Evenings are - mostly- a quiet affair in the room, after the hustle of off season conditioning, extra practices with Kevin, whatever activity the upperclassmen wrangled him into and dinner. After homework and maybe a hour or two on the roof of Fox Tower ( if Andrew’s up for it ) , there’s really nothing for Neil to do but to allow himself to unwind from the day, to give himself a moment to himself.
There’s times where he misses the silence of being on the run with his mother, when the Foxes’ voices get too loud, or they get too close. It’s never really their fault, but sometimes he can’t take it and he has to pull away, to put himself back together again. There’s other times when the silence is too much for him, it weighs heavy on his shoulders and reminds him all too much of the first weeks he spent alone after his mother’s death, when he’d turn to say something only to remember her passing.
Tonight is one of the nights where he’s in a comfortable middle ground, content with either the distraction of his found family or the silence that comes with an empty room. Though, the room’s not empty, Andrew’s lounging on the couch. He fell back into one of the bean bag chairs, leaning back as his eyes closed for a moment as he stretched out his hand, fingers slowly uncurling and straightening, feeling the scar tissue pull uncomfortably for just a moment. Slowly, blue eyes open as his head fell back, tipping back against the chair to look behind him, the world now upside down. His hands now fiddle with the television remote, fingers brushing over the buttons, but not quite pressing them, there’s really nothing on to watch ( nothing that would catch his eye anyways ) and while he knows that they have games from the Trojan’s last season recorded, he doesn’t feel like possibly luring Kevin out from the rooms yet with old exy games. “ What’re you reading?”
