jean moreau is nineteen. he is nineteen. he is just a boy he is hardly alive!! imagine you’re an exy coach for USC and this nineteen year old boy hands you his racket and practically asks you to beat him with it. imagine you’re a nineteen year old boy and you’ve been waterboarded ten times and made to break three of your own fingers and tortured so extensively for the past five years of your life that you’re begging others to let you die. imagine you’re kevin day and you have to make this nineteen year old boy promise that he won’t kill himself. imagine you’re a nineteen year old boy and you’ve just learned your sister is dead and you’ve destroyed and betrayed yourself and it was all for nothing. imagine you’re a nineteen year old boy and you kill yourself in every universe but this one.
Listen, you know why Andrew loves Neil? Why Neil Abram Josten was the one Andrew would allow into his inner space, to allow growing roots where Andrew keeps the remaining fragments of his heart?
Because hardly anyone respects Andrew's boundaries. Renee does. Bee does. Wymack does. Andrew respects his own boundaries to the point of enforcing them at knife point.
But Neil? Neil Abram Josten?
He views Andrew's boundaries as sacred.
Renee, Bee, and Wymack would view crossing Andrew's boundaries as disrespectful at best and a violation at worst. They earned his trust that way.
But NEIL???
Neil views crossing Andrew's boundaries as a fucking sin. As blasphemous. A devoted disciple would sooner spit in their God's face than Neil ever conceiving of crossing Andrew's boundaries.
Some people would look at you erecting brick walls covered in barbed wire and would start looking for a good crack to aim a sledgehammer. Some people would watch you lock a door and try knocking, just once, to see if you'll open it for them. And some people would watch you draw a line in the sand and never dream of stepping over it.
Neil parked his ass on the other side of Andrew's barbed wired multi-layered brick wall surrounding his concrete bunker and stayed there, running his mouth. And when Andrew revealed the hidden door, Neil smiled, stayed put, and kept talking.
Andrew didn't fall for Neil because Neil wouldn't come in.
He fell because Neil waited for Andrew to come out, waited for Andrew to extend his hand, and waited for Andrew to lead him inside by his own volition.
And that's why Neil was the one who earned Andrew's "Stay".
"Stitch by stitch, tape and gauze, Jean had done his best to keep the wayward child moving. The helpless anger—why the fuck did he get caught—had been mitigated by a more foolish what-if—what if he stays?"
if i played exy i would HATE the foxes. oooh look at us, a ragtag team of murderers and criminals, running straight at you on the court with a large stick :) rumour has it the goalie with the aggravated assault charges wears knives under his gear and the little redhead one was involved with fbi :) i think i would simply fake an injury and get benched