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The day starts just like any other, but so different at the same time.
His nerves are as clear as water and they're only made worse because he's conscious of the fact that he wouldn't be able to hide them even if he tried; Neil's usually stable hands are shaky, his eyes drag over every possible escape route —which summarizes into the main door of the dorm and not much else, because they're in a floor too high for the windows to not signify an early death if he wanted to jump—, and his legs move him around the room every few minutes, even with nothing to do.
Andrew stays silent over all of it, but his eyes tell him everything. He knows that something's up, and he also knows that Neil knows that he knows something's up. Their energies explode like sparks of electricity with every accidental eye contact, a mirrored frown busying their faces and worsening the storm brewing up in the air around them, the turbulence shaking Neil down to his core. Still, they don't say anything at all.
Because it's hard to build up the courage for what Neil's planning to do: he needs to tell Andrew that he has life growing inside of him, the very one reason why he's been struck by sudden morning sickness and a pause in his period the last few weeks, an accident that he doesn't know how it happened, but it's too late now to wonder about the past.
Multiple tests had confirmed it for him before, and just yesterday, the bloodwork results came into Abby's mail. She promised to keep it secret, not only for the sake of her doctor-patient usual confidentiality but also because of the respect she had for Neil as a person, as one of her Foxes. Their relationship has grown over the years, and now, with Andrew on his last year of college and Neil on his fourth one, she's the closest thing he has to a mother figure.
In between all his inner turmoil he hasn't had the time to think about how to break the news to him, to Andrew, the other most important person in the equation apart from Neil himself, the father of his baby. He hasn't prepared anything pretty to announce it. Not a shirt, or blanket, or any object related to babies, because realistically, that isn't his kind of thing, and he knows that Andrew wouldn't appreciate something like that either.
They've been together for years already, their nothing slowly but surely shaping into something, a partnership built on trust and never-broken promises, and a lot of 'yes or no' in the path. This time it wouldn't be any different, Neil would ask Andrew once again, and whatever his answer is, he'd respect it like all the times before. But first, he needs to calm his brain and ground himself.
Neil gets up from the couch, where they've been sitting together for around twenty minutes now, mindlessly listening to a news station on the TV. In reality, nothing has been processed by him, not when he's so distracted by everything else going on. Andrew follows him with hawk eyes as he walks to the bathroom, and he quickly closes the door behind him as soon as he goes through the threshold.
The click enters like a signal through his ears, sending him into a panic almost instantly without him even noticing at first. It's a mix of all the anxiety he's been carrying around, which once he's alone inside of the small room, decides to overflow and break the brim that's been holding the tears inside of his eyes.
Wetness leaves a trail over his cheekbones, the drops falling on the tiles under him and echoing like a shout yelled between two mountains. He's free-falling into nothing, his senses both underwhelmed and overwhelmed at the same time, the cold light radiating over him forcing him to close his eyes when it turns to be too much. His hands cover his ears and when his legs tremble, he lets the door behind him hold his weight, uncaring of how the hit of his back against the wood must sound for the world outside of the bathroom.
He can't calm down, no matter how desperate he is to get himself together. In less than nine months he would be becoming a father, and yet the simple act of having to admit it is enough to make him spiral. Neil's not the same eighteen years old kid he used to be, the one drowning in grief over a destroyed car burnt into his eyelids and the smell of charred skin and hot bones cooling in the sand, but for one single second, he thinks about calling for his mom and asking her how to do this.
She may've even been the same at one point, freshly having discovered that she was pregnant, lost by the implications of it. He doesn't know if by that time, Nathan had already shown his true colors, or if she was still blinded by the idea that she would be sparred from his evil nature and lack of humanity just because her love could fix him. Maybe she too thought about telling her mom, but he can't know anything about that because Mary's not here and she hasn't been for a long time, and that's also fine.
Neil shakes his head and forces breath after breath to come inside his lungs. The air is heavy with doubts and fears, and as it enters his body, the oxygen carries around his cells the blood that he's afraid may be tainted by murderer's genes, but he needs it to live. No matter how hard it is, he drags his hands over his cheeks and dries the tears left to fall, as he inhales and exhales until he no longer is about to blackout.
He looks up and tries to count until three, but as soon as he hits the two in his mind, he hears a knock right behind his back that can only be coming from one person in specific, the one he aches for the most right now.
"Junkie," Andrew says from the other side, firm with conviction, "You either come out or I go in there."
Neil, against everything inside of him, smiles shyly even if the other can't see him. Taking a last deep breath he turns around, and without saying anything, he opens the door to find Andrew frowning at him, most probably confused about what's going on.
He tilts his head, sure that he can't quite conceal the redness around his eyes and the mist of tears still wetting them, but uncaring of it. "I think it'll be better if you come in," it's as much as an invitation as a hesitant question; not ideal for this kind of situation but he may not be able to do it if he's out in the open living room, and not comforted by the restricted space of the bathroom.
Andrew steps inside and closes the door, and a bubble forms around them, locking them together in place and space. He sits down over the lowered toilet lid and looks up at Neil, scanning him from head to toe, but he doesn't seem to find anything amyss —understandable since he's not far enough in his pregnancy for it to be visibly showing, yet.
"So?" Andrew raises an eyebrow when minutes have gone by and Neil still hasn't talked or made any sign to indicate what's going on. A lump in his throat is blocking any word from coming out of him, and instead, he chooses to do the next best thing left.
He turns around and crouches to search around the cabinet, and sticking his hand onto the back he finds what he's looking for. Neil doesn't bother to hide it, and he just places in Andrew's lap the last test he made out of a multitude of them, and the only one he kept, inside of a lock-zip bag just in case.
Neil knows that Andrew's not stupid. A pregnancy test can't be confused with anything else, and the words stumble out of his mouth before he can think about them well, "I need you to not shut me out Andrew. No matter what, I just ask you to talk to me."
He doesn't beg, doesn't dare to say the prohibited word between them, but he's desperate for only one thing and that's for his partner to not block him out, to be allowed to hear what's going inside his mind right now, with the revelation that could change their lives in the biggest way ever.
"You're pregnant," Andrew utters out, not moving his eyes from the object on his lap. He sees his hands, they're closed into fists by his sides, and Neil would dare to say that he may be aching to call Betsy with the phone kept in his pocket, just as he's done multiple times before in situations of high stress like this, but he can't be fully sure.
Neil gulps, nodding because he knows that he can still be seen by Andrew's peripheral view. "I'm pregnant."
His hearth is pulsing so hard inside of his chest that he's afraid that he may be about to throw it up, but he forces the saliva pooling in his mouth to go back down. He takes a few steps back until he's close to the wall opposite to the toilet, just in case he loses his balance and can't catch himself, but Andrew follows him into his space, finally getting up from his place.
With stable hands, he gently grabs Neil's face and forces their eyes to engage in a duel of who can stay the longer without blinking, if only to not have the chance to miss what's going through inside of the other's. The windows to their souls are open now, connected by the red rope of destiny that forms a bridge between the two, one they'd both be willing to cross even while blind and going against the wind.
Their height difference doesn't matter, not like this with Neil trying to make himself as small as possible. Andrew frowns, and lost to his instincts, his gaze falls for a fraction of a second to Neil's stomach, hidden by his hoodie. No matter how short the gesture is, he notices, and Neil drives his hands to cover his torso, hugging himself in search of comfort. The tension goes even higher, and that's when it turns to be enough for Andrew.
“What do you want to do?”
The question is simple, and Neil has an answer for it. He's spent long hours lost in his lectures, not listening to the words coming out of his professors' mouths, more focused on thinking about his current state. He examined his own body from an external lens, imagining how it would look like if he laid himself down on a gurney and extracted his brain from his skull to dissect it and see what's inside. In its fluids, not an ounce of dysphoria or discomfort could be found; only fear, of not being able to give his child a good life, thanks to the defects in his own childhood and his long history of being a big mess, but he's not unhappy with the thought of giving birth to a baby that would be his forever.
What's not easy is to say all of that out loud, in front of the love of his life, who could decide to not stay by his side. He would never force Andrew through something he didn't want, but he needed to admit, at least to himself, that him deciding that he didn't want to accompany Neil through his decision would break him a little bit inside, taking with him a piece of him that could never be filled again.
But he won't let himself be like them, and so, he wants him to choose for himself.
“Andrew if you don't want to-” Neil tries to say, with his mind made up to accept whatever his response could be, but Andrew cuts him at the middle of the sentence, while he brings up his hands to rub Neil's cheeks in a soothing motion with his fingers.
"Listen to me," he lays out, making direct eye contact with him to accentuate the words coming out of his mouth, the hazel managing to slow down Neil's pulse to a calm rhythm. "Between the two of us, you're the one who's carrying a living thing in his womb. If you decide that you don't want to go through it, now or ever, then we'll find a way to book an appointment and get rid of it as soon as possible."
Andrew takes a few deep breaths and he gulps, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue and interlacing his fingers in between Neil's auburn curls at the back of his neck; such an act of humanity, so vulnerable, shows Neil how he too is as nervous as him, even behind his usual stoic image.
Neil closes his eyes, nodding at Andrew. "And if I want to keep it?" he whispers.
As a couple of fingers brush his bangs out of the way, a pair of lips come up to his forehead to leave a subtle kiss over his skin, an action that they both have learned that doesn't need for a previous question to be made, because of its innocence and simplicity. The notion makes Neil open his eyes again, a soft smile forming in his face when he finds only warmth in his partners' gaze.
"Then I'll stay with you during the whole path, Neil."
Maybe it's the hormonal changes, or the pent-up tension in his body being suddenly liberated and flowing out of him, but Neil doesn't think he's ever cried this much, not since he's had memory. The tears fall down for what seems to be the ninth time in a few minutes, and Andrew dries each one of them with one hand in his face, while with his other one he grabs Neil's waist, holding him like he's something to be treasured.
"Yes or no?" Andrew asks. Guided by Neil's enthusiastic affirmative, he connects their lips, communicating through the kiss all of his love and the determination to make this right.
Neil once told them that it's not the world that's cruel, but the people in it, and he stands by what he said. He's been hit, kicked and burnt, and almost didn't come out alive out of his first year in Palmetto, while Andrew's seen terrors that Neil can't even imagine, and which still haunt him on nights where the line between reality and memories turns blurry, hard to distinguish; but at the end, they survived everything that has happened to them, and they've been led to this moment.
It may've been faith, luck, a random array of sequences, or a perfectly curated time line created by a higher god. No matter what, they came out of it alive, barely scraping by at some points, but alive anyway. The path to healing wasn't easy, and even after years of therapy —because Neil had finally accepted to ask for help, even if Betsy still weirded him out most of the time—, they managed to reach a point where most days were good, even if a bad one intercepted their routine from time to time.
Boundaries clear and their feelings more interconnected than ever, Neil has hope, not only on both of them but on their closest ones, the family that they'd managed to form over the years, even if some of them had already left to go on with their individual lies. A whole community is behind them and Neil trusts them to be by their side, supporting them in every step to assure that their kid would never qualify to be apart of the Foxes like they were made to.
In the early steps they take care of the most important matters while trying at the same time to keep Neil safe and healthy, even if the stress of everything tries to get to him when he's unaware and with low defenses.
Ichirou, the one who could mean the biggest danger to their life plans, accepted Neil's reassurance that their deal didn't need to be changed, and he would still go off to play in a Pro team once he left college, while also taking care of his kid.
Against his wishes, Andrew offered to take his role if anything arised in the way and Neil wasn't able to fulfill his part in giving the Moriyama's their desired money, and as soon as they received Ichirou's nod, Neil was already forming the words in his mind to bite at Andrew as soon as they were out of hearing range. His new sensibility mixed with the rage he felt inside of him every time he thought about the implications of his loved ones being perceived by the people who owned him didn't form a good reaction, more like the opposite.
That day ended up with what was probably the biggest discussion they'd ever had, but it was one only fueled by worry for the other one, so they resolved their differences not much later. Andrew didn't take his word back, and even if Neil despised him getting in shooting range just for his sake, deeply inside he understood what drove him to do what he did, because he would do the same if their roles were to be inverted.
With that out of the way, and already having announced his pregnancy to the Foxes, including Wymack, Abby and Betsy, Neil was given a break from the team, even if it hurt to leave aside the sport that had given him so much life the last few years and during the run. For his safety, he couldn't take part in such a rough activity that asked for constant contact with racquets and other bodies, and even crashing into walls in full force. Not even Kevin would let him enter the court, and that fact alone was enough to show how serious it was.
His legs ached most of the time, not only from the changes in his body that drove him to having to ride out cramps and swelling constantly, but also from the itch to go on a run for hours and hours, like he used to enjoy so much. No matter how much he walked around campus and their dorm, going to his lectures by foot even if every day he was offered a ride, he couldn't brush off the restlessness that invaded him.
He can't appease it with a cigarette either, not even the second hand smoke of one, because as soon as he told Andrew the news, he quit smoking completely. Out of the blue and directly the next day, by the time Neil woke up —pretty late based on his usual routine, because the weight of the emotionally charged conversation had left him exhausted—, all of their packs were already in the trashcan, waiting to be thrown out.
Andrew didn't say much about it, because in his words 'there was nothing to explain', and Neil didn't question it. Instead, he went and bought an array of different brands of lollipops of all the flavors available in the store, and started handing them out to Andrew as soon as he noticed the smallest twitch of his hands, compromised by the abstinence. But even if it kept him entertained, it wasn't enough to appease him, and they both knew it.
It's gotten to the point where, to keep him in place, Andrew has taken to a new activity, one that Neil never expected from him but accepts altogether.
On their couch, with Neil under him, stomach facing up and uncovered, Andrew lays down a little lower right in between his legs, and spends what feels like hours admiring Neil's belly. At first he only rubbed the skin there, under Neil's attentive gaze, with his calloused hands covered in a cream that the girls gifted him meant for the stretchmarks, talking about whatever came to their minds. Topics like the apocalypse, natural disasters and superheroes never got old between them, even if they sometimes felt the lack of Renee in them. The TV was usually on besides them, accompanying their voices with the various sounds coming out of it, lulling them into a relaxed state, in a trance dedicated only for the two of them.
But with time, he started getting more comfortable. Neil doesn't know where he got the idea from, or what changed in Andrew to drive him to do it, but one afternoon, while they laid bathing in the rays of sun and enjoying the calm, he spoke a couple of almost muted words.
Not to Neil, but to his belly, to their kid cocooned inside of it.
Neil would never forget the rush of dopamine that he got from the small act, goosebumps rising in his skin and all of the blood flowing to his ears, that burnt with love and admiration. Andrew, always so tuned to him, sensed his happiness and from then and on, never ceased to talk to their baby.
He talks to them about whatever he wants to; a weird bird he saw outside, how much he 'hates' their other dad —five hundred and growing, junkie—, a stupid comment that almost drove him to nuke Kevin, and so on. Sometimes, if the day was dark and the clouds were pattering a slow rhythm into the windows, he'd tell them about little memories from his childhood, the few that weren't tainted or depressing.
And on very infrequent occasions, so little that Neil could count them with the fingers of his two hands, when the lights were turned off and instead of the couch they were resting on their bed, protected by four walls and the lock of their door, he whispered a song, one that Neil didn't know the name of.
Neil never commented on it, his usual smart mouth driven into silence during those moments, and instead allowed Andrew the privacy that he deserved. He closed his eyes while Andrew laid his cheek on his belly and skin to skin, felt how with every line he recited, an enthusiastic kick was given to him as an answer and a motivation for him to keep singing.
If Andrew thought anything in particular about it he didn't say it, but what Neil couldn't ignore, was how every time it happened, a singular cold tear would wet his belly, and the last thing he'd feel before falling prisoner to the lands of dreams would be his partner's soft smile, shown only in the dark nights, because they would be fine.