Archive of Our Own

Sometimes, Andrew thinks in ichor. The tension of thought like the tension of bleeding immortality and the discharge of a wound. The moment of glory after the break. The moment of agony in it. 

Inevitably it all leads back to the boy beside him. 

There’s ichor in the blades of a lowering sun that cut between the trees, ichor in the sound of Neil’s laugh responding to the sort of dry humour no one else understands on Andrew’s tongue. There’s ichor in the way Neil makes him feel immortal. In the way Neil looks immortal; memorialised in smiles no one else gets to see and the weight of a mouth holy against his. 

Neil feels like religion, sometimes. Like ichor and nectar and the way it feels to sink onto your knees in complete devotion. Sometimes, Andrew feels like a confessional. Sometimes, Neil’s touch is absolution. 

There’s ichor in the way Neil’s lips are still swollen from their roadside pit stop. A biting kiss turning bruising turning tender turning Andrew’s heart in Neil’s hands and pulling back like stopping just before stepping off the edge.

Ichor in the way his heart beats like it will never stop.

“Seatbelt,” Andrew chastises. 

Neil twists in his seat, the opposite of how Andrew wants him to, crosses his legs at the ankle and leans back to the door, heart over the centre console. 

“Neil.”

Neil grins. “Andrew.”

There’s no one else on the road this late. Andrew switches lanes only after a precautionary look all the same; Neil is in the car with him. 

The look he levers Neil’s way is all the repetition Andrew needs to offer. 

“I thought,” Neil teases, back coming off the door to lean himself up against the edge of Andrew’s personal space. Not getting close enough to warrant a step back, not getting close enough to intrude. Andrew wants to reach out and tug him closer, holds the wheel tighter instead. “You said I shouldn’t be so afraid to die.”

Andrew checks the rearview, the smile on Neil’s face. Thinks about how easy it would be to pull over and kiss him stupid all over again. Neil can’t talk shit if his tongue is busy with other things. 

“Can’t get mad at me for taking your advice.”

Andrew taps the brakes, enough the car reacts and Neil has to catch himself with a wild hand against the dashboard. Crossed legs don’t bode well for helping him stand his ground against Andrew. 

Neil’s countenance dances in shades of shock and amusement, a swell of astonished glee and the sort of infatuation Andrew would break his bones to hold closer. He lets himself smirk, angles a pointed look at Neil who reflects every bit of the fizzing playfulness in Andrew’s blood. 

“Seatbelt.”

Neil laughs.

Playful.

Who would have thought Andrew might ever be capable of this?

Neil’s smile pulls the scars on his face out of order, casts the streetlight shadows in a mockery of nighttime. He’s the brightest thing Andrew’s ever seen.

“You ignore me often enough,” Andrew muses.

Neil rolls his eyes, mouth opening to continue the fight even as he twists to plant his feet on the floor and reach his fingers to hook on the seatbelt in defeat.  

“Name one time I’ve done that.”

The streetlight ahead of them flickered out, snapped back on. One time. 

“Sunday, 7:12 am. I said: ‘Neil take your phone’, you said: ‘sure’. Sunday, 10:47 am, your phone is on the table and you are?”

Neil protests, back of the throat half whine. Andrew fights not to transpose the sound half an hour back, the press of the car’s hood on the back of his thighs. “That doesn’t count–”

Andrew kept talking, Neil’s tongue bite and grin easy. “Sitting at the side of the road with a sprained ankle.”

“It’s not sprained,” he argued. “It’s just–”

“Sprained.”

Andrew revs the engine, jerks the car forward so Neil has to plant his feet not to slide and lifts a brow at the wince.

“It’s sore,” he argues.

The engine rumbles a final warning and Andrew holds Neil’s stare as best as he can when he’s going 95 and checking the stretch of road before him to keep them safe. 

He’s tugging the seatbelt slowly, the edges of his pout fighting him. Clever blue eyes on Andrew like a spotlight and all Andrew can do is stare out the windshield and keep them steady on course while steadfastly ignoring his rabbit’s teasing. 

This is how Andrew plays; ignorance that Neil knows he’s never really known, a sharp bite and the soothe of a kiss following it. Affection in sharp teeth and armoured words and the tension of pressing up against gentle things without touching them.

“Neil,” Andrew warns, watching slow hands and clever fingers and a belt that’s still not clicking even if it long since should have. 

His peripheral teases him with the curl of Neil’s smirk and he wants to look, wants to see and to trace and to– 

“Andrew,” Neil echoes.

Andrew holds steady, holds the steering wheel. The streetlights end just around the bend, Andrew turns the wheel towards darker streets and trusts in the light of Neil’s smile. Trusts in the way he knows his way home. 

There’s nightsong and the engine, Neil’s fingers tracing the edge of the seatbelt buckle like he’s expecting it to feel like something else. The lights fade behind them and the road bends away from what’s left of it. 

“Neil, seatbelt,” Andrew repeats, head slanting to the side.

Neil’s not looking at him anymore, head turned to the window and his shoulder tight like they shouldn’t be. Tight like there’s a–

Neil drops the seatbelt, twists a little. “Drew.”

There’s a light.

Andrew blinks, foot on a brake that’s not going to save them now, and the world changes to the siren-scream of warping metal, pop and hollow twist, changes on the coin-flip steady beat of a truck catching the Mas from the back corner. 

Tires on asphalt sound a little like open wounds. 

It’s not fast. Andrew’s going 95, that truck had to be going 130 at least. Blink and you’ll miss it speeds, but it’s slow. 

It’s grind and shatter, Andrew feels his teeth the same way he feels his heart, feels the mistake he’s making but he’s body locked and tight and there’s no taking his foot off the brake now. 

He goes forward hard, meets the airbag halfway and closes his eyes before he can see what happens next.

Neil isn’t wearing his seatbelt. 

Andrew doesn’t see what happens next.

The radio is playing and he opens his eyes to the airbag. The radio is playing and the Mas is hissing. The radio is playing and Andrew’s chest hurts. Seatbelt bruise and the tension of exhaling without an inhale. 

Neil never put his seatbelt on. 

The passenger seat is empty.

Andrew flinches with airbag hisses, slow blinks as it deflates. 

Blink and–

What did he miss?

Andrew crashed the last car he wrecked. Grabbed the wheel and pulled and the whole thing flipped. Ferris wheel barrel rolls and his entire world like a spinning top. He hit the back of his head that time, closed his eyes on Tilda’s blank gaze and didn’t know anything else until he knew the way sedatives felt heavy under his skin in a hospital bed. 

He didn’t crash this time.

He didn’t think it was any less intentional.

The windshield is shattered and bloody. Is a stained mosaic and funeral pyre waiting to be burned. Is a warning sign and desperate cry.

Neil never put his seatbelt on. 

Andrew’s seatbelt fights him, holds him down long enough for handprint panic stutters on the act of unbuckling, unfathomable thing. 

The car is still running, dings and dings until it echoes like a ricochet and Andrew falls out of the door. 

He thinks hands and knees and devotion, he thinks shattered glass and the blur of dark streets and darker thoughts, he thinks about light and home and matching sets of keys.

Andrew crawls from the Mas like a wounded dog and he feels like little more than that. 

Neil’s not in the passenger seat. Neil’s not next to him. Neil’s not–

Andrew rounds the car, cuts his palms on glass shards and salvation that’s been shattered in the way of church windows and abandoned boys. 

Cuts himself in the pursuit of holding on.

Wanting. 

Andrew bleeds on asphalt and keeps going.

“Neil,” he calls. 

Calling is a quiet thing. Dark street and dark smears in the shine of the Mas’ headlights. There’s no other car hanging around. Hit and run and run.

Andrew’s chest feels like it's caving around the letters of Neil’s name, feels like his entire body is bending around letters that feel more like home than any house he’s been in. His world is red stained and messy and he thinks maybe it should be his favourite colour if it’s the only one he’ll ever know.

In the sixth grade they had a group come to their school and talk about the violence of drunk driving. The wreck of a crash and the wreck of the lives after one. Andrew’s been in two car crashes now, and he’s been sober for both of them. 

Does that mean he’s wrecked too?

Is he the car wreck or the wreckage of lives? Is he–

The Mas’ lights are shitty. They’ve been shitty and Andrew’s been refusing to fix them. Neil’s never complained about them, but Andrew sees the way he shifts in his seat when it’s dark and they leave the streetlights. The way he pays a little more attention like two sets of eyes will help them react better than just the one.

Two sets of eyes saw headlights coming and neither set stopped them.

The Mas’ lights only reach about fifteen feet. Right at the edge there’s a dark puddle and a limp form and Andrew stutters under his own weight. 

Statistics. 

77.3 percent of car crash victims ejected in the incident don’t survive the crash. 

15.1 percent of the survivng crash ejection victims are permanantly incapacitated.

Either death now or death later then. Neil’s life is contingent on being an asset. On being capable. 

7.6 percent chance his rabbit walks away.

Not much walking now, Andrew crawling like he’s never learned how and Neil crumpled like a broken thing. The way the blood spills looks like moth wings. Damaged little creature. 

Andrew used to think that if you touched a moth’s wings it couldn’t fly anymore. He’d been told that in kindergarten, watched a little moth land on the toe of his shoe and held his breath because he was terrified he might blow away its magic dust and keep it trapped on the ground with him. 

You couldn’t, he learned. 

It didn’t matter much though. The next day the other boys in his class pinned the little thing and poked holes through its wings with a stick. Left them tattered and tortured and laughed when it tried to take flight anyway.

Andrew called it mercy when he stepped on it. 

Wondered if there was any mercy now.

Neil’s not moving enough. At all. Andrew can’t see if he’s breathing. His eyes are red-blurred and fuzzy and he has to hold his own breath to try and listen for Neil’s. Hears the car asking him to fasten his seatbelt and thinks about going through a car window. 

How fast did Neil hit the ground?

His outside is bleeding sluggish and heavy and there’s no telling in the half light if there’s anything worse. Andrew can’t see damage under the skin, can’t figure out how to see Neil properly at all just yet. 

He ducks his head close to Neil’s, face turned towards his chest.

It’s what you’re taught to do in a CPR class. Andrew skipped the safety assessment and he skipped A in the ABC’s but Neil’s breathing. Slow and short, little lifts of his chest and puffs against Andrew’s ear. 

His eyes are closed and Andrew would change his favourite colour to blue in a heartbeat if he could see them right now. It’s a deal he's willing to make. Sign on the dotted line. 

He thinks he might give anything for that.

“Neil,” Andrew tries.

He feels, stupidly, like the moth. Like he’s looking at the moth. Feels like he’s the junior kindergarten teacher who told him moths can’t fly without their magic dust and the little boy who held his breath so he wouldn’t break gentle things. 

Feels like a seven year old boy who learned that gentle things don’t belong in this world.

Neil is a gentle thing. Andrew wants to fix it.

When he touches Neil’s hair, his fingers come away wet and red. He thinks it almost looks gold.

Ichor. 

Even gods bleed.

“Neil.”

Here’s where Andrew stops. Here’s where the things Andrew knows how to do run dry and the things he doesn’t start. Here’s where Neil is on the ground and bleeding, moth wings and slow breaths and Andrew will never be able to forget this but he has to remember it first and it might just kill them both.

Andrew might just let it. 

He sits there at Neil’s side, counts his breaths and restarts every time he loses track of himself. It occurs to him then, hanging off the moth wings of hope, that he doesn’t remember how to exist in a world without Neil Josten. Andrew’s on his knees like a preacher bowed before a shrine and he’s praying he won’t have to relearn the patterns of his breathing when they’re not timed to the heartbeat of a martyr.

He sees the lights before he hears the sirens. It shouldn’t work like that. He should’ve heard them coming long before they got close enough for him to see them. He should’ve called them himself instead of–

Who called them?

Andrew can hear the car’s seatbelt alarm system dinging still. He doesn’t know how to tell it that he’s not in the car anymore. Doesn’t know how to do anything except try to remember how many breaths Neil’s taken since he forgot to count them. Except following the ambulance lights while the siren chases after him. 

Neil’s still breathing.

It’s all Andrew thinks he knows.

Ambulance song and moth wings like heartbeats. There are three paramedics. One opens the double doors at the back. Neil inhales. One pivots on their heel like they’re searching, walkie to their mouth. Neil exhales. One comes straight towards Andrew and Neil.

Andrew holds his breath. 

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Andrew thinks in ichor. The scream of tires and the chime of shattering glass. Hit from behind and sent half-bathed in blood to his knees.

“He went through the window,” Andrew says. Slurs. His letters don’t sound the way they’re supposed to. His mouth doesn’t feel like it belongs to him entirely.

“How fast were you moving?”

95.

Andrew blinks, sees the dashboard and the speedometer, feels his foot lock on the brake. Is that what sent Neil through the glass? Objects in motion. Did he–

“Sir,” the paramedic calls. “Can you tell me anything about your friend's condition?”

Friend’s a stupid word. 

Neil’s not his friend, Andrew doesn’t even think he has any friends. He’s got Nicky and Aaron and Kevin and they’re not…that. And the Foxes are– Neil’s friends maybe but not–

Friends.

“Sir?”

“Not friends,” Andrew mutters. There’s a dashboard and a cut of white and red lights, there’s his hand tangled in a bloodsoaked sleeve and a paramedic getting–

Too close. 

She seems to understand, pulls her reaching arm back into herself when Andrew’s attention focuses on it like a viper. He feels snake fangs in his throat and poison slowing the heavy beat of his heart. Too slow. Too slow. 

Too fast. 

No magic dust to save him.

Crash landing steadily approach–

“Okay,” she agrees. “That’s okay. I need you to let me look at him for a while okay?”

She crouches low, has been crouching, shifts her weight in her thighs and how long have they been on the ground? How long since smash and shatter and seep. Andrew wants to close his eyes and open them in a tomorrow where Neil’s got his wings back and things aren’t so bloody. Can’t close his eyes. 

Andrew feels.

It’s an unpleasant thing.

Feels the spaces where things are misplaced and broken, wings torn from his back and Neil’s back and he blinks and there’s a part of him on the asphalt. He’s blood-headed and blue-boned and what is he supposed to do if–

Too close.

“No,” Andrew slurs, the second paramedic taking one of Neil’s wrists and starting to count out a pulse. There’s a sloppy reach to stop him, the female paramedic blocking Andrew’s attempt with a hand hovering in front of him. “Don’t, hey stop.”

“Sir,” she calls, not touching him. 

They won’t touch him but they keep touching Neil. They can’t just–

“Don’ touch ‘im,” Andrew warns. It doesn’t sound like a threat the way he wants it too. “Stop.” His knives are–

At home. His knives are at home because he’s never needed them when they go for rides. He’s never needed to protect himself from Neil or–

You don’t hit someone going 95 from behind unless you’re going a hell of a lot faster.

You don’t hit someone going 95 from behind unless you’re trying to.

Where’s the–

There’s no other car. 

Two sets of tire tracks burnt into the road. Enough shattered and warped metal to put the damaged bits of the Mas back together and have more. 

Hit and run and run and run and–

If Andrew had his knives he’d–

Be just as useless as he is now. Held back by a single paramedic and her hand floating in front of him. Held back when there’s two–

Andrew lunges the best he can, knocks himself right into the extended arm held out like a barricade. Twist and roll, they’ve got hands on Neil’s shoulders, hands on his waist. Hand on–

“Hey it’s okay,” the female paramedic rushes. “They’re helping him. They’ve gotta get him up in the ambo, okay? He’s–”

“Can’t–” Andrew doesn’t know how to explain this. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say anything when his words are slipping away from him between slow blinks of red and white the the distinct phantom touch of blue that’s not there. It’s not there. He’s not– “Neil–”

“Is that your name?”

“No. I–”

“Him?” she asks. “His name is Neil?” The world nods like maybe Andrew did it first. “That’s good. Can you tell me yours?”

“I–” Andrew rocks forward with the lift of Neil’s body. Tries to crawl past the arm still bracketing him into place on his knees. On his–

Fuck he hoped Renee had prayed enough for both of them. 

“Minyard?” the paramedic called. “Is that your name?”

Andrew can’t not look at Neil. Can’t not struggle to get to his feet. Can’t not catch desperate and snarling on the arm that tries to catch him. 

He’s wearing his team sweater. Has his name branded on–

“I have to–”

Can’t look away from Neil. Eyes on the– he looked away once and he almost never got to look again. Riot lights look like red and white and the sing-song of an ambulance never turned off. Sirens like a warning. Screaming after the car that–

Can’t hit a car going 95 from behind unless you want to.

Try to.

Intentional.

They’re trying to take Neil away from him.

They’re trying to take–

“Can you walk? I’m afraid our only option is rideshare so–”

Andrew’s unsteady on his feet. Unsteady in himself. 

Doesn't matter. Neil’s–

Paramedical hands on him. Neil on the bed. Not bed. Cot? On the–

Andrew can’t step up, doctors gloves snap and there’s teeth on his forearms. Neil needs–

He can climb. 

Used to climb trees so he could fall out of them. Fragile little boy. He thinks maybe that was his first way of hurting himself. 

He climbs now, hands planted thighs pressing. Up and up and up. 

He feels, absurdly, like he’s walking on a tightrope. Like he’d followed Neil up and up and up and now he’s standing right at the top, wire swaying underfoot and Neil’s been stripped away from him. Stains chewed out by bleach. Stains like handprints.

They won’t stop touching Neil.

Two sets of hands and wires crossed. Andrew thinks he’s sitting. Feels the world shift around him. Moving too fast to keep up. Too slow to save them. Too fast, too much. 

Not enough.

Andrew stumbles to his feet, trips and catches himself on a heart monitor laughing Neil’s name in the echo. 

“You need to sit down,” someone says.

Andrew needs to sit down. 

He’s up up and up and Neil is–

Through the glass. There’s a reason Alice had to come back. Can’t stay through the glass, can’t just–

There are hands on Neil and there are hands on Andrew and you don’t hit a car going 95 unless you’re really trying to and Neil is–

The heart monitor laughs until it screams and Neil isn’t breathing.

Pinprick pain and shattered windows like shattered hearts. 

How do you put them back together?

Up up up.

Andrew falls.

Andrew doesn’t have a perfect memory. 

It feels that way sometimes. When he blinks between breaths and can’t manage to forget the things he wants to. He remembers more than he doesn’t and he remembers with uncanny clarity. 

Hand and hearts and the way it feels to break underneath someone else and have to break yourself too so it feels a little less like losing. 

It’s not surrender if he always goes down fighting. 

But for all that his memory feels perfect, feels camera flash and immortalised, it isn’t. Not all the way.

Andrew wakes up—crawls and drags himself back into awareness, beats back fog thick enough he can watch it come back together when he slashes at it—and all he knows is the lull of medication under his skin.

And he panics.

Racecar quick and head in his throat where his heart should be. Shouldn’t. Where his–

See because Andrew’s memory isn’t perfect and it isn’t flawless, but it’s never quite this empty. Never quite this flawed and gaping and–

Never quite been ‘here’s a stretch of space that you know how to fill and won’t be able to’. Never not trigger ready and willing to bend and warp and twist until he can’t get away. He feels like he can’t get away. Like he’s missing something and it’s heavy enough he has to stay. 

He’s medication slow and flawed where he’s never been flawless but hasn’t ever been this damaged. He’s medication slow and he’s not smiling but there’s–

Foot scuff and scoff. 

Andrew’s eyes are open to the ceiling but they open to the side now, to stiff chair and the cross and bleed of a brother in the wrong light. Brother a foul term on Andrew’s tongue but a blessed thing to his heart.

Aaron.

And if Aaron’s here then–

Medication empty. That’s what Andrew is. Medication empty and lost and there’s something still Not Right and he doesn’t know and he needs to figure it out but if Aaron’s here then it can’t be–

Shouldn’t place his faith in Aaron. Andrew knows better than to have faith. Knows better than to trust that he has a brother. Knows better than to trust. 

Trusts something and he’s missing it and he’s medication heavy too. 

Aaron meets his gaze when Andrew forgets to look away and he’s medication slow but not stupid and Aaron looks cruel like that. Aaron looks like Andrew with the apathy of his face and Aaron looks like Andrew with a shade of feral anger in his eyes and a cut curl to his lips like a violent thing and–

“Did Josten piss you off like mom did?” Aaron asks. In, out, shatter. Andrew killed Tilda and– “You should find a better way to solve your problems, brother, this ones getting a bit expensive.”

You don’t hit a car going 95 from behind unless–

Andrew can’t hear the heave and hiss of his own breaths over the way Neil’s heart sounds when it's screaming a flatline in the ambulance. Can’t hear whatever else cruel thing Aaron is sneering on about over the pinch and prick of a sedative in his arm and the whine of a defibrillator that lifts Neil chest up and violently drops him back down and his heart still isn’t beating and–

Andrew doesn’t know if his heart knows how to beat if it’s not set to the same tempo as Neil’s. Andrew doesn’t know if he can still–

“None of this medical stuff makes any sense to me,” Nicky complains, the door swinging open and his eyes down on his phone. “No clue what it means. Anyway, I ran into Wymack in the hall he was grabbing coffee and he was just on the phone with Abby; it’s so stupid that they’re only letting her back and no one else.” Nicky moves to tuck his phone away, closing the door with his foot, pulling his phone back out. “But! She said that Neil was awake for a little bit, and that’s good right? The doctor was doing something to his breathing tube or whatever, the one in his throat? Is it called that?” Aaron doesn’t answer and Nicky pouts at him for less than a handful of seconds before trudging on his tangential relay of information. 

Andrew thinks his heart is going to shatter. Thinks that maybe it already has. Breathing tube? He tries to swallow back silence and breathe himself. Neil’s breathing. Not on his own but–

“Doesn’t matter, he was up for a bit but not lucid, and now he’s asleep again. And Abby says that’s a good thing?” Nicky doesn’t sound convinced. “Is it? I feel like the more he’s asleep the more worried I’d be but she told Wymack that it’s a good thing because he’s resting and well, you know Neil never stops to rest so I guess it is a good thing, he could use the sleep at least, but Abby says even if he wasn’t really lucid waking up for a bit shows good cognitive response? And I don’t know what that means but Wymack said something about his smart mouth being intact so I guess it’s–”

Andrew’s silence shatters on the precipice of asking. Tips and teeters off the edge until it’s shards and sharps in the shake and quiver of a question already answered. He can’t help asking anyway. Can’t help double checking. 

It’s too important an answer to be assumed. 

“He’s not dead?”

Neil’s not dead.

Andrew can’t say his name. Doesn’t know why. Nicky’s been saying it and that’s fine, but it gets stuck in his throat and it won’t come out and he thinks about the bitter lick of saying it when Neil’s not there to answer. Thinks about Neil never answering again. 

Thinks he might be about to vomit. 

Nicky looks at Andrew, expression convoluted. There’s an ache of easy relief and a silver flicker of grief. And there’s the rush and crumple of confused despair. Confused. 

“Why would you think–” 

And then Nicky looks at Aaron. Looks at the way Aaron looks so smug and stupid and the way his face looks like Andrew’s but oh so fucking wrong. Andrew looks at his brother and sees a stranger less familiar than the boy who came to meet him in a juvie cell. 

Andrew doesn’t know what he looks like, thinks about the devastation of collapsed caves and the creatures locked inside. Thinks he’s a collapsed cave and the creature locked inside himself. Hollow chest bleeding cracks of caverns and pebble stones. 

And Nicky looks from Andrew to Aaron and Nicky–

Nicky looks furious. 

Looks like– 

Andrew used to wonder, when he was little, where he got his anger from. He knows that a lot of it is a result of the pain he survived. A lot of it is the residual stains of growing into violence to keep violence from happening to him. But he knows too, that people are predisposed to a certain sort of nature. People are inclined to adapt in certain ways.

Then he met Tilda and he decided if he got his anger from her he didn’t want it. Took her out of the equation and chose to take his anger and name it something else. There’s nothing righteous about rage, but Andrew can pretend there’s something good in the way he uses it.

But now Nicky looks like thunder and holy storm and–

He wonders if he got it from Nicky. 

He wonders if it hasn’t ever really been anger. Hasn’t ever been righteous. Hasn’t ever been good. 

He wonders if it’s desperate and violent and if maybe it’s loyalty.

Andrew’s never seen Nicky angry like this. He’s never–

He has. 

He has he has he has and he’d never–

Nicky standing between the twins and his father with metal in his spine and the lift of his jaw a stone-carved and fought for thing. Nicky standing between the twins and his father with almost two decades of pain spilt between them and refusing to drop to his knees in the face of it. Nicky angry and angry and loyal.

Andrew’s never been protected before. Not until Neil. He’s never had someone stand between him and–

And he thinks that he’s been lying. 

He thinks that he’s wrong.

Nicky.

Angry and loyal.

Andrew thinks maybe his anger isn’t such a terrible thing if it comes from Nicky.

“Nicky–” Andrew mumbles. 

“Out.” 

Andrew blinks, watching his twin mirror the motion. 

“What?” Aaron stalls. Reboot, restart. Reconfigure your windows to comprehend–

Shattered windows. 

Broken glass looks like night stars in the daytime. Looks like–

“I said out,” Nicky repeated. “Now, Aaron.”

Nicky, when he first brought the twins home, was a timid whisper and an offered hand too easily swatted away. Was a breeze in the grass and a non-threat. 

He wasn’t that now.

Aaron falters still, slack-jawed and silent. Falters and falls and Andrew thinks maybe he’s feeling as untethered as Andrew is. 

Maybe they are twins. 

Nicky takes a step forward and Aaron scrambles like there are dangerous things here. Like Nicky is a dangerous thing. Aaron looks at Andrew like Nicky’s a dangerous thing and Andrew’s meant to stop him. And Andrew looks away.

The door shuts and Andrew flinches. Hospital beds and an IV in his arm. Medication slow means he forgets he’s alone until he hears Nicky hissing in the hallway.

Means he hears “You fucking ass, what if it was Katelyn?” and he can’t stop the traitor skip of his heart and the fleeting thought that sticks.

The question is absurd. What if it was Katelyn? Katelyn is some dumb cheerleader with half a shot at a decent medical career and Neil is everything. Neil is–

“How could you say that to him?”

Did Josten piss you off like mom did? Did Josten piss you off like mom did? Did Josten–

“He killed my mom, Nicky.”

–piss you off like mom did? Did Josten piss you off like mom did? Did Josten piss you off–

“She was killing you,” Nicky hissed. “If I was here, I would have helped him.”

–like mom did?

Andrew never went through the window. Watched Tilda climb halfway through in the twist and brake and slam and watched her bleed. Blinked too slow to catch Neil and found him limp and red and half-breath heart beats.

Andrew should have gone through the–

Nicky opens the door and Aaron doesn’t follow him in. 

“Hey,” Nicky mutters, door shutting and steps carrying slow and easy to Aaron’s abandoned chair. “Neil’s okay, Andrew.”

Andrew is questions and answers and he’s neither and there is a chasm that’s trying to fill itself unsuccessfully. Nicky has a shovel and a rope and Andrew’s not sure which one he likes better. 

“Your poor car though,” Nicky winces. “She’s not so okay. I don’t know where you got the money for the Mas the first time but good luck getting it again I guess. I don’t know much because I’m not on the insurance paperwork which, rude by the way, hurts my ancient little heart, but they gave me a brief outline of repair costs and I know Wymack said the school would foot part of the medical bill since you’re both athletes and they need you in prime condition but–” Nicky talks and Andrew closes his eyes and listens. 

He’s medication heavy enough that he forgets his eyes are closed before he falls asleep.

He wakes up slower this time, but medication free. Wakes up stiff-jointed and aching and it’s an altogether unpleasant thing, but it’s more welcomed than the hum and slide of medication in his blood. More welcome than the uneasy blur of missing things because he’s too slowed down and up high to catch them all. 

He clocks the changes in the room, not half as fast as he should, not half as slow as he might have.

Nicky’s gone, Aaron never came back. 

Wymack’s in the chair now. Trace smoke and the steady weight of a signature copied on several documents. 

Wymack who’s a direct link to Neil.

He’s bare armed and heavy, tied up and tied down and his bones won’t move the right way when he tried to sit up, get up, stop–

“Stay in that fucking bed, Minyard.”

Well that’s not happening.

His arm gives out and he’s half collapsed on the bed. Body weight drags him down and desperation holds him up. He feels like a marionette with broken strings and he wants Neil.

“You look like a fucking idiot,” Wymack grumbles.

Andrew throws a scowl at closed eyes and nearly hisses. “You’re blind, old fuck.”

Wymack cracks an eye open and lifts a brow like a mocking thing. “You still look like an idiot.”

There’s more to worry about than a scathing glare he can’t offer. Andrew’s bandaged to shit and he’s aching in a way that he knows won’t lend well to any sort of fury. Wymack won’t look at his scowl and see rage, he’ll look at it and see…

Everything else.

His shoulders twist and scream, bare arms scratch against the sheets.

Nicky would have reached for Andrew.

Wymack doesn’t.

Andrew sits up.

“Here,” Wymack offers, not an extended hand but a sweater and Andrew hadn’t noticed the curl of his arms into his chest until there’s a bundle of black and orange deposited on the edge of the cot. 

10.

Andrew holds on and pretends he never let go. 

If he closes his eyes maybe he never did.

Blink and miss it. Sedation slow and car crash quick. Andrew’s hands curl into Neil’s sweater and there’s a question in his throat only after there’s a burn in his–

“He’s fine, by the way,” Wymack mused. “It took a bit of convincing but the staff let Abby go back and sit with him since she’s a registered medical practitioner and he’s… well it’s not like he’s got any family to contact.”

Andrew wants the sweater on. He wants it on and around him and he wants to close his eyes and pretend that he can smell Neil because Neil’s here, with him, safe. He wants–

“She’s keeping me updated with every change,” Wymack continued. “It’s a bit much, but… better than not knowing.”

Not knowing–

Smash and shatter. Red and blue and Andrew misses the colour of Neil’s smile. Thinks about ichor and chokes on mouthfuls of it. He wants the sweater on. He wants–

“Doc said your shoulders are fucked,” Wymack mused. “Might be hard to get that on yourself if you get cold.”

Andrew strangles the sound that rises in his throat. Strangles the hopeful bastard limping around in his heart. Strangles his heart too.

He wants–

“Here,” Wymack offers, hand out and disinterest in his eyes.

It’s easy to pretend it’s not half so demeaning when Wymack looks like he couldn’t possibly care less. 

Letting go doesn’t feel so bad when he gets to be held.

Andrew gets his own arms through the sleeves and Wymack doesn’t touch him once. Holds the hem of the sweater wide and furrows his brow when Andrew flinches ducking his head. Doesn’t touch him, doesn’t help him. Holds and waits and then Andrew’s–

It’s not Neil, but it’s not nothing either. Not shattered glass memories and flatline fractures in his heart. 

“He’s still intubated,” Wymack says as he settles. Andrew back against the pillows and Wymack back against his chair. Back against– “There was a perforation in his left lung and some serious swelling in the–” Wymack gestured at his neck vaguely. “Windpipe thing. Abby says it was the right call, but they’ll be looking to get him off of that soon. He seems like he’s breathing on his own now.”

Andrew’s not sure he’s breathing on his own. Not entirely convinced that the rise and fall of his chest isn’t prompted by the swaddle of a stolen sweater and the rub of orange stitching against black fabric. In. Out. Try to hold onto the memory of how it feels to–

Try to remember that there’s still something to hold on to.

Letting go and holding on and glass shards in his palms.

They took those away from him, left him with gauze pads and a swath of medical tape holding it down.

“Anyway, your boy broke a couple bones and did his damnedest to fill a goddamn kiddie pool with his own blood, but he’ll be fine,” Wymack grumbled. “Benched for the rest of the fucking season, but fine. I’ll forward you the breakdown of his chart Abby sent me. It could have been a lot worse.”

Andrew sounds like tires skinned on asphalt and his chest strangled by a seatbelt. He thinks his collar bone might be fractured. “Doesn’t make it good.”

Wymack scoffs. “I think ‘not dead’ would be good enough.” There’s a long sigh and when Andrew looks Wymack’s got his head leaned back and his eyes shut again. Blinded to the rest of the room. “Fuck knows he’s been putting a good effort into digging his own grave. You should look into buying him a fucking leash.”

“And that’s meant to stop him?”

“A cage?” he offers instead.

Andrew sinks back into the pillows of the bed and grumbles to himself. Pretends it’s not relief in his chest. He’s angry. Very much that. Neil is stupid and ridiculous and Andrew is mad at him. Wants to put shattered windows back together so he can heave Neil back through them himself. Hit the brakes– “He’d break his teeth chewing on the fucking bars.”

“Are you sure he’s not a rabid pet?”

Rabbit and runaway. Andrew’s not entirely convinced Neil’s any better.

“Shut up.”

Wymack does. Without question. Shuts up and sits up and tosses a printed copy of Andrew’s own chart and he’s not going to ask any questions but he’s rather certain it’s at least a little illegal for Wymack to have a copy of it. 

He’s uninterested in himself, skims over the list because it’s better to know than not, crumples the page and starts on aiming it at the coach.

“Throw that paper at me and I’ll tell Abby to stop laying it on thick with the nursing staff,” Wymack warns. “Good luck seeing Josten then.”

Andrew scowls, tosses the paper ball in the trash instead.

It hurts to throw, but he thinks it hurts more that it misses. 

Andrew’s endeared a paramedic to himself. 

Somewhere between Neil’s name and the way he fell apart in the pursuit of putting Neil back together. He remembers hands that never quite touched him and the soft corners of eyes that seemed to understand the significance of standing still and holding on.

Andrew has no fucking clue who she is or where she’s gone but she’s told half the nursing staff about him and they sneak him extra servings of jello with the lunch tray they bring in. It’s all well and dandy, but he cares more about the potential extra permissions it gives him.

“The fucking luck,” Wymack had grumbled.

Andrew’s inclined to agree. 

The deal, struck between a nurse trying her damn best not to smile and negotiated through Wymack but by Abby, is an easy one for all that it isn’t.

Andrew can see Neil. But Andrew needs to get in the wheelchair first. 

That would be an easier process if his legs were feeling even moderately cooperative. 

“You have to get off the bed first,” Wymack muses.

The nurse holding the chair presses her lips in a firm line to keep herself in check, closes her eyes when Andrew demonstrates some nifty fine motor skills by flashing Wymack the middle finger. Is she getting paid extra for this? She probably should be. 

“Did that help?”

In through your nose, out through your mouth. 

If Andrew could fucking stand up–

“I could go and grab one of my male coworkers?” she offered, innocent question and a vile answer. Andrew’s lungs beat unsteady and there’s a hand pressing his mouth silent-shut.  “He might be able to help lift–”

“No,” Wymack interrupts, facade of detached pleasantries still intact even if Andrew’s blurry-eyed and wretched. 

His fists curl, the sleeves of Neil’s sweater and the bunch of hospital bed sheets. Andrew crawled bloody palms and broken ribs to get to Neil and he can’t just–

Stand up.

He just needs to stand up.

“Would you mind stepping out for a second?” Wymack asked.

The nurse—Andrew should know her name, she’d introduced herself he’d heard it, he should remember—havers for a moment between the crouch of behind the wheels and the space of the door, frowns in an overly concerned way that rolls in Andrew’s gut like a foul thing. 

“I’m not sure that’s…”

“Just a minute,” Wymack insists. “He’ll be ready to go when you’re back.”

She dawdles another moment still, breaths in Andrew lungs like ruined wings and the heartbeat of shattered glass and trying to take flight. Hello broken thing, did you forget you’re ruined? Andrew’s car crash and burn and–

The nurse steps out.

“Do you need me to turn around?”

Andrew stutters out of blurred pasts into a present he’s not sure he understands anymore. “What?”

“Oh my bad,” Wymack mused. “Figured it was performance anxiety.”

He tries for a scowl that misses the mark. He knows it does. Wymack’s too much lifted brow and amused shine for it to be effective. 

“I can get up.”

Wymack snorts. “That’s above my pay grade, Minyard.”

“Fuck you.” 

“So is that.”

Andrew grits his teeth and tightens his grip on the sweater, the bed, and himself. 

“Neil’s waiting,” Wymack reminds him, ever the helpful fuck. 

“I know.”

He pushes off the wall, three steps to stand behind the chair and brace it on his thighs, one breath to extend a hand palm up for offer. “Let’s go then.”

Bloody palmed and red light knees. Andrew swats Wymack’s hand away and takes it in the next second. 

He stands. 

Andrew likes to hold Neil’s hand when they drive. It’s entirely Neil’s fault and it’s a bad habit he’s gotten far too used to. He holds Neil’s hand over the cupholders and lets Neil piss around with the playlist order and drives until he’s dizzy with contact, until he has to pull over at the side of the road or in an empty parking lot and kiss his rabbit senseless. 

It’s like that, drenched in ichor and Neil and the moments where one becomes another, that Andrew forgets what it’s like to know he’s not going to live forever. He presses Neil body against body and the space between them forgotten in the crawl of fingers and tongues and the heat of hearts that beat like they’ll never stop. And Andrew never wants it to stop. Ichor and gods and religion in the way Neil tastes and sounds and moves–

Ichor’s still blood. Still open wounds and the leak that drools in rivulets across scarred bits of skin. Ichor’s still golden and golden and wrecked. 

Andrew’s heart feels like it might never stop beating and his world feels like it already has.

Andrew likes to hold Neil’s hand when they drive. It has the unfortunate consequence of reminding him that he’s alive. He’s alive and he’s alive and Neil is too and his heart feels like ichor does. Like the gods do. Andrew likes to hold Neil’s hand when they drive and sometimes when they sit in the beanbag chairs and sometimes when Neil’s trying to study and sometimes whenever they’re alone and sometimes even when they’re not.

Andrew hasn’t held Neil’s hand in long enough that the way his heart beats feels like he’s dying instead of living. Like he’s standing pitched at the edge of a roof and contemplating a particularly strong breeze. Like he’s–

Andrew wants to hold Neil’s hand again.

The door opens before Andrew can even think about asking it to and Abby’s waiting with red eyes but they’re dry now. No tears to be found, just lines of stress and forgotten sleep. 

At least, he thinks, there’s been someone looking out for Neil.

“Thank you,” Abby says to the nurse who’d wheeled Andrew here after all too smugly telling Wymack he couldn’t go any further with them. It’s a curt thanks, and Andrew wonders if Wymack’s already passed on the mildly abrasive exchange.

Andrew wonders a lot of shit and then he stops because Abby’s holding the door open enough the wheelchair can fit through and Andrew’s scooting his way in with slipping socks on tile and one hand on the left wheel. 

Sometimes Andrew thinks in ichor, and sometimes Andrew thinks in a mausoleum of god worship and tragedy.

Sometimes he doesn’t know the difference.

There’s no ichor in Neil’s hospital room, but hair splayed and sleeping he looks like Icarus. 

Broken boy who never knew how to live before his heart beats sounded like countdowns. Broken boy of moth wings and school yard secrets who never learned the difference between flying and falling. Broken boy who thought they were the same thing.

Moth wings of wax and ruin. No one ever gave Icarus the magic dust the moths had. No one ever told Neil he didn’t need to move so fast to earn the right to stand still.

You don’t hit someone going 95 from behind.

Foot on the brake.

Neil is Icarus young and moth wing wild and Andrew loves him. 

“I’ve sorted it so no one should bother you about being in here so long as you don’t cause a fuss,” Abby says. She’s puttering about the room, collecting a couple loose bits of belongings and stuffing them into her bag. He thinks it might be Bee’s bag actually. “I won’t be gone for long, but David’s been on my case about getting home to shower and eat something that’s not from the hospital cafeteria.”

For the first time Andrew hears the pulse of the heart monitor and the hiss of the tube fed down Neil’s throat. Hears the steps Abby’s taking around the room and the way they lead her up to him, hand hovering in the space near him until his chin dips in a confused nod. She settles her hand in his hair for a blinking moment of unflinching weakness and Andrew can’t manage to hate her for it. To hate himself. 

He–

“A couple hours, alright?” Abby says it like a question and Andrew knows it isn’t. He knows he could say no and she’d put her bag down and stay with him. “If you or Neil need anything I can be back in fifteen minutes, okay?”

Andrew nods like moth wings flutter and Icarus falls and Abby shuts the door behind her on the sound of nurse-gossip and ambulance screams. 

Neil’s still breathing. 

If Andrew thinks in ichor he can convince himself that means enough.

Neil chokes before he opens his eyes.

Andrew’s meant to be wheelchair bound and rule compliant to that but Neil’s bright blue and choking and Andrew’s car crash red. 

“Neil,” Andrew calls, crawling glass shard hands and broken ribs, crawling bruised and headlight silhouette. “Neil, stop.”

Blue and blue and blue. Andrew’s favourite fucking colour. Andrew’s favourite fucking thing. He’d bleed for blue. He’d break for blue. Open eyes and Neil.

Neil.

His throat works a desperate thing, wretched sounds and eyes locked on Andrew like a lifeline. What did that make Andrew? Sunlight and Apollo? Wing beats and heart beats and the heat of holding on?

Andrew isn’t letting go.

He heaves himself up on the bed, shaking arms and hollow lodged in his throat. Moth wings are paper thin and Andrew holds himself over Neil like they’re concrete strong and stable. His shoulders want to buckle but he’s got Neil under him now and Neil’s still choking on the thing that’s meant to keep him–

“Neil,” Andrew says. Neil and Neil and Neil and Neil. “Stop it. Use your head.” Andrew’s not strong enough to hold himself up with one arm, he’s not– He’s shoulders rotated enough to grind against the cartilage and ribs protesting the way he’s folded. He shifts his weight on one arm anyway, drops the other to curl a glass-shard palm around the back of Neil’s neck. “Breathe.”

Neil’s nostrils flare with the desperate heave of his chest and fuck Andrew has never seen something so stupidly beautiful in his life as that. Neil inhales. Blue eyes shine rainfall wet and Andrew’s hand tightens the best it knows how. Neil exhales. 

Andrew holds his breath. 

“That’s it,” he says, the closest to an assurance he knows how to get. Neil knows it, hears it, keeps his eyes steady on Andrew and breathes through his nose a little wildly. Breathes like he can’t catch his breath and Andrew isn’t sure how to fix–

Nurses and doctors and it feels like the paramedics are back again. Feels like ambulance lights and Neil’s blood on his hands and 95 down unlit roads. Headlights in the rearview. You don’t hit–

Someone tells Andrew to get off the bed, someone tries to–

Andrew moves, standing unsteady and newborn legs, keeps his hand on Neil’s neck and his eyes on blue. Someone’s saying something and Neil is panic bright and medication riots, is eyes going fuzzy with–

Eyes closed.

“What did you give him?”

The tension lingering in Neil’s neck leaves, heavy on Andrew’s hand and there’s someone trying to push him back. They’re trying to take–

“It’s just a sedative.” 

Andrew latches onto the voice, familiar like wheelchairs and concern unwarranted but understood. 

“It won’t last long, but we don’t want him fighting the intubation and doing any sort of damage to his trachea.” Hands mean Andrew has to lurch back, let go of Neil and hit the back of his knees on a wheelchair that tries to roll away. He sits before he falls and it feels like the same thing. “They’re going to take the tube out now–” body blocking his view, can’t see Neil, can’t– “Do you want to be taken out of the room for that?”

“No.”

Andrew’s never going to forget the way Neil looks unconscious and held down by one forearm braced on a broken collar. He’s never going to forget what it looks like to watch them take a tube out of–

Andrew’s memory isn’t perfect, but he won’t forget this. 

He wants to.

“That’s not how the game works.”

Andrew’s head tilts and Neil puts a valiant effort into shifting a casted leg aggressively enough to topple him. It’s not near enough and Andrew pretends to miss the scar-pull flicker of a wince in Neil’s expression. He turns mild eyes on his rabbit, glancing once at the cards folded precariously into Neil’s taped hand grip and settling in for the spar. “Says who?”

Neil’s eyes narrow and it’s a wild thing in Andrew’s chest. They’re battered boys balanced on a hospital bed that gives them both aches and they’re alive still. 

Neil takes naps he never used to and Andrew guards a door that opens every other hour for nursing staff and doctors and they’re alive. 

They’re also knee deep in a game neither of them ever got the chance to play as children. 

Better late, Andrew assumes.

“The internet,” Neil answers, challenge and challenge and delightful spark of hit the ground and get up shuffling along on broken bones until someone forces you to set them properly. 

Andrew expects no less from him. 

He remembers though, littler than he is now but not half so little as to think that moths had magic dust and wings that couldn’t truly be broken, sitting legs dangling in a computer lab and a lecture on internet safety. Hears now you have to be careful what you click on and–

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to believe what you read online?”

Neil squints at the cards in his hands like they’ve personally offended him, hardly shows a sign of being phased at all by Andrew’s teasing. 

Andrew’s teasing. 

He swallows bitter edges of shattered glass. Last time he let himself indulge in playful things he–

“They were busy teaching me how to throw knives at moving targets.”

Sharper than shattered glass. Neil’s always been the most lethal thing that Andrew’s had the chance to know, touch, have. Neil’s always been a deadlier thing than Andrew could dream to be and Neil’s never turned that kiss and kill on Andrew with any intent less than affectionate. Kiss and kiss and kiss. 

Andrew’s long since stopped waiting for the other half of the ruse. Long since stopped trying to convince himself that it’s a ruse at all. 

Kiss and kiss and–

Andrew has glass in his throat and reminds himself the kill isn’t coming. 

Not for either of them.

“Shame,” he muses, and Neil hears the change in his voice, eyes up and head tilting acknowledgement of it. Andrew holds his heart in his eyes and asks for the banter to continue on. Kiss and kiss and– Andrew wants to play. “Internet surfing is a more efficient use of time.”

“You think?”

Andrew grabs on and holds on, and Neil’s been talking a bit more every day. It was hard for him at first after thirty something hours of intubation and the rough and ruin of his throat after they pulled the tube out. 

Andrew’s taken up the reigns. Holds them steady even now, seven days after the end of intubation and Neil’s voice coming back in clarity and cracks. 

“I know these things, because I know how the internet works.”

Neil’s eyes roll and settle back onto his cards, bottom lip between his teeth. “Unlike me?”

Card tilt confirmation and the not-without-consequence nudge of a casted leg shoving ineffectively against Andrew. 

“Precisely.”

Neil smiles a golden thing; ichor and immortal. “Do you have a five?”

“Go Fish.”

“Oh fuck off,” Neil complains. “No fuckin’ chance. Let me see your cards.”

Andrew clicks his tongue to watch Neil’s jaw jump. “That’s cheating, Abram.”

“You’re lying to my face.” And he says it like he’s astonished. Good performance for a liar. Andrew’s never been a fool to him though, sees the amusement and feels the steady pulse of his heart like it won’t ever stop.

Andrew looks down at the five of hearts sitting in his hand, meets Neil’s stare with a deadpan challenge. “Prove it.”

There’s a look in Neil’s eyes like damnation and if his rabbit wasn’t casted ankle to hip on his left side Andrew thought he might have met it. 

Forty minutes found them both frowning at a website with euchre rules and scrolling half-defeated through.

“This is ridiculous,” Neil mutters, bit lip to smother the stretch of a yawn Andrew’s too attentive to miss. “Why are there so many exceptions to the rules?”

“You’d think,” Andrew muses. “That you’d enjoy that. Seeing as you don’t tend to abide by any set of rules anyway.”

“Rude.” Neil’s head slipped from its perch on his hands to drop on the pillow Andrew had braced underneath him. He doesn’t lift it, and Andrew settles his phone propped against the round of an unbroken skull. 

Shatter shatter–

Scroll.

Neil says something into the void of the pillow and Andrew hums his consolidation. Abstractions of sounds and a meaning inferred and accurate. 

There’s no one else in the room, there’s no one else coming to check on them for a fair while. 

There is a wheelchair with a leg prop fastened to the front and Andrew’s hankering for a little bit of mischief.

“Hey rabbit.”

Neil mutters unspoken sounds again and Andrew tucks a secret smile in the curls of Neil’s hair and he bends himself closer. 

“How rusty are those runaway skills of yours?”

Neil’s head doesn’t lift, not with the ghost breath of Andrew’s right there, but he turns one blue eye free of pillow-press and it’s shining like a siren-song in rapids. Andrew never learned how to swim. 

He’s willing to start now.

Neil grins.

Wrath of the nursing staff behind them, Wymack’s frustration looks like little more than a cool breeze in the heat and burn of midsummer. The coach crosses his arms, reorganises so he can scrub a hand over his face and holds it there like he can squeeze his temples and reset his memory. Andrew could probably–

Neil pinches his side and Andrew refuses to look at what that means. 

“I’d say I can’t believe the two of you would be so fuckin’ stupid, but then I’d be lying and I’ll be damned if I turn into Josten–”

Neil starts. “Hey!”

Wymack’s either gotta get to a doctor to get his hearing checked out or he’s gotten remarkably good at tuning them out over the past however many days. He doesn’t so much as stop to look Neil’s way, continuing on his that hand pinched over his expression and looking for all the world like he’d rather switch places with the broken fucking leg. 

Or maybe the rotator cuff Andrew had torn back into a sling. 

Or Neil’s newly christened third-grade concussion.

Or maybe–

Well.

“What I really can’t believe is that I was stupid enough to think leaving either of you unsupervised in a hospital with nothing to do was a good fuckin’ idea.”

Andrew scoffs a quiet. “I can believe it.”

“Can it, Minyard.”

Oh so now Wymack’s got working ears?

Well actually, no. Andrew can’t quite begrudge him for tuning out Neil’s bullshit actually–

“Yeah, Minyard. Can it.”

Andrew can blame Wymack. 

He can blame Neil too. 

Middle finger like a threat and Neil’s grin like a promise. 

“Fuck right off, rabbit.”

“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Wymack snaps. “This is a hospital, not a jungle gym. Sit on your damn asses like good little idiots or so help me I will pay the hospital staff double to keep you here for the rest of my life.”

Andrew hums, furrowing his brows like he’s suddenly been inspired to start emoting this late in life. “How long are you planning on living?”

“Josten, shut him up or you’re benched.”

“Wait hey!” Neil surges up from his recline against the pillows, cast jostling Andrew and hand grasp-and-tugging on Andrew’s sweatpants to find enough leverage. “That’s not–” he turns wide eyes on Andrew and oh this is a glorious moment isn’t it? “Drew, I will perform so many sexual favours.”

“Oh fuckin–”

Neil cackles when the door slams shut. 

“Drew,” Neil calls, secret-whisper sort of silent in the dark of the room.

It’s hard to see his rabbit in the dark like this. Hard to find him in and amongst the oddities of lights flashing from hospital machinery and the strange cast of shadows.

At the edge of fifteen foot headlights.

“You’re quiet.”

“Because it’s three in the morning, Neil.”

There’s a rustle of sheets. Andrew blinks and finds the milky white of eyes blinking back at him across the room. Not enough space for both of them in that hospital bed. Nowhere to go if a nightmare tries chasing them awake. 

He misses blue so suddenly he almost says it.

“Not that sort,” Neil denies. “You’re louder now really. ‘Cause I’m not.”

“That’s contradictory,” Andrew mutters. “Am I quiet or am I loud, rabbit, make up your mind.”

“You talk more,” Neil explains. “But you’re saying far less.”

Andrew rolls his back onto the thin mattress, blinks up at the ceiling to stop himself chasing shades of blue in a room too dark to find them.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Josten. You’ve got a concussion.”

“So do you,” Neil argues. 

Andrew won’t indulge that. Doesn’t. Stupid excuse from a stupid boy and Andrew’s stupidly gone and gotten himself attached. 

Stupid fucking–

“Neil,” Andrew calls, reaching across the silence and the space and waiting to find the bright eyed blue looking back at him. 

“Yeah?”

Andrew swallows tree branches littered in glass shards and the headlight in the rearview are approaching faster than they may seem. Almost puts his foot on the brake.

Can’t make that mistake twice.

“Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

Sheets rustle and slide. Neil’s cast hits the floor and there’s a body waddling over to Andrew’s bed on unsteady legs like a goddamned idiot.

Like the god of idiots maybe.

Andrew’s hand helps Neil settle, both of them on either side of the dip Andrew’s made in the bed and propped up on bracing arms.

“I won’t,” Neil promises, pinky stretched out.

Andrew crooks his little finger round Neil’s and thinks of school yards.

Neil ducks his head and presses a lazy kiss to the back of his own thumb, like he’s–

“Promise.”

Andrew tugs him closer and closes his eyes.

He won’t let go.

Andrew turns the radio off as soon as Wymack starts the car. Neil’s stretched in the backseat so his stupid little peg leg cast can fit and Andrew’s hopped up in the passenger seat. 

Not until after he’d done up Neil’s seatbelt. Swatting Neil’s scraped up hands out of the way and fastening it himself. Click and tug. It hadn’t budged.

Neil caught his hand before he walked away, squeezed, and Andrew climbed into the front and debated the merits of buckling his own seatbelt for long enough his rabbit used his still functionable leg to kick the back of his seat.

And he turns the car radio off.

The radio doesn’t stop when you crash your car. 

They recovered Andrew’s phone from the wreck and he deleted the playlist Neil had been playing before checking a single notification, and sent it in Nicky’s relatively safe hands to get the screen fixed. 

Wymack starts the car and Andrew stops the radio.

“How was Friday's game?” Neil asks.

Andrew takes half a heartbeat to hate him and half a heartbeat to consider climbing into the backseat to show him exactly how much. 

Wymack gives him the general breakdown and turns out of the hospital parking lot. Andrew looks in the side mirror, watches cars approach and tenses when they pass. 60 on the main city roads. That fucker’s going 67. That one at least 75. 

“Kevin’s still throwing a fit over your recovery period,” Wymack complains. “I expect now you’re back he’ll be worse.”

“Joy,” Neil grumbles.

“You can handle that,” Wymack delegates. “My wallet hurts.”

“You bought him booze?” Neil asks like it’s an accusation and Andrew has to shake his head free of car crash shatter and warped metal in the shape of gravestones to remember Kevin hasn’t had a drink in four and a half months.

“Fuck no,” Wymack dismisses. “Bought the bastard a new racquet to shut him the hell up.”

“So if I keep talking–”

“Not a chance in fucking hell, Josten. I will throw you out of this damn car.”

The passenger seat is empty. Neil’s not in the–

15.1 percent of car crash victims ejected from the vehicle are permanently ejected.

Andrew wasn’t allowed in the room when the doctor who’d operated on Neil’s leg came to speak with him. Neither was Abby. She’d gotten access to his file, of course. Andrew didn’t. 

For the first time in the years he’d had his rabbit, Andrew couldn’t tell if Neil was lying when he said everything was fine. 

Headlight circumference and the seep of blood into the shadows beyond it. Neil’s hand, fingers curled limp into his palm and pressing the boundary. 

“You can try,” Neil bites. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Andrew fastened Neil’s seatbelt.

They’re not moving fast enough for it to kill them.

Not if they survived 90.

Wymack turns another corner and Andrew closes his eyes.

“Well.” Wymack shuts the truck door, hospital bags dropped at Andrew’s feet, and angles a look up at the building. “Good luck.”

He’s gone before Neil seems to process what that means, truck rumbling a laugh around the corner. Neil tries to pick the bags up, looking for all intents like he’s trying to figure out how he’s meant to balance them on his crutches.

Andrew takes the fucking bags. 

“Idiot.”

Neil swings after him, little crutch clicks when the lock reengages each step. Andrew hates how reassuring the sound is. Like heartbeats and simple breaths. Crutch step path from point a to point b. Neil can’t move so fast Andrew can’t keep up. 

It dampens the edge. 

Three steps inside the Tower and Andrew’s murderous.

Closed For Services.

He’s not climbing that many stairs.

“I could give you a piggyback ride.” Neil grins. Andrew scowls, but there’s a wing flap and a heartbeat and a set of goddamned fucking stairs from hell and their dorms are three flights up. 

Motherfucker. 

“You can’t walk,” he grumbles. 

Neil considers the stairs for a moment, slides all his weight onto his good leg and tucks both crutches under the same arm. It tilts him to the side a bit, leaning tower of martyrdom and idiocy.

Andrew doesn’t want to live long enough to see the day it comes crumbling down.

He could switch to an engineering major and stick around another few years.

Andrew’s got both their bags and each flight of stairs is twenty-three steps. Sixty-nine’s not a bad number for other things he supposes but–

“You think I could just jump up?”

Bunny hops. 

“I think you’re fucking stupid.”

Neil hums and nods. Takes Andrew’s insult like it’s fact. “Right, good point.”

Andrew sighs and sets foot on the first step.

“Don’t fall, Josten.”

Neil swings his good foot up after Andrew, weight on his double crutch cane and grin canine sharp in a rabbit’s whisper-twitch muzzle. “Great advice.”

They found stairs in the Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan when they excavated. Built back in 2500 fucking BC. Found stairs in the Egyptian dynasty littered through the fucking place. Found the wretched things in Mesopotamian dig sites.

Masochists. 

Andrew lumbers up a couple more steps, pauses to roll his ankle in its brace and check his shoulder to watch Neil brace himself on the wall, grit his teeth, and swing himself up another step. 

Don’t fall.

Neil looks up to catch his gaze and grins. 

Andrew stomps up the next set of stairs without turning back. 

Waits on the landing for Neil to catch up.

Andrew’s jacket is rolled under his head, leaving his t-shirt to guard against the harsh grate of the concrete roof on his back. He shifts, eyes locked on the stretch of an open sky and the concrete irritates his skin enough he shifts again.

The sky shines post-sunset shades of navy and bleeding edge purple, and he’s thinking about ichor again. 

Lifeblood and godborne. 

There’s ichor in the edge of Neil’s smile and Andrew spends enough time chasing after it that he’s earned the right to lay here—bleeding his own blood from the way stone has bit into his shoulder—and ponder it. 

Ichor immortal.

And ichor’s lethal too.

Ichor in the veins of gods. Ichor in the quality of eternity. Ichor in the way mortal skin falls to nothing at the end. 

Neil looks an immortal thing, ichor and golden and–

Andrew feels ichor in the way of Talos.

Bronze-boy and purpose-driven thing. The sky changes colours, darker with the turn of thought. Andrew is Talos-heavy and Talos-fated. Protect them. Protect him. Protect. He’s ichor in a single vein. He’s skin that can’t be cut and heart that can’t be beat.

He wonders, when Neil makes his heart race and his body come to life, has he pulled the nail free?

Or is Neil so much ichor and immortal that he saves Andrew in a way Talos doesn’t ever get to know?

The roof door opens to Neil’s limping stroll. He’s not brought his crutches. Has been leaving them behind since he went to the hospital three days ago and got a soft cast, hinged leg brace in place of the plaster cast. 

Stupid boy. 

Andrew watches the sky as Neil settles down beside him, the awkward sink of a one-leg squat nearly tempting enough to abandon the single cloud Andrew’s been tracking. 

“I got you something,” Neil says.

Andrew wishes his cloud goodbye and turns his head to find Neil’s already fallen his way. 

“What if I don’t want anything?”

Neil bites down on a grin. “I guess I could give it to Nicky then,” he muses. “Or Kevin.”

“You wouldn’t keep it for yourself?”

“No,” Neil answers easily. “I like watching you drive better than driving myself, but I guess watching Kevin figure out how to drive a sports car could be interesting enough. Not the same but–”

Watching Kevin figure out–

“What.”

Neil grins then, dangles a key fob between them. “Wymack picked it up for me, I signed everything, of course, but she’s in your name.”

“Neil.”

His rabbit just keeps grinning, looking like ichor and Icarus and wings that should have melted and didn’t. Moths with magic dust.

Neil looks like a god.

Andrew feels like a faithful man.

“Andrew.”

Neil sets the keys down on Andrew’s chest. Drops them there rather, just to make sure he’s not touching anywhere he’s not been told to. Pulls out a fucking deck of cards with comic-style fish on them.

“I got you these too.”

“I’m going to throw you off the roof.”

“You could take me for a drive instead,” Neil offers.

Seatbelts double checked and Neil’s hand in Andrew’s, the streets sing past them like memories. Neil smiles like new life, Andrew’s jacket loose on the frame of his shoulders, and Andrew feels like everything. Moth wings and free fall and flight. Feels like–

There’s ichor in the way Andrew’s heart beats like it’ll never stop, and there’s ichor in the way Neil’s does too.