I have two prompts from the Hozier lyric thing for Andreil: “we should quit” or “tell me what you’d do to me tonight”. Pick your fave! (Or both of you’re feeling adventurous)
from the full line: lord we should quit but we love it too much
They meet in sticky July, two sore thumb prints stamped into the wall at the back of the dance floor. Neil’s nose is bloodied, and he looks lost, a wounded wallflower twisting in the wind. He keeps pulling at his shirt, slightly sheer and obviously the wrong size for him.
His scars are invisible until Andrew leads him into the bathroom, where the overhead lights make them unavoidable.
They only talk that first time, under the glare of the fluorescents, dabbing at a wound that Neil won’t say how he got.
He can tell that Neil is interested by him, but not in him. The way they speak to each other is the way a bull and a matador tussle, afraid, both thinking they have the upper hand.
They run into each other again at the same club, Neil lingering at the back like they’d planned to meet there and Andrew was already late. He takes him outside to smoke, this time, and they orchestrate a game of twenty questions until the summer sun pops its head quizzically over the horizon.
They walk home in opposite directions, through chirruping robins and baby blue sky, Andrew glancing back at Neil, who is glancing back at him. He can’t figure out where all of this want is coming from. He can’t find the source of it.
They meet a few more times that summer, and then he doesn’t see him again until a windy day in October.
Andrew steps out of his second year biology class and finds Neil waiting for the class across the hall to get out. He’s wearing round brown glasses, his hair is dyed black, and he purses his lips when their eyes connect. Andrew can tell he’s pleased to see him.
Neil tells him that he was recruited to Palmetto to play exy, and Andrew says “what’s that” because he can tell now that Neil is one of those athletes who doesn’t understand the point of anything else. He didn’t mention it, though, in all the times that he spoke to Andrew before.
They walk all the way across campus to the court, and circle its shiny white walls in a slow perimeter. Neil describes various exy positions and plays and Andrew describes how much he doesn’t care.
Neil asks him if there’s anything he actually likes doing, at which point Andrew takes him back to his dorm, and holds his hand when he sucks him off.
After that, they have the strange, floating arrangement of two people who will swallow each other whole before they share any of their secrets. They’re not friends, and the sex isn’t really a benefit, because it’s agonizing, how much he thinks about it, and how much more he wants.
He can’t stop wondering who Neil might be. He is a beautiful window display on a closed store.
They don’t step into each other’s lives unless it’s into a room with a locking door. The more they talk though, the more receptive Neil gets, and he starts seeking Andrew out on campus, looking sunken-eyed and famished until they come together again.
This is how Andrew knows they should stop.
“You should come to our home game, on Friday,” Neil says. He’s smeared down the length of Andrew’s bed, and his arms are crossed behind his head. His glasses are on the bedside table. Andrew doesn’t know why he bothers wearing them, when they always end up torn off. He knows they’re not prescription. Maybe the disguise makes him feel better.
“I should not,” Andrew says. He blows smoke up into the whirring ceiling fan.
“You don’t want to see what I do all the time?”
“I don’t want to waste my time on a sporting event,” he says. “And I don’t care what you do.”
“Right,” Neil says, working himself up onto his elbows. “Except that I saw you watching us practice, last week.”
“We were supposed to meet at five,” Andrew says coolly. “I was there at five.”
“But you know we go long on Mondays, and you never come on time. You sat through twenty-five minutes of wrap-up.”
“I had nowhere else to be.”
“Or maybe you just like to watch,” Neil says slyly.
Andrew narrows his eyes. “Even if I had the patience to sit through a three hour game, I have no interest in meeting your friends,” he tells him.
Neil shrugs. “Don’t have any.”
“I won’t be a cheerleader for your bastard sport.”
“Fine,” Neil says shortly.
“And we’re not dating.”
“Fine,” Neil repeats.
Andrew shifts in the covers. He doesn’t know why he does it, but he leans over and presses a kiss to Neil’s hip. A hand closes in his hair.
______
The foxes win their home game, a sweeping 11-4. Andrew stands outside the court with his head tipped back into the wall, eyes shut, feeling the vibrations of their victory.
“You came,” a voice says.
Andrew keeps his eyes closed, even when he feels Neil come right up to him, even when the post-game humidity from his skin spreads between them. Or maybe Andrew was already hot, thinking about Neil bounding across the court, a comet captured in a jar.
He finally opens his eyes when Neil presses a shy kiss to his throat.
“We can’t sleep together anymore,” Andrew hears himself say. Neil steps backwards.
“Okay,” he says, confused. “Why?”
“You love exy.”
“Andrew,” Neil huffs. “That’s fucking stupid.”
“You love chasing a rush,” Andrew continues, in a monotone, like it doesn’t bother him one way or another. “To the court. To my bed. But the rush will run out.”
“But it hasn’t yet,” Neil says slowly. “Are you saying you don’t feel that kind of rush for anything?”
No, Andrew thinks. I’m saying I do. And he didn’t think he could. And he sat in the stands for hours, watching Neil run, and drink water, and clack sticks with people he doesn’t know, and the crowd around him was paper, and time started ticking backwards.
The last time he’d wanted something so much that nothing else mattered, everything had gone brutally wrong.
“Yes,” he lies.
Neil’s eyes spark and fire up. “Bullshit. You think if you look neutral enough, and you hold your cards close to your chest, that no one will know that you want things.”
He crosses, then uncrosses his arms. People are starting to flow out of the doorways to the parking lot behind them.
“But I’ve heard you talk about your brother. I’ve seen how you read up about the things that matter to you. You memorize them.” He lowers his voice. “And I’ve kissed you,” he says. “I know you feel things.”
“What did you think this was going to be,” Andrew says, a little cruelly. “A life partnership?”
“Why does it have to be anything other than what it is?” Neil asks.
“Attachment ruins people’s lives.”
Neil’s shoulders go slack, and his mouth twists in understanding. “Sometimes, but sometimes it saves them.”
“You want to save me?” Andrew says, like it’s a dark joke.
Neil lets this slide right over him. “If you want.”
He doesn’t know what to do with this. He’s very aware that he’s being fought for, and it’s so completely unfamiliar that it’s making him a little sick, like rich food on an empty stomach.
He doesn’t say anything, and Neil smiles. His face is still pink from the exertion of the game, and he couldn’t look more vivid and familiar.
They should really stop.
“Can I kiss you?” Neil asks.
They’re never going to make it out of this alive.
“Yes,” he tells him. Of course he does.
If his life is going to tumble out of control again, this time he’s going to enjoy it.
Prompt: Riko survives TKM and gets onto a pro team. Where he immediately becomes nothing special and is eventually dropped due to his awful behaviour and self entitlement.
THIS IS SO FUNNY WHAT
“You look self-satisfied,” Andrew notes in his usual semi-bored tone, a comment which is actually a question. He’s just come in from the mall, a couple of bags in his hand that he puts down by the couch in favour of watching Neil.
“Hm,” Neil replies. “Have you read the news today?”
“Not whatever it is that has that expression on your face.”
Neil picks up his phone, opens the page he wants, and throws it underarm to Andrew, who catches it easily.
About halfway through reading, Andrew’s mouth twitches. It’s basically the same reaction Neil had had - amusement, closely followed by a wave of relish. The long game can be just that - long - but there’s still always a winner in the end.
Andrew tosses the phone back. “What did Kevin say?”
Because, of course, Kevin would have been the first person Neil talked to after finding out. Neil doesn’t mind being considered predictable in this sense.
“He’s the one who told me,” he admits. “I think he’s relieved.”
Andrew makes a noise of agreement, sitting on the couch and flicking the TV on. On screen, a bunch of reporters have Jeremy Knox bailed up in front of a building, wearing an oversized USA Exy jacket and jean shorts. He’s saying, “Look, I don’t have a comment to make on this.”
“The Aces just dropped one of the best players in the league for what they called ‘behavioural issues’, and you as the captain of the US team don’t have an opinion on that?” someone asks.
Jeremy shrugs, unbothered and uncaring, or at least a good seeming of it. “A player being dropped off the roster of a low-ranked team isn’t relevant to the US Court. All I can say is that our selections agree to abide by our core values of teamwork and sportsmanship, and players who can’t uphold those promises will never play for the US. Now, if you’ll excuse me-”
“I hope Kevin is watching this,” Neil says, a pointless comment because he knows that Kevin will be. “Talk about kicking someone already down.”
“It’s true,” Andrew points out. His lack of caring is genuine - Riko stopped being a threat to anyone he cares about years ago.
“Yes,” Neil agrees. He’s smiling, can feel it on his face. He’s not afraid of Riko anymore either, but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy a good self-inflicted downfall. “It is.”
Sorry, sent this to the wrong place. Billy/Teddy 33
No worries, I got it both ways. ^^
33. Expectations
Billy is in a bedroom with another guy, with an incredibly attractive guy, and they both have their shirts off. He is in Teddy Altman’s bedroom and they have their shirts off. And they’re kissing. They’re kissing! He has a boyfriend, who is beautiful and kissing him and not wearing a shirt.
Also he has the theme from Spongebob stuck in his head. Is that supposed to happen when you’re making out?
He tries to focus on the mind-blowingly hot thing happening, where he’s in Teddy Altman’s bedroom, on Teddy Altman’s bed, being kissed by Teddy Altman, and he’s having a lot of thoughts about where things can go from here. Most of them involve pants coming off next. Several of them still involve his mouth, which he’s maybe a little apprehensive about. But then there’s also the part of his mind that is resolutely refusing to concentrate and singing about pineapples under the sea.
Teddy kisses the side of his neck and says, “This is awesome, you’re awesome,” and then makes sort of a weird noise.
Billy freezes. “What, what was that, did I do something wrong?”
Teddy actually blushes and ducks his head nervously. “I, uh...this is awesome. But. Um.”
He’s not actually gay. He’s got a boyfriend. He’s actually a space alien and he’s going to kill me. “What?”
“I. Uh. I’ve got a song stuck in my head.”
The breath goes out of Billy in a relieved whoosh of, “Oh my god, you too?”
“Wait, really?”
“Well I mean I think it’s just that I’m so nervous that my brain is trying to calm me down but the Spongebob theme isn’t really doing that.”
“Yeah.” Teddy sighs, pressing his forehead to Billy’s in a gesture that’s somehow way hotter than the kissing from just a moment ago. “I think I expected this to be less nerve-wracking.”
The trouble with witches--and warlocks, and wizards, and sorcerors and soothsayers and magicians and mystics and obeahs and and oracles and conjurors and enchanters and gods walking the earth and people imbued with demonic powers and just plain creepy little kids--is that they’re like cats. At best, they only ever sort of like each other, tolerance verging on vague fondness. At worst, they are terribly disagreeable.
In the literal sense.
They disagree about everything.
Or: the story of how Dr. Strange brought Billy along to the First International Conference of Magic Users as his assistant and started a yelling match that almost destroyed the entire fabric of reality.
