“DO you know how impossible it is. To love someone other than you? To try and love someone with everything I have and can’t because you will always have the biggest piece of me? Even after these past 2 years? That I can’t be with anyone else? That I can’t touch anyone else without having the memory of you there? It’s been two fucking years and I can’t love anyone else because I’m always going to be in love with you. I’m always going to want to call you when things get too bad. I’m always going to want to curl up next to you after I have a shitty day. I’m always going to want to see your face when I wake up from a fucking nightmare. But I can’t because I told you I loved you two years ago and you left. Without a fucking word andrew you left without a word. You went to practice and never came back. I had to find out from Kevin that you weren’t coming back to the apartment until I was gone. I left that weekend heartbroken because you couldn’t even look at me. Now you’re transferring to my team and I can’t do that Andrew I can’t act like I’m okay when you’re two feet away from me acting as if you’re fine!”
Andrew stared back at him. Face completely blank and it killed Neil that he couldn’t decipher the look this time. He stood up ignoring the gloves that fell from his lap. “That’s your problem. I told you when we started. That it was nothing. You were nothing it’s not my problem that you turned it into something it wasn’t” Neil felt himself get angrier. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to tell me that we were nothing! Not after everything Andrew. You don’t get to look me in the face right now and tell me we were nothing. That you didn’t care!” Andrews blank face flickered for a moment and before Neil realized what was happening andrew had him against the wall. “I didn’t care then. And I don’t care now.” He had the same bored tone that he always did but Neil could hear the aggravation in is tone. “Then why are you here? Why my team” Neil spit back and Andrew smiled, it made Neil flinch because it wasn’t the smile he’d get everytime he’d do something stupid and made andrew laugh, it wasn’t the smile that made Andrews eyes go soft, it wasn’t the smile reserved for Neil when they were laying in bed at night talking about what they would do after graduation, it was the smile that Andrew would give to someone before stabbing them with one of his knives and he was directing it towards Neil. “Because your team is the only team left who’s willing to take me. Apparently I’m a danger to others” he let go of Neils shirt and shoved him against the wall as he took a couple steps away from Neil. “This has nothing to do with you. So don’t for a second think that it means anything. That you mean anything to me”
“Do you have any twos?” Neil asks, frowning down at his hand. He can’t tell if it’s a good one or not. He doesn’t know if that’s possible in this game.
“Nope, go fish,” Nicky says. “Any kings?”
Neil wordlessly hands two over just as Dan and Matt come into the suite, both talking about something that Neil doesn’t pay attention to.
“Do you have any fours?” Nicky says.
“Go fish. Any sixes?”
“Nope, go fish.”
“Are you two seriously playing Go Fish right now?” Dan says, popping up behind Nicky and startling him enough that some of his cards fall out of his hand.
“Jesus, Dan, give me some warning next time. Yeah, turns out Neil can’t play any card games, so we’re starting small and working our way up.”
“So you’re cheating at Go Fish with someone who’s never played cards before.”
“You’re cheating,” Neil says. “Seriously? It’s not like we have money on this game.”
“No one bets on Go Fish,” Nicky says, even though he definitely tried to when he suggested they play it. “Besides, cheating is part of the fun! He has to learn that.”
“You could’ve mentioned it,” Neil says. “I just assumed we were playing by the rules. Now that we’re cheating, I’m going to definitely beat you.”
“We need to introduce him to Bullshit.” Matt hands beers to Nicky and Dan and settles on the floor next to Neil. “You’d definitely kill at that. Plus you could get all your lying energy out during a game and be totally honest afterward.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Neil says, and Matt laughs like Neil has just told a very funny joke.
“We were thinking,” Dan says. “You and Andrew, me and Matt—we should go on a double date! I mean, we’re on the same team as him and we’ve never really hung out properly, so wouldn’t it make sense if we got to know him better?”
Life might have made Andrea a dangerous girl, but Mommy made her a killer. Rule 63!andreil ftw.
Andrea Minyard is the kind of girl men hate.
That’s fine with her – the ones who can’t tell that on sight she teaches to hate her soon enough. That’s the way she likes it.
She’s the girl all in black, the one with the sharp knife against both forearms. The one who is the fucking knife. A danger to herself and others, out of control: like she’s ever done anything unprovoked in her entire life. Like she’s ever done anything that wasn’t with someone else’s name on her lips, burned bright on the inside of her eyelids.
It’s just that people have funny ideas about reasonable force. They didn’t grow up like she did, of course. Danger breeds danger, and all of her earliest memories are soaked in it. It’s really no wonder that she turned out the way she has. Psycho. Monster. Murderer.
That last sounds like it came straight from her sister’s mouth. Because life might have made Andrea a dangerous girl, but Mommy made her a killer.
Andrea is meant to be the one who ends things, not the one who starts them. But she’s the one who offers Kevin Day a deal when he crashes into the midst of the Foxes, with his broken hand and equally broken spirit.
He’s so scared. Andrea can’t bear him, for that or the brusque snarl of an expression he paints over it in his attempt to seem braver. She has no fondness for liars.
She remembers him telling her that she could make something of herself, though. She remembers him saying you’re worth it. She wants to keep him close so that when he fails to uphold his end of their bargain, she can punish him for it.
She never claimed not to be petty. For example:
“I won’t fuck you,” Andrea says, apropos nothing one night when they’re at the house in Columbia.
Kevin clearly hasn’t heard her come into the living room where he’s trying to get comfortable on the couch, because he jerks up so fast it must sober him. “I don’t-”
“I know you don’t. If you did, I’d have neutered you already.” She’s grinning, buzzing on crackers, but not joking. Not much, anyway. “But for the sake of clarity-”
“I get it,” Kevin says. He appears vaguely frightened by the suggestion. Andrea would think he was sensible enough to avoid women like her if she hadn’t seen Thea Muldani – that girl looks like a killer.
“You’re not as stupid as you look, then,” Andrea tells him, patting him on the shoulder. He actually flinches.
It’s lucky he’s more afraid of Riko than he is of her.
Kevin has barely had his dressing off his hand when someone manages to take a photo of the two of them in a grocery store near campus, half of Kevin’s tired face and Andrea’s bright-eyed grin turned to the camera. The media goes wild for Kevin Day and the woman he must be fucking, because God knows that men and women can’t be in close proximity without wanting to fuck.
Someone spray-paints ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘slut’ on the stadium walls over the weekend. Andrea looks them over and laughs – kids these days, thinking they’re so original. She can’t even remember the first person that called her a bitch, and for her that really is saying something.
The next week at practice Wymack comes into the lounge and dumps a plastic bag of letters on the desk. He says, “This is all hate mail.”
Dan, who’d been furious about the graffiti, says, “What the hell?” When she pulls one of them out, it’s addressed to Andrea by care of the court. So is the second, and the third.
“I’m not replying to them all, if that’s what you were hoping for,” Andrea says lazily from her spot on the couch.
Wymack’s expression is steadily unimpressed, but his gaze doesn’t waver from her face. “Some of these are death threats.”
She laughs. “How boring.”
“I’m involving the cops.”
“Go ahead.” Andrea can’t wait to see them pretend that they’re putting in the bare minimum effort.
“Thanks for your permission.” He looks away from her at last. At her side, Kevin is rigid. She elbows him hard enough in the ribs to bruise so that he squirms towards the arm of the couch in an attempt to escape.
She turns to look at him. He doesn’t look back. She croons, “Oh, Kevin. Is that fear or guilt I see?”
“Andrea, be quiet,” Wymack says.
“You’re no fun,” Andrea tells him before turning back to Kevin and stage-whispering, “Don’t you trust me?”
Read my new fic, a Hunger Games AU, which has a sassy Neil, reluctantly smitten Andrew, and a Kevin who wants to keep his head in the sand. Features one (1) fewer love triangle than the actual Hunger Games series!
Shadow In The Light 