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Neil’s rotten freshman advising luck lands him in the absolute worst situation to be in on the first Monday of the semester at nine o’clock in the morning: the front row seat of an intro history course he’s already forgotten the name of.
This is not by choice. This is because of Kevin Day.
Now. You may be wondering, who is Kevin Day? Well, here’s the thing—Neil doesn’t fucking know either. He has three roommates, two of which he still hasn’t managed to catch a hold of even after living in the dorms for a good three days now, and the last one being Kevin fucking Day. Kevin Day, who is a junior history major, who jumped at Neil when he found out they share a class three times a week, who very much should not be in a random intro course with a freshman, actually, what the fuck?
“Half of the students in this class are sophomores or juniors,” says Kevin after Neil has finished expressing these thoughts to him. He looks decidedly unimpressed, but Neil ignores him.
“I just don’t know why we have to sit in the front row,” he says.
“Because it is better for our learning,” says Kevin like it’s obvious, and Neil decides that he is sick of this guy already.
“You are ruining my first day of school, did you know that? You are single handedly ruining my picture perfect college experience.”
“I don’t care,” says Kevin.
“Quiet,” says the guy sitting on Neil’s other side.
Neil sighs defeatedly as he watches Kevin turn slowly to look at whoever it is. Neil, for one, does not know why he is still here. In the front row of a class he doesn’t care about. Sitting between two clear history try-hards.
“Oh,” says Kevin instead of whatever vague insult Neil thought would come out of his mouth. He looks thoughtful for a short moment. “Hello, Jean.”
The guy—Jean, apparently—flinches. Then he turns to look at Kevin coolly. “Kevin Day,” he says slowly in accented English. French, Neil decides. He’s French. “Hello.”
“Oh my god,” says Neil, shifting closer to squint at him. “You hate him too.”
“Yes,” says Jean.
Kevin flicks him an annoyed look. “You do not hate me.”
“Do not put words in my mouth,” says Jean.
Kevin lifts his fingers and pinches his temple. He glances back to Neil and says, “Neil, this is Jean Moreau. We went to high school together in West Virginia. Jean, this is Neil Josten. My roommate. He’s a freshman.”
“A freshman,” Jean echoes, eyeing Neil. He looks suspicious for reasons Neil cannot parse for the life of him. What is wrong with all of these people? “I feel for you, if Kevin is truly the first person you have met here.”
Neil raises a slow finger up at Jean’s face. “I like you.”
Jean pulls a face. “I did not ask.” To Kevin, he starts in rapidfire French, “Why are you roommates with a freshman? Surely even you have your limits. I thought you said you were living with the Minyard twins this year.”
Neil’s eyes go wide. Kevin seems unperturbed by this development, and he waves him off. “I am living with them. They just put us in a quad for some unknown reason. Campus housing crisis, or something,” he says, also in French.
“You should have just agreed to live with us,” Jean says, shaking his head.
“And be a fifth wheel? No thank you.”
For a moment, Neil wonders if he’s supposed to say something, something like hey guys, by the way, just so you know, I also happen to be fluent in—
Jean’s hand closest to Neil curls into a tight fist. “I do not know what you’re talking about. You need to stop talking to Renee before she rots your brain with her nonsensical theories.”
“I don’t talk to Renee about you, you know.”
Jean looks vaguely like he’s been caught in headlights. “Then how did you…” He shakes his head. “Forget it. Stop talking to me.”
And so the two of them go back to their respective note taking, and Neil is left sitting between them with two raised eyebrows and far too many questions than what is probably appropriate for two people he has just met.
So he says, “You two seem familiar with each other,” in perfect French, and watches with mild amusement as Jean and Kevin both round on him. “You know, for two people who claim to hate each other and all.”
Kevin looks a little offended. “I never said I hate him.”
“I did, I hate him,” says Jean, and then, “Why can you speak French, freshman boy?”
“I’m not sure,” says Neil with a pause, like he’s thinking it over. “How do people usually speak languages? By learning them, of course. Also, my name is Neil.”
Jean looks away and mutters something under his breath. Neil smiles pleasantly and says nothing, and Kevin ignores both of them in favor of typing his furious notes. All in all, a fantastically off-putting way to kick-start the next four years of Neil’s life.
By a tragic stroke of misfortune, Kevin also does not have another class until later in the afternoon. This is fine with Neil—he has no intention of going back to the dorm just yet—except that he realizes belatedly that he forgot to bring his stylus with him to campus, and his next class is calculus, so he very much needs it.
He shoots a withering look up at Kevin, who falls into step right next to him. The two walk in silence back to the dorm tower.
When they enter their room, Neil blinks at the sight of a man sitting on top of one of the desks belonging to his elusive missing roommates, the wooden legs pushed up against the window. He has a cigarette between his teeth and the glass pushed open. One of the twins, Neil thinks immediately, remembering back to the conversation between Kevin and Jean he had accidentally eavesdropped on earlier.
“Oh, you’re here,” says Kevin as he precedes Neil into the room.
The stranger doesn’t deem him with a response, but he does tilt his head backward slightly. Instantly, his eyes lock with Neil’s, and Neil stands frozen in place as he levels him with a slow onceover. The hazel of his eyes rock down the length of Neil’s body, down to his toes and back up to his face, and Neil cannot find it in himself to break away first.
The stranger has no such reservations, judging by the way he turns back around and stubs out his cigarette, flicking the ash carelessly out the window.
“You’ve brought a stray, Kevin,” he says, spinning and planting his feet onto the floor. When he finally stands straight, Neil realizes just how short he is—somehow, Neil has to look down to meet him. It is such a startling realization that Neil has to blink a few times.
“Oh,” says Kevin from where he is already sitting at his own desk, reaching into his bag to pull out his laptop. “This is Neil. Neil, Andrew. Andrew, Neil. Neil speaks French.”
“I speak English too,” says Neil. Why Kevin thought this is the most important fact to hand out, he doesn’t know. He glances sidelong at Kevin, then looks back to Andrew. “I’m a freshman. Math major. In the bottom bunk.” He points his index finger at said bunk, and Andrew flicks it a bored look.
Kevin turns halfway in his chair, propping his elbow against the backrest. “Are you two finally moving in then? Where is Aaron?”
“Yes. Class,” says Andrew, a punch of irritation in the two syllables.
Kevin nods before going back to whatever it is he is doing.
Silence.
Right, well. Neil decides that’s enough for introductions, and he pads over to his own desk opposite Kevin’s. It doesn’t take very long to find the stylus—an innocuous, shiny little orange thing that Neil runs his fingers over once before pocketing it into the side of his backpack. He does a mental check for the rest of his things, and after nodding to himself, sets back in the direction of the front door.
Andrew slides in front of him, effectively blocking his path.
Neil pauses. “Uh?”
Andrew doesn’t say anything, standing there quietly and studying Neil’s face. Neil isn’t an idiot. He knows that Andrew is tracing the scars on his face with his eyes. Andrew tilts his head a fraction of a degree, as if asking him what the fuck is up with your face? But Neil won’t answer a question that hasn’t been asked. This one, he may not answer regardless. He levels Andrew with a blank expression and waits one beat, then another, then another, before Andrew finally relents and takes a step back.
Neil tips by him and disappears down the hall.
That night, while Neil is climbing into bed, Andrew enters the room wearing a thin black tank top and baby blue pajama pants. On his arms are thick bands, crawling up to his elbows. Neil takes in the sight of him for a moment, and then approximately two seconds later, Andrew enters the room again. There are two Andrews in front of him, standing next to each other.
Kevin rolls over from his top bunk on the opposite wall and says, “Oh. Aaron.”
“Kevin,” says the second Andrew shortly. “You didn’t graduate yet?”
Kevin looks at him with a bemused expression. Aaron shakes his head and walks over to the bunk underneath him and slips under the covers. For some reason, Neil isn’t particularly surprised that he wasn’t acknowledged in that entire exchange.
Except then, all of a sudden, Aaron sits up pin-straight and looks directly across the room at Neil. “Who are you?”
“I’m Neil,” says Neil, “Josten.”
Aaron squints at him. “Since when do we have another roommate?”
“Since three days ago,” says Kevin from above. “Neil speaks French.”
Aaron looks up and scowls at the bottom of Kevin’s bed. “Why the hell would I care that he speaks French? I don’t speak French.”
“You could.”
“I am not fucking learning French, Day.”
“I can speak English too,” Neil interjects. “Just, you know, for the record.”
“He’s also taking history with me and Jean,” says Kevin with a huff. “Monday Wednesday Friday nine am.”
“Jean Moreau?” says Aaron.
“How many Jeans do you know?” says Andrew, finally breaking his oath of silence and walking over to the ladder up Neil’s bunk. Neil meets his eye for the split second it takes Andrew to grasp the planks, and then he’s gone, just like that.
“Good night,” says Neil to no one in particular, and he doesn’t take it personally when he gets zero response.
When it was just him and Kevin in the dorm–as short and fleeting those two nights were—Neil managed to make it through the night fast asleep without waking up once. Kevin is the heaviest sleeper Neil has ever met in his life—he is instantly asleep the moment the side of his face hits his pillow, and he barely stirs for all eight or so hours he manages to soak up every night. It was nice. Peaceful, almost.
Now there are two more bodies in the room. Neil sighs and waits for their breathing to even out, twitching his fingers against the thin sheet layered over his legs and aimlessly playing with his fingers. Eventually, he does manage to fall under, and life is good and normal up until—
Movement.
Neil’s eyes snap open, and he goes painfully still.
Andrew is moving above him. Neil can’t tell if he is actively trying to get out of bed or if he’s just stirring in his sleep, but it doesn’t matter. Years on the run have trained Neil to gasp awake at even preliminary signs of danger, and he can practically feel his mother’s phantom touch around his throat, swallowing down any and every mutter of fear. He can’t be caught. He can’t open his mouth. The silence settles into his bones and sinks into his bones, and Neil stares up at the bottom of Andrew’s bed and wills his panic to subside.
There’s a flash of white blond in his periphery, and when Neil turns his head, he finds Andrew standing in the middle of their room. He’s staring at him, his expression completely blank and betraying nothing. His gilded eyes shine beneath the slices of moonlight that pour in through the window, and Neil stares at him as if he is seeing a ghost.
Maybe he really is.
Andrew breaks away first, and Neil watches him pad over to his closet and pull out a thick black hoodie. He slides it over himself, practically swimming in its oversized sleeves, and reaches to grab a pack of cigarettes from the top drawer of his desk.
He slides Neil one last look before leaving the room.
Neil gets out of bed before he can stop himself, sliding his slippers on and following after him.
He catches Andrew’s figure right before it rounds a corner, and Neil quickly moves to trail after him. His steps are hurried in their attempt to catch up to him, and it doesn’t take long to match Andrew’s leisurely pace heading for a lone door at the end of the hallway. He pushes it open and doesn’t bother holding it open for Neil, but Neil quietly slips through anyway and the two climb up a long set of stairs.
At the end there is another door, and Neil’s mouth opens in time with the door. They’re on the roof, he realizes as the wind hits him face-first. They’re on the rooftop of the dorm tower.
“Are we even allowed up here?” he says, glancing up at the night above him. The sky is dark and bleary, with just a few stars burning bright in their lonesome.
“Do you care?” Andrew asks. Neil looks over to see him walking up to the very edge of the platform, and a traitorous part of him kick-starts in fear. Andrew seems comfortable, though, staring down at the campus beneath him, and Neil takes a deep breath through his nose as he follows and settles into the spot by his side.
Neither of them say anything else. Andrew busies himself with picking out a cigarette from the pack, the whiteness of it glinting starlight against the gold glow of his eyes. He passes the box to Neil as he lights up, then takes a slow drag and looks out at nothing.
It’s something about the night. It’s something about the quiet that in any other situation would be uncomfortable. It’s something about all of it, the new city, the new name, the new room, the new people, that has Neil staring at the end of the stick and saying, “I’m a light sleeper.”
Andrew makes no move to indicate he’s listening, so Neil continues, “That’s not, like, me blaming you or something. I just…” He makes a face. “Anyways. Um. Do you know what time it is?”
Andrew makes a show of pulling the sleeve of his sweatshirt up and looking at the nonexistent watch on his wrist. Neil’s gaze snags on the thick bands wrapped there, and then on Andrew’s lips popping free from the cigarette, the way he breathes in and closes his eyes and then exhales a cloud of smoke.
So Neil looks out at the littered campus grounds, the pinches of people galloping drunkenly through the streets on the night of the first day of the semester, and he lets his shoulders drop. His mind endlessly wanders.
He learns from Kevin that Aaron studies biochemistry, pre-med, and Andrew is a criminal justice major. The revelation makes Neil look at Kevin with a bemused expression, but Kevin just half-shrugs in lieu of response, so Neil leaves it be.
He also learns that Andrew and Aaron have a cousin, Nicky, who graduated last year and moved to Germany to be with his long distance boyfriend, Erik. This one he doesn’t learn from Kevin, though. This one he learns by walking back to the dorm after class one day to find Kevin gone, Andrew propped up with a book on his loft, and Aaron sitting at his desk on a video call.
“Oh…?” comes an unfamiliar voice, staticky through the speakers on Aaron’s laptop. “Who is that?”
“It’s Neil,” says Aaron, moving a little to the side. “Kevin brought him to harass us.”
“I am literally right here, you know,” says Neil as he moves into frame. He leans over Aaron’s shoulder and looks directly at Nicky, who is leaning back in his seat slightly and humming appreciatively.
“Let’s just say that Kevin has excellent taste,” Nicky grins, nodding.
Aaron rolls his eyes as Neil says, “What?”
“Eyes off,” says Andrew in German out of literally nowhere, and Neil jolts slightly to find him hovering over Aaron’s other side. Nicky makes a small noise of protest, but grumbles and obediently looks away.
Neil’s eyes stay wide. The use of German was so sudden and so startling, but it makes sense if Neil thinks about it. Nicky.
Andrew keeps his narrowed gaze on the screen as Neil properly introduces himself to Nicky. He learns that Nicky was a marketing major, and “Did you know that I’m Andrew and Aaron’s legal guardian?” and “Neil, you have to meet Erik. Give me your number so I can set up our own little chat!” and “You study math? Hot and smart? Now that is just unfair.”
Neil doesn’t really mind the attention. It’s a little confusing, yes, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. Aaron can’t stop scowling at his cousin, while Andrew promptly goes back to completely ignoring all three of them shortly after his little interruption. Neil glances at his watch and sees that it is almost three pm, so he slings his bag back over his shoulder and heads out. It’s only the fourth day of class, but somehow he already has three assignments due within the next five days, so. He is going to beat procrastination and get a head start while he can.
He decides to head to the campus library, because it’s right across the dorm tower and it’s open twenty four hours. He doesn’t think he’s going to be studying very late today, but the thought of being in the middle of an assignment and then being told he has to leave is…not the most appealing thing ever. So he climbs onto the elevators and makes his way up to the third floor.
Where he immediately and thoroughly makes eye contact with one Jean Moreau.
Jean sighs in a way that has Neil knowing he’s sighing from all the way across the room, and the girl next to him looks up in confusion before following his gaze to Neil. Her lips part, and she glances sidelong at Jean.
So, naturally, Neil walks up to them and takes a seat at their table right across from her.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays are supposed to be my no-Kevin-and-Neil days,” Jean greets him in venomous French.
“Boo hoo hoo,” says Neil in English. He doesn’t really know what the French equivalent for that would be anyways.
“Hello!” says the girl, smiling serenely. The bottom two layers of her white hair are layered with pastel color. “My name is Renee. I’m a friend of Jean’s.”
Neil thinks he vaguely recognizes the name. He nods and says, “I’m Neil.”
“Oh, you’re Neil,” says Renee, suddenly leaning forward with much more interest.
“Um,” says Neil. He looks at Jean. “You’re obsessed with me.”
“I do not talk about you,” says Jean. “I’ve never mentioned you to her. Why would I? I have nothing good to say.”
Renee waves this off and says casually, “It’s not Jean I heard about you from,” and then doesn’t offer any more explanation on the matter at all. Neil waits for a moment, because he feels like he is supposed to be waiting for something right now, but when Renee doesn’t offer anything more than her—quite unsettling, really—smile, he furrows his brows and busies himself with pulling out his tablet.
Right, well. He has some equations to get through.
He makes it through one and a half of the assigned problems before he is inevitably distracted again. Figures, really.
“What are you working on, Neil?” Renee asks him over the table. “I see a lot of numbers.”
“Calculus,” says Neil, turning his tablet around to show her. “Limits.”
She scrunches her nose. “I see. That’s interesting.”
Is it? he wants to ask. Before he can say anything though, Jean is looking up from his own laptop and squinting at him. “I can’t believe that you are a science person.”
“Wrong,” says Neil. “I’m a math person. There’s a difference.”
Jean doesn’t look convinced. “Kevin will try to get you to change your major.”
“Literally what,” says Neil.
Jean nods as if he has not just said the most ridiculous thing to ever come out of his mouth—and Neil hasn’t even known him for more than four days at this point. “He will,” he says again. “He did it to me in high school, and then he did it to me again last year when I was a freshman.”
“What even is your major, anyway,” says Neil.
“Ceramics,” says Jean. “Studio art, more accurately. But I concentrate in ceramics.”
“Okay, well,” says Neil. “Maybe Kevin won’t tell me to change my major.”
Jean doesn’t seem fazed. “That is rude.”
“I’m rude,” Neil throws back.
Renee is studying him, perfectly content with her decision to stay on the outskirts of the strange conversation and rake her eyes all over Neil’s face. If it were anyone else, Neil would think she is taking note of all of his scars, but something about the way her narrow eyes glide over him gives him the impression that it’s something else.
He turns to her and decides to ask her plainly: “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing,” she says, but she doesn’t shift away.
“Okay,” says Neil, and then he goes back to his work.
This time, he manages to make it through an entire three problems before someone knocks into their table. Neil closes his eyes. Then he opens them and looks up to find two new people standing in front of them.
“Hi guys,” says Renee to them as Neil locks eyes with Jean, who is sighing again.
“Renee!” says the man with spikes for hair. He claps his hand over Jean’s shoulder, and Jean’s entire body glitches. “And Jean! What a coincidence to run into the two of you here. I heard that—oh! Who is this?”
The way this guy is staring at Neil tells him exactly how much of a coincidence this is, but Neil straightens up anyway and says evenly, “I’m Jean’s classmate. Neil Josten.”
“Neil Josten,” says the girl next to him. They’re holding hands, Neil realizes belatedly. “I’m Dan, and this is Matt. We heard about Kevin and Andrew’s new roommate and thought we’d stop in to say hi.”
Well. At least now Neil knows where Renee had heard about him from: one of his sore sucker roommates.
“Where’s Allison?” Renee asks, tilting her head.
“Something about needing a latte,” says Matt with a shrug.
“Oh,” says Renee, “a latte sounds good.”
“Do you drink coffee, Neil?” Dan asks.
“Um,” says Neil.
“Perfect!” says Matt, clapping her hands together. “Then Neil, Dan, and I will go grab coffee for everyone.”
“What?” says Neil, but it’s too late. It is too fucking late. Suddenly, he is being pulled out of his chair, and he’s shooting Jean an alarmed look and saying in French, “They’re not serious, are they? Literally when did I offer to get coffee? When did I say I even wanted coffee?”
“It’s best to not resist,” says Jean solemnly.
“You speak French?” Matt says in wonder, poking Neil’s head. “Oh, Kevin must be having an absolute field day with you.”
And then they’re gone. Neil is sandwiched between Dan and Matt on either side of him as they make their way downstairs to the library café. He briefly wonders if it’s a good idea to leave his things with Jean and Renee, but Jean doesn’t seem like he would steal something belonging to Neil of all people, and Renee is…well, Neil hasn’t exactly gotten a good read on her yet, but he digresses.
He tells the two about how every time Kevin has to introduce him to someone, he always makes sure to tell them that he speaks French. Dan and Matt find this incredibly amusing, considering that they spend the next five minutes laughing about it, and they tell Neil that they are absolutely not surprised by the revelation.
“He learned from Jean in high school,” Dan explains. “He’s a nerd like that.”
“Said lovingly,” Matt adds quickly.
“Speak for yourself,” says Dan, and privately, Neil agrees with her.
They order their coffees, and Neil feels his shoulders physically drop in relief at the first sip, so. Maybe this wasn’t the worst idea in the world after all. He still scowls at Jean as he places his cup in front of him, though—French roast, just because Neil thought it would be really funny.
There’s a new girl here too, perfect platinum blonde curls and swooping eyeliner and pink lipstick. Neil looks right over her spot next to Renee and attempts to go back to his work.
“So,” she says anyway, because of course she does, “you’re the infamous Neil Josten.”
“Infamous,” Neil echoes.
She shrugs. Renee pipes up, “Neil, this is Allison.”
Which is when Neil officially throws out the prospect of actually getting anything done today. Instead he learns that Matt was roommates with Nicky last year, which is how he knows the twins, which is how he knows Kevin. And he’s been dating Dan since they were both freshman, which is how he knows Allison, which is how he knows Renee. And Renee, apparently, knows Andrew too. Somehow. Neil doesn’t really catch the intricacies of that connection.
And then there’s Jean, who isn’t really part of this friend group, but he’s here anyway.
“I am going to leave now,” Jean says in French a little while later.
Neil stares at him. “Okay.”
Jean ticks impatiently. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Oh,” says Neil, “yes. Yes. Let’s go.”
So Neil and Jean leave the third floor and go to the fourth floor—the floor explicitly marked as the quiet area, where they straggle around looking for an empty table. Neil gets to the back end where there are a few lone booths, and his eyes immediately zone in on a blond tuft of hair and familiar black armbands.
He walks over as if on autopilot. “Hi.”
Andrew glances up through his lashes, blinking slowly at him. The rest of his expression doesn’t change much, but he does say, “This is the quiet floor.”
“You’re talking too,” says Neil, and before he can think better of it, he slips into the spot diagonal to him.
“I didn’t say you could sit here,” says Andrew, but he doesn’t make any move to get Neil to go away, so, it’s probably fine.
He’s getting his tablet out again when Jean finally catches up to him. Jean glances to the top of Andrew’s head but thinks better of saying something, and Neil obediently moves into the far end of the booth until he is directly across from Andrew. Andrew seems content with ignoring both of them, hazel eyes focused straight on the screen of his laptop in front of him.
They delve into silence for the next two hours, and Neil is quietly relieved. He manages to make it through his entire calculus assignment at a solid, steady pace. He glances up at Andrew every now and then, watching him sink his front teeth into his bottom lip and furrow his eyebrows in concentration. He’s been typing on-and-off the entire time, sometimes glancing down at his notebook next to him and furiously scribbling in black pen. Neil knows that Andrew can tell he’s watching him, but he doesn’t acknowledge him the entire time they’re sitting there.
Eventually, Jean mutters that he’s leaving, and Neil offers him a half-hearted wave and a see you tomorrow that Jean resolutely does not return. For a moment, Neil wonders if he is supposed to take Jean’s spot on the couch, but Andrew is still steadily working through whatever it is he’s typing, so Neil shrugs and opens up his next assignment: two chapters of reading for his godforsaken history class.
He’s halfway through the first chapter when Andrew decides he’s done for the day. He shuts his laptop closed, prompting Neil to look up at him. Andrew diligently gets to packing up his things, and when he slings his bag over his shoulder, Neil quickly moves to follow.
They walk across campus in silence, Andrew with his hands stuffed in his pockets while Neil looks aimlessly around. It’s a pretty road, winding and large and caged in by honey-red foliage. It’s nearing seven-thirty, so there are plenty of students out and about. Some walk in large groups, most are alone tapping away at their phones or listening to music.
“Are you hungry?” he finds himself asking. “Should we grab dinner?”
“Where do you think we’re going,” says Andrew, not exactly a question, and the corner of Neil’s lips quirk upward.
Andrew stops them in front of a diner just barely on the outskirts of campus: Sweetie’s, judging by the thick scrawl on the sign outside. Neil looks over it appraisingly, but Andrew is already filtering in through the front door.
Neil half-expects them to order takeout and walk back to their dorm with the food, but Andrew holds up two fingers to the hostess and watches her grab two paper-thin menus. She cocks her head in the direction of the dining area, and they weave through the bustling Thursday night crowd before being led to a corner booth. It’s a small thing, just large enough for both of them to slip in across from each other, and Neil smiles at the hostess in thanks while Andrew picks at his fingers and stares out the window their table is pressed against.
“What’s good here?” Neil asks, running his finger over the thin font on the menu. His lips twist as he looks through the options.
“The ice cream special,” says Andrew, reaching over the table and pointing at the small bubble in the corner. It’s a make your own deal, with several flavors and toppings to choose from. Neil’s nose crinkles as he looks it over.
“For dinner?” he asks. “Really?”
“Suit yourself,” says Andrew with a shrug, and then he calls over the waitress.
Neil watches in mild horror as Andrew proceeds to order a triple scoop chocolate ice cream sundae with extra fudge sauce and extra chocolate sprinkles. Andrew turns to him with an expectant glint in his eyes, and Neil quickly manages to order the first thing he sees on the menu: a burger of some sort with a side of crinkle cut fries. The waitress nods and collects their menus and walks away.
“I met your friend Renee today,” says Neil after a few moments of silence. Andrew glances at him but doesn’t say anything yet. “Well, really, I met…all of them. They sort of ambushed me before I found you at the library.”
Andrew rolls his eyes so hard Neil wonders if they will fall right out of his sockets.
It’s amusing, actually. He fights back his smile. “They’re very…they’re very interesting people,” he finally settles on.
“They’re idiots,” says Andrew. “You’re better off running.”
The thing is, Neil is tired of running. His father is dead, so there is no need to run anymore. Still—that’s not something he can just say right now out of nowhere, so instead what comes out of his mouth is, “I think I’m friends with Jean Moreau now, though. I guess.”
“You speak French, as I’m so extensively told,” Andrew drawls. “That friendship was inevitable.”
Neil smiles. “I don’t know. I’ve never really had friends before.”
Andrew doesn’t deem that with a response, but his gaze on Neil turns intense, ever so slightly.
Their food arrives shortly after, and immediately Andrew digs into his ice cream while Neil chooses to daintily eat his burger. This discretion lasts for all of two minutes, and then his hunger takes over and he too is scarfing his dinner down. The waitress brings them their check and Neil tries to reach for it, blinking when he’s landed another one of Andrew’s bored looks as it’s snatched away from him and paid in its entirety.
“Oh,” says Neil, watching as the waitress brings their receipt to Andrew with a pen. “You didn’t have to.”
Andrew looks back at him, his eyes roaming over the top half of Neil’s body. “Can you even afford it?”
“What?” says Neil, frowning. “Of course I can.”
“Really,” says Andrew, sounding like he doesn’t believe him in the slightest.
Neil looks down to where he’s looking, finding nothing but the sight of his perfectly acceptable t-shirt and beneath it, his old, scruffy jeans. It’s a normal outfit, he thinks. A little battered, sure, but Neil is used to blending in with the crowd. Years on the run sort of made that an inevitable reality.
“Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asks anyway.
The expression Andrew is making sort of comes off as an indignant where do I even start? But Andrew doesn’t seem the type to say something like that so explicitly. Still, Neil hears it regardless, so it doesn’t even matter, really.
They walk back to the dorm in silence once again, but it isn’t uncomfortable. It’s nice, actually. The breeze is cool on his face and Andrew is a steady presence preceding him the entire way back. He wonders if he should say something to start a conversation, but Andrew seems perfectly fine with the silence, so Neil is content to be as well.
“Neil,” Kevin greets him when the two enter their room again. “Have you done the readings yet?”
“I started them,” Neil mutters, already making a beeline for his bed. Andrew is rummaging through his closet, picking out a change of clothes to sleep in.
“Well hurry up,” Kevin says, annoyed. “I want to talk about them and I know Jean isn’t going to do them until Sunday night.”
“Talk about them with your pillow,” says Neil as he drops down face-first onto his mattress. “They’re not even due until Monday,” he continues, voice smushed.
“Where were you two, anyway?” Kevin asks, glancing between them.
When Andrew doesn’t respond, Neil rolls over until he’s lying on his back and stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “Dinner.”
“Dinner,” Kevin echoes.
“Dinner,” says Aaron out of nowhere, and Neil squints through his sleepy haze to find him curled in the corner of his bed, glasses perched atop the bridge of his nose and hands clutching what looks to be a biology textbook. He glances narrowly at his brother, whose back is still to all of them. “Really?”
Neil shrugs, because this really isn’t that big of a deal, and then he rolls back over onto his belly and closes his eyes.
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but the next time his eyes open, the bedroom is bathed in darkness and there’s a faint sound of rustling overhead. Neil quickly swallows away the instinctive panic that rises like bile in his throat and blearily rubs at his eyes, reaching for his phone scattered somewhere over his head and clicking it to life. He squints. It’s well past two in the morning.
Neil sighs through his teeth and moves to get up and change out of his jeans, and his limbs take him through the motions on their own: he trails over to his closet space and takes out one of his three pajama shorts, quickly exchanging them for the thick denim and stretching his arms high over his head.
The rustling hasn’t stopped, he realizes belatedly. He looks back over his shoulder in the direction of Andrew’s bed, and he freezes when he sees the pile of blankets twitching avidly in place. There’s no way Andrew is awake. If he was, he wouldn’t be moving at all. Neil knows just enough about him at this point to know that hypothesis as fact. Or, at least, he can tell.
He walks over to stand in the center of the room and looks up at the protective railing bracketing Andrew’s bed. He does not know what lies beyond the threshold, but then a second later everything just—stops. Andrew goes completely still, and then he rolls over, and Neil does not have enough time to look away before gold meets blue.
Andrew’s chest is heaving, and his throat catches when he meets Neil’s eyes through the pale darkness. Neil stares at him because he does not know what else to do. He stares at him because he does not know how to look away. He thinks of the smoke curling around Andrew’s cigarette on the rooftop the other night, and he thinks of the silver curve of his spoon of ice cream from just a few hours ago. He thinks of Andrew’s eyes raking the length of his figure again and again and again. He doesn’t know what Andrew’s deal is. He doesn’t know if he will ever find out.
Andrew doesn’t look away, so Neil doesn’t either. He wonders what Andrew is thinking. He wonders if he’s even conscious of it.
Neil realizes quickly that Andrew just…doesn’t sleep a lot.
It’s a certain thing, to wake up in the middle of every night to the sound of your bunkmate shifting around in his bed. Neil never brings it up, though. He doesn’t know how Andrew will react if he does, and he isn’t sure if he wants to let this sliver of night slip through his fingers. Because Neil wakes up every time without fail, and he waits. He waits to see if Andrew will just go back to sleep, or if he’ll climb down his ladder and reach for his pack of cigarettes and Neil will follow him to the rooftop. Night after night after night. After the first five times, Neil can admit it has become a routine of sorts.
He doesn’t bring it up, but he does decide to ask: “Are you an insomniac?”
They’re lying next to each other on the roof, their legs dangling off the edge as they stare up at the starless sky. Andrew is taking a slow drag of his cigarette, while Neil lets his burn right to the filter. He doesn’t expect an answer, really, but he can’t deny his curiosity. They’ve never talked here again after the first night, but Andrew tilts his chin, turns his face until he is facing Neil by his side.
They stare at each other. They do that a lot, actually, but Neil doesn’t mind. He likes looking at Andrew, and if context clues are anything to go by, Andrew doesn’t hate looking at him back.
Andrew blows smoke into his face, and Neil closes his eyes against the ashy air.
“No,” he says finally, several seconds later.
“When do you sleep?” Neil asks. He rolls over onto his stomach, propping himself up onto his shoulders and peering down at Andrew’s face. Andrew remains impassive, eyes flicking boredly around Neil’s eyes and his nose.
“The same time you do,” says Andrew.
Neil hums. “But then you wake up,” he murmurs.
“Ten points for Neil Josten,” says Andrew. He turns his chin away from him, looking past Neil’s ear up at a vague point in the sky. “Why do you have burn marks on your face?”
Neil recoils, but he doesn’t flinch. He should have known that this would come up sooner or later. Honestly, it’s a small fortune that nobody else has asked yet. They’ve looked their fill, of course, gazes lingering over the long-faded bruises that cage around his face, but no one has asked what they are. What they mean. What led to their appearance.
“If I tell you,” he says slowly, “will you elaborate on why you’re not an insomniac?”
“A truth for a truth,” Andrew hums, like he’s considering it. After a moment, he presses his lips into a thin line and nods once. “Fine,” he says, then straightens up and stubs his cigarette out by his waist. Neil watches him flick the ash away and swallows down his nerves.
Andrew turns to look at him. He splays his hand out on the concrete between them and he leans forward, not quite invading Neil’s space but not quite keeping to himself either. He waits patiently, as if Neil can take hours and hours to answer him and he will not give him grief for it. He won’t, Neil realizes with a startling intensity that has his eyes going slightly wide. He won’t.
“My parents are dead,” Neil says, and it comes out as more of a whisper than anything else.
“Did they do it then?” Andrew asks, gesturing to his own face.
Neil starts to shake his head, but—no, that’s not right. “I guess it was…because of them. In a way.”
Andrew peers at him. He doesn’t say anything. He just keeps waiting.
“It’s crazy because,” Neil starts, then stops. Considers. “I know for a fact I’m safe now, but I still haven’t really told anyone. I haven’t even thought about talking about it. Them. My parents.” A pause. “My father, mostly, though I don’t like thinking of him as such. Doesn’t really matter since every time I look in the mirror, I see him staring back at me, but. I don’t know. It’s weird. Imagine your most irrational fear being your own reflection.” He glances sidelong at Andrew. “What are you afraid of?”
“Heights,” says Andrew, and then, “Falling.”
“Falling,” Neil repeats. He raises an eyebrow. “We are literally on a roof right now.”
Andrew shrugs. “I have control of it here,” he says, and Neil mellows.
“You fear not being in control, then,” he says, and Andrew doesn’t respond to that, so Neil leans back on the palms of his hands and lets his mind continue to churn. “My mother ran away with me when I was ten. We were on the run from my father for eight years. When she died, I had to burn her body. It happened in California.”
“California,” Andrew says quietly.
“My father’s men found me eventually,” Neil continues, then finally makes a vague gesture at his scars. “A lot of these are from that. These,” he says, lowering his hand to his chest even though he knows Andrew hasn’t seen his bare chest before, “are from before.”
“Before,” says Andrew.
Neil smiles. “Do you like repeating the last word I say every time?”
“Time,” says Andrew, which makes Neil laugh up into the empty air. When he comes down, Andrew is still looking at him, and his eyes are sharp in a way Neil has never seen them before. Then he says, “Nightmares,” and all the air leaves Neil’s lungs.
He should have known. In hindsight, it was obvious. Neil has been plagued with nightmares too—for almost as long as he can remember, and thensome. In the bad ones, he’s at the end of the Butcher’s knife. In the worst ones, his mother is at the end of the Butcher’s knife. Sometimes Neil will wake up and find her dead body lying still by his side.
“What about your parents?” Neil asks.
“Don’t have them,” Andrew mutters, playing with the lighter between his fingers. Neil watches the flame dance against the horizon and spill its red, molten glow over Andrew’s thumbs. “I grew up in the system.”
Neil’s eyes go wide. “Then you and Aaron—”
“Not him,” Andrew interrupts, snapping the lighter closed. “Just me.”
He gets up after that, hops to his feet and dusts off the seat of his pajamas with rigid hands. Neil stares after his retreating figure, following him with his eyes until he disappears back inside and leaves Neil to sit and drown at the top of the world.
“You’re still a freshman,” Kevin tells him one Wednesday morning as they’re settling into their usual seats. Lecture isn’t set to start for another seven minutes, and in his periphery, Neil can see Jean trailing into the hall through the side door. “That means you have plenty of time to change your major to history.”
Neil blinks at him. “Oh my god, Jean was right.”
“What?” says Kevin.
“I mean,” says Neil, “why would I do that?”
Kevin lands him a cursory look. “You are doing well in this class. You have potential.”
Jean, who has just arrived on Neil’s other side, freezes and looks at Kevin. “You are not serious right now.” To Neil he says, “I told you.”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” Kevin sniffs. “If you won’t do it, then maybe someone with more sense will. Like Neil. I deserve to know at least one person in my major.”
“I’m glad you think I have more sense than Jean, but maybe you should work on making the people that are already in your major actually like you,” Neil suggests. He doesn’t have to ask whether or not his assumption is true. He knows Kevin Day well enough by now to know that he is generally what people would consider unlikeable.
“You do not have more sense than me,” Jean tells Neil.
“I’m not doing that,” says Kevin, and then, “What are you even going to do with a mathematics degree?”
Neil turns to Jean. “Is he serious?”
“Ignore him,” says Jean, waving non-committedly before taking his seat. “After a certain point you learn to tune him out.”
Neil thinks he can get behind that reasoning. He nods, then decides to aimlessly dissociate until the professor deems it time to begin class. Next to him, Jean’s phone dings, and he watches as he digs it out of his back pocket and clicks the screen to life. There’s a text message there, and whatever it says makes Jean scowl.
Neil doesn’t bother asking what happened. Jean turns to him, looks past him at Kevin, and then closes his eyes and mutters a string of curses in French under his breath. “Jeremy told me to invite you guys to Cat and Laila’s housewarming. It is on Friday. At…” Jean’s eyebrows furrow as he scans his phone screen. “Seven.”
Neil does not know a Jeremy or a Cat or a Laila, but judging by the way Kevin’s entire body perks, he clearly does.
“We will be there,” Kevin says, nodding seriously.
“Fine,” says Jean, starting to type something.
Neil looks between them. “Um. Hello?” To Kevin he says, “You really have to stop speaking for me, you know. I don’t even know who these people are. I’m not going.”
“Yes you are,” says Kevin. “It would do you good to meet Jeremy. Perhaps speaking with him will lead you in the right direction of a humanities degree.” He pauses to look thoughtfully up into the empty air above their heads. “Though, don’t let him talk too much about English. I am not too sure he even enjoys it.”
“He is studying for the LSAT,” Jean says darkly.
“He is a saint who should do whatever he wants,” says Kevin sincerely, before pausing. He furrows his brows. “Though, law school? Really?”
“It is not what he wants,” says Jean. Are his teeth clenching? His teeth are definitely clenching, and oh, are Kevin’s clenching too now? “It is what Mrs. Wilshire wants.”
“Hang on,” says Neil, putting both of his hands up. They both stop their teeth clenching competition and look at him. “Can we back up for a moment? I still don’t know who Jeremy or Cat and Laila are.”
“Oh,” says Kevin. “They’re Jean’s housemates.”
Neil blinks. Then he says to Jean, “So…you’re inviting us to your housewarming.”
“Incorrect,” says Jean. “Jeremy is inviting you to Cat and Laila’s housewarming.”
“Jeremy doesn’t even live with you guys full time,” says Kevin.
“It is literally your house too,” says Neil.
“Are you coming or not,” Jean snaps. “Cat needs a headcount so I know how many ingredients to buy.”
“Yes, we are,” says Kevin.
“Does that mean Andrew is invited too?” says Neil.
“Yes,” says Kevin, like it’s obvious. “Aaron too, though he won’t come if it’s on Friday.”
Jean rolls his eyes and types something else. He mumbles, “We will make pizzas, then.”
“Is that, like, cultural appropriation?” Neil asks, leaning over and blinking up at him. “Wait, you can cook? Seriously?”
Jean shoots him a baleful glare. “Cat taught me. Why do you sound so disbelieving?”
“I don’t know,” says Neil. He supposes he can see it. Kind of. Jean Moreau in the middle of a kitchen, apron on, spatula in hand. The mental image is so damning he almost snorts at the thought. Then the rest of the conversation catches up to him. “Hang on, so, when Kevin said that he would be fifth wheeling if he lived with you…”
Jean immediately scowls as Kevin turns to snicker behind his hand.
“Well?” Neil prompts.
Jean reaches up and flicks his index finger against Neil’s forehead. “Figure it out yourself.”
“You and Jeremy, Cat and Laila?” Neil guesses. “Or is it you and Cat, Jeremy and Laila? All four of you? Or is it you and—”
“Shut up,” Jean hisses as Kevin starts to laugh louder. Jean’s expression twists between exasperation and annoyance and he says to Kevin in French, “Tame your freshman beast. I am tired of young people and their overly curious minds.”
“You and Neil are the same age,” says Kevin pointedly.
This just makes Jean’s mood dampen further. “He is a year below me in his studies. It does not matter.”
“You know,” Neil starts. “You really do talk a lot of shit for someone who is only a grade ahead.”
“See you on Friday,” says Jean like it’s a dismissal, even though they still have the entire class to get through sitting next to each other.
Neil learns from Kevin on Friday that the reason Aaron won’t be joining them is because he already has plans with his girlfriend.
Aaron having a girlfriend isn’t the shocking part of this. No—it’s the fact that Neil has been living with him for over three weeks now and he still hasn’t met or heard anyone talk about her. But, well, she exists: Katelyn Mackenzie, pre-med chemistry major with an aspiration of pediatric surgery.
She comes to the dorm to pick Aaron up while Andrew and Kevin are in class. When there’s a knock on the door, Neil turns slowly to find Aaron bumbling away from his desk chair and quickly straightening his hair in the mirror. After a few seconds of this, he takes a deep breath and relaxes his shoulders, then moves to open the door to reveal a tall, objectively beautiful woman with bright red hair just a shade lighter than Neil’s.
She smiles and opens her arms, and Aaron instantly sinks against her.
“Oh!” she exclaims, turning them both around so she can face Neil. “Hi! You’re Neil, right? Aaron’s new roommate!”
“That’s me,” says Neil, a little dumbfounded. He pointedly ignores the glare Aaron is currently sending him.
“It’s nice to meet you!” says Katelyn. “Aaron and I have a date night planned, so we’ll get out of your hair as soon as possible.”
“Don’t tell Andrew,” says Aaron, which is in fact, like, the first thing he’s ever really said to Neil actually. “I mean it.”
Neil tilts his head. “Why not?”
“Just don’t,” Aaron says, and then he clasps Katelyn’s hand into his, and the two disappear down the hall.
Neil stares after him in mild shock, but he doesn’t get a chance to dig for answers until later when he, Andrew, and Kevin are walking off-campus to where Jean lives. It’s a house, Jean had said during lecture that morning. Wow, that’s really helpful, Neil had responded. Whatever. You will know when you see it. There are two bikes parked outside in the yard, Jean had said.
“Hey,” Neil starts now, “why isn’t Aaron coming?”
Kevin doesn’t bother responding. Andrew’s lips curl into a sneer as he says, “Probably hiding with that cheerleader of his.”
Neil stops walking. “So you do know about Katelyn?”
Andrew stops walking too. He looks back over his shoulder and raises both of his eyebrows. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No,” Neil admits. “But he was so…secretive about it. He even made sure to tell her to come by when he knew you weren’t going to be there.”
Andrew rolls his eyes. “Idiot,” is all he has to say, and the rest of the walk is spent in silence.
The house is, indeed, a house. And there are indeed two matching black motorcycles parked in the front. Kevin is the one who ends up knocking on the front door, and the girl who opens the door immediately breaks out into a grin and ushers them inside.
“Queen!” she says to Kevin, holding out her first for a bump.
Kevin stares at it for a moment. Then he sighs and complies. “Hello, Catalina.”
“And you’re Neil!” Cat says, reaching out and squeezing Neil’s shoulder. “Jean has told me all sorts of things about you.”
“And I’m sure they were all deeply misrepresentative of my character,” says Neil.
“Yeah, probably,” she shrugs, then leads them deeper into the house. It’s a quaint thing, with enough trinkets and decorations to make it feel like home. Neil doesn’t know what he was expecting from Jean’s house, but it wasn’t exactly this. There aren’t very many people here yet, mostly strangers or people he vaguely recognizes from hanging out with Jean often enough.
Another girl quickly walks up to them, her smile soft and excited on her face as she slots perfectly against Cat’s side. She introduces herself as Laila and tells them this isn’t an actual housewarming since she’s been living here for a few years now, but she likes to throw get-togethers sometime near the beginning of the semester and call them housewarmings just for fun. Neil lets his eyes flit around through the slowly growing crowd, and then his eyes land on the corner where two men are tucked away, talking under their breaths.
One of them is Jean. Neil makes eye contact with him, and immediately Jean pulls a face. Neil has no trouble pulling the same face back, and then the guy Jean is talking to whirls around and Neil is forced to bear witness to Kevin fucking Day breaking out into the widest, most disgusting smile he has ever seen in his life.
“What the fuck,” says Neil, looking to Andrew just in time to see him rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
“Kevin!” says the guy. He’s tan and distinct, with wavy blond hair that turns caramel brown at the roots. “I’m so glad you could come!”
Jean wordlessly slips into the spot by Neil’s other side.
“Is that…” Neil starts, trailing off.
“Jeremy,” says Jean with a solemn nod.
“And that means…” Neil rounds on him. “I just want you to know,” he says, “that I was right about my first guess. You and Jeremy, Cat and—”
Jean slaps his palm over Neil’s mouth. He hisses in French, “You will keep your mouth shut or I will shut it for you. Do not think I won’t do it. Let me remind you that I grew up with Kevin Day.”
Andrew slides into view in front of them, and Neil watches through his periphery as his glare lands neatly on Jean’s face. Jean looks alarmed for a moment at the sudden scrutiny, but he obediently lets go of his hold on Neil’s mouth without another word and takes one solid step away from him. Andrew regards him with a cool expression, and it is so ridiculous that Neil huffs an amused breath.
“Andrew should hang out with us more often,” Neil mutters to Jean in French.
“Shut up,” Jean mutters back.
“Neil!” says Jeremy, waving him over and slicing right through whatever had just happened. “It’s nice to finally meet you! Kevin tells me you speak French. Did you know I’ve been trying to learn? Oh, do you want a drink?”
“He is underage,” says Jean, effectively ignoring all of the rest of that, and Neil elbows him.
“We are the same age.”
“Are we really? You don’t act like it.”
“Oookay,” says Jeremy, and then he passes over a can of something or the other anyway. Neil takes it and stares down at the new weight in his hand. “Jean did mention you’re a freshman.”
“Of course he did,” says Neil. He drags his nail over the rim of the can opening and mentally debates with himself. He hasn’t drank since…well, since before his mother died, really. And even when they did drink alcohol it was more as a fucked up substitution for pain medication than anything else. If his father was still alive, Neil wouldn’t even be entertaining the idea, however…
He catches Andrew’s eye. The weight of the music from what looks to be Cat’s boombox thumps faintly beneath the soles of his feet, and he wonders for a moment if the curves of Andrew’s face would shine even the slightest bit differently under the influence. Would he become blurrier or more pronounced? Would Neil talk more or less? He already seems to talk so much when he’s around Andrew Minyard. Would a little more really hurt?
So he nods in Jeremy’s direction and resolutely ignores the conversation he and Kevin are clearly having about him and his major of choice. Jeremy is laughing, unsurprised by Kevin’s ridiculousness by this point, probably, but Kevin seems dead-set. He’s nursing a glass of straight vodka that’s already halfway gone, and his cheeks are tinged with indignation as he rants to Jeremy.
Neil watches them for just a moment longer, and then he cracks open the can and begins to chug.
He goes through the can quickly enough, and when he emerges, his throat is burning and Andrew is staring blankly at him. Jean is also gaping down at him, but Neil doesn’t care about what Jean thinks. He keeps his focus on the gold of Andrew’s eyes and takes a brilliant step closer to him, holding up the empty can and grinning.
“Did you think I would do it?” he asks, quietly enough so that nobody else can hear him.
“Is that what you were doing?” Andrew asks. “Debating whether or not you should have a drink?”
“Truth for a truth?” Neil asks, just because he can.
Andrew’s eyes narrow. “What do you want to know?”
“Why does Aaron keep Katelyn a secret from you?”
Andrew doesn’t seem surprised at all that that is the question Neil chooses to ask. Instead of answering though, he slides his gaze over to the table of liquor bottles, and then to the now-empty cup in Kevin’s hands. They watch as Kevin walks over to them and reaches for the vodka, pouring himself another glass before twisting the cap back into place and setting off for where Jean and Jeremy are.
Andrew dips forward, swiping the vodka away from Kevin and ignoring Kevin’s beastly, drunken scowl behind him. He finds Neil again, and he tips his head in the direction of the hallway. “You said you’re friends with Jean Moreau, right?”
“Well,” says Neil, and then Andrew is reaching out and wrapping his fingers around Neil’s wrist and pulling him into the bedroom at the very end of the hall.
It’s clearly the room that Jean shares with Jeremy, judging by the two beds positioned against opposite walls and a closet full of clothes Neil is annoyed he recognizes. Andrew walks to the center of the room, right in the spot between the two beds, and sits down with his stolen glass of vodka between his hands. Neil follows him down, grinning loopily when he finds that he stumbles over his own feet on the way, and the look Andrew gives him in return is so strange he laughs out loud.
“You had one drink,” he deadpans. “Seriously?”
“Maybe I’m a weightlight,” says Neil as he leans against one of the beds.
“You mean a lightweight.”
“I don’t think so.”
Andrew peers at him as if he is looking for something under the drunk styrofoam coating him like a shell, like he can expend no energy at all and pry it right into his cold hands. But thinking about Andrew’s hands leads to Neil wanting to look at Andrew’s hands, and a second later he realizes that there is literally nothing stopping him. So he does. He looks at Andrew’s hands where they flex against his glass, and he decides that Andrew Minyard has a really nice pair of hands. Not in a weird way. Just in a…Andrew way.
“We made a deal,” Andrew says suddenly, cutting Neil out of his thoughts immediately. “Aaron and I. We made a deal with each other last year. Katelyn breaks the rules of our deal.”
“What sort of deal is that?” Neil’s loose tongue asks. It’s dark here, on the floor in the middle of a foreign bedroom and across from a familiar boy. “You can’t end the deal.”
He doesn’t say it as a question because it’s not a question. Andrew understands anyway. “I am not someone who goes back on my word.”
“Okay,” Neil whispers.
Andrew takes a long sip of the vodka. Neil can tell it goes down smooth, but Andrew’s nose still crunches. “I can’t believe he likes this shit.”
“Alcohol makes you lose control,” Neil says, because he can’t end it here. He still hasn’t held up his end of the bargain. “And I don’t want to say something in front of the wrong person. That’s why I don’t drink usually.”
Andrew points blankly up to his own face. “Then you’re an idiot.”
“You are not the wrong person,” says Neil. “Andrew.”
Andrew swallows again. His glass is almost fully drained, and internally, Neil wonders how much of it has gotten to his head. It feels like their rooftop meetings all over again, except…not. Neil doesn’t know how to describe it. He doesn’t know how a closed door and an isolated bedroom can change an atmosphere so acutely. He doesn’t know how he is supposed to recover from it, if he is supposed to recover at all.
They find themselves floating back to the main room after a while. Neil still feels a pleasant buzz draping over him, and Andrew looks normal as ever, so. Whether he’s drunk or not, nobody can really tell.
There’s a mass of people in the living room playing through several board games, and Neil takes a seat next to Kevin on the floor by the coffee table. Andrew follows him wordlessly and sits down too, until Neil is neatly sandwiched between the two of them. Kevin has his thighs pulled up to his chest, his head buried into his knees as an empty bottle of vodka hangs flimsily from his outstretched hand. Neil crosses his legs under him, his leg brushing ever so slightly against Andrew’s calf as he goes, and he pretends not to feel it in its throbbing wholeness.
Neil takes the time to look around at the rest of the people here. Laila is sitting in a half-moon chair with Cat nestled against her legs in front of her. On the couch, Jean is sitting on the middle cushion with Jeremy sitting to his left side. He’s drunk—they both are, perhaps, judging by the way Jeremy’s forehead is tilting onto Jean’s shoulder, and Jean is sitting back looking completely and utterly at peace. It’s a sight that drives one of his father’s knives into Neil’s chest, wedges it into his heart and screams in the voice of his mother, you can never have that, you will never have that, people are a means to an end, Abram, do not ever forget that.
Loneliness is a sudden and vicious thing, and it settles into Neil’s bones in the same way it always does: sweeping, all-encompassing. He ignores it as he always does, too. He doesn’t have any other choice.
Kevin ends up being too drunk to walk back with them, so Neil and Andrew leave him on Cat and Laila’s living room couch. Jean scowls down at Kevin’s sleeping figure while Jeremy laughs from behind him and gently curls his arms around Jean’s waist. Neil looks between them and the knowing look Cat and Laila are exchanging from a little ways away, and then Andrew is grabbing his wrist again and leading them to the front door.
Neil bids goodbye over his shoulder and lets Andrew pull him firmly into the night.
“I am only going to ask you this once, so listen carefully,” says Jean in French the following Monday at nine o’clock in the morning. He drops his bag in front of Neil and points at him. “At the housewarming. What were you and Andrew Minyard doing in my room?”
Next to him, Kevin promptly breaks into a coughing fit.
Neil’s eyes go wide. “What? Nothing!”
“Right,” says Jean, squinting down at the top of his head in disbelief. “Why on earth do you think I am going to believe your obvious lie? Fess up right now, Neil Josten.”
“We weren’t doing anything!” says Neil again, a little more urgently.
“He quite literally grabbed your hand and took you to my bedroom.”
“He grabbed my wrist. There’s a difference.”
“You were in there for an hour!”
“Do you not have friends? Do you not talk to your friends?”
Neil turns to Kevin for backup, but Kevin is staring at him with an expression that says he is absolutely not going to be taking his side on this one. Rude, really! Betrayal! Cold, hard betrayal!
“You would not have to go to my room if you were just talking,” Jean says impatiently.
Neil shakes his head. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Jean looks like he has a few choice words for Neil indeed, but then the professor is calling them all to attention and telling them to quiet down so she can begin the lecture, and Jean has no choice but to grumble a string of curse words under his breath and violently take his seat.
The three of them trail out of the lecture hall together as always, and Neil is once again hit with several hours of free time before his calculus lecture. This time, however, he does have his stylus with him, so he bids farewell to both Kevin and Jean and sets off in the direction of the library.
He finds Andrew and Renee on the fifth floor, sitting in a corner booth by the window. Andrew is sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the back cushion of the seat as he speaks quietly with Renee, and Renee has her elbow on the table as she listens and nods along to whatever he’s saying. Neil approaches them and gently places his hand at the end of their table, and Renee turns her smile onto him while Andrew surveys him with one of his signature bored looks.
“Hi, Neil,” Renee says. “Did you and Andrew have plans to study together?”
“No,” says Neil, glancing at Andrew. “I just saw you two here and thought I’d say hello.”
“Perfect timing, then,” says Renee, making a quick show of checking her watch. “I have plans with Allison and Dan in a bit, so I was just leaving anyway.” She gathers her things and shoots Andrew a subtle look. “Think about it, okay? Or at least talk to Bee about it.”
Andrew shoos her off with a flick of his hand, and a moment later, she’s gone.
Renee had been sitting next to Andrew on the outward end of the booth, so Neil replaces her and settles in. Andrew doesn’t seem to mind, so Neil doesn’t think any further about it either, taking his tablet out and opening up his worksheet. He does manage to ask, though, “Bee?”
“Betsy Dobson,” says Andrew easily, and Neil watches him flip a page in his textbook. When Neil doesn’t say anything, Andrew pulls his textbook into his lap and says, “My therapist. I could give you her number, if you want.”
“No,” says Neil. Andrew shrugs and returns to his reading, so Neil, his curiosity sated, starts working through his homework. He won’t lie that he’s a little surprised Andrew of all people sees a therapist, but if he thinks about it, it’s not particularly out of character. Andrew doesn’t talk about himself a lot, if ever, but he offers himself in practical ways. Neil supposes therapy is something similar to that.
Then Andrew sighs. “Truth for a truth,” he says.
Neil looks up and agrees easily, “Okay.”
“I was on court-mandated medication through all of last year,” says Andrew, which finally has Neil fumbling with his pen in shock. Andrew doesn’t linger, though. He barrels forward: “They had me get a shrink. It wasn’t my choice. I went through a dozen before I met Bee.”
“Are you…” Neil blinks.
“I’m sober now,” Andrew waves him off. “Maybe you should be happy you never saw that version of me.”
“Do you think I wouldn’t like it?” Neil asks before he can corral his tongue. He doesn’t think about the implications of his own words. He doesn’t think about how they give him away, a hidden I like the version of you I know that he will not dwell on.
Andrew doesn’t seem to notice. Or, if he does, he makes no move to show it. “Nobody liked it,” he says instead, and then, quieter, “though everyone wanted it.”
It’s said bitterly. It’s more emotion than Neil has ever seen him display. He silently packs it away and tucks it aside in his mind. “I’m glad you’re sober.”
Andrew stares at Neil like he’s unwrapping a gift, peeling away all the different-colored layers of paper until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for. Then he looks away just as abruptly, and Neil is left there, unraveled beyond repair, with nothing to piece him back together.
He watches as Andrew reads down the length of his textbook page, the tip of his index finger curling around the bottom corner and preparing to turn to the next one. He watches Andrew’s brows remain perfectly still in concentration, and he watches Andrew’s mouth as it presses softly together, and he watches Andrew’s honey eyes rake over line after line.
“Staring,” Andrew says without looking up.
Neil’s throat is so dry he can feel it. “What truth do you want in return?”
“What would you give me?”
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
Andrew stares back at him, unimpressed. “Don’t barter yourself so freely.”
“I’m not,” says Neil. He thinks of something to say. He thinks about what he could offer in return for Andrew’s honesty, this part of himself he gives to nobody else but Neil. He looks down at his hands, the faint burns against his cuticles. He is silently grateful that there is nobody else around them in this corner of the library. “These,” he says, gesturing to his hands. “I got them when I burned my mother’s body.”
“You killed her,” says Andrew, filling in invisible blanks.
Neil shakes his head. “No. It was after she died.”
“Did you love her?”
Neil sometimes still feels the sinking hollow of her absence. He wishes he could tell her that everything worked out, that he isn’t running anymore, but she would probably kill him if she knew. “She did everything she could to protect me.” And then, “She was my mother. Of course I did.”
“Do you have to love her because of her blood?”
“No,” says Neil immediately. He shakes his head again and gestures up at his own face. “I did not love my father, and I look just like him.”
Andrew seems to accept that in silence. They turn back to their books and sink back into their work.
After two months of waiting for Andrew in the bottom bunk, Neil presses his hands into the wood of the bunk ladder one night. Across the room, Kevin and Aaron are fast asleep, and Neil takes a quick breath before climbing up.
He perches at the foot of Andrew’s bed as Andrew’s eyes finally flutter open. He stares up at the ceiling as his breathing evens out, and then he looks down and goes completely still when he sees Neil in front of him.
Neil doesn’t have to ask if Andrew is okay. He knows he isn’t. Instead he holds up the black hoodie he knows Andrew likes wearing during their nightly rooftop rendezvous, and he watches as Andrew’s gaze flickers away from Neil’s face to the cloth. He makes grabby hands for it, and Neil passes it over wordlessly.
They traipse to the rooftop and stand at the edge of the world with one cigarette between their lungs.
They go to Sweetie’s and get ice cream that night. Well—Andrew does. Neil gets a tower of onion rings and steals three spoons of Andrew’s chocolate sundae.
“You could just ask,” Andrew says after Neil has finished not-so-subtly digging away a bit of the dessert while Andrew is pretending to look in another direction.
“Hmm,” Neil drawls, squinting at the chocolate on his spoon. “Would you let me?”
“No,” says Andrew, crossing his arms.
Neil grins. “Oh, like you’re doing right now?”
“Order your own goddamn ice cream,” says Andrew, and then he hugs his bowl close to his chest and glares when Neil bursts into laughter.
Studying with Andrew after his history lecture becomes yet another routine in Neil’s life. It’s nice, because Andrew understands the importance of peace and quiet, and oftentimes the two will go the entire three hours without saying a word to each other beyond hi and hello. Neil loves it. It is consistently the best part of his day, save for their nights smoking together on the roof. He doesn’t know what it means for every best part of his day being something to do with Andrew.
Or, maybe, he does.
Jean joins him one morning, and Kevin is left to sullenly stomp back to the dorms on his own like a baby. Neil and Jean both ignore him as they make their way over to the library, and when they arrive, Neil finds out exactly why he wanted to come along today.
Andrew is sitting in their usual booth with Jeremy Knox. Neil’s eyebrows shoot upward at the sight, and next to him, Jean mutters something intelligible under his breath.
“Did you plan this?” Neil asks, pointing to Jeremy and Andrew where they’re sitting across from each other, mirroring each other’s furious typing on their respective laptops.
“Obviously not,” Jean says. “Did you think I was here to study with you?”
Neil is unfazed. “That is rude.”
“I’m rude,” Jean throws back, and Neil lands him an unimpressed glare.
“Well,” he says, “I didn’t want to study with you either, so.”
Jean nods. “Because you wanted your alone time with Andrew. I am glad we can agree on this.”
“And you with Jeremy, asshole. Whatever. Are we supposed to get them apart?”
“Forget it,” Jean mutters, shaking his head. “Jeremy is too friendly. This is what he does.” He gestures over to the booth and makes a vague, annoyed gesticulation. “He probably recognized your boyfriend and went to say hello.”
“Andrew is not my—”
“Jean! Neil!” comes the tell-tale voice of Jeremy Knox, and Neil and Jean are left to glare scathingly at each other for all of two seconds before they are unceremoniously left to walk over to Jeremy and Andrew. Andrew doesn’t even look up as Neil slides into the booth next to him, but Jeremy nods his head in greeting before turning to Jean and saying in poorly accented French, “Bonjour, Jean.”
Jean’s nose scrunches, but the corners of his mouth quirk up ever so slightly at the same time, and Neil can tell Jeremy notices it too considering his triumphant grin.
“That was good, right?” he says, and Neil thinks he vaguely resembles a puppy begging for scraps as he leans into Jean’s space. “Jean, come on, you have to admit that was pretty good.”
“All you said was hello,” says Jean with a raised eyebrow.
“Je m’appelle Jeremy,” says Jeremy with great emphasis.
“Okay,” says Jean. “Go back to your work.”
“Neil! Good to see you,” Jeremy says to Neil, tipping his head forward in his direction. “You speak French too. Give me some feedback since Jean won’t.”
Jean looks dangerously up at Neil.
“Um,” says Neil. “You’re…good.”
Jean sits back, satisfied but still glancing at him suspiciously.
Jeremy beams. “Thank you! It’s a slow going process since I have no space in my schedule to actually add a language course, but I’m making it work to the best of my abilities. It’s important to me that at least one person in our group can speak to Jean in his mother tongue, and well, I have nothing interesting going on in my life aside from law school applications, so it might as well be me.”
“Might as well be you,” Jean echoes, meeting Jeremy’s eyes.
Jeremy smiles. “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m making the effort because I want to do this for you.”
Jean looks away from him, not deeming him with a response. Neil does too, which inevitably ends with him looking at Andrew.
Andrew, who is already staring back.
Neil’s eyes go wide by the smallest degree, and he knows Andrew catches it with the way his gaze skirts over just a little. He swallows against Andrew’s piercing eyes and pretends they aren’t burning holes into the side of his face. He takes his laptop out and opens a blank document and wills himself to only think about his history class and Kevin Day breathing down his neck and telling him to hurry up and write his goddamn essay.
It works like a charm. His expression shutters, and eventually, Andrew stops staring at him and goes back to his own paper. The four of them work in silence, and Neil takes note of Jeremy pushing his previous assignment aside in favor of a thin French textbook. He catches Jean looking over at Jeremy staring down at the pages in deep concentration, and he duly ignores the pathetic tug of loneliness that threatens to wrap its ugly fist around his heart.
His mother’s voice begins to echo in his head again, but before its roar overtakes him in its entirety, Andrew is reaching over and pressing his knuckles against his wrist. It’s startling, warm even though Andrew’s skin is cold to the touch.
Neil’s mouth opens automatically, and what comes out is in German: “Do you want to go up to the roof?”
Andrew’s lips part in obvious surprise, and privately, Neil lets himself feel smug at the shock. He’s been waiting for an opportunity to use this, and now here it is.
Jeremy is the one who speaks first. “Neil, dude, how many languages can you speak?”
Neil ignores him. He’s looking at Andrew, who after a moment knits his brows together and says in German, “That’s unexpected. Did no one tell you I hate surprises?”
“What makes you think I care?” Neil throws back, and he’s smiling now. “Answer my question. Do you want to?”
Andrew answers him by plucking his phone off the table and shoving it in his pocket, standing up to his feet and shooting Neil an expectant look from above. Neil’s grin widens, something akin to adrenaline coursing through his veins as he holds his arm out and Andrew clasps onto his wrist. They don’t pay any attention to Jean and Jeremy as they leave, but Neil does hear a frustrated exclamation from Jean somewhere behind him because now he has to wait to make sure nobody steals their things. Neil doesn’t care about anything but the outline of Andrew’s back, the way he pulls him up the stairs and pulls him through the doorway onto the empty rooftop and presses him back against the brick.
Andrew’s hand comes up and his fingers curve around Neil’s chin, roughly pulling him to face him. As if he has to. As if Neil would ever look anywhere but at Andrew.
“Yes or no?” Andrew asks, and it sends a thrill down to pool in Neil’s gut.
“Yes,” he says, and then Andrew is kissing him.
His lips are soft and Neil’s throat is hungry as he swallows Andrew’s mouth against his teeth, closing his eyes and feeling the brick wall behind him entirely against his spine. Andrew presses closer, both of his hands cupping Neil’s face and his fingers digging into the sides of his face, and Neil curls his hands into fists by his side. One of Andrew’s hands comes down to wrap around Neil’s, keeping them firmly in place as he tilts his head and deepens their kiss, mouthing along his front teeth as Neil sighs back against his tongue.
Andrew pulls away and surveys him, and Neil watches with a bated breath as his eyes roam over the length of his face. He knows his lips are swollen and his pupils are blown wide because that’s how Andrew looks, and that alone makes him inhale sharply.
And, oh, okay. This is it, then. This is the end of the world. Neil thought he knew before, running away from his father and finding refuge in his mother’s tight hold on his sleeping figure every night. But the world is here, right here, beginning and ending with Andrew’s mouth.
They trail back to where Jean and Jeremy are still sitting eventually, and when Jean sees them, he immediately groans and curses out loud in French. Jeremy swats him and grins widely as Andrew and Neil sit back down and wordlessly go back to their work.
“I’m telling Kevin,” says Jean, pursing his lips as he observes Neil.
Neil sticks his tongue out at him. “I don’t care what he thinks.”
Jeremy mock gasps. “You can’t let anything distract you from your transfer to the history department, Neil, don’t you know?”
“Sometimes I really cannot stand that guy,” says Jean scathingly.
“Nobody believes that but you,” says Jeremy, elbowing him, and Jean scowls at him too in return.
Neil laughs because he can. He laughs because the people across from him are his honest-to-god friends and the boy sitting next to him is looking sidelong at his profile and is probably going to kiss him again tonight. Or maybe not tonight. Maybe just later.
If Andrew can tell what Neil is thinking, he doesn’t call him out on it. He knocks his foot to the side and hits Neil straight in his ankle, and then he hooks his foot around Neil’s calf and Neil has to spend the next two hours pretending his breath is not on the verge of evaporating from his lungs.
“Truth for a truth,” Andrew says against Neil’s mouth at one am that night. “I hate the word misunderstanding.”
Neil leans back to look at him. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll never say it.”
Andrew quirks an eyebrow at him. “Let’s see,” he says.
Neil shakes his head. “I won’t. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
“Is that your truth?”
“Yes,” says Neil, and then he pauses. Perhaps it is not good enough. “Anything else you want to know is fine too.”
“No,” Andrew hums, and he plants his hands behind his back against the floor of the roof and leans his weight against them. “It’s a good truth. I’ll accept it.” His eyes rake over the sky line, taking in the sight, and Neil follows his gaze and scoots just an inch closer.
They don’t touch. Andrew had told him while Neil was mouthing against his neck that he doesn’t like to be touched, that he might never like to be touched. He said it like a question, as if testing whether or not Neil is okay with that, and Neil had stared at him and wondered what awful thing had happened to him to make him so small, so afraid.
Andrew looks over again, and he reaches his hand out until his fingers bury themselves into the front of Neil’s shirt. His eyes shine against the moon’s soft glow overhead as he stares at his own curled fist, and Neil waits, and he waits, and he thinks that maybe he can spend his entire life waiting now because he has all he ever wants. Andrew never has to meet him halfway. He never even has to meet him at all.
Their mouths meet over Andrew’s arm and Neil litters kisses over Andrew’s jawline and down his neck. “Yes or no?” he whispers against the crook of skin, and Andrew says yes and then Neil is kissing him and Andrew is huffing into the open air, neck fetish.
He shivers too, and Neil knows that means he likes it. He compartmentalizes that somewhere in the back of his mind as Andrew lets go of his shirt and brings both of his hands back up to hold onto Neil’s face. He taps their noses together and kisses him deeply, and Neil tips into the hazel plush of his eyes and loses himself completely.
And so it goes, kissing Andrew on rooftops and behind bookshelves on every floor of the library and sometimes even in their room after Kevin and Aaron have fallen soundly asleep. Andrew wakes from nightmares less now, sleeps full nights more now, and Neil is quietly pleased when he begins to wake after the sun is well out instead of in the middle of the night.
It’s not always, though. One night finds Neil perched at the foot of Andrew’s bed again, holding up Andrew’s black hoodie. He inhales when Andrew shakes his head after spotting him, and his eyes go impossibly wide when instead of scooting out of bed and leading Neil up to the roof like always, he backs up until his back is pressed fully against the wall and looks down at the empty space he’s created on the bed next to him.
Neil moves on autopilot, carefully climbing fully onto the mattress and expertly avoiding grazing Andrew’s blanketed legs. He slots himself across from Andrew’s lying form, rolling onto his side so that they are facing each other on the bed with a foot of space between them.
“Okay?” he asks softly, and he releases a breath he didn’t know he had been holding when Andrew nods imperceptibly and takes a few long, deep breaths.
Neil knows he’s working through something. He can see it in the way Andrew’s dead gaze is set on Neil’s chest, the way he’s not moving at all, the way he seems so intensely focused on the empty space between their bodies. Neil waits for him because he will always wait for him. And then Andrew is shuddering full-bodied and finally looking up and meeting his eyes.
“No one,” he starts, voice shaking ever so slightly, “has ever entered my bed and not tried to take me.”
Neil freezes. The implication sinks through his skin and down to his gut and settles in the quiet spot between them. This is why Andrew does not like to be touched. This is why he always, always asks Neil yes or no before initiating anything. Neil stares at him, and Andrew stares back, and they lie there for what feels like five years when in reality is only five seconds, before Andrew is closing his eyes and burrowing further into his blanket and pulling the cover over Neil’s shoulder.
“Sleep now,” he says.
His trust is a tangible thing, and Neil holds it so tightly it might break within his hands. He wonders how he got here but then decides it doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered. Andrew fed him into his truth game and now offered himself without expecting anything in return. It isn’t a game anymore. Neil wonders if he should say something but maybe this is enough. Maybe this has always been enough. Maybe he doesn’t have to think so much when he’s here, with Andrew, because nobody—not even his mother—has ever trusted him enough to just let him be.
“Good night,” he finds himself whispering into the night. Andrew doesn’t respond, but for some reason, Neil knows he heard him anyway.
Aaron screams. It’s why Neil wakes up, groggy eyed against the morning sunlight streaming in through the window. He just barely manages to make sense of his surroundings before Aaron is screaming again, and then Neil looks up to find the ceiling impossibly closer than he’s ever seen it before.
Last night rushes back to him in thick waves, and then he looks beside him to see Andrew already wide awake and glaring out into space.
Aaron starts screaming again, so Neil groans out loud and peeks his head over the top of Andrew’s bunk. “What the hell do you want?” he snaps down at Aaron’s gaping expression. Kevin, who is roaming around the room and running a thick brush through his hair, doesn’t look bothered in the slightest by all the ruckus.
Aaron seems to catch onto this at the same time Neil does, because the next thing he knows, Aaron is rushing over to Kevin and catching onto his side and demanding, “Kevin Day, what the fuck is going on? Did you know about this?”
Kevin just offers him a cool look. “Did you not?”
“What the fuck?” Aaron shrieks.
Neil turns back to Andrew. He looks at him meaningfully, and Andrew doesn’t say anything back, doesn’t even look at him. He seems to be in deep thought, considering something or the other as he fidgets with his fingers in front of him against the mattress.
“Andrew, you can’t just—I don’t even look at Katelyn in front of you because of—you can’t just fucking—”
“I can’t just what?” Andrew says, finally. He straightens up and bends over Neil’s body and grasps onto the protective railing caging his bed. “Oh, Aaron. You broke our deal first by seeing her in the first place.”
“That’s not—” Aaron shakes his head, then pauses, as if running through Andrew’s words in his head like a hamster on a wheel. “First? What do you mean, I broke our deal first?”
“We’re even now,” says Andrew, and Aaron’s jaw drops.
“Just like that?” Aaron says, and then, pointing at Neil, “For him?”
Neil frowns. Andrew says, “Don’t look at him like that.”
“I won’t look at him at all,” Aaron sneers, but it’s quiet, and it doesn’t hold the weight of Aaron’s usual remarks to his brother. Neil notices it, so he’s sure Andrew does too. Then Aaron straightens his spine, and he looks at Andrew with an air of defiance. “I’m going to spend Christmas break with Katelyn and her family.”
“Okay,” says Andrew, waving an arm in front of him. “I don’t care. Do what you want.”
Aaron is staring at Andrew like he’s grown another head, and it would be amusing in any other scenario. Neil doesn’t know the true weight of what has just happened between the twins, but he knows it’s big. He knows that much just by looking at the shock that is still painted all over Aaron’s face.
Then Aaron turns right on his heel and leaves the room, and Neil is left to stare after him with two raised eyebrows and a strange curl in the pit of his stomach.
“You two will be staying here over break, I assume,” says Kevin suddenly, and Neil turns his line of sight to him instead. Kevin frowns, then points to his bunk and says, “No sex on my bed.”
“Get out,” says Andrew, and Kevin shrugs before grabbing his bag and leaving too.
“And then there were two,” Neil breathes into the newfound quiet, and Andrew finally lets go of his hold on the railing and turns his head to look down at him. Like this, Andrew hovers directly over him, casting a shadow right over Neil’s face. Neil splays his limbs out and smiles cheekily up at Andrew, and he watches in fascination as Andrew averts his gaze from the blue of his eyes to the red of his mouth.
“Yes or no?” he mutters, and Neil’s smile widens impossibly.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, yes, it will always be yes. For you.”
“Until it isn’t,” says Andrew quietly.
“Yes,” says Neil again, tipping his chin up toward Andrew’s face. “Yes,” he says as Andrew dips and kisses him. “Yes,” he says as Andrew runs his hand under Neil’s sleep shirt and over his scars. “Yes,” he says as Andrew pulls the shirt up and litters kisses over his skin.
“Aaron is an idiot,” Andrew mumbles into the waistband of Neil’s pajamas.
“Please do not talk about your brother with me when we are like this,” says Neil, and he smiles when he feels Andrew’s amused breath fanning over his belly.
“Like what?” Andrew says as he pulls Neil’s pants off and peels them away from his legs. When he begins to palm him over his briefs, Neil’s teeth sink into his own bottom lip as he barely manages to suppress a hiss. “Yes or no?”
“Yes,” says Neil, and his throat burns with his want. Andrew works his hand over him first, and then takes him in his mouth, and when he comes Andrew kisses him through it, digging his tongue roughly into Neil’s mouth until he is a withering mess beneath his hands.
When they’re done, Andrew disappears out of the room and returns minutes later with a wet washcloth. He cleans Neil silently, wordlessly, and Neil stares at the mess he’s made of him: Andrew’s mussed hair, Andrew’s wet lips, the bruises littering Andrew’s neck and collarbones. It’s a sight he imprints into his memory and holds onto for dear life between his tattered fingers.
Andrew helps dress him and glares up at him when Neil says he doesn’t need to bother, that he can do it himself, and resolutely ignores all of his protests when he holds up Kevin’s hairbrush in front of his face.
“That’s Kevin’s,” says Neil.
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “When have I ever cared?”
Neil hums. “Okay, true,” he says, and allows the heavy trill rolling through his veins to engulf him in its entirety.
“It’s Saturday,” says Andrew after he’s finished pulling Neil’s bangs to perfectly frame his face. “What do you want to do?”
“Anything,” says Neil easily.
“That is not an answer.”
“That is the answer you’re getting, so.”
Andrew’s eyes narrow. “I hate you,” he says with a certainty Neil absolutely does not believe.
So he says, “No you don’t.”
“Proof?” Andrew cocks his head.
And Neil laughs again. Something tells him there will be a lot of laughing in his future now, as well as a lot of the disgruntled expression decorating the face of the boy standing in front of him. “Where do I even begin?” he says, and Andrew turns away to hide his smile.