(and how they would annoy me as a customer)
from a sleep-deprived donut shop worker
Neil: our summer specialty of a glazed ring sliced in half with whipped cream and strawberries, but he still asks for it in the fall and we have to look him in the eye and tell him strawberries are out of season in December
Andrew: a donut of my own making! a glazed ring with crosshatched caramel drizzle. it's truly the most delicious donut on this earth and I will make it for myself but if a customer ordered it I would cry cause it takes so long to heat up the caramel and idk how to price it
Matt: a peanut butter triangle, but in the drive-thru at 1:30pm (we close at 2) and when I say we're out he just looks very sad and drives away (this doesn't annoy me it just makes me sad)
Dan: blueberry buttermilk, but she asked me if it was blueberry despite it saying it is in large text and then took 30 seconds of staring to say "yeah I'll take it"
Kevin: a plain old-fashioned (no glaze), but actually we're out already and he asks if I can just go make him one then
Nicky: a half-dozen filled donuts, but it's 5:01am and I just got there and opened the drive-thru, hence the donuts are not yet filled, when I tell him I'll need to fill them he asks how long it will take
Aaron: cream cheese cinnamon roll, but he would order it after 10:30am so I would have to go in the back and frost it for him despite the fact that I already frosted a bunch that morning
Allison: white cake, chocolate frosting, but in the drive-thru and she just says "a white cake donut" so I have to ask if she wants chocolate, vanilla, maple w nuts, cherry, or cookies and cream frosting and she looks mad when there are so many options and then just says "chocolate is fine"
Renee: 2 chocolate bars, but she is so gd nice it takes so long to get to her order and every time she asks my name and then says how beautiful it is. it always makes me happy but also like ma'am this is a donut shop drive-thru. once told me the meaning of my mom's name after asking. always says god bless you before driving away
Truth is irrefutable and untainted by bias. Sunrise, Abram, death, queer kids googling 'am i gay quiz': these are truths
hold on, so the moment Neil says “do it” when Betsy’s trying to convince the everyone to have Andrew go off his medication, that’s the first time in the whole series he’s put someone/something before Exy, including himself *screams*
Doesn’t even consider for a second how that will affect the Exy season, just immediately does what he can to make it happen because he needs so badly for Andrew to be better or at least have a chance at being better, even when it might mean Neil loses out on the one thing he has been holding onto (insert Nicky’s speech about how Exy can’t love you back and you need someone to hold onto, this shows how Neil has been holding onto Andrew and how much that has changed his priorities).
okay we can all agree that andrew likes to read, BUT it’s also a fact that he dog ears pages, ruins spines by leaving books lying open, shoves them in bags even if the pages get crumpled, and stains the books by eating messy foods while reading
neil spent his whole life trying to blend in and desperately avoiding being remembered, and i feel like a monumental moment that shows how much he’s changing is when he sees himself on the foxes’ photo wall. he even reaches out, ready to tear the picture down, but he hesitates and leaves it up which is just... huge
he allows that small piece of himself to live on, he lets is stay there, and he even thinks ahead to the future. he thinks of being dead in a few months and of how that small picture will keep him in people’s memories, and for once, he WANTS to be remembered. he wants people to know that he lived and breathed and was a part of the palmetto state foxes. that he was, however briefly, part of their own little messed up, flawed, perfect family. for the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to let himself fade into oblivion
and for the first time in his life, he’s ready to die if it means protecting the people he loves
i can’t help but wonder how many times mary called neil stupid, given that that’s what he thinks of all his decisions
yes neil is absolutely clueless when it comes to people liking him, both platonically and romantically, but he’s honestly pretty perceptive when it comes to other people. he was able to analyse the relationships and dynamics between the foxes pretty quickly (for the most part) after meeting each of them, even without knowing their backstories or anything about them. i think that this is for a few reasons:
neil has spent his entire life looking for threats towards him, not love
the only person who ever really cared about him before he joined the foxes (from what we know) was his mom, who had very questionable ways of showing it (i could write a whole other post about mary)
neil didn’t actually expect anyone to care about him in any way, because he didn’t think he was worthy of friendships and had never really opened up enough for it to be a viable option
he had to be good at quickly and discreetly analyzing other people’s relationships, because it was important to understand those around him on the run
excluding all the times where he went off and snapped at people, he tended to listen more than talk, especially when in big groups. this is the perfect opportunity to absorb information about everyone else
that being said, he didn’t pick up on anyone caring about him, because that idea had never even crossed his mind
also, given that he hadn’t really known what romantic attraction felt like, it was probably pretty hard to place his feelings for andrew
and andrew’s not exactly the easiest to read, so even for neil (who understands him significantly more than others do), it would’ve been hard to see that andrew liked him (esp since andrew was presenting his attraction as hate)
however!! it would’ve been a lot easier to pick out the subtleties in the relationships between the other foxes, because they’re generally more open
basically, i think that neil actually isn’t completely clueless when it comes to love/lust/attraction between others, it’s just when it comes to himself - who he doesn’t think is worthy of anything good - that he’s a bit thick
no but did you notice how easily neil started thinking dan instead of danielle and nicky instead of nicholas when they told him their preferred names,, like say what you will, but i just know for a fact he would absolutely use everyone’s correct pronouns and names with absolutely zero hesitation or issue idc
nicky: honestly if you're short just grow
andrew, knife already in hand: famous last words
neil going around the baltimore hotel and checking the drawers to make sure nothing was left behind is too pure. they may have adopted him, but he still looks out for his own. and he also definitely thinks they’re not responsible enough to remember to check
andrew “stood with his back to the car, one arm propped on the hood and the other draped along the top of his door” (tkm, ch. 1) and i stg andrew bought a low expensive car simply for the Aesthetic and the Drama, you can’t convince me otherwise
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