#write angst

A hot knot formed in his throat. Breathing felt painful, swallowing near impossible.

The scent of smoke, from a cigarette he’d lit but left otherwise untouched, became suddenly unbearable. He crushed it in his fist, uncaring of the sting on his palm.

The pain cut through the fog in his mind at least.

A letter. That’s all they'd received a year ago from Neil before witness protection had swept in and cut them off. A letter, addressed to the foxes as a whole, and a small, folded piece of paper inside that envelope with Andrew’s name on it.

Andrew, unwillingly, unconsciously drew the now-crumpled and worn paper from his hoodie pocket. Written in handwriting so familiar to him that he could see it clear as day, burned into the back of his eyelids, were three sentences. The ink marks were a little smudged at the edge, as if Neil were writing this in a hurry, as if the feds who’d taken him away from the Foxes, from him, were rushing his only form of goodbye.

It brought rage crashing through his veins, boiling his blood for the moment it took him to remember his anger was useless.

Neil was gone.

And Andrew was alone, just as he had always been destined to be.

He had never been a man of religion, but he’d prayed that night. Sitting in a motel room, surrounded by a team that reeked of worry and fear for their missing striker, Andrew had clasped his hands together and titled his chin up, looking for heavens that didn’t exist, and a form of higher power he didn’t believe in, asking—for just this once—to have a prayer fulfilled, they way it never had been when he was a child.

He hadn’t prayed since he was seven years old.

And he hadn’t prayed since that night.

Neil wasn’t dead. Andrew knew that. But he was as good as.

They hadn’t heard a word from the FBI. For the first few weeks they’d tried. One after another, each of the Foxes had reached out to the feds hoping, praying, begging, for a chance to see him again.

Andrew hadn’t tried though. Why bother when he knew what the answer was going to be?

Always and forever. No.

Not if they wanted Neil to live. And no one—no one—wanted that more than Andrew.

So what if he couldn’t see those burning blue eyes every day? So what if his heart felt more and more like a dying lump of flesh in his rotting body? Neil was alive, and Andrew would take that.

It was more than enough.

Andrew—

I meant what I said, every word of it. Thank you, for letting me have everything I could have this year. None of it could have ever happened without you, and none of it would have been the same without you.

Neil

With a memory like his, Andrew didn’t know why he bothered keeping this fragile piece of paper. It wasn’t like he was forgetting this, forgetting Neil, ever.

Bee would probably have given this feeling a stupid name. Sentimentality, maybe. Attachment.

He couldn’t say. He’d stopped seeing her a few weeks after he’d stopped fighting the truth of Neil's absence from his life.

Two steps forward, three steps back, one step to the right—all moves in an elaborate dance he’d never signed up for. Now he was stuck in the darkness of an empty ballroom all alone with nowhere to run.

A phone call was the last thing he expected to receive. Andrew debated letting it go to voicemail, but it could have been Kevin or Aaron calling.

His movements were slow, encased in amber, as he flipped open the device of which he’d bought Neil a matching pair. He ignored the heavy thump of his heart as he raised it to his ear.

Instead of a voice saying something, the call cut. Frowning, Andrew pulled back to look at the little screen.

Before he could move a muscle, a text came through—from the same number he’d just gotten a call from.

It was an address—one that he recognised. He’d been to this little hardware store once before, back when Nicky, Aaron and he had been freshmen.

How they’d managed to shatter every light bulb in the dorm within a week of moving in was still a mystery to him.

It took him only a minute to decide whether he wanted to go or not. Kevin was in history class, and he knew Nicky had drinking plans with the upperclassmen later in the evening. Aaron was probably off fucking his cheerleader that he thought Andrew had no clue about.

They could rot in the library for all he cared.

He was moving before he registered it. He left the roof door open in his hurry to get downstairs to the car.

The number was probably a scam caller. Maybe a serial killer. Either were more likely than what Andrew knew he was hoping it would be, despite what he told himself.

The engine of the Maserati purred under his fingers. The sleek black leather did nothing to conceal his complex feelings about this stupid car.

Neil was tied to this too. He’d had a key to the goddamn thing, for fuck’s sake.

Andrew had once spotted a page in his brother’s biochemistry textbook. It spoke of the two types of proteins in the cell membrane—integral proteins and peripheral proteins. Integral proteins were permanently buried deep in the cell membrane. Extracting them would damage the membrane irreversibly, even cause cell death.

Neil had somehow, through his spilled truths and bleeding secrets, his whispered words and heated kisses, turned himself into an integral protein in Andrew's life.

Andrew was dying from the inside without him.

There wasn’t an FBI agent waiting a ten-minute drive away from campus, Andrew told himself. He’d grown very skilled at lying to himself, this past year.

The hardware store was closed when Andrew reached. Unsure of what to do, he got out of the car and dug his phone out, rereading the message even though he had no need to.

Andrew spun around, looking for someone who carried themselves like a fed. He’d spent enough time in foster care and juvie to pick up that particular skill.

There—emerging from the alleyway was a man, dressed in dark coloured clothes, not unlike Andrew's own.

His gait was familiar, as was the breadth of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw.

Andrew blinked once and then blinked again.

It must have been past time for an eye check-up because he was seeing things now.

The man crossing the street towards him looked a hell of a lot like Neil.

His Neil.

He came to a stop a few paces away from Andrew. His auburn hair was messy, like he’d run his hands through those strands Andrew had felt between his own fingers. His blue eyes pierced into Andrew's core and exposed every blacked, bleeding inch of him that he'd kept hidden for so long.

Andrew was aware he was staring, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could bring himself to do instead.

Neil's hands were the same but not when he extended one between them. The long fingers, the pale skin—it was interspersed with marks, scars that, when Andrew took a step closer, he could identify as burn marks.

Burn marks, Andrew noticed, just like the one on his left cheek, where that wretched ‘four’ tattoo had been.

“Andrew,” Neil whispered, and something cracked and shattered in him.

It was gravity, and nothing else, that tugged Andrew the rest of the way across to Neil. There was still a thin blanket of air separating them, but Andrew could feel the heat of Neil in front of him.

Neil's hand came to cup his jaw but paused just before fingers made contact with skin.

“Yes or no?” he whispered, voice rough with so much Andrew couldn’t identify.

Andrew, still unable to speak, just shrugged.

Neil, a hallucination, a pipe dream if there ever was such a thing, dropped his hand.

Andrew simultaneously held back a scream and took a relieved breath.

“Say something,” Neil said. His eyes flitted across Andrew's face like they were memorising details and comparing them to what he remembered.

Andrew's throat was drier than a desert when he attempted to swallow. “What do you want me to say?”

The corner of Neil's mouth ticked up. “That’s a start.”

“You can’t be real,” Andrew mumbled. He raised a hand to Neil's chest, too scared to touch him only to find him to be an illusion. His fingers trembled where they came close to brushing the material of Neil's t-shirt.

“Andrew,” Neil said, coming closer.

It was inhuman, the amount of effort it took Andrew not to close the distance between them, not to press ever inch of himself to Neil.

“Andrew,” Neil repeated. “I am real.”

Andrew was shaking his head before Neil finished speaking. “They told me you weren’t coming back.” His voice broke, when he said, “I tried to forget you.”

Something a little like shock passed across Neil's eyes. “Andrew,” he whispered again.

Andrew shivered. The vowels of his name on Neil's tongue sent electricity down his spine.

“Do you trust me?” Neil asked. His gaze bored into Andrew's.

“Yes,” Andrew answered, because in spite of everything, he did. He shouldn’t—he had every reason in the world not to, including the fucking mafia, but there was only one answer to that question.

“Then trust this,” Neil said and grabbed Andrew's hand where it was hovering over his heart. He guided it up and pressed it against the curve where his neck met his shoulder.

There was a pulse drumming hard under his thumb.

Alive.

Andrew stared at his hand. He raised his other and fitted it to the other side. Soft hair tickled the tips of his middle fingers where they rested at the nape of Neil's neck.

He slowly dragged his eyes to Neil's and asked, “Real?”

“Real,” Neil confirmed.

And really, there was nothing to do—no thoughts to be thought, no words to be said—except to use his grip to pull Neil down into a kiss.

If there was a word to encompass the feeling of coming home while not having moved a limb at all, this kiss was that. The heat of Neil's lips against his own was familiar.

Andrew slid his hands up, tangling them in red-brown hair, tugging Neil closer, closer, closer.

Neil's kiss was as ferocious as the rest of him. Every slide of his tongue against Andrew's scorched him from inside out.

There was an entire fucking language hidden in this kiss—words they could probably never find the strength to say out loud to each other, wounds that were bared and healed closed.

Andrew broke away first and buried his face in Neil's neck. His arms tightened across Neil's shoulders unwilling to let go just yet.

Neil's arms were far slower to wrap around him, even after Andrew's prompting “It’s a yes, fuck you.”

And standing right there, wrapped up in Neil, disbelief took over.

“How?” he asked. The question possibly lost all meaning when uttered directly against skin, but Neil got the gist of it.

“They’re dead,” Neil said, vicious satisfaction coating his tone. “The last of my father’s people are dead. The case is closed. WitSec was taking too long to finish the paperwork, which is why none of you were officially contacted. I just took off.”

It was such a Neil thing to do. Andrew twisted his fingers in the material of Neil's t-shirt.

“I’m back,” he said fiercely. “I’m back and I'm free.”

~ 

For the briefest moment when Kane woke up that morning, he had no clue what day it was. All that his mind could register was the softness of the pillow beneath his head. It was bliss. The June sun hadn’t found its usual strength yet and the air hadn’t become suffocatingly heavy either. As Kane laid buried beneath the blankets, enjoying the quiet, a realisation began to creep up on him. A hesitant glance at his phone confirmed it. 

It was Father’s day. 

That knowledge instantly brought a familiar ache to Kane’s chest, shattering the peace of the morning. Why couldn’t he forget about today? Too many thoughts and memories quickly drove him from the comfort of his bed and Kane forced himself downstairs in search of a distraction. He had secretly hoped those thoughts would remain there. They stubbornly followed him, clinging and weighing on his shoulders as Kane brewed a pot of coffee for himself. 

Today was a day meant for celebration. Who was Kane expected to celebrate? A man that he called ‘father’ throughout his youth or Paul Bearer, the only man who shared his blood. The first had dreams of Kane growing into something respectable whilst the other dreamt only of moulding him into a controllable monster. 

It has been decades since Kane greeted this day with any sort of excitement. He was still a child, sheepishly presenting a handmade card and a wrapped wood-working tool to his father. (The one who happily welcomed him into the world) They were nothing of extravagance. Kane had bought the tool from the only hardware store in the Valley, using his allowance from previous months. It was met with a soft smile and a large hand ruffling Kane’s hair. Less than a year later, his father and mother were lost to a fire while his red-haired brother was lost to the darkness.  

A knock at the front door brought Kane back to reality. Coffee forgotten for a moment, Kane padded through the house and opened the door. Sat on the porch was a simple cardboard box with a note addressed to him. Is this some prank? It wouldn’t be a leap in logic to believe that someone wanted to trick Kane. There was nobody in sight. He cautiously unfolded the piece of paper attached to the box and an icy chill ran up the length of his spine. Kane hurriedly tore into the box. Inside, carefully wrapped in a powder blue baby blanket, was a single dazed magpie.