Chapter Text
Allison calls dibs on the new downstairs neighbor before the ink even dries on the guy’s lease.
Andrew doesn’t blame her. The guy is hot. Like, fucking gorgeous. Like, should be a model. In L.A., plausibly could be some kind of model, if it weren’t for the scar that curves up the side of his face, as thin as a knife’s edge and just as shiny. Andrew’s first impression of the guy is of loose shoulders, a dropped chin, hands in his front pockets, jogging down the stairs. The guy looks up, finishes the smile that the scar keeps half-ready on his lips, and walks right past Andrew.
It takes a second for Andrew to catch his breath, as ridiculous as that sounds.
“I saw your boy,” Andrew tells her when he gets upstairs.
“So you get it,” Allison says with some satisfaction, like the words are candy on her tongue.
Yeah, Andrew gets it. And it’s not just the way he looks—you could get over that, eventually, once you saw him pick his nose or scratch his ass or something. No, he’s got this—this thing. This kind of bewildered affability, this aw-shucks grin. The loose shoulders that had so struck Andrew on his first sighting are a habit, and they look really good shrugged up around the guy’s shoulders.
The guy has a name. Neil. Josten. N Josten, 2B.
Andrew has some very definite ideas about the exact ways he would ruin 2B. He particularly favors the one where he fucks Neil up against a bathroom vanity, bending him over the counter and watching his face in the mirror. Neil’s moans—or grunts, maybe, or breathless curses—would echo off the tile, the shower glass, the other hard surfaces.
But then again, there’s the one where he spreads Neil’s legs open in bed and eats his ass until he’s desperate and quivering. For all of Neil’s loose joints and roll-with-it attitude, Andrew senses something tightly wound in him. Andrew could untangle that knot. He could work all the kinks out and leave Neil boneless and panting, delirious and satisfied.
Except Allison called dibs.
.::.
Andrew comes home from the gym to find Neil established at his kitchen counter, looking generally rumpled and hapless, bowled over in Allison’s wake. Allison has Etta James playing on the radio, Stormy Weather, and she’s singing along, throaty, barefoot in the kitchen with an oversized sweater slipping off of her shoulder.
Andrew feels a moment of sharp pity for Neil. The poor guy doesn’t stand a chance. What Allison wants, Allison gets, and Allison wants Neil. Andrew can see it written all over her. He knows how long it takes to get her hair to do that soft waves thing. He recognizes the fresh manicure and pedicure. He’d seen Allison’s freshly-used razor gleaming in the shower that morning.
“Sup?” Andrew says, nodding his chin in their general direction.
“Neil doesn’t know how to cook,” Allison chirps.
“I’m shocked,” Andrew says drily.
“I’m making dinner,” she says sweetly. “Are you hungry?”
Her smile is so wide that Andrew can see the tips of her incisors. “No,” he says obediently, even though he hasn’t had anything since a protein shake at lunch. His stomach protests; Andrew quiets it with the memory of the big bag of Bugles he has in his room.
“I’ll make you a plate for later,” Allison promises.
It’s her alfredo sauce. It’s worth the wait.
Neil says nothing, but he watches Andrew with intent eyes. Really blue eyes. They’re fire and ice—the heart of the flame, the gut of the glacier. Andrew turns when he loses sight of Neil, walks backwards his next few steps. He wants to know if Neil is watching him walk away.
He is.
“Have a nice night,” Andrew says, easy and a little mocking.
“Thanks boo,” Allison coos. Behind Neil’s back, she raises her middle finger to Andrew.
.::.
Andrew sees Neil on the stairs sometimes. There’s no elevator, so it’s pretty unavoidable.
God, Andrew really wishes their building had an elevator. It would make hauling groceries up four stories a lot more fucking pleasant.
He runs into Neil on his way up, recognizing him when he's still a squinted silhouette against the landing light—the loose shoulders, the unmistakable jog.
“Oh, hey,” Neil says.
“Hey.”
“Want some help?” Neil asks, easy, easy, easy. Affable. Andrew senses that shadow again, that sense of something moving behind a mask, like feeling watched by a portrait.
Andrew holds out one hand, full of grocery bag handles; Neil slips them easily into his own grip. They take the next three flights in silence, with Neil a step and a half behind Andrew, beneath Andrew, close to his back in a way that should have been annoying and instead felt exciting. Upstairs, he reclaims his groceries and shuts his door on Neil standing there on the balls of his feet, shoulders up, hands in his pockets. The tuck of Neil's thumbs over denim makes Andrew's mouth water.
.::.
Allison spends an evening at Neil’s, teaching him how to make omelets and introducing him to the dubious glories of Game of Thrones, though even Andrew could admit to a soft spot for the dragons. She takes Neil to a yoga class at her favorite studio. She has him over for their first ever super long-standing weekly movie night date, with Andrew sprawled in the armchair playing plausible group hang wingman.
And then Allison takes it one step too far: she has a party. She invites all of her obnoxious idiot friends, including Andrew’s own brother, and they occupy the fucking apartment like a ship's worth of rats. Andrew stands his ground for a whole half an hour, until Allison finally figures out that Neil isn’t coming and goes downstairs in her Louboutins to haul him back upstairs. Andrew thinks she would have done it in a fireman’s carry if she’d had to, but she gets it done with just an arm latched around one of his. Andrew catches a glimpse of them in the open doorway, and then he turns down the hall and hides in his bedroom.
He gets through most of a movie and half a bag of Bugles before he needs a bathroom break. When he steps back into the hall with freshly-washed hands, he bumps into Neil.
Neil smells fucking delicious. Downright edible. And juicy. A peach—no, a pomegranate. Forbidden fruit.
“Hey,” Neil says, looking surprised. Andrew thinks maybe it’s the first real emotion he’s ever seen on the guy’s face. “I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I’m being anti-social,” Andrew tells him.
“How?”
“Horror movies and snack foods.”
Neil smiles. It’s wistful. He says, “That sounds better than the party.”
Andrew opens his mouth, wondering what’s going to come out. “A dollar a minute,” he says.
Huh. That’s a choice.
Neil’s smile shifts into something real. He shoves his hand into his pocket, watching it like he’s not entirely sure the appendage knows what it’s doing. When he lifts his hand again, there’s a crumpled ten-dollar bill in it. He offers it to Andrew.
Andrew takes it. He extends his hand ahead of them: be my guest.
Back in his room, Neil sits next to him on his bed, legs out ahead of him, toes tipped politely forward to keep the soles of his shoes off the bedding. Andrew holds his big over-ear headphones up between them so they can share the set. On the screen, the rich British pricks hunt a bunch of petty criminals like foxes, dumb outfits and picnics and everything.
After exactly ten minutes, Neil stands up. He tugs his shirt down over the waist of his jeans and says, quiet, either sheepish or as intense as Andrew has ever seen him, “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Andrew says. He puts the headphones on and turns away before Neil slips out through his door.
.::.
“It’s going well,” Allison insists over brunch the next day. “He likes me, I can tell.”
“It’s been a month,” Andrew reminds her.
“So what?” she asks.
“Have you ever had to wait this long for someone to take you up on the offer?” Andrew asks. “I’m assuming all that usually works.” He punctuates the ‘all that’ with a wave of his fork at Allison’s general anatomical composition.
“No,” she says sweetly. “But that’s how I know he’s special. And he’s teachable. You have no idea how important that is.”
No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t have the patience to teach. He doesn’t have the desire to.
“It’s going well,” Allison says again, with emphasis. “You could be more helpful, you know.”
“Not interested,” Andrew tells her.
“Befriend him,” she encourages. “Invite him over.”
“You don’t want the competition.”
“Oh, please,” she says with a flick of her eyes towards the ceiling. “I think I’d know.”
Why does that feel like a bucket of cold water to the face?
.::.
At the second ever meeting of the long-standing weekly movie night, Neil insists that Andrew be the one to choose the movie. Andrew thinks very seriously about putting on something real fucking gay, then changes his mind and goes with Pitch Perfect. It’s as plausibly heterosexual as it is plausibly a group hang.
Neither he nor Allison can resist a singalong, but they manage to keep their damn mouths shut, and the whole night trembles on the cusp of desire as Neil laughs along at all the right moments and Andrew and Allison simmer with the need to sing—both the songs and the urgency of their attraction to Neil.
At the end of the night, Allison offers to walk Neil home. Neil seems to know better than to refuse, but he watches Andrew as he walks out, chin tucked back against his shoulder so that Andrew can see those eyes still burning through the closed door.
“Did it happen?” Andrew asks when Allison gets back, like he doesn’t care at all.
“Almost,” she says.
Andrew ticks a clock at her with his tongue.
She throws a pillow at his head, hard, but he’s not that far out of college shape—he snatches it from the air before it can flatten his face.
.::.
At the next party, Andrew hears a muffled knock on his bedroom door. He opens it, hoping to see Neil, expecting to see Allison. Or, God forbid, Aaron.
It’s Neil.
Andrew props his shoulder against the doorjamb and raises an eyebrow.
Neil holds a hand up, offering Andrew a neatly-folded twenty dollar bill.
Andrew takes it and lets him in. He’d prepared for this, always a fool if rarely an optimist. He offers Neil his left earbud.
They sit shoulder to shoulder, knees knocking, and watch a comedy-slash-horror film he thinks Neil will like, another rich-people-hunting-commonors thing.
Neil returns the earbud after exactly twenty minutes. When he leaves, Andrew finds himself leaning into the space he used to occupy, left empty but somehow warmer in his absence.
.::.
Allison invites Neil to the orphaned-or-disowned family Thanksgiving party because he belongs there. He turns up in a little short-sleeved button-down with jeans. The shirt is crisp, a polka-dotted buffalo-check plaid. Andrew thinks about licking him. He thinks very seriously about backing him up against the door and licking the tiny patch of stubble he’d missed under the curve of his jaw.
He can’t remember the last time he felt this turned on outside of the bedroom.
Allison seats Andrew to her right, Neil to her left, herself at the head of the table. This is as good a seating arrangement as any. Andrew watches Neil across the table during Allison’s lengthy speech. He thinks she would call it a toast.
Neil watches Allison, rapt. Andrew gets that, too; Allison is a hell of a performer, always has been—but under the table, Andrew can feel Neil’s leg moving, jittery, a flight risk.
They keep him until late that night, until well past Andrew feels everything in Neil settle down. They see him truly relaxed, Andrew thinks, for maybe the first time in the two months they’ve known him. It looks good on him, the little bit of limpness. The heavy eyelids. The hint of a yawn in his voice.
Andrew wonders if Allison feels it in her gut the way he does.
.::.
Allison takes Neil with her to her family’s Christmas gala, at which she is still expected for the purposes of keeping up appearances. It’s a pretty easy job, she says, considering the pay.
They clean Neil up for it, and Andrew remembers that Neil has a scar when Neil starts getting self-conscious about it.
“There’s makeup,” he offers. “It doesn’t cover it completely, but…”
“Oh, honey, we will both be wearing makeup,” Allison tells him. “The cameras at these things are very high definition. Infinite pixels. We’re not going to have a single pore when I’m done with us.”
Andrew suddenly remembers something else—that Neil’s ever-present smile is usually incomplete.
.::.
Game nights finally become a thing, and Neil spends every one of them partnered with either Allison or Andrew—Allison if she gets the chance to pick first; Andrew the time Neil gets the chance to pick first. Once, Matt throws a wrench in the machine and picks Neil instead of Dan for his partner. Andrew spends a lingering moment imagining punching the shit-eating grin off of the man’s face. He settles for picking Aaron and cleaning the floor with everyone else. He snatches the trophy they’d all agreed upon weeks ago (the best bottle of whiskey Matt had had in his house that night) away with a grin, but hands it to Aaron as soon as they’re out the door. He doesn’t give a shit about the trophy.
The long-standing weekly movie night has its third and fourth meetings. Andrew supposes it might start living up to its name soon.
At the next party, Andrew stands in Kevin’s living room and watches Allison twine her fingers with Neil’s across the room. He holds her hand easily. Andrew wonders if this counts as manipulation, all this time Allison has spent getting Neil to be okay with being touched. He wonders if counts as free therapy. Neil seems happier, either way.
Andrew turns the plausible group hangs into actual group hangs because they’re fun, and more than that, because they’re tolerable. They entertain themselves for hours. After, Neil always stays to help clean up, but Allison never does. Andrew moves around him in the dim kitchen like it’s a dance, a hand on a back mid-spin, a shuffle of feet closer and then apart again.
Is Allison even still trying to date Neil? Andrew honestly doesn't know.
.::.
Neil comes up looking for Allison but she isn’t there. He stays anyway and they sit in the living room and watch exy and Neil says he played in college, too, and they talk about stats and people they both knew, and Andrew thinks what a shame it is that he’s having the only conversation Kevin has ever really wanted to have with him with someone else instead. He cracks a beer in honor of Kevin’s loss and entertains Neil until Allison gets home. She plants herself in Neil’s lap, delighted to have him there, and Andrew feels the frisson of tension between them bend. Bend, but not break.
Andrew goes to bed with goosebumps that night, but technically, he’s not in the wrong—he hasn’t done anything to challenge Allison’s dibs.
.::.
At the next party, Andrew stands staring down his bedroom door, waiting for Neil to show up or himself to break, not sure which will come first. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s wrong and a coward and will stand here in his bedroom watching the damn door until the party’s over. Maybe he’ll go out there eventually and Neil will still be there, cleaning up, alone, ready to dance.. Maybe Andrew will never go out and he’ll never know what could have happened.
He tries to calculate how long he can spend in each phase of failure before moving into the next, and he’s gotten as far as two hours and forty-five minutes into the future when the muffled knock on his door comes.
Andrew steps forward jerkily and pulls it open. Neil stands there, wallet in hand, head down, shoulders loose, rocked on the goddamned heels of his feet.
“How much?” Neil asks.
Andrew takes the wallet from him, folds it shut, flicks it back over his shoulder. He pulls Neil in by the front of his shirt; the fabric is old and stretches too easily, so it sags loose around Neil’s collarbones when Andrew lets him go and backs him up against the door. Neil’s hands go into Andrew’s hair; Andrew puts his own on Neil’s face, feeling the scar under his palm, and kisses him with a lover’s pent-up longing, after months of together without the touch, like coming home.