Aftermath

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“Don’t come
crying to me when someone breaks your face.”

Andrew’s
words threw themselves back into his face like acid. If he’d known what would
happen just a few hours after he they had left his mouth, he would never have
allowed Neil to break their deal. He would have tightened his hold around the
other man until it threatened to smother them both.

He had woken
up before Neil, startled at the weight of another body in the bed before full
consciousness kicked in and he remembered that they were in the cabin. He lay
there now, tracing Neil’s profile as the sun leaking through the curtains
backlit the silhouette of his face. The long lashes and slightly upturned nose
had already been forever embedded into Andrew’s mind months ago, but somehow
they seemed completely new every time his eyes wandered over them.

Andrew
dropped his inspection down onto the scarred mess that was Neil’s cheek. The
burns looked better than they had when Andrew had pulled the gauze from his
face the previous Saturday, but the way Neil jolted awake every time he had
rolled onto his side during the night indicated that they still left Neil in agonising
pain. Neil was a stationary sleeper, but not even he could remain in the same
position all night.

He was still
enough, however, to never get close to Andrew while the two slept. The king bed
meant they could have easily fit in another person between them, and that space
had been left empty the whole night, for which Andrew was grateful.

Somewhere in
the back of his mind Andrew acknowledged that in the last few days he had slept
without his back against a wall twice, after years of making sure he was never
exposed. He wondered if this is what trust felt like, and when Neil had shoved
himself and dragged the other foxes into that space in his life. He didn’t feel
safe – he never did – but he could almost imagine what that would be like when
he was with his runaway.

Some emotion
that he couldn’t pick apart nudged at the edge of Andrew’s mind, and he set it
aside for later inspection when Neil’s breathing changed and his eyelids
fluttered open. His blue eyes looked almost warm in the yellow light and the
feeling became more insistent.

“Good
morning, Andrew,” Neil whispered into the still air. A soft smile pulled at his
lips as he tilted his head slightly to look at Andrew.

“Don’t look
at me like that,” Andrew said on autopilot. He almost regretted it when he
realised that he didn’t want Neil to
stop looking at him like that. Ever.

Neil,
however, just smiled wider and didn’t drag his eyes from Andrew. “I don’t want
to,” he said, and Andrew had never felt more grateful for a sentiment. For a
long minute the two just stared at each other before Andrew stretched his hand
out and rested it on the bed between them. Neil looked at it in confusion
before realising what Andrew was angling at. Neil twisted his body as much as
he could without pushing his face into the pillow and moved his own hand until
it was hovering just above Andrew’s.

“Yes or no?”
Neil Asked.

“Yes,” Andrew
said.

Neil dropped
his hand on top on Andrew’s, but didn’t make a move to actually hold it, and
Andrew thought that maybe, just maybe, this is what happiness felt like.