Chapter Text
Neil cradled the admission of care from Kevin as the final minutes of the game counted down. Things certainly had changed since those first few months with the Foxes. It was unthinkable that Kevin would put something above Exy, yet he left the court to follow Neil to the hospital, seemingly in a way that extended past having a stake in his career. And Andrew…
With protest from his ribs, Neil pushed himself to sit up as the final buzzer went off. The Foxes had secured their victory, and the sportsmanship handshakes were foregone as the older Foxes rushed off the court, panic evident.
Neil turned his gaze out the front door, fixing on Andrew’s relaxed posture doused in morning sun. He sat scarily still, and it dawned on Neil that he was unmedicated now. Gone were the manic smiles that he’d grown accustomed to. This Andrew looked at him different, not like a puzzle to be solved but like the final piece that had been lost under the table for an age.
“He won’t come in on his own,” Kevin said. “I’m going to go help Abby with breakfast.”
Kevin got to his feet, giving Neil a weak, worried smile that was more sincere than any expression Neil had ever seen from him. He wandered into the kitchen, and warm conversation bubbled up in between the sizzles of the bacon.
There was something magnetic about Andrew that had Neil heading for the front door before he’d consciously decided to move. His head throbbed as he stepped out into the sunlight, and the door slammed closed behind him.
“Hey,” Neil said. Andrew glanced up at him, a blanket of disinterest covering anything readable on his face, but Neil took not being flipped off as an invitation to stay. Andrew turned his attention back to his cigarette as Neil eased himself down onto the step beside him. The silence held, more comfortably than Neil expected, and his conflicting views of Andrew warred in his mind.
On one hand, this was the violent, dispassionate goalie who’d drugged him and thought he could stand between his own and the literal mafia. On the other hand, there was the Andrew that had been at his side since he’d woken up in the hospital. He’d pieced Neil back together with gentle hands and steady words, and that went against everything Neil remembered from his first year at Palmetto.
Neil studied his easy posture and the bored look as he took another drag of his waning cigarette. He wasn’t all that different outside of being sober: same shiny blond hair, black armbands hiding the knives Neil knew were there, even the bandaged hand wasn’t out of the ordinary. Andrew’s jaw tensed before he turned to stare back, and Neil’s gut summersaulted at how in tune he was to this look. He could hear the rasp of Andrew’s voice telling him to spit out what he was thinking already.
Neil settled on asking, “How’s the hand?”
Andrew flexed his fingers into a fist a couple times before he held his hand up and wiggled them as if to say perfectly fine.
“Kinda like when you shattered the window after Kathy’s,” Neil said.
That got Andrew’s attention. Something unnervingly earnest slipped across his features as he traced Neil’s face. The look dissipated as fast as it came, and it sent a chill down Neil’s spine at how quickly his eyes had sunk to dark depths.
“I remember our deal.” Neil said, a sudden, desperate need to stop Andrew from descending any further.
“Do you now?” Andrew balked. He turned his attention back to the street, boredom masking the storm that was so evidently brewing inside him.
“How come you’re still protecting me?”
“You severed our deal before the year was up.” Andrew said, side stepping his question. Neil couldn’t help but bite.
“Why would I do that?” He asked, incredulity slipping into his tone.
“Martyrdom called to you, I suppose.”
“Yet you were the first to me when I went down at Friday’s game.”
“Never said I condoned your stupidity.”
“I called off our deal, and what? You decided to give me your protection for free — because we’re such good pals?”
Andrew ground out his cigarette butt on the decorative metal handrail and discarded it into the bushes. He turned lazily to face Neil once more and looked so long that Neil was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer.
He reached out, gripping Neil by the chin, the touch far gentler than the cold look on his face, “Hasn’t been about protection for a long time.”
Neil opened his mouth to ask what it was about and what it even was, but Andrew’s hand fell away, getting to his feet. Neil swallowed his questions as Andrew offered a hand and helped him up.
No longer did Neil care about the ample horrors that were bound to be buried in his missing memories. He needed to know the road that led him to this stoop, feeling so at ease with Andrew’s hand against his.
Andrew pulled the front door open, lightly pushing Neil inside by the shoulder. He nudged him all the way to a chair in the kitchen. Abby buzzed about, popping waffles from the toaster and filling the center of the table with a cluster of topping options, while Kevin pushed scrambling eggs around a pan.
This was what Neil had imagined real families were like, wrapped in the comfort and security of something as mundane as cooking breakfast. It was hard to slip into his usual bystander role when, upon sitting sideways in his chair to face Neil and the rest of the kitchen, Andrew’s hot hand migrated from his shoulder to the back of his neck, firmly keeping Neil present. Abby set plates out for them all and tossed freshly toasted waffles onto them.
The warmth at the back of his neck disappeared when Kevin started dolling out the scrambled eggs, noticeably skipping Andrew’s plate. Andrew busied himself with smothering his waffles with a mix of sickeningly sweet choices. When he was satisfied with his drenched waffles and the mound of whipped cream on top, he turned his sights to Neil’s bare waffles.
“Nuh-uh,” Neil said as his plate was pulled away by devious fingers, and Andrew batted his hand back as Neil tried to save his food.
Buttering both waffles, Andrew waited for it to melt before unscrewing the peanut butter and spreading a heap onto the waffles. With both the waffles coated, he scooted the plate back onto Neil’s placemat. Neil eyed them with a wary curiosity, and the frozen grapes came to mind.
Kevin took up a spot across the table as Neil shoved a bite of the waffles into his mouth, instantly pleased with the flavor. He shot a look of approval at Andrew, but he was too enthralled in cutting his food into itty bitty slivers to take note of Neil’s surprised joy. Kevin huffed a laugh at Neil.
“There’s an upside to amnesia, I guess.” Kevin said and Abby smiled at Neil as she sat with her plate. “Don’t often get to experience your favorite snack for the first time again.
“We were behind on groceries when you discovered your love of peanut butter Eggos. All that was left was waffles, which Andrew saw no issue with, but neither of us were thrilled. You were complaining about how maple syrup is too sweet when Andrew tossed the peanut butter at you.” Kevin said as he spread a menial amount of butter on his waffles.
Neil munched on his waffles, managing to get peanut butter all over his fingers. The ache of his head was getting louder, and his ribs were beginning to protest sitting up, but he wasn’t ready to leave the warm chatter of the kitchen. Abby and Kevin were volleying back and forth in easy conversation, and the comfort of their voices was as familiar as it was foreign.
A clunk in the living room had Neil turning his head too sharply, sending his vision swimming. Wymack strode into the kitchen, shrugging out of his jacket, but all Neil’s fuzzy mind could latch onto was the presence of an older man in the room. This wasn’t his father. It wasn’t, but he went rigid all the same, tension pulsing at his bruised temple.
“Hey,” Wymack said, attention pressed to Neil. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine,” Neil forced the word out of his mouth.
“Don’t know why I even bothered.” Wymack glanced to Abby. “How is he doing?”
“As expected. We’re managing his pain. Oh, speaking of.” Abby wiggled out from her chair and grabbed a bottle off the counter.
Two pills folded into Neil’s hand, these ones tinted an orangey-red as opposed to matte white ones he’d taken before this. He stared warily at the pills. In his peripherals, he caught Andrew’s hand moving to rest at his nape, the weight of it reassuring.
“Ibuprofen,” Andrew murmured. “Oxy earlier. Tylenol before that.”
He hated that Andrew knew the root of his hesitation. When had Andrew gotten so intimately familiar with the interworking of his mind? As far as Neil remembered, they had merely tolerated one another. But the way Andrew had been treating him since he opened his eyes in the hospital was a far cry from what he remembered.
“It’s important to rotate them,” Abby cut in. “I know oxy probably sounds most effective, but they build off one another and will manage your pain better.”
Neil was washing the pills down with lukewarm
coffee before she was done talking. At least it was only Andrew that saw through his hesitation to the blatant distrust and suspicion that Neil carried with him through life.
Wymack was towering over the other side of the table, stealing a piece of bacon off Kevin’s plate as he rested a hand on his shoulder. Neil was still too tense. It was just Coach.
Andrew tugged lightly at the back of his hair, and he dragged his gaze from Wymack. The blankness on Andrew’s face was different, but he couldn’t pin down what had shifted.
Without preamble, Andrew was up, pulling Neil out from the table by the back of his chair. No one seemed surprised as Andrew took hold of Neil and helped him to his feet. Neil didn’t fight as he was led from the kitchen. At a turtle pace, they made their way to the guest room Neil had been calling home.
Relief sunk through him once he was horizontal. He hadn’t realized how much pressure gravity alone had been putting on his ribs. He sighed, closing his eyes as Andrew slumped onto the bed next to him.
“Nap. I will be here,” Andrew said. Light fingers brushed Neil’s bangs from his closed eyes.
The safety Neil found in this gentle touch had him drifting off faster than he wanted.
He would have slept well past the evening if the nagging urge to pee didn’t rouse him. Forgetting to be gentle with his ribs, he fumbled out of bed. The bathroom light was bright against twilight, the sun quickly dying on the horizon. His ribs screamed as he emptied his bladder, but the throbbing of his head was worse.
As he washed his hands, he squinted at the mirror. His bangs were getting too long, falling in his eyes every time he dared to look down. After drying his hands, he raked his fingers through the shaggy mess. He’d have to get Andrew to cut his hair again. It had been a couple months. The back could use it too, though he was partial to the way Andrew latched onto the back when it got longer.
He rubbed at his eyes, and the pulsing swallowed his vision in a blaze of white and a roar in his ears. Nausea rocked his stomach. He steadied himself against the counter until the wave passed.
Ginger steps took him towards the kitchen, in search of his next dose of pain meds. He spotted Andrew first, filling the coffeemaker with water. Andrew must have rushed through towel drying his hair today because it was sticking up a little in the back. A faint smile touched Neil’s lips as he steadied himself against the frame of the kitchen door. The coffee machine burbled to life as Andrew smacked the brew button.
“Hey,” Neil announced his presence. Rarely was he able to sneak up on Andrew, but the despondent slump of his shoulders told Neil, at this moment, he would be able to startle Andrew.
Andrew came to life, turning towards Neil’s slow approach. It wasn’t until he was inside Andrew’s personal space that Neil stopped. He wanted to lean his weight on Andrew, wanted to kiss away the pinched lines between his eyebrows and the bags under his eyes. Instead, Neil settled for hovering his lips a breath away from Andrew’s.
“Yes or no?” Neil asked, and Andrew stepped back into the counter, thumping up against it.
With the jerk back, Neil was sure he’d done something wrong, but Andrew took his face between calloused palms the next instant. His light eyebrows scrunched, drawing upward, gold eyes getting wider than Neil had ever seen. It was too expressive. Neil’s heart raced.
“What?” Neil let out a nervous laugh.
“Do you remember?” Andrew asked, an urgent strain to his voice that Neil hadn’t heard since Baltimore.
Oh, Baltimore.
None of his memories had registered as out of place. There hadn’t been anything strange about remembering before being reminded that he hadn’t remembered when he’d gone to sleep.
“I remember,” Neil gasped. “Holy shit. Yes, I remember. I remember.”
Protective arms looped over Neil’s shoulders as Andrew pulled him close. The unbruised side of his head settled into the crook of Andrew’s neck. Warmth radiated through every part of Neil. Andrew was crushing him, holding so tight, and fingernails were digging through his t-shirt, hard enough to leave marks behind. Neil had looped his arms around Andrew’s torso, and surely, he was imagining the jitter of Andrew’s frame.
“Do not ever fucking forget again,” Andrew bit, the harshness of his tone not matching the tenderness of the embrace.
Neil unburied his face as he said, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Andrew consumed his protest with a gentle, slow kiss. It wasn’t the desperate passion Neil was used to — no clashing teeth or spit rubbing his lips raw. Andrew kissed him like he was precious, like he might disappear in a blink. It fizzled into pecks, a few on the lips, a couple on his bruised jaw, then straying towards his injured temple.
“I came back,” Neil whispered. “I’ll always come back to you, Drew.”