petalloso:

@cabesdreamer replied: well since the 9th is sad what if neil never came back

thank u! this was rushed and so entirely inaccurate in all aspects but happy 9th or as happy as it can be, you know, considering what happened,, to neil,, today

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Andrew kept Neil’s duffel, abandoned with his phone tucked inside and a number that read the end of a countdown. It sat in his dorm room a week after Neil didn’t come back. A week turned into a month. A month into two. He still kept it, and still, Neil didn’t come back.

The police tell them he ran. Andrew knew it was a lie, and knew with more certainty when he choked the answers out of Kevin. Maybe he would have had it been a month earlier, but after everything it couldn’t be possible. And Andrew should have known better than to let him out of his sight, than to accept his words like there wasn’t a goodbye so clearly hidden in them, than to let Neil coax him into breaking his promise.

Let me go, he’d asked of him. He should have known better than to say okay. 

His heart beat steadily and never faltered at the mention of Neil Josten, former fox, whereabouts unknown. He didn’t stop looking, though. Not even when the foxes finally did. They were as he expected them to be, at first frantic to find Neil, and then as time passed, choosing to mourn him instead. Andrew told them the only ways he knew how that he wouldn’t have ran, and maybe they believed it. But months turned into years, and he was the only one still looking.

He didn’t know how to stop.

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