Neil josten:
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

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@andreilaftg
Neil josten:
When he’s a pro player Neil refuses to see his team’s physician for anything that requires more than a band-aid or some cooling and it frustrates his whole team and coach but Neil just Will Not Let That Person Treat Him.
Because the only doctor he really trusts is Dr. Aaron Michael Minyard, who is very exasperated about his Most Stupid Patient™ but will still treat all of his bruises and sprained ankles and pulled muscles
#i’m crying imagine the first time he shows up #go see your team’s physician?? #i don’t like him #you don’t like me and i don’t like you for that matter #yeah but i trust you #get the fuck out #you took a vow aaron #and aaron mutters and swars the whole time like #trust me… fucking moron… you’re literally the person i dislike the most in the whole fucking universe #yeah thats why i trust you #go see a fucking therapist AND DON’T WALK ON THAT FOOT UNLESS YOU’RE BEING CHASED BY A SERIAL KILLER #thanks aaron see you #LIKE FUCK #tfc (@roesiah)
I AM L I V I N G FOR THESE TAGS SHDKANAKL
99: “Calm down. I look a lot worse than I am.” (second prompt from the anon who asked for andreil! This is going to be exactly what you think it is :)))))
When Aaron’s ringtone bleats at Andrew from his jeans, he feels hyper-focus snap through him like the crack of latex gloves going on: skin-tight, hands about to get dirty.
He holds a finger up to Bee where she’s thumbing through her appointment notes, and flips his phone open, pressing it in snug to his ear.
“Andrew?” He hears, Aaron’s voice sounding stretched thin, his usual annoyance worn away in the middle.
“Aaron,” he replies, and Bee smiles in absent understanding, turning back to her work.
“Listen to everything I’m going to say before you hang up, okay?”
Andrew goes still. “Talk fast.”
“It’s Neil,” Aaron says, like his mouth is full of stinging bees. Andrew’s skull trades places with his ankles, or, something too small to be real has his head in a vice, and his legs are sloshy useless.
“Where?”
“I told you to listen,” Aaron hisses.
“Where?” Andrew repeats evenly. He’s already calculating the time, the steps to the court, fox tower, Abby’s place, Wymack’s apartment. Aaron shares Andrew’s resentment, though, and the other end of the line goes glacial.
“Aaron. Tell me where he is.”
Bee looks up, all her features tipping down like a kaleidoscope shifting — smile inverting, mouth shifting sideways.
“He’s not dead. And you can’t tell me you didn’t expect him to get beat up at some point, Andrew, he’s a hazard.”
He knows. He knows, Neil is the only caution sign that Andrew regrets ignoring, he’s a bad fall waiting to happen.
“I don’t care what you think he is or is not,” Andrew says, and Bee makes the mistake of looking sympathetic in his direction. Andrew slams one hand down on the desk, enjoying the controlled jump of the objects on it.
“Right. You just care about you,” Aaron says. Andrew gets up from his chair and leaves the room, ignoring Bee’s resigned sigh behind him. “And him, I guess. Josten,” he clarifies, like Andrew doesn’t know, like he could stop knowing.
Aaron pauses, then exhales. “Nicky should’ve been the one to call you, but he’s. He’s staunching the blood flow. I told him what to do.” It sounds important to him that Andrew knows this. Andrew barely registers it, he’s busy throwing every door open between him and his car with his phone still pressed to his ear.
“It’s… your boyfriend got hit by a car,” Aaron gets out, finally. Andrew takes a knife out, just for the feel of it in his palm. “It was a dark—I dunno. SUV? Tinted glass. We think it was a— no Kevin, I know— we think it was a Wesninski, not a Moriyama.”
“Don’t say that name.” He says it on a dry throat, and the words catch. There’s a sticky silence.
“Fox Tower parking lot. Should we call the cops?”
“No,” Andrew says, and he climbs into his car, turning the engine over, wanting it as angry as he is. “Don’t call anyone, don’t talk to anyone, not until I get there.”
“He’ll bleed out.”
The fact that Aaron called Andrew before 911 at all is a miracle.
“Keep him awake.” He hangs up, and the parking lot he’s in might as well be a peak on a mountain for how remote it feels. He speeds. A lot. He crumples the space between him and Neil into a ball and throws it in the fucking garbage.
When he rounds the familiar turn into the parking lot, a small crowd has amassed near where Matt’s car is parked diagonally and a dozen athletes are wringing their hands.
Andrew swerves close enough to them that they have to physically leap out of the way, and he’s out of the car without turning the engine off or closing the door behind him.
He shoves some kid to the ground, and then it’s Allison and Dan linked at the arms, and they move out of the way without being told.
Andrew’s eyes find Neil’s and he wants to go back to last year and physically cut him out of his life, he wants to raise a fist or a knife at Neil and have him take it seriously, he never wants Neil hurt again.
He’s propped up on the curb with his left arm in pieces and blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. He smiles when he sees Andrew and his teeth are red.
Andrew drops to his knees and fists one hand in Neil’s sweaty bangs.
“What the fuck did you do?” He shakes him. “What did you do?”
Neil jostles hard, and the pain of it shows on his face. His mouth is a slash of white paint. “Calm down. I look a lot worse than I am.”
Andrew takes his broken arm by the wrist and lifts it. Neil cries out, and his good hand twitches towards Andrew’s shirt but stops. Still not taking without permission, even in the throes of mindless agony.
Andrew can see that there’s something seriously wrong, Neil’s shirt is ripped and his side is already mottled with bruising. Neil’s breaths take two tries before they go anywhere. Internal bleeding, probably. Any number of trashed organs. A shitty brave face and a future narrowing to a crack in a closing window.
“Look,“ Neil says, and he raises his broken arm until it’s at Andrew’s face level. “I’ve got some grip.” He makes a loose fist and a tear rolls down his cheek.
“Your bone is outside your arm,” Andrew says. He puts both hands on Neil’s neck, and notices for the first time Nicky kneeling a metre away, a jacket on over his naked torso. The missing shirt is wadded on Neil’s side soaked in blood. Matt’s hovering at Neil’s head, watching them both. Beyond him, Renee’s standing guard, her expression carefully controlled and her eyes trained on Andrew.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” Neil slurs. His right hand is back at Andrew’s shirt, hovering, blind. “One of Lola’s maybe. One of dad’s. Loose ends, victimless crime. I don’t exist, anyway.”
It’s barely coherent. Andrew’s grip tightens and tightens. “You’re Neil Josten.”
“Number ten, stick size three, starting striker,” he recites. “Andrew—“ his eyes are open but they’re looking too far to the right.
He takes Neil’s hand and pulls it up so it meets Andrew’s chest. It instantly twines in the dark fabric and Neil’s mouth twitches then slackens. His grip on consciousness is starting to look like that sad fist he’d tried for: more painful when it’s there than when it’s not.
“Thank you,” Neil whispers.
“Stop it.”
“I mean it.” In an act of supreme defiance, Neil stays awake, and focuses more, blue eyes clear and forward-facing. “Last time I wanted to say more.” His hand splays across Andrew’s heart. “I wanted to kiss you again before I died.”
“You’re not dying.”
“I’m not doing such a great job of surviving.”
“When have you ever,” Andrew says, and then he hooks his fingers in the long ends of Neil’s hair. “Try harder.”
Sirens kick in somewhere nearby, and Andrew’s eyes instinctively find Aaron.
“Don’t look at me,” he says, and points at Matt.
“We got home and he was bleeding on the ground, what was I supposed to do,” Matt says, and he reaches to stabilize Neil’s neck when it cranes towards him.
Andrew bats his hand away easily. “Don’t touch him.”
Matt’s expression sours. “He’s not just yours, you know. We’re a team.”
Andrew doesn’t respond. He feels like he’s the one with a punctured lung.
Neil tugs his attention back where it should be with a gentle pull on his collar. The ambulance pulls up a minute later, but he’s only peripherally aware of it. “You don’t need to come. I know you don’t like hospitals.”
“I have to,” Andrew says.
He’s jostled sideways by a paramedic, and it wrenches him out of his head.
“Don’t—“
“Andrew,” Kevin warns, and if it were anyone else he would’ve ignored them.
He stands and watches Neil’s uncharacteristically weak-looking body fold onto a stretcher. It’s sickening, the juxtaposition of blood and woozy smiles. The chaos of Neil’s broken body is starting to look familiar, something violent and troubling like the foxes are violent and troubling.
“He’s coming with me,” Neil orders, his grip bruising Andrew’s wrist.
Other people are speaking but Neil’s water and Andrew’s face down in it. He leaves his car; he leaves the foxes and the bloody t-shirt and his panic. When he’s forced into the waiting room not by doctors or security but by Neil’s quiet voice, he thinks he might be learning to breathe underwater.
Now with bonus sequel !
aftg but neil is genuinely wholeheartedly under the impression that andrew and kevin are boyfriends. which is basically just the first book and half of the second but i mean we let him keep that energy the whole way through. andrew says he'd blow him and neil is like ??? pretty sure kevin would take issue with that??? and andrew, thinking neil is referencing their deal, is like ??? kevin doesn't care what i do when im away from him??? and neil is like ??? but you're always with him when im around??? and andrew is like ??? i would tell him to go away??? and neil is like ??? i don't think you should do that??? and andrew is like ??? u mean u want him to watch??? and neil is like ??? i didn't agree to this but if i was going to then yes, im not going to make you send kevin away??? and anyway this is how both andrew and neil operate under the assumption that the other is angling to enter a throuple with one another and kevin day and kevin has no clue about any of this
my favourite moment from all three books of aftg is neil wanting his racquet back after it was used as a murder weapon. the true champion of the idgaf war
When Neil and Andrew argue, they don't raise their voices at each other, they don't stay angry for more than an hour, and they quickly resolve any disagreements through conversation.
When Andrew and Kevin fight, Kevin always tries to make a scene, but quickly gives up because Andrew just looks at him with his calm, deep brown eyes with a silent question "are you done??" and the argument ends in a stalemate.
When Neil and Kevin fight, which happens more often than you might think, they yell, switch languages, push each other just for attention, not physical harm, people around just get out the popcorn because it's a spectacle, as soon as one of them shuts up the other mumbles something under his breath and it all starts again, but they are finishing it with an evil kiss and they continue talking as if they hadn't quarreled.
“Is your learning curve a horizontal line?” will always be iconic. Andrew Minyard, the man that you are
yall stop it Aaron must have SUCH Mysterious Enigma energy once he's a neurosurgeon like,,, Exy isn't THAT popular for the general public so slowly Finding Out about him must be wild like
"Oh Dr. Minyard? He was a college athlete. Yeah, won championships a few times."
"Oh Dr. Minyard? Yeah he was on trial for murder. No, no he definitely did it, the trial was to determine if it was justified."
"Oh Dr. Minyard? He speaks fluent German. We don't know why."
"Oh Dr. Minyard? Has a twin brother who is a professional athlete. Yeah he won an Olympic gold medal recently, that's why Dr. Minyard took all those vacation days."
"Oh Dr. Minyard? He's five feet tall."
He's like the love interest of some medical drama or something except his relationship is already established so instead people just whisper about him with no outlet for the way he makes them go a lil bit feral
okay lets debate
when does neil celebrate* his bday?
jan 19
march 31
secret third option (pls tell me what lmao)
*i know its not in the traditional sense, but lets say the day he acknowledges he's a year older
It’s both with his identity issues xD
On jan 19th he’s and reminiscing like ah yes Nathaniel(I) was born an extra year ago
And on March 31st he’s out here celebrating being Neil Josten for another year of living the life he wants while reminiscing on outliving his enemies and loving Andrew
Happy 19th birthday, junior!
He's forever 19 years old, but our Neil made it out, and we're expecting him on March 31st. For now, we're celebrating with Nathaniel
A sad day, the beginning of the countdown...
i love other people’s social media aus so much that i simply had to make one. anyway aftg and everything is the same except smartphones and twitter were thriving in 2008
Jeremy putting on those tight shorts that show off more of his legs and hyping himself up to go to the airport and pick up the fine ass player who’s stats were out of this world
au where nicky and erik broke it off after the first year of long distance, when nicky accepted the offer to play and study at psu and they were staring down the barrel of another five years of long distance. the first year had been difficult and they both deserve to make the most of their lives where they are, they tell each other, and they're both crying. but maybe in 10 years, one of them jokes, maybe in 10 years, if neither of us have settled down, we could get married. the other jokes along, agrees.
nicky starts at palmetto and misses erik. he regrets breaking up sometimes, sometimes he doesn't. he never cries in front of the twins, at least. he doesn't want them to think it's their fault. he dates a couple of guys but they all eventually complain that they're tired of nicky's persona. they want him to be himself, but he can never bring himself to be that vulnerable with any of them. he moves on quickly, moves on like he's never done from erik.
erik continues working in stuttgart and wonders every day if he made the wrong choice. he chose his job and staying in germany over nicky. he spends a lot of time with family and they stop mentioning nicky when they realize it doesn't cheer erik up anymore. erik thinks they've forgotten about him, and wonders how he can't. he dates but it doesn't stick. his friends joke about him being stuck on the american boy he'll only talk about when he's had one too many beers.
nicky graduates and gets a job in the us, but can finally leave south carolina. his coworkers hum in noncommital agreement when he fantasizes about europe out loud. you could move there, someone tells him, and he stops joking. he doesn't know if he's welcome back.
erik quits his job and gets a new one. the old one wasn't worth much, after all, and after five years he can't help but compare the five years there to what he could have had. he quits it before he's landed a new job, after too little sleep, and dreams that night of selling his things and going to the us. he wakes up, unemployed and panicking, and ends up landing a new job, also in germany. on other nights like that one, he regrets it.
nicky talks to the twins regularly and watches on video calls as the homes in their background fill out, watches neil and katelyn putter around behind them, watches as the twins both settle down and reach some sense of comfort he's never seen on them before. he watches as the twins look at each other in the viewfinder and fight silently before one of them asks about what's going on in nicky's life. oh, not much. never much.
erik goes to family gatherings and sometimes he brings people just to avoid the questions of when he will settle down. one of the dates doesn't catch erik grimacing when the date says they want eight children and to live on a farm. is that what you want? his mom asks him, and erik can't lie. he breaks it off with the date on the way to the car, and is surprised by how easy it is.
(andrew and aaron sit on a video call of their own, typing 'erik klose' into the facebook search bar and scrolling down his profile. he doesn't post much, and they don't have to scroll far until they reach photos with nicky.)
(erik's parents watch erik and the date leave and sigh to each over the kitchen table. one of them will mention nicky, and the other will agree that erik had been so happy back then. then they'll remind each other that they'd promised not to mention nicky, because otherwise they wouldn't shut up about him.)
nicky's thirty-one years old and he finds himself counting down to something he doesn't want to think about, really. he doesn't want to think about it in detail, lest he gets his hopes up, but it's too late. for more than nine years, it's been too late.
nine years and fifty-one weeks after erik last saw nicky, he sits down with a piece of paper in front of him and writes a letter.
ten years after he last saw erik, nearly on the hour, nicky's trying to find an email adress, a phone number, something to contact erik with, when the mail comes. there's a letter atop the bills, with his name in handwriting that makes his heart stop in his chest. the envelope is a fair shade of pink, as is the letter paper, and it darkens where nicky's tears fall. he reads it, again and again, and erases what he'd written out to send erik.
instead he writes, 'i'm coming.'
he escapes to germany for the second time in his life, and he's just as scared this time as he was the last. scared, and happier than he's been in a long time. he tells the person next to him on the flight he's going to germany to get married, and doesn't bother backtracking when his seat neighbour looks at him like he's crazy.
erik's waiting for him at the airport this time too. nicky feels like he's going to explode. they hug. they can't keep their eyes off each other on the way back to erik's place. when they get there, nicky goes to shower and erik makes food for them. they sit down, a candle between them, and they're back where they left off.
one of them asks, 'do you remember what we said ten years ago?'
"Cat has never bruised Laila like this."
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS!!!!!!! Jeremy's response gets a lot of traction (because it's hilarious), but LOOK at that sentence!!!! Jean is using Cat and Laila as his standard for what a relationship should be. Because he KNOWS THEM now and he TRUSTS THEM to be good and respectful to each other! He is watching Cat and Laila interact with each other and thinking "oh, this is what it's supposed to look like. This is how a relationship is supposed to work." That's amazing and he's right!!!
Some of the Raven abuse slides because the kids in the Nest just don't have enough of a baseline to compare it to. They get to Edgar Allen and think sure, every collegiate sports team is this restrictive with pain meds and meals and intense about scheduling and practicing. NO! But we're seeing in real time as Jean has these realizations and gets those comparisons to put his time in the Nest into perspective. And his standard for respectful, healthy relationships is now CAT AND LAILA!!! And he LIVES with them. So this isn't even a case of him just seeing them at their best a couple times a week. Cat has become the little angel on his shoulder and his baseline for what a good person would do and that's so sweet
Catlaila MVPs truly; they deserve the world and should be idolized by everyone
thinking how aftg would definitely have to be animated because imagine the insane amount of prosthetic scars an actor would have to put on to be Neil Josten
everyone's speculating about the "moriyama empire collapses" theory but may i offer a more satisfying alternative:
Kevin Day & the collapse of the raven-moriyama branch
cause here's the thing: agent browning absolutely knows more than he's saying. he’s watching jean and after the way he called it “the biggest case of [his] career”? yeah. this man is not playing around.
jean and neil are still useful. not just for exy, but for whatever this investigation actually is. and it's not like the FBI just randomly relocated from baltimore to seattle. there’s something bigger going on there. maybe moriyama affiliates in the pacific northwest? maybe that’s how nathan tracked mary and neil? either way, the feds shifting cities is not a coincidence.
and let’s talk about the ravens for a second. we’ve got a team full of traumatized kids, a bunch of former players who either vanished or ended up dead, and after the brawl with the foxes? the ravens are being watched. closely. and browning has his eyes right on the epicenter.
But here’s another thing: the entire moriyama empire can't fall imminently because it undoes the tension of tkm.
remember how neil couldn’t even think of even implying another, let alone moriyama involvement while in FBI custody because he implied there were moriyama spies there? how his survival literally hinged on acting like he’d never even heard of them? the feds are portrayed as not even close to touching the main branch. and even riko’s death is treated like a fluke with zero precedent for thinking that the FBI could unravel all of this in under a year.
now, do i think something fishy is happening? yes.
but what makes more sense (and what would be way more narratively satisfying) is if the feds go after the second branch. specifically: tetsuji.
think about it. he’s the one who raised riko. who "owned" kevin. who molded jean. he runs the evermore system. he’s the architect of the Nest. he is the Ravens. and unlike ichirou, tetsuji is a personal villain. the players hate him. we hate him. he’s the perfect scapegoat and the perfect target.
so here’s the theory: somewhere between college and going pro, kevin is learning more about whatever tragic way his mom died (because we all know she did) and what kevin and exy meant to her. He greives what could have been and finally understands.
Meanwhile, the FBI investigation culminates in tetsuji being tried (maybe even dying) and the second branch gets publicly targeted. The main branch panics and ichirou decides to cuts his losses to stay afloat.
But how can they do this? By enlisting a key witness to the trial: kevin day. Kevin obviously has to agree and plays his perfect part as he always does.
but throughout the trial he goes through more development and realises: 'oh I really want this to happen, how vile tetsuji is, how he didn't deserve everything riko put him through, and this is not what my mom wanted the sport to be or how she deserves to be honoured'. Maybe, after all is said and done, he loves exy but not like a Raven, but as a Day.
The trail ends, tetsuji is executed after chilling testimonies. And the main branch abandons exy involvement altogether because it’s too risky. The problem is that kevin, jean & neil played such big roles in the collapse that they hold the power/risk to shine a light on the main branch + neither can they be killed without the FBI being suspicious again and reopening the case.
They know this, the main branch knows this, it's Kevin/Neil who say it out loud and ichirou plays smart & strikes another deal: silence in exchange for freedom. kevin, jean, and neil get to walk away from all of it (no 80% money, no debts, just bring left alone & to play exy). (Or maybe in Jean's case, not play exy ever again?)
and then we end where we need to: with tetsuji dead, the raven branch destroyed, and MOST IMPORTANTLY:
kevin day as the last living person related to the foundation of exy. the one person left who can reshape the game. the one person who will make it what Kayleigh Day wanted it to be.
From here.
I just can see Kevin saying if they want him to make videos it has to be history based and this is what he and whoever is determined to get him using like Tiktok oe something have ended up with.