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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