Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I dream other people’s dreams,” Neil says, like biting a bullet.

It’s odd, giving someone a taste of his disaster. A quiet chaos usually meant for Neil and Neil alone. It’s heavy on his tongue. 

Andrew, a stranger who’s name he only knows because of the sharpie scrawled on the sleeve of his coffee cup, sits across from him. His eyes are as sharp and deadly as freshly sharpened blades, still sparking and hot with the urge for blood. Nimble, idle fingers tap on the side of the cup.

It’s almost comical; if Neil were the laughing sort, he’d indulge the hilarity of it all. Sitting in a coffee shop he’s never been to across from a stranger he’s never met yet knows everything about. A stranger who’s dreams he’s borrowed the past month.

It’s a miracle Andrew’s still sitting here at all, after Neil had suddenly claimed a spot across from him.

“Is this something you usually disclose to any random stranger?” Andrew lifts his eyebrows as he finally brings his coffee to his lips. When he takes a sip, he grimaces.

“No,” Neil says almost too quickly. “Only you.”

“You don’t know me,” Andrew challenges. 

Neil simmers in it a moment. He doesn’t know Andrew. He doesn’t know his last name, his favorite color, or how many sugars, if any, he asked for in his coffee. He doesn’t know why Andrew frequents this quaint coffee shop a block from campus.

But he does know that Andrew’s here at least three times a week. He knows this because Andrew dreams it. The coffee shop always looks different, in those dreams, but the baristas are the same. The logo, a crude sketch of a black crow, is the same. It’s stamped in the center of the sleeve with Andrew’s name written on it.

Neil knows Andrew has a twin brother, Aaron. He knows Andrew is afraid of someone hurting Aaron. He knows Andrew’s afraid of Andrew hurting Aaron. Neil knows this, because Andrew dreams it. 

“I know more than I want to. It’s your dreams I’m having.” Blue eyes lock onto dark ones of honey. Gray rain presses against the window outside. 

Despite the insanity of it all, Andrew’s expression betrays snothing. He is a picture of calm, but not the same calm as a still lake or clear sky. No, he is the uncharged tension in the air of an impending lightning strike. He knows Andrew to be explosive, to be something greater simmering underneath a still surface. He’s seen it. He’s dreamt of it. All Neil can do is brace for cover. 

“How do you know they’re not your own dreams?” Andrew asks him, yet another challenge. “Why do they have to be mine?”

“Because they have to be,” Neil insists. He can’t explain it any better than that: a gut instinct, a life-preserving intuition that he’s never failed to trust. “How can I dream about something I don’t know?”

It’s not what Andrew wants to hear. His shoulders tense and he shifts in his chair. More energy gathering beneath the surface, ready to burst. Neil holds his breath.

“How long have you been stealing other people’s dreams?” Andrew asks. 

Neil picks at the crumpled napkin in his lap. The way the fibers pull apart and fray at the edges under the slightest bit of pressure is familiar. It’s the same way Neil’s resolve gives when he jolts upright in bed, slicked with sweat and shivering with the ghosts of Andrew’s mind. 

“As long as I can remember,” Neil answers. It’s an honesty rare to Neil, but with all that Neil has seen, has stolen , he deems it only fair. “This isn’t the reaction I expected you to have.”

Andrew tilts his head back, staring at Neil through slitted eyes. There is a silent challenge in that stare, one that Neil can’t outwardly decipher. “What reaction did you expect?” 

“I don’t know. Disbelief? Calling me crazy?” It seems like the half-sane thing to expect. 

Andrew purses his lips. He trails his finger over the lid of his cup. “I’ve heard crazier things.”

Maybe Neil already knows that. It’s because of the aching, uneven floorboards on which Andrew’s dreams and nightmares and terrors stand, that Neil sits in front of him at all. It’s the silhouettes of each and every memory, fractured and transplanted into Neil’s mind, playing out like a story he and Andrew have both seen before. 

He wants to know more.

But now, as he sits in front of a silent, steady Andrew, knowing the deepest intricacies and darkest corners of that convoluted mind, Neil finds himself lost. He doesn’t know what he does not know; lacks the understanding of where Andrew’s dreams end and he begins. 

“I’m Neil,” he says instead. It seems as good a start as any. 

Andrew appraises him with a critical eye. “You don’t look like a Neil.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

It feels like a book slamming closed before he can reach the final page. Andrew grabs his messenger bag and slings it over his shoulder. He takes his coffee with him, and though his posture tells a story of cool composure, his eyes are flaming. 

“Well, Neil ,” Andrew says with finality. “I want nothing to do with you. It’ll do you good not to follow me here again.”

Hope is a fleeting, feeble thing, and in its absence Neil can’t help but wonder just what he’d been hoping for from the start. He shakes his head, speechless, as Andrew gathers his belongings and leaves. 

When the door opens, a rush of cool air sweeps in and cascades along Neil’s spine, biting at him even through the fabric of his jacket. It’s a grounding thing. It’s never cold outside in Andrew’s dreams. Neil runs his fingers along the worn grain of the wooden table.

This isn’t a dream, at least. 

He’s awake.

The worst part of stealing others’ dreams is that terrifying moment of not knowing whether he’s awake or asleep. Over the years, it’s a skill carefully developed, but some dreams are so tangible, so real , that Neil wonders if— just a moment— he’s started to have dreams of his own.

Andrew’s dreams almost feel like they can be Neil’s. Not all of them. Not the ones involving Aaron or that simple little coffee shop that Neil’s only been in once. But the more vague ones: the nights of terror, permeated with fear and pain. The pain’s never specific, never consistent. 

Some nights it feels like knives on his skin. Others, it’s cigarette burns. On rare occasions it’s a familiar, bone-crushing, gnawing agony that hollows out his chest and makes its home there until it rots. Those nights are the worst; the ones that leave Neil staring at the ceiling and counting the cracks just to stay awake.

The pain is an old friend in a way to Neil in the same way it must be for Andrew. Neil thinks that if he could dream, it’d be like these dreams. 

But it’s not possible. Neil’s never dreamed, and he never will.

***

Unluckily for Andrew, Neil is a person blessed and cursed with an innate inability to decipher what is good for him and what is not. So, it is with little hesitation Neil finds himself at the same table three days later, in the same secluded corner, in the same coffee shop. 

It’s the third day he’s stationed himself here, wasting money on yet another cup of coffee he does not want to drink. Three days, no sight of Andrew. Several nights stewing in his dreams. 

Last night, however, Andrew didn’t dream at all. Or if he did, he doesn’t remember them, and thus, neither does Neil. 

The bell above the door chimes. It’s still dreary outside, the last of a stormy cold front brushing through South Carolina. A gust of wind carries in through the open door, as does a man with tousled blond hair. 

Neil sees the back of his head first. He immediately stands in line by the barista, and Neil’s on his feet before he can think better of it. He crosses the coffee shop and stands behind Andrew. 

“Hey.”

Andrew turns and Neil falters because suddenly this isn’t Andrew. It’s another stranger who wears Andrew’s face. The clothes are different, his hair is parted on the opposite side, and there’s a softness around the eyes that was lacking three days ago. 

For a single terrifying moment, Neil thinks this must be another dream. Then, he remembers. 

“Oh. Aaron.” Neil’s not sure if the pinch in his chest is of disappointment or relief. 

Andrew’s look-alike, his twin, Aaron, scowls. He looks different than he does in Andrew’s dreams. Older . He and Andrew look much more similar now. 

“You are Aaron, right? You’re Andrew’s brother.”

“Who’s asking?” 

Neil takes a step back. “Neil Josten.” 

“Can I fucking help you, Neil Josten?” Aaron steps closer to the register as the line shortens. 

“You can dial back the attitude to start.” Neil glances around the coffee shop. No sight of Andrew. “Where’s Andrew? I need to talk to him.” 

Aaron’s reaction is an interesting one: immediate confusion and discomfort flicker across his face, one after another. “Figures your one of Andrew’s. Get out of my face.” 

Aaron’s next to order his coffee. Neil stands next to him for no other reason than to slyly glance at the name on his credit card when he hands it to the barista. 

Aaron Minyard . Andrew Minyard.

“I’ll gladly never come near you again if you tell me where I can find him,” Neil says. 

The proposal must be promising, because Aaron pauses in his motion of putting his wallet away. He glances Neil over, eyes dancing in the limbo between distrust and curiosity. There’s nothing protective in that stare. 

“Fine. Him and Kevin are usually at the Foxhole Court on Wednesdays after class,” Aaron says unkindly. “Try your luck there and make yourself scarce.”

It is unlike Neil to obey such a command. There’s a primal instinct to counter, to argue , that really never does him any good aside from a sense of immediate gratification. Today, however, Neil’s mind is occupied with something else entirely. 

It is because of this that he skirts around Aaron and rushes from the coffee shop without a beat of hesitation, abandoning his untouched coffee on the table in the back corner. 

***

The first thought Neil has about the Foxhole Court is about its color: orange. Nauseating, mind-numbing orange. 

The second thought he has is that its security is lacking. It’s easy enough to pick the lock on the outside gate, and even easier to sneak into the court. He finds himself a spot in the stands, halfway between the rafters and the court, and sinks into one of the hard plastic seats. 

There are only two people on the court. Andrew’s in the goal. It’s easy to tell given his short stature compared to the towering striker at half-court with a large ‘two’ printed on his jersey. Kevin Day, starting striker of the Palmetto State Foxes.

Any exy fan with half a brain cell to spare knows who Kevin Day is. How foolish of Neil to forget himself at Palmetto State, the exy prodigy’s transplanted home.

Odd, Neil can’t help but think as he watches Andrew deflect one of Kevin’s shots from the goal. 

Andrew never dreams of exy. 

Neil’s veins ignite. It’s a surge of adrenaline and an uneasy pang of familiarity. It’s been ages since he last wore that gear, last clutched a racket and felt the rush of joy as he struck a ball through the goal. 

The sound of a ball crashing against the boards jars Neil from his memories. Andrew had deflected one of Kevin’s shots from the goal, sending a ball careening to the sidelines. The crack of it still hangs in the air. Neil sits up straighter and leans forward.

“That’s more like it,” Kevin drones from his place on the court, pulling off his helmet to wipe at the sweat on his brow. “Would it kill you to play like this during games?”

Andrew doesn’t warrant Kevin’s words with a response. Instead he sits in the goal and pulls off his shin pads. 

Kevin goes to fetch the balls littered along the sidelines of the court, gathering them in his arms. “Though it doesn’t matter if we don’t find another striker,” he mutters to himself. “They won't let us play without one.”

“How tragic,” Andrew sighs and tugs his helmet off. 

Now Neil can see his face clearly. He can see the messiness of his hair, the tired rings beneath his dark eyes. He can see the moment Andrew turns his head and locks eyes with Neil, and can recognize the disbelief that flares in them.

“We’ve got an audience,” he says with no discernable anger. It’s almost something close to bored intrigue, as if despite his previous warning, he’s curious to see where the dice fall.

Neil’s never been hopeful of his odds on any given dice roll. 

He stands under the attention of Kevin and Andrew. Arms cross over his chest, a half-hearted attempt at protecting himself. From what exactly, Neil isn’t sure. 

“Hey, this is a closed practice!” Kevin yells at him.

Andrew steps up and places a hand on Kevin’s chest to stop him. A silent, I have this , speaks in the steadiness of his shoulders. He moves towards the boards and Neil moves to meet him halfway. 

“Stalking isn’t a good look on you,” Andrew says through narrowed eyes.

“You weren’t at the coffee shop,” Neil counters. “You’re avoiding me.”

Andrew tilts his head. Tension pulls his jaw tight. “I told you to stay away.”

Neil shrugs. “I didn’t listen.”

“I didn’t take you for an idiot.”

“And I didn’t take you for a coward, but here we are.”

A standoff. Neil’s not sure how exactly he imagined this to go. He has no plan, but then again plans are for the more coordinated, the more easily understood. Neither Andrew nor Neil are easily understood; Andrew’s dreams are just as convoluted as the absence of expression on his face. 

It’s part of the reason Neil just can’t stay away.

Andrew’s fists twitch at his sides. “Kevin. Get out.” 

“This is our practice,” Kevin protests, directing the anger of his glare at Neil. “You can’t just sneak in here. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Someone who has business with Andrew,” Neil says, sliding his eyes to glance over Kevin. “I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

“Or dead,” Andrew says. His fingers linger by the edges of the sleek black armbands donning his arms. 

“ Andrew ,” Kevin admonishes. 

“Why are you still here, Kevin?”

Defeat slumps Kevin Day’s shoulders. The striker spares yet another glance to Neil, just as uncomfortable and distrusting as before, before he turns back to gather the rest of his gear. Silence presses the distance between Neil and Andrew as Kevin’s footsteps filter from the stadium into the Foxes’ locker room.

“Aaron said I’d find you here,” Neil says. “You think I’d fall for a decoy?”

Andrew’s lips twitch. He tries to study with Neil with cool disconnect, but Neil knows there’s something more. He knows what true apathy looks like. Andrew is but a lame impression of it.

“Not many can tell us apart.”

“They must be idiots, then,” Neil says. The difference between Aaron and Andrew is stark, as if their bases are colored in with different values entirely. Neil thinks that even without the dreams, he could tell them apart with ease. 

“You’re an even bigger one for not staying away.” Andrew narrows his eyes. “What do you want?”

Neil falters. It’s the same question again, just in different words: Is this something you usually disclose to any random stranger? You don’t know me. What reaction did you expect?

What does he want? 

The answer cannot be summed easily into a few words. A few emotions. The past month has been a mess of Neil and Andrew , so much so that Neil doesn’t know where he ends and Andrew begins. Somewhere in the fray they’ve tangled to become one, and no one knows it except Neil. No one feels the impossibility of it. 

No one understands that it’s impossible for Neil to be stealing Andrew’s dreams. Not for as long as he has been.

“One month,” Neil says. “I’ve been dreaming your dreams for a month. And they won’t stop.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow, the only hint to his undoubted curiosity. “You’re the one stealing them. I don’t know what you want me to do about that.”

“You don’t understand,” Neil says desperately. “Most dreams I borrow for only a night. At most, a week at a time. Then it’s onto the next person and the next. I’ve been trapped in your dreams for a month . That has to mean something.”

“It doesn’t mean shit ,” Andrew snaps. “There is no fate, there is no destiny. You’re a freak poking your nose into other people’s heads. Stay out of mine.”

“I can’t control it.” Neil steps closer. The plexiglass is the only thing separating them now, and even then an invisible string tethers Neil to him. It’s a persistent thing with tensile strength beyond his imagination. 

Andrew glances over his shoulder to where Kevin had disappeared into the locker room. “I’m out of the stray keeping business,” he says.

“I’m not a stray.”

“You sure act like one.” 

Neil’s not sure if it’s meant to be an insult or not. He scrambles for a reason to get Andrew to stay, to give himself an opportunity to find out why he’s been trapped in Andrew’s head for a month, to untangle the mess of them before Neil can leave. 

“A deal, then,” Neil says. He follows the boards to the door that leads out onto the court. He steps onto it with ease, a familiar thrum of anxiety rushing through hum. His fingers itch for a racket, to hear the buzz of a goal. 

He reaches for a spare bag of equipment in the player box. The racket is heavier than he’s used to but he appreciates the tactile weight of it, the physical reminder that he’s awake.

Andrew watches Neil move carefully. He catalogs every movement from afar, confusing cinched in his brow. 

Neil continues, “If I can make a goal against you, I can stay and try to figure this out.”

“And if you can’t?” Andrew’s already reaching for his helmet. “What then?”

“I’ll leave you alone,” Neil promises. “I’ll take myself and your dreams far away, and I’ll never come back.”

“Deal,” Andrew agrees, moving towards the goal.

Another roll of the dice. Another misplaced hope in petty, nonexistent fate. Neil hasn’t picked up a racket in months. Andrew seems a halfway-decent goalie. It feels near impossible.

Impossible, however, has never stopped Neil before. He has to try.

Trying is firing shot after shot towards the goal. Halfway-decent is an insult to Andrew’s talent— a ferocious protection of a goal, of the precious contents of his dreams. Neil thinks Andrew doesn’t understand that Neil’s already seen them— the ugly and the uglier. 

There’s nothing else for Neil to uncover. 

So he tries again. And again, and again. One, two, five, ten, twenty shots. 

Neil’s arms slump uselessly at his side. A sharp snap echoes across the court’s flooring when the racket clatters from his hands. He’s out of breath. Sweat sticks his shirt to his back. 

A glow of red casts on his face. The goal behind Andrew lights up, the roar of a buzzer lost behind the rush of blood in Neil’s ears. 

Andrew’s face is hollowed and gaunt under the reddish glow. “You’ve played before.” He almost sounds betrayed. 

“I never said I haven’t.” Neil clenched his jaw. Adrenaline ebbs away at the last fibers of his nerves. His fingers tremble. 

Victory feels numb. There’s no true gratification to it, but rather a silent satisfaction in knowing soon, somehow , this nightmare will be behind him. 

***

Andrew outlines three rules. 

One, no one else is to know. It seems a fair enough rule, one that Neil and Neil’s mother were once intent on keeping to their graves. While she was already in hers, Neil has decided to fulfill her wish to the end. 

That was, until he met Andrew. 

Two, he’s only to contact Andrew if absolutely necessary for ‘fixing’ purposes. The only issue with this rule is that Neil has yet to figure out what ‘fixing’ entails, or even where to start. He doesn’t tell Andrew this, because Andrew doesn’t need to know it. 

And three, Neil must never discuss the contents of Andrew’s dreams. 

This is the most difficult of the three, because it is the contents that has Neil feeling so foolishly connected to Andrew. He also fails to see how he can begin to sort out the why behind his sudden insight into Andrew’s mind. 

But it’s these three rules that keeps Andrew from either killing Neil or filing a restraining order against him, so it’s three rules he will (for now) abide by. 

They meet the next weekend in Andrew’s dorm. It’s Andrew’s idea, surprisingly enough, but once Neil arrives he understands why. 

The dorm is empty. In fact it seems the entire floor is vacant. No one would hear: either discussions of dream thievery or Neil’s screams should Andrew decide he’s tired of this little game. 

It’s not like Neil to assume murderous intent in just anyone, but he’s seen enough to know Andrew’s grit is rougher than any type of steel. 

“How do you steal dreams?” is what Andrew asks him at the kitchen counter, busying himself with mixing a packet of hot chocolate powder in a steaming mug.

Neil stares at the powder as slowly, it turns to thick chocolate mix. “It’s like breathing,” Neil admits. “It’s not something I do , it just happens.” 

“And you can’t control it,” Andrew guesses.

Neil shakes his head, suddenly ashamed by the fact. 

The sound of Andrew’s spoon clinking against the rim of the mug tears through the sullen silence between them, forceful as a gunshot. Neil curls his fingers into fists and watches the color drain from his knuckles.

“Why are you here?” Andrew’s tight posture betrays his flat affect. He’s on edge. Neil can tell in the way his hands grip the mug of hot chocolate harder than they should.

Neil supposes he’d be on edge too, knowing if someone knew the darkest parts of his mind. Neil’s grateful that his secrets are just that: secrets . They’ll go with him to his grave. 

“I said I’d try to figure it out,” Neil says.

Andrew’s jaw clenches. “What does trying look like exactly?”

Neil doesn’t know, and he’s not ready to admit that he doesn’t know. He raps his knuckles on the kitchen counter once, twice. 

“It looks like this: staying here. Going to class. Wednesday’s at the Court and Monday nights doing homework at the coffee shop.”

“So just play your part as a normal college student. That’s your plan. You’re fucking useless.” 

Andrew doesn’t believe him. He shouldn’t, because anyone with a brain realizes Neil’s words are bullshit. 

“You can’t ask me to stay away,” Neil snaps because he knows that’s what Andrew wants to say. If it were him, Neil would want the same thing. 

Anyone who knows too much about him deserves to be held at arm’s length. At least then their knowledge of him wouldn’t hurt him. 

“Why is that?” Andrew poses the question less like a question and more like a threat. The words are sharp and venomous, just as knife-like as his dark eyes. 

Neil can’t explain why. Not in a way that will cement his feet to the ground in certainty, not in a way that will convince Andrew, someone saturated with pain, that he means no harm.

“I meant what I said at the court,” Neil says. “I don’t believe in fate. Destiny, whatever bullshit people like to preach about. It’s fake. People aren’t meant for each other. Coincides are just that: coincidences.”

A silent go on manifests in the tilt of Andrew’s head.

“But this isn’t fake.” Neil has to punch down the swell of dread that sits at the base of his throat, the instinct his mother had beaten into him that screamed, don’t tie yourself down. Don’t let anyone see you. “Whatever this is. I can’t explain why I can’t turn away from it, but I can’t. I won’t.”

“There is no this,” Andrew clarifies, the snap of his mug resting on the counter like a judge’s gavel. 

“Maybe not,” Neil agrees though it feels like a lie. “But I scored against you. Let me try.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that you have a free pass into my mind, yet I don’t know shit about you.” Andrew doesn’t seem the type concerned with what’s fair or not. Neil knows from the latter’s dreams that Andrew’s been on the short-end of that deal since he was born. 

“An exchange then,” Neil promises, because it seems the only way to get Andrew to play along. “Truth for truth. You can go first.”

“For someone keen on cornering me for all my deepest secrets, you’re terrified of spilling your own,” Andrew observes, his tone nauseatingly skeptical. He sips at his hot chocolate.

Neil’s tense. It goes against his grain: flaying himself open and leaving himself ready for prying eyes, prodding hands. Andrew’s hands are nimble and just as capable of destruction as his razor sharp eyes. 

Neil knows danger. It’s a close friend, a brother, a reflection in a mirror. 

“Like you said. It isn’t fair,” Neil mutters around the swelling in his throat. “This is all I have to give in return.”

Andrew hums. He stands from his spot at the kitchen counter and crosses into the living room. He occupies a large navy blue bean bag, sinking into it. There’s nothing outwardly defensive about his posture; if Neil was a more naive sort, he’d even say Andrew looks relaxed.

But he sees the way Andrew stares at him with palpable distrust. He can’t fault Andrew for it; he feels he’s earned a proper amount of distrust. 

“What brings you to Palmetto State in the middle of the semester?” To an untrained ear, it may sound like smalltalk. Nauseating, tedious smalltalk that makes Neil’s skin crawl. But Neil can hear Andrew’s rightfully placed suspicion. 

Neil shrugs. “I needed a fresh start.” It’s not a lie as much as it is an omission of the full truth.

“You’re not playing by the rules,” Andrew taunts with bared teeth. 

Neil raps his knuckles against the counter. He feels he can breathe a little easier with the distance between him and Andrew, but the ghostly tugging at his navel is stronger than before. “I got expelled from my last school,” he said. “I was a bit of a discipline case.”

“Shocking.” 

“My turn,” Neil says, though he struggles for a question to ask. The real objects of his curiosity are walled off with yellow caution tape behind rule number three. It’s a bright sign that reads, DO NOT ENTER. DO NOT TOUCH.

Neil’s eyes flicker to the hot chocolate still steaming in Andrew’s hands. The same hands that gripped the oversized goalie racquet and deflected Neil’s clumsy shots with precision, with talent . “How long have you played exy?”

Andrew narrows his eyes at Neil. “ Fantastic. The last thing I need is another exy-obsessed asshole on my plate.”

“I want to know,” Neil says firmly.

“Since last year,” Andrew relents. “Kevin was desperate and I was bored.”

Neil leans forward against the counter. “You’re good,” he praises, not out of politeness. “You can’t expect me to believe that you play because you’re bored .”

“You can believe whatever you want.” Andrew stares back at him, face blank and withdrawn.

It escapes Neil how anyone can step onto a court, one as large as the Foxes’, with rafters that seemed to kiss the sky and overheads that hit the floor like spotlights, can lack such passion. It perplexes him, but he supposes it’s the least confusing part of Andrew Minyard. 

“Do you have your own dreams?” It’s a simple enough question, but it catches Neil off guard. Perhaps that’s Andrew’s intention. “Or have you always been a little thief?”

Neil clears his throat. “No. I don’t think I have.”

“How would you know?”

“I just know,” Neil says, because he does. It’s an innate knowledge, like a rabbit’s instinct to hide away at the snap of a twig. It’s a skill honed and refined: knowing when he’s in someone else’s skin when he sleeps. 

Andrew’s fingers fidget around the cup, as if he wished he had a cigarette between them instead. 

“No dreams of your own,” Andrew muses aloud as he tilts his head back. 

He almost sounds jealous.

***

The first time Nathaniel steals a dream, he’s six years old.

He sees his father when he closes his eyes. It doesn’t look like his father, not really. But the deep gnawing fear in his belly tells him that it’s his father, so he believes it. 

Red paints his skin— though he doesn’t think it’s his own— and all he knows is that he’s terrified of his father. 

That morning, Mom sits at the counter. They’re in a little motel so close to the interstate that the sounds of rushing cars drowns out the infomercial Mom left on TV. 

She likes to line up her money, all in neat stacks by type. She lines them up, and Nathaniel watches with his chin on the edge of the table. He has to stand on his toes to reach. 

“Is he going to find us?” Nathaniel asks her then. Mom doesn’t stop in her movements, counting slowly under her breath until she reaches the end of the stack in her hand. 

Then, she looks at him. “Don’t ask stupid questions. I’m going to protect us.”

“I saw him last night,” Nathaniel whimpers. He wants Mom to understand how scared he feels, how real the sight of his father behind his eyelids was. How real his hands felt on Nathaniel’s neck. 

“Where?” Mom turns to him sharply, as if now she’s finally listening to what he has to say. She grabs Nathaniel’s wrist tightly and pulls him close. “Where did you see him?”

“When I closed my eyes.” Nathaniel feels his eyes starting to burn. He wipes at his cheeks even before the tears fall; Mom never likes it when he cries. “He was standing outside the window, but then he got inside. He was coming after me. He had b-blood on his face.”

If Nathaniel’s eyes flutter shut, he can still see it.

He’s outside. There’s a slow scraping along the wall. The sting of a blade against brick. It taps against the window, slow and drawn out. 

Tap. 

Tap. 

Tap.

Nathaniel’s heart thunders in his throat. He can’t breathe around it. His chest caves in. 

A silhouette lingers outside the window. He can’t see the features of the faceless man, but he can see the blood. Blood and bright blue eyes. 

When he looks to his right, there’s a sleeping boy next to him. Or maybe he’s dead. When he looks closer he realizes — it’s Nathaniel. 

Mary stares at Nathaniel. It’s a terrified, hollow look that’s usually reserved for the most dire moments. It’s a look that tells him that she knows and understands something that he doesn’t, and she has no intention of explaining it to him.

It scares Nathaniel. Maybe his father really is here, maybe he lives in the shadows. Maybe they can never get away.

“Listen to me,” she says quietly. She holds his face in her hands. It borders between gentle and rough, and Nathaniel doesn’t like the uncertainty of it. “That was… just a dream. Okay? Dreams stay in your sleep. They can’t hurt you.”

It sounds almost like she’s trying to reassure herself instead, but Nathaniel nods with understanding.

It isn’t until years later he learns that the dream isn’t his own. That the images of his father and bruises and blood and death that’d been plaguing him at night had been of his mother’s design. 

***

Wednesday finds Neil feeling particularly raw. A round of interrogation with the newest object of his intrigue and a night trapped under a stranger’s hands in said object of intrigue’s body, is bound to leave him feeling exposed, vulnerable, and fried in every sense of the word. 

He doesn’t know how Andrew does it. He respects him for it, the composure he carries himself with, the confidence. Neil’s years of training and thick skin do little for him after these dreams. Oh, how his mother would turn over in her grave. If she had one.

Class is uninteresting to him. A run in the cool breeze around the Foxhole Court does wonders to clear his scrambled head. It’s nearly impossible to think about anything with that obnoxious shade of orange surrounding him on all sides. 

Three laps becomes boring quickly, so Neil makes quick work of the lock outside of the gate and sneaks his way into the Court. Again, the Foxes desperately need a security upgrade, but there’s something strangely reminiscent about breaking and entering. 

It’s almost as if he’s back in dingy little Millport all over again. He’s sleeping under his team’s bench with a tattered towel and an old jersey as blankets. He’s cleaning the locker room and washing his hair in the bathroom sink and dodging Coach Hernandez all before the sun comes up.

Millport’s locker room doesn’t hold a candle to the Foxhole Court, though. There’s no Coach Hernandez, no old turf to stain his already tattered sneakers, and no borrowed metal bleachers. 

The Foxhole Court is something Neil would dream of, if he could dream at all.

The Foxes’ lounge looks newly renovated. There’s a trophy case that’s embarrassingly empty, and next to it on the wall is a corkboard. Pictures and newspaper clippings decorate the large board, detailing small victories and local coverage of previous games.

 There’s a photo of the whole team in the center of it all. Despite how different they all look, Neil could think they were a family. A miracle of moving parts, all so organic and different but somehow nothing would make sense if they weren’t together. 

Kevin stands in the center, looking the part of an exy superstar. There are several others that Neil recognizes from news coverage of games, but he doesn’t remember them all by name. 

A girl with short, spiky hair and a dark complexion stands in the front with a wicked grin. Danielle Wilds, captain of the Palmetto State Foxes. She wears the ONE on her jersey with great pride. Neil recognizes two blonde heads. Andrew and Aaron. Aaron stands at Kevin’s side, lips pulled into a half-smile half-scowl. 

Andrew’s not smiling, setting him aside from the others. Neil’s eyes linger on him a second too long.

He turns away from the photo and continues out onto the court. He expects to hear Kevin’s barking again, or the clashing of sticks against boards, but it’s eerily quiet when Neil steps in. The court is empty, the goal is unoccupied. 

Neil thinks he hears the ghost of a roaring crowd. But he realizes it’s just the rush of his blood in his ears. He approaches the court like one would approach a cornered, wild animal. He steps as if at any second the possibility of it will be ripped from it. 

Fingernails dig painfully into the meat of his hand. He’s still awake.

The spare equipment bag still sits in the player box. Neil gravitates toward it, reaching for the same racket he used to score against Andrew last week. The weight of it grounds him. It feels rough against his calloused palms. It feels like coming back home. It feels like sandbags being lifted from his shoulders. 

He steps out onto the court. 

It’s an indulgence his mother would scold him for. But Neil’s been strong for long enough. 

It’s been months since he last stepped on a court, but picking it back up is easier than breathing. His feet carry him across the halfcourt mark as he balances a ball in his racket. He imagines opposing backlines closing in, trying to smack the ball from his possession, and he dodges them.

What an easy thing it is: losing himself in the grain of the court, in the glare of the lights and the rows of seats cascading above. It doesn’t matter if there’s a million fans or an empty court to witness, Neil’s blood pumps with the adrenaline of it all the same.

Three strides forward, and he rockets the ball forward. It lurches into the goal and the entire thing glows red. 

“You’re fast.”

Neil turns and forces himself not to flinch. He can’t believe he allowed someone to sneak up on him. The adrenaline of the game quickly gives way to a cold, bone-aching chill of fear. 

Kevin Day stands near the player box. He crosses his arms over his chest and appraises Neil from afar. If Neil’s eyes weren’t betraying him, he’d say Kevin looks almost impressed. 

Neil’s heartbeat steadies. He stares Kevin down.

“I’d be more pissed that you broke in here. Again. But I’m more desperate than anything,” Kevin says. He steps through the player box and onto the court. 

Reflexively, Neil moves back. The more distance between them, the better. Neil at least feels a little better that he has a racket in his hands. Not that he really thinks Kevin will attack him, but old habits die hard. And fear is immortal.

“You need better locks,” Neil says. 

Kevin Day has the audacity to smirk. “You’re Neil Josten,” he says. “You played as a striker for the Millport High School team. Number ten.”

Neil’s stomach hollows out. The dread of it gnaws and eats away at him until he feels unproportionally small underneath Kevin’s stare. 

“Are you stalking me now?” Neil grits his teeth. His knuckles blanch around his grip on the racket. 

“Don’t sound so offended,” Kevin says. “You’re the one who came bursting in looking for Andrew. I watched you score against him. He may be lazy, but he’s also talented. Not just any rookie can pull that off.”

“So what?” Neil can’t see what Kevin could possibly want from him. He doesn’t yet understand the relationship between him and Andrew; he has yet to see Kevin appear in Andrew’s dreams.

Kevin steps into Neil’s space now. It’s a selfish stubbornness that forces Neil’s feet to stay in place, even when Kevin reaches forward and grabs the racquet by the netting. 

“I want to see what you’ve got,” he taunts. Neil doesn’t know what he means, not at first, not until he’s fitted in a suit of spare gear with the same heavy racket clenched between his gloved hands. Not until all six feet of Kevin Day, the prodigal son of exy, stands across from him. 

The scrimmage is the most terrified and exhilarated Neil’s felt in a long time. Maybe in his entire life. His arms are jelly by the end of it, his brow’s slicked with sweat, and he feels he’s one fingerbreadth away from falling six feet under. But he’s never felt more alive. His skin is on fire, and for what feels like the first time the incessant hammering in his chest is the result of glee rather than a fitful night’s sleep. 

Neil’s no match for Kevin Day. That much he can’t feel discouraged by. But what he can find pride in is the score. Five-to-four. One point is all that separates him and a man Neil’s read about in newspapers and caught glimpses of on television coverage. 

“Not bad, Josten,” Kevin says when he takes off his helmet. He doesn’t appear as winded as Neil feels. 

Neil tugs off his own helmet. He stares at Kevin’s hand when he stretches it out towards him. A peace-offering, perhaps. One that Neil is equally skeptical of and moved by. It’s a tentative thing when he reaches for Kevin’s hand, like the uneven floorboards are seconds from giving away and tilting the dice out of his favor. 

“The Foxes are short one striker. Last one flunked out, and if we don’t find a replacement for her, I might as well hand over championships now.”

Neil narrows his eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve taken bigger gambles,” Kevin says, no room for jokes or sarcasm. “Coach will have to approve, but I know he’ll trust my judgment."

“And what about what I think?” Neil asks.

Kevin levels him with a stare, hard as stone and cold as ice. “I think if you were smart you’d know this is an opportunity you can’t pass up.”

It’s too easy. A place on a team (a terrible one, but a team nonetheless), alongside Andrew Minyard, the man he’s been unable to escape, even in his sleep, from the moment he transferred to Palmetto State University. It feels too clean, too simple. As if the universe is mocking him or tempting him with the crumbs of what could be promised to be fate. 

It’s because of this that when Neil shakes Kevin’s hand for a second time, he feels like he’s signed his own death certificate. 

When Neil meets the team that night, he’s a breath away from fleeing for the closest exit. The first person in the locker room is Coach David Wymack, an imposing slab of a man with flame tribal tattoos and shoulders wide enough to take up the door frame. Kevin greets him immediately, and Neil’s suddenly struck by how nervous he feels. 

Sweat slicks his palms, and no amount of frantic wiping on his jeans can fix it. He glues himself to his spot on the couch and stares down the Coach with mistrust. 

“This him?” When Coach Wymack regards Neil, his eyes border on unimpressed. He appraises Neil from a distance, as if sensing Neil’s distrust. “Can he talk?"

Neil scowls and stands. Even standing, Wymack somehow towers over him, but at least having his own two feet under him makes Neil feel a little less pathetic. “He can hear ,” he snaps.

“How fantastic.” Coach Wymack’s voice couldn’t be any less sarcastic, but he somehow smirks through it and pats Kevin on the shoulder. “Not that I don’t trust Kevin’s judgment, but I need to see you on the court with the others before I convince the ERC to let you in mid-season.”

“The others?”

It’s an ambush, Neil decides. 

As if Kevin Day and David Wymack’s presence haven’t been overwhelming enough, the next person in the room is a taller girl with dark skin and the same wicked smile he recognizes from the team photo. She wears her team jersey; Danielle Wilds. The rest of the team files in behind her, a commotion of yelling and shoving and excited whispers. All are faces Neil recognizes from the photo, but there’s only one Neil knows . The only one he cares about.

Andrew stands at the back of the group, leaning up in the doorway with an odd, disconnected stare. It’s almost as if he doesn’t see Neil. There are dark rings beneath his eyes, as clear as written paragraphs of Andrew’s exhaustion. 

There’s a sharp pain in Neil’s chest that he can’t explain.

The pain persists through practice. It twinges something terrible in his chest, like a forgotten knife between his ribs. It twists and rubs his bones raw and sets his nerves alight. Andrew blocks nearly every shot Neil makes at the goal, and by the time he’s pushed into the boards by the towering backliner known as Matt Boyd, he feels his knees ready to give in. But if he’s anything, he’s his mother’s son. Her genes, for better or for worse, are ingrained in his very bones. She breathes in the way his knuckles clench white around his racket and the hammering of his shoes against the court. She’s the persistence through pain, the ability to grit his teeth and bear it.

He doesn’t know how Andrew does it.

That’s what Neil had thought about Andrew and his nightmares. But as he lurches himself across the court for the second time that day and fires what can only be his last shot, his arms being as exhausted as they are, Neil thinks he finally understands. 

He and Andrew are made from the same dirt. 

The goal ignites a fiery red, and someone’s slapping Neil on the back, but it’s difficult to tell who with the way his heart and lungs are trying to escape through his throat. 

“Welcome to the Palmetto State Foxes, Josten.”

***

Neil sees himself in his sleep.

Blue eyes are upturned towards a golden sky. The sun is setting. It casts hues of gold across Neil’s skin, and he’s glowing. 

Neil never considered himself as particularly beautiful. He often lacks time to ponder such things, not that the outcome would make much of a difference to him anyway. He doesn’t particularly notice the beauty in others. But when he stares at himself then, it’s something unearthly. 

This Neil— Dream Neil — looks as if he’s bleeding into the sunset himself. He’s a projection of it, soaking into the rooftop and basking in the last of his own glory before the sun disappears beneath the horizon. It’s hard to imagine himself anywhere else other than this place. It pains him to think of leaving it. It’s warm, it’s safe, it’s exciting.

The beauty of Dream Neil is not unlike an approaching storm, a faint chill in the air and an expectant promise of anticipated rain and dangerous thunder. A type of danger that excites your bones. 

A type of excitement Andrew’s never felt before.

Andrew.

Andrew’s dream?

This is Andrew’s dream.

Wake up.

Chapter Text

“Neil. Wake up.”

Neil wakes with his heart in his throat. His hands go for a weapon that doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe it never existed in the first place. His hands press against the cool grain of a wooden table. There are eyes on him, but it takes him several seconds to find them.

Renee sits across from him at the table. There are bookshelves behind her . Right. The library.  

Neil curls his fists against the grain. He stares at the pattern as if he can fall straight through it if he looks long enough. It’d be better than being under the pitying stare of Renee, the Fox that unnerves him the most. 

He can’t say it’s her hair or the way she dresses or the silver cross she wears around her neck. He can’t say it’s the way she carries herself with a smile that’s equal parts graceful and deadly. Neil knows a survivor when he sees one. And maybe she can too. 

Maybe that’s why Neil hates when she stares at him. She can see him.

“Neil. Are you alright?” She asks. She moves her hand towards him across the table.

Neil pulls away too quickly. “I’m fine.”

There are hands on him — hands on Andrew. There’s a word on his lips (Neil doesn’t know if they’re his or Andrews’ anymore) and it tastes like bile .

Renee, again, smiles. Neil averts his eyes over her shoulder off to the side where a window exposes the thawing soil and blooming trees of spring. Cherry blossoms, maybe. 

The new season has come, both in the weather and on the court. Neil’s run ragged between practice and keeping up with classes and trying to get Andrew to stop avoiding him. Throw in sleepless nights still trapped in Andrew’s dreams, and Neil’s running on fumes.

“Studying between classes?” Renee glances at the open calculus book sitting on the table in front of Neil. “Have you been sleeping enough?”

Neil scowls. “What do you care?”

If Renee is perturbed by Neil’s attitude, she doesn’t show it. Such a reaction (or lack thereof) does few favors in endearing Neil to her. It’s almost as if she’s made from stone. No one is that calm, that collected. 

“You’re a Fox,” she says simply. “You may be a late addition to the team, but you’re Fox all the same. We look out for each other.”

It feels like a target on his back. Eyes on him where eyes shouldn’t be. Maybe he’s paranoid, driven to the brink. Maybe two and a half months in Andrew’s head does that to a person. But no, Neil was already sharp and jagged around the edges. He was already composed of too many broken parts. 

“Thanks, but I don’t need you to look out for me,” Neil says. 

The edges of Renee’s gaze soften, and she considers him for longer than he deems necessary. “Maybe not,” she says under her breath but her tone is anything but defeated. 

Neil’s eyes bounce between the blurred words of his calculus textbook and Renee’s face. Every inch of his skin crawls, because she’s still sitting there and Neil feels he’s boiling under her eyes. He wishes she’d go away, to lose interest and leave him to the small corner of the library he’s sought refuge in throughout the week.

But Renee doesn’t leave. Instead she taps the desk and glances outside a moment before moving to her feet. “It’s beautiful out. I think I may go for a run around campus.” 

Neil sits up at that. He hates how instinctual of a response it is; how easy it is to snatch his attention. Renee looks like she knows this, her smile is the tiniest bit smug and knowing. 

“Look, Neil,” she says. “I know you don’t trust me. You don’t trust the team. I’m not asking you to open up to us overnight. We need everyone to work together for the game this weekend. And I think if you’ll let me, you’ll find you and I are not so different. You can find a place here.”

A deep chill prickles the back of Neil’s neck. It’s a terrible, gnawing dread of anxiety that comes with any eyes on him. But any and all calculus has leaked from the hole in his head and there’s only one way to work off the disgusting chill of adrenaline in his veins. 

He glances out the window again, at the sunny spring day and the promise that maybe this place doesn’t have to be another one that he abandons. 

Neil shakes the thought from his brain immediately. No, he can’t torture himself with the what ifs and the could haves . Instead he slams his book shut and grabs his backpack, all the while Renee staring at him expectantly.

“Let’s go,” he says.

***

They win by the skin of their teeth and Neil nearly takes a racket to the neck. Ten-to-eight, Foxes’ favor. Neil can’t tell if the buzzing in his fingertips comes from exhaustion or the thrill of being on a court again, of playing against a team that pushes him to his limit, of scoring goals and watching Palmetto’s home stands leap with joy and cheer. 

Andrew and some of the others are going to Columbia for the weekend after the game. The Monsters, as the upperclassmen call them. Neil figures it’s a fitting-enough name, with Kevin’s abrasiveness, Nicky’s endless capacity for sticking his nose in others’ business, and Aaron’s unyielding attitude. He supposes, by the others’ standards, Andrew fits in that category as well: a monster. 

All they see are jagged, sharp edges and a malicious grin. A broken mirror that you’ll cut yourself on if you’re not careful picking up the pieces, so it’s better to just leave them on the ground and step over them. It’s harder for Neil to see Andrew as a monster, not when he’s the one being tormented by them every night. 

“You’re coming with us,” is what Andrew says in lieu of asking if he’d like to come along.

Neil doesn’t appreciate being told what to do, but it’s an interesting enough development from being avoided that he can’t help but want to comply.

It’s how he ends up in a car wedged between Andrew and Aaron with their cousin, Nicky, behind the wheel. Kevin sits in the front. It seems he’s brought a bottle of Reyka as a vehicular pregame. 

It’s how he ends up at a club in Columbia with music so loud his ears might bleed and floors sticky enough to take his shoes clean off his feet. He regrets climbing into Andrew’s car, accepting such a precarious initiation, the second he steps foot inside. 

He’s trapped between Nicky and Aaron as they usher him inside, past the bouncers and up to the second floor. Andrew’s gone to park the car, and Kevin is already missing among the crowd. 

“Trying to find the closest vodka bottle,” Nicky laughs to himself. He hooks an arm around Neil’s shoulders and drags him towards a booth in the far back corner of the bar area. 

Neil considers himself a fish on the deck. He’s all for hard edges and deviancy, but strobing lights and electronic music beats hardly fit into Neil’s runaway puzzle. He’s never been to a school dance, let alone a downtown nightclub. Suddenly Andrew’s absence feels quite large, like an extra crater blown into the surface of the moon. 

Dazed, Neil allows Nicky to drag him into the booth, barricading him in between him and Aaron. Aaron is less than pleased to be sitting beside Neil, and Neil even more so. He only lasts a second before he shuffles out of the booth. 

“I’m getting shots,” he announces with a flippant gesture, leaving Neil alone in Nicky’s company. 

“ Neil ,” Nicky all but purrs as he leans his weight into the arm draped over Neil’s shoulders. “I feel like I haven’t spoken to you at all , we’re always so busy with practice.” He sounds disappointed, alarmingly enough. 

Neil is unsure how to respond. “We’re on the Exy team. We practice. That's the whole point.” 

“But that’s so boring— I wanna know about you! What’s Neil Josten about? What makes him tick?” 

Nicky’s attempts are already exhausting, and a glance at his watch tells Neil that he’s only endured about three minutes of Nicky’s droning, and he’s got at least another three hours ahead of him. The urge to slam his forehead into the table is difficult to resist. 

“What’s it to you?” Neil doesn’t look at Nicky. Instead he crosses his arms over his chest and observes the crowd for any sight of blonde hair that does not belong to Aaron Minyard. 

Nicky pouts. “Aw, don’t be like that. Cmon, tell me, what are you into?” 

“Exy.” 

“That’s not what I meant— I should really say, who are you into?” 

Neil flinches and turns to look at Nicky, perplexed. The backliner stares at him with a toothy, devilish grin that somehow both grates and soothes Neil’s nerves. The nerve he has to dig into other people’s business is astounding, though to be fair, Neil supposes the same could be said for him. The difference, however, is Nicky goes rooting for information that he doesn’t have a right to. Neil doesn’t have a choice who and what he becomes privy to.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It seems like a safe response.

Nicky’s eyebrows raise in obvious disbelief. “My radar is rarely wrong, Neil. Plus I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at Andrew. I’ll admit I was surprised, I felt like Kevin would be more of your type. Kevin is everyone’s type. Well, except for me. I like my boys short. Reddish hair never hurts either.”

If Nicky is suggesting something, Neil easily overlooks it. “No one is my type. I don’t swing like that.” 

The sound Nicky makes is lost over the roaring start of the next song. When he starts speaking again, insisting that Neil has heart-eyes for Andrew or something ridiculous about the way he walks, Neil tunes him out. It’s easy, when his voice blends into the white noise of the party and Neil busies himself with trying to find Andrew. Surely it can’t take too long to find a parking spot.

Or maybe Andrew’s avoiding him. Suddenly Neil feels ridiculous for not realizing it sooner. Though it’s a confusing conclusion given the fact that Andrew had been the one to invite Neil in the first place. Mixed messages seems to be Andrew’s game. Neil’s getting tired of playing along.

“Let me out,” Neil says to Nicky, gesturing for him to move so he can crawl out of the booth. 

Nicky’s expression wilts. “Aren’t you gonna wait for the drinks?”

“I don’t drink,” Neil dismisses. “Now let me out. I have to use the bathroom.”

Eventually Nicky relents, sliding out of the booth so Neil can get out. When Neil gets to his feet, Aaron’s picking his way back through the crowd with a tray of shots and two bottles of opened beer. Neil side-steps him, ignoring the way Aaron’s dark eyes linger on for a long, tense moment, before slipping out into the crowd.

Neil finds Andrew again near the bar. It’s difficult to navigate the sea of people, bodies pressed against one another, men leaning over to whisper in their dates’ ears, hands wrapped around waists and lips on necks. Neil’s skin crawls as he carves his path through them.

Andrew sits at the bar, nursing a glass of some kind of whiskey or scotch between his hands. The pose and the drink age him, like the weight on his shoulders is that of the world rather than a university athlete. Neil doesn’t have to get close to him for Andrew to sense his presence. 

“You’re quite persistent,” Andrew mutters around the lip of his drink. 

Neil steps up beside him but doesn’t look at Andrew. Instead he runs his fingers over the sticky bartop and tries to memorize the pattern of the fake wood grain. “I’ve been called stubborn.”

“An understatement,” Andrew says, unimpressed. “If you had any survival instincts at all, you’d leave me the hell alone.”

“ You asked me to come.”

Andrew shrugs. “A test of your intelligence. Obviously you failed.”

“You gave me your word that I could stay,” Neil argues. “If you had half the spine you pretend you do, you would stop pushing me away. You can’t tell me you don’t also feel like—”

When Andrew glares at him, it’s something venomous, so much so that Neil’s jaw snaps shut. “I don’t feel anything. There is no this , no us , none of this stupid story you think this is.”

Something in Neil breaks. He’s not even sure where it is or if it’s a vital component, but he feels it splinter, as if the invisible string that’s been tying him to Andrew the past two months suddenly started to fray and give way. 

It’s impossible that Andrew can’t feel it; the connection. Neil doesn’t want it. He’d give it up in an instant, the connection, the dreams, his crippling inability to move himself away from the enigma of a person that is Andrew Minyard. It’s a death sentence, one that he can’t take back.

And Andrew can’t feel a shred of it? Neil doesn’t know what he’ll do if Andrew’s telling the truth, so he has no choice but to believe it’s a lie. 

You dreamed of me, Neil wants to say. 

He remembers what he looked like, who Neil was in his dream. It wasn’t Neil Josten, but an impression of him. He was Neil Josten with edges smoothed over and drained of everything rotten. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was his face in those dreams, his hands, his eyes. Basking in the sun as if he were something precious, something treasured and deserving of such things.

“I don’t believe you,” is what Neil says instead.

Andrew’s stare is lazy. “Believe what you want.”

“You know I’m right,” Neil insists. “You’re too afraid to admit it.”

Andrew downs the rest of his drink and slams the glass back down on the countertop. The noise of it is lost in the howling of music and bass in the club. The angry twist in his features, anger Neil has yet to see from someone usually so outwardly composed, ignites under the bright glow of neon lights. 

He looks unreal. Even painted with hot, red anger.

Neil doesn’t step back when Andrew turns on him. He doesn’t flinch when Andrew curls his fist in the front of Neil’s shirt and pulls him down with a scowl. He doesn’t do these things because he knows that while Andrew’s hands are capable of destruction, he’s not a destructive person. 

Andrew won’t hurt him. Neil doesn’t know exactly how he knows this, but he knows it well enough he’d bet his life on it.

“You don’t know anything ,” Andrew snarls. “You’re a parasite. You crawl into people’s brain and steal their secrets like you have the fucking right. You burrow yourself into people’s lives and make them miserable. I can’t fucking look at you right now.”

Neil’s face crumbles. Of course Andrew’s angry. All the secrets meant to stay between Andrew and his pillow are now between the two of them on a bartop: Andrew, unable to acknowledge it, and Neil, unable to forget it. 

“I’m sorry,” is all Neil manages through the swelling in his throat. 

“I hate you,” Andrew hisses and leans in.

Their faces are close now. Neil can feel the heat of Andrew’s breath fanning across his cheek. He sees a faint scar on Andrew’s upper cheek, the way a single crease forms between his brows when he twists his mouth into a frown. 

“Noted,” Neil says. There’s a ghost of a smile on his face. Neil wants to wipe it away, quickly, but he can’t.

Andrew shoves him away roughly. “Fuck you.”

When he disappears back into the crowd, Neil doesn’t follow. He’s too dizzy to move.

***

Neil dreams of himself many nights after that.

It’s a rather disconcerting feeling, watching himself from a bird’s eye view. Witnessing an elegance in his features that Neil knows does not exist in reality. It’s a Neil that he both recognizes and doesn’t; it’s a Neil that doesn’t remind him of his father. He’s not sure such a version could ever exist, but it does here: in Andrew’s dreams.

Sometimes they’re in Eden’s Twilight. Others, the coffee shop. Most often, though, they’re sprawled on the asphalt of the rooftop of Fox Tower, sunset bathing their skin in brilliant gold and red hues. 

“I hate you,” Andrew tells him. But the hand on Dream Neil’s cheek is gentle despite the tense twitching of his knuckles. “So why can’t I get you out of my head?”

***

Andrew remembers Neil striking a ball in the goal past him like he remembers everything: with perfect clarity. It’s more a curse than it is a blessing, and now that’s true more than ever, when he can’t stop seeing the flash of icy blue eyes behind the grate of the helmet, and that stupid smile that split Neil’s face like cracking marble when the goal ignited a victorious red. 

In this moment, staring at the ceiling of his empty dormitory, Andrew hates himself for letting Neil score. For making him stay despite every inch of his being telling him that the pretty boy with icicles for eyes is nothing but trouble. Keep him away, it begs him. He’s going to burn you.

And burn him, Neil Josten did. He’s bright as any wildfire, and he hurts worse than the flames of his lighter Andrew brushes his fingers through late at night just to feel his nerve endings jump. Some nights Andrew swears he can feel Neil in his head, someplace between sleep and wakefulness, prodding himself into places he doesn’t belong. Mostly it’s terrifying. Andrew has to fight the urge to come at Neil with a knife against his pulsepoint, just to see a fraction of the terror he feels flash through Neil’s face. 

Other times though… Andrew doesn’t know what it is. The uncertainty hurts him more than any forest fire can. He knows what it’s like to burn. He doesn’t know what it’s like to simmer , not with Neil Josten. All at once he finds himself both withdrawing and falling into it. Like a petty toddler, he can’t make up his mind. Break his toy or treasure it. Lean into the safety of those pipe dreams on the rooftop promise, or snap it in half before they ever have the chance to betray him.

These are all things Andrew ponders as he sits on the rooftop of the Fox Tower, waiting for the sound of the access door to screech shut behind him. Waits for Neil Josten to announce his aggravating presence. 

***

Climbing to the rooftop of Fox Tower is an instinctual thing. 

Neil thinks it’s only right, after dreaming of it so many times. In those dreams, Neil can’t always tell where Andrew ends and Neil begins. The words that leave his lips aren’t his own, and he stares at himself, each night just as breath-taking as the next. 

You’re unreal, Andrew tells Neil in the dream. You can’t be real.

Everything about the rooftop is familiar. The ascending numbers of the floors as he climbs each flight of stairs, the stench of cement in the stairwell, the cool burst of air that hits his face the second he steps out, and the scent of cigarette smoke. 

It’s all familiar. Like an old dream that escapes between your fingers the more you try to remember the details before dissolving completely into thin air. Neil struggles to hold onto the memory of it, but the sight of Andrew is a tether. 

He’s sitting on the ledge, feet dangling over the empty parking lot below. Smoke trails a small cloud over his head, lingering from the cigarette burning to its filter between his fingers. His back is to Neil, but Neil knows Andrew hears him approach. 

“You found me.” Andrew doesn’t phrase it as a question, but Neil doesn’t miss the “how?” hidden in his words, in the gentle tilt of his head. 

Neil clears his throat and leans his head back to look at the sky. The sun is too high. There’s no golden glow, no beautiful version of Neil that doesn’t exist. Only this version: the dull, colorless one. 

“I recognized the place,” Neil ventures carefully. He takes one step towards Andrew. It’s taking a closer step to one of Andrew’s three rules.

Rule number three: Neil cannot discuss what he sees in Andrew’s dreams.

“You’re getting braver,” Andrew says, stubbing his cigarette out on the ledge. “People fall off of rooftops all the time.”

Neil scoffs. “If you wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already.”

“A man can change his mind.” 

“You won’t hurt me.” It’s both a challenge and a promise. 

Andrew has no argument to this, and Neil knew he wouldn’t. Andrew may be many things, and many of things may fall along the line of monster, but a blatant liar is not one of them. It takes one to know one, and Neil is a man made of lies. 

Neil takes the risk to sit bedside Andrew. They aren’t touching, a handbreadth between their thighs, but it feels like they might as well be side-to-side. Andrew feels like electricity next to him, like the way everything stands on end just before lighting’s about to strike. 

Neither of them speak. Maybe there isn’t anything left to say. Everything else has already been said, shown, and relieved, in their shared dreams at night. Andrew has nothing to hide behind, and judging by the slow easing of the tension in his shoulders, he’s starting to accept this fact. 

Still, it isn’t fair. Andrew has so little access while Neil so much. Steadying himself with a slow breath, Neil musters his courage. 

“I… was on the run. With my mom. We moved from place to place, never anywhere longer than a few months. Then, my mom died,” he says, staring at the new cigarette Andrew pulls from the cartridge and ignites. “Just before Christmas. We were in California at the time. I decided I needed a new place to be. So I came here.”

Andrew stiffens beside him. His face is turned the other way, but from here Neil can see the way his jaw clenches with thought. “It isn’t my turn.”

“It doesn't have to be,” Neil says. “I’m answering your first question. The full truth this time.”

“I’m not interested in your sob story.” Andrew’s knuckles blanch and the cigarette bends in the middle from his grip. 

“Ask me something else then.”

Andrew turns, finally, to look at Neil. His face is starting to become one that Neil knows better than his own, each subtle shift. He’s seen the minimal crease in his brow when he’s pretending not to care about defending the goal in practice, the calculated, rehearsed purse of his lips when he contemplates his next remark. And most of all, he sees the subtle darkening of Andrew’s eyes. The curiosity and the anger at said curiosity. 

“Do you enjoy leeching off of people’s fears?” Andrew asks. “Do you get off on it?”

“No,” Neil answers quickly. “I hate every second of it.”

The glare in Andrew’s eyes tells Neil that he doesn’t believe him. Neil can’t blame him; no one has given Andrew any reason to believe anyone, not in his entire life. He moves closer. A suicidal move, had Neil thought it through a bit longer, but he’s never been one to think before he acts. That kind of instinct has gotten him this far, has kept him alive. But it’s also ended him up here, thigh inches from Andrew’s and heart feeling like it’s nearing its limit, ready to burst in his chest. 

“I’m not like them,” Neil says, because it’s true. He’s seen the blurred faces of men who have hurt Andrew, he’s heard their laughter and taunts and cruelty. Perhaps he’s been so blinded by his need to understand , that he’s lost sight of what matters most. 

“If I’m going to stay, it’s going to be on your terms,” he continues.  “You can tell me to piss off now, and I will. I’m tired of taking more than I’m due.”

Over the past several months he’s been at Palmetto, the several hours on-end practicing along the Palmetto State Foxes, the days spent trapped in Andrew’s dreams, Neil thinks he knows every iteration of Andrew’s face as he does his own. This face though, the clear bewilderment, as if Neil had spoken a foreign language. Andrew’s exterior is rough and solid as stone, but something in it is starting to give, as if Neil’s tender hand had been the chisel to finally wear away at an unmoved slab of granite. 

The cigarette in his fingers burns to its end without Andrew as much as taking another drag. Neil expects him to make his decision quickly. To curse Neil away like the demon he always claims him to be. He expects Andrew to bid him farewell happily with a crooked grin and triumphant relief. But he doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, he sits in silence, never closing the small gap between them but not making it wider either. The silence between them stretches on for what, to Neil, feels like lifetimes. Andrew doesn’t look at him, doesn’t speak, doesn’t so much as breathe in Neil’s direction. Maybe he’s crossed a boundary, tapped too close to the contents of Andrew’s dreams. He’s finally given Andrew an out, after months of reluctant stubbornness and a need to understand why Neil of all people has been tasked with sharing Andrew’s mental burdens. 

Neil can live with that uncertainty. If it means sparing Andrew some of the hurt, he has to live with it. The time for selfishness is over. Andrew has suffered enough. Even if it feels as if a knife is tearing through something vital the more distance he feels growing between him and Andrew. 

The sun is nearly set when Andrew speaks again. “It’s your turn,” he says. “Take it before I push you over the ledge.”

“I’d take you down with me,” Neil teases, then stares down at his hands. There are small calluses on the pads of his fingers from wearing his hands around the staff of an exy racket. “Do you really not feel anything between us? A pull, a twinge, anything?”

Andrew’s eyes slide over to Neil, studying him. If Neil isn’t mistaken, there’s almost that softness that only Andrew Minyard can achieve, the kind Neil’s only seen in fragments in his dreams. But then, it’s gone. And Andrew’s gone. The butt of his burning cigarette smokes on the ledge as Andrew climbs to his feet and leaves Neil alone on that rooftop. Nothing but that aching absence and the setting sun as his witnesses. 

***

The room is cold, dark, and damp. He recognizes it, maybe. It’s odd. It’s terrifying.

His skin is slick with something. It’s warm and sticky, but at the same time gnaws a terrible chill to the core of his bones. He tries to reach up to wipe at it— it’s in his eyes— but no matter how much he tries, the red won’t wash away. Red. Red . Blood. It’s someone’s blood— his? 

Neil’s breath catches in his chest. It feels like his lungs are strung up outside of his body. No matter how deep he inhales, the breath never quite reaches the bottom of his chest. With it comes a panic that comes often with drowning. Drowning on dry land, drowning with air in his lungs and blood slipping down his windpipe.

Metal. Neil hears metal striking the ground, the sharp sting of it chiming in tune with his pulse. It’s the lightning strike in the eye of his thunderstorm; he can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from, but with every passing second it sounds closer. 

If you count the seconds from a strike of lighting to when thunder sounds, that’ll tell you how far the storm is, his mom had told him one night. The longer it takes you to count, the safer you are.

There’s another strike of metal. A blade sharpening. Neil holds his breath and counts. What he’s waiting for next, what he’s counting to, he’s not sure. But he scrunches his eyes shut and counts. One. Two. Three —

Another strike. It’s louder this time. It taunts him, it’s rhythmic thumping. 

One. Two —

Again. It isn’t until now, when he hears it right beside his head, that he realizes it’s the sound of a knife striking a table. The sharpening of a blade against a grindstone.

One —

A hand grabs him by his hair. His eyes open on instinct. A man with wicked auburn hair and eyes like a tundra stare down at him. Neil recognizes him, recognizes that gruesome smile speckled with blood. He’s seen it in the mirror, he’s spent years running from it, he’s imagined it in the shadows dark enough to fall into. 

“Hello, Junior.”

When Neil wakes, it’s not with a gasp or a violent jerk. He wakes slowly, as if the weight of Nathan sitting on his chest lingers in the limbo between realites. He wakes with his hand already sneaking to his opposite pillow, searching for the comfort of his mother’s weight in the bed next to him. But his hand grazes over cool sheets. 

Then, he sits bolt upright, heart thundering. 

His mother isn’t here. This isn't a hotel room. He isn’t twelve years old anymore. There’s a poster directly across from him from some old Western movie he’s never seen. A poster that belongs to his roommate, Matt Boyd. He’s in a dorm room at Palmetto State University. He’s eighteen years old. His name is Neil Josten.

And he doesn’t know who’s dream that was. 

Neil remembers sitting on that beach in California. Twilight had been setting in, casting the sky in hues of warring blue and red. Maybe he would’ve considered it beautiful had it not been the mangled car, flames lapping at metal and kissing the horizon. Neil’s toes buried in the sand, feeling the grit of it and imagining it as glass beneath him.

It was a terrible thing, but the first and only thing Neil could think was, Thank God I won’t have to dream about him again. Without Mary, there was no Nathan to plague Neil in his dreams. Only in memories. And memories were something Neil could live without.

***

Hello, Junior. The words ring, crystal clear, even over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears when he makes his fifth lap around the Foxhole Court. The sun has yet to rise, but Neil is restless. His skin feels like it’s been set ablaze, and no amount of pacing or running can quell the flames. It’s tearing him apart from the inside out, just like the promise of those blades. He sees the glint of them every time he shuts his eyes— blue eyes. Eyes just like his father.

“Focus,” he hisses out loud, into the blooming spring air. He’d feel ridiculous had anyone but the ridiculous orange of the Foxhole Court been there to witness it. Instead, he’s angry. It’s bright and hot and vengeful, and his veins scream at him for some sort of release. 

So he finds himself inside, destroying yet another padlock to get into the Foxes’ lounge and steal an extra racket from the supply closet. If he isn’t careful, doesn’t get on the court fast enough, he’ll drive the head of it right through the trophy case. He doesn’t care. All that matters is getting this out — this anger, this fear, this confusion.

Neil Josten doesn’t dream. Neil doesn’t deal in many absolutes, but this had always been one of the select few. Neil doesn’t dream, and he will never dream. He’s a thief, a parasite. The horrors and delicacies alike that torment him at night never have and never will belong to him. Nathan died alongside Mary on that beach. He shouldn’t be able to hurt Neil anymore. He can’t hurt him anymore.

So why can he? Why had Neil seen him? Why is his heart pounding so furiously that even a white-knuckled grip on a racket cannot calm the terrible shaking of his hands?

Ball after ball, score after score, he can’t seem to shake the nightmare from his mind. That’s what it had been, hadn’t it? A nightmare? The thought alone shakes the glossy flooring of the court, and Neil’s heart thunders so mercilessly that his knees give in, and he claims his spot crumpled in the center of the court. The floor is cool beneath his back, and for a moment, when Neil is brave enough to close his eyes, he almost feels peaceful. 

A hand combs through his hair. The voice is familiar, though these days he doesn’t know if it’s what she actually sounded like or what he desperately wished she sounded like . 

“It’s time to get up,” she’d whisper. 

“Neil.” 

He’s on his feet in a second, blood rushing in his ears and adrenaline coating his veins in ice. His knuckles blanch around his grip on the racket. But where Neil expects to see Nathan slinking along the shadows, all long limbs, bloodied teeth, and red eyes, he sees Renee instead.

She keeps a safe distance between the two of them, standing by the boards. She’s drowning in an oversized hoodie, her eyes heavy and tired, skin gray under the harsh court lighting. Neil can’t do anything but stare as he begs his poor, aching heart to settle. Still, he can’t help but look over Renee’s shoulder, into the shadows, wishing he could sink into it and be anywhere but here.

“What are you doing here?” Neil forces his words to steady despite the tremble of his fingers. 

“I could ask you the same.” Renee shifts her weight between her legs and examines Neil, that same gentle yet probing stare she offered him in the library, during practices, anytime she looked at him it seemed. Neil hates it more than anything, the silent understanding she carries with her as if she has the right. She doesn’t know the first thing about him. How could anyone?

Neil shakes the racket in his hand. “... Practicing,” he says, breathless. 

Renee hums. “Right. At three in the morning.”

“You’re no better,” Neil says. “It's a bit hypocritical to be criticizing me right now.”

“Maybe,” Renee relents. She walks along the edge of the boards until she reaches the abandoned gear of spare equipment Neil had dragged from the storage locker. She pulled out a racket, balancing it between her hands and rolling her ankles to stretch them out. “Let’s practice, then. If that’s what you’re here for.”

Neil steps back. He wants to decline, for a brief moment he considers fleeing. It’s always the easiest option, isn’t it? To flee when things get difficult, when it’s too hard to comprehend what’s unfolding in front of him? Problems abandoned are just as good as problems solved, no? As long as they weren’t around to haunt him anymore. 

Only running’s never solved anything. Nathan might be dead, or missing. His mom may be long gone. But it seems even distance and a dreamless man aren’t enough to keep them away. They’ll always find a way to haunt him. 

“Okay,” Neil says weakly. 

It’s not the same as playing against Andrew. Where Andrew has resolute power and strong lines, Renee has grace and speed. She moves like a dancer in the goal, her feet light and blocking corners of the goal Neil couldn’t even dream of reaching. Her hair falls in her face in disheveled strands, and by the time an hour passes, her face is flushed a fierce shade of red from exertion.

Neil long lost count of how many goals and interceptions were made. He finds he doesn’t really care. With an opponent in front of him and the court beneath his feet, he feels like he can do anything; be anything; forget everything. He sits against the back wall, and Renee joins him, careful to allow Neil space. He silently appreciates the gesture. 

She rolls a ball between her hands, tracing the seams of it as if trying to memorize it down to its fibers. Neil watches from her periphery, the adrenaline slowly fading from his veins and relief flooding through in its place. 

“Are you feeling better?” Renee asks.

Neil tries not to show that the question startles him. Is he so easy to read?

Slowly, he nods. “How did you…”

“I know you don’t trust me,” Renee says. “And I’m not asking you to. But I told you before— you and I are not so different, Neil.”

A scoff escapes him. 

“I mean it,” she says, leveling him with a cold, hard stare. She holds up the ball between them, turning it slowly in her hand. Neil finds himself unable to look away. “ This. This is just as important to you as it is to me, I can tell. It’s saved us.”

Neil’s eyebrows furrow. For months, it’d seemed like the only other person who breathed the sport like oxygen was Kevin. As exhilarating as it had been, training alongside a prodigy day after day, Kevin’s attitude and need for winning overcoming the need to simply be on the court became exhausting. Andrew’s indifference never helped, either. Still, Neil’s never needed anyone else to share it with. So why does it feel like he’s been missing out on something?

“You don’t act like someone fighting to be on the court,” Neil says. 

Renee shrugs and places the ball in the space between them. “I already did my fighting. I came here to escape. To let my blood pump and forget everything I am and was.”

Neil can’t look at Renee anymore, so he stares at the ball between them. He fights the urge to reach for it out of fear of his fingers brushing against hers. “And who is that?”

“Someone with regrets. Someone who’s had bad things happen to her. Someone who’s done bad things to other people.” Renee speaks as if it’s easy, to cut herself open and pour a cup for someone she hardly knows. Neil is a stranger to her— he should be a stranger.

Neil swallows a heavy lump in his throat. Exhaustion suddenly washes over him, pinning him to the ground. He doesn’t think he could get up even if he wanted to. “Is it that easy to forget it? On the court?”

“Not at first.” Renee answers and Neil believes her. “I had to learn to face it while out there, embracing it. Instead of running from it.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Is this turning into a lecture?”

“I have no business to lecture anyone,” Renee says all too kindly. “Only advice. It's up to you if you take it or not.”

The words rub Neil’s skin raw. He’s tired of being peeled back and read. Renee unnerves him for more reasons than Neil can describe, nor does he care to. All he knows is that she can see things most can’t, and somehow manages to stay a face of calm and peace for the team. She plays with ferocity and hides a past between kind smiles and cross necklaces. She can’t be trusted. 

“Exy isn’t the only thing we have in common,” she says. 

Neil flinches this time. He can’t help it. “And what would that be?”

“We have a tendency to steal other people’s dreams.”

The terror that washes through him has no name or origin. It’s entirely unfamiliar. Not the bone-gnawing dread that comes with hearing his father’s voice from down the hallway, not the dull anxiety of waking up to his mother packing yet another bag, and not the frantic fear of the back of Andrew’s head as he walks away from him. This monetary fear strikes him hard and deep, right through the chest, paralyzing him. His fists curl into the fabric of his shorts. 

No one is supposed to know. 

“You… What?”

Renee smiles at him, that heathen. “I know you have been in Andrew’s dreams. I got the sense about you when you first joined, but I wasn’t certain until recently. When I saw you two together. There’s a certain… energy.”

Neil doesn’t know what to do, what to say. Years of isolation, of knowing he’s a freak of nature with no greater purpose. No one understands what it feels like to be trapped in another’s head, in another’s body, not knowing what’s dream and what’s reality. Not knowing where he ends and others begin. Renee has known the entire time?

“How did you… You’re like me?”

Renee nods. “I’ve seen everyone’s dreams on this team. Kevin’s. Aaron’s. Nicky’s. Allison’s.” Her eyes flicker to Neil, assessing his reaction. “Yours.”

Neil freezes. “That’s not possible.”

“I know that’s what you think,” Renee says. “I didn’t think I could dream either.”

“But you can now?” 

“Sometimes. It can be hard to tell which ones are actually mine.”

Neil thinks of the rooftop. Nights of reprieve from Andrew’s closet of demons, sprawled on the rooftop with the sun coating his skin and kissing Andrew’s profile. He sees himself, but he sees Andrew as well. They’re both glowing, and no matter how low the sun gets, Andrew’s eyes still somehow shine like bright pools of honey. He feels safe then, under the glow of the sunset with Andrew’s hand a steady force on his shoulder, on his arm, on his back. Andrew’s always around him, and looking back on it, Neil doesn’t know if he’s seeing it from Andrew’s perspective or his own. 

Maybe at some point they blended together. 

Hello, Junior. Neil goes rigid, throat tight and hands trembling. Renee’s seen it. She’s seen Nathan with his bloodied face that mirrors Neil’s own. She knows the dark horrors of Neil’s mind that’s meant for no one but Neil and Neil alone.

Is this how Andrew feels? Neil feels sick to his stomach.

“So you saw it.”

Renee nods. “I’m sorry, Neil. You know better than anyone that I can’t control it.”

Neil can’t be upset. Because that would mean Andrew’s right to push him away, that Neil’s nothing but what Andrew had said he was: a parasite. Nothing but another devil to dream about at night. 

“I know.” Neil’s throat runs dry. He can’t breathe. “At least answer one question. Why am I stuck in Andrew’s head?”

Renee’s silent for a long time. So long, in fact, that Neil considers snatching the ball resting between them and fleeing from the Foxhole Court. Anything, the buzz of highway traffic, the roaring of songbirds with the rising dawn, would be more bearable than this empty, expectant silence. Just when he’s about to lose his resolve, to cave in and flee from Renee, from this conversation, she clears her throat.

“I don't have an answer that will satisfy you,” she says. “But I don’t think what we do is without reason. We gravitate towards people for a reason. You feel it, don’t you? A pull?”

Reluctantly, Neil nods.

Renee continues, “Maybe it’s not a bad idea to allow it to guide you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Neil says. “Andrew hates me. And I can’t blame him.”

Renee hums in lieu of a real response. Neil can tell she’s holding something back, but he doesn’t know what. He doesn’t pry either. Instead he allows the silence of the Foxhole Court consume him whole, allowing the tension between two dream thieves to simmer. He clenches his fists and feels the tingle of his palms when he releases the pressure. 

This is real , he tells himself. You’re awake.  

***

When Neil drops, it happens all at once. 

It’s a combination of things that does him in. First and foremost, sleep eludes him now that Nathan has taken what seems to be a permanent residence in Neil’s nightmares. Despite this, Neil can only be glad he’s no longer invading Andrew’s head every night. A minor dose to soothe his guilty conscience. 

Second, Kevin Day is an asshole. This isn’t a particularly new discovery, but rather, he’s done a rather impeccable job of reminding Neil of said fact in the past week. Midnight practices turn into three A.M. practices, which Neil can’t say that he minds. Though it’s difficult to listen to his body screaming out in exhaustion when Kevin Day’s yelling at him in the other ear that his game is slipping. 

Third and potentially the most devastating of them all, Neil’s an idiot. He’s not above admitting it, especially when he’s splayed out on the floor of the court, thousands of watchful eyes on him as the once boisterous crowd shrinks into concerned whispers. Neil’s blood roars in his ears; he can’t quite see the rafters but he can feel their stare, even through the feverish stickiness of his skin. 

He’s an idiot because he’s allowed himself to get to this point: head spinning, chest heaving, and panic bubbling at the base of his throat to the point where he can’t breathe. He’s an idiot because he’s been nearing his limit for well over a week now. And it’s landed him here: flat on his back in the middle of one of the most important games so far. 

All because he hadn’t seen the backliner coming for him. 

“Back up!”  

He thinks that might be Matt yelling. Maybe Nicky. He can’t be sure. His vision twirls until the lights and stands blend into a dizzying swirl of color and brightness. It’s difficult to breathe. Maybe someone’s sitting on his chest. Though he’s not sure why they’d do that. Maybe Andrew wanted to see him suffer just a little bit extra. 

“ Hey! Break it up! Boyd, go grab Minyard!” Neil recognizes that voice. It’s gruff, rugged. 

Suddenly, he sees the person it belongs to. Coach Wymack’s face is blurred around the edges, but Neil can see him looming over him, face twisted. Neil can’t help but wonder why he’s so upset. 

A hand grabs him by his chin, lightly tapping his cheek. Neil winces at the stab of pain that lances through his head. “Hey. You with me?” Wymack’s voice is grating and annoying, especially when Neil’s head feels like an egg that’s been cracked on pavement. 

There’s a commotion somewhere to Neil’s left. There’s yelling and screeching of shoes against the court’s floor. He tilts his head, despite how terrible it throbs, to see a blur of people. They’re fighting, Neil thinks, with fists flying. Orange clusters on one end. Neil recognizes Matt Boyd’s back as he tries to pull someone from the fight, someone small with a three on the back—

“Josten. Hey. Pay attention.” The hand on his chin forces Neil’s vision back to Wymack. He can’t help but be annoyed at him for that; he wants to know who’s fighting. Did someone get hurt? He wants to help.

He tries to get up, planting his hands on the floor of the court, but he’s not sure he can quite feel them. Wymack doesn’t let him move more than an inch before he’s pressing him down by his shoulder. “Jesus Christ, kid, stay down.” Wymack looks over his shoulder. “Probably a concussion. Get Abby the fuck over here!” 

Neil winces. He really wishes Wymack would shut up. The misery is difficult to work through, especially when there’s a tinge of bile working up the back of his throat, the pain ransacking his face and nausea claiming his gut. He doesn’t think he can move now, not when his vision’s starting to clear and his chest spasms with the realization of where he is, of what happened. 

“Coach,” Neil chokes through grit teeth, pushing against the firm hand pressed to his chest. 

“You took a hard hit, Josten. Are you trying to shorten my lifespan?” He sounds stressed, as if gray hairs are sprouting on his head as he speaks. Neil wishes his vision was clearer so he could see it firsthand. It’d make some of his pain worth it, maybe. 

There’s more footsteps, and the commotion to his left starts to die down. The silence is somehow worse. All eyes are on Neil, even though Neil can’t see them. He can feel them, and it’s then that he realizes that the crushing weight on his chest belongs to the stares of the spectators and cameras trained on him. It’s unbearable. He can’t get up— he can’t get away—

“Get away from him.” 

Wymack moves aside.

A new voice. A new face looming over him. The first thing Neil notices is the red on the stranger’s face. His nose is bleeding, blood dribbling down his chin and onto the collar of his jersey. The second thing Neil notices is that it’s Andrew. Andrew’s leaning over him with wide, wild eyes that look momentarily like they belong to someone else, and a frown so wickedly sharp that it could cut anyone who dared come too close. 

“You’re bleeding,” Neil mumbles. For some reason that fact makes him incredibly angry. 

“Brilliant observation, dumbass.”

A voice somewhere above Neil says, “Andrew, you have to let Abby look at him—” 

“No.” Andrew’s voice is stern and authoritative. Strong, like a rock. Neil wants to lean on it, use it to climb to his feet. “Not here. No one else touches him or you’re dead.”

Andrew grabs Neil’s shoulder, slowly pulling him upright. Neil’s stomach lurches at the movement, but Andrew’s grip is steadying. He doesn’t let Neil slump back to the ground, no matter how much Neil wants to right now. Clumsily, the two of them stagger to their feet, Andrew supporting most of Neil’s body weight with an arm strung across his shoulders. Neil can sense the others hovering, buzzing with nervous and angry energy. Angry at Andrew for not allowing them to help. Angry at the bastard backliner for snapping Neil against the backboards as violently as he had.

The whole way off the court and into the locker rooms, Neil feels sick to his stomach. The stars from the initial hit start to clear, but it leaves him with a hollow, queasy feeling and a slight blur to his vision when he moves his head too fast. He can’t tell if he’s bleeding or not. He can’t tell if the others are trying to talk to him. All he hears is Andrew’s ragged, almost feral breathing. From the arm across his shoulders, Neil can feel his heartbeat. Intense, desperate, rapid. 

Finally they’re out of prying eyes, and Andrew sets Neil down in the makeshift infirmary in the back of the locker room. Abby rushes in, a kit clutched in her hands. She approaches Neil slowly, eyes on Andrew, as if she’s afraid of being pounced. As if Andrew was a feral animal protecting its last scrap of food. Neil’s not sure how he feels about being dumpster picking for a stray dog. But maybe that’s just the concussion talking.

Andrew makes no move to stop Abby, but he stands close by, eyes wide and glued to Neil as if he’s afraid he’ll fold up and disappear into thin air if he so much as glances away. Neil almost feels like that’s possible. The pain in his head, the ache in his joints, the humiliation crawling over his skin— he wishes he could shrivel up into dust. 

Abby asks him a lot of questions, most of which Neil can’t remember answering. But he isn’t being carted off in an ambulance so he can only assume he answered most of them to Abby’s liking. His headaches by the time she’s done looking him over and applying butterfly stitches to a gash just above his left eyebrow. 

Andrew’s stationed to Neil’s left, sitting on a short chest of draws with his eyes never leaving Neil. The intensity of his stare is foreign, lacking the distinct sharpness of anger and instead leaving behind… what? The emotion is hollow and unfamiliar, and no matter how much Neil squints at him, trying to examine the meaning of Andrew’s clenched jaw and blanched knuckles, he can’t figure it out. But Andrew makes himself a permanent fixture in the room, and as unpredictable as he is, Neil finds great comfort in it.

As a last measure, Abby’s fingers brush through her hair, leaving his skin chilled and crawling, and when she passes over a swelling lump on the back of his head, he nearly jolts out of his skin.

Andrew steps forward, about to intervene. Abby whispers a frantic apology under her breath. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I just had to feel it.” She steps back from Neil, turning to look at Wymack leaning in the doorway. “He’s got a concussion and a nasty knot. But otherwise he’ll be okay.”

“He doesn’t need stitches?” Wymack gestures to the strips above Neil’s eye. 

Abby shakes her head. “Thankfully, no. Just rest.” She directs her attention to Neil when she says that, and he can’t help but feel slightly targeted. 

“Good. Now get out.” Andrew leaves his position as a sentinel and moves to Neil’s side. The change in his demeanor is jarring, and had Neil not already been concussed into next week, this would’ve done him in for good. Andrew’s standing close to him now. Neil can smell the court on him, can see the remnants of sweat that cling to the side of his neck. The dried blood around his nose. 

Neil doesn’t know how he convinces them to do it, but eventually Wymack and Abby back out of the room, shutting the door behind them. They’re alone, and all at once it’s a terrifying and exhilarating feeling. Neil feels a tug in the base of his gut, a desperate need to pull Andrew close and know that he’s safe and relish in having him near after months of wishing and hoping for it with some disjointed part of himself. 

They’re alone, and Andrew turns to him. They’re alone, and Neil feels his heart trapped somewhere in his throat when Andrew grabs his chin and leans in close to examine Abby’s handiwork above his eye. It isn’t until then that Neil catches a glimpse of the dark bruises on Andrew’s knuckles, already blistering blue and purple beneath his pale skin. 

“All this time fighting and you never learned how to throw a punch?” 

The grip on Neil’s chin tightens. “All those years running and hiding and you never learned to shut up?

Neil weakly grins. “Guess not.”

Andrew had done that for him. Neil’s not sure what to do with this realization; it sits heavy in his stomach and simmers there, stubborn and impossible to digest. Neil always knows there’s more to Andrew. There’s something deeper than the cold, disinterested facade he wears like a suit of armor. Neil’s never been interested in stripping that away, but not that he’s getting a peak at the skin underneath it, he can’t help but be curious. 

Maybe Andrew had been lying all this time. Maybe he feels something too. Neil’s never been one for hope, but he thinks he might like it this time. It’s unsettling, disquieting. Risky. 

“Andrew,” Neil says, but Andrew pays him no mind. He parts Neil’s hair near the top of his head to look at the bump and inspecting for any other wounds that may have escaped Abby’s watchful eye. His fingers aren’t gentle. They don’t delicately map out Neil’s skin and ridges like wandering hands do in the movies. Instead they are rough and firm, a steadying force that doesn’t treat Neil like he’s bound to break apart. Neil finds solace in that reassurance, that silent faith Andrew has in him. 

Neil won’t break. And it sure as hell won’t be by Andrew’s hand.

“Andrew,” Neil croaks. “I’m okay.”

Andrew circles him. Neil tenses with Andrew at his back, feeling his sharp eyes carving over his skin. Then, his hand reaches for the collar of Neil’s shirt. The chill of Andrew’s clammy fingers against the nape of his neck shocks him. 

“What is this?” Andrew’s voice is deadly. Poisonous. A snake coiled in the grass with a hiss that serves as a promise rather than a threat. He tugs Neil’s shirt again, a demand. “Neil.” 

Neil doesn’t need to turn to know what Andrew sees. He knows, because there’s a terrible drop in his stomach, and he’s suddenly in a free fall. Metal scrapes against asphalt. A wicked laugh ghosts over the back of his neck. Bruises blossom on his skin. His mom cries in the other room. Only none of these things happen; Neil only thinks they do. Andrew’s hand on his neck almost belongs to someone else, and Neil’s frozen in fear when Andrew grabs his shirt by the bottom hem and hikes it up his back.

Neil’s scars are an extension of himself. He doesn’t know what he looks like without them, even the ones on the expanse of his back. Andrew’s hands lack their usual confidence when they trail over them, mapping Neil like a cartographer along the shoreline. He memorizes those lines in a way similar to the way Neil had, craning to see his back in the mirror of the motel bathroom. Only Andrew’s hands are careful, calculating. They take great care to learn every ridge. It’s sobering, Andrew’s hands on him. No longer is his vision obscured by stars or the pounding of his head. It’s just the two of them, Andrew’s bloodied nose, and Neil’s story written in white lines across his back.

A long gash across his left shoulder blade from the jagged edge of a broken bottle. The cluster of cigarette burns just beneath it. A lump near his third rib, a fracture that never healed correctly. Puckered skin stretching over his opposite shoulder. This one is the most painful to think about, and Neil can feel the heat of the iron pressed into his skin when Andrew’s finger charts the width of it. He can smell burning flesh. 

Andrew’s hands venture down. Sliding along his sides until his fingers find another aged wound. 

“Someone shot you.” 

“Yeah,” Neil whispers, even though he knows Andrew isn’t asking. 

As suddenly as they came, Andrew’s hands are gone. It somehow felt like years and seconds he had been standing there, breath hot and heavy against the nape of Neil’s neck as he marked and cataloged every inch of Neil’s back. Neil’s seen enough of Andrew’s dreams to know he never forgets any detail. Any detail. Neil wonders if he’ll see his scars in Andrew’s mind that night.

“Your mother?” 

Neil shakes his head. “Not those.”

Andrew drops Neil’s hem, lets his shirt fall back over his back and cloak his engraved shame. He doesn’t move, eyes burrowing holes in the back of Neil’s head. Neil can hear the rage barely contained in tight, shallow-chested breaths. 

The silence lasts lifetimes. Neil lets his eyes slide shut, lets his weight pitch forward until his elbows on his knees shoulder most of his weight. The dull ache throughout his body reminds him that there’s still a game out there, but here it’s just him. Him and Andrew. He clenches his fist, watches the blood refill his blanched palm through half-lidded eyes. 

He’s awake. Andrew’s heat behind him is real. Andrew’s concealed anger is real. The bruises on his knuckles, the dried blood on his lip. Andrew protected Neil. Real .

“Why did you do that?” Neil’s mouth is numb when he asks it, hoarse as if it’s been months since he last spoke. “Why did you protect me?”

Andrew’s suddenly in front of him again, face blank and level and impossibly cruel. Neil’s not easily frustrated. He’s spent sixteenth birthdays alone in motel rooms nursing black eyes, learned to love in barely concealed threats and clenched fists. He’s measured breaths and counted to ten, waiting for it to be safe to play. And Neil’s never complained. 

This is his life. This is the deck he’s been dealt, the cards he’ll survive with. So why is he so selfish and wanting another?

“You’re haunting me,” Andrew says. It’s not much of an answer, but Neil thinks he understands.

A ghost without a presence. A parasite , he hears in Andrew’s voice. 

“I gave you the choice you never had,” Neil reminds him. “Stay or go. What do you want?” 

Andrew’s jaw clenches. He looks at Neil as if it pains him. As if he’s about to split his jaw and tell Neil he would love nothing more than for Neil to disappear, to fold up into the shadows and sever whatever ridiculous connection Neil thinks connects the two of them. And if he does, Neil would. He’s tired of being a parasite. He’s tired of being an apparition. He’s tired of never knowing whether he’s awake or asleep.

“I want to unknow you,” is what Andrew says instead. “But I can’t. So don’t you dare run.”

***

Nathaniel is seventeen when his Mom dies. 

Her skin is clammy, and his palms are bruised from the force of her compressions. Her ribs cracked a long time ago. But Nathaniel simply can’t give up. He cries when he realizes this, that despite his efforts, he can’t replace the blood she’s lost. He cries, but there aren’t any tears left, so he’s stuck with a hollowing pain in his chest and blurred vision. His fingers are numb when he searches for a pulse— just to be sure— and his fingers are still numb when he drags her into the car. 

It’s an old one, a cheap deal from an auto shop a few miles the opposite direction. It’s out of place on this beach, with its peeling bumper and duct tape and balding tires, with the dead body strapped in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t know how else to dispose of her. His head is filled with static. All he knows is he has to find the box of matches. Or the lighter. They’re somewhere in one of the duffle bags. The sun is low on the horizon, still beneath the waves. There isn’t much time. 

Nathaniel finds the matches. It won’t be enough. He rifles through the trunks. A red jug of gasoline. Saved for emergencies, should they get stranded without a station closeby. A lot of good it did us, Nathaniel thinks bitterly, when Father finally caught up to us. 

Gasoline slicks the car, a second coat of paint. The roar of the ocean waves drowns out the crackle of the fire as the first match catches on the front hood. The second, the trunk. Neil watches from a safe perch on the rocks, far up the shore. He can see the stretch of the shore from here, can feel the dry sand by his feet, can watch the flames and smoke alike lick the twilight sky. 

He says goodbye to her, then, through a swelling in his throat that he thinks will kill him. He also says goodbye to Nathaniel too, the least devastating of the two losses. 

Neil turns eighteen as he retraces their steps from California to Arizona to South Carolina. There’s a foreclosed house in Nevada. There are bricks in the windows and an old air conditioning unit doubling as a spider’s nest, but most importantly beneath the old, decaying porch there’s a duffle bag with ten thousand dollars in cash. There’s a note in his mother’s handwriting along with it, which Neil never reads and burns in the fireplace that night. The withering house is his own for a few days… a week. He learns which floorboards creak when he steps on them, and which stairs to skip to make as little noise as possible. Old habits die hard, Neil realizes. 

There’s a motel in Little Rock. He hates this city, but it’s one motel of thousands so he thinks he’ll be safe there. And he is. For a little while. Summer is reaching an end, and he thinks he’ll need to enroll into a school soon, for more of his sanity than anything else. He hates Little Rock. But maybe it’s a good enough place to survive, or die trying. He tries to find schools. He doesn’t look very hard. It’s difficult to think when it feels like a hazy film’s been pulled over his head for the past year. God, has it already been a year?

Little Rock isn’t as safe as he thought. He comes back to the motel from a run. Room 216. It’s a small room on the second floor, tucked on the corner. It has a half-decent view of the highway. The sea-green door is kicked in, wood splintered in two. His bed is overturned. The duffle with ten thousand dollars is emptied in the middle of the floor. It could be any normal bulgular. But it’s not the money Neil’s mourning, because he knows it isn’t. There’s a clatter behind him. Neil runs before he turns to see who it is.

They chase him. He doesn’t know how long they chase him, but they chase him until his legs are shaking and his lungs can’t take it anymore. But he can’t stop. He can never stop, because icy blue eyes follow him wherever he goes, even in the bathroom mirror. He stares at himself, in the fractured glass, face twisted in horror as his hair fades from one color to the next, and then they’re back at the door, kicking it in and chasing him down. 

He runs, runs, and keeps running. There’s a door in front of him. Red, this time. Another safe house. This one is in Atlanta, he thinks. Some kind of condo that he remembers because of the bars on the windows. He runs through, and there’s another door. It’s wood and the hinges aren’t on straight, and it only slows the thing chasing him by a few seconds. Another door, and another. Neil thinks he remembers all of these places, but now he’s running through them too fast to remember where they are. Moving too fast to remember who he is. 

Another door. He slams through it. He doesn’t even know what color it was. His legs can’t carry him anymore. It shuts with a thump behind him and Neil throws his body weight against it. He wants to collapse. His lungs beg him for mercy. Every nerve ending is on fire. He can’t run anymore.

But maybe he doesn’t have to. This house is nicer than the others. 

There’s a runner carpet beneath his feet and nice sconces on the walls. The walls are painted somewhere halfway between green and gray. It’s a house he’s seen on television. Nothing extravagant, no mansions or diamond chandeliers. But a place where families live. Where children grow into teenagers and leave for college and shop for dorm room supplies. Where friends group around a dining table and slam cards down and drinks back.

He should be safe. This place should feel safe. But it doesn’t.

When he moves forward, he’s no longer running. He’s creeping, slowly, careful not to make a sound. He’s terrified, he realizes. His blood feels as if it’s been replaced with ice and the thought of taking one more step towards the kitchen rubs his nerves completely raw. He feels small, compact. As if the slightest bit of pressure will make him pop and fold in on himself completely. His wrists ache. He can’t bear to look down at them.

Why is he so afraid? The house is quiet, unassuming. There’s the smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen. But the scent of it makes him sick to his stomach. He’d face whoever it was that was chasing him rather than stew in this bone gnawing dread any longer. He’s drowning in it, suffocating, but for some reason no matter how hard he tries he can’t turn and run. He’s not in control anymore. Why won’t he run ?

That’s when Neil realizes. 

Andrew Minyard is seven the first time. Then eight, then nine. All at other places, in other homes. He’s older now. Twelve, thirteen, maybe. This is home, but this is hell. He can’t breathe under the promise of what might happen to him here, of who’s waiting for him around that corner. He can’t escape it, and he’s learned a long time ago that running doesn’t fix anything. It only makes the pain worse. All he can do is wait for it. 

Neil can’t take it any longer, the stewing, the waiting. But he’s not in control, and this isn’t his dream.

Finally, Andrew’s short legs carry them around the corner. The smell is stronger now, and Neil knows who’s waiting for him. He knows that face, that smirk, that voice . He knows it well enough that he can imagine his death in perfect clarity, with pleas and blood between his teeth.

“Hey, AJ,” he says. 

Andrew— Neil— he’s not sure who’s who anymore — turns and runs for the door.

Neil wakes with his skin on fire and blood in his mouth. 

***

For the first time in a long time, when Neil runs, he knows exactly where he’s going. Not to the Foxhole Court. But rather his fatigued legs carry him just down the hall. Before he reaches the door, it opens. Andrew stands on the other side, as disheveled as Neil as ever seen him, with dark bruises beneath his eyes.

Andrew’s almost see-through. Neil can’t imagine he looks any better. Neil doesn’t have to say anything before Andrew’s grabbing him by the back of the neck and pulling him inside. The door shuts behind them with a slam. Neil’s suddenly not sure that he’s even awake. Another door, another safehouse, another hellscape. He scrunches his eyes shut, breath coming in pinched, unsteady steps. It’s like running up stairs with a limp, with a bleeding gunshot wound, with a—

“Neil.” 

Neil peels his eyes open. Andrew’s face to face with him. His hand is steady on the nape of his neck. Andrew’s angry, eyebrows furrowed and mouth set in a firm line. Angry at what? At Neil for invading his mind once again? For being possibly the only person alive who knew how scared Andrew had been? How terror had once consumed him wholly from the inside out?

“Andrew.” Neil doesn’t recognize his own voice. “I’m sorry—“

Andrew covers Neil’s mouth with his hand. “Don’t.” 

He doesn’t know what else to say. Because what else is there to say? Neil thinks he finally understands Andrew’s third and final rule. They don’t need to talk about Andrew’s dreams, not because they’re too ugly to face, but because what would become of it? Neil knows the fabric of that pain. Hell, it’s stitched into his own skin, it’s seared into him through cigarettes and glass shards and bullets and a mother’s love hidden in punches. He doesn’t need to talk to Andrew about it, because in their own twisted way, they understand. 

Neil and Andrew. Andrew and Neil. Two sides of the same fucked up coin. 

“I wish you weren’t real,” Andrew says, like he’s begging. “You should’ve stayed in my dreams.” 

“I’m real,” Neil says. “And I’m not going anywhere.” 

It’s not an answer. But it’s enough. Andrew’s hand on his neck and breath on his face is enough; Andrew’s throbbing pulse at the junction of his scarred wrist when Neil grabs it to steady himself. That’s enough. To know Andrew’s here, tangible, warm. Not a phantom from his dreams.