Archive of Our Own

It starts with a black eye. Neil’s black eye, to be exact.

That and a pit in Andrew’s stomach that ferments poison and a thousand negative chemicals that Andrew has no interest in but Aaron would have, like a good nerd—a cocktail of self-hatred. Not that that it’s important.

With the tact of a brick Seth asks, “What’s with the eye, you little punk?” at lunch break.

Hissing something incomprehensible in Mandarin Dan tries to elbow him but sitting next to Allison who is in turn next to Seth—practically using him as a throne—Dan fails. Seth still gestures at her. “Jeez, calm your fucking tits down. It’s not my problem that you guys are cowards enough not to ask what we’ve all wanted to know since we sat down to eat lunch.”

Dan tries to elbow him again. “Qù nǐde. My tits—? It’s the principle of the thing, you—!”

And Matt, in his white armor, “Hey hey hey, cuddy bro. Don’t involve my girlfriend’s tits—”

And Seth—

"I wasn’t hitting on her! I already have two girlfr—”

That is Andrew’s clue to ignore them. Bye-bye attention span.

Renee’s heavy gaze is fixed on him, solemnly serious—lacking accusation. Renee is smart. Worse yet: Renee knows Andrew for being Andrew not just for the reputation Andrew built single-handedly from the multiple middle schools he was transferred to every time Andrew moved from house to house—with his irreverent attitude towards authority figures and his threats and fists and vertebrae-smiles towards any classmate and dry Shakespearian monologues worthy of a Screen Actors Guild Award.

What! Can the devil speak truth? Yes, yes it can. Thank you very much Banquo.

The discomfort and curiosity of most of the group regarding Seth’s question goes unnoticed by Neil, or Neil pretends not to notice it like the expert evasion that he is. Neil blinks. Brings a hand to his face—to his still swollen and fresh purple black eye, so colorful in contrast to his darkskin.

As if he had forgotten it was there. As if it were fine. As if he were fine.

Knowing Neil he is. Idiot.

If Andrew doesn’t commit seppuku on himself Mary Josten will do it for him as soon as she sees Neil at his next track race and connects the dots. And for what it cost him to earn her approval to date her son. Oh well.

Today Neil has sat between Dan and Matt, away from Andrew, but not because he wants the distance or is punishing Andrew with it but because he correctly sensed that Andrew needed it. Idiot, idiot. Still, Neil wears one of Andrew’s black leather jackets as a replacement.

It’s too big for him. Andrew being much more compact, and that.

“Oh, dis? An alien the size of a small bird parked its UFO in my eye yesterday,” Neil lies, looking innocent enough about it. His tone does not invite further discussion, however.

An edge nests between its syllables.

Seth narrows his eyes, unconvinced, no doubt recognizing the edge, the lie in its absurdity. He turns to look at Andrew and Andrew completely ignores him—looking back at Renee. In an unusual display of intelligence from his part Seth decides to drop the matter and not search for a fight.

“Whatever,” he says, returning his attention to his sad tuna sandwich. Allison kisses the crown of his head, huffing—a reward for his good behavior. You go, token white boy. The other Foxes follow Seth’s lead, for once. The stars must be aligned. Hallelujah! Everybody mind your own business.

The silence does not last.

Nicky loudly asks Allison for the latest showbiz gossip—nothing subtle about how he steals the attention of both Neil and Andrew like a grocery bag even though Andrew has no inclination to thank him nor cares of what they’re assuming about him, and Allison responds to Nicky in a good-humored but disinterested way, and then Kevin comments on the chances of X pro lacrosse team beating Y team in the semifinals, and Seth argues with Kevin just to contradict him, and soon enough all the Foxes except Neil and Renee and Andrew are chatting up with all the Foxes except Neil and Renee and Andrew.

And that is that.

Or it should be.

But the pit has not moved anywhere else, it actually increases in size. Just as Neil’s black eye doesn’t disappear either. And Andrew’s knuckles are hungry for more meat to hit. Maybe his own.

Unconsciously, Andrew picks up an axe.

x

(When he was younger and much smaller—at least vertically—as small as Tom Thumb except not really because Andrew Doe was taller than a thumb and Tom Thumb had brothers and sisters and rocks and breadcrumbs—when Andrew was small like that, but not that much, and his biggest problems were slaps and pulls at his hair and fighting with other children for the last sugary donut on the plate, knew that if he measured exactly what a thumb measured he could have escaped from any orphanage to which he always returned sooner or later from the houses-not-homes Andrew was given, no one in charge ever noticing he had gone and go wherever he wanted—perhaps in search of his family, the real one, the blood one, the one who was surely not going to beat him under any excuse or give him second-hand tattered clothes that were not his size and smelled bad or send him to bed without dinner or infect him with lice. The family that was surely good because it was the original and not a cheap copy made in China—and was Andrew made in China? Was Andrew Chinese? Korean? Taiwanese? His slanted eyes and notable features from somewhere in East Asia were his only clue though the slightly natural lighter skin tone and marble-blond hair didn’t fit, half white and half... what? Andrew was lucky that his birth certificate included his first name and gender but not a last name, how to confirm?—because you can lose coins but not your own blood and surely they—whoever they were—lost him by accident and wanted him back and Andrew just needed to be found like a copper coin at the bus station to pay the fare, yes, yes, yes, to get a permanent transfusion of himself into them, blood type double A, oh Andrew we’ve missed you so much!—but he wasn’t, the size of a thumb, that is, so he didn’t, and instead Andrew dreamed of being a forest.

Why settle for one tree when there could be so many? Have a strong trunk. And some strong roots. And some strong branches. And some strong leaves. And not to be alone. And not to have to move from anywhere ever again.

Then Andrew turned seven years old, his bed a sarcophagus and Steven a spear made of flesh impaling him in the very center of his body at dusk, and Andrew grew the fuck up.)

x

“We should talk about my eye,” Neil says, cautiously though decided, sitting across from Andrew and holding a bag of frozen vegetables against said eye—the rising sun illuminating his beautiful face, his ugly bruises.

“No.”

“I’m— well, I’m not, right now, but I will be. Fine, I mean. I’ll be fine. In a couple of days, when the swelling goes down and the red blood cells do whatever they do. Aaron would know.”

“No.”

“You were asleep," Neil stresses out. “And it will heal. I am going to heal. This is not going to break me.”

“No.”

“I can ask Allison for some of her makeup to cover it up if you prefer it. She wouldn’t mind buying some in my skin tone.”

“No.”

“Listen to me. I do not blame you. I don’t even expect an apology from you. I just— do you need me to call Betsy?”

“No.”

“Andrew, could you at least look at my face?”

“No.”

“Has your vocabulary been reduced only to that word? I am trying to—”

“No.”

“Andr—”

“No.”

“We need—”

“What I need,” says Andrew, harsh and a little alarmed, or a little too much, “is for this one-sided conversation to die. The number you dialed out is out of service, leave your message after the tone. BEEP! Oh, whoops. Time’s up, sugar boy. Better luck next time. You’ll see me later.”

Not giving Neil a chance to speak a word more Andrew stands up, and unclenches and clenches his fists, and does not think, and locks himself in the bathroom, and slams the lock shut, and thinks about the possibility of Neil leaving him—of Neil leaving him because Andrew was made to be left behind, as a newborn baby—and breaks the mirror by throwing it into the shower, away from himself, because Andrew is at least rational enough to admit that self-harm is a vice and an old story and it wouldn’t help anyone—it would just make Neil sad for Andrew. Saddest. Not sad like pity. Sad like: I do not care if you’re not whole but I don’t like it when you unnecessarily break yourself further. Nothing sounds on the other side of the bathroom door. Not even steps, leaving or approaching. Andrew’s fury is immense. Fury contained in a can of sardines. He breathes.

And breathes.

And falls.

x

Things do not change much. They still kiss, they still fuck, they still talk, they are still each other’s anchor and the Question since there is no answer to neither of them. Except Andrew kisses and fucks his way with other guys, too. He changes hook-ups like socks except for Roland and—he grudgingly assumes—Neil. That is different. And Neil himself warms Dan and Matt’s beds in the meantime, or maybe they warm Neil up, whenever Andrew is busy as an arsonist destroying corrupted forests and Neil misses being held by someone solid and familiar, someone he can trust himself with in his totality not just with his sex—not that Andrew is particularly interested in knowing the details, not that Andrew has any right to be jealous—do they touch you like I touch you? Is it better? Do you touch them back without any terms or conditions? Is that what you want? More differences. And Neil doesn’t stop sleeping with him but has stopped sleeping with him. Literally. That is different, too. Sleeping together is boyfriends’ privilege which they no longer are. They continue to share beds, however. That remains the same. For hours, being awake, rolling around over the bedsheets, Neil either pissed off or huffing laughs or very very sad, sometimes not even having sex, not even making out heavily, just—being. It used to be easy to share a bed at night and if not easy at least comfortable and if not comfortable at least—But Andrew doesn’t stay over anymore. A lot of risk. And not towards himself. If he does it—if Andrew sleeps with Neil even though it is ill-advised, putting his desires on a stage for everyone to prod at, it is Neil who quietly gets out of whatever bed they’re in and gets dressed in the dark and sneaks away before dawn—but not before extending his arm towards Andrew’s face, as if wanting to outline the bridge of his nose but ultimately not daring to, not without permission, and Andrew already awake too for several minutes but pretending not to be, unable to breathe—saving him of that decision, more like doing him a favor really, letting Andrew wake up alone. Empty arms, empty bed. And Andrew’s heart already clocking a four-minute mile across the campus perimeter in his worn-out converse.

Things do not change much.

x

Zero refunds.

It’s supposed to be something final—when Andrew breaks up with Neil. It is the norm, isn’t it? A single break up and both sides move on, one resenting the other forever and ever.

He thinks about being nice. To say something corny to soften the hit: I am ruining us both for your own good. To admit: I am going to make you leave me eventually and inevitably and it is in my best interests if I am the one who leaves first. To confess: your absence would be absolute agony, Neil. Nightmare fuel, impossible to survive. To growl: Trees have scared me and scarred me since I was seven years old just like heights. To reveal: The mere idea of losing you is—

If only Andrew had one more spoonful of kindness in his five-foot body—

“I dare you to say that again,” Neil spits out hours after Andrew sparred with Renee. Furious and gutted and with tears in his pretty, wide forget-me-not eyes.

The eye that is not black, if anything.

Triple-dog-dare. Oh.

There’s blood staining the floor, this big growing stain of pain, and neither of them are hurt anywhere and there is no blood just like there is no forest. Andrew just cut down all the trees, the trunks, the roots.

He realizes, very clearly, that Neil is giving him the opportunity to back out. To prevent them from separating like two ligaments in a sprain. For them to continue being something. Something more than friends but less than boyfriends but more than husband and husband even without certificate and vows and rings, yet. Something exclusive and monogamous and long-term. Something that could be magnificent and everlasting and worthy of being put on the shelves of bookstores along with all those stories that transcend time and space and paper and the hearts of men.

Whatever our souls are made of—

Everything about Andrew burns. It rebels against him. It shouts: IF YOU MUST DO THIS YOU SHALL REGRET IT in Renee and Betsy’s distorted voices. But Andrew doesn’t do regret, you see. And he has never liked taking anyoneʼs orders. It goes against his nature. If someone says: jump! Andrew laughs in their face and bites them, unvaccinated Pitbull that he is. But if Neil says: jump—well. That’s a bad thought. Bark twice if you need help.

The incentive is the black eye. If Andrew keeps seeing it, it strengthens his resolve. The reason he does what he does. And Neil will thank him, one day. Even if not today in a millennium or six. If—when he has a new boyfriend or girlfriend or partner who listens to him and respects him and peels oranges for him and does not need coordinates to be touched sexually and non-sexually by Neil every damn time and doesn’t hit him with murder intent either when they wake up together in the morning in the same twin-sized bed on the bottom bunk because of tons of unresolved childhood trauma. Puppy romances rarely survive, anyway. Him and Neil are past their expiration date together. Three and a half years plus twenty-two days plus six hours plus fifty-one seconds.

Cannot Neil see it? The favor Andrew does to him? Of course not. Not with that hideous black eye.

And so Andrew does not back down. And he repeats it, slowly. “You bore me to death Abram," drawling the words, nailing them with a hammer. “There are so many dicks out there yet to be sucked off and staying with you is preventing me from doing so. Is that clear enough?”

Hontōni mōshiwakenai.

It hurts. But that is the point. So that Neil doesn’t insist on stubbornly fighting for Andrew—even though Neil doesn’t know how to fight with anything but his mouth and his mouth is a twenty-one caliber pistol, lethal where it aims—because there is no future for them.

There can’t be.

Not unless Andrew stops being Andrew and gets new unfractured parts to swap with for someone far more pleasant.

The change is instantaneous. Neil’s fire simply deflates. He breaks eye contact and lowers his head. Shoulders raised and shaky. His shirt showing a bit of his collarbone and the scandalous peek of Neil’s orange sports bra. Neil looks at the floor as he says emptily, “Get out.”

Andrew gives him a two-fingered salute to his temple. Wishes to turn back in time. Get an electric toaster and kill a dinosaur. And the regret.

“The pleasure is all mine.”

The door to the dorm that Neil shares with Matt and Seth is slammed forcefully behind him.

And that is that.

Or it should be.

Andrew is not as smart as he would like. Apparently neither is Neil.

x

Nobody wants to fall. Least of all Andrew.

But they do it.

Constantly. Inevitably. Foolishly. Inexorably.

They fall with each other. They fall apart. They fall back together.

Love is a springboard. It drives them to get up. To stumble. To not remain stable. To fall once again. To get up once more. Again and again and again and again and again and a—

x

Eleven months into this madness—the most exhaustive game of cat and mouse and tug-of-war in the history of games—Allison bets, “Twenty bucks that our modern Nosferatu permanently mends things with our Neil by the end of this year,” and puts money on the table, her Kundan Bangles jingling on both brown wrists.

It is a public challenge. More or less.

As a general rule the Foxes do not place any bets in the presence of their recipient so that they can win fairly. And Neil may not be there—busy in his French elective class and exchanging notes with Jean Valjean, not-so-subtly playing Cupid with him, assuring Moreau that he should go out with Kevin and Thea, who really, really like him, for real, two for the price of one, possibly mentioning the miracles of being part of a ménage à trois—but Andrew is. Present.

Nearly breaking his neck in his haste as he focusses on Allison’s words Aaron looks away from his Biochemistry book. He takes his wallet out of his backpack, frowning.

Is this Abel’s revenge? Should Andrew have a rock ready for the counterattack?

“I’m in,” Aaron says, like a traitor. “Make it twenty-five that Andrew fixes things with Neil this week at the latest.”

Nicky squeals. “Five that Andrew cries,” he adds, delighted.

“Pffffff. It’s like you don’t know your own cousin. Thirteen bucks that the mini monster doesn’t cry but does make a great sentimental declaration of love. Not with flowers. That shit is for chicks,” Seth intervenes.

“Thirty more that Neil accepts said declaration and accepts Andrew back, like, for life,” Dan joins in even though betting on Andrew means that she and Matt no longer will have a serious chance of seducing Neil in more than his body.

“Ion know,” Matt says nervously scratching his old track marks on both arms. “Fifteen that Andrew waits until New Year’s just to screw with our bets and then stabs one of us, you know, since he can hear us?”

“I will give you all five dollars each to abandon this conversation and focus on studying so that no one gets kicked off the team for bad grades,” Kevin proposes.

“Fifty bucks that Andrew makes the right decision about him and Neil,” Renee says calmly, “whatever it is, however long it takes.”

“Sign me in on everything except what Nicky, Matt, and Kevin said,” Allison announces. “Hmm. And exclude that tidbit of Seth about flowers too.”

“Hey!”

Their faith in both is nauseating.

“You all are going to mysteriously start coughing in six days,” Andrew says calmly and tosses a fork toward Allison with perfect aim. Allison dodges it gracefully. The fork pokes someone else at another table in the cafeteria, some extra perhaps—Andrew doesn’t notice who nor is he interested in knowing, he just hears them complaining.

Knowing that Andrew neither speaks nor understands Urdu, Allison smugly twirls a long strand of dyed blonde hair and says, smiling, “Khush Aamdeed.”

x

There is an old Polaroid camera stored in the second drawer of Neil’s nightstand.

Mary gave it to him as the two left the intensive care room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, as soon as the FBI had their new names ready on a legal paper following the testimonies that Mary and Neil provided of their double near-murder at the hands of Nathan Wesninski—may he not rest in hell.

It was, according to Neil, an escalation.

Nathan had never been nice to either of them. He was a big man with a heavy hand. But it got worse. And it got worse. Although wealthy Nathan had problems at work. And with drinking. One day he tied their hands and feet with ropes and, ignoring their screams, took them to the basement along with some kitchen knives and a closed box of cigars and several matches—family time, murder-suicide.

The rest was history.

(The rest was Mary miraculously escaping with a broken leg, three days later, fueled by visceral fear, and murdering her husband with a crowbar in self-defense to save her son’s life. My son, my son. He is the greatest thing that could have come from you and I, and he is mine! I birthed him! You cannot take him away from us, dearest husband. Yuh cyaa. I won’t let you.

“Unkle Stuart was there for us, in the aftermath. At the hospital. Mumz called him before her surgery and he traveled from England to the States in less than the blink of an eye. Paid for his citizenship, even, a special permit so that he would not be deported from the country. Bought us a modest house in South Carolina— to leave Nathania Wesninski and Mary Wesninski buried in Baltimore, with my father. He truthfully said: Mi wi tek care of yuh both now an foreva. But I was practically catatonic. Fresh out of the closet. At twelve years old with twenty fresh stitches and more scars on my body and mind than algebraic formulas in the history of mathematics. Few things were real or had meaning. So Mumz just— handed me the camera, packing up what little she didn’t want to auction off or donate to charity. It belonged to her, from before she was married off. She told me, on her temporary wheelchair, “Tek a picha. Any picture. From yourself, from people around you, from strangers, from the streets, from animals, from the sky, from the garbage, from the darkness, from the grass. Be good at it or suck at it. It nuh matta. We will live, Abram. We will live in your photographs.” It helped to differentiate what was a lie from what was not. If I photographed something and that something existed outside of my eye it was concrete proof that it really existed and I was still part of the world and— It helped.”)

Whenever Andrew turns his back on him and has put back all his clothes—armbands included—and heads for the bedroom door with numb steps that prolong the inevitable after smoking for exactly five minutes in the room of turn, reeking of sex and nicotine and 青い, 青い, 青い—Neil, in various stages of undress and still catching his breath—heaving chest, unshaven legs like jelly and of five stars-dessert at effortless flexible square angles—says, “Hey. Wait a second,” and reaches out to grab that camera and take Andrew’s picture.

The flash blinds him for a minute. Andrew doesn’t show it.

He asks, quite cynical, “Could not resist yet again capturing a picture of my walk of shame for posterity? Predictability does not look good on you.”

The concept of a door is rarely so unappealing. They can prevent the entry of others but not your own exit.

Eight weeks in a row is the biggest record so far. Andrew’s self-sabotage prevents him from staying any longer—taking breaks from Neil, regrouping his distance. Black eyes like branches like NO TRESPASSING like you did this yourself take responsibility for your own actions, Andrew.

Neil’s expression is sadly amused. Or maybe amusingly sad. It does not occur to Neil to have any modesty or decency in the face of Andrew’s departure. To cover his tits or his stomach or his pussy or his ankles, depending on what Neil is still wearing that occasion and what he isn’t.

To wipe Andrew’s cum off his belly or between his thighs or his tits or his lips, or.

All of his Canis Major scars are visible, the one hundred and forty-seven of them, in aimless ragged zigzags of discolored lighter brown skin. And there. The alpha canis majoris in Neil’s self-conscious smile.

Neil looks down at the polaroid. He traces the image with a fingertip and Andrew has never felt more envy of an inanimate object than he does at this moment. Turning to face him again Neil responds, rather mysteriously—as if he didn’t want to laugh at Andrew but Andrew was being inadvertently funny, “Something like that.”

As fast here as on a running track.

Who could stop him? Who could keep up with him? Who could be his arrival goal?

Andrew could before, but.

x

He doesn’t remember waking up. There was someone under Andrew. The forest laughed. Without sun everything is still darkness. There was someone under Andrew. The forest laughed. This person repeats his name as if calming a frightened animal in a language that is difficult to place, not English, not Japanese, not German either, more like—There was someone under Andrew. The forest laughed. Whoever it is does not touch him they just keep talking urgently. There was someone under Andrew. The forest laughed. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Come back tuh mi. They are gone. They are all gone. None of them can hurt you again. I won’t allow them. Open your eyes. We have each other’s backs. Do you not remember? Wi promise. You are not helpless. Andrew. I promised you. Won’t you open your eyes? It’s me, your N—There was someone under Andrew. The forest laughed. He cannot see who it is, his knuckles smack something soft. There was someone under Andrew and the forest was laughing and it’s late at night and Neil’s roommates spent the night out and Andrew trashes wildly around and opens his eyes and doesn’t remember waking up and his breathing is irregular and there is no forest at all and the laughter comes from himself and it is grotesque and Neil says, “Ow,” underneath Andrew, blood smeared around his nose and his left eye so, so red and his hands raised far away from Andrew over his pillow and Neil says, in a relieved whisper, “There you are,” and Andrew’s fists are just as dirty and sore and his forearms are bare as a bone and Andrew goes silent and very still, he—

x

Demands, “Tell me to stop,” right against Neil’s mouth, his own self-control a very frayed thread.

Kicking the wasp’s nest, just for fun. Kicking it harder. Kissing his ex for all the right reasons on the wrong impulse. Being stung to death by wasps, in one singular kiss. With sprouts under their feet—

The moon is waning in the sky.

Neil doesn’t take a step back. He clings to one of Andrew’s long sleeves, avoiding his skin, with the hand that’s not still gripping the package of gummy worms. He gazes at him and looks at him and stares at him and Andrew prides himself on knowing how to read Neil better than anyone—in more than one language, blindly, in Morse code, and hieroglyphs—but Neil’s current expression is unreadable, even for Andrew.

Neil is a pair of scissors.

Sawing that thread, very patient.

“Or what?” he asks eventually. No teeth, no bite.

Or I will kiss you until our lips and our teeth fall off.

How hazardous an answer.

“Or what, certainly. Tell me to stop,” Andrew repeats, harsher. Not a request but a demand. His hands still hold Neil’s face with deadly tenderness, and their foreheads bump against one another, neither of them stepping back from the other even though they should.

Surely Neil recognizes it.

That Andrew broke up with him just a week ago. That Andrew is synonymous of bad idea. That Andrew has fists and his fists are iron and they are of no use whatsoever to him if they can’t not hurt Neil when Andrew has only wanted to keep him and keep him safe, since they met—Neil’s fourteen to Andrew’s own sixteen—after having studied Neil two years at home as a recluse only interacting with a mandatory shrink besides his mother and uncle, before Mary enrolled Neil in Columbia High with Stuart’s persuasion. That the black eye Andrew so kindly gave him is still purplish blue with several more colors left to scream.

Neil must tell him—you are not allowed to touch me anymore, stop it—he has to. So that Andrew can be certain that this treacherous slip cannot be repeated, so that Andrew does not cross any border that has been explicitly forbidden to him—

But Neil admits, even less kindled than usual, his face clear, “Mi nuh wa yuh tuh tap.”

Which is so—

“Neil.”

He asks him, “Am I bothering you?” and does not wait for an answer. “A week ago you told me that what we were together had bored you.”

Be a jerk, Andrew thinks. Push him away. And finally convinces his hands to let go, though not by much.

“I am,” he automatically lies. Neil still hasn’t taken that step back.

“And yet you just kissed me.”

“And yet I just kissed you. Funny, that. Give me a laugh, baby blue?”

Neil doesn’t laugh.

He looks—small. Small but unwavering, and tired, and bemused, and a little ridiculous—an open package of gummy worms in his hand, for what damn reason, and his gray t-shirt with BAD FOR EDUCATION written in red italic letters, staring at him like his world ends and starts in Andrew.

“You bother me beyond the telling,” it occurs to him to reply belatedly, dangerous. Which means, of course: at your side I feel.

Neil barely blinks. “I know that.”

Fishing his pack out of a pocket and lighting another cigarette and finally moving an inch away from Neil and his body heat Andrew then admits, as if swallowing stones, “I wanted to kiss you. I still do. It cannot mean anything, you see. Begging to be accepted back by your ex boyfriend is overrated and I do not beg for anything. What’s done is done. And I did it for a valid reason, even if your hopeless feelings momentarily blind you from seeing it.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees in acceptance, his voice neither playful nor angry nor sad. Just a voice. The voice that inspires Andrew to dream and give wings to pigs in said dreams. Carefully blank, this voice, though with a hint of... something else. Determination. Neil scrutinizes him, for a while. Finds what he’s looking for, which is what? Squares his shoulders. Adapts himself. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he says, just standing there in the moonlight, tilting Andrew’s world completely off its axis, “if you don’t want it to. I have been nothing. I can be nothing to you, too. And you can kiss me. And fuck me. And whatever you want, or don’t want. Whoeva yuh call it. No strings attached. Zero commitment between us. If you get bored— if you are interested in hooking up with someone else— I am telling you right now. You don’t owe me a thing and there are no hard feelings and you fuck whoever you prefer and when you are interested in kissing me again— if you’re interested in kissing me again— then I’ll be here, and I’ll say yes again. I can do that. I can say yes to you. Or we can be friends again. Just friends. I didn’t lie about not wanting to lose that part of us. The friendship, the idle chatting, the understanding, the very long trips in your GS with no destination in mind. Or—” Here Neil gets wary. “Or if you tell me to leave, I’ll go. Just like that. Iʼll be your stranger, the ex with who you cut off all contact and disappeared from your map and who you may meet again in six years at an alumni reunion with unresolved emotional and sexual tension between us and bad dialogue from a rom-com script. Pick your poison, Andrew. You want it, you get it. What will it be?”

Neil’s expression is stubborn but malleable.

Andrew is remembered of roots—of how Neil wanted him out of his bedroom dorm at one point but not out of his life, it seems, much less permanently.

His fists are balled up. There is only one acceptable answer. What a tragedy. Take up a new pen, Shakespeare. Time to work!

“You,” Andrew rasps, the waning moon as his witness.

And Neil—

x

Neil misses all of his classes and the Foxes’ morning and afternoon practices and their shared lunch the following Monday, three days after his breakup with Andrew. Matt awkwardly explains that it’s due to a cold, which is bullshit—Neil would attend to classes and his track club with an internal bleeding so as not to worry anyone even if Stuart would ground him if he were to find out and Mary wouldn’t let Neil leave her sight during his recovery, irrationally paranoid that her ex-husband would come out of his grave and finish the job. None of the Foxes believe Matt. And Andrew wonders, with his fingers already on his flip phone, if it’s serious enough that Neil is not willing to play pretend with everyone else—but no.

It is no longer his right to know. Andrew made sure of that.

On Tuesday Neil reappears without fanfare. His appearance is bad. As if a freight train had passed over him, and then a second train—freeform locs in disarray and the reddishness of his black eye mutating to purplish blue, bags under his eyes, almost swallowed by a large mustard colored jacket that belongs to Kevin. At least he convinces the lie of having been sick.

“What’s with the shitty look, you little punk?” Seth asks him, his concern an unpolished sandpaper.

Neil is sitting back again between Dan and Matt. Far, far away from Andrew. Not out of consideration, this time.

“A zombie escaped from its confinement zone and bit me,” he lies, unperturbed. And Renee gazes at Andrew. Her brown-black eyes soft but frustrated, saying through her optic nerve: God give me patience with Andrew Joseph Minyard or I will unleash a plague of frogs upon him.

Or maybe those are the delusions.

Disliking how Renee judges him in silence—disliking even more how Dan rubs Neil’s arm in comfort while Neil evades any questions of other Foxes and lets her touch him and doesn’t look in Andrew’s direction even by accident—Andrew stands up abruptly and publicly declares, “Later, losers,” in a detour of self-destruction since it has already begun. May as well go ahead and explode in style with no care of any collateral damage.

It wasn’t always like this. Neil used to not want anyone’s touch, either, until he did.

But only with their Foxes.

Aaron’s twin senses tinkle, disturbing the cutesy ‘aaron michael mackenzi’ small doodles on his notebook. He looks up, sulky and acidic and suspicious. “Where are you going?”

Anyone that Andrew tolerates who isn’t his therapist or his lacrosse coach is here. The rest of the population is ignored by him. No one knows this better than Aaron.

Except Neil. And Renee.

Aaron’s handwriting is already the one of a doctor, illegible. Point for his brother. Ding, ding, ding! Who says Minyards don’t reach higher than rock bottom? That person clearly hasn’t seen Aaron commit to the cause of his future PhD with his current horrendous med student handwriting. It has always been horrendous though, since elementary school. Andrew is only able to understand it because his is exactly the same—chicken scratches with a pen or pencil and the Rs and Hs and Ts too crooked. They would surely both ruin hiragana and katakana and kanji too if they knew how to write it, alas.

(“Our father is Japanese-American, supposedly Sansei. I never met him, but Mom kept a couple of photos of him stashed in a box,” Aaron revealed him excitedly as soon as Andrew came to live with him under Nicky’s tutelage. Still naïve. Still eager to connect with Andrew—to eat leftovers of normality and brotherhood even though Aaron’s gums hurt from Tilda’s ghostly slaps and hits, Aaron talking about absent fathers and bruising mothers and religious uncles and aunts—at least before Andrew locked him in a bathroom for two weeks to clean him up cold turkey, before Andrew beat up Nicky’s four homophobic classmates in an empty park to stop from the root their bullying and slurs so they would leave Nicky alone until they spit blood, saying to them, “If any of you snitch on me you are dead,” and Aaron asked him, shrieking, “Why are you so violent?” and it was Andrew’s turn to be puzzled and angriest, “Why are you not,” followed by, “I protect what is mine”, rendering Aaron speechless—with Tilda Minyard dying of an accidental overdose five months beforehand and Aaron discovering Andrew’s existence accidentally a month after her funeral when Pig Piggins caught him red-handed stealing pills from a local pharmacy in San Jose to appease his own addiction and oinked at Aaron mistaking him for Andrew thus motivating Aaron to conduct a quest up and down the California coast with the help of Nicky to find him. First-time detectives in pairs.

“Supposedly,” Andrew replied in disinterest, putting the missing piece of his identity as an Asian diaspora in its place and completing the puzzle after thirteen years of uncertainty. It felt—not bad.)

Self-destructive and joyless, he thinks morbidly. Betsy would disagree. She would use another term regarding Andrew, straight from the DSM-5. More elegant. Clinical. Contrary to what Alice’s cat claims, Betsy diplomatically says, We are not all crazy here.

The ax is still in his hand.

Andrew can’t help but look in Neil’s direction. Painting his image behind his corneas permanently, even depressed—in muted shades of red and blue, cheap watercolors, torn canvas. He did that.

There’s sulfuric acid on the roof of his mouth, and Andrew hasn’t slept well in three days. Not since Neil left his bed.

“To put something more fun and phallic than pea salad in my mouth,” he replies. “A boy must eat and it has been a while. Ta.”

The chain reaction is immediate. Matt laughs, uneasy. And then he stops laughing when he realizes that Andrew is not joking. That’s fine and dandy. Andrew gave up being a comedian in the Spear household. It didn’t matter that Drake had died in combat when he stepped on a grenade across the sea, terrorizing innocent civilians, months before Aaron showed up knocking on Cass’s door, reeling from nerves and withdrawal symptoms, the artificial grass entrance mat with: MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE. “This may sound crazy but does my mirror’s reflection live here, m-miss?” Leaving Cass was simultaneously the hardest and easiest decision a thirteen-year-old Andrew could make. Aaron was clearly an addict, and the spitting image of him, and Cass’ mourning for Drake was unbearable, it smothered him, another kind of monster in a different league—how many nights had Andrew spent awake, zero orcs to worry about of eating him alive and his bedroom’s door finally closed all night though still unlocked and his sheets clean of blood and fluid, thinking nonsensically: He raped me for months. If I confessed this to you, would you cry for me as well as you cry your dead biological son? Turns out, yes. Cass bawled and cried her eyes out. And Neil hunches his back. Takes a deep breath, subtly shivering. In humiliation or grief like Cass’ with her vomit on the marble floor when saying: “Forgive me for not having eyes to see your suffering while it happened, Andy. I believe you,” or jealousy? Andrew hopes it’s jealousy, selfishly.

“Have fun,” Neil says, zero animosity and smiling a smile more plastic than Paris Hilton’s tits on the cover of Vanity Fair.

The voices of the Foxes are a driving accident disrupting traffic then.

“Wait what.”

“Oh shit.”

“Are you two serious?”

“What the hell. But you and Neil are—”

“Neil. Oh, oh Neil, no. You are sick! Andrew too! Yes, that’s it! No! I know what this is! You both were replaced by evil clones! That is why—”

“Guys, if you would stop and list—”

“Andrew Joseph Minyard don’t you dare walk out like that! Bring back your gothic vampire ass and explain yourself—”

But Andrew is already leaving, he’s already gone. Another tree split in two in his path. The torn trunk crushes under his combat boots.

And above all, Neil’s silence—haunting him like a poltergeist. Like Cass’ sobbed promise to deposit money into an account in his name that is still active, in love or guilt or a mix, along with her phone number on a piece of paper, just in case. In case Andrew tolerated contacting her one day, assuring him with her smeared makeup and snot on her nose that even if he permanently ignored her existence with justification she would continue to deposit him five hundred dollars a month and love him dearly like a son, the better son, the son that didn’t rot. And then hysterically forbidding Richard and their neighbors and friends from talking about Drake from then on but without explanation, to maintain Andrew’s privacy. And how Andrew still didn’t hate her then nor now because Cass hadn’t done a damn thing to him besides treating Andrew with absolute affection and respect and giving birth to a child molesting sexual predator. Boo-ho.

Who is the rabbit now?

Not me. Neil. Still Neil. Always Neil.

According to him and his culture rabbits are brave and witty. One of Mary’s teachings.

Unzipping a random What’s-His-Name behind the gym bleachers as soon as he accepts Andrew’s offer to give him a blowjob has never tasted so acrimonious.

x

And curiosity hums at fifteen miles an hour with her master’s degree in psychology and a preference for making homemade Tsokolate for Andrew on an electric kettle in her office every Wednesday.

Bzzz! Bzzz!

“Where did you put all my photos,” Andrew questions on impulse, not ignoring this unhealthy curiosity, his thumbs in the back pockets of Neil’s shorts, pushing him closer than close, and chewing on his sternum in the meantime.

Their crumpled t-shirts half removed in impatience. A suitable temperature of hot, hot, boiling. And Andrew’s dick wanting to take a walk around Neil’s neighborhoods and play a lot as if it didn’t bite any hand that feeds it at the most unpredictable moments.

Neil has this board on the side of his wall, full of the Foxes and his mother and his uncle but not of Andrew.

Not anymore.

At the trash can, he irrationally expects. No matter how unlikely.

The delicious kisses on his neck that Neil peppers onto him with the bonus of rewarding himself with Andrew’s tremors are interrupted. Neil pauses. Says, “... Under my pillow,” with some reluctance, as if he anticipated that his admission would blow up in his face or cause Andrew to walk away from him or something. Candygram for Mongo! Change the channel. We already saw that movie. More distracted by Andrew’s thumbs suddenly sliding under his boxers, over his buttocks. Andrew squeezes them greedily, with two hands, the YES prevailing. Neil whines a little. Thrusts his hips into Andrew, desperate. Resumes his kisses along Andrew’s neck with fervor. Distraction: successful.

Where you used to tuck your arm goes implicit.

In one swift movement Andrew lifts Neil, holding him from his thighs, and deposits him on the mattress. He kneels without religious intent. Inhales the aroma of denim, the aroma of wetness, how Neil grows even wetter at his demonstration of strength and begins to pant just as he does when he runs ten marathons, one after another. Andrew lowers Neil’s zipper and boxers with his teeth in an unpracticed but successful maneuver. Closes his eyes in front of his bellybutton. Kisses it. Takes six seconds to be amazed at the lack of living ghosts at his back or slimy voices in his eardrums. Feels Neil’s hands caress his hair, reverent and restless and loving, a permanent safety zone and green light. His legs closing around Andrew’s shoulders in anticipation. Andrew licks a straight line from Neil’s navel towards his clit. Flattens his tongue. Just with the tip. Pink as a lemonade. Twice as sweet on Neil. He drags it between his dark folds. Going slow. Going deep. Going in. Feeling Neil buck beneath him, panting harder. Squeezing his thighs and pussy around Andrew. Wetting his nose. Tight walls. Unrestrained whimpers. Andrew’s tongue swirls around. Hammering. Licking. Sucking. Feasting. Thrusting. Trusting. Wanting and wanton and wanted. Andrew stops thinking.

x

“You think I shouldn’t do it.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“Do not play dumb, Joan. Today’s game is hangman. Your turn. Five letters. T-H-I-N-K.”

Renee ends up nodding, in admission. She fixes her dyed-white and rainbow ponytail. Her tank top has an image from Hello Kitty plastered on it, such a girlish thing, more so in contrast to all Renee’s new colorful vineyard bruises and the non-artificial lipstick of dried blood on her lip’s corners.

“You are right,” Renee says, measuredly. “I do think that. And I will not give you my blessings if you decide to carry it out. And you will. You will because you have already made up your mind about breaking your relationship with Neil. You didn’t come with me to change your mind about it. I just wonder...”

“What.”

“It takes more than a black eye for Neil to consider hating you, Andrew. And you always hate yourself for so little,” Renee finally says, her optimistic affection replaced by sadness, salt packed in a sugar bag. “It is probable that he has already forgave you, even. When will you forgive yourself?”

What Andrew doesn’t say is: I know and, not soon.

Of course he knows.

Sodium chloride, also known as NaCl, has the same number of chlorine atoms as sodium atoms and—focus. She just mopped the floor with him at the gym, as usual, and Andrew won’t have a black eye to match Neil’s and repent and be even with him but he does have a couple of bruised ribs and the satisfaction of giving Renee a limp because of an effective kick to her knee. Renee will even pray for Andrew. In the name of the Mother, the Daughter, the Holy Spirit. Neil would like that way of thinking. Down with the Patriarchy. Yeah, he’d like it.

It’s—something.

The truth is that Neil would be willing to forgive Andrew if Andrew dissolved cracker dust in his soda and drugged him without his consent and threatened to accuse him of baseless unfounded conspiracies. Not that Andrew plans to find out. The mere idea infuriates him. Not his hypothetical actions but Neil’s hypothetical reaction to them.

Uneasily, Andrew tilts his head from side to side. Grinds his teeth. “He should not have.”

He shouldn’t have forgiven this.

And Andrew cannot not remember.

Isn’t that half the problem?

The way Neil was more concerned about Andrew than his own physical well-being that night—

And how when Andrew came to his senses he had the impulse to hit him again, awake and conscious, just so Neil would have his priorities in order—

And this desire to puke when Andrew knew he was not capable, not with intention, he could not, he could not, he would not—

“That is not your place to say,” she kindly points out.

“Oh but that is where you are wrong, Joan. Since when do Reynolds and Gordon wake up with your deadly fists in their faces, you eight seconds away from gouging out their eyes after the three of you literally slept together because between being asleep and being awake you are unable to recognize who they are or that they do not pose any harm whatsoever towards you.”

If anyone understands it is Renee. Renee who puts her Faith in a man in the clouds despite having been failed by many others on Earth, Renee who sometimes cries for herself and for Andrew and for Neil and for the other Foxes, oh Lord oh Lord, but not out of pity, no, but because Renee’s love is a double-edged sword, and she did what had to be done by learning how to fight with knives on Detroitʼs streets instead of playing hopscotch with the other girls and Watch Sesame Street on TV and wear bows in her then coily hair before Renee started ironing it for her own comfort.

Life is a succession of sacrifices. Both Andrew and Neil are safe, miraculously survived it—for years, their respective forests empty of devils and trees, devalued, no new nightmares to pay the rent or scoop up the dirt and take up residence in these decaying, poverty-stricken boogeymen of wastelands.

But now.

Now Andrew is an active risk to that security, a risk to Neil. Some kind of poisonous soil.

And what will become of Andrew when Neil’s forgiveness reaches its unavoidable limit? Even worse: what if Neil continues to forgive him for the rest of their lives. Error after error after error. A black eye today and two black eyes tomorrow and strangulation marks the day after tomorrow and stitches on his collarbones in two weeks and what if Andrew hurts Neil fatally what if he sends Neil to the hospital again what if he puts Neil in an early grave what if Neil abandons him because of this what if Neil doesn’t abandon him because of this what if Neil abandons him because of anything what are the chances—

Renee remains silent. He already imagined it.

Five unfamiliar letters.

G-U-I-L-T.

x

A routine is built.

Andrew says, “I am putting an end to this.”

Straight to the point. The AGAIN hangs in the air. Imaginary shapes in the ceiling like the cards Betsy shows him in their less serious sessions cackle and chirp and coo like Tsukumogamis and Tengos.

Andrew’s voice does not waver. Not at this point. Not after so many round trips down the path of his chain-smoking throat, and if not these exact words, a variation that expresses the same feeling. What is a feeling but an irrational hunger that will destroy you? Andrew knows better than to starve himself.

And yet.

There are scratches on his bare lower back where Neil clung to him with his explicit approval as Andrew dry humped him on the floor and rolled his hips into Neil’s and murmured dirty praises at Neil to unravel them both.

More or less composed Neil rolls onto his side now—camera in hand, eyes like diamonds, mouth swollen from being numbly kissed for hours.

“I thought there was no this,” he answers without cruelty.

Beads of sweat glisten from Neil’s teeth-marked perky nipples to his exposed small bellybutton—and Andrew’s own mouth is a caged lion, longing again for his nipples, longing again for Neil, for more than his flesh and what his body can offer him physically, as if it were endless.

Andrew says, “I’ll suck you off.”

The guy is completely average. His name Brad or Chad or maybe Ted. He is flabbergasted but eventually agrees, stuttering. Probably a virgin, if his shy attitude gives him away. Andrew doesn’t get involved with virgins, generally speaking. Who wants that responsibility? Not Andrew. Neil used to be a virgin. The only exception. No, think of someone else. Think of your hero, Joe Camel. Good, good Joe. Censored by the country’s homeland to protect the children.

Epic bad luck.

Whoooooops.

The bathroom’s store is impersonal. One of the light bulbs above the sink is out. The cubicle is narrow. Still, Andrew automatically kneels. He orders Brad or Chad or maybe Ted to keep his hands to himself or it’s all over before it starts and with one less appendage attached. No funny business, sir. He looks confused at Andrew but again agrees. Definitely a virgin. Andrew wastes no time with foreplay, pulls down his companion’s pants. Brad or Chad or maybe Ted’s dick is circumcised. Medium in size, and mediocre in flavor. Perfect to not become a junkie. Andrew keeps his eyes open, works it masterfully. Blowing it like you blow up a building. Dispassionate but efficient and holding back the urge to bite Brad or Chad or maybe Ted on his idiotic dick and make him bleed and ignoring Jesse standing on his shoulder like an evil spirit giving intrusive comments. Andrew the cocksucker, a self-taught prodigy. Bobbing his head, relaxing his throat. It’s just a guy, a shitty guy, a consenting guy, his moaning and his colors all wrong. Andrew’s own dick remains flaccid safely tucked inside his own jeans.

Mistrustful.

As a grand finale he spits Brad or Chad or maybe Ted’s semen onto the cubicle wall.

Andrew says, “Put your hands on me. Nowhere near my ass. Good. Only here. Spit on your hand.”

Neil follows each of his commands enthusiastically and eagerly. Neil shows interest only in the areas that Andrew gives him access to, as soon as Andrew opens his zipper and pulls down his patterned bat boxers a little bit. Neil spits into his own palm not even trying to be sexy, and that makes him even more incredibly attractive, and Neil wraps his five slender fingers around Andrew’s twitching dick, and Neil waits for Andrew to exhale, for Andrew to get used to it, Neil’s touch—the reality that another person can give you pleasure and that that pleasure is not taken by force or a tool of pain to humiliate you—so that Andrew does not get lost in the labyrinths of his head from ages seven to thirteen, and then Neil rubs him and strokes him and squeezes him, patient but not delicate, and goes from the tip of his dick to his thick length to Andrew’s balls, and Neil alternates between looking at Andrew’s face and looking at what his hand is doing, because Andrew would’ve told him point blank from the beginning that he wasn't allowed to look if he didn’t want to be seen by him, but he does, and Andrew’s dick is as pink as a Flamingo as a kidney, and it’s miraculously very hard, and it doesn’t ache, it even says WOOF WOOF so politely—stroke me some more sugar boy, one of its rare good days, oozing pre-cum like whipped cream, and Andrew’s breaths are labored, and Andrew hisses, and Neil watches him in naked wonder and with his mouth slightly open, little exhalations of air too, his thumb pressing, and Neil pulls and pulls and pulls, and the whole thing feels harmless, and nice, and Neil is being so good to him, because of him, and Andrew fucks into Neil’s fist harder, and hooks his fingers into Neil’s collar and pulls Neil forward and kisses Neil with all the passion that Andrew doesn’t care to give to the rest of the world, sugary aggression and shared saliva and racing pulses and a dance of tongues, the sensitive seventeen muscles in each one, and all the while Neil continues to jerk Andrew off, and no one else could touch him, much less touch him like this, and with this knowledge Andrew cums all over Neil’s scarred knuckles, and he spasms, and groans, closing his teeth on Neil’s lower lip, drawing a drop of blood, tensing and relaxing.

Andrew says, “If you try to touch me again you will wake up in a morgue.”

Roland doesn’t know how to listen. Padded handcuffs are required. Roland’s broken nose does not cause him any remorse. It’s the least Roland deserves.

Andrew says, “I know my way to the door. Do not miss me too much, baby blue.”

Two inches at most between him and Neil, between Andrew and the rest of the world, between the rest of the world and Neil.

He already took his picture of Andrew.

Lying on the bed like a starfish Neil is wearing socks and little else. Snorts. “You’re not the boss of me,” but still looks up at the ceiling, petulant. “I will do that, by the way. Miss yuh.”

How dare you. You better.

Andrew says, “I won’t call you, Francis. Or was it Frank? Get out of my sight.”

Francis or Frank or Whoever swears and buttons his pants to save himself the embarrassment after one night stand.

Andrew says, “Your feet are cold. Move aside.”

And takes a drag on a cigarette and exhales the smoke straight into Neil’s mouth and Neil coughs but he’s amused and does not push his face away and inhales exaggeratedly and Andrew loops an arm over his shoulder, curled up on the couch, looking at Sabrina the Teenage Witch reruns. Whenever Salem appears in a scene Neil points it out to the TV screen, muttering: That’s you.

Andrew says, “Don’t ask about Neil. He is none of your concern.”

The fifth time Roland is being nosy about it. And what happened to your little boyfriend, he was quite cute, you guys seemed very secure about each other, I never thought I would live to see the day when Andrew Minyard would be single again and return to his Casanova era. Roland shakes his head, already handcuffed. Recognizing that his luck has limits.

Andrew says, “You can take four fingers. Easy, Neil. Easy. Are you close?”

Neil hiccups, rolls his hips against Andrew’s palm, riding his fingers like a mechanical bull at a country fair. His g-spot overstimulated. The squelch between his thighs mouthwatering. And the view—

“Yes,” he croaks. “Yes, Andre-w.”

Andrew says, “Do not choke.”

And slowly pushes his pulsing, half-soft dick into Neil’s pliant mouth. Until it hits his throat. A tunnel of love. For Neil to warm it up. For Neil to suck it off. Because Neil asked for it. He said, not quite demanding, “Give it to me. I can take you,” and now kneeling on a rug Neil drools around Andrew. Suppresses his gag reflex with effort. Hollowed cheeks. A flashing look of: who do you take me for, an amateur? Your cock and I go way back. And then a tentative slurp, a swallowing motion, testing the waters. And Neil sets up a sucking rhythm, slow but certain and pleasant, and closes his eyes in bliss, red eyelashes fluttering, and moans, and Andrew lets out a loud exhale, loosens the leash of his own self-control, wipes Neil’s tears with a thumb, caresses his cheekbones, and moves his hips at the same tempo, short but rough thrusts with feeling.

Andrew says—

And says—

And says—

But Neil still gets up at eight at night one night and barefoot puts on one of Renee’s sweaters to sneak out of the room like a thief and that won’t do, that won’t do—

Eleven months, going on twelve.

Andrew doesn’t even feign to be taking a nap. He is so, so tired.

Of punishing himself, of refusing to take back the only thing that makes him feel a damn thing after foolishly letting it go, of settling himself with dozens of bland boys to satisfy his insatiable libido with more lows than highs, of the constant irritation of seeing Neil bark a laugh due to Dan and Matt in the locker rooms’ lobby, of the insecurity caused by the not-so-ephemeral possibility that one day Andrew will return and Neil will say no to him for preferring them and their double yes. Because Andrew walked out the front door and Neil still wanted him and Andrew gave him a black eye but Neil didn’t leave then either. And maybe Andrew was hasty. Maybe a black eye hurt Neil less than having Andrew half-hearted. Maybe trees are just green are just trees.

Enough. Put the bunny back in the box.

He contemplates the dilemma of his own creation. Throws the ax aside off a cliff. Remembers the Foxes’ buoyant supportive bets. Don’t you want to be happy? and When are you going to forgive yourself? and He is not going to run away from you and You want it, you get it. Andrew makes up his mind. Stops falling. He reaches out, grabbing Neil by the hem of his non-sweater. Neil jolts, in flagrante delicto. Not noticing when Andrew woke up. He turns to look at him. And Andrew’s insides are churning. Silly love songs. In Robert Smith’s voice, even.

Andrew says, “I want you to stay.”

x

And Andrew’s bed is very, very, very cold. It mourns the loss of Neil’s shape. His heat. His dip on his side of the mattress. How Neil didn’t move when he slept, not even a teensy bit, still as a corpse. How he turned his back on Andrew in complete confidence not giving it a second thought. And how Neil would roll over in the mornings, already in his arms—the arm Andrew didn’t tuck under Neil’s pillow, anyhow—with Andrew already awake for several minutes, spooning him, seamlessly recognizing who he shared a bed with just by the texture of Neil’s countless scars where Andrew would rest the palm of his other hand and by the scent of Neil’s skin cream for said jaded topography, and Neil would mutter something incomprehensible and blink sleepily and see Andrew and See him—so monstrous and so human—and smile a toothy smile, and not run.

x

“He is not going to run away from you,” Aaron announces—his pajama pants pooling at his feet and a bowl of Corn Flakes cereal freshly served in a plate in his hands before sitting at Andrew’s foot but with a respectable amount of space between them, at least five inches.

Neil jogs around the Tower since early in the morning. Andrew has been spying on him for almost an hour now from his own windowsill, like a little ant—debating the cons of screwing up the Foxes’ bets by not doing anything until after the New Year, like Matt said.

Kevin’s booming snoring in the next room serves as ambient sound.

“Who says I don’t want Neil to run,” Andrew says, deliberately obtuse. “Haven’t you heard Aaron. It’s good for your health to exercise.”

Aaron gives him a stinky eye.

If Andrew stabs Matt or Dan then Neil will give him the silent treatment for at least a week. If he stabs Allison or Seth then Renee will be disappointed in Andrew. If he stabs Nicky then Nicky will burst into tears and remove Andrew from his will only to add him back in five weeks. If he stabs Renee then Renee will stab him back. If he stabs Kevin—Maybe Andrew can settle for attacking them all by accurately throwing lacrosse balls at their heels during every practice for the next two months. Yes, that. Magnificent. Here comes the applause. And the award for best original idea to use violence productively goes to—

Aaron swirls his spoon in his milk-soaked cereal. “Not what I meant, asshole,” and then, “I don’t want to actively think about you and your boy.”

Andrew rests his chin on his forearms. Plays with a loose thread from one of his long sleeves. Doesn’t rip his gaze off the vaguely distant tiny shape that is Neil.

“Not my boy,” he says.

Not anymore.

“Shut up,” Aaron says impatiently but not with much animosity either. He points the spoon at Andrew, splashing milk on the carpet. “Neil will always be your boy. Even if he marries Dan and Matt and they sandwich him until all three of them are covered in wrinkles and adopt an iguana and invite us all to the triple wedding while you are still seducing half the nursing home’s male population and taking away your dentures to give blowjobs for free and lose the war against arthritis every time you get down on your knees or however you gay people have gay sex.”

“Should I take out the homophobia jar?”

It’s been a while since Aaron had to put a dollar in that jar, or Seth, for that matter.

Besides.

“Why an iguana.”

“I don’t know. Why not? I do not want to actively think about you two,” Aaron insists sullenly, lowering his spoon, pretending he hasn’t heard Andrew about the jar, “but I know you are agonizing over nothing. You’ll be fine. You and Neil. You will get back together-together. Maybe not now but in the near future. And not just because you’ll make me twenty-five dollars richer by the end of this week by doing so.”

“Surely that factor does not influence your conditional support for Neil and I.”

“Not really,” the discomfort is like a second skin on Aaron. Blood of my blood, type double A. And the kind of solitary company that only your identical reflection could grant you. They have marginally improved on this with the years. This: being two opposite sides of a same coin—brotherhood. “I don’t have myopia nor astigmatism,” Aaron continues, discomfited. “I see how you are with Neil unlike the rest of us, except maybe Renee. But Renee is Renee. She earned her angel wings through extensive Samaritan work at a Goodwill and therefore doesn’t count. More importantly, I see how Neil is with you. As if Neil didn’t believe in any God but did believe in you, as a person. It’s disgusting. Bet or no bet it is going to happen. No what ifs.”

Andrew imagines himself being the kind of person who can smack Aaron on the shoulder without his first association being domestic violence.

“What, because of fate,” he poses as a mockery in question, not immediately.

Aaron glances at him from the side, exasperation carved into all his squared features. His hair is terrible in the mornings. Blond short spikes of an angry porcupine standing in all directions.

Same as Andrew’s.

You and I are cut from the same wood, Aaron Michael Minyard.

“No, you absolute fool,” Aaron mutters seemingly at the limit of his short fuse. “Because of you. You are a keeper, Andrew. You may not like many things but the few that you do like you keep. And you keep them for life. Like that woman, your foster mom who you call every Christmas, and the ridiculously expensive sports car you paid for in cash with your savings from the money she gives you, and me, and Nicky, and your Skinny Puppy’s CDs collection, and your therapist Mrs. Dobson, and Neil. Especially Neil. And he’s a weirdo— but so are you, and Neil has never run away from you. You’d be incredibly dumb to believe he would start doing it now. Not even if you push him away. So I know this. And I’m telling it to you right now, like your normal smart brother. When Neil runs it will be towards you.”

x

Only dead wood remains of the tree that Andrew used to be and the forest that Neil planted for him.

Except—

x

It is that time of the year. Neil’s nightmares have been going on for a whole week.

It’s almost an annual tradition, at this point, around the anniversary of his torture—never mind that he’s out of the woods, that it happened almost ten years ago, in another city, in another state, to a different person who was going by a different name, with her elegant lace dresses and the curse of being the first-born daughter and an imposed obligation to grow up into an refined lady. Muscle memory. Andrew knows a thing or two about not forgetting things. On those occasions Neil screams in his sleep. Andrew also knows this from the sleepovers he’s had at Neil’s uncle’s Palmetto house where the three of them live together—Neil and Stuart Hatford and Mary, and this year around Seth curses out and falls off his bunk and curses some more and Matt raises up and goes out into the hallway and knocks impatiently and anxiously on the next door every night until Andrew opens it also dressed in his pajamas and barefoot and disheveled and with his armbands already on and without saying anything walks around Matt without touching him and goes to Neil, crawling into the same bed under the same bedsheets and whispering nonsense until Neil jerks awake and immediately relaxes upon recognizing Andrew—staying near him, Neilʼs hair in a protective hairstyle tucked into a silk scarf, wondering why his throat burns and when Andrew arrived, for seven nights in a row.

“You call, I answer,” Andrew always explains without inflection.

And Neil hiccups against his chest. He is embraced by Andrew, fiercely and heart-felt, while Matt and Seth wait in the kitchen pouring themselves glasses of water in varying levels of irritation and concern, an illusion of privacy.

“Yeah,” Neil whispers, snuggled into Andrew. “Ow cud mi forget? Thank you.”

“That better not get in the way of court,” Kevin says authoritatively, pointing to where Neil is peacefully napping with his head lying in Andrew’s lap one of the later mornings, his nose in proximity to his abdomen, when clearly it has already interfered.

In more ways than one.

Magic eighth morning. The morning when the cycle ends, like a mental period but in terms of years instead of months—although Neil has them too, the periods, and the menstrual cramps and the erratic mood swings, not so unpunctual.

It’s March.

The rest of the Foxes run circuits around the field in warmups for practice giving them not-so-conspicuous glances. Neil has skipped his own. Andrew manifests with the power of his mind that one of them will trip and swallow dirt and raises a pierced eyebrow at Kevin. He doesn’t disturb Neil’s sleep. One of his hands possessively drawing circles and koibumis and the words ラブラブ on Neil’s hip.

Over and over and over and over and over and.

Andrew’s black nail polish is cracked.

In theory, Andrew has been tying Roland’s hands and fucking him for almost three months in cheap motel rooms and Eden’s back rooms, giving him blowjobs and giving him hand jobs, too, and contemplating putting a gag in his mouth, a blindfold over his gaze—anything to not recall who he is not with. In theory, Neil has been getting acquainted with Dan and Matt’s kissing in turn, and celebrated the Lunar New Year with them when invited by Dan even if Neil claims it’s nothing serious, lie or not lie, the elusive lettuce on their sandwich of threes. In theory, none of this matters.

It doesn’t take long for Kevin to falter in the face of Andrew’s armed silence. His spine made of rubber whenever Kevin is not on a sports field giving his one hundred and one percent as a player. He’s mommy and daddy’s Champion for a reason, that’s true. And let them eat cake!

Kevin clears his throat. Whispers, not so haughty, “It is a good thing he has you to take care of him and vice versa, I guess. You two do make a good team together,” and, not risking angering Andrew with such an offensive statement, in an act of kindness, as if it were a tragic sacrifice not to have Andrew as a goalie for once, more tragic than the burning of Alexandria even, though the captain is Dan and not Kevin, he adds, with a constipated face, “You can skip morning practice today. I shall allow it. Just this once.”

“How generous of you. Did it hurt you to say that,” Andrew inquires, minimally curious. Still writing in a sleeping nightmare-free Neil within arm’s reach. As he should.

“... Yes,” Kevin admits, grumbling. Arms folded over his chest.

All in all, it’s a pleasant morning.

x

What Andrew could never have predicted, years after giving up and not giving up because there is nothing less interesting than being six feet under: for him to meet Neil Josten, half orphan extraordinaire and one hundred percent Tornado Boy born Final Girl. For Neil to become a cardinal point in his life, from one day to the next as if he had always been with Andrew, through thick and thin and worse than worse. For Neil’s touch to be utterly painless. For Neil’s smile to be the distorted reflection of that of a very, very bad man that Neil has no interest in becoming in. For Andrew to use any excuse to touch Neil and not have the immediate desire to tear off his entire epidermis from the inside turning into a mass of bloody muscles, and for Andrew to hold Neil, effortlessly, hand on wrist and hand on elbow and hand on shoulders and hand on lower back and hand on upper back and hand on neck to get Neil out of panic attacks and episodes of paranoia or if he is dissociating and when Neil asks permission for him to play with Andrew’s strands of hair or to scratch his scalp and for them to sit together on the roofs of the Columbia’s house and Neil’s house and the high schools’ and colleges’ rooftops and their respective porches and fenced yards, for hours, the melting hours, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, exchanging back and forth the same cigarette and lighter and mutual staring and anecdotes and secrets and wounds impossible to perceive with the healthy human eye and eventually too kisses that would put global warming to shame of hot they were. That Neil is made of roots and has a personal vendetta against reflecting surfaces and he runs from places all the time but not from important situations, not from serious battles, not from the people who are his people, not from Andrew.

x

At midpoint:

They are holding hands at the local Palmetto Cemetery, walking around the graves—mostly ignored by the gravedigger—and inventing ridiculous causes of deaths in which someone could have died by standing in front of their respective headstone, one at a time—they awakened an evil Russian spirit by playing poker; she tripped on a banana peel after insulting a gorilla at the zoo; his wife poisoned him for being unfaithful to her and to keep all his fortune and marry his lesbian cousin—and he feels both very violent and very calm.

“Do you hate me already,” Andrew asks nonchalantly and apropos nothing. Neil’s black eye is yellowish green.

Neil wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t let go of Andrew’s hand even by mistake. Kicks a pebble with the platform gothic boots that Andrew bought him and that fit so well on his miles of legs.

“No,” he says.

And—

They’re in the shower together and the water is warm but slowly getting colder and there are soap bubbles floating in the air and a spider in the top corner peering in at them with its eight tiny eyes and Neil still has the five-in-one bottle of Andrew’s shampoo that Andrew uses but not his toothbrush and Andrew has taken off everything except his boxers and if he were able he’d take off his skin too but not out of displeasure or discomfort, no, no, no, but as a sign of ultimate confidence, like the network of scars that Neil shows him here and in bed, how Neil submits of free will to Andrew—the damp black fabric of his skulls boxers splattered to his own ass, and Andrew splattered to Neil at his back, hugging him from behind, tightly, tightly, under the water spray.

“How about now,” he asks him, right at the back of Neil’s neck, nibbling him on.

“No,” Neil reiterates softly, putting his weight on Andrew, ghosting his fingertips across Andrew’s pale scarred forearms and raising little shivers like a necromancer. Returning his own words to Andrew. “Better luck next time.”

And—

They are at a Sweeties’ table, all the Monsters accompanying them as is tradition among the five of them, not sited in the same booth but facing each other, and Andrew has just blatantly flirted with one of the waiters who served them after ordering for himself an extra-large chocolate sorbet with melted caramel and cherries and Oreos and frosted cream on top, and plays footsie under the table with Neil, who draws fox footprints on a napkin and writes KEVIN DAY RULEZ in cursive with a Z. Neil’s black eye faded six months ago.

“What about now,” Andrew asks, deliberately sipping loudly on a straw to be a nuisance.

Neil shakes his head.

“Nuh uh,” he says, the pink of his tongue peeking out.

And—

It is a Very Bad Day for both of them and Andrew has beetles dancing the cha-cha-cha across his whole skin and he’s wearing four thick layers of clothing and if he blinks he’ll see four shadows of tall white men emerging from under the bed, threatening and covered in roots and soil. Neil is uncharacteristically lethargic himself—all his scars from knife cuts and cigar burns on his torso and arms stung by little disembodied scorpion stingers like they were made yesterday and the residue of extensive trauma snuffs him out, stripping him of his colors and his aquatic fire and his enviable ability to not give up even with all the circumstances against him.

Though Andrew is still there with him Neil takes photograph after photograph of him.

“He is gone, all gaan,” Neil murmurs to himself, reclined on a beanbag. “He walked through that door on my own command and never returned. Sometimes I wonder if he ever will. Don’t tell Andrew.”

“I am here with you,” Andrew denies but Neil barely pays attention to him.

“One day you are going to get tired of our combined emotional baggage,” Neil takes another photo. Tilts his head aside. “It will get too heavy. Even for you. Particularly for you. And you are so strong but... I do not want to burden you with my issues on top of your issues, and the commitment you clearly don’t want. It’s fine, though. I can deal alone with it. You deserve a reprieve from that burden. From me.”

Neil takes pictures of things to confirm they are real, Andrew suddenly realizes. These days Neil only photographs Andrew when Andrew leaves.

“I want you to hate me,” he admits impassive but furious.

As long as I hate myself first no one else’s hate can make me sad.

A truth.

Neil sighs with tiredness. Covers his eyes with one arm, letting go of the camera momentarily with no care.

“Yes or no, to one single kiss?”

Shameless, Andrew eyes him. And eyes him a bit more. There are still thousands of beetles rattling around on his Andrew suit.

“Yes,” he answers.

Neil doesn’t get up, not exactly. He leaves the camera in the beanbag and crawls toward Andrew, careful not to hover over him and make him feel pinned against the wall, and kisses Andrew on his forehead, not lingering.

It tickles.

Take it easy, Betsy would advise.

What’s easier than Neil Josten loving you without asking you to love him back even when you already do?

“You already hate yourself enough for both of us,” Neil whispers quietly, still on all fours in front of Andrew, much more lucid than he was half an hour ago. “I pass.”

x

(It all started with Kevin Day, actually.

A long time ago in a very distant and crazy era known as the 90s’ David Wymack decided to have consensual unprotected heterosexual missionary sex with Kayleigh Day in the back seat of his rental convertible car at the matinee during a second date.

An unplanned baby was the result.

Not wanting to ruin David’s dreams at such a young age to take responsibility for a baby he did not ask for Kayleigh kept it a secret. She rejected David’s incoming marriage proposal, broke up with him no offering any explanation whatsoever, moved across the country, and gave birth to a baby boy. The baby boy was biracial but he got more from the mother than from the father, except for his hair color, height, and cheekbones. He passed as white. Kayleigh named him Kevin—derived from the Irish name Caoimhín—in honor of her own heritage and raised him with the help of a close friend, a son of immigrants, Tetsuji Moriyama. Tetsuji had a nephew and the nephew’s name was Riko. Riko and Kevin grew up as 兄弟—brothers. Inseparable. Unfortunately, Kayleigh fell ill with cancer and died. Kevin was placed under the tutelage of Tetsuji. Tetsuji became unnecessarily cruel to Kevin—verbally and emotionally abusive, the evil stepfather of the tale. It didn’t take long for Riko to follow in his footsteps. Riko became a dragon. Riko broke Kevin’s dominant hand while playing lacrosse, allegedly an accident. Then Kevin conveniently found a letter written by his deceased mother addressed to him. He discovered that he had a father. He contacted him. David discovered that he had a son. He answered his call. David fought for Kevin’s custody in a jury and won and took him to live with him and his current girlfriend Abigail Winfield to Palmetto, South Carolina. Riko was a sore loser. He resented Kevin for abandoning him. He convinced his uncle to move to Palmetto as well. He was enrolled in the same high school as Kevin, in the same grade. He started harassing him. By then Kevin already knew all the Foxes, minus one, and his hand had healed. The Foxes were fed up with Riko’s bullying—the only ones allowed to occasionally make fun of Kevin were them because Kevin was their friend. Riko always got his way in the presence of adults and teachers and principal Kathy Ferdinand, however. Andrew had given him three ignored ultimatums. He was planning to kill Riko with a pencil sharpener, a gallon of vinegar, and duct tape. And then.

A sudden typhoon.

Category five.

Andrew mistakenly thought he was a she, at first.

Skinny and small and inconsequential until then a nobody darkskinned Black kid arrived and made a fuss in the middle of the schoolyard, just as upset with Riko’s reign of terror and bullying against Kevin even though it was none of his business. The boy unsheathed his tongue like a sword. And he spoke. He spoke a lot. He spoke in bullets and a thousand classy accusations and insults. Said to Riko, stop being so selfish. Until Riko was humiliated and slayed as a dragon and cried big ugly fat tears and ran away from the castle-schoolyard and never bothered Kevin again. The boy was reprimanded by a teacher and taken to Kathy’s office. The Foxes were impressed. Head over heels. Eager to meet this kid and befriend him and thank him for helping Kevin so bravely. Andrew paid attention even though everything bored him.

Based on his investigation the boy responded to Neil and had been recently enrolled in this school and was often sent to detention for not complying with the dress code. The teachers disapproved of his natural hairstyles and of him for dressing like a boy. Neil’s uncle was called more than once by Kathy Ferdinand to her office and each time he vehemently refused to obey the school’s demands to change anything about his nephew appearance. Nothing wrong with my likkle tiga’s wardrobe nor his hair as it is. Have any of you considered first to fix your prejudiced attitudes? His accent was thick. Hatford wore fine suits and fine shoes. For some reason their last names were different. Andrew continued to pay attention.

Apparently Neil was in a lower grade than Andrew and was sneaky and nervous and distrustful and avoided any attempts by the Foxes or any other classmates to approach him but carried a Polaroid everywhere he went. Andrew came up with a plan. He cut the pigtails of some Tabitha or Teresa with scissors in class because she wouldn’t leave Aaron alone with her hands full of girl germs. They sent Andrew to the detention classroom. And there he was, at the very back table in the penultimate row: Neil Josten.

Whistling from memory alone the complete symphony of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Andrew sat in the chair next to his.

He recollected all the lectures that he had eavesdropped on—that kind of vocabulary is unacceptable in this institution and, how do you expect them to use the correct pronouns with your hair like that and those clothes you’d think your parents would advise you against it and, your actions, err, words have consequences Mr. Josten. Face them.

“What are you looking at?” Neil asked warily but blunt. He was wearing a long-sleeved Snoopy shirt with a pink tutu skirt over his worn-out jeans, the laces untied on his brand-new gray converses.

Andrew could see that Neil had tits. Or not exactly. He couldn’t see the tits themselves but he could see their small volume through the fabric.

Then he continued to notice more things. Andrew made a personal catalogue.

One. Neil’s eyes an unexpected arctic blue. 89°59′59″N 0°00′00″E. From the Greek word arktikos. Two. His hair traffic-light red, styled in two strand twists—the kind of red that meant STOP but Andrew interpreted as GO— stepping on the gas and running over someone out of indifference now that he was practicing to obtain his driver’s license. Three. The bunny stickers glued to Neil’s fingers in vibrant oranges and lime and yellows and cobalt.

Everything about Neil was disorientingly colorful. Since his birth Andrew’s life had been a black and white noir film. His guts became a boy scout and assembled eighty perfect knots.

Like a stomach ache.

“Kevin Day,” Andrew said out of context after finishing his observations.

Neil blinked in puzzlement, disregarding his defensive pout. “What?”

“Wroooong. Not a what but a who. You rescued him the other day from the Machiavellian Riko Moriyama. It was quite a show, if I dare to say so myself. They could have televised it live on and given you a prize for being so epic,” Andrew explained cheerfully. Neil looked at him as if Andrew had three heads.

So, so colorful.

“You are weird,” Neil said after a while.

Not weird like an insult. Neil hadn’t abandoned the conversation. Yet.

“And you are pretty,” Andrew responded without missing a beat. Delighting himself in Neil’s barely perceptible blush, his increasing confusion. “Pretty badass,” he added, playing it safe, and kicked his feet together. “Say, bunny boy, what do you think of this sport originated from the native people of North America famously known as lacrosse.”

Neil stared at him for a long moment. His fingers twitched towards his Polaroid but Neil didn’t seized it.

“It’s boring,” was his eventual response.

Andrew nodded empathetically. “Yes, it is. Andrew Joseph Minyard at your service. What would it take for you to be my friend,” he asked smoothly. “Name it and it’s yours.”)

x

None of the Foxes give them any shit, noticing their situation. And they do notice it. How Neil lives glued at his hip remarkably clingy some weeks, how Andrew publicly hooks up with a different queer guy almost every hour some other weeks, how Neil spends more and more time with Dan and Matt and isn’t so oblivious to their flirtations when they are more direct with their intentions, how Andrew doesn’t borrow a page from Seth and Allison’s apocalyptic relationship before Renee joined them and set things right but instead steals the entire book.

It’s no one but Neil’s fault that the Foxes do not voice any rude input or mean comments to neither nor harass them in search of gossip. He can be persuasive like that, after all. Doesn’t even need antagonistic threatening intimidation like Andrew.

All Neil has to do is ask.

x

“Do you already know the place where you will bury me when you inevitably murder me?” Neil asks, beaming. He is always beaming in Andrew’s presence. It’s strange. Neil’s fingernails are slightly bitten due to random bursts of anxiety and on his thin wrists he wears ten bracelets, five on each—the number of friends he would give his life for. Lucky number ten.

Neil is really pretty. Not pretty like a girl is pretty, pretty like a late model Toyota 86 car is pretty. With a naturally aspirated 2.0 L four-cylinder boxer engine and a power of two hundred HP and—not now, Mr. Brain. The information filed away in Andrew’s mind is an annoyance in the most benign of cases.

Andrew does not have to even hesitate. He grabs Neil’s right hand and guides it to his own chest, his heart bones thundering in beats and gallops. Clutches it. The warmth of their intertwined palms tangling over his own Bahaus t-shirt. Bores his eyes into Neil. So that there is no doubt.

“Right here,” Andrew says, and.

x

One kiss leads to two kisses leads to three kisses leads to undressing leads to make-up sex leads to Andrew masturbating himself and cumming messily on Neil’s belly with a groan, smearing his cum all over him, internally reciting each state of the country in alphabetical order in the time it takes him to unwind—it is a perfectly natural bodily reaction Andrew, no damage is done by enjoying sex as an consented act buzz! buzz!—and then Andrew licks Neil’s sweat off his hip bone and imprints the taste of it on his palate like a postcard and says, “You are stupid. I am going to gift you flowers.”

Two fingers deep.

Twisted and stretched and languid.

Neil has his back arched, panting from his fourth orgasm, legs quivering.

It must be around midnight.

(Earlier Neil peppered Andrew’s entire neck with hickeys and uttered, “Mumz kind of hates you now, suh yuh kno. Unkle Stuart too. Somewhat.”

“I expected as much,” Andrew had said, shivering. “I’ll win them back over. By spring break.”

“And if you fail?”

“She’ll have a stroke when we elope and Stuart will hunt me for sport and you will become a widower.”

“Fuck off,” Neil had laughed.)

“If I’m stupid then what are you,” he replies now, squirming. Touché. There must be a mewl still stuck somewhere in his throat, Andrew is sure of it. Neil’s pussy in all its glory and his happy trail and bush of pubic hair as a flashy billboard: FOLLOW ME DOWN HERE.

Andrew already did. Plenty.

His tongue raw from so much sucking and licking and kissing and eating out. His own dick soft again and happily ignored in the confines of his boxers.

The sheets are smeared all over with Neil’s squirt and their sweat combined.

He wants to kiss Neil on his bruised knee, so he does. “Flowers,” Andrew insists yet again against Neil’s knee.

And Neil catches up at last. “Flowas. Any particular reason?”

“Your friends made some bets.”

“They are your friends too—”

“For how long it would take me to pull my head out of my ass and win you back. We have their blessings. Eight in total.”

“—Oh. And the flowers?”

Andrew shoves his fingers deeper, less languid. “Gordon. He said they were for chicks. I’m going to make him lose money.”

Neil whines-laughs. “F-fine. Screw gender bioessentialism. Mhhm. Flowers will be. Aah, uh, uunghf!”

The push and push. Andrew is unsympathetic. He fingers Neil like he’s going to die if he doesn’t until Neil screams and clenches around Andrew and squirts for the fifth time in a row and falls boneless onto the bed. Andrew withdraws his two fingers, satisfied. He gives them to Neil to lick—tracing his gums individually. Wipes Neil with a towel. Helps him go to the bathroom to pee. Gives him four bottles of water to drink. Carries him back to the bottom bunk. Wraps Neil in clean sheets. Kisses him all over his face for the sake of it because it makes Neil guffaw and if Neil deserves something after these last months is to laugh freely. Arranges himself down next to him, near the wall with the board full again of Andrewʼs pictures among all the others. Lays there on his back, restless.

Neil took a new picture of him, with him, of them together—of Neil sweetly giving him a peck on his cheek, after Andrew apologised.

“You will be here in the morning,” both question and statement.

A rustle of bedsheets in the dark. “I’d be here with you in the morning even if the world went to shit.”

“I might hit you again,” Andrew warns, tense.

“We’ll be fine,” Neil says, certain, “come what may. Yes or no?”

One answer.

Against all odds, Andrew believes him. “Yes.”

No dream is dreamed that night.

x

They do not avoid each other. Correction: Andrew is not avoided by Neil like radioactive waste. BEWARE!

And isn’t that the biggest surprise of the century? Andrew dislikes surprises.

He skips school for the rest of the week, driving the GS to Columbia and to Edenʼs. The night that Andrew returns to campus Neil goes up to the rooftop of the Tower and finds the door open with its UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY sign and Andrew already sitting on the edge, smoking and contemplating the distance between up and down—the exact number of feet it would take him to fall and become a human pancake.

For some reason Neil brings with him a package of gummy worms but no jacket.

A week of complete radio silence has passed between the two. The longest period they have been incommunicado or apart even since before they started dating during Neil’s high school junior year and Andrew’s senior.

Upon seeing him about to take another drag on his cigarette Andrew freezes, for a microsecond, cigarette in mid-air. It doesn’t take him long to compose himself—every line on his body tense and with its fangs exposed. He debates leaving without saying anything or telling Neil that he’s not so in the mood for revenge in the form of psychological torture or even ignoring him like Neil ignored Andrew at that fateful lunch seven days ago.

What stumbles out of his mouth apathetically, however, is a curt, “Are you lost.”

Neil rolls his eyes. He comes over and sits cross-legged at a safe distance from Andrew, dark green cargo pants and his gray BAD FOR EDUCATION t-shirt too baggy on his figure since Neil is lean and a fan of wearing tops three sizes too big even though he doesn’t particularly hate his small tits or feels bad for keeping them or for not using binders that hide them properly from prying or prejudiced strangers preferring the simplicity of sports bras.

(“I do not see you ordering Allison to cover up her D cups.”

“That is different.”

“Literally how. Have you played sports or run long distances with a binder?” Neil asked Kevin rhetorically in high school—on his tiptoes and poking Kevin with a finger on the cheek where Kevin tattooed himself a Kiri Tuhi in black jet-ink, a chess piece of all things, for his most recent birthday in a boy-to-man rite. Wymack had wept with pride. Kevin kept insisting that Neil’s breasts were a distraction on the field and Neil had to cover them if he was going to continue sneaking into the Foxesʼ practice despite the fact that they weren’t really big, A-cup sized. “It hurts less to be shot.”

“It’s scandalous,” Kevin had shouted in protest—his face and ears pink, bisexuality a disaster. “Aren’t you ashamed?”)

“No,” Neil says now, annoyed but not resentful, “I’m right where I want to be,” and proceeds to chew on one of the gummy worms, wincing occasionally at its sweetness. As if everything was normal between them, as if commenting on that kind of thing didn’t inspire Andrew to want to slice Neil’s skin open and ask for his hand in marriage.

Of course Neil is not going to be normal and avoid his ex like anyone else would normally do. Of course he must challenge the notions of the world that were imposed on Andrew by everyone else on here as in everything else.

He thinks about strangling the life out of him. All it would take is five minutes. Compress the carotid arteries or trachea or both. Tear the cartilage of the larynx and give birth to a hemorrhage. Those kinds of thoughts are not new—especially concerning Neil—but Andrew’s self-disgust is. Andrew dismisses the idea in less time than it takes Nicky to put Juanes on the radio. He tucks his knee under his chin. Boils privately.

“How was your dick sucking?” Neil asks, straightforward. “Had any fun?”

In another life Andrew possesses a sense of shame and chokes to death while taking another drag on his cigarette.

No such luck in this one.

Is he dead? Andrew would know if he had died. Probably. Fifty-fifty that Maybe-Neil is a visual auditory hallucination, though.

Off with his head.

Renee can always sew it back with yarn.

“No. Average,” Andrew answers truthfully since he’s not in the habit of lying to Neil. In general. And since their question game is tit by tat—“My turn, baby blue. Are you an hallucination?”

Maybe-Neil looks amused and nonplussed and saddened in equal measures, his lips pursed.

The pet name was a slip. It was.

“What if I was one of your hallucinations? What would you do?”

Give you the moon and fuse my skin with your skin and never let you go.

“Push you off the roof,” Andrew lies, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.

“Sorry to disappoint, then,” Definitively-Neil says, insincere. “I am as real as they come. But hey, you can always kill me in your sleep.”

An awkward pause.

Andrew looks away. He bites into his cigarette, imagining it’s Neil’s mouth. Or maybe his earlobe. Or maybe one of his nipples. Or perhaps his inner thighs.

“Do not bet on it. You will lose.”

Neil’s gaze is heavy on him, on his profile. Thrown off his game despite his best efforts Andrew shakes his ashtray on the floor. Changes the subject. “Should I expect Danielle and Matthew to challenge me to a duel first thing tomorrow morning to protect your virtue?”

“That’s two questions. And no,” Neil grimaces. “You’d kick their asses, and Renee would have to step in and kick your ass, and then we’d have three broken asses and Kevin would throw a tantrum about the lack of players in your next game against the Jackals, and none of us would want that. Better to keep the Queen pleased. He is fragile.”

It makes sense—and Neil is an obsessive sportsmanship freak and defender of Kevins, but.

“Gordon then.”

Neil scratches the cuticle of his fingernails. A crack in his mask. “Nuh bady,” he corrects Andrew, and more reluctantly, “I asked them not to give you shit about the cafeteria fiasco.”

It’s the slamming on the brakes ruining a winning streak in a car race. Andrew is less than a second away from spitting on Neil. He decides against it and settles for throwing his still-lit cigarette down a nine-story drop, you know—maturely. Like an adult.

He clarifies, his voice a sickle, “You asked.”

“Right after you left that day.”

“And they listened.”

Neil lifts his chin, defensively. “Is that so hard to believe?”

No. Yes. Maybe. No.

In the wilderness foxes are a solitary species but the Foxes missed that memo by choosing each other despite all their disagreements.

The mere implication gives him a migraine.

This was not supposed to happen. Neil, here, seeking him on purpose, yes, and his more or less friendly conversation, not so hostile—and how Andrew has Neil covering his back, even now—

“Don’t,” Andrew growls. “Are you even real, Abram? I break your heart and what do you do. You ask your friends not to give me shit about it. A little more weight on your righteous spine and you will roll downhill.”

Neil’s anger is palpable. Bigger than in the cafeteria incident but smaller than in his living room’s dorm last Friday. Andrew still hasn’t gotten used to being on the receiving end of that anger.

He almost certainly never will.

“Fuck you. First of all, they are your friends too. And second, just because you got bored of sticking your dick into my pussy doesn’t mean we should become complete strangers.”

You never bore me Andrew wants to say, and doesn’t.

“I never managed to stick my dick into your pussy,” he deflects. Not for lack of trying. Andrew wasn’t ready. His dick failed to perform eight out of ten times. “Whatever you are looking for I will not give it you and you will not find it in me either.”

Neil glares at him. “Mi kno dat.”

“So what,” he scoffs, flatly. Ignoring the percussions of his own heart. “Why come here at all,” Andrew presses on, spitefully.

It must be the last straw in a queue of last straws.

Before Andrew can blink or react Neil has loosened the leash of his own temper, perhaps by mistake, and shouts, standing up, “Because I do not want to lose you!”

The declaration hits the air out of Andrew.

Violently. Repeatedly.

There is this brief quiet moment in which they do nothing but observe each other. Neil looks embarrassed and Andrew’s blood goes on a roller coaster, with a ticket for one.

“I— It’s not—” Neil trails off. Crosses his arms self-consciously, almost hugging himself. He hovers around, clumsily. Clutching the package of gummy worms to his chest. “I do not want to lose you,” he repeats, in a whisper. “That is all. Not just like— you had your reasons for breaking up with me, and I understand. I do. Or I donʼt. I’m not going to try to— I was angry when it happened, but— You’re my best friend in the world. My partner in crime. The person I can tell anything to without fear of being judged. Who I feel most comfortable in my skin with. I can’t lose that. Lose that part of you. Of us. I don’t care if it’s selfish of me. I just cannot. It’d kill me, Andrew— I can live without your dick and balls but not without you. Do you understand that?”

Andrew can barely breathe. He stands up too in deliberate slowness. Ignoring the vertigo and the height and the cold wind of the night scratching them like a spoiled cat. Moving towards Neil, this human impossibility. His common sense turned off, his instincts on high alert, his lungs coughing up nicotine and screamo.

A tree writhes in a butō choreography in the distance. Rooting itself to the earth. Descending to its roots. It advises him: Get away from him. Stay away from him. Get away—

But Andrew is not listening.

A week and a subpar blowjob later, and a weekend swimming in beer, and a black eye in new hideous yellowish green, and Neil’s cheeks are just as soft as they always are when cupped by Andrew’s hands once more to tip his face forward towards his own, those three inches of difference.

Andrew whispers, “Yes,” gazing intently at Neil, and he swings himself, and kisses him.

x

(Neil lost his first kiss to Kevin while playing spin-the-bottle at a party organized by the Foxes to celebrate the end of their exams—already assimilated into the group despite being the youngest and last to join.

Everyone was doing it. It. The Kissing, naturally. Possessed by terrible teenage hormones and the ghost of whoring in the form of David Bowie. Andrew himself did quite a bit of kissing at that time. He shared his first willing kiss with Renee two springs before, and felt nothing, and then kissed Jim from algebra in the school hallways, and felt—too much, most of it bad. And then he kissed another boy, and another, and another. And the residue of bad-dirty-wrong that Andrew felt because of Drake and those who came before him began to—not disappear, but be overshadowed by the good-nice-right. The stain that you wash off your clothes with bleach.

It helped a lot that Nicky was making out with his white European boyfriend in almost every classroom as a big fuck you to his conservative parents and wearing his pink glittered I️ ❤ JESUS short-sleeved shirt.

“If God did not want men to love other men then why did He make them so beautiful?” Nicky bawled.

Wise words.

By the time the party happened Andrew was doing more than French kissing other boys and harbored a crush on Neil of the size of Saturn. And there was Neil still, around his orbit, or maybe Andrew was the one orbiting Neil. First uninterested in any other homo sapiens and then—not uninterested, but solely with Andrew. Neil was not as subtle as he thought.

Standing in the same corner as Andrew and nervously playing with an apple and tugging at one of his bracelets Neil told him, “Allison is organizing a game of spin the bottle with one of her old perfume bottles. Uh, Velvet Orchid?”

Andrew barely blinked. He sipped at his soda can.

“Good for her.”

“I’m joining in,” Neil continued, leaving Andrew mute. And he waited. And waited. Looking expectantly at Andrew like, what are you going to do about it, you short doofus?

Andrew didn’t do a fucking thing. Not at the beginning. He managed to unstick his mouth enough to parrot, as if robotically, “Good for you.”

Throwing his half-empty soda can into the sink to his left.

Neil had furrowed his eyebrows. Waited some more. He ate the apple in three large bites. Answered, obviously disappointed, “Okay.”

The thing was that the years went by and Andrew’s crush on Neil didn’t magically disappear, not since he had seen him in the schoolyard with an armor and a sword against the dragon that was Riko. It just solidified more and more, in fact. It was a beast of yearning, and not exclusively sexual. At this point Andrew was tired of cutting down pine trees with so much secret pining that he carried out, the electric chainsaw was not enough, not without batteries, and what did he have to lose? Besides Neil’s friendship. Besides Neil himself.

Oh, that was quite to lose. Alright.

And then—

The Foxes formed a circle on the carpeted floor of the living room of the Columbia house and Andrew remained seated where he was, over the kitchen counter. He opened a new soda can. Drank it all. And then opened a big bag of spicy Doritos. Breaking each Dorito into meticulous tiny pieces of five.

The rules were simple enough: you spun the bottle and kissed whoever it pointed to and that someone spun the bottle again and kissed someone else.

The perfume bottle was spun.

Seth kissed Dan. And Dan kissed Aaron. And Aaron turned into a metaphorical lobster and quit the game—I have a one-year plan to date Katelyn Mackenzi you guys, fuck off! And Dan snickered and kissed Allison. And Allison kissed Matt. And Matt kissed Kevin.

And then—

Kevin, already wasted from fraternizing all afternoon with the waiwaihā he drank from Wymack’s shelves, spun the bottle. And the bottle pointed at Neil, ominous. Soon Kevin was sucking his face drunkenly before falling face first onto the carpet and snoring loudly. Poof! First kiss: unlocked. Neil had touched his plump lips, expression thoughtful. His frown these symmetrical parallel lines. Not what he expected? Andrew not dared to hope.

The party continued partying. Andrew finished the big bag of spicy Doritos and opened and ate a new one, cursing his cowardice and Kevin-I don’t have a midday name-Day’s big mouth. It didn’t matter that Andrew was loyal to Kevin to a fault or that Kevin was one of the boys that Andrew himself had also hypocritically kissed months before.

Stunned, Kevin had asked, “What about Neil?” and at the crack of Andrew’s knuckles—what about him—more nervous, “I mean, whoʼs Neil? I mean. Fuck. Forget it. Why me?”

What Andrew had told Kevin was, verbatim, “You are attractive if I ignore your entire personality and your height.”

Kevin, with his respective simultaneous pining on both Theodora Muldani and the French exchange student Jean Moreau, surprisingly ended up accepting.

“I am very handsome,” he had sniffed.

And then—

The Foxes fell asleep one by one, in their sleeping bags, as the night progressed. They had moved the furniture in the living room to make room, and Neil was dancing alone in the middle with the stereo on the lowest volume playing a The Black Eyed Peasʼ CD. Moving his hips from side to side, his neck inviting, both arms in the air. The rhythm was in his blood, inherited from the defunct Nathan Wesninski and from Mary and who knew how many more fraternal and maternal ancestors. Mary had given him permission to stay the night with them—Stuart had persuaded her, as usual. That was why Neil was dancing so late. That was why Stuart hadn’t driven his classic Camaro from Palmetto to pick Neil up. That was why Neil was going to sleep two feet away from Andrew.

And Neil’s dance had nothing particularly provocative about it but Andrew had moved before he knew it, as if hypnotized. Placing one hand on Neil’s belly and the other on the back of his neck. Neil’s breath had caught and without thinking Andrew eliminated any distance between their mouths.

Neil gifted Andrew his second kiss, that same night, no awake witnesses and no spectacle.

It wasn’t sucking-face, like with Kevin. It was far more romantic, and hesitant, and very much hungry. Both feet on the ground, flying high. Feeling invincible. Neil didn’t know how to kiss well. Andrew wondered what the chances were of a paper plane crashing here, no survivors left. Imaginary vanilla ice cream melting on their tongues and Andrew’s tongue longing to make a home in Neil’s throat, and suffocate him.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Andrew said, pulling away. Not without Neil’s explicit consent. His lips were sore. They tasted of soil, they tasted of Them. His breath stank of spicy Doritos and Andrew wanted to vomit.

But then. Then Neil didn’t push Andrew away to stop him or try to break contact. Didn’t show displeasure. He had leaned forward, reciprocating in silent permission. Neil stared at Andrew awestruck and with his fists hanging at his sides. And it was supposed to be a single kiss, tonsil hockey, something Andrew was not allowed to have and that should not have had happened in first place or ever be repeated again because guys like Neil didn’t pick guys like Andrew and then—

Then—

Neil stayed close. He planted a hundred seeds in a circle around the two of them and became sun and water.

“Finally,” Neil had sighed, dreamily. “Do it again?”)

x

The bathroom mirror is replaced with a new one.

x

“If life isn’t good to you at least you should be, to yourself,” Nicky reproaches him, fruitlessly and tiredly. Andrew has lost count of how many times he has heard that sermon. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to be happy?”

It’s easy for Nicky to say. Or not.

Despite his predisposition to be naturally joyful Nicky tends to overcompensate in the presence of him and Aaron. Post-Catholic Stress Disorder. Worry not Nicholas, Andrew thinks. Jesus does love you, contrary to your excuse as a father and mother. He who is a sodomite should cast the first stone, or whatever the Bible says. Don’t look at me like that, Renee.

Nicky has been his legal guardian for practically a decade and his blood cousin for more, and Andrew wouldn’t say he likes Nicky or understands him, but Nicky is one of his own either way, and Andrew would be willing to commit first grade murder for him, he almost did, and not because they share DNA. It’s pretty simple. That Andrew respects certain things about Nicky—how he is openly gay and takes pride in it, how his heart loves who he loves without any shame, how he keeps trying with Aaron and Andrew even though they are both jerks and never tell him in so many words how grateful they are for him, for giving them a roof and a family.

None of that makes this sermon any less bothersome. Andrew has it stuck in his brain, an used chewed gum—along with Neil’s misery in high definition at the moment Andrew stabbed their this and left it dying at his feet, along with Neil’s vulnerability in offering him the option of nothing if Andrew preferred it because nothing was better than Nothing, along with Neil’s peace with which he exists at Andrew’s side, along with Neil’s patience to navigate Andrew’s Terrible Days, along with Neil’s trust to spend his own Terrible Days in Andrew’s sole company instead of another, along with the contentment with which Neil sleeps with him whenever Andrew feels like it and that is absent every morning when he wakes up alone—I had to feed my cat, Neil excused himself the only morning Andrew inquired about his whereabouts. You do not have a cat, Andrew had said. It’s a Tamagotchi, Andrew. That’s Pi 3.141592, the Tamagotchi cat. I can’t let her die.

Does Andrew want to be happy? Does it matter? Is it not enough to breathe every morning and not have it be a chore and to be alive and to make an effort to attend weekly therapy and take his prescribed medicine like a good boy and feel vertigo with heights and trees?

“Happiness is a box of chocolates,” Andrew flatly says to no one in particular, touching his armbands, the self-inflicted scars buried beneath the black fabric. Happiness is Neil. “And I? I am the Slasher of Worlds and Chocolates and Happiness. Three cheers for that.”

x

Neil swallows. “What happened to not wanting anything?”

That’s a fair question.

“As you’ve always said you are nothing,” Andrew unkindly points out.

“Andrew,” it comes out as admonishment.

Andrew sits cross-legged in the center of the bed and gives Neil’s hem an insistent tug. After fifteen grueling seconds in which Neil is motionless and Andrew is sure he’s made the wrong call Neil takes a seat next to him on the edge of the bed.

It’s not much, but.

He clenches his jaw. Twists the Rubik’s cube of his vocabulary, forming sentences, each word a different color that must be in a specific order to work.

Until he solves all the sides of the cube.

Until he fixes it.

“I fucked up,” Andrew grits out, his gaze fixed on the floor. Easier to do. Easier to say, “with us. When I broke up with you that was me intentionally fucking up. And I lied too. A good-for-nothing lie. But you already know this.”

“I know what you tell me,” Neil answers.

Because Neil takes Andrew’s word at face value. Because Neil isn’t going to doubt Andrew even though Andrew is just another kind of liar for his own entertainment and his actions contradict his words more often than not.

Believe me on this, he wills.

“I have not gotten bored of you,” Andrew says, still not finished. And he turns to look at Neil, steeling himself with courage—bravery in every metal plate on his armor—finding Neil’s eyes already on him. Very attentive and humid, melted poles. It’s the encouragement that Andrew requires. “You know this too.”

“I had a hunch,” Neil confirms.

Hopeful.

“I want you to stay,” Andrew repeats hoarsely. His throat a honeycomb of bees, emphasizing the I-W-A-N-T, “with me. The world is not as interesting when you are not around.”

Neil stops breathing altogether. He makes some incredulous noise. As if he were going to start speaking. As if he were going to arise.

But Andrew persists, possessed. Releasing the hem of the sweater only to painfully anchor his hand to the back of Neil’s neck in a vice grip, facing him head on.

“I want,” he says, changing neither his tone nor his expression, stone-faced, stone-voiced, “you to stay and sleep next to me all nights. For your stupid, lovely face to be the first thing I see in the mornings. I want you to wake up with my arm tucked under your pillow. To kiss you with bad breath. I want us to not kiss anyone else in our miserable lives except each other. Nor for each other to fuck with any other boring people. I want us to have breakfast together every day. And to peel oranges for you.”

Neil sounds soft when whispering, “You already peel oranges for me.”

“And I want. I want to not feel like a piece of shit when I hurt you. And I have hurt you. And it is very possible that I will hurt you again. And I do not want that. If a sword pierces its own knight what is its purpose as a failure of a sword.”

Neil frowns. “You are not a sword.”

“I am a knife,” Andrew mends casually, “and you are not listening,” he is. Neil always listens to him. “Sush, now. The adults are talking,” despite this Andrew contradicts himself and falls silent. More Rubik’s cubes to solve.

Extremely patient, Neil waits.

Remember the forests. Remember the 樹海, the Jukai, the Sea of Trees. Remember—

“This is about my black eye,” Neil deciphers. “Isn’t it?”

Andrew puts more pressure on his nape. “A grave mistake for a grave boy.”

“I told you—”

“And I told you to listen. Neil. NeilNeilNeil. Abram. Pipe dream of my life. Hey. Can you listen?” Neil nods and bites his mouth to shut himself up. Distracting. “Beds are safe for me only because of you,” Andrew manages to confess with great effort. “And what have I given you in return, hm? A black eye. An unsafe bed. I made that bed. I made it unsafe. I did it, Neil. For us. For you. It was like being like them. I have not feared anything since Drake Spear died when I was thirteen and yet I feared. I feared that you would leave. That you would not leave. That you would forgive me the unforgivable without any limits and reward to your own well-being. You didn’t even expect an apology. So I pushed you away before you could think of pushing me. And I hated myself. And I hated you for not hating me. And I hated Danielle and Matthew for taking up your time and your bed, and I hated Roland, and all those nameless guys who would never ever be Neil Josten and that I didn’t let touch me, not even a single strand of my hair. Which brings us to this precise moment, one of my most pretentious and visceral monologues in which I must spell you out what I want, for what I want is you. To have you and for you to have me back if you are still willing. And if you do— I will do better Abram. With us, with our this that it is a this. I swear on you. Because when I look at you you are already looking at me. And to be seen by you is such a terrible and wonderful feeling that I would not trade for anything else. Even if I unintentionally give you black eyes and my emotion regulation is very much irregular and you can never touch me in total freedom. Even if you are better off marrying Danielle and Matthew and adopting an iguana with them.”

And there.

All those therapy sessions do do wonders, Bee. Though maybe too little, maybe too late. This is why we canʼt have nice things.

Twenty-six seconds.

Neil clears his throat, rubs clumsily his watery eyes. His gaze still the bluest blue it has ever blued.

“Why an iguana?” he asks in the stillness of the room.

Andrew is exasperated. “Neil.”

“Did I ever told you that Mumz sometimes gets confused and yells at me?” Neil straightens his back, not breaking Andrew’s grip on his nape. He settles down on the bed, also kneeling at the center. Andrew is unmoored. “Afta wah Nathan did at har... They’re awful yells. Really hurtful and cruel stuff. Mumz always regrets them when she regains her consciousness. She hugs me as if she wants to put me back into her womb. I don’t care what she yells at me on those occasions. Mumz was the first one to see me and treat me as a boy. She gave me Abram. Saved my life. And Unkle Stuart. He accidentally uses my dead name sometimes. It’s an unintentional slip. Not even when he’s mad at me he calls me that name, he could just be asking me for the TV remote and go all mannerly, “Nathania, wudda yuh be suh kind as tuh han mi di zipper?” and then he realizes and corrects himself immediately, chastised on his own. And I don’t care about that either. Unkle Stuart was the first one to give Mumz and I a real home. The first adult man I had nothing to fear about. He took my side against our high schoolʼs teachers staff every time they were offended by the way I dress and look. And yuh!” Neil says, strangely breathless. “You are amazing.”

“Neil.”

“I know you don’t believe it but you are. And you gave me a black eye. So what? You have given me far more important things. You’ve given me the best years of my life, Andrew. A group of friends I would die for. And honesty. And keys. And trust. And kisses. And orgasms. Thousands of orgasms.”

“Neil,” two heated syllables.

“Dan and Matt give me orgasms and kisses too.”

“Stop saying the word orgasm,” Andrew growls, overwhelmed. “I’d rather play lacrosse all day than hear about the sexcapades of Wilds & Boyds and Associates.”

“They’re both very good at sex,” Neil admits lightly.

“Fantastic. Do they want greeting cards. If so, at what available time.”

“You’re also very good at sex,” Neil adds, more playful. “Well. At first you sucked but. You quickly caught on to my anatomy after googling some tutorials.”

“We do not talk about young Andrew discovering the existence of the clitoris on Internet forums.”

Neil smiles a little. “Mi guess nuh,” and gets more serious. He bumps his forehead against Andrew’s forehead. His own hands balled on his knees. Staring in blue. “I don’t love you for your ability to make me squirt, though. I don’t love either Dan or Matt that way because of how nicely they fuck me neither. Or because they let me touch them everywhere all the time. If you think that your endless boundaries when fucking irritate me or make me love you less you are solely mistaken. I love you because youʼre you and I like who you are. How you try your hardest to give a damn. And I do look at you, Andrew Joseph Minyard. How could I not? I know that for you apologies are less than useless. That’s why I didn’t expect you to offer me one that morning. And because it was an accident, and you did not mean it. Like with Mumz and Unkle Stuart. If you had enjoyed inflicting pain on me at any point between now and then, believe me, we would not be having this conversation. That is the reason. I can recognize a hurt that hurts itself when hurting another from a hurt that purposely seeks to hurt others for fun. There was nothing to forgive you then.”

Andrew is a mess of a human being. “And now,” he asks coarsely.

“And now,” Neil’s high tide is on fire and his face is getting closer. Neil carefully sits on Andrew’s lap, and Andrew welcomes him. Digging his thumbs into his hips. “Now I forgive you for breaking both of our hearts. If you want me, you get me. Remember? I won’t trust any knife but I trust you. I trust that when you hurt me it will be within reason. And Iʼll always love you back. So be a knife and be yourself. And watch how I stay with you because you are loved by me and I am loved by you— for I am in love with your edges and your apathy and everything less than pleasant not despite it. Not everything in you is bad, regardless. I see it. I see you. And we take good care of each other. Nothing could scare me away into abandoning you, Andrew. Not even yourself. I am happy following your coordinates with a marker. I am happy being with you. And I think you are happy as well. So. Apology accepted. And if you donʼt mind it I would really like you to kiss me now like this was a fight with our lives on the line. Because Iʼve missed you tons too.”

And then and then.

His heart stays right with him, on his own heart.

x

It is winter. December’s last week.

Andrew heads to the nearest park on campus carrying a switchblade on his right pocket, a gift courtesy of Renee—who disapproves of violence but approves of Andrew.

“I trust you will give it the use it deserves,” she sunnily tells him.

And Andrew feels the weight of this bow-wrapped knife in his hand, a weapon holding another weapon, and asks her rather dryly, “Do you mean to stab the hearts of my enemies? Tsk. Tsk. I thought you did not want to go to hell, Joan.”

But Renee isn’t offended. Her teeth are sacred ostia from Sunday Mass when she smiles at him. Bright and genuine. A smile to the beat of Otis Redding’s: oh she may be weary / them young girls they do get worn / but when she gets weary / try a little tenderness, yeah, yeah. Renee pretends to mull it over backwards and forwards, her fingernails polished in pastel pink.

“Hmm,” she says. “No, not really. I’ve heard it is quite unpleasant around this time of year. Like I said, I trust you. It has a very pretty blade, does it not?”

In addition to his new switchblade Andrew brings with him more emotional baggage than a hundred airports.

He carves into a tree the initials A+N in pronounced, huge letters inside a heart. So that they last. So that the world knows that they were here. He is without fear. Andrew admires his handiwork. Kicks the trunk. Keeps walking.

x

And when the sun shines—

x

It ends with a smile. Neil’s smile, to be exact.

That, and ten bouquets of flowers in another giant bouquet. Red tulips and red roses. Many of them. Lots.

Andrew thinks of Antoine de Saint-Exupery once writing: it is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. And he agrees, though not in reference to some literal rose. The Foxes’ stupor is brief. Most of them hold their respective breaths in trepidation.

With the tact of a brick Seth asks, “What’s with the flowers, you little punk?” at lunch break.

Neil is sitting next to Andrew—zero personal space between one another, one of Andrew’s black leather jackets keeping him extra warm. Their hands tangled above the table for anyone to see.

“The wedding is on Wednesday,” Neil lies, grinning. And then the truth, “Andrew gifted them to me. Aren’t they so cute and manly, Seth?”

Seth curses. “Fuck me! That stupid ass bet—”

Only to be interrupted by Andrew right away.

“No thanks,” he deadpans. “From now on I only fuck my boyfriend,” another bombshell.

“Oh shit,” several Foxes say out loud.

And holler.

“Ha! Pay me up, bitches!” Allison exclaims. “What happened? Details, Neilio, details! How, why, when, what! For the legitimacy of each bet.”

“Congratulations. I wish you both nothing but prosperity. Nine words,” Renee murmurs rather proudly through all the noise on Andrew’s other side. Andrew wants to kick her. He squeezes Neil’s hand tighter instead. They woke up together, way earlier that morning. No black eye in sight. A dreamless safe sleep. No empty bed. And Neil had said to him, teasing, “Gud mawnin, boyfriend.” And Andrew had climbed on top of Neil and squished his cheeks like a fish and looked and looked and looked.

And breathed.

And felt.

And got him his fucking flowers.

Because happiness is Neil is them is theirs—

x

All around him the trees grow and glow.