“Are you nervous?” Andrew questions, blissfully unaware of the kind of snake den he’s about to be walked into. “Do you not like flying?”
“I don’t care about flying,” Nicholas answers, taking Andrew’s hand in his own and pulling it onto his lap.
He’s an asshole for doing this. He shouldn’t be dragging his boyfriend across the county to prove a point to his parents who probably won’t care, yet their pull over him isn’t easily broken, nor is the tiny voice in the back of his head that’s been whispering at him since he was a child, that one day maybe, he can actually earn their attention.
“What’s going on?” Andrew questions. “You’ve been grumpy all week.”
“I’m always fucking grumpy.”
“Grumpier then,” Andrew corrects, rubbing his thumb over the back of Nicki’s hand. “Did you change your mind about them meeting me? I know it was fake before, so it didn’t matter, but now things are different. If you don’t want me there, you can tell me, it’s okay.”
“I want you there,” Nicholas asserts, gripping Andrew’s hand tightly.
“I know you’re not…close,” Andrew starts, clearly choosing his words carefully. “But do you miss them?”
“You can’t miss people who were never there.”
“So we’re going because—you miss the house?” It’s obvious that Andrew is trying to make sense of why they’re going, which is to be expected given how tight-lipped Nicholas has been about the whole thing. He really doesn’t deserve Andrew’s blind trust in him, coming on this trip with such little info solely because Nicholas asked. He doesn’t fucking deserve Andrew, no one does.
“I hate that house,” Nicholas admits, because if nothing else Andrew deserves the truth.
“Right.” Andrew scoots closer so there’s not an inch of space between them, their bodies pressed together from hip to shoulder. He’s got to be frustrated with Nicholas, given what a dick he’s being today—rude and emotionally evasive.
“Nicki?”
Nicholas grunts.
“What’s going on?”
Nicholaschokes on the words he can’t verbalize.He hates his father.He’s thought it so many times, the words might as well be branded across his skin like his tattoos, yet somehow he’s never acknowledged this truth out loud. Never wanted to give him the power. Turns out, his father held the power all along anyway.
Before he can confess, their boarding numbers are called over the loudspeaker.
Despite their relative privacy in first class compared to the rest of the passengers, it’s still a damn plane, and while they might have impeccable service and plenty of leg room, Nicholas isn’t stupid enough to have a personal conversation in such a public place. Not after the shit Andrew’s been through with the paparazzi already. He’s got to be more careful—patient and tactful in a way he never has been before.
Were it just Nicholas and his fucking parents involved he wouldn’t care who overheard him, but he won’t hurt Andrew again, and explaining why he needed a fake boyfriend implicateshim. He can’t take that chance, so instead he remains silent, relaxing only when Andrew begins to play with his freshly buzzed undercut. Stimming, he called it. Said it soothed him. It soothes Nicholas too, and he drifts, eyes falling shut as Andrew’s blunt nails trace patterns over the back of his head.
Eventually, Andrew lowers his hand, but only to accept the in-flight drink. He appears deeply pleased that it is not soda. Andrew has apparently never flown first class, and Nicholas is already planning on where else he can take him. Spain. Italy. The Caribbean. Anywhere with those picturesque beaches that make his princess smile. Bonus points for a warm enough climate he might have a chance to see Andrew strip out of his polo and khakis so Nicholas can lavish him in sunshine and attention. It’s what Andrew deserves, what Nicholas wants to give him, once this fucking trip is over.
By the time the flight attendant announces they’re going to be landing soon, Nicholas’s unease is at an all time high, kept only under wraps because he doesn’t want to agitate Andrew whose nerves about the impending meeting with his parents have finally surfaced.
“What if they don’t like me?” Andrew asks for the second time.
“Fuck them.”
“They’re your parents. You must care a little bit, or you wouldn’t be bringing me to meet them.”
There is an opening for the truth Nicholas has been avoiding. He still cares enough that he craves even a scrap of their attention or affection; both things they’ve never seen him deserving of. That, or they’re incapable of loving anything besides their money and social status. Either way, their emotional neglect is something Nicholas compartmentalized and ignored until a polo wearing man with a penchant for spreadsheets burst into his life. Andrew made him realize thatdespite his most fervent attempts to deny it, hidden beneath asshole behavior, Nicholas actually has feelings. Feelings which are a mess right now.
“Still fuck them. I like you, that’s all that matters.”
“It’s difficult to argue semantics with you when you say things that make me happy,” Andrew says, cheeks full of color and those beautiful brown eyes of his staring at Nicki with intensity.
“Good.” Nicholas lowers his forehead to Andrew’s, breathing him in.
“Nicki.”
“Yeah, princess?”
