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"I'd fuck him."
Giggles follow and Neil rolls his eyes at the textbook he’s meant to study. These two girls have been loudly chatting for what seems like Neil’s entire time at the library and he’s so close to telling them the library is for studying but then he imagines sounding like one of his professors and that just won’t do.
"Yeah he's small but I bet he could pick me up."
Neil tries his best to focus again on his textbook when he hears the raucous laughter begin. “Yeah he's pretty, but probably not underneath those clothes if you know what I mean,” says Girl Two.
Neil tenses.
"Oh- you know I just heard from Lila who heard from Sheena, who heard from Jack that he's fully fucked up, like seriously fucked up scars everywhere, not just his face."
Jack was on the team with Neil, one of the Foxes newest and most aggravating recruits. Of course it could probably be another Jack, but which other Jack has been privy to Neil’s vulnerability in their shared locker room, plus has an equally annoying accomplice named Sheena.
Neil clenches his hands over his book, feeling like ripping it in half would go far for his image in self control. He shouldn't care, he won’t. He’ll just have to get used to it as it must be common gossip by now if Jack has spread the news.
Neil wills himself to ignore the girls, but for all he tries the words ‘fucked up' keep echoing through his head.
Thankfully he doesn’t have to try for very long, Neil can hear sounds of the two girls packing up, but their shocked laughter holds a note of unease once they spot him. It’s not until Girl One and Girl Two stand up to make their way out that Neil hears a low, "Well you read the articles, he might be like his father, now he was a monster."
Neil closes his eyes, the pounding of his skull repeats the words back to him.
They weren’t wrong.
It was a long time until Neil left his spot at the library.
***
With all his time spent at the Library recently, Neil has been excelling at his studies. It’s only too bad he can’t say the same thing about his sleep.
Neil tosses and turns in his single dormitory bed, feeling suffocated by the heat at this time of year. He doesn’t sacrifice his t-shirt before bed so it’s stuck sticky and hot to his back. He drifts in and out, not making sense of any images, but Neil wakes up thirsty and cold, shivery skin comforted by the hoodie he slips on as he makes his way to the beanbags. Neil looks for the remote and stretches to retrieve it under a couch cushion, bringing the butter yellow blanket along with it, tying it around his shoulders as he huddles into the bean bag. The remote doesn’t work at first, fuzzy television with zero working channels, one after another, until Neil hits jackpot on a blank black screen and waits for it to load like a video game.
Confused, Neil inches closer to the television but there’s a force holding his body back. What the fu-
Ropes come out behind his back, across his hips, his arms, his shoulders, just circling around and around till Neil is fully bound in one sickening moment. Panic ensues and Neil startles as a warped voice sounds from the television, “Nathaniel.”
Neil gasps brokenly, his breath hitching in his chest, threatening to stop altogether. He knows that voice, he thought it long gone by now.
“My greatest disappointment,” Nathan greets coldly, “How fortunate it is for us to meet again.”
Neil can feel himself shaking, he thought he watched his father die, two bullets directly in the chest. Neil looks around and finds that they are in the basement of Nathan’s house, dark red splattered all over the floor. When Neil looks up, Nathan is oozing from the wounds in his chest, his throat gurgling blood that seeps out of his mouth.
His father talks through the blood and asks, “Ready to begin?” as he procures a cleaver from behind his back, stalking forward towards a bound Neil. “Shall we finally cut those ankles off then?” he laughs.
“No no no no-” Neil whimpers, cowering from the weapon, looking around for Uncle Stuart, but he is alone. All alone.
Nathan has disappeared, Neil has realised. The ropes unwind from his body, propelling him to stand and out of nowhere a mirror waltzes into existence and suddenly Neil is faced with himself. He wears an icy grin, his father’s smile, his hands holding a blood stained cleaver. Neil tries to wipe the smile off his face but mirror Neil smiles sharper, teeth exposed. ‘ He was a monster, he was a monster, just like his father, you read the articles, he might be a monster, he is a monster’
Nathaniel
Nathaniel
Nathaniel
“Neil.”
Neil jerks awake, lungs pulling in fresh air, his hands scrabbling against his sweat soaked body and looks down to see Andrew hovering. “You were shouting,” Andrew tells him.
“Was I?” Neil croaks. His throat feels sore, thirsty.
Andrew doesn’t answer, just helps Neil out of bed, bringing him a fresh t-shirt to slip on. They stand there, Andrew with a shirt in his hands and Neil’s hands are limp, useless. Andrew stares at him before silently lifting his hands to the bottom of Neil’s shirt, slow enough where Neil can say no, but he doesn’t, so Andrew peels it off and throws it aside in the dark. It’s a bit too quiet, Kevin and Nicky aren’t in their room tonight, they must still be out with Aaron and Matt. Andrew and Neil decided to stay at the dorms this time, deciding to head to Columbia tomorrow instead.
“Neil?”
Maybe if they’d gone out, then Neil wouldn’t have slept yet and had this awful nightmare. A warm touch to his jaw makes Neil’s head swivel to face Andrew.
“Roof?” Andrew asks.
Neil nods, still dream dazed, but manages to put on socks and slips into his shoes while Andrew grabs keys, cigarettes and Neil’s water bottle. Their walk to the roof is quiet, Andrew doesn’t need to fill the silence with words, unlike the rest of his teammates, this is the third time this week Neil’s nightmares have woken them up. Kevin made the decision to avoid the details, opting to make Neil work harder on the court after he can’t fall back asleep. Nicky on the other hand is loudly sympathetic, asking Neil if he’d like a glass of water or a hug, sending him sad looks during the day whenever their eyes meet, which Neil finds ridiculous. Neil knows Nicky also fills the Upperclassmen in because Matt and Dan tend to send him concerned looks after each sleepless night.
Neil thinks he should be able to stand on his own two feet without his teammates worrying circles around his well-being, and he’s starting to feel like a bigger burden than he first thought.
The door to the roof is heavy but Andrew shoulders it open with ease, holding it for Neil to walk through first. The air up here is cooler than the dorms, cooler than it was earlier in the day. Andrew sits next to Neil, a decent space between them and hands him his water bottle, but Neil just wants to be closer tonight so he places the bottle next to him and he moves close enough to touch, lets Andrew close the distance if he wants to.
Andrew places an arm around Neil’s waist and brings them together, and Neil sighs in relief, he feels like he can let go in Andrew’s steady arms.
“So,” Andrew starts, “What was it this time?” he asks, knocking his head against Neil’s.
“Ow.” Neil deadpans, looking up with a mock glare.
“We know you have a hard head,” Andrew jokes, with an undercurrent of seriousness.
Neil swallows roughly, the saliva gathering at the back of his throat making it hard to speak. He knows what Andrew means. Neil boasts about being fine all the time, so what does it mean when he’s really not fine? And for Neil to want physical comfort tonight, it speaks of reassurance.
“It was Baltimore… but also not,” Neil says, shuddering. “I saw myself as Nathan in this mirror and I turned into this monster and at the library these girls mentioned how I could be like Nathan, that he was a monster. So what stops me from being like that then, Andrew? I look just like him, I’ve hurt, I’ve killed.”
Perhaps they’re right, that Neil is his father’s son. He’s branded by him forever in blood and memory.
Andrew just stares at him, face blank and eyes searching. He reaches around to pull Neil’s water bottle to him. “Drink.”
Neil frowns, “Andr-”
“It sounds like you can’t breathe. Drink.”
Andrew nearly tips the bottle to Neil’s mouth but with a sour look of protest, Neil carries the bottle to his lips and takes deep swallows of water.
Andrew waits till Neil is done before reaching, this time for Neil. He holds Neil’s face between his hands and Neil can feel the warmth of them against his skin. “You are only a man, not a monster,” Andrew says, tipping his head to bounce it against Neil’s. “And fuck what the rest of them say about it.”
Neil’s breath catches and his eyes sting. How could it be so, when he barely feels human at all sometimes. He swallows against the roughness of his throat and brings his arms around Andrew’s shoulders, meeting his eyes, Neil sees fierceness staring right back at him.
It’ll be another long night for the both of them and by late afternoon, Neil will know that news of his scars and of his person will be discussed widely among his peers, garnering fresh looks of fear, and fury from his teammates. But right now in Andrew’s presence, he focuses on the words that have been shared between them, he takes comfort in Andrew’s rare words of reassurance and wills himself to believe that it’s all going to be fine, with his family by his side.