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The coffee had long grown cold, but neither of them had taken a sip. Andrew and Neil sit on opposite sides of the dining room table, mugs of coffee sitting in front of them, silence in the air between them. Sir winds himself around Andrew’s legs while King sits on the kitchen counter, watching over them. From where he sits across the table, Neil is bathed in the morning light from the window above the armchair in the living room. Neil hadn’t been sold on the open-concept apartment, but Andrew—for reasons he wouldn’t disclose—had insisted. He’s mature enough now to admit that he chose the apartment because of the way the light reflected off Neil and made him look otherworldly. Andrew has always found him particularly stunning in the sunlight, and this apartment was soaked with so much of it, courtesy of the lack of separation between the different rooms. Even now, Neil’s hair lights up like a hot-burning fire, and the soft glow in his blue eyes turns them into stained glass. He feels so far away. When did the dining room table become so long?
Andrew reaches out for his mug and brings the coffee to his mouth. It is tasteless despite the sugary creamer and whipped cream that he put in it, but he drinks it anyway. Only after he has a mouth full of coffee does Neil deign to speak. “So what happened?”
Andrew nearly chokes on his coffee but manages to get it down and set his mug back on the table. “What do you mean?”
Neil looks at him with a tilted chin and the beginnings of frustration burning behind his eyes. Andrew can’t blame him for that. It was the same game he’d tried to play last night: a game that he always lost when he played against Neil.
“Andrew, what happened?”
The night before, Neil had cried on his lap until they were both half asleep. Andrew had cried too, and in equal measure, he hoped Neil didn’t notice and hoped Neil did notice. Eventually, they both stood up, increasingly unstable on their feet for more reasons than Andrew could say. Neil walked into their bedroom, and the look of surprise on his face stung when he realized that Andrew had followed. Within seconds, they had both undressed and crawled into their bed. Andrew hadn’t slept in his own bed in months, though to be honest, he hadn’t slept at all in months. When he moved into the guest room he met the horrifying realization that he wasn’t able to sleep anymore when he wasn’t sleeping next to Neil. He would drift off for maybe an hour at a time, then jerk awake with his hand reaching for Neil only to close his fist around empty air. He had grown accustomed to falling asleep with one hand under Neil’s pillow and the other over the rugged scar on Neil’s chest. He could feel Neil’s heartbeat when he rested his hand there, and he fell asleep every night with the comfort of knowing that Neil was alive and safe under his hand. Over the years, Andrew had become used to falling asleep with someone else in his bed. Neil's weight on the mattress across from him made him feel safe instead of afraid. Sometimes he woke up with his chest to Neil’s back or the other way around, but they always fell asleep and woke up touching. Andrew’s craving for touch had always been in his nature, even when the circumstances of his life had done everything to ruin that instinct.
The previous night they fell asleep on opposite ends of the bed, but that morning, as always, they woke up touching. It was only their hands, but it was the best that Andrew had slept in months. He had forgotten what it was like to be well rested, to wake up and go about his day without tiredness fogging his mind.
Neil picks his mug up and sets it back down. He doesn’t take a sip, but the sound of the ceramic against the wooden table is enough to rouse Andrew from the detour of his mind. Neil had asked him a question, the same as the night before. What happened? he said. But what he meant was What happened to us? And Andrew knew.
Like so many of the problems in Andrew’s life, this one had begun with Aaron.
The summer after Andrew’s last ever season, Neil and Andrew went on a road trip across the country to drink whiskey in infinity pools, fuck in expensive hotel rooms, and (begrudgingly) visit the other foxes. Neil had called it Andrew’s victory lap, a title that Andrew had found both exasperating and endearing: two words that he frequently associated with Neil.
They visited the Drs. Minyard in Chicago and caught Aaron during a rare week where he was temporarily relieved of his neurosurgeon duties in favor of “protected research time.” The day in question Katelyn was performing surgery all day, which left Neil and the two pairs of twins to lounge by the pool that Aaron and Katelyn got installed with their first month of attending salary.
The girls required constant entertainment and were obsessed with their uncles, and while his fuse for children was longer than that for adults, Andrew grew exhausted of entertaining his nieces after a while and graciously passed off the entertaining duties to Neil. As Andrew settled into his lawn chair by the pool and Neil passed by him to chase the girls into the yard, he paused for a moment by Andrew’s chair. Andrew tilted his chin up to ask for what they both wanted, and Neil leant down and kissed him longer than was likely necessary in front of Andrew’s brother. But then again, as Aaron liked to inform them, Andrew and Neil had gotten “sappy and sloppy with old age.”
As Neil jogged after the girls (and as Andrew’s eyes followed his ass in his swim trunks), he heard Aaron’s judgmental hum. Andrew turned his gaze on his brother. “Something to say?” he asked.
Aaron sat in the lawn chair next to Andrew with an excruciatingly boring-looking book in front of his face. “No,” he said.
Andrew wasn’t interested in pushing. Long gone were the days where Aaron and Neil hated each other’s presence, but, like any pair of brothers, he did love to push Andrew’s buttons. Andrew supposed it was progress of a sorts.
“Okay.” Andrew flipped his sunglasses over his eyes and leaned back in the chair to bask in the sun.
“Just makes me wonder…” Aaron said.
Andrew lifts his sunglasses and looks at his brother. “Are you under the impression that I care about your opinion?”
Aaron laughed. “Wow, you’re so tough.”
“Are you done?”
“I just think it’s interesting.”
Andrew was silent for a moment. He contemplated ignoring Aaron, then figured opportunities for sibling antagonism were rare nowadays. So he decided to bite. “Just say it.”
Aaron shrugged. “Just wondering what you two are going to do now.”
Andrew would indulge so much, but only so much. “Get to the point.”
Aaron continued, “He’s still going to the court every day. What are you going to do—play bored housewife?” Andrew was already tired of this conversation, but Aaron kept talking. “You two might actually have to spend more than an hour apart from one another. It’s been what—ten years—since you tried that? Just makes me wonder is all.”
Aaron was just trying to get under his skin. Andrew knew that. He knew he did. But something about Aaron’s words burned in the back of his mind long after Andrew and Neil returned home.
Life for Neil went back to normal. He left for practice early in the morning and came back around dinnertime. He left for away games every few weeks, and Andrew went with him as long as they weren’t flying. Neil talked at dinner about the new recruits and the captain’s injured wrist and TV shows that their starting dealer recommended that Neil would eventually force Andrew to watch. Neil’s life went on as before. Andrew’s didn’t.
Andrew anticipated thriving in retirement. Time to lounge around the house and sleep late and eat junk all sounded great in hindsight, but he miscalculated one small factor: boredom. By the third day, Andrew had read all the books on their meagre shelf and scrolled through enough Netflix to know there was nothing that he wanted to watch. He tried to cook elaborate dinners from Nicky’s gifted German cookbooks, but he burnt himself on the stove on day four and made Neil cook when he came home instead. Andrew always tended to be quiet in the evenings, but when Neil asked every day at dinner what he did that day, the fact that Andrew had nothing to say grated on him more than he would admit.
For his credit, Neil picked up on this quickly. He lavished attention on Andrew when he was home and brought him little gifts that he pretended weren’t planned. He encouraged Andrew to get out of the house with art classes, new books, even a climbing gym that Andrew stepped foot in exactly once before examining the height of the rock wall and walking out before the receptionist could even greet him. The activities were a good distraction, but they didn’t stop the depression from coming like it often did with changes in Andrew’s routine. So he did what had worked in the past; he called Betsy.
Bee had retired from psychiatry a few years ago and was enjoying her free time at a new house in Florida. Andrew called her from time to time less so for formal therapy, but more for general advice between two people who were familiar with one another.
A downside of that familiarity was Betsy’s knowledge of Andrew’s psyche: of the things that built it and made it tick. She asked about the one thing that Andrew despised talking about in therapy.
“How is Neil adjusting to your retirement?”
The man in question was sitting on the porch, waiting for Andrew to come back from the phone call that he had ducked into another room to answer. “I don’t know. You should ask him,” Andrew said. Even after all this time, Neil’s still adamantly refused to pursue therapy of any kind.
“I’ll rephrase then,” Bee said. “How do you view Neil’s adjustment to your retiring from Exy?”
Well that was the heart of the thing, wasn’t it? Neil didn’t seem to require much adjustment at all. His routine was the same except Andrew no longer shared it with him, but Neil’s mood never reflected it if he found Andrew’s absence strange. He left every day for practice without complaint and came home to Andrew with a smile on his face. While Andrew’s routine was thrown out the window, Neil kept thriving on Exy and running as if Andrew’s presence with those things hadn’t mattered to him at all. It was a disheartening revelation as much as it was an unfair one.
“He’s fine,” was all Andrew said. “It doesn’t seem like anything changed for him at all.”
For Andrew, everything had changed. He thought back to Aaron’s comment about the two of them hardly spending more than an hour from one another, and while Aaron’s statement was an exaggeration, it had an element of truth to it. Since Neil and Andrew joined the same pro team, the pair rarely spent more than a few hours apart from one another. If one had an interview or commitment in another city, the other would often clear their calendar so that they could also go. They woke up together. They went to practice together. They ate together. They slept together. They even showered together more often than not, though most times those showers were strictly cleaning-only. Andrew supposed that others would call them co-dependent, but neither Neil nor Andrew had ever cared what others thought of them. Andrew didn’t need Neil around all the time, but he certainly wanted him—in his space, in his life, in everything.
Betsey was quiet on the phone for a moment, a trick Andrew long ago learned was meant to prompt him into elaborating. When that didn’t work, she asked him another question: “Have you talked with him at all about your perception of his behavior?”
Well that was the thing, wasn’t it? He hadn’t talked to Neil at all. An Andrew more in his right mind would have talked to Neil. Maybe Neil would have assuaged his fears there and then. But this Andrew was bogged down with a depression that reinforced every worst-case scenario, so he didn’t ask Neil anything.
“No,” Andrew said, but that wasn’t the full answer. He hadn’t asked because he was afraid of the answer. He was afraid that Neil was happy with how things were, so it was safer not knowing.
When Andrew announced that he would visit Renee in Philadelphia, he told himself that it wasn’t a test. He told Neil that he would be going, but Neil didn’t say anything. He didn’t offer to book a flight for both of them or ask what hotel they’d be staying in. He didn’t even seem suspicious that Andrew had made such a decision without consulting him. He just said “Oh, okay,” and went back to cutting up a pepper for their dinner. Andrew tried not to let it burrow under his skin, but with his paranoia already making a home there, there was plenty of room for this to fester too. The day he left for the airport he said goodbye to Neil in the kitchen. Neil was filling a mug with the coffee Andrew had made and something about him was more still than usual. If Andrew were thinking clearly in that moment, he might have asked Neil what was wrong, but he didn’t. Instead, he wheeled his suitcase into the living room and parked it by the door. He walked into the kitchen, approaching Neil in the oversized US Court ‘Minyard’ hoodie that he always stole from Andrew’s side of the closet. Andrew stepped up next to him and said, “I’m leaving.”
Neil slightly jumped at that, so small that it seemed he himself barely noticed. He relaxed almost immediately and nodded at Andrew. “Okay,” he said.
“I’ll be back Tuesday,” Andrew replied, and Neil nodded again.
Then Andrew did something that he didn’t know he would do. He grabbed Neil’s face between his hands and kissed him, not long, not deep, just a kiss. A kiss like that one on the roof so many years ago. A kiss he wasn’t sure of.
Neil leaned into it like he always did, but Andrew pulled away before Neil could reach up and touch him. “I’ll be back on Tuesday,” Andrew said again.
And Neil’s smile was small when he said “Okay.”
Overall, his visit with Renee was unremarkable. He hadn’t met her son in person before, but like Renee the boy was quiet and polite. Renee often inquired about Andrew’s feelings on retirement, which he more often than not avoided by changing the subject to Renee’s work with the PeaceCorp and her other children still abroad. Renee and Patrick were at the hospital often, which left Andrew plenty of time in a strange city to think. He spent time wandering downtown and Washington Square park. He even went to see the Liberty Bell and sent a picture of it to Neil.
Unfortunately, the free time gave Andrew ample opportunity to over-think. He thought about Neil’s quiet resignation when Andrew told him that he’d be leaving town. Only a year ago, if Andrew was meant to travel anywhere, Neil would immediately announced that he was coming too. This time, Neil hadn’t even asked to come. Andrew still hated planes. And he missed Neil.
When Andrew got home from the airport, Neil was already asleep. Andrew told himself that he’d sleep in the guest room just this once. He didn’t want to disturb Neil, especially if Neil was enjoying some space. When he woke up the next morning, Neil said nothing about Andrew in the guest room, so Andrew did what he thought was best, and he slept there the next night too.
Andrew hated the guest bedroom. It’s cold in there, and Andrew had gotten used to sleeping next to Neil who is a furnace in his own right. Sir slept with him every night, which did a little to assuage Andrew’s loneliness, but it was still not the same.
Andrew missed his own room. He had done most of the decorating, though any visitor would assume it had been Neil for the sappy décor that Andrew allowed himself to indulge in: the expensive pillows that Andrew had insisted on because if he was going to be destroying his body for the sake of a sport at the very least he should sleep comfortable, the painting over their bed of a home that looked a little too much like the Columbia house to be an accident, the framed photobooth strip on Andrew’s nightstand from a carnival Andrew and Neil went to during Andrew’s fifth year. There were four photos in the strip, and Andrew remembered taking every single one of them like a video running in his head: both of them staring blank-faced at the camera as they tried to figure out how it worked; the two of them looking at each other as Neil asked what they should do; Neil smiling with his face pressed against Andrew’s blank-but-impossibly-fond if you knew what to look for; and the last one, Andrew’s favorite, when he kissed Neil and the camera caught the exact moment that Neil’s surprise turned to comfort as he melted into Andrew’s arms. When the photos were taken and it came time to choose a theme for the photo strip, Andrew didn’t hesitate before he chose the one with hearts at the bottom. He blamed the decision on his developing sentimentality over his and Neil’s impending separation. The words at the bottom said “Love You More,” and while that wasn’t a word that they used with one another, that didn’t mean it wasn’t the closest thing to describe what he and Neil felt for each other. College-Andrew would never have admitted that, but the thirty-something Andrew that just missed Neil couldn’t help but acknowledge it.
Andrew hated the guest room. He missed his bedroom. But most of all, he missed Neil.
Andrew waited a month after getting back from Renee’s before he really and truly worried. He expected that after a few days, Neil would tell Andrew that he wanted him back in his bed and that he’d never wanted space, and everything would go back to how it was usually. But after a week, Neil still hadn’t said anything. He seemed to be almost normal, though quieter than he was usually. They still had dinners together, still watched TV in the evenings, but always from opposite ends of the couch. Neil never reached out, and Andrew was hesitant to initiate when he wasn’t sure what Neil wanted. Andrew’s paranoia told him that Neil didn’t want him anymore, that Neil was building a life without him.
After a month, Andrew got desperate. He hadn’t truly slept in that time, and eventually he gave up on sleeping altogether. He started leaving the apartment shortly after Neil had gone to sleep and would drive around the city trying to quiet the voices in his head. The voices told him that Neil would leave soon—that Neil’s true passion was always Exy, and he had allowed Andrew to stick around since Exy and Andrew were inexplicably tied together. They told him that Neil had only stayed to begin with because Andrew had asked him, and not because he truly wanted to. Sometimes the open road quieted his worries, but sometimes they didn’t. A cigarette or two helped occasionally, and soon Andrew’s efforts to quit years ago were efficiently thrown out the Maserati window.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise when the busybodies caught on, though Andrew did everything he could to keep them out of it. Renee called to talk with him often, but any mention of Neil or retirement had Andrew quickly hanging up. Nicky called and talked to Andrew like he was fragile, which meant he probably was talking to Neil. He didn’t want to know if Nicky knew something he didn’t, so eventually he started ignoring Nicky’s calls too. Kevin even called once to say that Neil wasn’t doing well this season and that he was ignoring Kevin’s calls. Andrew hung up on that one immediately. Kevin knew better by now.
As Andrew became surer of Neil’s impending departure, he more viscerally realized what a life without Neil would look like. The foxes were family, but almost all of them preferred Neil. It was never something that bothered him—he preferred Neil, too—but he hadn’t realized until recently just how much of a stable support the foxes provided him over the years. He didn’t need them, but he relied on them, and when Neil left they would all go with him. Renee would likely stick with him, as would Aaron and Nicky. Kevin went where Exy was, and Neil was the one who still played. Andrew would be left in Denver with his closest family member half a country away, a brother who thought he was best in measured doses.
So Andrew did what his angry twenty-year-old self would have been disgusted at his efforts to do: make friends. He started with his teammates from the Denver Daredevils, reaching out to a handful of them to meet for dinner or drinks. Neil was friendly with some of them, which meant Andrew was civil by necessity. They’d never had anyone but the Foxes over to their apartment, but meeting on neutral ground seemed reasonable. After all, Neil clearly had a separate life now. It might be reasonable for Andrew to do the same. Bee might even call it healthy.
Andrew’s teammates had never quite known what to do with him, not at practice and not now at a casual dinner. They were unsettled by the fact that he didn’t speak much, and if the questions they asked were any indication, they were unsettled that he wasn’t with Neil. In the world of Exy, the two of them were a matched set, a collector’s item—sometimes included with special edition Kevin Day—but their real value was together. Andrew alone just wasn’t worth as much, not anymore, not for a long time.
Andrew had long ago stopped needing someone to choose him, but he wanted Neil to want him, and it felt like winning something when Neil chose him.
When Andrew came home the previous night from his usual activity of driving and smoking, he pulled into the garage to find that Neil’s car was no longer in its usual spot. Andrew calmed his nerves. Maybe Neil moved it. Maybe Neil sold it. Neil had always hated that car, and it was possible he would get rid of it without mentioning it to Andrew. After all, they hadn’t talked in a few days.
Andrew took the stairs to their floor two at a time, trying to tell himself he wasn’t running—running to see his worst fear come true. Neil’s things were still in the apartment. The bed was unmade like Neil was at one point asleep, but he wasn’t in the apartment.
Neil’s old passports and fake identities were long gone. The two of them had burned everything he didn’t turn over to the FBI in a fire six years ago on the day after Nathaniel Wesninski’s birthday. If it was an anniversary of sorts for them, they didn’t acknowledge it, but they both knew what had happened on that date ten years before. Neil wouldn’t have sought refuge with one of their pro teammates—he didn’t trust them enough—and there were only two of the original foxes who lived close enough to drive to.
Andrew decimated the speed limit on the drive to the suburbs, so much so that when the car lurched to a stop outside of the Boyd-Wilds house, the momentum lurched his neck enough to wonder about whiplash. He didn’t care that it was just past four in the morning, Andrew slammed his fist against their door loud enough to wake up the neighborhood suburbanites. The occupants of the house must have already been awake, because it only took a few knocks before Dan Boyd-Wilds was in the doorway with a toddler on her hip.
“You’re so lucky I was already up, Andrew. I don’t care that I’m a mother now, I would still take a swing at you.”
“Is Neil here?” Andrew felt the hoarseness of his voice in his throat. It had been several days since he talked last, but he wasn’t expecting how desperate it made him sound.
Dan paled like she knew something he didn't. “Are either of you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“So he was here?”
“Andrew, she just woke up. Do you want to come inside or are you just planning on sitting out here like a stray dog?”
Andrew didn’t have time for this. “So he was here?”
Dan’s daughter tucked her head into her mother’s shoulder and dropped the blanket she was holding in her small fist. Dan rolled her eyes. “Yes, he was here. He just left, actually. You probably passed him on the highway.”
Left? There was a weight on Andrew’s chest. “Where did he go?”
Dan bent down and picked up the blanket. “To you, Andrew. He went home to you. Where do you think he went?”
Andrew didn’t wait to say goodbye to Dan, he just turned on his heel and went back to the car. As he slammed the door behind him, Dan called out one last time. “You know, sometimes you two are really dense when it comes to each other.”
The drive back to Denver went by without Andrew noticing, and then he was back in their garage. Neil’s BMW was there this time, but that didn’t put Andrew’s mind at ease. He sat in the Maserati for a while before there was a voice in his ear and he realized he was holding his phone.
“Minyard? Are you there? I swear I’m getting too old for this,” came the gruff voice on the other end.
“Wymack?”
“What is it, kid, I just woke up? Don’t tell me you’re breaking in to steal my liquor again.”
Andrew didn’t mean to call him, didn’t mean to spill his thoughts like the manic teen he once was, but Wymack had always had that effect on him. “I think he’s leaving me.”
Wymack was quiet on the other end. A coffee pot beeped and there was a sound like a cabinet closing, then Wymack spoke, “What’s going on, kid?”
Andrew told him everything. He gave words to everything he couldn’t say to Betsy or Renee or Neil and told Wymack about the fear of being left behind, being unchosen by the only person whose opinion has ever mattered to him. He talked for longer than he had in months, and at the end of it his throat hurt.
When Andrew was done, Wymack sighed. He heard the sound of coffee poured into a mug—he must be on speaker—then Wymack cleared his throat. “You know, I used to worry about you. Not in the way the others did. I was never afraid of you, but sometimes when you fell asleep on my couch with whiskey in your hand, I would stay awake wondering if I was doing right by you. I think you reminded me a lot of me—still do, actually. Jury’s out on what that means for you, but I’d like to think we both did good for ourselves.
“After you and Neil started whatever it is you and him are calling it these days, I worried about you less. I’m not gonna say he saved you or something, because he didn’t. You were always so sure that you were going to create a life for yourself, no matter what that would look like. And you did, kid, you created a life for yourself. A damn good one of those fancy cars of yours have anything to say about it. You both did.
“Do you know what Neil said to me when the two of you visited this summer? He told me that in a few years after he retired, he wanted to move you two out to the suburbs. Two car garage. White picket fence. All that shit. He asked if me and Abby would look at houses when you two were ready. Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have thought you two were the type, but hey, time changes us. It changed me—Abby says I’m soft now—but it doesn’t change us that much. If anyone in the world could make it, it would be you two. You’ve already made it through more than anyone should have to, and that was when you barely knew each other. You two should see yourselves now. I know, I know, mind my paygrade, but the two of you function like the earth revolves around each other. So I promise, whatever you’re feeling about this situation, he’s feeling the same way. I know that you know you should talk to him, so I can’t tell you to do that. But I can tell you that until you two talk, you both are going to be miserable. I know you’re used to your own misery, Andrew, but I think we both know you won’t put him through that.”
Andrew didn’t bother to respond to Wymack, and Andrew knew he didn’t expect it. He left the car and went up the stairs. He didn’t know what he would find behind the door, but he was prepared. He missed his home. He missed his family. He missed Neil.
~
Neil repeats his question. Andrew’s hands are so tight around the coffee mug that his knuckles are turning white.
“Drew, are you with me?” Andrew nods, he can’t meet Neil’s eyes. “Tell me what happened.”
Andrew doesn’t have the words for all of it. Telling the whole story now would feel like taking a chunk out of him, but he wants to tell Neil something.
He wants to tell Neil that when he came home last night and Neil said the words “I’m leaving,” it felt like a bullet that would leave a scar on him like the one he’d traced on Neil time and time again.
He wants to tell Neil that he’d do just about anything to make him stay, but he wishes that he wouldn’t.
He wants to tell Neil that the fact that this is Andrew’s fault makes him want to leave. He’d only wanted good things for Neil. He wanted to be a good thing.
“I was afraid.”
Neil’s eyes go wide, and he sits back in his chair. He crosses his arms over his chest like he does when he’s insecure. “Of me?”
“No,” Andrew shoots back. “Not of you. Never of you.”
“Then of what?” Andrew doesn’t say anything. Neil pushes. “What are you afraid of, Andrew?”
“I was afraid that you would leave me.”
Neil uncrosses his arms. He’s getting agitated now, and Andrew hates it. “I wasn’t going to leave you. I—I’m not going to leave you. I don’t want to leave you. Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then why would you think that?”
It isn’t an accusation, but Andrew’s panic reads it as such. He takes a few breaths before replying.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
A wave of emotions run across Neil’s face, and it’s the first time that Andrew laments knowing him so well. He looks hurt, betrayed, scared. Andrew doesn’t regret telling the truth—he still doesn’t believe in regret—but he knows for a fact that Wymack was right. Neil was just as hurt as he was, and Andrew did this to them. He let his insecurities build a home in him and fester, and now they were both poisoned.
“Andrew,” Neil says, and he sounds like he did in Baltimore: desperate, afraid, small. Andrew hates that he makes him feel that way. “I always need you. I’ve needed you all this time.” And you weren’t there.
Neil won’t say it, but Andrew can read between the lines. There’s no feeling that Andrew hates more than guilt, not even fear, and he feels so much of it now. He knows he should explain, tell Neil that he knows, that he’s sorry, but he’s not capable of it right now.
Andrew stands and walks across the table to Neil. Neil pulls his chair back from the table and looks up at Andrew, all those painful feelings still on display on his beautiful face. Neil doesn’t say anything, so Andrew fills the space. “Yes or no, Neil?”
They haven’t asked that question in years, but Andrew needs to know that he’s still welcomed, in Neil’s life, in his arms.
“Yes,” Neil says, without hesitation.
Andrew swings his leg around the other side of Neil’s chair and meets his eyes to make sure he’s okay with it before settling on his lap. He rests is hands in his lap and leans forward, pressing his chest to Neil’s and resting his cheek on Neil’s shoulder. Neil’s hands come up around him, one hand on his back and one hand on the back of his head like a child. Andrew presses his face to the crook of Neil’s collar and breathes him in like a child.
Andrew wants to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but he can’t. This is the only way he knows how.
But Neil understands. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
~
When Andrew wakes up again that day, Neil is still asleep beside him. They had stayed in the kitchen—Andrew in Neil’s lap, as close as they could be without crawling into each other’s skin—until Neil’s legs started to fall asleep. Wordlessly, they followed each other into the bedroom, stripped down to their boxers, and crawled into bed. Andrew was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, Neil’s arm under his neck and his leg hitched over Neil’s hip. It’s sunset now, and over the course of their daytime nap the two had drifted apart from one another, but Andrew’s hand still lays still over Neil’s side. Neil’s skin is still as warm as he remembers, soft and tan along untested stretches and pale and textured over his scars. Andrew loves all of it. He loves Neil, even if he’s never said it.
As quietly as he can, Andrew creeps out of bed. Neil stays asleep, something that would have been impossible once. It’s a battle hard won: the right to sleep soundly and safely. It’s a battle they fought once before when they were young, and a battle they are once again fending off together.
Andrew tugs on one of Neil’s old PSU hoodies and the sweatpants Neil was wearing this morning and creeps out onto the balcony off their dining room. They have chairs out there overlooking the street below, but Andrew opts to sit on the floor. Andrew’s not afraid of heights anymore (he’s fallen once and survived—no, thrived), but sitting on the concrete still makes him more grounded. A few weeks before, he hid a pack of cigarettes behind the flowerpot. He tried to confine his smoking to the car, but there had been a few nights when it became too much, nights when he would peek into their room to watch Neil sleeping peacefully and fight the urge to crawl into bed with him.
The man in question doesn’t make Andrew wait long. He comes out to the balcony still in just his boxers, but he wraps the comforter he dragged with him around Andrew’s and his shoulders as he sits down. Andrew doesn’t let the silence live for long.
“So you’re not going to say anything about it?” Andrew pulls a cigarette from the pack and lights it, then sets it back behind the pot.
Neil shrugs. “Nope,” he says. “I found it out here weeks ago.”
Well, that would explain the cigarettes that Andrew could swear were going missing. “Fuck you,” he says without heat.
Neil raises his eyebrows, then laughs at the joke he doesn’t need to say.
“What are we going to do?” Andrew stubs the cigarette out, throws it over the balcony then goes for another one. Neil takes the pack from his hands before he can grab another one and tosses the whole thing over the edge. He has the dignity to look a little guilty after he does it and pulls the blanket tighter around himself.
“You told me to stay,” Neil said. “I don’t want to stop.”
“Last night you said you were going to leave.”
Neil pulls the blanket tighter still, which has the effect of pulling Andrew closer. “I couldn’t stay to watch you leave.” Neil shivers. A consequence of his state of undress in the cool fall air. “I’m nothing without you.”
Andrew shifts closer to Neil under the blanket, sharing his body heat. “You have the others.”
Neil shakes his head. “They’re not like you.”
“You have Exy.”
Neil huffs. “Exy’s a job.” Andrew looks at Neil, and he continues. “Exy is…a passion. It’s my job. It was my first reason to stay. But you’re everything else. You’re my life, my home, my family, and I would give Exy and everything up in a heartbeat if it meant keeping you.”
A part of Andrew bristles at the words. They weren’t supposed to be this for each other. But they are, they are. “Then why’d you pull away?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Neil said. “I didn’t think I was.” Neil looks down at the floor. He’s wearing socks that he wasn’t wearing to sleep, so he must have put them on before he joined Andrew outside. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”
It hurt to hear. Andrew was afraid that Neil didn’t need him, all the while Neil was afraid that Andrew didn’t want him. And here Andrew was, wanting Neil and needing him in equal measure. Like he has for years.
Andrew reaches out and wraps Neil’s hand around his own. They stay quiet like that for a while, breathing with their palms together, their fingers intertwined.
“I’m not leaving you, Neil,” Andrew says with a breath. “I’m never going to leave you.”
Neil sounds like he’s choking when he replies. “Never?”
Andrew shakes his head, looks over at the city below him. “Never,” he says. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to. I want you.” Forever. He doesn’t say the words, but they both know what it means. They’ve both known for a long time, since that Baltimore motel room. “Stay?” Andrew asks, looking up at Neil.
Neil blinks down at him, squeezes his hand. “I’ll stay,” Neil says, and a quiet smile breaks onto his lips.
The sun reaches its nadir before them, and it gets cold, but they both stay outside. The city lights are vibrant and bright beneath them, but Andrew thinks he could sleep out here as long as Neil is still beside him. It’s long after the sun sinks beneath the skyline when Neil finally breaks the silence.
“Til death do us part, then?”
Andrew almost laughs. “Yeah,” he decides then, “you could call it that.”