dating app au ft. neil allison argument + andreil hookup failure
Neil only realizes what's happening when the girl starts to lean in. He jerks back reflexively, even though it's clear she was going in for a kiss and not attempting to stab him. His eyes flit to her hands anyway, who's to say she wouldn't have tried to stab him while he was distracted? "Oh um- I'm sorry. I totally read that wrong, let's just-"
"What did Allison tell you?" Neil sighs out in disappointment. He should've known. The girl, who Neil thought was only here for tutoring, blushes and looks away, tugging at a piece of her hair.
"She said you've been looking to get back in the scene, that you're just shy and that tutoring would be a good excuse to get to know each other better," she stutters.
Neil pinches the skin between his eyebrows, before swiping his hand down his face. "I'm not interested in dating. She misled you. Since you're not actually here for tutoring, we can call this early," Neil states matter of factly, packing up his things.
He tunes out the rest of the girl's apologies, waving her off with a clear dismissal. He doesn't linger once his bag is together, since she was his last slot of the day, quickly signing out at the front desk. The anger rises in his chest as he rotates the interaction in his head again and again.
He shoulders his way through the crowd of college students, glaring at anyone who decides to comment and taking pride each time a single glimpse of his scars shuts them up. He can't fucking believe her. The air feels jagged each time he inhales, tearing up his throat as it reaches his lungs. His jaw aches from how hard he's clenching it, teeth grinding against each other like metal on metal.
He fucking hates this. Being real was supposed to be good. Living was supposed to be good, but sometimes Neil thinks he'd take the homicidal father with an aptitude for torture over bullshit like this. At least that was straight forward. Skin meet blade, needle meet wound, rinse repeat.
Now he has to deal with shit like his friends setting him up on "blind dates" without his knowledge, for some asinine reason he doesn't care to understand. By the time he's outside their dorm building, his hand has been clenched so tightly around the strap of his bag it spasms when he loosens it to grab his id card.
He tries to take deep breaths as he stomps up the stairs, but it's a lost cause when he can hear the blood rushing in his ears. He ignores his dorm entirely, continuing down the hallway before reaching the girls' dorm and throwing the door open with a bang.
Allison jumps from her spot on the couch, swearing as she smears the deep red color she picked for her nails all over her finger.
She raises her face with a glare before she meets Neil's eyes, and then it's replaced with an innocent smile, "How was tutoring?"
"Great," Neil bites out, "Until she tried to kiss me thirty minutes in. Do you have anything to say about that?"
Allison shrugs her shoulders coyly, "I may have dropped a few hints in my stats lecture about a certain gorgeous jock we both know."
"Stop," Neil says coldly, "I've already told you I don't want to date. I especially don't need you at my job." Allison rolls her eyes, "Look-"
"No, I'm fucking done, Allison," Neil raises his voice slightly, "You're not ready to date because you're not over Seth. Fine. Whatever. I don't know what you saw in that asshole, and I never fucking will. It's not my problem he stood you up and od'd on that bathroom floor. So stop using me as your pet project."
Allison inhales sharply, pulling back and straightening until she looks more like a statuette than a being of flesh and blood. Guilt is new to Neil, but he feels it coat the back of his throat like bile. He's gotten better at keeping his tongue in check, at least with the people he cares about, but he's never been good at dealing with his own anger.
Neil runs a hand through his hair, tugging at it slightly before he breathes out explosively, "I'm not sorry; you can't keep setting me up like this."
"Fine," Allison says stiffly, "But I'm not sorry either. You're going to live a miserable lonely life. At least I had someone, even if that someone was Seth."
Neil nearly growls in frustration, wracking his brain for some solution that'll get Allison off his back. He feels a lightbulb go off when he remembers Renee lamenting over the dating pool a few weeks back.
"If I let you make me one of those dating app things, will you let this go?"
Allison hums, grabbing a qtip and some nail polish remover to wipe her fingers, "I want proof that you're not just going to ignore it. Go on a date, hookup with someone, I don't care. You give someone an actual chance, and then I'll drop it."
"Deal." Neil throws his phone to her, ignoring the glare he gets when her catch messes up her nails again, "Give it back to me when you're done."
She curses him out, but Neil pays her no mind. He needs a reprieve from all the bullshit of the last hour.
Neil ignores every prompt the app gives him and starts swiping. He doesn't bother looking at any of the other profiles either. Why should he care about their biggest fear or their best pickup line? None of them look particularly impressive either, but he swipes right on the first five profiles he sees. Three girls and two guys, because he hadn't bothered with picking a preference either. It's all the same to him.
Not ignored, he thinks to himself, sending a screen shot of his choices to Allison. He throws his phone across the room as it starts to buzz, probably judgements on his nonexistent taste that he couldn't care less about.
He goes on a run instead, glad to leave his phone behind. Seven miles later he feels almost serene, or the closest thing he can get to it.
It's immediately destroyed when he sees his phone lit up on the carpeted floor by his bed. He scowls at it on principle; he can't believe he let Dan convince him to get one of them last semester. He showers, makes it through three math assignments and even part of an English paper before he relinquishes, grabbing his phone and swiping at the notifications.
Tons from Allison, which are expected and therefore ignored, and two from the accursed app she put on his phone, much more surprising.
The little blurb lets him know he has two matches: Hannah, 22, accounting major at PSU, and Andrew, 20, with no other information. He has an unopened message from Andrew as well, which piques his interest.
Neil thinks back to Allison's words. Hookups or dates, she said. Neil just needs to go, and then she'll get off his back. A quick glance over Andrew's profile reveals an unimpressive picture. He looks fine, definitely stronger than Neil if he actually benched the weight in his gym photo, but Neil feels confident in his assessment that only one of them has actually killed a man.
He's surprised to see a message pop up near immediately.
you don't touch me. if either of us says no it ends.
Neil furrows his brow, but it's none of his business why Andrew wants to hookup with strangers without any benefits for himself. Fine by me.
Neil stands outside the hotel and debates running back to the nearest bus station. He's already sent Allison his location, so she knows he didn't ignore the app completely. Isn't that good enough for her? Just as he's about to leave, he watches an expensive black car pull up in a space nearby. He's only slightly surprised to see Andrew step out, if only because he's just a year older than himself, and there aren't many 20 year olds with access to stolen mafia funds.
Neil looks him over, taking in the shorter height but bigger arms, the bands bulky enough to hold a weapon, and the boots similar to his own, good for breaking bones. He's glad he brought his own knife out of retirement for this.
Andrew seems to have finished his own perusal of Neil, though who knows what conclusions he's drawing. Neil knows his scars were obvious in the photos Allison picked, so at least he must've found Neil somewhat attractive in the app. He didn't dress up any differently than he usually does, and he doesn't regret it either; his shorts look a million times more comfortable than the jeans plastered to Andrew's legs.
Andrew brings a pack of cigs out of his back pocket, shaking them at Neil in offering. Neil nods, grateful for the excuse not to talk, and follows Andrew towards the smoking area outside of the hotel.
He didn't bring his lighter, so he lets Andrew light the cigarette in his mouth, leaning in slightly as it becomes clear that Andrew won't be moving the flame. Neil recognizes the attraction in Andrew's eyes; he's been on the receiving end of it enough times recently.
Andrew takes two drags to each of Neil's one, but he doesn't seem bothered by the near wasted cigarette. Neil is surveying the area around them when Andrew stubs his out and throws the butt to the side.
"Kissing you, yes or no?"
Neil hums, throwing his cigarette to the ground and stamping it out to buy himself some time. The last time he kissed someone he was 14 in Quebec, and his mother nearly broke his ribs for it.
He almost forgets to close his eyes as Andrew leans in, shutting them abruptly as Andrew presses their lips together. Neil catalogues the knife in his boot, visualizes the angles he'd been studying before this moment, at least the parking lot had been empty. Andrew's lips feel fine, like lips he supposes. They're kind of warm, and Andrew clearly knows what he's doing as he slots them together. Neil lets his mind drift again as Andrew's tongue brushes against his closed mouth, wet and not very pleasant. He can't stop thinking about how vulnerable it is to have his eye's closed in public like this. It'd be too easy to attack him, too easy to catch him off guard.
Andrew pulls back abruptly, "We're done."
Neil blinks quickly, trying to catch up to the change in demeanor. "Huh?"
Andrew huffs, shaking his head minutely before lighting another cigarette. His fingers are shaking slightly, "Why say yes to a hookup if your obviously not into it. Experimenting with men?"
Neil doesn't understand the emotion flashing across his face, so he simply replies with the truth, "Not with men. My friend won't get off my ass about not dating. She kept setting me up on dates without telling me before hand, so I agreed to a dating app profile if she'd back off."
Andrew raises an eyebrow before looking him up and down again, "She pick the photos?" Neil nods. "Figures," Andrew mutters.
"Oh!" Neil remembers, "Can I get a photo of us? It doesn't need to have your face, just proof that I actually tried." Andrew seems to debate that for a second before nodding, and Neil takes a photo of them standing shoulder to shoulder, angled so that neither of their faces are visible.
Andrew shoots him another look, "Don't let them talk you into shit like this again. If you don't want to have sex, or kiss, or date, don't fucking do it."
Neil catches a bit more vitriol in that statement than he finds necessary, but he nods anyway. Neil doesn't feel sorry for using him; he's sure Andrew's had worse hookups than a lackluster kiss outside a hotel.
"Well," Neil says, "I'm going to leave. I can- uh, spot you the gas money?"
Andrew waves him off, "Don't bother." Neil figures that's about as good as it's going to get, so he starts to run before it gets anymore awkward.
