kinda discusses his coping mechanism but then i went off track idk what this is
neil’s the runner, the rabbit. we know that. so it wouldn’t be surprising when i say: escapism
when it comes to neil, it’s not the sort of escapism of indulging yourself into a book or a fictional reality. he has the mindset of: “if i get far enough and get myself into another problem i’ll lose this one.”
he bottles up his emotions, he’s always paranoid. he’s living under the constant fear that someone’s watching him, someone knows who he is, someone recognizes him.
so it’s only natural to say his instinct is to leave, to run, to get away from everyone and everything.
but he cant always run away, can he? not when he stayed with the foxes. when he chose to stop running. so what’d he do then?
i believe he dyed his hair or bought new contacts every single time.
oh? he’s got finals and practice and andrew has already graduated and he wants to run but can’t? solution: split dye his hair. half ginger, half blond.
problem? not solved but at least he’s got cool hair now
altering small parts of himself became therapeutic, but as his hair slowly started to fry off, andrew stepped in.
he talked neil through painting his nails different colours, rhat way he’d never run out of options, and neil did try. he wanted it to work. but it just didn’t suffice.
so there it began. neil began to have horrible panic attacks, and everything felt too loud morphing into an intolerable cacophony so jumbled and manic that it was like he’d been plunged into a choking silence instead. he’d tug at his already fried off hair, chin digging into his knees as he shut his eyes and clenched his jaw.
neil was lost. and he didn’t know what to do. the trauma was catching up and he can’t find a way to keep it at bay.
and then the foxes came in. started a bet on who’d be able to help neil find a healthy coping mechanism first.
all bets were on either dan or matt, and aaron refused to participate. he didn’t “care about josten’s tantrums. i have more important shit to do than be a shrink”
and one by one, all their plans failed, and neil was only falling deeper into the rabbit hole of human desolation.
until one day, as he was having a panic attack on the couch, with allison trying to coax him back, aaron sat in front of the computer, frustrated. he walked over and pushed allison aside.
you know what, neil was a math major and aaron needed to study. he was tired of this. he still didn’t care though.
“neil, what is the derivative of (5+3x)^5?”
neil’s grip on his hair loosened, as he continued to rock back and forth, his breathing slowly getting less ragged.
“neil, i knoe you know this, what is the derivative of (5+3x)^5?“
with a shaky breath, neil tried to speak, but failed. aaron sat close to him. “imagine you’re blowing a candle, neil, come on. slowly. in. and out. in and out. now do you know the answer to my question?”
after a few seconds, neil lifts his tear-stained face and utters, with a shaky breath “it’s- it’s 15(5+3x)^4, you sol- you solve it using the uhm- the chain rule.”
“that’s right. now get up and wash your face. you look pathetic.” as he walked back to his seat, he could see the slight upwards quirk of neil’s lips.
though it was true that aaron hadn’t found him a coping mechanism, he found a way to pull neil out of the pain, temporarily.
otherwise, when things got bad, he’d go for a run until his muscles felt like mush, and his brain couldn’t handle the exhaustion.
and when he couldn’t do that? when he was desperate? he’d just look up a calculus worksheet or anything of the sort, just to ground himself, or he’d mess with one of aaron’s uni textbooks just for the hell of it
it was a long road of recovery, but neil wasn’t alone, and for the first time, it didn’t send him into a spiral, it was comforting.
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