<Andreil Oneshots>

<9> Welcome Home

you still have a lot of time
to make yourself what you want.

— s.e. Hinton

—

Andrew and Neil were the boys who never knew home.

A house would stand in front of them — different almost every week — and they knew to count the doors and windows, to check the locks and the exits.

The buildings were never something filled with warmth and smiles; laughter nor safety. Never something solid and concrete. 'Welcome to your new home' if said, was flimsy at best. Just another lie in the reality the boys were dragged through.

'Home' was a place where they grew to understand the footfalls down the hall — the ones that spoke danger and the ones that spoke hide. They grew to understand the slamming and the screaming — the ones that spoke who to see and the ones that spoke who to avoid. They grew to listen through the walls and breathe quietly and slowly; to make themselves small and scarce but so ever ready to fight.

The shadows were their best friends and biggest fear. They may have hid mean tools and dirty secrets but they were a screen that played whatever the eyes could conjure. And blanket that took away whatever the eyes didn't want to see.

Night would come, sleep marching in toe, and they'd be ready like a loaded gun — the moment a floorboard creaked, they'd be off.

There was no such thing as safe. The sun would rise and so would the hairs on the backs of their necks, like the nose of a shark they could feel the vibrations of prey and of danger. They could smell the blood in the water and took a dive in the deep end to run or to stay. Caught or catch their minds would whisper.

Home was something Andrew and Neil never knew, domestic was a science they couldn't fathom, safe was a word which hid lies and brought pain and love was a feeling they'd most likely never know.

The apartment key that hung on their keychains — weighing and reminding — meant something, but the pulsing of the metal biting at their hips was nothing compared to the beating of a heart that would sound off the walls they called their own.

—

The mid season day was young and the Sun was still far from risen. The summer was cruel and unrelenting, even under the guise of night. It's heat with blinding rays forever crawled salty lines down the backs of its citizens. The months were mostly miserable — bearable at best — but the breeze rushing leaves past Neil made his jacket feel all the more welcomed.

The duffle over his shoulder no longer held all his possessions — not his home or his secrets or his solace — and the apartment towering ahead lifted something off his shoulders like he'd never felt before.

The single bag may have been slightly inappropriate for the length of time he'd been gone, but still some things never change. His week away off visiting Dan and Matt and their new baby shouldn't have felt so long but since Andrew had refused to come, it could have been labeled as months.

Neil was drained and he wanted nothing more then to crawl into bed next to the blond and relish in his un-glaring, sleep-filled expression. His flight landed in the middle of the night and so he had told Andrew not to worry about picking him, but that tiny selfish part of himself wished he hadn't; all so he could see the goalie sooner. Though, he knew it was only fair, Andrew had had a game in the hours previous and would be dead tired.