neil being 90% legs though. bangs his knees on his forehead when he tries to sit with his legs pulled up to his chest. always has to fix the damn seat in the maserati. his pants are always too fuckin short and he has to roll them (nicky told him to. it looks good ok). always walks too goddamn fast for andrew (that’s the only time andrew ever complains abt his legs tho if the love bites on neil’s thighs are anything to go by). neil being 5′3″ but his legs making up for 5′.
fuck okay so like neil’s character development is so important, his burying of nathaniel wesninski and becoming neil josten is so so important. it’s not him burying his past, it’s him looking at his past and realizing he simply doesn’t want to be that person anymore. he doesn’t want to be isolated and alone and simply surviving without living. he doesn’t want to be nathaniel wesninski, son of the butcher, he chose to be neil josten, chose to be tied to people and it’s such a fundamental part of his character development. he wants to be neil josten. he wants to stay with the foxes, even when he knew he shouldn’t. he wants to go back for andrew in a zombie apocalypse, the boy who ran, the boy who was always someone else and no one at all, the boy fit his entire life into a duffle bag and left at the first sign of trouble, wants to stay.
My favorite thing about the All For the Game series is how like… no one understands Andrew. They go on and on about how Andrew just does things that doesn’t make sense and he does unforgivable, senseless, violent things
and then Neil comes along. Neil whose mother beat him to keep him alive, who in her own violent way loved him even if it made him hate her and traumatized him, who couldn’t afford to be gentle even if she had the capacity for it.
He knows violence as an act of affection and protection when he sees it.
He recognizes that when Andrew kills Tilda, it wasn’t for himself because Andrew accepts violence towards himself as a normal part of his life and he could care less. It was to protect Aaron, his brother. He realizes that when Andrew tells Aaron to “Fuck off” when they first find each other, it wasn’t for any other reason but that Andrew was willing to suffer alone to keep Aaron safe from Drake’s abuse. Andrew goes back with Aaron to Tilda’s home where he knows that he isn’t wanted, that he’s hated even, to protect him from her heavy hand. Aaron, who was only ever hit out of resentment rather than survival, can’t understand that level of caring.
He can see that when Andrew beats strangers for assaulting his cousin, it wasn’t to protect his own sexual identity, it was to protect his cousin, his family, even if he doesn’t believe in blood relatives. Nicky, who was never hit by his parents (that we know of, at least), whose familial abuse was verbal and psychological and emotional rather than physical, knows that Andrew was protecting him but didn’t see it as anything more than Andrew being territorial, of protecting his things rather than protecting someone he cares about because, let’s be real, Andrew would not tolerate Nicky or protect him if he didn’t care about him; if they had had a deal like Aaron or Kevin or Neil, I’m sure we would have known about it. He may be a complete asshole to Nicky and treated him like he was an outsider, but I don’t remember reading any part of their relationship as some kind of deal.
If Nicky was anyone else, Andrew would hate him but Nicky moved all the way back from Germany where he was loved and happy and alive to help Andrew and Andrew, although he doesn’t show it, has accepted Nicky as family and cares for him. Andrew cares about Nicky because Nicky cared about him first, after Cass, Nicky was the first one to treat Andrew like he was family and care about him regardless of how broken he was. Yes, he pulls a knife on Nicky when he’s hitting on Neil and although that was probably because of Aaron’s comment about rape or that he himself found Neil attractive, I think part of it was Andrew’s distrust of Neil in the beginning, that he didn’t know if Neil was dangerous. He didn’t want Nicky to get too comfortable around someone he didn’t trust.
but Neil
Neil sees Andrew’s fathomless rage and loss of control after Baltimore and he sees his threats, and very clear warnings of “Get away from us” as he is supposed to: Andrew, despite what he says, cares about a very few select people and he will do anything and everything to protect them no matter what it costs him, and no matter how much it could hurt him because his own pain is irrelevant. Neil understands why Andrew is violent, he understands that it isn’t senseless, that it isn’t to hurt Neil or Nicky or Aaron or Kevin, it’s to protect. Andrew’s violence makes perfect sense to him and it is the only way he can show how he feels because he’s been so broken so many times that all that is left is a the violence he needs to protect. It isn’t until Neil that Andrew has another way to show that he cares, a new way only for him: kisses and touches and keys, and of course trust.
Neil understands Andrew which is why he can get Andrew to back down and give ground when he needs to and it’s also why Andrew let’s him, it’s why Andrew let’s him in and why it’s okay to be quasi-intimate with Neil. It’s why they work. For the first time violent affection doesn’t leave scars on Neil’s skin and for the first time someone understands Andrew enough that he doesn’t have to explain himself.
Mood: Neil worrying whether or not he’ll get his racquet back because it was expensive and not caring at all that Aaron used it to kill Drake an hour ago.
Mood#2: Neil admitting to Bee in all his chillness that he had brought the racquet upstairs for murder
Andrew: You have a habit of answering a question with a question.
Neil: And you have a way of asking questions that beg more questions.
Nothing but My Aching Soul 