Work Text:
Allison Reynolds:
have fun tonight
try not to assault anyone
wear the thing I sent you
do NOT leave early
remember you’re at ZERO
this goes well, you might get in the positives!
.::.
The worst part about the image rehabilitation media blitz Andrew is being forced to endure is the wardrobe. Apparently, it’s not appropriate to wear jeans and leather to a gala. Apparently, a muscle tank and armbands aren’t the look you want to go for when you’re ladling out food at a soup kitchen. Apparently, Andrew has to survive a fucking bow tie if he’s going to keep his job. He tugs at it viciously and glares down at the layers of dinnerware in front of him. Why he could not have simply written a huge check to whomever this fucking benefit benefits, he doesn’t know, but the PR team had been quite firm: it matters more if he’s photographed than if he actually does anything worth doing.
They’ve stuck him at a table with a bunch of pretty, precious twenty-somethings whose eyes slide over him like he was greased up before they sat him down. He recognizes the one to his right from some dumb fucking TV show: a twenty-six-year-old playing an attractive teen with problems. The one across from him: a runner-up from American Idol a few years back. A few seats down from her is someone who keeps talking quite loudly about their fashion line.
The douchebag actor is all plastic, bleached white teeth, stiff hair, definite signs of botox around the forehead. He’s been shifting his chair away bit-by-bit since they sat down about twenty minutes ago, avoiding looking at Andrew other than a few disgusted little flicks of his eyes before he shuffles over another inch or two.
Andrew supposes this is what happens when you get caught on camera forcing a paparazzo off the road with your car, then backing up, hitting the gas, slamming into their rear end, and then repeating the process until the asshole’s car is hopelessly up-ended into a ditch.
Excessive, they’d called it. Out of control. Deeply troubling.
What’s deeply troubling is that it’s standard operating procedure for these assholes to follow Andrew’s twin brother and nieces around all day, taking invasive photographs. It is excessive, if you ask Andrew, that these assholes scream questions at him about his fucked-up past every time he steps out in public.
The actor shuffles another inch or two. Andrew is on the verge of telling the annoying piece of shit that he doesn’t bite, but then someone steps into the space between them—the now ample space between them. It’s a man, dressed in a variation of the same sleek tuxedo that all the men are wearing. He settles his hand onto the actor’s shoulder and says, softly, “Hey, Jimmy. Switch with me?”
‘Jimmy’ practically leaps out of his seat with relief. Andrew takes a long sip of his whiskey. He’d been trying to ration it, knowing he’d have to wave down a waiter to get a refill, but fuck that. He deserves to drink it.
There’s a little dance as the two men switch, and then the new guy drags the chair back to its original location, and then he sits down, and then Andrew glances over and sees that it’s Neil Hatford. Andrew recognizes him from the many posters he’d had on his wall during his teenage years. Andrew recognizes him from the photoshoots in magazines that he’s perused a few too many times to be heterosexual. Andrew recognizes him from the fact that he watches Neil’s TV show every week, even if he wouldn’t admit it to anyone.
“Hi,” Neil Hatford says to Andrew. “I’m Neil.”
“Andrew,” Andrew says.
“I think I’m rescuing you,” Neil says thoughtfully.
“Rescuing me?” Andrew asks. “Or rescuing Jimmy?”
“Jimmy is a drama queen,” Neil answers with a half shrug. “And very boring.”
“Can you be both?” Andrew asks.
Neil raises one eyebrow at him.
“Yeah,” Andrew says. “I guess you can.”
“Actually, I had ulterior motives,” Neil says.
Andrew braces himself for whatever bullshit this is going to turn out to be. You should never meet the residents of your spank bank. They’ll inevitably open their mouths and say something that ruins the whole thing. Farewell, fantasies about Neil Hatford, Andrew thinks mournfully. Farewell, fond memories of a sexual awakening.
Something over Andrew’s shoulder catches Neil’s attention before he can talk—he straightens in his chair, tips his chin up, and makes a waving-over gesture. Hopefully he has spotted a server. A server who will bring Andrew more whiskey. Distracted, Neil says, “I’m a fan.”
“Of?” Andrew asks mildly.
“Of yours,” Neil says, turning his attention back to Andrew with a satisfaction that indicates his mission was successful. In this moment, Andrew tentatively likes Neil Hatford more than he’s ever liked anyone else in his life. “Since college, actually.”
“My college or your college?” Andrew asks.
“Yours,” Neil says. “I didn’t go. But I watched all of your games.”
“Ah,” Andrew says. “An exy junkie.”
“Junkie is a strong word.”
“Exy addiction is a serious problem. It deserves a strong word.”
To Andrew’s profound relief, a server appears at his elbow and bends down solicitously. “Sir,” the server whispers. “Can I get you anything?”
“More of this,” Andrew says, holding up his glass. “Two of these.”
“Make it three,” Neil says.
Andrew notices that Neil’s voice changes when he talks to the server—there’s a shimmery veneer on it, an affected charm that Andrew hadn’t realized was missing until it showed its face again. This is Neil Hatford. Who’s the other version? Andrew turns to look at him, considering. He catches the tail end of the Teen Beat smile that Neil offers the server, but then it fades away, leaving something somehow oddly warmer in its absence.
Andrew says, “You assume I was not ordering one for you, too.”
“Yeah,” Neil says. “Did I assume correctly?”
Andrew gives him a short nod. He doesn’t like this, this open friendliness, the lightness in Neil’s tone, the ease with which he accepts Andrew’s automatic hostility.
“So,” Neil says. “I assume this means you are not an exy junkie, despite being the best goalie the sport has ever seen.”
“Best,” Andrew scoffs. “You’d think a fanatic could read the stats.”
“I do,” Neil says. “And I also know what it looks like when you’re not really trying.”
“Do you?” Andrew asks.
“Yeah,” Neil confirms. “It was easy in college. I just paid attention to when Day looked like he wanted to rip your head off. By the time you went pro, I knew the signs like the back of my hand.”
“Gross,” Andrew says. It makes Neil smile again, but this one is different than the Teen Beat smile—smaller, more crooked. It does something crinkly to the corners of Neil’s eyes that makes Andrew want to reach out a thumb and smooth the skin. No botox, he thinks stupidly.
At the front of the room, a microphone comes live with a burst of static. A woman in an incredibly stupid gown clacks across the stage in incredibly stupid heels. Andrew wishes a long, painful death upon her. Next to him, Neil whispers, “Here we go.” It gives Andrew a funny feeling in his chest, a revving kind of feeling, like drag racing on a long, empty stretch of highway. Here we go, Neil Hatford says. Here we go.
After the endless speechifying and the mediocre dinner, Neil dabs the corners of his mouth with his white cloth napkin and drops it onto the table in front of him.
“Ready for a break?” he asks.
And Andrew definitely is. He follows Neil’s winding course through the ballroom, stopping every time Neil pauses to shake a hand, return a hello, or extricate his wrist from the grasp of some heavily bejeweled hot young thing. All women, Andrew notices. It’s only the women who try to flirt with him—and Neil deftly shuts each and every single one of them down.
Andrew himself seems to be invisible. The most he gets is a wary, sidelong glance from one of the beautiful people. So, maybe his PR team is right. His reputation has never been worse. He has to start giving a shit about that.
The grand hotel is unfamiliar to Andrew, but Neil navigates it easily. Andrew finds himself simply towed along in Neil’s wake as he charts a confident course through the public hallways, through an unmarked door, through a busy kitchen, and out the back of the hotel. Almost no one looks up at them. Andrew doesn’t know if this because Neil is familiar to them, or if it’s because rich people doing whatever the fuck they want is familiar to them.
It’s dark outside. They’ve arrived at some kind of employee break area, graced with none of the bright, glamorous light of the public-facing sides of the hotel. There are some scattered metal tables with shitty, lopsided chairs. There’s a forest of cigarette butts littering the pavement. Two women in maid uniforms occupy the far corner of the area. The air around them is thick with smoke.
Neil leads Andrew off to the other side, where he hops up on top of one of the tables, seemingly unconcerned about the fine fabric of his tuxedo being ruined by the rusty, uneven top of the table. He looks at Andrew expectantly.
Andrew raises an eyebrow at him.
“Smoke break?” Neil asks. “Seemed like you needed one.”
Now, how the fuck does Neil know he smokes? Probably from the paparazzi photos. They’ve caught him often enough. And there was that one scathing article about how Andrew didn’t respect the sport enough to stay in peak physical condition. Neil is a self-confessed fan, so Neil has probably read the articles, and Neil—
“Your fingers,” Neil says softly, interrupting Andrew’s spiraling thoughts.
Andrew looks down at the digits in question. They’re not yellowed. He makes sure of it.
“You kept pinching them together,” Neil says. He holds up his own hand and waggles his fingers, a look, I’ll show you move; he folds the ring and pinky down and pinches the middle and index together, the way you would if you were holding a cigarette.
Is Andrew really that fucking transparent? Shit.
Stiffly, Andrew says, “I left them at home.”
“Are you trying to quit?”
Andrew gives a single, decisive shake of his head. No, he isn’t. He just likes to suffer, apparently. Actually, he’d thought he’d be too tempted by them, that he’d duck outside for a smoke break and not manage to convince himself to duck back in.
“I got you,” Neil says, hopping down off the table. He stolls towards the woman at the other end, ducks, and starts speaking to them in what Andrew is surprised to hear sounds like fluent Russian. The women listen, and then laugh, and then rattle off more Russian (Ukrainian? Polish?). One of them taps out a couple of cigarettes and hands them over; Neil puts both in his mouth and leans down so that the other woman can light them.
Seriously, what the actual fuck is happening? What fever dream is Andrew living in?
Neil is back in moments. He hands Andrew one of the cigarettes and takes a long drag off the other. Andrew is afraid Neil is going to do some kind of insanely detailed smoke art in the air on his exhale, since he is apparently fucking perfect, but instead Neil chokes and then coughs violently. His failure soothes something bristling in Andrew’s chest.
Andrew takes an even longer drag, holds it like a boss, and then exhales calmly.
“Jesus,” Neil says when his breath returns. He wipes involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes. “That’s so much worse than I remembered.”
Andrew blows his next exhale directly into Neil’s face without comment.
When Andrew lets himself into his house that night, hours later, he has Neil Hatford’s phone number saved in his cell phone and no fucking clue what to make of the previous three hours. He doesn’t think he’s being hit on; he knows what that looks like, and also, Neil is notoriously single—not in the Leonardo DiCaprio way, but in a wholesome, clean-nosed, America’s boy next door way. Not to mention that, if Neil Hatford was gay, there would have been rumors about it. There would have been tabloid insinuations. Fuck, in this day and age, there would have been video.
So what the fuck does he want with Andrew Minyard, openly gay, scandal-ridden, notoriously dickish professional athlete?
He’s still standing in his entry, keys in one hand, when his phone buzzes with a text message.
Neil:
hi
Andrew could just ask Neil what he wants, but he’s not going to. There are so few mysteries in life. Why would he shut the door on this one?
He taps a reply.
Andrew:
hi
.::.
Allison:
good job not setting anything on fire
dogs with feline leukemia thank you
or whatever
+1
.::.
Two days later, Andrew pulls up outside of a run-down, hole-in-the wall bar in a pretty shitty area of Los Angeles. There’s no street parking for as far as the eye can see, so Andrew carefully aims his car into the narrow road running between the building and the dry cleaner to its right; around back, he finds all of six spots, marked only by lengths of day-glo painted 4x4s dropped onto the ground.
It is not the sort of place he expected to be invited to by Neil Hatford, of all fucking people.
Although, Andrew never expected to be invited anywhere by Neil Hatford, so he supposes he didn’t have a whole lot in mind to compare this to.
He parks in front of the rusted chain-link fence, nestles his brand new Maserati between a rusted-out Honda Civic and a heavily modded Dodge Charger, and considers pulling out and leaving. What is he doing here? The night at the gala with Neil had seemed like a fever dream even as it was happening. The texts they’d exchanged the last few days? Every time Andrew looks back over them, he feels like he’s invading someone else’s privacy. It isn’t him, the guy texting Neil Hatford. He just has that guy’s phone. He’s reading that guy’s messages. He’s definitely not the guy that needs to show up here tonight. The guy on the phone, Andrew thinks, has been asked on a date. Right? Maybe?
There’s no way Neil Hatford asked Andrew on a date.
Andrew swipes until the text thread is open again. The last thing he has from Neil is a message saying that incognito may not be necessary for the bar, as shitty and dark and typically slow as it is, but that he usually at least keeps his hood up. In the passenger seat, Andrew has a baseball cap and a hoodie. He’s pretty sure the Maserati will tip off anyone who’d recognize him—although, maybe not. The parking lot is pretty far back. There’s no lighting to speak of. Maybe no one will even come back here and have the opportunity to recognize it.
Fuck it. Andrew grabs the hoodie and hat and steps out of the car, shoving his phone viciously into one pocket and his keys only slightly less viciously into another. On goes the hoodie. On goes the hat. Up goes the hood. Andrew squints at himself in the dimly moonlit surface of his car window. He looks like he’s about to steal the damn thing.
There was a time he would have.
When he steps into the bar, he finds all of eight other people inside, scattered around a space that hasn’t been updated in at least twenty years. At first he doesn’t spot Neil, but then he finally sees him—a smallish, hooded figure tucked into a booth in the corner. Neil has his phone in one hand, his glass in the other, a straw fixed between his lips. He swipes up the screen with his thumb, slowly, a little at a time. He’s reading something. Andrew should probably leave. Neil is going to look up and see him and realize he made some kind of awful mistake, put the wrong name in his phone, something.
And yet, there’s no way Andrew is leaving. Not now. Not this close. He winds through the bar, shoulders hunched, feeling less incognito than absolutely, glaringly obvious. At the booth he slides in awkwardly across from Neil, who looks up and smiles brilliantly.
“You came,” Neil says. His voice is warm with pleasure, and a little something that sounds like relief. Did he think Andrew would stand him up? It’s a hard thing to imagine—Neil Hatford waiting alone in a bar somewhere, watching the clock, growing increasingly more certain of the outcome, increasingly more disappointed.
The tips of Neil’s eyelashes glimmer copper in the yellow glow of the light above them. Jesus Christ. That’s not a good sign. Andrew should definitely leave.
“I said I would come,” Andrew tells Neil. He does not mention the five times he almost turned around on the way here, the brief parking lot crisis, or the chickening out that nearly got its claws into him when he’d spotted Neil. Wild horses couldn’t have kept him from this, from the opportunity to spend a couple of hours across a table from Neil Hatford, from the possibility that this is actually a date. Andrew really fucking hopes it’s a date.
“You always do what you say you will?” Neil asks.
“Always.”
Neil nods. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Whiskey,” Andrew says, but he suddenly realizes the problem here: they’re trying to be unnoticed, un-recognized, but they’re both short for men and it becomes an issue in bars. Andrew is always carded. Andrew is 27 and he is carded every single time he buys alcohol. Sometimes the exact same bartender will card him twice, like he still can’t believe Andrew is an adult man, even after seeing it with own eyes on a government document.
“Got it,” Neil says. He slides out of the booth and moves, fluidly, comfortably, clearly at home, to the bar, where he props his arms up on the counter and says something to the bartender. He is not asked for his ID. Does Neil come here often? If so, how does he get away with not being Neil Hatford? Or are the three inches between their heights enough to move Neil from child to adult?
To Andrew’s satisfaction, the bartender has to reach high for the bottle of whiskey he gets off the shelf. Even better, the pour is generous, the bottom of the bottle pointing up almost as long as Andrew’s does when he makes his drinks himself. Despite the height of the shelf and the length of the pour, though, the quality is middle-of-the-road at best. The kind of thing better consumed quickly. Accordingly, Andrew downs half of the glass in one swallow, wincing at the aftertaste.
“Sorry,” Neil says, grinning at him. “If the drinks were better, there’d be more people here.”
“People who might pay attention to us?” Andrew asks drily.
“Exactly,” Neil says.
“You know there are options other than bars,” Andrew tells him.
“Yeah, but, whiskey,” Neil says. “I figured you were most likely to say yes if I promised drinks.”
Most likely to say yes? Neil could have invited him to a kid’s birthday party, and he would have shown up. Neil could have invited him to a couple’s root canal and Andrew would have dressed nice for it.
“Bribery,” Andrew observes. “I approve.”
Something small and sweet plays at the corner of Neil’s mouth. His eyes are bright even in the dark room, and they’re looking right at Andrew, glued to him, almost hypnotically focused. He leans forward from his easy sprawl, closes some of the space between them, and says, “I think I want to know everything about you. Is that okay?”
Andrew’s heart stutters in his chest. Neil is still and waiting, watching Andrew like he expects a real answer—like Andrew could say no, and Neil would apologize and pay for drinks and politely leave. Like if Andrew says yes, Neil would sit there all night and listen to him talk. “Sure,” Andrew says. He takes another quick sip of his drink and sets the glass neatly back onto the table. “I’ll start at the beginning: It was a dark and stormy night.”
“Was it?” Neil asks. “Really?”
“No,” Andrew says. “It was two p.m. in California.”
“Asshole,” Neil says, sounding far more fond than most of the people Andrew has known for years. “Fine. The biographical stuff is boring anyway. Tell me…what is the longest grudge you’ve ever held?”
“Life-or-death grudge or petty grudge?” Andrew asks.
“Hmm,” Neil says. “Let’s start with petty.”
Andrew nods once. “Have you ever met a Chad you didn’t hate?”
“No,” Neil says solemnly. The rest of him is visibly delighted. “Never.”
The story Andrew tells lasts forty-five minutes and contains more words than he’s said cumulatively over the last month. Neil hangs on every ridiculous detail. He asks a dozen questions that lead to a dozen extended segues. Andrew’s never been much of a talker. He keeps things short and to the point. There’s usually no point saying more—people so rarely like what comes out of his mouth. But with Neil, it’s oddly easy. Andrew says things as crudely as possible, to test him, but Neil never flinches. Andrew confesses to at least three things that are so petty he has never actually confirmed them to anyone else—been widely suspected of them, yes, but never confirmed it. Visine in Chad’s water bottle. Sugar in his gas tank. Neil nods at each revelation: yes, Chad deserved that, yes, that was the natural next step.
Whatever Andrew thought was beneath the blandly charming facade Neil shows the world, it wasn’t this. Neil Hatford, it turns out, is bloody ruthless.
This becomes acutely obvious—and rather handy—when Andrew is recognized and the night goes south. Recognized is a mild word. A better, more accurate one would be confronted—Andrew is confronted by an angry drunk guy when he’s stupid enough to insist on going to the bar himself for another round of drinks. The guy is enormous—tall and fleshy, bald, a little sweaty, smelling like cheap beer and cigarettes.
“I thought that was you,” the guy slurs as he shoves in close to Andrew. Too close. It makes the hairs on the back of Andrew’s neck stand on end.
“Who?” Andrew asks mildly.
“You,” the guy says, louder this time. “Mmminyard”
“Sorry, wrong guy.”
“No way,” the guy says. “I know the face of the fag who lost us the game against the Beavers.”
The game against the Beavers had been last season. Old news. And Andrew isn’t quite sure how he’d single-handedly lost it, considering the final score had been 12-4 and he’d been only one of three goalies who played, and if he recalls correctly (which he always does), he’d let in only one of those goals. Andrew turns back to face the bar, ignoring the guy.
“Hey!” the guy shouts. “Don’t ignore me!”
Andrew continues to studiously ignore him. Or, rather, Andrew pretends to ignore him while he actually keeps a very close eye on the guy's hands, waiting to see if he’ll swing.
“You arrogant piece of shit,” the guy growls. “I can’t wait until they fire your ass.”
Andrew ignores this, too.
The guy swings. It’s clumsy, delivered half on a stumble, but it has the force of the guy’s heft behind it. Andrew manages to duck, turning as he does so that he can land a punch roughly in the area of the guy’s kidneys. The guy howls in pain and outrage, doubles over, then straightens with the fortitude allowed to him by however many six-packs of Budweiser he’s had that day. He manages to clip Andrew in the jaw with his second shot, sending a sharp ache spreading through Andrew’s skull. Self-preservation kicks in and Andrew hits the guy in the face, feeling his wide, fleshy nose soften and give way beneath the blow.
Andrew absolutely cannot get into a bar fight. He can’t imagine how many negative points that would be.
And yet, Andrew is absolutely in a bar fight—and it’s not looking particularly good for him. The guy moves fast for a drunk asshole, and above that he’s big enough that he only has to take a single stumbling step forward to be blocking Andrew’s exit. Andrew will have to get the guy to move somehow, or he’ll have to climb over the stools to either side of him to get out.
He’s considering his options when the guy stands up tall and grins at him, manic and sweaty, teeth yellow, eyes bloodshot. The guy says, “Yeah, that’s right. You’re gonna be—”
And then he stops. His eyes roll back in his head. He crumples—it seems slow, the folding of his body downwards, the buckling of his knees, the sideways listing, the eventual topple, but the thud he makes when he hits the ground is realistically only a second or two later. Andrew watches him on the way down, then looks up to see Neil standing where the guy used to be, a bottle of vodka still grasped in his hand. The thick, clear glass is smeared with blood.
“Huh,” Neil says, looking at the bottle. “It usually breaks.”
Andrew hears the sharp scraping of chairs against battered wood floors and musters all of his situational awareness: the guy’s friends, two of them, just as big, are shoving away from their table. They look fucking furious.
“Come on,” Andrew says. He grabs Neil’s hand and steps over the guy, tugging sharply to get Neil to follow him. They need to leave very quickly, before Tweedledum and Tweedledumber over there get their shit together. Neil seems to be looking for a place to set the bottle down, which is time they do not have to spare. Andrew gives another sharp tug and literally drags Neil the first couple of steps towards the back door. The resistance behind him lessens and then is lost as Neil finally gets the idea and starts trotting behind Andrew.
The back door lets them out into a little paved area with a shitty patio table and a couple of large, disgusting dumpsters. Andrew breaks into a jog, rounding the dumpsters and fishing his key fob out of his pocket with his free hand.
“Did you drive?” Andrew asks.
“No,” Neil tells him. His hand is steady in Andrew’s hand, dry and warm and soft. “I called a car.”
“Good,” Andrew says. He hits a button. The car beeps, its doors opening. “Get in.”
They peel out of the lot just in time to leave the two guys waving furiously in the dust they leave behind. Andrew’s heart is pounding in his ears as he shifts, the engine whining its desire to be released from the lower gears. He can’t fully open it up until he gets on the freeway, but once he’s there he goes all in—they rocket off the onramp and into the sparse 9pm traffic, weaving between and around the other cars the way the Maserati is begging to do.
Andrew risks a glance at Neil once he hits an empty stretch of road. Neil’s is buckled safely into the passenger seat, his hood down, his eyes wild. He grins over at Andrew and says, “Nice car.”
Andrew presses harder on the gas pedal. The fifteen-minute trip to his place takes only ten, and if there are any cops who get him on radar, they don’t seem to think it’s worth chasing him down. His place is the top floor of a four-story apartment building, all sharp angles and concrete and glass, but it has a view of the ocean. Andrew slips neatly into his parking spot in the underground garage and steps out of the car, not looking back to see if Neil follows him to the elevator. He doesn’t need to look back. He’s so aware of Neil, of the position of his body, of his movements, of his quiet footsteps—he could probably draw, turn, fire, and hit Neil dead on, if he had a gun. If killing Neil was at all what Andrew wanted to do.
The elevator ride is a short one, but Neil manages to unscrew the lid of the vodka bottle and take a quick swig of it. He makes this face, scrunched up, protesting the sharp bite of the alcohol, and then he offers the bottle to Andrew. Andrew takes one punishing drink, and then a second, and then the elevator dings and lets them into the penthouse lobby. There’s a bench and a single door—Andrew unlocks the door, holds it for Neil, steps in behind him and locks it. He tosses his keys on the little hall table, sets the open bottle of vodka down on it, and turns his attention to Neil.
Neil, who is here in Andrew’s apartment looking flushed and gorgeous and really real for the first time all night.
Andrew asks, “Is this a date?”
“Yeah,” Neil says. “I mean. I hope so.”
Thank fuck. Andrew nods and says, “Good.”
And then, somehow, they are crashing into each other in the middle of the small space. It’s more teeth than kissing at first, urgent and desperate—Neil uncertain about his hands, Andrew wanting too intensely to be smooth or practiced or controlled.
“Here,” Andrew says, grabbing Neil’s fluttering hands and putting them on his shoulders. “Here and up.”
Neil flattens them, smooths over the breadth of Andrew’s collarbones, down over the balls of his shoulders. Andrew would kiss him again, but he can’t take his eyes off of the way Neil is watching his own hands, off the heat in Neil’s eyes as he traces over Andrew’s collarbones and skims his palms over the thick bands of hard-won muscle he finds. The hands travel the full width of Andrew’s shoulders and then back again. Andrew feels every millimeter of it, even through his sweatshirt, and then Neil’s hands slip onto the bare skin of Andrew’s neck, cupping delicately.
Andrew kisses him again, and this time it’s perfect. This time, it’s not a fever dream—it’s something headier, something impossible and exquisite. This time, their mouths fit; Neil’s opens to Andrew; the first slide of tongues pulls a low noise from Neil’s throat that goes straight to Andrew’s dick.
“Bed,” Andrew mumbles against Neil’s mouth.
“Uh huh,” Neil mumbles back.
Andrew slides his hands down from where they’ve been mapping out Neil’s ribs and chest—down over Neil’s hips, over the curve of his ass. He spreads his hands wide and hefts, lifting Neil off of his feet and swallowing the low moan that Neil pours into his mouth.
“Fuck,” Neil mutters. His legs wrap around Andrew’s hips, his arms around Andrew’s neck.
The walk to the bedroom feels fucking endless. Not because Neil is heavy—not compared to what Andrew usually lifts—but every step creates friction between them, their bodies flush together, Andrew’s fingers digging into Neil’s ass. Neil is kissing him, one hand in Andrew’s hair, all cheap vodka and soft noises and heat, and Andrew thinks that if they don’t reach the bedroom soon he is going to drop Neil onto the floor and blow him right here.
But they make it, somehow. Andrew kicks the door wide open. It’s three long steps to the bed and then he’s dropping Neil onto it. Neil scrambles towards the middle, kicking off his shoes as he goes. Just as hurriedly, Andrew unzips his hoodie and tosses it aside; he has to bend to unlace his boots, but he does it blindly, too busy watching Neil peel off his own sweatshirt and the simple white shirt he’s wearing beneath it.
Andrew yanks the laces apart with brute strength, nearly snapping one in the process. Each boot flies wildly across the room when he kicks them away, probably to opposite corners, and he presses this exact feeling between the pages of a book to save it for later. He steps onto the mattress instead of crawling. It’s faster this way—one foot up, and then the other, another step and he’s straddling Neil, looking down at the half-naked man in his bed, cataloging the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the flush in his cheeks, the heat in his eyes. He looks his fill, trying to memorize it. Andrew is a one-night-stand kind of guy. He’s not the guy you take as your date to the Emmys. He’ll be all over the internet tomorrow after that scuffle in the bar. This, Andrew knows, is probably a one-time-only proposition. So, he memorizes the messy shape of Neil’s curls. The desire in his eyes. The lean cut of his muscles.
And then, Andrew drops, his knees to either side of Neil’s hips, and braces above him.
“Hi,” Neil says softly, His hands come up to frame Andrew’s face. The touch is so soft that it hurts. Andrew hates it, and he never wants it to stop.
.::.
He wakes in the morning to the sound of his phone clattering on the nightstand. It’s late morning, he thinks, based on the light creeping in around the curtains.
The phone is probably going off with Allison’s disappointed text, but Andrew does not give a single fuck about whatever negative number he’s going to find written damningly in the message chain. What he cares about is the sleeping man sprawled beside him, his face half-pressed into a pillow, his back smooth and bare. Neil Hatford. Neil fucking Hatford, in Andrew’s bed. They’d gotten off, and then talked, and then kissed, and then gotten off again, and by the time they were tired enough to pass out it was nearly four in the morning. The idea of sending Neil off into the chill of the early hours to lose the warmth of Andrew’s hands and bed had been—well, frankly, it had been unbearable.
Andrew reaches out a tentative hand and traces the constellations of freckles on Neil’s shoulder. There’s another little cluster over his shoulder blade—Andrew pursues them with his fingertips, his touch as light as it would be on the sharp edge of a knife; it buzzes against his nerve endings.
The slow rise and fall of Neil’s breath pauses. Andrew looks up and meets Neil’s eyes, stunningly blue against the bright white of Andrew’s sheets.
One night, Andrew reminds himself sternly. He’ll only want you for one night.
“Do you need to get that?” Neil asks with a yawn.
Andrew can’t think of what he might mean, and then he hears it again—the clatter of the phone on the nightstand as another text comes through.
“My publicist,” Andrew says.
“Uh oh,” Neil says. “Last night?”
“Last night,” Andrew agrees. “Last year. The year before that.”
Neil frowns at him. It does this thing to the space between his eyebrows, presses this little furrow into that Andrew wants to smooth away with his lips. Neil asks, “What do you mean?”
Andrew sighs and rolls over, snagging his phone and unplugging it on the way. As he expected, he has an obscene number of missed messages from Allison.
Allison:
a bar fight, really?
what were you even doing there?
it’s everywhere
you broke his nose
the guy needed eight stitches
he had a concussion!
-1, obviously
you’re lucky there isn’t video or it would be worse
back down to ZERO
how do you feel about rehab?
rehab could be a good boost
“That,” Neil says, squinting towards the screen, “is a lot of messages. What’s the -1?”
“She put me on a points system,” Andrew tells him. “She gives me points when I get good press. She takes away points for bad press.”
“And you’re at zero?” Neil asks. “Where did you start?”
“Negative ten,” Andrew tells him flatly.
Neil whistles, low and smooth. He asks, “How many does she want you to get?”
“Ten.”
“Is there a deadline?”
“My contract is up in three months.”
“Three months to get ten points?”
Andrew nods.
“This is bullshit,” Neil says. “It wasn’t just you. I hit him with the bottle. I’ll announce it.”
“That is a stupid idea,” Andrew tells him. “It will not make me look better to have dragged Neil Hatford into a bar fight.”
“There was no dragging,” Neil protests.
Andrew raises an eyebrow, encouraging Neil to play out the scenario in his mind. Andrew Minyard: Exy’s notoriously short-tempered, aggressive bad boy. Neil Hatford: America’s blue-eyed sweetheart, who still appears as his nine-year-old self in syndicated reruns of the family show that had launched his career. Neil confessing won’t take any of the blame off of Andrew’s shoulders. Any tarnish that Neil thinks will land on his own name will just blow back onto Andrew’s instead.
“Then at least let me help,” Neil says. “With the PR campaign.”
“Help how?” Andrew asks skeptically.
“Come to a thing with me Thursday,” Neil says. “Mingle with upstanding citizens. You might even have a good time.”
“Is it a gala?”
“No,” Neil says, grinning. “It’s a baby shower.”
It’s not exactly the child’s birthday party Andrew had hypothetically imagined in his head last night, but it’s pretty close. And, just like Andrew had told himself last night, he is absolutely going to go to this fucking baby shower. He’ll probably even get a haircut. Anything to draw this one night out into two nights.
“Fine,” he says, lest he appear too eager.
Neil grins at him, shuffling closer across the bed until he can press his mouth to Andrew’s shoulder in something that is more a mashing than a kiss and still makes Andrew’s fingertips tingle with the urge to touch him. So, maybe he gets two nights. Two and a half, if you consider the gala. It won’t be enough. He’s not sure anything could ever be enough. But this is not for him. This is some whim of Neil’s—some secret fling, a sowing of wild oats. He’s probably done this before, brought some willing fool into his orbit—but no one has ever heard about it.
No one will ever hear about Andrew, either.
.::.
He gets a haircut. It’s really fucking pathetic, but he does it anyway, and then he goes straight from his haircut to the address Neil had sent him.
Once again, he parks where the GPS tells him to and double-checks that he’s in the right place. It’s a fancy-ish strip mall, the kind of place they’re constantly building in some new suburban sprawl to keep up with the times. It has a sort of Tuscan feel, all arches and stacked stone and earthy colors. Somewhere, the spaces these businesses abandoned to move here are filling up with Dollar Generals and independent clothing boutiques for the stylish modern woman—see also, spandex and sparkles. Andrew would probably fit in better there.
He triple-checks the suite number. 1004. There it is: Color Me Mine. Paint your own pottery.
Well, at least no one is likely to punch him here.
He parks as close as he can, gives himself a hard look in the mirror, and hauls his grungy foster-kid self into the brightly lit space. It’s empty. Completely empty. Not one customer in sight. The lone other human is a dark-haired girl in her late teens to early twenties who is channeling Ariana Grande so intensely that Andrew’s afraid she might flip her ponytail over her shoulder and start belting out a song.
“Hi,” she says, smacking her gum at him. “We’re closed.”
Andrew looks up at the lights, all of which are on. He looks behind him at the door, which had been unlocked.
“Private party,” the girl explains, then blows a large purple bubble.
“Yes,” Andrew agrees. “That is why I am here.”
The girl doesn’t say “You?” but the question is obvious in the look she gives him. She pops the bubble and then says, “Can you tell me who you’re here to see?”
No, actually, Andrew cannot. He holds up one finger and then pulls his phone out, opening his messages with Neil. He types ‘I’m here’ and only has to wait about three seconds for a door at the back of the room to fly open, spilling a roar of laughter into the rest of the quiet space.
“Andrew!” Neil says, beaming. “You’re here.”
Andrew feels the pull physically, like the tide, or a magnet, or a lasso looped around his waist. His hands ache to reach out when he gets close enough—to tangle their fingers together, to measure the width of Neil’s ribs, to press his palm to the small of Neil’s back and feel the rhythm of his walk. To suppress the urge he shoves his hands into his pockets and follows Neil into a smaller room with about twenty people in it. There’s a sign that says Welcome Baby Boyd. Andrew places it then—Matthew and Danielle Boyd, the power couple that appear routinely on the cover of every local LA publication that wants to tout the town as wholesome and good-hearted. Danielle had been a soccer player before a career-ending injury put her out of the game and she’d started a second career as a prosecutor. Andrew recognizes her instantly from her campaign ads. Her husband, the whole muscled mass of him, is a celebrity personal trainer, the kind whose three-minute-long workout videos constantly pop up on Andrew’s TikTok feed whether he likes it or not.
“This is Matt,” Neil says unnecessarily once he’s led Andrew to the couple. “And Dan. Guys, this is Andrew Minyard.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dan says drily. She is conspicuously not pregnant. Surrogate, maybe? Adoption? “Hello, Andrew. Nice to meet you.”
“We’ve heard good things,” Matt adds.
“Have you?” Andrew deadpans.
“No,” Matt admits. “But we haven’t heard bad things from anyone who matters either, so it’s pretty much true.”
This is not logic Andrew can follow.
Neil introduces him to the rest of the group. It’s a weird mix of professional athletes, models, low-key celebrities, and attorneys. He braces himself for some side-eye, some snide questions about what he’s doing there, but there’s nothing. Everyone greets Neil warmly and, by some kind of extension, Andrew too.
The wall of unfinished pottery pieces ready for painting is intimidating, all racks and rows of bleached ceramic carcases that feel rough and chalky to the touch. Neil chooses a mug without much deliberation, but Andrew considers half a dozen pieces before he decides on a unicorn piggy bank that he can give to his nieces.
Neil is already settled in with his palette of glazes by the time Andrew drops into the seat across from him. His own tray has shades of black and hot pink and purple; Neil’s is a veritable rainbow of pastels. Neil also has a roll of masking tape that he’s using to very carefully tape off even stripes that climb vertically up the mug. Around them, beautiful people are settling into other chairs with other bleached bone canvases. Chatter kicks up as people get started, but Andrew and Neil’s end of the table is quiet for a while as they both focus on the work in front of them. Andrew starts by painting his unicorn’s eyes with as many layers of black as he can uniformly slather on. Neil, across the table, peels off the top strip of tape and starts washing on a light coat of a pastel pink.
“Pink,” Andrew observes.
“Yeah,” Neil says. He looks up, raises an amused eyebrow. “You have pink too.”
“For my nieces.”
“Sure,” Neil says. “Likely story.” The first wash of pink done, Neil picks up a smaller paint brush and dips the tip into a little reservoir of darker pink. Carefully, and with precision, he starts scattering dots over the pink.
Andrew tries to focus on his own work—he gives his unicorn a majestic purple mane with pink highlights, paints on a lip ring, carefully outlines a strip of fishnet over the unicorn’s shoulder. Around them, conversation ebbs and flows like pleasant white noise. Elevator music. The sound of rain on a metal roof. It’s not until he realizes that his shoulders are tense from hunching that he thinks to sit up and stretch out his arms. A few seats down from him is a model who’s turning a platter into a spectacular landscape of sunflowers. At another table, he sees a sloppily painted Dia de los Muertos skull. Neil, when Andrew looks, has reached the very bottom stripe—a pastel violet that he’s meticulously dotting darker purple onto. There’s a blank strip left in the middle, still the bleached bone look of raw ceramic.
“You missed one,” Andrew tells Neil.
Neil looks up and grins at him. “Nice fishnet.”
From across the room, a burst of startled laughter rings. He glances over his shoulder and finds Matt bent nearly in two, muffling his laugh into the back of his fist.
“How do you know them?” Andrew asks.
“He’s my trainer,” Neil says. Which, yes, Andrew supposes that should have been obvious. “But he’s also my best friend.”
“And how, exactly,” Andrew muses, “is this baby shower meant to help my public image?”
Neil says, “We’re getting dinner after this. Someone will take pictures at some point. They’ll go up on Instagram. You’re at a private event for close friends of the best candidate for district attorney the town has ever seen. And I’d put money on Matt coming over to admire your biceps and ask you to appear in some of his videos.”
Andrew considers this. Neil, he thinks, has a point. This isn’t the full-frontal, publicity-grabbing gala and charity event push that Allison has had him on. This is actual reputation rehabilitation—being accepted by the right people, being seen doing wholesome shit in his ‘normal’ life, and especially, if Neil is right, turning up in Matt Boyd’s workouts. Andrew gives very few fucks about follower counts and engagement, but he knows enough to know that Matt’s eighteen million subscribers thinking fondly of him is a good thing. What interests him more—because he is an idiot—is that this is Neil’s approach to the issue. Allison is a battering ram. Neil, it seems, is a knife to the ribs. No, that’s not quite right. He is a planter of seeds. He places grains of sand in oysters. He’s not a beat down the front door kind of guy—he’s the one who sneaks in the side window.
Why does Andrew find that so fucking hot?
“Biceps, huh?” Andrew asks Neil.
“I have eyes,” Neil tells him.
Even hotter is that Neil’s right. It takes until Andrew has finished his punk-rock unicorn piggy bank, but Matt shows up at their table and says, “Do me a favor and flex for me?”
Obediently, Andrew holds up an arm, flexes in what he knows is his most impressive pose. Matt whistles, low and appreciative. Under other circumstances, Andrew might think he was being hit on.
“I do these videos,” Matt starts.
Andrew interrupts before he can go further. “I know.”
“Great,” Matt says. “I’d love to have you on. If you’re interested. No pressure.”
Andrew darts a glance across the table at Neil, who is painstakingly painting letters in the white strip around the mug. Neil doesn’t look up, but a smug little quirk lifts the corner of his mouth.
“Yes,” Andrew tells Matt. “I am interested.”
“Great,” Matt booms. “Neil can send me your contact information. Let me know when you’re free. Neil?”
Neil looks up.
“What did you make?” Matt asks.
Neil says, “One second,” and finishes a final few brushstrokes. Then he holds up the mug and slowly turns it so Matt can read the words: be the violence you want to see in the world. The letters are indigo, other than the ‘violence,’ which Neil has painted in the same alternating pastels as the stripes.
“It’s for Andrew,” Neil explains.
“Me?” Andrew asks. The question is entirely involuntary—he’s taken so by surprise that it comes out before he can suppress it.
“Yep,” Neil says. “You’re welcome.”
Andrew is still thinking about the look on Neil’s face at least an hour later, when they’ve moved on to dinner at a bizarrely down-to-earth tapas place in the same little mall complex. It’s an evening that feels entirely too normal for such a sparkling guest list—although Andrew supposes that Dan is actually just a civil servant and Matt is a self-employed personal trainer. Of all of them, Neil casts the longest cultural shadow. He’s the one most likely to get recognized—after all, most people have Netflix now. As for the rest of them, Exy, local politics, TikTok, and the fashion industry are much more niche. Maybe it’s everyone’s awareness of this that gets Andrew and Neil nestled into the middle of the big curved booth, buffered by half a dozen other people. Even if someone did approach, they wouldn’t be able to do anything other than call awkward compliments across the slab of wood between them.
But if anyone is watching Neil, Andrew doesn’t know it—he’s too busy watching Neil himself, watching the flex of tendons and tiny bones in the back of his hand, watching his throat as he swallows sips of wine, watching the corner of his mouth track up and down in amusement as the conversation whirls around them. He’s distracted from his watching by the bump of Neil’s knee against his own. Neil bumps him once, and then again, pressing his leg flush against Andrew’s and sending a little sidelong half-smile his way.
Andrew could resist him, probably, but why would he want to? He drops his hand to Neil’s thigh, splaying his fingers out possessively, and feels a tiny spark of satisfaction when Neil leans some of his weight against Andrew’s side.
It feels even less like this something Andrew is supposed to have—allowed to have—than it had when it was just him and Neil curled up in bed. Neil, a warm weight beside him; Matt, pitching workout locations to him from a few seats down the booth; dim light and wine and the kind of fizzy, friendly conversation that usually grinds to a hard stop when Andrew is in the vicinity.
He wants to hold onto it so badly that he leaves finger marks on Neil that night, small round shadows lined up on his thighs, in a crescent over the curve of his ass. After, spent and sleepy and with the stickiness wiped away, Andrew tucks Neil against his chest, works his leg between Neil’s knees, and falls asleep with his face pressed to the back of Neil’s neck, not sure if he’s trying to be the anchor or the anchored.
.::.
Allison:
interesting
how did you wrangle that invite?
no really I’m asking
have you been holding out on me?
Andrew:
Neil Hatford
Allison:
you know Neil hatford?
since when?
Andrew:
gala
Allison:
well don’t tell me everything all at once
+1
nice work
you have any more surprises coming my way?
.::.
Matt’s gym isn’t what Andrew expected.
Very little of Andrew’s life looks the way he expected these days, but the decor of the gym still takes him aback. He’d kind of figured there’d be bricks and concrete, dark woods and subway tile, but what he walks into is an airy space done up in sage and pale bamboo. Low-key acoustic pop pours out of hidden speakers. The entry space is dominated by an enormous skylight that makes the whole thing feel more like an atrium than an actual room. The guy behind the counter is a dark-complexioned man with the smoothest skin Andrew has ever seen and a definite limpness in the wrist.
“Welcome, Mr. Minyard,” the man drawls, tapping a few times on the tablet in his hands before looking up to give Andrew a coolly appraising look. “Mr. Boyd will be right out. Help yourself to some water.”
The man gestures towards a large glass water dispenser packed with ice and sliced cucumber. Andrew fills a sparkling glass with the concoction and has only just taken a first sip when Matt suddenly appears, beaming expansively.
“Andrew!” Matt calls. “So glad you’re here. How do you feel about Pilates? Let’s go this way.”
Andrew follows Matt down a long hallway lined with lightly frosted glass doors and windows that Andrew assumes lead into various classrooms and studios. Near the end Matt turns sharply and pushes open a door on the left; it admits them into a room with another generous skylight set into the ceiling. One wall is mirrors, and across from it is a living wall that stretches the full length of the room—a landscape of greenery that makes the whole thing feel alive. The third wall is a deep, almost-black shade of green that reflects light with a muted, velvety sheen.
The room also holds two Pilates machines, placed near the living wall not unlike a pair of twin beds.
“I know it’s not for everyone,” Matt placates, turning to face Andrew as he walks backwards towards the room. “And sometimes men think it’s supposed to be for—“
“I’m in,” Andrew interrupts.
Matt’s face breaks into a wide grin.
The camera set up is more modest than Andrew would have thought—Matt literally sets his iPhone up on a tripod with a light ring. He has a little remote that he waggles at Andrew, explaining that he uses it to press pause and record.
They spend about ten minutes on Matt showing Andrew how to do the moves, how to get his foot into the loops without looking like an idiot, how to adjust the springs for more or less tension. Filming itself only takes about five minutes, with Matt moving them briskly from exercise to exercise, effortlessly setting Andrew up to comment on the workout; they do a take with the camera stationary and then a second and third with Matt moving the camera around by hand.
“This one I’m going to call ‘Pro-Athlete Tries Pilates,’” Matt explains. “But I’d love to get one with resistance and one with body weight, if you don’t mind.”
Andrew does not mind. It only takes about an hour and a half to move from room to room, to practice each move, to film a few takes of everything.
It’s after, when they’re putting away the equipment from the last set, that Matt oh-so-casually says, “Neil says you met at a gala.”
“Yes,” Andrew confirms. “He accosted me.”
“I’m not surprised,” Matt says. “He’s been a fan as long as I’ve known him.”
Neil had said that. But, since then, they haven’t really talked about Exy. “So he said,” Andrew says.
“We have watch parties,” Matt tells him cheerfully. “He still has one of your PSU shirts. He probably wouldn’t want me to tell you that.”
“Anything else I shouldn’t know?” Andrew asks.
Matt just grins at him. “Maybe next time. We do some yoga and I tell you more secrets.”
Probably Matt is under the mistaken impression that this—this arrangement Neil and Andrew have—is something more than it is. Or, different. An actual friendship. But Andrew doesn’t know if he’ll be around long enough to do yoga with Matt. Maybe Neil stays friends with his secret lovers, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, Andrew doesn’t think he’s going to stick around after his dismissal or demotion. His poker face isn’t that good.
.::.
Allison:
I can’t believe I’m saying this
+1
pro athlete tries pilates?
your ass looked AMAZING in those pants
is this your secret friend’s work again?
Andrew?
so
you have 3 points now
that story about your donation to the children’s home came out
I hope you know I never send anyone this many texts if they don’t answer
if we were sleeping together we wouldn’t be sleeping together anymore
maybe give me a heads up before you go and make my job easier?
.::.
Neil comes to a game.
Neil asks permission to come to a game, and then asks where Andrew would like him to sit, if Andrew would like him to buy his own tickets or sit somewhere special or call in some favors and get into a box for the night, and the whole thing is so fucking earnestly respectful of Andrew’s boundaries that he wants to crawl through the screen of his cell phone and come out through the screen of Neil’s and lay on top of him on the floor until they start to grow roots in each other and become a single person.
That’s fucking insane, though, not to mention impossible, so Andrew just gets Neil tickets in the designated ‘friends and family who actually want to see the game up close’ section. He gets Neil two tickets, because Neil is apparently bringing his friend Jeremy, a pro surfer who Andrew definitely did not Google, because if Andrew had Googled him, he would know that Jeremy is a compact, half-Australian demi-god who looks a little bit out of place everywhere other than half-naked on the cover of a magazine, and if Andrew knew that then he would not be able to walk out onto that court tonight, knowing that Neil and his ruggedly handsome friend Jeremy would be intently watching every move he made.
The plan is that Neil will ride with Jeremy to the game, and they will watch the game, and Andrew will play like the fires of hell are licking at his ankles, and then he will take Jeremy and Neil back and introduce them to the team (though he’s not sure who will be more impressed by whom), and then Jeremy will fuck off to be the hot new Crocodile Dundee somewhere else, and then Andrew will drive Neil home. Maybe they’ll grab some take-out on the way, and then they will eat it at Neil’s house, which Andrew will be inside of for the first time.
He’s seen little snatches of it—mostly Neil’s bedroom and kitchen—in the background of FaceTime calls over the two or three weeks, but for some reason he’s clamoring to be inside of it himself. He wants to press all of the buttons on Neil’s coffee maker, skim his fingertips along the sleeves of all the shirts Neil has hanging in his closet, roll Neil onto his stomach in bed and give him something to remember when he’s there alone the next night.
It’s a fucking sleepover—the first one they’ve actually planned for. Andrew has a packed duffle bag shoved in the trunk of his car. He has a strip of condoms nearly as long as his arm, just in case. He has a toothbrush and toothpaste and mouthwash, even though neither the concept nor the reality of morning breath has kept them from rolling on top of each other and starting the day with round three—or four.
In the goal that night, he’s distracted enough to let the first shot in. It’s a clever slice of a shot, but it still reminds Andrew that he has a job to do, and that there is no fucking way he’s going to let Neil’s presence twenty yards away fuck him up. He doesn’t let in anything after that.
They win the game, if only barely, and Andrew meets Neil and Jeremy at the side door. He’s sweaty and tired, his wet hair clinging to his forehead, but the way Neil looks at him wakes him up. It’s been five days since the baby shower. They’ve talked, but—well, talking isn’t enough. Andrew wants to touch him.
He doesn’t. He walks Jeremy and Neil down to the locker room and introduces them to everyone. Andrew wouldn’t call himself an outcast on the team, but he’s definitely a loner. He’s friendly with a few of the players, but there’s also a decent chunk of them who think he’s almost more trouble than he’s worth. This stain doesn’t transfer to the company he keeps, apparently, because the flurry of mutual enthusiasm that goes down between Neil and the team is so shameless it makes Andrew’s eyes hurt from rolling. Neil has something specific to praise every single one of them about, some play or shot or save that he can describe in detail, complete with a disturbingly strategic level of analysis. As for Andrew’s teammates, well. One of them wraps Neil up into a tight hug and tells him, nearly choking on emotion, that he’d been nineteen and depressed when a fourteen-year-old Neil had done a teen suicide plot arc. The guy—Hutchins—actually says the words, “You saved my life, man.”
Neil pats Hutchins on the back, but it’s stiff and uncomfortable, and Andrew only just manages not to rip him away. He goes to shower, instead, and latches onto Neil’s wrist when he’s ready to go, dragging him towards the door. He thinks Jeremy stays for a bit, after, but he doesn’t really check to find out.
At Neil’s warm, well-decorated bungalow, after Andrew gets the tour of the place, when they’re standing in the bedroom and Neil is obviously about to suggest they go eat, Andrew says, “Matt says you have one of my shirts.”
“Ah,” Neil says, his eyes darting to the side. “Yeah, I—”
“Put it on,” Andrew interrupts. “Right now.”
Neil catches on quickly. His eyes flashing with anticipation, he turns and disappears into his closet. He comes back out in the shirt; it has Andrew’s last name and number spread across the back and the little fox logo where a pocket would go.
“Only the shirt,” Andrew tells him. He’s surprised by the way his voice sounds, by the strain in it, how the words scrape over the thickness in his throat and the dryness in his mouth.
Neil’s hands drop to the button on his jeans.
Andrew fucks him on his back, his knees up and over Andrew’s hips, his hands hooked around the back of Andrew’s neck. The shirt rides up a little more every time Andrew’s hips slap against the backs of Neil’s thighs—he can’t see his name this way, but he knows it’s there, and it’s on Neil’s tongue, slipping from his mouth into Andrew’s, so that Andrew tastes himself there, how much Neil wants him, the way Neil feels about Andrew’s cock filling his ass, all sweet heat and desperation.
The tacos they’d picked up on the way there, when they finally eat them, are cold.
.::.
In the morning, Andrew peels himself away from a warm armful of drowsy redhead and pokes at Neil’s coffee maker until things start happening. Unlike the perpetually cold floors in Andrew’s condo, Neil’s floors radiate heat. Despite the early spring chill that Andrew can feel creeping in through the windows, despite having only pulled on underwear and a t-shirt, he’s warm and comfortable at his post against Neil’s kitchen counter. The view through the window frames the first two letters of the towering Hollywood sign that stands sentry over the hills. Andrew’s condo has a similarly partial view of the beach. For a moment, he entertains the thought that they’d have to decide between the two if they moved in together—but of course they won’t.
As if to punctuate the stupidity of that thought, a sleek gray cat wanders in from the hallway—it pauses, blinks at Andrew consideringly, and then seems to give the feline equivalent of a shrug before it stalks towards him and starts winding around his ankles. The cat is silent but aggressive, making up for the lack of yowling with the pressure of its body.
Neil never mentioned a cat. Is it supposed to be here? Andrew looks around for signs of a cat—food bowls, toys, a litter box, anything—but comes up empty.
“Who are you?” Andrew asks the cat. “Are you supposed to be here?”
The cat stops its winding long enough to stare up at Andrew with its enormous, icy blue eyes. They remind him of Neil’s.
Neil himself does not appear, not even when the aroma of coffee fills the space. Andrew finds mugs in the cupboard and pours a couple of cups, adding creamer and sugar to his taste, because if Neil wants to be picky about his coffee, he can get his ass out of bed and tell Andrew how he wants it.
He nearly trips over the cat three times on the way back to the bedroom, a fact that the cat ignores, or perhaps welcomes, if Andrew is reading that pleased question mark of a tail correctly. Once the cat figures out that Andrew is heading towards the bedroom, though, it bounds ahead, slipping through the door several feet before Andrew and then promptly, apparently, disappearing to some hidden corner, because all Andrew sees when he walks in is Neil. Neil has rolled into Andrew’s abandoned spot at some point and half-buried himself under the covers. Through a gap in the fabric, Andrew sees one blue eye crack open.
“Coffee?” Neil asks.
“Do you have a cat?” Andrew asks, instead of confirming the obvious.
“Kind of,” Neil says. The great mound of duvet shifts, rises, and then parts, revealing a messy-haired Neil who’s still wearing Andrew’s college exy shirt, though the neck is stretched out now, revealing a scattering of marks Andrew vaguely remembers putting there the night before. He has no regrets.
“How do you kind of have a cat?” Andrew asks.
“We cohabitate sometimes,” Neil explains.
“Yes,” Andrew says. “That is how having a cat works.”
“He’s too much of an asshole to be owned,” Neil says, taking the coffee cup Andrew hands over and bringing it close to his face to inhale. “And he’s an escape artist. He comes and goes as he pleases.”
“You never mentioned having a cat,” Andrew says.
Neil shrugs, but a hint of a smile flutters at the corner of his mouth. Solemnly, Neil says, “He’s fiercely private. What are you doing today?”
The sudden change of subject throws Andrew for a moment; he pauses, takes a sip of coffee, and recalibrates. “Nothing,” he says. “We have an off day.”
“Want to take a surfing lesson with me?” Neil asks.
There is very little Andrew likes to do less than more sports in his free time. He sunburns in about two minutes flat, and he always comes away from the beach with sand in places it shouldn’t be. The best use of his off days, in his opinion, is brunch, a couch nap, and a couple of hours of The Food Network—about as far from swallowing salt water and picking sand out of his pubes as you can get. He says, “Yes.”
Coffee turns into breakfast, which turns into going out for brunch because Neil has approximately nine groceries in his house. They stop at a farmer’s market on the way back, where Andrew bullies Neil into buying such exotic ingredients as “eggs” and “tomatoes” and Neil adds so much fruit leather to their bags that Andrew seriously considers calling the people who make Intervention. Would that be a +1 or a -1 in Allison’s eyes? What about reaching across the few inches that separates their hands as they walk and pressing their palms together, tangling their fingers, tugging Neil past yet another fruit spread vendor?
He keeps his hands to himself, at least until they get back to Neil’s to drop the shit off; they make it as far as the couch and topple onto it and lose almost an hour to making out like teenagers. It’s fun, and hotter than it has any right to be, and almost makes them late to the surfing lesson.
Unfortunately, they make it exactly on time—Neil finds Jeremy on the beach like some kind of fucking homing pigeon, just as Jeremy is dropping a third surfboard onto the sand.
“You ready for this?” Neil asks.
“Probably not,” Andrew answers.
.::.
Allison:
lessons with surf god Jeremy Knox?
is Hatford trying to take my job?
tell him we can go into business together when he gets tired of acting
+1 = 4
have you seen the pictures btw?
you look 100% fucked
PS do you have Jeremy knox’s phone number?
PPS give me Jeremy knoz’s phone number
.::.
Andrew’s phone rings at exactly 9:00am. When he sees the name pop up on his display, he knows that the caller has been waiting hours to give Andrew the courtesy of even this much sleeping in.
“Nicky,” he says when he picks up the phone.
“Andrew Joseph Minyard,” Nicky says in a rush. “Are you fucking Neil Hatford?”
“Pardon?” Andrew asks mildly.
“Nope, absolutely not,” Nicky says. “You’re not getting out of this that easy. I saw that picture.”
That picture. Andrew doesn’t have to ask which one. It’s been burned into the back of his retinas since he’d seen it himself; it’s him and Neil, standing close enough to hear each other over the rush and roar of the nearby surf. Neil is showing Andrew how to tie some knot. It should be totally unremarkable—except that, in the picture, Andrew isn’t looking at Neil’s hands. He’s looking at Neil. He’s looking slightly up at Neil, at Neil’s face, with an expression of such raw longing that it had hit him like a knee to the gut as soon as he’d seen it. In the picture Neil, oblivious, is looking down at his own hands as he tries to explain the process to Andrew. There’d been a bear and a cave, according to the little mnemonic Neil had been reciting.
Is Neil still oblivious? Did he see the picture? Or is it revealing only if you know Andrew well? Maybe he looks as stone-faced and cold as he always does to everyone else.
“What picture?” Andrew asks, stalling.
“Uh, the one on the beach where you’re looking at him like he’s fucking dessert? And I do mean that literally. Fucking dessert. So, are you?”
“Maybe,” Andrew says.
“Oh my lord, you are,” Nicky says, delighted. There’s a muffling sound as he covers the handset and calls out at his end, “I was right!” Nicky must half-drop and fumble the phone, because there’s a weird grating sound, some squelching, and a few knocking noises. After a moment, Nicky’s voice comes through clearly again. He says, “He’s on my hall pass list, you know.”
“No he isn’t,” Andrew says.
“Totally is,” Nicky counters cheerfully. “Right under Chris Hemsworth.”
“No,” Andrew repeats. “He is not.”
It takes Nicky a second—a long pause that Andrew waits out patiently—and then Nicky says, “He used to be on my hall pass list?”
“There you go.”
“Soooo,” Nicky says, dragging the word out. “Is it…serious?”
Andrew closes his eyes against the familiar sight of his bedroom ceiling. Is it serious? Fuck.
“No,” Andrew says, after a long pause of his own.
“No because you don’t want it to be?” Nicky asks gently. “Or no because he doesn’t? I don’t think anyone has ever pinned him down on a statement on his sexuality, but we definitely would have heard if he… well, you know.”
If he’d come out. If he’d had a boyfriend. Hell, even if he’d had a girlfriend—but no, Neil Hatford has been perpetually single (or very secretive) for as long as the media has had its eyes on him.
“Everything we do is a group thing,” Andrew says very carefully. “He is—helping me. With the PR thing.”
“Everything?” Nicky asks with an air of wickedness. “Even the sex? Because that would be—”
“Not everything,” Andrew interrupts drily.
“Have you asked him? No, never mind, of course you haven’t asked him. And you still haven’t answered the question. Do you want it to be serious?”
“I want this phone call to be over,” Andrew tells him pointedly.
“You’re like a little kid who won’t take his medicine,” Nicky says. “But fine. I’ll just say one more thing. Don’t give your assumptions so much power that you fuck yourself over. What if you’re wrong? Now, moving on. How was surfing? I have an open spot on my hall pass list. Should I put this Jeremy guy on it?”
“He is a demon,” Andrew says, but his mind is caught on Nicky’s unsolicited advice. What if Andrew is wrong? What if Neil means it, any of it, any of the glow in his eyes when they’re tangled in bed, any of the reverence in his hands when they trace over Andrew’s skin, any of the adoration he presses into quick, firm kisses along Andrew’s shoulders and arms, his neck, the inside of his wrist. What if they’re doing group stuff all the time for Andrew’s sake? What if Neil is in Andrew’s kitchen some mornings in stolen socks and underwear and a hoodie because he really wants to be there, and not because it’s just more convenient to sleep over?
What if, what if, what if. What if Andrew pushes the issue and Neil balks and stops calling, stops texting, stops pulling Andrew into his orbit. What if Andrew says ‘I actually like you’ and Neil’s face shutters and he says, ‘no, sorry, I can’t, not really’? Andrew has always scrounged for scraps on the margins of other people. The odds of this being any different—especially this, this dream-like whirlwind with the grown-up star of so many of Andrew’s self-inulgent adolescent fantasies of love and connection—are more emaciated than they are thin. This thing is so delicate, so insubstantial in his hands, that he’s almost certain it would shatter if he tightened his hold even a little.
.::.
The conversation bothers him for the next couple of days, though. Is he making assumptions? Of course he is. But it’s a fair one—Neil, with everything he has going for him, with his success at keeping his private life private, would not want to publicly link himself to Andrew. Not with Andrew’s reputation. Not with his legions of anti-fans. Not with Andrew’s entire job on the line. He might not even still be in LA in a few months. There is no up-side to associating with Andrew Minyard. Not for Neil.
But—but maybe there’s a middle ground. Maybe there’s a way to have more without it being too much.
Thursdays are a fairly light day for Andrew: weights in the morning, physical therapy, watch a little game tape, off by 1:00 pm. After that, he has nothing on his schedule. These wide-open hours haunt him the night before, keeping him up well past his usual 9:30 pm bedtime. He almost texts Neil about half a dozen times, but ultimately doesn’t. Do it in the morning, he tells himself. It will seem more spontaneous. Less pressure.
In the morning, though, it’s too fucking early—the sun is still down and the moon frowns disapprovingly at Andrew. Too early to text the man, the moon says. Only desperate people message before the sunrise.
Well, Andrew supposes desperate isn’t the least accurate description of himself he’s ever heard. Especially not lately. He plugs his phone into his car for the podcasts, but holds onto it long enough to type and send a quick message to Neil.
Andrew:
done at 1 today
what are you doing
this afternoon
He isn’t expecting a response. Not this soon. He sets his phone in its usual place and backs out of his parking spot, turning the volume loud on the radio so that he won’t be able to hear his own doubt-ridden thoughts. The buzz of the incoming message a few minutes later floods Andrew with a cool wash of relief. Whatever Neil says, it will be better than not knowing.
Andrew uses all of his formidable self-control to wait until he hits a red light to pick up the phone and read the message. If it’s an outright rejection, then maybe he’ll crash the car on purpose; it might be something else, though, and he’d hate to die texting and driving before he got to read it.
Neil:
table read
done at 2
want to come over?
Andrew sends his response, a simple “yes” and then drives to the stadium extra carefully, paying special attention to stop signs and yellow lights.
.::.
He has an hour to kill before Neil gets home, so Andrew goes back to his condo and packs a bag. He keeps his sweatpants and t-shirt on, but throws something a little nicer into the bag, in case Neil turns this into another public group hang. He leaves at least fifteen minutes too early. He fills his tank with gas. He picks up cat treats at a weird pet shop he’s seen on his way to and from Neil’s before. There is so much nervous anticipation built up in him that he feels like it might explode out if he so much as opens his mouth, so he limits his communication with the perky sales clerk to grunts and nods.
The woman definitely recognizes him. There’s another “Andrew Minyard is a total dick in real life too” post for Reddit.
Even with all of his stalling, he gets to Neil’s house before Neil does. He could probably drive around the hills for a bit and then come back, but he’s still too antsy. There’s a halfway decent chance he’d get the spontaneous urge to see if the car can fly and just floor it over the edge of a ravine.
He’s parked there for seven minutes before Neil gets home. Neil pulls up in a deep blue Audi that Andrew has never seen before, parks it expertly in the garage, and climbs out looking like every fantasy boyfriend Andrew has ever imagined for himself. Andrew blurts, “I didn’t know you drove.”
“Of course I drive,” Neil tells him. “This is L.A.”
“You have not driven yourself to a single thing we’ve done,” Andrew points out.
Neil smiles then, wide and bright and with a touch of something Andrew thinks—thinks—might be affection. Neil says, “If I drove myself, then you couldn’t take me home.”
The neurons in Andrew’s brain try to connect to make sense of this statement, but they can’t quite make contact—he feels them reaching for each other, missing, reaching again, groping blindly. Andrew reaches back as far as he can, to the bar that first time. He’d taken Neil home alright—home with him and straight to bed, where he’d gotten Neil’s clothes off and his mouth on Neil’s dick as quickly as possible. Baby shower: Neil came home with him again and right back to bed. The game last week: Neil had ridden there with Jeremy; Andrew had taken him home, fucked him in that faded old Foxes shirt, and spent the night.
Andrew is thoroughly gobsmacked by this revelation. He shouldn’t be—he’d known this about Neil. The seeds, the sands, the pearls. The side window.
“Are you hungry?” Neil asks after what must be long seconds of Andrew staring at him in silent disbelief. “Follow-up question: can you cook?”
Andrew can, in fact, cook, but it’s exponentially harder to do when he’s still reeling and, on top of that, Neil is distractingly sitting on the counter next to him, stealing little bits of this and that and hooking his foot around the back of Andrew’s knee when he gets close enough. The cat gets wind of all of this action and materializes in the kitchen. It hops up onto one of the barstools on the other side of the kitchen island and stands, front paws on the counter, back paws on the seat, watching intently.
“Does your cat have a name?” Andrew asks.
“Dunno,” Neil says, shrugging. “Ask him.”
“What do you call him?”
“Cat,” Neil says. “Or asshole. Whichever seems more appropriate at the moment.”
“Neil,” Andrew sighs. “You have to give him a name.”
Neil and the cat both turn to look at each other. Both sets of blue eyes narrow appraisingly. It’s a staring contest, and Andrew isn’t sure who will look away first. He’s almost impressed when it’s the cat—though of course it manages to blink and turn its attention to grooming with an air of absolute indifference to the concept of human games.
“I don’t think he wants that,” Neil says with a shrug.
“Is he real?” Andrew asks. “He might be a ghost cat.”
“Entirely possible,” Neil agrees. “Let me know if you figure it out.”
The stir-fry Andrew produces isn’t the best he’s ever made, but it’s edible, and Neil eats it with gusto, explaining that Matt really put him through his paces that morning, and then the table read only really had donuts, which make his teeth ache from the sugar. If Andrew had been thinking, he wouldn’t have chosen the dish at all—it is entirely unsuitable as date food, and his mouth is full of salty heat. Theoretically Neil tastes the same way, but Andrew now has the tiniest inkling that Neil might actually be into him, and he’s not going to ruin it with soy-sauce-tongue.
Neil suggests they watch old games of Andrew’s so that they can discuss the finer points of his strategy. Obviously, Andrew nips this right in the bud—he suggests that they watch reruns of the short-lived teen drama that Neil had been on when he’d been a teen himself.
“Touché,” Neil says cheerfully. “Want to put together a puzzle?”
When Neil opens the door to a small closet off the hallway, he reveals shelves stacked with puzzles, about half of which are still in their original plastic wrapping.
“I broke my leg once trying a stunt,” Neil explains with a shrug. “I couldn’t do much of anything for the first few weeks. Puzzles helped me be less antsy. Now, people just buy them for me.”
“Hard ones,” Andrew observes, nodding towards a shelf with boxes that claim to be the “hardest puzzle ever” or “mind-exploding.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Neil says. He shuffles, so that he’s blocking Andrew’s view of that stack with his body. “Pick something else, Minyard.”
Andrew tries to reach for a complicated-looking geode puzzle that’s adjacent to the difficult shelf, but Neil blocks him with all the expertise of a professional Exy player. It puts him in kissing distance and Andrew forgets all about his stir-fry related reservations and kisses him; they nearly topple half a dozen open puzzles off the shelf and have to stop because Neil is laughing too hard to continue.
Ultimately, Andrew picks a 1,000-piece puzzle of a nebula, on which all of the astrological signs are imposed in thin, gilded lines.
“This is going to take us forever,” Neil says. He sounds pleased at the prospect, like there’s nothing he’d enjoy more than sitting around with Andrew and putting tiny pieces of thick cardboard together for hours. Maybe, a small, traitorous part of Andrew’s brain says, maybe you were right. Maybe there is a middle ground.
The going-out clothes he packed stay safe in his duffel bag, all the way through a couple of hours of puzzle, through dinner and Jeopardy, through sitting wedged into the corner of the couch with his feet in Neil’s lap. Through Neil absently rubbing Andrew’s foot, his fingertips somehow finding all of the sore spots, working at them until Andrew feels the relief through his whole body. It’s during this—during the quiet evening hours—that Neil says, “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Nothing,” Andrew tells him.
Neil gently sets Andrew’s foot down in his lap and picks up the other one. His fingers unerringly find the ball of tension that lives in Andrew’s arch. In a weird tone of voice—weird for how manufactured it is, how careful—Neil says, “When I was sixteen, my agent got me involved with this sailing thing for kids who need a place to go. A thing to do. My mother let me do it because it worked really well with my public image, but I think my agent sent me there because he thought I needed it too.”
Sixteen—that would have been eleven years ago. Andrew nods.
“I still do it,” Neil says. “I go, teach some of the kids, take them out on one of the boats and let them make just enough bad decisions so that they fuck themselves, but not irrevocably.”
Andrew nods again. He manages to suppress a whimper when Neil’s thumb presses right into the aching center of his heel. There’s nothing whimper-appropriate in this little glimpse he’s getting into Neil’s past. Andrew has heard enough about the mother to pick up on some shit—Neil has all but confirmed that she hit him, and some of his casual mentions of how controlling she was make Andrew’s teeth clench—but Neil talks about it so little that Andrew knows better than to ruin the mood.
Neil says, “We’re taking them on a trip to Catalina. We’ll sail there, camp overnight, sail back on Sunday.”
“Is this an invitation?” Andrew asks.
“Yeah,” Neil says, laughing self-consciously. “It’s an invitation. Want to sail away for the weekend with me, twenty-five teenagers, and a bunch of old boat guys you don’t know?”
“How about a trade?” Andrew asks. “I go to Catalina with you. You come to Vegas with me.”
“Vegas?”
“We have a game there in two weeks. I like to gamble. I stay an extra day.”
“Deal,” Neil says. “Vegas for Catalina.”
Andrew can hear Nicky’s voice screaming at him in his head. It’s a mess of glee and urgency and a not insignificant amount of eye-rolling about how goddamned stupid it is that they’re acting like this is about trading favors and not about how much time Andrew spends thinking about Neil every single fucking day. These aren’t really favors—they’re dates. Overnight dates. Overnight, out-of-town dates. Andrew needs to upgrade his hotel room to a suite.
That night, the cat creeps into the bedroom and lands silently on the bed next to Andrew. “Hello,” Andrew whispers. The cat takes this opportunity to try and put its entire head into Andrew’s mouth.
“Does he ever pet you?” Andrew asks. He gently slips his arm out from beneath the one Neil has draped over him, curling it up against his chest so that he can scratch the underside of the cat’s chin. The cat purrs in a way that suggests he has never been petted before even once in his life. Local Cat Shown No Affection for Years, According to Local Cat.
“You need a name,” Andrew whispers. “What do you think of Ghost?”
The cat headbutts Andrew’s face. Whether that’s a yes or a no, Andrew isn’t sure. He tells the cat, “We’ll work on it.”
.::.
The trip to Catalina is grueling, hard work in the sun—for everyone on the boat other than Andrew, that is. Theoretically he should get up and help, but he’s the only person there who doesn’t have any fucking clue what’s going on, and anyway, Neil presses him into a seat and hands him a bottle of apple juice and tells him to stay put until everyone stops teeming around the boat like a swarm of ants.
The kids call Neil “Neil,” and any excitement his celebrity status might normally invoke has obviously worn off long ago. Andrew, on the other hand, takes at least thirty pictures and signs at least fifty things. After a few hours spent around a campfire in a kind of group-therapy-slash-summer-camp vibe, he and Neil crawl into the tent Neil had expertly pitched for them. Andrew makes sure all of the lights are off, lest they put on an unintentional shadow puppet show, and then crawls on top of Neil and kisses him; he tastes like marshmallows and chocolate, the legacy of the s’mores they’d honest-to-god made with sticks and fire.
“We have to be quiet,” Neil whispers.
“Good plan,” Andrew whispers back, working his hands into Neil’s sweats to push them down and out of the way. “Let me know how it goes.”
He kisses Neil again, hard, slides down, bites at Neil’s nipple through his shirt, slides down more, and takes Neil’s half-hard cock to the back of his throat without warning.
The noise Neil makes is strangled and rough, but it shouldn’t travel far.
.::.
Allison:
I see you Andrew Minyard
is this a new thing?
posh sports with the juvenile delinquents?
Andrew:
hands off
this was not for publicity
Allison:
what was it for then?
Neil Hatford?
Allison:
fine don’t answer me
I’m still giving you a +1
I won’t push it
a press release would cheapen it
.::.
The friends and family section of the Vegas stadium stretches between the team bench and the goal. Neil’s seat puts him about twenty yards away from the team’s box. So close and so fucking far away. The last time Neil came to a home game, Andrew had gotten him seats right next to the team; Neil hadn’t even complained about how much worse the view was than the front-row seats he and Jeremy had gotten the first time.
It’s pathetic, Andrew’s yearning to lay eyes on Neil, but he hasn’t actually seen him in three days. Andrew had been busy with pre-game shit, and Neil’s show was wrapping up an apparently very big episode full of explosions and, Neil tells him, an unexpected character death. Add to that the distance between their houses and the lies Andrew’s been telling himself about what he wants this thing between them to be and, well. Three days.
Andrew had flown to Vegas with the team, but Neil, in a twist on their usual habits, had made the five hour drive on his own. He’d arrived just in time to find his seat before the game—his thumbs up emoji text had been the last thing Andrew looked at before they filed out into the stadium.
Fortunately, Andrew gets the goal for the first half of the game. Without that stroke of luck, he knows he’d spend the time pacing the box, trying to get a glimpse of Neil further down the sidelines. From his position on court, Andrew can at least spot the dark red of Neil’s hair. He seems to be surrounded by a group of teen girls, probably there as part of Alvaraz’s More Women in Exy initiative. The seating is either the best or worst case scenario for Neil—they are squarely in his demographic, and thus they’ll be very aware of who he is. On the other hand, they’re all exy fanatics, right? He’ll fit right in.
Only the relentless pace of the game keeps Andrew from spending half his time standing stupidly in the goal and staring at Neil. This is why Andrew almost never shares his innermost thoughts with anyone. They’re fucking embarassing. And it hadn’t been like this when Neil came to games in L.A., but then it had been—convenient? Something Neil would have done anyway? Something Neil has done. This time, though… this time, Neil drove five hours to be here. He drove because Andrew admitted that part of the reason he stays extra is to delay getting back on the plane.
It has to mean something. Doesn’t it?
Even if he can’t quite lose himself to the game, Andrew blocks eight of the eleven shots the Aces fire on his goal. It doesn’t matter that they’re so far from L.A.—Andrew is at home on every exy court. He feels the goal in three dimensions, not just lines on the wall and floor but a solid thing around him. The air is different, thicker; when the ball enters the space it sends ripples through, prickling the fine hairs at the back of Andrew’s neck, scenting the air with something sharp and dangerous. Every time he blocks a shot, the impact rattles through his racquet and into his bones, making his blood sing. He slides to block a low shot and thinks, Neil will appreciate that. He catches one ball on the narrow edge of his racquet and thinks, I am going to get so laid tonight. Knowing Neil is watching makes Andrew bloodthirsty. He smashes every ball he gets hard enough to return it to the other side of the court, sending his own strikers scrambling to keep up, and even that doesn’t feel like enough.
By the time the halftime bell rings, Andrew is so keyed up that he doesn’t want to leave the goal. He slaps his racquet against the wall, hard, frustrated at the sudden lack of movement and attack. A warning whistle ricochets around the plexiglass—when Andrew looks to find its source, he finds their team captain poised at the entrance to the court, her fingers between her lips. It probably looks like he’s throwing a temper tantrum in the goal.
The furious energy doesn’t dissipate in the walk across the court. He steps down onto the sidelines with his body still wanting to move, so he doesn’t follow the rest of the team into the box. He has to do something. He has to sate the fanged, ravenous thing that’s rattling his ribs like the bars of a cage. Instead of going where he’s supposed to, he tears his helmet off and tosses it in the direction of one of their equipment managers. She’ll catch it or it’ll hit the ground and shatter. Either way is fine with Andrew. He’s done for the night.
The distant roar of the crowd sharpens into focus as he walks—generic screaming shaping itself into his name. Over and over again: Andrew! Andrew, over here!! Andrew, we love you! His strides feel twice as long as usual and he covers the distance in what feels like seconds; the world turns beneath his feet and then he’s there, where Neil is, staring at him across the low half wall that separates the crowd from the loop around the court.
One of the girls says, “Oh my god,” in a hushed whisper that cuts right under the louder noises around it.
Neil shifts forward in his seat, leaning his elbows against the top of the wall. “Hi,” Neil says. “You were incredible.” His eyes are searching, as intent on Andrew as Andrew knows his own are on Neil. Andrew isn’t sure what his face is doing right now, but he knows it must be something. Something unusual.
Andrew says, “Thank you.” He can’t stop staring. His fingers twitch. He wants to reach and touch and hold.
Neil shifts forward a little more, close enough that only Andrew can hear him when he says, “I really want to kiss you right now.”
“There are seventy-five thousand people in this stadium,” Andrew reminds him.
“Yeah,” Neil nods. “Yes or no?”
If they do this, everyone will know. If they do this, there will be video of it all over the internet. If they do this, then they’re together for better or worse. But it will be for the better, Andrew thinks. He’ll make sure of it. Whatever it takes. He says, “Yes.”
Neil’s hands move slowly, leaving Andrew plenty of time to change his mind; then they’re cupping Andrew’s face—tender, but trembling with the same suppressed urgency that Andrew feels. Neil presses their lips together sweetly, the kind of soft kiss he gives Andrew over coffee in the morning, or after Andrew has tucked Neil’s hair behind his ear in bed. It’s sweet and careful, and it lasts for all of five heartbeats before Neil pulls back. The pounding of his pulse in his ears had muted the sounds of the crowd, but they come back with a vengeance when Neil’s lips leave his.
There’s more screaming than there was before, he thinks. There are a million flashes going off around them. It’s news. They’re making news. But that’s for everyone else. For them, these are promises.
Andrew takes half a step back, his eyes locked on Neil’s face. Neil, who just told the world in dramatic fashion exactly what this is. Something. Definitely something. Andrew looks to the right—one of the girls is there, her eyes wide, her mouth open, her phone lofted in her hand. He says, “Hold this,” and hands her his racquet. She takes it, shocked and silent, her mouth an O, her eyes almost as wide.
This time, it’s Andrew who settles his hands on Neil’s face. He combs his fingers into Neil’s hair and pulls him close, half over the railing, so that Andrew can kiss him with all the heat that’s racing through his body. Not soft. Not sweet. It’s the way he kisses Neil when he’s backing him towards the bed. When Neil is astride him, panting the melody to Andrew’s heartbeat.
Neil gasps into his mouth, surprised or breathless. Andrew pulls back, enough to let him suck in oxygen, but Neil follows him like he’s all the air in the room. It’s a familiar move. Neil is always reaching for him—has been since the first night.
He lets Neil press forward into another kiss—quick, soft, a private amendment to the declaration they just made.
“I’ll see you later,” Andrew murmurs against Neil’s mouth. “Don’t answer any questions I wouldn’t answer.”
“So, none?” Neil whispers back.
Andrew kisses him again quickly and then lets go, reaching to grab his racquet from the stunned teenager still frozen in the position she’d been when he’d handed it to her in the first place. He touches two fingers to his temple in a quick salute and then turns and walks away, leaving Neil to the mercies of the screaming crowd and the jumbotron camera.
.::.
Allison:
are you fucking kidding me?
+10
+100
imagine firing you now
invite me to the wedding plz