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The red light reflects on Nathaniel’s auburn hair and turns it to fire. Recently his skin has taken a ghastly pallor that he seems unable to shake and the only color left on it is the myriads of bruises littering it.
Someone, Jean most likely, has tried to bandage his wounds but the damage is too extensive. Nathaniel’s breathing is laboured but he looks peaceful as he naps in Andrew’s bed.
Andrew is simmering with rage wrongly directed at him, because he knows Nathaniel lives to antagonise Tetsuji. It’s his entire personality and he always forgets in the heat of the moment about those that will have to patch him up or stitch him back together after the ruthless beatings - beatings and torture he could easily avoid by shutting the fuck up.
“That’s nice,” Nathaniel hums with pleasure as Andrew scratches his scalp with dull nails. His eyes are swollen shut and Andrew is tempted to pull his hair out of petty irritation. He’s not entirely sure that pain would even register.
“You’re more of an idiot than I gave you credit for.”
Nathaniel smiles, it’s a twisted bitter thing, his lips unable to stretch fully.
“That’s flattery,” he comments and his voice makes Andrew’s blood boil.
He’d gladly choke him, if he wasn’t afraid his pipe isn’t one hand away from breaking.
“Was that charade necessary?”
“I wanted a couple days off.” Andrew lets it slide. There’s no way Nathaniel’s going to listen when he’s in this mood and in pain.
“Yes or no?” Andrew asks softly, barely a breath, but Nathaniel always hears. He hates him.
“Always yes.”
Andrew takes his hand in his and carefully - oh so carefully - leans down to kiss his broken and beaten lips. Nathaniel hisses softly against his lips, but doesn’t move out of the way, instead he shifts his head to slot their lips better together and deepen the kiss.
Andrew doesn’t linger. He ignores the lips chasing his, as he shifts on the bed from sitting to half leaning against the metal frame.
“Is Jean okay?” Nathaniel asks, and Andrew nods. Jean is probably sleeping, considering the late hour and especially extenuating training that day.
“Donnie?” Nathaniel asks again, turning his head towards the empty bed and in doing so he rubs his cheek and broken nose against Andrew’s dress pants. A moan of pain escapes him, and that’s all Andrew needs to know that this time it’s serious.
“He’s out for the night.” Andrew doesn’t care what the other goalie gets up to in their spare time, but he knows they won’t be bothered tonight.
“How was the banquet?” Nathaniel asks, his voice so low and broken that Andrew might just decide to kill Kevin.
“Uneventful,” he answers, looking straight at the door.
It’s the fourth consecutive year that Nathaniel can’t be at the Christmas banquet - since the day the Moriyamas got to him before his father did - and it’s the last Andrew will ever be at. They’d thought they’d make it this year. They could find a way to sneak away from the others and just smoke while looking at the stars, such a small wish for their last Christmas together in which Andrew’s believed in enough to be disappointed.
Nathaniel becomes less stable around Christmas - more likely to ignite and provoke - and Tetsuji is especially gleeful and heavy handed in his punishments. Not a good combination, and one that Andrew has underestimated.
They had been so close too, the disappointment tastes like ashes in his mouth.
“I wanted to kiss you under the stars.”
It takes Andrew almost a full minute to realise those words haven’t come from his own mouth. It looks like it physically pains Nathaniel to speak, but he’s found enough time to push his dumb bullshit out once again.
Andrew would love to throw a tantrum - because in the end, had Nathaniel shut his trap at practice, they would have made it. They’d be in bed together, their bodies satiated and minds lost in each other, like their situation wasn’t just a death sentence prolonged for as much money they could return to the Moriyama for as long as their health allowed.
“I fucking hate you, Wesninski” he bites out, ignoring the way his heart flutters at Nathaniel’s hand massaging his thigh through his dress pants.
“Sorry,” he mutters, which is gasoline on Andrew’s fiery temper.
“Stop lying.”
“I’m not, I tried, I swear I did.” He sounds genuine for once in his life, which almost drives Andrew to violence. He has to physically distance himself from Nathaniel, or risk adding injury to his already fragile state.
Nathaniel can’t take it, he reminds himself, he looks like this time they got too close to beating the life out of him.
“I don’t care,” he finally bites out. Nathaniel’s eyes are too beaten to be readable, but Andrew knows him well enough to see him closing off. He sees his face and body language like it’s tattooed in the back of his eyelids. He’s driven him to this so many times already that it’s a dance they know well.
“That’s good,” Nathaniel whispers. There’s something there in his pain that has never been there.
Andrew waits, because if there’s something that Nathaniel loves, that’s talking his ear off.
“I don’t think I can do it.” Nathaniel whispers, so low in the dark room lit only by the red leds that never dim properly enough for any of them to rest. He is fragile, so close to breaking that Andrew’s throat closes. He almost chokes on his next words, but they sound clear:
“You don’t have a choice.”
Nathaniel breathes slowly, but still laboured. Andrew hopes that the wet sound in the back of his throat is not really there, it’s just his overactive imagination.
“You know I do. There’s always him.”
Him. The nightmare that is still chasing Nathaniel in his sleep and every mirror he passes by.
“He’s gonna kill you.”
It’s a fact, they both know it - he’s the only one that knows, because Andrew’s the only one that put the pieces together. Not even Jean knows the extent of the threat awaiting Nathaniel just outside this prison of madness.
“It’s gonna happen the moment I graduate anyway,” Nathaniel says. Andrew forces himself to sit back next to him. His hand - that traitorous hand of his - finds the one he constantly longs for.
Neil intertwines their fingers with that gentleness he reserves to Andrew only.
“It’s not, he works for them, he won’t touch one of their most high return investments.”
Andrew doesn’t know if he’s right, he doesn’t know the extent of Nathaniel’s father’s madness. If he is anything like his son, business won’t stay his hand.
But that’s the problem with Nathaniel. He makes Andrew hope. A futile exercise he had eradicated from his mental gymnastics when he was young enough to still cry. He’d believed himself cured of the sick feeling, yet here he is, hoping against hope that they have a chance to see the stars and smoke a cigarette together without a care in the world.
Just to souls, broken and battered, waiting for just another boring day.
Christmas, Andrew thinks, like he had ever celebrated it. He wouldn’t know how to celebrate.
Where to start.
How to do it.
But, he thinks, their Christmas could be a cigarette, somewhere under the stars - a rooftop, the hood of a car, a bedroll in the desert. That could be his wish tonight: for the wish to become a tradition.
“Next year,” Andrew tells Nathaniel, “next year you’ll be someone else, we’ll go on a road trip.”
“You’re just gonna get yourself killed too.”
Andrew guesses that’s how it’ll end either way. He wasn’t born to last, but if he can choose how he spends this borrowed time, it’s with Nathaniel.
“We’ll come up with a plan, we’ll be famous enough that none of them will be able to touch us.”
“I think I’ll be Neil,” Nathaniel mutters, close to falling asleep. It might be just a fancy dream to lull him, but Andrew’s brain is in overdrive. He has the solution and half a plan already drafted.
It’s foolish, but so much so that it could actually work, and all it needs to work is for Andrew to become such a bright star himself that no one will be able to not know his name.
It’ll be his nightmare, but it’s not the first time he’s put himself through hell for someone he cared for.
“Next Christmas we’ll smoke a cigarette outside,” Andrew promises and half of Neil’s lips turn up. His eyes are closed and his grip on Andrew’s hand is lighter. His breathing sounds moderately better.
“Kiss me goodnight,” Neil says and Andrew obeys, because he’s weak for this redheaded punk. Weak enough that he’ll take on the world for just a minute of freedom with him.