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Very few things about Neil escape Andrew’s notice.
This has always been true, though he has certainly gotten better. Maybe it’s that Neil has learned to let his guard down a fraction, let some things slip now where he never would have before. A spark in his eyes when Nicky returns from the store with a basket of cherries for him, a curl at the edge of his mouth when he’s talking with Matt, a twitch away from something unpleasant. All weaknesses he would not have allowed himself to show a year ago.
Maybe it’s that Andrew pays more attention, learned what to look out for.
In any case, he notices. When Neil wakes from a nightmare, jolting so strongly it wakes Andrew as well, his legs tensed hard enough to give Andrew a cramp from the mere sight, he notices. When Neil jerks a bit as Andrew slides a hand over the top of his thigh mid-kiss, he notices.
He notices that it’s an issue, but it’s something Neil has buried deep and never addressed. Andrew doesn’t know what it is, and it does not seem big enough to raise. Neil relaxes mere seconds after waking. Andrew touches Neil’s leg again, two seconds after the twitch, and it prompts no further reaction. He smooths his palm flat over his thigh, thumb digging into the soft inside, and all it earns him is Neil making a needy sound into his mouth.
He debates asking about it, when they’re up on the roof one night, but Neil is loose-limbed from practice and smiling around a story, smoke curling around his face, so Andrew puts it out of his mind.
There are also more important things to worry about, things that have Neil much more on edge than whatever complex he has about his legs. The new freshmen refusing to get wrangled in line, the impending start of the season. Andrew leans back against the goal and watches Neil run agitated hands through his hair until it stands up in fistfuls.
He pulls him against himself later that night, the smell of soap still strong on his skin. It’s been a while since they had a moment to themselves somewhere that isn’t the roof of the tower, and the thought blips through his mind before he can stop it: I missed this.
He wrinkles his nose at the thought, pressed against the skin of Neil’s neck so hard he must have felt it. Neil makes a sound to confirm that he did, and Andrew yanks himself away and Neil’s mouth back against his before he can get a word in about it.
Neil blooms under every kiss. Always has, ever since that first one on the roof made him freeze up, always responds so beautifully to the press of Andrew’s lips. He makes little sounds into Andrew’s mouth, too short and quiet to count as moans, but driving Andrew insane nevertheless.
Neil is rarely wanton; he’s sensitive, and enthusiastic, and loves to be touched by Andrew alone, but he’s never shameless, never one to lie back and sink into it easily. He needs to be kissed and warmed up, needs Andrew’s hands sliding down his sides and over his chest and stomach all throughout, gentle caresses and Andrew’s tongue deep in his throat until he is, at last, coaxed into orgasm.
Andrew likes it. On principle, he takes no issue with anyone’s response to intimacy, and he has had partners who were easier subjects to pleasure than Neil, but something about Neil’s need for Andrew’s affections, for Andrew, pleases him on a level deeper than physical.
They sink down into Neil’s mattress together, tucked away beneath Andrew’s bunk. It’s a small bed, and the mattress is lain through in the middle with how many times they’ve shared it, and Kevin will be back eventually, but Andrew still … likes it. Still cherishes, somewhere deep down, every moment alone like this, when Neil rolls onto his back and looks up at him with those damned eyes.
Andrew leans over him, braces both hands on either side of Neil’s head and relishes, for a blinding moment of indulgence, in the way Neil strains his head upwards for a kiss. Andrew grants it, finally, and lets his hips sink into the space between Neil’s thighs.
It’s when he’s sliding his hands down, across the smooth fabric of the worn-through sleep shirt Neil pulled on after his shower, and down over his hips, that it happens again.
His palms skirt across the tops of Neil’s thighs, something he’s never had to ask for, and Neil flinches a little too hard to be brushed off as a simple twitch.
Andrew draws away without pause, both his hands from Neil’s legs and his mouth from his lips, and finds Neil already looking at him. Unoccupied, Neil’s lower lip is caught between his teeth, his gaze darting away almost guiltily.
“Neil.” Andrew does not usually have patience for Neil’s theatrics, but he’s pacing himself. The earlier realization that he missed this is still stuck in his bones, and he knows himself well enough to tell that he doesn’t particularly want to walk away now. “What happened?” he makes himself ask.
Neil shrugs, still staring off to the side. Andrew’s sparse patience runs thin.
He makes to sit up, itching suddenly for a cigarette, but Neil’s legs snap up, a heel digging into his back. “Don’t go.” It’s not the most comfortable of sensations, but Andrew usually allows it only on account of it being Neil.
Now, though, he raises a brow at the face Neil makes at him. “Can’t help what you won’t tell me.”
Neil blows out a breath, heavy and huge in his cheeks. “You can touch me,” he says, scrabbling for Andrew’s hands and, when he’s got them, placing them back on his waist. That’s where he’s always the most comfortable, Andrew knows, his hold secure around the slim of Neil’s waist. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I can touch you,” Andrew repeats. “Here?” He squeezes his waist a bit, then, feels out the strong muscle there, feels the slight twitch Neil gives, almost ticklish.
Neil nods, enthusiastic. “Yeah.”
Andrew hums, and slides his hands down just a bit, over Neil’s hipbones. They are solid even through the soft fabric of his sweatpants, and Andrew can almost imagine the little mole that sits right above the left one. “Here?”
Neil nods again, and wriggles into the touch, his pelvis lifting off the bed. “Yeah.”
Andrew clicks his tongue, but refrains from commenting on the impatience. Instead, he calmly slides his hands lower again, back to Neil’s thighs. He doesn’t flinch again, but in the charged silence of the room Andrew can tell that he is holding very, very still. “Here?” Andrew asks, pointedly. He doesn’t squeeze this time.
Neil doesn’t respond immediately. A few breaths pass between them, measured and even.
“If it’s a no —”
“It’s yes,” Neil interrupts, and his voice is certain. “Just —”
He trails off, but Andrew keeps holding on, his hands slack but pointedly braced over the curved muscle of Neil’s upper thighs, a touch kept light but present. "Just what?”
Neil swallows, visibly, and turns his head away again. “It’s … sensitive,” he says, finally.
Andrew cocks an eyebrow. Sensitive. That’s a word he would have applied to Neil in general, at least when they’re like this, and he had not considered that Neil might be particularly so in any specific area.
Gingerly, he lets both of his thumbs trace a circle across the tops of Neil’s thighs, and watches as a tiny shiver wracks his frame.
He hums to himself, considering. “But it’s a yes.”
Neil nods, quickly. “Yeah. I — It feels good. I think I’m just —” He swallows the rest of the sentence, eyes flicking away once more. Andrew very nearly groans.
“Cut the dramatics.”
Neil looks up at him, frowning, but obeys. “I think it’s just … nice. When you touch them. My father —” Andrew has to actively hold himself back from white knuckling Neil’s legs at the mention of Nathan Wesninski, or varialy drawing back to punch the wall — “he wanted to … hurt them. Sever my hamstrings, whatever. Make it so I wouldn’t ever be able to run again, it’s — I have nightmares about it, sometimes.”
Andrew knows. Sort of, at least. Neil has never told him much about what happened that night in Baltimore, but he noticed the way his legs tensed, sometimes, after a nightmare, and — well, he’s not entirely stupid.
“So you’re protective of them.” It makes sense. In the same way that Andrew is protective of his everything, Neil is protective of the parts of him he perceives as the most vulnerable.
Neil weighs his head from side to side, though. “In a way. I don’t think I would really like anyone else touching them. But with you …”
He shrugs again, then, but doesn’t look away. He smiles when Andrew frowns down at him.
“It’s nice, with you,” he continues. “It’s just sensitive, but in a good way, I think? I know I’m safe with you, so that makes it better.”
With the way the words make Andrew want to throttle him, he isn’t so sure about how safe Neil really is, but the idiot keeps smiling up at him so serenely that Andrew has to lean down and kiss it off his face.
Immediately, Neil melts back into it, smile and moronic speech forgotten as his hands wind back into Andrew’s hair, his hips buck up, his skin heating under Andrew’s touch.
Andrew comes up for air several moments later and narrows his eyes at Neil. An idea has taken hold, somewhere in the back of his mind, and he thinks he may just have to follow it, if only to get rid of — or confirm — the images his brain conjures.
“Pants off,” he says, “Yes or no?”
Neil nods immediately, hard enough for a curl to flop into his face. He wipes it away before saying, verbally, because he knows that’s what Andrew is really after, “Yes.”
Andrew sits up to shimmy Neil’s ratty gray sweatpants down his legs and off, followed by his boxers, throwing it into the room behind him somewhere. He keeps his own clothes and Neil’s soft, wide shirt on, for now.
His hands slide down the full lengths of Neil’s thighs, from his hips down to his knees, hooking under the backs of them to spread his legs apart.
Neil makes a sound, something strangely soft for how choked it sounds, and Andrew watches as his cock begins to fill out where it’s resting between his legs. His own has long taken interest in the proceedings, but he’s well aware that it usually takes Neil a moment longer to get on that side of things.
Andrew leans back in, then, lets his lips find the little mole on Neil’s hip without error, kissing it and sucking the skin between his teeth, briefly, before he moves down.
Not to Neil’s dick, despite how it twitches for his attention, but to the crease where his leg meets his hip. He presses another kiss there, closed-lipped and chaste, and makes a path down from there.
When he’s kissed his way halfway down Neil’s long thigh, he looks up to find Neil staring down at him, eyes wide and face flushed.
“Still yes?” he asks, just to be sure, and Neil nods immediately.
“Yeah, Andrew, I —”
The words die in his throat when Andrew continues his path, ghosting his lips over the skin. The strong thigh quivers a bit under his mouth, and Neil full-body shudders when Andrew kisses the inside of his knee.
He wraps his hands around the backs of Neil’s calves and props his legs up, holding onto his ankles as he kisses down the inside of the leg. Above him, Neil has sat up, supported by his lower arms, so he can watch him, his breath coming a little ragged.
“Andrew,” he says, the beginning of a thought that’s lost immediately. He nods, though, no less enthusiastically, when Andrew looks up at him for reassurance.
When Andrew lifts up his other, yet unkissed, leg to nip at the jut of his ankle bone, Neil flops back into the pillow and lets out a sound Andrew can only describe as a wheeze. He bites down on a smile and kisses back up the length of the calf, sliding the leg over his shoulder as he goes down, licking across the inside of his knee before he starts nibbling on his thigh again.
Neil makes little sounds to himself all the while, twitching at every new sensation — he wasn’t lying, he really is sensitive, much more than in any other part of his body Andrew’s explored so far.
He knew Neil had a thing about his legs, but not that it was this.
Not that he’s complaining. He sinks his teeth into the soft meat on the inside of Neil’s thigh, gently, and watches as Neil throws his head back into the pillow, his cock dribbling a little onto his taut stomach.
Andrew hasn’t even touched him properly, and Neil looks like a wreck.
“Andrew,” Neil gasps, then, sounding a little more present than before. Like the thought might actually lead somewhere, this time. “Can we —” His arm swings out towards the nightstand, feeling blindly for the rickety drawer, and Andrew knows exactly what he’s aiming for.
He extracts himself from between Neil’s legs just long enough to lean over and wrench the badly assembled drawer open, fishing out the lube they keep there.
It’s not the most ingenious hiding spot from Kevin, who is occasionally prone to disregard any commons of privacy when looking for something around the dorm, but Andrew is also unsure what Kevin expected, living with them.
He holds the lube up for Neil to see as he settles back into position, and Neil beams up at him.
“Yeah,” he says, wriggling his hips. “Can we?”
Andrew raises a brow. It’s not a game he plays often, but something in his chest feels more settled today than on most other days, and Neil seems in a mood, too, so he indulges. “Can we what?”
Neil frowns at him, the corners of his mouth pulling down, but he gives in easily enough. “Do you want to fuck me? Yes or no?”
Andrew considers, thoroughly, as he always does.
It wouldn’t be the first time, or even the second or the third. The first time happened many months ago, in fits and starts, secluded in his bedroom in Columbia, where they had a big bed to themselves and a door that only they could unlock. A weekend to themselves, and Neil spread out beneath him on the gray sheets, and as many tries as they needed. Andrew spent half an hour trying to not hyperventilate in the bathroom by himself after the first botched attempt, and Neil was still there when he emerged, clothed and one foot out the door if Andrew needed him to go.
They tried again. And they tried again. They almost gave up, Neil smiling up at him with no ill will hidden in his eyes, promising he was okay if it never worked, and then they tried again. Until it became easier, until Andrew could slide into him and think of nothing but Neil’s tight heat around him and Neil sank into the pleasure as beautifully as he did with everything else they tried.
Now, they have a rhythm figured out, even if they still don’t do it often. It’s a rare treasure, safekept for the days that they both feel up for it. Andrew thinks today might be one of those days.
He smooths his free palm over Neil’s stomach, feeling the familiar ridges of his scars, and nods. “Yes.”
Neil grins, though it’s not quite as winning an expression as Andrew would have expected — Neil never treats Andrew’s consent as a win for him, after all.
Andrew leans down to kiss the expression away, succeeding only marginally, then sits back and pops the lube open. Neil has a nearly pavlovian reaction to the sound by now — even if they don’t get to full penetration that often, Andrew will still finger him without a particular goal in mind occasionally — his dick springing up against his stomach immediately.
Andrew snorts, but coats his fingers in lube diligently, warming it up a bit.
He taps Neil’s hip, and he turns over onto his knees without hesitation. It’s a bit of a vulgar position, his ass presented to Andrew and his cock hanging heavy between his legs, but Neil got over his initial embarrassment pretty quickly once they started doing this regularly. Andrew kisses his asscheek and starts rubbing a finger over his hole.
Neil opens up beautifully — the first finger is easy, aided by the lube, and though the subsequent ones are a bit tight, Neil remains relaxed, sighing into the pillow under his cheek, and takes them all.
They always spend longer on this than is probably customary, Andrew figures, but he will never let Neil go into it underprepped. So he takes his time, scissoring his fingers until he opens up, until Neil’s breathing picks up in speed and volume and his skin grows flushed and damp.
When he finally deems him ready, sliding off his own pants before grabbing a condom from the same not-so-secret stash in the bedside drawer and rolling it on, Neil sits up.
He flips himself around, grabbing a pillow to stuff under his back, and looks up at Andrew. “Like this?” he says, almost a question, and he reaches up his arms like he’s waiting for Andrew to tilt into them.
Andrew does, lets Neil pull him down into a kiss. It’s easier with Neil on his knees, the angle a little better, but he knows Neil prefers it like this, always wants to be kissed. And, secretly, Andrew prefers being able to look at him, too.
They kiss for a long moment, before Andrew slowly draws back — pecking Neil on the forehead once in parting — and sits up enough to smear some new lube over his cock and position it at Neil’s entrance.
On a whim, he grabs one of Neil’s legs and slings it over his shoulder, placing his lips against the inside of his knee as he pushes in.
Neil sighs, deep and almost relieved, when breached, and Andrew slides a hand down to hold onto his thigh. The muscle gives under his grip, bulging nicely in his palm, and he holds for a moment inside of Neil to focus on sucking on the skin of his leg that he can reach from here.
Neil keens, wiggling impatiently, and Andrew decides to have mercy. He does not drop the leg, but he unlatches his mouth to focus on moving, sliding, slowly, in as far as he can.
Neil, despite the extensive prep and his relaxed, almost serenely satisfied, face, is impossibly tight and hot around him. Andrew cannot help his eyes fluttering shut for a moment, overwhelmed by the sensation he has only recently learned to attribute positively, but once he’s sure Neil is okay, he keeps going.
Building a rhythm is easy, natural. Neil moves with him, responsive as always, and Andrew barely has to think about what he’s doing.
His lips find their way back to Neil’s leg over his shoulder, ghosting over the skin just enough to make Neil shiver, until he latches on fully. His lips seal over a patch of skin, the soft flesh giving under his mouth as he sucks what will surely blossom into a bruise into it, and Neil lets out an actual moan.
It’s all a spiral from there. Neil only gets more turned on, only burns hotter under Andrew’s hands the more Andrew nips at his thigh, his hips never faltering their rhythm, driving his cock deeper into Neil who rocks back onto him. Neil doesn’t hold back the sounds that drop from his lips, louder than Andrew can remember him ever being before, and it churns something in Andrew on.
Their skin slaps together messily, Andrew’s lips begin to slide over the inside of Neil’s thigh with the amount of spit he’s spread there, and Neil is nearly lifted off the mattress with how hard he’s bowing into Andrew’s thrusts.
Finally, Andrew shoves the leg off his shoulder so he can dive for Neil’s mouth instead. Neil responds immediately, almost on instinct, his head lifted and straining for Andrew almost before he’s even moved. Their mouths slide together in a rhythm too well practiced to be this messy, Neil’s mouth already warm and wet.
He comes like that, with a hand snuck between their bodies to stroke his dick and Andrew’s tongue in his mouth, and Andrew follows not long after.
He rarely comes while still inside Neil, usually pulls out right after Neil comes, but today it only takes one, two, three more thrusts into the tight heat of Neil’s body and Neil keeps kissing him, keeps nodding against him with something that’s almost akin to desperation, and Andrew just has to let himself go.
They kiss through the heat of it, Neil’s hands buried in Andrew’s hair while he fills the condom.
It’s a good way to settle himself, when the adrenaline rush fades away and the shadows at the edge of his mind start to creep back in — Neil’s mouth is a sanctuary Andrew didn’t think he would ever have, and he allows himself to relish in the knowledge that he does for a moment.
Finally, he draws away, placing one last small kiss on Neil's upper lip. He sits up and pulls out, smoothing a hand over Neil’s hip when he winces at the feeling.
This has become easier to bear, too: the aftermath. In the early days, he would have to scurry from the room immediately, or at least kick Neil out so he could collect himself. Now, his skin prickles still, but he gets up from the bed to tie off the condom and throw it into the bathroom bin, covering it with some toilet paper so Kevin won’t bitch at them, and when he returns to the bedroom with a wet towel and his pants back on, he feels mostly calm.
Neil catches the towel when Andrew chucks it at him, and wipes himself down. He knows to stay away, too, even if Andrew isn’t always explicit about it.
He stays on the bed while Andrew cracks the window and lights a cigarette. Andrew slides up onto the desk beneath the window, and finally gestures at Neil.
He almost trips over himself getting up, and picks up his sweatpants on the way, nearly tripping again trying to put them on while walking. Finally, he shimmies up onto the edge of the desk beside Andrew, as far away from him as he can manage on the small space. He accepts the cigarette Andrew hands him without question.
“Stop being stupid,” Andrew says, finally, and yanks closer in by the front of his shirt.
Neil lets himself be tugged, easily, and smiles.