tw for implications of rape and self-harm
Andrew Minyard truly breaks my heart. Yeah, because let’s give this broken boy who was abused and sexually assaulted time upon time again, an eidetic memory, why don’t we?
Andrew used to be convinced it was a curse, even though he tells himself he doesn’t believe in that kind of thing. What else can such a harsh breed of irony be? He never believed it when Cass told him how gifted and intelligent it made him, because to him, it’s been nothing but a mockery, something wickedly capable of immortalising the pain he’s been through.
He is cursed. He is cursed to have every trivial detail of a world that he so loathes, burned into his mind like a brand like a burden he did not ask for.
Andrew’s brain is a constant horror reel. His memories are acidic, and they do nothing but usher bile to his throat. He has memories with teeth that only exist to gnaw at him. Violent, ugly, unbearable memories that he might’ve learned to somehow repress, if only he had the ability to forget. Time doesn’t heal shit when your every yesterday is a scab you can’t scratch away, burned into your brain like a shallow grave and dug right back up on the daily. No, Andrew does not want to remember it like this. Not like this. The dirtiest press of hands and every brutal line that curves like a fault along them. The vapid twist of their wet, demanding mouths, inching towards his sprained face. The unwanted weight atop of him- and the details he can’t even speak of, the ones that he can see like a crystal clear reflection in water at night, corroding the expanse of calm black behind his eyes.
Andrew is tired. Tired of all this futile information that he takes in without quite meaning to, information that travels like a flame over frostbitten skin. He remembers the face of every man whose ever laid a hand on him. He remember what it felt like. The horrid invasion of privacy, of breath, of body, of any will he might’ve ever had to remotely care to keep existing. Sometimes the thoughts will creep up on him without invite. When he’s in the shower (splintered bathroom mirrors & quivering fingers), on court (a racquet slammed down against solid ground & breath torn out of burning lungs), midnight (wide awake and sheets a wreck) and they won’t go away. They won’t let him rest.
They were in his head. They were in his skin. Reminders of everything he’d lost, everything that’d been taken from him, drilled into him like bullets
The bliss the pills offered him was a vacant mind, frazzled memories ridden slippery and sinking away from him. Good fucking riddance.
The nicotine helps. When the smoke infiltrates his system and he allows his mind to take a backseat. The stale memories giving way to ashes.
Bee teaches him about positive reinforcement. Take the thing that hurts you, look it in the eye, and then, throw it away. Replace the hole it rips through you with something new, something healing. Remember, your past does not dictate you. It’s quite the other way around.
So he takes memories of bloodstained bedsheets and his heart escaping his chest and the worst glimpses of flesh and replaces them with other things. He focuses instead, on the sound of Nicky’s laughter when he beats Aaron at Crash Bandicoot or cracks up at his own lame joke, the crease in between Aaron’s eyebrows when he’s sat against the wall with his head buried in a biology book, the crucifix at the base of Renee’s neck and how it glints when it catches the light, the rabid gleam in Kevin’s eyes when he stands, unshakable on court.
And Neil, Neil, Neil.
Neil’s unwavering respect for his boundaries, that annoyingly knowing look in Neil’s eyes that never fails to set the alarm bells off in Andrew’s head, Neil’s mouth on his; reducing everything else to violent, beautiful nonexistence. Neil’s ability to make him feel.
His imagination is vivid, and fantasising about being in bed with Neil is a whole lot more interesting than whatever activity he’s reluctantly participating in at the time. Someplace where touch is sacred, and Andrew can pull animal noises out of Neil without having to flinch at the sound, where his body does not hold him back, and he can touch and be touched without having to be afraid, without his stomach bottoming out from under him, without his hands shuddering and head clanging. Some place safe and secret, his to venture to and seek comfort in as he pleases. Losing himself to thoughts of Neil changes things. It keeps him anchored to reality, even when he feels like he’s fading away again, because Neil Josten is not just a fantasy. He’s real. This thing in between them is real. This is something Andrew gets to keep, gets to learn, gets to take his time with, gets to love, without having to call it love.
Nothing can take this away from them.
This stagnating, mesmerising, healing thing he won’t put a name to because names don’t matter. Not to them.
He doesn’t ever forget, and at this point, he doesn’t want or even need to. After all, he has no place for regrets, or rumination over a past long dead. The thoughts never go away. They never will, but they’re less frequent, less scarring, less volatile. There are still nights he wakes up to the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears, his body seized in phantom reflex, his heart a battering ram trapped in his ribs.
There’s Neil’s gaze like clockwork, full of concern and knowing. He keeps his hands to himself whenever Andrew gets like that. No touch, not even one of support, is extended without an affirmation of consent. The stubborn idiot would wait a century, if that was what it took. And Andrew is grateful, and he’s relieved, and he’s in love. He won’t ever say those things out loud, won’t make the notions tangible; susceptible to the light. He doesn’t need to. He knows Neil feels the same way.
He can’t afford words as shallow and spat around as love.
This is something quickening and dizzying, like falling from a great height.
And maybe it isn’t such a curse being able to get every single one of Neil’s scars down to a tee when he closes his eyes and pictures him naked under his own body, or the twist of his mouth when he smiles that ebbing, genuine smile, reserved for when the two of them are alone and aching, or the way his lips blaze a riot against his, or the feeling of soft hair caught in between his coarse fingers.
Andrew learns to live with it. He’s good at that, learning to live with things, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
He sleeps better when it’s with Neil pressed into his chest, a hand clasped over his heart as if to shield it.
The road to recovery is slow, agonising, winding, torturous and somedays, seemingly unending, but every single time he thinks he might just wander off the taunting goddamn edge, Neil brings him back home.