Neil and Jean. Black and Orange. The beginning and the end of a sentence.
Neil, though nobody would ever tell you so (because nobody knows, and that is intentional), is observant. Andrew likes to call it paranoid, but Neil feels it is justified, and therefore not to be classified under paranoia.
He knows he might seem flighty and dense (and that he is, sometimes, regarding certin topics), but in reality, he knows a lot of things. Most things, really.
He knows, for example, that one does not need to define something so ungraspable just for the comfort of others. (See: Andrew and him. If Andrew and him can be called something at all)
Now, knowing that, he still can't help but try to arrange certain things in his head in certain ways. Just for his own sake. Like a filing system.
One of those things, is Jean Moreau.
See, Jean is an oddity for Neil. In the same way that Andrew is, but slightly to the left. In the same way Kevin is, but a bit backwards. In the same way Wymack is, but actually not at all like that.
In a way that probably means something or another to other people but Neil does not have any references to, mostly due to the huge ass boulder he had lived under most of his life.
He sees no reason to react a certain way or do certain things just because that's what normal people would want him to do. He is not normal, and he does not care to be.
Still, in an uncanny and unflattering kind of desperation, he wants to do something. He's just not sure what.
It feels like how it does with Andrew, when he wants so much his body tingles in a way that makes him want to claw his skin off and melt into his arms simultaneously.
Like how it does with Kevin, where he feels so full and so hungry that the hair on the back of his neck stands rigid, his feet itch with the need to do something and his mouth is already running a mile a minute.
Like how it does with Wymack, so unsettling and unreliable that he cannot possibly believe it to be true, but so warm and unfamiliar that his heart freezes in place, trying to decide between lodging in his throat and dropping to his stomach.
In a weird mix and spill of all three, being with Jean, interacting with him, talking to him and defending him feels right and sideways. Makes him want to rip out his hair and carve the french man into small tiny pieces then sprinkle them across the fox's court so he could play a full game of exy stomping on his remains. Makes him want to touch and feel and something else that he didn't know he could want until Andrew told him so.
Neil knows people don't see the way he thinks as anything approaching sane. That if he spoke to Betsy she would send him to a closed mental facility and put him on drugs that would make him loopy and paranoid, more than he already is.
He also knows that the only people he has managed to form any kind of bond with, are people that also have a lightly skewed view of the world, if not one as upside down as his.
Neil doesn't really know what to call their bond, not that he has too (see: Andrew and him. If what Andrew and him have can be called a bond at all), but he heard Jean call them something once and it struck him as fitting, if a bit tight.
Misplaced forever partners.
The name is heavy with meaning nobody outside of a very small and very specific group knows.
It has implications and those are known by even less people. Specifically, four people, because two are the pair, one has seen what had been lost, and the last is Andrew, who Neil tells everything to.
Neil and Jean. They fight like cats and bark at each other like dogs. They throw insults at the other like they breath air, with the difficulty of knowing what it feels like not to.
They would do unspeakable things for each other without blinking and without expecting a thank you. They have.
Neil does not know what they would be like if he had grown in the nest, and he doesn't quite care. He rather likes the way they are.
He likes it in a way that makes him crave for... Something. Something he does not really know how to name. He does not really need to name it, but he would like to know what it is so he can find a way to get it.
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