Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.
Okay so I'm watching Criminal Minds, right? And everyone's taking turns being kidnapped. And of course, my AFTG brainrot is like -- okay bet
A Fox gets kidnapped. Neil goes savage to get them back.
Not Andrew, that's too easy -- and I also want Andrew to be there to see it and also to help Neil and maybe protect the public from him.
Along that line, it can't be Kevin or Aaron or Nicky either -- because then I think Neil would bank his own rage to help Andrew navigate his panic.
Renee can handle herself. Neil & Andrew would worry, and they'd stop at nothing to get her back, but Renee is like them and that's different.
I think it's Dan.
Dan gets kidnapped and Neil goes into Dark Mode. He gets evil as shit. He uses all his survival skills in reverse to find her and doesn't give a fuck about the collateral damage he leaves in the wake of his warpath to get his sister back.
Is there really any wonder that he's named godfather to Dan & Matt's children? They know that no matter what he'll keep them safe.
Still thinking about this
Can you imagine the moment that Neil realizes she's missing? Matt knocks on his and Andrew's and Kevin's door at like 8am on a Saturday morning and Neil answers the door looking sleepy and confused.
"Can I talk to Dan?" Mastt asks with a hangdog expression, dark circles under his eyes like he hadn't slept well.
Not understanding, Neil frowns up at him. Then looks over his shoulder then up at Matt. "What?"
"I know she's probably still mad at me but..."
"Matt" -yawn- "what are you talking about?"
"It was a stupid fight, and she was right of course. But I didn't sleep at all last night thinking of her being so mad at me."
"Dan's mad at you?" Neil asks, trying hard to follow - but either because he's still sleepy and wishing he could be back cuddling with Andrew (who was unusually snuggly this morning) or because he's still kind new to the whole humanity-and-relationships thing he's not quite succeeding. Why was Matt asking him to talk to Dan? Why didn't he just... do it? Was this a friend thing? Was he supposed to be supportive or like... caution him? Was Matt coming to him for... girl advice?
Unaware of Neil's plight, Matt nods sorrowfully. "Her voice did that really quiet, cold thing when she told me she was going to join your night practice last night and not to wait up for her. I haven't seen her that pissed in a really long time. Fuck. Fuck, Neil, please, just let me talk to her. I need to--"
But Neil is suddenly WIDE awake and he grabs Matt's shirt in a hard fist. "Dan didn't come to night practice last night, Matt, what are you talking about?" Games being on Thursdays this year, Kevin had happily rescheduled their usual Thursday night practices for an extra late, extra long session on Fridays (the Fridays they didn't go to Columbia) where they focused heavily on fixing flaws that presented in the previous night's game. The rest of the Foxes were welcome to join the Friday sessions, and Dan wad the one who joined them the most... but she hadn't been there last night.
Matt was frowning, his turn to be confused. "No..." he says slowly. "No, she said that's where she was going last night. I figured she just crashed with you since she wasn't in her room and didn't come back to mine..."
Neil is already moving, bare feet slapping against the tile in the hall as he goes down to the girls' room and knocks on the door.
The friendly smile on Renee's face when she opens the door only lasts as long as it takes for her to meet Neil's eyes.
"Dan isn't with you?" she barely makes it a question.
"Matt says she said she was coming to night practice last night but she never showed. I didn't get a text from her either saying that she was coming." Which he was able to say with genuine confidence because Andrew made him check his phone last night to turn off his alarm for this morning. They'd been out later than usual last night and Andrew had convinced him to skip his Saturday morning run. The only text had been a knock-knock joke in German from Nicky that Neil was still waiting on the punchline for.
Renee whirls away from the door and when she comes back it's with her phone already open. A moment later she pulls it away from her ear. "Straight to voicemail."
And Neil... Neil goes hot and cold all at once. He was alive today because of the instincts honing their claws under his skin right now, and as Matt nervously begins to babble about her maybe changing her mind last minute and going to a friends' in a different dorm instead, Neil is already turning to head back to his room.
Andrew is standing in the kitchen, looking rumpled and annoyed as he pokes at the empty coffee pot like willpower alone will conjure fresh contents. The second he sees Neil's demeanor, though, he too is instantly awake, instantly alert.
He abandons the kitchen and smoothly follows Neil to the bedroom, watching as Neil aggressively begins to dress. It's when Neil comes away from the closet, a pistol in hand that he now kept in the safe (after everything that had gone on last year, Neil decided he felt better with a firearm at least somewhere nearby), that Andrew steps forward and says, "Abram."
He doesn't raise his voice, doesn't add censure or worry or even a question. He just speaks his name, a reminder - quiet but firm - that he is *there*. That whatever is happening, Andrew is there and Neil isn't going through it alone.
There's no way to tell if this comes as a comfort or even registers with Neil at all, though. His expression is something dark and dangerous, something grim and twisted and edged with bloodlust.
When he doesn't respond at all after a few moments, Andrew closes the distance between them and grips Neil's chin, tugging his face down from its heavy stare at the wall over his shoulder so that their eyes can meet.
And he says again, "Abram."
And Neil says, in a voice like barbed wire coated in gasoline- hovering two inches above the flame, "Dan is missing. Something happened."
Perhaps he should be worried about Dan, but as much he has permitted a small allotment of anti-apathy to foster for the Foxes, Andrew was still a man of narrow priorities - so his focus is all on Neil. On Neil and the murder in his eyes, a warning with the heft of bodybags hanging in the air like a physical thing between them.
Andrew nods slowly, accepting this information. "Then we get her back," he says.
Neil finally seems to see him, and he nods without dislodging his face from Andrew's grip. "I need the car."
Releasing him, Andrew brushes past him back into the room and begins to gather his own clothes. "I'll drive."
Someone, he decides, needs to make sure that Neil doesn't end up arrested.
when gerard way sings "the broken, the beaten, and the damned" and when kermit the frog sings "the lovers, the dreamers, and me" they're talking about the same people btw
My favorite Andrew headcanon still remains that upon retiring from Exy—a good several years before average, and waaaay before Neil and Kevin, because he's finally secure enough in his life and desires to recognize that he doesn't need to keep doing something he doesn't enjoy just because hes good at it—he goes back into law and becomes a public defender.
It's not like he forgot anything since college, and most of the bar exam is rote memorization, so picking it back up is simple. Neil is too happy that Andrew is making such a major decision on his own initiative to be disappointed about losing pro exy.
On the other hand. Can you imagine sitting in a jail cell for auto theft waiting for some underpaid schmuck to offer you a plea deal when fucking LeBron James walks in.
One of the most decorated athletes of the decade sits down and says he's your legal council. You start looking around for the prank cameras.
Your sister's first celebrity crush starts reading you your rights for the interrogation in twenty minutes. You're still looking for the cameras so you don't notice he stopped until you realize he's just been staring at you unblinking for three minutes. You squirm.
"Do you want to go to prison?" The man who went viral bench pressing another dude twice your weight asks. You somehow manage to not piss your pants long enough to say "No?"
"Then listen when I speak and do as I say."
The police barge into the room. It's clear from their faces that someone in the break room told them that Vogue's sixth sexiest man alive was here and they had to check for themselves. "You're Andrew Minyard," the officer says incredulously.
"And you're intruding on a private meeting without due cause," says the man who's dirty sweats auctioned last year at $30k, then turns back around and goes back to reading you your rights. You try to listen.
He asks if you have any questions. You say, "Why the hell are you here?"
"Because it's my job," says the best goalkeeper on the planet. He doesn't say it, but dear god, why are you so dumb is heavily implied.
You decide to drop the subject. If his signature ends up being on your arrest papers, you are so framing it.
yes my favorite colors are the warm orange of the windows of a house u see on a walk at night and also the deep blue of the night around it
art by suzanne siegel
The Reddit migration happening during the Titan oceangate shit seems like the perfect time to transition. The mood is high, welcoming fires have been lit. memes being passed around like flagons of ale. There are songs. Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej are there.
we’re there
aaron's a dick but i really do feel for this kid that's just trying to keep a girlfriend and get through med school like this boy shouldn't be worrying about the mafia and his morally questionable twin brother, he's going to go grey at 30
