#day still knows better than anyone else in palmetto | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jingerhead · 3 years

Note

For your prompts: Neil telling Andrew that he's pretty, and Andrew getting flustered/embarrassed because nobody has ever told him that before??

I didn’t know I needed this until now OMFG. I’ve never thought about this but Andrew 100% needs to be told that he is pretty because he is and he deserves it. Thanks so much for this wonderful prompt! I apologize for the few days it took to write this, I...was on vacation, lol. And then I added probs more than I should’ve, so enjoy a 5 + 1. Also, y’all should check out @fortheloveofexy artwork if you haven’t, it is absolutely incredible I love it so much!

Read on AO3 | Word count: 4,553 | Rated: G

Neil isn’t blind. A little oblivious, and sometimes stupid, but not blind.

After a few months of working through his feelings - a long internal battle that had revealed more about himself than he would’ve liked - Neil had managed to work out what he wanted with Andrew. He felt protective and protected, safe and genuinely happy no matter what they were doing. They had rough spots, but Neil was sure that anyone in a developing relationship goes through them. Now, in his second year at Palmetto, they’d gotten down a better dynamic to deal with balancing practice and schoolwork and time alone.

They even managed to carry on going to Edens during some weekends. Aaron always took his chances to opt out, but Nicky still enjoyed the place and Kevin still had an unhealthy tolerance of alcohol. Some of the new foxes went there as well, but most of the time Neil spent there was by Andrew’s side, trying to keep an eye on how much Kevin had drunk while also sure the guy knew his own limits better than anyone else. If Andrew was sitting at the table, Neil would be at his side. If he got up to get more drinks from the bar, Neil would follow. He didn’t want to go onto the dance floor but would drink whatever Andrew ordered him.

At the moment, he was leaning against the bar, waiting for Roland to return with the drinks Andrew had ordered. Neil took the time to stare at Andrew, the booming music and flashing lights only seeming to emphasize every good thing about his face. His hair was styled in a way that made it look attractively windswept, and Neil was pretty sure that Andrew had put on eyeliner. Or maybe it was just the lights in the club making them pop more, but they did. It was hard to see the natural hazel, to pick out the flecks of gold mixed with olive green and brown, but Neil tried his best, anyway.

Andrew looked great. Neil always thought he looked great, and therefore today was no different, and there wasn’t anything special about it, either. It wasn’t that Andrew didn’t look better than usual, it was that he was always good-looking.

Roland came back with the tray, breaking Neil out of his staring contest with the side of Andrew’s head. The bartender didn’t stay long, saying a few words to Andrew before walking down towards others sitting along the bar, leaving them alone again. Andrew picked up one glass and slid it to Neil’s hand, who grabbed it but didn’t drink it, instead taking a moment to look it over. By the smell Neil was pretty sure there was whiskey in it, because for some god-awful reason Andrew seemed determined to get Neil to like it, or he enjoyed the faces Neil made when the burn would hit his throat. Probably the latter, now that he thought about it.

Neil glanced back at Andrew, thinking of something to say about the drink, but the other wasn’t looking at him. Neil leaned forward, spotting someone on his other side: a girl that couldn’t have been much taller than himself, wearing jeans and a tank top. Neil couldn’t hear what they were talking about over the sound of the music playing, but he wasn’t concerned. It was far more entertaining to watch Andrew’s blank face stare her down until she started to visibly falter and then walk away. When she finally did, Andrew turned around to face Neil again.

“Wrong twin?” Neil yelled over the music, smirking to himself at his own joke.

Andrew’s face didn’t change. He wordlessly grabbed one of the shots on the tray and knocked it back, neck flexing attractively and - yeah, if Neil didn’t have a neck fetish before, he probably did now. “Stop staring,” Andrew yelled back.

Neil looked away, holding more tightly to his glass and getting out of the stool he’d been sitting on. Andrew got up as well, holding the tray and walking towards the table they’d been sitting at earlier. Neil followed and stared at his shoulders the entire way.

Not every practice is going to go well. Sometimes the foxes seem to flow nicely, predicting each other’s moves perfectly and able to step around each other like they were performing some kind of complicated dance. Neil liked those days, because it was his job as captain to get the team on track, and he liked it better when he didn’t have to yell at the team to stop squabbling every few minutes.

A lot of times, he misses when Dan was captain instead. He only slightly feels bad for whatever hell he must’ve put her through during practices.

Today wasn’t a day that the foxes worked well. Wymack had already sent most of the team running laps at least three times now, and Neil wasn’t excluded from the bunch. Most days he could work with Kevin, especially after night practices, but he could no longer tell if it had been him that was originally pissed off or his teammate. They kept butting heads, crashing into each other and blocking goals that Andrew would’ve blocked anyway. The team couldn’t help but start their own drama amongst themselves after seeing the way the two worked.

“That’s it,” Wymack yelled at them when he finally called enough for the day. The team had gathered around, breathing heavily and glaring at anything that moved. “You all are going to go sleep off whatever mindset you’re in right now. If you’re still fighting like cats and dogs by practice tomorrow, I’ll make all of you run until you pass out.” Wymack nodded towards the locker rooms. “Get out.”

They did. Neil dragged his feet, still fuming at everything that had happened that day. He couldn’t stop seeing red whenever Kevin was in his line of sight, so he sat on one of the benches and stared at the lockers, counting to himself until he’d stopped panting for air. By that point, most of the team had gone and he could shower in peace, so he got to his feet and started pulling off his pads, ripping off his gloves with a bit more intensity than usual.

He was just grabbing his small bottle of shampoo when he heard footsteps approaching. For a moment Neil was worried it was either Kevin or Wymack, but when he glanced over his shoulder he found it was neither. Andrew was just getting back from the showers, dressed in boots and dark jeans, his arm bands in place and a t-shirt on. A white towel was around his neck, hanging off the back of his head like he’d tried to quickly dry his hair and then left it in place for the walk back to his locker.

Andrew glanced at him once, and then turned to open his locker. Neil watched him put away some soap and his folded jersey, eyes catching on the biceps that were exposed thanks to the way the sleeves of his t-shirt rolled up as he moved. Andrew’s muscles have always been something Neil admired: at first he used to watch Andrew press weights and was impressed, unable to take his eyes away in something he mistook for some kind of jealousy. Neil still wishes he could lift as much weight as Andrew, but he also enjoys spotting much more, because at those moments he’s supposed to stare, even if Andrew scolds him for not watching the bar at all times.

When the locker slammed closed, Neil jumped just slightly, taken out of his trance. Andrew was pulling the towel away from his shoulders, watching Neil back with a small frown on his face. Neil managed to not say anything, even if he had a lot on his mind, and instead focused on watching Andrew approach.

“I’m leaving in ten,” Andrew told him when they were standing right next to each other, chests so close they were almost touching.

Neil thought it was pretty unfair that he was being expected to think at a moment like this. “Okay,” he said dumbly, because that was the only response he could think of.

“I’m leaving in ten,” Andrew repeated.

Oh. Neil nodded and turned around, shaking his head as though that would get the thoughts of how nice Andrew looked out of his mind, and rounded up the rest of what he needed for the showers. If he wasn’t ready and in the Maserati in ten minutes, Andrew would leave him to run back to Fox Tower. Which Neil could do, he’s done it before, but he was still tired after the draining practice and would prefer to see where Andrew would take him instead.

It wasn’t like they had to go back to the dorm right away. And after stressful days like this, a car ride was usually just what it took to calm down again. Neil took the shortest shower of his life, probably only rinsing the sweat off his body rather than actually cleaning up, and was pleased that they drove out of Palmetto when he climbed into the passenger’s seat.

Whoever invented midterms deserved to be dead, Neil was convinced, because clearly they hadn’t considered that someone would be playing a sport like their life depended on it while also taking eighteen credits because they were an idiot who wanted to finish their gen-ed. requirements a semester early. In short, whoever invented midterms hadn’t done it with Neil Josten in mind, which meant that Neil felt like he’d been staring at his notes so hard that his eyes were going to fall out soon.

Sometimes he wishes he could memorize things the way Andrew could, because he could waste an entire week playing video games instead of studying and still pass everything. On the other hand, Neil felt like he was drowning in textbooks and notes, and he was also sure he’d memorized more from quizzing Kevin with flashcards full of random facts about Ancient Rome than his own material about sequences and series. The inventor of calculus also deserved to be dead, Neil decided, and was pleased that Sir Isaac Newton had been dead for a very, very long time.

Kevin was studying in the bedroom, because when he asked Andrew to turn down the volume to whatever video game he was playing Andrew had just turned it up more. Neil could deal with the noise, tuning it out to focus on re-writing his old notes like Katelyn had suggested to him, but now that he’d taken a moment to rub his eyes and try to think of anything except mathematical formulas, he was distracted by whatever Andrew was playing. Neil got up from the desk to sit on the floor next to the beanbag Andrew was sitting in, watching him play as some small green character trying to take on a large boss, which seemed to be a giant floating head with two hands.

“What’re you playing?” he dared to ask.

“Shh,” Andrew shushed him, not looking away from the screen.

Neil figured he could find out later and watched. Andrew was good at beating video games, probably because of his skills as a good goalkeeper requiring him to keep his eyes on everything, knowing exactly when to move and how to do it. Or he just had some natural talent, but Neil thought it was impressive, anyways. At some point during the boss battle, he looked away from the screen to watch Andrew instead, which was more entertaining.

His fingers moved quickly over the controller’s buttons, which was almost a hypnotizing sight. Andrew had painted his fingernails black again, but the nail polish was already chipping after a week. Neil thought that Andrew had nice hands: they were large but not bulky, strong and but not rough, unyielding but gentle. One night they had been lying in bed together and Neil had been allowed to look over one of Andrew’s hands, trying his best to learn every detail about them. He’d liked that night, and thought that he’d like to do it again.

“Do you want to play?” Andrew spoke up, bringing Neil out of his thoughts.

“Huh?”

Andrew looked back at the screen, where his character was picking up a heart-shaped item and then jumping into a purple portal of some kind. “What, were you trying to figure out how I fight?”

“No,” Neil admitted, then bit his lip to keep from admitting he was staring at Andrew’s hands because he thought they were nice.

“Either study or watch the game,” Andrew ordered.

Neil didn’t want to study, but he knew he shouldn’t stare more than he already had, so he looked back at the TV screen. It was distracting when he could hear Andrew’s fingers moving over the buttons again, to the point that he wasn’t watching what was happening but instead just focusing on the sound to his left.

Andrew let out a low sigh through his nose. “You’re the worst.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Neil argued.

“Yes, you are.” Andrew moved a foot to nudge one of Neil’s shoulders. “Stop.”

“Okay,” Neil said, forcing his focus to return to what was happening on the screen. Or to try and recall the formulas he had to know for his upcoming midterms. If Andrew noticed that Neil couldn’t stop thinking about his hands, he didn’t make any more comments about it.

It wasn’t uncommon for them to suddenly go out, but every time it happened Neil never felt prepared for it. The first time Andrew had taken him for some food and then found a secluded place to park the Maserati, allowing them to eat and talk about whatever they wanted and then eventually make out in the backseat, Neil felt pretty comfortable labeling that as a date. He’d gone so far as to message Matt about it, who told him he most definitely had been on a date and thanks, he’d just won a lot of money. Neil couldn’t be bothered to ask what the foxes had been betting on now and left it as is.

He didn’t say it out loud, anxious about Andrew suddenly taking the date back or something, but after months Neil knew for sure that’s what this was. Tonight, Andrew only had to quickly flash Neil the keys to get him to follow, and they went to some local diner that sold really good sandwiches. They got their food to go and then Andrew drove them down a highway, a long drive that spanned until after the sun set. By that point they had reached some secluded area with a great view of the night sky, which had significantly more stars in it than were at campus.

“Are we stargazing?” Neil asked when they got out of the car, sitting on the hood of the Maserati and eating the greasy sandwiches. He’d already used up the three napkins Andrew had handed him, so he wiped his fingers off on his pants so he could grip his water bottle well.

“Something like that,” Andrew replied.

Neil looked back at the night sky. “One time I stargazed on the run. I was in a bus, but the whole sky seemed to light up.” He’d been eleven and moving around with his mother, and hadn’t yet been so out of touch with life that the view of millions of stars in the sky wasn’t breathtaking. “We could go somewhere. Maybe next year, before the dorms open?”

Andrew just shrugged, his head tilted back to look at the dark sky. Here the only light offered was from the moon and the Maserati’s lights, so it was difficult to see his face. Neil couldn’t tell what expression he was making at the proposal to go on a road trip together, and he hadn’t received a verbal answer either, so he let it be. A few minutes later, he finished his sandwich and put his box to the side, glancing at the stars again before looking at Andrew.

It was hard to make out his facial features, but not impossible. The dark couldn’t quite hide Andrew’s side profile, and the light breeze that moved through the area they were in tussled his hair just slightly. Neil slowly looked down from the small jut of Andrew’s chin to his strong jawline, eyes adjusting more easily to the dark the longer he looked. Andrew’s adam's apple moved when he swallowed, his head angled back only offering a better view. Neil wanted to kiss his throat, to leave a light nip to Andrew’s pulse point and listen to the slight hitch of breath he knew he’d receive in return.

He was only slightly disappointed that the dark covered up Andrew’s light freckles and the color of his eyes. But those he had memorized, even though he’d never get tired of looking.

“Are you even watching the meteor shower?” Andrew spoke up, head tilting as he looked Neil’s way.

No, Neil wanted to say. He hadn’t noticed the streaks in the sky and didn’t feel like looking away, because as breathtaking as it would be to watch he knew it wouldn’t be able to compare to what Andrew looked like right now. He could stare for hours and not be bored - he had stared for hours and not become bored - which is why he decided it was so hard to finally drag his gaze upwards.

The meteor shower was pretty. But just not as pretty as Andrew looked, sitting on the hood of his car. Neil was tempted to say so, but he bit the inside of his cheek until it hurt to keep from blurting out loud. Andrew must’ve noticed, because he poked the cheek Neil was biting.

“Watch,” he encouraged.

“I am,” Neil argued.

“I didn’t bring you all the way out here so you could stare at me.” Neil blinked and looked Andrew’s way again, who was shrouded in darkness once more. “You do that every other day. Look at the stars instead.”

“So, you’re saying it’s okay for me to stare at you any other day?” Neil asked, smiling openly, and not at all a bit cheeky.

“I’m telling you to stare at the stars right now.”

“Okay,” Neil agreed, looking skyward again. That hadn’t been a ‘no’, but not quite a ‘yes’ either. He’d have to ask again later.

Of all his favorite things to do, kissing Andrew was definitely towards the top of that list.

Neil enjoyed just about everything they did: lazy morning kisses, a kiss ‘hello’ when they saw each other again, kisses to fingertips and forehead kisses, cheek kisses and neck kisses and everything in between. Neil had been told ‘yes’ to giving Andrew a kiss on his face so long as they were in front of one another and the mood was right. He liked kissing Andrew’s cheek while making food or talking or doing homework, and did it as often as he could.

But what was even better than kissing were the moments afterwards.

On his list of things he liked to do, laying in the afterglow with Andrew at his side was definitely number one. Like today, the two had laid down on the bed and kept space between their bodies everywhere except for their lips. Neil felt like his were definitely red and swollen, but not in a painful way. It was a satisfying feeling, and it only got better when he could see Andrew’s face so closely.

Like this, when they were laying horizontal and only a few inches were separating them he could admire every little bit of Andrew’s face. Neil could see the way his blonde hair framed his face, a few strands falling near his eyes but not long enough to cover them. His eyebrows were relaxed, not pulled into a glare or his mask of indifference, and Neil felt like he wanted to treasure this look the most. Andrew’s eyes were still closed, his long eyelashes fanning over his cheekbones that were covered with light freckles that tracked over the bridge of his nose. Andrew’s lips were also light red, a pretty contrast to the rest of his skin tone.

But when Andrew opened his eyes and looked at Neil, he felt like his heart might stop.

Neil couldn’t get why people don’t wax more poetry about people with brown eyes, because the different colors he could pull from Andrew’s were ones he felt he’d never seen before. Technically Andrew’s eyes were hazel in color, muted green swirling with the other earthy tones in his irises. In some lights, his eyes looked like amber. In others, they could look coppery or bronze, and some days the green came out more. But Neil liked the brown the best: the flecks of dark mahogany, the chestnut, the few lines of gold. The dark chocolate, the dark wood, the color of sand after the ocean waves rolled over it. And, of course, the olive green mixed in between.

He almost opened his mouth to tell Andrew just how beautiful his eyes actually were. Neil wanted to describe every color he could find, to see if maybe Andrew knew what he was seeing, and finally have a name for them. He wanted to talk about how they looked right now compared to other times, to whisper how he could waste hours staring at them and how he wanted to.

But he didn’t. Neil’s lips parted to say something, but Andrew beat him to it.

“Staring,” he simply pointed out.

“I know,” Neil replied. “Want me to…?”

He was offering to look away, even if it would be a chore to drag his eyes away from Andrew’s. But he received a ‘no’ to his question and happily continued looking his fill, head comfortable where it was on a pillow. Andrew blinked at him a few times, then closed his eyes as though he was going to take a nap, cutting off Neil’s view, who forced himself to only feel slightly annoyed by it.

“Sleep?” he asked.

“Hmm,” Andrew hummed. It wasn’t an answer, so Neil decided to just lay there, and tried to pick out a different part of Andrew’s face to stare at instead.

It was early Sunday morning, and they were completely alone in the dorm room.

Kevin was taking the day to hang out with Wymack, which left the place almost deathly quiet. Not that it hadn’t been since Nicky had left for Germany, but now there wasn’t even the sounds of the TV playing or Kevin’s heavy steps that he always took. Neil had been awake for a while, listening to when Andrew had left the bed to go to the kitchenette and get some food, but he’d been so comfortable that he hadn’t wanted to move.

But he was incredibly grateful that he had gotten out of bed when he saw what was waiting for him outside of the bedroom.

Andrew was clearly still half asleep, since his eyes were slightly drooping and he’d poured himself some cereal, lightly munching on it while standing at the counter. His hair was a bit of a mess, blonde waves sticking up in all different directions and slightly pressed on one side. He was wearing the long sleeved sleep shirt he’d thrown on last night but hadn’t pulled on any pants, which gave Neil the great view of his muscular thighs peeking out from underneath his black boxer-briefs.

In short, Andrew looked great. Neil wishes he could’ve lost control of his mouth at a more magical moment, or sometime meaningful, but he couldn’t stop himself after looking his fill for a few seconds. “You’re pretty,” he blurted.

For a second, Andrew didn’t react. His head turned Neil’s way when he spoke, and he frowned for just a second, but then his half-lidded eyes suddenly opened wide. Neil was almost surprised at such a strong reaction, but he didn’t think it was a bad one. Andrew didn’t blush or glance away, but there was something in his eyes that seemed a bit off. Neil took a few steps closer to figure out what it was.

Andrew let him approach, staring the entire way. By the time they were standing face-to-face, Andrew had composed himself, clearly putting more effort than usual to appear disinterested. But he hadn’t told Neil he was stupid, or staring, or to shut up, so Neil decided to quickly say it again before the opportunity was taken away again. “You’re pretty,” he said quietly, as though he was sharing a secret. It almost felt like he was, because Andrew didn’t hide his reaction again, as subtle as it was.

His eyes went wide again, just a little bit, and Neil was close enough that he could hear Andrew’s breath hitch. Once again, he didn’t blush, but the tips of his ears turned pink and his lips parted, making him look even more pretty. Neil leaned in and aimed a kiss near Andrew's left eye, pressing his lips to Andrew’s hairline firmly. Andrew let him, aiming a frown at Neil when he stepped back, but it wasn’t very effective since his bottom lip pouted out just slightly.

Neil decided to be merciful and didn’t say it again, even though he wanted to. He wanted to tell Andrew every day if he got to see this side of him, but Neil needed to make sure that it was okay to do this. That it was something Andrew wanted, because Neil was pretty sure nobody had told Andrew just how beautiful he really was.

“Yes or no?” Neil asked, sure that Andrew would understand.

He didn’t get an answer right away, but Andrew appeared to need a moment, so he waited patiently. Andrew finally looked away, not ducking his head but merely glancing to the side. It only took a few seconds, of which Neil spent staring at Andrew’s pink ears, but finally he was given the answer he needed. “Yes,” Andrew said, a bit quiet but clearly heard, looking back at Neil as though to prove there was no hesitancy in his eyes.

Neil didn’t doubt him. Andrew never did anything he didn’t want to do, and he knew Neil would respect a ‘no’ if heard. As it was, Neil was happy to hear he could continue telling Andrew how beautiful he looked, and leaned in to kiss the same spot on Andrew’s hairline, a bit softer than before. Andrew let out a strange noise, like a weird mix between a grumble and a growl, and turned back to his cereal, shoving a spoonful in his mouth.

He still looked nice. Neil turned away to find something for himself that morning, deciding to give more compliments later. He wasn’t sure how long it would be until Andrew told him to shut up after hearing one of Neil’s random thoughts about his appearance, but it would definitely be soon if he heard that he was pretty three times in a row.

They had a lot of time. Neil would have many more opportunities to blurt out what he was thinking, and now that he had the go-ahead to do it, he would.

#aftg #aftg fanfic #aftg prompts #tfc #tfc fanfic #andreil #andriel #the foxhole court #all for the game #all for the game fanfic #jinger's works

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paradoxolotl · 3 years

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Are there any quotes or moments from any of your fics that you've had to leave out of the final product? Like, deleted scenes. If so, do you feel like sharing?...(Particularly Inked Truths because I'm obsessed with it. I fell in love with BoM, read it multiple times. When I found out you were doing a prequel I was very excited and have not been disappointed since.) (I also love TftR but it makes sad.)...Absolutely no pressure. If you don't want to answer please just ignore this, I'll understand.

Truths for the Roof didn’t lose anything but Inked lost a bit. Really, it was just redone to flow better and fit the characterization better, or moved somewhere later on in the series. I’m more likely to add then take away. It’s pretty rare I scrap something completely, and usually find somewhere else to put it, even if it’s a different fic. But originally BOM was very different. Andrew was medicated and Aaron knew Neil Josten from class.

Here’s a scene that was reworked in Ink Blotted Memories ~

Aaron did his best to avoid Andrew after that. He made himself busy at work, hauling dishes back and forth and hanging out with the bouncers on his breaks. When they were home Andrew was usually shut up in his room or outside smoking which made avoiding him all the easier, giving Aaron space to dick around on the TV or be in his room. Nicky still tried to involve both of them in stupid bonding activities like family dinners and movie nights. When they did happen, it was tense and uncomfortable, mostly filled with Nicky’s inane chatter. Aaron purposely did not look at his brother on these nights. He was torn between wanting Andrew’s acknowledgment and wishing he had never found out about him.

He marked his days with video games and his nights with alcohol and cracker dust, counting the days until he could once again use school as a distraction.

And the entire original Brother of Mine, which I rewrote most of when I got partway through ~

Aaron could still remember lying in his bed in his mother’s house, body bruised and hurting, wishing to have someone who could help him. Someone to make things better. To stand with him and hold him up when he was so close to crumbling. Learning about a long-lost twin felt like something out of a movie. An answered prayer. Finally, Aaron would have someone, a brother, who he could talk to. He imagined late night talks and secrets shared between them. They would have a bond so strong that nothing could come between them.

Andrew’s response of ‘fuck off’ had felt like a back-hand across his face.

Still, he held out hope. He was told to try again in the Spring, and that was what he planned on doing. Even when Andrew was sent to juvie, Aaron held onto his hope of a brother who would care about him. They were twins after all, how hard could it be?

The first time he had met Andrew face to face, Uncle Luther beside him and a metal table separating them, Aaron’s idea of what their relationship would be went up in smoke. His face was looking back at him, but there was no expression, no emotion at all. A blankness that revealed nothing of what he was thinking. It was hard to make eye contact with Andrew, his eyes sharp enough to be cut on. Andrew didn’t speak to Aaron at all that first visit; he just stared at him with a flat glare the entire time.

And yet he still came to South Carolina to live with Aaron. Aaron desperately wanted for Andrew to open up to him when they lived together. He thought he had to, now that they shared a room. He also hoped that home would get better, now that Andrew was home. Maybe mom would get better, would stop being so stressed. So angry.

It only took one incident for Aaron to believe Andrew was untouchable. They were in the backyard so Andrew could smoke, both sipping from a bottle of vodka Andrew had acquired. He had only moved in a week ago, and so far, things had been quiet. Aaron had no new bruises, but Andrew’s blank stare made him warry. The slam of the front door had made Aaron flinch, Andrew’s cold eyes tracking the movement. Aaron could hear their mother calling for him, her words tight with anger. Remembering the pills he had swiped earlier in the day, he swallowed back the lump in his throat and went inside.

He remembers her screaming. He remembers the pain of a hand across his cheek. Then there was Andrew, her wrist gripped in his hand, twisted far enough to make her bend at an awkward angle. It was then that Aaron saw the first expression on his twin’s face, and it terrified him. His lips had curled back in a snarl, his eyes bright with an anger Aaron had never seen before.

It was that night that Andrew had offered Aaron a deal. They would stick together, just the two of them, and Andrew would protect him. Aaron believed this was the answer to what he had been asking for. Finally, he wouldn’t be alone. He made his promise to Andrew.

Months passed, and Aaron was still collecting bruises. It was almost worse now, to have a witness to his suffering. Someone who had promised him protection but couldn’t stop everything.

Then, the accident where Aaron was left with only Andrew. Just the two of them.

The funeral where Andrew’s arm was in a sling, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, and a strange gleam in his eye as the dirt was poured on their mother’s grave.

Nicky coming back from Germany, taking them in.

Moving into a new house and Andrew installing a lock on his door.

The agony of being locked in that bathroom, withdrawal clawing his body to shreds.

The slow isolation at school, Andrew refusing to let anyone close.

Nicky’s assault and the mandated therapy.

That awful laughter and empty smile.

And Aaron had to wonder if instead of his prayers being answered, he had been cursed.

~~~

Things began changing the spring of their freshman year of college.

When they first joined the Foxes, there was a clear divide between Aaron’s family and the others immediately. Any interactions ended in spitting insults at best and violence more than not. The others feared Andrew and his knives, circling their group like alley cats. Not that the three of them were much better. Nicky constantly antagonized the others, and the twins’ general lack of effort to get along definitely rubbed a few people the wrong way. The Columbia trips solidified their isolation from the others. Honestly, Aaron couldn’t care less about getting along with his teammates. He would leave them alone as long as they did the same. He was here for a degree, not friends.

Now, they had officially been knocked out of the championships. Not that Aaron could bring himself to care, but games days usually also meant Columbia, and Aaron desperately wanted to get off campus. Between the upperclassmen, Day’s bitching over the season and Nicky’s whining, Aaron was looking forward to drinks, crackers, and music loud enough to lose yourself in.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t go without Andrew. His twin was currently perched on his desk by the window, smoking and staring out at the campus, fingers rapidly tapping. Normally they would already be packed up and gone by now, but they hadn’t gone once in over a month. At first Aaron thought it was because of exy, but then Andrew would disappear from the dorms for hours at a time, much to Day’s frustration. The only reason Aaron even noticed this as odd was because his brother rarely left Day alone. He never told them why they stopped going, or where he disappeared to, and any complaints fell on deaf ears.

“Come on Andrew!” Nicky whined, “We never go to Columbia anymore!”

Andrew’s laughter made Aaron’s jaw tick. “Oh, poor Nicky, don’t you know that no means no?”

“But why not?” Nicky was still going.

Aaron didn’t know why Nicky thought he could reason with Andrew. Unless you were Renee the best result from interacting with him would be victim to a cutting insult or dismissal. Worst case you’d need stitches.

His phone buzzing in his hand distracted him from the conversation happening. Looking at the screen, he felt a wave of relief wash over him, soothing the tension in his shoulders.

Katelyn

You played great today! It’s too bad the season is over

Katelyn was an instant balm to Aaron’s anger. It was still new, this thing between them. They had met in their intro biology class and had spent many late hours at the library studying. She had been the first person at Palmetto who had bothered to get to know Aaron for him, not just as ‘Andrew’s twin’. At first, he was a sullen asshole, but her endless patience and positivity snuck past his defenses and made a place for her in Aaron’s very bones. The only issue was they had to sneak around; Aaron couldn’t risk Andrew finding out about her.

Glancing up to make sure Andrew was still distracted with Nicky, Aaron settled further into his beanbag.

Aaron

Whatever it’s just stickball

Katelyn

Still, I’ll miss watching you ;)

Aaron had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep the smile off his face.

Katelyn

How’s Columbia?

Aaron

Wouldn’t know we’re still in the Tower

Katelyn

Think you could sneak out for a bit?

We’re in that bar with the turtle

Nicky’s yelp brought Aaron’s attention back to the room in front of him. Andrew was still on the desk, but Aaron caught the glint of metal as a knife was put back in one of his armbands. His eyes followed Nicky as he retreated to the bedroom, face split in his usual grin. When the door closed behind Nicky, Andrew’s eyes snapped to Aaron, pinning him to his spot. Aaron glared back, daring Andrew to say something to him. To say anything.

Instead, Andrew flicked his cigarette out the window, slammed in shut, and left the dorm completely. Aaron wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or not.

He sat there for a moment, fingers tapping on his phone. If this was going to be following his typical pattern over the past few weeks, Andrew would be gone for hours, and wouldn’t notice if Aaron left. He would just need to be back before Andrew. Really, it wasn’t that hard of a decision.

Aaron

Be there in twenty.

Katelyn

Grabbing his jacket, Aaron hurried out of the dorm, eager to get away. Even if it wasn’t Columbia, even if it was with the Vixens, any time with Katelyn was worth it.

Aaron didn’t look up as he left the Tower. If he did, he might have seen a heavy stare and two lit cigarettes.

~~~

Summer came, and somehow Betsy had convinced the courts to change Andrew’s medication. Something about an incorrect diagnosis or dosage. Aaron wasn’t sure how they thought an Andrew off the pills would be any better, but no one asked him for his opinion.

The upside was that Aaron had weeks free of his oppressive twin, and he could spend as much time with Katelyn as he wanted. It was the first time in years Aaron felt like there was no weight pulling him down, like he could finally breathe.

It was in those few perfect weeks that Aaron came to a decision.

He couldn’t lose this.

~~~

Andrew had come back from Easthaven reverted back to the emptiness of when Aaron had first met him. He had barely said a word to anyone since he came back, simply leveling that bored glare at them whenever someone tried to speak to him. Whenever Aaron saw him, he was fiddling on that damn flip phone, barely acknowledging his surroundings. Even the upperclassmen had noticed his attachment to the device.

It was during a meeting before the first game of the new season that someone finally snapped.

“Damn it, Andrew, what are you doing?” When Kevin got really angry, his face flushed. Right now, he was approaching tomato.

Andrew snapped his phone shut, “Nothing.”

“Bullshit, you need to focus. Our first game is tomorrow, and we are nowhere near ready.”

“Maybe,” Andrew drawled, “instead of worrying about me, you should focus on what you’ll do when you see Riko again.”

It was a low blow, but effective. Kevin immediately fell silent, his skin changing from red to white so quickly Aaron was surprised he didn’t faint. Edgar Allen had joined their district after Kevin announced that he would be joining the Fox line-up. Last year Kevin had showed up, hand bloody and broken, looking for sanctuary. Apparently, Riko had broken his hand in a fit of rage. Kevin had tried to sue, but with the connections and money behind the Moriyama name, it was ruled as an accident. The public backlash of that along with Kevin’s transfer to the Foxes had caused several headaches last year.

“Jesus, Andrew,” Nicky whispered.

Andrew opened his phone again. No one else tried to speak to him for the rest of the meeting.

~~~

It was a new bet among the Foxes: what Andrew was doing on his phone. Everyone agreed that it was pretty clear he was texting someone, but the question was who. Some believed it was a secret girlfriend, while others were still convinced Renee and Andrew were together. Others thought it had to be something illegal.

Aaron knew what he thought, and he silently watched and cataloged information away.

~~~

The season was going terribly. They were winning games by the skin of their teeth and they were more divided than ever. Seth and Kevin couldn’t stop fighting, their newest striker was a nervous wreck, and Andrew didn’t give a shit.

Their last game was against the Ravens, and they had been destroyed. Now, Wymack and Dan were looking for a win.

They were in the locker room getting ready for the game when Andrew’s phone began to ring. Aaron didn’t recognize the song Andrew used, but he knew he normally used the default setting for his ringtone. Andrew picked up before Aaron could think too much on it.

“What?”

At this point everyone was staring at him, not even trying to act like they weren’t eavesdropping.

Andrew scoffed, “Junkie,” he said before snapping his phone shut, tossing it into his locker, and slamming it door closed. A moment later he was stalking out of the locker room.

Silence was left behind in his wake until Nicky broke it, “So it isn’t a girlfriend?”

When the team was gathered again (...missing...)

~~~

(...missing...)Today though, Aaron needed to talk to him.

The chances of Andrew brushing off any attempt Aaron made to speak to him were high, so Aaron waited until Andrew would have to acknowledge him. On Wednesday, when Andrew walked into Reddin, Aaron was waiting for him.

~~~

“Fuck off,” Aaron growled.

Josten had that stupid smirk on his face, his finger tapping on his test score. It wasn’t even that Aaron did bad. It was that Josten did better. He always did better in this stupid class. Aaron hated statistics, but apparently Josten was a math major and took every opportunity to show him up.

From day one Aaron had disliked him. He had plopped down beside Aaron, ratty clothes and shaggy hair, and called him ‘the second Minyard’. Not only was he a complete ass, but he was completely unnerving. His eyes were a blue so pale they were almost glacial, and his face and arms were covered in slashes and burn scars.

Once, Aaron had overheard someone call him ‘Scarface’, and Josten had just asked, with a terrifying grin, if they were looking for some to match.

And Aaron was stuck in a room with him twice a week.

Josten tsked at him, still tapping at his score. “What? Still second?”

“Fuck off,” Aaron really wasn’t in the mood.

He just hummed, pulling his phone out, a god damn flip phone, and spent the next few minutes ignoring the review happening. Aaron could barely focus as Josten texted away; each click grating on Aaron’s already frayed nerves.

Aaron wasn’t even sure how Josten did so well; he spent most of the class doodling in his notebook.

#aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #the raven king #the kings men #aftg fanfiction #para's fics #ask para

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just--a-nb--writer · 3 years

Text

in some of my posts I talk about how nicky took advantage of neil when andrew drugged him and how it is never addressed properly (not in canon, not in the fandom usually).

since it bothers me how it isn't even mentioned again, I wrote a scene about neil telling andrew years later when they're both in their apartment and going to therapy.

it may seem like I personally hate nicky and excuse all the other foxes, but in reality I recognize all of them are flawed and made questionable things during the series.

nicky's kiss is just the first thing that hit me while reading the books and it surprises me how it was never addressed properly again, so I just feel the need to talk about it more (specially because he is the only gay and proud latino character who also happens to be a predator).

please do not take this personal if you like his character :)

now with the actual scene:

"What?" Asked Andrew from their sofa.

Neil didn't answer, but instead walked to where he was and hesitated.

"What's wrong, Neil?" Demanded Andrew, getting tired of Neil's silence.

"Something happened. I've never told you about it." Neil let his mouth do the talking; it usually worked better if he let it be and didn't think much about it.

Andrew waited. He stared at Neil, who was standing next to the sofa, and didn't say anything. He saw how Neil's hands were uncomfortable, as if he didn't know what to do with them.

Neil was wearing his old Palmetto's hoodie. The name "Minyard" was barely readable now. Andrew had Neil's in his closet, carefully folded.

"When we went to Eden's for the first time, you gave me crackers dust." Neil started.

Andrew remembered it clear as day. He did what he had to protect his family, he didn't regret it. Neil made a performance on how good he was at finding people to travel with across the country and, for the fifth time since his arrival, he seemed interesting.

"Yeah." Andrew stared at Neil's eyes. "What about it?"

"You left me when I didn't tell you what you wanted."

"I did," he admitted. He also remembered what happened after that and, again, he wasn't one to regret things.

Neil didn't talk again. Andrew was thinking about that night, wondering why he was talking about it now, decades later. This wasn't about the cracker's dust, he'd have told him earlier.

"Someone kissed me," Neil finally said, with his hand in his pockets, "someone we both know."

Andrew recognized that expression. Andrew felt his own expression darken in a way it hadn't in years. He looked at Neil and what he saw resembled a mirror he saw many times many years ago.

He stood up in front of Neil. Those icy blue eyes were staring back at him. They weren't so cold anymore; Andrew wasn't as cold as he was when he first saw them neither.

He left a space between them. Neil didn't move. Andrew could hear him fighting for some air.

Neil Abram Josten, abused since he was born until his twenties or so, was standing in front of him and fighting for an air he couldn't inspire because of a memory haunting him.

Neil and Andrew were more alike than any of them could ever hope for.

"Nicky did it," Neil whispered. He didn't cry, didn't move, didn't say something else either.

The name was hanging between them. Nicholas Hemmick kissed Neil Josten without his consent. How history repeats itself, he ironically wondered.

"Yes or no?" Andrew asked.

"Yes," Neil answered, with his hands still in his pockets.

Andrew stood on his tiptoes and gently grabbed Neil's neck. He pressed a kiss into his forehead and looked into his eyes.

"You're safe now, you hear me?" He wasn't one to play soft and nice to calm anyone down. He knew Neil wasn't expecting that either.

But he wasn't the monster people thought of him as. Neither was Nicholas Hemmick. They were both humans, only difference is what they decided to do with that.

"Yeah," Neil answered some time later.

Andrew nodded and put his hands down. They were standing as they were in the beginning, with a space between them. He refused to let that name invade everything around him.

Neil told him a truth, he trusted him. Both of them trusted each other. No Drake or Nicholas or anyone else was going to change that. No past was going to change what they had now.

"Kevin is playing against Knox's team," Andrew told him. "Channel nine, starts in five minutes."

Neil's gaze looked for the remote control. Andrew put it on and both of them sat on the sofa to see Kevin's game. If his team won, they'd go straight to the final and play against his and Neil's team. They were counting on it.

His session with Bee was two days later. He hoped she had a specially sweet hot chocolate. He'd figure out what to do with her.

Neil was going to see his therapist tomorrow. He was making a progress. He didn't know if he was the first one Neil told this to or not, but it didn't matter anyway. He had a safe place where he could work on it.

They were both healing. They'd figure it out somehow. They always did.

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jemej3m · 4 years

Note

Yo. Yo. Yoo. A Highschool musical au. Yeah you heard me.

bruh cross clique relationships are my jam

pt. 1? maybe

When they’d first met, Neil had been hiding from everyone else on the roof of the ski lodge. Wymack had brought him on holiday and encouraged him to join in with the teen party going on in the karaoke lounge with Dan and Kevin, but he’d taken one look and noped the hell out.

Curled into a ball, he had never expected his angsty teenage silence to be broken by another short, bad-mannered boy, equally as distasteful of loud gatherings and soda-stupid teenage shenanigans.

There had been something very familiar about him, like Neil had seen him before.

He also had a pack of cigarettes.

Neil had yearned for one, like he yearned for his mom, and Andrew had asked for his name in exchange for the lighter. They’d sat in silence, letting the dulled sounds of music and cheers wash over them like a particularly persistent draft.

When Neil flinched away at the first pop of the fireworks, Andrew had frowned. And when Neil had explained they sounded too much like gunshots, Andrew gave him his number, scoffing at Neil’s old flip phone.

Then he’d proceeded to bitch about his cousin, the one who had dragged him and his twin brother on a ‘bonding’ trip, and was then forcing him to move across the country so they could all live together. it distracted Neil from the gunfire overhead: whether or not that had been Andrew’s intention, Neil thought he’d never know.

He assumed he’d never see Andrew again.

But then school started up again.

Guess who was the new kid?

Andrew didn’t think that high school movies were actually grounded in reality till he moved to Palmetto State high. But the minute that he walked in through Palmetto State High’s front doors, he was instantly proven wrong.

Aaron, who had already done his freshman year and half his sophomore year here, seemed unfazed. He was a generally unfazed person, expect when Andrew purposefully ignored him and then smashed his ass at Mariokart. Then he’d lose his temper but ultimately be angrier at himself, because he didn’t want to be anything like his mom had been.

Andrew never had the chance to meet Tilda. She’d died just before they met: her will was the only reason that Aaron had found out about Andrew in the first place.

Aaron shoved his glasses up his nose and neatly ducked past a set of boisterous jocks who were bouncing a basketball to one another.

“I already hate it here,” Andrew muttered, following after his brother.

“It gets worse,” Aaron sighed. “Wait till you see the Exy jocks. The cheerleaders are - ” his face screwed up for a second. “Not all bad.”

“What are you?”

“We,” Aaron insisted. “Are nerds. Did you think you’d be able to escape the fact that we’re identical?”

“I’m not a nerd,” Andrew muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets to hide the bracelet he wore. Bee had given it to him as a parting gift: it was the solar system, to scale, with the space between the planets made out of carbon fibre.

“Are you kidding? The only thing you moved in with was a box of books.”

“Whatever.”

They brushed by the office, Aaron ignoring the freshman’s offer to take Andrew on a tour of the school. Her name-tag read Robin and she was clearly unfazed by their complete disregard of her presence.

“History first,” Aaron huffed, squinting at Andrew’s timetable. “Good, we’re together. History sucks: we have Mr Moriyama, and his shitty nephew Riko is in that class too.”

“What’s so shitty about him?”

“You’ll see.”

Fantastic, Andrew thought. The day was shaping up to be an absolute nightmare.

“Mr Minyard,” drawled a nasally man who lingered by the door. When he saw Andrew, his eye twitched. “And Mr Minyard. So the attendance sheet wasn’t an error.”

Aaron just muttered something under his breath and dragged Andrew by the sleeve. The tables were set up in spaced-apart rows, but the back was already claimed by a group of delinquent-looking attention vacuums. The others were all crowded around one boy, who had his feet kicked up on the table in front of him and an uncanny resemblance to the history teacher.

He looked between Andrew and Aaron and sneered. Before he could open his mouth to say something, his uncle clapped his hands and called the class to attention.

Just as Mr Moriyama was about to start the lesson, what could only be described as the human embodiment of disaster.

When Andrew recognised him, his cheeks went red.

“Mr Josten,” Mr Moriyama said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How is it that you are always late to my class, when your brother’s already here?”

The brother in question looked nothing like Neil. He was taller, paler, with black hair and green eyes. He was also glaring at Neil, like that was going to make a difference.

“My bad,” the red-head shrugged.

“Detention,” Mr Moriyama said.

“I have practise,” Neil retorted. And - oh, god, he was a jock. A smart-mouthed sporty boy. Fuck. Andrew thought he’d never see the boy from the rooftop again, but here they were, sitting in the same history class.

“Should have thought about that before you were late,” the greasy man sneered, sending Neil on his way. Neil slumped his way past the desks till he saw Andrew sitting behind his brother, eyes widened with shock.

Andrew, involuntarily, found himself giving Neil a small salute. Neil’s lips quirked up as he slid into his chair, letting the first lesson of the day finally begin.

Neil jogged into practise late. This wasn’t surprising to anyone, least of all Wymack, who was leaning against the plexiglass with a knowing frown.

“Could you stop antagonising Mr Moriyama’s own nephew in his class?”

“In my defence,” Neil admitted. “Today’s detention was because I was late, not because I accidentally spoke my thought about Riko out loud instead of reciting them in my head.”

“Get on the court, you little shit,” he said, though not without fondness. Neil had been adopted by the Exy coach at the end of his freshman year, when he’d figured out why Neil was breaking into the changerooms to sleep.

He jogged up to Kevin, who was less than impressed as he stood by the goal.

“What the hell, Neil?”

“The only reason I was so late was because Gordon still hasn’t forgiven you for getting him kicked off the team and he likes to hang around my locker to take it out on me!”

Dan, Wymack’s other adopted child and team captain, was standing nearby and laughing. “Don’t try and flip this on Kevin: you just like picking fights with Seth.”

Neil grinned at her. “It’s so easy.”

“Oi!” Wymack called out. “We running drills or not?”

When he saw the blonde head of hair bobbing up and down, Neil’s grin faltered slightly. He was still in shock that Aaron had a twin, that the twin had moved here, and that twin had been the exact person Neil had met on the roof of the ski resort a few weeks ago.

No wonder he’d found Andrew’s face so familiar. He was truly an idiot for not picking up on it.

Andrew sat down, high in the bleachers. Neil felt a strange prickle at the back of his neck, like he had when they’d talked for hours up on the roof.

Practise went too fast after that. Neil stayed behind to help his coach pack up, Kevin and Dan bickering about plays as they went off to the showers.

Coach went off with the equipment, giving Andrew a cursory glance. Perhaps he recognised Aaron’s face: the boy had nearly done tryouts for the team at the start of freshman year but chickened out.

Neil skipped the steps, leaping up three at a time. Andrew was lounging on the bleachers, head cocked to the side.

“So,” Neil said. “You never mentioned that you were moving to Palmetto.”

“We were in a random Colorado ski lodge,” Andrew rolled his eyes. “What were the chances?”

“Clearly high enough.” Neil perched on the seat beside him. “So, Aaron’s brother, huh?”

“Obviously.”

Neil grinned. “Give me some slack: it was dark. I suppose you’ll be following him around, at first?”

Andrew just shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

“Do you like Exy?”

His eye twitched. “I’ve played before. Why?”

Neil felt his grin widen. “You should try out.”

Andrew crossed his arms over his chest. “Aaron says I’m doomed to be stuck with the nerds, so long as I look like him. Apparently that’s a big deal here.”

Neil faltered slightly. “Well, yeah. Everyone kinda sticks to their own. I’ve always wanted to join the Olympiads, but they’d never let me on the team. I’m good at math and physics, but I’m on the Exy team. They don’t associate with jocks.”

“Olympiads,” Andrew mumbled. “Jesus Christ.”

“Hey!”

“This entire school is a disaster,” Andrew said, notching a cigarette between his lips and spun the lighter between his fingers. “I don’t give a shit about their stupid cliques.”

Neil felt something warm in his chest. He’d always felt the same. “Careful. If Riko thinks you’re kicking up dust, he’ll retaliate. He likes to think he owns the place and prefers that everyone just sticks to their own.”

Andrew trotted down a few steps before looking back over his shoulder at Neil. “Well, he can just get in line.”

Huh, Neil thought, when he couldn’t get Andrew’s smirk out of his mind for the rest of the day. This is new.

gosh, teenagers r so melodramatic

@filteredred don’t call me out on hypocrisy

#andreil #aftg #andrew minyard #neil josten #high school musical au #the foxhole court #jock/nerd trope #very cute very nice #i was going to make it longer but i also wanted to get smth out because i havent posted writing in a whlie #so here ya go #the foxes #david wymack #fluff

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foxespsu · 3 years

Text

Location: Hotel Breakfast Date: Friday, November 20 Time: Night (beach party) (closed for @chaoticfoxes and @go-foxes)

Kent used to spend almost every morning by the ocean. Even before, when he was too young to surf alone—when his mom was sick, but his thoughts skitter past that as quickly as possible, because he can think of her as gone but not everything that came before it, even after all these years—that was where he went to run. To watch the sunrise, if he was slipping out of the house before anyone else woke up. He misses the ocean, misses Hawaii, even if there’s nothing for him there now. Florida’s not the same, but it’ll do tonight.

And maybe it’s not Hawaii, but it’s still a beach. That’s enough, when he’s going on three and a half years in landlocked Palmetto. Kent braces his feet in the sand, the waves rushing in until the water is almost up to his knees. He wishes he could go further out, but it’s long past dark. He’s tired from the game. He’s been drinking. Besides, it’s low tide still. The waves are too small to be exciting.

But he’ll come back tomorrow morning. They have an entire day, practically, and Kent already reserved a surfboard for first thing tomorrow. Bright and early, he’ll be back. He’s dragging Sterling and Colin with him too, half because he wants to show off the one thing he’s genuinely good at and half because he knows Sterling, at least, is about to go home for Thanksgiving. It makes him greedy with their time together as a group.

Anyway, he needs that time to hammer their friendships back into place. Sterling’s still not—normal with him, even though Kent’s more than proved that he won’t bring up the phone call. And then there’s Colin, where things are decidedly not normal either, but maybe that’s okay, even if it’s turned Kent’s room into a different kind of minefield.

He wades back onto the shore back towards his friends, drink in hand, and flops down onto the sand instead. It’s damp. He should’ve gone further up. “Man, anyone else really sore from overtime?” he says, sitting up better to take a drink. “Liquor’s supposed to help with that, right?”

#foxesstart #interaction: kent #kent #kentcolin004 #kentsterling006 #closed starter but it's for the entire rp so is it....actually open.....#ALSO WHILE WRITING REALIZED THEY WERE ALL THREE IN OVERTIME AW YEAH

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captain-danwilds · 3 years

Text

Too Broken for A Fox: Janie Smalls

I know I have a bad habit of falling for minor characters, but my heart just aches for Janie Smalls. It’s probably because she’s the Fox with the trauma most similar to mine that even though we know next to nothing about her, I have lots of feelings about Janie Smalls. (And yeah there’s potentially triggering things so mind the tags. Recovery Focus, but still proceed with caution)

It’s easy for her teammates to think everything’s fine.

Their captain is going to be playing for a division 1 school.

It’s Palmetto so only barely division 1, but still.

Janie actually smiles when Coach Wilmer announces the recruitment to them.

And they can count the number of times she’s smiled on one hand.

But even as Janie prepares for graduation, prepares for the life she’s worked for since she was eight and first picked up a racket, she knows she’s not fine.

It starts slowly at first.

Picking scabs before they’re healed, pressing bruises, driving less cautiously, rubbing the scars on her thigh from sophomore year.

She knows she should be happy. She’s got everything she could ever hope for.

But that’s it really, what is supposed to happen now? What happens when you’ve spent half your life working to get to this point (and the other half not believing you’d live this long anyway?)

The future is vast and intimidating.

“But it’s happy change.” Her mother whispers as she’s smooths down Janie’s hair. “Aren’t you excited?”

The pit growing in her stomach doesn’t feel like excitement.

Exy is an escape.

It’s always been an escape.

The Fairview Royals have been how she outran her troubles, outlived the thoughts in her head.

Because if she can just keep scoring, she’s worth something.

But then the season ends and she’s no longer a Royal and not yet a Fox.

Then they find her bleeding.

And she’s too broken to be a Fox.

Too broken to do anything really. Because what does she have left if she doesn’t have Exy?

The team sends a card and Janie only barely resists tearing it to shreds.

She rolls her eyes at the goal keeper’s pretty words about how Janie will get through this, but she adds Renee’s number to her phone anyway.

There’s a sick sort of joy in the pit of her stomach when she hears about Seth Gordon’s overdose.

She isn’t the only one who couldn’t handle it, handle living.

I mean objectively she knows. It’s not like she was in the hospital alone, didn’t attend group therapy alone.

But this is different.

Her suicide attempt had been called typical of a Fox on every platform that followed College Exy (and quite a few that didn’t.)

Seth’s death completely overshadows it.

She wasn’t really a Fox yet. He played for four years.

Janie’s no longer the face of too broken to make it.

She should probably hate Neil Josten for taking her spot.

For coming out of nowhere, Arizona with one year of experience on a team that didn’t even make playoffs, and taking her spot.

Her therapist thinks she’s being very mature that she doesn’t.

It’s easy to shrug the complement away. It’s not like she can use it when she hasn’t been allowed on a court in months.

But she sees herself in how Josten plays.

In those moments she steals when the nurses think she isn’t there to watch games in case it triggers her.

They have very different styles, his built on speed and instinct, hers on precision.

It’s the desperation that ties them together.

The way the court is the only thing that seems worth living for.

The slight madness in his eyes that says I play Exy or I’m nothing.

She’s nothing now.

But she’s learning how to be something.

Even if it makes her feel like she’s breaking apart all over again.

Still she sits in therapy, colors an almost comical amount of pictures, blows bubbles just to be able to destroy something that isn’t herself.

And things get better.

When the foxes make the spring playoff season, she smiles a genuine smile that makes one of her favorite nurse’s cry.

After she’s out of the hospital and the constant vigilance of her mother’s concerned eyes, Janie goes back to her high school Exy court.

One of the younger players lets her in after practice and doesn’t ask too many questions.

She just sits in the middle of the court. There’s no one around, but the memory of the sheer energy on game day is enough.

It’s not the first time Janie cries about exy and it won’t be the last, but there’s no longer a jaded feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She wants to be better, to live, and that’s so much bigger than just Exy.

Janie has other things to live for now. Things that make her heart jump more than scoring on a particular skilled opponent.

But she still loves Exy.

So Janie picks up her racket again and bounces the ball off of the Rec Center wall between therapy sessions.

As she lifts weights or goes on runs, Janie tells herself it’s because the doctors recommended it, not because she feels the need to whip her body back into shape after months of trying to only get through the day even if that meant never leaving bed.

She just wants to feel like her body’s her own again.

And her body, the small voice in Janie’s head whispers, is meant to carry her through an Exy game and shove away even the largest of backliners.

Her friends and parents purposely avoid talking about the Foxes even as the new rookie causes trouble left and right or Kevin Day nonchalantly creates the largest conspiracy the sport has ever seen. They don’t know she has all their news alerts set up on her phone.

When the Foxes make the finals, Janie is the one to announce it to them by covering the house in an obnoxious amount of orange paper paw prints.

And when they win, she cries.

Maybe they think that she’s mourning the fact that she should have been there, should have been part of the underdog team that finally brought the Ravens down.

But she isn’t.

It’s more the fact that they did it. The foxes beat the unbeatable.

And for the first time in forever, Janie Smalls feels like a Fox.

Her victory isn’t touted over the news, isn’t the topic of podcasts and already slated to be next decade’s feel good sports movie.

But Janie’s alive and she’s determined to be for a long time. And for a long time, that felt unimaginable.

Janie calls Renee to offer her congratulations. Even after all this time, she kept the number. It’s a small thing, showing joy for the girl who had faith in her when few did.

Janie doesn’t expect their conversation to mean much.

Doesn’t expect it to continue for months.

Or for Renee to casually slip in how the ERC expects Coach Wymack to drastically increase the size of the team.

It feels like a sign Janie didn’t even know she was waiting for.

She doesn’t tell Renee when she films a practice session with her best friend and sends it in with doctor’s notes.

Or the voicemail she leaves in the middle of the night on Wymack’s phone because she doesn’t think she can state her case if he’s actually listening in real time.

“You wanted me once. And I’ve only gotten better since then. You’d be a fool to pass me over now Coach.”

Maybe she’s convincing. Maybe they’re desperate.

Maybe it’s just because Coach Wymack believes in giving more chances than what anyone else wanted to give you.

But the following year, Janie Smalls is officially a Fox.

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ghost-in-the-stalls · 3 years

Text

Neil Josten's Playlist Part 6 - For Himself

Masterpost and link to the playlist in its entirety here

A lot of the songs Neil keeps are just for him. Sometimes you need to be in your feelings a bit and music is the only place you're comfortable doing that.

2. Shrike - Hozier

After he initially found Hozier, this boy didn’t listen to anything else for weeks straight if he could help it. Shrike I think is just a song that he loves the sound of. Pretty much the only thing we know in canon about Neil’s music taste is that he doesn’t like loud music. Which is incredibly vague and generalizing. To me, that tells me that Neil maybe is actually someone who tends to pay most attention to and by most effected by the sound of a song than the theme or lyrics or genre or anything. If he doesn’t like the sound, he doesn’t like the song. But a sound that appeals to him? Oh boy, he won’t be able to let it go. Shrike is like that for him. It’s gentle and smooth and I imagine he doesn’t pay too much attention to the lyrics or meaning. He just lets himself get lost in the sound.

11. Best Part - Daniel Caesar & H.E.R.

Not too much to say about this. It’s soft and beautiful and smooth, and I think Neil would greatly appreciate the sound. It’s a bit too soft for him to associate with Andrew, but he doesn’t need the association to enjoy it. Neil listens to it on his morning runs when the sun is only just rising and the world is still moving slowly. But he also listens to it on slower mornings when Andrew convinces him to forgo the morning run in favor of breakfast and coffee on the couch with the cats.

17. Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

Like some others on this list, this is a song that catches Neil wholly for its sound. Like the title, listening to this song feels a little like getting lost in a dream. There's just something very soft about it, and those are the kinds of songs that catches Neil's attention. He likes that he's found something he can get lost in for a time without losing himself.

27. Hallelujah - Rufus Wainwright

As incredible of a song this is, the origin of Neil's connection to it isn't anything super emotional. The foxes made him watch Shrek. He became very attached to this song and would listen to it on repeat for weeks afterwards. They all got so sick of it. His aux cord privileges were revoked. Matt doesn't need to start CRYING while he's DRIVING Neil, THANK YOU.

As for his connection to it, a big trend I'm seeing in the stuff that I think Neil listens to is that a lot of it is very emotional. Sad songs, moving melodies, beautiful ballads. I think Neil listens to music to help him feel his emotions - like really feel them. He's so good at compartmentalizing and shoving everything down and away (as per the trauma of running for the better half of his life), I think listening to emotional music - like really listening to it all - as a means of getting in touch with the emotions he's always shoving aside would be a great coping mechanism for him. To that degree songs like this just strike a cord with Neil, even if there isn't any parallel to draw between the lyrics and his own life. A song is a package of emotion that Neil can hear and unpack and process at his own pace while retaining a safe degree of separation.

30. Obstacles - Syd Matters

Not a whole lot to say about this one. Neil finds it somehow - either through one of his foxes or just on his own - and he finds it incredibly calming. He keeps it close. It makes him hopeful even on days when he can't bring himself to look in the mirror. The steady melody and repeating words help him get lost in something other than his own thoughts.

35. Ashes On Your Eyes - Deb Talan

This is one Neil found on his own. It doesn't remind him of any of his foxes, though, or his mother. It's one of the few songs he has just for himself. It serves as a reminder that he's going to be okay. He has a great support system, but sometimes he likes to find comfort in himself just to prove that he can still do it. Songs like this keep him going on those days where he doesn't want to bring his problems to others.

37. Rivers and Roads - The Head and the Heart

This is one Neil gets his hands on in his final year at Palmetto, but it isn't just about Andrew for him (like most of the others from this year). This one is about all his foxes - his family. It's about how lonely he feels even when he has a whole group of people he lives and plays and interacts with on a daily basis. They aren't his people; his people are scattered everywhere. He only learned how to be a real person after he met them. Now he needs to learn to do it on his own. There's a special kind of pain that comes when he thinks of how much he misses each of them.

39. Unsteady - Ambassador X

This song is one Neil thinks of often when he's having bad days. He'll still always end up having some days where he doesn't feel like a real person, and on those days it can be hard to ground himself - to keep from floating away and giving up on everything he's built to run back to being nothing. What helps him most on those days is not being alone. It takes him a long time, though, to learn how to communicate what his needs are on those days. It's pretty lucky that Andrew can read him so well, but during the years when they aren't living together it becomes very hard for Neil to find the words to ask for help. This song helps him with that. The chorus is so short and to-the-point but is still such a bare-bones lay of emotion and need that it centers Neil enough to realize that he doesn't need to explain himself or mince his words when he's asking for help. He just needs to ask.

42. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day

The downside to having the music taste that Neil does is that sometimes he latches onto something that is apparently a bit cheesy or overplayed, and the foxes gladly tease him for liking it unironically. This is definitely one of those songs. It doesn't matter to him that it was basically everyone's 8th grade graduation song (he didn't get one of those anyway, Matt.) He listens to this and thinks of the passage of time and how hard it's going to be when his foxes are scattered all over the country while he's stuck alone in Palmetto. But they'll be happy, and he'll be happy soon enough after that. They'll all move forward but it doesn't mean they'll lose each other (he has to repeat that to himself on bad nights).

The completely serious way he listens to this song is funny to the foxes at first, but Nicky is the first to break down crying when it stops being funny. He's also the only one to break down crying, but that doesn't mean the others don't get emotional too. ("Jesus, Neil, you got a whole team of collegiate athletes getting emotional over the time-of-your-life song. How much more of a fucking weirdo enigma can you be??" -Andrew at some point probably)

47. Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.

Neil has some pretty intense, pretty specific trauma. Plenty of people in the world have experienced terrible things and it isn't a competition. Neil knows this. However, he's also painfully aware that he's someone who pulled the right numbers in the shit lottery. Sometimes it helps to hear this song.

He knows that maybe his own life experiences were not anything close to what the songwriter had in mind, but it still helps. It helps to remember that he isn't the only person in the world who has terrible days. It even helps to know that people outside of the foxes have bad days. It helps to find a way to feel connected to the larger population of the world. It's a definite new thing for him - feeling like he's allowed to belong in the world - but it's very comforting at times.

54. Lights Up - Harry Styles

((I wish I could remember who made a post once saying this was a very Neil song because that was how I first heard it and I wish I could credit that person. Alas, it was over a year ago when I first read the books and didn't recognize any usernames yet :/ if anyone knows who that is lmk!!))

There are a lot of things Neil doesn't know about himself. There are a lot of things from freshman year and before that he still feels some level of guilt for. But ultimately he doesn't regret a single choice he's made. There are a whole lot of things he's still figuring out about his life. He heard this song and really vibed with the sound and what it was saying. Not much more to say than that. He's found himself in a light that he's happy to stay and figure himself out in.

66. Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles

Mary was a bit of a Beatles fan. There were several of their songs she'd play on their long drives when they weren't being immediately tailed.

This wasn't one of them. She skipped this one, every single time. Neil fully understands why. For all the indulgence she gave herself in the music she listened to, this one seemed to cross a line she couldn't handle.

Now Neil listens to it on morning runs and good days. And he lets himself feel okay.

71. Fall on Me - R.E.M.

Neil's had plenty of people trying to hurt him throughout his life. He's never really gotten help from people he was supposed to get it from. And now he has a whole family of people who have experienced similar abandonment.

Sometimes that pisses him off.

Sometimes he just really wishes the world was a softer place. Andrew would say it's dumb to wish, especially for something like that. And he'd be right. But it doesn't stop Neil from thinking it sometimes.

73. Hat and Feet - Fountains of Wayne

Sometimes you're just beaten down and worn out. Just once in a while, Neil wants to let himself feel this without feeling terrible and lost for it. This song helps with that.

Sometimes you're just a hat and feet, and that's okay.

#aftg #my writing #neil josten #andreil #andrew minyard

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palmett-hoes · 4 years

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alright alright alright let’s pretend this isn’t almost a full week late. here’s my piece for the @aftgexchange for Valentine’s day. this is for @black-glasses-and-books, who asked for an Andreil diner au. This is actually the first fic I’ve ever fully completed in my life, sooooo whew. also a special thank you to @leahlisabeth for being incredibly patient with me despite having let her down no less than three different times

**warnings for blood, loss of bladder control, minor sexual assault, and major, violent retaliation for sexual assault. dub-con reminiscent of the books, and at length discussion of that dub-con**

Neon Lights at Night

An hour and a half north of Columbia - the armpit of the South - on the edge of the dying little town of Palmetto that hung onto the interstate for dear life, a 24/7 diner called the Foxhole lit up the night a hundred different shades of neon orange. It was the first (and sometimes only) attraction listed on the past three rest stop signs.

It was actually a few miles from the exit, but still bright enough to be seen from the road (though, really it could be seen from space). Luckily for Palmetto, most unfortunate suckers driving through the boonies ended up at the Foxhole, eventually trickling further into town for gas or souvenirs or a place for the night, or just to look at the rundown town with its dusty southern charm and its friendly but flinty-eyed inhabitants. None of them would come without the Foxhole shining on the hill like a will-o'-the-wisp.

The graveyard shift, though, saw very, very few of those curious people who came through during the day. In fact, it saw very, very few people at all. Maybe five or six a night if things were really hopping, but the owner - David Wymack - had made a vow that his diner would be open 24/7 for whatever poor bastards trickled in. It didn't matter if it was noon or midnight, dawn or dusk - any wayward birds would have a place to rest their wings. Usually the ones that wandered in past midnight were a mix of addicts, car campers, and down-on-their-luck folks with nowhere else to go and no money to get anything better. Sometimes a traveling worker pressing hard to get home to their family faster would show up while driving through the night to down some coffee, or parties of local teens across the whole county would hang out hours past curfew. It didn't matter who they were or why they were there or even when, the Foxhole had a seat and meal waiting for anyone that needed it.

That didn't mean it had to be well-stocked in the middle of the night. Usually a one-man staff could run the whole show no problem, and Wymack slept light and kept his phone next to his bed just in case there was one.

...

Andrew Minyard pulled into the Foxhole parking lot at 2am on a weeknight: the height of the slump. He was not an addict, homeless, a traveling businessman, or a local punk, so really he had no business being at a diner in the middle of nowhere an hour away from his house (Andrew rather notoriously sped). Except he couldn't sleep, and whenever he couldn't sleep, he came to the Foxhole.

He'd first stumbled upon the eyesore diner on an aimless midnight joyride four years ago counting mile markers in hopes that once, just once, he could sleep through the night if he numbed his brain. Like every other midnight moth to the Foxhole's neon orange flame, he'd ended up in the parking lot by happenstance and desperation, and found its doors open to him (a novelty, to someone who'd been thrown out of more homes than he could on his fingers).

He'd been the only customer that night. Just him, the grumpy old owner, the old record player, and the best pancakes he'd ever had. They hadn't spoken at all that first night. Andrew had just pointed to the menu and the owner had just nodded, and fifteen minutes later he was slowly tearing off chunks of his pancakes while the owner went about his business on the other side of the restaurant. Eventually, the carbs and lilting oldies music succeeded in making his eyelids heavy so he payed his bill and slipped out. He managed almost four uninterrrupted hours of sleep after he made it back to Columbia.

The routine took time to develop. Andrew didn't go back to the Foxhole for almost a month after that first time, and when he finally did (under the same sleepless circumstances) it proceeded much the same. In the entire first six months that he visited the diner he and the owner didn't exchange a single word. The old man would nod to him when Andrew came in and when he left, and eventually Andrew nodded back. Sometimes there were other people in the diner, usually not. Some faces showed up more than once, locals; most were strangers, interlopers like him. He'd worked his way methodically through the diner's entire menu, and never found it lacking, and told himself that was the only reason he kept coming back. Certainly not the quiet understanding in the owner's eyes that said, "You can hide from it here, whatever you're running from. I'll always be here. You can take as long as you need."

It pissed him the fuck off, actually. How dare that old bastard look at Andrew like he had any idea what sorts of monsters chased him out of bed each night to run himself ragged in order to sleep. He didn't know, and he never would. So fuck him for looking at Andrew like he ever could.

Yet week after sleepless week, Andrew slipped out of house and drove to the middle of nowhere just to sit silently in the aggressively orange diner and listen to the staticy jukebox with the hum of the hundred neon lights running underneath it.

...

Four years later and Andrew was a regular. His insomnia chased him there from his bed at least twice a week, and on Sundays he took Nicky and Aaron there for brunch. He had come to know Wymack and his very annoying son, Kevin. He knew the manager of the diner, Dan Wilds - who did not like him - and the local do-gooder, Renee Walker - who did. He knew the town regulars - and some of the not-so-regulars - that lingered at night. The Foxhole was his diner - his place.

In the last year especially, he'd been going increasingly often. Wymack should offer him a job rather than just waive his food bills for all the time he spent there. It started to feel like rather than the diner lulling him to sleep when he couldn't, he now needed it to be able to drift off in the first place. Andrew was never as relaxed as within the Foxhole's walls. It was the first place he'd ever felt truly... comfortable.

Maybe a bit too comfortable.

He hadn't been in three weeks now, and he was coiled tight as a spring, ready to snap, but with no release - just a constant pressure building and building. He had no appetite, was sleeping worse than he ever had, unable to sit still, and shaking out of his skin.

As he reached the exit ramp and got the first look at the ridiculously orange building down below, the brightest thing for miles, he went through a series of wild contradictions. His chest constricted but his shoulders relaxed. He could finally breathe, but there was no air. He almost turned around but instead tightened his hands on the steering wheel and pressed the gas peddle down further.

It took both forever and no time at all to reach the gravel parking lot. There was only one other car, a boxy old Toyota that Andrew knew well, which meant it was just him and the night shift.

He sat in the car for a long time and watched the diner from the outside. It either had a retro fifties aesthetic or had actually been around since the fifties, unchanged. It was covered in miles of orange neon tubing, dozens of signs, so many it was hard to identify any one picture. Wymack said he didn't care what it looked like, so long as people could see it. It looked like it was on fire.

Nothing moved inside. Eventually, Andrew gave up waiting for a sign, so he opened the door and got out of the car. He felt like he was walking up to his own execution, but when he stepped into the building it was the same flat, bright lights and checkerboard linoleum it had always been. As if nothing had changed; as if Andrew hadn't changed anything.

The Supremes floated through the air and someone was humming along while they clattered about in the kitchen. Andrew played dumb, pretended he didn't know who it was, that the car outside had been borrowed. But no one else ever took the graveyard shift. Even Wymack stayed home these days. So Andrew just stood there in the middle of the empty diner and pretended that someone else was about to walk out of the kitchen. Maybe Wilds - who would ignore him - or Boyd - who would try to make small talk that Andrew would ignore. Across the room, the pinball machine flashed and beeped, and Andrew stood rooted to the spot.

Feet scuffed the floor. Dan didn't come out of the kitchen. Neither did Boyd, Wymack, Gordon or anyone else. Neil did.

Of course Neil did, because Neil always worked the overnight shift. He had since he stumbled into Palmetto a year ago, scared and hurt and was immediately been swept up into the fold of Wymack and his Foxes. He didn't sleep much more than Andrew did. He liked the quiet at night. He got nervous around too many customers at once. He thought the scars that littered his face would scare people away.

No one else but Neil Josten would be working the Foxhole at 2 am on a weeknight, but god Andrew wished someone else was.

When Neil saw Andrew standing there he stopped in his tracks. He jerked like he'd been shocked and dropped the mixing bowl he'd been holding with a clang. Neil looked at Andrew with his deer-in-the-headlights eyes and slack jaw, unmoving, for what felt like forever.

Andrew didn't know what was going to happen next. He half-thought Neil would turn and run, like Andrew had three weeks ago, and half-thought Neil would yell and scream and rage at him, like he should have done three weeks ago. Instead, he just stood there and stared and stared at Andrew in silence.

The song on the jukebox changed, Nina Simone now.

Finally, Neil spoke, but all he said was, "You're back," at a whisper, like he was genuinely shocked. And of course he was. If it had been Neil that had run three weeks ago, he'd be halfway across the world by now. New name, new story, new everything. But Andrew wasn't the type to cut and run from his problems (or so he thought).

Neil tried again. "Andrew," he said with a voice so strained it hurt to hear. He wanted to talk about it, and of course he did, but Andrew - the weak fool that he was - couldn't.

What did he think would happen? That he would wander back in after tearing everything between them to shreds and Neil would act as if nothing had happened? That they would play pinball and split a milkshake and everything would be fine?

(Maybe he hadn't believed it would happen, but he'd wanted it to).

"Don't," he grumbled, hoarse; he would hold this off as long as he could. When Neil looked like he was about to argue, Andrew said it again, louder, more forceful. "Don't." And Neil backed down. Because of course he did. Because Neil listened to whatever Andrew said. Because Neil didn't trample all over the lines drawn in the sand between them.

They looked at each other for a long time. Dark bags hung under Neil's eyes and his skin clung too close to his face. Andrew knew he didn't look much better.

But Neil still looked good, in that wild, unreal way of his. He wore the god-awful orange pinstripe uniform that Wymack didn't actually make his employees wear but that Neil liked anyway and that Andrew imagined peeling off of him. His hair floated around his face where it escaped the tie holding it back. Andrew missed when he could play innocent about dragging it back behind Neil's ear. He couldn't do that anymore.

Pink and red hearts literred Neil's cheekbones, and belatedly Andrew remembered that it was Valentine's day, or maybe close? He didn't know, actually. He'd stopped keeping track of time in any way except "Five days since he ran away from Neil," "Two weeks since he ruined everything with Neil." Wilds or Boyd or someone was always putting stickers on Neil's face, over the scars he was so self-conscious about. They said it was because he was such a 'good noodle,' which was disgustingly stupid, but Neil never took them off. They made him smile. Andrew preferred stars or flowers or anything else. The hearts made Neil look too romantic, and that wasn't fair.

Eventually, Neil turned slightly and gestured back into the kitchen. "The stove is broken again," he murmered. "Wymack thought he was going to have to get a real repairman in soon, if you didn't-" he stumbled, ducked his head and broke eye contact, "If you didn't come back." He trailed off, then added, "Soon," softly, like an afterthought. Neil and his stupid, reckless faith.

Andrew couldn't say anything back to that. So instead he silently made his way around the counter and back into the kitchen, making sure to give Neil a wide berth even while he felt Neil's eyes on him the whole way.

The number two reason Wymack treated Andrew so well were his technical skills (the number one was Wymack's indulgent heart). Since he was a child he'd devoted considerable time and effort into being self-sufficient. That plus his memory and naturally nosy nature lead him to become a more than adept handyman. Plenty of his skills came from unsavory roots, but his history of theft, b&e's, and car jackings ended up expanding into more official skills during his stint in juvie and then his high school's tech ed department.

Wymack owned two ancient grill-top stoves that were always breaking down but that he refused to replace. He claimed they were like castiron, that he'd cultivated a seasoning on them and he would be damned if he got rid of it. The food just wouldn't taste the same. The first real conversation he and Andrew ever had happened with Andrew's waist deep in the things' guts. From there, Andrew had become the diner's unofficial mechanic, paid under the table in food. It was a good deal, and he'd weaseled plenty of good quality tools out of it too. After four years, there was hardly anything left in the Foxhole that he hadn't patched up, trouble-shot, installed, or rebuilt. (If he spent his down time watching tech specialist YouTube videos, no one had to know).

Wriggling under the stove with the toolkit Wymack left him was familiar. The terrible strained silence of Neil standing at his feet but not saying anything was not. The dead air hung heavy between them as Andrew worked, just the clank and squeal of metal on metal against the omnipresent background hum of the neon lights. Usually Neil would talk, would chatter about stupid useless things he'd seen or heard or thought that he was convinced Andrew would find interesting while Andrew played at irritation. Neil had a soothing voice, it almost didn't matter what he said, except that he was also very good at saying things that got a rise out of Andrew. The hollow silence echoed off the wall dropped between them.

He missed the sound of Neil's voice. He missed the dumb things Neil talked about. He missed hearing about Neil's stupid, batshit life. He missed Neil's fidgety body language and careful hands and his ringing laugh and pensive eyes and wicked smile. He missed Neil.

'Well too fucking bad, idiot," he thought to himself,"You can't have him back.'

Wrapped up in his self-pity, Andrew lost his concentration and when he yanked too hard on the stuck pipe obstructing the fuel line it came out full force faster than he expected. The side of his hand glanced off a sharp metal edge, tearing through his skin with a jagged burst of pain. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a gasp, dropping his wrench and curling his hand to his chest.

At his feet, Neil jumped in alarm, exclaiming, "Andrew! What happened? Are you okay?"

Examining his hand, Andrew found a gash along the thick side of his palm that was long but not as deep as he'd expected. Checking that he could still form a fist, and then deeming the injury superficial, he grunted back, "Nothing," at Neil, grabbed his wrench and went back to work. Blood dripped down his wrist and he would need to wash his armbands and shirt when he got home, but he was almost finished anyway. He could wait five minutes to get a bandaid. The pain righted his head, drove out all his pointless angst and grounded him in the moment. Maybe he deserved it.

Sliding out of the stove, he found Neil hovering uncomfortably close. Once he stood up Neil leaned in even closer, brows furrowed and mouth pinched down. He was too close, Andrew would have stepped back but he had nowhere to go, so instead he angled his head away at the other side of the room and refused to look at Neil.

"It should work now," he grumbled, and prepared to push past Neil to get some space.

But Neil, idiot that he was, didn't even acknowledge what he said. "You're bleeding," he said instead, reaching down for Andrew's hand. He didn't touch, just hovered his fingers near Andrew's wrist and watched his face for a sign.

And Neil's devotion to respecting Andrew's bodily autonomy was far more painful than his hand.

Andrew jerked his arm out of the way and shoved past Neil. "It's nothing," he growled.

Except Neil had also never tolerated Andrew's bullshit, either. He whipped around to get in Andrew's way, putting his hands up to hover in front of Andrew's shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. They were nose to nose. "Let me see," Neil demanded." Then his voice softened, worry and concern and all the things he shouldn't feel for Andrew - not ever, definitely not anymore - as he hovered his hands at Andrew's wrist again, "You're hurt."

"It's nothing," Andrew repeated, but he let Neil take his hand and raise it up to his face to examine the damage.

Andrew watched Neil's face as he looked. His hand was drenched in blood, but hand wounds bled. It wasn't worth getting worked up over. But Neil's brow knit together and he looked so goddamned concerned as he assessed the ragged wound.

He was so close. Their toes touched. Andrew could count his stickers and freckles and goddamn eyelashes. The last time they'd been so close...

And all at once it was too much. It all came back in the awful, hyper-vivid detail that Andrew's perfect memory rendered all his worst memories in.

...

He remembered the obnoxious customer that wouldn't stop hitting on Neil, some asshole on a business trip who thought his expensive suit meant he could do whatever he wanted to the poor country bumpkins in a diner in the middle of nowhere. He'd been slimy, lewd, and obviously thought he was very suave. He'd kept sliding his paws all over Neil every chance he could, over the backs of his hands and up his arms. No matter how much Neil had shaken him off, he'd kept grabbing and leering and whispering filth about what he could do, what he could offer, as if Andrew couldn't hear him. But Neil had warned him off already, and Neil was a big boy who could fight his own battles, he could handle himself once this sleezebbag finally stepped over the final line. Andrew didn't own him.

It hadn't stopped him from grinding his jaw and clenching his fists where he'd leaned against the counter, stroking the knives in his armbands and never taking his eyes off the two. It was when the bastard leaned up and whispered something in Neil's ear that made his eyes blaze and he had turned his back to storm away, and the sack of shit slapped his ass with a laugh that Andrew had finally snapped.

Neil had whipped around like a hurricane to tear the guy a new one but Andrew had been across the room like lightning. He'd snapped the perve's head back with a fist, felt his nose crack underneath it. Grabbing the guy's hand, he'd squeezed and twisted until something snapped. Then he'd pressed a knife against the pig's throat and held it there, cutting a thin red line against his nice white skin. He'd been screaming and crying and blubbering, getting blood and tears and snot all over his nice expensive suit, but Andrew had been unmoved. He'd been going to look piggy in the eye when he cut open his jugular.

Only Neil's hand waving placidly in his face had distracted him. Without letting go of his grip, Andrew had turned his head to look at Neil hovering to his side. Boredly, he'd drawled, "Let him go, Andrew. He's not worth the investigation."

Piggy had sobbed even louder, so Andrew'd pressed his knife a little more into his throat to shut him up, but hadn't taken his eys off Neil's. "He touched you," he'd snarled, voice deadly and precise.

Neil'd rolled his eyes, "And I was going to deal with it. You're not my fucking boyfriend, Andrew. Let go."

For a second Andrew had held perfectly still, then all at once dropped the blubbering coward like he was diseased. He'd fallen forward sobbing and gasping as Andrew and Neil had regarded him dispassionately.

Neil had leaned down until they were level, and grinned, "Well I'd say you've learned a lesson here about not touching people without their consent. Be grateful you get to walk away. Now," his voice had become razor sharp, "Get the fuck out of my diner."

When piggy hadn't responded right away and just continued crying on the table, smearing blood and snot everywhere, Andrew had grabbed him by the hair and dragged him - tripping and tumbling and clutching his broken hand - across the restaurant, throwing him bodily out the door.

Turning his back, Andrew's eyes had latched automatically onto Neil, checking for any hurts he might be hiding. He'd seemed unruffled, body loose and expression untroubled except for the overexaggerated scrunch of his nose where he regarded the booth where the son of a bitch had been sitting.

He'd looked at Andrew and whined, "He pissed himself, Andrew, that's so gross." When Andrew'd pulled up beside him and just shrugged, Neil had pursed his lips in a fake-annoyed scowl. "You know I need to clean that up," he'd complained, "I should make you do it, it's your mess." He hadn't, though. Neil had went to get the bleach and cleaning supplies, muttering under his breath just loud enough to make sure Andrew heard, "blood and piss, great, awesome. Dumb pervert has to go and make my night even worse, can't even face down a knife, what a -" until the sound of his voice had faded away.

Left alone, Andrew had taken stock of himself, feeling the tension still pulling his muscles. He had felt supercharged, out of control. Seeing someone lay hands on Neil like that had snapped something in him and he hadn't known how to handle it. He'd been on a knife's edge when he'd attacked, ready to tear the scumbag's throat out, and he'd still been on that knife's edge ten minutes later, while Neil had mopped, scrubbed, and bleached down the whole area, complaining theatrically the entire time. Andrew hadn't heard any of it, he'd stood stock still staring at his knife, tipping a drop of blood back and forth methodically across the blade. Looking at Neil had felt too dangerous.

He hadn't noticed the room had gone silent for a long time. Eventually, he'd looked up from his knife at Neil hovering in front of him, hair pulled back and latex gloves on, still holding the mop. "Hey," he'd murmured, to get Andrew's attention, and Andrew had searched his face and found nothing dark lingering there. "You didn't have to do that. I was about to give that creep hell, and I could've handled myself fine, but," he'd smiled a little, just a little quirk at the edge of his lips, and his voice had gotten too earnest, his eyes too soft, "Thanks, anyway."

Then he'd snatched the bloody knife out of Andrew's hand with a, "Now gimme that," and disappeared again.

Everything had gone blurry, Neil and his little smiles and his blue eyes and his sass and the snowflake stickers on his cheeks and the timbre of his voice had echoed all around Andrew, through him. So goddamn loud, until there hadn't been anything else.

Then Neil was back, all cleaned up, moving in high definition through an indistinct world, saying, "Maybe you should be my boyfriend." Then he'd laughed, like it'd been funny. He'd handed Andrew his knife back, cleaned, and Andrew hadn't even felf it in his hand, had just felt the elctric spark of Neil's fingers against his own. "Anyone tries to hit on me again, I can just go, 'Nah, that's my boyfriend over there, he's super protective' or 'Sorry, can't. I've got boyfriend. Yea it's really serious.'" Everything had started spinning, but Neil had just kept talking. "Oh! Dan and Matt and Alli are always tring to talk me into blind dates or whatever. If I tell them you're my boyfriend they'll finally stop! They'll also have a conniption. It's perfect-"

Something must have clued him in that something was wrong, maybe the look on Andrew's face, because he'd cut himself off abruptly. Then, hesitantly, he'd asked, "Andrew? Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Then he'd been back in front of Andrew again, with his eyes and his hair and his scars and his freckles and his stickers and and and

"I'm just joking, alright?"

And Andrew had snapped.

He'd surged forward, wrapping one hand around the back of Neil's head and the other around his waist and dragged him in, crashing their mouths together in a paniced, frantic, broken-hearted kiss that would linger on Andrew's mouth until the day he died. He'd kissed Neil with all his wild, nameless emotions that he couldn't reign in anymore. He'd kissed Neil for all his smiles and his laughter and quiet understanding. He'd kissed Neil for all the times he'd thought about him as he fell asleep and then again when he woke up. He'd kissed Neil like he'd always, always wanted to.

And Neil hadn't kissed him back.

Neil hadn't kissed him back but hadn't... not kissed him back, hadn't pulled away, hadn't slapped him or yelled or run. Had gone completely still and soft in Andrew's arms, had let Andrew pull him so close and kiss him desperatly until he couldn't breathe anymore, trying to let him know "this is what you do to me; this is what I could do to you."

Then Andrew had pulled back with a jerk and a gasp and looked at what he'd done with the shock of a man who'd just pushed the button on the atomic bomb.

Neil's eyelashes had fluttered against his cheeks and his lips been parted, but when he'd opened his eyes they'd been nothing but dazed and confused.

"Andrew," Neil'd tried, shaky and lost, "Andrew, what..." Andrew'd felt the bomb go off.

"Why did you..." He'd seen the mushroom cloud; he'd still had a hand on Neil's waist.

"I don't..." No survivors.

So Andrew had thrown him backwards, had removed his hands from Neil like he burned to the touch (and he did, the feel of him was burned permanently into Andrew's skin), and run. He'd heard Neil call out "Wait!" behind him, but he'd already been gone. Out the door, in his car, and hitting the road as fast as his spedometer would allow, the trees and the signs and the asphalt blurring together into one bleak, gray blur as he'd smashed the speed limit to smithereens to get away from the worst, stupidest thing he'd ever done.

He'd kissed Neil without asking. Neil, who wasn't interested, who was all but repelled by sex and relationships, who would rather lie to his friends about a fake boyfriend than have them ask him about his dating life again. He'd kissed Neil without asking right after breaking a man's hand and nose for touching him. He'd torn everything between him and Neil to shreds, lit it on fire, and pissed in the ashes. He'd destroyed everything.

When'd he'd gotten back to the house in Columbia the sun had been just cresting the horizon, orange. He'd crawled into bed, numb, and pulled his sheets over his head. He'd wished he could fall asleep so he could never wake up.

...

He shouldn't have come back to the Foxhole. He should have cut his losses and let Neil go, let him recover and move on and hopefully never have to think about Andrew again.

But he was weak, so weak, and he'd come crawling back. And there Neil was, like a dream, covered in hearts, looking at Andrew like he cared he'd been gone, like he'd wanted him to come back, taking his hand, cleaning his wound.

It was all too much.

They sat across from each other at a booth with the first aid kit between them, Andrew's injured hand in both of Neil's as he cleaned off the blood, applied antibiotic, and wrapped it in a bandage. Frank Sinatra drifted over from the jukebox, low and sad.

Even once he'd finished, Neil didn't let go of Andrew's hand. He held it gently in both of his and ducked his head, avoiding Andrew's eyes. Then, he said, "I want to talk about it," low and solemn.

Andrew's shoulders tensed up immediately and he tried to jerk his hand back, but Neil didn't let go. He held on tight and turned his blue eyes on Andrew, blazing. "No," he hissed, "you don't get to run away again. You owe me an explanation at least."

Andrew stared at him, rocks in his throat. All he managed to ground out was, "I shouldn't have done it."

Neil looked sad at that, lost and confused. "Then why did you?"

Why had he? Because he was crazy? Because he was stupid? Because he was self-destructive? Because he dreamed about holding Neil's hand and running his fingers through his hair? Because it hurt too much to hear Neil laugh at the idea of them being together?

In the end, though, all he said was, "I couldn't stop myself."

Neil ran his fingers along Andrew's pensively. "So you wanted to-" he stuttered, "You want to- Kiss me, and all that stuff. You like me, like that."

Andrew was far too deep for denial anymore. He'd already dug his grave, time to lay in it. "Yes."

"You never said anything."

Andrew paused, took a long breath in and let it out slowly. Of course he'd never said anything. Just being in Neil's presence was enough - should have been enough - confessing would only have driven a rift of expectation between them. "There was no point," he said finally, "You don't see people like that."

"How do you know?" Neil snapped, and for a moment the whole world froze. But then it broke again just as fast. Andrew knew better than to get his hopes up. Why Neil was toying with him like this he didn't know. Maybe it was revenge.

"You said, Neil," Andrew reminded him, "Over and over. You don't feel that way about people."

Neil curled forward, tucking his chin to examine their hands, his fingers playingnervously over Andrew's. "What if I was wrong?" he asked, "What if I can feel that way?" He leaned his head back to look in Andrew's face beseechingly, "What if I do?"

If this was revenge, it was the coldest, cruelest kind. Andrew would rather Neil hit him, screamed at him, cursed his name and thrown him out than play these games with him.

And if he meant it? That was even worse. If the only way Neil could conceptualize a friend violating him like Andrew had was by tricking himself into thinking he felt something back, that was worse than any physical pain.

He extracted his hand from Neil's, lay Neil's hands down flat on the table and drew his own back into his lap. "I kissed you," he began, "And it was wrong. I didn't ask, I just took it from you." He spoke as callously and apathetically as he could, so his voice wouldn't shake, wouldn't betray him, "Don't try to justify it. Don't delude yourself out of some misplaced sense of obligation."

In an instant, Neil's face flared with fury. He slammed his hands on the table hard enough to shake it. "Don’t tell me how I feel!" he shouted.

Then the anger melted away as fast as it appeared, replaced with something nascent and vulnerable. He curled his hands together shakily. "I don't know what I feel," he whispered, "I don't know anything," Then he curled his hands into fists, and his voice became resolute, "But neither do you. All I know is I want to try again."

That was it, that went over the line Andrew had already pushed and pushed to the breaking point. He couldn't handle this anymore. He roared, rose out of his seat, "I fucking assaulted you, Neil!"

But Neil flashed right back, "You surprised me!" They met in the middle, raging, and both backed down. Neil slid his hands palms down across the table, entreating, never breaking eye contact. "I was shocked... and confused," he began, "But you didn't hurt me." Andrew recoiled, very slightly, even though he wanted to reach out for the hand Neil offered. "Whatever you think you did," he breathed," You're wrong. Whatever mistake you think you made, I forgive you." It tasted like absolution, too good to be true, and Andrew felt his body collapse in on itself in relief. He could breathe again, the vice on his chest released.

And Neil just kept talking. He nudged Andrew's fingers with his own, sliding underneath to take his hand. "I can't stop thinking about it, Andrew," he whispered, "About you." Slowly, he rose from his seat and swung around the table, leaning closer and closer. "When you left, I-" he faltered, face darkening, "And when you didn't come back..." he bit his lip, eye clouded. Then with a shake he continued, even more insistent than before. "That hurt, more than anything else. I was..." he was so close, speaking so softly, "Scared, that I'd never see you again." They were toe to toe, Andrew tilting his head back to look at Neil standing above him. He couldn't move. Neil cupped his hand between them. "I don't know what will come from it," he admitted, "But I have to try, okay?" He raised Andrew's hand up to his face, "I have to know," pressed it against his cheek, "So ask me."

Andrew was frozen, choking on his heart in his throat. He couldn't respond, couldn't move, could only stare wide eyed up at Neil.

Neil took a halfstep back and brought Andrew with him, tugging him to his feet until they were nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye. He hovered a hand next to Andrew's face, not touching, not yet. When he spoke, Andrew felt the breath on his lips, "Andrew, kiss me again."

He leaned into Neil's hand, felt it brush agaist his skin in a rush. He brought his other hand, dangling at his side, up and wrapped it around Neil waist, pulling him in until their lips were the only parts of them not touching. "I'm going to kiss you," he breathed, "Yes or no?"

"Yes," Neil said, eyes already falling closed, already leaning in the last inch.

So Andrew kissed him, and Neil kissed back.

#@aftgexchange #@black-glasses-and-books #aftg #andreil #fic #diner au #my posts

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doodlingstuff · 3 years

Text

Together Away

Here’s some belated Christmas fluff. Hope you like :)

---

The Foxes had been scattered around the world for a full year, counting on the days to gather for Christmas and be finally united again like those years when they still went to Palmetto. Alas, weather has other plans and they all end stuck far away from each other.

Keep reading here or head to AO3.

Comments, asks or requests? Let me know!

“Babe, help with the luggage?”

“Mhm.”

Allison stopped circling their tiny apartment in Paris to watch over Seth’s shoulder. He’s sprawled on the couch, with no intentions on sight of moving. Not before harvesting his virtual plantation of grapes, eggplants and watermelons.

“You know you can do that during the flight, right? We’ll have an entire ten hours of literally nothing.”

“Something can grow in the meantime. Just a sec.”

The blond rolled her eyes in apparent disgust. Truth is, she loved how adorable Seth looked when he was focused so intensely in something so banal as Farmville. But she wouldn’t admit it in a million years. Instead, she gets herself busy double checking for the thirteenth time that they got everything they need for their holiday in New York.

“Come on honey, Renee’s plane will land in thirty minutes.”

With a reluctant growl, Seth finally blocks the phone and tucks it away in his pocket. They are on their way to the airport a few minutes after.

***

“Do you think the snow will cause them any trouble?” Dan asks while watching the white fluff drift slowly to the pavement. She’s seen snow before, however, it never ceases to amaze her the way clouds can produce such a beautiful show. Inconvenient, but beautiful nonetheless.

“Of course... Ah! Of course not. It’s snowed the other years too.” Matt answered while scrambling in the floor with their daughter, Eva.

“He’s right. There’s nothing to worry about. Come on, teach me again that punch recipe you do every year.” Randy adds.

Dan motions herself far from the window and inside the kitchen. Mother and son are both right. Previous years had snowed and that hadn’t stopped the Foxes to gather for Christmas. Just because this year everyone was out of school and scattered around the world didn’t mean they wouldn’t be together.

She takes the tension away and starts repeating her punch recipe for Randy.

***

For Andrew’s annoyance, Neil is tucked beside the radiator again. A human burrito rolled in a blanket, topped with a side of cats enjoying the warm. Andrew takes in the ridiculousness of his junkie for a couple minutes before he’s had enough. Reluctantly, he leaves the mug of hot chocolate on the counter and moves towards Neil.

“It’s not that cold.”

“I know, but it’s warmer here.” Responds the striker while laying back his head. Cheeks too close to the heat. Andrew only sighs before returning to his drink.

Anyone would assume that after Neil’s disgusting experiences with irons and lighters, the idiot would avoid hot sources at all costs by now. Apparently, the cold he had passed while on the run was still a bigger concern than the burns.

The goalkeeper only lasts another couple of minutes before getting the cats out of his way to sit beside Neil.

“You do realize it’s only going to feel colder once we have to get out, don’t you?”

“We have a couple hours. I’ll be fine.”

It’s been his first year in a pro team. They both struggled, they both were lonely. The snow storm almost made them get stuck again far from each other, but they managed to meet in Columbia, just like when they were still in college, so when Neil cuddles beside Andrew even knowing they’ll be taking a plane to New York in a couple hours, the blond doesn’t complain and lets his rabbit take a nap on his shoulder. At least his face is far from the direct heat like that.

***

“Oh my God! This can’t be happening to me. This. Cannot. Be. Happening.”

Nicky covers his face defeated after watching the highway to the airport all covered in white, cars parked for as long as he can see.

“What’s wrong?” Erik gets a hand out from the steering wheel towards Nicky, oblivious to the freezing rebellion going on outside the car.

“The freaking snow storm is wild. The flight will get cancelled. We won’t make it. And I haven’t seen the Foxes in a year. A full year dear! I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.”

For Nicky, everything always seems like the end of the world, but Erik has grown around snow storms like that. He trusts the flights won’t be affected, at least not for long, and his lovely husband will get to see his friends.

“It’s just snow. I’m sure it’s going to be alright.” Erik assures Nicky while holding his hand. “Let’s hear the news.”

***

An unprecedented wave of cold weather had parked in the northern hemisphere of the globe. Almost every country in Europe is covered in snow, and while we get beautiful postcards from the frozen landscapes this eventuality has given us, most flights have been delayed or cancelled until the storms recede.

In America things don’t look better, either. Canada has closed all highways; several cities had reported problems with electricity and authorities are asking for everyone to stay at home. Some cities in the USA are doing the same. Flights coming and going to the Northeast, especially New York, had been canceled or delayed until further notice.

This will be in fact a very white Christmas kids are already taking advantage of. While transportation is having a nightmare time, incredible snowmen of all kinds and sizes are built along the streets as snow balls are thrown happily by the ones who are taking advantage of this extreme weather...

***

“So, we are stuck here. Awesome.”

“At least we are together.” Renee replied to Allison’s whine. Seth and her had managed to get to the airport just in time to greet Renee and Jean. A few minutes after, every TV on the airport was breaking the news for them, followed by the official announcements from the airlines.

Jean, still used to bad luck, had only shrugged and gone away to find coffee for them, while Seth looked for a corner to resume playing Farmville.

Allison had tried by all means to find another flight to New York but it was of no use. They were stuck in the airport until further notice. At least Renee and Jean were able to join them instead or being thrown in another country.

***

“I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it!” Dan was biting her nails while walking from one way to other in the living room.

“Dan, you talk like it’s your fault.” Matt had covered a tired Eve sleeping on the couch and is motioning to take Dan in his arms.

“Because it is! I was the one who thought a good idea to meet here! We should’ve gone to Abby’s like every year.”

“First of all, it was a great idea to meet here if everyone was scattered. Second, they all agreed, and third, you weren’t the one making this shitty snowstorm, were you? I didn’t marry princess Ana as long as I’m concerned.”

“It’s Elsa.” Dan corrects him “And I didn’t bring the storm, but I jinxed this and... I wanted so bad to see them.”

“I want it to. Give it sometime, maybe the weather clears and they arrive.”

Matt hates so much when he can’t make Dan feel better, but there’s nothing more he can do about the weather, so he only takes her wife in a tight embrace, reminding her they all been through worse than a few snowflakes.

***

The snow falling is not so bad when there’s thick walls and calefaction separating it from Neil. He’s lost in memories of his previous lives, overlapping with good memories from the Christmas he had spent with the Foxes. He allows Andrew to stay close, but he is also lost in his own past.

Luggage is waiting on the door. They won’t be flying to meet the others and that was what made Neil lose the spark of happiness he was still feeling. Despite the ghosts of previous holiday celebrations organized by Drake, Andrew finds enough strength to get out of his own haze and turns to watch his junkie. It hurts him somehow seeing his happy rabbit long faced because there is nowhere to run with that weather. But it's not that bad there, so Andrew had an idea.

“Take that off. Come on.”

It takes a full minute for the auburn haired to acknowledge the command was for him, not the cats. “What?”

“Said come on. You look pathetic. Another minute of that and I’d rather die of cold outside.”

“Where are you going?” Neils asks as he sees Andrew picking the keys and their luggage.

“Out. Are you coming or I need to drag you?”

“But...” The striker is still one third inside his memories, one third disappointed because he’s not meeting the Foxes and another third trying to be grateful that at least Andrew is with him.

“Yes or no?”

“Still always yes.”

With that, the blond grabs Neil’s wrists and puts enough clothes on both of them so they don’t freeze on their way to the car. In a couple strides, they are on the road and warm again.

How important is the junkie that Andrew is driving on the frozen road instead of entertaining himself with more hot cocoa and some cakes with the TV tuned to a silly show.

***

When Nicky wakes up, he realizes the landscape is not familiar anymore. Erik is chanting a Christmas carol playing low on the radio. Their fly got cancelled, and the man had enough joy left to be singing. How he was capable was way out of Nicky’s comprehension.

“We’re not even near home now.” Nicky complained, so certain the surroundings seemed alien only because of the storm.

“No, not by far, but we almost arrive. Take another nap if you want. I’ll wake up when we get there.”

Nicky is too deflated by the bad news to protest or question, so he lets himself get carried away by the slow motion of the car and Erik’s soft voice singing again along with the music.

***

“We weren’t expecting to be back here until March, so there’s nothing else to eat.” Allison said as she took out a few cans from the pantry.

“Don’t worry, Jean and I brought things to share on the dinner, we can have them now.”

Allison, Renee, Seth and Jean returned to the Reynolds apartment -because there was no way Allison turned herself into a Gordon and the man hadn’t any say on it- after being sure their trip was cancelled.

Surprisingly enough, the guys were getting along just fine and Jean was listening all about Farmville like it was the revelation of the century. Poor Renee, she’ll have a hard time making him snap back to reality if the man was taking the game as serious as Seth had. It was only a virtual farm.

Renee’s smile made Allison forget about the damn game as she showed all the trinkets and snacks she had gathered from her trips around the world, plus a special selection of French delights Jean had picked on their way from the airport once he saw one the few stores he remembered from his time living there.

It wasn’t much, but they were going to make it work as their Christmas dinner.

Although Renee was putting all of her to be cheerful regardless their change of plans, her enthusiasm was melting away fast as she took in the empty house without the rest of the Foxes laughter.

Any other year, by this time, they would all be gathered in Abby’s kitchen, making a mess while preparing a full dinner worthy of half an army of hungry athletes.

After a while, even Seth felt the absence of his teammates and dropped the phone away. The doorbell rang at the same time the phone clashed on the couch.

***

There’s only a certain amount of news a man can take on Christmas, and Matt had reached his. They had scrolled through every single channel in hopes for someone to have a positive take on the weather, but it didn’t depend on them, so instead, he had listened to Randy, and they were watching half-heartedly one of the Foxes favorite Christmas movies.

It was hard. Neither could avoid remembering their first time watching it. Kevin’s confused face, Neil’s dumb questions about everything happening on screen. Allison’s and Seth’s noises once they got tired of watching and started making out in front of the rest. Good old times.

Matt could feel Dan holding back a sob. She still felt guilty for no reason. So, when their phones started to dance across the coffee table, she retreated from them, as if expecting bad news. Her husband picked his phone. It must be bad news if Andrew was the one calling.

***

The road to Abby’s house took longer because of the slippery road, but they made it in one piece. Kevin’s car was already parked.

Andrew took the things they bought on their way out and headed for the door without seeing if Neil was following. He rang the bell and waited. It took the same for the people inside to open, than for the junkie to get out of his stupidity and join him.

Thea was the one greeting them. Before she could say anything, a dark rocket was colliding with the blond man.

“Uncle Andrew!”

The screech from the tiny devil made David and Wymack turn from the TV.

“Let them in Amalia, come on.”

Both men got in and greeted the people inside. Abby was in the kitchen, delighted when she saw Andrew had gotten things for making his now infamous apple pie. As soon as Neil noticed father and son were watching a rerun from the Class I final match, he joined them and left Andrew alone with the women.

Because six hands worked faster than four, and now Amalia was entertained helping uncle Neil replay the best shots of the game, dinner was ready by the time the match was over. Everyone gathered around the table. Of course, for Kevin’s disgust, Amalia had chosen to seat between Andrew and Neil. They were about to start, when Neil paused them.

“I just wish everyone else could join.”

Wymack let out a heavy sigh, the same kind he reserved for when he was really exasperated. “You are one of the best Exy players of the country, you got a degree on math and you still don’t know how to FaceTime? Please someone remind me why I still have him around.”

“Tell me.” Andrew replied while taking his phone out.

***

Nicky swears it has only been a couple minutes when his incredible man wakes him up gently.

It takes Nicky one, two, three minutes to notice they are not in Germany anymore.

“Are you a secret serial killer and you only kidnapped me now? Where are we? Oh, don’t tell me, just make it fast. I have no reasons to live this year anyway.”

Erik lets out a soft laugh before answering. “It’s Paris. Thought that you could at least see some of your friends.”

If Nicky wasn’t already head over hills for his precious Erik, he was then.

***

“Nicky? Erik? What the fuck?”

Seth’s strange greeting makes Allison and Renee get up in a heartbeat. The movie they were trying to watch lost all the interest the moment everyone saw the happy couple at the doorstep.

“So, our flight got cancelled too, but this amazing human being drove all the way here just to meet you after I told him your flights were cancelled too.”

“Roads weren’t closed and I couldn’t see Nicholas sad on Christmas.”

“That’s sweeter than when you took me out of the Nest.” Renee smiled before she melted in Jean’s arms.

“You spent half the night driving here only to see Nicky happy? Seth plays Farmville the whole day.”

“Hey! We had sex in the morning and I’m not playing now. Come on in, how bad is the storm?”

In no time everyone got settled. Nicky and Erik also brought the presents meant to be shared with all the Foxes. It was too late, and they were missing lots of people, but it was so much better than nothing at all. The table was rearranged, Nicky was so elated to be there than even Seth looked happy. They got ready to start on their improvised dinner-which seemed more like a very early breakfast- when Renee’s phone rang inside her purse.

Then Allison’s.

Nicky’s followed.

After was Seth’s. Then Jean’s.

Even Erik’s phone rang.

***

Laptops on tables took lot of space, but the Foxes wouldn’t change it for the world.

Dan’s spirits lifted instantly when Andrew told them about the collective video call. It was only a matter of seconds before she had the table ready again. Matt couldn’t be more relieved seeing his wife was back on track being the leader organizing their meeting.

Allison and Nicky fought over the best position to set their computer until Renee broke them apart and picked the perfect spot at the first try. Seth, Erik and Jean only waited until they could join again and start eating.

Neil was grinning from ear to ear as he called Katelyn to invite her and Aaron into their reunion too. Thea pulled out her laptop and set it where everyone could be heard and seen. No one scolded Andrew when he gave Kevin a flap after he complained for the interruption in his next Exy match and they all laughed when Amalia ran to copy his uncle.

Some of the dinners were too big, others too fancy, others too improvised, but it didn’t matter. They chattered, they laughed, they told jokes and set new bets. Their reunion was nothing like the beautiful chaos they had gotten used to along their years at Palmetto, but it was still a mess of laughs, and good tears, interrupted by Kevin’s never-ending concern for Exy, the twins’ apparent indifference when anyone directed a comment towards them, Renee’s sweet smiles to everyone and Allison’s fights with Nicky. Dan was delighted to see their Foxes gathered. Matt was as cheerful as always talking to everyone before the conversation turned fully about Eva and Amalia before Erik mentioned his dogs and then the calm became a debate of cats versus dogs.

Coach never meant to have kids. He didn’t intend to even had Neil and Andrew on the house that year, but if he was told to do all over again, after every single pain, fight and tragedy he had witnessed over the years, only to see all his Foxes united like that, he will do it without complains every time he was told to, because even with everyone away, he knew they would always remain together through the best and the worst. Just like all good families do.

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xlady-saya · 4 years

Text

I’ve had a love of my own [ch. 4]

Relationships: andrew/neil

Summary: Despite everything Neil could’ve imagined for his life, he never thought he’d be here, finally giving the world the interview they’ve always wanted.

It’s been decades, but even with his numerous accolades and sports wins, he finds that they’re the least important thing about his life.

Neil can’t help but laugh. Andrew would be so annoyed if he were here.

Of course, Neil only wants to talk about him, and the life they spent together.

Tags: interviews, post canon, major character death but not how u think I swear lol, neil is an old man retelling his memories about andrew, cheesy romance, post retirement, see more tags on ao3

Read on ao3!

Rayah hands him tissues, but Neil passes them back.

She needs them.

Blake too, from the snot he's trying to wipe on the back of his hand. Weird, how Neil doesn't necessarily view this as a fond memory, or even the most important one he has to offer. It happened though, but he sees it more as a halfway point.

His journey with Andrew had really only begun, and he hadn't even known. So much time left, not infinite, but vast.

"You must've been so afraid," Rayah says, blowing into the tissue enough for Neil to lean back. He's glad they're there to break up the memory, he's become weak in his old age. Memories of the past can't come back to hurt him, Andrew taught him that.

Still, they can feel like barbed wire around his throat.

"I was," Neil affirms, checking his watch. Sydney will be due back soon, he can't linger much longer. "Andrew's reaction then was almost worse than the one on the court. Andrew was never violent with me, but I'd seen him lose control, I'd seen his rage. It had been so long...that was the first time in a long time he really looked like he wanted to tear the world apart."

Neil finally had a vague idea of what Baltimore was like for everyone else, and he finds himself grinning down at his hands.

"Funny, I was so worried about leaving Andrew," Neil mentions, and watches both Blake and Rayah freeze. When had they started hanging onto his words? He shakes his head, touching the watch on his wrist. "But now I'm here."

At their sad faces, he corrects himself, holding up his hands with a laugh. "No no, I don't see it the way I saw it then!" In fact, he sees it more how Andrew saw it. There was no way for them to be apart after everything they'd been through together. Neil's smile fades, his words serious, and he moves the recorder a little closer. His voice is crystal clear when he says: "Andrew didn't leave me. I was not abandoned."

He could never be abandoned by Andrew. Andrew helped him be at a place where he could never feel that way, and he did the same in return for Andrew. Had Neil gone first, he knows the blond would've managed in much the same way. As much as he would've mourned, he would've had his brother, the rest of their family. All of Neil's excessive Palmetto merch and memorabilia to look after...

They were never each other's answers, just something they didn't want to be without.

"I think I actually ended up being kind of happy, not when he died but later. Andrew's final act was a selfish one. He didn't want to be here without me, so he made sure it wouldn't happen."

Neil finds himself feeling smug, despite his aching. Andrew was someone who always did things for others, despite what he tried to convince people of. Knowing his last act was completely for himself...

Neil couldn't be prouder.

Okay, so he's not going to be able to remain strong. Neil grabs the tissues petulantly, overcome with it. He blames Andrew. "The bastard."

They look away out of respect while he sorts himself out, hands clasped.

Rayah's mascara smears a little when she goes to wipe her red eyes, sticky on her finger, and Blake is so engrossed he doesn't notice when she wipes it against his clean white shirt. He leans forward after a moment, and Neil isn't surprised. A reporter's curiosity is never sated. There's a fire in his eyes, urging Neil on. "What happened next?"

Ha. Now isn't that an interesting question?

Regardless of how terrified Neil felt in the moment, his smile has a smug edge to it when he recalls the night he arrived, the sound of a cane echoing at the back of Neil's head.

He leans back, and keeps his voice low. "They did eventually come."

One night, just as time bleeds over into the next day, there's a click of a lock that reverberates through their entire flat.

Neil instantly knows; the click is akin to a gunshot, a timer going off. No more hiding, nowhere to run.

At least Neil still has some of his reflexes.

Andrew shoots up, knife in hand in half a second, and Neil grabs his own legs like they can save him one last time. No, not himself, Andrew.

His legs, still wrapped up and healing, are not nearly ready for any excessive movements. Neil doesn't care; he throws them over Andrew as quick as he can, and cries out when they land.

It's excruciating.

Movement shouldn't be possible, but Neil has never listened to doctor's orders. The pain is the consequence; it's a blow torch on his tendons, searing every nerve and joint it can. His scream breaks off into strangled gasps, and he feels Andrew halt completely.

It's a dirty trick, but necessary.

Andrew's scowl is almost worse than the blaze of his joints, but Neil doesn't back down. He doesn't weigh much; Andrew could throw him aside with ease. But he won't. Neil's legs are pushed firmly in his lap, resting against his abdomen, pinning Andrew between his own body and the headboard.

There's no way to lunge without hurting Neil, and despite the way Andrew must be weighing the pros and cons of it in his head, Neil is his weak spot. Andrew edges forward in warning, but Neil digs his heels in and whimpers.

"Andrew," he pleads, and the sound from Andrew's throat makes him feel sick.

"Fuck off, Neil," he replies, teeth bared. It's unfair, he gets it. Andrew never got to fight, last time he didn't even know Neil would be taken away. But Neil can't, he just can't--

"No."

Stay down.

Neil wants Andrew to let him fight first, let him try his luck one more time. Andrew's scathing response is cut short by tap of shoes on their hardwood, and they silence themselves, fixated on the door.

Ichirou never follows anyone's schedule but his own. He walks leisurely, calm, and without care for the panic he's caused. His cane clicks offbeat with his footsteps, the sound disjointed and not nearly as polished as the rest of him usually seems.

Neil watches the shadow on the wall grow larger and more distorted, until it finally forms the thin silhouette of the reaper himself.

He never got tired of silk suits, Neil notes. They fit a little better now though; Ichirou has filled them in, not just physically. Neil forgets how young he is, it's been so long since they've seen each other, but he remembers how even someone as menacing and cold as Ichirou had looked new, not yet settled into his role.

That Ichirou is gone.

He walks into the room, ramrod straight and poised, with an air of superiority not many people other than himself and perhaps Allison Reynolds can pull off. It nearly has Neil turning to face him, but he won't, for sake of letting Andrew loose.

Andrew snarls under his breath, but Ichirou's entrance into the room, while dramatic, isn't anything particularly foreboding. In fact, he grabs one of their crappy folding chairs, one Neil's physical therapist uses, and drags it across the room after some consideration. It throws Neil off almost immediately, and the subtle scrape of the chair legs grate on his nerves. However, he hopes it means Ichirou is here to talk.

While Neil knew realistically that would happen, a swift execution wouldn't have surprised him.

Ichirou places the chair down a few feet from them, and the thump of it puts a silencer on the world around them. The street below doesn't dare make a peep. Ichirou regards their positions with an edge of amusement, but lingers on Neil's legs.

"I'll admit I did not know what to expect," he speaks, and his voice reminds Neil of the embers of a fire. Grave, subdued, and ready to be stroked into something far more devastating.

"Lord," Neil replies, and he bows his head despite how much it makes the lump in his throat all the more constricting. "I've been waiting for you."

"I'm sure you have." Ichirou gestures to Neil's legs calmly, and leaves his hand hanging there until Neil looks. Salt in the wound, but Neil does it. "Your father would be happy."

Fury and resentment spike in Neil's chest, and while it may bleed onto his face, it's not much compared to how Andrew tries to lunge forward. All it takes is Neil's wince to stop him, to send him reeling back and torn between checking on him and not taking his eyes off Ichirou.

Neil is glad for his forethought; he wants Andrew to be safe, but even he can't be completely passive. Neil scowls, letting some of the respect melt away.

He can't help it. The cold smile is on his face before he means it to be, and Ichirou inhales sharply. Neil wonders if it's an acknowledgement of one of his own. "Well he's dead, so we'll never know."

He's dead and rotting somewhere, insignificant.

Even when he's hanging on by a thread himself, Neil's comforted by the memory.

Ichirou's eyes narrow, but it's not a threat in his eyes.

"Someone's feeling bold, though I suppose you always are," he says, humming in the back of his throat. "So close to death all your life, nothing to lose. You've never needed my presence to know that."

Neil bites back all he could say, all the things about his life Ichirou wouldn't care about or label as valuable. He has everything to lose now.

"Lord, I know I'm in no position to ask for favors," he says, and Ichirou nods in agreement. Neil's worth and investment potential have run out, if they're going by the bare bones of his contract. Before he can think better of it, he prioritizes what's important. His voice takes on a desperate edge, a critical mistake in front of someone like Ichirou, but unavoidable. "I'm prepared to make my case but—but leave Andrew out of this. He's not—"

A hand finds the back of his neck and squeezes; it's not painful, never painful, but it startles him enough to make him choke on the rest. Andrew's tone rattles against his brain, warning. "If you try to be a martyr in front of me, I'll kill you before he even gets the chance," Andrew bites at him, and Neil glares at the lie. Always a bad liar. But without acknowledging that, Andrew whips around to Ichirou, and his threat has Neil's blood solidifying. On ice, already. "And you, get out of our house."

Neil's hand flies up to squeeze the blond's arm, but he doesn't have the strength to do much. "Andrew."

Ichirou just chuckles, amused as Neil has ever seen him. Instead of threatening Andrew in return or silencing him right then and there, he leans back in the chair, regarding them like they're some species he's never heard of. "You're lucky I'm not here for you. I'm willing to overlook your rudeness because of what I need to say."

Ichirou doesn't so much as glance at Andrew while he says it, nor anytime after, and Neil feels the blond's trembling pour into him. He straightens, watching the careful tap of Ichirou's finger on the cane, and refuses to let himself jolt when those eyes meet his. Darkness meets an ocean blue, and Neil is thankful for the resemblance to his father now. He hopes Ichirou has just as much trouble navigating the sea of his mind, in finding what's locked away.

"Nathaniel," Ichirou begins, then tilts his head. A correction, one that makes Neil hold his breath. "Neil. Given the circumstances, I'm willing to confess a little here. You've always been an enigma to me. For a long time, I did not know whether to label you as a disgusting leech, or the wolf in the henhouse. Or maybe fox is more appropriate. Either way, you're a particularly giant, conniving thorn in my side."

Good, Neil thinks. He never wants to be that known, that easy to pick apart. He never saw himself as a threat though, regardless of his potential, his willingness to claw and bite. Yet, he never took any pleasure in the pain of others unless they deserved it. That was a big difference between him and his father, something that's perhaps hard for Ichirou to wrap his head around.

Neil never asked him before, he realizes. What did Ichirou think of The Butcher?

As if hearing Neil thinking too hard, Ichirou's eyes pierce through him, holding the thoughts hostage, pinning to a wall.

"There's blood on your hands wherever you go," Ichirou muses. "There are nights where I think I should've killed you. You're too dangerous to be let loose, to be kept alive and constantly bearing down on my throat when I don't even realize it. You are the riskiest investment I ever made, and your retirement should be nothing more than an act of charity from the powers above."

Ichirou looks to his cane then, and taps it once, twice against the floor. "I wonder."

He sits there a beat too long to be comfortable, and that's when he reaches into his suit pocket, as if having made up his mind. All Neil sees is the gun, from that point on.

The air in his lungs is ripped clean out, and that's appropriate. He feels like a husk, with Andrew's pleas in his ear to let him up, now Neil, now. But Neil's mind ignores it all, voice tiny and wheezing. "Lord," he tries, but has no idea what to say. "I--"

What? What does he want?

It's the simplest, most pathetic thing. But all he can think is: not in front of Andrew.

Yes, that's it. Neil's panic flares, and it's not his rabbit instincts for once. He doesn't want to be home anymore. He doesn't want to ruin this place they built together, the place they made their home with all their pictures and souvenirs.

He's an idiot, what was he thinking?

He opens his mouth to say as much, and stops short when Ichirou places the gun on his knee. Andrew's gaze tries to melt the thing until it’s molten, and he's just getting more and more frustrated when that doesn't happen. It's still shiny, and very much there. It's so elegant, so unassuming, for being a deliverer of death.

Andrew keeps trying to make Neil budge, to at least move in front of him like a shield, but Neil refuses. His legs cry out in agony, but he'll ignore it until his last breath.

"I'm not done," Ichirou says, and points the gun at them both for good measure before it's back at his side. Neil tracks it up until Ichirou slams his cane on the hardwood, and pulls Neil's gaze back to him. There's a resignation in his gaze Neil doesn't know what to do with, a question not even Neil can parse. And if he can't understand the weight of this, who can?

"I could finally be rid of you. I could wipe the slate clean of yet another risk. You are the only one who threatens me."

Neil bites his tongue; Ichirou's only half speaking to him. Neil wants to argue he would never, there's nothing about that life, the one Ichirou leads, that Neil could want to steal away.

But Ichirou has to know that. Maybe that's the thing he can't wrap his head around, what makes Neil dangerous.

"But it just so happens that some of that blood on your hands was beneficial to me," Ichirou admits, huffing to himself. "Without you and the stress you put on my family's contacts, the animosity towards Riko...I may not have this throne of mine."

Neil chokes on the realization of where this is leading, but doesn't dare to let himself expect it.

Ichirou leans back again, and takes him in with nothing short of disdain. It's the most expressive Neil has ever seen him, the cool veneer stripped away.

"Make no mistake, I am not giving you credit, not even an ounce of it," Ichirou spits out, then he closes his eyes, breathing in to regain a shred of the composure he had when he walked in. Neil doesn't care, he's too busy staring at the furrow in his brow, at the retreating gun. Ichirou's eyes meet his and they're blazing, but the ring of fire doesn't scathe him. Neil seems to be the one point it can't reach. "You don't deserve it. But with your father gone, with my enemies and all those squabbling liabilities rotting in the ground...I can move freely."

He puts away the gun, as slow and conflicted as the movement is. But it's gone. Hidden. Neil's last stroke of luck. May he never be in need of more.

Andrew sneers, unable to help himself. "That sounds like plenty of credit is due."

Any other moment, Neil would wheeze, would fear retaliation. But Ichirou's just shown him his decision, a mind made up. He won't go back on it once he's crossed that line. It's not in his nature.

Funny. No matter how depraved the code of ethics is, it's still there, clean and outlined.

Ichirou stands, contempt clear as he stares down at them. "Think of this as repayment instead, a courtesy if you will," he mutters. "This will close out our account officially. There are some terms. I'll be happy to take that remaining 80% of your pension, your severance, but after? I want nothing to do with you."

The last syllable is laced with thin disgust, but then Ichirou retreats back into himself. The mask returns, an icy veil which emotions don't stand a chance against.

And well, Neil's always been a little stupid. He exhales shakily, his lungs aching from being so deprived. "You...you're letting me go?"

"I'm letting you become someone else's burden," Ichirou glances at Andrew, at the way his fists are still clenched around Neil. "But do not think me merciful."

He could never.

He understands their relationship, or rather, the end of it. That doesn't stop Ichirou from making it exceedingly clear.

His voice fills the room, coating the walls and staining it. It's not as bad as blood, but it's a promise Neil won't soon remove, a reminder that if he wants to keep this home of his, he'll listen. "I’ll extend the courtesy to your companions if they’re ever in the same situation. But if I ever see you again, if I hear that you're involved in anything, from the smallest transaction or negotiation in my circle, in my empire, I will kill you all," Ichirou explains, a vow. Then, his gaze flickers over Andrew one last time, and yes, Neil understands perfectly. He shows it in the way he glares, in the way he calls on his father's ghost one last time. "I will do more than kill you, I will destroy everything about you."

The fear begins to trickle out of him, and maybe that's a bad thing where Neil is concerned. He's not sure what he's exuding right then, but he can feel himself stop shaking, can feel his chin tilt up in a challenge. It's a deceptive calm, but one Ichirou will read correctly.

Acknowledgement, respect, but underneath all that it's a boast. It says I won.

Neil's not sure it can be called that but he owns it, with all his infuriating confidence, he owns it, and makes sure Ichirou knows there will always be some truth to it.

Even if Neil didn't have to convince him, even if Ichirou came to the conclusion all on his own.

He was bested, and Neil has to squash the smile that wants to bloom on his face.

Andrew stops shaking too, his rage reigned in for now. He probably won't sleep for days regardless; the fear, the what ifs...they're too fresh and heavy.

But that's alright. More than alright. Because Neil can spend the rest of their lives making it up to him.

"Do we have a deal?" Ichirou states, like he needs to. But Neil nods anyways. It's a farewell he didn't know he wanted so badly.

"Yes, we do," he says, and adds reluctantly: "Thank you, Lord."

Ichirou inclines his head, and Neil has to bite back any sass. It's a look that says 'don't thank me yet. Don't thank me until you're old and gray.'

With that final warning, Ichirou turns away, and neither of them dare to move.

That's where the acknowledgement ends; Ichirou reaches the door, and without looking back, solidifies his exit from Neil's life.

"Goodbye, Neil Josten."

They don't move at first. They listen to the disjointed steps as Ichirou leaves, and only when it sinks in that he's walking away does Neil feel Andrew pull him gently closer. It's a fierce hold regardless, an attempt to carve Neil a place in his chest to hide. It's 'I've got you' and 'I get to keep you' all at once.

When the lock on their front door clicks shut, the one to Neil's future opens wide.

Neil lets Blake and Rayah take their time scribbling their notes, neither of them daring to ask for clarification. Neil hopes it's because there's nothing to clarify.

It's too simplistic to say he won some climactic battle, that the rest of his life was carefree and happy. This was merely a pause in his life, a blip in time which also passed like everything else, drowned out with visits to Germany and difficult trips to the vet.

Neil doesn't view it as the middle, or a turning point. He doesn't view anything that way. He started his life as Neil Josten and it flowed from there, choppy and untamed at times, but no less...memorable.

His encounter with Ichirou was a moment he had to wait, to breathe in and take in what he had before he kept going. A log or dam that eventually eroded away like the rest of the obstacles he faced.

And there was so, so much more that came after that.

Perhaps not as exciting; family vacations, Exy games, and weekend getaways are hardly anything compared to run-ins with the mafia, to devastating injuries and comebacks. No one wants to hear about the petty arguments and compromises, the bouts of depression which came from being robbed of the sport he loved despite his survival. There's nothing riveting about the quiet dinners Neil enjoyed with Andrew at his side every night for over thirty years after.

But even still, he's waiting to get to those. He wants to talk about those.

Each time he finishes a memory, he's antsy to tell the next one. It's the most exciting thing to him, knowing that even when it all stops, when he has nothing more he needs to share, that nothing ever ended. He could go on and on. As long as he’s breathing, he can say more.

It doesn't end until he's gone, and how sneaky he is, how brilliant, for even going beyond that to preserve their life, every boring piece of it.

He sends Andrew a smug little smile, just for that.

So now people can know, for at least a few years to come, that yes, Neil Josten survived the mafia. But more importantly, Andrew Minyard was next to him, and was just about the best companion Neil could've asked for.

It makes him smile, uncontrolled in its entirety, and when Sydney walks in she doesn't even ask. She returns it, and that fondness makes Neil feel as if Andrew is still in the room, because it was so often directed at him as well.

When she leaves, the room is quiet apart from the last fading scratches of pen on paper.

Occasionally one of the reporters will look up at him, scan him as if they can get the residual emotions hanging from his aura and paste them onto the messy pages.

Neil doesn't envy them.

He's never been a writer, and he's giving them a daunting task. Vague, but detailed. Powerful, but without all the flowery, over-exaggerated nonsense. This is not a sensationalist piece, but his life, and while they've been treating him with the respect he asked for, he gets the feeling they just now came to the realization fully.

It's easy to say you love someone, at the end of the day. Even if it's a lie, even if it takes you a while to work up the courage for it. It's easy to repeat it over and over again.

But for people to understand the full scope of Neil's feelings, so far beyond that word with all the strange deviations and intricacies...

Well, he can tell by the way Rayah and Blake come to a standstill, eyes fixed on their notes, that they do understand. That's what makes it so difficult, that's what makes it impossible.

Nothing they do or write will truly replicate the way Neil has made them feel, the way Andrew made Neil feel.

And Neil's grateful for that. He's grateful, because he always knew deep down that his relationship with Andrew was not something anyone would be able to capture and define. It was theirs.

As long as that's obvious, then he thinks it'll be more than okay.

He'll keep providing all the details they need to compensate.

Eventually, when they do look up, Rayah just laughs, smoothing her hand over the paper. Neither of them make a move for their food. "I—I don't know what to ask anymore?" She frames it as a question, tone searching, and when she looks at Blake, he merely shrugs.

There's a mistiness in his eyes when he turns to Neil too, as if to ask, 'well?'

Neil beams brighter, bringing his food in front of him. Ten years and he hasn't changed the order. It's still the plate he and Andrew split.

And with that warmth in his chest, he's more than happy to take it from there.

"Don't worry," he says, amusement lacing his tone. "I know what comes next."

#aftg #all for the game #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten

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forgetmenotaftg · 4 years

Text

It Gets Better

Dan wasn’t one to scream. It took a lot to faze her, to surprise her.

Still, she felt that she wouldn’t be completely alone if she screamed at this.

This being a kid standing in her kitchen, wielding a kitchen knife.

“Who are you? Where am I?” The boy asked.

Dan shook her head, confused, but she caught on. She responded, “I’m Dan. We’re at Palmetto State University.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Liar.”

She shook her head, but the boy’s eyes only squinted further. When Dan looked closer, she could see a purple shadow on the kid’s cheekbone. She held up her hands like she was trying to calm a wild animal, which this kid might as well have been.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

The boy paused, took a long, drawn out breath, and spoke. “My name is Andreas.”

Dan was surprised for a moment. She hadn’t expected the kid to respond. Dan studied the boy while he gave her a scrutinizing look. He had blue eyes, light enough to be blue, but dark enough that it was hard to see in the dim lighting.

His hair was a dark brown, but what troubled Dan the most were the bruises all over the child in varying colors.

Violet, yellow, green, red, each mark was of a different spectrum.

Like a rainbow made of pain, Dan thought.

It was hard to see in the dim, but as Dan’s sight adjusted, she could see that the bruises were everywhere. Up the boy’s collar, his arms, his legs, his face, they were covered in sickening shades.

But what troubled Dan the most was his hands.

There were fresh, dark marks, and tiny slices overlaying them.

It looked painful. It must have stung to even make a grip, but the injured hands holding the knife didn’t waver from their target. She didn’t even know what sorts of marks decorated the boy under his clothes.

And that was when Dan spotted a stain on his pant leg. It looked red.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

“I’m fine,” He said.

It struck Dan then, how similar that sounded to Neil. The boy said in the same way as Neil did, too, when he first came to Palmetto.

The boy’s tone said, I’m used to this, and I need to be fine.

It was then that the boy collapsed onto the cheap plastic and wood floor, knife clattered to the side, mouth open in a silent gasp of pain.

His eyes shuttered once, twice before closing.

Oh no.

“What the hell are you talking about.”

“I don’t know! I just- there’s a kid in my dorm, he’s like twelve-ish, and his leg is stabbed. I do not know what to do. Just- just get here quick.”

The line clicked off.

Dan took a shaky breath, then clutched at her phone harder.

Down the hallway and through the first door on the left, lay a boy with bruises on every inch of skin, and a stab wound in his left leg.

On highway 62, Andrew Minyard was driving twenty miles over the speed limit to get to the Fox Tower.

In Fox Tower, Danielle Wilds was attempting to barricade the room where the boy lay with a dresser without making a sound.

In the first room in the left dwelled Nathaniel Wesninski. He was dreaming.

(It was a nightmare)

“You stupid child, I have explained this to you seven times.”

Mary brought the ruler down on Andreas’ hand. He didn’t wince, though. He just erased the incorrect word and scribbled down the correct letters. But still, his mother wasn’t pleased.

“How are you going to fit into the sixth grade when you cannot even spell? If you do not learn quickly, your father will come. You know what happens then.”

Andreas ducked his head down and nodded. His hands ached with every movement of the pen, but he ignored it and jotted more words and pronunciations.

Eventually, through enough swats and cuts, Andreas stopped seeing his hands as his.

Instead, he imagined that his hands were petals. Delicate, soft, but still unwilling to tear. Marks upon marks appeared, but still, Andreas saw lined blossoms instead of injured hands.

Andreas startled awake on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. He counted to ten in english, then in german in his head.

That was how long it took for Andreas to steady his breathing and compartmentalize his injuries.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room with Andreas, so he opened his eyes and sat up as quietly as he could.

His leg felt strange.

It seemed as though someone had bandaged it. Maybe his mother had done it. Probably not.

The wound wasn’t important enough to waste supplies on.

Andreas wasn’t important enough to waste supplies on.

The door was unlocked.

It was unlocked, but it wouldn’t open.

The door was unlocked, but Andreas couldn’t get out.

Trapped. That was what Andreas was.

He’d tried pushing the door open, but something blocked the entire doorway. Somebody had heard him, too. Softened footsteps had sounded right after the groan and creak of his attempts.

Eventually, he’d given up on escaping. There was a window, but it was too high up and steep to climb down from.

But through the glass pane, Andreas could see cherry blossoms whirling around in the wind.

Dan decided that the kid was Neil. It was too unlikely to be anyone else.

Neil had been in her dorm to avoid Andrew and Kevin’s argument, and Dan had gone out to buy some food. That was when she discovered the boy. He did look suspiciously like Neil, too.

But all of that reasoning didn’t explain why Neil was suddenly a child. There was no plausible reason for that, besides magic.

And magic didn’t exist, did it?

Andreas woke up to the door opening.

It was almost silent, but he’d learned to wake up at any sound while sleeping. At the doorway, a blond man stood. He didn’t look surprised that Andreas had woken up.

He watched the man carefully, when he spoke two words that froze

Andreas’s very blood.

“Nathaniel Wesninski.”

The man continued, unfazed by Andreas’s shock.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” The man said.

Andreas let himself breathe shakily for a moment, then spoke in the calmest voice he could muster.

“That’s not my name, sir. I think you are confused.”

At that, the man seemed amused, as his brow twitched up and he looked disbelieving.

“Liar. You are Nathaniel Wesninski, and are pretending to be someone else.”

Andreas’s eyes darted back and forth, trying to find a way to escape this man, who clearly knew who he was.

He opened his mouth, and got ready to lie, lie, lie.

Dan almost screamed when Andrew walked out of the room with the kid in tow.

“Hello.”

The boy’s voice was surprisingly smooth. It was high, too, still containing just a little trace of childhood in it.

“H-hi!”

“You’re Dan, right?”

Dan eagerly nodded, and the kid’s mouth tightened at the sight.

“And you’re Andreas?” She asked.

He nodded.

“Do you want some lunch?”

Another nod. Fake brown eyes angled at the ground.

“Then let’s go eat.”

Andrew watched Neil- no, Andreas sit in the backseat of the maserati. Andreas didn’t sit like a normal twelve year old would. He didn’t swing his legs, or look out the window, or fidget.

He just stayed perfectly still. Like a statue. Andrew didn’t know why, but it bothered him. Maybe it was because the kid was what Neil had once been.

Andrew knew that at this point, Neil had already escaped Nathan with his mother. But there was still a minor stab wound in Andreas’s leg, and bruises all over. Andrew knew that Mary had been abusive to Neil, but he’d never pushed it, seeing as Neil still believed it was for the best.

Andrew had learned to accept that, but the new marks on Andreas’s hands and body brought up the old hatred he’d kept inside when Neil had first told him about Mary.

But Andreas wouldn’t want to hear about his dead mother, so Andrew ignored just how silent the boy was.

Andreas was picking at his fries at McDonalds, when he looked up with his fake brown eyes, and asked, “Is my mother dead?”

Next to Andreas, Dan sucked in a panicked breath, and Andrew watched the kid with a calculating gaze. A normal person would probably say something about she was somewhere else, but there was no reason to lie.

“Yes.” Andrew said.

Dan’s hissed “Andrew!” was lost in Andreas’s quiet voice.

“How’d she die? Did my father die before her, or after?” He asked.

Andrew answered both questions unflinchingly, while Dan looked more and more panicked, probably scared that Andreas would cry or run. He did neither of those things, but Andrew saw him clench his fists under the table, and his mouth tremble.

The kid was good at hiding things, Andrew could give him that. A sob story that the rest of the foxes would probably fuss over. He knew that they would find out eventually, so when Andreas said he was done with the Happy Meal, despite not having eaten a bite of his burger, Andrew sped to the Fox Tower with Dan watching nervously in the backseat.

The reactions of the Foxes was just what Andrew had expected. Nicky had been shocked at first, then started to coo over Andreas. Renee had watched from a distance, with Allison. Aaron hadn’t cared, and Kevin had almost immediately asked about the upcoming exy game, while Andreas looked extremely shocked at the sight of Kevin.

Matt had attempted to strike a conversation with Andreas, to no avail. And all throughout the whole ordeal, Andreas had looked very uncomfortable. When he’d requested to go the bathroom, he hadn’t come out, even after twenty minutes had passed.

Surprisingly, Renee was the one to knock on the door first. Her normally sweet voice was rougher, more real.

“Andreas? Are you still in there? It’s Renee. I know it’s a bit overwhelming, meeting us, but I promise, we won’t make you go out if you don’t want to,” she said. “I won’t lie. We all know what happened with your father, and I know it must be a shock, finding out that both your parents are dead in a day, but we all understand. The Foxes are a family of messed-up people, and you might find that some of us have more in common with you than you think.”

A moment passed, then Andrew could hear shuffling behind the locked door.

“I want to speak to Renee. Alone.” Andreas said, muffled.

Turning away, Andrew said, “Everybody get out.”

For once, the Foxes all listened, shuffling outside, undoubtedly to try to listen through the door.

At Renee’s meaningful glance, Andrew stepped outside as well.

Renee knocked again, and said softly, “Andreas? Everybody’s out. I swear.”

A pause, and then the door came open.

Andreas came out, and Renee’s heart broke at how his shoulders curved in, how his battered hands clenched as he walked over the threshold.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Renee asked.

She watched Andreas breathe for a minute, before he spoke.

“I don’t know what to think. I woke up in a stranger’s bed, and apparently, my mom is dead, my father’s dead, there a bunch of people who apparently know my whole life’s events, and the craziest thing is- I’m supposed to be twenty.”

Renee was silent.

“Can you tell me what happened to your hands?” she asked.

Andreas immediately looked suspicious, and put his hands behind his back.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Renee said.

And for a tense moment, he didn’t. Then Renee watched as he crumbled.

“I mess up sometimes. In German. Mom doesn’t like it when I do.”

Renee clenched her fists, but didn’t say anything, until Andreas looked up, and his scowl lessened.

“I’m glad he-I have all these friends. They seem okay. This life seems okay.” he murmured.

And Renee, dropping her nice-christian-girl face for a moment, answered back, “Trust me. It gets a lot better.”

Neil Josten woke up in the dorm room of the Fox Tower, surrounded by his friends, his family, the reason it got so much better, and took the day off to watch the cherry blossoms fall, while Andrew sat with him.

Written by @alvarez-sara and posted here with permission.

#writing #alvarez-sara #forgetmenotaftg #neil josten #dan wilds #andrew minyard #renee walker

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darkblueboxs · 4 years

Note

Thoughts on Aaron and Matt’s relationship as the become roommates and definitely after the extra content on Aaron and Matt’s mom.

Couldn’t track down said extra content but their post-canon roomsharing is tragically unexplored so here we go

Moving out of the monster’s dorm is Aaron’s first cold, sharp lungful of freedom after years of having his head held underwater. Freedom, it transpires, tastes like gummy bears and leftover pizza and whatever other crap Matt likes to clog his arteries with. Aaron elects to ignore the smell; the important part is the long-awaited independence. If only he could ignore his new roommate so easily.

Aaron hasn’t been there five minutes before Katelyn is cheering on the other end of his phone, and ten minutes later she’s helping him unpack his books and arrange his desk the way he likes it. The prospect of being able to come over to Aaron’s dorm whenever she likes without fear of being sliced open by his psychotic twin is clearly an enticing one for Katelyn. Regular access to a bedroom shared with only one other student is equally appealing, for obvious reasons.

They don’t waste much time on that front; Katelyn hops up on Aaron’s desk and pulls him in, first with her eyes and then with her arms, and Aaron is happy to follow. Finally, finally, finally, he is allowed to have something good in his life.

The key part now is to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.

Aaron is interrupted from nervously fidgeting his way towards the clasp on Katelyn’s bra by the sound of Matt walking into the locked door with a thud. Aaron swears and pats his hair back down into its usual shape while Katelyn buttons up her blouse with a sheepish smile.

He stumbles over and unhooks the latch before Matt can start complaining. Judging by the blinding grin he’s met with, Matt hasn’t been fooled. “Settling in okay?”

“Great,” Aaron grunts. Katelyn smiles at Matt, and Aaron fights down a flare of jealousy. Katelyn can smile at whoever she wants to, and Aaron refuses to become an angry, possessive psycho like his brother.

“I’ll leave you guys to get to know each other. Well, you already know each other, but, you know.” Katelyn stoops to press a kiss to Aaron’s cheek, which goes some way to soothing the sting of her departure. “Catch you later, babe.”

“Yeah,” says Aaron faintly, hating how fucking pleased Boyd looks at the display. His new roommate needs to learn a serious lesson in minding his own damn business.

Aaron spent his first years at Palmetto steadfastly ignoring every team member outside his family, and despite the Foxes’ newfound unity, he still has little interest in building bridges. Too much effort, far too late. For their first weeks sharing the apartment, Aaron avoids Matt, keeping his head in his books and spending his nights in Katelyn’s dorm.

Eventually Katelyn broaches the topic, not because she wants to spend more time in Aaron’s dorm and less time inconveniencing her roommate, but because that’s the kind of person Katelyn is. She believes in people, believes in Aaron. So much so that she makes him want to believe in himself. She suggests – not in a preachy or demanding way, but kindly – that he might find his living situation a lot more bearable if he made at least some effort with his roommate.

And because it’s Katelyn, who Aaron will never be good at saying no to, Aaron throws Matt a bone.

“We’re going to Columbia tonight. Dress nice,” Aaron says without slowing on his way to his bedroom.

“Oh. Oh, cool, who else is coming?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Aaron shuts the door behind him. It’s the thought that counts, not the delivery.

Aaron means to make an effort when the night comes, but soon he’s floating on a cloud of alcohol and cracker dust, and it’s hard to concentrate on things like bonding and conversation when Eden’s bassline is calling him. Matt spends most of his time on the dancefloor with Dan and Renee, and the night passes in a hazy, unremarkable way.

The next day, Matt won’t look him in the eye. Aaron casts his mind back for something particularly embarrassing he did the night before and draws a blank. It’s only when he sees the nervous way Matt rakes his fingernails over track marks dotting his inner arms that Aaron realises they have a real problem on their hands. The gesture is uncomfortably familiar, and not just because Aaron has seen Matt doing it before.

Aaron drops his PlayStation controller to the floor with a deliberate thud. “What,” he says, barely a question.

Matt lets out a huff of air. “I didn’t realise… I didn’t know you still used.”

“It’s dust, it’s nothing,” says Aaron dismissively. “Why do you care?”

Matt slumps into the beanbag beside him, clenching and unclenching his fists. It takes Aaron a beat to realise that he’s angry. “Everything your brother did to me during your first year,” he says, “was to make sure you stayed clean. And you’re not. I started caring when you made it my business.”

“Not my problem,” says Aaron. It comes out harsher than he means it to. “If you don’t like it, you can go running to Flamer Paradise next door, see what they have to say.”

Matt’s jaw clenches. “Really? Flamer? Are you still hung up on this?”

“I don’t give a shit. Take a page from my book and fuck off.”

Matt climbs back to his feet, his face like thunder. “You’re going to make a shitty doctor, you know?”

Aaron is on his feet in an instant, barely reaching Matt’s chest. “Fuck you. Cracker dust isn’t even dangerous, it just-”

“Not because of the dust.” Matt steps forward, and it takes everything Aaron has not to flinch. “Because you don’t give a shit. About yourself or anyone else, and god help any gay patients who might have to rely on you to help them. Have some goddamn self-respect.” His piece said, Matt stalks from the room before the argument can descend into a fistfight.

Aaron stands alone in the living room with his fists clenched for longer than he can count, wishing he had someone’s face on hand to put his fist through.

Katelyn is, as always, his reprieve. She listens to his venting sympathetically and without judgement, even though Aaron suspects that she may privately disagree with him. Aaron can respect that; it’s the support that she shows him regardless that leads him down from the cliff-edge of his anger. And, if Aaron is being completely, brutally honest with himself, Matt might have had a point or two.

It takes him some time to be ready to return to his dorm, and even longer before he’s ready to look Matt in the eye again.

“I’m sorry,” says Matt after one day too many of awkward silence. Aaron pauses his game, trying to arrange his features to hide his surprise; when his mother lost her temper, she would spend days clattering around the house in silent fury while refusing to acknowledge that anything had happened. Matt’s direct approach is unsettling, and it takes Aaron a moment to accept it for what it is – an olive branch. “Look, we have our differences. That’s obvious. I know you don’t want to be here. But this year the team came together in a way I could never have imagined. Maybe we can too?”

Aaron stares for a long moment. Finally, he nudges the second PlayStation controller in Matt’s direction. “This game works better as a multiplayer, so…”

Matt drops into the beanbag beside him, relief washing over his features. Aaron waits until the game has loaded to add under his breath, “I never said I didn’t want to be here.”

Matt lowers the controller to look at him. “You never spend much time here. I just figured…”

“No. It’s fine.” Aaron clears his throat. He sees Katelyn in his mind’s eye, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at him. He has to do better. “You’re fine.”

Matt snorts, and his attention slides back to the TV screen as the game begins.

“Anyone’s better than Nicky,” Aaron adds.

Matt snorts and kicks at his leg.

Maybe it isn’t too late to build that bridge after all.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! I was not planning on writing an *actual* fic for this but there was too much unresolved tension between these two worth exploring.

Side note: I’ve read so much fanfic I no longer remember if the monsters gave up cracker dust in canon or if that was something I read in a fic. My canon now, fuckers.

#all for the game #the foxhole court #aftg #tfc #aaron minyard #matt boyd #my fic #my asks #anon #ask game

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howtoregrowthhairnatural · 3 years

Text

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Best Natural Way To Regrow Hair

There are several different herbal remedies that are thought to be effective against thinning of the hair. These include olive leaf extract, Rosemary, nettle root, grapefruit seed extract, aloe vera gel, vitamin B6, and many other ingredients. In most cases, it's advisable that you decide to try these remedies out before looking for the most commercially available remedies offered pharmacies. Only a medical doctor can advise you on the ideal remedy based in your own specific case.

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http://blogforhealthyliving.com/natural-hair-loss-treatment-herbs/

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whatmack · 5 years

Note

“Being attracted to people is exhausting” man Neil mood. Big mood XD I love mattneil

how can neil have energy for ROMANCE when there is EXY

Theair changes once they’re closed inside Matt’s truck (a different one from hisPalmetto days, but no less beloved). Neil knots his hands together in his lapand stares out the window. He can’t stop remembering that this is a date. He’s on a date, a real, physicaldate, with Matt. His best friend Matt. He’s on a date with him. Matt. A date. For romance and stuff.It’s so much bigger than their Skype dates. Neil wants to open the door andleap out onto the highway. It’s survivable if you know it’s coming. The shirt Matt is wearing has a deep vee down the front, exposing the long lineof his neck. Whenever Neil turns to answer a question or make a comment, he’sovercome with the desire to find out how it feels under his lips. Thinkingabout wanting someone other than Andrew is weird enough, and Neil has hadmonths. Actually doing something about it might give his central nervous systemthe final excuse to tap out.

Mattpulls them into the parking lot of a bistro that has an alarmingly elegantspray of poppies carved into its sign-front. Warning bells sound inside Neil’shead as Matt leads him through exposed-grain wooden tables and couples incollared shirts and pretty dresses. His casual getup marks him instantly as anoutsider. Neil dodges the judgmental glances, curling his shoulders anddropping his gaze to the floor to be as invisible as possible.They get to a small counter at the back that turns out to be the cash register,hidden so as not to offend delicate sensibilities. Matt chats easily with thecashier and is soon handed two large paper bags, receipt attached marking themas take-out. Neil nearly sinks to the floor in relief. He keeps his legs steadyout of sheer will.A childish lisp breaks him out of his thoughts: “Mommy, look at the man withthe scars.” A haggard mother tries frantically to silence her child at anearby table, darting fearful glances up at Neil. She’s not distressed at herchild’s rudeness, Neil realizes, just afraid that he’s heard them. Neilstraightens his spine and bores his eyes into her plastic smile, keeping hisface still and staring much longer than social norms would dictate. Her palemouth turns down. Her son has no such compunctions.“Guy! Guy! What happened to your face?” He points to both his cheeks, eyesbigger than the plate in front of him. “How did you get those?”

“Kidnappingchildren who ask too many questions,” Neil says, not dropping the mother’sgaze. She flinches and yanks her son close to her, but not before a peal oflaughter bursts from him, bouncing off the exposed decorative rafters.Matt is beside him, takeout bags in one hand, the other rising to restproprietary at the small of Neil’s back. “Do we have a problem?” He’s smilingat the mother, and for once—Neil didn’t know it was possible—the expressionholds no warmth.Neil has to give the hostess his respect. It’s the fastest he’s ever beenushered out of a restaurant.

They don’t get back in the truck. Instead, Matt steers Neil across and down ahandful of the city’s long blocks, chatting idly. Neil memorizes the pattern inthe automatic back of his mind. It’s a warm evening, humid but not miserablyso, and people on the street nod instinctively to Matt’s general aura of charm.His hand remains on Neil’s back the whole time, pressing lightly to guide him.It’s something Andrew does when he’s feeling possessive, but not in public. Neilhas always liked the way it makes him feel taken care of.They stop to buy cups of lemonade from a dinky stand (the “best in the city,”Matt proclaims. Neil takes charge of the bags of take-out while Matt fishes forhis wallet), and then they’re tramping through the close-cropped grass of apark, dodging picnickers and other (other!) couples. A frisbee arcs through theair towards them, and Matt catches it one handed, laughing and calling out tothe children tossing it while he sends it back. His easy athleticism makes Neil’sskin burn under his collar.Expecting to be out in the open, Neil is pleasantly surprised when Matt ducksaround an intentionally arranged copse of trees and crouches to put thelemonade cups down behind a hedge. He motions for Neil to sit beside him andhand over the bags.“I was worried this spot would be taken,” Matt says, pulling out napkins and Styrofoamcontainers. “I found it last summer, but I can’t have been the only one. Look.”He points with a plastic fork through a gap in the hedge, and Neil squints tosee an outdoor amphitheater, concrete steps dotted with clusters of sunhattedpeople.“There’s a concert?” Neil has, in the past years, gained somewhat of a passionfor live music. It is as much of a shock to him as anyone else. He blamesKevin.“Most nights, once it’s warm enough. The sound carries decently well to here,and the important part is you can eat as messy as you want and nobody else cansee you.” Matt nudges Neil and passes over one of the containers. The hedge and the trees block them from the rest of the park, enclosing them ina small bower of greenery. On the stage in the amphitheater Neil can see thesound crew taping wires and gesturing to microphones. Matt leans against a treetrunk, leaving space for Neil to curl beside him but letting him decide whetherhe wants to or not.He understands Neil so well. Neil’s fingernails make dents in the Styrofoam.He has to swallow rapidly.“Eat that before it gets cold,” Matt says through a mouthful of food, and thelump recedes from Neil’s throat. He crawls to slump against Matt, heedless ofthe grass stains he’s getting on his jeans, and opens the container to find alarge, crusty-breaded sandwich and a cup of sauerkraut. “Because your taste in food should be acriminal offense,” Matt says.“Won’t be the only thing criminal about me,” Neil says, elbowing Matt’sstomach. Matt yelps and nearly overturns his own, much less cabbage-y dinner.

It’snot the most comfortable place to be. Roots dig into Neil’s ass, and the drygrass is prickly even through his clothing. He keeps on the lookout for ants.The sandwich is too good to sacrifice to them, as is, true to Matt’s promise,the lemonade. They use every single one of the paper napkins and need more.Neil rubs his sticky hands on the grass, and Matt unselfconsciously sucksdipping sauce off of his fingertips. It’s an action he’s done a hundred timesbefore. This time Neil is allowed to stare.A four-person band takes the stage. Neil misses their name and half the lyrics.The drumbeat thuds up his hipbones to control the pulse of his heart. He closeshis eyes and wiggles into Matt’s lap, listening, feeling the sweat make theirt-shirts stick together. Dusk turns to twilight turns to the fluorescent brightnessof a city night.“I was worried you were going to take me somewhere with white tablecloths. Ortuxedos. Or chandeliers,” Neil says. He wraps the flap of Matt’s jacket tighteraround him. He’d stolen it after sundown had turned the gentle breeze to chill.That is, after all, why Matt has brought it.Matt chafes Neil’s arms. “Give me more credit, c’mon.” He pauses, and Neil canhear him thinking, so he waits. “Would that be…absolutely horrible?”The band finishes their last (no really, their last) encore to the scatteredapplause of the visible audience. There’s the shrieking of feedback as theybegin to pack up, the crew reappearing to monitor the band’s abuse of theequipment. Neil uses the time to figure out how to put his words in an orderthat makes sense.“I don’t get it,” he finally says. Matt’s legs shift under him, tipping Neilinto the crease, and Neil grabs Matt’s shoulder to stay upright as Matt leansback to look at him. “Why does anyone do that stuff? If you care about eachother, it shouldn’t matter.”Matt takes a while to answer. “When I was a kid,” he says, slowly, “I used towatch a lot of those—pirate movies, knights, cowboys…where it was all about thegood men and chivalry and beating the bad guys and winning over the fair lady.And Mom wasn’t…she was busy, but there were a couple months when she had donesomething to her elbow, and she read a whole book of Arthurian legends to me.It was the most time I’d ever spent with her all at once.” He traps Neil’sankle in the circle of his fingers; unties his shoelace when Neil kicks at him.“I guess I thought that that was what it would be like, for me. Stupid, I know.”He tips back, taking Neil with him sothey’re sprawled on the grass. Neil is grateful to have Matt’s cushioningbetween him and the rocky soil.“Everyone’s stupid when they’re a kid,” Neil says.Matt laughs weakly. Neil can feel it rumbling against him, like the musicearlier. “Yeah. Anyway then I moved in with Dad and it didn’t. Happen likethat, I mean. I think the most romantic thing that happened to me was one timea guy made edibles that were m&m cookies because he knew those were myfavorite. And that was only because he thought I’d suck him off. When I got toPalmetto, I wanted…I think I want to be the one to make it better for otherpeople, you know? It doesn’t have to be like that, but it can. And not just toget someone to put out, or as a trick, or whatever. When I was younger I wantedit to mean something. I guess I still do.”Neil digests that, lying on Matt’s chest, Matt’s arms clasped around his waistas they look up at the sky through the shadowed branches. The city lights aretoo bright to see any stars, but Neil knows where they are. “Do people reallydo that?” He asks. “Have sex with someone because they’re nice to them, or givethem things?”“I don’t remember,” Matt says.Neil flips himself so he’s kneeling with his legs on either side of Matt’s,hand resting on the ground beside his head. With two fingers he traces Matt’snose, his cheek, the swoop of his browbone and the delicate skin of hiseyelids. He is so much bigger than Neil; Neil forgets he was built on ascracked a foundation as the rest of them. Neil wants to kill every singleperson that made Matt have to be strong.“Can I kiss you now?” Matt asks in the breath between them.“Do it,” Neil says, and leans forward first.Matt’s lips do not feel appreciably different from Andrew’s. Slightly fuller,perhaps, but just as soft. Neil goes down on his forearms as Matt’s palms pressagainst his spine, urging him closer. How long Matt has been waiting, Neil doesnot know; Matt does not rush him, keeps the kiss soft, pressing and easingagainst him in waves. Only when Neil tugs at the back of his neck does Mattroll them over so he can pin Neil to the ground with his mouth. Neil can’tfeel the roots with the weight of Matt’s hips on his. His heart is a wellspring, and Matt keeps adding water.“I would try it,” he says against Matt’s lips. “Thetablecloths and chandeliers. If that’s what you want. You can explain it to me.”“We’ll talk about it,” Matt promises, and kisses him again.

Can u believe Matt KISSED Neil after Neil ate sauerkraut…..what a mans

(No they did not fuckin a city park, Matt is a Gentleman)

#all for the game #the foxhole court #mattneil #boydsten #part 7 of #I'm not making u eggs #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #my fics #Anonymous

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ravenvsfox · 5 years

Note

hello meghan my love my darling when are you going to post the next chapter of the rockband au???? you should do it on or before the 2nd for absolutely no personal reason at all. but anyway ilysm???? i hope you’re doing great now that it’s starting to warm up (seasonal depression whomst?) 💖💖

(hello ily honeyy happy happy happy birthday I’m sorry this is late)

Neil wakes up, as usual, to the pinging of a text message. He doesn’t bother to look at it. He knows what it will say; the unassuming number, the conspicuous silence whenever he writes back.

He rolls over so that the thinning comforter pulls and sticks beneath him, and he slits his eyes against the pre-dawn light.

Yesterday he’d deleted the number ’36’ from his messages and jammed his bare feet into his boots. He’d walked all the way out back to the dumpster with the cellphone cracking in his fist before his fear won out, and he’d pocketed it again.

He knows what day the zero should fall on. He’s learned to dread countdowns because he’s lived to see what comes on the other side of them, surfed the sand in an hourglass as it ebbed out from underneath him.

The monsters keep him busy, and so do the Foxes, now. They pull him in different directions, divide his attention, pique his curiosity. He’s acutely aware of how devastating it will be for him when he has to leave them, what a terrible thing he’s done by letting them close enough that they’ll notice when he’s dead.

But no one endures like the lonely people who end up at Palmetto, and he knows no one will stumble for long.

He reaches into the swath of blankets and holds the phone in his hand. It buzzes again, the nudge of the same message insisting upon being read. He feels frustration crest and fall in his chest, and then he wonders if anyone else is awake. Sometimes Andrew will get up early and make eggos, or Kevin will go for a run before the sun is up, but they’ve been inconsistent while they sloshed through the songwriting process.

He’s heard Aaron making endless pots of coffee and Nicky in the basement, practicing licks without an amp in the middle of the night. Once, Neil wandered down and knelt the wrong way on the couch to watch him play. He wasn’t quite awake, and the music twanged against Nicky’s goofy grin and made Neil smile back at him.

Now that Ausreißer’s album is edited into submission, sent off for packaging, all of their tireless work crystallizing somewhere, he’s promised Foxes that he’ll record a vocal for them. It’s strange to think of them wanting his serious voice worked through their bright sound, incongruous as salt in coffee. It’s even stranger to think of the way his voice will be broadcast after he’s dead, perpetually echoing after his disappearance.

Their album is set to be released in a week, and then the next leg of their tour will roll up to meet them, and sometime in those delicate, dwindling months, Neil will be found. He fantasizes about leaving a ripple when he’s taken, and then he thinks better of it. When his mother died, he watched the fire take her skin, and her hair, and her eyes, and he thought, death would be easier if we didn’t let ourselves matter to one another.

He lets the phone sink back into the sheets, and sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. Someone knocks twice on the door, just the edge of a knuckle. Andrew.

“It’s open,” he says.

Ever since Andrew had burst in, answering questions that Neil hadn’t even thought to ask, he’s taken to leaving his door unlocked.

Andrew opens the door and promptly crosses the room towards Neil’s dresser, not even sparing him a glance. His hair is unkempt, a riot of blond that won’t part correctly, fluffed up from sleeping on it wet.

Unlike the rest of the monsters, who’ve buckled back down into their routines, Andrew’s been acting increasingly erratic. He’s been self-medicating more often, and holding himself back from something so effectively that Neil can’t quite see what it is. Sometimes he seems to glitch out, cutting himself off mid-sentence, cagey and self-contained.

The drugs should make his tongue looser, but mostly it seems to make him say more of everything. It’s harder to find whole kernels of truth in a bowl full of bravado that’s puffed out like popcorn.

Andrew puts both hands on the knobs of Neil’s drawer and waits there. Neil nods, amused. He’s long since found a lock for the bottom drawer and secreted away his money and information. Andrew pulls the top drawer out, sawing it back and forth when the dufflebag catches. He digs briefly through Neil’s small selection of shirts, and picks out something in faded green. He throws it and some light-wash jeans in Neil’s direction.

“Up, get up. Renee’s already at the studio.”

“You have today off,” Neil says.

“Well deduced,” Andrew says. “I’m driving you.”

Neil hesitates. “I’m fine with walking.”

“Do what you want,” Andrew says flippantly. “I have an errand to run near the studio, and you can come with me or you can waste Renee’s time and mine.”

“That’s not manipulative,” Neil says sarcastically.

“I’m giving you a choice,” Andrew says. His gaze finds the burner phone nestled in Neil’s bedding, then trails up to catch his eye.

“Yes, okay. Just let me change.” He’s secretly glad to be ferried to the studio, to have earned Andrew’s passenger seat, and to not have to think about who could be tracking him on foot. Andrew crosses wordlessly to the threshold of his bedroom and closes the door behind him. He can hear him shifting his weight outside, guarding Neil’s privacy.

He dresses quickly and quietly in the clothes that Andrew picked out for him, feeling strangely flushed about the whole thing. He doesn’t want Andrew to know that he’s doing exactly what he suggested, or that it’s become a habit for him to do so.

They leave not ten minutes later, after he’s stopped in to use the bathroom and splash water on his face, teasing fingers through his hair and swigging Nicky’s mouthwash.

Andrew waits at the door, turning keys over in his hand, hair still wild, belt buckled kind of askew with the tail of it sticking out.

“Are you ready?” Neil asks tentatively. Andrew cranks open the screen door in response, and steps out into the sweet spring morning. Neil follows, watching his even gait, the full, yolky yellow of his hair.

They climb up into the cold barrel of the van. When Neil reaches for the dial to turn up the heat, Andrew catches his wrist.

“I can’t get any warmer.”

It’s around this point that Neil suspects that Andrew might already be high.

Maybe balancing the creative chaos of their album with the newness of Neil has taken more of a toll on Andrew than it has on the others. Something about working constantly, writing feelings into rhymes that you can chew and rinse and spit with has made him itchy and distracted.

“Did you take something?” Neil asks.

“Not yet,” Andrew says, reversing violently onto the street, much too broad a maneuver for such a large vehicle. He clips the opposite curb before he cracks into drive and takes off.

Neil watches his inscrutable face, the tightness around his mouth and the brightness of his eyes. He can’t tell.

“No one drives like this when they’re sober.”

“You know I do,” Andrew tells him. Neil does. He’s seen Andrew stoned, laughing like he doesn’t want to be doing it, the way people do when they’re being tickled. He’s also seen him drunk, soaked through with sweat, sticking to the seats, and he’s seen him storm-cloud sober. He always manages to make it feel like the van is on ice skates.

“Did Wymack ask you to hold my hand?”

Andrew considers this for a moment too long. “Depends on what you mean by that.”

“Babysit me,” Neil clarifies. “Drop me off and pick me up so I don’t cause another incident.”

“No,” Andrew says simply, turning left so sloppily that he almost clips a crossing pedestrian.

“Then why would you—why are you doing this?”

“Million dollar question.”

“Is there a million dollar answer?” Neil asks.

“There are no million dollar answers,” Andrew says. “There are disappointments.”

“So no one asked you to do this for me.”

Andrew looks at him. “You may have noticed that I do not do what people ask me to unless it’s in my best interest.”

“You’re not as selfish as you want people to think,” Neil says, looking away, out the window. The studio is creeping up on them, three intersections way, then two. He’s come to know the route well, imagining the bends in the road when he’s trying to fall asleep. “Defending Kevin could bring the yakuza down on you, and you’ve always known it. Just like you had no guarantee that killing Tilda for Aaron wouldn’t kill you too.”

“Most people wouldn’t give murder as an example of selflessness,” Andrew says. “Does it make you feel better, to make us into good people?”

“No, actually,” Neil says honestly. “It makes it harder to pretend I’m one of you.”

Andrew pulls up into the shaded side of the studio, and Neil breathes out heavily. The honesty comes so much easier now; after those first botched pricks to his veins the blood has just flowed and flowed.

“Here,” Andrew says, pulling his keys from the ignition and prying the ring open. He slips a little bronze key from the loop and hands it to Neil. “To our front door. Allison’s going to drive you home, and none of us are going to be there to let you in.”

Neil’s hands go cold with surprise, and he opens them both for Andrew. “Just for today?”

Andrew shrugs and drops it into his palm. “It’s yours.”

“Why?” Neil asks quietly, pressing two fingers to the ragged edges. The metal is still warm from Andrew’s hand. He thinks of his name looped into a contract, thinks of sharing a microphone with Kevin and bumping fists with Matt. He pictures himself unlocking the door to a home on a residential street and hearing their record playing somewhere inside.

“You live there,” Andrew says, bored. “It’s convenient.”

“It’s more than that,” Neil says fiercely. “You know it is.” He wishes suddenly that he could give Andrew a key to something, an access code to a vault of secrets or a missing piece that would topple Riko’s threat. Before he’d found a stolen twin and a frantic cousin, he had even less of a home than Neil did. The teeth of the key eat into his palm.

“Do not lose it,” Andrew says. “I’m not cutting you another one.”

He knows that he would never misplace this proof of the flimsiness of Andrew’s apathy, this symbol of belonging, this ticket to normalcy. He also knows that Andrew would make him another if he really needed it, and that it means something distinct to both of them.

Andrew watches him mildly. “Go inside. Find your Foxes. If they try and wash your voice out with shitty effects, walk away.”

Neil smiles a little. “You told me yesterday that you don’t care about musical integrity.”

“I don’t want to hear you complain when the track flops,” Andrew says.

“Right.” Neil pops the door open. “I’ll see you at home,” he says tentatively, and when Andrew waves him off, he closes the door between them.

He lets himself uncurl his hand to look at the key, slowly, like it’s a living thing, something he unearthed. He studies the pattern of it, the tangy metallic smell clinging to his fingers.

When he looks up again, Andrew has pulled away. He forces himself to ease the key into his pocket and lower his eyes before the van disappears around the corner.

______

He finds Renee alone in the biggest upstairs studio, sipping demurely from something that smells natural and fruity. She smiles warmly at him when he comes in, and he feels caught in the suspended moment between springing the trap and suffering the consequences.

“You’re early,” she says.

“Interesting. Someone told me I was late.” He shrugs off his jacket and drops it over a music stand.

“Interesting,” she echoes.

Neil crosses his arms. “Where are the others?”

She pauses with the rim of her travel mug at her lips, then lowers it again. “Struggling to get out the door, probably. Allison likes to take her time primping.”

“Okay,” Neil says, uncomfortable to find himself alone with the only person at Palmetto that he can’t really read. “Warm up?”

“If you want,” Renee says easily. Infuriatingly. “Or we could talk, like Andrew so obviously wants us to. I recognize his machinations when I see them.”

Neil considers the slender silver cross at her neck winking in the overhead light. She has the nimble, capable hands of a musician, and the inexplicable ability to garner the respect of someone like Andrew. It’s more than enough to warrant his curiosity.

“What could he possibly want us to talk about?” Neil asks, sitting gingerly in a stray chair across from her.

Renee shrugs. “He’s not usually forthright with details.”

Neil tilts his head and decides all at once to play along. “What is it that he likes so much about you?” he asks.

Renee takes his rudeness in stride, her mouth pursing a little with amusement. “He discovered that we have a lot in common. Rich histories of bad situations and terrible exit strategies. The only difference is that I have my faith and he has his nihilism.”

“And what exactly constitutes a bad situation, for you?”

He’s seen Andrew’s sleeves of scars, he’s seen him wake violently from dreams that never seem to be anything but nightmares, and he’s seen that shallow look in his eyes that says that he’s been hurt as badly as he can be, and everything else is just smoke after fire.

He can’t see any of that on Renee. Her faith is gentle as candlelight, her mannerisms easy as warm water, and he doesn’t like the waxy, tepid feeling of being around her.

Her smile cinches, as if yanked closed by pursestrings. “How much time do you have?”

Neil shrugs. “As much as you do.”

She pulls a hand awkwardly through the hair at her neck — as if, for a moment, she was expecting it to be longer.

Neil waits. Renee sighs. The overhead clock ticks.

She tells him methodically about her mother’s whirlwind of abusive boyfriends, the years that compounded into a deadly pressure that would only give when she took knives to it. She doesn’t hesitate when she tells him about causing her parents’ death, running with gangs until it landed her in juvie, and then into foster homes. For a moment, Neil can see something of Andrew in her face like a familial resemblance.

Renee worries a fingernail in her mouth for half a second, distracted, before she explains what Stephanie Walker did for her. The way music and faith entered her life at once, twin forks on a lightning bolt. Church choir first, and then violin lessons.

Cruelly, he resents her for having someone who desperately fought for her, for letting her mother die so quietly in jail. He also understands, for the first time, why he’s been so unsettled by Renee; she walked out of her tragedy and shut the door. Neil can never latch his while Nathan’s foot is wedged in the gap. He has the most unsettling feeling that Andrew’s door has been wrenched off of its hinges.

“So why aren’t you with Andrew?” he wonders aloud. It’s not the right thing to say, but it’s the only complete thought he’s had since she started talking. Her story reads like a high quality forgery of Andrew’s. Renee complements him just as well in friendship as she does in music.

She smiles like she was expecting this question. “Why would that matter?”

“It doesn’t,” Neil says quickly. “Matter. I don’t care. It just seemed like an obvious fit.”

“We’re kindred spirits in some ways, and I have a hunch that we’ll always be friends. But I’m not his type.”

“I can’t imagine who would be, if not you,” Neil says. He doesn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation, or a compliment, so it sits uncomfortably between the two.

“That’s a puzzle,” she says, smiling impishly.

“You know the rest of your band is placing bets on you?” he asks.

She laughs. “Sure. Gotta pass the time between sets somehow.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. Allison’s in on the joke, and that’s half the fun — bluffing together. Finding your allies.”

“In on— in on which joke?” he asks, vaguely frustrated.

Her eyes drift sideways, away from him and towards the door. She pushes up her sleeves carefully. “Andrew and I aren’t just unlikely. We’re impossible.”

“Why impossible?”

She shrugs. “I don’t date men, if I can help it.” Neil barely has time to process this before she adds, “and Andrew doesn’t date women.”

“Oh,” Neil says dumbly.

“I wouldn’t spread that around, though,” she says. “It’s not common knowledge just yet.”

“So why would you tell me?” he asks.

She smiles again. “If he suspected that you were curious about my relationship with him, and still engineered this conversation, I don’t think he would be surprised to know that I’ve told you this particular truth.”

Neil turns this thought over in his head. Andrew puts his secrets at such a remove that he completely avoids being confronted about them. Their impact disperses and melts away before he even makes an appearance.

He thinks about Andrew’s complete disinterest in the fans who throw bras at the stage and shake posters with his name on them. He doesn’t think their gender has anything to do with his apathy, but those instances still tint and change in his memory.

Renee sits good-naturedly through his bout of silence, and then she says, “I hope I helped uh— fill in the blanks a little more for you. I know I don’t really know anything about you, even though we’re all really trying to. Your bandmates though—you breathe the same air and play the same songs day after day, so they can’t help but know you a little. And I know them. So maybe we can be friends someday too.”

Neil feels a distant pang of regret that he won’t be around long enough to prove her right or wrong. He’il be pried from this life with the abruptness of a needle lifting from the middle of a record, and the truth will die, unspoken, on his wasted tongue.

He doesn’t reply, and lukewarm silence stretches between them until Allison comes teetering into the room on platform heels a minute later. She puts her iced coffee on the table and tugs affectionately on the ends of Renee’s hair, and Neil thinks, of course.

A memory surfaces—Andrew twisting dye into his hair and his eyes slipping involuntarily closed—but Dan and Matt parade into the room, arms full of store-bought water and gatorade, and whatever the thought was going to be slips away.

_____

It takes them hours to nail the recording. Neil is dissatisfied with every take, Dan keeps thinking up ideas to beef up their harmonies, and Matt messes with the controls, stripping back the distortion to ‘show off Neil’s pipes’.

They break for lunch at 1pm, and Neil finds himself drifting away from the others, wandering all the way downstairs and through the door, out to the shade where Andrew had left him that morning. He takes out a cigarette that he’d stolen from the console in the van, and the backup lighter from the bowl of keys in the foyer.

He lights up, flame chewing its way towards his fingers. He turns his back against the brunt of the cold and keeps his shoulder to the wall, hair washed forward over his eyes by the wind.

A car rolls up somewhere behind him, and then there’s a snap like a briefcase being closed.

Someone says, “Nathaniel.”

Neil whips around. His fingers tense so that the cigarette nearly snaps in half, but he clings to it and the lighter, the only weapons on his person.

There’s a sleek black SUV parked several spots away, and Riko Moriyama is leaning out of the open side door.

“It is time for us to talk,” he says.

Neil takes a step back. He can see at least two other people in the vehicle, and when he looks up, the shades are drawn over every visible window in the building.

“If you run it will only drag this process out for all of us,” Riko sighs. “We don’t offer civil discussions often. I would take this rare opportunity.”

“You have a knack for making threats sounds like kindnesses,” Neil says. “But then, most bullies do.”

“Get in the car,” Riko says. “Or your real name goes violently public.”

Neil’s teeth clench hard enough to crack. He drops the cigarette on the pavement, and walks forward two steps. “Can I say goodbye?”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Riko says, and his upper body disappears into the car. Neil follows him in, trying to conceal the way his legs have gone stiff with terror.

In the cab of the car it is just Riko across the expanse of cool leather in the back, and two older men whom Neil doesn’t recognize in the driver’s and passenger’s seats. They peel smoothly out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“They’re expecting me back,” Neil says. One of the men in the front passes Riko an ornate black cane, and he levels it in Neil’s direction.

“I don’t want to hear anything from you until I have finished speaking. In fact, do not talk unless you have been prompted to. I already know everything about you that I care to.”

“I’m at a disadvantage then, since all I know about you is that you are a sadomasochist with the bravado of a much more interesting person.”

Riko raps the cane into the side of Neil’s head with such force that his teeth clatter together and his ears ring.

“I guess pleasantries are over, then,” Neil says.

Riko regards him with distaste. “In another life, perhaps, you could have been an asset. Your father’s reputation precedes him. We might have recruited him if he were as easy to pin down as his son seems to be.”

“What would the yakuza need with another butcher?”

Riko raps him on the hands this time, a warning. “Don’t. Speak.” He watches the redness bloom immediately on Neil’s knuckles with flushed pleasure.

“It would be easy enough to send word to his colleagues and have them at Mr. Hemmick’s front door in a day or two, but I’m not sure that you wouldn’t stir up a mess in the meantime. The publicity from your death could bolster Ausreißer’s success. The disappointment from hearing that you’ve left voluntarily is a boycott and a think-piece away from cutting them off at the knees.”

“You want me to leave the band,” Neil says incredulously.

“Of course,” Riko says.

“I’m aware that you have sway in many circles, but not here,” Neil says. “The people in this studio are inside each other’s pockets more than they’ll ever be in yours. They won’t accept this. They won’t.��

“Your interpersonal connections mean nothing to me. Kevin belongs on my team. Andrew and his monsters have been a nuisance, but you are an insufferable offence.”

“So you’re removing your biggest threat?”

Riko’s lip curls. “I found vermin in my house, and I will return it to the sewers where it was born unless it gets out of my way.”

“Even if you did scare me with your posturing, my hands are tied,” Neil says. “I have a contract. He—they won’t let me go.”

Riko’s expression shifts, sand dunes moving in the blowing wind. “You think the drummer will protect you?”

Neil doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to betray Andrew’s position. He’s like a pipe bomb in a mailbox or a chess piece in check.

“Oh, Neil. He couldn’t even protect himself.”

“What,” Neil says flatly.

Riko waves the cane in a relaxed circle, like he’s deciding where it should land. “I would have thought that someone with your trust issues would have done better research on the people around you.”

Neil stays silent.

“Andrew was a foster kid, yes? It’s chaotic for kids in those crowded houses. So many mouths to feed. Or fuck, in Andrew’s case. I’m sure it was traumatic for little Andrew to be passed around like that, from bed to bed. No wonder he’s so hot and bothered over our intervention. He knows what it looks like when someone’s overpowering him.“

“You’re lying,” Neil says, thunderstruck.

“Mention Drake Spears to your little bodyguard and see how quickly he loses it. Or better yet, just look up the Minyard trial. Andrew can drink the past away, but he can’t erase it from the news. Drake was a fascinating man. Not that rapists in uniform aren’t common, but to break someone like Andrew in I’m sure takes a little extra finesse.”

Neil lunges for him, and Riko counters a beat too late with the cane. Neil clips his eye, and the cane makes contact with his throat a second later. He splutters and reaches, trying to get a hand around Riko’s throat.

“That’s not true,” Neil’s saying, over and over. He twists the flesh on Riko’s neck, scrabbling at his clavicles, physically pressing him to be honest.

Riko looks annoyed, but not deterred as he holds Neil’s hands at bay. “How did you think he got to be a monster, exactly?”

It knocks the breath out of him. His grip sags. He’s aware suddenly that the car has stopped moving, and that anyone in it could kill and dispose of him without so much as interrupting their day.

“You’re not a monster because of what other people do to you,” Neil says, seething.

“Nonetheless. Leave the band, or one of the other members goes missing,” Riko offers. “I don’t care which, but Andrew is so nicely broken in already.”

Neil’s hand darts for him again, and Riko catches it, bored, cracking it back at the wrist. The door pops open at Neil’s back, and he’s hooked halfway out of the car by one of the other men, forearm screaming with pressure where Riko has him clamped in his fist.

Cool sweat breaks out on his brow from the pain as Riko leans down to face level, nails piercing his skin.

Before he can speak, Neil chokes, “you can’t set Andrew up. I won’t let you.”

Riko looks suddenly fatigued, and he lets Neil go so that he rocks back onto the sidewalk. “The more you underestimate my family’s clout. the more people suffer by our hands. You must understand that I am the only thing keeping any of you alive right now.”

“You’re wrong,” Neil says.

“You’re likely to be dead by summer, Nathaniel,” he says evenly. His eyes are black in the shadow of the open car door.

“That’s not my name.”

“If you want to lose allies and make new enemies in the meantime, it is your choice. But I don’t want to see you on stage again.” He shuts the door quietly between them, and Neil stumbles back several steps, momentum almost overbalancing him.

He watches the SUV depart and thinks of all of the leverage they have over him, how laser focused their will is to scrape Ausreißer off the charts and clip Neil’s loose end. His defiance had almost no affect on them at all. He had rubbed up against Riko’s temper, sure, but it was no harder than squeezing the trigger on a gun that’s already in your hand.

He squints distractedly at the studio several metres behind him, the bustle of midday spilling through the streets. The pleasant murmur of a city heralding in the end of Neil’s life.

He keeps thinking, if Riko knew about Neil’s past, he had no reason to lie about Andrew’s.

He keeps thinking, how could he be stupid enough to imagine that he had the biggest secret in the band — like Andrew wasn’t writing him a roadmap with songs, like his past wasn’t melted down and repurposed into lyrics.

He thinks, the target on his back just swallowed everything and everyone around him.

He thinks, I have to talk to Andrew.

______

He can’t bring himself to go back inside and excuse himself from rehearsal. There’s no explanation that they would accept without also understanding that he’s dragged them all down into danger with him.

He let them believe that his problems weren’t active case files and bleeding wounds. He pretended that he could broadcast his voice and maybe the music would be so sacred that no one would come looking for him.

Neil takes the bus home, scraping together spare change from his pocket. He finds his key while he searches, and his heart sinks. When he’s slouched in an aisle seat, he looks down at the shape of his hands, the grit under his nails, the old slice across his pinky, and the key nested in the intersecting lines of his palm.

Rain starts to patter against the window, blurring the colourful shapes of people outside who were hopeful enough to dress for much warmer weather.

He whirs with anxiety, searching for an out so desperately that it becomes a physical act, a shaking and a sweating. He should leave the city while he can still bear to. He owes it to everyone at Palmetto studio to take such a volatile element out of their equation.

It used to be his favourite solution when things turned ugly, dumping his life and name and letting a car carry him to a new one. The ritual of dying his hair and popping in lenses always felt charged with possibility.

Now he can’t let himself consider it. The idea of never seeing Dan or Wymack or Nicky or any of them again, of abandoning his deal with Andrew and dropping his new key into the nearest storm drain — it’s different now.

They were the first people to squint past his face-paint and recognize him as a lost kid. They gave him a key and a home with a locking door and passed him a microphone with the name he chose taped onto the handle. They gave him all sorts of contracts, but most important was the unspoken one that, for a minute, looked like friendship.

He gets back to the house two hours ahead of schedule, but it still feels too late. He thinks about letting himself in but suddenly can’t stand the thought of walking into the home that he’s about to ruin.

He knocks and steps down onto the second stair to give himself some distance. After a minute, someone stirs inside, and then there’s a thumping of footsteps, and the whine of the screen door.

Andrew stares down at him through the mist of rainwater.

“You have a key, don’t you?” he says. Neil looks up into his wan face, studying the way he’s holding himself up with the door, washed out in the bleak light from outside. Neil climbs warily to the top step, feeling a lived-in sadness settle into him.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Got it in one,” Andrew says, smiling with one half of his face. “So very very perceptive all the time.”

It’s such bad timing that Neil laughs, then holds a trembling hand over his mouth. “I can’t have this conversation when you’re like this,” he says.

“Which conversation is that?” Andrew asks sharply. “Do be precise.”

“I need you sober,” Neil insists.

“You don’t need me anything,” he sneers.

“I’m making you coffee. And then we have to talk about the Moriyamas.”

Andrew looks immediately more alert. His hand slips from the door, and Neil just barely catches it before it closes on him.

“Why are you back early?” Andrew asks slowly. Neil closes his eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I came.” He should be hitchhiking over state lines. He should be in someone’s truck bed with the rain in his hair. He should be using the cold to forget what warmth feels like.

“Not a good enough answer,” Andrew says. He steps backwards into the entryway and turns, calling “keep trying” over his shoulder. Neil follows him solemnly, nudging the doors closed at his back. He steps out of his shoes while Andrew disappears silently into the kitchen.

When he rounds the corner, Andrew’s sitting on top of the dinky round table by the window, legs crossed beneath him. His cigarettes and lighter are at his side, and a bottle of Smirnoff is open on the chair behind him.

Neil moves towards the coffee maker, but Andrew snaps his fingers at him.

“Tell me why you left recording, no non-answers s’il vous plait,” he says. Neil hesitates, then climbs quietly up onto the table across from him, boosting himself with one socked foot on the cushion of a chair. Andrew looks surprised and red-eyed as Neil settles in, knee to knee.

He swallows thickly. “I have to leave.”

“You just got here,” Andrew points out.

“I have to leave the band,” Neil explains.

He waves this off. “Oh, no, I’m pretty sure we have our contractual claws in you, Neil Josten.”

“There are people, more now than ever, who have… more deadly claws in me.”

Andrew taps his lower lip thoughtfully. “Is it claws though, or is it talons? I know how the Moriyamas enjoy their raven motifs.”

“Riko’s threatening the band.”

“What’s new?” Andrew says.

Everything, he wants to say. Everything’s reaching a new and chilling level of dangerous.

“He stopped me on the street,” Neil says quietly. There’s a hand on his jaw immediately, turning his face towards the overhead light fixture. Neil lets his eyes unfocus in the harsh light. Andrew puts a finger to the bruise from the cane Riko was borrowing. “It’s fine.”

“You will be fine up until the moment that you’re dead,” Andrew spits, one hand moving to inspect Neil’s tender wrist.

“I’m fine if I can walk away,” Neil argues. “I’m okay if I stand up and move on, and that’s what I need to do here.”

“You took some heat from Riko and now you want to run away,” Andrew extrapolates. “Which is great, except you told me you weren’t ready to give up our deal.”

“I kind of assumed all deals were null and void in the event of a deadly threat.”

Andrew uses his leverage on Neil’s chin to tilt their faces close together. “I,” he says, “am a deadly threat. Riko is a little boy playing with his father’s knives.”

Neil flinches at his phrasing, shaking his head. “He has connections I can’t begin to understand. He told me things about my past, about yours—“

“Did he?” Andrew interrupts. His voice is the kind of inescapable cold that turns all of your exposed skin red, then blue, then black.

Neil tries to turn his face out of Andrew’s grip, and the pressure on him is immediately lifted. “Who’s Drake Spears?” he asks.

“Oh,” Andrew breathes, and then he laughs. “A dead man. Aaron’s gift to me.”

Neil’s face goes lax with surprise. “He killed him?”

“We like to keep our violence in the family,” Andrew says, smiling again, joyless. “Or rather, they did. We ended the cycle.”

“So Riko wasn’t lying about what happened to you,” Neil says slowly.

Andrew takes his cigarettes in one hand and shuffles them against the tabletop for a long moment. “Unlike you, Riko doesn’t always think that lying is in his best interest. It’s not one of his favourite sins.”

Neil stews in this revelation for a moment, trying to outlast the directionless rage streaking through him.

“I wish I’d known, before.”

“Why? So we could waste our time excusing ourselves in miserable circles for things that other people did to us? So I could explain to you what all of my scars mean and make you feel better about yours?”

“So I could have killed him myself,” Neil says fiercely. Andrew eyes him steadily. The rain picks up outside, and Neil can see it coming in through the window cracked over the sink.

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“It’s not supposed to mean anything to you. It’s just the truth,” Neil says. “If I can’t kill my own demons, I—would’ve liked to kill yours.”

“Much too late for that,” Andrew shrugs. “Not too late to stay here with us. If Riko threatens you out of the band on his first try, then you’re not as tenacious as I thought you were.”

“I’m afraid,” Neil says, “that someone else will suffer for my pride.”

“It’s not pride, it’s trust,” Andrew says, and then his face clouds over like he’s sobering up, remembering himself. “In case you’ve forgotten since I reminded you two minutes ago, we have a deal. Protection for participation.”

He shouldn’t believe that this volatile, five foot nothing stage performer could rebuff the yakuza, but he does. He can’t look at Andrew’s eery, wavering certainty without wanting badly to trust him.

“Right,” Neil agrees, feeling hours-old tension ebb out of his shoulders. He came here, he realizes, knowing that Andrew would give him a reason to stay. “I’ll wait it out. But you have to promise me that you’ll watch your back.”

Andrew shakes his head and pulls a cigarette from the pack. “He can’t touch me,” he says, flicking his lighter open. His eyes are hazy as he props one hand up and smokes on autopilot. Neil’s not certain that he knows for sure who Andrew’s talking about anymore.

The tour isn’t for another couple of weeks. He can keep his face out of the news and slog his way through all of this new information, maybe turn over a solution somewhere in the muck. At the very least, he can spend these final weeks pretending that he’s not afraid of the dark at the end of the tunnel where the rest of his life should be.

______

It’s the bark, not the bite

the prelude to a fight

the gleam of bared teeth

when they catch the low light

the revving beneath

the thought that you might

with the last of your breath

get our ending right

Neil turns the demo down on the car radio, embarrassed, and Dan grins at him from the driver’s seat.

“That’s a sexy little lyric.”

“Shut up,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“I like the weird synth in the background, that’s baller,” Matt pipes up from behind them.

Nicky groans. “Don’t tell Kevin that, he thought he was a fucking genius for stringing together six notes by ear.”

Dan laughs brightly, easing onto the freeway that’ll carry them out of the city.

Their album was released at midnight, and they’ve spent the morning watching the charts and listening to Nicky read out reviews as they were published, waiting to see if they’d be rejected or absorbed into the musical bloodstream.

It was exhilarating to see the finished product saturating their little corner of music culture, to watch people forming opinions, and to pop up in playlists and news feeds. Someone had already posted a guitar cover of one of their tracks before noon.

Neil watched the locked door of their house and hoped furiously that Riko wouldn’t take this new music as defiance and show up to drag him away. Foxes had shown up instead, with congratulatory champagne and a novelty card for Neil that read “baby’s first album”.

Both Ausreißer and Foxes were scheduled to take the weekend off before they’re all launched into promotions and tours on opposite coasts. Dan had suggested a Palmetto-wide retreat to lake Jocassee, and Neil had jumped at the opportunity to dodge the pressure from the Moriyamas and corral everyone out of harms way.

“This is going to be such a rowdy time,” Nicky says, chin tucked onto the shoulder of Neil’s chair. “I can’t believe you convinced Andrew to come.”

“Yeah, what the hell,” Matt says. “How did you manage that?”

Neil shrugs. “I asked.”

“Oh, you asked,” Dan says, nose scrunching under her sunglasses. “Do you know how long we were playing nice with the monsters before you showed up?”

“Neil’s got that magic touch,” Nicky says.

“Just how magic a touch are we talking?” Matt asks slyly.

“Don’t,” Neil warns.

“He won’t let us bet on them,” Nicky complains. “He’s just like, not fun.”

“It’s bewildering to me that you clowns are wasting your time when we all know who Andrew’s into,” Dan says. She keeps talking, and Neil hears Renee’s name, but he’s uninterested in the direction the conversation is taking. He looks distractedly out at the sun-split highway.

He thinks of how quiet the other car must be, stacked with supplies, caught in that constant vortex of tension between the twins, plus Kevin with his headphones on as always. Or what Renee and Allison talk about, tucked into Allison’s baby-pink convertible, the wind catching their bleached hair.

“Damn, are they passing us already?” Nicky asks, and Neil looks back in time to notice the massive shape of the van swerving past on their left. He catches the tail end of Aaron flipping them off, and Nicky laughs, craning into the front to return the gesture.

“They left like half an hour later than us, what the hell,” Dan says, revving a little, reluctant to fall behind.

“Andrew’s driving,” Neil says. The van jolts awkwardly into the lane in front of them, and Neil smiles as it streaks ahead. “They’ll beat us by a mile.”

“If they don’t crash first,” Dan grumbles.

“Look at it this way — if it’s not that, it’ll just be some other disaster,” Matt says. “That’s what you sign up for with the monsters.”

“You say disaster, I say a great time. Am I right, Neil?” Nicky asks, flicking at his shoulder to get his attention.

“I’m staying impartial.”

“You literally can not fool me,” Nicky says, affronted. “You love having an opinion.”

“He doesn’t want to incur your wrath by agreeing with us,” Dan teases, winking sideways at him.

“My wrath? This is the guy who taunted Riko Moriyama on sight, and you think he’s afraid of me?”

“We all are,” Matt says solemnly, and Nicky socks him in the arm.

They keep bickering, but Neil mostly tunes them out. A song that he helped write is still playing at half volume from the sound system, rounded out by Kevin’s deft bass solo. The car is warm enough to lull him to sleep, and he can see the rest of the Ausreißer crew fading into the scorched horizon ahead.

______

They arrive in staggered bursts to a spacious cabin, swallowed in overhanging trees on all sides. It’s two stories high, with a broad, wrap-around porch — courtesy of Allison’s string-pulling.

The twins are sharing a bench when they pull up, talking seriously, and Neil has to squint to make sure he’s seeing them correctly. Three hours in a car together and against all odds they’re still sharing space.

No one bothered to unpack the van, so Neil keeps himself busy by hopping into the back and pulling out duffel bags. Allison and Renee arrive soon after with coolers full of booze and perishables, and by the time everything has been lugged inside, there are three guitars propped up and abandoned in the foyer.

It’s surprisingly easy, once all of them are talking at once. Kevin drinks enough to stay loose, which always seems to relax Aaron in turn. The girls sit on the floor of the dining room while Matt unpacks groceries. Nicky chatters about getting everyone hammered so they can play “sweet, genre-fucked music” together. Someone lights a joint, and it makes the rounds.

Neil hops up on the kitchen counter, and Andrew leans against the fridge beside him.

Neil relaxes at the sight of him. “Aren’t you glad you came?” he asks, a little louder than he intended. He can sense the others pretending not to eavesdrop, their conversation dropping and then starting back up again, overly bright.

“Remains to be seen,” he replies.

“You were talking to Aaron,” he says. Andrew stares passively back at him. “I’ve never seen you speak one on one like that.”

“It was a long drive.”

Neil hesitates. “Did you tell him—“

“Andrew,” Nicky calls. “I’m comin’ through with groceries, can you free up the fridge?”

Andrew moves wordlessly aside, and then all the way out of the room. Neil watches him go with a dull sort of disappointment. For someone who is so frequently difficult to parse, Andrew is such an obvious font of honesty and clarity that speaking to him sometimes feels like an antidote to his own lies.

“Come on, Neil,” Renee trills. “We’re talking about the collab.”

“I want to hear the track,” Kevin says.

“You want to critique it,” Neil counters, wandering closer.

Dan throws a hand out towards him. “Exactly!”

“I think I have a right to know how you’re utilizing my lead singer.”

“Oh jesus, Kevin’s going to start talking about music theory, isn’t he?” Allison says. “I’m gonna need to drink so much more.” Dan cracks up, passing her a mickey of spiced rum.

“We all do,” she agrees, raising a full bottle in toast. “It’s a Palmetto tradition. Work hard, play hard.”

“Thanks coach,” Matt snorts.

“C’mon, bring it in.” They all tilt bottles together, some of them unopened, eyes rolling. Neil can see Andrew watching from the next room, and when they drink, he takes a drag from his cigarette.

______

Neil drinks too much.

He’d half planned on it, but his stomach is empty and his anxiety is just barely held down by sobriety, and it all gets to him so fast. His elbows keep chafing against other people’s, and his fear keeps blinking back at him from between branches outside and through passing headlights and in his own reflection.

They’re all seven or eight drinks deep when someone brings out a guitar, and then it’s a chaos of bad singing that coasts into real singing, someone upstairs laughing hysterically with someone else, someone on the porch with a bong.

He likes how it feels, the old safety of staying numb, like the back of the bars where nobody knows you, so you don’t have to bother to know yourself, and there’s nothing to be afraid of except the throb of a hangover at the end of the night.

But it’s different, now. Dan gets in close and thumbs both his cheeks, and Allison puts little, almost undetectable braids in his hair. Matt tells him how happy he is that they’re all together over and over again. The longer Neil looks over at Andrew the more he’s aware that he’s looking for something that isn’t there.

Nicky looks solemnly into his eyes in the bathroom mirror and asks to see his tongue piercing. There’s a strange moment, when he opens his mouth, where he thinks Nicky might grab him by the tongue.

“Come here, come here, come here,” someone says, and Neil looks at Allison’s reflection where she’s hanging in through the doorway. “Convince Andrew to play us something.”

“I can’t,” Neil’s mouth says. He tries again. “He won’t.”

“He does whatever you want,” Nicky says, looking much too serious.

“You—no,” Neil says. “You guys ask for whatever you want. I ask what he wants.“

“Whatever,” Allison says. “Semantics. Come out here.”

Nicky puts his hands briefly on Neil’s hips to sidle by into the hallway, and he and Allison chatter all the way back to the sitting room. Neil looks blearily at his reflection. His hair is so long now, it softens the angles of his father’s features. Makes his eyes look less painfully blue. He blinks, and breathes, and tries to think about nothing.

His feet carry him out to the rest of them. Dan cheers when he enters the room. She’s so flushed, and even though she’s sitting, Matt’s holding her steady.

Andrew’s sitting in an armchair by the fireplace, his posture relaxed, lips wet, drink in hand. Neil walks as steadily as he can to his side. The room goes nearly silent.

“Will you play something?”

Andrew looks up at him flatly. “Why would I?”

“I want to hear you sing,” Neil admits.

“And?” He takes a sip of his drink.

Neil shrugs. “I’ll trade you something for it,” he offers.

After a long moment, Andrew says “I’m not interested.”

“I know you’ve been writing new lyrics,” he says softly.

Andrew watches him for a minute, then nods towards the place where his notebook is sitting unassumingly on the coffee table. “Then sing them yourself.”

Neil considers this. He retrieves the book and holds it in both hands, giving Andrew time to back out. He doesn’t, and someone breathes out behind him.

“Okay,” Neil says. “Fine.”

He flips to the centre and finds blank pages, then beyond that, two that are flush with words and annotations. There are chords written out for four more pages after that, and then just scores and scores of melodies and poems and the lucky places where they meet.

He thumbs through songs he recognizes and new, title-less ones, still standing, everyone watching his search with interest.

He comes to a page near the back with the title burn this, and it reads:

Hands off never used to be a bad thing

It would be better if I never heard you sing

I know it’s winter, you can’t tell me that it’s spring

I want you without wanting anything.

Then a few lines are scratched out before the next fragmented stanza. Neil looks up into Andrew’s face, and he’s already staring back, eyebrows hitched so, so slightly together.

Neil crosses the room, and wrestles a little portable synth out of his bag, carrying it over to the couch. Some of the members of Foxes ‘ooh’ dramatically.

He nudges it on, cracks his knuckles, and toggles a couple of switches. He holds the book open on his knee, and starts to arpeggiate the suggested chords that Andrew’s written above each line.

He sings, improvising the melody, those first four lines and then —

It was too easy not to feel

when the drugs still told me you weren’t real

I always knew you were here to steal

We started this, me back on my heels

and you—beneath me.

There’s more, but Neil can’t bring himself to keep singing. His throat sticks and his vision goes spotty.

“Kind of a bummer,” Matt says.

“I think it’s pretty,” Dan says softly.

“Hard to believe the monster wrote it,” Allison says.

“You must know by now that we can write good lyrics,” Kevin says, irritated.

Aaron says something, but Neil’s still stuck staring down at the words on the page. Something is angrily crossed out in the second stanza, just completely struck through, unreadable. He feels remarkably sober all of the sudden, and he trudges to the precipice of an understanding so large that he has to step away from it, or he’s sure it’ll call him down to his death.

Andrew stands, somewhere in the field of Neil’s vision, and lets himself out onto the porch.

“Whoops,” Matt says, when the door closes behind him. “Do you think we took it too far?”

“He offered the book up,” Allison points out.

“To me,” Neil says.

“Well, yeah, but I think ‘sing them yourself’ was pretty self explanatory,” Dan says, missing the point. “So are we supposed to know who that was about?”

Neil stands, and the synth slides off his lap and into the crease between couch cushions. He walks to the kitchen and pours himself a cup of water, downing it all. Then another. He tries to remember exactly what the lyrics said and finds himself less and less certain.

For the second time that week, he thinks, knees knocking with terrible anticipation, I have to talk to Andrew.

______

He finds him curled on the bench outside, drenched in the yellow light from an exposed bulb, still nursing the same whiskey from before. He looks up with what Neil now recognizes as carefully tailored interest.

“Why does Nicky think that you’ll do whatever I ask?” he asks, voice wavering.

Andrew taps his fingers erratically on the rim of his glass. “Presumably because your track record has been good so far.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Andrew’s lips purse. “Then ask a new question.”

“Fine. I’ll play,” Neil says. “What was that song about?”

“It was about wanting something that I can’t have.”

“I didn’t think you wanted anything.”

“No,” Andrew agrees. “Except maybe to see if you sound as good in bed as you do on stage.”

Neil sits down, hard. He’s half-surprised when gravity still works, and the wicker footstool catches his weight.

“You like me,” he says weakly.

“Not really,” Andrew replies, expressionless. “Want and dislike are not mutually exclusive.”

Neil dry swallows a couple of times. He thinks of their eyes connecting darkly in a bathroom mirror, Andrew’s fingertips gliding over his scars, the passenger seat left open for him, his mouth and then Andrew’s on the same flask. He thinks of lyrics on their own album about running and lying and wanting without taking, and he remembers the deal that has kept him upright and safe and sane for so long.

Andrew’s amused interest when he’s high, the cryptic things that Nicky said to him on the night they met, the conversations where he gives away his secrets but doesn’t feel like he’s losing anything, it all completely restructures in his head.

He’s dizzy, still drunk, one foot in the reality where he was little more than a hindrance to Andrew, and the other in one where he writes songs about how much he wants him.

“You didn’t tell me,” Neil says dumbly. “You never said.”

Andrew shrugs. “There’s no point,” he says. “I’ve thought about it. Written about it. But I know better.”

“Okay,” Neil says, even though it’s not. Andrew shifts in his seat, and Neil watches his broad hands, his shiny lower lip, his squared shoulders. The night chirps and smokes with faraway firewood, pitch dark beyond the line separating the porch from the wilderness. Andrew might be the brightest thing for a thousand miles. “Okay,” he says again, but this time it splits in his mouth, and he reaches for Andrew’s face.

#the boys are back in town and emotionally? they're doin bad #aftg #the foxhole court #andreil #tfc fanfic #rockband au #abuse tw #violence tw #drugs tw #this one is a bit of a rollercoaster tbh #sorry if this is kinda poorly edited I've been at this for hours and gd hours #mine #philosophium #ask #long post

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