neil runs, and his brain goes quiet. it’s early morning; his legs still hurt from yesterday’s drills and it’s raining, light enough that he can still see straight but heavy enough that he is definitely going to be drenched by the time he gets back to the apartment, and he’s running anyway, because he loves this.
neil loves the peace. the absolute nothingness apart from the birds and the few cars that dare to be up this early in the morning. for the most part, it’s just him and the sound of his trainers hitting the tarmac, of his breathing and his heart and this feeling that he is very much alive.
it used to be about running away, about outrunning whatever demons were chasing him, about staying fit enough to be able to escape his father when the time came. now, now, its about running because he can, because he wants to, because there’s something awfully calming about not stopping until he’s strung out and exhausted, until his legs are jelly and he’s left tired in the kind of way that makes his bones sigh happily. it’s about coming back. to the apartment, to the cats. to, most of all, andrew, who somehow has that same talent of leaving him feeling mellowed out and content, his mind mercifully silent.
running on his own is great. going home to find andrew sat on the sofa, or in bed, or leaning against the kitchen counter with his unimpressed face as neil stumbles through the door, flushed and sweaty and unable to form any kind of coherent thought, let alone words, because he’s so tired but so happy, pressing a cup of coffee into his hands and calling neil an idiot, and neil can’t help but smile, because this is all his, and he can run without running away, and he’d never realised how good having a home to come back to would feel. he’s not just surviving anymore, he’s living. there’s a whole space carved out in this world just for him, a fact that is somehow just as thrilling as it is terrifying. he knows andrew knows this, even when he flicks him on the forehead and complains, voice monotonous as always, how disgusting neil smells, and looks, and is. neil tries not to grin back at him, he really does, but andrew is not at all good at lying, especially when it comes to him.
and so running on his own is nice, because he gets to come home to andrew. but running is better with andrew, much better, much nicer, even if andrew spends the whole time comparing neil to a dog, circling back to its owner—which isn’t neil’s fault, because andrew is slow and he refuses to run at the pace of a snail, which means he has to double back on himself—but even with the dog jokes that neil will never live down, it’s somehow still all kind of perfect.
especially when andrew buys him headphones and an iPod for music and programmes him in a load of songs. neil doesn’t normally listen to anything when he’s running, because it’s harder to hear approaching people or cars or anything with headphones in, and he might mot be running away anymore, but that doesn’t mean his paranoia isn’t something that still sits like thorns in his skin, sometimes. it’s a part of his mother that he’d never managed to shake off, not that he ever really tried to, because it kept him alive all that time, but still.
he listens to music when andrew comes with him. their deal has been broken for a long time, andrew isn’t his bodyguard anymore, but they still always end up protecting each other, anyway. and neil has never said anything about it to andrew, but andrew has always known him scarily well anyway, which is why, he supposes, when they go on their joint runs, that andrew goes without the music that he normally listens to when he works out. neil trusts him to keep them safe, even if there isn’t any real threat anymore, even though his father’s dead, and it’s enough.
running with music is a whole new experience. the songs andrew downloads for him are the complete opposite to the things that matt used to listen to at the gym, which were all girls singing about boys and summer and parties over electronic beats and so much bass that neil could hear it from matt’s headphones when he was three treadmills over. andrew’s music has too many guitars and drums and guys singing about overthrowing the government, and it shouldn’t work, shouldn’t be so easy to run to, but somehow it still does, it still is.
his feet fall in sync to the beat as he runs laps around andrew in the early morning haze, and andrew’s ears are pink from the cold, and neil can’t stop grinning even though it’s doing stupid things to his breathing. his chest is heaving and his legs ache and he’s stupidly, unpredictability, wonderfully happy.
