#irrelevant but neil is an accountant for a local business in this au

[moonsnqil]

aftg au where andrew is a burnt out musician who's sick and tired of writing/playing shitty music bc his label says it sells better. he meets one deaf neil josten at some no-name pub on the east coast. he's a little mesmerized by the way neils hair catches in the bar lights and how his eyes track the woman playing bass on stage. andrew offers to buy him a drink and then he offers to blow him. it's a no but at first neil looked at him confused and andrews about to start wondering how someone who looks like that would be confused about an offer like that but then neil asks him to write his question down. he does. (there's something humbling about writing a proposition down). neil says no but they trade notes back and forth until the line of indie artists waiting their turn for the stage dwindled into nothing. the last thing andrew writes is his phone number. they talk, well, they text. neil doesn't know him, not the way magazine covers and top 40 radio hits know him. to neil, andrew minyard is just a guy that plays the drums and occasionally writes lyrics. one day, when he asks why neil loves watching him play his drums so much, why he goes to indie night at the pub when he can't hear the words they sing, neil tells him that he likes the thumping in the ground. it steadies him, calms him down as if his ear was pressed to someone's heart. he likes the way the artists lose themselves to their music in a way so obvious. its with neil peering into andrew's grand piano, his eyes watching the hammers pop, that he remembers why he started making music in the first place and for the first time in months he actually wants to compose something