

“Number twenty-six,” Andrew says, when he decides it’s not worth thinking too hard about.

“Brandon,” the backliner says. “I’m here for Neil.”

“Sure,” Andrew says. “Come on in.”

It takes him a few seconds too long to swing the door open and step aside.

“I brought him clothes,” Brandon explains, holding up a bag. “If you can just point me in the right direction?”

“Third door on the left,” Andrew tells him. His hackles are up. He’s not sure why. Brandon is, as Andrew understands it, Neil’s best friend on the team. This becomes more obvious when Brandon walks to Neil’s door and stops and knocks.

“Neilio,” Brandon says. “Let me in. I’m here to make you presentable.”

Neil’s door swings open, and there he is, cleanly shaven, his hair styled for once. “There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” Neil says.

Andrew catches Brandon’s grin in profile, but not whatever the man says in response before he and Neil disappear behind a closed door.

It’s a strange and not entirely welcome reminder of the real world, shattering the little bubble of Andrew and Kevin and Neil and exy that has crystallized around them. Their new routines feel so set that it’s hard to believe it’s been less than a month. And only a month to go, then Neil will head back over to Palmetto for summer training.

Andrew is going to miss the fuck out of him. And it’s not just him. Kevin will miss him too. It’s this realization that makes Andrew feel unsettled all night. He and Kevin barely know what to do with themselves without Neil around. And when, exactly, had it started seeming like such a good idea to let this many people live in his house? Of course, he should know better than that. The Columbia house has never housed only one person. If you don’t fill up every room, the house just keeps acquiring strays.

After about an hour of sitting in the living room unconsciously waiting for Neil to join them, they remember about the The Good Wife marathon they’d been in the middle of, order a pizza, and finish season two.

Andrew is still in his recliner when a car pulls into the drive and stops. Two doors open, and then close, and there’s the scuffle of feet on gravel and muffled laughter. Andrew’s heart lifts in his chest, and he thinks Kevin’s would too, if the man wasn’t snoring on the couch.

There’s the fumble of a key in the lock, a click, and the twist of a doorknob. Someone giggles; someone else shushes. And then there’s Neil—leaning on Brandon, held up by a thick arm. He’s flushed and smiling and beautiful and definitely drunk.

“Andrew!” Neil whispers happily.

“He’s drunk,” Brandon announces, entirely unnecessarily, sounding charmed and rather pleased with himself.

“You don’t say,” Andrew drawls.

“I’m not drunk,” Neil protests. “He’s drunk”

“Only a little,” Brandon says, too loudly. Kevin snuffles and shifts in his sleep.

“You’re wasted. I’m buzzed,” Neil counters. He straightens, steadying a wobbly Brandon in his wake and then steps away, closing the distance between the hallway and Andrew’s recliner in a carefully straight line. Andrew puts a hand up and on Neil’s back, bracing him. Neil sags into it and says, “Okay, maybe a little drunk.”

“Maybe a little,” Andrew says, amused.

“He insisted on walking me in,” Neil says, nodding towards Brandon. “But he’s hammered. I should walk him back out.”

“You should sit,” Andrew tells him, levering himself up and out of the recliner. “I’ll get him back to the car.”

By the time he gets two hundred pounds of backliner into the passenger seat of someone’s battered Saturn and gets back inside, Neil is draped loosely in Andrew’s recliner, his eyelids heavy.

Andrew goes straight to the kitchen and grabs one of Neil’s dozens of sports drinks—for the electrolytes—and makes one of his infamous peanut butter, honey, and apple sandwiches. He has to jostle Neil with his knee a few times to get him to wake up and eat. Every bite seems to push Neil a little closer to sober and awake, and by the time he licks the last droplets of honey off his fingers, he’s upright and bright-eyed, if still wobbly and flushed.

“We should move Kev to bed,” Neil says, nodding towards the man. “Remember last time he slept on the couch?”

Andrew does. Back in college, Kevin had been able to sleep anywhere—he could fall asleep on a picnic bench and wake up twelve hours later, refreshed. These days, if he spends too long on the couch it takes three days for his back to get back to normal.

Between the two of them, Andrew and Neil manage to get Kevin upright and awake enough to stagger down the hall towards the bedroom. Kevin notices about halfway into the trip that Neil is back—he slings an arm around Neil’s shoulders and nearly takes him down with the amount of weight he drops into the embrace.

“You’re back,” Kevin says, yawning. “What time is it?”

“Two,” Neil tells him.

“You smell like a bar,” Kevin says. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” Neil says. And then, “a little.”

“Too drunk to practice tomorrow?” Kevin asks.

“Never,” Neil assures him.

They get Kevin into bed—jeans off, covers up, door closed—and step back into the hallway. Neil leans against his own door, Andrew on the wall beside Kevin’s.

“Hey,” Neil says. His dimple pops up, disappears, reappears, and deepens until he’s fully smiling at Andrew, head tipped back against the door frame, blue eyes heavy-lidded but not sleepy.

“Hey,” Andrew says mildly. His heart pounds in his chest for no reason.

“How was your night?” Neil asks.

“Fine,” Andrew tells him. “Boring.”

“Miss me?” Neil asks.

“Maybe,” Andrew says, honest before he can think not to be.

“Me too,” Neil says. “I kept wishing you were there. Maybe we should go out sometime.”

Andrew isn’t sure what Neil means by that—’we’ could cover a lot of ground. Hell, it could include Kevin. In fact, it almost certainly includes Kevin.

“You want to see Kevin party?” Andrew asks lightly. “He drinks like a monster.”

“Uh,” Neil says. A tiny crease forms between his eyebrows as the corners of his mouth tip downwards. “Sure.”

He’s drunk, Andrew reminds himself. Drunk people are easily confused. “Get some sleep,” Andrew tells him. “Kevin’s sober as a judge. He’s going to work you hard tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Neil says, smiling again, a fond little lift of one corner of his mouth. “You too. Sweet dreams.”

Neil’s hand falls to the doorknob, but he lets it rest there a long moment before he turns it. It’s not awkward, exactly, the moment, but it is uncomfortable. Illegible. Andrew chalks it up to the alcohol and heads to his own room as soon as he hears the click of the doorknob lock from Neil’s room.

They miss him, when he leaves. They miss him a whole fucking lot.

Mornings are lonelier, for one thing. Kevin could win Olympic gold in sleeping in, but Neil had always been up when Andrew came in for coffee—either freshly showered or fresh from a run, so his hair had been wet and curled dark across his forehead every time. He’d become Andrew’s daily Wordle companion. His crossword ringer.

The morning after they drive Neil back to Palmetto, Andrew sits alone in a silent kitchen and wonders what he’s going to do with his days. Kevin will have his exy program to keep him busy, but Andrew?

They settle back into their pre-Neil routine eventually, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. The hot tub is a little too empty. The dinner table feels unbalanced. They leave Neil’s bedroom door open and his bed unmade, and that helps a little.

Two weeks into the fall semester, Kevin comes home from a day of exy and asks, “Talked to Neil lately?”

“No,” Andrew says. And then, more sharply, “Why?”

“Why not?” Kevin asks.

“He’s in Palmetto,” Andrew reminds him.

“Yeah, but don’t you text?”

“No,” Andrew says.

“Really?”

“Kevin.”

“You miss him,” Kevin says. “I can tell. Your face does this thing that’s almost an expression.”

“Ha,” Andrew says drily.

“He’s going on a date tonight,” Kevin says.

“With Brandon?” Andrew asks, because he can’t help himself, because he’s an idiot.

“One of the Vixens,” Kevin corrects. “He doesn’t sound very enthusiastic about it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Andrew asks him.

“Why don’t you already know?”

Well, he doesn’t know because he doesn’t keep in touch with Neil when he’s at Palmetto. And he doesn’t stay in touch because the last thing in the world he needs is Neil Josten existing inside of his phone at any and all hours of the day, just waiting there, accessible at any time. That’s something Andrew thinks he could get lost in. What he says, eventually, is, “Unlike some people, I don’t want to text about exy all day.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. Andrew knows he must be being particularly difficult, if even Kevin is moved to eye-rolling.

“Text him,” Kevin says. “Put yourself out of your misery.”

“You’re my misery,” Andrew counters.

He thinks about it, though, and that night he almost sends about five different messages before he deletes them. At midnight, after hours of revisions, he texts: sup?

Texting Neil is just as bad as Andrew thought it would be, which is to say that he feels compelled to do it all day, every day. He hangs on Neil’s every emoji. He lives for the 5:30am “good morning” texts.

He hears about the date.

The date, which Neil’s entire team had thought was a great idea, was an experiment. They’d learned that Neil had never dated, not once, and decided it was past time Neil took someone out for a nice night. So, take someone out he does—dinner and a movie, an inoffensive first date choice.

Is Andrew jealous? Is that the right word for it? He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think some random Vixen is going to be able to give Neil what he needs.

And what is it that Neil needs? Andrew prefers to leave that question unanswered. He’s too afraid the answer will be ‘me,’ and that’s entirely unsuitable.

But, Kevin was right. Andrew had been missing Neil. Does texting him make the missing better or worse?

The date goes fine. Neil is bored. He tells Andrew, she was nice enough and it was fine and I don’t think it’s for me.

Dating? Andrew asks.

Maybe, Neil shoots back.

Andrew changes the subject.

Things Andrew learns from texting Neil Josten:

• people do, actually, major in math
• it is possible for a person to survive on chicken nuggets and fruit
• the Palmetto State Foxes still waste their time by betting on a bunch of bullshit
• there is a family of ducks living in the big courtyard fountain
• Wymack still ends most of his pep talks by telling the team to get out of his sight
• Neil has an unexpected knack for photography
• one of the football players does sunrise tai chi on the lawn
• the weekly Fox movie night has been hijacked by the entire 10-film Fast & Furious franchise
• Neil’s scathing commentary on the fourth film, Tokyo Drift, is so funny that it makes Kevin laugh until he cries
• Kevin is extremely smug when he thinks he’s right about something

No, strike that last one. Andrew’s known that for years.

Andrew steps outside of his house on a Thursday morning, around 11, and is surprised by a beige sedan parked in his driveway. He’s more surprised by the driver, who he can see through the open window, arms crossed over the wheel, forehead braced on his wrists. Andrew doesn’t need more than the top of that head to know who it is.

“Neil?”

Neil looks up, blinking.

“Where’d you get the car?” Andrew asks.

“It’s my roommate’s,” Neil tells him, with a little shift of his eyes to the left—so that’s probably true, but not the whole story. Probably the roommate doesn’t know Neil has it, much less has it this far from campus.

Andrew is supposed to be going to the gym. He guesses that’s not going to happen anymore.

“Are you coming in or are we going out?” Andrew asks.

Neil smiles at him faintly. “Coming in?”

Back inside, with coffee brewing and Neil established on a stool, Andrew faces him and quirks an eyebrow at him expectantly.

Neil shrugs and scratches at the back of his head. It takes him a minute, but eventually he huffs and asks, “Is it okay that I’m here?”

“Always,” Andrew says. “Want to tell me why?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Neil says, shrugging again. Andrew believes the shrug. The shrug is authentic.

Andrew takes a closer look at Neil. He looks… pinched, maybe? Stressed. His hair is rumpled, fucked up by anxious hands. His t-shirt is one of the loose ones he used to wear before his teammates got their hands on him. It’s an odd look with the tighter jeans and the flip-flops.

Andrew ventures a guess: “Fan club problems?”

Neil makes a face. No dimple anywhere in sight.

He says, “Not just that.”

“What, then?” Andrew asks.

“Everyone’s so fucking interested in my personal life,” Neil says, cracking, a minor explosion. “I don’t like having this many people in my business.”

“By ‘many,’” Andrew says drily, “I assume you mean ‘any’?”

Neil’s face shifts rapidly into a small, restrained smile. “Maybe.”

Andrew thinks about all the people in his life who wouldn’t leave him the fuck alone. Probably he’s the better for it now. Probably.

“So is this you running?” Andrew asks.

“Running,” Neil agrees. “But.. not running away?”

“Progress,” Andrew says. “Personal growth. We didn’t think you had it in you.”

Neil exhales hard, half a laugh, and says, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“A bit hypocritical, but sure.”

“How did you know you… weren’t straight? For sure?”

“Ah,” Andrew says. “More dates?”

“Brandon thinks I just need to find one I like—a woman, I mean.”

“But?”

“But I don’t like any of them.”

“It was pretty obvious for me,” Andrew says, glossing over all the turmoil the realization had brought him, all the years of self-loathing, all the times he thought he was only gay because he’d been made that way, that he must have secretly liked what was done to him. “I wasn’t attracted to girls. Only boys.”

He doesn’t look too closely at his word choice there. It took him a long ass time to admit to himself that he was attracted to men, too, to the grown-up species that had hunted him relentlessly when he was too young to understand any of it. Boys were fine. Guys were okay. Both were safe in a way that “men” hadn’t been, deep into Andrew’s twenties.

“Now can I ask a stupid question?” Neil asks.

“Since when do you need permission?”

Neil says, “How do you know when you’re attracted to someone?”

Jesus. Andrew wishes Neil was having this conversation with Wymack. Or Kevin. Or anyone but him. Maybe he could get Nicky on the phone. Nicky’s always been good at this shit. Behind Andrew, the coffee machine announces its completion. Andrew takes the opportunity to pause the conversation—he pours them each a cup, adds cream and sugar, sets Neil’s down on the island in front of him, and takes a long sip of his own.

Neil, as always, waits patiently.

Andrew sorts through his thoughts carefully, draws careful lines about what he’s willing to reveal, and tries to condense it as much as possible: “Physical attraction usually means you desire physical contact.”

It’s a bullshit explanation. It’s bare bones. It’s the most simplistic fucking way he could put it.

It seems to be exactly what Neil needs to hear, or at least to be enough, because Neil nods and takes a quick sip of his coffee. He says, “I want to ask Kevin, just to find out what he’d say.”

“When a man and an exy racquet love each other very much—” Andrew starts, and smiles into his mug when Neil laughs, really laughs, shaking all of the anxiety off of him, all of the reserve, all of that skittishness that, for Andrew, looks so unfamiliar on him.

Kevin makes it home just in time to catch Neil—he pulls his car into the driveway as Neil is throwing his stolen vehicle into reverse. Andrew likes the way Neil looks in a car. He likes the easy way his hand rests on the gear shift. He should let Neil drive the Maserati. It would be hot. It may be too hot.

Seeing Kevin sparks something in Andrew’s mind—a good idea, a bulb that pops into life above his head and glows brilliantly. He leans down to the open driver’s side window and says, “Ask him.”

“Ask what?”

“What you drove all the way here to ask me,” Andrew says drily.

Neil frowns a little, his brow creasing, then he shrugs and puts the car back into park. He wastes about five minutes getting hugged intensely by Kevin, who whispers something into his ear that Andrew strongly suspects is exy-related.

Then Neil does it, he pulls back and says, “Can I ask you a weird question?”

Personal, stupid, now weird. He’s batting… something. Andrew doesn’t know baseball references.

“Sure,” Kevin says.

“The team—” Neil starts, then shakes his head and forges on. “How do you know for sure when you’re attracted to someone?”

“Oh,” Kevin says. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

“Never?” Neil asks. He doesn’t sound surprised. He sounds… compelled, maybe.

“Never,” Kevin says. “I guess I’m asexual. That’s the word for it.”

“Huh,” Neil says. The little hamster in his brain climbs onto its wheel and starts running its tiny ass off.

“Ask Andrew,” Kevin says sagely. “He fucks.”

They both turn to look at him. They couldn’t be more different—Neil fire, Kevin coal; Neil short, Kevin tall—and yet. And yet.

Andrew feels a little off-kilter the rest of the day.

Three days later, Andrew gets a text from Neil—it’s a picture of Neil leaning against a car, a sporty little Honda hatchback. It’s bright orange.

A second later, the message comes through: got my own

The car is hideous. It clashes horribly with Neil’s hair. Andrew grins at his phone, so hard his face hurts.

He sends: horrible

Neil sends: orange!

Andrew had been right in the first place. Texting with Neil was a mistake. At least before, he went whole stretches of days without talking to him. Weeks, sometimes—though not lately. This—Neil’s inaccurate use of exclamation points, that picture of him, the cheeky little smile on his face? This is cruel and unusual punishment.

Andrew sends: even worse

Neil sends: fox paw stickers y/n?

Andrew sends: no

He expects there will be fox paws dotting the car as soon as Amazon can get them to the dorms.

Andrew pulls up to the curb outside a club with a line that wraps around the block. Someone has generously added enough lights to the outside to give you the inside ambiance—or give you a seizure, if your brain is so inclined.

He finds Neil dressed in tight jeans and a short-sleeved button-up, wavy hair a little chaotic, shoulders square and jaw set.

“Everything okay?” Andrew asks when Neil slides into the passenger seat.

“Yeah, fine,” Neil says. He snaps the buckle of his seatbelt into place and settles in, comfortable, like he owns the place. He kind of does. Andrew thinks of it as Neil’s seat more often than not, after half a summer spent driving him to the court and taking him along on errands, after dozens of nights spent driving for the sake of being in motion.

Andrew pulls away from the curb and into the late night traffic, but he knows that something isn’t quite right. Not wrong, necessarily, but not quite right either. He could push, but there’s an edge to Neil that Andrew isn’t sure he wants to test right now. It’s something… not sharp, exactly, but honed. Neil will tell him when he’s ready. He always does.

Andrew makes a left at the second stoplight, heading absently in the direction of Lake Murray, only to hit another red light. The car idles quietly, trembling along with Andrew in the thrum of the muted radio and the sounds of Friday-night partying outside.

“Andrew,” Neil says into that relative hush.

“Neil,” Andrew says evenly. He adjusts the wrap of his fingers on the wheel and braces himself for whatever comes next. Is it bad news? What the fuck bad news could Neil be giving him?

Neil takes a quick, short breath, and says, “I think about you all the time.”

“What?” Andrew asks, thrown.

“I think about your body. Your hands. I think about you touching me.”

Andrew tries very hard to swallow. It hurts, a little. What the fuck is happening here, exactly?

Neil forges on. He says, in one rushed breath, “I’ve never really been attracted to someone before.”

The light turns green. A car behind them honks impatiently. Andrew pushes his foot to the gas pedal, more a reflex than a conscious decision.

Neil says, “I want to kiss you.”

Andrew takes a hard right into a parking lot a little too fast, so that the car leans hard on the passenger side wheels. Neil’s hand goes up, bracing against the roof.

Andrew parks the car diagonally across two spots and throws it into neutral, yanking the parking brake for good measure. He turns in his seat, back against the door, so he can stare at Neil. At Neil’s determined face. At the flush in his ears. At the wariness in his eyes.

“One more time,” Andrew demands.

“I want to kiss you,” Neil says again. His voice is steady, but the bob in his throat isn’t.

Alarm bells go off in Andrew’s head. Sirens and strobes. His heart beats a staccato against his ribs. Absolutely no part of him wants to say no to this. He leans closer, and then Neil is there, soft lips and uneven breath. Andrew buries a hand in Neil’s hair, impatiently combing through gelled hair to get a grip on the soft curls he’s been watching tumble too long over Neil’s forehead all summer.

Kissing Neil sets Andrew’s blood on fire. Whatever dam he’d built between his desire and himself cracks, shatters, floods him with wanting. He pulls back for a breath; Neil chases him, a sound of soft protest caught in his throat. The flush of heat is sudden, explosive, almost painful in his cheeks and chest.

Neil’s lips part. The kiss turns tongue and teeth, clumsy until it isn’t. The treacherous heat in Andrew’s body pools downward, and he pulls Neil closer. He doesn’t realize until Neil makes a soft noise of protest that they’ve reached the expansive limits of their seatbelts—Neil can’t climb over the goddamned console if he doesn’t take his off. The logistical reality of the situation finally impresses itself upon Andrew, who pulls back but keeps a hand in Neil’s hair to hold him still.

Okay, Andrew thinks. Okay. Everything is fine. Totally chill. He’s kissed Neil Josten. The look on Neil’s face promises more to come, but. Andrew had reasons for not going there. They were good reasons. He can’t remember them at the moment. He is, and has always been, the world’s biggest idiot.

“Andrew?” Neil asks. His tongue twists the syllables in this way that’s uniquely him, in that everywhere-all-at-once accent of his.

“This is the parking lot of a laundromat,” Andrew tells him.

Neil blinks, looks through the windshield, blinks at the neon he finds there. “Right,” he says. “Take me home?”

Andrew puts the car back in gear and whips the car out of its parking spots. His pants are tight. His skin is tighter. They get through two green lights then hit a red. He turns to make sure Neil is still there and not some kind of fever dream; nope, he’s still there, teeth in his bottom lip, yes slivers of silver blue.

They have the same thought at the same time; Andrew leans as Neil surges forward; his hands find Andrew’s face; his mouth yields against Andrew’s.

They kiss, and kiss, and then the guy behind them honks his horn and Neil surges back as quickly as he’d surged forward, the tide coming in and out.

Every fucking red light they hit, they kiss, and it’s enough that Andrew’s mouth is parched by the time he pulls the car back into the driveway. His heart is too big for his chest. His fucking knees are weak—he wobbles a little when he climbs out of the car.

He pushes Neil into the house ahead of him, but they don’t get very far—Neil stops after only a few steps and turns around, crowding Andrew against the garage door. Andrew discovers a new dimension of kissing Neil: his athlete’s body, the three inches he has on Andrew, just enough that Andrew needs to tip his head back against the slab of the door behind him.

Kevin is asleep—or should be asleep—and dead to the world for at least nine more hours, but they’re hushed anyway, wordless in the rustle of hands and clothes. Andrew gets himself out of his jacket and tosses it at the kitchen island. The fabric of Neil’s shirt is thin, and Andrew can feel the heat of him through the cotton, can feel the slopes and dips of muscle.

He has to figure out where they’re going. Bed? Couch? Pros and cons. Couch is closer, but more public. Bed is more private, but further away.

The decision is made for him, Andrew realizes. The TV is still on. That means Kevin is still in the living room. They’ll have to keep quiet if they don’t want to—

“Andrew?” Kevin calls from the other room. “Is it you or a Moriyama?”

Andrew separates his mouth from Neil’s neck and whispers, “Are you here?”

“What?” Neil whispers back.

“Do you want him to know you’re here?”

“Oh,” Neil says. “I don’t—”

“Neil?” Kevin asks from the doorway.

Neil whips around. He really is fast.

“Hey Kev,” Neil says. His voice is so level you could build a house on it.

“Everything okay?” Kevin asks.

“Yep,” Neil says. “Just, uh.”

“He’s very tired,” Andrew says. “He’s going right to bed.”

“Uh huh,” Kevin says.

Andrew can fucking swear there’s a twinkle in his eye. He plants a hand flat on Neil’s back and shoves, sending him half-stumbling forward. On the way by, Andrew says, “Goodnight, Kevin,” in a voice Kevin should remember from every other sentence Andrew has ever said that ended in “or else,” silently or otherwise.

They go to Andrew’s bedroom. Neil leads the way, but he keeps looking back over his shoulder at Andrew, like he’s making sure he’s still following, or like he can’t not look at him for more than ten seconds, or like he’s trying to catch Kevin spying on them.

For some reason, Andrew’s mind shows him a slideshow of those bullshit couples cliche pictures, all those idyllic, photoshopped led-along posts that stir something in you by virtue of lighting and composition. Or, maybe, because we all want someone to lead us, someone whose lead we trust.

Andrew follows. He follows Neil down the hall to the master bedroom Andrew had taken over in the remodel, over the threshold, and only plants his feet once the door is closed behind him. The tangle of their fingers holds; Neil walks until their arms are extended between them. He waits.

Andrew swallows something heart-shaped past the lump in his throat and says, in a voice stretched thin by careful, “Should we talk about the age difference?”

Neil watches him, somber, beautiful in moonlight. Andrew feels pierced through by that gaze. Neil says, “No.”

Andrew takes a step forward. The tension falls out of their linked arms.

They take off shoes and socks; Andrew takes off his belt; Neil climbs to the center of the king-sized bed, poetry in motion even on twelve grand’s worth of memory foam. God damn. The pattern on his shirt is made of tiny ducks. Andrew watches Neil flop onto his back in the middle of the bed and Andrew releases the lingering reservations and gives himself permission.

He steps up onto the bed and walks to Neil, too aware of the temperature and the sound of the music coming from elsewhere in the house, the volume cranked up.

They lose an hour, Andrew thinks, at least, just to kissing. Andrew can’t remember—no, that’s not true. There’s nothing to remember. He’s never done this before, not like this, not the tender, lingering shit, the besotted bullshit that occupies about forty-three seconds of the porn he watches. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, kiss and move against each other a little, for relief, and then Andrew’s fingers slip under the hem of Neil’s shirt; Neil freezes, so Andrew freezes, starts carefully extricating his fingers.

“Sorry,” Neil says, breathless.

“No,” Andrew says. “Don’t apologize.”

“I just. You should see them.”

“Neil, you don’t have to—”

“No,” Neil interrupts. “You should. But they’re—they’re really not pretty.”

“I’ve got scars of my own,” Andrew reminds him.

“Not like this,” Neil says, and unbuttons his shirt.

He’s right. Andrew doesn’t have scars like that. His are the careful work of someone who wanted to live. These are attempts to kill. Andrew knew Neil had been almost murdered a half a dozen times or more, but knowing is different from seeing. Andrew has never seen anything like this. He reaches—hesitates, holds with his fingers inches from Neil’s skin.

Neil nods.

Andrew presses fingertips to the bullet wound and feels everything. A torrent. Fury and fear and sadness. His eyes burn, with murder or tears he’s not sure.

“If you don’t—” Neil starts awkwardly, shifting beneath Andrew.

Andrew peels his own shirt off and shuts him up with a kiss, hard, his hand splayed in Neil’s hair and then over his ribs, ribbons of years-old scars marking bad memories under his fingertips.

He falls asleep he doesn’t know how long later, wrapped around Neil, loose, his knee tucked between Neil’s. His first thought, after he blinks himself awake in a beam of late morning sun, is what did I do?

He thinks to carefully extricate himself from bed, but Neil wakes up as soon as he moves—they’ve shifted in the night, and Neil is facing him now, body curved towards Andrew’s like leaves to the sun. One of his crystal blue eyes cracks open; the depths of them mimic the bright morning sky outside the windows.

“Coffee,” Andrew offers.

Neil’s eye flutters shut again.

Andrew finds Kevin in the kitchen, already post-workout, already expertly pushing buttons on their monstrosity of a coffee machine.

“Hey,” Kevin says, grinning widely at him. “Good night?”

Andrew opens the fridge door. Gets the creamer. Slams the door closed, a little too hard.

“Uh oh,” Kevin says, sounding suddenly worried. “Bad night?”

Andrew doesn’t answer. He’s too busy working over the implications of what he’s done.

Neil is nineteen, and Andrew is twenty-nine, and that’s ten years. It’s nothing. It’s five years too many. It’s only a few years more than the gap between himself and Roland had been. It’s irrelevant, in most of Andrew’s circles.

It’s enough.

It’s too much.

“Andrew,” Kevin says urgently. “What’s wrong?”

“Ten years—” Andrew starts, then stops, shaking his head viciously at himself. He’s even fucking whispering, like Neil’s going to hear him from bed down the hall, like Neil is even awake to hear him.

“Oh, fuck,” Kevin says, startled. “You’re worried about that.”

Of course he’s worried about that. How could he not be, with his history? How could he not? What kind of person would he be if he didn’t?

“Okay,” Kevin says. “Okay. Nothing about this is the same.”

“Isn’t it?” Andrew asks.

“No,” Kevin says firmly. “You were a kid. A real kid. An actual child.”

“Neil is nineteen,” Andrew reminds him.

“So what,” Kevin shoots back.

“So how am I any better than any of them?” Andrew asks, flat, a little desperate.

“Oh, Andrew,” Kevin says sadly. “Do you really not see the difference?”

Okay. Okay. Alright. Andrew sets the creamer down on the counter, careful with it once he realizes he’s squeezing it too tight. Does he see differences? Of course there are differences. He’d been seven, for one thing, which is a far cry from nineteen. And he’d said no—he’d cried, he’d fought, he’d fucking begged. He’d been forced. He’d been—he’d been dependent. He’d had nowhere else to go. None of that is true of Neil. None of it. He doesn’t need Andrew at all, he just…wants him, apparently.

This is a knee-jerk response. A reflex. A landmine left over from a childhood paved in trauma. Neil is—Neil is not Andrew. He’s so much fucking better than Andrew has ever been. Neil is certain. He’s decisive. He’s honest about things Andrew was still denying in his mid-twenties. He’s everything Andrew has ever wanted but never thought existed. He’s a fucked-up, rock-solid trauma survivor, gorgeous, who gets Andrew’s sense of humor, who clicks so easily with Kevin, who occupies Andrew’s passenger seat like some kind of fucking pipe dream.

Andrew braces his hands against the counter and takes a deep breath. There are at least two ways to see this. In one of them, Andrew has taken advantage of someone younger than him, and the right thing to do is back off. In the other, Neil put himself way the fuck out there last night, asked for what he wanted, and got it. Blindsiding him with a no this morning after all the yes of last night would be…cruel. Andrew tired of being cruel years ago, when he’d gotten a little less angry at the world.

Gently, Kevin says, “This has been there since the beginning. You can bail on it, if that’s what you need to do, but I think it will hurt you both.”

Yeah. That sounds about right. Andrew’s specialty.

He carries two coffee cups back to his bedroom, thinking Neil will have gone back to sleep and Andrew can sit and stare at him and caffeinate and think about his options—the shoulds and the wants of the situation, his ethical fucking responsibilities.

Instead, Neil is upright, cross-legged in the middle of the bed. His shirt is back on. Is he having second thoughts? Andrew feels a lightning strike of panic spark through him. Well, he supposes that answers one question: does Andrew want this too? Whatever this is.

“Coffee,” Andrew says for the second time. Stupidly.

“Thanks,” Neil says, taking his mug. His blue, blue eyes are wary.

Neil knows about Andrew’s history—or, at least, has extrapolated Andrew’s history from the handful of sparse sentences Andrew’s said to him on the matter. Does he already know what Andrew is worried about?

“Neil,” Andrew says, and barely holds off a wince when Neil squares his shoulders, preparing himself for a hit.

“Don’t do it,” Neil tells him.

“Do what?” Andrew asks.

“Turn me down now. You’re worried about the age difference, I know, but it’s—you don’t have to.”

“It’s a decade,” Andrew points out.

“So what?” Neil asks. Fuck, he really is a lot like Kevin sometimes. “So you happened to be born ten years before I was. What fucking difference does it make?”

What’s Andrew supposed to say to that? That it’s about life experiences? He can’t say that to Neil with a straight face. Neil’s lived fifty or sixty years worth of bullshit in his nineteen. That it’s about maturity? Neil would probably punch him in the face, and rightfully so. Very carefully, Andrew says, “I don’t want to—”

He doesn’t know how to finish it.

“I know,” Neil says simply. “You aren’t. I probably want this more than you do.”

Which—no, Andrew doesn’t care for that. He can’t help the frown that creases his face. “No,” he says, firm. “You do not.”

“Then come back to bed,” Neil says, raw and hopeful.

God, Andrew wants to. When he was younger, that would have been all the reason he needed not to do it. But he’d gotten over that self-sabotage shit years ago, right? Andrew swallows any lingering reservations down, past his dry mouth, past the heart in his throat, and gets back in bed. There’s one truth about all this that rises above the others, that points true north—Andrew trusts Neil. He trusts him with his secrets, with his darkness. He trusts Neil with Neil, that Neil knows better than anyone, including Andrew, what’s good for him.

Andrew drives Neil home that afternoon because the Foxes have a home game. Because they have a home game, Kevin is with them—he crams himself into the backseat cheerfully, leaving the shotgun seat for Neil. Everything is the same as it always is, except for Andrew’s hand on Neil’s thigh and Neil’s fingers tangled with his. Except for the way Neil absently strokes Andrew’s knuckles. Except for the kisses they sneak in a little-frequented hallway in the stadium before and after the game.

Except for Neil promising, “I’ll call you,” before Andrew lets him go for the last time. It’s harder than it has any right to be, letting go. Andrew slides his hands up Neil’s sides, over scar tissue and freshly washed skin, and kisses Neil until he’s panting.

Then he gets in a car and sets out for home, over an hour away. Away from Neil and this little flame Andrew’s holding in his cupped hands, close to his chest for safe keeping.

Kevin manages to keep his mouth shut for all of about fifteen minutes, and then he blurts, “You didn’t fuck it up.”

“I didn’t fuck it up,” Andrew agrees.

“Proud of you,” Kevin says. The worst part is, Andrew believes him.

In response, he punches Kevin hard in the thigh, careful to keep the car from swerving when he does it.

Here’s the thing. Andrew knows they’re something now, something different than they were before. But what that is? The details are beyond him. They didn’t have a boyfriend conversation, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have done either of them any good. Andrew’s had a couple of “boyfriends” at this stage in his life, mostly guys he could tolerate enough to hang out with before sex. Neil has had none.

They can slap any label on it and still be lost.

What Andrew feels, more than anything else, is leaky—a year’s worth of feeling seeps out of him in a day, sending his insides lurching around inside of him, leaving him raw and wanting at the end of nothing more than a stop-and-go text message conversation about the next time they can plan to see each other.

Plan to see each other.

A simple concept. A complete novelty.

Andrew gets a nightly phone call now. Neil’s name pops up on his screen reliably between 7:15 and 8:00, depending on when Neil’s latest class gets out that night. The conversations aren’t long—fifteen or twenty minutes of wistful talk, heavy with long pauses, other times moving fast, floating on the currents of all the things they’re not talking about. All the terms they’re not claiming and defining.

Eight days of separation go by, and then—

“I want to see you again,” Neil says, honest and merciless with it. He’s a spotlight on Andrew, blindingly bright, leaving nowhere to hide.

“Me too,” Andrew says. “Soon.”

“Game Saturday,” Neil says regretfully.

“I could come up Friday?” Andrew offers.

“Yeah?”

“We could go…out?”

“Out,” Neil repeats.

“Dinner,” Andrew says, for lack of a better option. “And, uh, something else.”

“A date?” Neil asks.

“A date,” Andrew confirms.

“Will you stay the night?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew says. “Where?”

There’s quiet as they both consider the possibilities. First up: the dorms. Andrew could cram into Neil’s twin-sized bed with him for a single night. With him and his three roommates, that is. Less than ideal. The next option: Wymack’s house. More viable, but they’d have a lot of explaining to do to Wymack himself, and Andrew doesn’t think either he or Neil have the answers the man would ask for.

Of course, there is a third choice. Andrew broaches it first: “A hotel?”

“A hotel,” Neil says. There’s an odd edge to his voice—something uncertain, maybe a little dismissive, definitely resigned.

Andrew is going to need an apartment in Palmetto, isn’t he?

It’s going to have to be a two bedroom, Andrew realizes as soon as he tells Kevin he’s heading up to Palmetto for the night.

“I’m going,” Kevin says instantly.

“Are you,” Andrew says.

“Not on your date, asshole.” Kevin waves a dismissive hand. “You can drop me off at Dad’s.”

Andrew guesses they’re about to road trip his first date—or, at least, the first date he’s ever cared about.

It’s brutally awkward.

He picks Neil up outside his dorm—Neil and his backpack, slung over his shoulder. It’s an overnight bag, Andrew realizes. College freshman style. Fucking hell.

Neil tosses the backpack into the backseat and climbs into the car. The same nervous energy that’s humming through Andrew’s veins is clearly in Neil’s too; Andrew watches Neil smooth his palms down his thighs a few times and thinks, at least it’s not just me.

The awkwardness lasts all the way to the restaurant, a fifteen minute drive. They make stilted small talk about their days, the game the next night, Kevin. At the restaurant, Andrew orders a whiskey; Neil gets a water. They should never have started with dinner. They should have gone right to the hotel, put something on the tv, done something normal, something familiar.

“Okay,” Neil says, setting his water glass down firmly. “That’s enough.”

“Of?” Andrew asks.

“Awkwardness,” Neil says. “Insult me.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him.

“There’s gotta be something wrong with what I’m wearing,” Neil says.

“Sneakers,” Andrew tells him.

“What?”

“You’re wearing running shoes with jeans and a button-up.”

“It was that or flip-flops,” Neil says.

“We’re going shoe shopping after this.”

“I have plenty of shoes,” Neil protests.

“You have a mortuary of running shoes and one pair of Converse.”

“Like I said, plenty.”

“What did you wear to the banquet?” Andrew asks.

Neil’s eyes dart right, then left again. He picks up his water, takes a long sip.

“Neil,” Andrew prompts.

Neil grins at him and just like that, everything is good.

Later, they crash into their hotel room in a tangle of hands and legs and mouths, desperate from the interminable foreplay of seven stories worth of elevator ride. And it’s easy—it’s so fucking easy—to let Neil touch him, to feel Neil’s careful hands on his arms and shoulders, to wrap his arms around Neil’s hips and keep him close. They make it to the bed and flop, Neil laughing as he bounces, and Andrew gathers him up again, rolls him onto his back, and kisses him with every drop of the pent-up longing that pools in him in the oddest places.

Epilogue.

Andrew gets that apartment. Actually, it’s a condo, and he buys it—he couldn’t bring himself to pay someone else rent if he didn’t have to. If things work out—and he’s pretty fucking set on them working out—he’s going to need it for years to come.

The place is far enough from campus that none of his neighbors are college students. He reminds himself of this often, as it’s important to highlight the positive things in life. Kevin, seeing an opportunity for a five-year plan, starts talking about expanding his exy program into Palmetto.

Andrew…has a boyfriend. It’s a bizarrely easy thing to do, dating Neil. All that shit that Andrew would suspect to be forced and awkward actually isn’t. They hold hands. They stay up all night talking—Neil puts glow-in-the-dark stars on the master bedroom ceiling, something he’s always wanted but never lived anywhere long enough to have, and they take up the whole king-sized mattress, lying with their heads together—and kiss before they brush their teeth, and cuddle on the damn couch. Andrew gets used to the feeling of Neil tucked against his side. He gets used to the slow stroke of Neil’s hand over his shoulders and back when they’re out, Neil’s fingers in his hair, Neil, Neil, Neil.

Telling Wymack is—scary is the word Andrew eventually settles on. The man has become something of a father to Andrew, too, despite Andrew’s best efforts never to be called son again. Andrew knows how Wymack feels about his team. He knows how Wymack will react to anything he deems a threat to one of them. It’s been a long time since he had to worry which side he’d fall in that equation.

Andrew waits as long as he can before he starts to feel ashamed of himself, a solid month after he moves into the Palmetto condo. He waits until he and Kevin finally throw that housewarming party they’d been talking about, until Wymack is on the balcony with him and the barbeque, until Wymack has a sharp and pointy object in his hand. Andrew takes a fortifying sip of beer and says, “I’m dating Neil.”

“Are you?” Wymack asks. Andrew thinks the man sounds surprised—it’s not until this moment that Andrew realizes he’d expected Wymack to say he already knew.

“I am,” Andrew says, and awaits judgment.

“Huh,” Wymack says. He pokes at the sausages on the grill; he takes a sip of his beer; he says, “I can see it. I assume it’s going well. Neil’s been happy.”

“That’s it?” Andrew asks.

“What’s it?” Wymack asks. “Are you expecting a lecture?”

“Maybe,” Andrew admits.

“Meh,” Wymack says. “I think one of you will be a good influence on the other. I’m just not sure which way that’ll go.”

So, that’s done.

Later, Andrew tells Kevin, “I told your father today. About Neil.”

It takes Kevin a while to stop laughing.

It takes Neil a while to stop looking at him with soft eyes.

Andrew isn’t sure which is worse.