Work Text:
Andrew watches from across the locker room as Brice puts his hand on the small of Neil’s back.
Team members touch each other. It’s not new. Well, they know not to touch Andrew, but Neil is no stranger to pats on the shoulder or a slap on the ass. It doesn’t mean anything. Neil has never complained. Really, Andrew wouldn’t even be paying attention, had Brice not insisted on getting Neil’s number last week for practice reasons.
He’s not jealous. He’s not. Andrew does not get jealous.
But something territorial rises up his throat, anyway. He tries to swallow it, but it gets stuck, like a pill going down wrong. Brice doesn’t remove his hand, and Neil doesn’t swat him away, and they laugh at some unfunny joke together. Andrew wants to bleach his eyes. Neil’s face is split with a grin—not one of his father’s, and not one that he would be reserving for Andrew, but just a bit sharper than what he’d give Matt or Kevin. Andrew knows the difference, because he knows Neil Josten better than Brice could ever hope to.
Brice brushes his thumb just under the 10 of Neil’s jersey, all casual. Like he truly believes it belongs there.
Neil laughs again and murmurs a last remark before he walks away from his locker and towards Andrew. Over Neil’s shoulder, Andrew makes eye contact with Brice, and the bastard fucking smirks because he knows exactly what he’s doing. Andrew is sure to keep his expression schooled and flat, but hopes his eyes are burning with the appropriate amount of rage.
Neil sees it, though. He nearly stumbles over his feet as he approaches the bench Andrew is straddling. One by one, other players filter out of the locker room, including Brice. Andrew ties his shoe with what is perhaps a bit too much aggression.
“You good?” Neil asks.
“Stupid question,” Andrew answers.
“You’ve got that look in your eyes that usually leads to murder,” Neil says. “Did Kevin text you something asinine again?”
It’s a good guess. Kevin does that a lot. But Andrew shakes his head. He gets to his feet and brushes past Neil in an attempt to stay indifferent and calm and collected, despite his rapidly increasing heart rate.
“Home,” he says.
Neil purses his lips together. “Like, we’re continuing the conversation when we get home?”
Andrew raises a brow at him. He slings his duffel bag over his shoulder and leaves the locker room, knowing Neil will follow.
Neil does, and he has to jog to catch up. He digs the keys to their car out of his pocket and plops them into Andrew’s already-waiting upturned palm. It’s mid-season, so the weather in Colorado is positively miserable, and Andrew tries to focus on how the chill seeps under his jacket and rattles his bones. It takes his mind off the hot shame crawling up his neck.
They drive for five full minutes in silence before Neil says, “Was it Brice?”
Oh, of course he already knows the problem. For all Neil does to pretend he doesn’t understand modern courtship and the concept of flirtation, he is not slow to pick up on the more obvious aspects of it. “Brice who?”
Andrew is looking at the road but he knows Neil is rolling his eyes.
“Andrew.”
“Neil.”
“He’s being friendly.”
“And you are famously a very open and social individual.”
“Am I not allowed to grow and develop?” Neil asks as he clutches his invisible pearls.
It’s sarcastic, but Andrew doesn’t have much to say in response. It’s not that Neil is making friends. He’s made quite a few of those during his professional career. Andrew has very little issue with any of them. He’ll even join them when they go out to bars for trivia nights. But none of those friends touch Neil’s lower back and serve him suave smiles six inches away from his face.
“You are literally the only one for me,” Neil says with more softness.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s bullshit. There’s not one person for everyone. No such thing as fate.”
Andrew is not foolish enough to think that Neil Josten is the only person alive on the face of the Earth who would be able to respect consent or accept his gritty past. It’s a high bar, but it’s not an impossible one. And, likewise, plenty of people would be able to accept Neil’s scars and his sparkling personality. Life isn’t a Disney movie.
But they’ve built something. They have a house and two cats and a car with both of their names on the title. Andrew tightens his grip on the wheel.
“Well, I don’t want anyone else,” Neil says with a huff as he leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. “Brice is just a teammate.”
Andrew is not jealous. He’s not. And he trusts Neil implicitly.
“I know,” he says. “Stop talking. Your voice is pissing me off.”
Neil scoffs. Andrew glances over just in time to see the quirk of Neil’s lip before he wipes it away.
–
Okay. Andrew sometimes gets jealous, but most of the time, all he feels is a smug sense of pride.
Neil is objectively hot. Andrew has always known this, from the day he smacked his racquet into Neil’s stomach and watched that razor-sharp jaw tilt his way. Andrew is used to people turning and staring, and while some of them are doing it to gawk at Neil’s vicious scars, plenty of their eyes grow hungry and dark.
Normally, this is an ego boost for Andrew. He got Neil. Out of everyone, Neil chose Andrew. He’s maddeningly attractive, hopelessly interesting, and endlessly understanding, and Andrew gets to revel in that.
So, yes, it is a kick in the face when he stumbles across a tabloid questioning the relationship between Neil and Brice.
“I’m not even out,” Neil says sternly when he tosses the tabloid onto the coffee table in front of Andrew. King is spooked by the movement and skitters across the room, leaving pinpricks of blood where she had been sitting on Andrew’s lap. He hisses in pain before leaning over to look at the tabloid.
Huh.
NEIL JOSTEN AND BRICE O’CONNOR: Denver’s Own Love Story?
The front page image shows Brice with his arm around Neil’s shoulder–Neil, who is looking up at Brice with stars in his eyes. Andrew knows those stars are because Brice had just made an impossible pass that got their team a goal, and he knows because he was there, as pictured in the far background in the form of a small speck.
Something dark curdles in his gut.
“Can I sue for this or something?” Neil asks as he flops onto the couch next to Andrew.
Andrew raises a brow at him. “Sue for what?”
“I don’t know. Outing me.”
“It’s just a tabloid rumor. Nobody outed you. Nobody with weight.”
“It could cost my career,” Neil continues like he didn’t even hear Andrew. “Do they care about that? If I get put on the bench because of this—”
He cuts himself off. They both know how the sentence finishes. Ichirou wouldn’t be too happy if Neil’s professional stint ended not even halfway through because of a gay rumor.
It’s precisely why they’ve never addressed their own accusations, though none of them have ever made it to a headline. Reporters will ask, and both Neil and Andrew will tell them to mind their business, and the question is dropped. On the court, they aren’t affectionate, and it’s on purpose. They know that one singular slip-up could finish both of their careers and end Neil’s life.
“You’re too good for it to matter,” Andrew says, and even though he believes it, that doesn’t mean it’s true.
Neil just shrugs.
Andrew can’t stop himself from saying, “It’s not like they have any legs to stand on, anyway. It’s Brice.”
Neil’s brows furrow as he stares at the tabloid. “Why does that matter?”
Why does that matter, he says.
“It doesn’t.”
“Why’d you say it, then?”
Andrew is silent.
“Oh, my god, Andrew.” Neil sighs dramatically and tilts his head back against the couch. “Not this again.”
Andrew is immediately engulfed by hot shame. King is pawing at the door to their screened-in porch, and Andrew uses this as an excuse to stand and step away from Neil to try and lessen his guilt. It doesn’t work, and Neil doesn’t speak again, and Andrew can feel Neil’s stare on his back until he turns around.
“What can I do?” Neil asks.
“Nothing. You didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. It’s me.”
Neil pauses and thinks before he speaks. “I probably wouldn’t be very happy if the tabloids tried to sell you with another man.”
“It wouldn’t happen to me.” Andrew gestures at himself. “On account of my charming personality and wildly good looks.”
“Is that supposed to be sarcastic?”
Andrew levels him with a flat gaze.
“It definitely could happen to you,” Neil says. “They’re probably thrown off by your lack of fagcent. I’m just more obvious.”
“Never say that word again.”
“Sorry. It’s true. You fly under the gaydar.”
Does he? Andrew doesn’t think he signals in the typically historical sense—at least, not like he did in college, though that also largely went ignored by anyone aside from Roland. Andrew glances at the tabloid again and thinks about Neil, about how he can’t afford to be outed, about how all the gossip attention will follow him like a shadow after this.
About how Brice thinks he’s being subtle. Actually, he probably thinks Andrew is a random straight man who absolutely does not rail Neil Josten into the mattress.
He thinks about two birds and one stone.
“You might not be able to get outed,” Andrew says, “but I can.”
–
Because, really, it’s not like Andrew cares if people know he’s gay.
Not anymore, at least. It used to bother him. It’s why he never told anyone until Neil made it unavoidable. It wasn’t that he worried people would judge him or abandon him for it—after all, it’s not like Bee had a choice in the matter as his therapist, and Aaron’s opinion is negligible, and Nicky would have been over the moon—it’s that he didn’t want to have The Conversation. Being gay wasn’t public information, but being a victim was.
He’s all too familiar with how often people associate the two.
A few months ago, Andrew did a podcast and was interviewed about his past. His agent pushed for it, and Andrew made sure to clear the idea with his current counselor, but what really made him commit was visualizing himself as a young kid. He couldn’t stop ruminating over how much it would have changed his life to see a professional athlete speak about sexual abuse so openly. Maybe it would have encouraged him to speak up sooner, maybe it would have kept him out of juvie, and maybe it would have reduced the mental heartache that came with the entire world finding out about it.
It was a shit experience, of course. He had vetted all the questions ahead of time and they still felt like surprises. It’s no secret that Andrew is not a conversationalist, so he’s sure the interviewer felt as though he was pulling teeth with his bare fingers. Still, he did it. The following gossip train had been far more sympathetic than he’d expected. It wasn’t terrible.
Growth and maturity. Blah, blah, blah.
So, Andrew comes out to the Exy community a week after Neil’s tabloid headlines, and it quickly overtakes them in relevancy.
This time, he doesn’t go on any podcasts, and he doesn’t entertain any interviews. He makes a singular tweet and turns off his phone.
Andrew stays offline for the next six days and plays their game against Santa Fe like he normally does. He ignores reporters. He mentally photographs the grinning kids in the stands behind his goal holding rainbow flags. He lets Neil chase off questioning teammates, including Brice, who now keeps his distance and regularly glances between Andrew and Neil as if he could determine their preferred brand of lube if he stared hard enough.
They’re at a rooftop bar when the conversation continues its relevancy. High above the city, there’s a sort of athlete’s club for when the team wins their home games. Andrew can see the ghost of the Rockies’ silhouette through the large windows, just barely.
It should be a private and exclusive event for their team, but somehow, a press member finds his way through the doors. He plays up the other team members, relaxing and drinking, but Andrew keeps an eye on him throughout the night. Multiple times, Neil has to tell him that he’s staring.
“He’s ugly,” Andrew tries to say, gesturing to the man’s mousy hair and thick-rimmed glasses. “Like a car crash. I can’t look away.”
But the man isn’t oblivious to Andrew’s gaze. He’s mid-conversation with their offensive dealer, Slaytner, when he finally catches Andrew’s eye and keeps contact. Something seems to click behind his eyes, and the reporter quickly exits his chat with the dealer before sliding out of his bar stool and making his way through the crowd.
“Great,” Andrew mumbles.
He’s probably about to get another round of questions about his sexuality, like he’s been getting for the past week. Neil will tell the guy off, and Andrew will refuse to answer anything, and they’ll go about their night. Andrew just wishes he didn’t have to engage in a social interaction for that to happen.
The guy slides into the empty chair at their high table and says, “Hi. I’m Ted.”
Ted? Andrew doesn’t laugh, but if he did, that would have triggered it.
Andrew just stares at him, waiting for the inevitable grilling session.
“You’re really good,” Ted says, and his gaze flicks to Andrew’s lips, and oh. Oh, that’s what’s happening.
Andrew freezes. He couldn’t have expected this, actually, and has told Neil as much. Just because the general public knows he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s actually desirable in any capacity. But Ted is looking at him like he’s something to eat, and it certainly has nothing to do with Ted being press.
Neil clears his throat from across the table. “What’s your point?”
There’s something in his tone that has Andrew’s spine straightening. It’s protective. Possessive, maybe, if Andrew didn’t know any better.
Ted smiles tightly at him. “Just making conversation.”
“He’s not looking for one.”
“Don’t you think he gets to decide that?”
“I’m elected to make his wishes known, actually,” Neil snaps back. “He’s not interested.”
Ted glances between them and seems to make the connection. For a moment, Andrew worries; the entire point of him coming out was to take everyone’s eyes off Neil. It would defeat the purpose if rumors of their relationship started circling again. Luckily, though, Ted appears to realize this would be against his best interest, helped along by the embers in Neil’s icy eyes.
“Fine,” Ted says, shrugging. He takes something out of his wallet and places it on the table: a business card. “Call me if you change your mind.”
As he walks away, Neil snatches the card before Andrew can even get a good look at it. He crumples it in his palm and clenches his jaw and glares after Ted like he’s never wanted to kill anyone more.
“Wow,” Andrew says slowly.
“Wow, what,” Neil mumbles.
“I don’t often see you jealous.”
“I’m not jealous. He pissed me off.”
“Because you’re jealous.”
“No. He was bothering you. He was going to say something stupid about your statement and make it weird.”
Andrew has to restrain his lip from quirking up. “Say something like…”
Neil doesn’t seem to have an answer. He’s staring at the back of Ted’s head like he wants to set it on fire.
Something satisfied curls up in Andrew’s stomach and makes a home there. He knows he should probably classify the feeling as unhealthy, and that jealousy has no place in a stable relationship, but the loneliness of his emotions surrounding Brice seem to fade into the background. And, unbidden, Andrew realizes how much he likes it.
He leans towards Neil and says, “Are you feeling territorial?”
“Shut up,” Neil says.
Andrew shrugs. “I’m just saying, you could do something about it.”
Neil raises his eyebrows. “Here?”
“Maybe he just needs to see I’m accounted for.”
He watches as Neil’s gaze darkens considerably. With another last glance at Ted, Neil rises from the table. He’s either not hard yet, or neatly tucked away, and Andrew’s mouth goes dry at the thought of figuring out the truth of it.
Andrew follows him to the bathroom. There are two empty stalls bathed in warm, gentle lighting, and Neil drags Andrew into the smaller stall and locks the door behind them. Anyone could walk in and see two pairs of feet, and Andrew is sure Neil hopes it’s Ted.
Neil is on Andrew in a fraction of a second.
He’s got Andrew’s back slammed against the stall door so hard that it rattles. Their lips clash, dirty and quick, teeth scraping skin and tongue soothing the path. Heat rises up Andrew’s chest when Neil’s nimble fingers slip under his shirt and graze the bottom of his ribcage. Neil’s mouth moves from his lips, to his chin, to his jaw, to his pounding pulse on the side of his throat.
A full-body shiver wracks Andrew’s frame and he grips Neil’s hips helplessly. “Neil–”
Neil mutters something that sounds vaguely like English and bites down.
“Fuck,” Andrew hisses. The hard line of his cock presses into the corded muscles of Neil’s thigh, shooting heat through his core. Neil follows his bite with suction—more than usual—until Andrew can feel a bruise forming along his sensitive skin.
Neil is marking him, branding him, exactly where Ted would be able to see it. Andrew certainly doesn’t belong to anybody, and under normal circumstances, he’d balk at the accusation. Right now, though, it’s unbearably heated to be so wanted. To feel Neil’s hot mouth and hotter breath, to feel Neil clawing at his waist to try and pull him impossibly closer.
Neil switches sides and starts on an identical mark.
“Fuck, Neil,” Andrew gasps, because those are apparently the only two words he knows right now.
Neil says something, muffled against the hickey. Andrew weakly pulls Neil’s head back by his hair, watching Neil’s spit-slick lips try to hold back panted breaths. They share air for a few seconds, Andrew silently willing Neil to speak his mind. Neil’s eyes are wide and bright, his cheeks flushed and blotchy.
Neil does speak, but first, he leans into Andrew’s space and makes sure his words are spoken right next to Andrew’s ear. “Mine.”
Andrew is helpless. He’s only standing because the door is at his back. He’s so hard it hurts. With a fogged mind, he nods, willing to agree with anything Neil says if it means getting that mouth on him again.
Neil pulls back. He stares at Andrew’s neck, then flicks his gaze back up to Andrew’s lips and kisses him. Just as Andrew attempts to deepen it, the bathroom door swings open, and they both startle.
Someone uses the urinal and washes his hands before leaving again. He must not have noticed the heavy breathing coming from the stall. Andrew simultaneously thanks the universe that they weren’t caught, and wishes so badly they were.
“Clean up,” Neil says as he readjusts himself, and it’s difficult for Andrew not to pout. Neil notices, grins with his crooked smile, and promises, “Later.”
“I’d take a public indecency charge right now,” Andrew tells him through broken pants.
“You look indecent enough,” Neil teases. He drags a fingertip along the bruises on each side of Andrew’s neck. “I’ll give you more once we’re home.”
The promise of it has Andrew shaking all over again. He petulantly drags his cock under his waistband, wincing at his sensitivity. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Neil gives him one last parting peck on his cheek.
Andrew is left alone in the stall to catch his breath.
Maybe jealousy isn’t all that ugly.