#neil wears a confused expression that andrew wants to immediately wipe off with a kiss

[ravenvsfox]

heres a prompt if u were interested: neil being oblivious when flirted with constantly while andrew doing nothing, passing by, twirling his racquet is enough to get neil's attention (the rest of the foxes smirk)

“You’re all zoned out,” Matt says in her ear. Dan tips him immediately backwards with a hand to the chest.

“Shush,” she tells him, gritted through the straw she’s worrying between her teeth. She ran out of the watered-down pepsi they’re serving in battered plastic jugs a half hour ago.

“Dan.”

“Shush,” she insists, pressing two fingers to his mouth. She’s watching Neil trying to fill his water cup over at the far side of the banquet hall. He’s hovering in that way he does, like a shark who hasn’t figured out if something’s food yet.

There’s this sweet brown-eyed boy trying to talk to him, possibly the only male cheerleader in the room, certainly the least in the loop about Exy gossip. Dan watches him touch Neil’s arm and Neil jerks backwards into the table, toppling an entire icy water jug so it slops onto the floor and seeps through the tablecloth to the dark wood underneath.

Heads pop up, the boy falls all over himself to pour Neil a new glass, and Neil wanders off, bored.

Dan has noticed that people really want Neil to have a heart of gold. They like the news stories and they want them for themselves. They want the seams showing on his face and the tragedy in his back pocket, and they want to show everyone how accepting they are for finding his scars sexy. 

All they really want is his trim waist and his pretty eyes and his vice-cap badge and the way he shoves cameras away and has more history than any twenty-year-old has any business having.

Dan’s seen it all before. The way people like the character you’re playing so much that they want to take you home and open you up and see how deep it goes.

Neil’s worse at knowing when it’s happening. Dan’s a professional. She can see the way their eyes follow him because at least a dozen are always following her too, especially in places like this banquet. They look at Neil, or Dan, and a little part of them expects a show.

She watches Neil walk towards them with his eyes pouring over the room like liquid and finding every crevice, every exit. She looks at Matt.

“He’s doing that thing where he’s making a spectacle but he thinks he’s being very subtle.”

“That’s his whole shtick. I’m fond of it, now.” Matt grins.

“Do you think he actually noticed he was being hit on?”

Matt hums, watching Neil wind through the tables back to the fox—trojan extravaganza at theirs. “I doubt he knows anything about that boy other than the fact that he was in front of him for a bit.”

“Poor kid,” Dan says. Neil pulls up and drops back into his chair, looking grim.

“Who was that?” Matt asks him, and Neil looks around, unsure if he’s the one being spoken to.

“Who?”

“Mr. blue tie.”

Neil glances back and they collectively notice that the cheerleader boy has followed Neil all the way back to their table, and he’s trying to wedge himself behind Allison and Laila’s chairs to reach him.

“Hi, hi sorry, I know you actually—I know you left, right,” he says, and everyone looks at him blankly. Dan can see his anxiety cranking up, his shoulders almost touching his ears. “I just wanted to give you—um.” He holds out a damp water glass, and Neil ignores his hand, frowning.

“Don’t you sit across the room?” He jerks his head at the Jackals sitting somewhere near the doors.

The boy deflates. “Well. I mean. I just thought I should replace what I spilled.”

“I spilled it,” Neil corrects, confused.

“Yeah, but. I startled you. I forget some people don’t like to be touched as much as I like touching them.” He looks disarmed by his own forwardness, and he flushes hard, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want you to be thirsty.”

“Buddy, sorry, but I really don’t think this is your audience,” Matt says, and the boy darts a look between Neil and the rest of the crowd staring at him.

“And I don’t think he’s thirsty,” Dan says, deadpan. She can see Alvarez whispering furiously to Jeremy out of the corner of her eye.

“Neil,” the boy says imploringly, putting one hand close to Neil’s, which is next to a conspicuous set of cutlery furnished with a steak knife. Renee quietly tugs it away. “I liked talking to you. I think you’re so interesting.”

“Interesting,” Neil repeats, and his face kind of changes like his eyes aren’t taking anything in. He comes back online when someone clears their throat. “Where’s Andrew?” he asks abruptly.

“I think he had to rescue Kevin from some raven with a king complex,” Matt says. Neil frowns severely. “There was a whole argument. No punches thrown though, thanks to you not being there.”

“Minyard?” the boy asks, caught off guard. “Isn’t he kind of a dick?”

Neil’s eyes snap to his so quickly that Dan half expects there to be sparks in the air. “Are you still here?”

The boy steps away, taken aback. “I—“

“I’m not going to tell you anything that’ll help your school,” Neil says. “And I’m not sure why you think it’s appropriate to come all the way across the room to touch me without asking and insult my teammates. But maybe they do things differently on the losing team.”

There’s a chorus of gasps, and the boy’s skin goes mottled red with embarrassment. “I wasn’t trying to— I don’t care about teams, I was just. I thought you were—“

“Interesting, yeah, I heard you. Better people than you have told me that before.”

The boy stumbles back, close to tears. Allison laughs loudly as he turns and breaks into a run back towards his friends.

“That was brutal,” Dan says, grimacing.

“He’s pissing himself,” Matt agrees, watching him go with a sympathetic, pinched expression on his face.

“What?” Neil says. And the thing is— he really doesn’t get it. His expression is so readable: bone-deep confusion, anger from the guy’s comment about Andrew sprinkled all over it. “Why are you always so shocked when I don’t let people get away with their shit?”

“I don’t think he was trying to pull shit, I think he was—“

“Completely in love with you,” Allison says, and Renee shushes her from across the table.

“What?” Neil asks, his mouth all turned around.

“Nothing, Neil,” Dan says, raising her straw back to her mouth and smiling around it.

_____

It’s so frequent that it would be funny, if Andrew weren’t always a strong breeze away from breaking someone’s nose.

This month alone, Dan’s seen a girl sit with Neil at the library and get asked bluntly to leave, watched a gaggle of fans with ‘I heart Neil Josten’ posters get ignored at a game, and had to look away when some guy tried to be cool and sexy by leaning Neil into a wall and he got his arm wrenched backwards in its socket.

Matt likes to lean in and whisper what flirty things he thinks the latest suitor is saying, and Dan laughs and fills in Neil’s parts of the dialogue. Dan’s gotten into the habit of searching for Andrew whenever it’s happening, watching his immovable face angle towards the threat, his body tense up. He’s so transparently jealous that it’s not even fun to bet on it.

They’re out dancing, and Dan’s wiping sweat away from her nose and sipping Allison’s fizzy gin concoction with her nose wrinkled. The club is a pulsing migraine.

She becomes aware of Andrew all at once, somehow more visible than he usually is, like his body is made of matches that are just now lit. Neil isn’t with him, but it feels weirdly like he’s all over him anyway.

There’s something odd about the way he’s floating over to them with his neck craned in the direction he just came from. All their conversation falls away, Aaron puts his shot glass down still full, and Andrew takes a stool without looking at it. Dan meets Matt’s gaze, widening her eyes at him until he clears his throat.

“You lose Neil?” he asks.

Andrew doesn’t reply, his eyes are flung somewhere Dan can’t see, moving with the roll of the crowd.

Matt looks back at Dan helplessly, shrugging. Nicky comes toppling over to them and lands heavily on his elbows in the centre of their table, hard enough that the drinks jump and spill.

“Neil is getting seduced outside the women’s bathroom,” he tells them gleefully, until his eyes slip and focus on Andrew and his expression hollows out. “Uhh, not— it’s unreciprocated, terrible seduction.”

“I know,” Andrew says simply.

“You know,” Matt repeats. “And you don’t care, I bet?”

Andrew raises a glass to him in mock cheers. “That would be the first bet you’ve ever won.”

Dan snorts, surprising herself.

“They were talking about exy,” Andrew adds. Dan blinks. It’s disarming to be offered information from Andrew, like if a temperamental animal brought you something dead and you didn’t know whether to be flattered or disgusted.

“Well you’re fucked then,” Matt says.

“Exy talk is dirty talk to Neil,” Dan agrees. Andrew doesn’t answer, unsurprisingly, but his eyes are sharp, slicing through the thicket of bodies straight to wherever he thinks Neil is.

“Were they a fan?” Allison asks, thick and sweet, and Andrew’s hands clench.

“She was wearing Neil’s number,” Nicky whispers loudly across the table, and Allison crows.

Neil comes into view a minute later, looking sick and distracted. He slides onto the stool next to Andrew and steadies himself on his shoulder. Dan watches the way Andrew’s whole frame drops open at his touch. She squeezes Matt’s hand under the table.

“She tried to kiss me,” Neil says, almost to himself. Andrew is immediately up out of his seat, and Neil has to catch him around the wrist.

“Let go,” Andrew says. His voice is the too-tight string wrapping a parcel together.

“She stopped when I asked,” Neil says lowly, thumb swiping over Andrew’s pulse point.

Andrew methodically removes himself from Neil’s grip, only to stay exactly where he is. “She shouldn’t have started.”

Neil shrugs, Andrew sits, Aaron takes his shot.

Dan catches Andrew’s eye for a sliver of a second, and the look she sees there is bleeding and human.

_____

Neil doesn’t swing, except that he sure seems to when Andrew’s the one pushing him. Sometimes it looks like he’s grappling with the adrenaline you get when you’re high enough on a swing-set that you think you’re going to wrap around.

He doesn’t look that way around women at bars or cheerleaders with floppy hair, but if Andrew’s in the room Neil’s always going to be watching him.

It’s endearing, seeing the way Neil gets clumsy when Andrew’s around. He stops chewing when Andrew slides into their booth at lunch, eyes following Andrew’s arm down to wherever his hand has settled under the table. Dan can tell that the beginning and end of his reality in those moments is the exhilaration of Andrew’s touch. 

She recognizes that early relationship feeling: when you want a person more than you want the food in your mouth or the conversation rushing around you.

Neil’s on a frequency that even the foxes struggle to hear sometimes, but Andrew walks in and turns all the right dials without trying.

The unlikely way they fall after each other reminds Dan of the way Matt lulled attention out of her, like she fell into the spill from a lighthouse and steered slowly, slowly home.

It’s strange to watch from the outside; seeing them pretend not to be preoccupied with each other, seeing how Neil’s focus looks like tough cement until Andrew walks through it and makes a mess.

All Andrew’s doing now is standing in goal, blessedly where he’s supposed to be. He’s dropped his helmet and he has his fingers threaded through the net of his racquet.

Dan’s turning to yell at him for being unprepared when she runs straight into Neil’s back. She makes a little involuntary ‘oof’ noise and stumbles sideways.

“Sorry,” Neil says vaguely, one hand half out like he’s trying to hold her back from breaking his focus. When she follows his gaze, it’s to Andrew’s hand ruffling through his sweaty bangs, his other hand sliding from the net of the racquet to the handle. “Sorry,” he repeats. His face is bright pink.

It’s stupid, because it’s interrupting her practice, and Neil’s supposed to be her biggest help in these fast-paced drills, but she smiles. Andrew looks completely grim and uninterested, but his uniform is snug to his arms and his hair is a shade darker because it’s so wet. He had to participate in the brutal running drills and he looks like he’s still sorting out his breathing.

Neil is so obviously in love with him that she’s a little surprised Andrew’s withstanding it. His face is so sad when he looks at the people who are important to him, sometimes. It’s worse when he looks at Andrew, like he cares so much that it’s breaking his heart.

“You’ve got it bad,” Dan tells him. Neil looks back at her, caught.

“He took his helmet off,” Neil says dumbly.

“I can see that.”

“I’m— he’s—“

She watches hims struggle with an excuse and then stop, frowning. She looks over Neil’s shoulder and finds Nicky laughing, Matt making a heart with his hands and putting it in front of his eyes. The foxes are sort of scattered, breathless and hot and half hunched to get their bearings, but they always seem to have the energy to mock their teammates.

She purses her lips, trying to keep amusement from warping her irritation.

“I didn’t think we should be hammering balls at an unprotected goalie,” Neil says finally.

“Right,” Dan says, biting her tongue against a joke that Neil wouldn’t get. “Maybe it’s time for a five minute break.”

He tilts his head. “If you think they need it.”

“I think you need it,” Dan corrects, not quite tamping her smile down all the way. “Go cool off,” she says meaningfully, and Neil’s eyes twitch back towards the goal.

She leaves him like that, claps and announces a break to the team, and crosses to Matt at the other side of the court. She slides easily into his arms, hanging off of his waist and smiling into his chest when she feels him laughing.

“He’s lucky Andrew’s just as bad, or it would be embarrassing.”

“It’s still embarrassing,” Kevin says from a couple of paces away, scowling at his water bottle.

“It’s sweet,” Renee says. “He’s smitten.”

“Yeah but he’s like—so bad at it,” Allison says. They look collectively over at the opposite goal, where the two of them are staring at each other, Andrew’s hand now fisted loosely in Neil’s collar.

“Still seems to be working,” Dan says, and Matt presses his face to her hair.

“Guess they’re meant for each other.”