so a thing that has always baffled me a little is this idea that neil josten is somehow completely ignorant about pop culture.
for one thing, this boy spent half of his teenage years in transit, and i can guarantee you that only a very small percentage of that time was spent actively running from an immediate threat. most of it would have been extremely tedious – endless car rides, sitting on public transport, waiting around at airports, being stuck in shabby motel rooms with only a TV for company while his mother went out and organised the next trip. mary would have had her hands full finding ways to keep him entertained on the road when he was younger, and there’s only so much time you can spend doing something productive before your attention span fizzles out.
for another, if they were learning new languages, then listening to language learning tapes in the car would have only gotten them so far. in order to blend in, pick up local accents and learn colloquial slang, and learn things about local culture and whatnot, they would probably have resorted to local radio stations, books and audiobooks, TV shows etc, and mary probably listened to the news religiously and picked up newspapers where she could.
thirdly, being utterly unaware of current pop culture would have really made neil stick out at school? i know he was never allowed to really socialise, but mary would have made sure that he knew how to make smalltalk and fly under the radar. that plus the fact that neil bounced between a shitload of different schools in different countries and states would have meant that neil had to pick up on new trends and stuff very, very quickly. i can even imagine him using the blending in excuse to get away with watching a movie or something – “everyone at school’s talking about it mom, they keep asking me when i’m going to see it” – because hell if that boy didn’t take small pleasures where he could and used his sneaky streak on his mom sometimes when he could get away with it.
all of these things make me think that it’s much more likely that neil’s pop culture knowledge is actually quite extensive but very jumbled and mixed-up, kind of like a tumblr dashboard (like seeing gifs of TV shows you don’t watch, if you know what i mean)? there are probably not a lot of movies he’s seen in their entirety, and if he did, he was usually more focused on the language than the actual plot. or he looked things up on the school computers just so he’d know what people were talking about. or he knows the lyrics to every single popular song by a popular band at the time but he has no idea what the band members look like or what the songs are called. he knows obscure foreign films and he’s read the first three harry potter books in french and one of the later ones in german but he only saw half of the fifth movie and most of the seventh, in spanish with french subtitles.
tl;dr neil josten is a mess but he’s not an oblivious idiot, thank you for coming to my ted talk
Neil goes for a run every morning while Andrew sleeps in for another hour
Some mornings, Neil gets a late start because Andrew wakes up, too
Neil doesn’t ask Andrew to join him on his runs, he knows it won’t happen
But one morning, Neil confesses that he misses Andrew during his morning runs and he can’t wait to get back home
Andrew just stares at him, then finally says, “316%” and rolls over to go back to sleep
Two weeks later Neil leaves their apartment at 5:30am for his normal daily run
Twenty minutes into his route, a cyclist in full cycling gear on a professional road racing bike passes too close to him, forcing Neil to jump out of the way
He stares at the cyclist, but he’s already too far away to be sure who it was
A few days later Neil is midway through his morning run when another cyclist rides too close again, this one on a rugged mountain bike
Neil saw his face this time
It was Andrew
When Neil gets back to the apartment, Andrew is lounging on the couch reading a book with both cats curled up on his lap
He ignores Neil’s entrance
Neil decides right then not mention the cycling
Two days later a cyclist on an orange folding bike with a tall seat and a rider in neon green bike shorts who can barely touch the pedals brushes up against Neil
It’s all Neil can do not to crack a smile
There is no mention of the incident back at the apartment by either of them
The next morning during Neil’s run, Andrew goes whizzing by him on a bright purple Schwinn with a sparkly silver banana seat that has a seven foot pole with a flag at the top attached to the back of it
(The flag is a rainbow color)
This time, Neil can’t help his grin but manages to wait until Andrew is past seeing it
Andrew still acts as if nothing is going on when Neil gets home, so Neil sticks with not mentioning it
However, Neil can tell by the twitch in Andrew’s lips that Neil’s lack of commenting is getting to him
The following morning, Neil is almost done with his morning run when Andrew zooms past him wearing silver and orange bike shorts and shirt, riding a hot pink tricycle, complete with wheel clackers and green and white streamers flying from the handlebars
Neil falls to the ground from laughing so hard
Andrew looks back at Neil with a smirk on his face and keeps on cycling
When Neil gets back to the apartment Andrew is once again reading on the couch
Nothing but My Aching Soul 