Chapter 7 Nicholas #4
“Do you hate color or something?” Nicholas asks, opening his own ice cream.
It’s something brown with copious swirls of fudge and chunks.
Far different than Andrew’s and likely not kept in the freezer for him.
Does he keep this in his freezer for dates?
Or his brothers? Somehow the first thought makes him irrationally jealous.
He doesn’t like the idea of anyone else seeing Andrew fresh out of the shower with his socked feet shoved into the couch cushions and his slightly damp hair curling up at his neck.
Andrew looks so much younger like this, stripped down. Nicholas is reminded of being a child and taken out shopping by the nanny. If he saw something he wanted, he got it, but the piles of toys in his play room never filled the loneliness in his heart.
Looking at Andrew, he has the same irrational urge to keep him all to himself.
Nicholas is terrible at sharing. Maybe it’s because he was an only child, maybe it’s because he was a spoiled rich kid, or maybe it’s because he’s a possessive asshole. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t want anyone else eating stupid fucking ice cream with Andrew on the couch.
“Not exactly,” Andrew says a minute later, taking so long to answer Nicholas has to pause to recall what he asked in the first place. “My mind is…loud. Having everything the same—it’s quieter. You look surprised.”
“Well, yeah,” Nicholas admits. “You’re just, you know—”
“You can say it,” Andrew urges, popping a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth. He licks the spoon, his pink tongue swirling around the metal.
“You’re really fucking calm and collected. Unless you’re breaking shit at a rage room.”
“That won’t happen again.”
“It should and it will,” Nicholas objects, determined to make sure Andrew lets it out.
He’ll never forget the first time he went to one, the first time he finally had a safe private place to let out the kind of feelings he could usually only get out in the middle of a fist fight on the ice. Andrew deserves that.
“My parents worked a lot,” Andrew unexpectedly offers.
“They’re both amazing, but they were gone a lot when I was a kid.
People needed them, you know? My abuela had her hands full helping watch us when they were gone, which was most of the time.
I had a lot of sleeping issues as a kid and Charlie is, well—Charlie.
Our younger brother Jason was a pretty good kid, but he was a rambunctious and emotional kid, and he all but adopted his best friend Theo when they were seven, so he was always at our house, too.
Then when I was eleven, my mom got pregnant with Alec by accident, and Alec was…
a handful. As a baby, he never stopped crying, and then once he learned to walk, he never stopped moving.
By the time Alec was a toddler, me and Charlie were teenagers, and Charlie had a lot of big feelings during puberty.
A lot. It was just easier when I needed less. ”
“Easier on who?” Nicholas challenges.
“Everyone else.”
“Fuck that.” Nicholas takes a bite of ice cream, savoring the salty sweet mix of chocolate and salted caramel. He lets it melt in his mouth before he adds, “I don’t like your fucking family.”
“They’re great,” Andrew protests.
Nicholas scoffs, unsure how anyone great could make Andrew feel so shitty. “If you say so.”
“I do say so,” Andrew frowns. “I like being there when my family needs me.”
“What about when you need them?”
“I don’t,” Andrew answers, quick enough to know it’s not the first time he’s thought of it. “I love them though. That’s all that matters.”
“Family is fucking stupid,” Nicholas grumbles, slumping into the sofa and taking a massive bite of his ice cream. “Speaking of you being ace.”
“We literally weren’t talking about that.”
“Well, we should.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanna know what it’s like,” Nicholas answers, licking caramel off his spoon while watching Andrew poke moodily at his own ice cream.
Despite his assertions he loves his family, talking about them brought his mood down, and it’s plummeting with every second.
If Nicholas were a nicer person, he might find a way out of this conservation to make Andrew feel better, but he’s not a nice person. He’s an asshole and a nosy one.
“So,” Nicholas prompts. “What’s it like?”
“The same as not being ace probably.”
“Bullshit,” Nicholas says around a too big mouthful of ice cream.
“Fine,” Andrew snaps. “You really want to know what it’s like?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“You’re such an asshole,” Andrew groans. That should probably make Nicholas feel guilty . Maybe it’s proof that he is an asshole that he doesn’t care. All he feels is a thrill at being the cause of Andrew’s carefully honed composure faltering.
“It’s different for everyone, but for me…
.for me it’s like growing up with everyone around you watching the same show,” Andrew starts.
“All anyone does is talk about the show and even though you don’t understand the appeal or care, you have to try and pretend you do, so you’re not always left out of everything.
Except you try to watch the show, and you just don’t get it.
You try harder, wondering if you’re just watching it wrong, but no matter how many times you try, the feelings are the same after.
Only when you try and tell people you don’t want to watch the show, they can’t relate.
So you pretend you like it too for a while, until you can’t pretend anymore.
Only being open about it makes you feel just as lonely and excluded as you did when you were pretending, because most people act like life isn’t worth living without the stupid fucking show, and people don’t know what to do with you if that’s not all you want.
And you just…you just want people to stop treating you like you not liking the show means you’re broken. ”
When Andrew is done speaking, he’s squeezed his pint so hard the ice cream has come out over the rim and is dripping on his hands which he stares at with a tight expression.
Suddenly, Nicholas wishes he weren’t such a fucking asshole. What the fuck is he supposed to say? He’s never comforted anyone before.
“So you don’t ever want to watch the show?” Is what he ends up asking.
“It’s complicated,” Andrew answers, attempting to clean his sticky hands.
“Make it uncomplicated.”
“Sex is never going to be something I care about,” Andrew answers.
“It’s not a driving force for me, in…anything.
If anything, sometimes it’s a turn off. I’m not sex repulsed, but I get squicked by it when people talk about it in detail, and while I can in theory have it, I couldn’t care less if I never had sex again.
I’d much rather read a book or cuddle. Which is apparently a deal breaker for almost everyone. ”
“Then fuck them.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“No, it’s not. Someone doesn’t like you then fuck them. Maybe not literally though.”
Andrew’s eyes widen before he barks out a laugh. An unfamiliar feeling settles in Nicholas’s chest at having wiped away the tension from Andrew’s features. Usually he’s the one upsetting people, not making them feel better.
“That was surprisingly supportive.”
“Im not always an asshole,” Nicholas scoffs.
“Only ninety percent of the time?” Andrew teases.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“I don’t know about that, I think maybe you’re nicer than you let on.”
“Don’t be mistaken, princess. I’m an asshole and I’ve always been one. That’s never gonna change.”
“Whatever you say, Nicki.”
“Exactly. Whatever I say,” Nicholas huffs, unsure why he’s starting to like the way it sounds when Andrew calls him that. He’s supposed to hate it, but the way he feels right now isn’t anything close to the hate he’s used to.
“Do you wanna watch a movie?” Andrew asks.
“Only if I get to pick,” Nicholas says.
“You were a good boy and ate your snack, so you can pick the movie,” Andrew says with a straight face.
“Oh, fuck you, princess.”
Andrew laughs again, and the sound settles in Nicholas’s chest as the remote is passed to him. Scrolling through the television, he tries very hard not to think about the feelings swirling in his chest.
Having a fake boyfriend is fucking confusing.