Archive of Our Own

When Andrew signs to the Nashville Wildcats, at the end of his senior year and Neil’s junior year, he takes his signing bonus and buys, outright, a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment on the sixth floor of a high-rise, with its own private balcony and an attached parking garage. He and Neil both have no interest in spending time at Ikea or Walmart or wherever the fuck in order to decorate it, so he sends Nicky and Erik shopping with his card and a warning that if they bought anything ridiculously tacky or obnoxious that he’d report them to his bank for identity theft.

Whether it was the threat, the effects of age, marriage, and a college degree on Nicky’s maturity and taste, or just genuine willingness to be helpful, Andrew eventually returns to an apartment done up with moody greens and blues, tasteful teak furniture, a very comfortable couch complete with near-replicas of their dorm beanbags, and a well-outfitted kitchen and linen closet. The only signs of Nicky’s forceful presence are a bright orange Foxes blanket folded up at the foot of the main bed that Neil unfortunately loves, a variety pack of rainbow boxers in size XS in the closet, and an apron that says ‘Kiss me, I’m a goalie.’ (Andrew suspects Erik acted as a tempering force and therefore sends their joint bank account a couple thousand in appreciation of his heroic efforts.)

Neil helps Andrew move all his shit in on a hot day at the end of June, the clothes and products and general milieu that Andrew had somehow accumulated in college and in the Columbia house. At the end of the day they open the balcony doors and lay with their feet indoors and their heads facing the sky, Neil in a thin tank top that somehow exists in three-dimensional form despite lacking any fabric beneath the armpits, Andrew bare-chested and sans armbands. They pass a cigarette back and forth, though it spends more time in Andrew’s custody than Neil’s, and drink icy glasses of orange juice.

Neil says, “So, you’ve got your own place now.”

Andrew, having generally made it his mission to boycott stupidity and redundancy, says nothing.

“Three bedrooms.” Neil says. “Planning on hosting two separate guests at once?”

Neil’s idiocy knows no bounds. “What,” Andrew says, “you’re entertaining guests in your bedroom, now?”

In retrospect, Andrew acknowledges the following:

that he had not expressed to Neil that yes, he did think Neil will be offered a contract by the Wildcats;

yes, he wouldn’t entirely despise it if they did live together;

and yes, he did plan out this apartment for the both of them, one with separate bedrooms so they can each have a place to a) store their shit and b) sleep alone on bad nights.

Whatever. Pretty easy to guess, if you ask him.

“What,” Neil says, sitting up and whacking his elbow on the glass door. “Ow. Andrew. You bought us an apartment?”

“I asked if you wanted to decorate it.”

“I thought that was just because you hate Ikea.”

Andrew does hate Ikea. Though he hasn’t looked at his card yet and he has a sneaking suspicion Nicky avoided Ikea in pursuit of pricier pastures.

Neil stares at him, eyebrows all burrowed up and mouth slightly open. Andrew takes a drag from the cigarette.

“There’s no guarantee the Wildcats will sign me.”

Andrew exhales a cloud of smoke. “They’d be stupid not to. Besides, the coach said they’d match any offer.”

“There’s no guarantee the Moriyamas will let me,” Neil responds, quieting his voice on the m-word.

Andrew stubs the cigarette out into the ashtray made of a warped Exy ball (likely Erik’s find, and one he quite likes, since Neil winces every time he looks at it), and says, “Then I sell the apartment and buy a new one wherever you sign, dumbass.”

This is as good as a marriage proposal coming from him. Both Andrew and Neil know it.

Neil blinks and then grins. He lays back down, lights up another cigarette, and, after a moment of contemplative silence, says, “So, if the second bedroom is mine, I can paint it whatever color I want, right?”

*

A few weeks after Andrew had bought the apartment, he and Neil had thrown a housewarming party. More accurately, Nicky, having never kept gossip to himself ever in his entire life, informed the rest of the Foxes that Neil and Andrew had their own place in Nashville, and within a week, everyone had bought flights. Someone had mentioned booking a hotel, but Neil had told them not to bother, and so suddenly the apartment was filled with nearly a dozen bodies, all the original Foxes and Robin.

Andrew had considered booking a hotel room for himself, but then watched Neil bite his nails while choosing extra pillows for the spare bedroom and couch, and quietly resigned himself to the awful reality of a Fox-filled weekend.

Neil and Robin drove in from Palmetto together on Thursday and made it to the apartment at 2 am. Robin had clearly just woken up from a long nap in the car, half-coherent and with creases on her face, and stumbled off to the guest bedroom. But Neil was alight with some unholy combination of gas station energy drinks, post-finals adrenaline, and long-distance ennui, and sidled up to Andrew without any self-consciousness about his greasy road trip grime, and they waited just long enough for Robin’s door to lock before kissing in the dark kitchen, then made their way to Andrew’s room, and Neil was so goddamn wired that they alternated between handjobs and making out and fucking wrestling for hours, and they didn’t manage to fall asleep until the sun was about to rise, but it didn’t matter, the rest of the team didn’t arrive until Friday evening anyway, and when they woke up Robin was watching old Vampire Diaries episodes in their living room, and they all went to Whole Foods together for groceries, and dicked around all weekend, drinking and eating and hiking and laying about. 

And Andrew hates to admit it, but he didn’t mind the whole thing much at all, not even when the rest of the Foxes arrived and the decibel levels exponentially rose, not when Neil looked like that, relaxed and content, even if he looked surprised to be relaxed and content at all.

*

The first time they’d had penetrative sex, Neil had, predictably, bottomed.

Before, they’d fooled around, had experimented with Andrew sliding a generously lubed finger or two or three into Neil, had long been muddling about with handjobs and blowjobs and mutual masturbation and even, memorably, rimming, which had resulted in Neil laughing uncontrollably for ten minutes, and then moaning, a change in attitude that Andrew prided himself on.

And they’d talked about it, and agreed that they wanted to try it, and Andrew talked to Bee about it for several sessions in a row, and Neil sent Andrew links to chocolate-flavored lube and exy-themed sex toys. And so, on an intensely humid August day, on one of Neil’s weekend trips away from Palmetto to visit Andrew in Nashville, they had made their way, kissing, from the kitchen into Andrew’s bedroom, where they always slept when Neil was over.

Andrew had sucked Neil off first. Neil was squirmy and hyperresponsive as usual, running his hands gently through Andrew’s hair, scrabbling for the bedsheets, watching Andrew swallow down his cock. And then Neil came, and Andrew sat back and wiped his mouth and drank some water, and then it was time.

Both of them were nervous. Neil laid on his back, legs bent up, and Andrew had stretched him open slowly, practically tenderly. Andrew’s hands were so covered in lube it was like a goddamn slip-n-slide. Neil had let out small, pleased breaths, a little quieter than normal. Andrew had asked, “Yes or no?” and Neil had said, “Yes, Andrew, it feels good. You’re not hurting me. Keep going,” and so Andrew had, teasing Neil open, and Neil had been biting his own lip, and when Andrew asked, he’d said, “I’m concentrating, ‘drew, it’s okay,” and so Andrew had thought it was okay, and eventually, Andrew had sluggishly pushed inside, and Neil had gasped—not a good gasp. Like he was breathing through a too-small tube—and Neil had gasped out, “I’m sorry.”

Neil had clamped his hand over his mouth and Andrew had said, in the most even voice he could manage, “Neil, I’m going to pull out now,” and Neil moved his hands up to cover his entire face and began to say, sputtering, “I’m, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s not you, I, it’s, I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and Andrew had fought off the urge to leave the room, jump out a window, cut himself, shout, leave, leave, leave, and he had remembered all the things he talked with Bee about, and he had said, “Neil, what do you need?” and although he was fully expecting Neil to tell him to go fuck himself, Neil had paused in his raspy apologies and said, “I, can you, it’s, it’s okay if it’s a no, can you, can you hold me?”

Andrew had said yes, and Neil had instantly buried his face into Andrew’s collarbone, and though Neil never shed a tear Andrew could feel the choked-up rhythm of his breathing, even as Neil continued near-whispering sorry, sorry, sorry.

When Neil had calmed down, Andrew had said, through gritted teeth, “Did I hurt you?” and Neil had said, “No.” and Andrew had said, “Then what happened, Neil?” and Neil had said, “I, I don’t know. It felt good and then… I was just so vulnerable. It scared me.”

*

Neil graduates from PSU on a bright Friday at the end of May. Nearly all of the original Foxes are able to make it, with the exception of Kevin, who has an unavoidable game that weekend but promises to celebrate the weekend after. His absence dims the celebration slightly but exponentially decreases the amount of alcohol consumed.

Neil staunchly refuses the university-wide commencement ceremony, but Allison manages to persuade him to go to the College of Science ceremony, where he walks across the stage with the announcement of, “Neil Josten, Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics.” He walks like he’s approaching a funeral. He has absolutely no positive emotion on his face. He refuses to shake the Dean or whatever’s hand without his expression changing whatsoever. Dan and Matt boo. Andrew is delighted.

Once Neil is done walking, and sits back down in his seat, he twists around and scans the audience until he sees the team. And once he manages to catch sight of them, he smiles, very small, for just a half second, and then turns back towards the stage.

*

The regular season ends in early December, giving teams a few months off prior to the beginning of playoffs in March. The Wildcats play their last game on December 2nd at home court, securing a win 8-10 against the Hyenas. Neil’s on in the last half but Andrew isn’t, watching from the sides as Neil scrambles about the court in wild pursuit, the flex of his calves, bend of his arms, the racket in his hand. When the buzzer sounds announcing the end of the second half and the Wildcats’ win, Andrew watches the team swarm around each other in the center of the court and allows himself a rare second of exy-related joy. He doesn’t jump up and start screaming like the rest of the lunatics sharing the sideline with him, although he does exchange fist-bumps with an older striker that doesn’t bother him as much as his other teammates. But he watches Neil sling his arm over someone’s shoulder, watches Neil hoist his racket in the air victoriously. He’s grinning furiously. Shouting and laughing. And in the midst of all that celebratory spirit, all the fucking good sportsmanship and athletic cheer, Neil’s eyes slide toward Andrew’s, and, as if this hasn’t happened a thousand times before, Neil mouths we won! with such glee and surprise that Andrew, god help him, rolls his eyes and mouths back we won.

*

This is how the problems start: Andrew’s feet are cold.

It’s not entirely a surprise but it is unusual. First because Neil’s legs aren’t entangled in his own, second because he somehow didn’t hear or feel Neil leave, third because it’s still dark out, the kind of dark that suggests the sun will be missing for a few hours more, far too early for a run, and the apartment seems—eerily quiet.

Andrew doesn’t bother to grab his glasses, just peers around for a fuzzy Neil in the dark corners of their bedroom and, no surprise, comes up empty. Padding out of bed, he heads for the hallway, flicks on the kitchen light, and comes face-to-face with a knife.

Knife, in Neil’s hand, his arm flung forward, stopping just short of touching Andrew’s neck. His eyes are looking at Andrew, but they also aren’t really looking at anything. He isn’t wearing a shirt or armbands, just standing in a pair of boxers, chest heaving.

“Abram.”

Neil’s eyes flick up and down but he doesn’t say anything. Andrew moves his hands, open and flat, in front of his chest and sidles slowly around Neil, who rotates with him.

Okay.

This is a Neil that has existed before, however rarely. A Neil—well, who’s to say, maybe a Nathaniel—who doesn’t quite understand where or when or who he is but is still ready to protect himself however he can. Andrew knows he’s keeping his expression blank, but his heart is pressing against his ribs in an urgent, frantic beat and there’s—a twinge in his chest that he’s learned to name as worry.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to sit down. But I’ll make you a deal. You keep the knife, but if you start getting freaked out, you hand it to me, so I can protect us.”

This strange Neil nods, shoulders tight and eyes wary. Andrew pushes himself up onto the counter and sits, giving Neil several feet of distance from where he stands still on guard in front of the window.

They stay like that for a while.

From the window above the kitchen sink, where the blinds are tugged down in a scraggly half-mast, the skyline is just visible beyond a light frost, lumps of buildings illuminated by the traffic lights below. As the sky begins to lighten towards navy blue, Andrew watches Neil’s eyes, previously jumping from Andrew’s face to dark corners and back, begin to fall. The blue irises disappearing beneath the brush of his eyelashes. Then a jolt and his eyes shoot open again, inventorying the room, before they droop again.

Andrew waits.

Outside, the sky continues brightening. The city bus rumbles as it screeches to a stop outside their building and begins early morning pickups.

A few cycles of drooping pass, Neil looking increasingly more panicked and exhausted with each one, and then he says what Andrew’s been waiting for: “Drew.”

Andrew’s heart fucking leaps. “Abram. It’s okay. Can I see the knife?”

“I can’t…,” he trails off, eyes darting around the room, chest beginning to heave. “I, I don’t, I can’t, you, are you, you won’t, you’re not with my father?”

“No.” Andrew says, trying for soothing and coming out tense and monotone. “I’m not with your father. Your father is dead, remember? Stuart killed him.”

When there’s no further response, Andrew continues, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to protect you.”

And Neil looks suspicious, but he’s overwhelmed and tired, too, and probably, Andrew concedes, at the point where he’d rather give the known enemy a knife than wait any longer for the potentially larger threat to show.

So Neil sets the knife on the counter behind him, then backs away from Andrew, squinting, until he gets to the other side of the kitchen, where he grabs hold of the table and uses it to leverage his slow fall to the floor, upon which he leans his head against a table leg and falls asleep in the span of about twenty seconds.

Andrew takes the knife and hides it in their dish towel drawer. He doesn’t dare move Neil, now that he’s asleep, but instead he stays watching him from his perch on the kitchen counter, watching the sun rise, watching Neil’s chest steadily move up and down.

*

Neil has a physical therapy appointment early the next day. He has them regularly, or at least more regularly than Andrew, by virtue of having survived torture and possessing the resulting fucked up joints.

Normally Neil hates it when Andrew joins him for these appointments. But Andrew watched him wake up this morning, in a fetal position under the table, and saw the clear pain flash across his face as he tried to stretch out his legs, and had decided right at that moment that, short of an atomic bomb, nothing could stop him from accompanying Neil everywhere today, and maybe Neil was aware of that stubborn resolution, or maybe Neil was in enough pain to allow it.

On the way to the appointment, Andrew asks Neil if he remembers the night before. Neil says it’s all fragments and flashes. Andrew doesn’t explain. Neil asks, and asks, and asks. Andrew explains. Neil’s face goes taut and tired.

“I could have killed you,” he says.

Andrew scoffs. “It’s just sleepwalking, o ye of little faith.”

But Neil doesn’t laugh, just tightens his hands on the steering wheel. At the appointment, he doesn’t have a flashback, like Andrew thought he might, but instead just grows more and more slow, moving slow, talking slow. After physical therapy and a few hours working out and watching tape, Neil pensive, distant, they go home and make dinner together in practical silence, even for them.

Over their chicken and rice, Neil says, “I’m going to sleep in my room tonight.”

This is normal, or approximately so. They both have their days, where one or both of them needs a little space. Neil sometimes has nightmares that make him toss and turn. Andrew sometimes can’t stand the way the mattress dips with someone else on it. One of them sometimes has an early morning appointment or a late night obligation. It’s not unusual, is the point, and normally Andrew wouldn’t press.

“Because of the sleepwalking,” Andrew says. He can’t quite keep the disdain out of his voice.

“I would call it the attempted murder, but sure, the sleepwalking.” Neil pokes at a particularly stringy bit of chicken. Such a fucking drama queen.

“You didn’t even nick me.”

“I had a knife to your throat, Andrew.”

“The knife was there first. I invaded its personal space.”

Neil lets his fork clatter to the table and looks up at Andrew. It would be better if he looked angry, Andrew thinks. Instead he just looks tired. With only a mild amount of venom, Neil says, “I know you don’t give a shit what happens to you, but I do. Fuck off.”

So Andrew fucks off and shuts up. Neil scrapes his plate off into the garbage and goes off to brood somewhere else.

The next morning, Andrew wakes up preternaturally early to the smell of cigarette smoke. Neil rarely smokes of his own accord—only when he’s stressed out. When Andrew goes out to join him on the balcony with coffee, Neil looks up at him and sighs.

“Hey, stranger,” Andrew says, pushing Neil’s head back down and scraping his fingers across Neil’s scalp.

Neil huffs a content little breath. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says.

Yeah, Andrew had gathered that.

On a shaky exhale, with his head still craned down, Neil says, “I kept thinking I’d wake up to your body.”

Andrew reaches around Neil’s shoulders, takes the cigarette out of his hand, and brings it to his own lips. Neil lets him. “I’d kill you first.”

Neil leans his head against Andrew’s leg and mumbles, “I’d hope so. What’s all that sparring for if you can’t handle an unconscious assassination attempt.”

“I’ve actually been boxing with zombies while you’re on your runs in preparation for this exact scenario.”

Neil laughs. Andrew scratches little circles into his hair.

It becomes a little less funny the next day, and the next, when Neil’s sleep schedule does not return to normal.

*

The team has regular gym hours even during the off-season. Their regimen is a little more lax, the atmosphere suddenly that of a regular gym, rather than being charged with the jockish jitteriness of game weeks. They scrimmage three times a week and work out daily, but teammates take time off, go on vacation, come back with angry red sunburns from tropical destinations or complaining about the snow in Michigan. Sometimes, when their coaches and physical trainers think they’re being funny, they play Christmas music, or non-denominational holiday bullshit music.

Andrew leans up against the side of a power cage, watching Neil trying to kill himself on the treadmill. Neil’s always acquiesced to the weightlifting requirements of being a pro athlete, both in college and now, even during the off season, but he’s a cardio rat through and through. He’s wearing Nike, a freebie matching set of run shorts and a long-sleeved compression top that he’d gotten as part of some promo the team had done a few months ago. He’s going to need new running shoes soon. He didn’t sleep all night and he’d skipped breakfast. Andrew watches Neil tilt his head back to shoot water into his mouth without changing his pace. 

“Minyard,” one of their trainers, Simone, says, pausing. “Working hard or hardly working?”

Despite his best efforts, Andrew actually likes Simone. She’s six feet tall, a bit caustic and cynical. Right now she’s got a case of electrolyte drinks perched on her hip and an Airpod in her ear.

“I’m practicing guarding the goal,” Andrew says. Without moving, he continues, “I just blocked a shot.”

Simone laughs. She shakes a drink out of the case and leaves it at the base of the cage, before pointing to Neil, whose one-man mission to run the distance between Earth and Mars has not gone unnoticed. “Think I can get him to finish one?”

“No,” Andrew says, honestly. “Unless you have a gun on you.”

She tries anyway, depositing it into the empty cupholder on Neil’s treadmill. He acknowledges her with a nod but doesn’t stop to exchange pleasantries, like he usually might.

On the ride home from the gym, Neil falls asleep. The deep sleep where his eyes move beneath his eyelids. Andrew contemplates driving in circles. But within ten minutes, they come to a stop at a light and Neil wakes up and stares at Andrew.

“What,” Andrew says, turning on his blinker. At the very least he can pick up food and try and get Neil to eat. Try to meet at least one biological need.

“Bad dream,” Neil says, still staring.

“About?”

“I dreamt I…,” and Neil pauses, shakes his head and bites his lip, and says, “... hurt you.”

*

Back in their college days, when they’d just barely begun having sex regularly, Andrew had embarked on a handful of risky solo sexual escapades. It was half for healing, half for harm. He had wanted to piece out what he was okay with before it ever came into the Columbia house or the dorm room. He had also wanted, maybe, to prove to himself that it was fine, he was fine, he was over Drake and Proust and everyone before, and he was the most dangerous thing in any room, and capable of having any kind of sex he wanted, and not hurting anyone while doing it, etc., etc., etc.

Bee had been neutral. She’d said something about it potentially setting him back, purposefully triggering himself, but also potentially pushing him forward, giving him a sense of autonomy, control. She’d said he’d be fine as long as he was safe about it. As long as he went slow and thoughtful.

She’d also said something about doing this healthy experimentation with Neil, who, as someone he trusted, might be able to help him through a trigger. Andrew had ignored that part.

It was summer when he’d gotten the idea, the summer Neil had been kept busy by the legal prep for the trials against Lola and Romero and a slew of minor villains under Nathan’s empire. They’d work out together in the morning and then Neil would abscond off to a courthouse to look at pictures or answer questions or recount his process for making fake passports. Andrew had offered to go with, actually multiple times, but Neil had always said it would be a waste of Andrew’s time, since the feds would just make him sit and wait on a plastic fold-out chair in the court lobby.

Therefore, during the day, Andrew would masturbate. Maybe that was the wrong word, really, since mostly it was Andrew trying to prepare himself psychologically for having a flashback. He did other things, too. He watched TV, read books, cooked, listened to music, experimented with prepping specialty cocktails. Sometimes bizarre little urges would strike him and he’d follow them, like going river rafting, or to the shooting range, or, memorably, making a collage out of Wesninski-related headlines, which made Neil laugh.

But his main focus was mapping out his trigger territory. He practiced jerking off, which he normally never did, which he normally couldn’t stand solo, which he became comfortable with. He tried fingering himself, multiple times, until he got good at it. He hated himself a little bit for that. To know how to get his body to relax and loosen and to not freak out, to actually be kinda excited. It felt whorish, which he told Bee, but it also felt good, especially when he got to the point of being able to jerk off and finger himself at the same time. He tried a vibrator. A dildo. He tried fucking into his fist. He tried it in different locations, in bed, in the shower. Under different environments, in the dark, with music on, with porn playing. He tried face down and he tried facing a mirror. And there were hiccups, but there were also successes, and mostly, even where he hated himself a bit more, he at least understood why, and he understood what might, with another person, be a previously unanticipated issue.

Once, he decided to experiment by handcuffing himself to the bed. This is actually one of his most practical forays. Knowing the company he keeps, lockpicking seems like a practical skill. It makes him nauseous, but he wants to try it, and so he does. He’s got both his hands over his head, a spare key tucked within reach in his armband and another on the windowsill above the bed frame, and is working on simultaneously taking deep breaths and picking the lock on his left wrist when Neil walks in. Early. Straight from the court. Holding his running shoes in one hand, the way he does on a bad day, when he needs to go for a run as soon as he’s home to shake off all the memories.

Andrew hates explaining himself. He inhales, but Neil is already reacting. He freezes. His face falls. Andrew can see the breath stutter in his chest. Then Neil turns abruptly and vanishes.

Fuck. Andrew drops his fucking paper clip shiv and extracts the key from his armbands and unlocks the cuffs as quickly as he can, letting them clatter to the ground. He shoves himself out of bed. God only knows what Neil is thinking—as far as Andrew knows, the only time the Andrew + handcuffs combo has even been mentioned to Neil, it was fucking Roland trying to be funny.

But Neil isn’t stalking furiously down the hall or doing a runner down the street. He’s actually startlingly close. Andrew rounds the open door and Neil’s just curled in a pile by the door frame. His running shoes are abandoned next to him. Neil’s in an upright fetal position, his face tucked into his knees and chest. Andrew can hear his quick staccato breaths.

What the fuck.

“Neil. Abram,” Andrew says, kneeling next to him. “Stop.”

A shake of the head. Neil won’t look up.

“Hand on your neck, yes or no,” Andrew says. Neil nods, and so Andrew obliges, their already established routine for this kind of thing, though usually—usually Neil is not prone to panic attacks except in the case of an actual threat or violent trigger. It makes something squirm in Andrew’s stomach to think that he may be some kind of virulent, volatile reminder.

After a few minutes of Andrew putting pressure on Neil’s nape and reminding him to do things like ‘stop that’ and ‘breathe’, Neil seems to settle back into himself, at least enough to lift his head up and let it thunk against the wall. His face has gone placid.

“What was that,” Andrew says. He sounds upset. He sounds angry. He’s not sure he meant to sound that way.

Neil shakes his head. His eyes are closed.

“Neil,” Andrew says. “Tell me.”

Neil looks, for a brief moment, like he is also upset. “You tell me. What was that?”

Andrew is taken aback. He had somehow forgotten, in trying to calm Neil, what he had been trying to do.

“An experiment,” he grits out. “Bee-approved,” which isn’t exactly the truth, but isn’t exactly a lie.

Neil closes his eyes again. Andrew hates him. But before Andrew can generate a new threat or command that will get him the information he wants, Neil near-whispers, “I have these dreams where. Instead of Lola and I in the car. It’s you and me. And I’m the one holding the lighter.”

Andrew has to suppress the knee-jerk image of Neil in the backseat of that fucking sedan. (He’s seen that fucking sedan. It’s in police evidence. It is covered in Neil’s blood and there are a few round burns in the seats.)

So Andrew knows a lot about his own limits, because he has tested out every edge of them. But Andrew also knows a lot about Neil’s, by virtue of having been around while life tested Neil out. Andrew knows that Neil is grotesquely afraid of himself.

*

They go to the grocery store. Neil had been awake for most of the night. Well, seemingly. Andrew hadn’t asked, since it had seemed pretty goddamn obvious based on Neil’s sentinel on the couch with shitty cable and bleary red eyes.

Neil pushes the cart. They do their usual circuit: produce first, then dry goods, then meat and dairy. Neil looks pissed off when Andrew grabs double the amount of their usual fruit and retaliates by grabbing unsweetened dairy-free coffee creamer. He doesn’t know about Andrew’s syrup stash. In the car on the way home, Neil kicks the glovebox for no reason. He hauls up the groceries with Andrew, leaves them on the counter, and then goes out to their balcony with a pack of cigarettes. When Andrew joins him, he says, “I hate that fucking grocery store. We’re going to Publix next time.” Andrew acquiesces, because he really doesn’t give a shit. Neil looks even more pissed off.

Domestic bliss.

*

In the middle of the night Andrew wakes up to a, “Drew. Drew. Drew,” in Neil’s half-whispered half-spoken voice. He feels his body startle then settle as he comes up out of sleep. He’s in his own room, wrapped up in the big white duvet with his back to the wall. Neil stands a bit away, wearing boxers and a promotional Foxes t-shirt from college.

“Neil,” Andrew says.

“Can I sleep here?” Neil says. He has his arms clasped around his middle.

“Yes.” Andrew budges over. Neil folds himself into the bed, twisting himself into the top sheet immediately.

They lay there, half-facing each other. As Andrew’s eyes adjust to the darkness, Neil’s face comes into finer focus, the slope of his cheek, his nose. Neil blinks at Andrew. He looks tired, but then he’s looked tired for as long as Andrew’s known him, really.

After several long moments of silence, as Andrew starts to consider falling asleep again, Neil says, “I dreamt about the Nest. And Jean,” and shifts to lay flat on his back, so he’s not making eye contact with Andrew. “It was confusing.”

Andrew shifts to pull the duvet around himself more fully. Already this feels like a conversation he doesn’t want to have.

“Mostly flashes,” Neil continues. “But, I don’t know. Some things were worse than I remembered them being.” Andrew hums in acknowledgement. “I mean, it might not be accurate. I don’t know. It just. It feels like I keep uncovering things.”

When Neil doesn’t continue that sentence—since the theatrical son of a bitch has always been committed to the verbal vagueness that has previously brought Andrew such storied lines as, ‘Thank you for everything, you were amazing,’—he prompts, “Like?”

Neil is silent for a long moment. The profile of his face in the dark looks like a mountain range. Andrew watches the rise and fall of his chest.

Shifting again, turning his face back, Neil says, “Andrew, you know I’ve done bad things before.”

Yes, Andrew was right to think he didn’t want to have this conversation. Despite the years of being chased, manipulated, and tortured by a literal serial killer, Neil manages to convince himself that the violence he has committed, often under pressure by said father or by his selfish, abusive fucking mother, somehow makes him unworthy of existing in the world or having any kind of relationship with anyone. Clearly this extends to whatever the shit with Riko and Jean was in the Nest. Neil could literally have done nothing but stolen a fry off one of the Raven freshman’s plates while he was being starved to death and would still go to the grave with a guilty conscience about it. Andrew is so sick of the Catholicism of it all. “I hope you did some of those terrible, evil, horrible things to Jean. He probably deserved it.”

Neil audibly sucks in a breath through his teeth. Good. Why should only one of them be annoyed by this stupid conversation. “Andrew. I’m serious.”

“I literally murdered my own mother,” Andrew says.

“Manslaughter,” Neil automatically corrects. “And it was justified.”

Fucking hypocrite. “Doing terrible things doesn’t scare me, Neil. I know you know that.”

Neil exhales. He chews his lip. Then, “Can I kiss you?”

Andrew says yes, and they kiss for a few moments, very gently, like reassurance. When they break apart, Neil sighs and says, “Can I lay my head on your shoulder?” and Andrew says yes, and when he wakes up in the morning, Neil is still awake, his head still resting on Andrew’s shoulder.

*

Andrew still has regular appointments with Bee, covered under his team’s health insurance, even if they spend half of them talking shit. It’s good, though. Something Andrew can admit he looks forward to, a chance to talk to someone he trusts about whatever he wants, whether it’s—well, whether it’s gossip about his current and former teammates or shit like this.

It’s been a long time since Andrew has felt unsure about handling Neil. Usually he considers himself somewhat of an expert. A doctorate in Neil Josten studies, if you will. He knows how to talk Neil down from a panic attack or up from a black mood; how to make Neil laugh; how many balls to block in a game in order to make Neil’s eyes light up; how exactly to run his hands over Neil’s shoulders and back to make him shiver; what kind of kisses Neil likes; what more-than-kisses Neil likes. And even when new Neilisms come up, childhood stories Andrew hasn’t heard before, a trigger freshly unearthed, a joke that makes Neil snort, Andrew’s always been qualified to examine it, to add the anecdote to his portrait of Neil Abram Josten.

But for all that navigating around this current twitchy Neil has felt like an eternity, Andrew reminds himself, it really hasn’t been that long. Everything was fine. Good, even. In fact, Andrew had felt good enough to—well.

One morning, Neil had been sitting at the kitchen counter post-run, feet tucked underneath him, in those black nylon shorts, sipping at his morning coffee and idly scrolling through the daily sports news, and his calves were squarely flexed against the stool, and there was a bead of sweat, not even rolling, just quivering, taut and glistening, on his elbow, and his hair was flopped over a sweatband, and Andrew had cheerfully announced, “I want you to fuck me.”

Neil had then choked on his coffee and Andrew had smirked.

But now that moment and its whole atmosphere of intimacy and trust or whatever is gone. Two days after that conversation (Neil saying yes, Andrew and looking up with his sharp clear eyes), a day after their weekly grocery trip (Neil throwing grapes at Andrew and somehow always managing to hit him, even when he was throwing from multiple aisles away), a handful of hours after a whiskey neat and a soda, respectively, at their local bar (his hand on Neil’s thigh, Neil writing out an exy play on a napkin, Andrew doodling in a medium-sized dragon breathing flame and burning all their racquets to ash just to be prepared for every scenario)—

Neil had woken up gasping. He’d gone on a run, and then, three hours later, called Andrew from a gas station a couple miles outside of Nashville. When Andrew picked him up in the Mas, he had fallen asleep in the passenger seat and then woke up dissociative and irritable and panicky and has stayed that way ever since.

“Neil hasn’t been doing well,” Andrew says.

The knife in Neil’s trembling hands. Neil afraid, Neil falling asleep curled up on the ground against the kitchen table.

Bee, all-knowing as usual, seems to recognize the underlying thoughts of It’s worse than usual and he won’t talk to me and I’m worried about him and I hate that I’m worried about him and he’s vulnerable and I’m vulnerable and I hate being vulnerable that Andrew leaves unsaid. She hums and says, “Neil trusts you. He’s not running, Andrew. Whatever it is that’s bothering him, he will tell you when he’s ready.”

Andrew scoffs and changes the subject to Bee’s recent move, inquiring sarcastically after the health and safety of her collection of glass figurines. She lets him, like she always does.

*

Neil has been in a furious exhausted mood. The exhaustion seems to provoke the fury, and the fury seems to tire Neil out, and the cycle continues. Neil wanders about the apartment, goes out into the world and comes back with random bits of free shit he’s foraged from the streets. A number torn from a street psychic’s poster, a spoon from a froyo sample, a stool with an uneven leg. He completes their meal prep for the week early and aggressively. He plays a belligerent game of handball against their living room wall that somehow leaves only black scuff marks, no holes. He vanishes at odd hours and reappears still furious and exhausted. It’s a bit like living with a poltergeist.

So Andrew is surprised when he walks into the ensuite bathroom one night, intending to complete his normal routine, alone, and finds Neil, wrapped in a towel, sitting outside of the shower with the water running.

Neil says, in an uncharacteristically small voice, “Can you help me?”

Andrew pauses. He’s already taken off his glasses for the night. Something about not having his glasses on makes him feel unsteady, like he can’t fully understand Neil without them.

Neil, maybe attempting to persuade Andrew, says, “I’m tired.”

Andrew says, “Yes.”

Neil stands up, still wrapped in the towel, and waits for Andrew to reach him. The towel is dark blue and he’s pulled it around himself like a blanket. Up close, with just his head poking free, Neil looks young. The color makes his eyes look lighter. Andrew wants to run his hands through Neil’s hair—there’s a stray red cowlick that he wants to make lay flat. He doesn’t.

“Can you,” Neil says, voice still defeated, “not look at me?”

The question sits heavy on Andrew’s chest. He closes his eyes. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He hears the thump of Neil’s towel hitting the floor.

They step into the shower. Andrew stands just outside the spray and finds the body wash by feel. Neil doesn’t help. Andrew says, “Shoulder,” and Neil guides his hand to it.

From there it’s muscle memory. Andrew moves in moderate, detached motions across each section of Neil’s body, pauses before moving onto a new limb or area, and once Neil says yes, washes it with as little sentiment as he can manage. He scrubs one arm, then another. He washes the back of Neil’s neck. He passes the washcloth down Neil’s ass and then over his dick and balls with no ceremony. When he reaches Neil’s calves and ankles, he suppresses the urge to massage the muscles that he knows must be tight and sore from all the running, and instead does the job as perfunctorily as possible.

Afterwards, Andrew gets out of the shower and changes his soaked clothes for their dry equivalents. Neil puts on about thirty layers of sweats and creeps out to join Andrew on the couch. He leaves his foot pressed against Andrew’s thigh, not sleeping, but not fully awake either.

*

Early in the morning, with Neil attempting to get fitful sleep in his own bedroom, Andrew gets into his Maserati and drives the three hours to Aaron’s house. The world is so dark and frosty cold that it clouds up his windshield and transforms the street lights into fiery golden haloes.

Aaron has lived in Memphis for the last two years. It makes logical sense, since Katelyn’s parents live in Little Rock, or at least Andrew’s sure that’s what Aaron would say if asked. Close enough for grandparent visits once they have a kid, far enough for Aaron to have the distance required by virtue of his mommy issues, and a big enough city for plenty of the gruesome freak accidents that Aaron so desperately wants to get his surgical paws on. Andrew visits about once a month, sometimes with Neil, sometimes not.

By the time he reaches their apartment, one half of a two-story duplex, outfitted with a yard surrounded by a chain-link fence, the first hint of the sun’s existence is beginning to make itself known. Andrew lets himself in with his spare key and stands for a minute in the mudroom. From the dim light, he can make out the images of himself and Aaron strewn throughout a slightly crooked gallery wall, no doubt Katelyn’s efforts at playing house. In one, he and Aaron make equally disgusted faces at the photographer, both nursing drinks at a divey sports bar.

Andrew makes sure to smear the mud on his shoes against the floor as he goes to make a cup of coffee in their kitchen. He doesn’t bother to turn the lights on.

It’s when he’s rummaging through their fridge for another bottle of creamer, having drained their Chobani Cookie Dough, that he hears the first footsteps on the stairs.

Aaron rounds the corner into the kitchen and lets out a high-pitched squeal that he manages to quickly silence. Andrew smirks into the condiments section.

“Jesus motherfucking Christ, Mary, and Joseph,” Aaron breathes, having lowered his voice to a more manly pitch and volume. “You couldn’t have fucking texted?”

“You’re out of creamer,” Andrew says.

“Yeah, well, if I’d’ve known you were coming, I would’ve refilled it with fucking bleach.”

Around the fridge door, Andrew examines his brother. He’s already wearing his scrubs and a pair of honest-to-God Crocs. His eyebags are no more prominent than usual. He’s the perfect image of a good little doctor, clean-shaven and with a short-on-the-sides, longer-on-top haircut that comes off very family, very trust me with your children, very tennis player, missionary, good guy.

It’s too bad. He really did have so much potential.

Andrew sits down at the countertop bar with a squeezy container of honey and passes Aaron a mug of hot coffee with no creamer, which Aaron scowls at but accepts. Sunlight is beginning to weakly filter in through the closed blinds. A clock ticks somewhere behind them.

When his cup is empty, Aaron says, with the rhythmic quality of a well-oiled engine, “I’m good. Katelyn’s good. We’re still thinking we’ll try for kids in another year or two. Work is fine. My supervisor still sucks. Katelyn’s work’s good too. She’s enjoying the new hospital. Money’s fine, health’s fine, everything’s fine. Landlord says he’ll fix our heater soon.”

Andrew doesn’t even bother to nod, just picks up Aaron’s mug and goes to rinse it out.

After Aaron stands and begins to take out his Tupperware and prepare his chicken salad ingredients, Andrew says, “I need you to prescribe me sleeping pills.”

Aaron stops chopping the celery. “Nightmares?”

“More or less.”

Aaron squints. “Like flashbacks?”

Andrew raises a shoulder. “Sure.”

Aaron frowns. Well, more than usual. “And you’ve talked to Bee, and you’ve kicked out Josten.”

“I always talk to Bee.”

Aaron doesn’t respond for a second, recommitting to his fine dicing. But after a minute, he says, “You don’t look like you haven’t been sleeping.”

The problem with being in an adult relationship with Aaron is that, while he’s always been smart, he’s gotten annoyingly perceptive after years of therapy taught him to pull his head out of his own ass. Before, Andrew could have shown up and made bitchy demands and that would have sufficed until the next month. Now he’s expected to be ‘open’ and ‘honest’ and ‘communicative’ about the events in his life, and even when he’s not forthcoming, Aaron puzzles it out. It’s messed up. “I didn’t say that I haven’t been sleeping. I said I need you to prescribe me sleeping pills.”

“Yeah, asshole, and the most logical explanation is that a prescription written for you would mean the pills are for you.”

“You know what they say about assumptions.”

Aaron sighs. “Well, you have no friends, you have a team doctor, you don’t have any animals, you’re not going on a trip anytime soon, and unless Hell froze over and I didn’t hear about it, Josten doesn’t take any medication, so who the fuck needs pills so badly that I should be bothered to write an illegal prescription for you?”

Andrew doesn’t say anything. It’s too late, anyway, to dissuade Aaron. He’s halfway there, and it’s much easier to let Aaron figure it out than to say the words himself.

“Oh my God,” Aaron says. “It is for Josten. What the fuck? What the fuck?”

Andrew pushes Aaron’s cutting board into the sink. It clatters. Celery spills into the garbage disposal.

“God fucking damn it, Andrew, I swear to God,” Aaron says, and visibly clenches his jaw. He takes in a deep breath, gathers up the celery, rinses it in his hands, and moves it and the cutting board to the opposite side of the counter, away from Andrew. Then he takes the knife and moves it, too.

With a long exhale, clearly scraping together the last remnants of his patience along with his celery, Aaron says, “I have to leave for work in five minutes. I know you know that. And I know you don’t like talking about Josten’s shit, and I also know that you wouldn’t be asking for this if you didn’t feel you have to, but I’m your fucking brother and I care about you, too, and if you want me to do you a favor you need to tell me what the fuck is going on.”

See? Perceptive. And emotionally communicative. It’s disgusting, what therapy combined with cohabitating with a woman does to a man. Andrew misses their fistfights.

“Neil isn’t sleeping well.”

Aaron rolls his eyes. “No shit.”

Then there’s a pause where Aaron is, arms crossed, waiting for more information. When no more comes, he says, pointedly, “After literally years of nightmares and panic attacks, what the hell makes the vampire shit so pressing now that he needs pills he’s not willing to get himself?”

Like water being drawn up slowly from a well, Andrew grudgingly says, “He thinks he’s going to hurt me, so he’s stopped sleeping.”

Aaron’s face gets very serious. “Is he hurting you?”

“No.”

“Andrew.”

This was a terrible mistake. He should’ve just lied to their team doctor. “He thought I was with his father. He had a knife.”

“Holy shit, you couldn’t have fucking led with that?” Aaron scans him up and down. Already he’s going for the first aid kit in the pantry. “Have you been fucking stabbed? Do you need stitches?”

“No.”

“God,” Aaron says, still rummaging for the kit. “He needs to be institutionalized, not pills. I’m serious, Andrew, I know you don’t want to hear it but he’s still the Butcher’s fucking kid. He could’ve fucking dissected you.”

Andrew doesn’t want to deal with this shit, is so sick of people acting like they have any right at all to interfere in his life, to try and protect him, as if he isn’t very aware of what could hurt him, what could kill him, as if Neil isn’t the best thing that’s ever happened to him. But then, as Bee has attempted to make him empathetic about, Aaron got real fucking sick of Andrew protecting him during college, and now it’s his twin’s turn to be overprotective and condescending, and blah blah, if he wants a relationship, he has to act like it, and accept that it goes two goddamn ways.

Also, Andrew has violently threatened Katelyn before, so. Tit for tat.

“Neil would never hurt me. And I know how to handle a knife.”

Aaron obviously only barely manages to bite back a frustrated retort. He puts his head in his hands and looks down at his watch. “Fuck,” he mutters. “My fucking chicken salad.” He pauses, then looks back at Andrew, and says, “I don’t like it, but okay. Okay. I’ll write the prescription. I doubt he’ll fucking take them, but I’ll write it. But you’ll come back here if shit gets worse, okay? If they take away my medical license because Josten murders you in his sleep and it comes out that I wrote the prescription, I’ll kill you.”

That’s all Andrew needs to hear. He stands up, says, “I hope you and Katelyn have a terrible week,” and leaves. He sits in the Maserati and watches Aaron pull out of his driveway in his blue Civic a few moments later, flipping Andrew off as he drives past. Then he starts the car and begins the drive back to Nashville, back to Neil.

*

In a different attempt to get Neil to sleep, they’ve tried, for lack of a better word, cuddling, located anywhere except the bed. Predictably, this works well once, and then, the second time—

Andrew had fallen asleep on the couch with Neil pressed beneath him, Andrew’s chin turned against Neil’s neck and his arm across Neil’s abdomen, and wakes up to darkness, a shove against his gut, a slew of shouted Japanese, and the thud of Neil hitting the floor shortly followed by his scuffle to get away.

Andrew takes a second to retaliate against his mind’s instincts at being woken up so harshly—a second to breathe in the clean air of the apartment, remind himself where he is—before fumbling for his glasses and peering out into the black corners of the room. He can hear Neil repeatedly gasping out something in Japanese, voice raspy.

“Abram,” Andrew says firmly into the dark room. No response—which is to be expected. Evermore nightmares are always the hardest for Neil to shake off. Andrew grapples with the floor lamp near the couch, flicking it on and allowing soft light to fill the space.

Neil is curled up between the couch and the wall covering his head like he’s bracing for impact. His gasps interrupt every other syllable of whatever phrase he’s repeating. His fists are tight in his hair, knuckles white. He’s shaking. He’s wearing fuzzy socks.

Andrew kneels a few feet away from him. “Abram,” he says.

He repeats the name over and over, every few seconds. Eventually Neil transitions from the Japanese—some phrase whose sound Andrew has now locked into memory in Neil’s choked iterations—into quiet heaving for breath.

“Where are you,” Andrew asks.

“Nashville,” Neil says, but it sounds like he’s begging.

“Where are you,” Andrew asks.

“Nashville. Nashville.”

And they repeat this, and other such riveting questions like who are you with and what year is it,  until Neil sounds sure of himself, until he finally says, “I‘m sorry,” and Andrew says, “Shut up,” and that, at least, is normal, and they get up off the floor, and Neil makes an instant coffee, and eventually Andrew is tired, and goes to his bed alone, and listens to the sounds of Neil puttering around the kitchen as he falls asleep.

*

Neil tries the sleeping pills. Little white ovals, which Aaron oh-so-helpfully points out are usually prescribed alongside anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds.

Neil takes ten milligrams while he and Andrew are finishing off dinner, or, more accurately, while Andrew is eating like a normal person and Neil is grudgingly nibbling at his salmon filet. He gets sleepy near-instantly. It’s almost alarming, the speed at which he begins to yawn and droop. Andrew helps him to bed, where he falls face-first into his pillow and wiggles his feet until Andrew gets the message and takes off his socks.

For an hour, Andrew gets himself ready for bed and pokes his head into Neil’s room intermittently. He hasn’t so much as shifted positions. It seems promising. It seems like it’s going to work. He goes to sleep.

Then, around 2 am, Andrew wakes up to the telltale sound of retching.

He goes to Neil’s room and finds him miserably slumped over the toilet in the ensuite. Neil blearily makes eye contact and says, “What. Are you real?”

“Pretty sure,” Andrew says drily.

“I don’t understand,” Neil mutters, and then attempts to throw up again. But he hasn’t been eating anywhere near enough, and so nothing comes out.

Andrew goes to sit next to him, but Neil flinches away and cowers back against the wall. “Abram,” Andrew says, feeling his voice begin to tilt up into a question.

“Jean, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t,” Neil says, sounding like a child’s whine.

“It’s just me,” Andrew says, leaning back against the sink. “It’s Andrew. You’re in our apartment.”

Neil starts another round of gagging. When he finally catches his breath again, he says, “No, ‘s not. You’re not even, it’s, no. I, Andrew, what? You’re not Jean. I, I need to throw up. I need to, where’s Jean?”

Andrew purses his lips, but before he can even repeat himself, Neil says, more urgently, “I don’t, I don’t feel good. No. Where’s Jean?”

“Abram, honey,” Andrew says, surprising himself with the very rare pet name, which appears spontaneously in his vocabulary in distinct correlation with how disoriented Neil is, and therefore how unlikely to remember it later. “It’s okay. You’re in Nashville. You’re in our apartment. You’re safe.”

“No, no, no. No more. Where’s Jean,” Neil moans. He says something in French, then, rapidly escalating into panic, “I can’t throw up, it’s, the pills, I can’t, I, I can’t get them out, Riko’s going to kill me, I need, I, no, no, I need Jean, fuck, I can’t throw up—”

And he leans back over the toilet and sticks his fingers down his throat.

Andrew mentally ticks sleeping pills off the list of potential solutions, and thinks about mailing Moreau anthrax, and makes a plan to flush the remnants of the bottle, and watches Neil throw up bile, and Andrew lies to him and says you threw everything up, the drugs are all out of your system, and you’re okay now, and eventually herds Neil, dizzy and confused, to a beanbag in the living room, where he settles, at least enough to stop putting his fingers down his throat, and to only ask “Where’s Jean?” every half hour instead of every five minutes, until he finally, mercifully, falls asleep.

*

The Evermore nightmares repeat, interspersed with the same ones about hurting Andrew. Well, Neil doesn’t explain it as such, but Andrew pieces it together based off Neil’s rotating moods: clinginess after an Evermore nightmare, anger and avoidance after a hurting one.

One day, after hearing the Japanese words again from a Neil stuck in a nightmare, and the subsequent pat-down from a Neil desperate to ensure that Andrew retains all of his limbs, Andrew finally calls Kevin.

“Translate this for me,” Andrew says, slowly enunciating the phrase.

There’s a long pause and then, no surprise, Kevin says weakly, “I’m not really fluent —”

Andrew’s gut twists. “Kevin.”

Whether Kevin likes it or not, he really has come a long way from the coward he was in college, which is why he stops lying, sighs, and says instead, “You won’t like it.”

“And yet you’ll notice that I’m asking anyway.”

“It’s —” Kevin hesitates, then continues quietly, “formal. Something like—like stop, please, my King.”

Andrew hangs up.

*

By luck of all luck, Neil manages to get a two-day fever that knocks him out enough to get some decent fucking sleep. It does not, however, knock him out of any of his recent neurotic habits. The day his fever goes down, Neil walks out of his room wearing a pair of baggy black sweatpants and correspondingly huge sweatshirt, and, the moment Andrew looks him up and down, says, “I’ll fucking kill you if you look at me again.”

So Andrew takes that for what it is and gets lost. It’s nice, actually. He goes to a library, finds a comfy couch, and reads for a few hours, wanders around a specialty Italian butchery and an ice cream parlor, respectively, goes off to the gym, to a diner. Later that evening, Andrew comes home to Neil, asleep sitting upright on the couch, arms folded, frowning.

*

On Tuesday the idiot is awake at five in the morning looking like a skeleton and sipping orange juice. He looks like someone had taken a spoon and scooped out the flesh just beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheekbones.

As Neil continues to stare detachedly into space, Andrew says, “You’ve got two choices.”

Neil blinks at him. Andrew balls his hands into fists. “Pick one.”

Neil blinks again then brings a hand up to scrub his face. “I don’t get it.”

It seems like Neil’s childhood did not involve small children with grubby hands offering up surprises. The lack of sleep probably wasn’t helping. Andrew taps one fist with the other and mimes a dramatic reveal of a present. “Gabriel. High ratings, highly recommended. Specializing in patients with complex—” Neil groans “—PTSD and shit coping mechanisms.”

With a deep yawn, Neil says, “What would have happened if I had picked the other hand?”

“A fate worse than death,” Andrew says gravely. “Her name is Marge.”

Neil doesn’t even snort. Actually, it’s possible he didn’t hear what Andrew said at all — his eyelids have started drooping and his mouth is slightly open, the relaxed face he makes just before sleep, usually with his head knocked against Andrew’s shoulder or slumped onto Andrew’s lap, dozing off during boring movies.

Andrew remembers, in their undergraduate days and especially during that first year post-Baltimore, that this used to be common, the drowsiness, so tired he’d fall asleep mid-conversation or in the showers or at Eden’s. Back then Neil had swung between exhaustion and a flighty paranoia, would jolt awake with his hands already reaching for a weapon. Probably Neil would be similarly jumpy, now, if they weren’t alone and in their own house, if they hadn’t worked so hard to establish some kind of safety here.

Somehow, Andrew realizes, a therapist is the nuclear option. They’ve tried muscling through it. They’ve tried sleeping pills, tried cuddling, meditation. It’s a testament to how shitty this whole thing has gotten, really, that Neil isn’t cursing him out for even mentioning getting a shrink, a subject which he has always been extremely, vocally, against.

“Neil.”

Those blue eyes flick upwards to meet Andrew’s. Neil blinks again and says, “Sorry. I’m… “ A deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about anything.”

Andrew doesn’t sigh, both as a life axiom and in this instance, but he comes close to it. As Neil begins to droop again, Andrew moves the glass of orange juice out of knock-over vicinity and turns to the fridge. At the very least Neil will eat a yogurt bowl if Andrew makes one and aggressively follows him with it for the next hour or so.

Here’s the thing.

Andrew does not believe in forcing himself to do anything he does not want to do. In that same vein, he does not believe in forcing Neil to do anything he does not want to do. Sure, he’ll hide Neil’s running shoes in the morning to gently encourage him to come back to bed, or he’ll offer up pain medicines when Neil’s injured in practice with strong endorsement.

But gone are the days when Andrew would command Neil to do anything, the days of demands to come to Eden’s or wear certain clothes or the like. Gone, even, is the Andrew who bought the apartment assuming Neil would like to live with him. He’d been right, obviously, but the two of them have settled into a different rhythm now. Andrew will express what he thinks, what he wants, and Neil will make his own decision, and very often it will align with what Andrew thinks and wants, not because of a system of promises and deals, but because Neil trusts him.

And Neil will say what he wants, and Andrew will make his own decision, and, though he’s loathe to admit it, very often it will align with what Neil thinks and wants.

Ergo, as much as the fervent insomnia and recent mood swings appear like blood-red flags in Andrew’s sightline, as much as Andrew would like to lure a therapist into their bedroom closet and subsequently lock Neil in there, he won’t.

*

Finally, it happens.

One day in scrimmage, just a week before Christmas, Neil is so tired that he doesn’t see a ball coming at him that normally would be child’s play. It hits him hard in the chest, and the impact twists him around, and he’s mid-run and disoriented, so he doesn’t see Marcus, or doesn’t account for Marcus’s running trajectory, or something, because suddenly both of them are on the ground, their bodies hitting the court loudly, Neil beneath Marcus’s bulk. Andrew is out of the goal before he even comprehends what happened.

Neil isn’t badly hurt, which he says immediately when Andrew and the team medics reach him, “I’m fine, I’m not hurt, let’s keep playing,” and Marcus says, “Dude,” with deep disapproval in his voice. One medic is examining Marcus’s wrists, shoulders. The other medic begins palpating Neil’s ankle and both of them suck in deep breaths at the same time.

“That’s a sprain,” the medic says definitively.

“No, no,” Neil says. “It’s fine, I can walk on it.”

The medic is used to this bullshit and so continues as if he hadn’t heard Neil speak at all. “Let’s get you off the court. Minyard, Hassan, can you lend Josten a hand here?”

“I don’t need a hand,” Neil says acidically.

“You need to get a grip,” Andrew says, at the same time Marcus says, “Man, I’m sorry.”

Neil scowls.

They hobble Neil out of the court and to one of the medical examination rooms. Neil complains the entire way, mutedly while Marcus is still there, animatedly when it’s just Andrew. A new medic appears, this one less attuned to Neil’s particular breed of bullheadedness, and thus, after she wraps the ankle in a brace, she looks surprised when her, “Not the worst it could’ve been. Moderate sprain, keep it iced and elevated, and take rest for three weeks,” is followed by a terse, “Or?” from Neil.

She tilts her head with furrowed eyebrows and says, “Or… it won’t heal?”

“Thank you,” Andrew says, against his will. “He’ll stay off it.”

“Great,” the medic says, pulling off her gloves. “The holidays are coming up anyways. Take a break, you two, and stay out of trouble. Merry Christmas.”

Andrew has never in his life wished anyone a merry anything, but he’s tempted to do so to get her out of this room. He nods at her, and, thank God, she leaves.

The moment the door closes behind her, Neil says, in Russian, “They’ll kill me if I don’t play.”

They’ve had this conversation several times, at this point, and so Andrew generally knows how it goes, generally knows that, even if Neil is making the most inane arguments known to man, even if he’s using his death sentence to try and argue for getting on the court while injured, there is genuine fear behind it, wrapped up in layers of Neil’s traumatic little origin story and the actual threat of the Moriyamas. This knowledge doesn’t stop Andrew from getting very annoyed very quickly. “I’m guessing the assassins won’t be focused on sniping you during their vacations. Unless you’re clocking in and clocking out every time you get on the court. Or is there a mafia agent assigned to approving your PTO?”

Neil yanks himself to his feet and ferociously shuffles to the door, which he clearly intends to slam in Andrew’s face, but Andrew catches it and follows him. The rest of the team is still on the court, so no one’s around to watch Neil’s furious stumbling or Andrew walking behind. He stalks into the locker room and starts peeling off his sweaty gear and chucking it into his locker. Andrew begins to neatly pack his own duffel.

Stripped down to socks and underwear, Neil starts to struggle a pair of sweatpants over his fucked ankle. Andrew swears and abandons his gear to wrap an arm around Neil’s shoulders and help.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Neil says, not pushing Andrew away.

“Break the other ankle then, see if I give a shit,” Andrew says, continuing to pull the sweats up to Neil’s hips.

Once the sweats are securely on, Neil turns his back on Andrew and continues pistoning through his locker. “Are you fucking happy?” he says.

“Thrilled.” Andrew deadpans.

“Fuck you.”

“Next time,” Andrew says slowly, giving in, “try to hit Hassan harder. If you knocked yourself out I wouldn’t have to listen to your bullshit anymore.”

“I didn’t ask you to listen to me,” Neil hisses. “That’s your idiotic choice.”

And then they’re shouting at each other, really shouting at each other, in a way they haven’t in a long time, Neil half-dressed, all the scars on his chest on display, Andrew still mostly in his gear. Andrew is pissed. Neil is pissed. The brace on Neil’s ankle. It’s only when a door bangs shut somewhere outside the locker room that they come to a sudden silent halt. They’re both breathing heavily.

Neil gives up first. He breaks eye contact and shoves his hoodie on, then says, “Let’s go home.”

So they go home. They don’t talk on the drive. Andrew helps Neil to the elevator and to the apartment, then Neil takes off to the shower.

When he gets out, hair wet, face flushed from the heat, naked, he goes to Andrew, who is lying in their bed on his phone. Neil still looks angry. He says, “Yes or no?” Andrew says, “Yes.”

Neil presses his wet lips to Andrew’s, holding himself above the mattress. He kisses insistently. Pulls Andrew’s bottom lip in just a little, keeps shifting his angle, his frequency. Andrew matches him, but tries to slow the pace, just a little. Neil lifts a hand up to touch Andrew’s neck. His thumb traces a line from his earlobe to his clavicle. Andrew sits up. Neil moves his knees to either side of Andrew’s hips, though he keeps his center of gravity off of Andrew. He rests his hands on Andrew’s shoulders.

Then Neil breaks the kiss, and looks down at Andrew, and says, “Yes or no, I give you a blowjob.”

Andrew considers it. Neil’s eyes are alert and his dick is half-hard. Andrew isn’t far off himself. The room is just on the side of cold, but Neil isn’t shivering, even still damp from the shower.

Something, Andrew thinks, is wrong.

He says, “Neil. Yes or no, you giving me a blowjob.”

Neil’s eyebrows go up for just a second before his eyes narrow, and he inhales, and scoffs, and uses the hand on Andrew’s shoulder to push himself off, landing on his ass on the other side of the mattress.

Andrew rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I thought so.”

But that only makes Neil more upset. He shoves Andrew off the bed. Andrew yanks Neil by his good ankle to the ground.

Neil lets himself fall and then scrabbles up to a sit. He sits there for a moment, looking at Andrew, then says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Andrew says, without any real malice, “No, you shouldn’t have.” and then they’re back at a stalemate. Neil climbs onto the bed and deposits himself besides Andrew. They don’t touch. Neil stares at the ceiling.

*

So they have Christmas off by force. The first morning of team-imposed vacation, Neil is already hellishly antsy. Andrew wakes up to the handball’s return, pounding against the living room wall, though Neil at least has the decency to say, “Shit. Sorry.” when Andrew walks out of his room. This is immediately followed up by one-armed push-ups, which is followed by actual handstands. Andrew starts the coffee machine and Neil appears like a jittery cat in the kitchen. It is literally nine AM.

As Andrew starts to pour himself a cup, Neil says, “I’m going for a run.”

“Like hell.”

“You could come with me,” Neil says, with a desperation that would be more at home if he was literally begging for his life.

“Me being there doesn’t change the state of your ankle.”

“What about the elliptical?”

“I don’t know if you know this, but your ankle attaches your foot to your leg. Think about that for a second before you start suggesting other things that require standing.”

Andrew pours Neil a coffee, black, and hands it over. Neil’s hands are shaking a little as he holds the mug. Andrew dollops a thick layer of vanilla cream into his own cup.

Neil is looking into the black swirl of his coffee mournfully. “Andrew, I can’t stay here. I’m going crazy.”

Andrew suppresses a comment about it not being possible to get crazier. He says, “What do you want then, Neil?”

Neil looks so, so tired. He’s lost a little weight in the last few weeks. There are caves beneath his eyes, beneath his cheekbones. He looks practically bruised. The little snatches of sleep he’s been getting aren’t sustainable. He’s going to crash eventually. Or maybe this is all one prolonged crash. Andrew’s tried everything. God, he’s tried everything. It’s out of his hands, he knows that, but fuck if it isn’t hard to watch.

“Can we go on a road trip?” Neil says.

*

The plan is to reach the West Coast, specifically Oregon. Neither of them want to visit California again, and Seattle is out of the question for a trip that is supposed to be about forgetting traumatic shit, not recalling it. So a tiny little beach town in Oregon, close to NorCal.

Andrew buys a new car for the journey. One of the indulgences that the salary of a pro athlete allows him—rather than suffering out a long-haul trip in the Maserati, or renting a car for a few weeks, Andrew can walk into a used car lot, see a mid-sized blue Toyota with a miniscule ding in the side, negotiate it down to a couple thousand, peel the cash off a wad of twenty K in front of the salesperson just to be a dick, and walk out with the car that day.

He gets a little soccer mom about it. He buys a nice cooler and stocks it with fruit and water bottles and sandwich supplies and a jug of cold coffee. He packs a bag with trail mix and chips. He renews their AAA membership.

Neil, who Andrew gave strict house arrest orders, has worked himself up into an even squirrellier anxiety in the apartment, even though the road trip was literally his idea. When Andrew opens the door, Neil is standing right next to the doorframe holding a knife, which he immediately sets down when he sees that it’s Andrew.

“Sorry. Noises,” he says. Right.

“Are your things ready,” Andrew says.

Neil gestures to the living room, where there is a singular backpack, and a winter coat set besides it.

So Andrew packs them both duffels, some old Northface bags from a camping trip with Matt and Dan. Neil follows Andrew and vibrates. When Andrew turns away for a moment, Neil has gone and gotten two of his handguns, which he brings sans carrying case to the duffels and packs carefully away, shuffling the guns and ammo into a pair of socks and a t-shirt with an ease that suggests frequent practice.

“Neil,” Andrew says, unimpressed.

“What,” Neil says. “You think I should grab another, just in case?”

Andrew does not think that. He prefers his knives, but he’s not against guns, by any means. It’s more that he’s against the ease with which Neil associates guns and road trips.

Neil has apparently interpreted the silence in the affirmative, because he lifts his shirt up and shows Andrew the gun tucked into his waistband. “We’re good to go,” he says, with the genuine feeling of someone who thinks he is good to go.

Andrew nods and fetches his spare knives from the dresser, sliding them into their sheathes. It’s been a while since he wore knives on both arms; at some point in the last few years, he settled for two tucked in his right armband, so the new weight on his left arm makes him feel slightly unbalanced.

Despite the sensations of being armed, Neil does not calm down. Not when they finish loading the car and pull out of their parking garage, or when they exit Nashville city limits. He keeps twisting around to look behind them and checking the rearview mirrors. At one point, he says to Andrew, “Take this exit,” which Andrew does, and then guides Andrew across thirty miles of rural Tennessee to a different freeway. Andrew doesn’t ask why.

They stop at an Applebee’s for dinner. Neil insists on getting a table and he insists that the table be near both an emergency exit and the kitchen. Andrew has a margarita and books them an AirBnB in Kentucky. It’s nautical themed, which Andrew finds horrific, but beggars, choosers. When Andrew lets his phone drop to the table, Neil flinches, then flushes. Andrew reaches his hand across the table, palm-up, but Neil shakes his head, looking nauseous.

They drive another hour to reach the AirBnB. Andrew allows Neil to scope out the place, gun drawn, before bringing in the bags. While Andrew begins brushing his teeth and changing, Neil buzzes around the property, checking for hidden cameras, opening drawers and cabinets like his father might be beneath the sink, testing floorboards and walls for hollow spaces.

Eventually they lie down together. Andrew has his back to the wall, as usual, and Neil is in front of him with his face turned into his arm.

Andrew is listening to Neil’s breathing. Instead of slowing down and smoothing out, it’s picking up faster and faster. He’s trying to hide it in the pillow.

Andrew says softly, “Neil.”

But Neil shakes his head into the pillow, so Andrew can only lie there and watch as Neil accelerates into a full blown panic attack, all tense and curled up, and then, when he decelerates, gets up suddenly from the bed and out into the rental’s hallway. Andrew follows. Neil is gathering linens from a closet and won’t look at Andrew and he walks out to the futon in the main room and begins to take off the decorative pillows and Andrew’s chest feels heavy but he walks over and helps Neil set up for the night and he goes to the kitchen and gets a glass of water for Neil as well before saying, uselessly, “I’m in the room if you need me.”

Then Andrew goes and lays alone on the AirBnB bed, staring up at the ceiling, heart pounding, hoping that Neil will come back, hating himself for that hope.

*

They continue the journey, from Kentucky to Kansas. Neil is silent. He occasionally drifts off to sleep before startling awake gasping. The only time he speaks is to say, “Pull over, I need to piss.” Even when Andrew is finding them places to eat, Neil mainly shrugs, and lets Andrew order for him.

Andrew finds them another AirBnB. Neil doesn’t even pretend that he will attempt sleeping—he goes straight to the tiny dining table and sits there with a pen and sudoku while Andrew changes, brushes his teeth, and takes off his glasses. Andrew goes to sleep alone. He can hear Neil tapping his pen.

In the morning, Andrew finds Neil at the table with his head in his hands.

It makes him stop in his tracks in the doorway.

“Neil,” Andrew says, without a plan for what to say next. Does the couch bite, maybe.

But in the next instant—“Drew,” Neil says, voice shaking, lifting his head from his arms. “I fucked up.”

Andrew’s ears begin to buzz, alarm bells ringing danger, danger in his head. Distantly, he notes that Neil’s eyes are wet and lined with red.

What can Andrew handle right now? Something mafia- or Moriyama-related, again, okay. Cheating, as unlikely as that is—sure, whatever. Neil’s lips are flat, hands pulling through his hair.

But those options don’t seem right. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Something has been wrong.

“Oh? And how would you have done that?” he finally responds, trying to keep his voice level, as he takes the seat across from Neil.

The setting is so banal. So fucking dull. They’re in the tiny kitchenette in a stupid fucking AirBnb in the middle of Nowhereville, U.S.A., and there are brown sugar packets scattered across the table and in the fluorescent light Neil’s eyes look gray and he hasn’t been sleeping for weeks and now he won’t meet Andrew’s eyes.

“At the Nest,” he begins and stops.

Andrew’s chest feels tight.

“I raped Jean,” Neil says.

The kitchenette sharpens into stark contrasts.

Andrew feels his pulse leap.

He doesn’t say anything. Can’t.

The thing is—the thing is Andrew has played out this scenario before.

He’s learned over the span of twelve foster homes that nothing is as it seems, that every facade, no matter how good, is still a facade. When Andrew had first begun fiddling around with the idea of talking to Neil at all, he had tested that veneer of trustworthiness over and over again. And it had held. Even when the rest of the disguise faded, even when Neil Josten himself splintered into Nathaniel Wesninski and back again, there was still the trust: that Neil would not be the kind of monster that Andrew needed to protect himself or his family from.

And because Andrew has played out this scenario before, he knows there are two options: to move on impulse, to reject, to fight, to lash out, to kill the danger before it can even approach him. Or, the path he rarely goes down, the option of wait. Observe. See what happens.

It’s not entirely by choice that Andrew finds himself frozen, expectant and horrified, like a field researcher watching wild animals fight to death from behind shrubbery.

He had thought he could trust Neil. Okay, so he just needed to revise the hypothesis. Neil could act trustworthy. But wasn’t. This was the way of life, of Andrew’s life.

Andrew is still in observation mode. Neil is shuddering.

His hands are clenched tightly in front of him, fingernails creating dented semi-circles in his palms. After a pause, he sucks in a breath and says, “Riko made me—made me fuck Jean.”

And—ah. The world is tilting. The world is buzzing. Andrew takes in a breath. Andrew’s revised hypothesis crumples and unfolds and crumples again.

Of course now Neil won’t stop talking—he’s gasping out apologies, something about memories and nightmares—Andrew can’t unclench his teeth, can’t un-tense his jaw—Neil is almost hyperventilating and instinct says hold him but—Andrew doesn’t—

“Neil. Shut up.”

And he does. Because of course he does. Because he has always listened to Andrew. Because he has always respected Andrew’s no.

Andrew breathes. He breathes. He looks away from Neil and slowly taps each of his fingers against his knee. One, two, three, four, five. He’s here. In this stupid kitchenette. With no one but himself and Neil. He’s safe. Andrew is 26 and lives in Nashville, Tennessee and he is safe. It has been a long, long time since anyone has made him do anything he doesn’t want to do.

Neil is caving in on himself. His arms are pressed into his stomach and shoulders hunched in. There are tears in his eyes.

Andrew has never seen Neil cry before. Not so much as watery eyes from a stray eyelash.

“Okay.” Andrew says. “Tell me what happened.”

The hyperventilating makes Neil stutter and he keeps his eyes fixed on the edge of the table as he says, “I—when Riko would handcuff me—to the bed—sometimes he would touch me until I was hard and—then tell me to—tell me if I didn’t fuck Jean—” Neil is gasping for breath. The word inconsolable floats through Andrew’s head, a fucking dictionary entry while his entire world falls apart. “He’d do it with, with a knife, or—or he’d cut out his tongue—and he’d have Jean get on top of me—or I’d—or to, to—his mouth—and sometimes—and then Riko would—would—I didn’t remember, and, and, I didn’t want to tell you, because, I’m so sorry, I know I’m—I’m a piece of shit and I don’t—”

“Stop.”

And Neil stops talking. Just closes his eyes and continues shaking. A sick part of Andrew thinks about telling him to stop and start again just to see if Neil will keep following directions.

Andrew’s ears are ringing. He thinks he hears Bee, a years-and-years-ago version of Bee, saying Andrew, you did not deserve what happened to you and You did nothing wrong. Somewhere Aaron is in front of the courtroom and his face is tight and he’s choking out I saw him raping my brother and I couldn’t do anything about it and somewhere else there’s Moreau at the banquets looking at Neil with his expression heavy and dark and Neil’s subsequent panic and Andrew’s own voice telling Jean to stay the fuck away and then further back the image of Neil after Evermore, the shock of his change in appearance and the bruises jostling the edges of Andrew’s numbness. And then suddenly flooding in all the times Neil’s been—weird—after or even during sex, the handful of panic attacks pushed into a new light, the self-consciousness and the admissions of self-disgust, how Neil would sometimes be quiet and empty or clingy and irritable, Neil’s own confusion about his feelings and his desires and how much he still struggles to vocalize his wants—and then the memory of Neil’s surprise when Andrew had said I’d still blow you, the memories of Neil dissociating in the months after Evermore, in the winters ever since, the time on the roof that he had said something happened that I just can’t remember—

and a recent version of Bee says Neil trusts you. He’s not running, Andrew. Whatever it is that’s bothering him, he will tell you when he’s ready.

“Neil,” Andrew says, and he can hear his own voice repeating back at him, somehow remaining monotone as ever, “that wasn’t your fault.”

Neil shakes his head, though it’s hard to tell through the way he’s trembling. He still won’t look up. At some point he had brought his hand up to his mouth, crossing his arms over his chest. The tears have fallen down his cheeks, tracing in distorted paths over his scars.

Andrew picks through his emotions the way Bee taught him, trying to categorize each piece of himself. There’s rage, of course, old friend, telling him to reanimate Riko’s fucking corpse and kill him again and kill Jean for being part of it and kill Neil for fucking martyring himself. In the deepest pockets of rage, wanting to kill Neil for letting Andrew touch him. Wanting to kill himself for touching Neil. For letting Neil touch him. Then there’s an invasive panic, crawling up his throat, wanting to get up and leave and abandon this whole insane fucking revelation. There’s guilt for not noticing sooner, self-loathing, there’s the shame, there’s sorrow roiling through his skin, and all over him is weariness, the urge to retreat into apathy.

And also the gentle emotions. Those are—have always been—harder to parse out. He feels… protective, yes, that’s the right word, wants to go back in time and hide Neil away before anyone can get to him. He wants to pull Neil against his chest and hold him. He wants Neil to smile and sleep through the night again. There are other things, too, like concern and worry and a sense of motherfucking tenderness towards this man that he—that he cares for.

When he controls himself enough to speak, Andrew says, “Did you want to be touched like that? Or to touch Jean like that?”

Neil shakes his head again.

“If you didn’t consent, then you were raped.”

The word hangs in the air. Neil’s eyes are still downcast. His hair, dull and curling at the ends, covers the top of his face, so all Andrew can see are his wet eyelashes and his tear-stained scars and his hand still covering his mouth, the burns and slashes still tinged pink even after all this time. The trembling is very slowly lessening.

“Neil,” Andrew says. His chest hurts. “Did anything else like that happen?”

Neil looks up. For a long moment, they just look at each other, the sun coming in dusty through the window, Neil greyed out and watery, then—

“Yes,” he whispers.

Andrew takes in a deep inhale. He wants a fucking cigarette. “Will you tell me about it?”

Neil chews on his bottom lip and looks away again. His hands have fallen to the table, picking at the scars on his knuckles.

“Why,” he says hoarsely, “don’t you hate me.”

“I don’t fucking hate you. I will never hate you for being a victim,” Andrew bites out.

Neil recoils at the v-word. “I was—I’m not—” he closes his eyes and forces out, “I was hard, Andrew. I came.”

“Great, your body can respond to motherfucking stimuli. You think mine never did?” Andrew snarls. Then pauses. Breathes. Memories of things he didn’t want and dozens of conversations with Bee keep invading the present moment. “That doesn’t mean you were turned on or wanted it or liked it or whatever other idiotic shit you’re thinking of.”

Neil’s jaw is tight in a way that suggests disagreement, but he doesn’t say anything, just returns his gaze to the table.

They sit there in silence for God knows how long. Neil’s hands find a brown sugar packet and tear it open, piping its contents onto the table. Andrew resists the urge to drum out a beat with his fingers, to scream, to go out for a cigarette, to shake Neil by the shoulders, to stay inside and smoke that cigarette anyway, to ask “yes or no?,” to also pull out a sugar packet and pour it out and light the contents on fire, to do anything.

But he doesn’t. He just sits, perfectly still, like a dumb fucking rodent, like a child playing hide and seek, thinking that if he doesn’t move, nothing can hurt him.

*

Eventually, Andrew had said “Lunch.” and grabbed his car keys. It wasn’t a question. Neil followed and they went through a Culver’s where Andrew got a massive custard and Neil a basket of cheese curds and they sat in the parking lot and Neil ceased to make any eye contact at all and Andrew said—well. Andrew said a lot of things.

He said, “Do you actually enjoy sex. Don’t lie to me.”

A yes.

“You’re sure.”

Yes.

“Do you have any boundaries you’d care to share.”

A head shake.

“Neil.”

A no.

“When did you realize.”

A shrug, then a few weeks ago.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this.”

Another no.

“Are you going to tell me about what happened.”

No response. Neil leaned his head against the car window and closed his eyes. Bastard. Bastard. Andrew hated him. Fuck.

(He remembered himself and Pig Higgins in a bland office playing this same game of yes/no/maybe/I don’t know/what are you willing to say/what are you willing to tell me/what questions will you answer/what questions will you not. He remembered Neil panicking and scrambling away from him once when they’d been fucking and Andrew had accidentally trapped Neil’s wrists down by his side. He remembered fucking into Neil’s mouth and Neil breathing through it content and at ease. He remembered coming back from the twisted excuse for rehab and not telling anyone fucking anything. He remembered Neil, returned home like the prodigal son in his revolutionary new colors, helpless to it, like a bug flashing its wings to scream I’m a threat, I’m a threat, I’m a threat.)

(Fuck. Fuck.)

Then they finished their food and Andrew said, “Do you want to go home.”

And Neil, quiet but sure, said, “I think I need to see Jean.”

*

It’s Christmas day. They continue their road trip, albeit with a much more somber tone. Andrew guns them through the remainder of Kansas and then across Colorado and into Utah, stopping at gas stations for beef jerky and icy sodas, jumping on a smaller highway to swerve around the city traffic of Denver, and coming to a stop in the desert scrub of St. George, where they disembark for an adobe motel monstrosity, complete with three different locks on their suite’s door.

On the bright side, the confession had put a sizable dent in Neil’s stubborn insomnia. Or maybe it’s the goddamn holiday cheer. Regardless, he had slept most of their drive away, waking to piss at various Chevrons or to fuck with Andrew’s Spotify algorithm or, at one point, to peel open the slick map of U.S. highways in the glove box and to study it with the same focus he dedicates to exy statistics. Andrew didn’t bother asking if Neil was mapping the landmarks of his childhood on the run or just picking the nearest printed material to fixate upon with the last vestiges of his attention.

Honestly, Andrew didn’t bother saying much at all. He spent the drive either trying not to slide across icy roads or mentally replaying every moment of the last five years, looking for the subtler signs. The panic attacks, those are easy to pick out and put in a fresh light, easy to tear himself apart with, but he’s already tabulated and sorted each of those into a mental inventory, so now he’s looking for the mostly-fines, the places where turning a blind eye was easier than asking anything, and so his eyes turned blind. There, the return from Edgar Allan, an irregular bruise on his neck that could easily have been a hickey, mistaken for strangulation. An evening kissing on the roof, Neil sliding backwards when the kiss deepened, ostensibly fixing his posture. A long shuddery breath watching a close-up of Moreau’s face on an old Ravens clip, could be just from sharing regular old torture together, or it could be from seeing the same scrunched-up expression of pain that Neil thinks he fucking caused.

Who knows. Andrew’s good at building cases against himself. Apparently he’s less good at actually protecting his people.

The motel room in St. George, Utah is pointedly Southwestern, painted in muted clay tones and complete with striped woven rug. Neil kicks off his sneakers and immediately curls up, in all of his smelly stale glory, on the bed, back exposed only to the wall and bed frame. Andrew plonks his car keys down on the dresser and leans their dual duffel bags against it. How sweet.

“LA is six hours away,” he says to the Neil-ball on the bed. This begets a minute nod. “We’ll be there by 3 tomorrow. Already told Moreau and Knox. They’re expecting us.”

Another nod.

Dandy.

With no additional commentary from the peanut gallery, Andrew grabs a pair of sweats and takes to the bathroom. He strips slowly. Crusty socks, sweaty t-shirt and pullover, black jeans. Unbuckles the watch from around his wrist. Pulls the end of his armbands until they slide down his forearms, the tug of fabric against skin.

He’s getting older. The mirror tells him this—the slight narrowing of his face, the line on his forehead. The scars on his arms seem less raised, less shiny. And he looks tired. The skin under his eyes wrinkles easier than it used to. He always has eye bags, but as of late, they’ve become even purpler than the usual.

But Andrew has been here before, staring down a reflection already too battered to continue. This should not be, he reminds himself, the bottom. Not for him. Even for Neil, this is only maybe the bottom. The reflection of a previous rock-bottom. But for Andrew? This isn’t a new trauma, not really, nothing to add to his own collection of abuse. Just the ache of watching Neil claw through the days, knowing that he had no idea, knowing that he did nothing to stop this, knowing that he can do nothing to stop this.

Knowing that Neil only went to Evermore for him, and what a big success that turned out to be.

Andrew showers. When he comes out, dressed but with wet hair, Neil is asleep. It’s fine. They’ll talk tomorrow on the drive. Andrew settles onto the couch.

*

They don’t talk on the drive.

Neil foregoes the passenger seat for the first three hours of the trip, laying down across the backseat watching an exy game on his phone, and when he does come up to the front, clambering over the center console and gracelessly dropping into his seat, he props his feet up on the dash, pulls his hoodie down over his face, and conks out.

The last three hours of the drive are spent within fifty miles of Moreau and Knox, fighting through stop-and-go LA traffic. Neil wakes up the first time Andrew has to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting a Tesla. He grumbles wordlessly.

Knox and Moreau live in a nice-looking high-rise in downtown LA. There is armed security stationed outside the ground entrance and the parking garage. As a reminder of just how many things are out of Andrew’s control, they are immediately stopped by a small team of valets and security guards, who force Andrew to relinquish the car and their bags before ushering them up towards Jean and Jeremy’s apartment. Neil wobbles a bit when he unfolds from the passenger seat. Andrew’s fucking exhausted.

Jeremy meets them at the door. He has his hair back in a blonde, hipster-y bun, and he’s wearing a knit sweater, jeans, and flip flops. He’s smiling, because it’s biologically impossible for Knox not to smile, but he at least tones it down a little.

Andrew doesn’t bother to say hi, just walks in with their bags. Neil follows behind with a courteous “Knox.” as an acknowledgement.

Jean is in the living room. He looks well, or as well as psychopaths can look. His hair is cut neatly and he’s wearing the most casual outfit Andrew has ever seen him wear—an expensive-looking graphic sweatshirt and black slacks. Andrew can’t quite forgive him for anything.

Immediately Jean pulls Neil to him in a hug, which Neil allows, luckily for Jean’s fingers and windpipe. Then, with a bitchy glance to Andrew, Jean disappears the two of them off into some parcel of the apartment.

Jeremy says, “Care for a smoke?”

They both go out onto the balcony. The weather is perfect, cold and crisp and bright, and the smog levels are, surprisingly, not bad. It’s a different Los Angeles than Andrew remembers, faintly, from his one-time attempt to be a teenage runaway, taking the Greyhound from Oakland to LA. Pig Higgins had found him within a week, the asshole.

Knox has a small metal toolbox that he opens to reveal a smoker’s hoard, organized by category—a few packs of cigarettes, different flavored vapes, pre-rolled joints, a baggie of pot, some battered-looking Bic lighters. So the golden boy does have his uses. Andrew selects a pack of American Spirits and Jeremy a joint.

Unwisely, Knox begins to attempt conversation. “How was the drive?” he asks. Andrew blows smoke into his face.

This does not deter him. He doesn’t even wave the smoke out of his face. “Jean’s been looking forward to seeing Neil,” he continues. “‘s been a while.”

No shit. The only time they see each other now is at Exy benefits or games. Probably the last time Jean and Neil spent any amount of prolonged time together was in the Nest.

“Neil might actually be one of his best friends. I mean, as much as you can be friends, you know, under. Those circumstances. You know, we’re usually busy during the holidays, I’ve got my family ‘round here or we go back to France or whatever, but honestly, we should do this more often. I don’t know why we don’t see you two more often, I mean, Kevin is a bit of a sore spot, so maybe that’d be kinda difficult, but, like, I don’t have any beef with the two of you, Jean likes Neil, feels like maybe we should all be doing the vacation thing together once in a while, you know, spend some time together before we all end up at the Olympics, we’ve got enough languages between us. We could do South America, ooh, or we could go and surf down in Morocco, or, what, you two speak German, right? We could do the Christmas market thing. Oh my God, hey, we could have so many inside jokes going. I bet that’d be good for team morale.”

When Neil is feeling better, Andrew is going to have to have some very harsh words with him about putting Andrew in a position of being friendly with Jeremy Knox. He ashes his cigarette and reaches for another. As Knox continues his monologue, Andrew tunes out, watching the plume of his exhales dissipate, the hiccup of traffic on the highways below.

In a quick chain of motion, the balcony door screeches open and Andrew feels the blade of a large knife against his neck, just as he feels himself smoothly slide out his own knife and presses it, barely, to the neck of his attacker. His six foot two attacker. Moreau.

Jeremy says, “Hey, guys, I didn’t bring a knife. I’m starting to feel left out. Maybe we could set them down.”

Jean says, “If you ever hurt him, I will kill you.”

“Good,” Andrew says.

Jean removes the knife from Andrew’s neck. He looks down at Andrew with his stupid solemn face, then says something in French to Jeremy, who gets up and goes inside.

“You didn’t know,” Jean says.

Andrew feels something fucking burn in his chest. “No,” he grits out. “I didn’t.”

Jean nods and says, “And he did not know, either.”

“No.”

“Ah,” Jean says, which clears up exactly nothing.

Jeremy takes that moment to reappear with, bizarrrely, hot coffee. Jean disappears back inside.

Andrew stays out on the balcony, even once Jeremy heads inside, even as the sun goes down and the night starts to grow cold. He finishes the pack of cigarettes and throws the lighter off the balcony.

Eventually, the balcony door opens again. This time, finally, it’s Neil.

“Hey,” he says, one of the first things he’s said to Andrew all day.

He sounds. Better. Andrew tilts his head up to look at him. It looks like he was crying for a while, but not anymore. His eyes look a little swollen. His shoulders are slumped. But there’s no tension in his jaw.

“Had a good confession?” Andrew says, and he means to sound peeved, but it comes out genuine.

Neil snorts. Andrew feels his body physically relax in a way he hasn’t in weeks.

“Yeah, actually,” Neil says, and then sits next to Andrew. He rests his head on Andrew’s shoulder without asking. Andrew takes in a deep breath and lets it out.

He has so many questions. He doesn’t know which one to ask first, or if he should ask at all. Neil usually just shares when he wants to share. But Andrew wants answers, wants answers so badly, wants this to be over, resolved.

Before Andrew can begin with anything, Neil says, “Can we go sleep in their guest room? I miss being next to you.”

So they go to the guest room. Moreau and Knox are nowhere to be seen. Neil washes in the ensuite bathroom, with slow movements, the frenetic insomnia energy having seeped out of him. He climbs into bed with Andrew in just his underwear, curls himself into a ball between Andrew’s arm and torso.

In a reversal of their recent roles, Andrew doesn’t sleep. Or at least, he doesn’t sleep for the first few hours. He watches Neil’s chest rise and fall, steady. He watches Neil sleep soundly.

*

When Andrew wakes up, he is profoundly disoriented. It is unclear what time it is. There is sunlight streaming into the room. Neil is by his side, awake. He looks awake. He’s stolen most of the duvet. He’s frowning. “Hi,” Neil says.

Andrew closes his eyes and attempts to steal some of the duvet back. It becomes quickly apparent that Neil will not allow the theft without the duvet becoming a casualty, even after Andrew kicks him.

“Andrew,” Neil says, still smugly wrapped in the duvet. “Can we talk?”

“We’re talking right now,” Andrew says, eyes still closed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Neil says.

Andrew breathes. He knows how to do that. He knows how to inhale and exhale.

“You never hurt me,” Neil whispers. “I promise.”

“You didn’t know,” Andrew says. “You would’ve told me if you’d known.”

“Yes,” Neil says.

“Did I,” Andrew says, and stops because he doesn’t know if he can get the word out, then starts again because he knows he can get the word out, “ever rape you?”

Neil says, “Jesus. No.”

“Neil,” he says, and he knows that Neil can hear it in his voice, how heavy this is, how fucked up Andrew is. He rephrases. “Did I ever make you do something you didn’t want to do?” When Neil doesn’t respond immediately, he continues, “Did I ever hurt you, even if I didn’t mean to?”

He feels Neil’s cool dry hands touch the side of his face. He can feel the raised burn scars on his fingers. Andrew still can’t open his eyes. Neil says, “You might be the only person in my life who has never hurt me, not on accident, not on purpose. Never. You’ve always. You’ve always taken such good care of me.”

Andrew shudders.

Neil says, quietly, “What can I do to take care of you?”

*

They have dinner with Moreau and Knox that evening. They had apparently slept through breakfast and lunch. Knox makes a massive pile of stir fry with peanut sauce. Jean and Neil exchange barbs with the comfort level of siblings. Neil blanks out once during the dinner, staring at Jean’s hands around a fork, and Jean says something in French that seems to jog Neil back to himself, something that Neil later translates for him as little Fox.

Later Neil and Jean sit out on the balcony to talk more, and Jeremy and Andrew go to a brewery and throw darts. The next morning they wake up freakishly early and put on wetsuits and drive south to a beach. Neil isn’t supposed to hobble on the sand with his ankle, so Andrew carries him down to the shore, and Neil only mutters something about his mother’s bones once, and they swim for a few hours, then break at dawn for burritos and hot coffees. They go back to the apartment and nap, or maybe Jean and Jeremy nap, but Neil sits on the ground besides the guest bed with his head between his knees and slowly reels out stories about the Nest, and answers to Andrew’s questions. When Neil gets shaky, Andrew says, “Breathe, Abram,” and Neil breathes.

Jeremy forces them all to attend drag brunch the next day, at a restaurant that Jeremy and Jean apparently frequently visit, and it’s a scene which Neil is so unfamiliar with and startled by that it brings Andrew a blessed spark of amusement.

Then Andrew and Neil drive up to Malibu, and, in the Toyota, Neil says, “I’m scared I’m going to hurt you.”

“In what way.”

“Like I’ll do something you don’t like,” Neil whispers. “Or get caught up in myself. Or, or force you.”

Andrew doesn’t say that he would never allow Neil to force him to do anything, though he wants to say that. He doesn’t say that he doesn’t like anything, that he doesn’t want anything, though he wants to say that. “I trust you.”

“How?”

Honestly, it’s a good question. “You’ve built up a reputation,” Andrew says.

“But you don’t know everything I’ve done.”

Andrew doesn’t think he’ll ever know everything Neil has done. There’s just too much. And he doesn’t think it’s good for Neil, anyway, to always be confessing, like he’s stuck in the witness box.

“I know how you treat me,” Andrew says. “That’s enough.”

They find a lookout point in Malibu where they sit and eat some ludicrously expensive sandwiches. Neil is quiet, but not sullen quiet, more like exhausted quiet. Andrew is quiet too. It’s been a long trip.

*

They stay in LA for another two days before Neil’s patience runs out. “I don’t want to be here,” he says, “it’s like my mother’s haunting me,” which, while stupid, is also understandable, and so they repack the Toyota and bid the Moreau-Knox household farewell, unfortunately with promises to visit and a few inside jokes.

Things have clearly changed.

A few days into the drive home, Neil calls Jean of his own free will and begins a long conversation in French, which has seemingly no urgency and no larger purpose.

When they get home, Neil one day says, “Andrew. I’m seeing a therapist. His name is Joe.” and Andrew says, “What.” and Neil says, “It’s telehealth. I call him on the telephone,” which was not actually the question that Andrew had, but he says, “And you initiated this yourself,” and Neil shrugs and says, “Jean recommended it.”

Neil is still getting semi-frequent nightmares, but when they happen, he gets up and does some odd activity—crunches, organizing teabags alphabetically by flavor, scrubbing behind their fridge—then comes back to bed.

Neil also begins to, for lack of a better word, shamelessly seduce Andrew. It’s a little bit ridiculous. He brings home a bouquet of roses and follows Andrew around the apartment with them. He starts to use Andrew as a sounding board for his own personal Urban Dictionary, picking a sex act and coming up with increasingly ridiculous names for it. He describes, in the kind of detail which he has never before been able to voice, exactly the kind of things he would like to do with Andrew, or would like Andrew to do with him.

When they try things, sometimes Neil has trouble. He’s not like Andrew, he doesn’t get panicky. Instead he just—slides away. This is hard for Andrew, especially the first time it happens. He tells Neil he won’t touch him if he can’t see his face completely. There are some frustrations.

They work through it. Andrew sees Bee twice a week for two months, and then resumes his regular biweekly frequency.

Neil’s ankle heals. He gets back on the court.