Andrew’s chest is tight with a pressure he cannot name. It began when he got the call, but the choke on his lungs only escalated when he found Neil on the curb. Again, squeeze, upon finding Neil still slumped in the back seat of the rental car. Again, crush, each time he looked in the rear-view to see Neil following him home.
Now Neil is on the roof, hair whipping in the wind and saying he’s nothing. Andrew knows how it feels to fade from the page, but Neil’s words live in contradiction to his suffocating presence.
Andrew thinks, you are like me. And also, you could not be more different.
He is not thoughtless when he puts out his cigarette, says “no one asked you,” takes Neil’s confused face in his hands, and kisses him.
It’s a spark that ignites the pressure in Andrew’s chest, starting a fire that feels like relief, but also like rage. Neil’s hand clasps gently at Andrew’s sleeve, and now it is definitely rage, but turned in on himself — on an impulse Andrew could have stifled, on a choice he should have given. Neil speaks with ice water, so Andrew lights cigarettes in search of a new burn strong enough to cauterize the old wounds ripping open in his now-hollow core.
Neil’s feet are planted solidly to the ground by the time Andrew tells him to go. He thinks, well, that’s one problem solved, and stays on the roof until he finally stops bleeding.
Even in the midst of getting a mind control parasite jammed into his head... again, Barry can only think of Iris. There is no basis for it but I choose to blame the mind parasite for Barry's completely bizarre reluctance to remarry his wife