silver lining - english version

one shot

hii, i hope you all like this one shot! i just need to warn that english is not my native language, so if you find any mistakes i wanna say sorry in advance. 
have fun  <3

- nina

————

It was around 3am when Andrew woke up from another nightmare.

It was getting less and less frequent these days, with the confort of a house of his own and the safety that came with it - and of course the redhead man right next to him also had something to do with this development... not that Andrew would ever admit it to him.

The thing was that he had dreamed with hands. Hands all over his body, touching him without consent and without caring if it was hurting or not and, in his mind, he begged for them to stop. He said the word he despised so much and of course nobody cared about it.

Suddenly he was seven years old again and when he finally got to wake up he just couldn't stand it anymore.

His body, usually so steady, was shaking like crazy, and his eyes were completely opened, trying so hard to see in the dark room.

He knew he wasn't alone, and for a second there he actually knew that the hand that was touching him wasn't Drake's, he knew it was Neil.

It was Neil and he knew that.

He should've been strong enough to keep that in his mind for more than this stupid second, cause, after that, the feeling was just too strong for him to bare.

Andrew just stood on his foot. One second he was there, sleeping through his personal hell, and the other he was standing on the other side of the room, trying to catch his breath while two icy blue eyes stared at him, filled with a guilt that he was too shaken to even try to understand.

He didn't say a thing.

He didn't really have to, actually. 

He never did.

Not with Neil.

Healing surely didn't come easy to someone like Andrew. He knew that, and Neil knew too. So when his body finally got him out of the room, in a desperate need for space, Neil just accepted it.

It was annoying, actually, how considerable Neil always was with him. He was so used to having his boundries ignored by everyone that when someone finally thought it was worth respect he just didn't know how to deal with it.

Maybe annoying wasn't the right word — disconcerting? After all these years he still had no idea how to deal with someone caring about him, the idea of Neil wanting to take care of him and take the bad feelings away was too surreal for him to find a way to deal with it.

Without feeling like thinking about it, Andrew went to the kitchen. He made himself a cup of hot chocolate and didn't wait a beat before drinking it - his mouth burned with the hotness of it, but it felt good to him. It kept him there. In the present. And suddenly, the exhaustion of being the middle of the night was finally taking over him as he stood up again, many minutes later.

Going back to the room without making any noise was easy enough - he had spent so long in foster houses that he learned that stupid ability - but when he arrived at the room, the icy eyes were still there.

Waiting for him.

A questioning look was all he had to do before Neil shrugged.

- I wanted to see if you were alright, but I wasn't going to just follow. You left cause you wanted to be alone, and you didn't say yes, so I didn't follow.