Chapter Text
Nicky lingers at the door, biting his lip as if that will save him from Andrew. Andrew considers making him wait, Andrew considers breaking every finger that he has, but both of those options will eventually make Nicky open his mouth, and Neil is sleeping.
Since his foiled escape attempt, Neil hasn’t asked Andrew to leave or had a panic attack over his presence, but he hasn’t rested much either. He just stares at Andrew with an odd intensity in his eyes, or looks empty-eyed at his cast, fingers clenched into fists around his thin covers.
The others have come by to see him a few times, but he only ever perks up when Boyd drops by. Neil doesn’t make Andrew leave during their visits, but Andrew usually trusts Boyd enough to step out for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t know what they talk about, but at least Neil seems to trust the upperclassman more than Andrew. Andrew had never expected to appreciate Matt’s friendliness, especially because he’s almost always around since the girls have graduated, but it serves him now, with Neil.
But Neil has finally fallen asleep, truly, deeply asleep, and Andrew really will kill Nicky if he wakes him up. Andrew jabs a sharp finger at him and stands up as slowly as he can, creeping across the room without making a sound. Neil stirs, a frown marring his exhausted face, and Andrew freezes, his glare sharper than knives on Nicky, until Neil rolls deeper into the pillow and settles once more. He has always been a painfully light sleeper, but his injury and memory loss has only reduced him back to his flightiest instincts, making it almost impossible for him to sleep in the loud hospital ward.
Andrew shuts the door behind it and leans on the wall just to the side of it, against his hands in an effort to keep them away from Nicky’s throat. “What do you want?”
Nicky blinks at him, his tentative smile slipping from his face. “I - I don’t know, Andrew. Neil is - sick and injured and you keep looking at me like it’s my fault! I don’t know what I did, but I thought we were making pro-”
“Stop. Talking.” Andrew bites off the end of each word as he speaks it. He hasn’t used this tone in months, and it’s been almost two years since he’s used it on Nicky. Nicky blanches, paling underneath his tanned skin. As forgiving as he is, he has not forgotten that Andrew is dangerous, that he has killed his own family members before. He just hasn’t had to think about it since Baltimore, since he had stood with Andrew against the FBI and all of Neil’s rabbity, self-martyring instincts and refused to let Neil go. That afternoon, that action alone, had bought every single Fox an ally in Andrew should they ever need one.
“Do you know when Neil’s brain sent him back to? To what day exactly?” Andrew asks softly. He has knives in his sleeves, but he won’t use them. Not on Nicky, not even now. Bee would be so proud. She is going to owe him a fucking ton of cocoa for his fucking self control.
Nicky blanches, eyebrows drawing together as he thinks. “Andrew?”
“The morning after the first night we took him to Eden’s, remember it?” Andrew’s voice is low, silky and dangerous, and when Nicky meets his eyes again, they are knowing and sorrowful.
“Yes,” he whispers. “No wonder he hates us.”
“No wonder he-” Andrew cuts himself off. “Give me one single reason I shouldn’t gut you right now.”
Andrew expects Nicky to blanch, to stammer excuses and maybe even cry, but Nicky just sighs and leans against the wall next to Andrew. “You would never forgive yourself for hurting me, especially not for something you feel responsible for.”
Rage hits Andrew like a truck, and before he can stop himself he is pinning Nicky to the wall, his forearm pressed against Nicky’s throat so hard that his cousin turns purple. But still, Nicky doesn’t struggle, he just meets Andrew’s eyes and waits, his face slowly filling with blood. “They’ll throw… you out!” Nicky gasps, sacrificing the last of his air.
Andrew snarls, pressing closer, wanting nothing more than to lose himself in his rage and externalize it, to take the sick, boiling pain that is killing him and get rid of it. It's not just about what Nicky did - what Andrew let him do - but for everything. At Nicky, for assaulting Neil, at Neil for getting injured, at himself, for letting himself care enough that he is shattering .
But Nicky is right. If Andrew takes it out on him here, he will be thrown out of hospital and not allowed back in. And as much as Andrew wants to tear his cousin apart, he needs to stay close to Neil more.
It still takes everything he has to let Nicky go. At this point, hurting him feels an awful lot like taking his knives to his own wrists. It’ll make him feel better, sure, but it will ultimately only make Bee and Neil, when he gets his shit together, look at Andrew with disappointment.
Andrew shoves Nicky away from himself and stalks a few steps away, as if that will make it easier to keep control of himself. “It’s not you I need to apologize to,” Nicky pants, uncharacteristically ruthless and firm. “And I don’t need you to make me, either. I know what I did was wrong.”
“ Wrong ,” Andrew repeats, uncharacteristic venom in his voice.
“I’ll tell you what Neil said, when I apologized,” Nicky continues as if Andrew hadn’t spoken. “He forgave me, like he forgave you. Because I did what I did to obey you, like you did what you did to protect Kevin.”
“That’s different,” Andrew snaps, his palms itching for Nicky’s throat again.
“Is it?” Nicky asks softly, as if he’s a fucking therapist.
And it is different, it has to be, because if it’s not -
If Andrew had eaten anything in the last 24 hours he would probably throw it up all over the pristine floor.
“Sir!” someone snaps. A nurse, escorted by a burly security guard eyeing Andrew like he’s a moment away from coming at him like a linebacker hurries down the corner towards them.
“It’s okay,” Nicky soothes, stepping between them and giving Andrew his back like that isn’t risking his life. “It’s my fault, and I’m going. He is allowed to be here; he is the medical next of kin.”
Andrew considers letting his rage burn him alive, some spiteful part of him content with taking them all down with him and knowing it would leave him exhausted and blissfully numb.
But Neil is still asleep in the room behind him, looking far too small under the blankets.
So Andrew turns away from Nicky and the nurse and the security guard and steps back into Neil’s room. He won’t leave him. He still remembers his promises, even if Neil doesn’t.
–
It is too late to call Bee, but Andrew does it anyway.
It's after midnight. The door to Neil’s room is shut and rounds are done for the next few hours. Neil is still sleeping, courtesy of the cocktail of drugs in his system, keeping him as still as possible in the hopes of helping his brain recover.
It's possible that he’ll wake up while Andrew’s on the phone, but it's been a long time since Andrew has kept secrets from Neil, who for the most part, has a standing invitation to his appointments with Bee.
“Hello, Andrew,” Bee says. She usually goes to bed early, but tonight she doesn’t sound tired and there is a faint clink of tin on porcelain. Andrew can almost picture her in a partially lit kitchen, making herself a cup of tea in her softest robe.
“You don’t sound surprised to hear from me,” Andrew replies, keeping his voice quiet enough to let Neil rest.
Bee smiles. Andrew can’t see her, of course, but he can hear it in her voice as she speaks. “I thought you might call,” she says. “David told me what happened. Have you been eating?”
No. “Nicky assaulted Neil the first time I took him to Eden’s,” Andrew says.
The clinking of the spoon in the mug stops. “I know,” Bee finally says. “Did you not?”
“ No !” Andrew doesn’t bother asking how or when Bee found out - not even she will show that much blatant favoritism to Andrew. He assumes Nicky told her some time after the Thanksgiving Aaron killed Drake.
“Well, I imagine that was troubling for you to hear. Is that the last thing that Neil remembers?” Bee’s voice doesn’t change. She still sounds calm and pleasant, and Andrew feels his own heart rate begin to calm down in response. For a long time Andrew had doubted the veracity psychology, but there’s no denying the Pavlovian response he is having to her voice.
“Yes,” Andrew says. He’s looking at Neil, silent in the bed, his auburn curls spread over the pillow case. Even in sleep, there’s a furrow in his brow, denoting his stress. Or maybe his pain. It’s never happened to him, but Andrew imagines that a head injury severe enough to wipe out years of memories would be painful even to someone with as overgrown a pain tolerance as Neil’s.
Bee hums, an invitation to speak that Andrew eventually takes her up on. “I don’t know who’s boundaries to protect, Bee,” Andrew finally says. “Before his injury, Neil would want me here. He would trust me to watch his back as he recovers. Without his memories, he doesn’t want me here at all, without his memories, he only has reasons to run.”
“They’re both Neil, Andrew.” Bee reminds him. “You are the one who built your relationship with him, it wasn’t gifted to you. He has no more reason to leave now than he did before and he still chose to stay. Fewer, actually, without Riko or his father around to threaten him.”
Andrew doesn’t exactly feel better, but he feels some part of him unwinding as Bee talks. She’s not saying anything that he doesn’t already know, but hearing it reflected back is different, somehow more compelling.
He had managed to earn Neil’s trust before, an uphill battle when all Andrew had wanted was to pull him apart. There was no reason that Andrew couldn’t do it again, he just had to get over the fact that Neil now looked at him with nearly as much disdain as he had Riko when the Raven had shown up at Kathy Ferdinand’s show.
“Andrew,” Bee says as Andrew prepares to hang up the phone. “You can’t tell him everything that happened.” Her voice is sympathetic but firm and Andrew finds himself clenching his fists.
“I don’t lie to him, Bee,” he says softly, trying to keep the threat out of his voice.
“I didn’t tell you to lie,” Bee points out, no less brutal for her soft tone. “But brains are malleable and adaptable. He is likely to adopt whatever you tell him as truth, and that might overwrite whatever he does remember.”
She doesn’t ask whether Andrew is okay with that; even Nicky knows him better than that. He grits his teeth, looks out the window, and hangs up the phone.
–
Andrew doesn’t sleep. He is not worried about Neil’s physical safety in the hospital, but it already feels like an invasion of Neil’s privacy for him to be in this room while Neil is drugged and helpless.
Somehow, sleeping would make it feel worse. Andrew feels like he owes it to Neil to be on guard, to watch his back at a time when Neil feels vulnerable, even if the person he’s scared of is Andrew himself.
Neil wakes briefly several times, shifting to complete stillness before his eyes even slit open. He always turns his glare directly on Andrew, angry and accusing. Andrew always stares back at him, trying to convey without words that he is here and that he is not a threat and that Neil can trust him.
He’s not sure if it works, but every time, Neil drifts back to sleep without comment.
Nicky brings him a cup of coffee a little after dawn. He looks wan and nervous, but Andrew doesn’t lash out again. As horrific as it is, Nicky was right. Andrew had orchestrated the night at Eden’s, Andrew , knowing who Nicky was, had ordered him to keep Neil drugged and compliant at any cost. Andrew was the one who had wanted to crack Neil open like an oyster and harvest him for his own gain.
Nicky shouldn’t have kissed Neil, shouldn’t have assaulted him, but Andrew isn’t the injured party here. Andrew doesn’t get to dictate other people’s trauma any more than anyone gets to dictate his. If Neil isn’t allowed to do anything but stare coldly at Roland because of the statutory technicality of Andrew’s previous arrangement with him, Andrew does not get to decide that Neil can’t forgive Nicky, and he can’t break every bone in his cousin’s body either.
But that doesn’t mean he will look at him any time soon. Luckily for him, Nicky doesn’t seem to expect him to. Nicky leaves the pale brown coffee on the table near the chair and makes himself scarce with an unnecessary reminder that he is in the waiting room if Andrew needs anything.
There is nothing that Andrew needs in the waiting room. There is nothing he needs outside of this hospital room even, but he doesn’t say those things out loud, so he ignores his cousin until he goes away.
Andrew drinks his coffee and spins his phone between his fingers. He’s waiting for a call, and that fact burns in his gut far hotter and stronger than the coffee. He doesn’t like Stuart Hatford, he never has, and relying on him for anything makes Andrew furious.
But Hatford is the single living tie between Neil’s past and present who doesn’t actively want to kill or control him. Neil doesn’t trust Andrew, he doesn’t trust Wymack or Kevin or Bee. But he will trust Hatford when he tells him he’s safe. He has to. The truth is, Andrew has no idea what he will do if Neil doesn’t believe his uncle. At any moment he might recover his memories, but Andrew won’t rely on that alone.
If Neil doesn’t remember, and if he can’t trust Andrew, as soon as he can manage, he’ll disappear.
And Andrew knows all too well that if Neil vanishes himself, Andrew will never see him again. That thought alone makes him feel violently ill, and he will do anything, sacrifice anything to keep Neil here, with him.
His pride is nothing.
A commotion near the door draws Andrew’s attention and he reaches automatically for his knives. Neil wakes with a bitten off noise, eyes wild and panicked at the sight of Andrew’s blades, and he sheathes them again without a second thought. “They’re not for you,” Andrew tells him, scraping every shred of his apathy together to try and hide the ache in his voice. “They are never, ever going to be raised against you.”
Neil has never liked Andrew’s knives, but he hasn’t been afraid of them in years. He even replaced them with better ones last Christmas and before his accident, he had appeared to view them as yet another piece of Andrew that was there to protect him.
He should be, by now, but Andrew still isn’t used to Neil’s fear.
He can’t bear to see Neil’s reaction, so he puts his body between the bed and door as it opens, barely relaxing even when he recognizes the man who walked through it. “Hatford,” he says coldly.
Neil’s uncle barely spares Andrew a glance as he looks through him to his nephew, who has frozen, staring at Hatford with wide, fearful eyes. “Nath-” Hartford starts to say.
“ Neil! ” Andrew hisses sharply, sending Hatford his deadliest look. Neil is already spooked and caught, any hint of more danger is just going to make him want to run even more.
Maybe Hatford knows a bit about Andrew and Neil’s relationship, or maybe he can see the fear just as clearly as Andrew can. “Abram,” he says, voice softening. “My boy.”
“Uncle Stuart?” Neil whispers, shooting a baffled look between Andrew and his uncle. “What - how - you can’t - no. ” His voice breaks off with horror and Andrew has yet another painful realization that he may have misjudged this choice, made yet another mistake.
He is so used to understanding Neil intrinsically . He feels like drowning. He is so out of his depth. “Abram,” Hatford says again, voice gentle and affectionate. “It is okay, you are safe.”
Neil’s eyes flash to Andrew and back again, swallowing his response. He looks like he’s trying to figure out what to say, how to play this. Andrew feels sick. Hatford follows Neil’s gaze and looks at Andrew pityingly.
Andrew hadn’t been around the last time Neil spoke with his uncle, but Neil had told him that Hatford had offered him a place in London, clearly disparaging of his life in South Carolina with Andrew to some degree or another. Would he be selfish enough to offer again? Would Neil take him up on it?
Andrew is a control freak, a large part of him wants to throw Hatford out, to lock Neil away from anyone who might take him away.
But that would make Andrew no better than Mary.
Andrew is sure that his face doesn’t move, and he clings onto that even as everything else slips from his fingers. But as he forces himself to leave the room before he does something unforgivable, the distrust in Neil’s gaze turns to narrow eyed puzzlement.
–
Andrew doesn’t go far. He forces himself to go piss, but he convinces himself that he isn’t giving Neil the chance to run, that he isn’t testing his own resolve to let him. If he goes , Andrew makes himself promise the mirror as cold water runs down the drain, Ichirou will get my paycheck, or else my knife. Its a paltry protection, but it’s all he has to offer: himself for Neil’s freedom.
When he can no longer delay doing so, he pushes back out through the bathroom doors and returns to Neil’s room. He doesn’t go inside, or attempt to listen at the door. There is a window between the hall and the hospital room, and even though the blinds are down, they are not closed.
Andrew leans against the opposite wall, keeping his mind and face blank as he stares through the slats. He can’t hear a single word shared between Neil and his uncle, but he knows Neil’s face better than he knows his own, and Neil - Neil is listening.
His face is controlled and closed off, but every word that Stuart says, Neil is paying attention to, his fingers mangling the cheap, scratchy sheets. When Andrew tried to talk to Neil, he hadn’t heard a single word. Andrew understands, or - he’s trying to. He can’t imagine how he would feel if he woke up in a hospital bed with memories mismatching current events. How would he react to being told that a stranger, or someone he knows to be a liar and threat, was his partner?
Violently, Andrew is sure.
But still, Andrew struggles to suppress the pain of Neil believing Stuart Hatford, a man he only remembers through the eyes of his mother, rather than him.
And maybe he deserves this, maybe this is the price he pays for beginning to believe that Neil is something that he gets to keep.
Stuart stays for over an hour. Andrew waits outside the entire time.
–
Stuart leaves the door open when he exits the room. Andrew keeps his face blank when the short Brit approaches him.
“He’s scared of you,” Hatford says conversationally. “I watched that boy smile through the blood when I killed his bastard of a father, even though he was little more than pulped meat at the time. He didn’t even blink when Ichirou shot his brother in the head a meter away from him. But you – he’s scared of you.”
Andrew’s throat is on fire, his fingers go numb, but he refuses to give Hatford the satisfaction of seeing his reaction.
“He’s always been stupid,” Andrew forces the words from his throat, each one grinding against the tenderest parts of him.
The look Hatford sends him is far too knowing for Andrew’s comfort. He doesn’t clap Andrew on the shoulder, but he looks like he wants to.
“If I did not know what Ichirou would do to him, I would take him back to London with me,” Hatford says. “I told him about his mother and his father, but I’m not sure he believed me. I don’t know what you did to put that look on that boys face, but if I hadn’t seen the way he looks at you after whatever the fuck you did you did to him a few years ago, I would kill you myself. I recommend you don’t engage in that behavior again, boy.”
Andrew’s lip pulls back from his teeth in a half-hearted snarl. It’s hard to argue when Hatford is correct, but that doesn’t mean that Andrew appreciates his feedback.
“This isn’t about me,” Andrew forces himself to point out. “The only point of you being here was to tell him a truth that he could believe. You can go now.”
Hatford shakes his head, a wry smile on lips. Quirked like that, he looks enough like Neil that it hurts , but then the similarity vanishes just as quickly, and Hatford is just a short, nondescript aging man.
“Take care of yourself, Doe,” Stuart tells him, just to let Andrew know that he knows about his past. If Hatford expects a reaction to that, he is disappointed. Andrew’s past is just that – the past, and when he is awake with his wits and his knives around him, it cannot hurt him.
Andrew turns his back on him and glances back through the glass window into Neil’s room. Neil is looking back at him, his blue eyes unreadable, scarred hands mangling the sheets around his lap.
“He wants to see you,” Andrew thinks he hears Hatford tell him. Neil jerks his chin one, and Andrew moves to the door like a well trained puppy.
Neil doesn’t look afraid when Andrew steps into the room, just wary, but Andrew doesn’t push his luck. Although his palms itch to touch Neil, to make sure that all of his bones are in the right places and his skin is untorn, Andrew tucks his hands behind himself as he leans against the opposite wall.
Neil remains quiet for a long moment, but his silence has never been able to outlast Andrew’s.
“My uncle,” Neil finally says, voice raspy enough that Andrew wants to push his water cup closer to him. “Said you weren’t lying. I would think he was lying if he didn’t know where I buried my mother.”
Andrew blinks at him. He doesn’t want to speak, not wanting to break the fragile peace between them. He waits, fingers digging nervously into the wall behind him. Finally, he can wait no longer. “What do you want?” he asks, each word deliberate.
For a second, he thinks that Neil has lost his ability to understand him, but Neil’s lips twitch slightly, his hands finally relaxing on top of the coverlet.
“I wouldn’t have told Stuart much,” Neil says eventually. “But he told me that I trust you, and he didn’t look happy about it. So I want you to tell me.”
Andrew’s mouth is dry as bone. “Tell you what?”
“Everything.”