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Neil had come back to South Carolina different. Andrew recognized that immediately.
Yes, he still had auburn hair atop his head. Yes, his eyes were the same icy blue that seemed to hold onto something no one else could see. No, his face wasn’t quite the same, with its fresh scars and burn marks. No, his smile wouldn’t quite meet his eyes unless he was caught in the moment with no one watching.
Yes, Andrew knew it was Neil. No, Andrew was not happy when Neil made it back alive.
If Neil had died in Baltimore, that would have been that. Everything would have been over. It would have made Andrew’s job just that much easier, even if only a little. The grief would have been brief, and then he could find something else to interest him in a bored world like this one. When Neil came back alive, although not quite in one piece, it meant that now he was different.
Despite his face being disfigured, and his dimples not showing as often as they should, that wasn’t what Andrew could focus on. As soon as Neil believed everyone had looked away, had turned their attention elsewhere, he fell. Not literally; the man stood, although slumped, but that was normal. Andrew could recognize Neil’s spiraling, the way he seemed to go into his separate world when no one was watching.
Andrew didn’t like it.
It was unsettling. It reminded Andrew of himself on the drugs he was forced to take. It reminded Andrew of his own awful memories and his inability to find anything worth his time. Neil’s lost, spinning eyes made him nauseous.
When the Foxes decided to stay at the cabin retreat for spring break, right after Neil is home from Baltimore, long after Andrew had realized something was wrong, he decided to figure Neil out.
As they had toured the cabin that Allison had managed to reserve, Andrew could sense the slight unease Neil had as the sun fell farther and farther down. He was lively when he was with the Foxes, and his usual self when he was alone with Andrew, but the darker the night became, the more he began to change.
Andrew almost wanted to mock him. Maybe he had been bitten by a werewolf in Baltimore– what an interesting turn for the big-bad Butcher. Maybe he had gained a strange fear of seeing the moon at its peak.
Instead, he stood next to his side as the team left to their respective rooms, murmuring words about passing out cold and how thin the walls were. Andrew let it flow in one ear and out the other until it was only Andrew and Neil in the main room, the door to their bedroom behind him.
Neil turned to glance at him, so much like a rabbit that Andrew had to remind himself that it was Neil. He looked between Andrew and the bedroom before shrugging, as though he hadn’t just had one of his panic responses telling him to run.
“This place is nice. I’m glad Allison was able to snatch it for us,” Neil commented, looking around the room before reaching for his bag. Andrew didn’t reply, but he gazed at Neil, processing his words, turning them over and over in his head. Not everything Neil said was important; moments like now were when he simply spoke because he could, either to fill the silence or remove tension. Nonetheless, it was nice to have something to think about, even though Andrew’s main thoughts were focused on Neil’s strange behavior.
Neil pressed a hand to the mattress and watched it slowly rise back. “I haven’t slept on a mattress like this in years. The dorm ones were an upgrade from what I was used to before. Everyone talks about how much of an impact the mattress makes on sleep, but I’ve never really listened to it too much.”
“Too busy thinking about Exy,” Andrew said, finding his own bag and seeking out more comfortable clothes to sleep in. Neil scoffed, though the sound lacked any real harshness.
“And I bet I’ll be able to dream about Exy on this lovely mattress,” he said, patting it again. Andrew just barely managed to suppress an eyeroll in order to make unimpressed eye contact with Neil. He shrugged, unapologetic. “Sorry if you hear me muttering in my sleep tonight. I’ll probably be mocking an opposing backliner.”
The way he spoke about sleep was strange. That was the only word Andrew could come up with in his mind to describe it: strange. He spoke as though it were a hobby or pastime, something he thought about often. Andrew briefly wondered if, instead of being bitten by a werewolf in Baltimore, he was knocked over the head with a racquet.
Andrew didn’t dignify Neil’s words with a response, instead stepping into the bathroom and changing. He did it quickly, wrapping up his discarded clothes into a bundle and brushing his teeth. Before long, he stepped back into the bedroom, helping Neil get changed and watching him tap his fingers on the sheets. He was more restless than before everything had happened, yet it was so distinctly Neil that Andrew felt slightly dizzy.
He circled the bed to the right side, setting his head down on the pillow and covering his eyes with his arm. Neil didn’t say anything, instead reaching over to his own side and turning out the lamp. Andrew left his on for a moment, briefly too bored to bother pulling the chain, before he gave in and did the same.
Andrew fell asleep sooner than he had meant to. The next time he woke up was in the earliest hours of the morning, the sun still deep down and the moon high up. He stayed still, refusing to move, listening carefully.
Andrew knew what it sounded like when someone was asleep. He had spent enough time recognizing patterns of breathing and footsteps to know exactly what pace a heart fell into when it was resting.
The breathing beside him was close to that. It was a slow rise and fall, an inhale and exhale similar enough to sound unconscious. But Andrew also knew what it sounded like when someone feigned sleep.
There was a hitch every time Neil took another breath in. It was brief and quiet and subtle, and Andrew almost missed it the first time he had heard it. But it continued, the same pattern of hitch, inhale, exhale, hitch again, over and over.
Neil was not asleep. There wasn’t a single chance in the world that he was. Despite this, the idea of Neil pretending to be asleep was stranger than anything Andrew had noticed that was different about him.
“Closing your eyes doesn’t mean you're asleep,” Andrew said into the darkness, lying still.
Neil had the audacity to pretend not to hear him.
“Usually, people prefer to stay awake and be productive if they can’t sleep.”
“I can’t,” Neil finally said, voice sounding like gravel. “Be productive.”
Andrew didn’t spare Neil a glance as the man turned over to face him. He knew that as soon as he looked at him, as soon as he recognized what was in his blue eyes, it would be a losing battle.
“That’s a shame. I guess you have to sleep, then.”
Neil shook his head. “I can’t do that either, Andrew.”
“Why?”
It was the most forward Andrew could be about this. Neil didn’t seem like the type to sit idly if he couldn’t fall asleep. Neil’s mind never stopped moving, almost too quick for his own mouth to catch up, and him lying in bed for hours staring at a wall was the most atrocious and non-Neil thing Andrew had ever heard.
Neil shuffled on the sheets, staring at the ceiling rather than at Andrew. “I can’t. When I came back from Evermore,” he said, and Andrew suddenly found it in him to look over, because it was too late at night for Neil to be vulnerable again and even in the dark his eyes shone blue and Andrew ached. “I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. I kept waking up drenched in sweat and I got sick of it.”
Andrew pieced it together before Neil finished talking. Instead of finishing his story for him, Andrew let him continue.
“I just– stopped. Sleeping, I guess. I passed out cold a couple of times, like when you saw me at the library.” Neil said it casually, like anyone picks up the habit of starving their body of rest every once in a while. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Andrew was more tempted than ever to punch Neil, because that was close enough to an I’m sorry to make him want to crawl out of his skin. “You’re not as smart as you seem.”
Neil’s lips turned up in a smile. “I seem smart, then?”
“Avoiding sleep doesn’t mean it disappears.”
He frowned. “I know that.”
“Then why do you do it?” Andrew asked, nearly exasperated. “You come to bed but don’t sleep. That’s nearly the dumbest thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth.”
“Normally, I would do homework or focus on Exy,” Neil explained. If he was impatient with Andrew’s antagonism, he didn’t show it. “But we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and I have no homework, and like Allison said, the walls are too thin to be up walking around.”
“Is it nightmares?” Andrew started, tired of beating around the bush. “Or that you can’t watch your back?”
Neil faltered. For a man with such a large mouth, he always seemed to lose it when asked something that forced him to admit something about himself, not the person he sought to be. “Yeah.”
“Which?” Andrew asked, suddenly a little more awake than before. From where the curtains were slightly open, he could see moonlight slipping through the window, long lines crossing the panneled flooring.
“Both.”
Andrew watched Neil’s gaze fall back on him, watched his fresh wounds and scars shift with the movement. Despite the dark, the thing missing from what Andrew knew was different was now apparent– sure, Neil would spiral, but the spinning as he lost track of where he was became worse with a lack of sleep, of rest his body needed and would force from him if it didn’t get.
“I don’t think any of you would hurt me,” Neil clarified, as though Andrew needed him to.
“No shit,” Andrew replied, sitting up and leaning against his pillows. Neil went to copy his movement, but Andrew grabbed the back of his neck and forced him down again. “Sleep.”
Neil stared at him dumbly. “I can’t just sleep, Andrew.”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Clearly. But I can see the door, and if you happen to start crying out about your father or mother or other traumatizing figures in your life, I will force you awake.”
“You have to sleep, too,” Neil pointed out the obvious, because god knew he needed to be helpful for something. “You can’t stay up all night watching me.”
“If you walk off a mountain path while we’re here, it will be significantly worse than me staying up a few extra hours.”
He thought for a moment, tapping a finger into the sheets as he had done hours before. And then Neil, with all of his stupidity and audacity and obliviousness, smiled. “Thank you.”
Andrew never wanted to push his luck. He knew better than that, and the words thank you were like being shot in the chest, but Neil had been open and brave and confessed something that he normally would keep to himself and die of later on, so he said, “Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down to where Neil was lying, pressing his lips to Neil’s, seeing the dark room light up in a way the moon and lamps hadn’t let it. It was brief, as despite Neil’s yes, Andrew knew better than to keep him awake all night, so he pulled away and sat back against the blanket. Andrew watched Neil’s head fall further into the pillow, his eyes shut hesitantly at first before staying that way, his chest rising and falling at the pace a person’s breathing resorted to when they were actually fast asleep.
Andrew, on another night, or maybe next to someone else, might have been bored. Sitting in silence as the sky grew lighter and watching someone sleep wasn’t his idea of a generally good time, but something in him was unsurprised that the boredom and apathy he felt towards most things were absent that night.
Neil muttered once in his sleep. It was short and quiet, and the only sign that he might have been dreaming at all. Andrew had half a mind to wake him up, clarify that he wasn’t going to sit up screaming in a moment, but he stayed where he was. Neil let out a sigh, content, and shifted, tugging the comforter a little closer.
When Andrew heard the first groupings of people making their way downstairs from their rooms, he turned to look at Neil again. He was still sound asleep, not realizing the world around him was waking, and Andrew distantly wondered how long he could get away with letting him sleep. It was nearly ten when Nicky let out a shrill shriek, probably having annoyed the wrong person, and Neil finally stirred.
He reached up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Neil yawned, stretching his arms before wincing at the movement, and finally looking up at Andrew. Andrew wanted to wring his neck.
“Morning,” he said, voice scratchy. Even though Neil clearly hadn’t been getting enough sleep since December, his eyes seemed brighter than they had in months.
Andrew stared at him. “Morning.”
“Did you have to wake me up last night?” Neil asked. “If you did, I can’t remember.”
“I’m surprised you remember anything from last night,” Andrew commented. The fact that Neil’s memory wasn’t completely destroyed was a wonder.
Neil grinned. “Me too. Was that Nicky screaming?”
Andrew watched him sit, trying to wake himself up. The smell of coffee and alcohol was already drifting through the cabin. “Yes.”
“Makes sense,” Neil said, slipping off the mattress and starting to rifle through his bag for clothes to wear. “I’m going to shower before going out there.”
“Arms,” Andrew said, and Neil’s shoulders dropped in disappointment.
“If I’m quick about it, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Neil responded, although both of them knew that wouldn’t be the case. Andrew followed him to the bathroom, repeating the process they had followed back at Fox Tower in the dorm bathroom, making sure Neil’s hair was clean and asking yes or no all over again.
Andrew changed into his own clothes after Neil was gone, and the two of them entered the main room of the cabin to find the Foxes already bustling with energy. Andrew went straight for the pot of coffee, momentarily looked between the alcohol set out, and poured himself a mug from the pot anyway. He pulled down another mug from the cabinet and filled it with the drink, handing it off to Neil as he leaned against the counter and spoke with the others.
And if they repeated the same process again that night, and for the rest of the vacation at the cabin, it was just for them to know.