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Neil didn’t remember getting on the plane to South Carolina, nor did he remember leaving the Nest.
Every external sensory stimulus exacerbated his senses and nerves. The background noise of the airport buzzed in his ears, along with a ghostly, lingering French echo of a voice. He expected Jean to appear at any moment, and mutter in a scolding voice to keep walking at a decent pace. Jean wasn’t allowed to speak French since Riko couldn’t understand it, but he would whisper words to Neil when he wasn’t listening. So, when Spanish came out of the speakers, it felt wrong.
The fluorescent lights were burning his retinas, too accustomed to Castle Evermore’s darkness for the past two – three? – weeks. Walking on his own two feet was a battle he thought he couldn’t win, every inch of his body and skin was torn by wounds and stitches. His legs wobbled laboriously and slowly toward the lobby, people dodging him more than he dodged them, in pain.
Breathing, already a chore in his condition, felt like thousands of needles piercing his lungs from within as he realized he had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Neil breathed out jerkily, purposely trying to chase the underlying panic away and forget the last time these very same feelings overwhelmed him, an image of fire behind his eyes.
Neil pulled his duffel bag closer to his hip, gripping the handles with his uncooperative gloved fingers. He moved each one of them, achingly, and he stupidly counted them to make sure he did not miss any. After a sigh of relief, Neil dragged himself to the nearest wall with an available outlet. Gluing his back to it, he slid down the wall until he was seated, vaguely hearing his knees crack as he did so. Neil took his phone out of his duffel bag. It was obviously dead, but he checked it anyway before plugging it in to charge.
He curled his arms around his shins, bringing his legs even closer to his chest, and dropping his phone loosely in between. His forehead pressed against his knees and his eyes closed, he focused to find recollections of the past two weeks. He soon realized that this was a futile and headache-inducing attempt. Eventually, Neil gave up on having any thoughts at all when his unstable consciousness began to drift away from time to time.
Seconds, minutes or hours later – the concept of time being long forgotten – Neil was startled by the vibrations of his phone, an indication that it had enough power to turn on. Neil removed his gloves with his teeth and did turn it on. The phone buzzed with every text and missed call he had received in the last two weeks. He ignored them to press on the third speed dial that Andrew had set up for him.
Wymack answered on the fourth ring. “Why you maggots keep bothering me on my holidays?”
“I didn’t know who else-” his voice died away, derailing. Neil could breathe, but his throat tightened as though he was choking. He barely recognized his own voice; the last time he used it, he had been screaming.
“Neil?” Wymack’s usually gruff tone became softer and alarmed. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“No, no,” Neil cleared his throat despite it hurting. “I’m not. Can you pick me up at the airport?” He didn’t add ‘ I don’t know where I’m supposed to go’ because he’d hate sounding any more vulnerable.
Another voice on Wymack’s end talked. It was familiar but the distance, his own surroundings and the haze of his mind prevented him from identifying it. “Where” was the only word Neil caught. Although Neil wanted to ask who it was, he reached the limits of what his vocal cords allowed.
“Okay,” Wymack said, in the calmest way Neil had ever heard him. “Okay.” He repeated. “I’m on my way, stay where you are.”
A rough, dry and short laugh involuntarily escaped his throat. Whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t run. It was too late for that, now or ever. It seemed to be enough of a response for Wymack, so the older man hung up.
Immediately, his remaining energy and the tension of his nerves left his body and fatigue washed over him, as if the knowledge that Wymack was coming made him safe. The irony of his own thoughts and situation dried his mouth, blood draining from his face. His fingers and toes grew colder and colder, tingling sensations spread through his limbs. The cold sweat creeping up the back of his neck indicated he was reeling.
Before Neil could fully realize what was happening to him, he passed out.
* * *
Andrew was going to kill him, or so he thought.
Easthaven Hospital released him three days early. So no one was expecting him in the lobby or in the parking lot. Not that he minded. He was sober, alone with his thoughts and the itching of his healing hidden forearms. Dr Proust was a biter. Not for long, though. Andrew was going to keep his promise.
The silence of his mind was a blessing, or would be if, like Renee he believed in God. The parasite noises fogging and messing with his drugged head were gone, as were the intrusive thoughts that drove him to bizarre actions. Perhaps, this silence was a curse, also. All the thoughts he couldn’t linger on or keep straight while on drugs were quiet and hit him harder now that he was sober.
Out in the parking lot, the glacial wind of December whipped against the skin of his face with such force that he instantly froze. Andrew managed to ignore it, his apathetic face still in place, and walked to an electric pole to lean against it. He took out his phone and turned it on. It buzzed the thousand texts Nicky had been sending him to report their days, every night. He checked them through, quickly until one particular text caught his attention.
“Neil went back home to see his uncle visiting. As for us, we’re going to New York with Matt.”
Admittedly, of course, that Neil Josten had been real, and not a side effect of the drugs. Because that was what he was supposed to be; a side effect of the drugs. Josten didn’t have a family. Josten lied like he breathed, and Andrew had learned to believe only half of the man’s words but there was one thing Andrew was sure of. Neil did not have family.
Like the pipedream he was, Neil Josten probably lied when he promised he was going to watch over Kevin and his family, he lied when he promised to stay. In the end, the rabbit left as soon as Andrew was out of the picture. He was a mirage Andrew’s drugged mind – his family and the rest of the foxes, apparently – collectively imagined.
Andrew hated him for many reasons, and the flaring disappointment weighing in his chest was one of them. Andrew didn’t feel disappointment. Andrew didn’t feel at all.
Now he knew they were in New York, he called Wymack to pick him up. And called Kevin next.
“Andrew?” surprise leaked out of Kevin’s voice. “You’re already out?”
“Yes,” Andrew said with a flat tone. If Kevin was expecting an explanation, he would be upset. Andrew wasn’t going to give him one. “How are my dear brother and dear cousin?”
“Uh…” Kevin hesitated. Andrew could even hear an undertone of desperation. “They’re doing great, do you want to talk to them?”
“No,” Andrew replied simply. Kevin must have guessed what Andrew would ask next. Andrew listed his people one by one, and there was only one left, one that was missing. Kevin was good at pretending, but he wasn’t a good liar. It was easy to see through him, especially in unexpected situations. Kevin had known about Neil’s identity since the fall banquet, Kevin had always known more than he let on. “Where is Neil?”
“I told him it was a bad idea. I told him not to go, but he went anyway,” Kevin sighed. The words were spewed out quickly, as if Kevin had been reciting them to himself hundreds of times.
“That’s not what I asked,” Andrew pointed out, his voice was bored but a warning was attached to it. Despite his words, he wasn’t stupid. He could take a guess already.
“And that’s the only thing I’ll tell you,” Kevin dared to tell him.
“Did you grow a spine while I was gone?” Andrew would have laughed if he was still on his meds.
“That has nothing to do with it. I can’t let you do anything about it, not now,” Kevin said categorically. There were very few occurrences where Kevin acted out when it wasn’t directly about Exy. Those occurrences often had some sort of connection to Evermore, in one way or another. But there was one thing Kevin didn’t understand, Andrew wouldn’t do anything about it even if he knew the details. Because, according to Kevin, it was Josten’s decision to leave. “He should be back tomorrow, anyway.”
Andrew hung up on Kevin, he heard enough. Neil’s words echoed in his brain, ‘We will both be here when you get back’. Maybe, Neil planned to come back before Andrew. Either way, it didn’t matter. Neil may have not broken his promise, but he may have forced Andrew to break his. Andrew’s jaw clenched ever so slightly as he sent Neil a text message to read as soon as he could, “I’m going to kill you.”
Or so he thought.
Neil fucking Josten was miserably unconscious, covered in bandages, breathing heavily against a wall in the middle of the airport, a phone charger hanging from the outlet to his folded laps and the handles of his duffel bag tangled between his legs. Another bit of honesty was the bright auburn hair on the top of the man’s head. It looked like the most real thing Andrew had ever seen along with Neil’s blue icy eyes. This time, however, this truth seemed to have been taken away forcefully rather than being gently asked for.
Andrew approached him at arm’s length, unwilling to disturb Josten’s habits. “Neil,” Andrew called. After unresponsive thirty seconds, Andrew called him again, in vain. He was out of it entirely. Without much choice, Andrew broke into Neil’s safety zone to untangle the duffel bag handles from his legs and to unplug the phone charger. He stored the charger in the duffel bag and pocketed Neil’s phone. As a last resort, Andrew called him one last time, but he changed his name to “Abram.”
Neil grumbled, his legs jolting and stretching out on the floor, alert.
Andrew put the duffel bag on one of his shoulders. Not feeling the bag close to him anymore, Neil grunted and touched the ground around him to try to find it. Unsuccessful, his breath quickened panicking.
“I have your bag, Abram,” Andrew clarified. His tone wasn’t harsh, but it wasn’t kind either. Neil calmed down immediately. Andrew pulled Neil’s right arm and wrapped it around his own shoulders. Since he was in control, the contact wasn’t so repulsive. He, then, wrapped his own arm around Neil’s shoulders. “Up,” Andrew commanded.
Andrew carried most of Neil’s weight, but the auburn head still put one foot in front of the other, step after step, working on instinct alone. Getting to the car wasn’t an easy task, with Neil out of if, Andrew couldn’t dodge people as he usually would. Instead, he glared at people so they moved out of their way.
Eventually, they made it. Wymack was double-parked, his hazard lights on, not caring the least about the traffic. Andrew opened the back seat door, and threw Neil in who deplorably fell on his side in a lying position.
Wymack craned his neck to look at Neil, then glanced at him. The Coach’s expression wasn’t one of pity, no, he never pitied them – that was the reason Andrew tolerated him – but one of confusion and deep sadness. Andrew could hear his thoughts ‘ yet another terrible traumatic event has happened to one of my players ’. Again, Andrew would have laughed, if he was still on drugs. Andrew had always been impressed by Wymack’s hopes for them. His hopes eventually turned into beliefs for the worst cases, just like Neil and himself.
Andrew paid attention that Neil's feet were inside the car before closing the door and joining the passenger seat.
“How bad?” Wymack asked, roughly. His knuckles were turning white on the steering wheel.
“He didn’t wake up,” Andrew stated, matter-of-factly. He fastened his seat belt, Wymack wouldn’t start the engine otherwise, and propped his elbow up against the windowsill of the passenger’s door.
For the first ten minutes of the drive, the silence was solely interrupted by Neil’s heavy and irregular breathing and their personal thoughts.
It was an understatement to say that Neil was the stupidest man Andrew had ever met. And this, regardless of Neil’s reasons for leaving and showing up as though he had been eaten by a meat grinder. The man was a walking problem, adding one wherever he went. He tried to solve them in the worst way possible, while making the others’ promises impossible to keep. Where Aaron and Kevin were effortlessly manageable, Neil was too unpredictable. He hated that Neil was slipping out of his hands and he hated that it was bothering him. This was easier when he was on drugs, when he thought he was affected purely because of the haze of his mind.
Andrew would kill him, but Neil seemed to be well on his way to being killed on his own.
“Are you okay, Minyard?” Wymack asked, turning sharp to the left before eyeing him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Andrew replied, mirroring Wymack’s previous tone. Unconsciously, he started scratching his right armband with his nails.
“When Neil called, you looked-”
“A few weeks in the hospital makes you forget your therapist’s name. Weird, I was sure it wasn’t David,” Andrew cut him, warningly. He wouldn’t discuss about Neil with Wymack – with anyone, actually.
“You don’t talk about it with Betsy,” Wymack pointed out, rightfully.
“And that’s where we draw the line, Coach. This,” Andrew gestured in circle, without aiming at someone in particular, “is not of your business.”
Wymack hummed in acknowledgement, “You could, you know. Talk to her about it.”
The conversation was over. Andrew ignored Wymack’s conclusion, allowing himself a few minutes to say, “I have a deal with him, too. Remember our deal, Coach? The one where you mind your paygrade.”
Wymack heaved a sigh and pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building. Wymack lifted Neil on his back like he was featherweight, which wasn’t so wrong. Neil was light. Who would have thought that a runaway kid didn’t eat his fill every day?
After the elevator took forever to come down, and up, the older man trusted Andrew with his keys for a few seconds to open the front door of his apartment. Wymack hurried in to drop Neil onto his couch, carefully. Josten groaned, again, unmistakably from pain. Andrew narrowed his eyes, observing the unconscious man for a moment.
Neil had bandages all over his visible skin, or where it was supposed to be. Two of them were on his face with ugly bruises sticking out, and some purple bruises went all the way down to his collarbones. One bandage was suspiciously high on the cheek, but Andrew wouldn’t check it out right now, not with Neil being unconscious. The skin of his hands couldn’t be seen, the bandages were rolled around each finger from top to bottom, including his palms.
There was nothing to say, nothing to share with Wymack right now, so when he looked up to Wymack and the man was watching him as much as he was watching Neil, Andrew shrugged scarcely.
Decidedly, he moved to the kitchen, and, under the Coach’s unimpressed gaze, poured himself the best of Wymack’s alcoholic juice. Wymack raised an eyebrow at first, but lowered it as soon as he saw the second glass that Andrew had grabbed out of the cabinet. Then, Andrew grasped the back of a chair and dragged it to the living room to place it in front of the couch. He sipped his drink and sat, one of his legs hugging his chest. Wymack put the whiskey’s bottle on the coffee table, implicitly authorizing Andrew to fill his glass again, once it’s empty.
“I’ll go to Abby’s to fetch some medicine and first aid supplies. Not sure what I have will be enough,” Wymack uttered, his car keys in his hands. “Keep an eye on him.”
Andrew didn’t answer, and Wymack didn’t wait for him to. He left, slamming the front door behind him.
* * *
Neil felt his skin tearing apart and an atrocious back pain. He tried to motion his legs to make sure they were still cooperating. When they did, he inhaled and smelled a strong scent of whiskey mixed with a scent of leather from the couch he was lying on. Finally, his eyes flickered open and he pushed himself up. All his senses working at once, nausea knotting in his stomach. He hissed through his teeth in an attempt to keep the pain and nausea under control, as if they were going to go away.
Neil was thankful for the dim light, so it didn’t hurt his eyes. He squinted anyway, adjusting his vision to his environment. He was at Wymack’s. He didn’t remember walking there, the Coach must have carried him all the way up here.
He heard a wooden chair creaking and tilted his head to the sound, too quickly to avoid feeling dizzy afterwards. He was met with blonde hair and a bored – and sober – expression. Hazel eyes stared at him with such intensity that Neil felt like he had been punched. The air stopped entering his lungs and, at the same time, he had never been able to breathe so well before. He blamed it on his dizziness, though. Andrew couldn’t be here yet.
“Are you real?” Neil blurted out, raucously. He realized that it sounded ridiculous, but for all he knew, it could have been Riko’s doings.
Andrew straightened on his seat, putting his glass away on the coffee table. He imperceptibly clenched his jaw, his eyes narrowing as much, he stayed quiet for a moment. “I don’t know, are you?” Andrew’s voice was devoid of irony and drugs, it was clear and real.
Neil curled one arm around his abdomen as he admitted, “I wish I wasn’t so real right now.” His throat was so inflamed that his mouth tasted of blood. Although they shouldn’t have, his words echoed through the room and his brain. The echoes, then, shifted into a lulling silence they both needed. His momentary honesty had been too harsh and violent, and an expression of the accumulated fatigue and pain.
“Is this truth given willingly or is it a side effect of what has been forced out of you?” Andrew asked. His gaze wandered up, leaving Neil’s eyes, but not quite off his face.
Neil stared without understanding him at first. Until panic gashed his organs and twisted his complexion livid, his hands stirring to his hair on their own. His fingers mingled with it, pulling at it, in the hope of remembering what must have happened not so long ago. His hair was long enough by now for him to see the shade if he pulled it properly.
On the run, Neil dyed his hair too many shades, black, blonde, or anything in between, but he avoided this shade like the plague. He never dyed his hair anywhere near that shade. The vibrant brown auburn that was so disgustingly characteristic of him . A trait they shared and forever linked them together, a trait too distinguishable to be noticed and recognized.
“No,” Neil got up, unintentionally. “No,” he repeated in a grainy voice. The blood in his veins iced in fear, it was too late, they had seen him. Andrew and Wymack had seen him and Neil would never be able to erase it from their memory. Vomit rose to the back of his throat, which constricted to keep him from retching on the ground. His body ran by itself, limping more than it was running, to hide somewhere, just like he had always done.
Too hasty and on the verge of disorientation, Neil didn’t catch Andrew moving behind his back. The blonde reached and grabbed his coat’s collar in his fist and spelled out one single word, “Don’t.”
Don’t , Andrew said. It didn’t resonate as a “ don’t run away ”, but it rang as a “ don’t hide ”. Don’t hide because I’m seeing you, don’t hide because everyone is seeing you . Neil’s horror and panic would have clobbered his bones if it weren’t for Andrew’s implications. The reiteration of his promise; Don’t hide because I promised to protect you.
It did little to calm Neil’s mind but it did stop his body halfway to the bathroom. Andrew walked around to face him, and extended a hand in his direction, slow enough for Neil to interrupt its course. Andrew’s hand clawed the back of his neck, firmly. “Breathe,” Andrew muttered.
So Neil did. Andrew’s palm touching his neck relaxed the nerves he didn’t know were tense, and released the trapped carbon dioxide out of his bronchial tubes. His eyes locked with Andrew’s, each breath hurt more than the last, pulling at his skin painted in stitches. He ran a hand over his stomach, trying to check through the clothes and gauze that he wasn’t bleeding. He gauged the situation could wait; it wasn’t critical yet.
When Andrew deemed that Neil’s panic was substantially reduced, he lowered his hand, letting go of Neil’s neck. The blonde stepped out of Neil’s personal space, and nodded to himself, whatever it meant. “I’ve been thinking if it were you being stupid or you having a death wish. I haven’t decided yet,” Andrew started. “Either way, you’re making my job a lot harder.” Andrew paused, and took a deep breath as he scanned Neil’s face, adjusting to his new ominous feature, Neil thought. Andrew pocketed his hands. “Where were you,” Andrew demanded.
The first bit sounded familiar but Neil didn’t say that. “Kevin didn’t tell you,” He winced. As much as he tried to ignore it, the pain sharpened when he spoke.
“He didn’t. But I can make an easy guess,” Andrew gazed at a specific point of his face. “So, did I break my promise or were you keeping yours?”
“Neither. I just lied to the foxes,” Neil whispered – a painless alternative.
“This isn’t a news flash, and not an answer. You weren’t supposed to leave Kevin’s side.”
“I went to Evermore,” Neil hated how his voice tolled, raw and hollow simultaneously. “Riko was too busy to care about Kevin.”
A look crossed Andrew’s face, already asking the next question without saying it just yet. In lieu of asking, Andrew stepped back into Neil’s personal space, and peeled off a bandage on his cheekbone he didn’t know he had.
Andrew’s expression was completely blank. Neil wasn’t used to this blankness; he only witnessed it briefly on days Andrew skipped his doses or before sleeping. Still, it wasn’t even close. The drugs not yet out of his system, manic smiles had often crept up to break the apathetic face. Andrew’s face was now unwavering, firm and certain. So only Andrew’s eyes, fixed on his cheekbone, flashed something Neil couldn’t quite figure out. “Four.”
This word was all it took for Neil to rush to the mirror, his heart dropping down his feet in a horrific adrenaline, half expecting his reflection to haunt him. He clamped both his hands on the sink’s edges, so tightly he could hear his knuckles crack.
He gagged at the sight of the vibrant auburn hair and icy blue eyes right away, far too striking in contrast to his pale complexion. The black ink on his cheek, showing off the number four, was an aggravating factor of the finality of his appearance. However, it may be changed soon. Neil forgot his condition for only a moment to run to the kitchen, ignoring Andrew’s attempts to stop him. He pulled a knife from the wooden block on Wymack’s counter. It would be so easy to make the number disappear. The blade was so close to his eye, that he felt the phantoms of Riko’s hands and knives burning his skin.
Suddenly, a pressure on his forearms, deflecting the blade from his face, tuned Neil in with reality. He fought like a caged beast against the force Andrew applied to keep him still. Neil ended up losing his grip on the knife, which clattered on the kitchen’s tiles. He tried, flipping himself on the counter, to seize another one in vain.
Seeing Neil wasn’t going to give up, Andrew let go of one of his arms to clutch a hand on the back of Neil’s head, and in a quick motion clashed their foreheads together. “Calm the fuck down, Neil.”
The collision between their foreheads set Neil straight, anchoring his mind in the present. The feeling of Andrew’s breath on his face even helped to steady his. But it did not erase the truth on his face, nor the fact that he wasn’t fine. He had never been. He wasn’t as strong as his mother was in holding on. No matter how thick was the smoke of friendships, hopes and promises, that was all that they were, smoke that would be blown away to reveal the ugly truth that awaited him.
“You’re not fine,” Andrew said, as if he could read his mind. He looked alternatively down and up Neil’s face, their proximity hurting shared gazes. “Nothing is, you’re a Fox. This,” he glanced at his tattoo, “is – admittedly – a new low for even you, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re still annoyingly Neil Abram Josten.”
Neil desperately wanted to cling to that name, to make it real, but it was nothing but a sham. “They will know, eventually.” He didn’t spell out who would, he thought of his father and his henchmen but it could refer to anyone, really. He kept it vague so Andrew wouldn’t know.
Neil felt the tremor caused by Andrew gulping his saliva down and his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Yes, they will.”
Neil much preferred fatalism in Andrew’s mouth to fake optimism that wouldn’t correspond to the truth. Andrew set his forearm free before separating their foreheads. Neil let his arms dangle down on either side of his body, almost willing to lean back in Andrew’s personal space.
Andrew sat on the ground of the kitchen flinging the fallen knife farther away. “Sit,” Andrew ordered.
Neil complied, watching the knife stop moving. “You’re a hypocrite,” Neil said, his eyes rebounding on Andrew.
Andrew raised an eyebrow, so marginally that Neil would have missed it if he hadn’t been staring. “It’s hardly comparable. You,” he pointed his pinky finger at Neil for emphasis, “would have regretted it. You can’t play exy half blind.”
“I thought you didn’t care about exy.”
Neil could swear Andrew rolled his eyes, “I don’t.”
They contemplated their thoughts and silence for what could have been seconds or minutes. Neil’s thoughts were hollow, his mind was too tired and his body too weak to be coherent. Although he knew it would only last a moment. Until Andrew decided to break it, “you didn’t go for Kevin, so why did you go?”
Neil knew Andrew would ask at some point. Neil wanted to share this truth, he had planned to, anyway. But after the dreadful past weeks, and the equally terrible day, he struggled to utter the words.
Andrew rummaged through his pockets, and plucked out his pack of cigarettes. Andrew pursed his lips, shimming two cigarettes in between to light them. He offered one to Neil, Neil gladly stole it from Andrew’s fingers. Neil held it right beneath his chin, he closed his eyes and breathed in to let the pungent smoke invade his nose.
The smoke stung his dry throat and made him cough. It wasn’t a violent cough at first but it surely hurt like hell, he had to push the cigarette away from his face. He handed it back to Andrew, and recoiled mildly, still sitting. He, then, writhed so much that he ended up curled up into a ball, just from coughing.
If the little smoke he had inhaled had been enough to ground him and give Andrew a proper answer, it had also been enough to pull a stitch or two. He felt blood trickling down his stomach, arms, and fingers, leaving him with the excruciating sensation of being cut over and over again.
His spasmodic limbs trembled even after the coughing subsided. The stabbing pain, though, didn’t cease, bringing him back to Kevin’s bed under Riko’s hands. He tried to blink the memory away, hiding a shudder or two. In his effort to straighten himself up, he banged his head against the cupboard behind him. He started to laugh at the irony of the situation, or perhaps at his whole life. It hurt, but it was better than to cry. Because Neil never cried. His laughter became hysterical, ugly, even sinister. He didn’t know how long it lasted, but his body was burning all over, his lungs no longer keeping up the pace of his need for oxygen.
Finally, the hysterical screeches coming from him stopped abruptly. Except for the uncontrolled grimaces he displayed, he regained his composure. Neil glanced at Andrew who was staring at him intently, waiting for Neil to express his needs.
“I think I pulled my stitches,” Neil said, his voice all the more broken.
Neil noticed Andrew had extinguished the cigarettes, traces of ash powdering the soles of Andrew’s shoes. Andrew got up on his feet, inviting Neil to do the same. “Wymack is coming back with more medicine and first aid supplies. I’ll check your wounds, yes or no?” Andrew questioned.
Neil helped himself up with the kitchen’s furniture around, he was a bit confused by Andrew’s question but he nodded, “Yes.”
Neil walked to the couch while Andrew grabbed a poorly furnished first aid kit on his way in the bathroom. Neil took the opportunity to strip down his coat which proved to be a hardship. He gesticulated more than he should considering the pain it caused him. He was halfway through his task when Andrew entered the living room. Andrew tugged on his sleeves to help, wordlessly. It worked.
Neil sat on the couch, “Don’t ask about them, today.” He muttered, referring to his scars. “Ask me later.” He caught the whiskey’s bottle and opened the lid, and swallowed a sip or two. It wasn’t enough to numb the pain but it was a good start. He tested the effect of the alcohol on his swollen throat first. He considered the stinging was bearable to continue drinking. He felt Andrew’s gaze on him, so he replied to his unasked question, “it’s useful to numb the pain.”
Andrew positioned himself next to him, scissors in hand, ready to ruin his shirt. Andrew waited patiently for Neil to face him so he could carefully cut the shirt. An apprehension floated in Neil’s heart to the exposure of his scars, although it was too late for that. Andrew looked at his naked – and gauze-covered – torso, taking the information in. There was no pity nor terror on Andrew’s face, just an unconcerned and detached look analyzing what was in front of him, in silence.
After a few seconds, Andrew removed the gauze one by one, his fingers skimming over Neil’s skin, only methodically. With that part done, Andrew seemed to look for the wounds that needed attention first, prioritizing them with what little supplies they had on hand. As for Neil, he took a handful of gulps from the bottle, sucking in a deep breath through his teeth when it hurt too much.
Maybe the alcohol was starting to loosen his tongue, or was it the sense of the temporary safety of the moment? He didn’t know, he only said, “Riko said if I didn’t go, Proust would-”
Andrew was quick to drop the adhesive plaster to clap his hand over his mouth. A wave of nausea twirled Neil’s stomach inside out again, the bored look on Andrew’s face adding to the effect. A few weeks ago, Andrew was so drugged that he would have laughed it off, but today he didn’t even care enough to do that. Neil ignored which was worse, one thing was for sure, he despised both. Neil should have known better than to trust Riko’s words. He should have known that he was bound to fail.
“I never asked,” Andrew pointed out, apathetically. ‘For your protection’ was left unsaid. Andrew pulled his hand away from Neil’s mouth, and took the adhesive plaster back in his hand.
“You didn’t have to,” Neil whispered. He didn’t add that he would do it again if he had to. “Nobody is watching your back when you’re watching ours.”
Andrew stopped tending to a cut on Neil’s chest muscle in order to look at him in the eyes. Andrew’s hazel irises reflected his face, so Neil blinked away. “Have you forgotten? I am the one who promised to keep you alive for a year, not the other way around. Next time it happens, stand down and let me deal with it.”
“No, not if it means losing you,” Neil said, with the clearest voice he had heard from himself today. Andrew dragged his hand down from Neil’s chest to his own lap, brushing against Neil’s skin and sending a shiver down Neil’s spine. Neil drew in a stuttering breath, suddenly aware of how close they were.
Andrew glared at him for a full minute before speaking again, “I hate you. You weren’t supposed to be real.”
“But I am.”
“Proving that you’re not a pipedream remains to be done,” Andrew deflected, his eyes back on the slash he should be treating. Firm fingers were holding the gauze in place, ready to be taped with the adhesive plaster Andrew had cut into small strips beforehand.
“Your touching me is proof enough,” Neil declared. The contact of their skin made the present – and the presence of the other – real, no matter how numb his skin felt at the moment.
“Shut up,” Andrew replied, in a way the man wanted threatening.
Neil knew when he had to stop talking with Andrew, and he did just that. Only for a while, though. Just the time for Neil to pay attention to Andrew’s every move, not to police him but to observe this unusual bored focus on Andrew’s face. Just until Neil had a question tickling the tip of his tongue.
“How did you get out of Easthaven early?” Neil asked, after swallowing another sip and putting the whiskey bottle on the table.
“I called Bee,” Andrew confessed. “She got me out yesterday.”
Neil nodded as an answer. Three days was a poor consolation prize in comparison to what Andrew had been through, but it was still better than nothing. Andrew likely hadn’t been able to call her earlier. Neil had never understood how Andrew could trust Dr Dobson, however, he had to be a little more honest and admit she had now helped Andrew at least twice.
The noisy doorknob of the front door, which Neil had gotten used to during his stay at Wymack’s last spring, rattled, echoing in the quiet apartment. The door was slammed open and then slammed shut in the familiar and characteristic way that Wymack always did. Neil found his lips curving upward. Andrew shifted on the couch to create a negligible distance between them as Wymack’s footsteps grew closer.
A long conversation was about to start, but he wasn’t so afraid. Neil was no longer alone. He was surrounded by two members of his extended family. The Foxes. The family that was worthy of every sacrifice and pain.