i am terminally A Sucker for characters who have a towering and generally earned ego about their own ability and absolutely no self-worth about themselves as a person at all. intoxicating combo.

we talk a lot about how much of a revelation andrew’s confession is for neil, and not enough about how revelatory neil’s reaction is for andrew. because like. imagine you like this boy. but he doesn’t swing. you know the answer would be “no,” so there’s no point in even asking. then he goes and gets himself needlessly tortured for you, and tells you there’s no amount of suffering he wouldn’t endure for you. not because he thinks you’re weak, but because he thinks you’re worth protecting. he says things that you would interpret as advances if it were literally anyone else. you remind yourself that he doesn’t swing. now you’re at eden’s and he’s asking about your feelings for him in 12 different ways. he really wants to know. so you tell him, in the most casual and crass way you can, thinking that’ll put an end to it. but unfathomably, it doesn’t. he asks you why you didn’t tell him. why would you have? it would have been a “no.” you say that, and instead of confirming it, he just echoes your words, clearly still reeling. you start to leave, and he tells you that he wants to keep playing your game. while the absence of a “no” is obviously not the same thing as a “yes,” you’ve been operating for months and months under the assumption that the answer would be unequivocal. so you keep waiting for that answer, but it never comes. for the first time since you met him, you wonder if maybe it’s not a “no” after all. if maybe you could have this. you can’t remember the last time you were able to have something you wanted. the world tilting on its axis, indeed.

incredibly important to me how quickly neil—who has spent years on the run learning to be suspicious of everyone who isn’t himself or his mom—decides that matt is someone he can trust. they have NOT known each other long by the time the first columbia trip rolls around, but neil still decides to call him and ask for his help keeping andrew out of his stuff. and sure, that’s a heat-of-the-moment decision: neil has limited options as to who could do this for him, and it makes sense to ask his roommate. but it’s not only that neil calls matt, it’s that he “dial[s] Matt’s number from memory.” at some point before this, neil “allergic to using phones” josten received matt’s phone number and decided to memorize it in case he needed to call matt in an emergency.

I know it’s been said but pipe dream is such a crazy thing to call someone Andrew really said you are an unobtainable fantasy that I foolishly desire and it went right over Neil’s head

#I understand why he had enough and just told Neil he would blow him (via @prettyboyneil)

something about the way kevin and jean are tied together in life and death. if kevin dies jean does too, so kevin hangs on even when the ledge is only big enough for his fingertips and it's crumbling underneath his hands. jean resents kevin for tying them together like this, but he will not untie them. not in this universe. do you ever think that, once their bindings begin to unravel, kevin feels a hole in his heart knowing their souls now exist side by side rather than wrapped around each other so tightly it hurts?

Pre-TFC Andrew massaging Kevin's hand when it hurts too bad. Kevin keeping Andrew's meds with him and watching Andrew swallow them. Them noticing pain in the other's body language and never talking about it but taking off the other's gear after practice and making the other's coffee in the morning just how they like it (even though Kevin will scowl every time because you don't need to add anything to coffee that's unnecessary and it's for energy and-) and learning to notice and process the slightest changes in eachother's expressions and knowing when they didn't feel safe and showing up for eachother no matter the time of day or distance or reason. Sharing travel bags and whiskey and quiet gestures of intimacy that would never demand attention.

do u ever remember just how fucking weird andrew and kevin were about each other. like what the fuck were they doing. i don't think even they knew

i think we as a fandom genuinely forget how kevin and andrew are literally like best friends. like andrew went with kevin to california. at the start of tfc everyone describes them as literally joined at the hip. if andreil ever got married KEVIN WOULD LITERALLY BE ANDREW'S BEST MAN. kevin will call andrew in the future when they're all graduated because he knows andrew will pick up. they had a single carry-on between them in tgr. they probably stayed in the same hotel room. they fight like an old married couple throughout the og trilogy constantly. kevin knows how to rile andrew up and to calm him down. nora can pry kandrew (romantic and platonic) from my cold dead fucking hands.

i feel like kevin has aura but not rizz. like from afar, he's the most charismatic man of all time. picture-perfect smile. hot. tall. athletic. charming. confident. but when you get to know him he's like. a pathetic princess loser. he hates waking up early. he isn't impressed with a maserati. he regularly drowns himself in vodka. all he cares about is stickball. what an icon.

people make fun of the extremely intense dynamic andrew and kevin had but sometimes i feel like we're forgetting just how totally fucking torn apart and horribly anxious kevin must have been ALL THE TIME for it to get to the point that medicated andrew would do all that shit to comfort him rather than dismissing his worries

“Oh my god, I can't believe Kevin day fumbled two different situation ships” Kevin Day who surgically removed himself from the people he loved when he realized he was not the better option. Kevin day who even when he's the first option knows he's never the best option. Kevin Day who lets people use him as they learn to love each other and themselves until he has no use anymore and lets them go even as they rip parts of himself away when they leave. Kevin day who is always the first choice and never the last.