Aftg Fic - Blog Posts

Red roses by Garden_Secret

[ Post-Canon ] | [ G ] | [ 1k+ ] | [ 1/1 Complete ] | [ English ]

Once again, not following his words, Nicky invites Andrew to give Neil flowers, otherwise “you seem to be dating, but don’t give flowers” the next day the guys had to look for a vase.

— What are your favorite flowers?🌹

Chapter 16 is live! Here’s a little excerpt from the current chapter:

“Minyard did sign a five year contracted with the team,” Tetsuji said.

“Spare is dead to the world, so no one knows he’s here,” Riko replied.

“They know,” Ichirou growled. “That is why we are here.”

Riko blatantly glared at Neil and sneered. “Yeah, and I wonder how they found out.”

Neil met his gaze. “You accusing me of something?”

“Didn’t you talk to them after the game?”

“Yeah, because I have these things called friends. Ever heard of it?”

“Control your dog, Ichirou,” Tetsuji said.

Fanfic update for anyone who wants to know.

I'm currently working on chapter 16 of Dead Ringer. Chapter 7 of Singularities is done, but it won't be posted till I post the Dead Ringer chapter. I apologize for the delay and hope to have them out by next week or the week after. Thank you all for being patient!

Chapters: 15/? Fandom: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic Summary:

“Potential.” Riko slammed Neil against the wall again and whirled on Kevin. Kevin stared back at him, white-faced and tense. “You said that goalkeeper had potential and then wrote him off as useless when I offered him to you...” - The Foxhole Court, Ch. 13.

Nathaniel was given to Ichirou as his private hitman after his skills as a marksman were revealed when the Moriyama tracked him and his mother down after they ran away.

Riko decided to surprise Kevin with matching “pets” after he found out the goalkeeper that Kevin was interested in had a twin.

When Nathaniel is ordered to join the Ravens for a year to cover for a series of hits, his smart mouth meets Andrew’s prickly attitude and things get interesting.

alright I see you all, thank you all for voting

so a kit amoung foxes has won the vote for elios fic name I should also clarify with how it's gonna be written if it's chapter and than a number eg chapter 4 it is Neil's pov, if it is a title eg sneaking a racoon into the car than it is elios pov, the story will be more from elios pov than Neil's so like while Neil is at evermore there will be about 2 or 3 elio pov chapters

alright guys some options for the unnamed aftg fic starring my sweet baby boy elio josten

yes I did Google some stuff so baby racoons are called kits and yes baby foxes can be called kits to they are more often referred as cubs so keep that in mind

also very funfact about elio is that because he was born and raised on the run he doesn't have a concept of gender (yes is this also a funfact because onke of the drawings/ sketches I have planned is him in a dress yes it it cuz fuck gender norms)

alright guys some options for the unnamed aftg fic starring my sweet baby boy elio josten

yes I did Google some stuff so baby racoons are called kits and yes baby foxes can be called kits to they are more often referred as cubs so keep that in mind

also very funfact about elio is that because he was born and raised on the run he doesn't have a concept of gender (yes is this also a funfact because onke of the drawings/ sketches I have planned is him in a dress yes it it cuz fuck gender norms)

here’s my @aftgexchange fic for @foxyroxisworld :) i had so much fun with this piece, and i hope you enjoy it <3

Summary:

Andrew Minyard couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t have flower tattoos adorning his skin. The sloping curves and sharp edges were dark and striking, and he thought that they might be nice to look at if they didn’t make his stomach drop. His foster families always averted their eyes at the sight, pity etched into their faces. Every time a new tattoo crept across his body, Andrew wanted to tear it off. He didn’t want them to appear in the first place.

He hated knowing that somewhere, he had a soulmate that was being hurt, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He hated that his skin was permanently stained with ink that he had never asked for. He hated flowers.

or

andreil soulmate au with scars and flower tattoos

Me, You, and the Multiverse for the @aftgexchange and @helplesshobo

Talia tentatively reached out to take the book from Ray’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.

Ray recognised the tone of her voice. It was the same tone Ray had heard in Kevin, in Aaron, in herself. It was a tone built from years of abuse, of being so used to pain and numbness that even a glimmer of kindness seemed like an oasis. A torturous hallucination that would only bring more pain, and yet you still walk to that oasis anyway. Even though you knew it wasn’t real, that the hallucination wouldn’t last, you couldn’t help but want it anyway.

And now Talia was looking at Ray like she could fix all of the world’s problems. Like she was her answer.

Ray knew she wasn’t anyone’s answer, certainly not Talia’s, but she found her own oasis of warmth in her chest, and she couldn’t quite ignore it. It had dug its roots in, and it was here to stay.

𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬

Fluffy andrew short

Pulling Through: Masterpost

Andrew has turned to knitting for a multitude of reasons, but everyone is pretty sure that it's just because he likes stabbing things.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

I need a fic/fanart we’re Neil is an actor and Andrew is the director. Please Please Please

Kevin Day 100% has smile lines. Just think he’s the face of Exy which obviously means people will know him. He definitely Smiles his camera practiced smile in front of people in his college classes and obviously the Press ….he just definitely has Smile lines . Maybe sometimes when he becomes drunk and forgets to do his facial care, he wakes up looking a little puffy and with deep smile lines looking like a grandpa… just a head canon

Just read the newest chapter of soulbound by @elesary and I have to say *chefs kiss * delicious ✨✨

So yeah I just had to draw Andrew fighting his Desmond with magic your honour.

Three years later it becomes clear: squid-boys never stood much of a chance breathing on land.

''Is he awake? The tranquilizer is loosening. Oh, he moved. Did you see? Left fingers.''

Your shoulder – right, you hit a rock. A set-up of metal walls glistens in the corner of your vision. You can't move. Some wetness in your throat makes you despair, makes you cough, involuntary and chokey and wet. Your muscles just don't move the way you want them to.

''Hey. Are you awake? Back away, I think he's scared.''

''Binary gender is a construct,'' a voice says, light, somewhat serious, somewhat self-aware.

''Oh, I'm sorry. Are they awake.''

Fuck you, you think. This happened just fifteen minutes after waking up. If this were to happen later, maybe you would be less out of it and more situation-wise, more windbreaking skin. More teethful. Wetness should be at your side and not pool where it shouldn't. Wetness should drown things when you willed it to.

They carry your limp body into the metal box, as you knew that you would, carried to the truck door and packed away neatly. Your body feels particularly insensitive, even when gloved hands touch it, maybe in the enlightenment of death, or something death-like.

In the box, the only way to look is upwards at the glass cover plate. It doesn't move when you push against it, and none of the other walls do. When the light in the space of the truck is cut off, you stop pushing at the upper plate, because it makes you feel flattened, or something that can be flattened with force, in the way of soft-tissues invertebrates. It makes the air in your chest twist into impossible illusion shapes, looped into themselves.

And then the truck screeches to a stop. When it does, abrupt in the way of accidents, you think of the gods you've been learning to despise in the practise of eighteen years. You would think your spite is more polished by now, better refined, with how raw and disgusting it has felt. But now your ears are ringing with divine working in one's life shall become apparent as an ineffable experience; divine working—

Your ears are ringing with Andrew and eyes burning with the image of the hell-made saviour of him. You hear shouting. The truck sways with the force of something, and you go with it, like unrooted watergrass. If this is Andrew, he must be sating the hunger of his hyper-grin. A new image blazes into you: out of water, in the air of land, bloodied hands remain bloodied. You are used to water washing blood from your skin, the skin remaining stainless, shedding impurity and grime and violence right off. If this is Andrew, he must look like a terror.

But there is a godly part in this. If this is Andrew, he has brought what you have always wanted: difference without novelty and novelty's stomach-digesting discomfort. The truck sways again and you are still holding your breath.

*

It has been over a week since Andrew removed his arm from around your shoulders, and you both fell in the water of a flooded basement, comrade-like, collapsed and breathing fast in the aftermath of things. He dragged himself to the staircase and spread over the length of a step, legs up on the railing, the weight of his cement-bag body sagging. The thump of his head falling back against the wall made you want to urge forward. But you didn't. His clothes were soaked past his waist, black jeans abyss-black. His head lolled to look at you and you felt all too transparent, like he could see right through your skin and muscle, liver and intestines and all your soft organs. You were still spiked-up, body still ready to rush. Too tender when he was looking like this.

It has been over a week of you dragging your body through the ecosystem of the basement. The water is shallow enough to make the basement a crawl-space. You crawl around the pillars, wondering if you can do it in an utterly random pattern. Don't think too hard. You think you're going crazy. From aloneness. All the other beings in the flooded basement are small and timid. Don't think too hard.

Andrew comes every day, every second day, every few days. Irregularly. He brings stacks of food.

''It's not this dark outside,'' you tell him the next time his boots settle with your eye level, ''The windows are tinted. It's darker in here.''

He brings you a flashlight. You don't use it. To what, target yourself? A predator with nothing to prey on. A predator with nowhere to go.

He sticks his feet in the water and reads with your flashlight. He brings you games of multiplication and these little metal wire shapes to disentangle. You get better than him at chess quickly. It surprises him. It doesn't surprise you.  You have been thinking about mathematical perfection and formal proofs your whole life. You have spent your whole life over-chewing your people's stories; it makes you a good social learner; a learner from mistakes, yours, others'.

''I am going to promote my pawn,'' you observe. He brings his hands up, all fingers meeting in a point aligned with the centre of his chest and then he pulls his hands apart and spreads his fingers into something open and empty-handed.

''I don't care,'' he says, then huffs and laughs meanly until he swallows it down, and then bolts upstairs. You can hear him rage there, the thumping of what you imagine is hands hitting the frame of a doorway as he enters a room, pushing empty drawers shut, throwing himself on a bed. You don't understand his theatrics, or his rage.

Most of the time he is gone, though. It would be okay, that nothing ever happens, if nothing happened inside of you, too. You just feel disused, as a person. Your skin is pale without bruises and your head is empty. Andrew has brought you a waterproof phone, a metal little thing. He's been gone for days, and you've been existing amongst clutter, a being in the ecosystem, an object in stasis. This water tastes different. It leaves a dirty taste in your mouth that you try to get rid of by licking your lips. It doesn't work, but you keep catching yourself doing it anyway.

You call him.

''I feel sick,'' you say.

He brings you aspirins, more food, a radio.

He hasn't been saying much. This isn't what satisfaction looks like, you think as he expressionlessly tears a second packet of salt into his food box. His quiet leaves you feeling alone in un-novel ways, even though most of your aloneness is new. To be fair, you have only found dissatisfaction to be unkind; not intrinsically, not out of necessity, but out of something more spiteful – maybe stubbornness. Anyway. Anyway, maybe you shouldn't think of quiet as unkind. What else can you expect. Being low-maintenance feels kind of right.

*

Somebody is in the house.

When the steps come, they come slow, and with foreign wilfulness. You still. You watch your breath skate over the surface. You know that you wear suspicion the way Andrew wears the relaxed slope of his shoulders, but you're right, you're right.

You are right. After minutes of soft thudding, a corrosion-of-a-boy appears at the top of the basement staircase and deflates in front of your eyes. He peeks downwards quickly, then half-turns, his eyes again jumping around in the way of sweeping: thorough and clearing. The semi-dry sepia shrubs outside the window, the unopening front door of abandon, the end of the hallway you only saw once. He stops. He deflates. He exhales, exposing the wear of him, then covers his eyes with his wrist. He stops like that.

You are watchful. You make yourself unseeable and now that he doesn't see you by how he continues walking downwards. You watch as he crouches his anaemic-looking body on the last step above the water, looking around in a glazed way, with clumsy attention. His eyes are shadowed by the downwards tilt of his head, so you set your gaze to the tight pull of his shoelaces and the triple knots of them. Slow enough to be soundless, you lift some more of your body out of the water.

''Psh,'' you say, and the boy stills. Stops breathing, until he leans his head forward, a little, squinting, and you think about a fish hook.

''Merman?'' he asks, stupid.

He looks a thought away from bolting, a distraction away. Haunted? you wonder. Fast as someone would be if they had something sharp snipping right by their neck. For a moment, you worry that Andrew has installed cameras, but he wouldn't.

''Are you with Andrew?'' you ask, and have him scrambling up – and it rolls a terrible terrible sense over you. A sense of Andrew's hyper-grin. A sense of his red-dripping hands. An unpunctuated question of things Andrew could do.

You don't want him to go. ''Wait, wait. Do you have an aspirin?''

He stops in something surprise-like. Continues looking undecided. He looks like a person who only trusts himself. Who wonders whether he himself is trustworthy.

''Black hair,'' you address him. It seems to stagger him further.

''I don't,'' he says, then clears his throat. ''I have needles. Some alcohol?''

''Alcohol is a very ineffective drug.'' Drugs know you, you know drugs. You say this to skirt the edge of things, because some basicity is growing inside of you. Psychotropics have always meant skirting things, for you. People have always only responded to the wrong ugly aspects of you using them, and they have responded in an ugly way, when they did.

''Is he the one keeping you here?'' the boy asks lowly, with horror. Andrew wouldn't. The boy probably doesn't know Andrew specifically. He is probably just wary. Trustless. He absently wipes a hand under his nose and looks at his hand as it comes away clean.

''No, no. He helps,'' you say, throat wound up in a familiar way.

The boy's gaze doesn't linger on the un-land-suited parts of you. What must you look like? Hiding in a vacated house, now un-vacated, now a whole new ecosystem. You dragging your body around it purposelessly in the manner of dethroned kings. In religious stories, evil is described along the image of decadent, scorching beauty, or ugliness, never ordinary. What are you? Stale, now; touch this – this; ah, pfh, in the hold of gloved hands. Are you ordinary. Can you be unordinary in a good way. Please. Suddenly, you feel the crash of some alien plea, fully, mouthfully in a way extraneous things can't be.

The boy stands up, scanning the basement around you, the misplaced wooden boards and pillars and the handles of some exercise equipment above the water level. The place you scavenge. The place where electronic devices make your eyes hurt. The boy shakes his head.

''Does Andrew—'' he starts, then reconsiders, ''did Andrew—'' stares at you wordlessly, before he glances over his shoulder and grips the strap of his bag with both hands.

''Are you in a hurry?'' you ask.

His eyes are a little wild when he turns back to you, and his nodding is shaky. ''He will be back, right. Andrew.''

The air isn't right. You twist your arms under the hunch of your shoulders. ''Are you really?'' you ask after a moment.

''I don't know how to tell the truth differently,'' he evades the question; you notice things like that. You stare. You stare. He sharpens under your gaze. His grip on the strap tightens. His eyes narrow when yours do, and his face is tightening up with something wild and exposed and almost breathless.

''Look, I'm just asking, okay?'' you roll the words out carefully. ''You don't have to, I won't— It's just me here, okay? But are you— are you—do you know Wes—''

''No. No. I'm. I'm Neil and I don't know anyone here,'' he says, then runs back up the stairs, and you think: fuck.

*

''What have you done,'' you accuse Andrew right as the door at the top of the staircase gapes wider, more late-afternoon orange light seeping in. You don’t know if you should tell him about Neil. Andrew halts and untenses with a controlled exhale before he even fully tenses. He turns his head before he turns his body, the slit-eyed mechanism of it.

You watch him pull down his large brown-knitted sweater from where it has creased at his waist. This is the softest you have seen him. In his mechanical way. He walks down.

''What do you mean,'' he asks blankly. You lift your eyebrows. You don't want to prompt his answer. You want to squeeze out his hiding space until he is forced to expose himself. Something tells you he has not been sufficiently challenged, lately, that he has been glaring his way through people's curiosity until they took their questions back.

''I will stay here now. I needed the foster address to get a job. I don't need it anymore.''

''You work?'' you ask, dumbfounded.

''Warehouse stock control. I'm getting machinery training. Forklift truck. Vroom vroom'' his tone mocks himself. He doesn't answer your question. He lifts his mug above his open mouth and nothing pours out, which he must have known before he lifted it and did it anyway.

''So what did you do,'' you ask. You imagine he squints his eyes, but he doesn't do anything, really, you just see the questioning of it.

''I left and now I'm moving here. What do you think I did? Oh thee who inquires with an accusatory tone.'' He sits down, then stands up enough to pull a pen from the pocket of his black jeans. ''What will you charge me with, officer?''

''Okay,'' you say carefully, raising your hands. ''Were they bad? Wherever you were staying.''

''Sure.'' He gives a not impressed look at your raised hands, then pulls a sudoku from this jacket pocket, and you think: how can this be the thing that bores you the least. He has this unasking about him: he doesn't wonder about your life, or about its past, or about its pastness. How you sometimes wanted to be one of the little beings that scuttle inelegantly, instead of a self, and how you now drag your body around in patterns. You still don't know to where he disappeared for two years, and he doesn't ask about the gelatinous ways in which life unfolded in that time. He doesn't bite into pasts. It's very uninviting.

''So why were they bad?'' you ask, then watch him build things inside of himself. Stories, lies, napkin-houses that fold the dirty sides inwards.

''They don't read social cues,'' he says, finally. You wonder how carefully crafted this answer is. But who are you to judge? You haven't told him about Neil.

''And I read things fine, for you?'' you ask.

Andrew's eyes trace the line of your shoulders. You turn a little, into something more invisible, and Andrew nods a little.

''You wear your body like it's soft,'' he says.

You feel a strike of something pulpy. You look down at your body, water surface wavering around it. The stricken feeling is illusionary; it reminds you: Andrew's curiosity is just selective. Just one of the on-off things he switches, like his energy and benevolence. It's selective in the way of not knowing things that are easy to know, like knowing to list your body organs, and on the other hand saying, you wear your body like it's soft.

''This doesn't work,'' you say. Twitching your head sideways to indicate the space of the basement.

''I know,'' he says after a moment, taut. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

''I can't even move.''

''I know,'' he says. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

*

Andrew should be sleeping upstairs when you hear a crash, some crashing, and then quiet. An accident, you imagine immediately, your mind attuned to likely narratives, bad things, extrasensory things.

''Andrew?'' you ask tentatively. It's something bad. It's always something bad. But then the quiet is broken with more crashing, scrambling, the noise of something desperate. The sound has moved down the hallway, where you can hear more clearly. Andrew is saying something through his teeth, softly, melodically, always teethfully. You hear a gasp.

''Neil?'' you say.

''Neil?'' Andrew pronounces carefully. He pushes the weight of something unwilling to the basement door. A hand in Neil's hair is pushing his hand backwards, harshly, and a knife glistens by his throat artery. Andrew isn’t grinning, but you can’t unsee him grinning.

''Why did you come back,'' you say to Neil, who is forced to look at the ceiling, one hand around each of Andrew's arms.

''Come back,'' Andrew repeats blankly, looking between you and Neil.

Neil uses both hands to push at the arm with the knife and suddenly knife is held by them both, away from their bodies and struggling for a swing, both breathing hard with faces sharp. You imagine red-dripping hands. You don't want the knife to swing. You don't want it fiercely.

You open your vocal cords in the right way and a shrill blooms from the resonating spaces in your cheekbones, outwards, hitting Andrew and Neil with the force of soundwalls breaking. It's piercing to your ears, too, and you know it doesn't even compare. You're the predator, then, and they are prey-like. Neil falls down the stairs. Andrew falls to his knees and elbows, hands closed around his ears.

Neil is staggering, touching his ears, spitting water away from his lips, wild. You offer a hand and he stares at it, then moves further back. He bumps into a pillar and startles, before walking around it to take another step back.

Andrew cracks his neck sideways, both sides, glaring at you, then slowly takes two steps down to pick up the knife.

''Neil came back, Aaron? Is there something you aren't telling me? Try not to lie.''

''What,'' Neil asks, then covers and uncovers his ears again, panicked, looking between Andrew and you. His hearing. It probably hurts. It's probably disorientating.

Andrew snaps his fingers three times. Neil doesn't respond. Andrew keeps snapping rhythmically; the more times he does it, the higher up the clog of eeriness in your throat climbs. Neil pushes his hair out of his face, breathing hard at his reflection. He's cupping his ears, shaking his head, shaking the ringing out, until he looks up at Andrew, and Andrew stops snapping and drops his arm.

''What?'' Neil asks again, quick, twitchy. Andrew tilts his head. Neil takes another step back. ''Who are you on the market? Are you resistance? Is this how you know?'' he looks at you.

''The market. Food?'' Andrew says, just as you ask, ''Criminal?'' Neil is talking about the criminal market. He is talking about prized items like you. You know from stories; you just hear big names, as a lesson for avoidance. There is nothing familiar about the way Neil looks. But his hauntedness; it might look like something familiar.

''Liars, liars,'' he Andrew smiles, syllable by syllable. ''You're staying, then,'' he says to Neil. ''You have overshot your runaway runway, huh? We have something to talk about. I see we'll be dining finely tonight. The plentiful company of the three of us.''

Andrew carries himself like a punchline, when he talks. It's annoying.

''He's patronising to everyone. Don't think you're special,'' you tell Neil.

Neil smoothes his hair back and wipes the water off his face. ''Who are you?'' he asks tautly. ''Resistance? Nobodies don't hide Others in abandoned houses.''

''Your turn to share, squid boy,'' Andrew says, both reappearing and coming down. Neil is in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic. Andrew ceremoniously offers a metal fork to Neil, and then hands out a plastic one to you. You pull it out of his hand.

''We are not. You both. You both say these statements. As if you knew. Nobodies don't do this. Nobody knows anything for sure, okay? Tentativity can be enjoyable sometimes.''

''Pescatarian, anyone?'' Andrew asks, pleasantly. ''Come, Neil. You can't stay in wet clothes. We'll talk.''

They disappear upstairs. In the way of denouements, you feel a resolution unfolding. Or hoping for one, anyway. You press the feels of your palms over your eyes. They will probably talk about you, too. And then Neil will appear in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic, and it will make you think of the cosiness of monochromatism, of how homewise it is. It will make you think of when your cousin was glancing at you with a frown and your aunt told her, leave him, he's just brooding, and the cousin still went to him, calling out Aaron Aaron Aaron.

They keep sneaking glances at each other. Neil's dark hair and Andrew's face so much like your own make you think back in time, back to the few days before the metal box and dismal circumstance. I like your hair, you signed to the girl the name of whom you had been trying not to think, drawn to things that are too dark to shine. She was lingering by the mosaic in front of the growth of your rock opening that you had deliberately let become overgrown, something one pushes through with spicy feeling. Thank you, she signed, I like your face. That sounded like a really bad comeback. I do like it, it's very symmetrical.

Neil and Andrew's eyes meet, and you think: you two assholes are too self-absorbed to not do this staring contest.

*

Andrew's phone rings. He turns to bore into Neil's eyes. He moves the phone away from his ear, and says: ''Nathaniel?''

And Neil panics.

In the way of narrative complications, the three of you end up in Andrew's warehouse car.

You are in the backseat, covered with two blankets, feeling yourself frown as you readjust your grip on the four two-litre water bottles you are hugging to your chest.

''This is clearly idiotic,'' you inform them, again, because apparently neither of them senses the threat of a looming climax. The so many things that will go wrong, because nobody has any sustainable plans.

Andrew is loosely gripping the wheel with faux laziness and Neil glances around full-bodily, alert, before returning to zooming in on google maps on a new phone he just had in his bag. He destroyed Andrew’s.

''This doesn't work,'' Andrew repeats your words so wholly blankly that it is no-doubt mockery.

''Not nearly the stupidest thing I've done,'' Neil mutters. Andrew flicks his eyes at Neil. You squint as you flick your eyes between them. Andrew is tapping his fingers on the wheel. Neil is hunching low in his seat, scowling at the screen. Andrew reaches over to Neil's side to pull sunglasses from the glove compartment, and Neil leans away to make space without looking from the screen.

''So you two are friends now?'' you ask, something strange and foreign tinting your tone. ''Or have you guys started—''

''He's a benefit,'' Andrew interrupts. The sunglasses render his thoughts further invisible. He is a thing of well-fitting black placed within American-spaced property and nothingness. He evades the friend part with his answer. Like so often, he is making himself into invisibility and insinuation.

''You smell like excitement,'' you tell him and watch as his face jumps a little.

''You can smell feelings now?'' He snatches the phone from Neil's hands, maximally zooming into the location that Neil has been inspecting for minutes. Neil keeps looking in the empty space of the phone, hands hanging around phone-shaped air, before he drops them and buckles his seat belt. And you think: theatrics on the road.

You shrug. You can still sense Neil's panic.

''You smell like wet,'' Andrew retorts, looking who knows where. Having learnt from exposure, you know Andrew looks down on things he feels, and you soak in them. Leave him, he's just—

''Just start the engine,'' Neil says.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099911/chapters/35012867

Ah. It's a joke. The joke of the meadow. The location for the economy of life choices: a bright and blossoming meadow. You feel played already. Stale air, too hot, and your distressed feelings. The chilling lightness of butterflies.

You're not here as a joke. Nobody comes here as a joke. Calling coming here a summoning has been a fatal insult. You wonder if all your tension is in the tissue around your nerve cells, making you slow. Invisible, you hope. You've heard of someone who went to make a deal, then never returned. Someone who made one, then never woke up in the morning.

''You can use yarrow for tea,'' the fae says, making you spin, springing backward, feeling the grip of the keys in between your fisted fingers. ''Ribwort plantain, too.''

''I come accompanied by friendly spirit to make a deal,'' you say, the words having looped around your mind for weeks, now feeling your heartbeat in your fingers. ''I bring an offering and hope not to trespass across the separating—''

''It's easier to make tea,'' the fae says. He looks your age, maybe; it might be unsayable, because of the smudgy quality about him. Light hair, some dark knowing in his light eyes. Shorter than you, you feel played. A dream make-believe. One just accepts the indefinition.

''I offer five years,'' you say. Rehearsed. Determined and inwardly desperate.

''Five years,'' the fae is nodding ambiguously, agreeing or not. You can't tell. It's stupidly performative. Very flashy, the fae whispers: ''Are you lifting a curse?''

You aren't really lifting a curse. Or is that what it is? It is: avoiding eye-contact. Meaningful sighs, the wordlessness you hate. Running, we’re nothings. Abram, do you hear me. You know you can’t build anything here. Anything anywhere. Running, then midday crashes like narcan, like countering opioid overdoses. Crashes. Crashes. Lingering in dimmed half-underground spaces, thinking I can't think, writing lists of protologisms, for what, thinking I can't think, not finding what you need.

You hate it, and there's more: faulty cause and effect, infinite repetitions, chronic secrecy. Look at the shape of that finger burn, someone laughed, passing you kitchen serviettes. That's not how you meant it, right? That's nonsense. It's funny, actually. It's like a nursery rhyme, look. You didn't find it funny. You are a not-being. A nothing. You look for devices of sense and only find devices of nonsense. You can't think.

''Can you help me?'' you ask.

The fae sits down. Seemingly unbothered by the sun, seemingly unbothered by the power relations implied by the difference in the height of your eyes; by looking upwards and you looking downwards. Of course, though. Of course the implied power is foolish. A pretense. A guise for your amusement. You shield your eyes from the sun.

''What can you offer if you die tomorrow,'' the fae says, not a question enough, eyes too still to be really questioning.

''Wait. Wait. Can you—'' you didn't know the fae can tell, nobody has said, you don't want to know, you don't– the fae deals in life years, you know that, anyone like you knows that; after all the leeching on life, nobody knows how old he is. But nobody's ever said anything about prophecy.  ''Since when can—''

''Just asking,'' the fae shrugs. You exhale like okay. You breathe out like alright alright alright. Stabilising yourself.

Breathe in, breathe out. ''Can you help me?''

''Are you sure that would help you?'' the fae asks. He tilts his head. Actually, he fits – with the butterflies. It's eerie. He fits with the sweet-smelling meadow into a single morph.

''Do you take the offer,'' you correct yourself. Again, you think the asphyxiating presence of omissions, of avoiding eye contact. You hate it.

''No,'' the fae says calmly, and you say, ''What?''

This isn't how the word goes. The word goes: you come, you deal, you die younger. Win some lose some. Sometimes you lose some more, things you don't foresee. As a bonus, a little treat. You've come prepared, you’ve always expected it: an early death; it’s heavy in your pockets, it’s the shape of a butcher knife. But you won't – do that, you won't lose to inaction.

''I'm not giving you more years,'' you bite. And then you sneeze, which feels greatly innapropriate. ''Allergic to pollen,'' you say, somewhat angrily, distantly, empty-handedly.

''So indoors would be more suitable next time,'' the fae is nodding. ''Here, I'll give you a phone number.''

Whose, you think, and feel like dying a little. You think about more disposable phones before you think: I’m not doing that.

''I'm not asking you again, and I'm not giving you more years. That's five years for you. Do you take it?'' You sound unnerved. Not calm. You don't want that to flatter the fae.

''No. You can pick the spot. I'll show up, probably. If I'll be interested.''

''I think you'll ditch,'' you say, maybe against some recommended judgement, maybe to be interesting. ''A cafe,'' you add.

The fae shrugs. ''Text me.''

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281928

''I'm gonna go,'' Jean says.

''You didn't say anything.''

System breakdowns happen like this: automated alerts pop up. Fuse activation necessary. Deactivate fire detectors.

''I probably won't say what you're hoping to hear,'' Jean says.

Andrew, close to turning fifteen, is clinically insane. 

NEW CHAPTER IM ALIVE

sorry im constantly forgetting that tumblr exists 😳 pls take this wintry andreil as an apology 🛐

please don’t repost my art but DO follow me on insta ! 💗

I just started a fic that Neil's ig username is "Jos10" omg people are so creative

when the fic pulls stuff like "Now Neil knew there was nothing new on the news"

bro english is not my first language. slow down