Kind-404 - No Savvy

Synchronization of horrors.

It had to happen one day. Jean sees flashes of other people's hands in front of his eyes, shying away from Kevin's soothing touch. All he can do is squeeze out a pathetic "no" on the verge of hysteria rising to his throat.

Jeremy is at Moreau's side at the same moment. He has seen how him lives through such attacks, and knows what to do. Kevin steps back, allowing Jeremy to sit Jean down on a chair. It is not easy for him to realize that he can do nothing to help his second beloveds who has survived violence.

Andrew and Jean are inherently very similar. They wrest control from the world. On bad days, Andrew only lets Neil in, and Jean only lets Jeremy in. No exceptions. They are their safe place. Fair enough, considering these are the people who managed to figure them out faster than anyone else.

Synchronizing their shared nightmares is maddening. Neither Andrew nor Jean like to show their vulnerability, and these days they try to avoid each other, going in different directions. They literally trigger at the sight of each other.

This day is just one of those when Kevin wants to burst into tears from impotence. The horrors of the past overtake his guys at the same time. Word for word, and Andrew does not hold back with words, in fact, like Jean.

It hurts.

It opens up old wounds.

Neil crawls out of his and Andrew's room. He does not approach them, pausing in the doorway. Jeremy shakes his head, and Neil realizes that neither he nor Kev have anything to do here. He pulls Day away by the edge of a home stretched T-shirt. The sound of shuffling footsteps hangs unpleasantly in the atmosphere of a quiet house.

"How's Andrew?" Kevin asks, and Neil shrugs vaguely.

The exact answer is: in the abyss of nightmares, mired in the swamp of the rolling past. Neil doesn't say that. If Minyard wants to, he will tell everything himself.

Kevin accepts Josten's silence. They curl up together on the sofa in the living room, clinging to each other like drowning people. The Ravens destroyed Jean. The system destroyed Andrew. Their hastily glued fragments cut painfully and without warning not only them.

Neil wraps his arm around Day's waist, looking oceans of pupils into his eyes. The storm hides inside him, infecting Kevin with quiet anger.

"It's so fucked up, Kev."

The muffled sound of French deafens them both. They would give anything not to understand fragments of Jean's panic attacks in his native language. It's scary. Details of the horrors of his past.

Kevin nudges Neil lightly in the back.

"Maybe you should go to Andrew. He needs you a lot more than I do."

Neil isn't moving anywhere. Andrew asked for space, and he's giving it to him. After all, who is he to violate his boundaries? He's much more useful here, next to a completely lost Kevin.

Batman : The Deal - Fan-Fiction - DANIEL BAYLISS

Hey. Psst. You. Yes, you. You, who thinks that Andrew choking Kevin for Neil is sweet and romantic.

Yes, please, come closer.

*slams a rolled up newspaper on your face*

No.

It's not romantic. It's not sweet. It's not proof of Andrew's undying care and love for Neil. It's Andrew, going back on his promise to protect Kevin. It's Andrew, choking someone who trusted him and who had already been betrayed and abused by a person he once trusted in the past.

Loving a character doesn't mean you can't recognise they've made mistakes and shitty things. Especially when it comes to the AFTG ones.

yoo your striker looks gnc af

But yeah Andrew is the softer one in the relationship:

- This is a part of him he thinks must be in new bloom. The world says rough, the world says weapon, the world says joyless and so there must be some truth to it, right? Yet he finds himself wanting to cradle Neil’s hands to his chest when he needs steadying from a nightmare, have Neil’s bare wrist pressed flush against his ribs so that he can feel their pulses thrumming against one another. And he can’t sleep at night until he’s ran slow, deliberate fingers through Neil’s soft hair, every comb-through an indulgence, fingers massaging Neil’s delicate scalp, learning the structure, the very shape of it. He wants to press his lips to every scab, every contusion, everywhere Neil tore himself apart in hopes of survival. He wants to alleviate and cradle and absorb.  - Neil often ends up kicking his own blankets off of himself at night, and in the winters it drives Andrew absolutely crazy, so he’ll wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night just to fix Neil’s blanket and pull the covers back up over his shoulders to keep him from shivering too much, right before closing his arms down over Neil’s middle like a brace like a ring of fire. - Andrew likes to tease Neil about being clingy, but there are times when it’s difficult to say if there’s something wrong with his system or if being separated from Neil for longer than a few hours at a time has him emptied and aching in more ways than one. One particular evening at Sweetie’s, while watching Neil, Nicky and Kevin engage in some idle conversation he doesn’t remotely care to pay attention to, Andrew subtly tilts his cone in Neil’s direction. Neil regards it a moment before gladly accepting the soft serve and taking a small bite out of it. They share the rest of the cone together. Nicky attempts to tease them about it at one point, but stops mid sentence when he catches Andrew’s murder-glare from his periphery and changes topic. Andrew will never admit it, but once it becomes a quiet, shared ritual; he likes getting a little ice cream on his nose on purpose so that Neil has the urge to kiss it off. Slowly it becomes ok, even in  public. - There are nights when Andrew lets Neil wrap his arms around his stomach and pull him close, his chin on his shoulder, Andrew’s back digging into Neil’s chest. Andrew sleeps better when he can feel Neil’s heart beating against his spine. It leaves him strangely warm and punch-drunk.  - Sometimes in the midst of exploring, Andrew will take Neil’s hands and press them to his own diaphragm over his t-shirt so that Andrew’s breaths can do the speaking for the wordless, happy hum that he’s feeling. He likes Neil’s palm resting there, at the centre of him. - Andrew anchors his fingers in the back collar of Neil’s sweatshirt whenever he feels Neil tense by his side. As soon as Neil’s on edge, all it takes is for Andrew to hook his fingers and give a light tug on his clothes to reground him. Other times he’ll bunch his hand in the hem of Neil’s t-shirt and twist or press a steering hand around the back of his neck, but never to control. Always to guide. Neil will never not be amazed by the impact the slightest contact with Andrew can make on his nervous system. - Andrew strives to smoothen out his hard edges, catches tail ends of hushed conversations where the Foxes relay mutual shock at noticing the incurvated places where Andrew lets himself cave in, allowing himself to be vulnerable, allowing himself to be worshipped. The devotion and unrepentant trust that builds a monolith within him when Neil fiercely defends him. “I don’t need your useless concern,” he’ll mutter. “Too bad because you’ve got it,” Neil will usually reply. “They have to stop preying on you at every given chance. You’re not a monster to me. You shouldn’t be a monster to anyone. If they fail to understand that, they’ll be sorry.” Andrew’s tone is offhanded. “I don’t care about what they think. Nor should you.” Neil just shakes his head. “We’re family. We have to treat each other like one.” The words bite at the crumbs of Andrew’s nonchalant demeanor and he lets his guard down wholeheartedly. It’s an understanding. He and Neil have something that the rest of the world can only dream of, and nobody can take that away from them. - Neil often spends time bare-chested with Andrew so that he can further familiarize himself with the feel of Neil’s lacerated skin and by the time they’re falling asleep, Andrew almost invariably ends up wearing Neil’s oversized hoodie he shed earlier to bed.       - He doesn’t feel particularly gentle, but Neil insists that he is. “You’re always so careful,” Neil’s voice is thick with some unchained emotion, yet conversational as he runs fingers over Andrew’s split knuckles. The night air is humid and dark, rain-heavy clouds blot out the stars. They feel exhausted after a particularly grueling game, like battlefields after war, but the heat of Andrew’s body is lilting and makes Neil feel kind of dreamy. “With me, I mean. Nobody else has ever been that considerate.” Andrew’s blank amber eyes stare back at him, shone like opals in the campus lights reflecting from down below. “It’s not concern,” Neil nods in agreement. “No, it’s not.” Andrew then wordlessly takes their entwined hands and holds them against the side of his jaw, just below his cheek. Neil reacts with an elaboration. “Even though it’s always yes with you, you understand that some days it might be a difficult yes. You don’t touch to feast, you touch to steady. You make me feel safe and like I exist. You go about it like flower picking, if that even makes any sense. Cautious but hot, never incomplete and still somehow leaving me wanting more.” Now Neil’s smiling and nudging Andrew’s foot with his own. Their hands still twined at Andrew’s throat. “It’s really sweet.” Neil expects a comeback, an evasion, an immediate it is not but instead Andrew’s silence is pensive. Neil can feel him swallow against his fingers. The swift bob up and back down. “I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to.” He finally declares. Neil’s heart enflames as he leans in, close enough to Andrew’s mouth that he can taste his breath on his tongue, an inch keeping from tipping over into a kiss. “And I don’t ever want you to feel like I don’t want to. Because I do. I want so much it scares me. Pretty weird, right? Going from being nothing to wanting so much.” They gaze patiently at one another, not kissing, breaths spreading against lips like ripples in a pond. “What if I stopped asking?” Andrew’s voice is barely a whisper, hoarse; afraid almost. “I would like that, but only if you feel comfortable with a decision so big. You don’t have to make it now. Not for me.” Neil replies. Andrew closes his eyes. “Tell me one final time.” Neil traces one of Andrew’s eyelids with a barely-there finger and takes a breath. “Yes. Eternally yes.” Andrew crushes his lips hard against Neil’s: a chemical reaction. The kiss is a languid drink sipped by a man who’d been thirsting for years. The kiss is a game changer and Neil feels it in every single one of his arteries. If such a gesture could be measured, it’d stretch on for eternity. Neil is so thankful when they come apart for air that he’s stunted speechless. Andrew’s expression, once an uprising, now lays its armor down and then, the barest, shortest of burning smiles. Neil thinks he’ll forget how to inflate his lungs. And sitting there, atop their little pocket dimension of a rooftop, with Neil’s face moon-bright and stained red with surprise, Andrew thinks this gentleness will become a bad habit.

Ooops

First it was Neil and Jean but the thought of Andrew kept me up so

I really love them…

I finished aftg this week and I'm not ok, so I present aftermath Kevin Day but with hair grown out??

My thoughts behind the drawing under more ❗️spoilers for King's Men (last book)❗️

Kevin after Riko's death. Kevin attending the private funeral despite every horrible thing as a last goodbye, maybe out of spite, maybe to reassure himself the king is dead, maybe out of actual grief, either way he arrives, paying his respects ...

HOW IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

SHE SAID THAT THEY WERE DATING, MY BABIES ARE IN A FUCKING SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP

People on Twitter pissed me off, so now I need to talk about Kevin Day. With a new wave of "Kevin was selfish for leaving" discourse happening, I legitimately have to ask, do you all understand what a cult is??

Even putting the psychological effects being in a cult had on him aside, Kevin is not a perfect person. Nobody in the aftg series is perfect, characters are not black and white. This is one of the big points of the series. You have got to put yourself in his shoes. Imagine this:

You are 19 years old. Your mother was killed when you were a child by someone involved in this cult; even if you do not know this for a fact, you have a suspicion. The identity of your father is kept from you in an effort to keep you where you are. You are number 2, supposed second in command of the other members. You can not piss off number 1; you have seen what he does to number 3 when he is angry. You are challenged to fight number 1 and know that if you win, he will be irrationally angry, so you pull the fight and let him win. He knows you did this. He attacks you, and you start begging. First in English, your native tongue, then in Japanese, his native tongue, and then in French, the language you should not know. This implicates number 3, and number 1 lashes out and crushes your hand almost beyond repair.

You are left alone with number 3 there to pick up the pieces. Your mind is absolutely reeling; you are no longer useful to the cult like this, and you know what they do to things they do not deem useful. 3 will do anything for you. You know this to be true. You have to get out, and a solution comes to your mind: number 3 distracts number 1. It is your only opportunity. Do you take it?

Personally, I don't understand how you can read this series and not come out of it feeling incredibly sorry for Jean and Kevin. Should Kevin have used Jean's feelings for him to get out of the nest? In a perfect world, no, but this is not a perfect world. He was desperate, and scared, and vulnerable, and he did whatever he could to get away. If he was selfish, he would not have felt the insane amounts of regret we can practically feel radiating off of him during the series. Kevin is a victim, and I need y'all to stop overlooking that.