Chapter Text
“Are you guys okay?” Nicky asks one day, completely out of the blue. He looks surprised at himself, eyes round and lips parted like the question just burst out of him.
“Um. What?” Neil says.
“You and Andrew.”
Nicky stares at him with palpable concern, like that answer is actually supposed to mean anything.
“We’re… fine?”
His lips thin with what seems to be frustration. “I mean. I know that Andrew can take care of himself, but he’s still my cousin, you know? I still feel like I need to watch out for him if I can. You get that, right?”
“I guess, yeah,” Neil answers hesitantly. Given the lengths Andrew would go to to protect his family, it seems he least Nicky can do.
“Right, so… The thing is—I mean, you know I think you’re awesome, right? You’re family. It’s not about that. But the thing is, you know, it all made sense if you two were just hate-fucking or whatever—always knew you couldn’t be completely straight looking this good!” He laughs awkwardly. “But, err, Andrew basically tried to stab me last time I called you fuckbuddies, and he never did anything like that with Roland, so. I must have been wrong, right? I guess you two are a bit more serious than I thought.”
He pauses again, looking at Neil with wide, anxious eyes.
“We’re…” Neil says, unsure what kind of answer Nicky is looking for. “Andrew is… important.”
“Right. But, see, now I’m wondering how that works because… I know that you’re both quiet guys, so you don’t talk that much to each other, but—you never touch either, not even… holding hands or something. So I was just—concerned. That kind of thing is concerning.”
Neil blinks slowly, uncomprehending.
1.
He mostly sleeps lying on his side, which makes the red glow of the alarm clock the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. 3:47AM, the thing screams silently. He freezes for a moment, waiting for the memory of his nightmare to slam into him. It’s usually what happens when he wakes up at this time of night. When it doesn’t come, he frowns. Something isn’t right.
The bedframe is shaking.
Neil slowly turns around, careful not to cross the invisible line cutting the mattress in two. Andrew’s eyes stare back at him, round and too-white like a cornered animal’s.
Ah, he thinks. Not my nightmare.
It takes a few more seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then he can see the vague shape of Andrew’s body, his back pressed to the wall like he’s trying to disappear into it. The snarl hooked to his lips can’t hide the way his panting breaths are shaking through the whole bed. Neil swallows and stays quiet, considering his options. There really aren’t that many.
He gets up, careful not to make any sudden movements, and says “I’ll make some coffee” in a low voice—just in case, though he knows Andrew probably can’t hear him right now. Or at least, can’t make his brain process the sounds into words.
“Whassit?” comes Nicky’s mumbling voice from the next bed. “Neil? You ‘kay?”
“We’re fine. Go back to sleep.”
“Ugh.”
What Andrew really needs is space, and Neil can give him that, so he heads to the kitchen and tries not to fret too much. He starts a pot of coffee, checks his twitter feed, tells himself that he’s not paying too much attention to the clock. Finally, after about forty seven minutes, Andrew emerges from the room. Neil pours him a cup, no milk or sugar, which Andrew never wants on mornings like these. Neil suspects that, much like heights, the uncomfortable physical sensation is a grounding help.
The mug of coffee goes on the table, and Neil leans back against the counter after setting it down, body twisted as far as possible from Andrew in the small kitchen space. He watches the way Andrew’s hands shake when he picks it up. They stay like that, breathing together in the quiet of the dorm, while the sun starts to rise outside the foggy windows.
Andrew is still shaking when he puts his mug down, when he reaches in his pockets for cigarettes. He doesn’t even try to light one on his own, just slides the pack and his lighter across the table. Neil takes them and does it for him, then extends his arm as far as it can go—which means Andrew barely has to get in reach at all to take the lit cigarette back. It’s a while before he’s down to the filter, which he drops it in his mug before staring silently at Neil, who patiently lights another one.
This time Andrew goes to lean against the counter, closer but still a few feet away. He stops shaking, but stonily refuses to take his lighter back, making Neil hand him out cigarette after cigarette instead. The pack, which was brand new, is emptying at an alarming rate. From the bedroom, they can hear the shuffle of Kevin dragging himself out of bed for his morning class.
“Well,” Neil says, when it looks like the smoking break is finally over, “I’m gonna go shower.”
Andrew nods, looking bored, and still makes no move to get back his lighter. Neil can’t help but smile a bit. It’s too late for him to go running, and Kevin will surely chew him out later for skipping on his cardio, but he can’t bring himself to care.
2.
“Russian,” Andrew says, and throws a pen at Neil’s head.
Neil frowns at him from the floor, where he’s lying flat on his stomach. He’s only halfway through his statistics exercise package. Focusing has been pretty difficult these last few days, what with all of the sappy German they’ve been subjected to. Nicky has apparently been missing Eric more than usual, and the number of Skype calls has skyrocketed. The apartment has turned into a bit of a minefield—they never know when Nicky might dramatically slam a door open and start a bout of tragic fake-sobbing.
Andrew kicks at the desk to make his chair swivel, obviously ignoring the fact that they’re supposed to be doing homework.
“Was there a beginning to this conversation that I missed?”
“How do you feel about Russian?” Andrew insists. His tone is just as flat as usual, but the swiveling is strange. If Neil thought Andrew had any reason to, he might think this was his very own form of fidgeting.
“Well, I don’t know, pretty neutral. I know a tiny bit of it.”
Andrew stares. There’s the smallest tilt to his left eyebrow.
“I knew this guy that was Ukrainian,” Neil answers the unspoken question. “We worked with him for a while. Anyway, what’s this about?”
“You’re learning Spanish, but Nicky already speaks some of that one. There’s no one on the team that knows Russian.”
Neil attempts to process that. “So you… want us to learn?”
“Hm. Yes.”
“But why?”
Andrew’s chair swivels again. It’s pretty distracting. “I’m not Nicky, I don’t enjoy making my private business public.” And then he adds, seemingly as an afterthought: “And there’s Kevin. He keeps saying shit to you in French.”
It takes Neil a few seconds to realize Andrew is speaking about the German skyping situation.
“What, you want to sob out a love confession to me in a foreign language? Or you want to yell at me for not training enough. I’m confused.”
Andrew looks as incredulous as he can for a few seconds. “Of course you’re confused. What did I ever do to get stuck with you?”
The question gets thrown around so much that Neil doesn't even bother sassing back anymore. He focuses on the matter at hand instead, idly chewing on his pen. If Andrew wants him to do it then he will, of course. But it’s rare for the goalkeeper to ask for things, and he’s still not getting what brought this on. He guesses it’s true that they speak a bit less when they’re around other people, but he doesn’t really see that changing, secret language or no. Though maybe for emergencies… German has certainly proven useful enough. And either of them might still need to be talked down sometimes, though of course everything has been going much better now that Riko is out of the picture—
“Do you want to or not?” Andrew almost snaps.
“Um? Oh, yes! Yeah, sure.”
Andrew throws his eraser at him. Neil thinks he might have let his inner monologue go on just a bit too long.
“Why Russian, though?”
“Dostoyevsky,” Andrew says after a brief pause. At least his chair is no longer moving.
Neil scrunches up his nose. He’s recently discovered that Andrew is taking a lot of literature classes, which—honestly, Neil is trying, but he doesn’t get it. He’s always hated reading. “Is that the Anna Karenina guy?”
“No. That’s Tolstoy.”
“What’s Dostoyevsky written, then?”
Andrew turns back to his desk, refusing to look at Neil.
“The idiot,” he says, apparently to himself, picking up a new pen.
“Hey!”
“124%.”
3.
It’s the middle of summer vacation and Neil’s plane from London just landed. The airport isn’t that crowded, but the background bustle and speakers’ announcements are still comfortingly familiar to him. It’s a welcome feeling, after so much time spent feeling awkward and out of place at his uncle’s.
He and Andrew haven’t seen each other in three weeks. He can feel the anticipation buzzing beneath his skin like an ache.
But he catches sight of Nicky first, mostly because the sight of two grown men huddled that close together on an airport bench is a bit incongruous. Matt texted him that Nicky hasn’t stopped groping Eric every five seconds ever since the German got off his own plane a few days ago. No one is exactly surprised by that. Neil even feels a bit happy for them, though suffering through the saccharine pet names and the blatant PDA is going to be a struggle.
Then a group of tourists move as one and Neil loses that thread of thought entirely—because there’s Andrew, all black fabric and pale gold hair, standing by the baggage claim. He’s holding Neil’s rucksack.
Before he’s even had time to think about it, Neil is forcing his way through the crowd, walking fast but not too fast, keeping his arms relaxed by his sides and his body language casual. There are still reflexes ingrained in him, rules about airports and standing out that he doesn’t have the brainpower to break through right now.
He still gets to Andrew—finally, finally, finally, a loud voice chants in his head—whose eyes have been following Neil’s path through the crowd for the last few minutes. Neil doesn’t stop moving until he’s gotten right in Andrew’s space, falling just short of actual touching. He kicks at a combat boot with the toes of his ratty sneaker.
“Hey,” he says, almost too low to be heard over the ambient noise.
He’s staring, and for once there’s no demand that he stop—just Andrew staring back, chin a bit raised to meet Neil’s eyes. “I’ve missed you,” Neil says, unspeakably giddy with relief and a bit surprised at himself. There’s no answer, just a slight parting of Andrew’s lips, which Neil would probably have missed if he wasn’t standing so close.
Their stalemate lasts maybe a minute before Neil goes to pull back, aware of how strange this must seem to anyone else.
He’s barely taken a couple steps before Andrew’s hand is shooting out and grabbing at his shirt. Fingers tangle in the fabric and tug once, almost violently. Andrew uncovers his teeth in what a passer-by might mistake for a smile, but Neil knows to be a snarl. Their proximity hides Andrew’s hand, still gripping the hem of his shirt with whitened knuckles. Neil can feel his breaths blowing hot against his cheek. He supposes they can stay here a while, until Nicky is done whispering whatever it is to his boyfriend. And then they’ll be heading back to the privacy of their bedroom in Columbia. Maybe he can tell Andrew about England, then. Maybe he can kiss him.
Neil’s small smile turns into a grin and he kicks at Andrew’s shoe again.
4.
They’re back on the bus after an away game, Neil still flushed with the victory, when Andrew hands him an ear bud. He has to dangle it right in front of Neil’s face for him to even notice. There’s a nervous energy running through him, still high on the adrenaline kick that comes with a good game. He can’t stop his eyes from flitting everywhere, attention drawn by every insignificant detail.
“Junkie,” Andrew says, and makes as if to throw the ear bud at Neil’s face. Neil finally picks it up and shoves it into his ear, pulling a face as he does. There’s been a campaign to broaden his musical horizons in the team lately, because apparently “It’s not okay not to know who Rhianna is, you weirdo”—dixit an outraged Allison.
But instead of the weird underground rock Andrew has been trying to convert him to, Neil only hears a monotonous voice telling him that this is a recording from something called librivox.
“Uh, Andrew?”
“Just shut up and listen, alright? I’m not going through another game breakdown.”
“The Idiot,” the ear bud is saying, “by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.”
“Wait, is this a book?”
Andrew ignores him, head turned to look out the window, the headphone cord swaying gently between the two of them. Neil slowly leans back into his seat and closes his eyes to listen.
They last about three hours before the rest of the team gets annoying enough for Wymack to call a bathroom break. Neil takes the opportunity to go buy something to eat, and Andrew pauses the audiobook as soon as he says he’s going out.
“Want anything?”
“Chocolate.”
“Of course.” Neil sighs at the lack of originality, but he does get an assortment of candy bars to go with his beef jerky.
Andrew’s lips twist in disdain when he sees it as Neil sits back down, but he doesn’t comment aloud. Most of the team is still outside, not as efficient about pit stops as Neil. They only have Matt’s snores, Dan and Renee’s whispered conversation for company. Andrew hands him back his ear bud. Neil takes it but doesn’t bring it to his ear, watching the grey cord tangle between his fingers. Somehow, in that moment, it feels a bit too vulnerable to look at Andrew’s face.
“Listen,” he says, then immediately realizes what a stupid start that was. This is Andrew. He never has to ask for him to pay attention. “I’m not sure I get it.”
Andrew frowns slightly.
“I mean. I don’t know. I’m really bad at books. I can’t like… analyze it or whatever.” Neil has always been the type of student that falls asleep in English classes.
“It’s a story. You don’t have to analyze anything. Just sit and listen.”
Neil shifts a bit on his seat, scratches at the scars around his wrists. He doesn’t know how to explain this feeling, exactly. Andrew doesn’t have a lot of things he gets interested in, so reading is clearly important to him—and Neil is really, really bad at it. Neil is bad at most things that aren’t exy or survival-related. It hasn’t been a problem so far, but he’s scared that it might… become one.
It’s frustrating, because every other thing he’s done with Andrew before has been instinctive. Not easy, far from it—but like they understood each other, on some level. With this, not so much.
“Moron.” Andrew sighs. “What do you make of Ganya so far?”
“What, the creepy one? He’s going to screw Myshkin overt, obviously. He’s an asshole,” Neil answers without thinking. He can never resist a good dig at a shitbag.
“Hm. Think Myshkin is gonna realize at some point?”
Neil raises his head and hesitates, a bit lost. “I can’t really understand that he hasn’t already. I mean, it’s really obvious.”
“Well, they did call the book The Idiot for a reason. Remind you of anyone?”
“At least if I do something dumb then I know it’s dumb. I don’t just… expect everyone to be nice to me for no reason.”
“But aren’t you worse than Myshkin for knowing it’s stupid and doing it anyway? At least the guy has the excuse of inexperience. While you’re just brainless.”
And, just like that, they’re talking about it. Andrew answers Neil’s questions, when he has any. Raises points when the conversation flags. Neil surprises himself by finding things to say, but Andrew holds up the bulk of the arguments. He has a nice voice. Not emotionless, really, just calm. Grounding.
The others start filing back in, sticking to the first rows, half-asleep and obvious to the way Andrew’s entire face relaxes subtly, the way his upper body has turned and opened to Neil while he was speaking. Neil feels a rush of relief. This is fine—this is better than fine. He hasn’t messed up yet. Right now Andrew is pointing out a piece of symbolism that will be important in the next chapters, and soon they’ll pick up with the recording again. They have four hours of driving left, which won’t be nearly enough to finish the book.
Which is great. It means they can do this again next time.
5.
They’re having a post-game party and someone spilled their drink all over Neil’s shirt. Which, given their terrible loss in today’s home game, is only adding insult to the injury. Not that you’d be able to guess anything looking at the crowd surrounding him, or the improvised dance floor with its flashing lights. The Foxes are masters in the art of drinking to forget—Neil is pretty sure that Kevin is on his second vodka bottle.
He thinks the drink came from one of the cheerleaders’ glass. He couldn’t see very well in the mass of shifting bodies, but the liquid smells fruity and viciously strong. It’s making his head spin.
Or that might just be the heat, the constant press of strangers against him, the roar of music in his ears. Neil does the best he can to leave his old life behind, but tonight he feels young and skitterish again, keeps mapping exits in his head on automatic. The soft cotton of his shirt has turned sticky against his skin. It feels like drying blood. His hindbrain has been blaring ‘trap!’ at him for the past twenty minutes
It’s at this point that Andrew comes out of the crowd, a small pocket of empty space around him. No matter how much alcohol is involved, everyone instinctively knows better than to touch him. Like some kind of sanctuary, or holy relic.
He let Neil press against him just this morning, knees to shoulder. Let him put his hands in his hair and his tongue in his mouth. Right now the thought seems shocking, almost absurd, and makes something twist low in Neil’s stomach.
“Goddamn waste of space,” sneers Andrew, and grabs Neil’s left sleeve to drag him along as he cuts through the dancers. Neil realizes that his right hand is just next to Andrew’s, fingers worming their way under his own armband. It’s a bad habit he’s acquired at some point during the last year, to tug at the handcuff scars circling his wrists. He promptly shoves the traitorous hand back in his pocket and lets Andrew guide him.
Someone has tried covering the walls in fairy lights for some ‘mood lighting’, but all they’ve managed to do is create even more shifting shadows for Neil to flinch at. He tries to remember why the fuck he thought showing up here would be a good idea, and comes up blank. He hates losing games. He knows it can’t be avoided, but the memory of Ichigo Moriyama’s dead eyes as he calmly threatened the Foxes still crawls under his skin like an anthill.
It should be simple. He just has to be good. Better than god. The best. As long as he wins he’s safe, and so is Andrew. So is everyone he cares about.
But he lost tonight, and the last game, too. Probably the next one as well. The press will be on his case for this. There’ll be doubts he was any good to begin with. Maybe it’s a slump. Maybe he was a one-hit wonder, and now it’s all over. They’ll all find out how much of a fraud he was from the beginning.
The thoughts come slightly delayed, as though from very far away. There’s nothing in the fridge, he thinks idly, just to distract himself, but ice cream and grapes, maybe some frozen meals—nothing that would last on the road. That was stupid of him. He has plenty of cash, of course. There’s an emergency drawer no one knows about. It should be enough for some food and basic supplies. He wouldn’t need to pack a lot, in that case. Should be done in fifteen minutes, tops. Most of his sweaters are either dirty or in the wash, but he can steal some of Andrew’s no problem, they’re the closest in size, and—Andrew. Andrew, Andrew—
shit, Andrew.
The name manages to kick him out of the panicked, dissociated state, and he remembers why escape plans are not real options anymore. But his brain still won’t work properly when they finally reach their destination: a secluded corner of the room. Everything feels remote and out of time. Andrew crowds him and Neil backs up until he’s pressed against the wall.
“Don’t,” Neil says, unable to look away from Andrew’s hand hovering over his chest, “don’t, it’s all, everything feels—” too much, he wants to say, like I’ll drown, like my skin will come off, but his throat closes up before he can get anything else out.
Andrew nods jerkily, pulls away and cages him in with his arms instead, hands resting flat on the wall on either side of Neil’s face. It helps a bit, being pinned into place, knowing that Andrew won’t let him run. Neil takes a painful breath through his nose.
“This okay?”
“Yes. Andrew,” he hears himself say, slurred, almost drowned out by the music.
“Will you stop that shit?” Andrew answers, sounding truly angry for once. Neil blinks stupidly until he sees Andrew is looking down. He lowers his eyes and realizes his nails have gone back to digging at the scars. He stops immediately, staring silently at the indentations he’s left behind. The skin there is too thick for him to really feel anything. Still.
“I’m sorry,” he says. For all he knows, his hurting himself might bring back painful memories for Andrew, who still sometimes scratches absently at the raised lines on his own forearms. The guilt almost makes him wince.
Andrew bends his head forward until his eyes are almost entirely filling Neil’s field of vision, looking seriously pissed.
“Then don’t fucking do it again,” he says. Just like that.
"I won't, I just, it's—losing, you know."
"What, like freaking out about it will help?"
Neil lets out a careful breath, nods. One of the best things about Andrew, he thinks, is how simple everything becomes when he's around.
“Not that—you know I think you’re awesome, but Andrew deserves something really good. Something that will help him, like… heal, not just get stuck where he’s at right now. With the whole psycho shtick.” Nicky makes some vague hand gestures that are probably meant to illustrate Andrew’s ‘psycho’ behavior. “I know he’s—well. Andrew.”
Neil feels a surge of protective, vicious rage. It’s always difficult to deal with how the Foxes speak of Andrew, like he’s some alien, vaguely creepy thing. What Nicky is doing right now is even worse.
“But you guys never even look like a couple! Just standing next to each other constantly does not count as actual dating! I mean, I don’t know—it isn’t at all what I would expect from people that are actually together.”
“We’re not dating, though. We’ve told you that.”
Neil’s tone is ice-cold. He can’t believe he still has to explain this. He also wants to break something quiet badly just knowing that Nicky sees Andrew like that, as something to be 'healed'. To be fixed by someone else.
“Well, then, I guess my question is: what the fuck is it that you’re doing? Because it sure doesn’t look like a proper relationship from where I’m standing.”
Neil sighs and closes his eyes, wondering why it matters so much to other people anyway. “Something else.”
Nicky sputters, obviously getting some sort of objection ready, but Neil cuts him off. “Listen, I don’t care how you feel about it, or what you think it should look like. I don’t give a shit what you think you see. It’s between me and Andrew, and we’re never going to be like you and Eric. We want different things. We don’t have to explain ourselves to you. I get that you’re trying to help, but, seriously. Back off.”
He doesn’t wait to hear what Nicky has to say to that, just walks out of the kitchen. He’s had that conversation many times before, in some form or another, and he’s done having it. Even if he felt like explaining, Nicky probably wouldn’t understand anyway.