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slightydepressedfox · 3 months ago

Text

AU:

Neil doesn’t meet the foxes, he’s instead caught by the FBI

He helps them catch his father and bring down his empire.

One day he’s brought in to Andrew’s lecture as a guest speaker

The Q&A at the end:

Student: Have you ever killed someone?

Neil: There’s two FBI agents at the door who advised me against answering that specific question. There’s your answer.

Student: What’s the best way to get fake documents?

Neil: I’m legally required to say “don’t”.

Student: What’s the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?

Neil: See, that’s a trick question, because if I answer it becomes the most illegal thing I’ve admitted to.

Student: What’s the hardest lie youve ever had to tell?

Neil: “Sure, I’d love to do a Q&A with a bunch of people who are weirdly obsessed with my father and decided to study crimes because they don’t have the balls to commit them.”

Student: Are you afraid your father’s people will come after you?

Neil *at the end of his fucking rope*: No, I feel completely safe. That’s why I’ve got armed federal agents waiting outside.

Student: How’d you get caught?

Neil: First of all, rude. Second, the FBI made a very compelling argument

Student: …which one

Neil: “cooperate or find out exactly how many laws you’ve broken” - said by a guy holding a very thick file. Direct. Effective. Hard to argue while zip-tied to a chair.

Student: What’s something you miss about your old life?

Neil: being able to leave a room without seven cops and a judge asking where I’m going.

Student: If you could do it all over again, would you?

Neil: I’d rather set myself on fire. I know you don’t understand that reference, but trust me when I say it’s funny.

Student: how many identities have you had?

Neil: Simultaneously or in total?

Student: …total?

Neil: enough that I had to check my ID before answering roll call

Student: what’s the worst crime you’ve ever committed?

Neil: do you want me to answer this as Neil Josten or Nathaniel Wesninski? The distinction matters.

Student: Have you ever made someone disappear?

Neil *looking over his shoulder at Browning*: goodness gracious no

Student: How many languages do you speak?

Neil: enough to talk my way out of things… mostly into them, though

Student: Why did you agree to talk to us?

Neil: it was this or community service

He’s as unhelpful as possible.

His entire goal is to waste everyone’s time while making it just interesting enough that no one can call him out on it.

And Andrew? He’s watching. He’s enthralled. He’s interested, and isn’t that odd.

The professor looks like she regrets her entire career. Half the class is too stunned to speak. Browning is wondering if the punishment for beating up the most valuable witness the FBI has in custody would be worth it. (It would)

Anyway long story short. 5 minutes in Andrew’s in love

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slightydepressedfox · 3 months ago

Note

not to be dramatic but I need the trc x aftg crossover you mentioned on twitter or i might die

The morning air in Henrietta is heavier than Nathaniel expects. It’s warm but sticky, something thick and unseen pressing against his skin. Maybe it’s the town itself, breathing slow and steady, wrapping around him like a lull he doesn’t trust.

They’ve been here two nights. The longest they’ve stayed anywhere in months.

Mary keeps to herself, watching from the motel window, ready to leave the second something feels off. He knows she hates it, stopping like this, but they need rest. He needs rest. And food.

Nathaniel picks Nino’s because it looks like the kind of place where no one asks why you’re alone at 3 p.m. with shadows under your eyes and a limp in your step. The bell chimes when he pushes the door open, the scent of grease and coffee greeting him immediately.

A handful of people are scattered inside—locals, from the way they sit with easy familiarity, their conversations unhurried. He slides into a booth, back to the wall. No one spares him a glance except for the waitress, who looks vaguely tired and doesn’t ask questions when he orders the cheapest thing on the menu.

He’s halfway through the toast when he notices a boy.

Sitting two booths down, hunched over a notebook, mechanical pencil tapping absently against the page. He’s got a cup of coffee beside him, untouched, and a textbook open, something dense and math-related. He seems to be about Nathaniel’s age. Unfamiliar school uniform, collar wrinkled, sleeves pushed up.

He looks like a sepia photograph. All soft browns and old gold light, edges blurred like he doesn’t quite belong in the present. Like someone pressed pause on a feeling and forgot to hit play again.

Nathaniel doesn’t mean to stare, but something about him catches. The tension, maybe. He wears his uniform like armor and has this stillness about him, like he’s holding his whole world together by sheer will.

Nathaniel stares too long. The boy looks up.

Their eyes meet.

For a moment, they just hold each other’s gaze. There’s something calculating there but not unkind.

Nathaniel drops his eyes to his plate.

But a minute later, there’s movement, and suddenly the boy is standing at his table, looking down at him.

“You’re new.”

Nathaniel tilts his head, considering him. The accent is southern but not thick.

“You always walk up to strangers and announce that?”

The boy doesn’t flinch, just pulls out the chair across from him like he’s made a decision. “Only when they look like they’re passing through.”

Nathaniel hesitates. He should tell him to leave. But his mother always tells him to blend in, so he tries. “Well. That’s not creepy at all.”

The boy smirks, something unreadable beneath it. “I’m Adam,” he says. No last name.

Nathaniel watches him for a beat, then sighs. “Chris." No last name, either.

Adam doesn’t pry.

------

And just like that, it’s a thing. They share a booth now. Adam still does his homework, and Nathaniel pretends not to look. Sometimes they talk. Quiet things, trivial things. Weather. Coffee. The fact that Nino’s jukebox hasn’t worked in five years.

Nathaniel learns that Adam works too much and sleeps too little. That he fixes cars and still uses an old phone because, “if it works, why change it?”

Adam learns that Nathaniel knows more about hand-to-hand combat than any teenager should and that he doesn’t have a phone at all.

One afternoon, when the sky outside is a hazy, sun-faded blue and the diner is nearly empty, Adam looks at him for a long time.

Then he says, almost like he didn’t mean to say it out loud, “You’ve got the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

Nathaniel freezes, caught mid-sip of coffee.

Adam doesn’t look away. Just studies him, quiet and steady. “Must be nice carrying the sky around with you.”

Nathaniel sets the mug down, slower than before. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“It is. Almost like you’ve got freedom stitched into you.”

Nathaniel huffs a quiet laugh, more breath than sound. “Freedom’s overrated when you’ve got nowhere to land.”

Adam’s gaze drops, his expression tightening at the edges. “Maybe. But being stuck somewhere doesn’t mean it’s home.”

They sit with that for a moment, both staring past each other, into corners of the diner where the light doesn’t quite reach.

Then Adam glances back at him, slower this time, like something’s just clicked. “You’re trying to take root.”

It’s not a question. Nathaniel feels it like a pin pressed into his chest.

So he does what he’s always done. He strikes back with something sharp enough to keep distance.

“And you’re trying to break loose.”

The laugh they share isn’t really a laugh at all. It's something heavy and honest that neither of them meant to give away.

“Hell of a pair,” Adam says.

Nathaniel doesn’t disagree.

Another morning, Nathaniel gets stuck staring at one of Adam’s textbooks.

Adam catches him looking. “You like math?”

The lie comes easy. “Not particularly.”

Adam hums, flipping a page. “You were staring like you did.”

Nathaniel raises a brow. “You always analyze people like this?”

Adam just smiles. “You always avoid questions?”

Nathaniel smiles back, feeling honest for once. “Yeah.”

------

On a Friday, after two weeks in Henrietta, Nathaniel comes in late. Mary is restless, checking their exit routes again, but Nathaniel just needs air.

Adam is already there, a plate of fries in front of him, his sleeves pushed to his elbows.

It’s the first time Nathaniel notices the bruises.

Small ones, fading to yellow, near his wrists. Not new, but not old, either.

Adam sees him looking, and for the first time, something shifts in his expression. A flicker of something dark.

Nathaniel is too well-trained not to school his own face into careful blankness. He knows what it’s like to be seen when you don’t want to be.

So he just sits.

Adam doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then, without looking up, he says, “You don’t ask a lot of questions.”

Nathaniel shrugs, picking up a fry. “Neither do you.”

Adam tilts his head. “I could.”

Nathaniel snorts. “I’d lie.”

That earns him a quiet huff of laughter, and for some reason, it settles something uneasy in Nathaniel’s chest.

There’s a long pause before Adam finally says, voice quieter, “I’d lie, too.”

And just like that, they understand each other.

There’s no need to say it out loud.

Nathaniel doesn’t ask where Adam’s bruises came from. Adam doesn’t ask why Nathaniel flinches when the bell over the diner door rings too loud.

Instead, they just sit and share a plate of fries.

------

Nathaniel meets them by accident.

Earlier that afternoon, Adam had waved vaguely in the direction of friends when they crossed paths, and Nathaniel had shrugged, uninterested. But later, as he cuts through the gravel lot beside Nino’s, there they are.

One of them looks like he stepped straight out of a boarding school brochure—crisp button-down, polished watch, hair that probably costs money to maintain. He’s mid-monologue about “kingship” and “Camlan,” his voice full of breathless reverence. The kind of rich-boy obsession that makes Nathaniel instinctively reach for a knife he doesn’t carry anymore.

On his left sits a boy built like a coiled spring, all sharp lines and sharper eyes. He looks like the world bores him unless it’s bleeding. He introduces himself as Ronan.

Ronan just nods once at him, short and flat, like anything more would be a waste of energy. Nathaniel respects that.

Then there’s the girl. Dressed like a thrift store exploded but on purpose, fidgeting with her rings and studying Nathaniel like she might try to read his palm.

“Oh,” she says as he gets close, squinting slightly. “You have an aura.”

Nathaniel stops dead. “I have a what?”

“Never mind,” she replies, narrowing her eyes like she’s filing him under suspicious. “You’re not from here.”

“No shit,” he mutters.

Gansey (because of course his name is Gansey) sticks out a hand, all manners and forced charm. “Richard Gansey the Third. Have you heard of Glendower?”

Nathaniel stares at the offered hand. “I have literally no idea what that sentence means.”

That’s all the encouragement Gansey needs to launch into a speech about Welsh kings and sleeping legends and the geometry of ley lines, like Nathaniel had actually asked. The girl (Blue, apparently) chimes in only to insult him or ask invasive questions.

By the time Adam appears, tired and dusted with oil from work, he is already halfway out of the conversation.

Nathaniel doesn’t stay long. Says he’s got somewhere to be. Doesn’t say where.

Gansey tries to shake his hand again on the way out. He doesn’t take it.

Later, as they walk through the quiet of early evening, Nathaniel mutters, “Your friends are weird.”

Adam shrugs, a found smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. They are.”

“You’re weird, too.”

Adam snorts. “You’re the last person who gets to say that.”

------

Adam’s new place is small and crooked, a converted room above the old church where he used to sleep. Nathaniel knocks and hears a muffled “One sec!” before the door creaks open.

“Hey,” Adam says, already pushing his hair out of his face. “You found it.”

“Yeah. Guy downstairs gave me a look like I was here to steal communion wine.”

Adam grins. “Welcome to St. Agnes.”

Nathaniel holds up a little box—plain brown, tied with string.

“What’s this?”

“Housewarming.”

Adam eyes him. “You don’t seem like the gift type.”

“I’m not. But my mother said it was polite, so.”

Inside is a small utility knife, sleek and silver with a clean flip blade. Tucked beneath it, a folded pack of high-quality pencils.

Adam laughs—just a short breath through his nose—and says, “You’re a strange kind of thoughtful.”

“I know.”

When Adam sets it down, his sleeve rides up, revealing a violet bruise stretching across his forearm. Nathaniel opens his mouth to say something, but Adam turns to look at him—

And sees the split lip blooming on Nathaniel’s face.

They stare at each other for a beat. And then both of them burst out laughing.

It’s not pretty laughter. It’s breathless and sharp and cracked around the edges, like they both needed to let it out or drown.

“God,” Adam gasps, “we look like a before photo in a self-help book.”

“Or an after photo in a cautionary tale,” Nathaniel offers, grinning despite himself.

They sit on the floor. There’s no couch yet. Just lamplight and silence and the occasional creak of the building settling around them.

After a while, Nathaniel says, “I’m leaving. Tonight.”

Adam doesn’t look surprised. Just tired. “Where?”

“Don’t know. Wherever she points next.” He means Mary, but he doesn’t say her name. “Just thought I’d—”

“I know,” Adam interrupts. “Thanks for coming.”

There’s a quiet moment. Then Adam gets up, crosses the room, and returns with a small stack of thick cards. They’re wrapped in a worn ribbon, blue-gray and frayed at the ends.

“Take these,” Adam says, handing them over. “It’s a tarot trading deck. You pick your three. Keep them.”

Nathaniel raises a brow. “Is this like… magical or just metaphorical doom?”

Adam shrugs. “Dealer’s choice.”

Nathaniel unwraps the cards, flips through them slowly. His fingers hesitate on three before pulling them free.

He lays them down on the floor.

The Tower. The Eight of Swords. The Hanged Man.

He doesn’t ask what they mean.

Adam looks at them, then at him. “Jesus.”

“What?”

“That’s…” Adam swallows. “That’s brutal.”

Nathaniel stares at the cards. “Fitting, then.”

Adam doesn't touch him, doesn't offer false comfort. But his voice is soft when he says, “You can come back, Chris. I hope you know that.”

Nathaniel picks up the cards and tucks them into his jacket pocket like talismans. He stands.

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

They don’t hug. They just look at each other for a long time.

And they know.

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