Ummm more about Mr. Neil Minyard on campus please
Ah, thank you so much for the ask! 😘
Let’s see, especially since tumblr atewhat I’d already written for this. ☹
As they’d planned out when they got engaged,Neil and Andrew didn’t tell anyone but the Monsters (+ Robin and Katelyn), theoriginal Foxes, Wymack, Abby, Bee and Stuart, that they were married.
Oh, and Ichirou, of course, who agreedthat they shouldn’t tell anyone else until Neil’s final Exy season started(Andrew’s pro team also thought this was wisest). However, he was pleased thatNeil had basically signed already with a more than adequate pro team and sowould soon have a ‘decent’ salary from which to send him that owed percentage,and even gifted Neil with a rather extravagant wedding gift.
Neil, Nicky andAaron had to talk Andrew out of smashing said gift to pieces after its arrival.
Neil and Andrew spent the summer in Boston,eventually settling on the perfect apartment (meaning they both agreed uponit - with only some minor freakout from Neil), which they decorated as their future home together; Neil even brought someof his belongings from PSU and Columbia since he hoped to spend as much freetime there as possible before he graduated.
Once training season started, Neilreturned to PSU, where he roomed with Robin and threw himself into preparingthe new Foxes. He both wanted to ensure that the Foxes did well that year aswell as fill the time until he was able to talk to or visit Andrew.
Neil had gotten better (not much, but a little)at telling when someone was interested in him, but he was distracted, okay? Forthe first time in several years, he was alone without Andrew or even Nicky orAaron at his side, it was a huge adjustment for him. Robin helped a lot, butshe wasn’t Andrew.
And oh was Robin by his side! She’d beentemporarily assigned by Andrew as the guardian of Neil’s… erm… uhm… ‘virtue’,and she took said job very seriously.
Especially since theathletes (and eventually the rest of the students) had returned to campus, some ofthem excited about the fact that for the first time in over four years, oneNeil Josten was alone without one very scary Andrew Minyard in sight. An AndrewMinyard who’d graduated and moved up north, so that meant Neil was single, right?
(NO, NOT AT ALL.)
Robin would be amused by the patheticattempts to pick up Neil if they weren’t attempts to pick up Neil.Though she almost, almost, felt sorry for the morons (again, theywere attempting to pick up NEIL JOSTEN.)
Like the guy who thought it was abrilliant idea to walk up to Neil, smile and tell him how ‘hot’ his tattooswere, and then ask if the ‘A’ on his cheek stood for ‘angel’ because surelyNeil had just fallen from heaven. Robin was hard-pressed not to laugh when Neilsomehow managed to spill his bottle of sports drink over the guy’s head.
Or the girl who told Neil that she had a‘thing’ for linguists because they ‘knew’ how to use their tongues, only forhim to give her a blank look and say in Russian that he only spoke Englishbefore he gathered his books and stalked out of the library (with Robingiggling in tow, their Russian study session clearly put on hold for the timebeing).
The Foxes knew that Neil was stillinvolved with Andrew (just not how involved), and found the whole situationhilarious, of course (well, not Jack and Sheena). Of course they started abetting pool on how many times Neil would be hit on each week and how; Cammie madea killing when the one transfer soccer player had the ‘brilliant’ idea ofserenading Neil one night from the Fox Tower’s courtyard with an alteredversion of ‘Foxy Boy’.
Robin had to prevent Neil from going outto gut the moron, and then Andrew from flying (flying!) back to PSU onthe next plane to track down said moron to do much the same.
(Nicky nearly passed out from laughingso much when she told him about the whole thing.)
It was decided that Andrew would makethe announcement after his first professional game, something they both eagerlylooked forward to happening (and Wymack, since he was tired of the drama,betting pool and lovesick idiots interrupting his practice).
The Sunday after the Foxes’ first gameof the season (which they won), the Colonials played the Nighthawks and won(Neil, Robin and several Foxes held a viewing party at Abby’s for the game). Andrewnearly shut down the goal when he was out on court, and had the commentatorsraving about such an exciting start to his career and predicting that it wouldn’tbe long before there was an offer to join Court.
Of course he was dragged out for apost-game interview, where he clearly suffered through a few questions which hereplied to with coached answers (‘happy’ to be with the Colonials, Boston wasn’t‘too bad’, he liked the food, etc.). However, after five minutes, he clickedhis tongue and loudly announced that he was done with the questions as he hadto go call his husband.
That declaration was met with silencefor several seconds, until an intrepid reporter raised his hand and asked ifAndrew had said the word ‘husband’. Andrew verified that yes, he had, and that saidhusband was one Neil Josten now Neil Minyard so he needed to make sure thetrouble-prone idiot hadn’t gotten into some sort of new mess he had to takecare of, so he was done for the night.
Neil sat on the couch with a huge grinon his face while Robin nudged him in the ribs; it took a minute or two beforeCammie, Jordan and the others regained their senses and could (cautiously) pileon him in congratulations.
Word spread quickly about Neil’s new statusas a married man; he gave an interview the next day, started wearing his ringson his finger instead of on a chain hung around his neck, and let the schoolknow about his name change.
Most people respected Neil’s marriedstatus, but there were a few who seemed to think that him being in a long-termrelationship meant he was open to ‘fooling around’ (of course it didn’t). Bythat point, Robin had perfected her own version of the creepy smile/stare andmanaged to circumvent almost all of them before they got close to Neil.
And the ones she didn’t? Well, theydeserved what they got, she figured.