Aaron Minyard - Blog Posts

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

IS THE WORLD SEEING THIS

A little art for @runningwithhellhounds ’s fic!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099911?view_adult=true

She is both an amazing artist and writer, so you definitely have to check out her blog and fic!

Love you bro 💕

if somebody's looking for a fic to read and hasn't read this one :)

Andrew, close to turning fifteen, is clinically insane. 

Andrew, close to turning fifteen, is clinically insane. 

the piece for @giveyourbacktome-zine 

AFTG au where everything is the same except Neil and Andrews attempts at gifting each other CRAZY FUCK-OFF expensive things is somehow ratcheted up another notch until someone (Nicky) notices them spending their literal life savings on each other and calls them out on their mutual attempt at making each other their sugar baby.

(Neil is confused as per usual, Nicky is fuxking delighted at these disaster gays competing to make the other their baby without a single word, and the rest of the foxes are internally screaming about how dumb the whole scenario is because neither will admit something more is going on. Aaron just doesn’t want to think about his brother fucking anyone let alone the suicidally stupid sugar baby who has the mafia after him)

(Andrew is contemplating murder more than usual while simultaneously looking at bigger houses in Columbia because Neil just upgraded his car that fucker)

here is my piece for the @aftgexchange 😊

this is for @accal1a who requested andrew & aaron sarcastic healing as one of their prompts! I’d like to think the twinyards become more open with each other and bicker light heartedly eventually but still act super annoyed about it hahaha

anyways, i hope you like it Accalia 💗

Don't think about Aaron Minyard

Don't think about Aaron Minyard at the Foxes and Ravens match

Don't think about how he had to watch his brother be attacked

Don't think about how he only had enough time to shout

Don't think about how he wasn't fast enough

Don't think about him seeing someone swing a racquet at Andrew

Don't think about how he knows damn well that a racquet swung with enough force can kill a man

Don't think about how he remembers the weight of that racquet in his hands as he swung

Don't think about how he fought for his brother

Don't think about Aaron Minyard

I’m going to casually drop this here and pretend I’m not embarrassed with myself 😅 I wrote a Kevaaron fic that is VERY sexual, anyway!

I don't know anything about the raven AUs or what the extra content has to say but can you imagine if Jean, Kevin, Neil and Andrew were all at evermore at once, because ive been dwelling on it. It would be endless fights. Fists would fly so often. We'd have the whole kevjean situationship plus the andreil mess that is them. Also, jeaneil would be THE power couple. If they had been partners for years, can you imagine the brutality of their insults, oml. I would never want to piss them off or youd just be thrown through the nine rings of hell that is verbal abuse.

And if Andrew still made the deal for nicky and Aaron (not sure that would work but its something to consider)

Would Aaron and Andrew be partners? How would they handle all their problems if they are stuck together 24/7? Do you think Aaron would still fall in love? Would Andrew take medical classes so Aaron can be a doctor? Do you this Aaron has PTSD, thinking of Talia everytime a beating happens?

Dont even get me started on how it would destroy Nicky. He is not built to handle any of that. Plus what Riko would do to him and Andrew, eventually even to Neil. Riko caught Jean by simple looks and Andrew constantly pointed out "that" look on Neil, they would be fucked.

But it would be so intresting to read.

There are too mamy itches in my brain. Andreil. Its a peaceful Saturday morning and they're sleeping in, sun just barely filtering through the window as they cuddle together. Neil's pressed against Andrews side and Andrew has an arm around him laying on his back. The phone rings waking them both and Andrew goes to turn it off but its a call from Aaron, a FaceTime. So he answers, groggy and half asleep. He wakes up more after noticing that Aarons been crying.

"You're still in bed" chuckles from the other end of the phone

"Its the weekend, you're crying?" Andrew cuts the small talk and Neil peaks open an eye out of curiosity.

"We have some news" Katelyn wiggles her way onto the screen standing behind Aaron. "We're pregnant" she give a small happy dance. Andrew stares blankly for a moment.

"Youre going to be an uncle." Aaron says, clearly a bit nervous but mostly proud.

"How long?" Is the only response he can think of.

"I'm currently eight weeks, so give or take another 32 weeks, but theres more."

"More?" Andrew sits up a bit dragging Neil with him.

"Twins" Aaron finishes. Neil muffles a laugh into Andrew's shoulder.

"Good luck with that. If they are anything like you, your hands will be full."

"Shut up" Andrew and Aaron say in sync. Neil just laughs again with a shrug.

"You're not saying much." Aaron presses, fiddling with a pen.

"He's excited" Neil says, looking up at him. Andrew scoff and pushes his face away "he's got that look in his eyes, he happy" Andrew shoves Neil off of him.

"If you ever need anything," Andrew mumbles grumpily to which Aaron nods.

"We will be posting updates on our socials, but we wanted you to know first" katelyn says before disappearing off screen.

"Yeah okay." They talk a bit more before hanging up. Andrew stares at the black screen, processing everything.

"Whats on your mind?" Neil whispers crawling back over to him.

"I'm going to be an uncle. He wants me to be apart of it. Of their lives."

"Of course he does, you're his brother."

"A year ago, I would have never gotten that phone call." He drops the phone on his chest, letting it lay face down. Neil lets him be lost in thought for a moment, then reaches out and brushes the hair from his face.

"You two fixed your relationship. Of course he wants you to know his kids."

"Have you ever thought about it?" Andrew picks at his nails, not looking at Neil.

"About what? Drew, what are you asking?"

"Kids. Have you thought about it?"

"I think I'd make a terrible father. I didn't think you were the type to want kids"

"We dont have to be parents. We could foster. Its just an idea, i dont know." Andrew sits up, tossing his legs over the bed. "I don't even think kids would like me." Neil sits up too, watching Andrew's back.

"Do you want to foster children?" Andrew just shrugs at the question, not facing him.

"We could, it would be one more good house in all of the bad ones. Kids might not like us but theyd have their own room. A warm bed and a safe place to be." His words are quiet, contemplating. "Its just a thought."

"We can always look into it. I wouldn't mind."

"An uncle. He wants me to be an uncle." Andrews thoughts go full circle and Neil cant help but smile. Their future seems bright, and possibly filled with young laughter and toys. Neil inches his way to him and whispers "yes or no" a mumbled yes and Neil trails little kisses down Andrews neck, hugging his back to him.

"This also technically makes me an uncle, think Aarons upset about that yet?" Andrew rolls his eyes at him, earning another laugh.

Aaron, after two full years of going to Eden's on a weekly basis: I think this might be a gay club!

Andrew, who just walked out of the stockroom with Roland: Nothing gets past you, does it.

“Yeah, murder for hire is surprisingly affordable,” says Neil.

Kevin stares at him.

“I get a discount,” Neil justifies.

ik this is prob obvious but I'm putting it out there anyway bc I randomly got reminded of it

INDEPENDENCE & SELF SUFFICIENCY

Andrew spent all the money from Tilda's death on that car BECAUSE he didn't need the car - he wasn't gonna go pay college fees or groceries or whatever bc he didn't need Tilda to survive - he didn't need her while she was alive and he didn't need her now, he could support himself. So of course he wasn't going to use the money from her to buy essential things - he bought that ridiculously expensive car solely because he did not need it and he wanted the money gone.

Nicky jokingly mentions that the car is the reason they're poor, but Andrew wouldn't want Tilda to be the reason they're stable - they can take care of themselves. That money was never going to be used for things they needed, so he blew it on the car

aaron killing a man with a heavy racquet #exyplayerinmafiadominatedfields

vs

neil setting up not one but two hits throughout the series #mafiosoinexydominatedfields

Aftg as racoons pt.2

Neil to the twins:

Twinyards:

Andrew

Aaron:

You might disagree, but Andrew would be the loviest person with children, not the kind that runs around with them and make baby voices, but the kind that protect them with everything in his power and let them mess with him as much as they want.

Like, if Aaron's kids want to put a princess tiara and feathers on him, he would stay still and let them have as fun as possible.

And when there isn't many people around, he would smile. Just a little.

Had to explain the plot of all for the game to someone who had no prior knowledge and holy shit. (Spoilers) Here’s some of my favorite footnotes from our texts:

To start with it is about a bastardized version of lacrosse called exy

And the yakuza

What

Does the yakuza have to do with lacrosse

The only joy he has is playing exy after his mom died and he burned her body in the first few pages of the book

Ah yes

Hillbilly cremation

10/10 for the environment

I’m honestly scared to actually read it

It made my mental health worse I think

Their mom decided to give up one and keep the other so one grew up in the foster system and one grew up with their abusive mother and they didn’t know abt each other until they were like 13ish? At which point one already had a SEVERE self harm addiction and the other had a severe drug addiction

Bro what 😭😭😭

And was HEAVILY abusive to them and their moms sibling was extremely religious (which sucked for their gay cousin, Nicky-he’s also on the exy team) and forced her to raise Andrew again after abandoning him as a baby and Andrew caught her abusing Aaron so he murdered her at 15ish

MURDER

A VALID MURDER

BUT MURDER

YEAH

AARON WAS NOT STOKED

I CAN IMAGINE

ALSO ANDREW LOCKED AARON IN A BATHRROM COMPLETELY ALONE FOR LIKE A WEEK AND FORCED HIM TO DETOX COLD TURKEY

WTF😭😭😭

Oh also Neil is like 5’4? There’s a lot of short kings in these books

Napoleon syndrome goes hard ig

Also I forgot to mention Kevin and Neil were childhood friends because Neil is technically supposed to be a raven (the ones who brand children) but his mom ran away from him and Neil knows who Kevin is but if I remember right Kevin doesn’t know who Neil is

Someone get these kids therapy

Please

They’d have to admit to all the murder

Get a mob boss therapist idk

TO BE PART OF THE TEAM BC THEY HAVE TO COME FROM FUCKED UP CIRCUMSTANCES THEY SEE BETSY DOBSON

Maybe it’s time to change religions

Atp I don’t see any other solution 😭

I need you to know everything I detailed happened in the first book and THERES FIVE

Fuck religions

Just death

They also go clubbing at a club called Eden’s like all the time

Ah yes, I’m mentally unstable, let me go to a club, shake some ass, grab a dick, and do a joint in the bathroom. Fun Friday night yall.

Also the older members call the younger members “the monsters” bc they’re good at exy but also because they don’t really view them as people

Again you’ve rendered me speechless and not in the fun way

Atp just burn down the school

THE YAKUZA TRIED 😭😭😭

TRY HARDER

ARSON ISNT ROCKET SCIENCE

Russian sleep experiment this author

Please

That summary makes it sound INTERESTING the points you described to me makes me think I should join a JIGSAW GAME I’d walk out of it with less trauma

Please comment some of your favorite fucked up things that happened in aftg 😭

you know sometimes im like “aftg isn’t that dramatic”

and then i remember it literally starts with neil smelling the cigarette smoke and reminiscing about his mother...

kevin, helping aaron get ready for his trial: i would like to represent my client’s internet search history from that evening

aaron, leaning into the fake mic: i’d rather just confess to the murder

As if on cue, Andrew appeared in the doorway with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and Kevin at his back. “Success.”

That scene in the first book at Wymack’s apartment

(pt 1/pt 2)