#This has nothing to do with the post but I hc that Dan proposes to Matt

[youknow-igetit]

i’ve always had the headcanon that neil learns how to pole dance and dan helps teach him and i saw someone else post something similar to it (iconic of them, really) and it made me want to elaborate on my hc

some days, neil wakes up and he can’t stand looking in the mirror

he look in the mirror and despite the scars on his face and hands and the vibrant orange hoodie and the chipped nail polish on his hands, all he sees is his father’s eyes and hair and cold smile

so he usually finds himself at the gym building, blasting music in his ears and facing away from the wall of mirrors as he purposefully overworks himself so he’s too exhausted to care about the cold smile that he knows well

either that or he’s in the basement, hitting a punching bag with taped knuckles and pretending that the canvas is his father’s face, lola’s, romero’s, sometimes even his mother’s

one morning he wakes up at four with the phantom pains of hundreds of knives wracking his body

he can’t go back to sleep, so he heads to the gym and picks the lock to the basement

he’s so caught up in his own head that he walks right past the room full of punching bags and opens the door next to it

despite it being in the basement, the room has the same high ceilings as the upper floors, maybe twenty or twenty five feet

there’s no equipment that neil can see in the dark room, nothing except for the mats covering the floor and four vertical poles bolted to the floor and ceiling

he’s confused at first but then... oh

he’d obviously heard of pole dancing as a sport, he remembered seeing the words on the gym directory

but actually seeing the poles, he was kind of intrigued

but he backed out and went into the right room and ran himself down, and despite heaving on the floor, he felt like he could finally breathe

he was exhausted by the time the exy team started trickling into the main gym to do their workouts, but he honestly didn’t care about the stern talking-to kevin was attempting to administer

over the next week, inexplicably, neil’s mind kept going back to the room with the poles. he found himself watching pole dancing competition videos and tutorials and reading articles on different products that help to stay on the pole

on another one of Those Days, he finds himself purposefully breezing right past the boxing room and opening the door to the pole dancing room

he turns on the light, which is still dim, and walks nervously up to the pole in the far right corner

he’s bad at first. not as bad as he thought he’d be, but still bad. youtube isnt exactly the best coach

but he comes back the next day. and the next. and it eventually becomes a regular thing as he becomes better at it. sometimes, when his school workload isn’t heavy, he spends his free periods between classes practicing.

he never sees anyone else there, no matter what time, and he likes it that way. he gets more confident in himself, eventually ending up stripping down to just his briefs as he learns new moves

he doesn’t tell anyone about it. it’s not that he’s ashamed, but the idea of the ex-mafia kid exy player spending his free time pole dancing? it was a little embarrassing

like andrew knows in general where he is at those times but he doesn’t know/care what neil’s doing there. he guesses its just more things to do with exy

and kevin is suspicious but when is he not

but all in all no one finds out

until

one day it’s like three pm and he had the most annoying argument with the TA and he’s still pissed as he descends the stairs to the basement of the gym, just wanting to dance and blow off some steam

he bursts through the door and stops abruptly as the person whirls around

“dan?”

“neil?”

they both kind of just stand there for a moment before neil’s like “sorry, i was--uh, the boxing room is right next to this one and--”

“you were planning on boxing?”

“uh huh”

“in skinny jeans?” dan raised an unimpressed eyebrow

neil glanced down. he was wearing skinny jeans. “um.”

neil shifts nervously. “what are you doing here? nobody ever goes in here.”

“I was just--” dan pauses. “wait, this is where you’re going when you disappear?”

neil rubs the back of his neck. “kinda, yeah”

“kinda or definitely”

so neil tells her everything, about how he’s been going there for months and teaching himself how to dance and whatnot

dan is highkey impressed and asks him if he wants her to teach him anything

“what?”

“I used to be a stripper, neil.”

“oh. right.”

“no, you’re okay. it’s just... i kind of missed it. not the stripper part, but during the day, when the club was closed and my sisters were teaching me. it didn’t feel like it was for anyone. it was for me....it was liberating.”

neil nods. “i get that”

so dan ends up joining in on his practices more often than not

at first neil’s kinda uncomfortable being so physically exposed around someone that wasn’t andrew

but he finds a weird comfort with dan, both of them in just their undergarments swinging around on poles in a big empty room with music playing out of one of their phones

dan ends up teaching neil a bunch of moves she knows, like how to bend over upside-down and spin with just thighs

“and if you twist like this, it shows off your ass”

they also end up talking a lot, about random things, but dan also tells him a lot about her stage sisters and what her high school life was like and in turn neil ends up talking a bit about his life on the run

they also end up talking a lot about their relationships, like how dan learns that andrew likes to snuggle (dan is astounded) and neil learns that matt sleeps with his socks on (neil is apalled)

some of the foxes notice that dan has joined in with neil’s disappearances and she tells them that she’s teaching him “how to be a captain for you assholes. it’s hard fucking work, i’m giving him seminars about you little shits”

but one day matt comes up to neil during practice and he’s like “hey neil can i talk to you”

and neil’s like “you’re talking to me now”

“no i mean like later”

neil’s like ?? but he agrees

after practice everyone leaves the locker room except for matt

he nervously sits down on the bench so once neil’s done he hesitantly sits next to him

“what’s up?”

matt’s acting shifty and weird and isn’t look at neil’s face

“so um, i need you to be honest with me, okay? and i know you wouldn’t do this, but i’ve been having doubts and i just--” matt sighs. “is dan cheating on me with you?”

neil is... absolutely pissed

“what the fuck?!”

“i mean, like, you guys have been disappearing off on your own and then you come back sweaty and flushed--”

“we work out together”

“but she’s always smiling and content after!”

“i literally have a partner”

“that doesn’t stop a lot of people, neil”

“don’t you remember that i don’t swing? dan’s like my sister, matt” neil is surprised when he says it and finds that he’s being truthful. “dan loves you. she’d never hurt you like that. stop selling yourself short.”

matt nods and neil leaves

the next time dan and neil practice together, the next day, dan asks him about matt and neil tells her everything

“i think he’s just paranoid that you’re leaving at the end of the year” neil spins around and hooks his ankles around the pole

“yeah... i’ll talk to him” dan sighs and wraps an arm around the pole and hoists herself up a few inches

“if you’re fine with it, he can come to our next practice”

“you’re sure?” a few weeks ago, neil had told dan how insecure he was about his scars and they both enjoyed the privacy they had at the practice room

“yeah. it’s just matt”

they twirl around for a while, soft music playing from dan’s phone, the artist singing something about being sorry that she fell in love with someone while they were in a hotel room

“what about your boy?” dan asks

“what about him?”

“does he ever doubt you?”

neil shrugs, as well as he can while upside down “we trust each other”

dan thinks for a minute. “are you going to show andrew too?” dan motions to the room with her foot. “i’m fine with it if you are”

so later that day, back at the dorm, neil turns in his bean bag and asks andrew if he wants to come to his and dan’s next practice

andrew replies with a “not particularly”

“don’t you want to see what we do?”

“not really. you don’t ask me to watch renee and i spar.”

“yeah but that’s cause it your guys’ thing. also, dan and i definitely don’t spar”

“it’s still your thing.”

“i wouldn’t ask you to come if i didn’t want you to”

andrew looked at him before saying “you’re insufferable.” neil knew that meant he’d be there

so the next day finds dan and neil leading matt and andrew down their familiar basement path

andrew shows no reaction to the poles except for a quirk in his left eyebrow (neil knows he’s very surprised)

matt, on the other hand, says “this is what you guys have been doing?”

neil nods and takes his shirt and pants off, which leads to another shocked sound out of matt and another raised eyebrow from andrew. (that’s both raised eyebrows. neil’s never done that. he takes it as an achievement. andrew’s eyes tell him not to read too much into it. neil smirks)

andrew leans up against one of the untouched poles as neil talks to matt about liquid chalk as dan takes her own clothes off

matt sits down on the edge of a mat as they start practicing. after a few minutes neil almost forgets that there are two more people in the room than usual, the only giveaway being andrew’s sharp eyes never leaving him and matt’s amazed “ooh”s and “ahh”s

after the alarm on dan’s phone beeped to tell them that their hour and a half were up, matt stood up as the two stepped away from their poles

neil started pulling on his clothes as matt went “I--um--that’s--that was--”

neil picks up his bag and starts walking toward the door, knowing that andrew’s following

“don’t fuck near my pole” he calls, and he can hear dan laugh as he shuts the door

andrew is silent all the way to the dorm

later on the roof, he asks “why?”

neil sighs. “it makes my mind quiet. suspended like that, fifteen feet in the air, the only thing that’s keeping me from falling is me. it’s not like exy, where I have to rely on my teammates. It’s... it’s finding trust in my body.” he looks down at him scarred hands, at the one interlaced with andrew’s. “also my father would never pole dance. neither would my mom. god, she’d be so pissed.”

neil smiles

“what do you think about it?” neil asked as andrew took another drag on his cigarette

“it doesn’t matter what i think”

“it matters to me.”

“I hate you.”

“mmhm. don’t i know it.”

they were quiet as they watched the sun slowly dip over the horizon

“you’re more flexible than i thought”

“what’s that supposed to mean”

“it means i liked it. you are as confident at pole dancing as you are at playing exy.”

“are you telling me that you like when i play exy?”

“shut up. yes or no?” he flicks aside his cigarette at neil’s yes

a few days later, matt apologizes to neil for his assumptions. he ends up convincing neil and dan into entering a pole dancing competition that takes place a few weeks after the championship game

they end up winning third place

(the competition was recorded and put on youtube. neil’s proud. he catches andrew watching the video more than once)

(when kevin finds out about it he practically combusts and tells neil how bad it is for his exy career and what will pro teams think blah blah blah neil doesn’t care)

after dan graduates, neil and her keep up their practices through facetime

the next year they’re able to win first place