“You are being self-pitying.“
“I’m nearly done. You don’t have much more of this to bear.”
“I like you better this way.”
“Crushed and broken,” Gansey said. “Just the way women like ‘em.”
Ayyyy you wrote a prompt sometime and it was I think "can you just hug me" or something andreil,, and it was about Neil getting more comfortable with casual touches with his teammates,, WELL IT WAS GOOD AND A PART TWO WOULD BE BLOODY FANTASTIC (I think we all need Neil becoming comfortable with casual touches from his family and not flinch every time)
(one billion years later I have written a sort of sequel hello and thank you you’re wonderful)
When he wakes up on his 21st birthday, Andrew’s watching him over his glasses, wire frames flashing like lightning in the sun. He’s drinking spiked hot chocolate so sugary and boozy that Neil can taste the tang of it in the air. He spots a second mug on the bedside table and grimaces.
Andrew tucks a hand up into his own hair and rakes it back, taking a long sip from his mug. Neil smiles into his forearm, enjoying the over-performed nonchalance. There’s a tiny ’03’ printed in black on the white ceramic of his cup; it ends up looking like stark letterhead, completely leeched of enthusiasm. It’s Andrew’s version of a joke.
“They’re surprising you,” Andrew warns mildly, lips crowding the mug when he talks.
Neil rolls onto his back, stretching the comforter taut across Andrew’s lap. “I know. Nicky texted the group chat I’m in by accident.” He accepts the drink that Andrew passes him and holds it upright on his chest, letting the warmth brand his palm.
Andrew looks down into his face. “But you knew before that.”
“I did,” Neil says, pleased. “None of you are good at hiding things.”
Andrew gives him an unimpressed look, and scoops whipped cream into his mouth with his finger. Truthfully, Andrew is a professional at hiding things, but Neil’s just as good at uncovering them.
“What reason could I have possibly given you to think that they were doing this?”
Neil wriggles as far up onto their mismatched pillows as he can get without really sitting up, holding his mug away from his body so it doesn’t spill. “You told me they weren’t. Last week. I knew you’d never care enough to say anything. I still don’t know why you’re playing along now.”
“What happened to all your ill-considered trust?” Andrew asks.
“It doesn’t apply to birthday parties,” Neil replies wryly, and takes a careful sip of his drink — coffee, untouched by cream or sugar, lukewarm the way he likes it. “When are they coming?”
“They’re here,” Andrew says, and takes another pull of hot chocolate, eyes a bit unfocused. Neil juts his neck forward, sure he’s misheard.
“What?”
There’s a knock on the door, and Neil startles, coffee sloshing violently. He catches the run-off with his thumb and swings a glare on Andrew.
Nicky’s voice drones through the door, winding up on the word ‘happy’ until Neil tells him to come in and he trips into the rest of a lopsided rendition of ‘happy birthday’. Neil’s alarmed to find half of his original team pushing into their bedroom, singing and wielding a cake with a little plastic goal and exy action figures on top.
Matt climbs into bed with Neil and Andrew climbs out. The slipping moment where the scales are aligned and they’re on either side of him for a second is the strangest thing he’s ever experienced.
He’s disoriented to find himself both physically vulnerable and smiling, ringed with family and clutching a sweaty hand around his coffee. His armbands are crumpled on the bedside table but he doesn’t reach for them.
Matt swings an arm around his shoulder and smacks a kiss on his cheek, beaming, and Neil grins back without thinking too hard about it. Andrew takes one warning step towards Matt, but he has bedhead and glasses and sweatpants on. He’s a threat on his best behaviour, a human-shaped pulled punch.
“Surprise,” Nicky singsongs.
“He didn’t let you in,” Neil starts, incredulous. He throws an accusing look in Andrew’s direction like a grenade and waits for the explosion, but Andrew just looks cooly back at him. He has all his buttons covered so Neil can’t press them.
Neil can’t picture Andrew colluding with people that aren’t him. The thought of the team whispering their way into his apartment without Andrew hitting someone is impossible.
“The door was unlocked,” Matt says, smiling sheepishly.
“And we thought a great surprise would be home invasion,” Allison says, popping her gum. “Good fucking morning.”
“And a happy birthday,” Dan adds, cuffing his shoulder in a rough, sisterly sort of way before she snaps a party hat onto his head. Nicky coos from where he’s kneeled at the foot of the bed, recording Neil’s lacklustre response on his phone.
“We know you don’t like cake,” Renee says apologetically, setting it smoothly down onto the dresser.
“But we know you like goalies.” Allison’s mouth quirks, and she plucks the little masked goalie cake topper off and tosses it at Andrew. He swats it away.
Neil can taste the lump in his throat, but he doesn’t understand it. The foxes move his stuff and find their own perches, trying to hide how interested they are in the photos without frames splayed over open surfaces, the trinkets that mean more to Andrew and Neil than they’ve ever thought or said.
Aaron’s in the doorway, mouth sour, Kevin’s sitting on the only chair in the room with his fingers steepled on his crossed legs. Renee has her hands folded around an orange envelope, her expression held back just a little, like a crossword with a few words unsolved.
Andrew’s in the doorway of their ensuite looking stern, but the sun washes out his black shirt so the seams and cat hair show. Matt’s arm is a pin and Neil is paper, trapped and safe, only a little puncture necessary -- so small you can barely see it.
The moment he realizes that all the doorways are blocked and he’s not throttled by the thought of it is the moment he becomes aware of safety existing in a crowd, not a vacuum. Andrew watches him, knowing this, effecting disinterest like he didn’t pilot Neil home himself.
“We’re kidnapping you next,” Nicky says gleefully, and Dan shoves him.
“What did we say about language sensitivity?”
Nicky shrugs and leans in to pinch Neil’s cheek, but something thunks into the back of his head. Neil watches him flinch forward and steady himself on the bedspread, then looks beyond him to Andrew. He’s looking out the window, but the book on the dresser next to him missing.
“It’s fine,” he says, and it’s shotgun placation for Nicky glaring at Andrew and Dan glaring at Nicky; but mostly for Andrew with his expression screwed into his neck and shoulders instead of his face. “What are we going to do?”
“Exy,” Kevin says, looking alert for the first time.
“Casual exy,” Renee corrects gently.
“No such thing,” Neil says.
Dan groans and shakes him by the leg that’s still tucked up under the covers. “No stakes, Josten. Exy in the park.” She leaves her hand on his ankle.
He almost has more foxes in his bed than out of it now, and the cats are winding around the frame, sniffing cautiously. Andrew scoops Sir up when he starts clawing his way up the duvet.
“I won’t play if it’s high stress. I get enough of that in the hospital,” Aaron says. He’s taken to mentioning his internship at every pause in the conversation, and Neil’s patience for bragging is scraped thin.
“We only need six,” Neil replies pointedly.
Dan jostles him again. “Play nice.”
“No,” Neil says, enjoying himself a little. “It’s my birthday.”
“Breakfast first,” Allison cuts in. “I need a few mimosas if I’m going to spend all day with you.” There’s affection all over her though. She’s always been good at saying two things at once.
“Okay but we need to cut the cake first, I need him to do dumb birthday things,” Nicky says impatiently, climbing out of bed. “It’s carrot cake because, you know. You’re a health freak. And orange gets you off.” He sort of spins in a circle, searching, and then grabs at the armbands on their bedside and shakes them out. “Any knives in here?”
“Knife block in the kitchen, Nicky,” Neil says tiredly, and Nicky laughs his way out of the room.
“Were you surprised?” Dan asks after a moment, mouth quirked, and Neil shrugs, eyes wandering to Andrew again.
“By some things.”
______
When his mother used to hug him, she would pull him into her side without warning. Whatever wisp of a threat or suspicious shadow or harmless passerby would melt into the muffle of her hands curled over his head or sides, tight enough to shock his flesh when she let go.
She would treat him like something she was stuffing into a suitcase, and he would go limp and usable and try to be easier to fold.
He’s done with being something you roll up and wedge in, and the foxes never make him feel like last minute padding. He can see in their low-tipped, hopeful faces that they want him close but they won’t force him there. It’s enough to curl the edges of his heart and make consent well right up on the tip of his tongue.
He has to remind himself that he doesn’t have to tamp it down. He has to talk himself in and out of wanting affection just like he dithered over being able to afford a family or a locker with his name on it or a place in the margins of Andrew’s life.
It gets easier the more they touch him. Trust isn’t abstract, since Andrew, and he likes being able to recognize it.
Since it’s his birthday, he gets hugged and nudged and held between bodies and kissed with the caution of someone touching a dog’s favourite toy. Andrew hovers nearby, nonchalant enough that no one would look for his hand returning over and over to Neil’s thigh under the breakfast table or his steps hooking with Neil’s when they trudge out to the park.
The whole day is a splotchy mess of squabbles and drama and blue skies and sweet aching exertion, and Neil follows the rush of it with great fondness. They have omelettes for breakfast and play hard exy for almost two hours, letting high noon catch their clothes and slow them down with lethargy. Nicky naps in the sun, Aaron sits near him with his face tipped up and open.
Neil feels strangely older; his muscles sit comfortably with the heft of his heaviest racquet, his mind buzzes like radio drowned out by the rain, and his low tolerance for laziness is all but absent. He’s not his mother’s son, anymore.
“Having fun?” Dan asks, plunking down at Neil’s side, and he nods distractedly. “What’s going on up there?” she asks kindly, knocking gently on the side of his head.
“I don’t know,” Neil says, thoughtful. “Just thinking about how my mother probably never had a surprise party.”
Dan gives him a disbelieving look. “Very grim.”
He shrugs. “She didn’t like to be surprised.”
“But you do?”
He watches Renee offer Allison an earbud a few metres away, heads together, then lets his own head thunk back into a tree trunk. “Everything good that’s ever happened to me has been a surprise.”
“Neil,” Dan says softly, taking his hand. Neil squeezes his eyes shut, feeling his whole body prickle, pins and needles that only hurt you to wake you up. “You’d let us know if it was too much?”
He hesitates. Historically, if things got to be too much, he left.
“Maybe,” Neil says, and Dan leans her head onto his shoulder.
“Noncommittal bastard,” she says fondly. “You’re always so straightforward in interviews, where’s all that gone?”
“Where’s all what gone?” Matt asks, coming up and settling down between them, his hair wet from the public fountain.
“His big-shot starting striker persona,” Dan replies mirthfully. “He’s ‘I’m fine’-ing me over here.”
“Typical,” Matt grins, knocking shoulders with Dan first, then Neil.
“I’m just thinking,” Neil argues.
Matt makes a tsk-ing noise. “That’s never good.”
“I like—” Neil cuts off, annoyed when he gropes for words and finds none. “This.”
“This park?” Dan asks, her eyebrows raised. Neil looks away, out into the foliage that’s drooping over everything, the sun melting it back into the earth where it was born.
“Having birthdays,” Neil says quietly. He wants to say not being afraid, but he doesn’t want the words to come out silly and dramatic.
Dan pokes him in the calf, and smiles tenderly when he looks up at her. He looks back down at the grass he’s been uprooting and swallows thickly. Sometimes he looks at Dan or Matt and he hurts with loss until he realizes that he’s standing in one place, nowadays. His friends do things like cross countries to see him, and he’s just— still.
“We’re going to do up all your birthday’s like this,” Dan says, bright-eyed. “Or at least the next eighteen, to make up for your trash childhood.”
Eighteen years is unfathomable and tempting and possible and Neil shakes his head, overcome.
“I don’t know how we’re going to top exy though,” Matt says, looking around at the pylons and sticks and water bottles dotting their stretch of the park. “Lower your standards. Develop some more interests.”
“I have enough interests,” Neil says.
“You have two,” Matt says, deadpan. Andrew and Exy, presumably. He considers this for long enough that Matt bursts out laughing.
Andrew comes wandering up the path on cue, wearing Neil’s navy t-shirt and looking at the trio of them like he’s mentally dissecting Dan and Matt from the picture. Neil likes the way Andrew doesn’t try to hide his interest in Neil from their friends anymore. There was always Andrew’s lot, but now Neil’s on a rung of his own, snug to Andrew’s side.
He’s feeling flushed and impulsive so he reaches out for Andrew when he’s close enough. Andrew looks at his hand for a heartbeat, and takes it faster than Neil would have thought, palm to palm. Neither of them move to get down or up.
Andrew waits for Neil to guide them and Neil enjoys how uncomplicated everything is when his best friends are on one side of him and Andrew’s perfect hand is flexing around his wrist. A shiver creeps up on him and sluices down his back. He’s still getting used to the overwhelming warmth and relief tied to physical contact that asks first.
“Come here,” he says, very very quietly, and Andrew sinks down across from him, still holding his hand.
Dan and Matt have gone silent. Neil looks straight ahead at Andrew because things are always easier there; he knows Andrew will be looking back, clear as a window.
The others shift up onto knees and then feet, and Neil catches the tail end of Dan’s smothered laugh. Neil looks up expectantly.
“No, please, have your moment,” she laughs, tangling hands with Matt and bouncing on the balls of her feet. “It’s your birthday, Neil.”
Matt rumples Neil’s hair as he passes, and they tramp off towards Allison and Renee’s clearing. He doesn’t watch them go.
He has the persistent feeling that Andrew is letting him get away with things because it’s his birthday, which is such a charming, stupid idea that Neil has to grind his teeth so he doesn’t smile. He squeezes Andrew’s hand instead.
“Thanks for letting them do this.”
Andrew blinks. “Not stopping them is not the same thing as letting them.”
Neil smiles, can’t help it. “You unlocked the door,” he points out.
“You forgot to lock it,” Andrew corrects, and they both sit with the obviousness of the lie for a moment.
“You ate their shitty cake.”
“Cream cheese icing,” Andrew says simply.
They look at each other, holding hands, listening to Renee laughing somewhere else in the park, bees swerving over rose bushes. Nothing has a beginning or an end for a minute.
All the rest of his birthday’s stretch in front of him. He thinks about getting to watch his friends tick older and buying a dog and learning to hug first, and his future seems real enough to hold in his hands.
rain beats against the windows of fox tower and even though neil is untouched by the storm he feels as if he’s drowning from the force of it. he doesn’t feel like neil josten, his body feels all wrong, and his spirit is suspended elsewhere so he doesn’t flinch when the thunder booms and the lights flicker.
they’re in the south, after all, these things tend to happen regardless of generators.
a breathe of a noise from the bean bag on his right catches his attention for the briefest of seconds and he thinks the sound may be his name – except neil isn’t his name, is it? he feels a little more like nathaniel; disjointed, vicious, and wrong. he doesn’t know how to stop it.
“abram.” andrew’s voice cuts through the din in his brain and neil snaps his head over to him in surprise. he comes back to his body all at once, registering the dull pain of his blunt nails cutting into the skin of his calves. abram. neil abram josten. that was his name. he wasn’t nathaniel.
nathaniel was dead and buried with his father in baltimore.
“what do you need?” andrew asks, his hand resting on the bean bag underneath neil but making no move to touch him. to a less trained ear, or one focused on the vicious thunder rolls outside, his voice would have sounded emotionless, like he was simply asking out of habit. neil knows better and hears the hidden question. yes or no.
“yes.” and andrew shifts on his beanbag to take neil’s nape in hand, pressing a warm and grounding kiss to his cheek. it’s not enough to take the ache away, but it’s a start and neil turns his head to kiss andrew as lightning strikes somewhere on campus.
neil thinks it’s fitting, since loving andrew makes him feel like he’s been set aflame.
@callron tagged me to post ten songs i’ve been listening to recently so here they are! there is a v big kind of ‘fsociety woe is me’ mood to all the songs, a lot of which are from .@foxxhole’s playlist ‘everything that matters’ which is honestly the only thing ive been listening to all month y’all should check it out.
rules: pick 10 songs you’ve been listening to then tag 10 people
im tagging: @transandreil @eipis @deerlily @aarvnminyrd @revneewalker @matthcwboyd @exyfordays @spookymiscreant @frxnkenstein and @m1nyard
none of you have to do this if you don’t want to; and if anyone else wants to do this just say i tagged u! im a slut for playlists
EDIT: @boydsten and @dickcampbelllgansey have since tagged me but i haven’t listened to anything new but i did this like a week ago!
“let riko be king,” kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. “most coveted, most p r o t e c t e d. he'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. whatever. me?” kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. “i'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board.” “QUEEN.”
hey I just found all your work, and sorry but im so confused, is your OC Kenji apart of a book or comic your writing? or is he just an OC that your enjoy giving a background story to (((: either way this all seems so cool!
Well, I do hope I’ll be able to make a comic, but as of now, that’s not too realistic, but thanks for thinking stuff is cool :>
