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Navy blue waves wash away the peachy-pink skies of an early evening and Neil Josten watches it happen from the highest point of Palmetto State’s campus. Beneath his back, the rubbery surface of the roof is beginning to sweat but Neil is too tired to sit up, now. Evening practice with the Foxes has left him feeling like his body is torn in two. It was almost too much effort to even drag himself up the extra two flights of stairs to the roof door, but his fingers had been twitching for a cigarette all day.
Both he and Andrew had cut down on smoking in the past year; Neil because he didn’t need to remember his mother so much anymore, Andrew because the possibility of a professional career was closing in and he needed his lungs for it. Ironic, maybe, that the latter is the cause for Neil lighting up a Marlboro now, overlooking the sprawling campus alone.
Andrew hasn’t graduated yet. That’s what Neil keeps telling himself, and it only helps sometimes. In three months, two weeks and six days, Andrew, Aaron and Nicky will walk the stage and accept their diplomas and close the door on their time at Palmetto. The very last of Neil’s family will enter into a real life of their own and he’ll be here, with Foxes who aren’t Foxes, waiting for the day that someone calls and offers him a professional contract.
Or the day that someone calls and tells him that Ichirou Moriyama has changed his mind, but Neil tries not to dwell on that one too much. He has had vague offers, is the thing. Representatives hedging toward a potential future contract, asking him not-so-subtly if he has any plans after college, if he’s spoken to any coaches about it.
And realistically, Neil knows if no one offered him anything at all, Kevin would kick up enough of a fuss that the Houston Sirens would extend an olive branch. Even if the thought of playing with Kevin again makes him as nervous as it did the first time.
So, if anyone was to ask, Neil would tell them that his main concern at the moment was ensuring his future career as a professional Exy player but, for the first time in a while, he would be lying.
Neil’s real main concern is the uncertainty of a future without Andrew at his side.
He takes a drag of the cigarette that had settled, forgotten, between limp fingers and watches idly as his breath spirals up around the stars. Andrew knows that Neil is overthinking everything, is the problem. Four years of their this means that they know each other better than they know themselves, and there’s no way Andrew hasn’t put together Neil’s early-morning runs and his cigarettes and his restless nights. Neil has seen the curious glances Andrew has sent toward the smoke curling from between his fingertips, the way Andrew will peer at him from behind the rim of his coffee mug when Neil returns to the dorm, sweating and gasping for breath.
Andrew hasn’t said anything. Not that Neil really expects him to, but at the very least he assumed Andrew would have stuffed him into the Maserati and driven until Neil’s thoughts dissolved, by now. It makes Neil’s chest feel hollow, gaping and open and exposed. The truth is that he misses Andrew even when he’s right beside him. More than anything he needs to know that nothing will change even when they’re thousands of miles apart, but he doesn’t know how to ask and he doesn’t know that things won’t change. Constants in Neil’s life are rare as they are new but he has a list, now, small enough to count on one hand and permanent as the scars there. Exy; His Family; The bone-deep knowledge that he wants Andrew at his side forever, or for as long as Andrew will have him. Andrew is the clear, calm, unflinching eye at the centre of every storm and Neil’s feelings for him run so deep that they make him dizzy.
Realistically, he knows Andrew isn’t going to up and leave. Kevin is living in Houston and Andrew texts him every week. Neil can’t imagine what they talk about but he sees Kevin’s name flash up on Andrew’s phone enough that he knows Andrew is still keeping tabs. Neil himself calls Kevin every Friday; they spend an hour talking about Exy, the Foxes, Thea and whichever history documentary Kevin linked him to that week. Matt texts Neil almost daily, Dan facetimes him so often that Neil has intimate knowledge of an apartment he’s still yet to visit, and both Renee and Allison send enough photos of themselves and their dog that Neil doesn’t have time to miss them.
Why he thinks Andrew wouldn’t make a similar effort is beyond him. Andrew hasn’t indicated either way and Betsy would probably tell him that he’s simply projecting his fear of Andrew leaving onto Andrew himself, but his thoughts have been spiralling for weeks now and he can’t make them stop.
Idly, he thinks he might finally understand why his mother was so violently opposed to the idea of human connection, but being backhanded for kissing a girl in Quebec didn’t add weight to the message because he hadn’t cared about her. There’s something dangerous and disconcerting about wanting to give all of yourself to someone and trust them not to buckle beneath the weight. More dangerous still to know he would do anything at all for Andrew, has done, has done things his mother would kill him for.
Maybe Neil just hates change.
He thinks that’s okay. Betsy tells him that it is, which is ironic in and of itself considering he had to commit to change when he finally decided to see her properly in his second year at Palmetto. It had taken a few months before he stopped feeling like his chest was going to cave in and actually started seeing the results of talking about the more difficult aspects of his life, even if there were things he’d never be able to say out loud. If not for Andrew, he likely would have avoided therapy for the rest of his life.
As his thoughts loop back to Andrew, something small lands at the flat of his tummy and a shadow interrupts the flickering fluorescent light by the roof door. Neil lifts a hand to finger at the edge of a thick manila envelope and when he lifts his eyes, Andrew is there.
“Smoking is bad for you, you know”
Andrew folds himself onto the ground beside Neil with all the usual grace. Neil rolls his neck to peer up at the stark lines of his profile just as Andrew steals the cigarette from between Neil’s fingers and Neil scoffs. “Hypocrite”
“I said it was bad for you”
It falls quiet again but Andrew’s presence fills the space in a way Neil thinks he might never understand. Andrew is the difference between silence and quiet. Neil watches Andrew watch the sleeping campus. His eyes are like whisky over rocks in the cheap fluorescent glow and Neil thinks, I want this forever.
Eventually, he asks, “so how did it go?”
Andrew had flown out to Pittsburgh yesterday morning to meet with his new coach and look at a few apartments they’d seen online. If Neil had charged his phone this morning he might know the answer to that question already, but he was forgetful and avoidance was something he still had to do work on. It had likely been an hour or so since Andrew landed at Upstate Regional and Neil could still see the line of tension holding his body rigid, the layers of fuzzy exhaustions clinging to the soft skin beneath his eyes. Neil wants to kiss it away, but he knows better than to smother Andrew when he’s still prickly and hypersensitive from flying.
In lieu of answering Neil’s question, Andrew taps the envelope on Neil’s chest twice. Then he says, “she’s not Wymack”
Neil hears the but she’ll do that goes unsaid. Sitting up dislodges the envelope and it slips into the space between his folded knees. After a few minutes of indelicate scrabbling, Neil tugs a few sheets of stapled paper from the envelope and ignores the too-familiar swoop of anxiety that the realtor letterhead conjures up. A photograph of the apartment sits just below it, a stylised picture of the front door with two tall plants either side of a scratchy brown doormat, and Neil is quietly pleased that Andrew picked the one Neil liked the most. Below are details Neil doesn’t really care for, rent and bills and a list of furniture that comes with the place. When he looks at Andrew, there’s something wound tight in the clench of his jaw and his eyes are still somewhere in the middle distance.
Neil says, “I like this one. Do you get to keep the orange sofa?”
Andrew’s eyes narrow. “We’re not keeping the orange sofa”
We. The word takes Neil’s heart and sends it careening around his body at a rate of knots. It settles at least some of the panic that had been rattling around Neil’s ribs like a trapped bird and when he turns to face Andrew fully, Andrew finally tucks a knee up to his chest and peers at Neil over the bend of it. Neil beats Andrew to the punch when he says, “I know. I’m an idiot”
“You are,” Andrew confirms. “I thought it went without saying”
“That I’m an idiot?”
“No,” Andrew says. “The other thing”
Neil hums. “I think I told you once that I need things spelling out”
It earns him an eye roll. Neil tucks his smile behind the papers still clutched between his fingers and Andrew reaches across to take the envelope still sitting in Neil’s lap. Instinctively, Neil tries to hand him the papers but Andrew waves them off as inconsequential and when Neil looks over again, he’s clutching the envelope with such force that his knuckles have turned white.
“You have a phone,” Andrew says at last. “It came with a charging cable, by the way. If you keep it switched on, I might even call you”
“Yeah?”
“Mm. It is easier to shut you up over the phone. I can’t hang up on you in person”
“You could push me off the edge, though” Neil tells him, gesturing vaguely to the short wall of the roof by their feet. The corner of Andrew’s mouth twitches.
“Don’t tempt me. Anyway,” and he finally loosens his grip on the envelope, slow and deliberate, so that he can tip the contents of it into Neil’s lap. Neil had assumed it empty after he’d taken the paperwork out. Whatever was left inside hits the surface of the roof with a small clatter and when Neil scoops it up, he finds a long silver chain with a key looped in. Something hot and insistent forms a lump in Neil’s throat and he swallows it down, pushes his thumb into the teeth of the new key to distract himself from the emotion threatening to surface. Andrew says, “that one is so you don’t have to lock pick your way into my apartment”
“Afraid I’ll embarrass you in front of your new neighbours?”
“Obviously,” Andrew deadpans. Neil allows the twitch of his own mouth as he begins the process of familiarising himself with the pattern of this specific key. In his pocket, his keyring is already far too cluttered; three keys to the court, his dorm key, the key to the Columbia house, the key to the Maserati. Maybe, Neil thinks, he’ll keep this one on it’s chain, close to his chest. Maybe that was Andrew’s intention in the first place. Knowing how well Andrew knows him and his relationship to sentimentality, that is probably the case.
“The other one,” Andrew says then, voice low and careful and almost hesitant, “is really for me, so that I don’t have to lock pick my way into the ICU when you inevitably get yourself maimed in my absence”
It takes a slow moment for the words to make sense. Neil had been so focused on the first key that he hadn’t even realised there might be anything else attached to the loop of chain dangling between his fingertips. It catches the light as the chain sways softly and Neil’s heart falls out through his mouth when he realises he’s looking at a ring.
It’s a silver band, plain and flat and simple enough that Neil could probably wear it under his Exy gloves without difficulty, if he wanted to. Neil opens his mouth, closes it again. Takes the ring between his fingers and smooths a line along the curve of it. Looks at Andrew, who’s watching him with careful eyes, and knows that the expression on his face must be dumbfounded.
Neil understands marriage, is the thing. Matt had proposed to Dan before the ink on his diploma was even dry; Neil had spent months lending an ear to his fretting. What if the ring doesn’t fit? What if she says no? Is it too soon? Where do I ask her, how do I ask her? It had all worked out, in the end, just as Neil knew it would. And there was Nicky, who was engaged to Erik and ready to marry him as soon as he set foot in Germany again, who had a little journal filled with wedding ideas and a shiny gold ring sitting in a plush box for safe keeping. If not for seeing the way his friends viewed the idea of marriage, Neil would likely never understand it at all – it isn’t like his parents were the pinnacle of true love. Sometimes Neil isn’t sure he does understand it. He doesn’t understand the need for an expensive ceremony with flowers and ribbons and hundreds of guests. Commitment he understands, but only because he’s been committed to Andrew from day one, ring or not.
But there is a ring, now.
Neil finally manages to unglue his mouth. “Are you….”
“Yes,” says Andrew. “I’m not…asking you to marry me tomorrow”
“Right,” Neil says, “but you are asking me to marry you?”
Andrew’s glare thaws some of the surprise that had frozen Neil to the spot and he uses his newfound movement to turn the ring this way and that beneath the low moonlight. Knowing Andrew as he does, Neil can tell that there’s more Andrew needs to say and Neil is content to wait him out, wondering if Andrew got his ring size right and positively trembling at the notion of slipping it off the chain and onto his finger. “It doesn’t have to be now,” Andrew says finally.
“Or ever. It doesn’t change anything if you say no. We don’t need to get married”
Neil hums, “But?”
“But I’ve resigned myself to putting up with you for the rest of my life anyway, so we may as well make it legally binding”
The smile splitting Neil’s face in two is a soft thing, gentle and wonderful and the most genuine the expression has ever felt settled into his mouth. “I think you like putting up with me”
“Shut up”
“Make me,” Neil tells him.
“Marry me,” Andrew replies.
Somehow, hearing Andrew say it so blatantly sends a thrill down Neil’s spine and makes his eyes burn hot. “I,” he says, and he’s surprised to find that his voice comes out wet. “Yes”
“Yes?”
Neil is nodding, now, head bobbing furiously. “Yes, Andrew. Yes”
Andrew reaches for him and Neil is startled when his thumb swipes a soft arc below Neil’s eye, coming away wet with the first happy tears Neil has cried in his life. He tries to duck his head but Andrew’s other hand intercepts, tipping his chin up between a thumb and forefinger so he can look Neil in the eye. “I want you to know that I’m doing this for the tax benefits”
When Neil laughs, he feels it in his entire body. “Right, tax benefits. Or was it hospital access? Not because you love me, surely”
Those last words leave Neil’s mouth unbidden and he twitches with the burning desire to snatch them from the air and shove them back down until he chokes. It isn’t something they’ve ever said, not in four years. For one thing, love was a foreign concept to Neil until he joined the Fox line-up his freshman year and watched the girls throw it around freely, watched Matt toss a love you, bye over his shoulder to Dan whenever he left for class, watched Aaron slowly develop the confidence to sign off his phonecalls to Katelyn with the affirmation.
Neil does love Andrew, is the thing. How could he not? It’s something he figured out a while ago, something he’d said to Betsy once or twice, something he’d thought as he watched Andrew’s chest rise and fall with the soft dip of sleep. Never to Andrew, though. Neil knows Andrew has trigger words and he never wanted to ask if I love you fell onto that list, didn’t think he could handle it if someone had destroyed that for Andrew, too.
It wasn’t as though Andrew had said it, either. Not that Neil minded, because everything they felt for each other they showed through kisses and linked hands and shared keys and long drives to nowhere. Andrew is looking at him so intensely that his pretty hazel eyes have gone dark and Neil pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, worries at it as he waits for Andrew to speak.
Eventually, Andrew runs a thumb over the scarred knuckles of the hand Neil has curled around his newest gift. “I do, you know”
Neil feels the tears, this time, when they lose their grip on the curl of his lashes. “Yeah?”
Andrew nods. “I did just ask you to marry me”
“You did,” and Neil couldn’t stop the glee seeping into his voice even if he wanted to. “You did, you do”
Something like humour curves at the end of Andrew’s mouth and Neil remembers again how much he loves getting to see the parts of Andrew that people forget exist in the first place. “Did I finally break your smart mouth?”
“I love you, too” Neil tells him. Then, “oh. Maybe you did break my mouth”
“Idiot,” Andrew says, almost automatic, but Neil can see the delicate smattering of pink colouring the round of Andrew’s cheek. Beneath the curve of Neil’s chin, Andrew’s hand shifts and Neil remembers himself, notices again the proximity of their faces. Andrew asks, “yes?” as though Neil hasn’t just signed up to kiss him for the rest of his life.
Kissing Andrew feels as much like coming home as it always does. Mouth moving against mouth, Andrew’s fingers tucked warm between the curl of Neil’s hair and his jaw solid as ever beneath the bend of Neil’s fingers. Andrew kisses like he never wants to stop and Neil remembers the first time, how kissing Andrew was the most honest he’d ever felt, was the first time Neil Josten existed. As he lifts his other hand to smooth over the hills and valleys of Andrew’s upper arm Neil remembers the chain digging lines into his palm and he tips his mouth away from Andrew’s with a quiet gasp of breath. Andrew’s eyes flutter open slowly, his mouth is pink and wet and Neil thinks, I love him, I love him, I love him.
“I forgot,” Neil says, in lieu of a proper explanation. It takes a few tries until his shaky fingers manage to work the tiny clasp of his new chain but eventually, he shakes the ring loose into the palm of his hand. Andrew’s gaze feels heavier than his mouth had been when Neil slips the ring onto his fourth finger.
It fits, near-perfectly. It would likely have been a half-size too big if not for the scar tissue across Neil’s lower finger and he wonders, idly, if Andrew had thought to compensate for that. Probably, knowing him. Neil is smiling down at his own hand like a fool, he realises.
“Thank you,” he says. Andrew shakes his head. Disbelieving, maybe, but the thought leaves Neil’s head as soon as Andrew takes his left hand in a gentle grip, fingers curled beneath Neil’s own so that his thumb might run along the knuckles there. Andrew dips his head low, his breath warm and steady, and he presses one soft kiss just above the band of silver before leaning back as though Neil’s heart isn’t up with the stars.
At length, Andrew sighs. “You should know that I owe Aaron twenty bucks, now. Since you agreed to marry me and we’re probably going to combine our assets, I feel like you should provide half of it”
“How do you owe Aaron? Did you think I’d say no?”
Andrew shakes his head. “Aaron bet you’d cry. I had higher expectations, of course”
“Sorry to disappoint”
“I think I just signed up for a lifetime of disappointment, actually”
“You did,” Neil agrees, sneaking a hand across the ground to link his fingers with Andrew’s again. Then, he adds, “fiancé”
It earns him a shove before it earns him a soft kiss, but Neil finds that he doesn’t mind much, at least not tonight.