Work Text:
How does Neil Josten feel about girls? That’s not even a question worth asking. Girls are strong, they’re fierce and loyal and tragically alluring. Sometimes their lips are chapped and they bite their nails, but they’re all dangerously pretty in their own right.
Neil’s never been given the time to look at girls the way other people do, the way normal people do, if anyone can be labelled with society’s false version of normal .
His mother beat him for staring at a girl’s skirt too long when he was sixteen and studying in France. They were safe enough for him to attend a school for three weeks before they would ultimately pack their belongings and run for the next sanctuary.
The way Annabelle smiled at Peter was breathtaking. She looked at him like she wanted to know the way his mind worked, he was so quick-witted and smart, and during break she tried to hold his hand. He let her, because there was something soft in the way her fingers laced with his. It didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel totally wrong, either.
Harriet didn’t like her at all. It wasn’t so much Annabelle herself, but Peter’s attraction to her. Barely there but still as dangerous. She’d walked home with him from school and though Harriet was nice enough to lie to her face and say, “It was lovely to meet you,” in perfect French, as soon as the door had closed and Annabelle had turned the corner, she rounded on her son and taught him the lesson that he’d never forget as long as he lived:
Women are dangerous. They’ll destroy you. Don’t involve yourself. We don’t have time for meaningless affection .
And he never spoke to her again. He’d liked other girls after her. Kissed a few of them, too, but they were never worth his mother’s scolding tongue and harsh hands.
Things are different with the Foxes. With Dan, Renee and Allison. He can’t really think of women like that anymore - he can barely think of anyone like that anymore, his mother saw to that. But he knows he’s allowed to admire them.
Renee, Dan and Allison represent everything his mother despised, right up until the moment her heart stopped beating: safety in sharing secrets. Neil knows she’s rolling in her shallow grave at the very thought of him being happily situated anywhere near the vicinity of pretty girls with dangerous pasts.
Allison and Dan, perhaps, not so much. But Renee, she could destroy him without even meaning to. If she was still the person she tried so hard to detach from, Neil bets (but not really, because bets are stupid) that if he was Nathaniel they’d have an equal match. Both of them skilled with knives, lean figures with enough flexibility to avoid injury and dodge fatal jabs.
The women of the Foxhole Court are as dangerously pretty as they come, hardened skin as their armour and tongues doused in poison to spit at anyone who dares to threaten them. Neil hopes some part of his mother - the distant part of her, the part that was kind - finds comfort in the fact that they could, have, and will always protect him if he needs it - though, he knows the possibility of that is slim.
And so Neil Josten doesn’t feel as much for girls as he used to, or as much as he would have liked to, when he was a young boy on the run sparing glances at girls sipping from slushies at the local gas station.
So, moving on, how does Neil Josten feel about boys?
He’ll tell you, that’s not really a question either. Not worth answering or trying to explain. So he won’t.
But, what you
can
ask, what there
is
an answer for, is: How does Neil Josten feel about Andrew Minyard?
Andrew Minyard is everything Neil has ever wanted. He’s strong, loyal, resilient. Like a storm barrier on a basement door, taking each hit the wind brings and holding steady, keeping back the floods of rain and holding everything inside until the storm blows over.
He’s where all the truths lie, dead and asleep in the water because neither one of them really wants to address what sharing ones darkest secrets means. Andrew more so, but Neil has his hesitant moments, a baby fox hiding in the den and shying away from the unordinary.
Andrew is breathtaking. Of course, Neil is biased to thinking this because nobody else seems to see it (and less in a figurative sense because, Andrew really does take people’s breath away. Either with their own racquet or his fingers around their throats). Yes, some think Andrew is attractive, but they don’t see him the way Neil does. They never will.
Where they see a Monster - and they do, they say it all the time - Neil sees a damaged individual trying to fix his broken parts. He’ll not let anyone help him, and Neil thinks there’s a tragically beautiful similarity between them, in that Neil does the same. He’ll break himself apart trying to hold it all together and then spend long, sleepless nights trying to tape himself back up.
The only person allowed to touch these broken parts, allowed to bleed if they tear open skin, are each other. Perhaps each of them have an anchor outside one another, Andrew with Bee and Neil with Matt (he considered this in great detail, and though he’ll never tell Matt everything , Matt knows much more than he’d like to). There’s a comfort in not having to spill all their secrets to just one another, there is always someone outside of their little bubble with a helping hand and a shoulder to cry on (or a mug of cocoa, in Bee’s case).
Their deal is simple.
Truth for truth. Yes and no. Here and there, but not there, or there. Boundaries upon boundaries that they stick to, because they promised that to each other. Silently, maybe. Between kisses, even. You can touch me and I can touch you and all those little things that amount to whatever it is they are at this point.
They’re together . They’re not boyfriends , but there’s something unspoken that lets everyone know not to ask, not to pry, not to try and get into either’s space. Maybe it’s the way Andrew rests his palm on Neil’s thigh during movie night in the girl’s room, or the way they sit close and talk in hushed Russian at Eden’s. Maybe it’s the way they kiss in front of the team, comfortable and petty enough to annoy Aaron with affectionate displays.
It’s just them , together. Everything about them screams, I’m with dumbass, over here - and they don’t need to justify this whatever to anyone.
So, Neil Josten doesn’t feel very much for girls, and the same goes for boys. But for Andrew Minyard, his heart jumps in irregular rhythms, his palms dampen, he blooms like a flower in the early spring. Andrew Minyard somehow brings out the best and worst parts of Neil Josten, somehow knows all of them by right of being the only person allowed to be that close. And Neil likes to think, perhaps, that for Andrew it’s the same.