More and more I’m realizing that while Neil is demisexual, Andrew is almost certainly demiromantic.
We know he feels physical attraction to other men; Roland, people in juvie (per Nora’s EC), etc. But it’s always a transaction, it’s always about his rules and who is willing to follow. Which makes sense, given his history, but I suspect until Neil he doesn’t even know what romantic attraction means.
It must sound like a fairy tale to him: a story they tell children, to make them feel like they are always missing out on a secret that everyone else knows, to make them feel compelled to partner up, to pretend they’re in on that secret too. But Andrew, he’s smarter than that. He’s seen family after family, the violence and dirty secrets, the monsters that hide in the shadows of each “perfect” little home with its picket fence and walk-in closets. Romance and love, delusions fed to the populace like drugs in the water.
At first, acknowledging his attraction to Neil is easy. He’s pretty, and smarter than he should be, sharp-tongued and clever. Something pleasant to think about while getting himself off. But piece by piece, Neil is putting together the puzzle that is Andrew, faster than Andrew can do the same for Neil. Neil sees him, in a way Andrew has never been seen. It’s unsettling, and intriguing, and the fascination grows.
Then Drake happens, and Easthaven, and for the first time in years Andrew’s brain is not being yanked around by the wrong medication. For that must have been it, right? The drugs, messing with his senses, making him see…something, something that wasn’t there, that couldn’t possibly exist. A fairy tale. A pipe dream.
He gets out, and Neil is beat to hell and auburn-haired and blue-eyed and tattooed, and he’s looking at Andrew like that. Unafraid. When Andrew asks why he went to Evermore, and it was for him–some misguided attempt to save the unsavable–it is fury that dominates Andrew’s untampered emotions. For how dare he? How dare he be so real, so easily able to make Andrew feel?
“Do it. I’ll take you with me.” He does, too. Andrew may have unwittingly pushed Neil into falling, but he was dragged after, every foundation of cynical reality he had built for himself crumbling. He’s caught on the other side of the looking glass, in a world that looks like his own but distorted. In a world where it was possible to feel this for another person, to have that returned. To put someone’s hand on his chest, and have it stay there–just there. To dip his toes into the fathomless water that is trust, and not have them bitten off by the monsters that reside within.
Andrew had never believed in fairy tales. Never, until he found himself in one.
( @nakasomethingkun this is inspired by your post and your lovely fic One Way or the Other (or Maybe Neither))
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