ally douglas? > Recent Status Updates

Three more chapters left but i don’t want to finish because that means they’re gone🥲

Most of all, though, he thinks about how much trust he’s given Neil piece by piece without getting burned like he expected to and like he got used to. It’s trust that mirrors the amount of trust Neil has given him in return. It’s enough, almost, that it spills over his hands that are cupped and runs between his fingers without getting less like the water stained by dirt and blood escaping down the drain.

And Andrew’s pulse is normal and strong, his hands are steady when they reach for the lock and his thoughts are a carousel of colors that come to life and get brighter the closer he steps to Neil but Andrew finds that they’re calm and clear, and the sound of the lock sliding into place doesn’t feel like the gunshot and the call of judgement it had felt like when he was younger
favorite trope:healing inner child

Time passes slowly and the sun keeps spilling its golden and bright rays inside of the room that hit Andrew’s skin and warm him but are nothing in comparison to the man sitting in front of him whose gaze Andrew feels like the touch of a feather running over the skin of his face.

And it is a this, Andrew is long past denying the truth when it’s right in front of him and sitting under the layers of his skin and brushes against it from the inside out. He’s long past denying it when he’s getting pulled back together like two patches of skin with a thread of stitches with the knowledge that Neil’s back. He’s long past denying the flame that has been lit inside of him that refuses to die

Andrew thinks for a moment, with the weight of another person, of Neil, so close to himself and white bandages that are bright even during the night when the moonlight spilling inside through the window hits them, with breaths causing his chest to rise and fall again and again

He knows, he thinks as he watches Neil watch him back until his eyes close and Neil falls asleep, because it can’t be the same for them as it is for him.

and before he knows it, and before he has the time to think about what it means that he shattered as much as he did on Friday even if he already knows it and accepts it (because this isn’t a game he can win, not anymore, but it’s not a game he’s destined to lose either), the bus dies and Wymack announces that they’re back in Palmetto

but this is different because Andrew can’t find it in himself to want to let go, to uncurl his other hand and let the light making him glow from the inside out like a firefly escape and fly away to places someone like Andrew will never be able to follow.

This is different because Andrew has let himself care about Neil enough to hate him, because Neil pulled Andrew out of the shadows and into the light and into the colors, this is different because everything around Andrew begins to dim to what it has been before and Andrew isn’t sure if he’s able to carry the weight of it again even if he knows that he will make do one way or another —

Three words.

Three words are playing in Andrew’s head on repeat like the past coming back to taunt Andrew in an attempt to hit Andrew in places that have been hit before, in an attempt to destroy what’s long been destroyed like a glass shattered on the ground.

Neil is missing

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE

“Thank you,” Neil says quietly, and it’s odd because Neil hasn’t uttered a thanks like this the last time Andrew had shut down the goal and he hasn’t looked like this and Andrew can’t make sense of it as Neil looks at him and Andrew looks back. “You were amazing.”

It’s at both of them and Andrew knows that saying it won’t make either one go away, he knows that it’s way too late for that and that saying it is nothing but a feeble attempt, a push without much force behind it, but he does it anyway.

My babies

Oh shit

Neil smiles then, and it’s one of those smiles that has the corners of his eyes crinkling and it’s small but so, so bright that it rivals the diamonds of the universe sparkling on the dark canvas surrounding the solar system and Neil is a star, he is the sun, and Andrew can’t help the way he turns to Neil like a sunflower stretches to the light.

Neil asks, hearing what Andrew doesn’t say and it shouldn’t make him feel like someone placed the sun inside of his ribcage and right next to his heart to warm him from the inside out, but it does and Andrew doesn’t say anything.

13 chapters left🤭

And that—that’s not true. Andrew doesn’t like Neil, he hates him and he hates what Neil does to him, he hates how alive he feels near him when everything is supposed to be dull and grey and familiar and not like a breath of fresh air. “I hate you,” Andrew corrects him.

And it’s the truth, but so is what Bee had said to him when they saw each other again, he thinks of how much more dangerous and interesting Neil turns out to be with every passing day, he thinks of the keys to his house and his car on Neil’s keyring.

And looking at the injuries makes him think back to sitting on the roof with Neil, to his heart pounding from the height, and from stupid, infurtiatingly gorgeous Neil sitting there; it makes him think back to Neil saying that he wouldn’t lose Andrew.

“I didn’t until you came here,” Neil says and narrows his eyes a bit, lets the blue of his eyes, the bright bright blue, dim a little. “I took a chance on you when I decided to stay. You took a chance on me when you trusted me with Kevin.”

“Andrew, to hate someone, to hate Neil like you do, you have to care about him enough to hate him.”

But he’s not going to let this grow into more than the irritating and useless attraction he already recognized because he knows better than that and if he’s good at something, it’s destroying things around him.

It causes his shoulder to brush against Andrew’s, and it’s not for longer than half a second but it makes Andrew’s veins fill with heat and his stomach so hot as if he swallowed the sun.