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Aaron Michael Minyard considers himself to be a fairly....not exactly tolerant person, per se, but he doesn’t like to cause a fuss. He would rather politely ignore things that annoyed him, and have them ignore him in turn. No trouble, no headaches, no big scenes; everyone goes their separate ways and gets on with their lives in relative peace.
Unfortunately, Neil Josten exists.
It was tolerable enough when he was just the random asshole rookie. Hell, it was even entertaining. But then Seth died, and the car was destroyed, and the November from Hell and mob wars and and and-
When Kevin storms through his, Nicky, and Matt’s door at 10:30 pm, huffing and throwing himself melodramatically onto the couch, Aaron knows. He’s not an idiot, despite what his brother likes to say. He knows Andrew and Josten are...whatever they are. He’s seen them sitting nearly on top of each other, the way they reach out to each other and seem to orbit each other like two fucked up satellites that collided once and now can’t seem to let the other go too far without leaving wreckage between and around them. Aaron’s not an idiot.
What Aaron is, however, is a brother. Probably the older one, but they’ve shelved that argument lately. And as a brother, especially one who has seen firsthand the awful things that Andrew has been through before, Aaron thinks he reserves his right to be a little protective. Andrew, though he may be a giant dickhead and the bane of Aaron’s existence sometimes, deserves happiness too. Assuming he’s capable of it, at least.
Aaron thinks about his own relationship with Katelyn: the warm, sunny mornings in her bed, light peeking through the blinds and making her hair alight like fresh embers; walking through the quad and listening to her snorting laughter that makes her nose scrunch up like the cutest pig Aaron’s ever seen; her sly smile that always precedes scathing and polite backhanded compliments that make strange things happen in his stomach to hear. He never feels more alive than when he’s with her, never feels like he’s got more of a chance to live than when he’s holding her hand. Anyone who can find it deserves a happiness like that. Even Andrew.
Which is why Aaron cannot, for the life of him, wrap his head around Neil Fucking Josten. The kid is incapable of picking his battles carefully, apparently waking up every day and choosing to cause problems on purpose. He’s bossy and cocky on the court, condescending on his better days, and vaguely terrifying on his worst ones. There is nothing soft about him, nothing cute like a pig or warm like sunshine. Josten is ornery and annoying and everything about him screams, “WARNING: Do Not Approach- May Contain Rabies.”
So, when Kevin storms into their room at 10 pm, Aaron puts his headphones in even though they live half a hallway away. He turns his music up to deafening, closes his eyes, and thinks with as much malice as he can muster towards a God that he may or may not believe in:
Why him?
A month later, Aaron is sweaty and buzzing from a long practice. He’s had a busy week, and all he wants to do is stop thinking for a little bit. That’s what Eden’s and Columbia are for; a couple shots, some world-shaking bass, and a crowded dance floor, and Aaron doesn’t have to be himself for a couple hours. He’s just another body, swaying and shaking and bumping into people. It’s the closest thing he’s found to a high (besides Katelyn’s kisses) that doesn’t require any drugs.
So, when Nicky starts babbling about getting out of the dorms and going to Eden’s, Aaron is more than ready. Except-
“You’re not coming.” Andrew cuts Nicky and shoots a glance over to Kevin and Aaron. “None of you are.”
Kevin starts to argue, and Nicky starts to whine, but Aaron doesn’t really care. What he does care about is that Josten and his brother are going to be alone in the Columbia house. They’d never had any issues kicking Kevin out of the dorm when they wanted some, eugh, alone time before. So why go to the trouble of having an entire house to themselves? It made Aaron uneasy. He glares at Josten, searching him for any clue as to why.
He continues glaring even into the maserati, sliding into an empty backseat because he was the only one with enough self control to not act like a big baby over not getting his way. Honestly, how Nicky and Kevin were legally adults amazed him sometimes.
The ride back to Fox Tower is silent, distressingly so, and Aaron is ready to jump out of the car as soon as it’s parked until he catches Andrew putting his hand on Neil’s leg in the front. Just the movement pisses him off for reasons he can’t truly name, and he wants to prevent any further motions like that as long as he can, so he stays put.
Through the rearview mirror, Andrew glares at him.
“Get out.”
Fat fucking chance. Aaron’s only going to get one shot at this, so he tries as bluntly as he can. (Andrew tends to respond better to blunt questions than hinting or beating around the bush- they’ve talked about that with Dobson.)
“Why are you going to Columbia this weekend?”
“Not your fucking concern,” Andrew replies, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t make me repeat myself. Go.”
Aaron scowls, but he knows he’s not going to get anything else out of him. It’s infuriating, the way Andrew acts like he doesn’t care. Aaron knows he cares, he knows because of session after session of therapy with him; Andrew cares, he just doesn’t show it the way other people expect to see it. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating for Aaron, though. Andrew acts like he doesn’t care about his own safety and it makes Aaron want to break something, like Josten’s face perhaps.
Aaron slams the door when he gets out, and doesn’t look back as he walks into the tower.
Fuck them. Fuck them both. If Andrew doesn’t care about his opinion, then Aaron doesn’t care about Andrew either.
He doesn’t.
He spends the weekend with Katelyn, splitting time between lab reports and making out. It’s like a two day bubble of What Could Be, just the two of them existing together. Aaron wants it so bad, a future where every day is like this and he doesn’t have to leave to go sleep alone for another week.
One day, he thinks. One day.
He doesn’t end up thinking about Andrew and Josten too much, and doesn’t really see them again until practice Monday morning. He’s barely awake, already chugging down a Gatorade to prepare for sweating his ass off on the court. Since Kevin didn’t get his weekend exy enrichment, he’s going to be riding their asses for the next two hours.
Sometimes Aaron really wishes he was allowed to hit him. He thinks it would probably do Kevin some good.
He’s imagining a fantasy world where he’s allowed to beat Kevin Day’s ass when he sees Andrew take his shirt off out the corner of his eye, and his blood freezes.
Andrew’s neck, shoulders, and chest, are littered with hickeys. They range in size from barely there lines to a blood transfusion from a vampire, their colors a mixture of purples and reds and bits of yellow. Bruises, hickeys are bruises, Aaron knows this, he’s given and received his fair share of hickeys in his time. He’s not a prude. It’s just, it’s Andrew, and they’re everywhere , and it looks trashy as hell and it suddenly occurs to Aaron that it was Josten who put those all there, which is just-
“Gross,” He says emphatically, staring down the dark marks on his brother’s skin. It’s so fucking gross.
Nicky wolf whistles. “Day-yum, okay, I get why y’all didn’t want us there this weekend. I respect the hustle.”
Andrew locks eyes with Aaron, but doesn’t say anything. It pisses Aaron off.
“You look like a fucking chew toy,” He spits out. Andrew blinks at him.
“You should see the other guy,” He deadpans. Aaron’s face twists up in disgust.
“I’m good, thanks. Put a fucking shirt on.”
“I was thinking of going to practice shirtless today, actually, but if you insist.”
Josten comes out of the showers fully changed then. His eyes catch on Andrew’s shoulders and chest, and the motherfucker has the audacity to smile . Aaron catches it. It’s infuriating, looking at him stare at Andrew like that, with those marks on him like he’s staked his fucking claim on him. It makes Aaron want to take a fucking exy racket and-
Deep breaths. Calmness. Zen. No need to cause a scene. If he ignores the annoyance, it will go away.
He spends practice pointedly running Josten down as much and as hard as he can. He tries to be strategic about it, making it look incidental, like just another part of the game. But Josten knows. Aaron knows he knows because the next time he slams him into the plexiglass, the kid snaps.
“You’re a fucking child, you know that?” Josten bites out.
“Maybe if you were faster I wouldn’t rail you so much,” Aaron spits back. Josten pauses, and smirks in a way that Aaron recognizes from press recordings.
“I spent all weekend getting railed by a Minyard. I don’t need to spend practice doing it too.”
When he’d heard people say they ‘saw red’ to describe their anger, Aaron thought it was just a pretty metaphor to convey the experience of blinding rage. Oh, how wrong he was. Aaron really, truly, sees red, the orange of their uniforms blurring. He feels someone tug his racquet back, and he doesn’t remember raising it but he really wishes they would let the fuck go.
“Nope, not happening man,” Matt says, “and don’t you fucking lunge for him or I will throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”
Aaron stays put only because he knows Matt will follow through on that, and his pride outweighs his wrath by at least a slim margin.
“Is there a fucking problem over here?” Wymack shouts, walking over to them.
“No,” Josten says.
“Yes,” Aaron says.
Coach sighs. “Can it wait until after my practice?”
“Yes,” Josten says.
“No,” Aaron says.
“For fuck’s- alright, Minyard, take a lap and cool off. Josten, I don’t know what you said and I don’t want to know, but I swear to god I will duct tape your mouth shut one of these days.”
“Duct tape’s easy to get off,” Josten replies, shrugging. “Even without hands. You’d do better with a gag.”
“ I’m going to gag,” Aaron says.
“Minyard,” Coach snaps. “Walk.”
Aaron huffs, yanks his racquet out of Matt’s hands, and stalks off the court. He’s not pouting, he tells himself, just simmering in his fury. He doesn’t make it far around the court before he hears the tell-tale stomping of his brother coming up behind him. He doesn’t slow for him; if Andrew wants to catch up to him, he will.
And he does. He sidles up alongside Aaron, matching his pace, and their walk together is silent only because Aaron isn’t going to be the first one to talk, and he figures Andrew is waiting for him to break. He won’t give him the satisfaction, though, so Andrew speaks.
“You are an idiot.”
“And you’re an asshole.”
“Whatever you are trying to do, stop it.”
“I’m not trying to do shit.”
“You are. You seem to be under the impression that I have some sort of honor that needs defending, and that I am incapable of taking care of that myself.”
“I don’t-”
“You do. Otherwise, you would not have been trying to assault the biggest dumbass in class 1 exy for the past two hours.”
Well. Andrew has him there. But it makes Aaron’s blood boil, how swiftly he read Aaron and how sure he was. Dobson tells him to use “I-Statements” whenever he feels like this in therapy, so Aaron braces himself and gives it a shot.
“I hate that you’re just...fucking covered in him. It’s like he wrote his fucking name all over you, like he owns you.”
Andrew doesn’t quip back, much to Aaron’s surprise and relief. He clocks Aaron’s wording, seems to roll it around in his head for a moment before responding.
“I am not a thing that can be owned , nor was I a passive recipient of whatever he was doing.” Aaron’s face scrunches up at the implication of Josten doing anything. “I asked for these. I have agency, and it is not any of your business or concern what I do with that. You may think it is, because at one moment in time it was, but this is not that time. This is not that place, or that person, or anywhere close to that situation. So stop treating it like it is. I do not need a knight to protect my virtue. Fuck off, and mind your business.”
Andrew walks clear ahead, easy enough to do now because Aaron’s pace has slowed to a crawl. Andrew was right, of course. In Aaron’s mind, even if he didn’t want to admit it, Josten and Drake were still in the same category. He was still watching Josten closely, just waiting for the moment when he pushed Andrew too far and Aaron needed to jump in and do...something. That part was a little unclear, mainly because, despite everything, Aaron doesn’t actually want to add another homicide charge to his name.
But it was like Andrew said: this isn’t then. This is Andrew unmedicated, in full control of his mind and choices. This is Neil Josten, who even now Aaron sees jogging over to his brother, concern on his face as he glances over to Aaron and back to Andrew. His hands hold his racquet rather than reach out to Andrew and there’s still about a foot of distance between them, even though no one would blink an eye if they were all up in each other like Dan and Matt sometimes were. Andrew waves a hand and pushes Josten’s chest, sending him back a step towards the court. Josten doesn’t push back or stand his ground. He rolls with Andrew’s push, and a moment later is jogging away.
‘I asked for these,’ Andrew had said. And, yeah, it’s gross at first thought, but if Aaron thinks about it for a bit longer, he gets it. Andrew can say anything, and Josten will listen. Aaron has yet to see an instance where he hasn’t. It turns his stomach to consider it, but being able to make a choice and have people respect that decision is probably not something Andrew is used to. So Josten rolling with the punches, walking away when told, doing what Andrew asks; it’s huge, and Aaron feels like an asshole for not taking that into account. He was so focused on keeping an eye out for the warning signs that he ignored all the rest, the good.
Neil Josten is an ornery, bitchy little shit. He’s contrary for the fun of it, but then, so is Andrew. He has a one track mind when it comes to exy and is as exhausting as Kevin on his good days, and a self-destructive idiot on his worst. But for all his faults, the kid always listens to what others have to say, even if he is a bastard about it half the time. If that was enough for Andrew, then, at least for now, Aaron could close his eyes and plug his ears and hope that it was just a college fling.
(He knew in his gut it wasn’t, though. Just like he knew Katelyn’s ring size, and her favorite flower. Aaron, despite what his brother believes, is not a complete idiot.)
Aaron doesn’t know what real happiness looks like on his brother. He’s seen it manufactured, forced and dizzy and sickening. But if it looks like Josten-
Like Neil-
Well, Aaron thinks his brother deserves whatever happiness he can get.