Uhhh So The Number Four Is Associated With Death In Certain Cultures, Including Japanese, Which Is Fitting

New year, new obsession 🦊

I'm glad I looked past the first sentences of aftg, which really made me want to just close the book and never open it again. After a while, I somehow fell in love with that mess 💓

No specific scene or anything, just thought about how I imagine Andrew, Aaron and Kevin could look like (kind of at least)

andrew has only ever hurt aaron once.

it was when they were both still in high school, the first year andrew was on his medication. he took a dose and fell asleep during a movie, out cold. aaron and nicky both let him sleep, and then nicky went to go start dinner while aaron woke andrew. he woke him by touching his shoulder, and andrew had him up and pinned against the wall before he fully registered it was aaron. hand around his brother's throat, nicky comes back in and freaks out (one of the first times this has happened, more than just a hit). andrew releases aaron and nicky asks him what the hell that was. andrew doesn't say anything before aaron interrupts him– nicky, it was my fault, he was asleep, i shouldn't've touched him, he didn't mean to do anything, it didn't even hurt, i promise. and andrew stops. stares at his brother because he has heard him say those exact words before, in a different house, bruised by a different hand– andrew, seriously, it's not a big deal, it didn't even hurt. it was my fault anyway, and she's drunk, she didn't mean it.

andrew doesn't say anything, but he hears it. he remembers. he never touches aaron again.

when you read aftg from neil’s perspective you sort of get used to his fucked up logic but the moment you see him from jeans pov you’re like oh . he’s literally just a short little freak (affectionate)

An Ancient Egypt AU nobody asked for

and here some additional things I did faster but ended up liking more

okay so:

kevin and jean are "wrong person, wrong time" trope

renee and jean are "right person, wrong time" trope

jeremy and jean are "right person, right time" trope

...

my roman empire is that if clarke had gone back up to space in season 5 instead of echo, her and bellamy would’ve realised how in love they were and ended up together.

I fully believe Neil sent this to the foxes post Baltimore

i just know i will always be hunted by Jean "I'm not in love with you anymore" and Kevin "I didn't know you ever were" trope.

We all know that Neil has two smiles, his "Neil-smile" and his "Nathaniel-smile". I went through the books to see how many times Neil actually smiles, because god knows it's not that many.

His "Nathaniel-smile" pops up a few times, usually when he's around Riko, threatening someone, or daydreaming about his father's gruesome death.

"Are you threatening a federal agent?" Nathaniel smiled so hard his burns ached. "I wouldn't dare."

He smiles his normal or "Neil-smile" a total of eight times through the series. Never in the first book, twice in the second, and six times in the third. Out of these eight, four were towards Andrew, one to Kevin, one to Wymack, one to Nicky, and one to Matt.

Nicky subsided with a lightning-quick grin in Neil's direction. Neil managed a small smile back.

The original point of this post was that Neil really doesn't smile or laugh or anything as much as he does in fanfictions and stuff. Andrew and Neil are not a grumpyxsunshine trope, Neil is not the light to Andrew's darkness, they're both massively fucked up and Neil does his crazy serial killer smile more often than his regular one.

He couldn't sleep, but at least he could daydream his father's death over and over again. That was almost enough to make him smile, and eventually it thawed the chill from his veins.

Anyways, that 𝘸𝘢𝘴 the original point of the post, but now I'm stuck thinking about how cute it is that he literally smiles only eight times throughout the entire series, and 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳 of them are to Andrew. It's so fucking cute, especially when you consider the circumstances of the rest of them.

Andrew, who for once hadn't wasted their time denying that this thing between them might actually mean something to both of them. Neil hadn't even noticed the silence at first, too distracted by his dizzying thoughts. Now he couldn't help but smile and pull Andrew in.

He shares a tired smile with Kevin after the first Raven match. He smiles when Wymack picks up the phone when he calls him after he comes back from Evermore. He returns Nicky's grin with a small smile to reassure himself when Riko comes to watch their match against the Longhorns. And he gives Matt a tight smile during the final match against the Ravens.

"Neil?" All the gruff posturing left Wymack's voice; that sharp edge was all alarm. "Are you all right?" Neil smiled. It felt like it tore his face open. "No. No, I'm not. I know it's kind of sudden, but can you come get me? I'm at the airport."

With Andrew, basically every single time is directly 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 of him. Those smiles are some of the only times he actually feels or shows genuine pleasure or happiness, and I just think that's so cute.

It wasn't funny—none of this was—but that response was so obnoxious and so typically Andrew that Neil couldn't help but smile.

Technically he does smile a ninth time, at all of the Foxes, but since that was immediately after and because of Riko's death, I'm tempted to classify it as a "Nathaniel-smile" lmao.

Neil looked from one tired face to the next, soaking them in, reveling in everything they'd accomplished tonight and imagining how they'd react when they heard the news tomorrow. "What's so funny?" Nicky asked when he spotted Neil in the doorway. Neil hadn't realized he was smiling. "Life?"

(Also the word smile no longer feels like a word to me now. I never realised how often Renee smiled until I had to go through every single time any character smiled in the books)

the shower scene this, the shower scene that

what no one talks about though is how andrew took his armbands off.

Of course it wasn’t to keep them from getting wet; the shirt he kept wearing disapproves that. It was part of their truth. He saw neils bare scars and answered with his own. One vulnerable part for another.

That’s what we should be talking about