Archive of Our Own

More Gentle Than Any Man

~*~

Nicky Hemmick is having a massively bad day. 

The type of day that starts bad and snowballs into worse . 

His alarm doesn't go off for morning practice (because technology is a fickle bitch), Allison doesn't wait for him after practice to head back to Fox Tower (because she's also a fickle bitch) which makes him late to class, and Erik is mad at him. 

(Erik is not a fickle bitch and Nicky will fight anyone who insinuates otherwise.)

If forced to be truthful, he's been off all day- tired from restless sleep and blurry nightmares. Neil loudly and pointedly calls him out during afternoon practice for missing an easy pass and for a moment Nicky honestly wants to cry before he puts on a brave face and mimes being stabbed in the heart. 

Neil’s stern expression cracks into a small grin and Nicky blows a kiss at him, pretending to duck away from Andrew’s imaginary blows while his cousin lounges in the goalie box, unmoving and unmoved.

Matt waits for him this time, saving a spot in the back of his truck for Nicky to hunker down in as they finally head back to their dorm rooms. He checks his phone on the short ride back, hoping he’s missed a text notification sometime in the twenty seconds since he’d last checked for one.

He hasn’t and the silence sinks like an anchor in his gut.

It’s their anniversary next week. Nicky hasn’t been back to Germany for one since he took over guardianship of the twins and every missed date draws the phone lines taut between them. 

They’re in the home stretch of things now but the closer it gets to graduation, the more Nicky feels like he’ll cross that finish line alone. 

Erik has stopped making solo plans to visit and Nicky has stopped insisting he make them- it feels like they’re one misstep away from implosion and Erik’s silence now isn’t quelling the burgeoning anxiety Nicky can feel in the tips of his tingling fingers.

If he’s quieter than usual- and his usual is enough to make most people wince- none of the other Foxes comment on it. Nicky is used to keeping his problems to himself, keeping things light- the idea of unburdening himself to anyone right now makes him feel ill. 

It helps that the freshmen Foxes have taken up residence in their dorm- Nicky, Matt, and Aaron are closest to the girls' rooms, making them the de facto hangout spot for team get-togethers.

It also probably helps that Andrew would sooner spit in their faces than give the rookies the time of day. 

Usually, Nicky loves the chaos- the baby Foxes bicker and yell and clamor over Matt and Dan like inquisitive puppies, eager for approval, making a mess of the snacks they'd brought with them, but today Nicky wishes he could wallow alone in his misery. 

He types out another message, a tentative " can we talk? whatever I did, im sorry" and watches it with unblinking eyes until he can't anymore. It's not so late in Germany that Erik may have gone to bed but Nicky feels jilted nonetheless. 

He wants to apologize but he doesn't even know what went wrong- one minute they're laughing and Nicky's half in love with him all over again and the next moment he's mentioning their anniversary and Erik's line has gone silent. 

He'd just wanted to reconnect, to reassure Erik that he missed him, that he was thinking of them, and that he remembered the date. 

Instead, he'd made it bad again, always sticking his foot in his mouth-

Erik had said he'd had to go in that distracted voice lovers know and dread and Nicky had said I love you to the silence in his wake. 

"Nicky! Tell the kids that smores are the best campfire snack!" 

Matt's voice is loud, happy and filled with mock outrage as he puts Terry in a headlock. 

They don't actually want Nicky's input- he glances up and flashes a smile but Terry is already fighting Matt's hold, shouting that trail mix is the superior snack.

"Who brings nuts to summer camp?" 

"Lots of people!" 

"I got sent to Jesus Camp and even we had smores." 

Nicky types out im sorry and deletes it, retypes it with proper punctuation, and deletes that too. 

He's never had smores either if he's being honest but chocolate and marshmallow will always trump a handful of peanuts, it's just basic mathematics. 

Nicky is too distracted with crafting the perfect apology text- his thumbs tapping out and erasing draft after draft with brutal, anxious efficiency- to think anything of it when one of the rookies starts talking about being sent to camp. 

He hits send and watches with a tight twist at the back of his throat when Erik reads the text and there's no immediate sign of those telltale dots. The anxiousness sticks to his skin, blocking out the rest of the world so that when Dan asks, "What was the name of the camp you went to?" Nicky has no qualms with throwing up a quick peace sign and saying, "Camp Evergreen, class of 1999!" 

Not until a sharp, sudden silence falls over the other Foxes.

The absence of noise creates a vacuum of foreboding pressure, the tick of a bomb before it explodes. 

Unease slips down Nicky's spine like oil, like something cold and greasy and wrong. He's become accustomed to the way the temperature of a room can go from frigid to mercurial with a mere glance and it's a lesson Nicky thinks his body won't ever unlearn. 

He glances up from his phone to see half a dozen eyes on him, Jude Denton's hand still hovering over her open mouth. 

"What's up?" He asks after a moment, flipping his phone closed with a small snap. It feels like he missed the punchline, missed the joke entirely, and pulled focus when all he'd wanted was to stay behind the curtain. 

Jude's eyes are blue- not the pale winter morning blue that Neil's are without his terrible contacts but stormy sky blue, like something sad and solemn and sharp. It's just as striking and leaves Nicky feeling just as stripped bare. 

"You went to Evergreen ?" 

It's like the name trips a wire inside Nicky's brain- he grins so hard and so fast it hurts, clenching his teeth together until his jaw twitches with a whip of pain. 

“ Smiiiile ,” the voice of an old memory whispers in the back of his mind and Nicky swears he can hear the click of a Polaroid camera along with it. 

"Oh, that old place-" Nicky rolls his eyes and crosses his arms before remembering he'd read somewhere that crossing your arms was a sign of discomfort and quickly sticks them in the front and then the back pockets of his jeans. "If you're looking for recommendations, I do not recommend. Horrible location. Lots of mosquitoes." 

The joke doesn't take off enough to land. Jude's expression is caught somewhere between horror and stark disbelief, breaking Nicky's gaze long enough to look back at the other Foxes for support. 

When she looks back at him, her mouth is set in a grim, determined line. She really does remind him of Neil when she gets like this.

"Really. Not because of all the torture then." 

It's not a question or a condemnation but Nicky flinches all the same. 

Bee says that one day Nicky will have to talk about Evergreen without turning it into a joke but today is absolutely not going to be that day. 

"Personally it was the lack of s'mores for me-"

"You never told us you went to Evergreen," Dan says, hands on her hips like she's someone's backyard barbeque dad. 

Went to Evergreen. It's such a funny way of putting the hours of frightened travel, of handcuffs and screaming men and a dark bag over his head until civilization was a distant dream and there was nobody around to hear him cry and beg for help. 

Nicky went to Evergreen the way Neil went to Evermore- shackled and owned. 

"You never asked," he says, shrugging like it's no big deal, even if it hurts a little to admit. Nicky's been casual about his past to the people who matter most to him- dropping it all in Neil's lap last year had been as terrifying as it had been freeing- but not even Aaron seemed to care enough to ask for details and he’d known Nicky while it had happened. 

Nicky just assumed most people didn't know what to do with "my parents found out I was gay and sent me away to be fixed by the church" without having a degree in psychology. 

Keeping the details to himself felt like having control of it- the memories or the narrative, or whatever- and didn't that give him an insight into Andrew and Neil and their secrets.

Maybe there was something to being silent and scary after all. 

"Was it bad?" Matt asks, stepping forward like he wants to wrap an arm around Nicky, eyebrows curling into concerned crescents. "It- you know you can tell us anything, man." 

"Was it bad?" Jude mocks, turning to give Matt a look of sheer outrage for even asking. "It was criminal- they found bones on half a dozen properties- human bones." 

Nicky's body goes cold even as a fine layer of sweat breaks out over his forehead and upper lip. There's a feeling of sickness at the back of his throat, his pulse beating so rapidly at his throat that it feels like the wings of a bird trying to break free. 

Bones. 

Bodies.  

He can hear Matt defending himself, can hear Jude's voice getting louder as she replies, but their voices sound far away, like Nicky's body is there but his soul has gone away. 

"I didn't know!"

"It was all over the news last year-"

"Yeah and so was Neil- last year was kind of eventful for us!" 

"Nicky?" 

Someone touches his arm and it's like he's been sucked down a straw, his body coming back to him in a jarring punch of awareness. 

The hand on his arm is gentle and Nicky follows it up to see Renee watching him with quiet concern. 

"Hey, Renee," he says and his voice comes out croaky and feeble. "I'm not feeling so good." 

Renee's hand tightens on his arm briefly. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Nicky does not want to talk about it. 

Nicky is very sure that if he does talk about it, he'll start crying and if he starts crying, he might never stop. 

Thinking about crying makes his throat tighten, the backs of his eyes aching with the need to suppress it, to push all the bad things that have happened down deep until breathing stops feeling like it's shredding him from the inside out. 

He can't be here- with Renee's open kindness and Jude's outrage on his behalf and Matt's well-intentioned curiosity. 

"I'm going to- walk," he says, tripping over the words and his feet as he stumbles towards the dorm door. Dan calls his name again but he ignores her, barely stopping long enough to shove his feet into a pair of sneakers and scramble out the door. 

His world is compressed into escape, into getting out into the open solitude of anywhere away from here . 

He doesn't even see Aaron until he's barreling into him, sending papers and books and a pencil case tumbling to the floor. 

He doesn't see Andrew until someone is hauling him to his feet with a firm hand gripped on the back of his shirt. 

"What the fuck, Nicky?" 

Aaron's temper is the length of a blink and just as instinctive. Nicky knows it isn't personal but everything feels personal right now, even his existence is soaked in failure. 

"I'm sorry." The words come out like a broken tune, cracking and unsteady. He clears his throat and tries again. "I'm really sorry." 

It's an apology to the universe- to Erik for not being enough, to his parents for being too much, to anyone and everyone Nicky has let down just for being here. 

Maybe Aaron hears it because the annoyance in his expression drops away into a confused frown. 

Andrew hasn't let go of his shirt yet. 

"What's wrong with you?" Aaron demands, crossing his arms and peering around Nicky's body and down the hall. 

"I'm fine." He isn't and he's a terrible liar. Andrew stays silent but he watches Nicky, like he knows there's something to be discovered if he waits it out. 

Aaron calls him on it for them both. 

"Bullshit- you look like you're going to cry-" 

Nicky can't tell what expression Aaron is making because the hallway around them blurs, clarity washed away with the tears welling up in his eyes. 

He really is going to cry, right here, in front of his cousins. He's embarrassed, mortified, and he needs to get out. 

Andrew opens his mouth to speak but Nicky twists out of his grip and darts down the hall towards the stairs, ignoring Aaron's shout for the metallic bang of the bar on the exit door. 

He keeps a hand on the railing, using his momentum to swing down flight after flight until his feet hit the ground floor so hard it jars his knees and he pushes the last door open to the outside. 

The sun hits his face in a flare of gold, the late afternoon glow a sharp contrast to the knot of wretchedness writhing in the center of his chest. 

People stare as Nicky takes the path across the quad in front of Fox Tower at a jog but no one tries to stop him- being a Fox means Nicky could be upset for a number of life-changing reasons and most of Palmetto State's student body knows it's best to steer clear. 

It's a relief as much as it is so damn lonely. 

He wants too many things at this moment: to be left alone with his misery, to bury his face in the firm comfort of Erik's chest and bawl his grief out. 

He settles for collapsing on a bench near the Foxhole Court and pretending the tremble in his breathing is from his aimless run here. Neil is right, he really needs to up his cardio. 

Maybe if today hadn't started out terribly, he might've been able to handle things- pulling focus from his undesirable play on the court, paying attention when the conversation with the other Foxes swerved into dangerous territory. Instead, Nicky was too quiet and like every time before it has left him exposed. 

At least if he's loud, he knows why everyone is mad. He can't sit in the silence- Evergreen taught him that. 

So Nicky knows he goes too far sometimes, that he pushes boundaries- it's nearly pathological at this point. It's instinct for prey animals to freeze or flee at the first signs of danger but Nicky always flinches first, he keeps moving and talking and provoking - that specific type of sleight of hand all kids learn when their father is a live wire bomb with an indiscriminate blast zone. 

Nicky has always hoped that with enough practice he'll start saying the right things instead of always being wrong. 

His stomach cramps, his mouth flooding with saliva as he swallows convulsively, and it's a battle of wills between his determination not to puke and the knowledge that he'll probably feel better if he does. 

His phone buzzes in his hand as Nicky realizes he still has it in a death grip. His heart leaps at the idea of Erik knowing halfway across the world that Nicky needs him but it isn't Erik. 

Renee's name, dove emoji and all, flashes across the front display and although it isn't fair, Nicky can't think of a person he'd like to talk to less right now. 

He knows Renee means well but their entire friendship is based on Andrew and the church they attend together most Sundays. 

Thinking about church right now sends a shiver down his spine. 

Nicky has a Complicated With A Capital C relationship to religion. The memories of shiny brass candlesticks and glossy pulpit wood are muddied by his father's cold, resentful eyes. Sleepy-eyed nights of listening to his mother softly hum hymns can't drown out the way she'd stood by and let those men take him away. 

Renee has tried to understand him but their paths are ships in the night- she still finds peace when she enters a church, still feels some sense of belonging and forgiveness. 

All Nicky feels is ashamed. 

He goes anyway, hoping one day it'll change. 

The screen dims as he stares at it as a long shadow falls across Nicky's shoulders. 

He looks up slowly, expecting…..expecting the hard, hateful face of the head of Camp Evergreen, a ghoul that's clung to the back of his nightmares for years, and blinks when he finds Andrew instead. 

He sits up straight when his cousin stares at him, his scrutiny so heavy Nicky feels it settle on his shoulders like rough hands. 

He can't stand the silence between them- it rings like bells in his head, reminding him too much of hours locked in cold wooden boxes that felt like coffins when he wasn't straight enough to pass. 

"Hey," he says, and it's brittle and soft. "What are you doing here?"

Andrew narrows his eyes. "What is wrong with you?" 

"Too many things to count." He tries to grin but the quip hits too close to home and the pressure at the backs of his eyes and the line of his throat are back. 

Andrew's form blurs as he watches and Nicky knows he'll go; if there's one thing that Andrew would hate to see it's his tears, right? 

Andrew does move but instead of backing up and backing off as Nicky sniffles, he twists around to sit on the end of the bench. 

"Tell me."

And isn't that what Nicky wanted? For someone to see how upset he's been and care? But now that it's here the idea of telling anyone- forget Andrew - is sickening. 

"It's just been a bad day," he says, sounding wobbly and too young. He’d cried every night the first week at Camp Evergreen and they hurt him until he stopped doing it where people could see. 

Almost as if spoken into existence, the first tear trembles on the long lashes at the corner of his eye and drops down to dash a line down his cheek. 

The dam breaks and it feels like failure. 

"Nicky-" Andrew starts and he sounds mad and that only makes it worse. 

Two more tears well up and roll down Nicky's cheeks. He's gone from silent upset to full-on sobbing in a matter of moments, ineffectively wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. The Foxhole Court is an orange creamsicle smudge across his vision but Andrew's sharp-eyed expression still comes through Nicky's tear-streaked attention with clarity. 

Ugh, how embarrassing. 

"Sorry," he says wetly, sniffling like he hasn't done since he was a teenager. " Sorry , I'm-"

"Stop it," Andrew says, his voice flat and final in the air between them. Nicky tries - he slaps a hand over his mouth and counts to five but all it does is make his chest stutter and his head hurt. 

He swallows thickly, cringing at the way Andrew's brows are still furrowed into a familiar expression of anger. Guilt and misery drop onto his shoulders in an instant, the feeling a throwback to a childhood spent letting down the most important man in Nicky's life- his father. 

Twenty-four years old and he's still just a kid in a room with a man who is angry at him.

"I'm sorry, Andrew," he whispers the words into the back of his hands, shoulders heaving with the force of his crying. "I can't -"

He startles when Andrew reaches over to grip his wrist in one hand, forcing it away from his trembling mouth. He startles again when his cousin grits his teeth and bites out the words, "Stop apologizing , Nicky."

Oh. Ohhhh. He’s gotten this all wrong.

Understanding clicks into place as Andrew keeps a hold of his wrist until he's sure Nicky won't try to smother himself again. 

When he lets go, it's slow and unbearably kind. 

Now that Andrew has said it's okay, Nicky feels his sobs slowly begin to ebb away. The cuffs of his sweater are damp with tears and possibly a little snot. Dark orange splotches dot his collar, leaving cooling, sticky trails down his neck. Nicky watches as another tear balances on the tip of his nose and drops to speckle the dark gray cotton of his sweatpants. 

Despite his utter mortification, it feels good to cry. His face aches- his eyes stinging and sore from wiping them, his temples throbbing with every sniffle- but instead of pushing it down, pushing it away, Nicky lets himself feel it. 

The tightness in his chest squeezes and coils in on itself and as Nicky takes a deep, shuddering breath, it slinks down his legs and into the ground beneath his shoes. The feeling comes in waves, these cresting, pulsating bursts of energy locking up his muscles, followed by an exhausting wash of nothing. 

It feels…. cathartic, Nicky thinks, latching onto the word. Like the last time squeezing Erik's hand at the airport in Stuttgart. Like hugging Aaron on the steps of the courthouse, never wanting to let him go but knowing he had to. 

Andrew is a silent sentinel throughout the entirety of Nicky's breakdown but he's there - his presence familiar and sturdy and strong. Nicky's foot twitches, his ankle rolling out to point his sneaker towards Andrew's thick-soled boots. 

Andrew rolls his own ankle in turn, tapping the toe of their shoes together twice in silent support before shuffling back. 

A great swell of affection for his cousin bubbles up in him, forcing out the last lingering misery, like a flame touched to ice. 

This isn't the first time Nicky has felt like Andrew cares about him- you don't nearly kill a handful of men for someone without at least liking them a little, but it's the first time Nicky thinks Andrew might like him because he’s Nicky . 

Despite all the times Nicky is sure he's let his cousin down with unintentional ignorance or carelessness or selfishness or-

Andrew has always been a mystery to Nicky. 

A lot of that is because Andrew isn't just a closed book- he's a locked diary in a closed safe buried in a vault with a thousand dangerous little laser lights warning any and everyone to Do Not Enter. 

Nicky is too clumsy with him; loud when all Andrew wants is quiet solitude, soft when he needs a firm hand. 

He'd never felt like such a failure until it was Andrew coming to his rescue, Andrew single-handedly wrestling Aaron into sobriety, and getting them all scholarships at Palmetto State. 

Andrew doesn't ask for much- respect of his boundaries, loyalty to his deals. It had been like pulling teeth to get him to let Nicky in and he still hasn't, not really, but he's here and he's asking Nicky to tell him what's wrong and that's what makes him speak. 

"You know I got sent to camp when I came out to my parents," he starts, speaking slowly because it's a story that grows into horror and he needs the time to steel himself. He’s been trying to train himself to not think of them as his mom and his dad but he stumbles over the words even now.

Andrew goes still but Nicky can tell he's listening in the way he's angled towards him. 

"My- Luther and Maria let them take me from home," Nicky continues, a strange sort of numbness settling over him now. "Six men tied my hands together, put a canvas bag over my head, and took me away. I could barely breathe but they kept it on my head the whole drive there. They didn't let me see until we were in the forest." 

Nicky can still remember the hopelessness that had filled his chest when they'd ripped the bag off his head. His face had been dirty from old tears and sweat, his eyes sensitive from hours in the dimmed light. He'd gone from sobbing and screaming to silently plotting and all of that had gone up in smoke when he'd seen how dense the trees were around them. 

No one would be able to save him.

And the people that should've were the ones to send him there. 

"It wasn't bad the first night," he says with a shrug. "They fed me, let me have a shower and clean clothes. Everything they said made sense, you know? That I was there to be saved, that my family loved me and wanted to save my soul from hell." 

They'd said other things too- pointed remarks about his father and his devotion to the church. How selfish Nicky was for endangering that, how he was Luther's biggest shame. 

“They took us out into the forest a lot. They called it wilderness therapy.” He huffs out a laugh that's heavy, dead with the memory of it the smell of pine and cold dirt. “We'd walk for hours, until we were bleeding in our boots. Sometimes we'd run out of food or water. Sometimes if you were too slow you'd lose tent privileges.”

Nicky had heard the stories then- of kids who'd been left out in the cold and frozen, their bodies taken away under the banner of ‘death by misadventure’. It was probably better than the kids who'd starved. 

“They'd make us dig holes for some reason,” Nicky says, shrugging at the question Andrew doesn't ask. “I never asked. Mike used to say they were making us dig our own graves out there.”

It stopped being funny when Mike never made it home. 

“Taking your chances in the woods was better than staying at base camp though.” Nicky licks his lips, surprised to find them dry. His head is stuffed, fuzzy with remembering and that specific sort of exhaustion that comes from being emotionally wrung out. 

Andrew doesn't speak, and Nicky is grateful for the company even if he feels like he's holding his cousin captive with his words. 

Hsi fingers trail along his wrist, to the circular scars there. There are matching ones on the bottom of his feet. 

Electrical burns. 

Andrew reaches out to push Nicky's fingers away, studying the marks with a blank sort of understanding. He doesn't know if Andrew thinks they're self-inflicted or not but when Andrew doesn't ask, Nicky breathes an internal sigh of relief. 

Despite his cousin's support, there are still things about Evergreen Nicky can't talk about. About being submerged in ice water. About the way he still can't stomach oatmeal because he can't forget the way it tasted being forced to come back up. 

About the scars on the bottoms of his feet. 

Nicky had only spent one summer there before he’d come back to South Carolina, thoroughly scared back into the closet. Worried Luther and Maria would see through the lies he'd told to escape and send him back. 

“They made us get married before we were allowed to leave- not legally,” he adds quickly when Andrew’s eyebrows jump sharply. “Like, we had to make a commitment to each other and God to disavow homosexuality. They made me wear an ugly tie and everything.”

Nicky hasn’t even told Erik this, because it hurts somewhere deeper than the physical reminders of Evergreen. Even when he was sure it would never be allowed Nicky has dreamed of a wedding in a sunlit church, with a man that loved him waiting at the altar. He’d kept it cupped between metaphorical hands, a bright little secret want to warm him on days when he sat in the cold silence of his parents’ home and wished to be somewhere he was loved.

Even though it didn’t count, Nicky can’t get that unblemished moment back. His dream will never be so simple again.

“My wife is a man named Adam,” Nicky says, hand cupped around his mouth conspiratorially. “He lives in Maine with his husband and their two weiner dogs.”

“Hmm,” Andrew hums back, quiet and contemplative. He has a cigarette unlit between his fingers now, rolling the slim stick over his knuckles as he listens. “Cats are better.”

Nicky loses himself to watching that cigarette roll, so much so that it takes a moment to register what’s been said. He can’t help but perk up. “Oh yeah? You want a cat?”

Andrew visibly chews on the inside of his cheek and he’s so expressive right now, that Nicky’s almost afraid to breathe and shatter the moment. “Two, at least. Neil thinks they’ll get lonely.” 

“Neil’s smart,” Nicky murmurs, heart warmed twice over at the idea of his cousin and Neil discussing their lives together and deciding on cats. It's like a balm on a burn, like a soft hand on a child's head when they're sick. 

Andrew breaks the cigarette in half, then flicks it away. “Hardly.”

His cousin is trying to be derisive but now that he’s seen him, the thread of delicate affection on Andrew’s face, in his voice, is impossible to ignore.

“I’m glad you have someone,” Nicky admits quietly and the corners of his eyes hurt when he smiles. It’s genuine this time though and when Andrew darts a quick glance his way, he knows it is too. 

“There’s still time on our deal, Nicky- don’t be so ready to say goodbye.”

“And after?” Nicky asks, pushing and emboldened by the day’s events. He’s always wondered if they’d walk across that graduation stage together and branch off on the other side, drifting away until Aaron’s put-upon bluster and Andrew’s watchful protection were old memories. 

Nicky doesn’t want that but if that’s what his cousins need, he’ll bear that sadness for them. 

Andrew watches him cooly but Nicky doesn’t feel dismissed this time. 

“I am open to re-negotiations,” he says like it's casual and not a concession. 

Now that they're sharing secrets….

"You know I'd have picked you over them, right?" It's suddenly imperative to Nicky that Andrew knows this, that he believes it. "Even before-"

Even before Aaron's trial. 

He'd carried a tiny nugget of guilt over everything that had happened to the twins that Thanksgiving, wishing he hadn't stupidly believed that his parents - that Luther and Maria had actually wanted to be back in his life.  

He hadn't looked away once as Andrew had testified about telling Luther why he'd refused to be adopted by the Spears, had taken the revelation that Luther had known Drake was a pedophile and still invited him into his home with a surprising lack of surprise. 

And when the Prosecutor had asked Nicky if he truly believed that Luther Hemmick, his former father and Man of God, could've done such a thing- Nicky had answered him with a clear and confident yes. 

Because hadn't he done that to his own son? Hadn't he put Nicky in the hands of people who wanted to hurt him?

Andrew stills, his eyes heavy-lidded as they stare back at Nicky and it's like looking into the ocean and knowing there's going on beneath the surface that you can’t see. Andrew is vast and mysterious and a little scary but he's Nicky's just as much as Nicky is his. 

“I know,” is all Andrew says back before he flips open his phone and stands to his feet in a single motion. “We're going back now.” 

Nicky hesitates. The idea of facing the other Foxes after causing a scene sounds more than embarrassing.

“To our dorm,” Andrew throws over his shoulder, already walking away. “Aaron’s confiscated Matt's PlayStation for tonight.”

He knows what Andrew isn't saying- Aaron went back to his dorm room after Nicky ran off like he was impersonating Neil and got the story out of them. The PlayStation is Matt's apology. The game night is Aaron's way of assuring that Nicky gets one. 

Because Nicky is family. 

He tucks his phone back into his pocket without checking for a text and follows Andrew back to Fox Tower. 

~*~*~

Neil is already setting up the PlayStation when they come in, steadfastly ignoring Aaron's directions from where he sits on the couch. Nicky knows his eyes are still red and puffy when Aaron gives him a critical once-over and presses his lips together to keep himself from saying something. 

“We sicced Kevin on the freshmen,” Neil says, looking at Andrew for a long moment, as if he can see something the rest of them can't. He grins. “We have about four hours of free time before he returns for night practice.”

He tosses Andrew a controller, keeping one for himself. Nicky groans. 

“Oh man, it's so not fair when the two of you get to work your creepy boyfriend telepathy against us. Aaron, we're about to get creamed.”

“Nicky, you're with me,” Andrew says firmly, that tone of voice that says they'll play the game his way or not at all. 

Neil cocks a single eyebrow at him before turning to look at Aaron with not-so-mild judgment. Aaron takes a moment to catch up to the numbers and recoils back into the couch. 

“I have to play with Josten ?” 

“More like I have to play with you,” Neil mutters but he flashes Nicky a warm smile before taking his spot on the couch next to Aaron. Aaron lets out a whoomp of breath when his controller is thrust into his ribs but otherwise doesn't complain. 

Until Andrew starts fiddling with the play options. 

Nicky sits between his cousins on the couch, squeezing his hands around the PS3 controller as warmth bubbles up in his chest. The urge to hug someone is almost unbearable, the swelling gratitude that this is his family, these are his friends. Instead of shouting it out, Nicky sits with it, lets the feeling wrap around his body and soothe him from the inside out. 

(When he checks his phone again that evening, there's a text from Erik:

Lost service in the storm last night and couldn't reach you. There's nothing you need to be sorry for. Call me tomorrow and we'll see when I can visit next. I love you. )

~*