A/N: So I finally got around to playing this game and it's consumed my life somebody send help. I'm kind of poking at various ideas right now for fics within this fandom (primarily a really dramatic multichapter detailing another case for the insurmountable Neil-and-Eva team and the reality of exactly why Neil had those painkillers) but we'll see how far that goes. Kind of depends on how well this goes over. This is a largely introspective piece that just kind of...fell out in about twenty minutes tonight while I was listening to the OST for the second minisode? I dunno, man. These two just break my heart. I love them a lot.
Anyway, feel free to let me know what y'all think (and hit me up if you want to talk about the fandom because ahHHHHH I NEED TO SCREAM Neil is my son and I am very afraid for him.) See you soon, theoretically!
It's like this: Neil hides things.
When clients first meet them, it's always Eva who seems to be more closed off initially, at least in comparison to the wild gestures and lopsided smirks that accompany Neil's every movement. He's got an indomitable sort of energy that makes her look stern and implacable in comparison, which is fitting enough in some lights, she supposes, if she thinks about it.
But what the clients never realise in two hours or so dealing with Neil, what she's had ten years to learn, is that Neil hides things. He doesn't lie (not well, anyway, and never to her) but he's made an art of avoiding questions, of dismissing any inquiries with a quick sarcastic comment and a wry twist of his mouth that she used to think meant he was joking. These days, she knows it's less a matter of him joking than it is a case of him not wanting to talk about it.
She thinks she knows, anyway. It's hard to know anything for sure when it comes to Neil. Eyes are the window to the soul, or so the adage goes, but Neil's are closed up and shuttered constantly, locked behind those ridiculous one-way mirrors he claims he uses to see. If not for the fact that she's seen him stumbling around without his glasses and knows he's blind as a bat, she'd think those were another diversion, but she knows better, is certain about that, at least. She sees his eyes so rarely she almost forgets the colour sometimes, only to be reminded what an impossible shade of green they are on the odd occasion that they're visible. Every time, she wonders privately what on earth possesses Neil to hide them the way he does, but she never asks. She knows he won't answer.
Neil hides things. It's been that way for as long as she's known him, even when they'd first met back in high school. The chip on his shoulder had been just as massive then as it was now, even bigger, maybe, and she'd known him for two and a half years before he'd ever volunteered the slightest bit of information about himself beyond what was immediately visible. It had been a minor thing, an offhanded comment about the actors at Disneyland not being all they were cracked up to be, and the moment she'd asked how he'd known, he'd clammed up the way he always did. Still, she'd remembered the exchange, the exact curve of his smirk as he'd avoided the question. It was a smirk he wore daily, even now, a constant feature on his face. Quintessential Neil, some would say. It was hard to picture him without it.
She's never understood why he does it, why he locks so much away, figuratively and metaphorically. She's never understood why he has four locks on his door at home and a deadbolt keeping his video cabinet shut as if something will escape from it, why he keeps everything that doesn't belong in a fridge (and some things that probably should be in one) under lock and key and never talks about any of it, why he says one thing when he means something else entirely. It's not lying, per se, but it's a far cry from honesty, and it drips off everything he does, and she's never been able to figure out what his reasons are. She doesn't know what terrible thing prompted him to cloak himself in this shroud of secrecy, doesn't even know if there was an event that caused it or if it's all simply a manner of him being evasive because it makes him feel like he's some sort of spy with something worth keeping hidden. She could write a book on things she doesn't know, when it comes to him.
But she trusts him. For all his vague answers and witty dismissals and all the questions she couldn't answer about him despite knowing him for ten years, she trusts him unconditionally, would lay her life in his hands any day of the week if the circumstances forced her to (though never, she's careful to note, simply for the fun of it. Neil has a terrible habit of breaking things that don't belong to him, and while she trusts him, she's not stupid enough to fall for every prank he tries to pull on her.) She trusts him to have her back when she needs him to, and she likes to believe he trusts her the same way. Even if he can't tell her why he doesn't have any pictures in his house, why he took a family picture once when he was ten with his best friend but never talks about her, why he rarely invited her over to his house in high school and barely does so now, she trusts him, and she knows he reciprocates enough to let her see all he's hiding. He may not tell her the stories behind it all, may make up horribly blatant lies about walking into concrete walls to avoid answering simple questions, but he doesn't waste her time letting her believe he's being totally honest, the way he does with some people.
She's not sure what that says about them, really. What it says about her.
But she trusts him, stays with him through all that he hides and never presses for answers she knows he won't give, and he stays with her, too, teases her the way others never would, drives her crazy at every possible opportunity with inappropriate remarks and pointless flourishes on a job that could have been done far faster if he'd just follow the rules for once. Every once in a while, she sees again the incandescent green of his eyes as he grins at her, glancing over the rims of his glasses while he takes a drink of coffee or when he takes them off his face to clean them, and she knows she's the only one he graces with even that much.
For others, it's a pittance. For her, it's enough.