Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nathaniel hated using wigs. 

He’s not stupid enough to scratch, even if the damn things itched like a bitch, but there were just far more variables to consider with a wig. He couldn’t tug on it too harshly or let other people tug on it. He couldn’t get it wet, or at least not dunked in a swimming pool type of wet. He had to be constantly making sure it hadn’t somehow shifted around or misaligned. There was always the question of whether the colour was right.

Alas, Alex Fields was blond.

He’d dyed his hair last time he’d been Alex, but that had been for a stretch of a month and a half and Oliver, who'd Nathaniel had been a handful of times during that month and a half of Alex, also happened to be blond. 

It’d been nearly three weeks since, but he wouldn’t be Alex for nearly long enough today to bother with dying his hair again, especially when he’d have to dye it back before meeting with his father.

So he’s wearing the wig.

At least Alex’s eyes were blue, so he’d been able to spare himself the itch of wearing coloured contacts after neglecting to sleep for a few (three) days.

Nathaniel took a long drink from the coffee he was cradling, knitting together the bits of Alex he’d need to get this done. Alex was a charismatic and friendly guy. He smiled more with the left side of his mouth than the right, his family was in the hotel industry.

At least on paper.

Alex Fields and his family didn’t exist outside the puppet show Nathaniel orchestrated. Fake accounts with fake names, decade-old properties held under a dozen different names, Ichirou’s lesser hotels with some tampered paperwork, a fake ID, a few staged family photos with Elias playing big brother and a child 'actress' playing little sister, and suddenly the Fields were a renowned family, good at what they did and with a son that screamed boy next door.

“Give me a status,” Nathaniel said. His mouth was hidden by the rim of his coffee cup and his words quiet enough that none of the bustling pedestrians would hear him. And if they did? Well, it was a business district, and Nathaniel’s words were nothing if not familiar to them.

He heard Elias’ chair shuffling before he heard Elias. “ She’s leaving now, I’d ditch the coffee .”

Right, because the last time Gemma Mathers had seen Alex he’d been on a very particular health cleanse. Or, in other words, Nathaniel had been running a 106 degree fever for three days straight and could only manage to keep down ginger kombucha, but had only just gotten close enough to Mathers to get the information he’d been sent in for. 

Kombucha health cleanse it was.

“Oh I’m sorry,” Nathaniel drawled, a too casual chill edging his voice. “But I don’t recall seeing you breaking down the bodies someone left behind.

He heard Elias wincing as Charlie’s mic went live. 

“ Listen, Nat, they came out of nowhere ,” she insisted, her voice crackling in his earpiece. “ Mia and I didn’t have a chance .”

Nathaniel swirled the last quarter cup of coffee around, trying not to dwell on everything that had led him here. “Next time, you don’t call me.”

He didn’t really mean that, and after two and a half years working together (begrudgingly) all three of his too giddy employees knew that.

“ Nah, you love us ,” Mia insisted. “ You’d do it again in a heartbeat .”

And he probably would.

Nathaniel wouldn’t dare say he loved them; he wasn’t entirely sure he’d ever loved someone, nor that he ever would. He might’ve loved his mother when he was young and hadn’t learned how to keep all the different parts of himself separate, but it wasn’t safe for Nathaniel to love the way Abram did. 

Nathaniel had been raised in a loveless home by loveless people to be thrown into a loveless world. That was simply the way of things.

But Abram, the parts of him that hadn’t been carved out by daggers and cleavers and paring knives. Abram loved. He loved his mother, screamed and cried as his father took her apart before he could get Nathaniel’s hands to close around the knife Lola was threatening to bleed him dry with.

Abram loved Jean and Ichirou and Aiko. Loved them like family; and they were Abram’s family. And he reluctantly had to admit that he was beginning to expand that family to the three fools monitoring him and his target on the other end of the comms.

But it was a dangerous thing to love, and he knew that. Regardless of what skin he wore, and who he was supposed to be. He knew that loving people and loving things was near as bad as wanting and hoping and wishing.

It made it hurt all the more when he’d had to watch Jean go deep cover in the Nest two and a half years ago. It was why he and Ichirou could never open one of Jean’s letters or answer one of his calls without a bottle of something strong nearby. It made it all the more difficult to focus on missions when he knew Aiko was sitting in a doctor's office trying to figure out if the cramping she’d been having meant the baby was in danger. It made his focus slip when he couldn’t recall exactly where one of his family members was supposed to be, because how could he keep them safe if he couldn’t get to them?

So when it came down to it, he’d want the girls to call him. Not least because he knew the kind of trouble he’d be in if his father’s people had to deal with the mess, but because there was perhaps a small part of him that needed to know when his team needed help and a still smaller part that wanted to be the one that helped them.

Nathaniel finished his coffee.

More people were crowding the sidewalk, the lunchtime rush of business executives in fancy clothes, interns in cheap off-brand knock-offs. It increased the potential for witnesses sure, but it was far easier to slip into a crowd and get lost in it.

“Mathers,” Nathaniel demanded.

He heard what sounded like typing over the comms. If they’d managed to lose Mathers in forty seconds he’d kill them before his father even got the chance.

“ Headed your way ,” Elias answered easily. “ You’ve got maybe a minute .”

Nathaniel clicked his tongue in answer and sidled over to a vending machine, coughing up far too many one-dollar bills for ginger fucking kombucha.

Charlie gagged over the comms. “ That shit is disgusting. ”

“It’s also good for you,” Nathaniel mused.

“ You can drink an extra one for me then, boss ,” Elias decided before adding a quick, “ Ten seconds .”

Nathaniel half turned as he focused on twisting off the lid of the kombucha, facing the direction his target would be coming from.

The target, Gemma Mathers, was the daughter of the cartel running Richie Mathers. She was a sweet girl, if not a little too eager to spend her time with pretty blond boys, but her father was one of the Butcher’s biggest influxes of money. If they wanted the Butcher weak, and Nathaniel wanted his father as weak as possible, Mathers had to go. 

Nathaniel would have felt bad for her if he was still capable of such a thing.

“Alex?”

He twisted to look over his shoulder, kombucha opened and lifted in an aborted raise to his lips, expression creased into a perfect picture of confusion.

“Gemma?” he asked, pulling surprise on like a new suit.

“Alex!” she laughed, rushing over with her arms out and ready. “Oh my God! It’s so good to see you!”

He braced himself for it, but he still had to struggle not to take off in the other direction when she wrapped him in a hug. He folded his arms loosely around her.

It wasn’t good to see her. She was only ever supposed to be an intelligence assignment. Get in, get close, get to her father. Easy. He’d finished in six weeks. And then the game changed. The game always changed. Gemma was a ransom assignment now, and he had about an hour to bring her in before Mathers clues in and contacted the Butcher for help. He needed Gemma incapacitated and begging her dear old dad to save her before they even realized she was missing.

He let her hold on a second longer before swiping a thumb across her shoulders and stepping back; stepping into the frameworks of Alex.

Alex smiled at her, the left side of his mouth quirked higher than the right. “It’s really been too long.”

She leaned in to press a chaste kiss to his cheek and grinned up at him, her face sunburnt and freckled. Alex liked Gemma, her freckles and how she smiled. He had a little sister so similar it hurt.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

Alex laughed lightly, sipping at his kombucha before twisting the lid back on. “Ugh, Mom had me out west for a while. We had a new site opening up and she didn’t trust Pete to manage it all on his own.”

He settled with Gemma beside the vending machine, invisible to both crowd and camera and tucked up against the wall.

“Peter’s good!” Gemma insisted with a smile. At Alex’s doubting expression she laughed and amended. “His intentions are good.”

Alex only scoffed. “Yeah well, his intentions nearly started a grease fire on opening day.”

Gemma’s eyes widened and a gasp tumbled over her lips. “No!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” Alex insisted at the same time Elias’ voice crackled over the mic with a quipped “ As fake Peter, I’m offended by these lies .” 

Gemma was still staring wide-eyed and transfixed and Alex plowed on. “The whole thing was one big mess I had to clean up.” He threw in a wince. “Mom would’ve had us both castrated if we hadn’t fixed it.”

There was a quick twinge of Nathaniel, a recognition of truth linking Alex’s story to Mia and Charlie’s late night visitors. Alex gave himself a quick shake and forgot who Nathaniel was.

Gemma’s shoulder nudged his softly. “But you did.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t very well let Pete burn the place down, could I? I spent months on the designs for the place.”

“ Charlie’s ready with the van ,” Mia updated.

“No,” Gemma argued softly. “You’re just a good brother.”

He laughed; a quick huff of breath and a crinkle at the corner of his eyes. “Be sure to tell my mom that.” Alex looked at Gemma a little longer, tracking the pupil-blown gaze she latched onto his before he spoke again, making a show out of checking his watch. “I’m totally wasting your lunch break aren’t I?” he shook his head, self-deprecating. “I guess I’ll see you around?”

Gemma’s forehead creased predictably, lips bending into a pouty frown. “You’re not wasting anything, Lex.”

He evaluated her slowly, letting his smile strengthen back into a full shining grin. “Well, the least I can do is take you out then. Get you something nice to eat?”

Gemma’s blush came fast and furiously, painting her cheeks a violent shade of pink. “Oh, sure, yeah.”

Alex grinned and offered her a hand. And Gemma, sweetly predictable Gemma with a soft spot for blonde boys with pretty eyes and bright smiles, for boys with good family relationships and bleeding hearts, reached for his hand.

“Come on,” Alex insisted, her hand dropped into his own, tugging her along gently. “I know the perfect place.”

“ Christ Nate, you’ve got her good .” 

Alex ignored Elias’ voice in his comms, leading Gemma through the crowd with an ease that spoke of years learning how to disappear under eagle sharp surveillance. And within seconds he got the confirmation from Mia.

“ The cameras lost you, make for the car. ”

Gemma hung off his grip on her hand the entire time, chatting and smiling at him, completely trusting that he was exactly who he said he was.

“My cars just parked down here,” he mused, tugging her closer as they slipped into an elevator.

He squeezed her hand in his, letting his eyes linger a little too long on her lips as he spoke. It didn’t take long before she moved, placing her free hand on the expanse of his chest. She leaned forwards, tilting her head down to press a soft kiss against his lips, one he returned as easily as she gave it.

He wanted to shove her off, to push her aside and scrub himself clean in a vat of acid. But with her eyes slipping closed and her mouth pressing kisses against the side of his neck, Gemma was oblivious to the card he swiped in the elevator and dumb to the needle slipping free from the sheath in his sleeve.

Gemma pulled back with a timid-looking grin and faltered at the dead gaze leveled at her.

“Alex?”

Alex had fallen away between the main floor and level 3. Nathaniel sheared off at the dinging of the elevator landing on their floor. There was nothing but Reisu left. The Wraith.

He moved in a quick twist, needle prick sinking into her skin and ketamine flooding her veins. He saw her expression of pain, watched her eyes widen in a second of panic, and she slumped forward against him as the doors opened.

He led her out, grumbling about taking the medications the doctors prescribed to avoid situations like this Lizzy, otherwise, how are you supposed to get any better? A concerned lover leading his stubborn fiancee to their car.

The van door opened and he let her fall into the back tossing the wig next to her and scrubbing his face with the makeup wipe Charlie passed back to him.

“You coming with?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Ransom.” was all the explanation Reisu offered. “Get moving.”

He caught the salute thrown his way as Charlie slid the door shut and clambered into the front seat. He was in the stairwell heading down another two floors before he heard the engine cut on and the squeal of tires as she tore out of the parking garage.

The burner phone recovered from behind a thick stone pillar Reisu flipped it open and leaned against the cool wall of the underground parking as he dialed numbers he’d memorized and would not soon forget.

It rang twice before connecting.

“Yeah?”

His lip curled in discontent. “Mr. Mathers,” he greeted. He kept his tone cool and polite, voice carefully devoid of any placeable accent. “I was hoping to speak with you, business-related things of course.”

Richie Mathers grumbled for a moment. “Who’s asking?”

Reisu hummed. “Pardon me,” he apologized. “ Reisu .”

He could hear Mathers swallow, hear the cold rush of terror from across the line. He bore a name that carried an inarguable reputation. The Wraith was a man everyone in the crime world knew to fear. 

He had no face, he had no name, he had no heart. When the Wraith came calling, no amount of prayers could save you.

Mathers’ voice trembled when he spoke, far too breathy and fragile. “What might I be able to do for you?”

“You have a daughter,” Reisu started. “A very lovely girl. She is in a van right now, high on ketamine. In a few minutes, she’ll be brought to a warehouse where she will enjoy a most uncomfortable stay.”

“Gemma?” Mathers asked. “You have Gemma?”

“No, Mr. Mathers,” Reisu reminded him. “Gemma is in a car, I’m speaking to you. Tell me, do you hear a car?”

Another thick swallow. He wondered about that. Swallowing when you were scared. He couldn’t imagine that it actually helped with anything.

“No.”

Reisu hummed what might have been a pleasant sound if it came from anyone but him. “It’s been brought to my attention that you are in business with the Butcher of Baltimore,” he paused. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Mathers jumped to answer. “I am, yes.”

“That ends now,” Reisu decided.

Mathers sputtered on the other end of the line. “I can’t just- do you know what he could do to me?”

“I do,” Reisu confirmed, but he offered no comfort or condolences. “But you see Gemma is in a car, Mr. Mathers, and if I have to pay her a visit… well. I don’t think either of us would really like that, would we?”

“No,” Mathers gasped. “No, please. She’s my baby,” he begged. “Please.”

Reisu made a little surprised sound, loud enough to be heard. “Gemma’s at the warehouse now, Mr. Mathers,” he informed the quivering man on the other end of the line. “You tell me what happens next. Either I give my men permission to burn the soles of her feet and carve the skin from her bones, or you cut your dealings with the Butcher.” He waited, a few moments of heavy breathing and muttering coming through the phone. “Tick-tock, Mr. Mathers. I am not a very patient man.”

“An hour!” he shouted. “Give me an hour! Please!”

“I don’t do well with begging, Mr. Mathers,” Reisu said. “But I’ll give you your hour.”

“Thank you,” Mathers groveled. “Thank you, thank you.”

“It was a pleasure, Mr. Mathers,” Reisu dismissed. “Until next time.”

He snapped the phone shut, dropped it on the floor and crushed it beneath his shoe. It only took one good stomp for it to fracture and he fished the card out easily, crushing it between his teeth and spitting the remains into a tissue.

He’d burn it later

He stalked away and veered for the motorcycle Elias had stashed on the floor above the night before. As he walked traces of the Wraith fell away, Reisu peeling back and leaving absolutely nothing underneath. He needed space to put himself (some version of himself) back together.

By his estimations, he had at least two hours before Mathers would be able to do what he claimed he could do in one. He’d given Mia clear instructions on what she was to do with Gemma once he gave her the clear to proceed, but he rather thought she dreaded having to act.

He gave it three hours before his father called on him.

There was enough time for him to crawl back into his skin. 

He kicked the motorcycle to life, chest humming with the steady thrum of the engine. He knew he shouldn’t ride like this; when he didn’t have a name and was already halfway convinced it would be easier to ride right off the edge of a too high bridge.

But he was hungry and he was tired and the subways were too crowded with people now. If he spent another second in the company of anything alive he’d lose whatever traces of his sanity he was still holding onto.

Nathaniel strode through the doors of his father’s house with his chin raised and his clothes impeccably polished. His father may be Kengo’s Butcher, but he was not the only monster to walk these halls. Nathaniel was, and always had been, a beast of his own making. 

The halls were nearly abandoned, a few too young girls folded on their knees and scrubbing floor boards with bristled sponges. They looked up sharply at the sound of his approach and he nodded gently at them, the closest thing to a soft smile he was capable of sliding across his face.

He watched them relax and turn back to their work as he moved on.

He moved through the empty halls, eyes cast forwards and ignoring the medieval statues and brutal art decorating the walls. The sound of his steps, nearly silent apart from the slight click of his steel toes, and the hush of his breaths echoed through the house. His presence was announced to anyone who was listening for it.

Nathaniel tried not to let it panic him, to be so exposed and seen.

He was a monster too. This was his home once too.

Monsters and villains and Lords.

They were all still human. It was good to remind himself of that, to prove that the people made like him could still breathe.

He shrugged his shoulders to loosen his posture, felt the pull of several sheaths on his torso. There were nearly half a dozen knives on him now, a gun at his hip and another at his ankle.

The door to his father’s office was cracked open, Lola’s scratching voice trailing out the door and trying to rust his joints and fold him over. He took a fragile breath and pushed through the door without knocking. They didn’t need him to announce himself; if they didn’t already know he was there that fell on their shoulders.

“Junior!” Lola greeted, sounding far too delighted about his arrival. “Good of you to join us.”

Nathaniel leveled her a flat gaze, disinterested and unbothered by her constructed glee. “You did call me here, Lola. Don’t be so surprised I came.”

Lola’s grin was a dangerous, bloody thing. Red lipstick stretching over-bleached teeth in a feral snarl disguised as a pretty thing. It was the same smile she’d offer him when he was four, knees buckling and a too big knife gripped between chubby fingers.

“Oh come now, Natty. Can’t I be happy to see you?”

Nathaniel didn’t deign to answer her, turning his gaze on his father and raising an eyebrow in question.

Nathan sat behind his desk, lounging back in his chair and watching his son with a casual interest so blatant Nathaniel knew it was straight from the factory line.

“What have you been doing these past weeks?” 

Nathaniel lowered his eyebrow, tilting his head subtly to the left and keeping Lola in his peripheral even as he focused on his father. Lola would always be a threat, a wild and excitable thing, but his father was Baltimore’s resident Butcher, his father was his very own personal demon. Nathaniel knew which of them would be the fight he couldn’t win, and it wasn’t Lola.

“Less than I’d like to be,” Nathaniel answered. It was an honest answer, even if Nathan couldn’t know what he meant. 

Nathaniel wanted to see his father burn, wanted to tear him down brick by fucking brick until he was nothing but a child, crawling across the floor with scars to match his son’s. And then, Nathaniel wanted to slit his fucking throat.

That was the plan.

That was the carefully constructed two-year plan he Ichirou, Aiko and Jean had formulated. The plan that had him calling the family he’d never really met and settling deals sealed with the blood of a son that had never been a child. The plan they were seven months deep in, and already extending for another year.

That was what Nathaniel wanted to be doing. Crippling his father wherever he could. 

Sure, he had Gemma Mathers whimpering and wasting away while her father scrambled to cut all connections with Nathan to save her. Sure, he had isolated his father’s main suppliers and was elbow deep in plans to unravel them all.

But it wasn’t enough.

It could never be enough.

Until Nathaniel had his father begging at his feet and bleeding in the same basement Nathaniel had watched his mother die in it could never be enough.

Nathan hummed, affecting disinterest in his son’s answer and turning to a few pages on his desk. Nathaniel would bet a limb on them being blank.

“Is there anything you actually needed me for?” Nathaniel pressed. “Family dinner? A father-son bonding activity?”

Nathan’s lips twitched in displeasure before he grinned, a sharp creature wielding like a weapon. Nathaniel pulled a matching smile on his own face. 

Nathan was a monster, but his son had been raised into something even worse. They both knew that.

“There’s been…” Nathan trailed off, gesturing loosely with his hands. “A disturbance.”

Nathaniel kept his grin plastered on his face, withholding the laugh that could have given away secrets he couldn’t afford to share. “Is that so?”

Lola shifted in his peripheral, sliding closer to Nathan’s desk and angling herself between father and son like she could be enough to stop a fight between them.

“It seems that way,” Nathan mused. “Mathers has dropped out, closed his accounts and disappeared.” Nathan narrowed his gaze on his son. “You understand what that means I’m sure?”

“Oh, he’s a clever boy,” Lola purred. “I’m sure he can figure it out.”

Nathaniel’s gaze flicked over to her before settling back on his father. “It’s a financial depression,” he supplied. “Puts you down a few million dollars at the end of the year.”

“Puts us down,” Nathan corrected. “Don’t forget that you’re still my son, regardless of what brand you wear. If I go down you come with me.”

Nathaniel’s shoulders tightened, rigidity spearing through him before his body relaxed into a fight-ready stance. “Then you best fix your accounts, father . I wouldn’t want to be punished for your failings.”

Lola seethed, a rushed step forwards as a snarled “You dare !” tore through her.

Nathaniel had a knife in hand, dancing over his knuckles and ready to be loosed at her in a heartbeat. “Careful, Lola,” he warned. “I don’t see any special brands on you.”

She snarled at him, lipstick smudging on her front tooth like blood. But she settled again, falling into place at his father’s side. And his father, Nathaniel withheld his shiver, his father grinned at him like he’d been waiting for this moment all afternoon.

“You may be Ichirou’s little dog, but you are mine first.” Nathan’s expression was a dangerous thing, one that kept the knife fixed in Nathaniel’s hand and had a sharp ice clotting his veins. “You’ll look into Mathers and report what you find back to me. I want to know what changed and why, and I want my money.”

Nathaniel held his father’s gaze a moment longer before nodding sharply. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“You’ll prioritize this above any other tasks you have,” Nathan decided.

A half beat and the wicked smile was painted across Nathaniel’s lips again. “Unless the order comes from the Lord himself,” he responded, sinking into a mockery of a bow.

His father flicked his fingers in dismissal, and Nathaniel turned his back to them both. A blatant declaration.

I’m not scared of you , his heartbeat trembled. You can’t touch me , his fingers shook.

Two years was far too long to wait to make his father bleed. But how sweet it would taste when the day finally came.

Chapter Text

Abram flipped his phone in his hand but was otherwise perfectly still. A marble statue on a subway car. 

Faces around him were blurred and sharp. Every detail made itself boldly known until he had them memorized and then they faded into a wash of colour smears and background noise. 

If there was ever any difference in the canvas, a change in the environment,  he would notice. If only because that’s the sort of person he was And if he needed an out, to slip into the current of bustling people, he could vanish.

Transient. 

Temporary people in a temporary place. Coming and going and coming again and never stopping for long enough to be seen. Snatches of colours; a blue eye, blonde curls, a red sweater, yellow shoes. 

This was why he loved the subway.

The anonymity was everywhere. He was another face in the crowd, another body in a seat. There wasn’t anything important to it. The subway was busy and bright and it was so easy to slip into a crowd and lose yourself.

Abram was always a little bit lost.

Startling him, his phone vibrated soundlessly in his hand. And then again, and again. Abram pressed his thumb to the screen and swiped to unlock.  

He was met with a legion of texts from his oldest brother. Adoptive brother really. Or, well not even that considering there’s never been an actual adoption either way. Ichirou was just… His brother. In the simplest of ways. Ichirou and Jean were his brothers, and Aiko his sister. Abram didn’t care much for the formalities or the lack thereof. They were family. 

Now though, with Ichirou blowing up Abram's phone, he was reconsidering the term.

Fancy Suit Man:

tell me something will u?

what

and i do mean what

is wrong w u?

u do know i bought u a whole entire car right?

Ram

Abram

ABRAM

Abram:

that does sound vaguely familiar

Fancy Suit Man:

Pls

do tell then

y must u refuse to use it?

Abram:

who says i’m not using it now?

Fancy Suit Man:

it’s sitting in your buildings underground parking rn

Abram:

i could be in it

Fancy Suit Man:

then u would be l8

Abram:

could be

i’m not scared of you

you literally made me kill the spider in your apartment last week

because Ai couldn’t reach it

Fancy Suit Man:

ram

i bought u a whole car

4 the xpress purpose of making sure u didn’t take the subway

Abram:

i like the subway

Fancy Suit Man:

y

Abram:

ezra pound

Fancy Suit Man:

what?

Abram:

in a station of the metro 

the apparition of faces in the crowd 

petals on a wet black bough

Fancy Suit Man:

… 

i disown u

Abram:

that’s fine

His stop was coming up, the subway car rolling to a bouncing stop as brakes scraped against rails to stop the whole metal coffin from hurtling past its destination. 

The math was fun. How fast before they were terminal? How fast before the car shook loose off the rails and they rattled around in the tunnels like pinballs in a machine? Crack your skull on the handlebar and bleed through the floor.

He knew how to work the system, could stop the damn thing manually if he wanted to. But that was the catch, wasn’t it? He had to want to stop the car. And he did for the most part. But there were nights that he spent curled into himself and wedged into a cabinet under his kitchen sink because it was the only place where his nightmares couldn’t touch him. The morning after one of those…

Well, it didn’t always seem like the worst thing in the world to go out rattling around at terminal speeds.

The subway jolted to a stop and he stood, striding out and slipping seamlessly into the throng of people heading up and out onto the street above them.

Transient. 

Invisible.

His phone was vibrating again, a barrage of texts coming in from Ichirou still. He couldn’t imagine anyone else was texting him. Aiko maybe if she was craving something particularly awful and wanted him to taste it. It had been pickles and ice cream the last time. Sriracha and cream cheese dip with ruffled chips the time before that.

The bustle of the hotel district was a balm on his mind. Soothing the ruffled anxieties torn open by Reisu . 

This was familiar territory, marked off and claimed by the Moriyama’s. They owned half the hotels on this strip alone, and those they didn’t own themselves knew better.

It was an age-old technique, to head their business in a hotel. People, particularly business-looking men, could come and go without question. They were privately staffed and privately supported. 

The hotel Abram veered for now, was Ichirou’s favourite to use. Twin Crown. Abram thought it was ironic all things considered. The second son had been tossed aside like the worthless investment he was and he’d been nothing but trouble since. There had only ever been one crown and it was only ever meant to be Ichirou’s.

He caught a few glances as he walked through the streets as most well-tailored men did. Or, as Aiko would insist, attractive well-tailored men. 

He ran a casual finger over the cuff of his suit. It had cost around eight grand if Ichirou was to be believed and the custom sheaths added had been an additional charge.

It was his favourite of many.

Freer glanced up as soon as the door swung open, silently triggering the light behind the desk. There was a double-take and a crooked grin before Freer turned to snag today’s room key. 

“Hey Freer,” Abram greeted in his mother’s natural accent, propping himself against the counter and perusing the lobby for the details he needed. He settled into the conversational code they’d built on years of working together. “How’re things?”

What am I walking into?

Two by the door, one by the main elevators, another posted up by the entrance to the casino, closed though it was.

Freer noticed his searching gaze and his head dipped left in a silent tell. “Seems in a good way,” he mused. “Getting giggled before the lunch.”

They’re trying to pull something. Had more than a few drinks.

Abram lifted a brow and hummed. “Do they ever, really?”

“Much as they’re capable,” Freer answered, drumming three fingers against the marble six times.

Abram laughed a rolling sound and snapped his affirmative back. “That’s good news for me then,” he drawled. “Makes the job real easy when they’re loose.”

“Little Lord seemed a bit fussy though,” he noted. “Something spoiled under his watch?”

“Nah,” Abram dissuaded, waving a lazy hand through the space at his chest. “He was bugging me about the subway and I left him on read.”

Freer hummed consideringly and nodded. “That’ll do it.”

“Anything else for me?”

“Their numbers might be loose,” Freer noted. “I gave him a tug for you.”

Their analyst was shady. I drugged him.

Abram grinned with just a touch of too many teeth and patted the countertop twice. “Good man,” he thanked him. “I’ll get the Little Lord to leave you something nice, yeah? Have you and the wife been on any trips recently?”

“In this economy?” Freer laughed. “Lucky when we can cover rent every month.”

You’ve got half an hour before he’s loose-lipped.

His grin turned a shade more dangerous at that extra detail. “I’ll see what we can manage then. How’s Fiji sound to you?”

“You know Laney’s always wanted to get out there,” Freer mused. He seemed to wait for Abram to pull the comment back as a joke and his eyes widened when it didn’t happen. “You’re being real with me?” he pressed. 

“Real as I always am.” Which wasn’t really a great comparison to make, and Freer knew that.

But Freer only barked a laugh and shook his head. “I’ll be holding you to it,” he accused with a pointed finger.

Abram saluted him and took a heavy step back from the desk just to watch the post at the casino door look up sharply. “If I survive this meeting.”

Freer shook his head again and swung back around to his desk computer. “Ta, Pommy,” he jeered.

Abram only laughed and ducked into the elevator.

He hated elevators. They felt like a tomb even more than a subway did. There was no room to breathe, hardly enough room to fight. It was too easy to find yourself trapped and secluded and shit out of luck if things turned sour. 

The stairs were better. Abram would rather climb a thousand flights of stairs than jump in an elevator, but Moriyama floors were accessible by elevator only with keycard access. Or print scans if Abram was in a pinch and couldn’t drop by the desk.

He always dropped by the desk. 

Stepping off the elevator Abram made down the narrow hall for the double-doored room at the end dipping his head in greeting to the guards on Moriyama payroll that he’d grown up around and leveling an even look at the unfamiliar guards just visiting.

He’s always trusted his own men more than regular Moriyama men (and certainly more than outsiders), like Freer at the desk who slips drugs into the right cups and singles out secrets that he hoards and hands over. Like Elias and Mia and Charlie who have watched his back for long enough now that he forgets he’s not supposed to miss them there sometimes.

The guards pull the doors open for him, one on each door and at the exact same time, for him to stride through. Dramatic sons of bitches the mafia.

And like clockwork, he dropped a heavy step to announce a silent presence and every head in the room turned to him. 

Abram’s smile was Nathaniel’s and it was the deadliest thing in the room.

He brushed a glance over everyone ranked any less than he was and landed on the last few faces. Abram’s not just inner circle, he was Kengo’s favourite, Ichirou’s second. He was deadlier than his father was, smarter than his mother was. 

He was the Moriyama’s deadliest investment.

He waited there a moment before Kengo looked away and strode forward to his seat at Ichirou’s side.

There was a careful order to the table. Kengo sat at the head, a beacon of power even in his old age and wasting health. To his right was Ichirou, the firstborn son, the heir pristine. And at Ichirou’s side was Abram. Jean should be there too, at Abram's side, but there’s always work to be done and someone to keep an eye on. Kengo’s left side was always open, a reminder and a threat.

The executives from other companies and those belonging to the Moriyama’s were required to leave at least one chair of space between themselves and any member of the inner family. Always a space between them and Abram, a space between them and the empty chair on Kengo’s left,

What a reminder that was. 

You are less than nothing.

But then, wasn’t Abram?

The Butcher doesn’t get a spot at the table. It’s a spot of pride for Abram; for Nathaniel. For whatever name he wears. He lingers in the back corner of the room like a leashed dog waiting to be called. 

Abram never misses the way his father’s eyes track him more than they do their job.

Kengo waited until he sat, always waited. But he still spoke.

“Nathaniel,” he greeted. His voice was an ancient-sounding thing, more aged than his body surely, and often Nathaniel thought it was more aged than his mind was. “Good of you to join us so early.”

He wasn’t early.

Nathaniel’s never early, that’s not his job. But the party they were meeting with was notably missing a few members. Their most important members. Their financial analyst and their lead. 

This was Kengo not so subtly addressing the issue at hand.

It was a known thing in the Moriyama high-ranking members that Nathaniel was to be the last person to enter every room. But it was known to a rare four of them as to why.

The Wraith had a job. To know where everyone was at every time. To know every way in and every way out. To know everything there was to know about everything there was to know about. He watched every space and tracked every movement. Studied family histories back generations until he understood someone's motivations more clearly than they did. He was expected to have full control of every room he entered without letting a single soul know that he held all the power.

And he was good at it.

Nathaniel only nodded once. “Of course, my Lord.”

Ichirou glanced disinterestedly at Nathaniel. An obvious tell really because Ichirou was anything but disinterested if he’s bothering to look directly at Nathaniel at all while both their fathers and a dozen executives are in the room. They’re both too paranoid to divert their attention unless the issue is pressing and—

“I’m taking back your car,” Ichirou said in smooth French. 

And oh how Abram loved his brother.

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, a show of consideration to make their conversation seem far more serious than it was. Not another person in the room spoke a lick of French.

“I never actually wanted the car Bigwig, what sort of threat is that meant to be?”

“Here’s a threat then,” Ichirou warned. “I’m calling Serpent after this meeting to tell her all about the unnecessary risks you’ve been taking.” Ichirou looked far too smug pulling the Aiko card. “See how you like that conversation.”

They were making them nervous. Kengo was unbothered, if not pleased with the way Ichirou and Nathaniel’s fluid French was disarming the linguistically challenged individuals in the room.

It made Nathaniel giddy in a vicious way.

“The subway is not a big risk you big banana, it’s a mode of transportation I’ve been taking my entire life. Not once has anything bad ever happened to me on a subway.” Nathaniel tilted his head to offer Ichirou an almost indiscernible look. He was too good at masking his emotions. He forgot sometimes that his brother couldn’t always see through the fronting. “Now in cars? Do you really need me to remind you of how many car accidents I’ve been directly involved in?”

“One of these days,” Ichirou mused, voice thick and slow as honey. “I’ll just get sick of you and toss you down the incinerator.”

Nathaniel hummed like was considering two weighty options. Kill ten men to save a stranger or a thousand to save a loved one? Kill everyone in the room and be done with it all? “You should know by now that I’m fireproof.”

“I’ll find a way,” Ichirou promised.

Their conversation tapered off into silence and they waited with the rest of the group completely at ease as the tension built. And then their missing companions arrived.

Kengo didn’t look up or over, and Nathaniel was content to keep his eyes turned towards the Lord. He had no interest in their new guests. All he wanted was to play a few little games with them and be done with it. 

Aiko always told him not to play with their partners, but Nathaniel couldn’t help the way he enjoyed the little mind games and varied stages of manipulation Jean and he had played as children. 

Most of what Nathaniel knew about normal human behaviours came from Jean. About the way a mind worked and desired and felt. How to use that the way he wanted to use it. Jean had given him all the tools to make a very pretty picture. It was really just honouring Jean to continue the tradition even in his absence. 

It was always too easy. They never expected to be faced with anything quite like him. 

No. 

The criminal world saw Nathaniel for less than half as dangerous as he was. They saw him as a linguist and numerical genius. They saw him as Ichirou’s right hand and the favoured translator of the Lord.

Most of them walked away thinking the exact same thing, completely unaware of all that he’d taken from them.

That was most dangerous of all; underestimating the real threats.

Nathaniel rolled into bright Japanese, respectful to the nines. “My Lord, if I may?”

Kengo landed a slow look on Nathaniel and blinked. “You may.”

Nathaniel’s head ducked into the smallest of bows before he spoke again. “I’m of the knowledge that the men so kindly joining us now, who we’ve been waiting some time for, have been in the building since long before my own arrival.”

“On whose authority?”

“Take it on mine if you must,” Nathaniel insisted. Even to the Lord, he would never name his sources.

Kengo nodded in slow acknowledgment and careful agreement. “Ask them where they’ve been, then.”

Nathaniel knew where they’d been, Freer had told him all about their trip to the bar in their mindless commentary. It was for the same reason that Freer knew that even when Moriyama men didn’t, that Nathaniel always trusted his own people.

He already knew where they’d been, but he nodded and turned to do as he was told. He could challenge Kengo in private and get away with it if he wanted, that was the benefit of being a child who’d made himself an asset before he’d reached his tenth birthday. The benefit of being seen more like a son than as a possession. 

But in public Nathaniel played the obedient role that the criminal world expected from a child co-owned by a father and his Lord.

Spanish was lovely to speak, rolling letters and trilling. Nathaniel fell into a natural accent and spoke as well as a local might have. “Good afternoon,” he greeted coolly. “Lord Moriyama wonders about your delayed arrival. He hopes that there was no trouble with your travels?”

Their leader was a man who called himself Royal, but whose mother had named him Alejandro Pérez. By either name, he was a reckless and arrogant liability. He smelt like cheap beer and stride gum and Nathaniel disliked him on that alone. He hated him for the rest of his crimes. Child abuse, sexual assault allegations, filicide.

Even one of those would have been enough for Nathaniel or Abram or anyone of his names to feel good about killing him. All three? He wasn’t ashamed to actively want to see this man die at the end of his knife.

Pérez smiled, a sick and slimy thing and Nathaniel’s fingers twitched for one of the nine knives he had on him. “No troubles,” Pérez said. “We were simply admiring the… amenities offered here.”

Nathaniel kept a pleasant smile on his face at the expense of his own soul, a part of him leeching away to never ever return. Playing nice with people like Pérez was the one thing he told Kengo he wouldn’t do. And here he was doing it.

He thought he heard thick mumbling Russian and felt the ghost of a hand on his shoulder blade. It was all he could do not to flinch from the not-real touch of phantoms.

He wasn’t in Russia.

He slipped into Japanese and turned away from Pérez without anything more. “He claims to have admired the amenities. I can place him at the bar. It holds more fascination for him than our business.”  

He couldn’t keep the poison anger from bleeding into his voice and he knew Kengo heard it. He knew the man that had been more father than his own, but no more father than a stranger could have been.

Ichirou scraped a nail on the tabletop only loud enough for Nathaniel to hear it. An apology on behalf of the man who’d saved Nathaniel’s life and damned it. There were too many emotions there. Kengo had been a father to them both, and to Jean as well. More so of a father than Nathaniel or Jean’s fathers had ever bothered to be at least. 

But they’d never been anything close. They’d been distant, irrationally mature. They’d been brought up as proteges and revolutionaries; raised to be better than those who claimed to be the best. And Kengo had achieved that in them. 

But Kengo only folded his hands together.

Nathaniel uneasily took note of the wrinkled skin and the traces of the dark bruises caused by burst blood vessels that were covered in powders and creams. 

Nathaniel hated to see it; Abram hated it more.

In nearly silent French, Nathaniel muttered to Ichirou: “Has he been taking his medicine?”

“Not as often as he’s meant to,” Ichirou responded.

Pérez spoke next, and Nathaniel’s hackles raised at the sound of his voice alone. He was a threat to too many people. Letting him walk out of this room went against everything Nathaniel still believed in, but killing him went against the Lord.

Father figure or not, Nathaniel could not disobey Kengo so openly. He’d get his chance.

“It is good of you to invite us to this meeting, Lord Moriyama,” Pérez said, smug smile and stupid eyes. “These numbers are always best discussed in person, are they not?”

Kengo considered the greeting carefully, his right pointer finger tapping silently across the back of his left hand. It was a familiar gesture, one that used to terrify Nathaniel but had him excited now. 

Kengo was deliberating a punishment and finding the best way to dish it out.

“They are,” Kengo agreed. “I’ll ask your financial associate to go over the data with Nathaniel.” Kengo gestured loosely towards Nathaniel. “Might I interest you in a drink while they speak?”

Nathaniel could feel the threat in his bones, but Pérez, thick as he was, couldn’t.

Nathaniel was good at his job. One ear fixed on the conversations floating around the room finding the middle ground English being spoken, the Moriyama Japanese concerning exists and entrances and watch posts that Nathaniel had covered already, the fluid Spanish of Pérez’s men discussing dinner and New York City activities. It was all easy conversation so far. 

The rest of him isolated the figures and data on the spreadsheets he was being presented. He followed the notations of the financial analyst speaking to him in heavily accented English.

“Your income rates are inconsistent between figures 7 and 29,” Nathaniel said, interrupting what he was sure was a wonderful explanation of the numbers behind it all. He already knew the numbers, and he knew these numbers were wrong.

“They..” The analyst trailed off. “They are?”

Nathaniel didn’t so much as nod in reassurance. “There’s a difference of .37 in the biweekly revenue,” he explained. “Care to explain?” Because he was owed his own explanation too.

The analyst faltered for the first time. The wonders of drugs really. “I’m sure it must be some mistake, easily corrected-”

Nathaniel interrupted with the click of his tongue. “Simple or not, a .37 biweekly difference represents a 9.6 annual loss.” He flashes a lethal smile. “I’m sure you know this already, but that’s a lot of money just gone.”

Two snaps under the table. Middle finger and thumb in quick succession and Ichirou’s attention had been snagged without anyone else aware.

“I’ll ask you first, kindly, before drawing the attention of either of our employers.” He waited until he knew Ichirou was listening and listening well. “Where’s the money gone to?”

“Mr. Wesninski-”

“I do prefer Nathaniel.” Oh, what a wicked game he played.

 “Nathaniel,” he corrected. “Sir, if I could just look at the numbers again. I’m sure that there can’t be-”

And Ichirou swooped in, all the terror of the Moriyama heir in full effect for the poor drugged analyst. “Are you suggesting Nathaniel’s math is incorrect?”

Absolute fear. Nathaniel almost grinned just to see it. So easy, always so beautifully easy.

“I- no, my Lord, I only, I simply meant that there must be an explanation-”

And the analyst really wasn’t getting the chance to even try fighting back.

“Be sure to find it then, yes?” Ichirou hummed.

Nathaniel flicked his fingers in silent thanks. “Pérez’s Pedro Ximénez vineyard has taken damage in a recent storm, they’re expecting a minimal revenue loss of ten percent. Your father will need to increase taxes on the Tarragona vineyard.”

Nathaniel would almost call the noise Ichirou made a whine. It was something like it, possibly the closest people like them could ever get to it. “The Tarragona vineyard never produces at the forecasted rate.”

Nathaniel hummed. “They’re hopeful for honest production this year. I could ask uncle mine to survey the land himself when he stops in?”

“Best do that,” Ichirou agreed. “Ten percent loss is significant… find that missing 9.6 annual loss and I’ll advise my father on the vineyard production.”

“As you wish, oh great and mighty one.”

“If I could hit you right now I would,” Ichirou muttered.

Nathaniel turned away from Ichirou, giving his back to the Little Lord in a way that was safe for very few to do. But he and Ichirou had been guarding each other’s back since they were children, the two of them and Jean and closed off triangle of self-defense and anger.

A square when Aiko found them. When they found Aiko? Maybe they'd found each other?

“Have you found the Lord’s money, my friend?” Nathaniel asked the analyst.

“I-” he swallows. Working up to a lie from the sheen of sweat across his forehead. “Well, it seems there had been an unexpected alteration made regarding several of the deals made in the Northern region.”

“The arms deals?” Nathaniel clarified. “There’s never been a deficit from the Northern region, especially not concerning the arms deals.”

A terrible lie, too.

“The data signifies-”

How many times could Nathaniel cut this man off before he just stopped talking?

“I’m not asking what the data signifies. We’re both very well aware of how easily data can be altered and forged.” Nathaniel leaned closer. “I’m asking where four million dollars went. Do you see the difference there?”

“Yes, sir,” he stumbled.

Nathaniel smiled and it wasn’t a pleasant thing. “You look like an honest man, a good man.” the analyst was nodding his head like a bobblehead on a gravel road. “So I’m struggling to understand why you insist on lying to me. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” The smile sharpened further, curving like a knife. “Your heart rate is elevated, you’re sweating like a pig under pressure, your accent gets thicker with every word… and besides. I’m a practiced liar myself, practically a lie detector wearing someone's skin.” He leaned back then, slinking out of the analyst's personal space. “So what is it that you’re not telling me?”

And this? This was fun. Drugged and terrified, caught in his lies and desperate to save his own skin the truth comes toppling out like a landslide. Everything in its path decimated. It might even be enough to have Pérez finally killed.

“Parties,” he sputtered. “The newest mistress has been filching money for parties I- no one expected it to be so much-”

But Nathaniel has never cared to stick around for explanations he doesn’t need. He had an answer and that was the end of his task.

“Where’s it gone then?” Ichirou asked, tuning back into Nathaniel when he turned back to face his brother with the datasheets in hand.

“Parties,” Nathaniel sneered. “Are you telling your father or am I?”

“Be my guest.” Ichirou waved loosely at Kengo.

Nathaniel slipped back into Japanese with the ease of a practiced tongue. “My Lord, pardon my interruption, but we seem to have a financial inconsistency to discuss. A loss.”

Kengo doesn’t deliberate, never deliberates when Nathaniel has something to say during these meetings. Kengo knows what his Wraith does. “Speak then, Nathaniel.”

“There’s been considerable loss of revenue. A .37 biweekly deficit accounting to a 9.6 annual deficit.”

Kengo angled a brow, a strange look on his aging face. “And what’s happened to the money?”

“Our friend's mistress, My Lord, is known amongst the staff to throw elaborate parties funding with stolen money.” A twitch of a smirk quickly tucked away behind a respectful dip of his chin. “Your money, My Lord.”

Kengo’s gaze slid dangerously to Pérez, dark eyes unnerving at the best of times and chilling now. Nathaniel remembers being eleven and meeting those eyes when Kengo explained what the brand he Ichirou and Jean all wore on their chest meant.

“Do you know, Mr. Pérez, what it is that the young Wesninski tells me?” 

Oh, and Kengo was going in for the kill. He doesn’t very often remind people that Nathaniel is a Wesninski, prefers to call him Nathaniel only. Wesninski was a threat and told the involved parties that Nathaniel was only ever as dangerous as Kengo wanted him to be, but that he could be more dangerous still. Nathaniel was the boy Kengo had brought up to be Ichirou’s. 

Outsiders didn’t know the intricacies of the Moriyama inner circles. Nathaniel’s own father didn’t know the truth of his son’s role. Didn’t know the Wraith was his own flesh and blood even as he knew to fear the name.

“I’m afraid not,” Pérez laughed. “Japanese has always been well outside my understanding.”

Kengo’s expression remained unchanged. “First, I’m to hear from my son that one of your vineyards had taken severe damage. And now I’m to hear from his Right that four million dollars have been wasted on a Mistress’ parties.”

And if Kengo was calling Nathaniel Ichirou’s Right it meant he wanted the room to be terrified of what he might do to them.

“My Lord-”

“I’m wondering,” Kengo continued. “Why it was not you who told me of these detriments.”

“I would have shortly, of course, but-”

“But it seems instead you’ve arrived late to an important meeting so you could sample the hotel's bar, and have arrived with debts that you cannot afford to pay.”

“With just a few months grace-”

“That is not how this works, Mr. Pérez,” Kengo reminded. “You know this already. You and your men will leave now, and if you cannot provide me with my due money by the close of next month I will expect a blood penalty.”

Nathaniel wanted to smile, he bit his cheek instead.

“You’ve made yourself very clear, My Lord..” Pérez sunk into a deep bow, groveling even though it would do nothing for him now.

“Wesninski,” Kengo called, crooking a single finger at the Butcher still in the corner of the room. “Escort our friends from the building will you?”

And he goes, a monster playing at being a loyal dog.

“Well,” Nathaniel huffed, the door clicking shut behind them so that he’s alone in the room apart from Ichirou and Kengo. “All things considered that could have gone worse.”

“Is that right?” Ichirou mocked.

Nathaniel shrugged lazily. “Could have gone better, I personally would’ve liked to gut Pérez.” That earned him a look that was almost reproving from both father and son. “My Ozzy did his job well, slipped the analyst an extra something to loosen his lips.”

“A job well done,” Kengo mused. “You’ll be sure to secure this ‘Ozzy’ something for his troubles.”

Nathaniel grinned and it wasn’t half so dangerous as it could be. “I was thinking of Fiji.”

His comment was ignored, as it should be and the serious expression of Kengo’s face brought them back around to business.

“I trust that Reisu is doing well these days?” Kengo prodded.

“He is,” Nathaniel confirms. “Waiting for a task.”

Kengo spoke slowly, tasting each letter sound and the value of the words as they came out. “Kevin Day.”

Nathaniel stilled as Ichirou shifted.

“Kevin Day, father?”

Kengo leaned back in his chair, relaxing in the presence of just the two of them. “You’re both aware of his recent transfer?” Nathaniel was nodding before the question was finished. “You’re to evaluate his worth. Now that Tetsuji’s ward has broken his hand I fear his value to the family is considerably lacking when accounting for the risk his freedom poses to the family.”

Nathaniel dared to prompt him further. “Then mission then?”

“Threat assessment,” Kengo decided. “And should his value be worth preserving you’ll transition into a protective detail until Tetsuji’s ward has been appropriately handled.”

“Is it to be a proper infiltration?” Nathaniel pushed. “Deep cover?”

Kengo gestured at a closed manilla folder that had been resting in front of him throughout the entire meeting. Nathaniel hadn’t thought anything of Kengo not opening it at any point. “All the paperwork you’ll need to become Neil Josten. I trust you can find your own way onto the school’s Exy team?”

He couldn’t resist the smirk pulling at his lips if he’d wanted to anyway. “Of course.”

“You’ll have your own team in place?”

Ichirou nodded. “With Jean- with the Bird securely in the Nest and Nathaniel’s own resources there should be no issues regarding manpower.”

“You’re dismissed then,” Kengo muttered.

Ichirou slipped into affectionate Japanese and stretched to rest his fingers on the back of his father’s hand. “Don’t forget you have an appointment upcoming. I may not see you before.”

“You will be contacted,” Kengo reassured. 

Though, Nathaniel couldn’t call his tone reassuring in the slightest.

It didn’t take much prodding for Nathaniel to lead Ichirou out of the room and he fell away as soon as the door clicked shut behind them again.

“Neil Josten, huh?” Ichirou mumbled. “Both my brothers deep cover.”

Abram snorted. “Kevin fucking Day,” he reminded. “And you’ll have Aiko. Your very pregnant wife? Remember her?”

Ichirou scowled and swatted playfully at Abram’s arm. “You’ll be standing next to a spotlight,” Ichirou reminded him. “I don’t need to remind you to be careful.”

“You don’t,” Abram agreed. But he knew what Ichirou was saying. This was a public deep cover, and the Wraith could not afford to lose his anonymity. No one could know that the Wraith was in Palmetto, this had to go their way.

“Be careful,” Ichirou said anyway.

Abram flipped the folder open and skimmed the detailed summary at the top of the stack of sheets before opening his mouth to a river of orders. “We’ll go in three weeks,” he decided. “That’s enough time to build a comprehensive history and figure out a plan of action. I haven’t lost exy yet, but I’ll need a refresher.”

Ichirou looked at him. “And your father?”

“I don’t see how this changes anything in regards to him.”

Ichirou sighed, loudly and obviously, but he didn’t bother to disagree.

There was a letter at the front desk for them when they left the building, handed over by a softly smiling Freer and Abram knew what it was as soon as he saw the looping letters across the front. So he didn’t put up a fight when Ichirou demanded he climbs into his car.

He settled into the passenger seat and tore the seal on the envelope. A handful of winged seeds spilled out into his hand first, and then a square sheet of pale blue paper with April third - 5:30 scrawled elegantly across it.

It was Jean, a flair for the dramatics and everything.

They go to Abram’s apartment. The one he used to share with Jean before the older boy went deep cover in the Nest. Ichirou’s apartment has Aiko in it and they try to keep this sort of talk away from the six-month bump in her belly in case it can hear them well enough. The apartment all four of them share but hardly ever use anymore is too empty to do this in.

All the same, Ichirou was texting with a dopey smile on his face the whole way up to Abram and Jean’s apartment, unaware of where he was being led. Abram rolled his eyes fondly as he unlocked his door to let them in.

“Aiko?”

Ichirou hummed in answer.

“Tell her I want more of those biscuits she made,” Abram mused, tugging Ichirou through the open door so he could lock and deadbolt it behind them. “The rosemary and honey ones, or whatever they were.”

Ichirou made another humming sound. “She said something about making another batch tomorrow.”

“Oh that’s good,” Abram said, genuinely relieved. “I had my last one the other night and I was moved to near tears.”

“You’ve never cried a day in your life,” Ichirou chirped. “If you insist on lying, at least make it believable.”

Abram squawked. “You’ve no place to judge me,” he argued. “You cried over that dog in the movie. The one Aiko made us watch last week.”

Ichirou looked up from his phone, absolutely offended. “Do you mean Marley and Me? It was devastating, Abram. The fact that you didn’t cry is practically criminal.”

Abram laughed. “I have watched you quite literally eviscerate a man once. You completely disemboweled him, but not crying over a dead dog in a movie is the criminal offense?”

Ichirou stopped dead in the middle of the hall, twisting to face Abram directly and looking properly aghast. “Ram,” he stressed. “It was a dog,”

Abram blinked at him slowly before returning to making sure the several locks on his door were properly fastened and secured. “I fail to see your point.”

Ichirou made a vaguely disappointed sound and moved away from Abram into the kitchen. Abram was short on supplies currently, but he knew exactly what Ichirou wanted to make today. They had nearly twenty minutes before Jean would be expecting their call, plenty of time to make Ichirou’s comfort food of an ‘American staple’.

“Open up the beans while you’re in there,” Abram called. “Be something other than a useless lump, yeah?”

He grinned at his door when Ichirou muttered in quiet Japanese that Abram couldn’t quite hear well enough to understand. The cursed comments fell into silence when Abram entered his own kitchen fishing a pack of hot dogs from his freezer.

Ichirou was craning his neck to search each of the cabinets. “You still haven’t bought a new can opener have you?”

Abram held out a knife that matched his cheeky grin and it was enough of a response for Ichirou to roll his eyes. All the same, Ichirou snagged the knife and worked to open the can of beans with it.

In time with Ichirou’s movements, Abram twirled another knife between his fingers before roughly chopping half a dozen frozen hotdogs into bite-size bits. It was practiced movements in a practiced routine. He turned and filled the designated hotdog pot with water and brought it to a rapid boil so he could add the little bits in.

One monthly, at the very least, Ichirou and he stood in this kitchen, boiling bites of hotdogs and heating a can or two of pork sauce flavoured brown beans. They brought them to temperature and threw them together and sat at a table with bowls full of what Ichirou unironically called America’s best dish and glasses of bottom-shelf whiskey that tasted like sutures on the side of the road and waited for a phone to ring.

They did it today with more hope than other times.

“Kevin Day,” Abram mused.

They might as well do this now, so they could come to some sort of an agreement before they worried Jean more than they had to.

Ichirou stood resolutely next to him, monitoring the shallow pot of American brown beans bubbling away in their canned pork sauce. He gave them a loving stir and worried his lip.

“He’s not a threat,” Ichirou decided. “Dad’s sicker than he’s telling us if he really believes Day could ever be a threat.”

“True as that may be,” Abram hummed. “He’s still a liability. Whether he talks or not, we've seen enough of Riko’s reaction to Day’s supposed betrayal to know that there is massive potential for damage there.”

“His hand is on track to heal,” Ichirou noted. “And recovering from what should have been a career-ending injury will only serve to increase his future profit for the family.”

Abram wanted to remind Ichirou that it wouldn’t be hard to ruin that recovery. Shatter the hand again and there’d be no coming back, certainly not if Nathaniel was the one to do it. Riko’s hissy fit would come to an end, Kevin would remain too frightened of the Moriyama’s to speak against them.

But that would mean Nathaniel would have to ruin the life of a twenty-one-year-old kid with a golden future. At the end of it all, Kevin Day was a liability, but an innocent one. He’d never done anything to warrant the brutality that they were discussing now. 

Was that something that Abram could live with? Or would it be another part of himself sacrificed to the demands of a reputation he’d never really wanted?

He’d ruined enough innocent lives, hadn’t he? Would another one tip him over the edge? Or was he already too far gone?

“Until it comes out that the incident was never an accident,” Abram argued, instead. “How does it look when the world learns the truth?” He stopped, listening to the words he was saying and hating that he didn’t mean a single one. “Aiko would be so upset with us,” he mused.

Ichirou huffed a laugh. “Could you imagine it?” He grinned and pitched his voice far too high. “He’s only a boy,” he mocked. “How much of a threat is he really?”

“Let him play then,” Abram mused, his voice intoned to match Aiko’s light accent and rolling vowels but pitched as his own. “Your brother has always been in dire need of a reminder of his place in the family. Backing Day tells Riko he’s worth less than an outsider’s son.”

Ichirou hummed. “Was that you impersonating Aiko or giving your own compromise?”

“Does it matter?”

Ichirou shrugged. “So that’s the plan then?” he asked. “You keep him safe and help him tear Riko down a peg, and what then?”

“We’ve saved a few lives,” Abram mused. “Wipe some of the red off our ledger, and move on with our lives.” He looked over to find Ichirou watching him with a curious expression. “No reason for it to be any bigger than anything else we’ve done.”

Ichirou hummed agreement as he turned away, but there had been something careful and considering in his expression that troubled Abram. He watched his brother long enough to watch his scraping at the bottom of the pan in a key indication that he’d lost focus for a short moment.

Abram wouldn’t push if Ichirou wouldn’t be forthright.

“Sriracha?”

Ichirou took the pot off the heat and rested it on the marble counters instead. “Always.”

They traded off, Abram digging the sriracha out of his fridge while Ichirou strained the hotdogs and folded them into the beans. A tablespoon and a bit of sriracha later, they split their result between two overly expensive wooden bowls Aiko had picked from the home design store and were settling at the table with a bottle of cheap scotch to split between them.

Abram watched the time stutter from 5:29 into 5:30 and pressed the first speed dial on his burner phone. They waited patiently as it rang out and hung up before it could prompt them to leave a message. Seconds later, the phone shook with an incoming call and Abram flipped it open to accept.

The brothers all slipped into French, Abram mimicking Jean’s Marseilles accent without a second thought. Ichirou’s French was more a jumbled Parisian accent, with touches of influence from Jean’s home.

“Why hello, my Dark-eyed Junco,” Abram greeted.

Jean’s snort carried through the phone. “Did you rhyme that on purpose?”

Ichirou lifted a heaping spoon of beans to his mouth and rolled his eyes while Abram answered. It was the closest they could come to being brothers right now. Two of them ready to waste themselves of scotch and the third deep cover in a graveyard. 

“Well, it’s been so long since you called. I wanted to give you something special.”

Jean scoffed. “Long enough I’m sure you’ve managed to cause all sorts of trouble?”

“He still hasn’t bought a can opener,” Ichirou mumbled around a mouthful of half-chewed beans.

Abram made a face at him and was promptly flipped off for it.

“I don’t know why we expect any better from him.”

“A knife works just fine,”  Abram argued. “I fail to understand why I need another kitchen tool to do a job I can handle just fine.”

Jean was exasperated on the other line. “It’s the idea of the thing Red.”

“The idea is ridiculous,” Abram muttered.

“Ignore him,” Ichirou decided, swallowing back the beans he’d finally finished chewing with a sour sip of the scotch. His nose wrinkled. “How have things been for you?”

“Less than ideal,” Jean answered honestly. “The brat thinks himself entitled to Day and has made his displeasure extraordinarily clear.”

“Do you need to be pulled?” Abram demanded.

He would storm the Nest single-handed to pull Jean out if he needed to. Abram didn’t love many people, but he loved his family and he loved them fiercely. He would gladly set the world on fire and watch it burn if it would keep them warm.

“No, Ram,” Jean said, sounding less concerned about it all than he should be. “I can handle myself just fine.”

“I mean it,” Abram pressed. “If he’s hurting you then the risk isn’t worth it.”

“Trust me to understand my own limit, Ram,” Jean implored. “If I need your help you know I’ll ask you for it.”

“You’d better,” Ichirou cut in, jabbing an empty spook accusingly at the phone as if trying to make Jean feel the movement with it’s force. Abram slid the phone a little further from Ichirou just to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally break it. “If I find out you’re letting him abuse you-”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jean snarked. “I didn’t realize my name was Abram.”

“Technically,” Abram ventured. “Mine isn’t either.”

“You don’t have a name at all. So you don’t count.”

Abram considered that, and couldn’t find any flaw in the reasoning he compiled.

“Focus,” Ichirou chided. “An update?”

“There’s nothing to worry about yet,” Jean explained. “He’s making himself into an even less tolerable beast than he already was, but he’s yet to do anything so dramatic as to draw any unwanted attention to the family-”

“Did we forget that he shattered Day’s hand?” Abram wondered aloud. “Because I very clearly remember that happening.”

“-Apart from that,” Jean corrected.

Abram looked over at Ichirou, resting his spoon in his bowl and waiting for his eldest brother to meet his gaze. Silently, they came to an agreement. Jean didn’t need to know anything about Neil Josten and Abram’s deep cover mission. It would be a complication if Jean was worried for Abram, and they needed Jean as focused and self-concerned as possible so deep in the Nest.

“He’s been intolerable since the day he was born,” Ichirou muttered.

Abram bit back any sort of expression. “You say that like you remember it.”

“You’d do well to shut up now.”

Abram snickered and silenced himself with a tottering spoonful of hotdogs and baked beans.

“Tetsuji seems bothered by the media attention Day has been receiving,” Jean cautioned. “He’s been more withdrawn in recent weeks, making more phone calls.”

“Indications that he’s planning something?” Abram asked. “His record has never been any cleaner than his nephew’s and he certainly has sway in the Exy world. They could be coming at it through the game as opposed to more illegal paths.”

“I’ve heard nothing yet.”

Ichirou shook his head slowly and his expression pinched in consternation. “The longer they go without acting the more concerned I am about what they’re planning,”

Abram couldn’t disagree. As the second branch, Tetsuji’s resources were limited, but the more time that went into building a response to Day’s actions the larger the fallout would be. It would come down on Ichirou to deal with the clean-up of whatever mess was left behind. 

And that was only half the issue at hand. “As for the media attention…”

Jean was quick to answer. 

“It’s all been appropriately handled as you’ve seen, limited exposure to members of the team, a cohesive story… they’ve done their best to keep the truth concealed and I don’t foresee it coming out unless Day or the Foxes speak out.”

“Foxes,” Abram echoed, angling a look at Ichirou that he hoped conveyed exactly how displeased he was with all of this.

Ichirou ignored him and called out to Jean again.

“Has there been any indication that Day has told them about the family?”

“Nothing that’s made it's way back to me,” Jean answered him. “There haven’t been any media stories and I haven’t heard from Day since he ran.”

Abram almost snorted. “Is that meant to be a comfort, my dearest Pine Siskin?”

“So long as they’re not saying anything-”

“The knowledge alone poses a threat to the family.”

“If they’re properly warned and understand the consequences of exposure-” Ichirou argues.

“Then there’s ample time to exterminate them before it can become a problem.”

“Christ, Ram,” Jean cursed. “Why is your solution always to kill everyone first and think about it all second?”

“I’ve done plenty of thinking,” Abram reminded him. 

They knew who Abram was and who he could be. He thought and he planned and he acted, and he was hardly ever wrong. Were there often less lethal ways to solve their problems? Yes. But they weren’t often worth the risk.

“And what a miracle that is,” Ichirou said, poking Abram’s temple with the rounded end of his spoon. “Are you in any pain from making that tiny brain of your work so hard?”

“We cannot take out the entire team without there being suspicion,” Jean added. “Without proof of an actual threat of exposure the risk involved is just not worth it.”

Abram spread his hands in front of him, palms up to the ceiling and fingers curled like he was holding tangible ideas in them. “Buses crash every day. Planes go down, pipelines burst. Accidents are everywhere.”

“If there’s no risk there’s still no need. We can’t even be sure that the Foxes are aware of the family’s true nature-”

“But if they do-”

“Then there are other ways to handle the situation,” Ichirou interrupted their bickering. His word so often was final that he silenced them long enough to finish his thought. “Money, so I’ve heard, is an excellent motivator.”

Abram wasn’t satisfied yet. He was the one tasked with going deep cover, and they’d decided to protect Day already, but if he’d told the Foxes... If there was any chance the team knew the truth and Abram walked into that mess? 

He didn’t like it.

“Not so much as a threat to their livelihood.”

Ichirou clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “It’s not much of a threat if they’re already dead.”

“Has anything happened on your side of things?”

Abram was annoyed at Jean’s not-so-subtle change in topic, but Ichirou grabbed at it with two hands and Abram followed along. 

“We’ve made some progress in dealing with the Butcher, but things are moving more slowly than we’d like them to.”

Abram kept quiet, spooning a bite of beans and chewing silently. He ran the spoon along the edge of his bowl.

It wasn’t just moving slowly. The plan was fucking crawling along. Dragging itself through the dirt with cracked nails and a bloody smile. They were moving so slowly Abram thought they were moving backward half the time.

His mother’s family had hit a few snags in gathering information, and they’d lost an informant in a raid last month. Nathaniel was their only source of information for the time being and it didn't help that he wanted to be as far from his father as possible at all times.

How much slower would things get once he was deep cover?

“No one’s done anything stupid?”

Abram looked up at that. “I’ll take a definition for 200.”

Jean snorted but expanded anyway. “Nothing like Russia?”

Abram winced.

“Nothing like Russia,” Ichirou confirmed.

Ichirou looked at Abram, eyes asking a silent question. Do they want to stay silent still, or do they want to tell Jean the truth?

Abram shook his head negative. In his experience, there was never anything good to come from getting personal feelings involved in deep cover missions. It was better that Jean left behind any concern for his brothers.

Feelings meant someone ended up hurt and someone else’s cover got blown.

There’d never been anything quite so bad as Russia again, but there have been far too many missions where he’d had to slip outside of himself to keep Abram or Nathaniel from ruining things. Times when Reisu’s inability to feel was all that let him survive the tortures he’d seen.

Sometimes when he slipped too far, tumbling out of Reisu and into that void of space where he was most honest and most a lie, all the way down into that locked drawer of repressed agony he can hear the way Aiko screamed in Oulu, Finland, or the way—

He was Abram now. And Abram hadn’t been there for any of that. It wouldn’t do him any good to go looking for those memories when he wasn’t equipped to handle them.

“How much longer have you got?” Abram asked, already dreading the moment the line will disconnect and his brother will be silent in the Nest again.

“A few minutes at most,” Jean answered and there was heavy sorrow in his tone too. 

None of the brothers liked the separation between them. Abram wondered for a moment how Ichirou would fare on his own once he was Neil Josten. 

The timing of it all smacked him for a moment. Jean was deep cover in the Nest, Abram would be deep cover at PSU. Ichirou and Aiko would be on their own, baby on the way and Kengo’s health deteriorating at a faster pace than they’d accounted for.

Would he and Jean miss the birth of Aiko and Ichirou’s child? Would they miss the death of the man who’d done what he could to earn the title of father?

He brushed the thoughts away and let them fall into that locked drawer he tried to never willingly open.

“Let me tell you about this new biscuit recipe Aiko’s found,” Abram mused.

“Better than the black currant ones?”

Abram hummed an affirmative. “Rosemary and honey, sweet but still savoury. On par with the cranberry orange ones she makes.”

“A good balance then?”

“You know I’ve never cared for things too sweet,”

“The two of you deserve beds in a nursing home,” Ichirou grumbled. “Discussing the merits of biscuit flavours over a secure line?”

“Would you put us in a good one, Rou?” Abram teased. “Top quality for your best brothers?”

“If I had any common sense at all I’d have locked you up in a psych ward ages ago.”

“Well it’s good we don’t love you for your brains then, isn’t it?” Abram grinned.

Ichirou made a quick swipe for him, but Abram had skipped out of the way already, laughing wickedly with the phone in hand as he danced around furniture carefully rearranged once and week so only he could ever navigate it with the ease he was now.

“Do try not to kill each other while I’m on the line,” Jean called out as Ichirou stumbled around a loveseat and into the corner of the coffee table. “I'd hate to have to explain any of these circumstances to Aiko.”

“He only wishes he was half talented enough to kill me,” Abram snarked, wild grin and bright eyes as he watched Ichirou give up and climb on top of the furniture to make his path to Abram easier.

“You, little brother, have no concept of self-preservation,” Jean said, light amusement bubbling through his tone.

Abram’s grin was Nathaniel’s was Reisu’s was Junior’s was a thousand different names and a thousand different people. “What fun is that?” he asked. “Besides, isn’t that what makes me good at my job?”

Chapter Text

The world was falling apart.

Abram could feel the Earth crying beneath him—terrible groans rumbling up from a place so deep it should not know pain. The tremors rippled up through his legs until his knees shook and knocked together. 

And then the bleeding started; foaming bubbles oozing up from the mud beneath him. Warm and slick with expired life, hot and heavy on his skin.

He itched to run, but the ground beneath him was shaking and slippery, and if he moved he’d fall and he wouldn’t be able to claw his way back up to the surface.

His whole body hurt with the injuries of a memory nearly a decade old.

The world was falling apart, and all there was for him to do was fall with it.

“Are you watching, Junior?”

He shut his eyes, but the shadows forced them open; claws like needles stitching his eyelids to his brows until he was bleeding across his vision and dizzy with the pain. 

There was screaming, his screaming, his mother’s.

When he looked up, the moon hung heavy, a bloody eye blinking at him. It’s another ghost watching him fail, watching him struggle through life when he only truly knew how to die. 

There were no stars in the sky.

The sky opened into an empty ugly void that kisses the tops of shadows.

He was not afraid. He was not afraid .

It tasted like a lie; sharp and bitter and foul.

“Look at what you did, Nathaniel.”

He looked, the shadow hands pulling until he felt the bones in his neck snapping. He screamed again, the sound strangled and drowned in the blood pooling around his tongue. 

He’s going to choke on it.

The ground was shaking and the Earth was bleeding and he was going to drown in the thick heavy heat of it all.

His mother hung above it, chains around her wrists suspended from a height Abram couldn’t see. Her shoulders were both dislocated, but where there should have been bruised skin there was no skin at all. His knees threatened to buckle, the blood pooling at his thighs whispered to him. It wanted him to fall, to lay down and breathe it in. He spat blood from his mouth, and the tide rose higher. 

Shadow dressed in blood, blood dressed in shadow.

His mother spun slowly from her chains, eyes dug out from her face and skin gone; skin peeled back by the sharp of a knife; skinned like an animal.

Butchered.

A shadow stretched before him, and the shadows holding him up shivered and raced away. He fell to his knees in the bloody mud of the Earth, letting it lap at his chest.

He could scream, but his neck was broken and when he opened his mouth he choked and there was too much blood .

The shadow stretched, black and jagged like a saw’s edge. Not a saw, not a knife. A cleaver.

The shape of it was heavy in his right hand, the whispering weight of an idea.

The shadow grew, expanded, stretched, and rose until it loomed over him and swallowed the void of the sky.

A shadow; a father.

“Look what you did, Junior.”

The cleaver rose; in his own hand, in the shadows.

“You’re my blood.”

Nathaniel laughed, the blood bubbling up through his throat and he choked on it. He was laughing and he was screaming and he was going to die choking on blood that wasn’t his.

It was his fault. It was his fault. It was his fault. IT WAS HIS FAULT—

Abram’s eyes snapped open.

Darkness stretched to the edge of his vision, suffocating him in its clutches. It felt too much like the shadow claws of his past and he opened his mouth to breathe. Gasping around the weight of his lungs he fumbled for the lamp by his bed.

His hand knocked into it but he snapped the switch and the light burned bright enough he hissed and rolled away from it. Slowly he turned back, blinded by the uncovered bulb. The shade rolled on the ground in a half-circle, knocked off in his desperation.

He stared at the bulb until he knew that he’d see it for hours when he looked away, but he welcomed the pain of it. The fuzziness and the spots in his vision when he finally rolls onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.

It had only been a dream.

It’s one of many. Recurring nightmares that chase him into the real world. His mother’s death hadn’t been like that at all, they’d been in the basement, him thrashing in DiMaccio’s arms and his mother chained down to a table while his father skinned her.

But it had felt the same, like the world was crumbling underneath him and he was drowning in his guilt. Guilt tasted a lot like blood, he learned. Like gunmetal and wet rust, a copper coin still covered in mud.

This should be a comfort. Demons have no place in the waking world; his nightmares shouldn’t be able to reach him here, tucked away in his and Jean’s apartment. He knew better. Dreams are born in reality, and nightmares are born in dreams.

Years stand between him and the day he watched his mother die, and yet he’s still gasping; his chest splintered with the pain of grief and fear.

He couldn’t ground himself if he tried. 

And he did try.

He dug his nails into the skin of his arms and scratched jagged lines over the scarred skin until it was swollen and bleeding. He pulled his hair until he felt strands come loose and saw a few stray auburn curls tangling around his fingers when he let go. He bit down on his tongue and his cheeks, trying to chase away the bloody taste of fear with actual blood.

He rolled from his bed at that and barely made it into his bathroom before he was retching, the bile of his stomach and the blood in his cheeks mixing pink in the bowl of the toilet.

His hands trembled as the tremors of his body settled, and he leaned his head against the porcelain, calling the third speed dial on his phone out of learned instinct.

“Abram?”

Aiko’s voice has always sounded different over the phone than in person, but there’s a comfort in it despite that. The musicality in her accent was something Abram had never heard replicated the same way in anyone else’s. There were the traces of an accent in her voice, one that Ichirou had been trained out of when he was young enough not to have met Abram yet, the Japanese sounds of Aiko’s mother and the Singaporean ones of her father.

He breathed for a moment, until the rattling in his chest had reduced enough he could answer without choking on the words.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

Aiko waited the entirety of a moment in case there was anything else he was struggling to say, but she spoke into the silence when he didn’t.

“What happened, petal?”

“She’s dead,” he managed, his voice sounded ravaged like he’d been screaming the way he did in the dream. He knew he hadn’t, his body had long since trained itself out of the habit. He wouldn’t have so much as twitched while he was still asleep.

Aiko’s short breath was enough to tell him that she understood, even without an explanation. She knew him well enough by now, taken all of his late-night calls after Jean went deep cover and there’d been no one else to drag him out of his mind. 

He could have always called Ichirou, but Rou had never had the same capacity for handling emotions that Aiko did, Ichirou had been raised too similarly to Nathaniel to understand the way feelings really worked.

“I know, Ram.”

“I killed her,” he continued, his chest heaving again. “I killed her, I could have saved her, should’ve-” he broke off into an extended cry, a sound torn between a whimper and a growl. 

Animalistically painful.

Aiko’s voice remained the soft and steady thing he needed. “It wasn’t your fault, Abram,” she promised. “You did not kill her.”

“It was my fault,” he insisted, unable to stop himself from arguing. It was all foolish and he knew that. He’d been a child , it had been years ago. There was nothing to get from arguing now. “If I had just listened to him, if I did what he said then…”

But he couldn’t finish that thought. He didn’t know that it would have changed anything in the end.

“And then what?” Aiko pressed, trying to draw the answer out of him.

“Then she’d still be here,” he forced, but the lie was heavy on his tongue.

Aiko said it for him, ever the calming presence he was searching for. “Not even you believe that, Ram. He would have killed her soon enough.” She paused, and he thought he could hear her shuffling around for a moment. “What would it have done to you, hm? If you’d listened to him?”

He made a desperate sound in the back of his throat, a complaint and a dismissal in one. “It doesn’t matter. I should have protected her better, I would've ended up here regardless.”

“It wasn’t your job to protect her,” Aiko said gently.

He knew she was right, he’d been a fucking child . It never should have been his job. But it shouldn’t have been his job to cut open pigs while they squealed and shrieked, and it shouldn’t have been his job to stand in front of that half-dressed man with a cleaver that wasn’t balanced properly, heavy in his hand.

“Why?” he pressed, and he could hear the shaking anger in his voice, the stitches of fear holding his rage together. “Because she was the adult? The parent? She was my mom , Aiko. I had the power to do something, I was capable of doing something and I let her down. I let him-” Another strangled sound cut him off and he bit down hard on his tongue, agitating the already bleeding sores from just a little while ago.

“No, you didn’t.”

Abram’s entire body had started shaking again, but that quiet assurance, the softly muttered words, smoothed him out like hands flattening the creases of a blanket. He felt his muscles relaxing, the churning of his gut settling into a lesser rolling.

He repeated it back to himself in Aiko’s gentle voice.

You didn’t kill her.

It wasn’t your fault.

He knew it wouldn’t last. Aiko knew it wouldn’t last. But they only really needed it to last long enough for Jean to return. 

It was putting a bandaid over an infected wound. It was too late to do anything for the rot, but they could cover it up and hide it from the rest of the world. He knew there was only so much longer he could really ignore it for, that one day the rot would be so far spread there’d be no chance to cut it out. It would infest and spread until he was consumed completely by grief and guilt. 

Abram would be corrupted and chased away and he’d fall into someone else.

But Jean knew. Jean had known him back then, had helped to reassemble Abram with stitches and medical glue and a brotherly affection that had been stronger by far than the love his mother had ever shown him. Jean had walked in step with him through the horror of the memories, and stayed up with him at night when they’d followed him to sleep.

Jean had that careful way of peeling back the bandages and drawing out the poison so it stung a little less. 

It would always come back, Abram knew that, but Jean had a way of working through it that made it all seem a little easier, that made it feel a little less like avoiding the truth and swallowing the heavy pills of a lie.

So he and Aiko stuck the bandaid on with promises that were too empty to mean anything. Pretended there was no sickness to be seen. 

It was not enough.

But it was enough for now.

“Do you think I could plant some cucumber bushes in the greenhouse?”

The question snagged his attention, was a hook that dragged him back to reality and kept him tethered where he was, wedged between his toilet and his tub with his phone on speaker and balanced on his knees.

These were the pieces of himself he had control over.

His past and his psyche were beyond his reach, but the bathroom tiles and the grout he’d cleaned last week and the knowledge of gardens and flowers and agriculture, he knew that.

Breathing came easy then. Stopped being a performative task that drained him. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bathroom wall, sinking into the sound of static on the other end of the phone as Aiko awaited his answer.

“You could,” he said.

There was a gentle exhale whispered across the phone, one he was certain he wasn’t meant to hear. The release of panic and concern.

“You’ll have to avoid planting them beside the basil plant though,” he continued. “Growing a vegetable like a cucumber next to a power herb like basil will change the taste of the cucumbers and essentially ruin the whole bush. It's the same with rosemary or sage or marjoram.”

Aiko hummed softly. “Like with tomatoes and corn?”

“No,” he dismissed, clicking his tongue lightly. “Tomatoes and corn can’t be planted together because they’re both heavy feeders. They’ll compete for the same nutrients and will end up deprived if the soil isn’t incredibly rich. You’ll end up with at least one, if not both of the crops either dead or half-grown and useless. That’s not to mention they share a common pest which they’ll pass back and forth until both plants are ruined. With the cucumber and basil, both plants will live, but your cucumber will taste wrong. Honestly, it’s best not to plant anything next to a power herb.”

“So no cucumbers beside herbs,” Aiko decided.

“You can plant them anywhere else though,” he advised. “They’re a nice vegetable to grow.”

He could nearly hear the way Aiko smiled through the phone. It warmed him to know it was there, to know that things were okay; that he was okay. Even if it only lasted for the duration of the phone call, there was happiness in his life; there was still room for good things no matter how awful the shadows of his dreams were.

Aiko’s voice was soft and quiet on the other end of the line. He was tuned into the rolling notes of her words, the way they sounded like love in a way he didn’t deserve.

“You, my little firefly, make me proud every day,” she mused. “I know that I’m not your mother, but if my son is anything like you are, then I would consider myself the luckiest mother alive. I hope beyond all things, that he will never doubt how much he is worth.”

Abram heard the unspoken words attached, the ‘I hope you know how much you’re worth’ that he couldn’t acknowledge without letting her down.

“He’s going to have the best of parents,” Abram answered, paying her kindness back with a compliment so he didn’t have to feel the curling warmth and the boiling guilt.

Aiko wouldn’t let him get away with it so easily. “You deserved better, Abram.”

“I ended up with you guys, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Aiko answered. 

She sounded sad, if not a little disappointed. But they both knew by now how these things went. Aiko could say she was proud, could tell him he was good and worthy and deserved better things. But Abram would never be able to look past the blood on his hands, the blood that threatened to drown him every night when he closed his eyes. 

He’d done too many terrible things; he’d been too much of a terrible thing. 

She wanted him to forgive himself, the same way Ichirou and Jean did. But he didn’t know how to start.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

Aiko hummed. “Are you going back to sleep?”

“Maybe.” He paused, considering the day he had waiting for him tomorrow; the goodbye brunch and the flight and all the work that was waiting for him with the Foxes and Neil Josten. “Probably.”

“I’ll stay up with you until you fall asleep then.”

“Aiko-” he started.

“Don’t argue with me, flower-boy, I won’t hear it,” she said, putting a decisive end to any argument he might have made. Aiko was good at being soft, could ease him out of a panic and soothe his jagged edges, but she was as sharp as the rest of them. He was more frightened of her anger than either Ichirou or Jean’s. “If you even think about hanging up on me I’ll drive over there faster than you did in Nepal.”

He laughed lightly, a cautious sound emerging from a sacred sort of place. “Okay.”

Even if all he heard was static, if neither of them spoke another word until their phones died or the morning came, it was better than being alone again. 

His eyes slid shut slowly, heavy with exhaustion in the same way his heartbeat slowed with sleep. He fell asleep with Aiko’s words still swimming in his mind, both spoken and unspoken. ‘Thank you’ and ‘I love you’ on the tip of his tongue but bitten down anyway. And Aiko was there despite it all, on the other end of the phone and probably ignoring the bed Ichirou slept in to rest on the couch so he wouldn’t be disturbed.

He’d get a crick in his neck for sleeping in his bathroom, but he’d slept in worse places before.

He didn’t have another dream the rest of the night.

It’s some sort of miracle that his phone wasn’t dead when he woke up. Though it’s probably some sort of miracle that he managed to sleep again at all.

He could hear Aiko’s steady breaths on the other end of the line and hung up the call, the edges of his mouth tugging relentlessly into something shaped the same way as a smile. Slowly, body protesting his movements, he wiggled his way out from his pinched position between the toilet and the tub. 

It was a habit he probably needed to train himself out of, always finding the smallest spaces and wedging himself in tight when he started to panic. The open spaces were too daunting, there were too many angles to cover, too much space for an attack to come from. In the middle of his panic, it was all he could do to make himself as small and insignificant as he could manage, to cramp himself into the smallest of spaces.

Jean had found him once tucked under their sink, knees bruising against the pipes and back in desperate need of chiropractic care. It had taken longer than it should have for him to get out of that one, and since Jean had taken to locking up most of the lower cupboards.

It wasn’t as if Abram couldn’t get into them, but if he was panicking enough to look for somewhere to hide he wasn’t going to waste time trying to pick locks.

So far, and it had been nearly four years, it had worked well. The spot between the toilet and the tub was a favourite, on even ground with clambering into the actual tub. As was the space between the TV stand and the wall. 

On nights when it was Russia he dreamed of, he’d taken to laying flat on his stomach under his bed, though Jean hadn’t been around for any of those dreams yet.

That spot was undiscovered by his family.

He gazed at his tub for a moment, then leveled a look at his shower. With the stiffness in his upper back and neck and the cramping all too apparent in his thighs, it would be best to take a shower or bathe and try to get work done in the hours he had between now and the goodbye brunch Rou had insisted on.

But the streams of anxiety skipping stones in his chest were still too close to the surface to be comfortable. He pressed the pads of each finger to his thumb in quick succession, running through the pattern again and again.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 

He’d gone for runs in worse conditions than a little soreness from sleeping in the wrong place.

He changed quickly, back muscles twinging as he bent to slip into his running shorts. He layered his running shirt over his custom dri-fit, and was lacing his shoes all within the first minute after he’d made his choice.

It was only when he was out the door of his apartment and halfway down the stairs that he realized he’d grabbed the only not black dri-fit he owned.

It wasn’t much of a difference really, but Aiko insisted the dark green of it made his hair look more like copper and flames. He supposed it probably clashed a little with the dark purple top.

There were ten of them total, nine in pitch dark black and the one lonely forest green one Aiko had ordered without telling him. Taking notice of it now, he was fairly certain it was only the third or fourth time he’d worn this one. Impressive considering he wore one constantly.

It was only in recent days that he’d begun to take them off when he slept, though that habit would be changing now he was going deep cover.

There were too many scars that he wouldn’t be able to explain away so easily.

He shook the thoughts away before his skin could start to itch under his scars, and lost himself in the monotony of the run. 

There weren’t too many people on the streets so early, considering this was New York he wasn’t sure that really said too much. He passed by other runners, people walking their dogs, heading out on their commute to work. 

Each footfall on the pavement was familiar and distinct. The same streets, the same shops, the same faces even.

Monotony was a rare thing in his life and he wasn't sure he cared for it outside of his runs at all.

It was nearly two hours when he wound up back up the apartment, giving him just enough time to dye his hair, shower and change before leaving again to meet with Aiko and Ichirou for brunch. 

As much as he hated wigs, he wasn’t particularly fond of hair dye either.

He’d never really liked his natural hair. He understood, conventionally, that he was fairly attractive. He understood that in the way people reacted to him, in the way Aiko fussed over his appearance at times, and the way his brothers made jabs at how ‘pretty’ he was. That last hasn't happened in a while, not since the word started bringing around panic attacks aggressive enough to shake the Earth and require a handful of stitches in their wake.

But when Abram looked in the mirror, he saw his father. His hair had more of a curl to it, he supposed, and after all the bouts of dyeing it was certainly textured differently. But the colours were identical. 

The issue with dyeing it wasn’t the colour change, he rather liked that bit, but he detested the smell. Before Jean went into the Nest they’d do it together, with lit candles and a bottle of floral perfume ready to go. And afterward they’d be sure to make something aromatic for dinner, usually one of their favourite curries or some sort of braised meat.

Aiko liked to help too, and he was grateful for it now that he had to do it alone, but with the baby on the way and how tight the schedule had been for this mission, there hadn’t been the time for it.

He put the contacts in first, a muddy brown that was both dark enough and thick enough of a lens to hide the haunted blue of his natural eyes. When he’d blinked them into place he turned to the mirror, box dye already mixed and waiting.

The application was soothing, in the same way aloe lotions on sunburns were soothing. It eased an ache in him that was always present when he caught his reflection. Pretending to be someone else, who wasn’t a Wesninski or a Hatford or a Wraith, it made breathing a little more natural.

He painted the coal dark dye onto the loose curls of his hair until it was all saturated and goopy. He peeled the gloves off his hands, stuck a plastic bag over it—mostly to keep the dye from staining anything—and used the twenty-five minutes it would need for the dye to take to pack his things.

All of his remaining dri-fits, save the one he was going to need to wear today, went first, followed by three of his running shorts and two of his shirts. He squeezed them into the duffel that held his exy gear and tied the laces on his running shoes to the strap of the bag. It took up far less space and was one less thing to carry around.

The rest wasn’t much harder. Ichirou had already made it quite clear that he would have an array of things already waiting for him in the apartment that had been rented out in Neil Josten’s name. He used his other duffel, and packed only his favourites. His softest jeans, his nicest shirts. They were all rather dark, blacks and greys and shades of cool colours only a few degrees lighter than black, warm tones not much lighter than those. 

His sweaters took longer. When it came to long sleeves, button-down and t-shirts he wasn’t picky outside of what fit well and was still breathable over his dri-fit, but his sweaters were more valued. Most of them were knit, thick, and lovely. He packed away one hoodie for the sake of it but spent most of his time combing through his sweaters to find the softest and the favourites.

He knew Ichirou would be loading the apartment with more of them. It had bothered Abram for the longest time that the others were so intent on spending their money on him, but if they wanted to spoil him with the things he actually liked?

Who was he to complain about that?

Well…

Who was he to complain about it for years?

Just when the smell of the dye was getting to be too much the timer he’d set on his phone went off. He was glad to note that his internal clock had reset after last night. He’d lost enough time between then and on his run to be tense about it.

He started up the shower and peeled the plastic bag off his head, shoving it down near the bottom of the trash. He’d be leaving for upwards of a year and he didn’t think the dye would still reek when he got back but he wasn’t going to chance it.

He stripped efficiently, avoiding looking at any of his scars while he could avoid it, and left his clothes in the hamper. Either they sat and waited, in which case he’d probably just throw them out, or someone would come round to make sure he hadn’t left anything out or behind that could spoil and they’d take care of it then.

Belongings packed and dye overwhelming his senses, Abram stepped into the shower gladly.

The water was just this side of too hot, stinging the open scratches on his forearms in a fresh reminder of the violent panic he’d stumbled into last night. 

He hissed lowly, and took them in. He wouldn’t need any stitches, but once he’d finished in the shower he’d need to put on some antibacterial cream and wrap them up. He could probably manage fine on his own, but they would likely be a little bulky under the dri-fit.

Turning his attention away from his scratched-up arms, he lathered his body with the Tangerine body soap Jean had always favoured. Until they’d started all living together full time, Abram had never really bothered with scented soaps and the like, but he’s taken to just using whatever kind Jean got. He knew that Ichirou had done the same thing for a while, but while Rou had branched out and started playing with his own preferences, Abram had never bothered. Whatever Jean bought was always in the bathroom anyway, and the Frenchman got the hint quick enough to just start buying it in bulk.

Truthfully, it smelled like the closest thing to a home he’d ever really had. 

He avoided his arms as he went, gentle over the scars that were agitated from the bitter cold of an April run. He’d last scraped them out a few days ago, and he knew Jean would chastise him if he knew he hadn’t been doing it as frequently as he should, but he didn’t have the energy for it today.

The aftereffects of the nightmare were still heavy in his shoulders and his mind, leaving him vaguely foggy and distracted.

The heat relaxed his muscles and he climbed out of the spray with a reluctant sigh. There was only so much time in the day. It would have been a dream to stay under the pressure of the water, letting the water chase away the soreness and the aches of sorrow that still clung to him.

He dried systematically, even with the hair dye and contacts he avoided looking in the mirror other than to check that his hair was black through and through. Standing in his boxers and still keeping his gaze away from the mirror, he snatched up the expensive scar cream he’d used for years and massaged it in quickly. He was well aware of the time ticking past and the fact that he’d be cutting it close if he took much longer, but there wasn’t much he could do to rush this.

Dressing was easy. 

His favourites all packed away he slipped into a dri-fit, dark jeans, and a navy cable knit sweater Mia had bought him last year. He laced on his heavy boots and was ready to go. He checked his sheathes, both stitched into the waistband of his jeans and the ones customized to sit snug around his forearms and ankles. 

He wouldn’t be able to carry his knives on his person during the flight. Ichirou had very adamantly promised that any and all knives and firearms Abram wanted at PSU simply had to be packed into a bag and handed over at brunch. He’d have someone drive it down to the apartment so they’d be waiting when Abram got there.

He listened for the most part, his favourite blades and guns already in a small backpack. He slipped his sheathes in too, now he didn’t need them, but he kept one knife on his hip for now.

Abram knew Ichirou would take one look at his small weapons bag and send down half an arsenal to join, but he trusted he wouldn’t need it.

Out of things to do, and without reason to delay, he slung his duffel over his shoulder, grabbing the backpack and the duffel containing all the freshly bought Exy gear in his other hand.

And then he was done, looking around the apartment and feeling strangely like he should be saying goodbye. 

The apprehension was a new feeling. Most missions like this were easy, he went in, played a part, and when he’d gotten what he needed or was called out he just disappeared.

But this one had his skin crawling and tight, feeling a little too much like a cage to be comfortable. He knew what it was, rationally, but it was alarming all the same.

Neil Josten wasn’t a far thing from the truth.

Well, Abram wasn’t exactly the truth either.

Names were a tricky thing really. There was something to a name that shaped a person, or something to a person that shaped a name. 

He’d been born Nathaniel, and Nathaniel was a terrifying thing. He was cold and calculated and had learned before he knew much else how to simply not feel anything.

But he’d been Abram at the same time. Abram was the version that knew how to feel, but didn’t know how to show that. Abram was the version that did what had to be done, but felt the guilt of it later.

He’d grown into Reisu. Another beast entirely. The Wraith was all the wicked things of Nathaniel without any of the humanity. The Wraith did a job, without any regard for anything else.

He’d stepped into a thousand names since, played all the different roles he’d been asked. That was what came of being raised into nothing. Even Nathaniel, even Abram, they were constructions. Assembled by the people who called him by the name. Nathaniel was what his father expected him to be, Abram what his family did.

At his core, he wasn’t sure there really was a truth of who he was.

But Neil Josten sat in there somewhere. He was all the parts of Abram that were good, all the parts of Nathaniel that were resilient. He had enough of someone like Alex that he could be personable and charismatic if he needed to be, but he was like Oliver in that he’d rather exist unseen.

Neil Josten wasn’t different enough to be comfortable.

He looked around the apartment again, trying to find traces of himself in it, to find a truth that wouldn’t be there.

His room had never been anything special, empty walls, everything kept as plain as it could be. And it had been Jean who decorated the rest of the apartment sparsely before he’d had to leave. French abstracts on the walls, couches with pillows that matched the curtains and the rug. Dark wood floors and cabinets to match. 

It was the family photos that Abram lingered on now. 

The four of them at varying ages in countries scattered across the globe. As he looked now he nearly laughed. There wasn’t a single photo where at least one of them wasn’t bruised or beaten in some way or another. Not a single photo where they were all unscathed and unburdened. But in each and everyone there were grinning faces and teasing expressions. The upward quirk of lips, and the bright shine of happy eyes. 

That was a truth, he supposed. Or as close to it as he could get.

His phone rang, and he hardly spared a glance to check who was calling before he answered.

“ I’m not late ,” he said in quick Korean.

He heard Aiko grumbling about the fairness in speaking languages that not everyone understood before Ichirou answered in terribly accented Korean himself.

“ We’re outside .”

“What?” Abram reverted back to English now, no need for caution in languages if no one else was there to listen.

“You don’t use your car, and it’s not fun to take the subway with so many bags,” Aiko spoke, and he could hear her dislike of his use of the subway as clearly as anything.

He clicked his tongue. “The both of you are fools.”

“When you get attacked by a high addict riding your precious subway, neither of us will visit you in the hospital,” Ichirou decided. “Now get down here.”

Abram listened, leaving his apartment and locking up after himself. “First, what gives you the idea that I’d go to a hospital? And second, if I did, I certainly wouldn’t want you to visit, Rou, if anything it’d make me wish the addict had just taken me out.” His voice echoed a little in the stairwell and he struggled a little to shift around the bags he was carrying while keeping the phone pressed to his ear. “Aiko can visit, but only once she promises to make your smelly ass sleep on the couch.”

Aiko’s laugh was feather-light and sun bright and her witty Arabic was nothing short of sensational in the face of Ichioru’s offended grumbling. “ I’ll be sure to bring you biscuits and leave him with the ratty blankets. ”

Abram scoffed. “ As if you’ve ever owned anything ‘ratty’ in your entire life .”

“What did we say about speaking languages others can’t understand, hm?” Ichirou complained.

Abram hung up the phone mostly accidentally as he shouldered his way out through the stairwell entrance. The car was there waiting, as he’d expected it would be.

He caught Aiko shoving Ichirou’s arm before the Japanese man climbed out to snatch the weapons bag from Abram.

“That can go in the back seat with you,” he advised, walking to the trunk of the car. “This I’m putting in the trunk. Are you still carrying?”

Abram nodded. “I’ve got a single stiletto at my hip.”

“Side?” Ichirou asked.

“Left.”

“Cross draw?”

Abram scoffed. “You’re fully aware I’m ambidextrous, but if it would please you I can say yes.”

Ichirou leveled him an unamused glare that Abram raised a cocky brow in the face of. It was a normal conversation for them. Ichirou liked to know what Abram carried where, a few disastrous injuries and traumatized doctors had made it essential, and Abram loved to tease Ichirou for never being able to master the use of both his hands.

They could go back and forth on it all day, and Aiko knew that.

“I’m fucking hungry, boys, get a move on.”

Abram nudged his shoulder against Ichirou’s with a sly grin curving his lips. “How’s she been?”

Ichirou leaned into the contact, and Abram was flooded with the warmth of his affection. 

It was easy sometimes to slip into a more lethal mindset around Ichirou. They’d been brothers since they were boys, but they’d also been coworkers—in the loosest sense of the word. When they were alone there was an easy routine, Abram and Rou, brothers and friends; family. But there was a shift when they walked out the door of the apartments.

They both watched too carefully, were more defensive of each other. They’d spent too long defending each other that it was next to impossible to step out into the world and not play bodyguard.

“I might have to move to PSU with you at this rate,” Ichirou grumbled. “She won’t stop making biscuits and every time I breathe it’s ‘too loud’ and bothers her.”

Abram laughed lightly. It tasted like sunshine and strawberries. “You can sleep on the couch.”

Ichirou winked dramatically, scrunching the entire side of his face in effect. “I’ll make sure it’s a wonderful pull-out then.”

Abram snorted, and at Ichirou’s scandalized expression he winked back and slipped into the back seat. 

“ What did you say to him? ” Aiko asked, Arabic smooth on her tongue. “ He looks like he’s accidentally wandered into a strip club again .”

Abram’s smirk was a sharp and dangerous thing, eyes gleaming. “ We just talked about getting a pull-out .”

Aiko rolled her eyes. “ Must you torment him all the time ?”

“ He makes the sweetest faces ,” Abram argued. “Besides, you think it’s just as funny as I do.”

She met his gaze in the mirror and her smile was just as sharp as his. “You are such a younger brother.”

Ichirou’s door opened, and with a more composed expression, the man himself slid into his seat. “Everyone’s okay with Cora’s?” he asked.

Aiko hummed her agreement and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek, that serpent sharp smile still curving her expression. “Alright, love, be careful when you pull out, yes?”

Ichirou’s foot stuttered on the gas and the car jerked in place as he choked.

Aiko’s laughter was light as a flute, playing the high notes of a lilting song. Ichirou sputtered next to her, wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked. Abram let himself chuckle lightly in the back seat, a smirk splitting his face as he watched his family giggling and choking on the joke.

“Are you alright, Rou?” Abram drawled, leaning between the front seats, arms folded on the center bar. “You look a little flushed, have you got a fever?”

“You’re a plague,” Ichirou muttered. 

Abram hummed lightly. “There are worse things, I suppose.”

Aiko cried twice at breakfast; once because she couldn’t finish her waffles and they never tasted as good reheated as they did fresh, and once when Ichirou offered her his extra fruits before he gave them to Abram.

It was, in short, nothing other than a fiasco. Which was exactly the way Abram liked it. He was well aware that his family wasn’t the conventional sort. They’d grown up extremely detached from the rest of the world, and by the time they’d been tossed together they had no concept of normality. He vaguely missed the company of Jean, who’d have been participating equally in the comfortably jaded sarcastic quips Abram let loose, but it was good all the same.

“Right,” Ichirou started. “Now you’re not allowed to be mad at me for this.”

Abram’s eyes snapped up to Ichirou’s from where they’d been looking over the flights as they flickered over the airport message boards. He had a duffel swinging from each arm, and he’d given up his stiletto after a drawn-out argument concerning the airport security. Abram was still very much of the impression that he could get the dagger onto the plane unnoticed, Ichirou was adamant that they were not going to make the attempt.

“I hate it when you say things like that.”

Aiko’s smile was small but bright. “He has a point, it’s not entirely fair of you to dictate how he’s allowed to feel, is it?”

Ichirou ran a large hand over his face and grumbled something low enough it was swallowed up in the noise of the airport. “I’m calling in my Trump then,” he decided. “So there will be no arguing, no Vetoing, and no further discussion to be had.” Ichirou pulled the small card out of his pocket.

Abram furrowed his brow and accepted the card quietly. He’d collected well, sitting on his own Trump still and both his Vetoes and one each of Aiko’s and Ichirou’s. It was a game they’d been playing for ages, though it was less of a game now and more a way to dissuade arguments between them. 

“Fine,” Abram muttered, slipping the Trump into his wallet beside his own. “What is it then?”

Ichirou chewed the inside of his cheek in a tell he’d long since mastered. It only came out around this group, the inner circle. It set Abram on edge immediately, coupled with the request he wouldn’t be mad…

“You didn’t,” Abram started. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Ichirou winced. “You’ll be joined on the mission-”

“You son of a-”

“You have a habit of going off the grid when you go deep cover-”

“I cannot fucking believe-”

“So Einstein will be residing full time in the apartment unit and attending PSU as upper-year students-”

“I am not a child , you know I am more than capable-”

“I called Trump,” Ichirou snapped.

Abram locked his jaw around another insult, the betrayal souring in his gut like spoiled milk. If he said anything now he’d regret it by the end of the day. He wasn’t willing to go that far.

“If it was Jean you wouldn’t complain,” Ichirou continued. “They’re your people, we know they’re loyal-”

Abram bit down on his tongue. 

“They know about the mission concerning your father, they’ve been filled in on everything regarding the Day mission. Their job is to stay out of the way and provide back up when you request it. That’s it.”

Abram snarled. “Their job is to babysit me,” he hissed. “Is this because of Russia? You haven’t let me deep cover since, and now you’re sending me in with a task force that I don’t need .”

Ichirou sighed, and his hand came up to rub at his face again.

“You have been taking more risks than you need to-”

“I get the job done.”

“I know that,” Ichirou stressed. “Ram, I know that. But you’re going to get yourself killed if you keep going this way.”

Abram stepped away from the hand that Ichirou reached out to him and bared his teeth like a cornered feral thing.

Ichirou’s eyes were pained, his expression pinched with sadness and sorrow. “I called Trump, Ram, it’s non-negotiable.” He cleared his throat and nodded once. “They’re your team, you’ll have no problems with them. Go inside, they’re waiting for you.”

Abram shook his head and swallowed back his fury. “This is ridiculous.”

“You’re my brother,” Ichirou said, equal parts sharp and soft. “I will always do what is necessary to keep you safe.”

Abram turned his gaze on Aiko, who’d been quiet and distanced for the entirety of the scuffle between her ‘best boys’. She managed a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes and held out a questioning hand for a goodbye.

Caging his anger, Abram stepped into her light embrace.

“ You know he means well ,” she muttered in his ear. “ He’s only ever tried to keep you safe .”

Abram stepped back and swallowed the tightness in his throat. “ I’ve never needed him to .”

Her eyes were haunted things, dark and swimming with shadows he’d put there. It made the knot in his throat harder to swallow, soured his anger until it tasted like grief again; like hurt.

“ Oh, petal, we only worry because we care .”

He turned his gaze away from her, ignoring Ichirou standing by and opting to study the toes of his boots instead. “ I know .”

“Ram…” Ichirou muttered. “ Otōto , I’m sorry.”

Abram nodded sharply and stepped away from them both. “I’ve got to go.”

“Abram,” Ichirou called as Abram turned and walked away.

“ Let him go ,” Aiko advised in gentle Japanese. “ He needs time, his trust has been betrayed. ”

He couldn’t see them now, but he heard Ichirou’s tight response. “ I can’t lose my brother, Aiko. I can’t. ”

Aiko’s words chased him through the closing door, an exact echo of his own stepping in the shadow of his wake.

“ I know .”

Abram stewed in his hurt for the duration of the flight, decidedly ignoring the Einstein crew and running over the details of Neil Josten that he’d long since ingrained.

It was hard to admit that Ichirou may have had a point, but as the plane grew closer to PSU there was an itch of panic that settled over him. The last time he’d been deep cover like this, completely entrenched in another identity, he’d been Leo Ostrovsky.

He’d done plenty of undercover work in the year and a half since, he was the best at it, but there hadn’t been anything as involved. He’d been able to step out of whatever identity he wore at the end of every day, and though there have always been risks, they’d never been quite so high.

He was going to be Neil Josten. Nineteen years old, born in LA but raised in New York, emancipated at 15, estranged from all living family members, financially supported by the dead parents that had never really loved him anyway.

Neil Josten was the kind of kid you didn’t look at twice when you passed him on the street, and he preferred it that way. He was good at going unnoticed, he was good at being normal and polite and ordinary. But he had a wicked sharp mouth that he knew how to use, and when he needed to be noticed it was impossible to miss him.

It was when they’d reached the apartment complex, conveniently the same one that the PSU Coach lived in, that Abram opted to acknowledge the Einstein crew, shedding Abram off and buttoning up Nathaniel’s shirt. It would be easier to get through this first day here when he wasn’t stumbling out of a near panic attack.

“Whatever it is Ichirou has you reporting to him, you’ll report it to me as well,” he stated, cold eyes moving across the team he’d been saddled with. “None of you have worked deep cover before, so I expect you’ll follow my lead. This is not a job we can afford to mess up. Clear?”

Elias’ hand rose slowly, and Nathaniel raised a brow.

“Are you gonna be this pissy the whole time, boss? Or is it only ‘cause the Lord went and pissed you off?”

Nathaniel scowled. “Get your ass inside, Elias.”

Elias nodded and loaded his arms with the carry-on bags they’d brought, leaving Nathaniel’s duffels for him to carry after learning not to touch his things early on.

“Yes sir.” 

Nathaniel watched as Elias shuffled into the building without help and fixed his gaze on Mia and Charlie next. Both girls watched him with knowing eyes and he kept his own expression blank and untelling.

“Do the two of you need something from me?”

They exchanged a glance before Charlie leaned a little further forward. “Ichirou mentioned that you’d be upset that we were assigned to help out. We just wanted to confirm that it wasn’t us you were upset with.”

Nathaniel hummed. “No, I’ve no problem with you or your work.”

His problem was Ichirou refusing to trust him. Except that’s not what it really was. Ichirou trusted him to get the job done. He always had. The only job Nathaniel hadn’t finished was the Russia mission, and it hadn’t been him to make the call that ended it.

Ichirou didn’t trust Nathaniel with himself.

He was upset, because over the course of a flight and an examination of his psyche that he really didn’t want to have, he wasn’t so sure Ichirou was wrong about that assumption.

Mia grinned. “Pizza for dinner? I’ll get that gross ass dipping sauce you love.”

Nathaniel let the blank facade crack, allowing his lips to twitch up into a mockery of one of Abram’s smiles. “Order extra, I’m going to head out for a check first and I won’t be sleeping tonight.”

“Is that the best way to start one of these?” Charlie pressed. “Kicking the sleep schedule to the curb before day one’s officially started?”

Nathaniel shrugged and shoulder his bags, beginning to lead both girls inside. “It’s necessary, I’ve got to get the Coach’s attention somehow.”

“Well yeah,” Charlie agreed. “But we all know you sleep like shit on a good day already and-”

“What the fuck.”

Nathaniel had stopped dead, both girls sidestepping quickly to look past his shoulders at whatever had caught his attention. Sitting pretty and shining in the parking lot when Nathaniel knew for a fact it had been left in an underground parking in New York, was his stupid fucking car.

“Oh, this is good,” Mia cackled. “Tell me I can record the call when you go off at him for sending down the car, I’m begging.”

Nathaniel grit his teeth and scowled. “There won’t be a call, there will be a stabbing.”

 “Oh, even better,” Mia agreed. “I can film that instead.”

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Nathaniel fumed. “I can’t believe the fucking audacity of him.”

Charlie hummed casually, but her amusement was clear as day on her face. “Honestly, we should be thankful he didn’t buy a whole new car entirely.”

“Oh, could you imagine?” Mia gasped. 

Nathaniel took one last look at the car he’d left behind and stormed into the building.

Ichirou had of course taken the liberty of getting them the best unit the place had to offer, a sad attempt at a penthouse unit that had three rooms but still only the only bathroom. It’s been fully furnished by Ichirou already, touches of Aiko’s flair strewn throughout. The couches were supple leather, and the largest one just had to be a pull-out. There were fluffy rugs and high back stools that spun around. 

Nathaniel gave the unit a quick once over before dropping both his bags in the room that was meant to be his. It was the closest one to the entrance, across from Charlie and Mia’s shared room and next to Elias’ own.

This he knew Aiko had taken over, the dark earth tones echoing the closet she and Jean had assembled over the years. The closet itself was stocked with clothes that were soft to look at and comfortably dark. He checked for the weapons stache next and was pleased to see that in addition to the wicked knives and assault rifles Ichirou had sent, his own knives and handguns had safely arrived.

Satisfied, he tucked his things away and left the room, door locking behind him and key swinging on the keychain he’d found waiting.

Elias was already affixing a PlayStation to the TV and met Nathaniel’s curious appraisal with a bright grin and a challenging shine in his eyes. “Heard you’re going for recon?” Nathaniel nodded. “When you get back we can go a round on this thing, Lordy sent us some interesting games.”

Nathaniel tilted his head and considered. “Figured he only would have sent that building one he likes.”

Elias laughed sharply, a brave barking sound. “He did send that one, but he gave us a few others, The Last of Us, God of War, The Witcher, Spider-Man, COD-”

“Did he send over Assassin's Creed?” Charlie called from the kitchen.

Elias knocked over the stack of games piled up and shoved a few titles around. “Valhalla,” he called back. “And the newest Resident Evil.”

“I recognized maybe two of those names,” Nathaniel reminded them. “Last time I used one of these was on the stakeout we did a few months back.”

“For shame!” Mia sobbed, her voice echoing out from the kitchen as well.

Elias shrugged and started stacking up the games again. “We’ll teach you better, boss.”

“Right,” Nathaniel agreed. “Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone.”

Elias saluted his agreement and Nathaniel didn’t wait for the girl to respond before veering out of the apartment and settling into an easy jog. He had a lot of ground to cover and a lot of spots to map out before he’d be anything close to comfortable about this mission.

Chapter Text

Abram sat on the couch of the team lounge waiting for Wymack to show up. He’d texted Ichirou just under an hour ago, complaining about the car in one message and updating him on the plan in the other. He hadn’t apologized, or acknowledged that there’d been any sort of fight between them at all. 

Aiko chastised them for it relentlessly, but it was the way they did things. If they tried to resolve their fights, they only seemed to get more heated. The both of them had always been too stubborn for their own good, and without Jean to referee them it was best they ignored there were any problems at all. It’s what they’d been doing about what went down in Russia, it was what they did every time Abram complained things weren’t moving fast enough on the Butcher mission.

Ichirou still hadn’t answered and Abram was debating giving him a quick call when the lights cut on and the Coach was standing in the doorway blinking at him. His gaze was layered with confusion, but there was a remarkable amount of calculation going on, something he hadn’t quite expected from the Coach. It made sense really, that a man so determined to save ‘broken souls’ with second chances would be good at seeing and seeing.

He waved with a tilting of two fingers, more a mockery of a salute than anything else, and settled into the bones of Neil Josten, barely-there New York accent and everything. “Hello,” he started. “Nice to meet you.”

“Sure,” Wymack muttered, eyes narrowing and expressing a mix between annoyance and suspicion. “Who are you?”

“Neil Josten,” he introduced himself, keeping still in his seat. Another commonality then, suspicion of men that are old enough to be his father. Some anxieties needled their way into nearly all the identities he knew. “I’m your replacement striker sub.”

Wymack took a long moment before he answered. A moment in which he was not so subtly studying Neil. 

Let him look. Neil didn’t particularly care what the Coach saw in the end. So long as he kept his distance and Neil got what he wanted, everything else could be managed.

“I beg to differ,” Wymack argued, folding two thick, tattooed arms across his chest. It wasn’t an innately threatening gesture, but Neil’s father was too similar to Nathaniel’s, they’d both felt the sting of needless abuse. Wymack just happened to be a big scary-looking dude.

Wymack caught the way Neil’s eyes lingered too long on his folded arms, and he didn’t miss the way Neil leaned a little further into the couch to get away from him.

Neil ignored the attention and plowed on, using that silver tongue to snag himself a spot on the team. He could sit still, keep his head down, but he could bark and bite when he needed to. And he needed to sing a pretty song.

“You’re running a little low on options there, Coach,” Neil reminded the man. “If I were you, I’d at least want to know if the kid volunteering to play for your team was any good. Don’t want to turn away a valuable asset, do you?”

Asset.

Abram hated the word, but Neil didn’t have any sort of repulsion for it. He’d said it now, at any rate. He had to stand by it.

But still. 

His skin crawled with it. Memories that belonged to a different name and a different life tripping him until the skin of Neil felt too loose around the hollow bones of his foundation. Asset, hissed in his ear in his mother’s fading British accent. Asset, giggling across Lola’s blood-polished teeth. Asset, in his father’s smooth Baltimore drawl. Asset, asset, asset.  

Carved from and in his skin. Hollowing himself until identity was an imagined thing. He could change his entire person like shrugging on a different jacket. Kill a man without staining a single item of clothing. Be a thousand places and have a thousand faces and never be known by anyone.

That was the cost of being an asset.

He was invaluable because he had no value. He was remarkable because he wasn’t. Known because he was unknown.

He was nothing, and in the criminal world that made him everything.

Reisu felt like a shock of cold water. Itching under his skin where Nathaniel and Abram and all the other names were waiting and writhing and ready.

He centered himself. 

His name was Neil Josten, soon to be a striker on David Wymack’s Palmetto State Foxes. He was the emancipated son of two now dead abusive parents and at odds with most of his remaining family. He had brothers that he’d been removed from but had reconnected with and was close to, an adopted father that had taken his eldest brother in when they’d been separated. 

And right now, he was sitting in the lounge of the Foxhole Court trying to win over a bleeding heart of a Coach.

“Listen here, kid-” 

Neil interrupted quickly, “It’s Neil.” As it turned out, kid was going to have to be one of Neil’s trigger words. It hit far too close to home for Abram not to react.

He’d spent too long being seen as a kid, too long being underestimated. For too long people had tried to victimize him, and for too long he’d been a victim. 

Children were victims. 

Kids were victims. 

They were young and small and weak. They were defenseless and immature and stupidly naive. Abram had never been allowed to be a child or a kid. To be young or naive or immature. But he’d been defenseless before, and he’d been weak before, and he was still small but not in the same way now.

Wymack was an adult man, old enough to be his father, or old enough to be someone his father might employ. 

Neil wasn’t Abram, he wasn’t supposed to know about the Butcher or his men or what they did to children and kids who were defenseless or weak or small. But Neil knew his own sorts of monsters. Abusive fathers and abusive mothers who weren’t so far away from how Nathan and Mary were. Neil knew what it was to be a kid who didn’t know how to fight back in any way that mattered.

Kid was a word neither of them could find the strength to listen to.

Wymack gave him a quick scan, the sort Abram was used to getting from Ichirou or Jean. Like he’d noticed the discomfort and was cataloguing it. Looking for a source, trying to isolate it and avoid it in the future. 

He didn’t trust it so much coming from the Coach.

“Alright then,” Wymack conceded. 

And it was too easy. It was too accepting and Neil wasn’t sure that he trusted it. 

“Neil,” Wymack continued. “You are aware you’ve broken into my court, right? You’re trespassing on University property right now; all I have to do is call the cops and your scrawny ass is in jail for the next 5-10.”

Neil tilted his head to the side, inquisitive but bordering on mocking. He wasn’t the sort of person who could be intimidated by casual threats, even when they came from someone he was wary of. He’d spent too much of his life in very real danger for a threat to mean much of anything to him. “Are you gonna call the cops?”

“I’m not sure you’re getting the point here,” Wymack said, avoiding the question in a way that was more than answering enough.

Neil shrugged. “I’ll get arrested if you call the cops, nice threat. But you’re not gonna call them, are you?” Neil tried to relax again, but he couldn’t quite get over the accidentally aggressive folded arms of Wymack. He wasn’t as muscular as DiMaccio or even Nathan, but Neil’s issue with men was supposed to come from a regular old asshole of a dad. Wymack looked enough like one of those. He corrected himself at the shifting in Wymack’s posture. “I mean, that’s sort of what your whole thing is, isn’t it? You’re supposed to take in kids like me when nobody else wants us.”

Too much truth in that. Too much truth in Neil really.

“You-” Wymack cut himself off, his suspicion overridden with a surprised curiosity.

Neil shrugged again. “Are you calling them?”

“If I was going to call the cops, you don’t think I would have done it by now?” Wymack countered.

Abram wouldn’t trust it, and Neil didn’t really trust it either, but Wymack looked nothing if not sincere. He looked curious and concerned and that was going to have to be good enough for now. 

Neil offered up the smallest of smiles, nothing bigger than the right corner of his mouth twitching up and pulling at his cheek. It was enough for Wymack to notice it though.

“Can I call you Coach then?”

Wymack laughed at that; an abrasive sound, a smoker's cough. Neil could feel it in his chest and he let his smile stretch a little further.

“Listen, kid- Neil.” Wymack self-corrected and Neil was as close to surprised as he could be at how quickly Wymack had picked up on Neil’s dislike for the word. More surprised still by his willingness to avoid it just for the sake of making a strange kid he didn’t know a little bit more comfortable. Wymack unfolded his arms, and Neil tracked the movement carefully, letting himself lean a little more forward when there was no apparent hostility in the older Coach. “If you’ve got some sort of problem there are better places you can go for help, like the cops.”

Neil’s smile was wiped clean away, and he threw up walls he’d fashioned from brick and mortar overnight. Let the Coach see those walls, let him get a good look at the locks and chains and barbed wire keeping him out.

“I didn’t come here for help ,” Neil clarified, letting a bit of Nathaniel’s sharpness creep into his voice. “I came here because I want to play, and there isn’t another team stupid enough to take me.”

“And I am?”

Neil raised a single brow, and instead of a smile playing on his lips it was some version of a smirk. “Coach, your whole team is a bunch of kids like me.”

Wymack considered that, Neil could see him considering it. Running the new information over and over like he was trying to find the holes in his story.

“Do you need me to detail my history for you?” Neil asked, and it was as sincere as it was mocking. He could do it if he had to, it wasn’t a truth so there wasn’t much harm in it, but it wasn’t who Neil Josten was either. “I meet your standards, my parents won’t be a problem for you, I’ve been on my own for ages. I just want to play.” He met the Coach’s eyes for what wasn’t the first time but certainly felt like it. He’d been busy watching Wymack’s movements, keeping track of any hostility or aggression in his posture. He knew Wymack had seen him doing it, and he knew that boded well for him moving forward. But he needed an actual yes. “Will you let me play?”

“I don’t even know if you can play,” Wymack responded.

“Well that’s an easy fix,” Neil countered, nudging his duffel with the toe of his shoe. “Let me on the court and I can show you.”

Wymack considered him for a second. “Do you even need me to let you in?”

“Well clearly not, I got in here, didn’t I?” Neil felt a strange smile tugging at his lips, one that belonged to the Wraith as much as it did to Nathaniel. He scraped it from his face, it had no place being there. “I figured it’d be more polite to ask.”

Wymack scoffed and shook his head slowly, but he didn’t look mad, if anything he looked amused by it all. “What did I do in a past life to deal with bastards like you on the daily?” he grumbled.

Neil wasn’t sure if he was meant to hear, or if he was meant to respond, but he invited himself to anyway. “Probably something really nasty,” he agreed. “Have you ever killed a man? That’ll probably do it.”

“Christ,” Wymack muttered, and the hand he ran through his hair and over his face was the same as Ichirou’s when he didn’t want to be amused but couldn’t help it. “Get changed then, I’ll meet you on the court.”

And because he was Neil Josten, and because at the end of the day Neil Josten was still just a boy who loved this sport more than anything, he grinned.

It wasn’t as if he’d really thought that Wymack would turn him away, especially not after the half-true crumbs of a tragic backstory he’d given up, but even still he wondered how someone could be so stupidly trusting so stupidly fast.

He’d never had that luxury, no matter what name he’d worn. Underneath the skin of whatever identity he donned, he’d never been able to just take someone's word for what it was. There was always another motive, always something for them to gain. As Nathaniel, it was a tool to use for himself, as Abram it was another wall his family had been forced to find a way around. As Reisu … well, what was Reisu if not something to be used? A monster made by monsters. A predator amongst prey.

He couldn’t shake it as he set up the cones to the first of the drills he was planning on running himself through. 

He understood that Wymack was a different man than he was. He understood that Neil was a different man than he was. But even Neil Josten was a prickly little bastard. He’d been hurt by enough imaginary people in his imaginary life that he knew how to keep people at arms’ length, even when they were embracing him the way this coach was.

Neil Josten was meant to be good at Exy, and Abram had spent the past three weeks bleeding himself out on the Exy court Ichirou had rented for him to make sure he was damn near perfect. And Neil Josten was smart enough to learn the Raven drills, and well, if those were supposed to be confidential it was nothing that Ichirou’s computer skills couldn’t easily evade. 

But neither Abram nor Neil Josten was stupid enough to perform the Raven drills he’d been killing himself to learn in front of the Foxes’ Coach.

So Neil placed the cones in almost, but not quite, the same pattern as he might have for the Raven drills. He cracked his neck once each way, rolling out his shoulders and wrapping his fingers around the stick of his racquet. 

He waited, imagining manipulating the ball through rebounds and plays so similar to the Ravens’ oh-so secret drills that anyone, including the high and mighty Kevin Day himself, would have to admit that Neil’s ability to play the game was well above most of the Foxes.

He was far too excited to be on a real Exy court. Anticipation and adrenaline had Neil bouncing on his toes, fingers twitching and tapping out a familiar pattern on his racquet in the same way Abram’s might when he knew that Aiko was coming over to show him a new muffin recipe.

It was a familiar feeling. Neil was a familiar person. 

It was alarming how easily he could be both Abram and Neil at the same time. How he could be a New York Exy junkie on par with Kevin Day, and the baked goods-loving British boy that hadn’t held a racquet since he was fifteen and fooling around on a court with his brothers. 

His other names were farther away and would take him reaching out for them to come to the surface. But Abram was right there, bubbling up on his own even when Neil was so prominently Neil. Abram was only just covered by a single layer of skin.

Their trauma, though it was meant to come from different enough pasts, manifested in the same sorts of ways. A wariness of older men, a need to be seen and forgotten but the inability to hold onto a too sharp tongue when pressed in the wrong ways.

He had enough patience, maybe that was Abram’s but it could have been Neil’s, to wait for Wymack to join him before he’d actually started in on the drills he’d set up and had been running in his mind. Every second that ticked past on his mental clock had his heart skipping a little quicker in his chest, turning his ribs into a line of hurdles waiting to be jumped in a race that hadn’t started yet.

Finally, when Neil thought his chest might just split open under the force of his heart beating, Wymack came strolling lazily through the hall. He set up shop at the court door, a clipboard folded in one large hand and held by his thigh as he leaned against the plexiglass.

Neil waited for all of half a beat to see if he’d say anything before he opened his own mouth. “Can I start?”

Wymack shrugged. “It’s your tryout, do whatever you want.”

He tilted his head and considered. Of all the people he’d ever been, he wasn’t sure any of them had ever been given explicit permission to do what they wanted. They’d all had to fight for that right. Neil Josten was the same sort of person.

He scoffed lightly. “I always do.”

And what he wanted? That was simple enough.

Neil shifted his grip on the racquet he’d purchased not yet a month ago. There’d been a decade of training once, seven years a backliner, and three years a striker. He’d been good, he’d been better than good. They’d wanted him to play for the Ravens once; he’d been on the same level as Day once. 

And then there’d been three weeks to bring it all back. He didn’t have all the skill he used to, but the weight of the racquet was a familiar thing, the way his body moved on a court was instinctive. Another month and he could be there again, by the end of the summer at the longest.

He ground the ball of his foot against the court floor, scooped a ball into the net of his racquet, and lost himself in the drills he’d scattered across the court.

Rebound.

Pivot. 

Catch.

Throw.

Duck.

Rebound.

Sprint.

Pivot.

Move, move, move.

His footwork was impeccable, though his best skills had always stemmed from his speed. His stickhandling could use some work, but even it was undeniably advanced with all things considered. He knew his strength and his stamina could surpass any of the Foxes; it was a side effect of Abram’s day job, he supposed.

He would always be better in a ring than on the court, he’d been born for one and he’d found the other along the way. 

Compared to the Foxes though, he was outstanding. Compared to Kevin Day or Riko Moriyama even he had a hell of a lot of work to do. He was enough of a threat that it would take some real work to get past him, especially if he’d been playing backliner. And after a whole summer under Day’s direction? After a summer playing with Minyard in the goal?

Wymack would be stupid not to take Neil on, and Neil was pretty sure they both knew that.

He stopped at the sharp bang on the plexiglass, involuntarily flinching at the sound of it. Letting the ball in his racquet clatter to the ground as the head of the racquet bounced off the floor, he switched his grip on the end of the stick so he might be able to swing it as a weapon. He turned in a fluid motion, his eyes leading the rest of his body around one hundred eighty degrees to face the three figures lingering at the door.

Wymack, Day, and Minyard.

What Abram liked most about Neil, and what Neil was all too happy to display now, was how little Neil cared about the way other people saw him. Nathaniel, Alex, Abram, Oliver, everyone he’d ever been had an image they’d been crafted in and an image they’d had to maintain. Neil’s was fuzzier. He was what he was, whether people chose to see that was their own choice.

The three people watching him now were the three people he was forced to care about, however. His spot on the team, the whole reason he’d been created, was in their hands.

“Oh,” Neil huffed, catching his breath as slowly as he could. “Hello.”

“Kevin, Andrew,” Wymack started. “This, apparently, is Neil Josten-” Neil raised his free hand like he was acknowledging his name on a roll call, fingers curled and lazy. “He wants to be our striker sub.”

“Does he?” Andrew asked. 

It was a mockery of mania. The manic-inducing pills that Andrew shouldn’t be on but was legally mandated to take were clean out of his system right now. He clearly hadn’t taken his morning dose just yet, but he also clearly didn’t want Neil to know that.

Neil noted it, tucked it away, and turned his gaze on Kevin instead.

The constipated expression on Day’s face was more interesting right now. His forehead was creased so badly Neil was almost tempted to try ironing it out, and his mouth was twisted in a painful version of a frown.

Neil raised an eyebrow at it and Kevin twitched with annoyance.

“Were those Raven drills?” he finally asked.

Neil looked over his shoulder at the cones he’d set up, as if he had no idea what he’d been working himself through, before turning back to the three of them with a light frown and pinched brows. “Raven drills aren’t public knowledge,” he countered.

Anyone worth their money would see that he never denied it, would poke at that before looking at anything else.

Kevin, apparently, was not one of those people.

“So all of that…” he gestured almost helplessly at the array of drills behind Neil. “You learned that where?”

Neil shrugged unhelpfully. “Family.”

Kevin nodded stupidly, but Wymack was frowning now. “Thought they were dead?”

Neil clicked his tongue. “Unfortunately not. What I said was ‘my parents won’t be a problem, I’ve been on my own for ages.’ They’re dead though, my parents. The rest of my family…” he shrugged again.

Wymack rubbed his face and sighed heavily. “Are you always like this?”

“Not always,” Neil admitted. “But I got your attention, didn’t I?”

“Oh Christ,” Wymack muttered. “You’re gonna end up like Andrew, aren’t you?”

Neil digested that, picked it apart, and soaked it up.

What Wymack must have meant, and really the only thing it made sense for him to mean, was that they were instigative little shits. And he wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right either, and Neil thought that had more to do with the misinformation out there about Andrew than the way he’d been portraying Neil Josten.

“I’m not sure which of us is supposed to be offended.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes, but the supposed-to-be manic grin stretched further. “You are, stupid,” he guided. “I’m crazy, don’t you know?”

Neil was hyped up on energy drinks and the adrenaline of the Exy court, but he could feel the hyperactive energy leaving him slowly. 

He examined Andrew thoroughly before he answered. The defensive body language, the way he held himself like a weapon, trying to be threatening enough that people stayed the hell away. It was a blend of Nathaniel and Abram, is what it was. A traumatized boy playing at monster because being anything else meant he was helpless.

“You’re really not.”

The grin faltered, slipping and sliding to leave an apathetic slate behind. But those eyes were expressive. It was all in a way Neil wasn’t sure anyone else would really notice, but he saw it there. Curiosity, amusement, intrigue.

“Oh, Coach, he’s interesting,” Andrew quipped, pulling the smile on like it had always been there. “Where’ve you been hiding him?”

“The lounge,” Neil answered. “You should visit me sometimes.”

Andrew’s gaze sharpened and it was Neil’s turn to offer up a smile. It was a sharp thing, a cruel thing. The wicked curve of his lips so they resembled the dangerous edge of a blade.

“This’ll go well,” Wymack sighed.

Neil wasn’t inclined to agree.

Kevin spoke up again, looking halfway like he wanted to grab his own racquet and join Neil out on the court. “We’re signing him, right?”

“Oh are we?” Andrew mocked. “How exciting.”

Wymack finally dropped his hand from where it had been partially covering his mouth and leveled another evaluating gaze on Neil. “We’ll talk with the rest of the team tomorrow at morning practice. Unless they’ve got a valid problem with it, I can’t see a reason why not.”

“You don’t think it’s odd, Coach?” Andrew tweased. Even still, he hadn’t taken his eyes off Neil yet. “Some rabbit off the street shows up with drills from the Ravens and we’re opening all our doors for him.”

Neil shrugged. “I don’t know the Raven drills, they’re supposed to be confidential. If they’re similar you’d have to ask my brothers about it.”

“Brothers?” Wymack echoed.

The smile Neil offered was a bitter thing. “Good luck with that one.”

“Right,” Wymack agreed. “Clean up your shit and get off my court, Josten.”

Neil’s shoulders went rigid at the command, but he nodded quickly. It was obvious enough if Wymack’s tired sigh and troubled gaze was anything to go by. Too obvious if the excited gleam in Andrew’s meant anything.

“Yes, Coach,” he muttered.

Three for three. 

Interested, curious, intrigued. 

Neil Josten was a puzzle enough for them all. A broken boy with a traumatic past that Wymack could try to save. An up-and-coming exy star that Kevin could devote all his attention to. An intricate and delicate web of half-truths and falsehood that Andrew could try his hand at detangling.

If Minyard managed to figure out who the hell he was, he’d have to give him a prize. 

He didn’t really know himself.

Andrew watched him clean the court. 

Kevin walked off with Wymack, and it was really a miracle no one had figured out those two were related yet, but Andrew had stayed. 

It wasn’t until Neil let himself off the court through the open door and made for the locker room where he’d left his duffel that Andrew moved, and even then it was only to follow after him. 

Neil wasn’t sweaty enough that he needed to shower, but he could if he wanted to. The shower stalls Wymack had installed had been a bit of a blessing to find when he’d been doing his research. It made the matter of his scars that much easier to deal with.

Well aware of Andrew’s gaze on his back, Neil stripped his armour off—noted the way Andrew’s clever eyes caught on the skin-tight dri-fit Neil didn’t remove—and stuffed his gear back in his duffel, pulling out his clothes and a towel. If nothing else, the showers would offer a reprieve from Andrew’s watch.

He showered quickly, even with the stalls there was no part of him that was comfortable taking off his dri-fit in a public space. 

He’d pulled his jeans back on, and they stuck to him a little more than they had before he’d run around and jumped in a shower but were soft enough that it wasn’t uncomfortable. The dri-fit was still clean enough it didn’t smell, but he’d be changing it the first chance he got back at the apartment. He’d have to have Ichirou order him more of them now he’d be practicing so frequently.

He considered his button-up for a minute, worried about the humidity of the room, but slipped it on regardless. He knew they would see the neck of the dri-fit and the ends of the sleeves despite the shirt being overtop, and he knew that Andrew was clever enough to piece it all together sooner than he would have liked, but he didn’t need to go around without the button up and parade the tight-fitting dri-fit anyway.

He was toweling off his hair as he walked back out into the locker room, unsurprised to find both Andrew and Kevin waiting. They were easy to ignore while he laced up his boots and stuffed his towel back into his bag, less so when he noticed Andrew had stationed himself in front of the door.

He might have considered himself saved from saying anything by his phone ringing, but he knew who’d be calling and he didn’t like it.

He didn’t bother to look at Ichirou’s name flashing across the screen before he answered the call and brought the phone to his ear, making the quick decision about what to give away.

“One of these days, I’ll just kill you and be done with all the grief you cause me,” he said in fluid Arabic.

He knew Andrew only spoke English and German, so French should have been safe, but he knew from his sweet little bird that Kevin knew French. Kevin knew Japanese too, but even if he didn’t the language would be a giveaway. 

Ichirou didn’t know half as much Korean as he’d need to in order to have a proper conversation in it, but Aiko was as fluent in Arabic as Neil was after she’d joined him on a mission and taken a liking to the language.

“What the hell are you saying?” Ichirou responded.

“I’m saying a lot of things,” Abram started. He was too aware of the heavy stares of both Andrew and Kevin, but so long as neither of them said or did anything to interrupt the call he didn’t have a problem with them being there. They couldn’t understand him. “None of which you’d like to hear. I could start with the psychotic goalkeeper not actually being psychotic, or with the man I’m here to protect being as terrified as a small dog with anxiety.”

“Ram, what are you on about?” Ichirou pressed. There was annoyance in his voice and it almost pissed Abram off until it fell away and Ichirou’s tone stumbled into a dead wall of cold understanding. “Are they in the room with you?”

Abram might have rolled his eyes if Ichirou was there with him. As it was, only Andrew and Kevin would see and he wasn’t anywhere near comfortable enough in a room with just the two of them to show anything outside of what his tone of voice gave away. 

He tried to sound annoyed in a way that only Ichirou would understand, but he was questioning his brother’s intelligence the longer this call went on without Ichirou solving the problem. 

Abram didn’t particularly like that either. It was usually his job to problem solve, especially when they were on the fly like this. Ichirou said it was because he was the craziest of them, Jean thought it was because he was the most dramatic, Aiko thought it was because he had the most experience in staying alive when his life was in very real danger. 

Abram thought they each had their own point. He was most certainly the least stable of them mentally, they’d come to that conclusion in the single psychiatric appointment they’d each attended at Kengo’s request. Aiko had been the only one who’d gone back for a second appointment, and the only one of them considered anything close to normal.

As far as dramatics went, Abram could agree that he went a little overboard at times, but the job got boring when things were too predictable. It was the little things that made it enjoyable enough to keep going. How many lies could he tell before someone caught on? How many mics could he plant before someone found one?

Aiko was probably the closest, he bartered. He’d spent far too long with hellhounds on his ass and a reaper stalking his shadow not to be creative when it came to making an escape. You could only solve a problem the same way so many times before someone caught on. It was his job to never be caught. And he hadn’t been yet.

“Obviously, you sack of shit, otherwise you’d understand me when I insulted you.”

“You were supposed to call me twenty minutes ago,” Ichirou chastised, taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t have to listen to what he couldn’t understand to simply pick at everything Abram had already done wrong.

This was usually the part of the conversation when Abram would knock into Ichirou or casually dance a knife along his fingers and they’d descend into mindless bickering before circling back to the topic at hand. 

Abram didn’t have time for mindless bickering today. He had two college exy players standing less than ten feet away who were getting increasingly more curious.

“Get Aiko, you useless tree growth.”

“Aiko? Did you say Aiko?” Ichirou asked. “Right, I’ll get her.”

There was scuffling on Ichirou’s end of the phone, distant muttering he couldn’t make out, and then another voice came over the speaker.

“Ram?” Aiko asked.

“You married the thickest man on the planet,” he started. “It took him far too long to realize I wasn’t just spouting Arabic for the fun of it.”

Aiko hummed pleasantly and he could hear the gentle smile he was sure she wore. “Perhaps,” she acquiesced. “Personally I think he’s just been too worried about you to remember how to think.”

“Worrying is useless,” he reminded her. “I was doing my job, there were several texts sent that he didn’t bother to acknowledge.”

“Be that as it may, we do still worry about you,” she said. And he wasn’t going to continue to argue with that. If they worried they worried. It wasn’t going to do anything when they were hours away and unable to do much more than call to check-in. “But I assume you’ve got updates?”

He huffed, and he might’ve rolled his eyes if they’d been there to see it. “Things are going well, Einstein has settled in fine, I’ve made the Foxes roster so long as no one can come up with a reason to deny me in the next twenty-four hours. Even then I doubt the coach would turn me away.”

“It wasn’t hard then?” Aiko pressed.

“No,” he agreed. “I hardly had to do anything outside of mention a tragic backstory and he was ready to sign me. He’s… too good.”

“Good enough to give you time off when the baby comes?”

He snapped to attention quickly, feeling the shifting in his posture before he was aware he’d shifted at all. Back tensing and mind racing. He could be on a plane by the end of the day, he had the car if he needed to drive.

“Did something happen?” he demanded.

Aiko hummed questioningly. “Oh no. He’s just been a little busy today, I think he misses you.”

Abram breathed out a heavy sigh of relief and relaxed near immediately. “You frightened me.”

“Didn’t mean to,” she apologized, and she was as sincere as she always was when she wasn’t teasing him. So heartfelt it was dangerous, but never a danger to him. “But in about eight weeks now, I do expect you’ll be able to get that pretty butt of yours down here to spoon feed me ice cream while Ichirou rubs my feet.”

His laugh was light and quiet, and the small smile tugging his lips even quieter. He couldn’t help but be aware of what he was giving away to the other two people in the room, but he couldn’t help the small show of affection either. Aiko would understand if he swallowed it back and remained apathetic, but he couldn’t deny her the spark of emotion, they were fleeting enough when he didn’t search them out. 

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he promised.

“I know you wouldn’t,” she mused. “ You best be going, though, you must have guests if we’ve been speaking in tongues this whole time. ”

He hummed in agreement but had another request to make before leaving. “I want the court transcripts from when the goalkeeper defended his cousin.”

“Do you need the psychiatrist’s notes as well?”

“Especially those,” Abram emphasized. “There’s something that doesn’t add up. He’s not psychotic, or sociopathic, he doesn’t seem any crazier than I am.”  He paused. “Actually I’d reckon he’s far more stable than I am.”

“That’s curious, isn’t it?” Aiko mumbled.

It was enough he knew she was headed down the same slippery slope of thought that he’d gone tumbling down. It wasn’t infrequent that the judicial system was wrong, in fact, it was more common of an occurrence than the public seemed to think. But to not only inappropriately sentence a minor, but incorrectly diagnose him with a severe mental health condition he didn’t have? Abram didn’t trust it, and that alone was reason enough to have it checked.

He only clicked his tongue. “What’s curious is how a minor ended up on a ridiculously high dosage of misprescribed pills.”

“You don’t think…” And there was Aiko’s clever mind catching up with exactly what it was he was insinuating. Only she knew as well as he did that there was no insinuating or assuming until there were facts to back up the thoughts.

“I think a lot of things,” Abram said, neither a confirmation nor a denial. “I won’t know anything until I see those transcripts and records.”

“You’ll have them in twenty-four hours,” Aiko guaranteed. “Now go tell some pretty lies about me, will you?”

“ Goodbye, Scales, ” he teased.

“ Goodbye, Petal. ”

He hung up the phone, taking a moment to find Neil again, after tripping so quickly into Abram when the call had come in.

Too close. They were too close to being the same person; it was too difficult to make sure they weren’t. He hoped time would be enough to settle it. Enough time for Neil Josten to sketch himself into something whole and defined outside of his similarities to Abram.

Kevin broke the tension and the silence in one swoop.

“How long have you played exy.”

Neil blinked. He’d been expecting more pressing questions about who he was and why he spoke another language fluently. Why was he here when he was clearly good enough to play for better teams. 

The threat in Andrew’s eyes told him those questions would come later. For now, Neil could play along with Kevin’s obsession.

He shrugged around a small yawn. “I played when I was younger, stopped when shit went to hell with my family, picked it back up around the time I was emancipated.”

It was achingly truthful. Abram had played when he was a boy, mostly stopped when Jean had gone deep cover in the Nest and stopped completely after Russia. It was only now that his collar was being loosened and he was stepping back into a deep-cover mission of his own that he was picking the sport back up.

“Maybe ten years strung together?”

Exactly ten years and four months.

Kevin nodded like he was pleased with that answer. “You have skill, but you could be better.”

“I used to be,” Neil countered.

Kevin got visibly more excited, and while Abram had been joking—or at least mostly joking—when he’d called Kevin a small dog with anxiety, Neil wasn’t so sure the comparison was all that far off.

“You’ll be better when I’m done with you,” Kevin said. He was arrogant, and Neil couldn’t help but push at that arrogance just to see what it would do.

“That’s a bold assumption,” he mused. “You don’t even know how good I was before.”

Kevin scoffed. “You couldn’t have been that good, the Ravens never scouted you.”

Neil raised an eyebrow and tried not to smirk too boldly. “That’s rich,” he countered. “Until you’ve given up your grand illusions of supremacy and realize you only ever settled for being second best with that wretched thing on your face, I don’t really care what you think.”

Neil watched the shift, the shock and distress in Kevin, and the wicked amusement and interest in Andrew. He was walking a dangerously fine line between being interesting and being a threat, but Neil feared if he played his cards much safer he’d lose Andrew’s interest and be cut off from Kevin.

He scooped up his things and pulled his bag over his shoulder, walking calmly until he stood in front of Andrew, just a few inches more than a foot of space between them. “Excuse me,” Neil said as politely as he dared. “You’re blocking the door.”

Andrew feigned an overdramatized surprise and turned to check over his shoulder like he was confirming Neil’s words. Neil wasn’t impressed by the display, but he was mildly pleased with Andrew’s blatant disdain and the distrust he had for Neil. So far, Andrew was shaping up to be the only person here with any sort of sense. While it made Neil’s job that much harder, it made his job a hell of a lot more interesting too.

Neil disagreed with Wymack when he said things would go well, but it was Wymack’s sarcasm he disagreed with more. He wasn’t fooling himself into thinking that he and Andrew would be the best of friends in the snap of his fingers. But it would be fun puzzling Andrew out, especially when he knew Andrew would be doing his best to crack Neil wide open too.

How fun would it be to watch Andrew realize that there wasn’t anything else there? Not because Neil was the truth, he thought Andrew would figure that out. But because there was no truth. How fun would it be to see the goalkeeper frustrated with the gaping expanse of nothing hiding under Neil Josten’s skin?

Neil couldn’t wait to see which of them would break first.

Chapter Text

Neil dropped into the front seat of his stupidly ridiculous car and slowly wrapped two gentle hands around the steering wheel. It had been an adrenaline rush and a half. Playing on a court without Ichirou hovering in the stands and shouting out corrections when Neil deviated from the memorized drills. And the conversation…

It had been a long time since Neil had been around anyone quite like Andrew Minyard. By that, he meant he never really had been. 

Sure, his brothers were wicked smart, and Jean was an expert at reading and predicting human behaviour like Andrew seemed able to. But they didn’t have the same sharp edge that Andrew did. Aiko had his instigative nature, or she had when they were younger, not quite so much now. 

But Andrew Minyard was different from the people in Neil’s life in that he was the closest thing to someone quite like himself than he’d ever met.

Now it was over, his blood beat a little less viciously and his mind slowed with the exhaustion that crashed over him. 

Jean always told him his mind moved too quickly. Thoughts swept through his mind in a whirlwind that he’d learned only he ever seemed to be able to keep up with, but there had been Andrew. Andrew, who matched him step for step, thought for thought. Andrew, who crooked a manic smile even when it didn’t fit and stood unflinching in doorways. Andrew, who was clever and quick and shining with a dangerous charm that was far too much fun to be safe.

Neil drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, let himself slouch in the muddled exhaustion of sleep deprivation and a stripped away adrenaline rush for a slow moment, and blinked until the dizzy glee left him.

The door opened by the time he’d centered himself, Day and Andrew stalking out into the parking lot. Neil tracked them, and it was because of his careful observation that he caught the exact moment Andrew’s shoulders stiffened when he noticed Neil’s scrutiny. 

His windows were tinted too dark for Andrew to be able to see him, but Neil took great pleasure in turning over the engine and revving it. The car purred, showing off three million dollars worth of beastly smooth steel. Andrew was too far away to see the expression on his face, but Neil wanted to grin at the anger he could only imagine sparking in those bright eyes. Neil didn’t bother waiting, with the engine rumbling under him and the leather warm under his hands, Neil peeled out of the Foxhole Court parking lot.

Oh, it would be so much fun to press each and every one of Andrew’s buttons.

He made it all of five minutes on the road before his hand snaked out to search the car's GPS for the closest coffee shop. 

There were three nearby. Both The Fox’s Paw and The Coffee Den were located on the far end of campus. While Neil found the names ridiculous they were well rated and seemed popular. 

The third, and the closest one to his current location, had just opened a few months ago: The Split Bean.

It was unreviewed, seemingly untested, and Neil let the car guide him straight over.

The Split Bean was cozy in the way that all coffee shops should be. There were plants littering the space in chaotic organizations; ferns towered in the corners, dressed in twinkling string lights; dark ivy crept across the back wall, jungle green covering brick red. There were stuffed sofas and big armchairs that looked as soft as Abram’s favourite sweater. 

It was dark, atmospheric with the dimmed spotlights and the sparkling of string lights pinned up. There was soft music playing something low and soothing. Neil stepped through the door and there was no chime to alert anyone that he’d entered or distract the early rising students that had already nestled themselves into corners and spread out over wood and iron tables. The display case was mostly full, a little surprising with the early hour, pastries and muffins and all sorts of international treats and sweets.

Neil decided right then and there that it was his favourite place in Palmetto.

The door that led to what Neil could only assume was the back area and kitchen space swung open on mostly silent hinges, and the person who stepped through paid no mind to Neil’s presence in the cafe. He wasn’t sure if it was that the entry door had no bell or that they didn’t seem to care about his presence but the worker didn’t look up at all.

And then they turned enough Neil caught a glimpse of three big bright buttons on the strap of their apron. He saw the bright yellow She/Them first, followed immediately by the, I am an asshole, but I’m also Deaf pin and finally the Queer of the Year one. And under all of those, the name Emery was stitched into her apron with multicoloured thread.

His lips twisted into a faint smile involuntarily. Even without the pins, he would have pinned this particular employee as someone he could get along with, now though, he was sure of it.

He made his way up to the counter and waited until he caught her attention to wave and offer up a smile that was closer to a normal grin than the sharp ones he wore too often. 

Abram had learned ASL with Jean, and though he hadn’t used it conversationally since Jean had gone into the Nest he made a habit of using it with himself, narrating his thoughts on occasion. It was something he did with most of his languages, a way he could be sure to hang onto them. Something about keeping the neural pathways open and active. 

So he signed a greeting, just a simple hello, how are you? and watched Emery’s smile spread across her face.

She was taller than Neil was and quite evidently of mixed race, something East Asian and something from Sub-Saharan Africa. It was too early in conversation to ask those sorts of questions, so he made quiet guesses for himself. There was no accent to work with evidently, and there wasn’t much tell in her features either. He thought he at least had the regions right.

Emery’s hands were quick with excitement as they signed back: good morning. I’m well, you?

Little tired. Excited, he signed back. 

It felt good to use sign again. To communicate with someone else in a language that he’d been holding onto in the lonely hours of pre-dawn for far too long.

It felt even better to watch Emery grin and sign back with more enthusiasm than anyone should have so early in the mornings.

She asked if he was Deaf as well, and he responded with a denial, signing that he was hearing but had picked up the language with a friend after they’d had an ear surgery. 

It was a lie mostly, he and Jean had picked it up primarily so they could speak without making noise, but also because firing weapons and having bombs go off in close range could mess with your hearing for an extended period. 

But it was far harder to detect a lie when it was being signed and not spoken and Emery took his word for it without hesitation.

New? She asked, expression politely interested.

Neil nodded and tried not to show how natural and how warm it felt to be signing again when he expanded on his short affirmative. Starting at the University in the Fall.

I’ll be starting my second year, was Emery’s response. Her expression shifted though, polite and professional excitement blurring into something that was perhaps a little more mischievous. School is a boring topic, pick something else.

Neil laughed once, a quiet puff of air that Emery wouldn’t hear anyway, but she saw the jump of his shoulders and grinned ferociously back at him. Last place you travelled to?

Nigeria, she shot back quickly. Visited my dad’s hometown. You? 

In country, New York. Out of country, Greece. 

Greece? Why? You don’t look like you enjoy beaches. Her eyes flicked down to the dri-fit he wore under his shirt and his lips quirked at the cleverness in that acknowledgment. 

I don’t, he confirmed. It was a family trip. Chaos.

I like those. Dad got us lost three times driving around in a rental before he admitted that he couldn’t remember anything from his six-year-old self’s life in Nigeria.

How shameful, Neil signed, mouth pulled into a teasing smirk and keeping his body language as playful as he could. What sort of man can’t navigate on the memories of his childhood?

Emery laughed, and Neil thought it was something of a shame she couldn’t hear her own laughter. It was bright and loud, rolling and snorting in a way that had him laughing lightly along with her.

Where are you from? She signed. You look European.

For a moment, Neil forgot that he was Neil, wearing dark contacts and box-dye-black hair. 

He thought of blue eyes that were white in the sunlight and ocean dark at night and the way they used to terrify him before he learned to be just as scary as they were. He thought of hair that was curled like his mother’s but the same flame-kissed auburn colour as his father’s. 

As it stood, all he was that was Abram and Nathaniel, and consistent across the board, was the cool tan of his skin. Or, well, Aiko claimed his skin was ‘Cool Tan,’ supposedly somewhere between ‘Almond’ and ‘Toast’ depending on how much sun he’d gotten. 

While he’d inherited his father’s paler skin, it seemed he’d also inherited his mother’s ability to tan after only a few minutes in the sun. Jean teased that Abram was the only person he knew who could get a tan in the wintertime.

New York, technically. Dad was Polish and something else. Mom was British.

Emery’s eyebrow inched up. Was?

Neil only nodded. 

He didn’t have it in him to fake grief over the father that hadn’t died yet but should have, and he was far too tired to grapple with the multitude of emotions that came with thinking about the mother he’d loved and watched die. She’d been a pretty shitty person really, and she’d never been good to Abram, but she hadn’t been as awful as she might have been.

My mother, Emery signed, an old grief in her eyes. I was small. 

Was she East Asian?

Taiwanese, Emery agreed with a pleased little smirk. Well-traveled or just observant?

Neil signed back a quick both and turned his attention to looking over the coffee menu, trying to keep his eyes off of the array of international treats. Emery caught him peeking all the same.

Well-traveled, she signed again, putting a box together and stuffing it full of pastries and sweets that he could both name and not name in equal amounts. 

If he was Abram, he might have stopped her, but Neil watched with an amused curl to his lips as she surveyed the display and selected what he assumed were probably her favourites. When she dropped the box on the counter and slid it over after folding the top shut he quirked an eyebrow and signed a request for a coffee recommendation.

Emery pursed their lips and stared him down for an extended period of time that might have been awkward if Neil were anyone else. As it stood, he was Neil and there wasn’t anyone else waiting to be served at quarter to seven in the morning anyway. 

The questions came rapid-fire, and Neil fired back his answers as they came. 

Size?

Big.

Sweet?

Not really.

Caffeine?

As much as possible.

Allergies?

No.

Dairy?

He shrugged at that one. He didn’t have an allergy or intolerance, and he didn’t have much of a preference either way. Emery offered a short nod and spun away to make him something.

It was like a dance, he thought. The twirl of a little metal cup around her middle finger, the pour of heavy cream into a separate chilled metal cup. Measurements made with the look of an eye and the silent count of fingers drumming on a thigh. 

It was like a knife fight. A good one, at least. Except there was no opponent here. Neil’s hands were full of thin scars, nicks from learning to wield a knife like an extension of his own self. He saw his own steps mirrored in the way she swayed and slid along the edge of a counter; reaching for a flavoured syrup with a back swipe, pressing espresso beans in a downward stroke to an abdomen.

It was like watching Aiko bake in the kitchen back when he was still too timid to join her. Ingredients spread around them in the little homes they’d made. 

Emery knew where everything was, picked things up and set them down with a practiced grace that told Neil she’d been working here long enough to learn the system of the place. Long enough maybe that she’d been here when it opened. 

He was mesmerized with the fluidity of it all, the rhythm of their movements.

When Emery turned around, there were two drinks in her hands, one hot and one iced, both in the biggest sizes he thought they offered. She set them down and slid them across the counter. 

Same things, she signed. But the iced one has extra espresso and more hazelnut.

When Neil didn’t immediately react she huffed audibly and crossed her arms. 

“Oh,” he said dumbly. She wanted him to try them now, before he’d walked out of the place.

He sipped the hot one first and was pleasantly surprised. It was frothy at the top, and the coffee was rich in a way he hadn’t known that coffee could be. The flavour of it was accented by what he assumed was hazelnut and by something else he couldn’t place. The iced coffee was much the same. It packed a little more of a punch caffeine-wise and the hazelnut was more noticeable in this one, that other unnamed flavour more of a background hint than anything else.

He liked them both quite a bit more than he’d been expecting to.

Setting them down so his hands were free he grinned a lazy grin and signed his compliments. Emery only smirked back at him, but her eyes glinted with a touch of pride. 

He thought there was a good chance she was far more involved in this little cafe than he’d initially assumed.

When he left, laden with the baked goods and treats and balancing two trays of drinks, having gotten hot black coffees for Einstein, it was with the promise both to Emery and to himself that he’d be back soon enough.

It didn’t take long enough to get back to the apartment, and he was reluctant to leave the car for quite possibly the first time in his life. 

He couldn’t honestly remember the last time he hadn’t wanted to get out of a car. Thinking on it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a car alone for this long either. 

His memories were filled with stick shifts and tires screeching against sun-scorched asphalt, Jean bleeding in the backseat and Aiko chewing him out for being thick-headed while giving him stitches with dental floss. He remembered jumping out of the passenger door of a car seconds before it went over the side of the bridge, laughing wildly when Ichirou rolled to a stop next to him, shoulders bumping and both of them bleeding something awful.

And now he was sitting alone in a three million dollar car he didn’t even really want, wishing in equal parts for his family to be there with him and for the silence to never end.

It was still early, and with any luck, all three members of Einstein would still be sleeping. Neil, Abram, whatever name he put on in that moment of time, was all too aware that he’d never been the sort of person that luck agreed with.

Mia was awake, standing in front of the open fridge and cradling a pack of turkey bacon from her and Charlie’s three-hour trip to the grocery store while Abram had been patrolling. She angled her head towards the door, and as soon as she set eyes on him relaxed back into the fridge after offering a bright grin.

“Coffee,” he mumbled, dropping the trays down on the counter closer to her and turning away to deposit the box of sweets and treats on the island. 

Mia hummed, and he heard her popping the lid off of one of them to add in cream and sugar. He knew how she took her coffee. He knew how Charlie took hers and how Elias took his. And still he’d gotten them all black.

“Oh shit. This is good, damn,” Mia said after a slow moment in which he heard her swallow. “Thank you.”

Abram nodded, unsure if she could see him, and hummed a gentle agreement. 

“What else have you got?”

He nudged the box open and Mia came to stand beside him so she could take a peak. She surveyed the assortment of familiar and international baked goods with bright eyes and picked out a puffy thing dusted with powdered sugar and slivered almonds. At some point in his absence, he noticed, she’d painted her nails a deep purple colour.

“Mm,” she hummed around a stuffed-cheek bite of the treat. “This is really fucking good.”

Or at least, Abram assumed that’s what she’d said. It was muffled and distorted by a second too-large bit she’d shoved into her mouth despite not having swallowed the first just yet.

“From Spain, that one,” Abram offered.

And Mia, mouth stuffed full of sweet pastry and bits of almond, grinned a powdered sugar grin at him, before turning back to the turkey bacon she’d set out and getting a cast-iron pan ready to start what had to be breakfast.

“Oh. Aiko told me to remind you to sleep. So.” She angled a faux sharp look at him, squinty smiling eyes and a scowl tugged out of place by a wild grin. “Have you slept yet?” she asked, licking powdered sugar from her fingers and cranking the flame under the pan.

Abram shook his head, eyes darting to his half-finished coffees before deciding his fuzzy mind needed some actual rest and not just a bloodstream that had bled into caffeine infusions. 

“I’m going now,” he told her.

She tossed him another sweet smile and he was gone, silent steps carrying him through the apartment to the room where his things were.

His room.

Jean hated that about him. The fact that he had to self-correct that it was his room and not just the room he was sleeping in. Abram thought Ichirou probably hated it too. But it was a byproduct of the way he was raised, his mother beating away his sense of attachment, his father cutting out everything else. Even holding onto a name that felt like it might really be his, Abram had only ever felt at home in places that were liminal and wild. Places that couldn’t be owned or bought or taken away. Abandoned buildings, overgrown forests. It had taken him close to a year to start calling his and Jean’s apartment their apartment.

Homes were temporary. 

It was a simple, irrefutable fact. Homes came and they went and at the end of it all they meant nothing. 

Abram (Nathaniel, Neil, Alex, Junior, pick any) didn’t have whatever it was everyone else had that let them think any differently.

There was a bag on the end of the bed.

It was plain glossy black, made of the paper plastic hybrid that their tailor used for her orders. All the same, his paranoia kicked into overdrive and his eyes scanned over every other untouched detail of the room.

He checked for bugs, combing through all the expected places first. Lights, floorboards, around the bed, in the bed, door frames, drawers, the closet. And then he made a second round, digging into all the places  Aiko and Ichirou and Jean would hide bugs. And a third, looking for bugs where he would have planted them.

It was always the Wraith’s bugs that never got found.

When he was satisfied that the room was bug-free, or as satisfied as he could be, he turned to the unbranded shopping bag sat at the foot of his bed. Slowly pulling out the tissue paper that was creased in the distinct way Ichirou liked to fold it, Abram worked his way to the stack of dri-fit, long-sleeved, high necked shirts at the bottom.

He counted out another fourteen pitch dark ones, Ichirou’s doing no doubt. And underneath them was a stack of coloured ones. 

Aiko had gone with a theme clearly, mimicking the choice she’d made when selecting the darkest shade of green possible for the only other coloured one he owned.

There were two identical navy blue ones, as dark as the sea at a hundred feet below. One was dark purple in direct light, but looked black otherwise. There was another green in the same shade as the one he’d left behind. And one a dark, deep red.

And at the very bottom, wrapped in another sheet of tissue paper, was a white one.

Abram snapped a quick photo of the white dri-fit and sent it off to Aiko with a series of question marks.

The bag sorted through, and a concise thanks fired off to Ichirou, Abram pulled his button-up off, stepped out of his jeans and into loose grey sweatpants, and collapsed on top of the covers of the bed.

He was in dire need of a few quiet hours of rest. But because he was Abram, luck worked against him. Always against him.

Nearly as soon as his eyes had shut and sleep had started gently crawling over him, music played from the kitchen. It was a clear sign that Charlie was awake. While Mia was frequently the more vocally expressive of the two girls, Charlie was oftentimes the loudest despite that. 

Abram couldn’t wait until the two of them started leaving the apartment to scandalize the public on their trademark six-hour dates.

He rolled away from the noise. Even went as far as to burrow under the plain covers of his bed in an attempt to use the sheets to smother the sound before it could get to him. But because the world really just hated him, it was only 5 minutes before Elias’ voice and the sound of violent video games joined the party.

Abram liked to pretend sometimes that he wasn’t a violent person.

It was a lie, and an obvious one at that, but he indulged himself in the illusion all the same. There were some days when he could almost believe it too. When the salt and copper taste on his tongue sweetened into the summer spray of the Atlantic ocean. When his skin was stained by the sun instead of the sins he’d inherited. When he could remember the taste of those childhood delusions; butterflies on the beach, chubby toddler toes wiggling in the surf like worms on a hook. 

Now, huddled under the sheets of a bed that wasn’t his and the special exhaustion that followed a nightmare and 31 hours without sleep blurring the edges of his focus, he had no chance at pretending at much of anything.

He crawled out from under the blankets and snatched his phone. 

Abram:

consider this a warning

Fancy Suit Man:

what

Abram:

i am going to kill someone

Fancy Suit Man:

what

Abram:

and i will need a new team

Fancy Suit Man:

what

Ram

Ram

RAM

do NOT kill any1

RAM

...

do i need 2 come 

?????

ABRAM

He dropped his phone face down into the mattress and shoved his pillow over his head, hoping it might do something to drown out the incessant sound of his 'roommates' in the living room. He was getting ridiculously close to taking Elias’ hands. He couldn't play video games at 100 volume if he didn't have hands, could he?

Something told Abram no one else would appreciate his problem-solving skills.

Not seconds later his phone buzzed again.

Aiko:

who are we killing?

Abram:

einstein

Aiko:

attack strategy?

Abram: 

improvised 

too many UKF’s

Aiko: 

hmm 

e has the strength advantage

Abram: 

he’s clunky and an easy take down 

m+c are quicker

Aiko: 

not nearly as quick as you 

loc?

Abram: 

kitchen

Aiko: 

ah 

anything in a kitchen can be an improvised weapon

Abram: 

i raise you this: i have actual weapons

Aiko: 

hmm 

i suppose the fight goes to you regardless really 

you have the advantage on all fronts apart from numbers and that’s never been an issue for you

Abram: 

what a compliment

Aiko: 

it is 

now help me fix this new recipe 

A link came through following her text and Abram rolled out of the bed as he pulled it up. It was beyond obvious that he wouldn’t be getting any sleep until either Einstein all simultaneously shut up or he found somewhere else to sleep. 

While Abram could fall asleep just about anywhere, he knew the noises would wake him up immediately and he wasn’t too keen on the panicky start his day would adopt then.

The smell of breakfast hit him first, and though he’d eaten one of the ham and cheese croissants Emery had pushed on him earlier he was more than hungry enough to eat again.

Abram:

try switching out some of the white sugar for brown?

Aiko:

genius 

i’ll get back to you in 30-35

“I thought you were sleeping?” Mia called out as soon as his silent steps brought him into her line of sight.

She was in the kitchen still, but now there was a neat stack of turkey bacon next to her and she was cracking eggs into a bowl. There were several bowls of finely chopped vegetables on the far side of the pan. Green peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes. A massive bowl of grated aged cheddar.

“Omelettes?” he asked, moving past her so he could make his way to the two coffees he’d decided against earlier.

“Are you deliberately refusing to answer my question?” Mia fired back, refusing to answer his question in turn. “I will contact the boss-lady.”

“Too much noise,” Abram dismissed. 

Her grin dampened and her forehead creased with gentle worry before Charlie fox trotted into the kitchen. Mia laughed at her girlfriend and was tugged into the off-beat dance as soon as Charlie came within reach of her.

“Morning!” Charlie greeted over Mia’s shoulder.

Abram saluted her with his coffee before lowering the flame Mia had started under the pan and getting his own omelette ready.

“We should go for a dogfight later today,” Charlie mused, still swaying with Mia bundled in her arms. “Check out the gym facilities offered and get a good workout in.”

Abram swirled his eggs around in the pan a little so the edges came up a little on the lid and tossed in the offered vegetables a little reluctantly. “Afternoon?”

Mia made a moderately offended noise. “Abram!” she cried. “You have to sleep!”

“Sleep?” Elias echoed, because of course, why wouldn’t they all have a party in the kitchen while Abram was trying to make an omelette in peace? “When have you ever known-” he cut off, narrowed a look at Abram. “We’re calling you Abram for now?” He waited for Abram’s short nod to continue. “When have you ever known Abram to actually sleep?”

Abram blinked slowly, a heavy ache starting at the base of his skull. All the same, he appreciated the way Elias clarified which name he was wearing. 

They knew enough to refer to him as Neil only when they were in public, but they didn’t know him quite so well as his family did. None of them ever seemed to be able to tell what skin he was wearing the way Ichirou, Aiko, and Jean could. Not that Abram blamed them, some days he didn’t know what name he had until someone else used it.

“Shut up,” Mia grumbled.

They made omelettes, Abram let them talk him into playing—or at least attempting to play—a few different video games. Elias tried his best to be a good instructor, Charlie teased him mercilessly about being so shitty when his reflexes were better than all of theirs combined, he was pretty sure Mia was filming most of it.

He never ended up getting his nap in, but Charlie talked Mia into a dogfight anyway. 

They were taking the wrap off their hands and Abram was tucking his knives back into the sheathes he’d drawn them from when the door opened. 

Their group fell into a hush immediately, Elias’groans cutting off and both Mia and Charlie dropping into silent crouches beside him. Abram crept forward with silent steps, socked feet helping to make the weight of his body a soundless presence on the floor. 

They were already tucked behind a bulk of equipment and there was a fire exit behind them that Abram had been sure to disable as soon as they’d gotten there in case they needed the quick escape. Sparing a glance back at Einstein, Abram watched Elias roll to a crouch to mimic the girls’ postures.

When he peeked back around the equipment it was to find Andrew Minyard and Kevin Day setting up around the arms weight section. Neither of them had noticed Abram or his group.

He watched for a moment, long enough to see Andrew putting the weights on his bar and start lifting. A moment longer to watch Day wander away from him, leaving Andrew without a spotter. 

And then Abram was backing away on steps as silent as they always were, picking up his boots in one hand and beckoning to Einstein with the other. He eased the door open without a creak, but when he closed it after them he made sure to let it slam.

If Andrew was as smart as Abram was hoping he was, he’d figure it out.

Oh, how Abram hoped he did.

Because he’d already done it once and he didn’t really need to show off too much just yet, Neil waited in his car outside the stadium for Coach Wymack to arrive. 

He knew the coach would be early to the practice he’d been instructed to come to, and he knew the players probably would be too. It was of no surprise, then, when the first car to pull into the lot wasn’t the coach's muddied truck, but Matt Boyd’s instead, backliner and number four in the Foxes’ line up.

The ensemble that climbed out of the car was expected. Matt Boyd, six foot four even without his hair spiked up in twisted braids, stepped out of a front seat that was high enough Neil would have needed to jump. Danielle “Dan” Wilds slid around the car, having probably climbed from the passenger seat and wrapped an arm immediately around Boyd’s waist. And from the back seat, bleach white hair blurring into pastel rainbows, Renee Walker slipped gracefully from the truck.

Their files had been comprehensive enough, but even still, there was only so much you could learn about a person you’d never really met.

Neil knew about Boyd’s less than ideal family life and the drug addiction he’d battled but seemed well over now. He knew about Wilds’ history as “Hennessy” and working to support her family. 

More importantly, Neil knew all about Walker’s previous involvement with low-ranking gangs. He knew she wouldn’t be a threat to him, and that her skills—vast though they might be—were shadows compared to his own. All the same, he also knew that she’d know exactly how dangerous the Wraith was, and if there was the slightest stutter in his cover, he thought she’d be the first to pick it up.

Well, the first apart from Andrew.

Predictably, they stared at his car while they worked up the nerve to actually approach it. He waited until their group had started to close the distance, thirty feet turning into fifteen, before opening his door and stepping out.

Neil hadn’t broken into the court this time around. But he hadn’t been subtle either. 

If the three million dollar car wasn’t enough to pique the team's interest, he made sure the rest of him was. He was well-versed in the world of sex, money, and drugs. With the Foxes, money would be refused, drugs were largely unwelcome, but sex? Sex appeal was everything. 

Jean had told him once, both of them a fair bit drunk on a bottle of aged whiskey they’d split while giving each other stitches in a motel room in Sicily, that people tended to trust you more if you were attractive. Neil didn’t know the psychology behind it, hadn’t bothered to ask once he’d accidentally derailed the conversation by asking Jean if the son of a bitch had been attractive, but he was living proof that it was true.

How many men and women had been disarmed by a well-timed flash of his eyes and a sly grin? How many of them had been lured into a trap by the press of a kiss to the shell of an ear? Drawn away from safety by the flash of tanned skin between the edge of his shirt and the top of his jeans?

People liked pretty things. His family told him often enough that he was a pretty thing, no matter what colour he dyed his hair or what contacts hid the colour of his eyes.

Mia and Charlie had helped pick the outfit this morning, both of them far too excited to comb through his ‘expensive’ and ‘stunning’ closet to find something that screamed ‘casually sexy’. He didn’t understand most of the things they said, but from what he gathered, the outfit was meant to say ‘look at me, I’m delicious and I fucking know it’.

He’d wrestled himself into the tightest pair of black ripped skinny jeans to exist on this planet, laced up his custom steel-toed boots, and let Mia and Charlie fuss over the best way to tuck in a baggy button-up silk shirt. The shirt itself was black, but their tailor—bless her glorious soul and her talented hands—had made the fabric herself. In the light, and if you got close enough to really look at it, were navy butterflies.

Neil didn’t feel particularly sexy. He felt like he was wearing tight pants and a baggy shirt that exposed his dri-fit to all the Foxes really early in the game, but the girls had insisted he looked ‘downright edible’ and Elias had gone as far as to chime in with an ever so kind ‘yeah, boss’ that hadn’t done much either way.

If the way Boyd and Wilds faltered and eyed him up and down twice over meant anything, it probably meant that Mia and Charlie had been right.

Walker didn’t seem half so phased. Maybe not into men? Maybe not into anything? “Hello,” she greeted when the distance was reduced to a respectful six feet. “You must be Neil.” Her smile was sweet, misleading, but sweet all the same. “My name is Renee, this is Matt and Dan.”

Neil gave a sharp nod and looked away from the group quickly when Coach Wymack's car pulled into the lot. He looked back in a fraction of a second and dredged up a response. “Goalkeeper, right?” he asked her. “Number nine?”

Walker’s smile stretched a little wider. “That’s correct.”

“And you play backliner?” he directed at Boyd.

Boyd finally seemed to shake free of his little daze and took another step forward, incidentally dragging his girlfriend with him. “Yeah, man. It’s good to actually meet you, Coach just said you existed yesterday and we’ve all been buzzing since.”

Neil lifted an eyebrow at the word choice. Buzzing was an interesting option for an ex-drug addict to use.

“I only really met your coach yesterday,” Neil dismissed. 

“Still,” Boyd insisted. “He gave us one hell of a story, talked you up a lot.”

Neil wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Right,” he said.

“Renee already introduced me,” Wilds started. “But I’m Dan, offensive dealer and team captain. It really is good to meet you, our last striker sub didn’t really turn out.”

“I heard,” Neil mused. “Suicide attempt, right? Sucks.”

Boyd and Wilds winced in near synchronization, but it was Walker’s devastated expression that caught his attention the most. 

Neil was a practiced liar. In fact, Neil was a walking lie, and he knew how to fake emotions and he knew where to find tells, it was how he’d rid himself of them. But Walker’s fallen expression was a genuine one. And wasn’t that interesting? He knew all about her born-again Christianity, but until now he’d thought of it as bullshit. It was some impressive bullshit if that’s what it was.

“The hell are you all standing out here for?” Wymack called, heavy steps with a barely-there limp marching past the gathered group for the court doors. “Did you forget about that practice you’re all here for?”

“Sorry, Coach,” Wilds said, not sounding sorry at all. “Just introducing ourselves.”

“Do it on the court, would you?” Wymack grumbled. “Josten,” he said, switching his attention from the upperclassmen that had started shuffling to the court doors. 

“Yes, Coach?”

Wymack looked ready to curse him out already. “Didn’t feel like breaking in today?”

Neil flashed him the crooked grin he’d adopted for Neil Josten, “Nah,” he denied. “Haven’t had my morning coffee yet.”

“Do us both a favour then,” Wymack decided. “Don’t.”

“Well, that’s no fun.” 

Wymack’s sigh was heavy enough Neil could hear it from twenty feet away. “That’s the point, maggot,” he said, heading to the door and pausing as he punched in the key. “I won’t hold it open forever.”

Neil snatched his bag from the backseat of the car, double-clicked the lock on his key fob, and jogged the distance to the door.

“What a gentleman,” Neil commented.

He skipped away from Wymack quickly, making sure he got out of reach long before his words processed with the older man. Wymack grumbled under his breath, but he eyed the way Neil was careful to keep at least an arm’s length of space between them and didn’t try to get any closer.

“Go change out,” Wymack sighed.

Neil pulled that crooked grin back into place where it had fallen. “Yes, Coach.”

Walker and Wilds had disappeared into the women’s changing room, and when Neil stepped into the men’s it was still only Boyd in there with him. He felt Boyd's eyes snap to him immediately and his skin crawled with the weight of it. Neil reminded himself that Boyd was in a committed relationship, so attracted or not—and Neil was, unfortunately, well-versed in recognizing the sexual attraction both Boyd and Wilds had shown—there shouldn’t be a reason for him to try and act on that attraction.

Boyd only grinned at him. “Showers are that way,” he said with a quick gesture. “They’ve got stalls on ‘em. I don’t think you have a locker yet, but any of the ones without a name and number on them are available.”

Neil nodded, stepping further into the room and heading for a bench a good distance from where Boyd had set up. “Thanks.” 

“Hey, no problem,” Boyd insisted.

Steeling himself against the uncomfortable weight of Boyd’s eyes still on him, Neil half-turned so he could still see Boyd but wasn’t facing him directly, and started popping the buttons on his shirt.

He’d gotten it all the way off and had started shimmying out of the impossibly tight pants when Boyd spoke up again.

“Hey, so uh.” he stumbled, smiled a little sheepishly when Neil glanced over at him and flushed. “How long have you played?”

Neil had the sneaking suspicion Boyd had been gearing up to say something else and had chickened out at the last minute. Neil figured he could guess at what Boyd had almost said and was impossibly glad he hadn’t said it after all.

Kicking free of his pants and stepping quickly into his exy shorts and strapping on his gear, Neil shrugged. “A while, I guess.”

Undeterred, Boyd just kept grinning, changing out considerably more slowly than Neil was. “That’s cool.” And it really wasn’t. “I started in high school, did a lot of boxing before then. My mom was a professional boxer.”

Neil already knew that. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to know that, so he lifted his eyebrows in what was deliberately a very poor show of surprise. “Cool,” he said, echoing Boyd’s behaviours back at him.

“Yeah,” he agreed, completely oblivious to any of it. “I wanted to be just like her when I was a kid,” Boyd told him.

Neil strapped on the last bit of his armour, pulled a practice jersey over top and snatched his gloves and helmet under one arm, his racquet in the other hand.

“She said she always wanted me to be better, but I still don’t think there’s anything better, really.”

He added it to the folder he’d memorized; Matt Boyd, momma’s boy and resident people pleaser. He filed away mannerisms and behaviours he’d picked up in the short conversation and then pulled his bag from the bench and dropped it in a far corner next to the lockers instead of trying to shove it in one.

“I’m gonna head to the court,” Neil said, cutting off whatever else Boyd wanted to say before he could start saying it at all. “Check in with your coach, see if anyone else is here…”

He trailed off and caught Boyd’s “Alright, see you in a sec!” before escaping the changing room and veering straight for the court.

Wymack was indeed waiting at the court doors and he nodded once at Neil before pushing it open and stepping out onto the court with him. Neil stood there for a moment, beside the coach but with enough space between them he could react before Wymack got the chance to get a hold of him.

“Let me make something clear to you,” Wymack said. His voice was as gruff and gravelly as it always was, but there was a certain weight to it suddenly that was different from the affectionate annoyance he used with his Foxes or even the amused one he used with Neil. “I am a grouchy old man. I shout and I swear and I call you rotten little shits a fair amount of names, but I have never hit someone who didn’t hit me first.” Wymack angled a sharp look at Neil. “I’m not going to start with you.”

Neil swallowed, nodded slowly. “I’m a sarcastic little shit,” he offered in return. “Usually more trouble than I’m worth, I don’t shout much, but I do swear and I’m not going to shy away from using a few insulting names myself.” He glanced over to see Wymack watching him with a curious look Neil wasn’t sure he liked. “I start a lot of fights, but never any that I can’t finish.”

Wymack nodded in return. “Alright,” he said finally, when the silence between them had stretched long enough most other people would have been uncomfortable. “Good to know.”

While Neil’s wariness of the coach hadn’t miraculously disappeared—trauma was a funny thing, wasn’t it?—he felt more secure in the truth of Wymack’s blunt words. He didn’t think the coach would start swinging at him out of nowhere, but if Neil brought too much trouble his way they’d have to see what happened then.

“Coach! Where’s the new kid?”

Neil couldn’t stop the way his body tensed for a fight at the word kid, and though he knew Wymack saw it, the coach didn’t mention a thing as he turned. Neil turned with him, finding Nicky Hemmick grinning in the hall that led to the locker room one way and the home bench the other. He was flanked by Aaron Minyard on one side, Andrew and Day standing on the other.

When Hemmick’s eyes landed on Neil in return, his grin widened and Neil was a little nauseous at the obvious sexual attraction there.

“You didn’t say he was this pretty,” Hemmick teased. 

Neil was sure it was meant to be a flirty comment, but all he could manage was to not go for any of the knives he’d kept strapped on under his dri-fit. He fixed Hemmick with an empty look, sharp cut to his jaw and a warning in his eyes. 

Or it would have been a warning if Hemmick had bothered to look for it.

“What team do you swing for?” Hemmick asked, coming forward quickly enough that Neil backpedaled a step.

“Hemmick,” Wymack snapped. “Shut up and get ready to practice.”

Hemmick pouted. “Aw, Coach!” he whined. “Just asking questions to get to know him.”

“And you can ask him whatever you want when practice is over,” Wymack said, shutting down Hemmick’s insistence on the conversation. “While you and Josten are on my time, you’ll keep the personal shit in your head.”

Hemmick rolled his eyes and turned back to Neil. “To be continued then,” he said with a wink that was probably meant to be funny or flirty.

All Neil felt was an uneasy twist and the need to find the nearest escape and take it. He managed to hold his ground at the very least, even if he tensed in his discomfort.

Andrew’s smile was manic and feral—the beauty of misprescribed drugs—but his eyes were a little too knowing. Still, Neil held Andrew's gaze until he turned away and followed Hemmick, Day, and his twin into the locker room.

“Alright?” Wymack asked.

“Fine,” Neil grumbled.

Wymack didn’t look like he believed him for a second. “Nicky’s harmless,” he insisted. “If he’s making you uncomfortable just let me know, would you?”

Neil shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Wymack huffed. “Sure you are.”

It wasn’t that Hemmick was a problem. Neil didn’t care about him or his sexual preference at all. The issue was that Hemmick’s attraction was fixed on Neil. And Neil wanted nothing to do with it. He could barely stand platonic touch on a good day, and the idea of sex or anything even remotely sexual was enough to make his stomach turn a little. 

He had no interest in any of it, regardless of how many men and women he’d kissed in back alleys or how far he’d had to go with some of them at other times. It had never been a pleasant experience for him. At best it was boring and somewhat of a chore, giving out oral sex or hand jobs to get what he needed to complete a mission. At worst it set his skin crawling and he holed up in his room for a few days, shaking and being violently ill.

But Wymack said Hemmick was harmless, and if it came down to it, Neil knew he could have him on the floor or dead in a few minutes at most.

He was fine.

Wymack started setting out a few cones and Neil set his things down to help out, laying things out the way Wymack directed him. By the time the rest of the team made their way out to join them, they’d started up a game of basic catch, Wymack tossing the ball to Neil and Neil bouncing it back to him.

Wymack had played once, before an injury ended his career early. It was clear that he loved the game, that he was passionate about it even now when he couldn’t really play. 

At the soft joy that danced in Wymack's eyes as they tossed the ball between them, Neil wondered when the last time he’d done something like this was. Had no one on the team ever thought to actually ask Wymack to participate with them to any degree? 

It was strange to him to think that a team who seemed to genuinely care about their coach had never thought to offer.

Even when Ichirou had been hounding Neil about getting back to his former glory he’d stepped onto the court. Ichirou hadn’t held a racquet for just as long as Neil, but they’d trained Neil’s skills back to life together.

When the Foxes gathered just inside the court door, Wymack caught the ball and held it.

“So this is him?”

Neil appraised Allison Reynolds. She’d been the one to speak, and she was the one looking down her nose at him now. A spoiled brat from a rich family who’d abandoned most of her inheritance to pursue her own dreams even when her parents' disdain was made clear. Neil knew a fair bit about parents who just didn’t care, though his were a shade or two more violent than Allison’s. He had the scars to prove it.

Neil raised a challenging eyebrow. 

Next to Reynolds was Brian “Seth” Gordon; one of several children to parents who never should have been parents. He was already glowering, looking pissed off and aggressive in every way, but he softened partially when Allison leaned into him with her shoulder.

Even more interesting was the look Walker left lingering on an all too oblivious Reynolds. This team was shaping up to be something colourful indeed. At least three of the players weren’t straight, and Neil suspected more of the others weren’t either.

“Foxes, Neil Josten. Neil Josten, Foxes,” Wymack gruffed. “Drills are set out. Dan.”

Wilds stepped forward with a sharp grin that Neil could respect. “Alright, Neil,” she said, enough of a challenge in her voice that he was bouncing on his toes in anticipation. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Seven separate drills later, the foxes were mostly gathered at the bench getting a drink. Neil stood apart from them, still surveying and cataloguing information that was both new and in accordance with the folders he had. 

As of yet, Andrew hadn’t participated in anything. Neil wasn’t sure if Day was more irritated about that, or about the fact that Neil still kept blowing him off every time he tried to say anything along the lines of ‘I’m so good and talented and I can make you good and talented too’. He was beginning to wonder how many times he’d have to make the same comments over and over before Day would get the point.

“Day,” Neil snapped, cutting Kevin off mid ‘Give me your game’ speech. “Shut up. I’m not sure how to dumb this down enough for you to understand it-” someone at the bench was laughing. “But I have no interest in giving you anything.”

“But-”

“No,” Neil interrupted. “If you want to make me the best, start by getting your fucking face fixed. You can’t talk for shit if you’re still settling for second place.”

Kevin was equal parts baffled and furious, the same expression as every other time Neil had something along the lines of ‘fuck right off’, but this time he blanched a little too. Neil figured it had to do with the not-so-subtle allusion to Riko.

It was a cheap shot maybe, bringing up Kevin’s past abuser, but Neil couldn’t be held accountable when technically no one had actually told him that yet. Besides that, Neil didn’t care all that much about fighting fair. No one in his world ever did, and he wasn’t going to get all soft just because he’d left most of the hardened criminals behind him for now.

“Damn, Neil,” Hemmick laughed. 

Neil spared a short glance to the bench to see the amused expressions on the Foxes' faces. They were mostly amused at least. Walker looked a little too curious for his tastes, Gordon looked amused and angry about it. He thought Wilds and Boyd looked a little too appeased by the interaction. Hemmick looked several shades too interested, while the other Minyard twin couldn’t have looked less interested. 

But as Neil was beginning to realize was possibly always going to be the case, it was Andrew who was most interesting to him. Andrew, who was high as a kite and still watched him with too clever eyes that were disassembling everything Neil said or did more intricately than Neil wanted them to. When he caught Andrew’s amused and inquisitive gaze he held it until Wymack called them away.

“You weren’t kidding,” the coach grumbled, running a hand over his face.

Neil offered up that same crooked smile. “No, Coach,” he said. “I don’t lie.”

Wymack gave him a look that screamed bullshit, but refrained from saying anything about it. “Right,” he agreed instead.

Neil just kept grinning. “So,” he mused. “Did I make the team?”

Chapter Text

After reassurances from both coach and captain alike that he had definitely made the team the practice devolved. 

Gordon got more and more aggressive, his hits full of force that wasn’t necessary for what they were doing. He picked fights with anyone willing to let him, namely Hemmick and Day. Neil’s head tilted at the homophobic slurs and the ableist comments he spouted. 

Gordon wasn’t angry, was the thing. 

Neil didn’t know how many of his teammates even knew it, but there was nothing about Gordon that was genuinely angry. It was insecurity. Bone-deep and debilitating. 

Gordon saw the way Reynolds looked a little too curiously at Neil and he sneered and made jabs about spoiled rich kids with complexes. Neil wondered if he understood that he was upsetting his girlfriend by saying that, but one look at the pinched expression on Gordon’s face told him everything he needed to know.

Day had a broken hand and was relearning how to play the sport he’d been raised for, but he was still the better striker between the two of them. So Gordon lashed out and tried to tear him down with seething comments about Ravens and how birds always flew back to their nest in the end.

His homophobia towards Hemmick seemed a little confused, if Neil was being honest. It wasn’t some internalized hatred, which Neil supposed would have been the easier explanation. He was pretty certain it was a genuine lack of understanding, coupled with the knowledge that Hemmick would always rise to the bait.

For all that Gordon was insecure and volatile because of it, Neil really couldn’t give any less of a shit about him. Still, it was annoying how frequently Neil found himself at the end of one of the ignorant bastard’s insults.

“Hey, pretty boy!” Gordon shouted out when the pass he’d supposedly thrown Neil’s direction went nearly three feet off course and Neil didn’t bother to put in the extra work to snag it. Not when it meant he’d leave himself open to taking a potentially bruising hit from Boyd. “How about you fucking do something other than be some useless fuck-up Coach pities too much to say no to.”

It would be easier, so much easier to keep his mouth shut. But he was Neil Josten: Passivity until provoked. That was Neil Josten’s rule. In a way, it was Abram’s rule too, though he thought Neil probably had a little more restraint than Abram tended to. 

All the same, passivity until provoked meant the floor was wide open once provocation came.

Neil turned his head twisting back around to find Gordon first and his body following after him.

“Pretty boy?” he echoed back, blank-faced and cold. “I thought you had a girlfriend, Gordon.”

There was a simultaneous reaction on the court. While Hemmick laughed, Gordon lunged towards Neil, restrained only by Boyd getting in the way quickly enough.

“You little fucking shit!” 

Neil smirked, dangerous and lethal. He was a well-designed weapon even wearing the skin of a different name, anyone who was raised in the life he was would be. “You’re the one who called me pretty,” he mused. “Mixed signals if you’re asking me.”

“Oh Christ,” he heard Wymack muttering.

Neil made to glance at the exasperated sounding coach, but he got stuck on Andrew. 

Though it was slightly crazed with the influence of drugs he shouldn’t be on, Andrew’s gaze was unwavering, and Neil found that he was both unable and unwilling to look away. It felt like a challenge, an accusation, a victory. Looking away would have been the opposite.

Even with Gordon spitting out a string of insults and Hemmick’s jeering and cheering in the background, Neil’s focus was entirely on Andrew.

At least until Wymack marched over and quite literally parked himself between them.

“Office, Josten,” Wymack grumbled.

Neil tilted his head. “Am I in trouble?”

“You are trouble,” Wymack huffed. “Paperwork, you little shit.” He spared a glance over his shoulder at Boyd still trying to calm down Gordon and Neil felt the sharp smirk tugging back up into place from where he’d stifled it. “Practice is definitely done for the day, go change out and sign some shit.”

For as terrible as he’d always been at following orders, Neil did a remarkably good job following this one.

As he walked past Andrew however, their gazes locked again in another of those contests neither of them could break, he was deliberate in knocking their shoulders together. He handed it over to the heavy padding he was strapped into, but for once the contact didn’t set his skin crawling.

After changing and showering and signing away a life that didn’t belong to him, Neil found himself cornered by the ragtag team yet again.

Or, rather, by the team’s upperclassman.

He wanted to turn around, if only to resign all the contracts and paperwork he’d just been over so as to avoid whatever this was. He hadn’t forgotten the attraction that was ever-present in Boyd and Wilds’ gazes earlier. And he wasn’t oblivious to the heavy once-over that Reynolds was giving him now that he’d changed back into his street clothes.

“Lunch,” Wilds said in the same tone of voice she used when running drills on the court. It was that no-nonsense ‘try me and see what happens’ tone of voice. The sort that made Neil want to push just hard enough to see what would happen.

So he furrowed his brows and looked back at her. “What?”

Wilds softened, and he wasn't sure why that was the way she chose to act on his response but he could play up her sympathy for him if he needed to. “For some team bonding,” she decided. “It’ll be good.”

Yeah, Neil was going to have to disagree with the captain there.

“Oh,” he said, and so maybe he was leaning a little too much into the confused and stupidly naive act considering what they’d seen from him on the court, but no one looked suspicious of it. “I don’t know, I have some things to settle still and…” He shrugged and trailed off.

Walker put a hand on Wilds’ elbow when the captain opened her mouth to speak again. “I understand you’re busy, Neil,” she said with that deceptively sweet voice. Abram didn’t have anything to fear from her, but Neil might. “It’s just lunch, two hours at the most. If you’re not comfortable that’s alright.”

Neil watched her eyes, spared less than half a second to look at the expressions of Boyd and Wilds next to her or to Gordon’s quiet aggression and Reynolds’ dangerous curiosity behind her. It was Walker’s eyes, alarmingly perceptive and working to take apart a mask he knew she wouldn’t be able to. 

And that was the dangerous part. 

While Andrew was capable of burrowing right down to the absence that he was underneath Neil, Walker wasn’t. All she would be capable of seeing is someone worth suspicion. And that was far more dangerous than Andrew uncovering truths that didn’t exist.

“Two hours,” he agreed. “I really do have a lot of stuff to get through.”

It was such an obvious lie. Though he supposed a liar as practiced as himself could twist anything into truth if he wanted to. But it was too general, too reserved. Neil was a private person though, not the sort to hand out information that didn’t need to be given away.

‘Stuff’ was a good enough excuse for now at least. So far as the Foxes knew, he’d just moved here recently. There were a plethora of things he could still need to handle. They didn’t need to know that what ‘stuff’ really meant was that he had over three hundred pages of transcribed court proceedings and medical records to comb through. 

Boyd took a step forward like he was going to drop his arm over Neil’s shoulders. Ducking to tug at the laces on his shoe, Neil avoided that and glanced up under the cover of his slightly shaggy hair to watch Boyd pull Wilds under his arm instead.

“How do you feel about Italian?”

Neil straightened out, blinked once, and shrugged. Was he meant to feel anything about Italian? Italy was a beautiful country, from what he’d seen of it. He’d never truly vacationed there, but he’d been through Sicily and Rome and Modena. He’d hidden in the streets of Vatican City once.

Pasta was a good carb refuel, and it was one of the first things he and Jean had learned how to make once Mary had died.

Italian was fine, he supposed. At the very least, it wouldn’t trigger any memories better kept under lock and key.

“Italian sounds alright,” he agreed, mumbling his words in a way that might have been contrary if he hadn’t written himself a narrative. 

He was impulsively tempered and smart-mouthed, sure. But Neil Josten was a little awkward, fumbled when it came down to it. His life was never one that fostered healthy relationships. They were antagonistic or they didn’t exist at all. This was a new world for Neil.

“Great,” Wilds grinned. “You can follow us? There’s room in the truck if you want...” she gestured a little vaguely, but it was enough Neil knew what she was insinuating.

“No, that's fine,” he assured. “Just give me the address?”

Wilds rattled it off and Walker prodded until they wandered away from Neil. The captain called a final “Half an hour!” over her shoulder, and Gordon leveled him with one last venomous look.

Half an hour was not nearly enough time to settle into Neil’s bones well enough to stand up to the questions that would be coming. He knew Neil’s foundations, he knew Neil’s history and his aches and his flaws. But Neil’s present was still building, still falling into place. His quirks and his mannerisms and the triggers and the way he fell apart.

Though the best way to build a name into an identity was to live in it.

A quick drive and ten minutes spent on the phone with Einstein while he gained access to the restaurant’s security cameras and scoped things out, and Neil was fiddling with the sleeves of his shirt while he waited in his car for the upperclassmen to pull into the parking lot.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he was quick to pull it out and open his text conversation with Elias. They had access to the cameras now, and it seemed Elias had put his time to good use checking for coverage and weaknesses.

Elias:

blindspot btwn c6/7

Abram:

manual ctrl?

Elias:

n- 

Abram:

cfirm

He didn’t like it particularly, but it wasn’t the worst of things. He’d been in plenty more places with plenty less coverage. A single blindspot wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen tonight.

Abram:

wash?

Elias: 

two markers in hall, quarter door

kitchen has full - freezer iclud

Abram:

cfirm

Not bad at all for a cheap restaurant in a college town.

The call he had to make, and the call he was pondering now, was whether he wanted to use the blindspot to hide, or if he wanted Neil Josten’s presence to be accessible information. 

There were two tables in the cross-sectional blindspot Elias had pointed out between cameras six and seven, and it wouldn’t be difficult for him to keep his face directed away from the cameras on his way to and from whatever seat he took. The question was less about how comfortable he felt when no one was watching his back—he was more comfortable than he probably should have been when he was ‘on his own’ like that—but rather how quickly he wanted a documented history of his presence here. 

Documentation was important for extended deep cover missions like this, for any sort of cover mission really. But if the information was accessible to Einstein, it wasn’t much of a stretch that other organizations could get their hands on it just the same.

He tapped out of his thread with Elias and flipped his hand in his phone.

The risk and reward were equated; six one way and half a dozen the other. Neil Josten needed documentation, it was better that he controlled what was written out and taken down.

Boyd’s truck was loud, and Neil heard it before he saw it. It was followed a lot more quietly by Allison’s Porsche, bright pink and eye-catching. Not that his own car was particularly subtle. 

That reminded him, he’d need to chew Ichirou out about the car still. Later, he figured, after he’d slogged his way through a good chunk of the court transcripts and medical records waiting for him in a sealed box back at the Einstein Apartment. Transcripts and records he was not looking forward to combing through. 

There were a lot of lines he didn’t mind crossing, but Andrew seemed to have a lot of lines he didn’t let people cross. It was odd that it bothered him this much, but he needed to know exactly what went down in that courtroom and with the shrink. If Riko was involved the way he was certain he had been.

His primary task was Kevin Day, and he knew that. But anything he could gather on the second son would be just as important. There was no love lost between Ichirou and his estranged brother, and the little prick was quickly making himself into a problem that they couldn’t afford to sustain. If he could turn up enough evidence that Riko was making a mark that was too visible, they’d have grounds for a termination. 

Neil shoved his phone into his back pocket and shook himself. It was still too easy to fall into Abram; to slip and slide right into another name and another life. 

As the upperclassmen clambered out of their cars and looked over at his own, Neil stepped out and locked the doors behind him after patting himself down for his wallet.

“You got here early,” Wilds mused.

As far as conversation starters went, Neil ranked it pretty low on his list. He much preferred Emery’s more aggressive ‘tell me something interesting’ approach. Honestly, he thought it probably would have been more entertaining if she’d come at him with a knife. Though, that almost certainly wasn’t how conversations went with the general population.

Neil shrugged. “I don’t know the area well yet,” he explained. A lie. “Didn’t want to be late.” Also a lie. But really, what was he supposed to say? Yeah, I got here early so I could hack into the security cameras and make sure that I had an advantage before heading in just in case of an emergency or something. You know, like normal people do.

“How long have you been in town for?” Walker asked. 

He tried not to look like he was studying her. It wasn’t particularly hard, he was a master at controlling the expression of his face. But he knew that Walker had to be at least smart enough not to read too much into expression. She was the only one on the team who seemed to get along with Andrew, that had to mean she was smart enough to watch the eyes. And it was in the eyes that it was harder to hide the truth.

It certainly helped that he didn’t really have a truth.

“A few days now.”

Reynolds’ head tilted, and the way she looked at him had him feeling vaguely like an animal behind the glass at a zoo. Inspected, glorified. All five of them were looking at him in a similar way. He was a foreign body. A new addition to their group. 

Neil supposed that he understood the fascination they had. He came in like a storm driving a three million dollar car and wearing designer clothes. He was abrasive with most of them and awkward when he wasn’t, and when it came to the court he was an absolute demon. They couldn’t make heads or tails of him, and for as much as Neil wanted it to stay that way, he knew the rest of the team wouldn’t be half so inclined to agree.

“Why Palmetto?” Reynolds asked. 

With Reynolds’ attention, Neil had unwillingly made himself the focus of Gordon’s glare. The striker had been entertaining Boyd in a conversation about the school’s football team until Reynolds had spoken. 

Boyd seemed to realize he’d lost Gordon’s attention and turned his own back towards Wilds and, consequently, Neil as well.

Shepherded by Renee, their strange little group was shuffling into the restaurant now. Neil shrugged as the hostess spotted them coming through the doors and got away with muttering a short “University,” before the hostess was greeting them with a far too bubbly voice.

“For five,” Walker said sweetly. She looked briefly at Neil in a way he was sure he was meant not to see. “A corner booth if you have any, please.”

Neil didn’t really flinch. It wasn’t a word that warranted a flinching response. But his muscles tensed in preparation to defend himself and his body was rigid in the few seconds he needed to remind himself that he wasn’t going to be hurt. 

And Walker saw it. Her gaze was considering if not evaluating, taking in the rush and release of tension, the way he held his body loosely and ready to strike if he needed to.

She met his gaze with a steady gaze of her own and dipped her chin in a subtle way he doubted the others would notice. It might have been in acknowledgment or in apology, he didn’t care either way.

Slowly, with all the timidity of a street cat, he raised his chin in return. Acknowledgment or acceptance. He didn’t care what Walker saw in it.

The questions and conversation paused while the hostess led them over to a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. Neil clocked the cameras as he passed them, kept his face half-turned away. It was documentation that any interested party would have to dig for. Proof of a person without handing over his position to anyone looking for the Butcher’s Boy.

A compromise of sorts.

Sitting at the table was interesting. Walker wrangled the group into a seating arrangement with so little fuss that Neil had to wonder if they even noticed her doing it. Walker placed herself between Reynolds and Wild, Boyd and Gordon taking up the spots on Reynolds’ side of the table with Boyd at the end. It left the wall behind Neil and the open aisle on his right. 

While he wasn’t particularly comfortable sitting next to any of them, Wilds was certainly the least overwhelming of them and she scooted closer to Walker with a careful smile, generously offering him plenty of space.

It was rather more observant of the captain than he’d initially credited her capable.

Or, at least until he caught Walker’s gentle smile and knew she’d had a word with the captain while he’d been tracking the cameras.

They gave him the luxury of letting him order before the questions started up again, but it did little to lessen the weight of their stares on his shoulders. Between Walker’s encouragements, Wilds and Reynolds kept a conversation bouncing between them, and though Gordon spent the entire time glaring through Neil he at least answered Boyd’s questions. 

It was after they’d all placed orders for varying types of pasta that the flood gates opened back up.

“So, Neil,” Wilds said around a friendly grin that felt more like a threat than it should have. What did that say about him? About Abram? About Neil? That kindness was a dangerous and unfamiliar thing? Jean would have a field day with his mind. “Where are you from?”

“New York,” he answered curtly.

“Oh hey!” Boyd cheered. “Allison and I are from New York. I grew up in Manhattan, but I moved out to Brooklyn with my mom.”

Neil nodded slowly. “I moved to Manhattan when my brothers and I reconnected.”

Reynolds, who hadn’t offered up her own borough—it was Manhattan—pounced on the details he’d handed over. “Reconnected?” 

Abram was the best at what he did for a reason. His eyes slipped down to the cutlery on the table, and the relatively pleasant expression he’d held up sealed itself off behind the sheltered mask of a broken boy built in stone. “Yeah,” he muttered. “We, um-” He scratched his throat just above the collar of his dri-fit, swallowed, and took the inside of his cheek between his teeth. “We got separated when we were young, I found them a while back.”

Passivity until provoked. 

“Are they where all that money’s from?” Reynolds pushed. 

Neil threw the skittish act away, snapped his gaze back up to meet Reynolds’ dangerously, and saw the bright flicker of shock in her gaze. He ignored Walker’s hissed “Allison!” and the movement of Wilds kicking under the table.

“What of it?” he demanded. “Pissed off you’re not the only rich kid on the team now?”

The table was silent. Abram, and by extension Neil, was something of a master when it came to looking at people without being seen, but he didn’t dare break Reynolds’ stare. Even if he saw Walker’s amused expression in his peripheral vision. 

He deliberately ignored the anger wafting off of Gordon. If Reynolds wasn’t tough enough to take a little heat she didn’t have any right to be dishing it out.

But Reynolds, her gaze steady if not a little bit confused, didn’t waver under his words or his watch. Slowly, her almost caustic look shifted until she was grinning at Neil. She nodded and gave him an approving hum.

“I like you,” she decided.

The table had mixed reviews about that apparently. Boyd looked mostly confused, while both Wilds and Walker were smothering smiles and giggles with the palms of their hands. Gordon very nearly had smoke coming out of his ears.

Neil simply raised an eyebrow, the rest of his face still that stone-carved emotionless mask that was possibly closer to the truth than anything else he could offer. “I’m so glad.”

“Watch your fucking mouth, Josten,” Gordon seethed. 

It was probably a bad move to keep provoking Gordon when he was already so agitated and worked up, but Neil didn’t really know how to back down from a fight. He lazily tilted his head to Gordon, scanning him slowly with eyes that were cold enough he might as well have taken out his contacts. 

The issue was that for all Neil could take him in a fight, he didn’t particularly want to. Gordon was tall and he was mean-looking and Neil had a feeling that if punches were thrown lines would be drawn that he couldn’t afford to have.

“Sure,” he agreed.

Either it was Boyd’s poorly timed snort or Reynolds’ smirk that set him off, but Gordon looked ready to lunge across the booth. Neil thought he might have if their waitress hadn’t come back over with a tray full of drinks and an exhausted grin.

As soon as she’d left them again, Wilds was jumping in before either Neil or Gordon had a chance to start anything.

“Tell us about you,” she insisted. 

Neil shrugged, picked up his napkin and started twisting it into little bits. “There’s really not much to say.”

“Course there is,” Boyd denied. “What sort of things are you interested in?”

Wilds jumped on her boyfriend’s thoughts. “Did you ever have any pets? What’s your favorite colour? Are you a morning person or a night owl?”

Neil wondered for a second at the nature of their relationship, at how loud it was. There was an easiness between Boyd and Wilds, they looked for each other, bright smiles and eyes rounded with warmth. The only note of comparison he had was Aiko and Ichirou.

Aiko and Ichirou loved each other quietly. They loved in worried glances and gentle touches of reassurance. They loved in Ichirou’s favourite focaccia waiting on the counter when he got home and Aiko’s tea brand always fully stocked. They loved in the way they let each other stand on their own and the way they leaned on the other. They loved in the way that they never dared to question the other in public and the way they defended each other even when they’d been in the wrong. They loved in sniper rifles from rooftops 300 yards away and ear comms with private lines.

But Boyd and Wilds—Matt and Dan—their love wasn’t quiet. Not in the same way. Neil doubted they’d ever been seconds away from losing it. He doubted that they’d ever been helpless and watching while the other’s life was in very real danger. 

Neil could remember too many times he’d talked Ichirou out of panic attacks when Aiko had been hospitalized after Finland. He remembered sitting in the bathroom with him the morning after he’d found out Aiko was pregnant, knowing all the dangers it meant for her and their child. He remembered the night in Berlin when Ichirou had gone off grid and Aiko had nearly stormed the city in search of him.

But Matt and Dan had never lived that. 

They’d never lived in a world where loving someone was as dangerous as the barrel of a gun pressed to your temple. 

Aiko and Ichirou loved quietly because to love loudly was to light a neon sign to the world: this is how you hurt me.

Matt and Dan were open with their love. Bright with it. Dan looked at Matt and smiled and he looked at her and melted. Neil was one of very few to have the honor of seeing Ichirou’s walls come crumbling down when Aiko stepped into a room, to watch Aiko’s face get a little brighter when Ichirou came home. They loved in private, the space of their home, in the arms of their family. 

Neil ached for them, wanted them to be able to be half so bold with their love as Matt and Dan could be.

Neil looked from Matt to Dan and all he knew how to do was shrug. “I like grey.”

They waited for half a beat to see if there was anything else he had to add, but all Neil did was press his lips in a thin line and go back to twisting his napkin to shreds.

Walker smiled gently as she leaned a little bit forward on the table to see him better. “What are you planning on majoring in?” 

“Languages maybe,” he pondered. “Or math.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Walker responded, keeping the conversation going past its expiration. “I’ve never been particularly good with numbers.”

Neil shrugged. “My education was a bit patchy growing up, but numbers don’t change.”

“No,” Walker agreed. “I suppose they don’t.” 

He noticed the way she picked up a napkin, mimicking his behaviour without shredding her own napkin the way he was. It was a basic psychological tool. People often felt more comfortable and open with those who shared their mannerisms. The issue with Walker trying to mimic Neil’s mannerisms, whether it was intentional on her behalf or not, was that Neil's mannerisms were fabricated. 

“Do you have a favourite?” she asked.

“Favourite what?”

She set the napkin down, smoothed it flat, and picked it back up again. “Number.”

Neil wrinkled his brow. Was that a common thing for people to have? “I dunno,” he muttered. “Ninety-three.” 

It was the number of missions he’d completed with his family. There were more if he counted the ones he’d done on his own, but he rather enjoyed working with Jean or Aiko, or—as rare as it was—Ichirou himself.

“I quite enjoy the number nine, myself,” Walker responded

“I have to ask,” Boyd interrupted, biting back a grin that was dangerously wide. “Your fucking car, man.”

“What about it?” Neil asked, sliding his gaze easily to Matt and raising an eyebrow.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Matt started. And right there was where Neil stopped listening. He stayed partially tuned in while Matt rambled about horsepower and engines and something about the design of the interior.

When he paused to take a breath Neil cut in. “Do you want to take it for a ride?”

Matt froze, stared at him like Neil was offering to give him the sun. “Are you fucking joking?”

Neil fished the keys out of his pocket and dangled them between himself and Matt. “Am I?”

What Abram thought, was that Ichirou really needed to calm the fuck down and explain the problem, before he just threw caution to the wind and flew his ass back to New York to figure out on his own.

“Rou,” Abram snapped. “You are not breathing. How are you supposed to tell me what’s happened if you are not breathing?”

Through the car speaker, Ichirou sucked in a breath that nearly had Abram flinching. It was such a violent sound he worried all of three seconds for the state of his brother's lungs before the exhale came rushing out. Inhaled again, exhaled.

Abram counted himself through seven cycles of Ichirou’s ragged breathing before he heard it starting to smooth back out.

“Right,” Abram said. “Without the breakdown this time?”

Ichirou walked himself through another breath cycle before starting. “I do not know how to make chocolate chip cookies.”

Abram blinked out his windshield and debated the merits of crashing his car. Pro: no more breakdowns about chocolate chip cookies. Con: Ichirou would most definitely march his ass down to Palmetto to chew him out whether he survived the crash or not.

“Are you serious?” Abram demanded, not bothering to signal as he turned onto the street that the Foxhole Court was built off of. “Rou, tell me that was a joke.”

“I could say that,” Ichirou mumbled. “But it would most definitely be a lie.”

“Cookies? We’re having a breakdown over chocolate chip cookies?” Abram’s voice had a sharp edge of hysteria to it. The sort that came out when he’d been worked up to the edge of a panic attack over something as useless as chocolate chip cookies. “Why are you-” he cut himself off with a frustrated sort of growl.

For as animalistic as the sound Abram has made was, it had nothing on the strangled whine that came over the car speakers. It was raw anxiety and panic compressed in a sound that had Abram’s skin crawling with goosebumps, hairs standing on end.

“How am I supposed to be a good father for my child if I can’t even make cookies? I’m going to be that dad Abram. The one who can’t make cookies and can’t go on class trips and is always busy-”

“And that’s going to make you a bad father?” Abram interrupted. 

“Yes!” Ichirou stressed. “He’s going to hate me!”

Abram’s hands flexed around the steering wheel as he pulled into the court parking lot. “Because you can’t make cookies?”

“Yes!”

Like he’d expected, Andrew’s car was here in addition to Wymack’s. 

Abram only wanted to sign the last bit of paperwork and head back out but he had a feeling that morning that his day was about to get considerably longer than he wanted it to be. All the same, he was too preoccupied fussing over his big brother to pay too much mind to Andrew’s presence at the court.

There was a reason he’d bought four coffees instead of two.

“Ichirou, shut up.”

Ichirou sputtered across the line. “What?”

“Shut up. Right now.” Abram switched the call over to his phone as he turned the car off and climbed out, locking the doors behind him and pinning his phone to his shoulder with his ear while he rearranged the coffee tray Emery had prepared for him with a wink. “You are not going to be a bad father.” He closed the distance between his car and the court, punching in the code Wymack had texted him that morning and yanking the door open. “My dad can make chocolate chip cookies. Does that qualify him as a good dad? Because if you’re about to tell me making cookies means he’s a good father, I’m going to put a hit on your ass and it'll be your damn wife who follows through on it.”

Ichirou’s voice was defeated, a little bit cowed by the rambling speech Abram had gone on. “No, I-”

But Abram wasn’t finished yet.

He had years of built-up anger for his father, it was all squirming under his skin now, like maggots in a rotten corpse. His father was a wretched man, a monster that had made a monster. All the same, his father had been a man first. A man who liked chocolate chip cookies while he gradually amputated and cauterized victims in a basement designed to be a death chamber.

Chocolate chip cookies tasted like blood in a metal drain.

“Are you going to yell at him?” Abram demanded, moving through the halls of the court for the locker room. His voice would be muffled still, but Wymack would be able to hear him. Hear the withheld anger simmering under his words. “Are you going to raise your hand to him? Are you going to strap him to a table and chop him into little bits because he can't sit still when the cops come sniffing your business?”

“No,” Ichirou muttered, and Abram could hear the way his brother was pouting.

“Are you going to love him?”

“Ram-”

“Are you going to help him grow and learn and raise him to know the difference between good and bad?” Abram pushed. “Are you going to care about him and worry about him and help him with his homework and then pass him off to me when you don’t understand the math either?”

“Abram.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he said, shouldering through the doors to the locker room and glancing once at both Andrew and Day staring at him. He hated the audience, but his brother and the family he was building were far more important to him than a little bit of information handed over for free. “It’s a yes or fucking no question.” Abram noted the way Andrew’s interest was a little more piqued by that. “Are you going to love him?”

“Yes,” Ichirou grumbled.

“Great,” Abram monotoned. “Then it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to make chocolate chip fucking cookies, they’re not even the superior cookie and if your kid is dumb enough to think they are Aiko knows how to make those double chunk ones that aren’t half bad.” He held the coffee carrier out to Andrew who raised a challenging eyebrow that Abram reflected back at him until the goalkeeper took the coffee with a lid marked with an ‘A’. “You will not be a bad father because you can’t make cookies. I promise.”

The tray was held out to Day next, and he was far less hesitant in reaching out to take the coffee marked ‘K.D’ across the top.

“Right,” Ichirou agreed quietly. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Abram mused. “If you’re a bad father it’ll probably be a product of how we were raised. Systematic abuse, disciplinary violence, that fun stuff. You might poison the cookies.”

Andrew had raised the coffee to his mouth, but he froze there, head jumping up sharply to look at Abram who looked back and only raised his brow again in question. Andrew tilted his head, held his gaze a moment longer, and then turned back to the coffee Abram had brought.

“Abram!”

Abram laughed, cutting through the resurgence of tension in Ichrou’s voice easily enough he could feel it defaulting. “If you touch him, or if you hurt him, or if you are anything like my dad,” Abram started. His voice was deceptively light, still teasing but with enough weight he knew Ichirou would recognize the promise forged in them. “I will kill you.”

Day made an odd noise, and Abram looked at him briefly before noting the disinterested way Andrew had done the same.

Ichirou released a heavy breath of relief. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Abram huffed. 

There was a slightly strained silence on the other end of the line and Abram huffed. “What?”

Ichirou’s voice came out a little more timid now, mumbling in the ashamed way it only ever was around Abram, Aiko, and Jean. “Do you know how to make chocolate chip cookies?”

Abram pinched the bridge of his nose, incapable of moderating his annoyance and exhausted frustration when it came to Ichirou. “Would you like me to teach you how to make chocolate chip cookies?” Abram sighed.

“That would be nice,” Ichirou grumbled.

“You are a mess of a person,” Abram said, and he knew that Ichirou would understand it to be an agreement. “Okay? And that’s coming from me. Do you know how much of a mess you have to be for me to sit here telling you that you’re a mess?”

“You’re not sitting, you liar.”

Abram scoffed, setting the coffee tray down and pinning his phone between his ear and his shoulder for just long enough to wrestle his own iced coffee out of the tray. “Of course I’m not sitting, what does that have to do with anything?”

“It proves that you’re a liar.”

“Oh sue me,” Abram grumbled. He took a sip of the coffee and was again pleasantly surprised at the magic Emery had worked. There was something rich in a way that reminded him of dark chocolate but wasn’t. He wondered if Emery would answer if he asked. “I’m a lying liar who lies about sitting down when I’m standing up. Do you want me to teach you how to make cookies or do you want to be a terrible father?”

“I thought making cookies wasn’t the qualifications for being a terrible father?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Abram explained. “All fathers must make cookies or they’re bad parents. Do you want to be a bad parent?”

Andrew laughed and Abram felt his lips twitch into a smirk that was several shades too proud to be allowed. It wasn’t really Andrew laughing, he reminded himself, but a medication that was doing more damage to an already damaged boy. That wiped the smirk right off his face.

“I do not,” Ichirou laughed.

“Then shut up before I call your wife.”

Ichirou squawked an offended sound and sputtered. “Why would you call Aiko?”

“To tell her that you’re not allowed to learn how to make cookies.”

Wymack finally made his appearance, walking through the door with both eyebrows lifted. It was clear that he’d heard the whole phone call from the moment Abram had entered the locker room. Abram greeted him with a quick salute and gestured towards the single coffee waiting in the tray, marked with a ‘W’ and a terrible drawing of an angry face.

Wymack snorted when he picked it up.

“A menace to society,” Ichirou grumbled.

“That I am,” Abram agreed. “Are you finished having a breakdown now?”

“Probably not,” Ichirou answered honestly. “But I’m sure you’ve more important things to handle right now.”

Abram bristled, and it was interesting to watch the way Andrew tensed in reaction. “Say that again and I’ll fly back home to smack you.” He slipped into French despite Day’s presence in the room and lowered his voice so that it would be a gentle murmur of vaguely familiar syllables at best. “There is nothing here that is more important.”

“Careful little brother,” Ichirou teased, and Abram could hear the affectionate smile pulling at his brother’s lips. “You almost sound like you care.”

“Fuck off,” Abram muttered.

He hung up to the sound of his brother laughing.

“Family emergency?” Andrew quipped, a too sharp cut to his smile and eyes shining with intelligence behind the blurry smear of drugs.

“Sure,” Neil agreed, stuffing his phone into his back pocket even as it buzzed with a text he was sure read either ‘asshole’ or ‘thank you’. Most probably it said something to the likes of both. “How’s the coffee?”

Andrew's manic grin stretched until Neil thought it probably hurt. “Oh, you think you’re funny,” Andrew drawled. 

Neil’s grin was a little bit too sharp, closer to Abram’s or Nathaniel’s. “Aren’t I?”

“Who’d you ask,” Andrew asked. Except there was a distinct lack of a question in his voice, a tone that negated the option for refusal. Neil was refusing all the same.

“Ask for what?” he teased, pulling and prodding and pushing at Andrew in every possible way he could. It was so much fun to rile him up, to watch him react even when he didn’t want to.

Andrew was still smiling, but the sound he made was something of a snarl. 

“D’you mean coffee?” Neil asked, faking a less than innocent confusion. “I just got what I thought you’d like.” He shrugged. “Did I get it right?”

Wymack interrupted before Andrew could respond, and Neil wasn’t sure if he was happy about the interruption or not. For as fun as it was to play these games with Andrew, the drugs the goalkeeper was on made him a little more volatile and unpredictable than he would have liked him to be.

What Neil was really desperate for was a sober Andrew. 

He wanted to see the full depth of that quick and clever mind. He wanted to have these conversations when Andrew had enough presence of mind and enough self-control to fully engage. For as talented as Abram was in a fight, there was a certain thrill these verbal sparring matches brought him that a knife fight never did. One of those matches with a sober Andrew? His fingers twitched with excitement at the prospect alone.

“You got mine right,” Wymack told him as if Neil hadn’t already known. “Now stop stroking your ego and get your scrawny ass into my office.”

Neil flashed that crooked grin at Wymack before turning it back on Andrew and giving him a quick two-fingered salute. A salute that should be as familiar to Andrew as breathing with a mind like he had.

Andrew’s eyes narrowed but there was too much curiosity in his gaze for Neil to be worried just yet. Their game would keep going.

“When you’re done, join us on the court,” Day ordered.

Neil froze in the middle of a step, twisted to look back at Day, and let his face slide into a blank and mocking expression. 

“Why would I do that?” Neil asked.

Day looked like he’d swallowed his tongue. Was he that unused to being told no? Hadn’t he heard it enough from the drugged-up goalkeeper at his side?

“Just- please?”

Andrew stiffened, but Neil beat him to reacting, shoulders coiling with tension.

“Don’t say that,” Neil said, his voice housing a little more bite than he’d intended. Day leaned back a little, even as far out of Neil’s range as he was. “Begging is for children who don’t know any better.”

Andrew’s grin was too bright and his eyes too understanding. “Interesting,” he mumbled.

Neil’s gaze cut to him. “Is it?”

“Josten,” Wymack interrupted. “Office.”

Neil was still staring at Andrew, but he tilted his head in recognition of the reminder that was phrased like an order even when it clearly wasn’t. “Yes, Coach.”

“Now, Josten,” Wymack repeated.

Neil wondered at the lack of a warning in Wymack’s tone. Even while telling Neil what to do, even in the face of Neil’s partial disobedience, Wymack was nothing if not mildly annoyed by his behaviour. There was no anger in his voice, no threat. And when Neil started moving towards Wymack and his office without glancing over first he almost froze again at his own action.

For all that he’d trusted the coach’s good word at yesterday’s morning practice, it had not eliminated the threat Neil felt from his presence. But that? Walking towards him without checking for the promise of violence first? 

Wymack saw it in him, the vaguely startled expression that flickered across his face before he smothered it again. And—startling Neil back into a fuzzy confusion—Wymack softened his edges when he recognized it.

The coach shut the office door behind them, and Neil was tense at the blocked escape route until Wymack circled around to drop into the chair behind his desk. It put Neil closer to the exit, and even with the door closed he knew he could get out long before Wymack could grab him.

“Relax,” Wymack grumbled. 

Neil tried to, recognized that his body had gone ramrod straight and still. He settled into the other chair in the office and rolled his shoulders once to encourage his body to ease away the tension that had built up naturally at the sound of a door shutting him in with an adult man. 

“Christ,” Wymack muttered. “Who the hell was your father?”

Neil’s gaze snapped up to Wymack and any of the tension he’d let go of returned. “Does it matter?”

Wymack looked ancient then, looked like he was holding the weight of a million lifetimes' worth of trauma on his shoulders. Like Atlas held up the world, Wymack held a history of pain that was a thousand times heavier. 

“No,” he decided with a sigh, pulling open a file drawer and pulling out a small stack of papers for Neil to go through before signing them. “It really fucking doesn’t.”

He ended up on the court anyway. Despite the way he’d shot Day down earlier, Neil Josten was the sort of person who couldn’t stay away from the court regardless of who the asshole asking him to be on it was. 

Well, he supposed that was only really true to an extent. If it was Riko Moriyama asking him to join him on the court, Neil would take great pleasure in first telling him no, and then punching him in that sneering face of his.

Day wasn’t half so bad as Riko was, and so long as he kept his mouth shut about making Neil the best and all his give-me-your-game bullshit Neil probably wouldn’t punch him.

So of course the first thing that left Day’s mouth was: “You could be the best if you would just let me teach you.”

“There’s a difference between what you’re demanding and what teaching is,” Neil mused, not bothering to even look at Day. Instead, he studied the drills that had been laid out. The Raven drills Neil had already mastered. What a surprise Day would be in for. “You want my game, I want you to fuck off.”

Day ground his teeth together. “You’re being ridiculous.”

Neil hummed in neither agreement nor disagreement. He supposed it was still early, and he didn’t exactly knock Day for taking this long to figure it out, but it seemed a pretty integral part of who he was to be as difficult as possible. The sooner Day put that together the better for them both, until then, Neil was all too happy to continue being ‘ridiculous’ if it would get his point across.

“And you literally tattooed second place on your fucking face,” Neil returned. “Look at us making great choices.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Wymack grumbled.

Neil didn’t look over at where the coach was stationed next to an uninterested Andrew, but his lips twitched in amusement at the man’s commentary all the same.

“Nothing?” Neil pressed when Day stayed silent. “I’m not interested in your little delusion of power and supremacy, Day. You’re no better than the rest of us and the sooner you realize that you were only ever a pawn in Riko’s game the sooner you and I can stop having this argument.”

Day grit his teeth and held his racquet out in front of Neil when he made to walk away.

“What will it take?”

Neil turned slowly, eyebrow raised and fighting back a dangerously sharp smile. “For what?”

“To get you to play,” Day continued. “What will it take for you to let me teach you?”

Neil tilted his head and made a good show of consideration. Even if he’d known all this time what he was going to ask of Day, he hadn’t expected it to happen quite so soon. He’d been expecting weeks of baiting and biting and scathing comments going both ways before Day finally set his ego down.

“Tell him no.”

Day furrowed his brow, but Andrew shuffled to attention by the plexiglass.

“What?” Day asked.

“Riko,” Neil clarified. “I’m not stupid,” he mused. “You showed up in Palmetto with a broken hand and the first thing you did was find yourself a bodyguard willing to get between you and the Ravens. The fact that anyone believes you’ve even gone skiing before is a damned miracle.” Neil shrugged. “What I don’t get is why you’re not furious. The bastard broke your hand and you look like you’re ready to go running back to him the second he tells you it’s time to go home.” Neil adjusted his stance, facing Day full-on and tapping the butt of his racquet against the floor. “You want me to learn from you? Then when Riko says playtime is over you tell him no.”

Neil ignored the manic sound of Andrew’s laughter, and didn’t spare a single glance for the expression of disbelief and evaluation that he knew was on Wymack’s face. He stared down Kevin Day as the striker went through the seven stages of grief. He stared down Kevin Day as he paled and flushed and braced himself.

“Okay,” Kevin said.

Neil hummed, keeping his expression neutral even with victory bubbling in his blood. What had Mia’s bet been? Two months before Kevin agreed? He’d just made a hundred dollars right there.

“So,” Neil said instead, turning to look at the drills set out. “What’s first?”

He glanced back at Kevin, and it was there. Slow, cautious, a little unsure maybe. But determination was rearing its proud head, confidence swelling and an arrogance that wasn’t Raven born but inherited from Kayleigh Day finding a home in the way Kevin held his racquet in an expert grip and scooped up a ball.

“Try and keep up,” Kevin snarked.

Neil grinned then, fierce and a little bit wild. 

Hello, Kevin, he thought. Welcome to the game.

Chapter Text

Abram checked the time again. He had to meet Jamie at nine and though it was only seven now the sun was starting to set and it was playing enough tricks on his distracted mind that he’d checked the time thrice in about ten minutes.

Huffing at himself, Abram turned back to the massive pile of transcripts and medical records surrounding him, going back over them for the second time in as many days. It was even less enjoyable the second time around. Not only was he reliving some of the most god awful rigged court proceedings he’d read in a long time, but the medical records and the transcripts from Andrew’s therapist were so stupidly incorrect a part of him wanted to hunt the bastard down to show him what it really meant to be a ‘threat to society at large’.

He sighed, ran a hand through the tangled curls of his hair, and jotted out another note on both the physical copy of the transcript and on a separate notepad. It was an ingrained habit to keep more than one copy of anything that might prove even potentially valuable.

Too many times in his youth had he watched the failings of those he was meant to learn from to make the same mistake now.

He turned to another page and winced. The patient is destructive and joyless.

How did they get it so wrong? Abram knew it didn’t all have to do with Riko. There was no way Riko had enough power to influence so much of the proceedings, and what he had influenced was explicitly clear in the records. 

But for even the cousin and twin to be so misguided when they gave their character witnesses?

That hadn’t been Riko. And still, they’d been so wrong about who Andrew fundamentally was. Abram knew that not everyone had the same skill set that he did. He knew that not everyone was half so capable of reading and understanding the people around him. He’d gotten so good at it because he would have been killed if he hadn’t. 

But for Andrew’s own family to have so little understanding of who he was?

Abram couldn’t imagine not knowing his family to their core. 

Aiko, Ichirou, Jean. They were his family and he knew who they were better than they knew themselves on most days. In the time since he’d reconnected with his mother’s side of the family, he’d figured them out too. Even Einstein, if he chose to extend the term that far. And when he was being honest with himself, he did.

Andrew’s time in foster care and the way he’d been separated from them the first sixteen years of his life was hardly an excuse. 

After all, it had only been a year and a half since Abram reached out to the Hatfords. But he knew Jamie, and he knew how she always braided her hair back before a mission because her brother had taught her that leaving it down was an easy way for an opponent to get the higher ground on her. And he knew his Uncle Stuart, the way he preferred knives to guns when he’d been young but had nearly stopped using knives entirely once Abram’s mother had died at the wrong end of one. He knew Jamie’s father, Thomas, and that though he headed the family he was almost never directly involved in anything they did because he’d always thought Stuart was better suited for it all. He knew Baz, and the way he was reliable through the end of every mission even when he seemed a little bit ditzy most of the time.

So really, what excuse did Hemmick and Minyard have? How could they not see Andrew?

Frustrated, and more than aware that even though it was only 7:10 he wouldn’t be making much more progress into his second run-through of the transcripts, he pulled his phone out to update Aiko on what he’d found.

At the very least, it was more productive than sitting here feeling sorry for something he couldn’t change.

It was bad enough that he felt bad about it at all. Abram almost never got invested in these sorts of things. It was never a particularly good move to give a shit about the people that you were protecting—or screwing over depending on the day. 

The last time he’d done that was back in Russia. 

But Andrew struck a chord with him. Maybe it was the familiarity, the way Andrew was so close to a mirror image of the closest truth Abram had. Abram looked at him and saw a mind that was capable of understanding him in a way no one else had quite figured out. 

Maybe it was because Abram was so desperate to be understood that he was angry beyond reason that Andrew wasn’t.

All the same, he reached out to Aiko.

Abram:

set up cfirm

Aiko:

r?

Abram:

cfirm

these proceedings are disgusting

the therapists notes are deluded

Aiko:

that bad?

Abram:

i don’t know how he got away with it

Aiko:

is it demonstrable? 

Abram:

y

i’ll send notes over when i’m done

Aiko:

cfirm

will you tell him?

Abram:

what good will that do?

no

he’ll ask too many questions

Aiko:

sorry 

Abram:

it didn’t happen to me

Aiko:

you still seem to care

And she was right; Abram did care. 

He cared that it had happened in the first place, maybe because he’d seen it too many times or maybe because he’d lived something terrifyingly close to the life he was suspecting Andrew had survived. 

Either answer, he knew it wasn’t a good thing, and he knew it would be safer to stop it. But he thought of Andrew and those clever eyes clouded over with mania and an expressionless face twisted up into a grin that hurt to look at. 

And Abram was angry.

He stacked the sheets back up, sure to mark his place in the damned things for when he would eventually force himself to return to them. He didn’t want to, but he knew that it was important. He knew that he had to know the exact damage Riko had caused, he needed to know what else Riko might be willing to do. 

And regardless of whether he liked it, he needed to know Andrew. Especially when Andrew had made it so painfully clear that he didn’t want to be known.

The rest of the foxes were easy reads, or easy enough. Walker had been the only other one to require any extensive digging, and even her past was understandable and easy. Familiar in a way that it really shouldn’t have to be.

Documents all stacked back up, Abram dropped them into the cardboard file boxes they’d been delivered in. Lids on, he shoved them into the safe Elias had installed for him the other day and tried to forget the anger he felt.

Anger was never a good thing for people like him to feel. It ruined them. It would ruin him. 

Abram stared at the safe for a moment longer. He saw the words destructive and joyless swimming around with the misguided character witness transcripts. He saw mandated therapy and a chemical cocktail of drugs shoved down an unwilling throat.

It would ruin him.

Abram left the room before he could drag it all back out again. He thought that he might burn it if he looked at it now.

“Hey boss,” Elias greeted him as he moved into the living room, abandoning the small space Aiko had made into something of an office. “You meeting Jamie now?”

“Nine,” Abram corrected. 

He paused behind the couch, surveying the game Elias was playing for a moment. He didn’t understand the objective of it. The missions were strange, the functions odd. He’d never been on an assassination mission that was anything like the one Elias was playing through. None of it made any sort of sense.

“Wanna play?” Elias asked, pausing the game and looking back at him.

Abram hummed dismissively. “No,” he moved easily into the kitchen, getting two mugs from the cabinet reflexively. He paused for a moment at that, looked at both of them and decided it was an alright mistake to make. “Mia and Charlie?” he called out.

From the living room, video game still paused and dangling over the back of the couch, Elias answered. “The first of many date days I believe.” Abram nodded as he made two mugs of coffee, one made the way Elias always drank it. “They left around four? You were a little busy.”

“Hm,” Abram muttered. “Going over the transcripts.”

“Again?” Elias pressed. “We’ve got to get you out of the house more.”

Abram frowned as he carried the mugs back out to the living room and passed Elias’ over to him. “I’m not a dog,” he grumbled.

Elias’ eyes were too bright just then, and Abram deeply regretted having spoken at all. 

“We should get a dog,” he grinned.

“Absolutely not.”

“No, I mean it,” Elias pushed. “Think about it, the building allows pets, and a dog is a good cover to go out on runs and shit all the time.”

“Elias,” Abram warned. 

“Boss-man, Nat, Abram, dearly beloved friend of mine-” 

Abram scowled and Elias winced.

“No, but come on,” he said again, almost whining. “I love dogs.”

“No,” Abram repeated. “We are not getting a dog.” He very adamantly ignored the pout on Elias' face and twisted to look at the television. “It’s non-negotiable.”

“Just wait until Charlie and Mia get home,” Elias warned. “We’re getting a dog.”

Abram sighed through his nose, and tried to enjoy his coffee as much as he still could. 

He was getting a fucking dog, apparently.

About an hour outside of Palmetto, Abram sat in a booth near the front of the diner. He was early to meet Jamie, as he always was. Twenty minutes early, so he had time to survey things before letting his cousin just walk into a potential trap. He’d much rather the trap snap shut around him and him alone.

Ichirou hated it.

As it stood, there was no trap waiting. Once Elias had secure feeds on the cameras and had locked the little diner down, Abram sent him off the comms. He’d be back later, once they moved in on the laundromat, but for now he could get some space and eat something. 

For as much shit as he gave them, Abram knew how dedicated his team was. Elias himself had gone thirty-seven hours without eating or sleeping or doing anything but downing shots of espresso and watching Abram’s back when a mission had gone a little south. Abram knew it was because of that dedication and loyalty that he’d made it out of there as unharmed as he had. 

If all he could do to help his team in return was scold them and force them to take care of themselves every so often, he would do it.

His cousin had always been loud, or at least, in the time that he’d known her. He supposed some of it came from years of squabbling with her brother to be heard. They were both ridiculously loud. Trained to stand out and be seen in the same way Nathaniel was and the opposite way Abram was.

It wasn’t a surprise that she was loud now.

Jamie tore around the corner on a motorbike that looked suspiciously like Aiko’s, and Abram tracked her movements through the parking lot and off the bike until her steps carried her through the door and set off that little ringing bell. When her eyes met his, her expression twisting up into that coy Hatford smile, Abram did nothing but raise a single brow in response.

“Aiko’s bike?”

Jamie’s grin stretched. “I’m holding onto it for safekeeping,” she said, accent lilting and bright. 

He’d done remarkably well keeping his own natural accent under wraps, a strange mix of his father’s regional Baltimore twists and his mother’s ‘proper’ English accent that was watered down and dampened until it sounded something like neither at all. But hearing Jamie speaking now brought the weight of it to his tongue, his mother’s notes overshadowing his father’s until he sounded like a British ex-pat when he spoke next.

“I’m sure you are,” he agreed. “Just not sure what state it’ll be in when she gets it back.”

Jamie rolled her eyes. “Could always give me your bike,” she mused, finally dropping into the seat across from him. “It’s not like you ever use it.”

Abram narrowed a look at her that was potent enough she cringed back for a second.

“Right,” she agreed. “Loud and clear, ‘cuz.”

That settled, Abram turned back to his coffee, his third in the past hour and a bit. He wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight, apparently.

“How’s your father?” he asked.

Jamie heaved something of an aggrieved sigh at that. “He’s your uncle, you know,” she muttered. Same argument as the last time, then. “It’s not like-” she made an aborted hand motion and tugged at the end of her braid instead. “He’s your uncle,” she repeated.

“No,” Abram disagreed. “He is not. He’s your father.”

“You could at least call him Uncle Tommy,” Jamie stressed. “Everyone in the family-”

“Your family is not the same as mine,” Abram cut in. “I am not a Hatford the way you want me to be one. You are my cousin, Baz is my cousin, Stuart is my Uncle. Your father was my mother’s brother. He made it very clear that he had no interest in being a part of my family. He is a business associate, and that is all.”

“Jesus fuck, Abram,” Jamie cursed. “We’re not asking you to join up and leave your family behind, but you are family.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “But you and I see family in very different ways.”

“Abram, you’re Aunt Mary’s son, Dad’s just- He wants to apologize, I swear, it’s just-”

“Just what?” Abram interrupted again. “If it wasn’t for Uncle Stuart’s involvement the Hatfords wouldn’t have done a damn thing to help me. You can tell your father to shove his apologies up his ass.”

Jamie sighed, cradling her head in her hands and muttering to herself quietly. “Okay,” she conceded, just like she always did. “Fine. I get it.”

Abram offered a smile that was a few degrees too cold. “Great.”

“Sorry,” Jamie grimaced. “Won’t bring it up again.”

Abram nodded, but rather bitterly he thought about how long that promise had lasted the last time she’d said it.

Thomas Hatford—Uncle Tommy, apparently—was the eldest of the three Hatford children. He’d been the one to decide Mary should court Nathan Wesninski, and he’d been the one to send her off to marry him. And when she’d reached out for his help with her infant son nearly nineteen years ago, he’d been the one to shut the door on her.

When Abram had reached out to him a little over a year and a half ago, it was to find an ultimatum waiting for him. He could join up with the Hatfords, abandon his family and the Moriyamas completely, and Thomas would help him take down the Butcher. Or he could walk away from them and never ask for a damn thing again.

Abram had gone with the third option. Waited a few days and called his Uncle Stuart instead, and it had been Stuart, who’d always been closer to Mary, always reached out on birthdays and holidays and did his level best, who’d swayed Thomas’ mind.

So far as Abram was concerned, he’d never had an ‘Uncle Tommy’, and he never would. Thomas Hatford was another unfortunate business partner he had to work with on occasion. It worked out well that Stuart handled more of the family business than Thomas did anyway. 

Meeting Jamie and Baz had been something of an added bonus, and though Abram was well aware that he had an extensive family in Britain, they were loyal to Thomas. The only members of his family who bore the last name Hatford, were those three: his Uncle Stuart, and his cousins Jamie and Baz.

No matter how many times Jamie advocated an apology in favour of her father, Abram’s mind wouldn’t change.

But she’d apologised, put it to rest and made another promise—even if it was one he knew she was going to break—and she was his family—even if her father wasn’t—so he could too. Abram nudged the extra mug towards her.

“Got you coffee,” he muttered into his own mug.

Jamie grinned, wrapped her fingers around it and pulled it closer to her chest. “Thanks.”

He hummed, and for a few quiet minutes, they sat there drinking their coffee and looking out the window, behind the counter, scanning every face in the store. Well, Abram did. Jamie just sat quietly sipping her coffee and looking at him.

Until Abram’s phone buzzed twice with an incoming text. He knew who it would be, but he checked anyway, pulling it out and flipping it open. Elias was ready, Stuart was in position, they had the go-ahead.

“Ready?” Jamie asked.

Abram hummed his agreement as he stood up, leaving a few bills on the counter to more than cover the cost of the sludge-like coffees they’d downed.

“Do we need to go over anything?” Abram asked. He figured it was more polite than asking if Jamie needed to go over anything. They both knew he knew the plans backward and forwards and in his sleep. There was something of a chance that Abram was a little bit obsessed with all of this.

“If you want to,” Jamie acquiesced. “But I’m alright.”

Abram looked over at her, ignoring the poorly concealed flashes of concern. “In through the back,” he started. “Let me handle the locks. You’ll ensure the first floor is clear before heading to the storeroom and working with Elias to reroute the camera footage. I’ll move straight into the back to copy out the information we’ll need. We get out, get the drives to Uncle Stuart, and get the hell gone.”

Jamie’s lips twitched into a smile. “It’s never that easy.”

“No,” Abram agreed. “It never is.”

Jamie trailed after him by about half a step as he left the diner behind and turned left down the quiet street. “What are you carrying?”

A lot, was the easy answer. But it was a habit from missions with Ichirou over the comms to give a too thorough layout of his personal arsenal. He managed to cut out the locations though, just spitting out blade types and quantities. 

“Four karambits, two boot knives, just the one stiletto, and a few throwing knives.”

The karambits were on his thighs, two on each leg. Boot knives quite obviously strapped at his ankle mostly covered by his steel boots. The stiletto was at his hip where it was usually joined by another that he’d left at home. The ‘few’ throwing knives were in the sheaths built into the sleeves of his dri-fit, three each arm.

He still felt underprepared.

“No guns?”

Abram made another turn and looked over at Jamie with unrestrained annoyance, she only grinned and taunted him with a raised eyebrow.

“We want this to be quiet,” Abram reminded her.

Jamie hummed, then removed her pistol from her person and shrugged before checking the magazine and putting it back. “Knives it is then,” she agreed.

“How many are you carrying?” he asked, returning the favour, so to speak.

Jamie rolled her eyes. “Enough.”

Abram clicked his tongue in vague disapproval. “Stupid answer,” he chastised. “How many?”

“Five,” Jamie answered. “Not as many as you-” and she sounded teasing there, but also a little bitter maybe. “But enough.”

Abram only hummed in response. 

There was never really enough the way he saw it. Never enough weapons or enough missions, never enough lives saved or terrible men murdered. Never enough planning or protection, never enough of anything really. 

“Uncle Stuart said it should be clear,” Jamie said. They were in a back alley now, only a few streets over from their target. 

“He said that last time,” Abram mused. “Elias has already marked three heat signatures. That was around an hour ago, we’ll see how things have changed.”

Jamie cursed under her breath and Abram had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from grinning. 

There were very few things in his life that he was actively proud of. He was proud of Ichirou, the boy he’d been and the man he was now. He was proud of Aiko, the healing that she’d gone through to be who she was today. He was proud of Jean, the strength of character he always showed. And he was proud of his team.

A lot of what Einstein was now had been founded since Jean left to go deep cover, but even before then, they’d been a strong team. Sure, their name was derived from a silly joke about their initials and the mass-energy equivalence equation. Sure, they were goofy and a pain in Abram’s ass more often than they weren’t. But they were—like he was and Jean was and Aiko was and Ichirou was—the best in their field. 

Uncle Stuart liked to try and show them up with his fancy Hatford connections and his criminal history, securing them all sorts of loyalties. But when push came to shove, it was always Einstein’s information that was the more reliable, the more accurate. 

Abram was furiously proud of his team.

“Where do you find these people?” Jamie asked.

“New York,” Abram drawled lazily.

It wasn’t technically correct. 

Abram had found Charlie first, dragged her out of an underage sex-worker ring where she’d been selling a too-young body to try and keep herself fed. She’d been sixteen to his fourteen at the time, and he’d accidentally enamoured her to him. He offered her a place within the Moriyama ranks, a safe haven in the shit storm she was living in. And she hadn’t hesitated before saying yes.

Elias came a little while later, Abram aged fifteen and searching for whoever the hell was the hacker behind the screen name R3CK0N1NG. He hadn’t quite expected Elias, fifteen and camped out on his drug addict step-father’s couch sporting fresh bruises. Elias had accepted a place on the mission team when Abram had asked, and somehow he’d never left.

Mia was the last to join, only a few weeks after Elias when she’d tried to steal food from an undercover Abram. She’d held her ground in the resulting scuffle for all of fifteen seconds, but it was more than most people could. Abram gave her the sandwich anyway, paid for the rest of her younger brother’s chemotherapy and for the funeral when he passed away months later.

He’d found each of them in New York sure, but not in the criminal world Stuart found his people in. Abram found them on street corners and sex clubs, in the homes of their abusers and desperate with starvation. He’d earned their loyalty as they’d earned his, and they’d climbed their way from the bottom of the ladder one rung at a time. 

Abram was so fucking proud of them.

Abram came to a stop, at the mouth of an alley across the street from the laundromat they were preparing to raid. 

The place was owned and operated by Karl Miller, and while they boasted quick and cheap laundry services during the daytime hours, Abram was of the unique knowledge that the laundromat was a front for a different sort of laundering. Miller was the Butcher’s preferred money launderer, and he’d been on Nathan’s payroll for several years. 

With the information stored on the computers in the Laundromat's backroom turned over to the police, Abram would do serious damage to his father. The feds would come crawling at the mention of their elusive Butcher and Abram was eager to watch his father squirm.

“I can’t imagine doing my laundry here,” Jamie mused. “We’re across the street and I can smell the rot of the place.”

Abram turned an amused look at her and jerked his head towards the large dumpsters on either side of them. “Might just be those.”

Jamie wrinkled her nose. “The things I do for you.”

“My sincerest apologies,” Abram grumbled.

“Oh, I can feel just how sincere you are,” Jamie hissed back.

Abram might throttle her here and do this mission himself.

Hm, no. He might actually miss her if he did that.

Before he could make a choice either way, his phone buzzed again. Elias had sent a photo of his folded legs in the new spinning desk chair he insisted he absolutely needed in order to be able to work most efficiently. It was clearly Elias who was going to be throttled tonight.

“Are we ready?” Jamie asked.

“Elias is good, Stuart’s been waiting,” Abram passed on. “You have what you need?”

“Always do,” Jamie grinned.

Abram wasn’t about to waste time correcting her when she had to know how obviously wrong she was. Instead, he reached out to tug once on the end of her braid and slipped into the shadows before she could swat at him. If she was going to call him her little cousin and piss around playing games before a mission, Abram was going to act the part and play just as hard.

“You little shit,” Jamie muttered. Her voice came at him in double, once over the comms as they cracked to life at Elias’ will, and once chasing him through the shadows as she silently followed him. 

The lock on the backdoor was less of a challenge than the one at the Foxhole Court had been, and Abram was almost disappointed at how easily he was given access to the building.

He should have probably known right then that it would be the only easy thing about any of this.

“Hey, boss,” Elias said, unease still evident in his voice even over the comms. “I’m getting eleven heat signatures.”

Abram felt more than he heard Jamie cursing, the two of them crowded so closely in a narrow hallway that her breath was firm against his shoulder. He forced away the sickness twisting in his stomach at just how close she was. He was alright. It was all fine.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“Are we calling it?”

“Give me locations,” Abram hissed. He wasn’t walking away from this.

“Uh… yeah. I’ve got three in the storeroom Jamie’ll need access to, six up in the backroom you’ll need to be in, and the spare two patrolling.”

“Too many, Abram,” Jamie muttered. “It’s not worth it.”

Abram’s shoulders tightened and he forced himself to relax. “You go through what I had to,” he growled slowly, ice in his voice that wasn’t his. “And you tell me again that it’s not worth it.”

He felt Jamie sigh heavily against his back, but then he felt her nod. “Alright.”

“I can walk you through it,” Elias promised. “Nine metres between the two of you and the patrol team now.”

Abram considered that. “Are they checking in?”

“Negative,” Elias crackled back. “There’s no radio waves.”

“Stupid,” Jamie muttered.

“Good for us,” Abram countered.

“Closing,” Elias warned. “Four metres… coming round now.”

As soon as Elias said it, two large men rounded the corner that Abram and Jamie were tucked behind. Without breathing, without checking in with each other or pausing for consideration, the cousins struck out with equally lethal force, and two patrolmen dropped.

There was a certain feeling that came with killing a man. Not a particularly pleasant one, but not unpleasant either. 

When he was younger, it made Abram sick. Death, violence. He’d dream of a life where he could leave it behind, not a life that he’d build dealing with death as intimately as one dealt with the rest of the world.

Now, death was a comforting thing. It was a sure thing. 

Every man died. Every man would die. Abram knew death, kissed her, cradled her, wielded her like the weapon she was never meant to be. And thus far she’d been good to him, had held his hand and guided him step by trembling step through a world that had been built to ruin him. 

The wicked curve of the karambit in his hand was a familiar thing, steady and natural. The way a man’s blood shone on the edge of it was a comfort.

Two slashed throats and there were only nine others left.

Abram scanned over the corpses. The man he’d handled was cut cleanly. The line was straight and crisp. Jamie’s killing stroke wobbled a little at the end, odd considering she was taller and had better reach.

He clicked his tongue. “Sloppy.”

Jamie scoffed. “Shut up.”

“Jay, you head straight, I’ll walk you through. Abram-”

“I know my way,” Abram interrupted.

“Well, see,” Elias started, feigning an age-old exasperation like he felt it in his bones. “I was going to say you were fine on your own because I know you’ve memorized the layout. Now I want to narrate your every step.”

“Elias I swear to god-”

“Don’t worry, I'm still banking on getting the dog.”

Jamie looked at Abram over with amusement and curiosity sparking equally in her Hatford grey eyes. “Dog?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Not the time,” Abram snapped, quietly but harshly enough both his cousin and his team member fell silent. “We’re on a clock here,” he reminded them.

Jamie winked, and then she was stepping back into the shadows and slinking her way to the storeroom. Abram tracked her as she went. For as invisible as she would have been to anyone else, he was too well trained in disappearing not to be able to see just as well.

“Close me out,” Abram muttered.

“You sure?” Elias asked, but Abram heard the tell-tale clacking of him typing away at his keyboard, already preparing to turn Abram's comms off until he felt the need to check back in. If Abram needed to, he could turn them back on manually. 

“Positive,” Abram confirmed.

And with one half-started click, the static in his comms fell silent.

He took a long moment, eyes closed and listening to the not-silent silence of the laundromat. There were floorboards creaking under the weight of bodies much heavier than Jamie’s or his own. The muffled sound of laughter, quiet enough he might have missed it if he hadn’t been waiting for it.

Eyes still closed, Abram stepped over the bodies he’d left behind, rugs that he’d rather not stand on.

Reisu stirred under his skin, like a shark scenting blood in the water. Violence called to him, called to Nathaniel too. Abram rolled his neck around on his shoulders, settled in his skin. He felt the weight of Nathaniel like a knife in his hand, the chill of Reisu calming his raging blood.

Death and violence were his friends, Abram had no reason to fear them. When they came for him, and he knew that they would one day, it would be a welcome reunion. But for now…

He kicked open the door behind which six men were waiting for deaths they didn’t realize were coming quite so soon, and the smile on his face was a weapon no man deserved to wield. 

The scramble was quick. Always so quick, never quick enough. Abram loved the thrill of it, of hitting and striking and dodging. The dance of daggers and blades and whatever else came out to play.

He drew two knives, one from each of his forearm sheaths, and in the half-second of time where the startled men looked up at the broken swinging door and the monster standing where it should have been he tested the weight of them—dangerously and deliciously familiar in his hands—and flicked his wrists. They found their targets, each one embedded in the foreheads of the two largest brutes.

Cruel smile still twisting his lips, Abram watched a thin trail of blood leak from where the hilt of his knife kissed the pale forehead of the closer of the two. 

There was a time when it might have made him sick once, a time when he would have seen it and cried into his mother’s unforgiving arms. But he’d been a child born to a loveless marriage between two monsters of different markings and what was he ever meant to be if not a product of that?

He watched blood drip from the knife he’d thrown, watched life wash out of eyes that had been twisted in anger a moment ago.

He was not taking innocent lives, and for as much as he was a monster, men like this were no better. 

Their deaths were quick, and he reckoned they were more painless than they deserved them to be. But they’d bought him another beat of time. One step closer and Abram had two more knives in his hands, could taste copper and iron on his tongue. 

There were four more men in the room, turning away from their fallen companions and twisting with rage. He threw another knife that found the soft temple of another victim, the smoke-smelling man on the left. His fourth blade went for the man with bleached hair, who foolishly held up an arm to block it, catching the blade deep in bone.

Abram heard and disregarded his wail of pain, but as he doubled over, stumbling too close to Abram to be safe, the curve of a karambit tore through his torso until he’d spilt onto the carpeted floor.

Abram wondered, a little distantly, how much of a bitch that would be to clean.

The smallest of the two remaining men scrambled for the cabinet while the taller of them struck out with a poorly aimed fist. Abram sidestepped, letting the momentum of his own movement spin him closer to the man trying to grab him. But Abram was behind him before he could regain his footing and swing again, karambit dripping with his friend's blood and tearing at his throat.

And then there was one. 

He was scrambling to grab hold of something in the cabinet drawer. A gun. Abram took a breath, cocked his head with a pitying smile, and threw another knife.

Taking a moment to breathe, his chest rising and falling a little more heavily than it should, Abram surveyed the room, checked the time. It had all gone down in the space of a minute. 

Sixty seconds for six men to die.

But then, he’d had every advantage. Been decorated in his knives, had known how many men there were and where they were in the room. They’d never really had a chance. Not against him. Not against the boy who was a Butcher’s son and a monster of his own making.

Not against the Wraith.

Abram collected his knives, wincing at the squelching noise they made when he pulled them free from bodies that needed them less than they still needed the air in the room. Wiping them clean on the shirt of the corpse closest to him, Abram packed them all away, karambit going back to its spot on his thigh, throwing knives sliding back into narrow sheaths. 

He nudged the body with his foot a few times until it rolled away and freed the space he was looking to occupy. That done, he slid into the chair next to the cabinet and pulled out the drive. 

Abram was not the most technologically adept. It had always been Ichirou who excelled in the realm of the dark web. Ichirou who knew computers the way Abram knew knives.

But Abram was knowledgeable enough by now. After all the years he’d been forced to sit through Ichirou’s ramblings and the hours of research he’d put in himself.

He powered the computer system up, scoffed at the lack of a passcode or security of any sort, and inserted his drive. From there it was easy, transferring over files and trying his level best to both remember and forget everything he saw.

He was ten minutes into the download when Jamie stepped into the room, looking distastefully first at the six bodies he’d piled into something of a stack while waiting and then at the trail of intestines he’d decided not to touch.

“Did you have to make a mess?”

Abram looked up at her from his spot in the desk chair and very pointedly spun it around, ignoring her question.

The noise Jamie made in response, half affronted but mostly amused, was well worth the little moment of dizziness. 

After a few more impatient moments, Jamie stopped his spinning chair and leaned over the back of it. “Shit, Ram, how long is this going to take?”

He shrugged against the seat and felt her forearms brush against his shoulders. Funny how he could kill six men without flinching but the feeling of his cousin’s skin against his clothes was enough that he felt nauseous.

“Ask Elias,” he recommended.

“Turn your comm back on, would you?”

Abram wasn’t given much of a choice in it then. Not ten seconds after she spoke, Elias had done it himself, looping Abram back into the communications between them.

“Stuart says he’s getting chilly,” Elias muttered, sounding a little bit put off. A child displeased by someone he was powerless to snap back at. “Taking too long.”

Abram huffed. “Tell my Uncle he can do it himself the next time then.”

“Oh, sure,” Elias agreed sarcastically. “Let me just get right on that, yeah.”

“Could be a good bonding experience,” Jamie teased. “Getting your ass kicked by an old man.”

Elias squawked. “My ass would not get kicked!”

“Mhm,” Jamie teased. “You tell yourself that pretty boy. We both know I laid you out in seconds last time.”

Abram faked a silent gag and ducked away from the swat Jamie flung at him. On the other end of the comms, Elias sputtered gracelessly. 

“Wha- I was distracted?”

Abram scoffed. “With what? Staring at my cousin’s ass?”

He didn’t quite dodge Jamie’s hit in time.

Another ten slow minutes later, Elias had left them on their own, his caffeine-induced wakefulness running low and Abram insisting he go and sleep. But the little ‘completed’ box popped up on the screen with a welcome chime that startled Jamie from the half-asleep reverie she’d been in. 

Abram yanked the drive from the computer as Jamie looked over at the stack of bodies that had started to smell about sixteen minutes ago.

He leaned back in the spinning desk chair, flipped the drive between his fingers once before slipping it underneath the sleeve of his dri-fit into a small stitched in pocket.

“You know what I could really go for?” Abram mused. “Chicken nuggets.”

Jamie looked over, a smudge of blood on her cheek giving her a slightly wild look when paired with the fact that at some point her braid had come loose to give her a little bit of a curly-haired mane on the one side of her face.

“And milkshakes?” she asked.

Abram grinned. “And milkshakes.”

He’d never been the sort to bond over the usual sorts of things. He and Jean had bonded over necessity when Kengo had dropped a trembling eight-year-old child on the doorstep of his Butcher’s home. They bonded with Ichirou over climbing down an elevator shaft to escape armed assailants trying to kill Ichirou and hitting Abram instead—and hadn’t that been annoying. He’d bonded with Aiko because of ‘public relations’ at first and then because they were both kids who mourned the death of a parent who’d never actually loved them anyway.

He supposed that this, going out for chicken nuggets and milkshakes after every mission they did together, was something to the likes of bonding. They didn’t really need to have the forced conversations now, both of them too drowsy with the late hour and the exhaustion of a recent kill to have much of a filter around someone who should be family. But it was a tradition now.

“Let’s get the drive to Uncle Stuart, then,” Jamie said, leading the way back out of the building and sticking to the shadows out of habit. She groaned quite suddenly. “Fuck, I hope they have strawberry.”

Stuart was waiting for them three streets over, the opposite direction of the diner where Jamie had left her bike. He looked them both over, passed a handkerchief to Jamie who frowned before scrubbing it over her cheeks, and turned to Abram.

“Got it?”

Abram raised an eyebrow. “Have I ever come to you empty-handed?”

It was a rhetorical question really. The answer was painfully obvious. Even when Abram had come to the Hatfords for their help in taking the Butcher down, he’d done so proposing a deal. After all, Ichirou would need someone to step into the power void that the Butcher left behind. Abram was willing to hand it over to the Hatfords. 

At the very least, Uncle Stuart was family. Jamie and Baz were family. Abram could find it within himself to be civil with Thomas for as long as was needed.

Stuart sighed. “Just give me the drive,” he grumbled, “I’ve got a man waiting to drop it at the station the next town over.”

Abram hummed. “I’d have gone at least three towns over but…” he shrugged in a ‘what can you do’ sort of way that had Stuart sighing again.

But he passed the drive over to his uncle without any further grievance.

“Alright you two shits,” Stuarts huffed. “Go get your smoothies. I’ll be in touch soon, do a dinner of sorts.”

Oh, Abram was definitely looking forward to that.

“Milkshakes,” Jamie corrected, pinching the skin on the back of Abram’s hand in warning. 

It was almost too much of a warning, his skin crawling with the touch and the sharp cut of pain jarring him into the present. He scrambled for footing within his mind and hardly noticed when Stuart said his second round of goodbyes or slipped into the black SUV waiting for him.

He did notice when Jamie snapped in front of his nose a few times.

“Welcome back,” she said. Her voice was dry, forcibly so, but he wasn’t blind to the worry in her eyes. Wonderful. He was going to get an earful tonight, that was for sure.

“Glad to be here,” he snarked.

Jamie ignored him for the most part, and started off in the direction of the diner. “Same diner?”

“Open twenty-four hours,” he answered.

“What are the odds they have the little cherries to put on top?”

Abram hummed. The place seemed decent. A little retro-themed, but they seemed to do well for themselves despite the not-so-nice neighbourhood they were situated in. He figured they could probably afford the maraschino cherries.

“Eighty,” was his final answer.

Jamie nodded stoically, like this was the most important conversation she’d ever had. They were closing the distance between them and the diner too quickly for Abram’s liking, really. “Risk worth taking then.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh I do,” Jamie insisted. “I say a lot of things really. Here, let me say some more.”

And so it began. 

“You’re a fucking mess, Abram,” Jamie was blunt as ever, not holding back in the slightest. “You look like you haven’t slept in days, you were stupidly violent taking out those men. This whole thing with your dad… I wonder if it’s doing you more harm than good.”

Abram turned a look on her so vicious she stepped to the side to put more space between them as they walked. 

“More harm than good?” he mocked. “All my father has ever done in my life has been a long list of harmful things, Jamie.” Oh, his voice was too cruel, too iced over and deadly and sharp. He wasn’t trying to cut Jamie with it, but he wasn’t sure that he could help it either. “Those men I took out violently? They allow men like him to do what they do. They fund the traffickers and the sex rings and all that bottom-dweller shit. They deserved what they got.”

“I’m just worried-”

“I’m fine,” he snarled. “Worry about someone else.”

“Oh right,” Jamie bit back. “It’s that easy, is it?”

Abram’s shoulders were tight with tension, his steps harsh and agitated. There was a part of him—a small part but a part all the same—that just wanted to pull a knife on Jamie and be done with it. He’d cut the questions out of her if he had to. But that wasn’t a thought that was really his. That came from the part of him that was too close to Reisu to be safe to look at right now. The part that had looked at a man’s guts spilled across the floor and been unphased if not a little bit pleased.

He bit down on his tongue, inhaled sharply through his nose. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated, far less venom in his tone. “I had to dig up some awful shit for the deep cover.” 

A lie, but a lie that was still a truth. 

For as well as Abram knew Jamie—and he supposed he owed a lot of his quick understanding of others to Jean and to his lifestyle—Jamie did not yet know him quite so well. She saw the truth of his statement, and was blind to the lie hiding behind it.

They reached the diner then, and Abram held the door for her as they walked in.

“What sort of shit?” she asked then, sympathy turned away from him now.

Abram shrugged. “Not all the way sure yet. A lot of fudged transcripts and medical records. The spare son had someone falsely diagnosed and medicated because they dared to tell him no.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “A bit of an overreaction there.”

“You’re telling me,” Abram mused. It was easy to fall into normal conversation. To bury the simmering discomfort of being poked and prodded at and distract Jamie by pretending to have a normal conversation. “Beyond that, I think I might be looking at years of child abuse in the system.”

“Foster?”

Abram hummed, and when the tired waitress came over he was happy to let Jamie order for them both.

“I wonder how much it would cost to go after the foster care system next,” Jamie wondered when the waitress had left them alone again. “Try and dismantle the damn thing.” 

Abram shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. “Can’t. It’s too big, too widespread, too entrenched. It would take too much money and too much time to get something else set up and ready to go for when it all comes down. Even then you’ve got no guarantees the new system won’t just revert back to the same abuse as the old one.”

But even as he said it Abram thought of Andrew, of the anger and the pain that was written into the original documents he’d managed to retrieve. The mannerisms that made sense to him for reasons he didn’t particularly want to dwell on for too long. 

That anger from earlier in the day rekindled itself, and Abram wanted nothing more than to be able to bring the whole corrupted thing down. But his words still rang with an awful truth. 

“And I suppose the politics of it are well beyond even our combined reach?” Jamie asked.

“Exceedingly,” he answered.

Milkshakes came to the table. Vanilla for him and the grotesquely pink strawberry for Jamie. He handed over the maraschino cherry that had come with his so there were two piled on hers. Like he’d picked up a remote to change the channel on a television, he switched topics.

“So when are you going to ask Elias out?”

Jamie choked on the mouthful of milkshake she’d half-swallowed, and Abram grinned around his straw.

Chapter Text

He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so much colour before in his life. Like a kaleidoscope had been slipped over his eyes and every ray of light splintered through until there were shades of blue he couldn’t name and oranges so desperately violent he bled under them. 

He watched walls splattered with yellow and brown crumble, deteriorating in slow motion and fast forward. Windows shattering in reverse. 

He rolled on the floor, or, at least he thought it was the floor. It might have been anything. He could have tumbled off the side of a planet stained in every neon pastel and not known the goddamn difference. Not when there were electric colours in his blood that kept him slow as a snail when his thoughts were rabitty quick.

It was cracking his skull open, kaleidoscopic colours as sharp as ice picks. Sparking in his blood until he was shivering but sweating, until he was both five degrees into a fever and four degrees into hypothermia. Colours drove into his temples until he was screaming and bleeding from eyes that could only see swirls of red and purple that were as jagged as the blade on a table saw. 

This was a colourful world, but it was one that was no less dangerous.

Smears of brown and blue and green stretched out over him in shapes that looked something like bodies, weights on his arms tugging and pulling. There were sounds he knew, sounds he’d long since suppressed but had memorized all the same. 

Voices fighting to be heard. 

Leo. 

Oh, yes. That was right. And that explained a lot.

He hadn’t been Leo for a while. But when he had been, he’d been in Russia. Colours and bodies and a world split open until he was drowning in the middle of it all.

He didn’t want to be Leo again. He would rather skin himself inch by inch. He’d cauterize his own wounds, watch his own muscles move underneath.

Not Leo again.

But it might have been alright. The colours were there and the dead electric weight in his blood was there. He’d been tugged around but it had been something close to gentle, not violent or harmful.

The floor was cold, he thought it was, at least. It made sense that it was cold. He thought the floor was supposed to be stone, or concrete, or something equally as terrible. His fingers pressed against it, clipped nails scratching across a surface they couldn’t find purchase in. 

He tried to push himself up so he was sitting but there was a set of hands guiding him back onto his stomach. They were too big, unfamiliar in a way that made him sick. But they were gentle with him, or at least they weren’t holding tight enough to hurt through the strange concoction of drugs heavy in his blood and on his brain.

He went willingly, or as willingly as he could. Fighting would have taken up too much energy. He had it, sure. Colours and bottled lightning singing in his bones, but for every bit of that medley of light he used up he felt a thousand worlds heavier.

Maybe it was—

Such a good boy. 

No.

No, he knew those words and he knew what they meant. He knew all about the pain and the shame and the way he would have to hide when it was over so he could try to put himself back together again. 

There were colours in his blood and on his body and all around him and it was all too much. It was all too much and there were rules. There were rules he was supposed to be following, blinded by colour and seized with that electric numbing thing in a way that made his heart stutter and jump.

He tried to lift his arm, remembered he wasn’t supposed to move. Or could he? He couldn’t remember if he was allowed to pick himself up or if he had to just stay still. 

He didn’t want to stay still. He knew what that meant for him. Why was he supposed to stay still?

There was something flickering; a shadow in the colours. He crawled for it and didn't move at all. The rounded mouth of a child’s smile. Gap-toothed grin and a Scooby-Doo themed bandaid over the palm of a hand.

He had to stay still. 

There was gunmetal grey as a door screamed open and another body-shaped blur moved through the space left behind. And then another. And then one he knew even when he couldn’t dream of knowing anything.

A hand on his throat. A stuttered breath. Someone calling out in Japanese when they should have shouted in Russian.

His name.

His name his name his name his—

Abram!

And then it was something of a mess. 

Then the ground fell out from under him and his fingernails sunk into earth that felt like skin. Then the world bled into black and white until the only colours he could find were blue eyes and auburn hair. Then the name slipped away from him until Abram was standing over him and Nathaniel was laughing in the corner and Leo was trembling on the floor and he was watching and watching and watching.

Then there were dogs barking and little girls crying and stuffed animals and sand in his cuts and ice cream on a lake in Fort Collins. Then there were five sets of gem coloured eyes and hair he braided between his fingers and a newborn foal eating from his hand and pale hands putting his hair in pigtails. Then there were thunderstorms and lightning strikes and the underside of his bed because it was the safest place he knew.

Then there was red. Red hair, red walls, red socks, red floors, red blankets, red bandages, red shirts. Red like Gala apples in the limbs of a tree. Red like slushies from a gas station. Red like ladybugs crawling over the bruised skin of his knuckles. Red like the roses his mother had always hated. Red like blood under his nails and over his skin and soaked into his clothes. 

Red and Red and Red and Red and Red and—

He woke up choking on the colour red.

On red walls that closed in on him until it was too fucking hard to breathe and he wasn’t breathing at all, red flavoured breaths catching in his throat until it was all he could see and all he could taste and all he could smell. Bright and furious and dangerous dangerous dangerous.

He grappled for his phone, crawling out of his bed and into the furthest corner from it.

Calling was instinct by now, trembling fingers fumbling with his phone. He stuttered over Jean’s name and found Aiko’s and then he paused. Paused in the way he hadn’t for a long time now.

Abram was well acquainted with the path his nightmares could lead him down. He was well acquainted with the haze of anguish that slipped over his days when he let himself stumble down into a depressive episode he was always teetering on the edge of. 

As a child, seven and eight and nine years old, he’d had Jean right there by his side. And though neither of them yet understood what those days really meant for Abram’s little mind, they found their way through them together. When he’d gotten older, stumbling through ten and eleven and twelve, he understood them for what they were. And he’d hated them for being nothing but a weakness. And still, Jean was there, and Ichirou was there too, in his own way.

He’d tripped his way through his early teenage years, and things had only gotten worse when Jean left his side and when Russia sunk its claws into the brittle fabric of his skin. And here he was now, bruised and battered on the other end of it and still aching with the same injuries he’d always had. The strange sort of ones that could never and would never be healed.

He knew better. He knew he was meant to call someone. He knew that he could make it hurt less. He knew that he could put it off for just a little while longer if he called. He was supposed to call.

But there were less than seven weeks until Aiko would be in labour and she’d be losing enough sleep then that he shouldn’t bother her now. She was his only option now that Jean couldn’t be reached.

And that wasn’t strictly true, he knew that. But he’d seen his fair share of Ichirou stumbling his way through his anxiety attacks and nightmares to know that it was more stressful for his brother to try to help him than it was for him to suffer quietly. 

And he knew that just down the hall there were three individuals who had devoted themselves to him and his family and the cause that they had built. Three people he begrudgingly called family as well. If he knocked on either of their doors there would be nothing but gentle understanding there, even if they would never really know the full depth of his pains.

And he knew that he could call Jamie if he needed, or Baz, or his Uncle Stuart. And they’d never be able to help the way that Jean or Aiko or Ichirou could. Not even the way Mia or Charlie or Elias could. But they could do their level best to try, and he knew they would.

His fingers twitched over the screen on his phone, trying to call Aiko, trying to turn it all off. He wasn’t sure if he could do either, wasn’t even sure which one he wanted to do.

His breaths were still stuttering in his chest, the taste of copper and salt and drugs as thick as sand on his tongue. 

He called.

Aiko always answered his calls, even when he startled her awake at whatever hellish time of night it was. He couldn’t find it in him to be surprised when she answered him now. 

“Abram?” 

His head ducked against his will, phone pressed tight to his ear and his body curled into itself like it could protect him from his mind.

His name came from the other end of the line a few more times, still gentle and sweet, but increasing in concern every time he could only answer with a desperate breath that was empty in his hollow lungs.

There was muttering on the other end of the phone that sounded like Ichirou. Sounded like “is he still not answering” and “ask him where he is” and then Aiko was doing just that.

“Abram?” she tried again. “Can you tell me where you went, Ram?”

And he couldn’t. Didn’t have enough letters to say Russia and Colorado and New York and Baltimore. All he had was the weight of the colour red on his tongue. Smeared lipstick like blood on a tooth. Spots of blood on a fresh bandage. Moving like wine in a syringe he was not allowed to refuse.

“Red,” he gasped, stuttered, choked. “Red,” he said again.

It was enough.

There was more muttering he couldn’t quite understand as Aiko shuffled around in bed and Ichirou said something to her that he couldn’t understand. 

There was too much red for him to ever understand.

“That’s a heavy colour, isn’t it?” Aiko mused. “Lots of different things there.”

It was a heavy colour. It was heavy enough he could feel his bones splitting under the weight of it until he felt less alive than he thought he ever had. It was heavy enough it chased him right up to the teetering edges of his sanity where he knew one wrong breath and he’d go toppling down and over into that deep dark place no one had ever been able to follow him into.

Red smothered him.

“Some red things are quite beautiful,” Aiko murmured. “Like strawberries and raspberries and making homemade jams from the berries you harvest from your bush.”

Abram did have a bush of each. 

A poor attempt to reintroduce himself to the colour red without losing his grip on everything. It was going well enough considering he hadn’t let it die. But then, Abram could never let any of his plants die. They were proof that he could make things and care for things and nurture things even when his skin was stained as dark as the devil with the sins he was born into.

The last time he’d made jam, though, Aiko at his shoulder and Ichirou fumbling at the island behind them both, he’d been staving off a panic attack at the way the juice of the berries looked like blood when it dripped from his fingertips.

“I’m also quite fond of rubies,” Aiko continued. “Though they can be a bit ostentatious at times, too flashy.”

Aiko made a fair point. Rubies suited her, nestled between her collar bones and perched on the lobe of her ear. He could appreciate the bold beauty of them against her smooth skin. 

Abram might never fully understand what it was to be attracted to someone, but he was no stranger to seeing beauty in aesthetics. 

As it stood, he far preferred diamond or amethyst on Aiko. It was more delicate in presentation, tricked the room into underestimating the lean cut to her muscles. 

“What’s something red that you like, Abram?”

The issue, he was slowly figuring out, was that Aiko was there in Russia when things spiralled out of control and fell apart. She was there calling his name and begging for his safety. After being back there, drowning in folds of red and kaleidoscopes that dripped with it, her voice was not the balm it should have been. 

Especially not when she was asking him about red things.

But he could answer her. He could do that. Even with the claws of panic bleeding him dry and Russia dragging him down and down until he lost sight of the way back up. 

He could answer her. 

“Amaranth,” he muttered, breath rattling around in his lungs until he could gather it up in his hands for long enough to gasp out the word.

It was a flower that was hardly considered a flower at all. Pigweeds, some people called them. He liked them for that. Liked them more for their usefulness. Liked them best for what they meant in the common flower language. 

Immortality. 

Everlasting. 

A flower that did not die when it was supposed to.

Abram could, strange as it was, relate to that.

A weed that was special in its own right. A weed that lived when many would have preferred it didn’t. A weed that made itself useful enough that most forget they were ever supposed to hate it. A weed that was hated even still.

“Which is that?” Aiko asked. “The bushy one?”

It was not the bushy one. Amaranth was a cosmopolitan genus of several various plants. None of which were particularly ‘bushy’. But he supposed he understood what Aiko was trying to describe in her limited floral vocabulary.

Amaranth red petals dripped and melted behind his eyelids. A weed bleeding onto a stone floor in a room with walls that were just a shade or two sharper than it’s petals were.

“Are there any flowers that mean safety?”

Abram knew what she was doing. Even with the clouded blur of panic and terror on his mind, he recognized the path she was walking him down. The question now was whether he was willing to follow her.

It wouldn’t do any good. 

He knew it wouldn’t help. Aiko wasn’t Jean. She didn’t understand what flowers meant to him the way Jean did. There was a difference between giving her gardening advice about herbs than there was discussing the language of flowers.

There was trauma in there. Woven into the bloodstained soil in which he planted his gardens and watched his flowers bloom. Trauma Aiko did not know and should never have to. 

Jean knew.

But she was asking. Everything she had ever done for him and she was asking him for this. 

Abram had never been very good at telling his family no.

He worried sometimes, and by that he really meant all of the time, that he was not enough to hold onto them. Even after all these years of standing with them, family in ways that mattered far more than blood ever would. It was not an easy insecurity to shake.

He wondered sometimes, when he could hear Aiko screaming every time the pipe impaled in her abdomen so much as vibrated, when he could see the devastation in her eyes when she was told she would likely never have children as a result, when he saw the terrified hope in her shaking hands when the pregnancy test was positive, when he saw the fear when the doctors said the words ‘high risk pregnancy’.

He wondered sometimes, when he could hear Ichirou stumbling along in echoey hallways after Abram had missed an attacker, when he could see the hunger in his eyes when they’d been locked starving in a bunker for nearly a week, when he could feel the anguish rolling off of him after Kengo was diagnosed, when he could remember the way it felt to hold him together when the world they’d built together cracked down the middle.

He wondered sometimes, when he could hear Jean’s too-young voice crack around a dry sob as he tried to understand why his family had left him behind on the doorstep of a monster, when he could see the shake in Jean’s hand when he first had to stitch a gash in Abram’s side that the little redheaded boy couldn’t reach himself, when he could feel the way Jean shattered and pulled himself back together over sleepless nights, when he could remember the way it felt like he was losing a limb when he let Jean walk into a Nest of monsters alone.

He wondered sometimes, what he’d ever done to deserve them. And he could never find an answer that seemed to make any sense. 

He wondered how much longer he might have before he lost them.

And that, that wasn’t a thought that was helping him at all. There was nothing soothing or gentle in the thoughts of losing the only people that hadn’t left. In thinking of the time ticking away until the pillars that held him together fell away.

Abram needed his family in a strange way. He would have survived without them, been completely fine on his own. Abram didn’t really need anyone in that way. But he wanted to. He cared for them and wanted them in his life and he thought that was probably worse. 

He could survive without his family, but he didn’t want to.

He tried to think of flowers that meant safety; that meant protection. Aiko asked and he wanted to answer. He wanted to be able to quiet his thoughts and his fears enough that he could just find the answer and give it to her.

He knew flowers. He knew them more intimately than he knew possibly anything else, certainly more intimately than he would ever be known. They were delicate things, dangerous things, deceptive things. They were fragmented parts of his own troubled soul. Stitches of self splayed out across the isolated petals of plants that had lived and died and would live again.

Flowers that meant safety and protection.

There was Yarrow—Achillea Millefolium—for healing. Verbena—Vervain—for healing and warding against evil. Mullein—Verbascum—stood for courage and health, Tanacetum for health and immortality. Hyssopus was protection through sacrifice, Hypericum was protection in rebirth. 

Marrow—Malva—and Oenothera and Witch Hazel—Hamamelis—swam past his closed eyes, chased by Foxglove—Digitalis—and False Indigo—Baptisia—and Fawn Lily—Erythronium.

Abram thought of hills in Scotland, seven years old and trailing after his mother. He felt the weight of Jean’s still small hand in his own as their shoes slipped and slid over slippery pebbles while Mary marched on unhindered. A river bed sparkling with the colours of a rainbow and water as crisp and clear as the air around them. Ruins of a castle Mary said had once belonged to them and the unblemished white of a thousand flowers.

This, Mary had said, her voice still gentle with affection for her son and the boy she’d come to see as her own, is White Heather. 

She’d tucked a stem of it behind each of their ears, the white stark against the deep red of Abram’s hair and the dark near-black of Jean’s. She’d let the pads of her fingers linger on their chins like she’d forgotten how to let them go. 

Abram wondered now if she knew she was saying goodbye then. It was less than a month later that the Butcher had taken her apart in front of them, less than a month until Abram’s trembling hands had steadied under Nathaniel’s name and stolen her last breath if only so her pain would end a little bit faster. 

Calluna Vulgaris, Mary mused. It represents many things, good luck, wishes coming true. And then Mary had smiled at them, in that strange way Abram wasn’t sure he’d ever seen from her before. Most importantly it grants protection to those who deserve it. 

Jean didn’t seem quite so sold on it, but Abram had been bubbling with questions, taking advantage of his mother’s strange openness to ask them for once. He wanted to know why; did it have magic? How did it know who was worthy? Would it let him make a wish? Should he ask first? 

For the first time in his life, Mary tolerated his questions, answering them with such confidence he had to believe her.

He wasn’t sure that he believed her now, but even still.

White Heather. Protection, good luck, wishes coming true. Little pale drops of petals on a long stem. White Heather.

He and Jean still used it, passing sprigs of it back and forth between them. It was one of many flowers that had found a place in the abstraction of code they’d made together over the years. While Jean didn’t know the language of flowers so intimately as Abram did, he wasn’t a stranger to it.

White Heather was a balm on Abram’s open wounds.

“Abram?” Aiko prompted.

He’d been too quiet for too long, nothing but rattled panicked breaths leaving him as his mind scrambled to block out the sea of red and red and red with the memory of flowers blooming between the ruins of a building on the bank of a river. With Jean’s little hand in his own. With Mary’s fingers under his chin. The only time he’d ever felt her love in a way that didn’t leave him bruised and aching with the memory of it.

“White Heather,” he whispered.

“What does it look like?” Aiko pushed.

But he couldn’t. It was too much too far and he was barely holding onto his sanity with all the red and her voice was making things worse where it should have helped. He needed space, he needed silence, he needed—

“I can’t-” he gasped, shaking his head. “You-” 

Aiko hummed like she understood and he thought maybe she did. “Text me, alright? Keep me updated and let me know you’re okay.”

He nodded desperately even though there was a phone and hundreds of miles between them. “Okay, I can- okay.”

“Goodbye, little firefly,” she muttered.

It lit something warm in his chest. A tiny little flame of white light chasing away the closest clawed fingers of red. Abram was Aiko’s firefly in the same way she was his dragonfly. There was a story there, he knew, the name was supposed to be a trigger for something happier. 

There was too much red. 

He wanted to answer in kind. Goodbye, little dragonfly buzzing on his tongue. He hung up instead.

Abram stumbled soundlessly out of his room through the halls, out of the apartment. He tasted the open air on his tongue and he ran.

By the time he stopped running, miles outside of Abram and miles away from any other name, he’d been sprinting for close to an hour and was standing outside the Foxhole Court gasping for breath.

Aiko’s voice was still echoing in his head, soft questions about flowers blurring into the sound of her throat scratched raw and still screaming. Screaming in pain, screaming for him. He’d caught a glimpse of his car on his way out of his building and the red shine of it was still chasing him. The red shine of a thousand things nipping at his heels with the intent to kill.

He only noticed the truck pulling into the parking lot because of the way he was spotlighted in the headlights for a too-long stretch of time.

Abram—Neil, that car meant he had to be Neil now, even if Neil felt both closer and further away then Abram did—forced himself to straighten up, one hand closed over the faint pain of a cramp in his side. He didn’t get them often, he was too well-conditioned for them. But even his body wasn’t immune to rebelling after an hour of running at a full sprint when his lungs couldn’t draw in even half a breath.

The car door opened and slammed shut and even though Abram—Neil—could see the door and Wymack standing in his peripheral he flinched at the sound anyway. It wasn’t anything like a gunshot, but with panic beating a hole in his chest it certainly sounded identical.

“Josten?”

Abram—Neil—sucked in a breath that was far more shallow than it should have been and turned to look at the coach properly.

“Morning, Coach,” he said, sounding only half as breathless as he felt. “You always up this early?”

He hadn’t bothered to actually check the time when he went tearing out of the apartment to try and outrun the twisted nightmares of memories he could only halfway recall, but the sun still hadn’t crawled up into the sky. It couldn’t have been any later than five. 

Wymack took a few steps closer, closing the distance between where he’d parked and the door without angling himself that way. It would be easy for Abram—Neil—to close the distance and meet him halfway there. 

He hesitated though.

There was too much panic in his blood, in his bones, in his body. He wasn’t sure how close to Wymack would be too close. There was a difference between the ghosts of Russia and the shadow of his father, but panic was panic and it was all the same at its core. 

“Routine,” Wymack grumbled. And he sounded as pleased with the concept as he was annoyed with it. Neil thought he could understand that. Routine meant stability, but routine meant predictability too. “Why are you up?”

Neil looked up and faltered at the sparkling calculation in Wymack’s gaze. He pressed the pads of his fingers to his thumbs to count himself back into the real world. 

Pointer finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie finger. 

Start again.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie. Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie. Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie.

It was an obvious tell, Abram knew that. And he saw how quickly Wymack zeroed in on it. But there wasn’t anything else that he knew how to do just then. Steady breaths were impossible, anxiety and panic had his pulse higher than it needed to be. All he was capable of doing—and even still he was doing it poorly—was trying to press himself into the present with fingertips and fragmented bits of sanity.

Wymack nodded slowly and his expression twisted up into something that was a mockery of a smile. “Routine,” he repeated.

Abram understood that. Bone deep and aching, he understood. Neil did too.

“Routine,” he echoed.

Abram flexed his hands and Neil clenched his fist before relaxing again and taking the steps to close the distance between him and Wymack. There was only the compulsive arms length of space between them and Neil met Wymack’s inquisitive gaze with a determined one of his own.

“Wanna play some catch, Coach?”

Wymack’s mockery of a smile twisted up into a more genuine thing. It was an expression that Neil knew well. A smile on the face of someone who was unfamiliar with the concept. He felt it every time he smiled at his brothers or Aiko or any other of the people he’d taken into his little family. Smiling after years of not knowing how to.

“Sure,” Wymack agreed, punching in the code for the gate and stepping through without waiting for Neil to move first. 

It was remarkably considerate. The coach already knew enough about ‘Neil Josten’ to know he wouldn’t be able to handle having him at his back, especially not after the panicked habits he’d been foolish enough to display. 

Abram, Neil, whoever he was, was reluctantly grateful for it.

He didn’t bother changing out, but Wymack lingered in the doorway while he stopped by the locker he’d been allowed to use to snag with gloves and switch out his runners for his court shoes. They were on the court in a matter of minutes, each of them with a racquet in hand and a bucket of balls swinging from Wymack’s hand.

Abram was reminded of the childhood he’d stolen in hidden moments. Exy practices he’d been signed up for under other people’s names, Jean joining him a while later when he’d been dropped on their door. He remembered little hands and laughter, bouncing balls off plexiglass and trying to catch their own rebounds as they crept closer and closer.

“Haven’t played like this in years,” Wymack drawled, netting a ball in his racquet like he’d always been doing it. 

Neil caught the ball Wymack lobbed at him with the ease of someone who’d been doing it for even longer. 

Wymack was offering an olive branch, so to speak. One in the form of exy, but a branch all the same. He wasn’t surprised that Wymack had picked up on his dislike for talking about himself, or his instinct for reciprocity, but he was a little surprised to see how quickly the coach used it. Not maliciously, but curiously. 

“I stopped for a while,” he mused, offering up a truth that was only partially genuine in return. It wasn’t really a trade, not considering the fact that Kevin and Andrew already knew after he’d been so well welcomed in the locker room that first morning, but it was something close. More genuine this time than it had been getting the pretentious striker off his back. “Family shit.”

Wymack hummed in what was neither agreement nor disagreement but simply a verbal acknowledgment of the truth he was being handed. 

“I started again when I was emancipated,” he continued, not entirely sure why he was still talking at all—maybe he trusted enough to know Wymack would give him a response in kind. The ball left his racquet and found Wymack’s. “My brothers both played. One more than the other.” He almost smiled at the quick memory of Ichirou stumbling along after Jean and him the first time the three of them had been on a court together. “It was a way for us to bond, I guess. After everything.”

He shrugged like it didn’t matter and caught the ball easily when Wymack sent it back to him.

“Kayleigh Day,” Wymack started. “Kevin’s mother. She caught a lacrosse game I was playing in and pulled me aside when it was done.” The coach looked a little far away, caught up in his memories the way Abram thought he must have been. “I was thinking, look at this beautiful woman, talking to me in that unintelligible accent of hers. She was going on about this sport she’d been creating with a friend and how violent it was, swearing left and right like she didn’t know how to speak without punctuating a sentence with fuck and shit.”

Neil pulled on a smirk. “Is that where you learned it?”

The next pass Wymack tossed at him was a few shades more aggressive. “Watch it, you little shit. You’re mine for the next five years.”

Abram kept the grin in place, Neil’s taunting, twisted thing. Behind that, he knew there was no truth behind the words Wymack spoke, even if the coach didn’t know it yet. He would be gone one way or another by the end of the year, the question surrounded how much damage or growth he’d leave behind. He thought there might be a bit of both.

“Kayleigh taught me everything she knew about Exy, I’d like to think I’ve learned some shit since.” Wymack shrugged and caught the ball Neil threw his way. “And then she was gone and I was in physical therapy for my damn hip.”

“I’ve seen footage,” Neil said, a little more somber now. “The whole thing was…”

He trailed off and found that he didn’t really need to supply a word. Wymack knew. Wymack had lived it.

Neil could say the hit was devastating; but Wymack knew that. He could say it was illegal; but Wymack knew that too. He could be brutally honest and say the whole thing was, quite frankly, disgusting and deplorable and the fact that Wymack had recovered this much was something of a small miracle. 

But Wymack already knew.

And when it really came down to it, he wasn’t entirely sure that any single word could ever really describe exactly what the hit Wymack had taken had been. It had been devastating and illegal and disgusting and deplorable and so many other things.

No ball in sight and no other players nearby, there had been no reason at all for it to have happened in the first place. But it had. The hip joint was dislocated and shattered at nearly the same time. The way Wymack had screamed was an awful enough thing that the original broadcast had cut their audio until long after he’d been removed from the court, and the game had been cancelled so they could clean up the blood and vomit not only Wymack but several other players had left behind.

“Six surgeries,” Wymack supplied. 

It was the end of the sentence in the only way it could be. Holding it together when any other ending would have risked fracturing it into lies or diminishing it into nothing more than a bruise and an ache.

“Six,” Neil echoed. 

They got a bit more complicated from there, putting words away, apart from a few quick and clever comments as they gradually added in little twists to their basic game of catch. Neil sprinted cross court and raced against whip-quick passes Wymack flung. They weaseled in upper body training in pushups and abs through crunches as Neil tried to see how many he could get done before he had to catch the coach’s wild ball. 

They were grinning and laughing and teasing and Neil was Abram and back on a court with Ichirou and Jean. Neil was Abram and wondering if this was what it was like to have a father. Neil was Abram and wondering what he’d done that he had never deserved to come by something like this honestly.

Abram wasn’t sure Wymack even knew he had a real son.

It was nearly two hours later, both of them sweat-soaked and sure to be sore the next day, when they breaked. 

Pouring more of his water over the back of his neck than into his mouth, Wymack pressed a flat palm against his hip and Neil watched with careful consideration. The coach winced, but doubled down and pressed more firmly. Not broken yet.

“Does it hurt?” he wondered, accidentally out loud.

Wymack looked over briefly, eyes softened by the surprise of being spoken to just then. “Not all the time,” he answered. There was a quiet sort of grief in the set of his jaw when he glanced down at his own hip, fingers running over the surgical scars Neil couldn’t see but Wymack had long ago memorized. “If I’m on my feet too long, pushing too hard…” he twisted his mouth into a sardonic little grin. “When it rains.”

Abram—because he’d forgotten how to be Neil just then—fingered the ancient outline of a particularly jagged scar along his abdomen where he’d lost nearly ninety percent of his liver and what should have been his life. He’d need a transplant, the doctors said, only there weren’t any matches and he was far too low on the donor list anyway. 

In the end, it had regenerated itself—the way livers apparently can—but the doctors had made it clear that they weren’t sure how his body had managed to fix quite so much damage.

Blessed, they called him. Everyone said it was nothing short of a miracle. 

Abram—still dressed mostly in Nathaniel’s name back then—had been fourteen years old and the only one who knew it to have been a curse instead. 

Reciprocity. 

“I was in a car accident when I was young,” he offered. 

The truth was that he’d been in a car that had been blown up by a low-level thug his father had pissed off. It was meant to be a revenge killing. Eliminating the Butcher’s son and only heir was a surefire way to do some damage to him. 

Well, it would have been if the Butcher cared at all for his son.

“My dad was…” he shrugged. “I wonder sometimes if he did it on purpose.”

That was the truth. 

Cut to the bone, painfully exposed honesty. 

He’d spent a lot of time laying in hospital beds with nothing to do but go back over the events that had landed him where he was. There shouldn’t have been any way for the bomb to have been planted or detonated. Not unless his father had known about it and decided to let it happen.

The four other people in the car had been killed. Two of them, Abram might have even considered his friends.

Wymack’s head was tilted slightly, eyes pinched in what might have been consideration or confusion and was probably both. “Did he?”

Abram took his bottom lip between his teeth, handing over a tell that belonged to Oliver with the hope it would keep enough space between them still. “I don’t know,” he admitted and then shrugged. “I don’t think it matters. He tried to kill me plenty of other times.”

He saw the tight squeeze of a clenched fist and the hard line of tension in a jaw. It was a strange thing. No one had ever been angry on his behalf before. Ichirou and Jean, sure. Aiko even. But Wymack was nothing other than a stranger still. There was nothing yet between them to warrant any sort of defense.

Abram saw it, considered it. 

Too good. 

That was what he’d told Aiko and it was all he could think of now. David Wymack was a man that was far too good. Abram almost felt bad about the way he was using him. 

Distantly, he heard the sound of the locker room door opening and slamming shut and he knew Kevin and Andrew had made their appearance for the day. It was his sign to leave, he had no desire to deal with anyone else after the terrors that had chased him out from sleep. 

He gathered his things and noted that Wymack didn’t seem at all surprised by his decision to depart. He was halfway to the court door when he paused and turned back.

“Hey,” he called out. “You don’t happen to know anywhere I could get a dog, do you?”

Chapter Text

There was an itch under his skin that was impossible to scratch. One that a three-hour run, thirty-minute shower, and four cups of coffee hadn’t even come close to soothing. It was a restless energy, a nervous energy. It was the uneventful build-up of time telling him that something was due to happen soon and nothing happening despite that.

He passed his time in an abstraction of a routine. 

His mornings started with a run, though the time varied and he’d yet to run the same route twice. At some point, before the morning got too far ahead of itself, he’d drop by the Split Bean and Emery would make him some new drink—and another one with a shiny W to go—and regale him with one misadventure or another. They’d had their fair share of conversations about older brothers and the tragedy of their greater responsibilities. 

If it was any later than 7 by then, he’d make his way to the exy court, play a round of catch with the coach or watch footage from old games and make notes to improve. By midmorning, 10 or 11 most days, Andrew and Kevin would come knocking. He’d step out into the court with Kevin and Wymack for as long as he could stand Kevin’s arrogance, Andrew watching from where he paced the stairs with that grin on his face.

There’d been hesitation there, but Wymack had let him in the court without Abby’s physical being done just yet. It was, granted, under the impression that he’d had a physical done at his last school within the designated time constraint. All things considered, Abram figured he could get away with it. 

His last physical, so far as he was concerned, was when he’d been suspended 80 feet above the ground by his own grip on a goddamn rope. If he was in good enough health to avoid dying then, he was in good enough health to play exy.

When he finally did get tired of Kevin’s bullshit, he had the rest of the afternoon and evening ahead of him. It was here the routine fell apart. He might go for another run, perform surveillance that bordered on paranoia. There was enough paperwork to manage for Ichirou and the family that he could easily spend his time locked up indoors translating and working with numbers.

Today though, he was desperate for stimulation. Needed something to drive the anxious adrenaline from his body and his mind. He’d run, he’d caffeinated, he’d beaten Kevin on the court, he’d wasted an hour going over court transcripts and two going over bank records for the Hatford family. 

He was out of his mind with it all. 

Shutting his laptop with enough force he was momentarily concerned for the well-being of the screen, Abram stood and moved from the office into the kitchen. He breezed through the living space quickly, but three heads turned to follow him instantly. 

“Hey boss,” Elias called out. “You need a dogfight?”

Abram moved to the cabinets, pulling them open and searching for anything he could make use of. Elias’ question went ignored as Abram dug out the meager-looking baking supplies Charlie and Mia had picked up and then promptly used on a few failed batches of cookie brownies before he stepped in to fix the mess of it all a few days ago. 

At best there was enough there for him to make a single batch of biscuits or scones from a well-known recipe.

His fingertips drummed against the counter in an unbalanced beat. A four-count, a three-count, something staccato. 

A well-worn recipe wasn’t the sort of thing he needed right now. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he needed at all, but he knew it wasn’t a recipe he knew. Running hadn’t helped, coffee hadn’t helped, exy hadn’t helped, working hadn’t helped. 

He was hoping that making something might channel some of that hysteric paranoia. Baking was a focal point, took the energy that he was sitting on and put it into something worthwhile. In the end, there would be something to show for it.

But experimenting with new recipes meant he’d need far more supplies than they currently had. Leaving the apartment to get more baking necessities, however, wasn’t too much of an option just then. He was far too high-strung to leave the confines of the apartment without losing his mind.

His fingers stuttered in the pattern they constructed and he pressed his palm flat to work out a rush of tension.

One familiar recipe first. Just enough of something to work the edge of his mindless anxiety and then he could survive running out to the store for enough supplies he could feed every kid at the high school thirty minutes across town if he wanted to. 

“Abram?” Elias called again, poking his head into the kitchen when it became more than clear his initial question wasn’t going to get a response.

Abram had his hands under the spray of the sink faucet then, scrubbing away with sweet-smelling soap suds stinging at a paper cut he’d given himself earlier that day. Both Mia and Charlie were lingering just behind Elias when he glanced over. The three of them were a strange picture of concern for the fact they were concerned.

“Going a little stir crazy?” Mia offered a sweet smile that was hesitant and wary.

Abram gave them an answer in the form of half of a shrug and dried his hands on the embroidered cloth Baz had sent over as a ‘move-in gift’.

There was no easy way for him to explain to them what it was that was truly going on in his mind. Not without triggering some sort of failsafe Ichirou had set in place for whenever he showed even a potentially worrying behaviour. 

While Abram knew his team was irrevocably loyal to him above all else, he had no doubts they’d tuck their tails and go running to alert his brother the very second they had any valid reason to be concerned for his mental well-being or stability.

As if there was ever truly a reason not to be concerned.

It wasn’t, like Mia suggested, that he was going stir crazy. Abram had been on longer stakeouts with far less to do than this one. He’d done them in complete isolation, locked inside for one or two weeks. He’d done them with people he absolutely hated once or twice. 

Here, he could leave practically whenever he wanted. He could get out of the apartment for a long run or head over to the court and let his body burn itself out. Andrew had remained a largely silent observer thus far, but Abram got invested well-enough in a bit of back and forth with Wymack or with taking Kevin down a peg or two.

No. Stir crazy wasn’t the right sort of term to describe what this was. 

This was a many-legged creature of paranoia. This was a paradoxical beastly sort of thing. It was the act of painfully waiting for something you desperately didn’t want, and it was the terrible knowledge that you needed it to happen all the same.

Abram knew that soon enough something would have to happen. The spare son had long ago proven himself a foolish and impulsive little bastard of a threat to the family. Abram didn’t need to see the scars on Kevin’s hand every day to know that. He’d been over enough of the branch family’s finances and heard enough of his brother's first-hand accounts of plans and actions that were reckless at best.

All the same, Riko’s unpredictability was predictable. Abram knew not to get comfortable, knew from a decade worth of the bastard’s activities that he couldn’t let his guard down if he wanted to stay as ahead as he was. But the more time passed without some sort of event, the more pent-up tension accumulated. 

There wasn’t anything to fight and Abram was desperate for a little bit of action. Any actual fight, though, would end in a lethal manner. 

Instead, it meant sleepless nights. An increase in the sort of dream that chased him out of the apartment. It meant seeing flashes of his father on street corners and hearing his mother screaming. It meant watching Aiko bleed out behind his eyelids. It meant stitching a nasty gash on a still small Jean’s side in a hotel room they’d broken into. It meant shoving a much younger Ichirou out of the path of a bullet and taking it himself. 

Running hadn’t helped, coffee hadn’t helped, exy hadn’t helped, working hadn’t helped. 

A stick of butter went into the freezer along with a box grater Abram was sure Aiko had insisted on. A glass mixing bowl spun itself onto the counter while he collected the rest of what he’d need and stored away the things he wasn’t going to be using just then.

Two cups of flour, half a cup of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, two and a half teaspoons of baking powder. He took his time with each measurement, levelling them out with the back of a butter knife, watching with eyes that saw more than most did. Each fell right into the bowl when he was satisfied they were just right, and whisked until you couldn’t see the separation between them. The variability between white and white, textures both different and the same. 

His hands remembered this recipe. The same way they remembered how to handle a knife or assemble a gun. He remembered the details of learning it, afternoon light coming through the blinds Jean had opened, Aiko standing next to him and debating the merits of silver vs gold jewellery with Jean while Abram snuck Ichirou bits of the chocolate bar Aiko had planned to use for the scones.

He remembered the light in Jean’s eyes when he caught on and the way he was sure to keep Aiko invested in their little debate so Ichirou and Abram could keep going until there wasn’t any chocolate left for the scones at all.

Aiko pretended at frustration but Abram saw the way she glanced at the matching bruising on Ichirou and Abram’s knuckles and rolled her eyes before hunting down fruits instead.

The butter had been chilled for long enough, Abram decided, as had the grater. It was easy work to grate the butter right into the mix. And it was easy work to grate himself into it as well, apparently. The knuckle of his thumb caught on the grater once, skin tearing halfway and catching on itself. He pressed the flat of his tongue to the little wound and it was red. He washed his hands again. 

Aiko hadn’t gotten them a pastry cutter, but two forks worked just as well to cut the grated butter into the dough until it was a crumbly sort of thing. It found a home in the freezer while he started the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. 

Half a cup of heavy cream, one large egg, one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract. 

He wrinkled his nose at the cheap brand Mia and Charlie had picked up and eyeballed an extra splash to make up for the fact that it wasn’t half as good as what he regularly used. It was all they had, however, so he whisked it in and beat it until the egg and the cream and the vanilla were homogenous and smelled like the start of a good thing. 

Abram wasn’t entirely surprised when he turned away from the bowl on the counter to find that Einstein had set up shop at the island counter to watch him instead of slipping back out to whatever they’d been doing. 

He understood the fascination he supposed. When he was younger he had liked to watch Señora Carina when she baked the sweets and treats of her own childhood. Jean joined him later on, but it wasn’t too long after Mary had passed away that Señora Carina had walked out of the house one evening and never stepped foot in it again. Abram was glad to know she hadn’t met the same painful end many other members of the staff had, but he’d always wondered what the final straw had been to cause her to walk away in the end. For a good while, he’d always wondered if he could have done something to keep her around for longer. 

It didn’t matter. Nothing ever did in the end. 

“Fruit?” he asked. 

“There are blackberries in the fridge,” Charlie offered gently. “Near the back, I think.”

Abram shrugged and dug them out, rinsed them, and patted them dry with careful pressure so as to not burst them. He knew that using them meant he wouldn’t eat a single one of the scones, but he also knew that blackberries were Charlie’s favourite fruit, and she wouldn’t have mentioned them at all if she didn’t want them. 

From there it was easy to bring it all together. Wet to dry, berries folded in. He was careful still to try not to cut into any of the blackberries. They were a fragile fruit, prone to bursting, and he was gentle with them in a way he’d had to learn to be capable of. 

He dusted flour across the surface of the counter and coated his hands with it. The dough was malleable and easy in his hands, taking the form of a disc without complaint. A sharp knife dipped in flour cut it into eight even wedges and then he was painting the tops with leftover heavy cream and sprinkling coarse sugar over the top. 

It went into the fridge for the fifteen minutes he took to carefully and thoroughly clean everything he’d used or touched while making them. The oven preheated to four hundred in the background. 

Twenty-two minutes later and Einstein was pulling apart blackberry scones that were hot to the touch while he drummed his fingers on the counter, staring through them and compiling a list.

1. Flour. Various types. Every type. Bread flour, all-purpose flour, oat flour, coconut flour, all the flour the store had to offer really. 
2. Sugar. White, brown, powdered, raw, coarse. 
3. Vanilla. The good shit, not the horror show of processed nonsense Mia and Charlie had picked up under the delusion that it was ‘good enough’.
4. Fruit. Berries, coconut, citruses, stone fruits. Every in-season fruit he could get his hands on really.
5. Nuts. Walnuts, almonds, and pecans specifically, but he wasn’t really all too picky.
6. Chocolate. Dark. At least 80% if he was going to even consider it. 
7. Butter. So much butter. 

He’d get things to go savoury as well. Bacon and ham, various different cheeses. Scallions, garlic cloves, black pepper, parsley, basil, sage, rosemary. 

There was bound to be more. Things he just wasn’t thinking of because he didn’t have a recipe to keep in mind just then. When he got there, wandering around and crossing out items on his list, he knew that he’d find more things, he knew he’d find more things. He’d spot something or other on a shelf somewhere and an idea for something strange would come to him. And then he’d go back through the store to get what he’d need for that recipe as he built it and spot something to send him on a whole other route. 

He snagged his keys from the ring, alerting Einstein to his movements. 

“Heading out?” Elias asked around a mouthful of blackberry scone. 

Abram just wiggled his keys and made for the door pulling on his boots with far more ease than he should be capable of given they were heavy leather things. It showed his familiarity with them, he supposed. Though, they were custom made and designed for his ease. 

Mia trailed after him, face twisted into a pout that was somewhere between scolding and worried and missing the mark on both fronts. “How long’ll you be?” she asked, and Abram heard how long before I call Ichirou to tell him you’re missing in action.

Abram shrugged, “A little bit.”

“Right,” Mia agreed, sarcastic with her eyes rolling and her arms folded across her chest. “Text me.”

Abram waved dismissively and left the apartment behind.

The drive to the grocery store was exhilarating. 

Palmetto was a pretty large place, but this close to the University with the school year out, the streets were abandoned. There was a time, after his fourteenth birthday and before his sixteenth, when he and Jean used to street race. It wasn’t any proper sort of street racing really, just the two of them going 200 miles per hour down abandoned backroads. 

It had started after that accident that was never an accident, a way for Jean to help Abram get away from the fear of being shut in a four-door vehicle. It ended when Jean left for the Nest.

Abram sat in a car that was so fucking red—another of his family's attempts at forced healing—he could feel the colour crawling over his skin so the whole damn world could see his sins and he drove the twenty miles to the grocery store like there was a bomb in the car and he was trying to outrun it. 

He wasn’t ever fast enough for that.

100.

120.

140.

The speedometer climbed and climbed and climbed and Abram felt it in his veins like it was his lifeblood. He was a runner whose first instinct was to plant his feet and fight. He was a liar who dealt in brutal truths and honest facts. An actor who couldn’t help becoming every name he borrowed and still didn’t have a single name that was really his. 

160.

180.

200.

His boot was heavy on the gas as his thoughts were heavy on his mind. Abram drove, and he tried to forget he knew anything at all. 

Abram’s cart was full.

Massive bags of sugar and flour bordering the sides and every other item on his impossibly long list piled precariously high in the middle. He’d just doubled back for more fruit, unsure that the abundance of it he’d already collected would really be enough, but now he was caught holding a starfruit in one hand and tapping the fingers of his other as he pondered recipes for it.

He was leaning towards some sort of cheesecake recipe, maybe with coconut mixed in. He could aim for something with a more tropical flavour profile and see how that landed with Einstein. He hadn’t used starfruit often enough to know much else to do with it.

“I understand.”

Abram froze.

The phrase hadn’t been directed at him, hadn’t even been spoken all that close to him. There was no reason to panic, no reason for his blood to feel like it was clotting in his veins. 

None at all. 

Except of course there was. Except there always fucking was. Except his mind had just sunk into a red-stained room and his body was tripping into the remembered haze of too many different drugs. 

Russian.

The starfruit rolled away from fingers that had fallen lax and fell back on top of its brethren. Abram stumbled two jolted steps back with a body that didn’t understand how to move the right way until the cold bar of his cart cut into his back and stilled him all over again. 

Russian. 

Of all the things Abram had been worrying about and preparing for so anxiously these past weeks. Of all the dubious and insane plans he’d hypothesized a second son’s crazed mind might come up with. Of all the vantage points he made sure to cover and all the points of attack he’d tried to strengthen. 

Abram had been ready for Riko. Abram had been ready for a poorly thought-out confrontation or a couple of stupid threats. Abram was over-prepared really. Had the power of the entire mafia at the press of a button and had the fear of the entire criminal underworld at his back if he chose the right name to wear.

But he had not prepared himself for something like this. For his own past to come back to find him.

For a long while, he had prepared for it. He had lines of defense set up miles wide and there was no chance in hell anyone could have ever gotten a clear shot at him unless he’d let them. Even now there was still no room for an attack.

It occurred to him then, cart handle digging into his back and a starfruit slowly stumbling across the skin of others, that Ichirou had perhaps been more worried about how vulnerable a deep-cover mission would make him than whether he could handle it.

Abram had forgotten. 

Nearly three years after Russia with an impermeable defense of his own design surrounding him, he had forgotten that as soon as he stepped away from Nathaniel and Abram and into the fragile skin of someone the world didn’t know yet he would be exposed again. He had forgotten that even after hunting down the bastards for months and spilling their blood over the skin of his hands he hadn’t ever been able to find them all. He had forgotten that they would still want to find him. 

Abram had forgotten that even after three long and awful years, Russia was still far more alive—and far more of a threat—than the nightmares that haunted him. 

He was reminded. 

Here, now, hearing that language in that voice.

Because that was it, wasn’t it? The goddamn fucking voice. 

He had done his damn best over the years to erase the triggers Russia had built. It was fifty-fifty whether he succeeded. The word ‘pretty’ set him on edge in a dangerous way now, but it was better than the panic attacks it used to bring. Band-aids from the dollar store with little cartoon prints on them had him stumbling away as quickly as he could manage. 

Abram had learned, after exposing himself to the Russian language and forcing Aiko to buffer the cold war between him and Ichirou over the meltdown the attempt had brought, that it would always be a trigger. But he’d worked it down to a tolerable panic. Made it so that while the fear crawled over his skin like the aftershocks of lightning across water, he could keep his mind clear enough to panic later. 

It was a manageable trigger, a panic he could stuff down to drown in another time. 

But that voice?

Abram stood stock still in the fresh produce aisle, the gravelly sounds of a voice he thought he knew echoing in his mind. 

He needed out. 

He needed to find an escape and take off and he needed to hide until the coast was clear and he had no fucking way of knowing when the coast would be clear again. 

He needed to be his mother’s son, Mary’s invisible little boy. He couldn’t do that when he was still Abram.

Abram moved on autopilot all the same, following years of instinct and experience in evasion had him worming through the store nonsensically like he was a lone car navigating a highway of thousands. He pulled the SIM card out of his phone as he went, snapping it between his fingers. 

Ichirou would kill him for this, he knew that, but he abandoned his cart by the fresh meats and slipped out through the back entrance they used for deliveries where the shadows tucked him gently into their folds. 

A blink of the eye and Abram disappeared. 

He wasn’t Nathaniel, wasn’t Reisu, wasn’t Leo. He was a boy without a name grasping at the loose threads of identities that could never be his until he learned it was better to just let them all go. 

He tucked himself into the shadowed corner between a trash disposal and the brick wall of the store. It wasn’t a secure place, wasn’t anything close to safe, but he settled onto his haunches with Mary’s voice in his head for just long enough that he could remember how to breathe with a body that belonged to no one. 

A rattled breath threatened to fracture his lungs for an agonizing second and he held it there until his options were to gasp around it or close his eyes. It was too easy, he thought, not easy enough. He’d lost his touch and never wavered in it.

A boy without a name.

Nathaniel was his father’s son. Reisu was something not altogether human and not yet the opposite. Leo, a child who’d used himself in terrible ways. Abram, a boy who loved and hated himself for it.

But they all knew panic, in ways that were familiar and not. They knew panic in the shadow of a cleaver in a father’s bloody hand. Panic in the cold apathy that sat heavy between ribs and the space that hid behind it. Panic in knowing that his only true choice to survive was to surrender his right to have one. Panic in having a family that could be taken away more easily than taking the next breath.

But Mary’s son? The boy with no name?

No, she had taught him better than that. Even when she crushed his spirit in ways his father never could. Even when she restructured the fractured foundations of who he was in the ways his father was desperate to. 

We are nothing, she would say to him, refusing to tend to his open wounds until he agreed with her confidently enough that she believed him. We are nothing and no one and that is how we survive. 

And they were nothing. They were nothing from the moment the Butcher laid his eyes on them and they would be nothing until the moment he left them pulseless and bloody in his basement. 

But they were nothing in different ways, he realised too late. 

Mary was nothing in the way she was a phantom in her own home. She was nothing in the way she was forgotten about except for as a mother who failed to love her son and as a wife who failed to fear her husband enough. She was nothing because she pretended not to be anything at all. 

Her version of nothing had gotten her killed.

But her son? The boy she’d given a name that she refused to use? The boy she’d raised in shadows that recognized him as the same thing they were?

Being nothing was what saved him.

A boy without a name. 

He was nothing because he could be anything. No one because he could be anyone. He was unseen because he was always seen. Forgotten because he could never really be remembered. He knew how to find the shadows and become them, how to step into the shoes of a stranger and walk in them like they were his truth.

He didn’t know a thing like panic or the senseless red taste of fear. 

Mary’s son knew nothing but survival.

A boy with no name.

It was funny to him now that he’d feared it for so long. That all he would ever be was the forgotten memory of a boy with the wrong name and the wrong face in the most honest ways. He’d forgotten to fear it now, when it had kept him alive for so long. 

There would be time for Abram to panic later. Time for Nathaniel’s violent anger and Leo’s extended dissociation, too. But first, Mary’s son had to survive.

He moved. Casual and careful, seen by the world and forgotten as soon as they looked away from him. Danced into shops and pondered items he had no desire to buy. Aided a woman crossing the street when she fumbled with a cane in one hand and two bags in the other. 

He was impossible to track. Moved in a way that would force a tail to abandon him or be discovered. Moved in a way that made no sense to anyone trying to predict where he was headed. Moved in a way that made sense only to his own mind, might have made sense to the mind of a brother trapped underground with monsters hiding behind dark feathered wings. 

He may have been a boy born with no name and raised to answer to any. He might even be that boy for the rest of his life. But hidden away from the world in the cold changeroom of a hockey arena that had been abandoned for the season and absolutely sure that no one could have found him regardless of how desperately they tried to, he was still—and always would be—the boy who survived.

Cold, alone, and as safe as he ever got these days, he stumbled back into the arms of Abram and found the time to fall apart. 

Russia had found him. 

The thing he enjoyed the most perhaps, was watching the frustration on Kevin’s face when he realized not only was he being outplayed, but that Neil was completely outclassing him. Neil knew Wymack was enjoying it just as much from the amused little smirk on his face and the way he was quick to pretend to be interested in something else the second Kevin glanced over for assistance.

But perhaps even better than watching the mounting frustration and annoyance, was watching Kevin’s determination build. 

For every moment that Neil outsmarted, outplayed, and outclassed him on the court, Kevin looked all that much more determined to improve until he was not just back in his prime, but better. 

And Neil loved that.

Even now, after only a few short weeks of Neil being at Palmetto, they were beyond the reach of the original Raven drills. Neil had only restrained himself a little bit his first go, letting Kevin see a learning curve that wasn’t really there. From the way both Wymack and Andrew had rolled their eyes at him, he knew they weren’t fooled. 

They’d moved past it now, even moved past the twisted versions of the drills Neil and Ichirou had come up with when getting ready for this. They ran the drills still, with increased speed and increased precision and increased everything. But they ran more too.

By the time their strange little practices were drawing to a close Neil and Kevin had always, without fault, progressed to absurd challenges of sorts. Who could hit the same place more times in a row, who could pull off this trick shot the cleanest, who could get the quickest sprint time? 

And without fault, Neil racked up wins and Kevin racked up losses. Again and again and again.

Neil loved it.

Kevin fumbled a shot he should have been able to make in his sleep. Even with his hand in the gently healed state it was, Kevin shouldn’t have missed.

“Can’t keep up?” Neil fired, his own shot landing true.

Kevin whipped around to face him with a scowl that wasn’t half as impressive as he thought it was on display. “I can keep up,” he hissed.

Neil raised a challenging eyebrow, spinning his racquet loosely in his hands and shuffling his weight carefully. He was struggling more today than most other practices he ran with Kevin. His little… incident three days ago had left him a bit tender on his left. 

He hadn’t meant to shatter through a window body first or ignore those injuries for the next five and a half hours while he panicked and dissociated. He’d taken care of himself eventually, and while he was sure he’d have some fun new scars joining his collection, the pain wasn’t anything worse than an uncomfortable pulling when he moved the wrong way. He had, however, intentionally forgotten to tell anyone about it. 

“So keep up,” Neil offered, tossing a ball at Kevin and watching him fumble the catch in a way so uncharacteristic of him Wymack shifted from where he was sitting inside the court but propped against the plexi-glass. 

“Josten,” Wymack warned lightly. 

And that was something so peculiar. Wymack wasn’t light or soft or gentle. Except that he was. He was abrasive and aggressive and every bit of the grouchy old fuck he’d claimed to be, but he dialled it back in the recent days. 

Neil wasn’t stupid enough to think that Wymack even knew what he was doing, but the man had at least subconsciously picked up on the change in Neil. In Abram.

Kevin was blind to it, even if he was the one suffering from Neil’s renewed ruthless frustration. Because it was Kevin on the court with him, even if Wymack lingered within the plexi-glass barrier and worked them through drills. It was Kevin that Neil was carefully and casually antagonizing into pushing himself past limits that had never been there before. And it was Kevin who was struggling to meet Neil where he was and keep going even past that. 

Andrew was another story.

Neil—Abram—wasn’t sure he’d ever be anything other than completely fascinated with the enigma that was Andrew Minyard. 

Andrew, even drugged to high heavens, was every bit as overwhelmingly and unnervingly intelligent as Abram was. As Neil was by consequence. Andrew saw Wymack’s change and clocked the cause for it in Neil’s barely altered behaviour. Caught on it like a fly caught in a web. 

He couldn’t do much about it between the drugs in his system and the supervision always lingering within plexi-glass barriers. 

And even if Andrew tried to do something about it there wasn’t anything he could do. What accusation was he meant to make? No one here knew who Neil was well enough to say anything had changed. No one here knew Neil enough to expect or demand an explanation from him. And Neil knew all of them well enough to shut it down before it ever started. Neil knew them well enough to clock every shifting breath in their behaviour and identify every possible cause for it before whittling down to the one it really was. 

That was what his entire life came down to. Knowing and never being known. 

There was a throb in his chest, a dull sort of ache behind the place his heart sat.

Did anyone know him?

“Move your ass,” Kevin hissed, checking him roughly as he shouldered by to scoop up a loose ball.

Neil let himself be hit, sore body wincing with pain he wouldn’t show, and tucked away the gentle lick of spiteful anger it stirred. There were better times to be angry and there were worse people out there to be dealt the brutal hand of his fury.

Kevin was something of a bug crawling on the laces of his shoe. Not worth the time, not worth the effort. Not yet at least. 

Neil slung his racquet over his shoulders, shifting his weight to his right side in a way that was more subtle than anyone here could notice. He watched Kevin. Watched him scoop the ball and give it an experimental toss before catching it on the way down and firing the shot he hadn’t been able to make all night. 

He missed it, found the ball on the rebound, and fired again.

No. Kevin wasn’t worth much right now. He was a broken boy with a broken hand and a broken spirit. And Neil knew a lot about broken things. He was one, after all. A broken part of a broken whole that had never not been that way. 

But Kevin was a broken thing that couldn’t be bothered to be right. He was a broken thing that saw shadows flicker and felt fear where Neil felt anger. He was a broken thing still scared of what had broken him. Neil only had so much sympathy for that.

But he watched Kevin flex his left hand and shake it out. He watched Kevin find the rebound again and line up for a shot they both knew he couldn’t make. He watched Kevin take it anyway. 

Neil, wearing the skin of Abram now even if he shouldn’t be, stood by what he’d said to his eldest brother all those weeks ago. Kevin Day was a liability. 

Oh, he was a profitable one, sure. And there was little doubt that his healthy and speedy recovery could do financial wonders for the family. But the fact remained that Kevin Day was a liability to their continued safety even for the non-threat he was. 

He wouldn’t even have to open his mouth to do damage. Riko had shown enough of his immature childish anger for them to know that. When Kevin healed, and Abram was beginning to see quite clearly that he would in fact heal, Riko’s reaction could never be a good thing. The potential for damage was great. 

And if Kevin did open his mouth? Well, that would be potentially catastrophic. Abram didn’t know the Foxes well enough yet to know their loyalty or their stupidity yet. Andrew and Wymack, he figured, would keep their mouths shut. They knew enough about the wrong side of things to know when they’d been beaten. But the rest of the Foxes? If they knew the truth how long would it take before they went squeaking to the police about things they didn’t know about? What sort of stain might Kevin’s secrets impress upon the Moriyama name?

Kevin Day was a valuable financial investment. Even more so if his hand healed. But Kevin Day was a liability and a loose thread. His innocence didn’t factor into things like they might have if it was anyone else thinking these things. 

Those were just the facts.

Another fact: it would be easy for Neil to end it all right here. 

He could recommend they switch to a more physical drill. Kevin would agree because of course he would. He was stupid when it came to exy and if Neil phrased it like a challenge Kevin wouldn’t know how to back down from it. They’d go for a while like that, body checks and rough pins between a body and the boards. As they got more tired he could get a little sloppier. A few stick checks just this side of legal. Play it off like exhaustion, toss in a few carefully worded quips to keep Kevin engaged in the game. And then a quick strike at the right bone with the right amount of force and his career would go down the drain like water. Riko would walk away smug and on top, the Moriyamas would get their last few paychecks and cut their losses, and when Neil disappeared tracelessly just hours after it happened Kevin would be clever enough—or even just paranoid—to put it together and bury himself in a voiceless fear of the family.

It would be easy.

Another fact: Neil—no, Abram, because this was really just Abram walking around with the wrong name—would hate himself for that.

It wasn’t like he didn’t already. He had a complicated relationship with the idea of himself. With names and identities and the footsteps he’d followed and the paths he’d carved for himself. Had a complicated relationship with the way he could swallow blood like it was tea and digest death as if it were fiber. Had a complicated relationship with the mirror and the ever-changing face staring back at him. With the things he’d done and the things he would do. With the people he’d been and the people he would be. With everything and anything and all of it. 

He had taken innocent lives before, wearing Reisu’s skin. For all that he’d done it was that, that he could never forgive. He’d killed and slaughtered and tortured, but he could always look at himself and say that he had been right to do what he’d done. He’d gotten rid of terrible people by doing a terrible thing, but the world was better off with him having done it.

But innocent lives? 

He always did what he could to save them. To protect them. To make sure that none of them were ever hurt the way he was or the way his family was. 

Reisu didn’t always have those same moral boundaries. Junior didn’t always have them. He’d done things he hated and would probably do them again. 

Kevin Day?

He was innocent. And for all that breaking his arm a second time wouldn’t kill him, Abram wasn’t stupid enough to think there was much of a difference in Kevin’s mind. 

It was what Abram did. He dealt in facts and truths that were bitter and cruel and he tried to make the best out of them. And when he couldn’t, he folded Abram into Nathaniel, sometimes even folded Nathaniel into Reisu , and he did what he needed to do.

There was red all over his ledger. Dripping through the pages until it was beyond saturation, until it crawled free from the book and strangled him. There was red and there was red and there was red. What was a little more at the end of it all? Would it be the thing that broke him at long last? Or would it just be another drop added to the tidal wave that was coming crashing down over him?

But Neil watched Kevin—Abram watched Kevin—and for as much as he saw a liability, he saw potential. 

Andrew stood in the stands, catching the attention of both Neil and Kevin simultaneously. Wymack twisted when he caught them both looking, a little blocked off from where he was dropped on the floor.

“Time to go, Kevin,” Andrew hummed in that too happy, drug-fueled voice. 

Neil winced, tried not to show it, knew he failed when Andrew’s manic-tinged eyes landed on him and gleamed with a hazy understanding of something just out of his grasp.

Neil watched Andrew, not bothering to pay any attention to Kevin grumbling about leaving so soon—they’d been there for hours—and packing away their things. He watched Andrew as Kevin left the court. Watched Andrew as Kevin vanished into the changerooms. Watched Andrew as Wymack looked between them with strange consideration. Watched Andrew right up until Andrew gave him a two-fingered salute and disappeared before Neil could give him one back.  

“That’s gonna be a problem, ain’t it?” Wymack grumbled, half a question and half an answer.

Neil only tilted his head, his expression something like curiosity and something like a threat. “I don’t know what you mean, Coach,” he lied. “Andrew and I are thick as thieves.”

Wymack sighed like the entirety of the world was against him and Neil was a little offended, granted most of the world was usually against him and not the aged coach suffering like he was alone with his issues. 

“I lose years every time you open your mouth,” Wymack huffed. “Decades even.”

Neil hummed. “I do, too.”

Wymack angled a strange look at him. “Every time I open my mouth?”

“No,” Neil argued. “Every time I do.”

Neil had a very warm cup cradled between his hands as he leaned over the counter and watched Emery’s hands fly as they detailed the absolute shit show that was her family trying to figure out how to operate the new espresso machine they’d purchased for the store. 

He’d learned over the last few weeks that the Split Bean was a family-run shop. Opened and managed by Emery’s grandparents and staffed by all the grandchildren. Emery’s own parents worked the finances, one of their aunts the marketing. There was an uncle in charge of whatever legal bullshit they needed handled, and then Emery and all their cousins worked clockwork shifts to run the place. 

He’d met most of the family by now, with the exception of the marketing aunt and the legal uncle. He was pretty sure there was a distant cousin who’d run off to Northern Florida at some point that he hadn’t met either, but he couldn’t really be bothered to clarify. 

As it stood, Emery had told her family about him after that first meeting they’d had, and by the fourth time he visited the little shop, there was always someone waiting to introduce themselves and shove a box of freshly baked something or other into his arms.

He had, Emery told him, been effectively adopted into the family. They warned him it wouldn’t be long until he found himself with an invite to family dinner he wouldn’t be allowed to refuse, but he wasn’t sure he had it in him to be upset by that just then. Not after the mess of trying to reach out to his mother’s family. 

It might be nice, he thought, to see what a normal family looked like. It wasn’t a difficult assumption to know that he’d certainly never known a normal family. 

He loved the family he’d stitched together from the abandoned and the lost and the son of a crime lord that technically owned him but was a better father than the rest of their fathers ever could be. 

He loved his eldest brother for the way he could keep his head when there was a gun aimed at his temple but not when he spilled his morning coffee. He loved his first brother for the way he could always string together the right words to say when the moment called for it but the way he couldn’t make left or right out of a simple sentence once the moment had passed. He loved the sister he’d found and who’d married into his life for the way she kept them all in line most days but was always the first one to join him in his chaotic plans of mass destruction. 

He loved the team he’d put together, too, because really it was about time he stopped pretending they weren’t family. Loved Elias for the way he was clever to his bones but downplayed his intelligence until everyone but Abram had forgotten it was there at all. Loved Mia for how easily she loved everyone and how often she forgot that she deserved to be loved just as much in return. Loved Charlie for the talented way she could brighten a room just by being in it and the way she tucked away the darkest parts of herself like they didn’t matter until someone else came along and told her they did. 

Abram loved them, Neil loved them. He was pretty sure they were one in the same still. But for all that he loved them he would never pretend to think they were normal. 

His family was made up of criminals and killers with a moral code that made sense to no one except for themselves. They were beautifully brutal and kindly calculated and each of them would kill to save or save to kill and he loved them.

They could never be normal. 

Emery took a break in their silent ranting to drop a croissant in front of him before waving off the rest of the story with a quickly signed you know how these things go.

Neil didn’t have the heart to tell them that he didn’t.

Anyway, she signed. How are things with you? You’ve been absent.

Neil winced at the accusation written clear across their features. He’d been absent since the twelfth when he’d fucked off to the store for baking supplies and tripped his way through memories of Russia and a thousand other traumatic things until he’d landed on his ass in a hockey arena. It was the fifteenth now. He was freshly showered after the long practice he’d had with Kevin and Wymack, and Emery looked like she was in the mood for answers.

I had some family shit to deal with, he decided on. And while not entirely true, it stood up to the test. 

Ichirou had been all up his ass the past few days. Elias had every camera they had access to—which was all of them—trained on him at all times, and either Charlie or Mia was always a maximum of five minutes from his current location, if they weren’t both on his ass. 

If that wasn’t already enough, there were texts coming through every other hour that he had to answer near immediately for fear that his oldest brother would simply disregard all the safety precautions they’d put in place and fly straight down to either throttle him or drag him back to New York and let someone else play Neil Josten’s role.

Emery hummed audibly, sympathetic in a way he didn’t deserve.

Are you still looking for a dog?

Neil quirked an eyebrow and signed affirmatively, watching the cruel twist to the smile that crept across Emery’s lips just then.

My cousin found a bunch of puppies, she said. They’re still young enough to need a mother and there was no mother to be found so we’ve been taking care of them. Give them about two weeks and they’ll be all ready to go. If you’re interested… 

And really, Neil knew all about that cruel little smile in those simple phrases alone. Knew what it meant to find strays on the side of the road and bring them into your home. Knew all about making a family from the ruins of what someone else had found lacking.

How was he supposed to say no?

Which cousin? He asked instead.

Emery snorted at him, the blatant delay of an answer. Does it matter? They countered before answering him all the same. Jaida. Always takes on more than she can handle.

Sounds familiar. Neil quipped before continuing on. What breed are they?

Emery actually rolled their eyes at him, snagging a chunk of the croissant she’d given to him and stuffing it in their mouth before lazily signing back a response. Fuck if I know. Cute and floppy.

And, well. What did Neil know about dogs in the end? Cute and floppy sounded good enough to him.

When can I pick one up? He asked.

Emery grinned, and if there was room on his never-ending list of things to regret and feelings to process, this might have added itself to the end of it. He reckoned he’d be long dead before he got the chance to address it. 

 Oh well. A dog was a dog, and if it made his family a little bit happier than they were it was good enough for him. 

I’ll text Jaida, she told him. Probably not until they’ve had their shots and are big enough to do whatever independent pups need to be able to do. Few weeks maybe?

That’s fine, he agreed easily. And it was, really. So long as he knew that he’d done his due diligence and so long as he could head back to that apartment and look Elias in the eye without being a little bit guilty about not getting the stupid prick a dog anything was fine with him. If the damn thing’s some tiny little mutant though, he warned, trailing off at the end to leave things up to Emery’s bountiful imagination. 

She grinned, tore off another piece of his croissant, and dropped a tart between them. They’re not tiny things, she promised. That much I know.

Good enough for him.

He picked up the tart, examined it for a slow second before breaking off a section somewhere around a fifth of the size of the whole and dropping it in his mouth. 

Huh.

Now that was startling and pleasant in one go. 

He parsed out the tastes on his tongue, working a palette he’d refined out of the desperation to be normal and be human and do something that didn’t make him feel like the monster he knew he was becoming. There wasn’t any citrus like he’d been expecting, but there was a sour note all the same. Like rhubarb that wasn’t. Like something sweet and not sweet at the same time.

What’s in that? He asked.

Emery only smiled at him, coy and teasing and downright rude because he already knew what that smile meant before they’d gone and answered him. Not going to happen.

He supposed if Emery wasn’t going to tell him—and there was really no chance they would, Emery never told him any of the recipes for the treats of the coffees she gave him—he’d just have to wait until a cousin or a grandparent turned up so he could hound them for an answer instead. Though, he doubted, there was a good chance this was one of those things Emery made impulsively that no one else ever seemed to know about. 

They did that often, he’d learned. Did whatever they seemed to feel like doing. Emery made his drinks in that way. Never something off the menu, which was really something considering how vast the menu was. But whatever coffee she made for him was never one he could find on their drinks list the next time he came in. 

It made it difficult for him to ask for specific drinks sometimes, but Emery seemed to know what he meant when he rambled off a date and vague flavour profiles. Between them they made it work most days. 

Neil barely caught the movement of Emery’s hand as she spoke, half gone in a strange daze.

How’s your sister?

Aiko. How was Aiko? 

Very pregnant, he answered easily. The swollen feet are ruining her life, presumably, and the bed rest is a form of legal torture.

Emery snorted again. 

It was something of a marvel to Neil every time. There was something genuine about that expression of amusement, something untouched and raw that made him ache. When Emery laughed, when she made a sound she couldn’t hear herself. The basic, most vulnerable human expression. Even to someone to whom it was meaningless. It was a wonder to see it. To hear it.

Sometimes, even in the midst of all the terrible things he’d seen and survived and done unto others, Abram felt incredibly blessed to be here. Not by any sort of god, no, he’d long given up on those. But blessed all the same. 

Not lucky, he didn’t believe in that. And really, he didn’t believe in blessings either. But there wasn’t any other word he knew to encompass the feeling of it. The simple, beautiful euphoria of watching life exist outside of himself, seeing it exist without the stain of red and red and red. 

He felt sometimes, watching and seeing and looking at the lives he could never touch, that he might ruin them by standing too close. But Emery snorted and made him coffee and packed up treats and sweets they never let him pay for, and what was he supposed to feel?

It existed around him, reached out to touch him, and when he walked away he could look back and he couldn’t see all the awful things he carried around with him. 

My sister was the same, Emery agreed. High-risk pregnancy like yours, so she had strict guidelines. Told me the doctor was purposefully making her life hell so she’d only have the one kid.

Did it work? Neil asked out of sheer curiosity. 

Emery huffed a gentle laugh and shook her head as she signed rapidly. Not at all. She’s got four little brats now.

Oh well, he dismissed. There are worse things.

Emery looked at him with one of those too sharp, too knowing sort of looks that bothered him in that they didn’t really bother him at all. Looked at him like she knew there were worse things and like they knew exactly which sorts of things he was thinking about. There are, they agreed. 

Neil hummed, breaking off another bit of tart and chewing slowly. 

He wondered if dogs could eat tarts.

When his phone rang there was a short moment where Abram thought someone had figured out his habit of disappearing up onto the roof and called Ichirou to scold him. 

That was not what was happening.

It took Abram all of two seconds and reading the empty caller ID on his second burner phone for him to realize that this was not Ichirou calling him. And if it wasn’t Ichirou calling there weren’t many other people it could be.

Hoping it wasn’t any of his father’s people, Abram flipped the phone open to answer the call and pressed it to his ear.

“Is the line secure?” came a fluid French voice. 

Abram might have died right then, so overwhelmingly glad to hear his brother’s voice. To hear Jean’s voice. 

“Yes,” he answered quickly.

He heard Jean’s contended hum, the flick of a door lock. “I have news.”

“What’s happened?” he asked, pressing for information.

There would be time later to revel in how much of a relief it was to hear his brother’s voice after these long and terribly paranoid weeks. For now, there was information to be traded. Information important enough Jean couldn’t spare time to reach out to Abram and Ichirou the way he usually did; a note found in an obvious place with a time and a date. Jean had reached out directly, disregarding the potential damage to himself. It meant that whatever he had to share was time-dependent. 

“They’re petitioning a district change,” Jean said, his voice hushed through the line. Abram didn’t want to focus on the implications of that just then. “It won’t be long before they’re granted it.”

Abram furrowed his brow, allowing himself the simplicity of expression in his rooftop isolation. Allowing it when it was Jean on the phone with him. 

A district change. Curious.

“There’s no chance of it being denied?” he asked. The answer was obvious enough just with the knowledge that Jean had felt the need to make this call, but he asked anyway. There was always something of a chance.

Jean only snorted. “Not with Tetsuji’s influence.”

While it was true that Tetsuji’s influence in the world of sport was immense, it was still true that there were limits to that reach. A district change, unprompted and unneeded, was asking for attention. It was a bold move, one that would have the press closing in like wolves. 

Abram had to hand it to Riko there. He was certainly being bold in his choices. The media swarm would bring in money, would put pressure on Kevin to return to the Ravens, back out of the spotlight, or risk a very public humiliation. It was clever in a poorly thought-out way.

Media attention, as Abram well knew, was a double-edged sword. 

It pressed buttons Riko wanted to be pressed, but it brought the cameras and questions down onto the Moriyama name.

It was a gamble, and Abram wasn’t sure that Riko had considered it properly.

“They’ve gotten awfully bold.”

“It is a good thing,” Jean insisted quietly. Abram spared half a thought to wonder how similarly they’d thought about Riko’s choice. “Easier for Ichirou to convince Kengo that the second son is worth less than spare parts.”

“It’s a bad thing too,” Abram countered. “If he’s going this far and if he’s doing it so publicly what’s to stop him from doing worse? There’s too much media focus.” He thought about Reisu living in shadows that were getting smaller. Of sleek snakes and feathered birds and elegant fish scales. “The family is at risk here.”

Jean made a sound between distress and dismissal. “All the more reason to eliminate him now.”

Abram felt himself go cold.

For all that his brother was a criminal and as morally questionable as Abram himself was, he was never quite so violently inclined. Between Abram and Jean—between all three of the brothers, really—Abram was the violent one. He was the one most likely to strike out mortally and effectively. Ichirou preferred negotiations first, a little polite conversation. Jean was less ashamed to say he manipulated those around him. He’d collect information, twist it the way he needed to. Blackmail and carefully analyzed plans to render people as ruthlessly helpless as Abram’s violence could. 

It wasn’t that Abram wasn’t equally as talented as his brothers were at negotiating and manipulating, but he didn’t often find the need. Death and violence weren’t so foreign to him. They were woven into the strands of his DNA until he could feel them thrumming in the blood under his skin.

Jean never asked so explicitly for violence quite so easily as this.

“... Jean,” Abram muttered, pressing in a way that couldn’t be considered a question.

“Abram,” Jean answered, voice taut with emotions Abram didn't want to think about and couldn’t help feeling as viscerally as his brother must have been. 

“What’s happened?” he muttered.

“Abram-”

“Don’t think you can lie to me,” he interrupted, fighting to keep his voice gentle and steady. He didn’t want to snap at his brother, not now. He didn’t want Jean to shut down or turn away the way he used to do so often when they were children. Jean was too far away for Abram to bring him back from that right now. He needed his brother safe. “I’m the one who taught you how to lie, you bird-brained fool. What did he do to you?”

“He gets more aggressive when he’s stressed,” Jean said dismissively, as if it was an easy thing to hear across the phone and six hours away that your brother was being hurt and there was nothing you could do about it. “It’s nothing worse than when we were boys.”

“When we were boys,” Abram strained, fingers curling around his phone until they ached with the tension in his knuckles. “We lived with a mass murderer. It’s not hard to be better than that.” He paused for long enough to strangle himself on a breath that was meant to help him collect his splintering emotions. “Do you need an extraction?”

“No,” Jean answered immediately. “We’re not there yet.”

“Jean-”

“Abram,” Jean snapped, and it was his turn to interrupt, Abram supposed. “I know my limits, I know when to ask for help…” He trailed off and Abram felt the shift, steadied himself for the insult that was coming as Jean tried to force a divide between them that was designed to keep neither of them safe. “I’m not you, Ram.”

The accusation was there in a way it hadn’t been in the joking tone Jean had used in their last phone call, and Abram felt it like the blow he’s sure it was meant to be. He felt it like the smokescreen he’s sure it was. Because no, Jean wasn’t Abram. And yes, Jean knew how to ask for help and he knew how to admit when he was in over his head and when he was in pain. And Abram…

Abram had never known how to do that. He’d been raised to know that he couldn’t find help anywhere other than his own two hands. Raised to know that showing any vulnerabilities meant they would be exploited. 

He’d worked hard over the years with his family to unlearn the behaviours both mother and father had beaten into him. Having Jean throw that work in his face like this?

Abram knew his faults. Knew he was reckless and foolish and so damn stupidly self-destructive. But Jean had never used them against him. Jean had always been there to help him through the shadows of doubt and the talons of his trauma.

“Okay,” he agreed, swallowing around the sting in his throat. If he told himself it didn’t hurt, maybe he could trick himself into believing it. “I’ll pass on the information to Ichirou, he’ll do with it what he will.”

“Abram,” Jean muttered, regret staining his voice.

“I get it,” Abram deferred. “I do. And I expect you to tell me when it gets to be too much.”

There was a slow breath on the other end of the line. Because for all that Jean’s harsh words had been a quick defence, Abram understood the truth behind them. Jean was managing alright, but he was being hurt all the same. In a way that Ichirou wouldn’t stand for but in a way that Jean expected Abram to allow.

Jean knew that Abram understood, and Abram knew that when it came down to it and he had to ask his brother the same thing, Jean would stand by his side and pick up the pieces when it was over. They might hate the things they each allowed the other to suffer, but they would never violate the trust between them. Not unless it meant one of them wouldn’t be there to hate them for it. 

They were two fragile boys who grew up in homes that disregarded their wishes and forced things on them they’d never dared to want. How could either of them deny the other anything?

“Thank you,” Jean murmured. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Abram all but begged. Don’t thank him, don’t apologise. Abram couldn’t shoulder the weight of that. “Not for this.”

“Alright,” Jean agreed. “I have to go.”

Abram knew he couldn’t keep him. He knew he could never risk asking Jean to stay any longer than was safe. Not when there was so much always on the line. Not when it was his brother’s safety at risk. Not when Jean was already unsafe as it was. 

Abram knew he couldn’t keep him, but he still ached to let him go.

“Send for flowers if you need to,” Abram reminded him, not-so-subtly begging his brother to remember to ask for help when he needed it. 

He could almost hear the gentle smile he knew was gracing Jean’s face just then. “White Heather and Meadowsweet,” Jean murmured. 

“Just ask,” Abram breathed across the line. 

“I will,” Jean promised, and the line went dead.

Abram gave himself all of half a minute to mourn for the pain his brother was forcing himself to endure. Half a minute to wish for the return of simpler times, when they were younger and carried the weight of less pain. When they went across seas to Italian cities or island coasts and got themselves involved in car chases and petty arson. When Russia wasn’t a constant chill up Abram’s spine and Jean wasn’t lingering in dark corners trying to outlast monsters. When Aiko hadn’t felt her life nearly ripped away from her and Ichioru hadn’t felt the impending weight of Kengo’s rapidly declining health.

Half a minute before he drummed his fingers together, pressing the pads together near violently as he fought for composure that never came as easily as it used to.

Half a minute.

The Ravens were changing districts. 

It was tactically efficient, he supposed. Riko was too far away from Kevin now to do much of anything. But switching districts brought them closer, provided them with at least three guaranteed meetings, and wrangled the media’s focus back to the two sons of the bastard sport. He didn’t want to think about the repercussions of the media again, he couldn’t yet forget them.

A district change, hm?

It wasn’t what Abram would have done, granted, but Abram was a better man than Riko, he couldn’t expect much from the son that had been cast aside like scraps.

Abram: 

fun thing just happened

Fancy Suit Man: 

that’s never tru when u say it

Abram: 

baby bird called me

Fancy Suit Man: 

what’s wrong? 

does he need evac? 

medic? 

ram?

Abram: 

the ravens are coming south

Fancy Suit Man: 

shit 

that’s 

what’s the working plan?

Abram: 

why do i need to make the plan?

Fancy Suit Man: 

u always make the plan 

don’t pretend u don’t 

now

plan?

Abram: 

i have some ideas

Abram’s phone rang with Ichirou’s proud number displayed and he grinned the sort of smile his father might have been proud of. 

It felt far too good to be so cruel.

Chapter Text

There was a gun in a hand that didn’t have a body and a finger wrapped around the bend of a trigger. There was a gun with a bullet waiting in the chamber and a finger twitching like it was hungry for someone’s blood on the floor. 

There was a gun. There was a bullet. There was the promise of death and the promise of protection. There was a life on the line. There was a brother to save.

There was Jean.

There was Abram.

There was a gun.

And there was too much space to cover between Abram’s feet planted too firmly into ground that felt like wet concrete and where Jean could barely hold himself up.

Abram tried. He always fucking tried and he was starting to learn that it didn’t matter how much he did or how desperately he tried to keep them safe: his family was going to keep getting hurt and it was always going to be his fault for not doing more. He needed to be doing more.

He fought to peel his feet off a quicksand-floor swallowing him, and sunk until he felt it burning like acid at the skin of his knees. He fought, writhed with the pain of being consumed by his terror and the terror of feeling his heart break before it was broken. He fought, palms skinning themselves on earth that was made more of firestone and broken glass than soil now. He bled into it, red blurring into black into nothing into something. He fought and he bled and there was a finger curled and curling and he wasn’t going to be enough. 

He was never going to be enough and he was stupid to have ever thought he could be. 

Abram, Jean had said once, in a voice that was younger than the years had ever afforded them permission to be. And Abram had curled closer to him in the shadows of three in the morning, sheets drawn up and over their heads like the walls of a criminal castle they promised to build. I don’t want it to kill me.

Abram screamed, bleeding over broken bricks all melting into the scorching stone that was dragging him down into the earth while Jean trembled with the barrel of a gun turned his way.

The sky fractured above them, light blinding him for long enough a body could form behind the hand, shadow striking for long enough the world could wrap a molten hand around his throat and cut fingers of blood through his throat.

Abram choked, fought for a breath so he could fight for his brother.

I won’t let it, he’d promised, too young and too desperate to understand that he was making a promise that he was never going to be able to keep. 

But Jean had smiled at him, the corners of his eyes softening and his lips bending up in the kindest thing Abram had seen all week. 

“Abram,” Jean’s voice trembled. All of him trembled.

Abram tried. He tried, and he fought, and he was never going to get there in time. He was never going to be enough, it was always going to kill him. A thousand nights in a thousand different ways.

Jean’s eyes searched for him, passed over the space where Abram was struggling against a tile floor that had turned volcanic so it could smother him, cut back to lock on him. Abram opened his mouth to speak, opened his mouth to do something, and talons of metal and smoke forced their way in so they could wrap around his tongue and force themselves down his throat until he was choking and gagging and Jean was begging with his eyes and his words and Abram could never be enough. 

He was so stupid to pretend he was enough. He was so stupid to let himself pretend. He was so stupid. 

And it was going to get Jean killed.

He fought: thrashed and choked and felt the skin melt from his body and imagined it was a gentle thing so he wouldn’t try to scream past the way he was trying not to vomit around the talons still tearing his tongue from his mouth. 

He fought: saw the desperate terror in Jean’s eyes, felt it in equal strength in his blood, remembered the same terror in them all those years ago, felt the curve of Jean’s body against his own under the bed sheets, ignored the agony of being torn apart by the world underneath him. 

Abram, I don’t want it to kill me.

Abram knew what it was. Had known back then too. Saw it manifesting in the hand wrapped around a gun, in the arm that sprouted back out until it met a body that looked like the broken crown of a second son and the violence of a life carved out from honest lies and bloodshed.

I won’t let it.

And then Abram had led him here. Taken Jean by the hand and they’d stumbled mostly blind down the deadly path they’d taken until they had made themselves bigger monsters and bigger beasts than any of the ones that had ever tried to hurt them.

He was trying to save them. Trying to make sure it couldn’t get them. And all he’d done was make them into it. All he’d done was guarantee that it could be the only possible way they’d go out. 

I don’t want it to kill me.

Abram fought. He was willing to do anything to get in the way and take the bullet headed Jean’s way. Abram fought. Willing to let himself bleed and break a thousand times and then a thousand times more if it would be enough to save Jean.

I won’t let it.

Abram was never enough. Abram never would be.

I don’t want it to kill me.

Riko fired the gun.

I won’t let it.

Abram held Jean in his arms until he remembered how to wake up.

It was a bad day for this, but Neil Josten was supposed to be separated from Abram, so he bit his tongue and forced his hands to stop shaking. 

It didn’t matter that Abram was a mess. It didn’t matter that he was desperate to hear the sound of his brother’s voice just so he could make sure he wasn’t really bleeding out with a bullet in his heart and a bullet in his brain. Abram knew the consequences of caring for people and he had to deal with that on his own time. But Neil had somewhere to be and something to do. 

Abram could wait.

He didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Tapping his racquet against his ankle bone, Abram closed his eyes and opened them as Neil. Exy practice with Kevin and Andrew’s salvaged family. Knowing that Wymack would be in the office instead of on the court was a deterrent he wished he could ignore, but he knew exactly who waited for him. Remembered the pull of the smirk on Hemmick’s face that first day and the scowl etched onto Minyard’s. Between the two of them, Andrew’s soon proximity, and the comments that would be coming from Kevin…

His goal was to get through the makeshift practice without killing any of them. At the very best, he might not even hurt them all too badly.

His goal seemed a lot more unattainable as soon as Hemmick strode out onto the court with the grumpy Minyard trailing after him. 

“Pretty boy!” he cheered, a grin splitting his face open so widely that Neil had to swallow back his wince. “You know,” he leered, “You’ll have to owe me for this. Taking up my free time to come and train with you.”

Neil’s hand was Abram’s, tightened around his racquet and moved it in front of his body crossways. Held onto it the way he might one of the knives strapped under his training uniform. 

Hemmick didn’t notice a damn thing. Abram wasn’t sure he’d expected him to.

“Better wait until the others aren’t around though,” Hemmick teased with a wink that had Neil fighting off a shiver. 

Minyard sneered. “Are you fucking serious? Can you not try to fuck the freshman while I’m right here?”

It bothered Hemmick. Neil saw it in the way his shoulders tensed. And for a moment he let himself be a little bit sympathetic for the guy who’d taken in two teenagers and gotten nothing but shit from the both of them ever since. How often did Hemmick have to face off against Minyard’s asshole tendencies?

While Neil gave him credit for how quickly he brushed the comment off, he wasn’t happy about it. “You could leave,” Hemmick suggested. “Then Neil and I could get to know each other better right now.”

“I’ll tell Erik,” Minyard said, scowl sinking further into his features. Neil might have been worried he’d never be able to get it off his face if he gave a single shit.

“You’d have to actually talk to him to do that.”

Neil wasn’t blind to the obvious hurt in those words, he didn’t think Minyard was stupid enough to miss it there either, but the asshole certainly didn’t react to it.

Neil didn’t care to get involved, didn’t actually care at all about them or their problems apart from the fact that he’d need to know the dynamics as best as he could. They bickered a moment more, Neil studying the exchange and keeping himself carefully separate from it. 

So Hemmick was a bleeding heart. He loved his cousins and loved Erik and probably loved the parents who’d made it damn clear they hated him. Hemmick loved and hurt because of it, and he loved even more still. 

Minyard wasn’t quite the same. He was a prickly bastard, insecure and whining over ouchies ages old that had never healed. Infected wounds leaking pus all over the place. He was the proverbial lion with a thorn in his paw and he was lashing out at everyone who tried to help him. 

Neil couldn’t understand either of them.

“Oh,” Hemmick interrupted, turning back to Neil like he’d remembered he was standing there. Neil took a half-step back, already trying to figure out how he could get Hemmick to forget about him again. He needed the Foxes to pay attention to him, sure, but he didn’t want the sort of attention Hemmick offered. “Erik is my future husband. We met when I was in Germany for a high school exchange sort of thing and we moved in together after graduation.”

Neil knew the expected thing to do was ask questions. He might have been able to manage it even if it had been another day or another person, but all he was good for now was a slow nod and the same blank expression on his face.

Hemmick wasn’t phased by the non-response. Didn’t seem to be phased by much. It was something Abram could have commended him for if it wasn’t making him so damn uneasy. 

Wymack had told him Hemmick was harmless. It was a damn shame Abram didn’t know how to trust him. 

Whatever Hemmick was going to say next was interrupted by Kevin storming onto the court, trailed by a grinning Andrew. Kevin surveyed them while Neil surveyed Andrew. Neil ignored the exchange between Kevin and Hemmick, heard the way Hemmick called him pretty again and the way Kevin scolded him for not practicing and promptly unheard it. 

Neil watched Andrew watch him. Silently challenging each other into backing down first. Neither of them did until Kevin moved towards Andrew and the goalkeeper had to turn away to warn Kevin off of touching him with what was almost an unnerving mix of dead eyes and manic grin.

“Drills,” Kevin demanded.

Neil slung his racquet over his shoulder, fingers looped through the cage of his helmet. He answered with a lifted eyebrow and Kevin scowled before gritting his teeth and starting that again.

“You can pick the first one.”

Neil flashed him a sharp smirk. “Sure thing,” he agreed. 

The next two hours were a balancing act between Abram and Neil. 

Sharp words were thrown Kevin’s way and Neil tried not to flinch whenever Hemmick got too close with that goddamn fucking grin. Minyard was doing his level best to break at least one of Neil’s ribs and spitting poison words at him for no reason other than to try and draw a reaction out of him. 

Kevin was driving him damn near crazy with the whining and the bitching and the way he crumpled too easily when Neil snarks back at him. With the way he turned to Andrew to defend him whenever he felt particularly sore over something Neil had to say. Neil turned to Andrew too then, one eyebrow or the other lifted in a challenge, asking why the hell Andrew bothered protecting Kevin when he didn’t bother to protect himself. 

Neil reflected on the half-assed promise extracted and the fight on the court he’d seen since. Couldn’t understand why it was gone now that Hemmick and Minyard joined them on the court.

None of it might have bothered him half so much if he wasn’t already so goddamn raw, but it was a bad fucking day for Abram and it was translating over into a bad fucking day for Neil too.

Kevin backed off from another drill, criticizing Neil from the sidelines with Minyard and Hemmick even as Neil ran the drill without fault.

“You can be faster than that,” Kevin said, confident in a way he shouldn’t be granted he wasn’t even capable of running the drill at all in the state he was in.

Neil ground his teeth. He’d asked for this, he supposed. Prodded and pushed until he’d weaseled something of a fighting spirit out of Kevin. Now he had to deal with this mutilated in-between bastard. A Kevin that was confident enough to speak up and tear down other people but cowardly enough still to hide behind other people. 

Kevin said he’d tell Riko no, but Neil wasn’t convinced.

“Can I?” Neil snarled.

Kevin nodded. “Yes.”

Neil wondered, for a longer moment than he should have afforded himself granted he was locked in a box with two Minyards who clearly disliked him and a rapidly moving ball, how the hell Andrew and Wymack actually put up with Kevin’s bullshit.

He’d seen spineless and traumatized. He even understood it. But the willingness to sit back and let someone else take hits so clearly designed for him? No part of Neil or Abram or Nathaniel or any other name of his could ever understand that. 

He wondered how hard Andrew could throw a punch, and consequently, if it would be worth it to find out granted he got to punch Kevin first.

Any longer out on this court with Hemmick staring and grinning and calling him pretty, with Minyard scowling and hissing and trying to provoke him for the sake of fighting someone, with Kevin snapping and hiding behind Andrew whenever Neil snapped back, and Neil wasn’t going to be able to stop himself hitting someone.

Lucky for him, or possibly not given Hemmick almost immediately started heading his way, Kevin called the practice off and stormed away like they were all beneath him. 

Half pissed off and all the way unwilling to let himself get caught alone in any capacity with Hemmick, Neil trudged after him, steps quick enough to put him right behind Andrew. 

Andrew who he hadn’t spoken with since the locker rooms well over a week ago.

Andrew didn’t turn to look at him, but Neil didn’t need any acknowledgment apart from the tension that shot right through Andrew’s spine. Andrew knew he was there without checking, the same way Abram knew when someone was at his back. It was an uncomfortable familiarity, more dots that connected in ways that were obvious enough Abram didn’t want to look at them any longer than he had to.

“Hello again, liar.”

It was a strange thing. Andrew opened a conversation between them and the lingering presence of Nicky a few steps behind them fell away. Neil didn’t want to be grateful for it, but he couldn’t lie to himself when his shoulders relaxed with the extra bit of space.

“Andrew,” he answered. 

“You don’t like Nicky,” Andrew hummed. “Why?”

Neil shrugged, figuring that Andrew knew even without having to see him. “He’s fine,” he lied.

Andrew clicked his tongue, calling him out on it as easily as Jean might have. “Nope. Try again.”

Neil bit on the tip of his tongue and ran the risk of a minor truth. It wouldn’t matter really. He was enough of a deadly thing that this was a vulnerability he could survive. Beyond that, Abram didn’t think it was the sort of vulnerability Andrew would exploit, and there were certainly enough of those.

“I don’t care that he’s gay if that’s what you’re after,” Neil said, and it was very much what Andrew was after.

“No?” Andrew mocked. “You certainly seem uncomfortable. Are you a devoutly religious man, Neil? Or are you just an asshole?”

Neil scoffed. “I can’t say I’m not an asshole, but not about this.” Andrew didn’t fill in the silence and Neil cursed himself for even bothering before elaborating. “Nicky can be as gay as he wants to be,” he continued. “I don’t give a shit. I do give a shit that he’s got no concept of boundaries or consent.” They were at the locker rooms now, and Neil peeled away from Andrew to grab his bag to change elsewhere before Hemmick followed them in. 

He caught the curious tilt to Andrew’s head. “And that bothers you?”

Neil stopped in the doorway, ignoring the way Kevin had tuned into their conversation with a furrowed brow and the fact that Hemmick and Minyard had just stepped into the room. “I don’t like people who won’t understand the word no.” He met Andrew’s hard stare with a dangerous one of his own, uncaring for the drugged smile when he could see the burning interest in those eyes. Wondered vaguely if Andrew would catch on to the distinct choice of wording or if his drugs would block him from that careful discovery. “Is that a problem for you?”

Andrew laughed, the same manic thing as the last time Neil had heard it. It made him sick to hear it now just like it had then, stomach rolling with it. And just like that, he was angry for Andrew all over again.

“You don’t make any sense,” Andrew mused.

Neil shrugged. “Have fun figuring it out.”

“Oh,” Andrew grinned. “Oh, I will.”

Neil turned away, Nathaniel’s smile splitting across his face for only the doorway to see. He’d issued a challenge, drawing Andrew into the game even more than he had already. It was such a dangerous little game now, the sort that he loved playing and Ichirou got mad at him for.

Abram couldn’t fucking wait.

In his family, the broken little self-constructed thing that it was, late-night calls were a tragically frequent occurrence. Shaken out of sleep from nightmares or simply kept away from it by the impending sense of terror. 

There were, of course, the regular nights too. When Abram’s hypothesized insomnia decided he didn’t need to sleep for at least the next sixty or so hours, or swollen pregnant bellies decided that getting up to pee every few minutes was more important than eight hours a night. 

He much preferred those ones. When a video call or a series of gradually more nonsensical messages were unattached to the traumas of a life that didn’t seem quite his.

They were common enough that he didn’t hesitate to answer the incoming video call, not even for long enough to bother checking who was calling. He was only half-surprised to note that Ichirou and Aiko were calling from separate lines.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out why, not with the mountain of pillows behind and around Aiko or the fact that Ichirou was buckling himself into one of his cars.

Abram hummed consideringly, “What is it this time?” he wondered. “Sweet or salty?”

“Sweet or salty,” Ichirou muttered. “The normal options. The presumed options. The options every other woman contemplates.”

Abram only lifted a brow and shifted his gaze away from Ichirou’s poorly illuminated half of the screen for Aiko’s much softer-looking section. She offered him a sly little smile, like they were both in on a joke Ichirou wasn’t. And they were, really. Abram had never been stupid enough to believe Aiko was as common as most, even less so considering he’d been the one to fetch half of them for her and make a game out of eating them like they were normal.

“Pickles again,” Aiko answered, her face twisted vaguely with dislike. “With hazelnut spread and jam.”

Abram let his own nose wrinkle, top lip curling up in a mirror of Aiko’s. “That’s a new one.”

Aiko’s smile was the sort of thing he couldn’t bring himself to say no to even though he knew he was going to want to. “You have to try this one,” she decided and Abram was nodding his head to agree before he’d really thought it through. Damn him if he didn’t have a soft spot for his family.

“Sure,” Ichirou agreed, “But to the point-”

“The point?” Abram interrupted, biting back a grin at the sharp cut of a glare Ichirou flashed at the phone before turning back to the road beyond them.

“The point,” he repeated. “Being that survival in apocalyptic scenarios is in fact dependent on accessible weaponry.”

“This again?” Abram mused.

Aiko’s smile was serpent slick, there and gone before Ichirou managed to tear his eyes from the road to look back at them again. Abram felt it slip and slide right across the screen until it was stretching across his lips just the same and Ichirou’s eyes narrowed at it.

“Yes,” Ichirou answered sharply. “This again. I recognize the importance of other sources-”

Abram scoffed as Aiko lifted a brow. “Do you?” she wondered.

“-for a continued and ideal survival, yes. But it still stands that without proper or adequate weaponry obtaining those resources is rendered all-around useless.”

“You can defend a source without weaponry,” Aiko argued.

“Not half as easily as you can with them,” Ichirou pressed. “And even obtaining them becomes far more complex. Regardless, if there’s a single active threat anyone without the means to attack or defend is a walking corpse. They’ve got numbered days.”

This argument, old as it was for their little family, was a long-standing favourite of Abram’s. He liked to dance the line of both sides, tip the scales both ways and neither. 

The points stood on their own, both of them worthy of merit. Weapons were good. Weapons meant self-defense as much as they meant offensive potential. They were good for the situation in which things were violent and dangerous and when there was something to fight. And the three of them knew better than most that there were plenty of situations that had something to fight. It stood as safe to assume that an apocalypse would all too quickly bring out the ugly violent bits of people. 

Ichirou wanted weapons so he could fight, so he could defend. 

But it stood just as well that weapons were a finite source, and they weren’t the sort of source that kept people alive outside of a fight. There were other things to look at, shelter, water, food. Tactical things, finding advantages in terrain, setting up camps that could be protected, starting gardens and farms and finding a way to make sources that were lasting and renewable.

The things Aiko was more inclined to look for. 

Abram saw them both. Understood how important it was to have resources to survive, how important it was to have weapons to defend those sources with. He could jump on a side easily, insert himself into the conversation and go for hours back and forth until one of them conceded for the time being or at least one phone died.

Tonight though, his mind was wandering down another avenue.

“What’s your choice of weapon?” Abram interrupted. “We’ve gone apocalyptic in one way or another, what do you want in your hands?”

It was an interesting question, he thought, one that had wriggled its way to the forefront of his mind and planted itself there until he answered it. But it was a question not half so easily answered as it might have seemed. 

While his instincts reached for his knives and his mother’s voice told him to go for a gun, he knew well enough to understand that there was all the chance that neither would do him any good. 

“A gun,” Ichirou answered, not a smidge of hesitation in his voice.

Abram hummed, rolling across the floor of his room to make it close enough to the bed he could scurry on. “Sure,” he started. “But what if the apocalypse is the result of a nuclear holocaust? Or a Solar flare? Chemical warfare? How good is your gun then?”

“The scenario changes the value of the weapon,” Aiko agreed smoothly. “I wouldn’t want to risk a gun if I can’t gauge the changes to the composition of my environment.”

“Well then you’ve got too much variability,” Ichirou argued, twisting his head to check blind spots as he made some sort of turn. “It’s impossible to pick one weapon for all scenarios.”

“We’ll go one by one then,” Abram offered, a quick glance at the clock in the corner of the room telling him it was closer to morning than it was night. He wasn’t going to be sleeping either way really, so why not waste his time in a way that might piss his brother off? “Unless your brain’s rotted from all your screens and you’ve forgotten how to think.”

He knew that Ichirou would rise to the bait. He always did. It was too easy to rile him up. So as Aiko laughed and Ichirou scowled he did nothing but smile in the face of Ichirou defending his computers the way Abram knew he would.

Finally, Ichirou settled into a scowl, glaring at the phone again. “Set out rules and I’ll play.”

“Lovely,” Abram mused. “Let’s start with an Alien Invasion. Assuming the invading species has at least minor sensory and strength enhancements.” It was, he thought, a safe assumption to make. There wasn’t much point invading a planet if you didn’t have at least something of an advantage.

Aiko pursed her lips and wrinkled her brow. “Warning?”

He paused, considered. If he was an invading alien race would he give much opportunity for warning? “Limited,” he concluded. “We caught notice of them entering nearby space. Two days at most.

Aiko nodded and Ichirou made another turn.

“The obvious plan is to stick to anything long-distance and silent,” Aiko began, that particular look in her eyes that said she had something important to say and wasn’t willing to be interrupted. “It won’t do you much good to fight close-combat when you know they’ve got the strength advantage, as a last resort, sure. And if they’ve got any sort of hearing enhancement they’ll be able to find you far too easily if you're constantly having to sound off to defend yourself.”

“Right,” Ichirou agreed, glancing over to make sure his wife had finished speaking first. It was a habit Abram might have found funny if he didn’t know exactly how dangerous she could be when she was interrupted. “Crossbows could be ideal here. They check your most important boxes, but you’ll run into the issue of ammunition the same as you would with a gun.”

“Well, it’s easy enough to make them yourself, no?” Abram chimed in. It wasn’t quite the same thing as making an arrow for a bow, but crossbow bolts had to be manageable enough. If you were desperate enough he figured anything counted. 

“For you,” Ichirou argued, and  Abram didn’t see the point in saying that he really didn’t know where he’d even start. 

“I think,” Aiko said, reentering the conversation with a considering look. “That setting up traps in pre-rigged explosives could be helpful. Particularly double-set explosives. You don’t have to be in the area to trigger them and they’re far more lethal than a crossbow bolt might be against a superior species. One explosion takes out the first few, the sound draws in more and a second explosion gets those ones too.”

Abram hummed. “Hunger Games style.”

“You read that?” Ichirou whipped to look at the phone and someone honked at him.

Abram wrinkled his nose. “You didn’t?”

“No,” Ichirou denied. “When the hell did you read the Hunger Games?”

Aiko laughed, a quiet thing, but Abram was too focused on Ichioru’s complete lack of culture. “Jean and I read it on a stake.”

“What?”

“The fuck else were we supposed to do?” Abram asked. “At least we’ve read it, you can’t say shit.”

“Jean read it?” Ichirou pressed. 

Aiko was snorting a little, her half of the screen jumping a little bit with the shaking shoulders of her joy. Abram was too flabbergasted with Ichioru’s fixation on the Hunger Games to appreciate her happiness, but he’d find the time for it later. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Abram decided.

“Doesn’t-” Ichirou made a frustrated sound. “I don’t get the comment.” And he was pouting, trying to make a left turn and so very upset that he was out of the loop.

Abram huffed, making it as clear as he could that he was annoyed even when he was as far from it as he could be. Ichirou didn’t look over to see him smiling anyway.

“They bomb a bunch of civilians in the third book, and when medical staff rushed in to help a second round of bombs went off,” Abram explained. “It’s fucking brutal.”

Ichirou glanced over for long enough Abram could very clearly watch him blinking past his surprise. “Damn.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Anyway, I’d want knives on me. Something relatively lightweight that I can keep on my person at all times as a backdoor plan. Scimitars or Katanas even. A blade won’t betray you the way a bomb might, and when it comes to it, hand to hand might not be an avoidable thing.”

Aiko nodded to concede the point. Detonation wasn't a guaranteed failsafe. They might get set up in the wrong place and end up a waste of perfectly good supplies, they might just never go off, they might go off when you were still setting them off, they were absolutely useless if you were cornered unless you wanted to go out with a bang. But a knife in Abram’s hand wouldn’t miss its target unless he wanted it to.

“I wouldn’t want them that close at all,” Ichirou said. “A sniper rifle with a silencer-”

“Still isn’t silent,” Abram interrupted. “They’ll hear you.”

Ichirou made a dismissive sound and leaned to look out the back window as he pulled into a parking spot. 

“It’s a fair point,” Abram defended. 

“What about zombies?” Aiko interjected, probably a smart thing considering Ichirou had stopped the car and was turning around like he was going to start a fight over how silent a silencer was. 

Abram tilted his head, fumbling with one hand for a pillow. “Assumptions?”

“Complete lack of self-regulation,” Aiko decided, consideration dawning on her face. “We can probably assume they have a temporary access to enhanced strength, speed, and pain tolerance compared to us granted they’re not stopping at their body's limits. They’re not capable of recognizing that they have limits at all.”

Abram nodded, stuffing the pillow he’d snagged under his chest. “They’d deteriorate quickly then, you can’t keep going forever and if they’re pushing every limit their bodies would start breaking down at increased rates.”

“Yes,” Aiko agreed. “Additionally, we’re running on the assumption that all brain functions apart from the hunting drive are non-existent.”

“Is it reversible?” Abram asked. “The… zombieism or whatever we’re calling it.”

Aiko paused, thumb coming up to her mouth so she could bite lightly on the pad of her finger. “No, I don’t think so. And if it is, we haven't figured that out yet.”

“What’s the state of humanity?” Ichirou asked, the sliding doors parting so he could step into the store and hunt down the pickles, hazelnut spread, jam, and whatever else Aiko had sent him out for at nearly four in the morning.

“Split I think,” she answered after a long moment. “There are some established basecamps and secure holdings by now, it’s been long enough I think that we’re trying to rebuild at least. But some have certainly been swayed toward more nomadic lifestyles.”

Abram’s mind was racing, considering he’d much prefer a nomadic style himself, it was a difficult thing to consider. More difficult was the fact that he’d want his family with him and he was more than certain Aiko would want to settle somewhere. 

It made it all the more complicated when he was trying to figure out what sorts of weapons he wanted with him. Tied down to a location he’d be able to set up all sorts of defenses. Mobile he’d want things he could pack up and carry around unhindered and unconcerned.

“Sound would be an attractant,” he announced, trying to voice his thoughts enough he could sort them out. “But then it could be worth it to draw them in for mass extermination. Lure them in and take them out. Big boom or hail of bullets, whichever you prefer really.”

Ichirou frowned, one arm stretched out to snag something from a shelf while turning towards the phone screen. “Are we assuming a non-fatal hit would be ineffective?”

Abram shrugged. “I am at least. With a pain threshold through the fucking roof, a missing arm or a knife to the leg wouldn’t slow them down much at all. It takes too long for them to bleed out, they’d take a chomp and you’d be fucked. While I could stick a knife in the skull every time, that’s not the case for everyone.”

“I’d say the same,” Aiko agreed. “They’re well beyond reacting to pain. If it’s not fatal they’ll keep going.”

“Guns with massive blowback then,” Ichirou said, aisles a blur behind him. “Shotgun for instance.”

“Machine could be just as effective if you’ve got the ammo to keep up with it. Sniper rifle if you’ve got the skills for it.”

“You could use Aiko’s pre-sets here. Grenades even,” Ichioru said. “Take your plan, Ram, and lure them all into some bottleneck or other, and boom. It’d be easy enough to get them where you want and then they’re toast.”

Abram’s stomach grumbled, but all he bothered to do was stuff the pillow under his chest a little more so he was propped a little further up. “A good enough plan, after that I’d go with blunt force weapons. Nothing quite so effective as braining one of them with a tire iron or a bat.”

“Something like a machete could be helpful too,” Aiko mused. “Beheadings are always entertaining.”

Ichirou sputtered in the baked goods aisle. “Entertaining?”

Abram hummed. “A cleaver would work well.”

His father’s shadow followed the word out of his mouth and the silence that settled over the three of them wasn’t at all a subtle thing. He spared Aiko and Ichirou the trouble of trying to branch the conversation away from the connotations he’d given life.

“We’ve been talking in terms of combative apocalyptic sources,” he pointed out. “All things you can fight off if you had to, but if we look at an Asteroid strike, for example, there’s a whole different power struggle going on. The issue isn’t so much fighting off an invader or a common enemy decimating the population, but adjusting.”

Ichirou took the bait, moving again through the store, and Abram was grateful for his brother’s easy grace, his ability to talk about anything at just about any time. “You’d have a pre-warning most likely, so we can assume humanity has established underground resources and precautions if not moved underground altogether. Society should be largely functioning even with the event of the strike.”

Abram flashed a grin and agreed. “Right. I think your primary concern is coming from environmental threats. You’ve got a declined external food source even with underground resources set up and a limited top ground environment for habitation. Competition isn’t going to be man against man or man against monster.”

“Defensive weapons,” Aiko said easily. “Particularly if a base of operations for humankind is already well established. It’s a matter of controlling and containing, not creating.”

“Guns all the way,” Ichirou said, sounding like he was agreeing with something Aiko had never really said.

Abram rolled his eyes, well aware of his big brother’s preference. “You’re biased because you still can’t throw a knife to save your life.”

“Why would I need to?” Ichirou demanded. “Why? You know how to throw them well enough for both of us so what’s the point in me learning?”

“Oh, I can’t wait for that to bite you in the ass,” Abram mused. 

“Conversely,” Aiko interrupted before Abram managed to get Ichirou shouting about throwing knives in the middle of a grocery store at nearly five in the morning. “You could just go back to pre-set defenses and use common weapons more as intimidation points.”

Abram hummed, hardly considering at all before he knew what he’d want. “In that case, I want a sword.”

“A sword?” Ichirou repeated, completely exasperated if the huff in his tone and the pained look in his eyes meant anything at all.

“Are you telling me that if you saw some bastard walking around with a sword or two you wouldn’t be intimidated?”

Ichirou scoffed. “Well can he use them?”

“He can damn sure figure it out,” Abram countered. “What’s it matter, you don’t know if he can use them, but he’s walking around with them like he can.”

“But if he can’t-”

Aiko cut Ichirou off. “If it was Ram walking around with the sword?”

Ichirou hesitated. “I’d be a little uneasy.”

“A little?” Aiko laughed, disbelieving as she should be.

Ichirou looked to the side sharply and there was a quick “hold on” before his half of the screen went dark and fuzzy.

Abram blinked at his side and then shifted his eyes over to where Aiko was still propped, rubbing small circles onto a very pregnant belly. 

“Old woman?” he offered.

Aiko hummed, pressing against her stomach. “Single mother.”

“At five?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “Point.”

There was a rustling from Ichioru’s line again and they were pulled back out of his pocket, screens flooded with the harsh light of the store once again. 

“Sorry,” he grumbled. “Some old lady was staring at me, I forgot my headphones in the car.”

Abram grinned, a sharply victorious thing, pulling the phone closer to himself just to make sure Aiko could see it clear as anything. “I take payment in the form of baked goods,” he teased.

“Orange and cranberry?” she asked, playing along and maybe even being serious.

“Lemon blueberry,” he countered, just in case she meant it after all.

Ichirou frowned at them, “Did I miss something?”

“Don’t you always?”

Abram laughed wildly as Ichirou started cursing him, laughed even more so when Ichirou was fumbling through the self-checkout and had two employees ask him if he needed help when the machine wouldn’t cooperate with him.

“So good with technology you are,” Abram snarked.

And if Ichirou wasn’t hours away by plane Abram thought he might have very well been chased halfway through the city for that one.

He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been expecting to have to wait before it was announced, but it was good to know he’d been right in assuming they’d break the news to the coaches before they went public with it. Abram was of the understanding that the ERC probably thought it was a kindness, but he was also of the understanding that it was a declaration of war being passed on by a messenger pigeon. The ERC had no idea what they’d just done.

Hearing Wymack shouting at Kevin hadn’t immediately told him they knew, but it told him to linger and figure it out, Kevin’s reaction, shouting about a ‘him’ and the sound of bodies hitting a wall and glass shattering told him exactly what he’d assumed. All the same, Abram leaned his shoulder against the wall beside Wymack’s open door and listened.

Jean had always called him a nosy child.

“I warned Andrew he was going to come for me,” Kevin cried. “I told him!”

And Abram had told Ichirou. The same way Jean had told both of them. Even before they’d found out about Tetsuji and Riko’s little plan to come down South. None of them had ever been under the impression that Riko would do anything other than come for Kevin somehow. He wasn’t sure why the Foxes might have fooled themselves into thinking he wouldn’t.

“It doesn’t matter,” Wymack countered, and Abram resisted the laugh that climbed up his throat. “You signed a contract with me.”

Like a contract was what mattered. Like it wasn’t just paper waiting to be burned and a signature that could be erased. Like it couldn’t be bought and bartered for. Like Abram hadn’t known after a few short days exactly where to apply pressure to make sure any one of the Foxes cracked. Wymack held Kevin’s contract, but Abram knew how to hold Wymack. Abram didn’t even need to hold Wymack, not if he had the school. Wymack could only say so much against them, and Abram knew how to make them desperate enough they wouldn’t listen.

Kevin seemed to know it too, maybe not quite so intimately, but he knew.

“He could pay off my scholarship in a heartbeat. You know he would. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-” Abram sighed, listening to Kevin moan and whine was less enjoyable now than it was on a court. “If I make him hunt me down anymore than I already have he’ll kill me for sure.”

Pathetic.

The worst part of it was that Riko wouldn’t kill him. Really, Riko would never get the chance. If Kevin showed any sign of going back to the Moriyamas it wouldn’t be Riko he had to worry about, it would be Abram. Kevin would lose his value going back to the Nest, and he’d proven that he’d run away once. What was to stop Kevin from running away a second time? What was to stop him from being a liability even more so than he already was?

No, if Kevin made the choice to go back he’d be forcing Abram’s hand. Abram would have to kill him before he got out of Palmetto. It wasn’t a nice thought, and he realized then that he didn’t particularly want to kill Kevin. Not that he’d ever really wanted to, but he found himself opposed to the idea in a way he hadn’t necessarily been when the mission had come out in the first place.

Wymack said something stupid about not going anywhere, Abram didn’t care to listen to it. Not when he knew Wymack didn’t have half the power he thought he did.

“I can’t tell Riko no!”

Abram tilted his head, a familiar sting in his chest. Another promise broken, then. Because Abram was very much under the impression that he’d only agreed to let Kevin boss him around like the arrogant prick he was because Kevin had promised he’d say no.

And here Kevin was, saying he couldn’t do that. 

Abram swallowed the bitter taste of betrayal easily. He knew it well enough he could pretend he was unphased by it. But Abram wasn’t willing to forget the way it was heavy on his tongue or the way it was thick in his throat. Like unshed tears trying to strangle his voice. 

Fuck Kevin Day. 

Let him know what it meant to piss off Abram. Neil. Whoever the fuck he was.

Wymack was saying something again, making mention of Andrew. Abram caught the tail end, right before Wymack softened his voice and plowed on.

“I’m not letting you go back there, nothing says I have to.” And that was sweet. Wymack thought he could get in the way. “Your contract says you belong to me. He can send us all the money he wants, but you have to sign off on it before it means anything, and you're not going to. Okay? You let me and Andrew worry about Riko fuck-face. You worry about getting your game and team where they need to be. You promised me you could get us past the fourth match this year.”

Oh? Another promise? Abram was wondering how many of those Kevin had made. Wondering how many of those Kevin was going to break.

“That was before,” Kevin argued. “This is now.”

At least two then, Abram figured. His own and Wymack’s. What had Kevin promised Andrew? Was he breaking that one too? 

He lost himself in his head again, thinking about broken promises and broken hands and how much easier this all would have been if he’d convinced Ichioru to just let him take Kevin out of the picture right from the start. He wouldn’t be deep-cover, wouldn’t be upset about the prospect of killing Kevin now, wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of all of this bullshit drama from the second son. 

Abram didn’t have time in his life for this. Not when the Butcher was breathing down his neck and his blood was singing for pretty, pretty revenge.

“-keep it from Andrew until then. Tell me you can see Andrew today and not completely freak out.” Wymack said, and that was a dangerous game to play. 

Abram could understand it. Andrew was high off his ass, telling him might send him right to Edgar Allan to go knocking on Riko’s door so he could knock in Riko’s skull. But Abram didn’t think they were giving Andrew quite enough credit here. He was drugged and manic and more than a little impulsive, but he wasn’t stupid. Abram had long come to the conclusion that Andrew was the smartest person here, smarter than him, even.

“Andrew will figure it out,” Kevin warned. “He’s not stupid.”

“Then you have to be the better liar. The ERC is looking for a reason to take him away from us, and you know they won’t give him back. Then where will you be?”

So Abram was right. They didn’t trust Andrew not to react.

Curious, that. 

They didn’t trust him to be smart enough to think things through before he reacted, but they trusted him enough to put Kevin’s safety in his hands? Or did they not really trust him at all? Abram was under the impression that all they really trusted about Andrew was his violence. That all they trusted was how willing he would be to get in Riko’s way and start a fight if it came down to it. Abram wasn’t even sure if they thought Andrew would win. If they even cared if he would. 

He thought of court transcripts and the notes off of a psychiatrist’s desk. Compared them to the bright eyes and defensive posture he’d seen.

Why was it that no one here seemed to actually see Andrew Minyard? Why was it that Abram cared? His priority should have been the way Kevin was reacting to this. The way Wymack was, even. And instead, he was missing more than half of their conversation so he could rage quietly at the way people misunderstood a boy who’d all too happily stab him in the back. At the way they were using him.

Did Andrew know he was being used?

Abram didn’t doubt Andrew was more than smart enough to have figured that out. The question was why Andrew was letting them. Why he didn’t seem to care that they all saw him as a dangerous, volatile thing. Why he didn’t care that he was their battering ram, their explosive, their suicide bomber. 

Abram didn’t like the consequences of that line of thought. 

It was the French that brought Abram out of his head. The quick “Tell me it isn’t true” in a language that meant Kevin had to be speaking to Jean. And while Abram couldn’t hear an answer, he knew Kevin had gotten one when he heard him fall onto the couch. 

It meant Jean was alright. 

Abram didn’t stick around any longer. His brother was alright, Kevin had lost the spine he’d only just barely found, Wymack was a fool deluding himself into thinking he could handle things, Andrew was a mess of questions and emotions Abram didn’t want to look at. He had a bed back in his own apartment and three days of sleep to catch up on. Kevin could get fucked for all he cared just then. After a few hours of sleep and a conversation or two with Ichirou he’d come back around. 

In the end, no matter how pissed off he was at the broken promise and the blatant mistreatment of another player, Abram had a job to do, and he’d be damned if he didn’t do it. 

He made it under the covers when his phone buzzed.

Wymack:

We have to talk, there’s something of an open secret you need to know about.

Abram stared at the screen of his phone, his mind racing and his stomach twisting with the gut reaction he knew was the right one. 

It wasn’t obvious from what he’d heard, but he saw it there. He’d come into all of this not knowing whether the Foxes knew the truth about the Moriyama's. Completely lost as to what their reactions might be if they found out. He saw the words ‘open secret’ and remembered the way Kevin was so open with his terror in Wymack’s presence. 

This was about to be even more complicated than it already was. 

Neil:

now?

Wymack:

Two hours.

Neil:

sure

Wymack:

Meet me at the court then.

Neil: 

okay

Abram sighed, tossing his phone down on the bed next to him without bothering to set an alarm. He wouldn’t be sleeping after all. Not when he had phone calls to make and damage control to plan out.

 It was obvious that Wymack couldn’t find out that Neil knew a damn thing, and it wouldn’t be hard to handle that much. But what was going to be difficult was the next two hours, calling Ichirou and figuring out what the hell they were meant to do. 

So far as Abram saw it there were three choices, none of them particularly good choices. 

One.

He stayed. Followed through on the initial mission and kept Day’s pathetic ass safe from the second son for long enough they could take him out of the picture. Then Abram got to walk away from the Foxes and from Day and could go back to trying to burn his father knowing that he’d done something mostly good. 

Two. 

He ran. Pretended to get all sorts of freaked out about the situation and bolted before anyone had a chance to convince him any different. He could have Elias wipe his existence from the system and erase any damn trace of him in the city. He’d vanished like the wraith he was and left them all behind to sink or swim as luck would have it. 

Three.

He took the whole team out. Probably find some poor sucker to be his own stand-in corpse so he wasn’t the sole survivor of whatever tragic accident occurred. There’d be too much media attention on him if he lived and the rest of them didn’t. But the loose ends would be all tied up in blood and smoke, the second son struck down before he became a problem. 

He ran an exhausted hand over his face, texted Charlie to pick up coffees before she came back to the apartment, and dialed Ichirou.

“We’ve got a fucking problem.”

Abram couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be Neil. He didn’t have to, really, just pulled on the accent and answered to the name. The awful thing about it was that there’s so little difference between them that Elias called him Neil anyway and didn’t even seem to realize that he’d used the wrong name.

Abram waited now, leaning against the hood of his car with a foot propped up like he doesn’t care and never will. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He didn’t care for the car much other than for the fact that it drove fast and he certainly didn’t see that changing. But it wasn’t the truth either. Couldn’t be a truth when he was so fucking angry for reasons lost on him.

He’d spent the last two hours on the phone with Ichirou, winding their way through the treacherous path that was navigating a deep-cover where the whole damn team knew about Nathaniel Wesninski and the Moriyamas. Well, they’d come to the conclusion that Kevin probably hadn’t brought up Nathaniel. He’d spent two hours parsing through the strange feelings of betrayal and hurt he felt at the shattering of the one promise Kevin had made him. But beyond that, he’d spent two hours on the phone with his brother trying to understand why he was so affected by the way this whole fucking team treated Andrew Minyard. 

Because Neil could disappear if he needed to. Could slip into the shadows and never make his way back out, but Abram had gotten himself involved in this now. The lines between the two of them so blurred that he thought maybe Abram had been the one to pull that promise out of Kevin, and maybe Abram who felt the sting of betrayal because he’d been too much of Neil in the moment to know he would get hurt.

Because Neil was Abram was the same sort of broken thing that Andrew was. Beaten down and stomped on and carved into a weapon by their own hands to ward off the monsters that had led them there. And he hated watching the Foxes look at Andrew and see someone that wasn’t worth saving. Hated the sick knowledge that if they saw him they’d say the same thing.

But he leaned against his car and waited. Anger was quiet in his chest where he’d wrestled it down and compliant. He had a job to do.

He tracked Wymack’s truck as it pulled into the parking lot and slid to a stop the spot over from him. Tracked Wymack as the man heaved himself out the driver's seat and turned to him. Tracked and lingered and waited for Wymack to make the first move.

Abram’s mind was a funny thing. He knew that. Understood that the way he saw things and the way he processed things and the way he comprehended and analyzed and thought at a fundamental level was a strange sort of thing. He’d tried once to explain it to his family. Ichirou had been lost, unable to follow the path Abram’s mind took but able to justify the answer he got to all the same. Aiko had given it her best shot, but it had been Jean, who’d grown up by his side, that came the closest to understanding.

It was a thing Abram wasn’t sure he understood himself. Thoughts pinballing and spiraling and chasing after each other. Thoughts skipping and singing and streaking around in his mind. One glance equating to a three-page single-spaced report. He understood subtleties others couldn't see, read between the lines of body language until he could tell you what you were going to do before you’d made the choice to do it.

Jean had called it a trauma response in a gifted mind. Aiko had called it a gift in itself. Ichirou grinned, a teasing thing, and called his mind their perfect weapon.

Abram thought it was just a consequence of his survival.

It was how he knew that Wymack would go for his smokes before trying to speak. It was why he knew to hold out his hand for a cigarette at the same time Wymack moved to dig the pack out of his pocket. 

Wymack arched a brow, fingers paused around the paper of the first smoke. “You smoke?”

Abram shrugged. “Sure,” he agreed. It was the smell he was after more than the taste. Always had been. It had been the smell of Mary’s skin on the few occasions she’d been of sound enough mind to remember she was a mother. The smell of the campfire on the beach he and Jean have risked hide and health to sneak out to. The smell of the car burning around him after it had exploded and knowing that he was going to survive and come back better. The smell of a quiet night on a Norwegian park bench, a stranger whose name he’d never know telling him stories that might have never been true.

Wymack’s expression didn’t change at that answer, didn’t relax or crease in further confusion. He remained nothing but the same, pulling two cigarettes free.

Abram didn’t move until Wymack stretched an arm out to pass over a lit cigarette. Leaning forward from where he was halfway sitting on his car to take the smoke in a careful touchless exchange, settling again when it was between his lips. 

“You know,” Wymack started. “You don’t seem to give much of a shit for that car.”

Abram drew on the cigarette between his teeth, holding the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could. It burned something awful, and his eyes stung a little with the weight of it in his chest. Unhurried, he took the cigarette between his fingers and let the smoke slide free.

“I don’t,” he answered, head leaning back to look at a darkening sky for a few moments before twisting to stare the coach down. “I didn’t pay for it.” He shrugged, brought the cigarette back to his lips and inhaled around a twisted smile. “Besides, I hate the fucking colour.”

“Red?” 

Drugs and blood and lipstick and the weight of a knife between his shoulder blades.

“Red,” he agreed. 

They smoked a while longer, Abram all too willing to wait for Wymack to bridge into the topic, Abram all too knowing that Wymack wouldn’t make that bridge until Abram prompted him to.

He took a final drag from the cigarette, tossing the butt down and watching it land in a puddle of the lot. 

“So?” he started, shifting around so he was facing Wymack properly. It ended with his right leg folding up on the hood of the car while his left stayed on the ground to keep him sliding right off. “An open secret?”

Wymack sighed. “Edgar Allan put in a transfer request with the ERC and it was approved this morning. They’re a part of the southeastern district effective June first.”

Abram considered. The response he should go with under the guise of Neil, and the one Wymack was probably expecting, would have been a stubborn ‘that’s impossible’. Abram knew it wasn’t, and he didn’t have the patience to play those games just then. “Doesn’t sound like a secret,” he said instead.

Wymack huffed a laugh and shook his head. “I’m getting to it,” he insisted. “Figured you deserve an explanation to why you’re finding all of this out now instead of after you got more settled.”

Abram narrowed an accusing glare at him. “It’s not hard to understand. Kevin transferred here after breaking his hand in an apparent skiing accident, but you and I both know that’s not how he really broke it. There’s a reason he didn’t stay with the Ravens.” He watched Wymack’s eyes blow wide and ignored it. “The Ravens are the only team in West Virginia, middle ground between the North and South districts. Riko’s a petty little brat and wants his dearest brother back, the ERC eats it all up because they know the publicity will be good. The Moriyamas have too much sway in the Exy world for anything you say to mean anything and even if it did the ERC doesn’t do takebacks.” 

He pushed off the ground with his left foot with enough force to leverage himself completely onto the hood of his car. It was something of a workout to maintain his balance for the first few unsteady seconds but he relaxed his posture as much as he was capable of. Wymack couldn’t see any tension in his body. He wasn’t willing to give anything away. 

Abram cocked his head. “Open secret time?”

“Right,” Wymack started settling himself so he was leaning against the driver's seat of his truck, the door still open. “What I’m going to tell you is an open secret, meaning we know it, but no one outside our team does. It has to stay that way no matter what, do you understand? People could get hurt if this gets out. People could die.” Wymack implored him to understand, more serious than Abram thought he’d ever seen him. More serious than that chat they’d had on the court where Wymack promised he wasn’t the sort of man who hurt kids.

Abram’s hunch had been more than correct. They were getting into mafia territory. 

Like a bastard, Abram looked smoothly around the parking lot, eyebrows lifted in mocking question. “And we’re not worried about being overheard?”

“Not here we’re not,” Wymack brushed his concerns away. More easily than Abram thought he should have given he’d just told him people could die. He was beginning to think he was the only one taking any of this seriously. “Do you know why Kevin came to Palmetto State?”

Abram almost choked on a laugh. He wanted to say, ‘because you’re his father’ just to watch Wymack sputter and stutter and derail this entire conversation. Except he knew Ichirou would scalp him for that. “He broke his hand,” he deadpanned instead. “He couldn’t play so he came here to be an assistant coach. I assumed he was following Andrew. Kevin knew Andrew could stand against Riko because he’d already seen it, I figured he was just betting on Andrew doing it again on his behalf.”

“You’re not wrong,” Wymack acquiesced. “Not right either.” Abram gave a little Neil Josten shrug like he was satisfied with getting part of the truth. “I brought him here. He showed up at my hotel room at the winter banquet with his hand a bloody mess.”

“Let me guess,” Abram interrupted. “He begged you not to tell the Ravens or take him to a hospital?”

Wymack nodded, less phased by Abram’s putting things together than he had been earlier. “Abby bandaged him up as best as she could and I put him on the bus back to South Carolina with us.”

Abram lifted a narrow brow. “Does anyone actually believe he was skiing?”

Wymack snorted, startling a short bark of a laugh and a complementary cough from tortured lungs. “Not on this team.”

“So how’d it really happen?” Abram pressed, playing on Neil’s supposed ignorance. Even the cleverest of boys shouldn’t know the details. 

“The ERC had an end-of-year meeting a few days before the southeastern district’s winter banquet,” Wymack started. He pushed himself further back into his own truck, one leg coming up to prop his heel on the step of the car. “The NCAA advisors got everyone talking about Riko and Kevin. They had some concerns about the season, they said. They were sure Riko was holding Kevin back, that Kevin was selling himself short so as not to outshine Riko on the court.” All valid points Abram knew to be true. He’d seen Kevin play in person when they were children and Kevin had only gotten better. There was no chance Riko was the better player. “They wanted to know if it was Coach Moriyama's doing. In response, Moriyama pitted Riko and Kevin against each other. Riko won, but I'm thinking he didn't get it fair and square. If he had, maybe things would have turned out differently. As soon as Tetsuji dismissed them for the night Riko broke Kevin’s hand.” 

Abram hummed, and nodded slowly. “Shitty.”

Wymack looked like he had been expecting a different reaction from Neil and all Abram could offer him was a lazy shrug.  It wasn’t anything Abram hadn’t already known, and it wasn’t something that would particularly trouble Neil. 

“You do remember when I told you my father tried to kill me, yes?” Abram angled.

Wymack sighed, running a heavy hand over his face before shaking his head and continuing like he’d decided the conversation wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Kevin doesn’t talk about his time at Evermore,” Wymack plowed on. “But I could tell it wasn't the first time Riko or a Moriyama had laid a hand on him. It was just the first time Kevin was smart enough to pack his bags and walk away. So much for family, hm?”

Abram snorted, and Wymack winced like he’d only just remembered the comment thrown at him. “I don't believe in family,” he answered. 

Wymack nodded. “Neither do I.”

“Why doesn’t anyone else know what Riko did?” Abram asked. 

And he knew he was playing with fire now. It would be so easy to slip up once things got political, but he needed to know everything that the Foxes did. He needed to know if they'd heard any of his names, if they had any idea how invested in Kevin’s health the main branch was. Needed to know how much of the main branch Kevin ever really knew about at all, how much of that knowledge he might have passed on. 

He pushed further. “Why didn’t any of you go public with the lie? Even if the whole world didn’t believe you, someone would have. You could have held Riko responsible for what he did.”

Wymack grimaced. “Because Riko is a Moriyama,” he answered, shifting uncomfortably before looking dead at Abram and continuing. “This is where it starts to get messy. The Moriyama family is broken in half: the main family and the branch family.” Wymack held out his hands like they were cradling each half of the family in them. “The main consists of the first-born sons and the branch is for everyone else. Coach Moriyama—Tetsuji—heads the branch family and his older brother Kengo heads the main. Kengo has two sons, Ichirou and Riko. Because Ichirou was born first, he stayed with Kengo in the main family. Riko was born second, so Tetsuji became his legal guardian and Riko became part of the branch family. Follow?”

Abram was following alright, if anything he thought Wymack’s explanation was laughable with how much it was missing. There were glaring details being left out and some falsities added in. The issue, watching Wymack in his strange sincerity, was that Abram couldn’t quite tell if it was ignorance or intention just yet.

“I think so,” he offered.

“The families are estranged,” Wymack continued. “Kengo and the main family are up in New York City, where Kengo is CEO of an international trading company.” Abram swallowed a laugh. “One day he'll pass the business to Ichirou. Tetsuji and Riko get a kickback of the profits, but they're considered unimportant and have no say in any business decisions. That's how Tetsuji had the freedom to study in Japan and develop Exy. So long as he doesn't do anything to damage the family's reputation, he is free to do what he likes, and what he likes is to create the most awful and powerful team in the nation. This is all public knowledge.”

Public knowledge in the legal world. Abram knew the criminal world saw a whole different truth. Knew there was another truth beneath even that one.

Tetsuji and Riko got enough of the profits so they wouldn’t bring down the family name by being anything less than well-off. Unimportant was too grand a word for their value. Tetsuji had the freedom to study because he’d been shipped out of the country for pissing off his brother when he and Kengo had been young enough Kengo wasn’t fully in control. Abram doubted Tetsuji would still be alive if Kengo had been in charge then. The only reason Tetsuji was alive now was because Exy was moderately useful and he was too public to kill off too easily. It was the same problem Abram and Ichirou were having with getting rid of Riko. He had too many people watching him too closely. 

“And the truth?” Abram pressed, because Neil didn’t know. Neil didn’t know and he wouldn’t until Abram could get Wymack to come out and actually say it.

“The real Moriyama family business is murder.” Abram couldn’t help something of a laugh at that, stifling it as a choking sound of surprise. Wymack offered something next to sympathy. “The Moriyamas are an immigrated yakuza group. Do you know what the yakuza are? They're the Japanese mafia. Kengo's father brought the group to America a couple decades ago and set up shop up north. I don't know what all they're involved in and I don't want to know.” Well, Abram supposed that was a small blessing. “I don't know how much even Kevin knows, since he's attached to Riko and the branch family, but Kevin knows the main family uses Raven games as a cover for big meetings. So many people go in and out of Edgar Allen that it's a convenient way to bring in their far-flung contacts. They've got VIP lounges along the upper floors where they make deals.”

It was a fragment of the truth, less than a quarter. They’d used the exy games before, sure, but never reliably and not near frequently enough for it to be important. Exy was less of a tool and more of a hobby. Something Kengo tolerated because his sons—that is, Ichirou, Abram, and Jean—found it entertaining and it kept the second sons busy enough not to be a bother. If it wasn’t for that, even the money it brought it wasn’t enough to warrant a continued investment. Not really. They had their fingers in everything else, a few million dollars a year wouldn’t hurt the family much.

Abram blinked, affecting at least a little bit of worried confusion. “They're a gang,” he echoed, monotone and blank as he could manage when his mind was racing in a thousand different directions about how much Kevin might know and hadn’t shared.

“I'm telling you this because everyone else here already knows the story from Kevin, but don't worry about the yakuza.” Abram almost scoffed. Like it was that easy. “Like I said, Kengo and Ichirou mostly keep to New York and couldn't give a flying fuck what Tetsuji and Riko do. The only way it's relevant to us is explaining why Tetsuji and Riko are violent and rotten. They have a lot of power behind their name and a rather twisted view of their place in the world. And we happen to have something of theirs.”

Abram chose to ignore Wymack’s assumption that Kengo and Ichirou weren’t paying attention. They were paying enough attention to send him, and probably paying more attention now that he was here in the line of fire. Instead he focused on that last thing Wymack said and answered in the only way that he thought might have been appropriate. 

“Kevin.”

Wymack nodded. “I'd hoped they'd thrown him away, Everyone said Kevin would never play again. Edgar Allen had to release Kevin from his school contract because of the severity of his injuries and Tetsuji didn't argue when I took Kevin on as an assistant coach. I thought they were ready to let him go. But Tetsuji didn't take Kevin in out of the goodness of his heart. He raised Kevin to be a star. He put a lot of time and money into Kevin's development on the court. As far as Tetsuji is considered, Kevin is valuable property. Any profit Kevin makes is rightfully the Moriyamas'.” 

Which was mostly the truth. If Ichirou’s little plan worked though, Kevin might be able to buy almost complete freedom. 

Almost. 

“And they think Kevin will transfer back? After all of that?”

“Tetsuji never formally adopted Kevin. Do you know why?” Wymack asked. 

Abram shook his head, but he was willing to bet he knew more than Wymack did. 

“Moriyamas don't believe in outsiders or equals.” 

And Abram had to bite his tongue not to laugh, sitting on the hood of a car his brother bought for him as both an outsider brought in and an equal amongst the top dogs. 

“Tetsuji took Kevin in and took over his training, but he also gave Kevin to Riko—literally. Kevin isn't human to them. He's a project. He's a pet, and it's Riko's name on his leash. The fact he ran away is a miracle. If Tetsuji called tomorrow and told him to come home, Kevin would. He knows what Tetsuji would do to him if he refused. He'd be too afraid to say no.”

Abram bristled and tried not to show it. Broken fucking promises. Broken beginnings of trust. Trust he hadn’t even noticed until Kevin had gone smashing through it. 

But he’d talked to Ichirou, worked through this. Kevin was still an investment, still someone they wanted to protect, still an innocent kid they were looking to save if they got the chance. Jean had told them the transfer was coming, given them time to think over how to handle Riko and the Ravens, the past two hours had given them time to figure out what to do about the Foxes. Dealing with Riko would be child's play. He wasn’t monstrous enough to give Abram a run for his money. 

The issue was keeping his cover through it all. Making sure no one looked at him and saw Nathaniel. Making sure no one looked at him and saw something worse. The problem rested not in what Riko was willing to do, because Abram could counter it and use it to tear him down with ease. No, the problem lay in that they didn’t know if Riko knew who Nathaniel really was. If Riko thought Nathaniel was a scared little boy who’d been promised to him before vanishing, or if he knew that Nathaniel had been promised to him before being given to his brother instead. 

They didn’t know what Riko knew about Nathaniel and they didn’t know what the consequence might be if the Foxes found out.

“Why bother changing districts then?” Abram asked. “If all they have to do is call and Kevin will go back to them?” He shrugged. “Seems like wasted effort.”

Wymack looked offended, rightfully so maybe. Abram had essentially said Kevin wasn’t worth the effort. It was an ironic thing considering Kevin was the whole reason Abram was in this mess at all.

“The Moriyamas are ready to cash in on their investment. No one honestly expects Kevin to make a comeback, but he signed with us to play. His arrogance is inspiring, and this year he's still a star. If he can't keep up and perform, the fans and critics will move on and forget about him. Tetsuji thinks he'll burn out, so he has to seize the moment now. Our teams are going to make a fortune this season. People are going to be hounding us every step of the way and gambling on our games. There'll be TV spots and merchandise and all kinds of publicity stunts. Tetsuji is pitting Riko and Kevin against each other knowing how it'll end. He'll put it all on the table and let his Ravens destroy us on the court. Rake in the winnings, establish Riko as the superior player forever, and relegate Kevin to the has-beens.”

Abram tilted his head. “What if Coach Moriyama told him to stop playing?”

Wymack took a moment to think his answer over that time, pulling out another cigarette and passing one over to Abram when he held his hand out silently. “Kevin only had the strength to leave because Riko destroyed his hand,” he started carefully. “That was finally one injustice too many. Because of that I'd like to think Kevin would defy Tetsuji, but it's just as likely we'd never see him with a racquet again.” Wymack took a heavy drag and shook his head like he was trying to shake away a decade of sorrow. “The day Kevin stops playing forever is the day he dies. He has nothing else. He wasn't raised to have anything else. Do you understand? We cannot lose to the Ravens this year. Kevin won't survive it.”

Abram wondered if Wymack knew just how true that statement really was. Kevin wouldn’t survive because he’d be a loose end with nothing to offer. Right now, Kevin was surviving off his stubborn determination, Ichirou’s kindness, and the fact that Riko had been provoked enough they were hoping he’d make a big enough mistake to die in Kevin’s place. If Kevin stopped playing, or if Kevin went back to the Ravens, Nathaniel would visit. More than that, Reisu would come out to play. Kevin Day was the sort of poor bastard that wouldn’t survive that meeting.

“The Foxes are the worst team in the nation.” Abram pointed out. He wanted to see Wymack react to it being thrown in his face that his team wasn’t anything near enough to save Kevin’s life. Wanted to see what sort of resolve he was working with. What resolve he might need to rely on later. “What exactly is the plan for beating the number one team?”

“If you didn't think we could,” Wymack said slowly. “What are you doing here? You wouldn't have signed the contract if you'd already given up on yourself.”

Oh, that was fun.

Abram laughed; a dangerous sound. It wasn’t his father’s laugh, no, but it was the laugh that still set his brothers on edge. The laugh of a man who’d long been broken and hadn’t the slightest hope for anything better.

“Oh, I didn’t sign the contract for myself, Coach,” he grinned

Wymack narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “Then what are you doing here?”

“My brothers,” Abram answered easily. 

He shrugged, thought about Kevin Day when he was seven years old and Abram was five and thinking they might be friends, thought about Kevin’s name on Kengo’s lips and the stubbed out spark of hope. He remembered being six years old under the covers with Jean talking about bullying their way through the world, forging a name for himself in blood and bone. Thought about being eighteen and hearing Kevin’s name again and thinking for the slightest of moments that maybe if Abram never had a chance to get himself out of this life maybe he could get Kevin out. Thought about having Ichirou tell him to protect Kevin, having to stand unrecognized in front of the very first person he’d ever wanted to be friends with. 

No, Abram’s not here for himself. He’s here because Kengo told him to be. Because Ichirou did. And because maybe Kevin could still be saved even when Abram and his brothers couldn’t.

“One of us deserves to make it.”

Wymack nodded slowly, and Abram knew that he’d never understand. That he’d never be allowed to understand. Because Abram wasn’t the one who was going to make it. He never was.

Chapter Text

When he took a second to actually think it all over, Abram found himself coming to the muddled conclusion that for all the awful things in his life he remembered with bone-breaking clarity, he couldn’t accurately place a single moment when running had become the therapeutic break that it had.

As a boy he’d done his fair share of it, sure. He’d run and run and run. He’d wasted hours and days skidding around the playground and tripping over himself in gym class. Beyond that he had his lessons with his father’s people, and they’d never been races or anything of the sort, but he’d learned how to run from an attacker or he risked bleeding out.

He supposed, though it certainly shouldn’t be something to be grateful for, that it was a good thing he had always been quicker than the other kids his age. It was that fact alone that kept him safe from bullets and blades when he was too young to fight back. It was that fact alone that meant all Lola really had to carve out of him was the skill to back it up. Even four years old and clumsy with his hands, he was as agile as a big cat. 

He can remember understanding that being fast meant being safer. Flashes of moments where he’d trained his reflexes and pushed himself to move quicker and be lighter sounded off between blinks. He had memories of standing at the spray-painted starting line during the first-grade track and field day and memories of someone patting him on the back. He remembered too the way it felt when that hand landed right on top of a set of stitches. He swallowed the way he wanted to wince and pretended he knew how to smile when they told him he was quicker than lightning.

Abram can remember the blur of fast fast fast in the pitter-patter of his heart. The song of quick quick quick in the halting inhale-hold-exhale-exhale of his lungs before he learned how to pattern his breaths. He remembered go go go the same way he felt move move move like a siren sound in the way blood screamed through his body. The stretch and burn of muscles pushed too far too fast and shattering the limits that stood like the thin ice of a sidewalk puddle. He can remember knowing for so long that it meant life or death for someone like him. The melody of fast-quick-go-move-fast meaning he was still alive to take another breath even if it felt like he was gasping back acid. He was always smaller and weaker and younger, always at the disadvantage, but so long as he was quicker too, he’d be alright. Fast and quick and sharp.

He remembered speed being safety, speed being first place in the first grades races, speed being the three-inch space of air between Lola’s knives and his skin, speed being the out-of-sequence side-step carrying him out of the path of a punch, the path of a bullet, the path of blood on bandages and stitches on his skin.

But he didn’t remember when it started to mean something else, too.

He didn’t remember when he’d stopped running to survive and started running to live. He didn’t remember ever knowing that there could be such a distinction. Certainly not when he lived in the Butcher’s home.

He enjoyed running; he knew that. The way fast-quick-go-move-fast hummed and sung and twittered and laughed until he felt like he was high on it. He enjoyed the thrill of pushing his body faster, and quicker. Enjoyed the rush of being lighter and lighter, until it hardly felt like his feet were touching the ground at all. He enjoyed the way it meant freedom, the way it was an open door for him to go racing through, the way it was an unlocked window and a knife on his hip.

When Abram ran, he was untouchable.

It was better outside, he thought. No boundaries, no borders, nothing keeping him boxed in and tied down. It was open in a way that had never left him feeling more exposed than when there were gates and walls.

Better still when it was wet and rainy and cold. When he could feel the sting of water-drops on his cheeks and the bite of cold like needlepoints under his nails. When he was clean clean clean and free free free and the tune of it was a swansong of fuck you, try and hurt me now.

It was, he thought, court shoes slip-squeaking on the court floor, not half-so-bad stuck inside either.

Abram planted a firm stop, body angled so his side was toward the plexiglass, momentum coiling in his calves and thighs. And predatory cat that he’d been trained to be, he pounced back the other way. His strides lengthened after the first two steps, bones shaking with the force of the impact of each step. It was only a few quick seconds before he’d passed the first marker, passed the second, sunk into a springing crouch at the third and went rocketing back to the start.

Firm stop, lurching back, first marker, second, third, load up at the fourth and fly back like he’d been launched from a springboard.

Abram had never really understood the motivations behind taking your own life, but he lived for this sort of suicide.

He slowed his steps as he came back to his starting marker and came to a stop with his hands braced against his hip bones. They were, he noticed and promptly ignored, a little more prominent than they had been before leaving the shelter of his shared apartment in New York. He took a few measured breaths, heaving and holding them with all the mastery of a long-time runner. Hip bones or not, he was doing fine. A little more paranoid, sure. More anxious and a few inches too stressed, too. But he was fine. Coping with the weighted chains of a slow sleeping trauma rearing its lazy head and the newborn wobbly knees of keeping a team of rejects and broken bits alive and well.

If he decided to wear clothes that were a bit baggier for the next few days to make sure it didn’t get back to Ichirou, that meant nothing.

It didn’t take long before his breathing settled into the slow beat he’d trained himself into, didn’t take any longer before he gave a quick roll of his shoulders and shook out the static ache in his legs. He settled into a tense crouch, coiled and tight and waiting like the touch of a throwing knife between fingertips. Deadly precision, sharpest edges three inches deep in the bullseye of a beating heart.

He was off again.

First marker and back to the start, second marker and back, third marker, fourth. The length of an exy court cut into quarters, the distance covered once and twice and again until he’d run the whole thing five times over in a single round.

Pause.

Hand on the hips, bones too sharp against his skin.

Suck a breath in, hold it until there’s smoke scraping at the walls of his throat and gouging at the lining of his lungs.

Control the exhale, a slow release before another steady breath in.

Prime the body, tense the right muscles, angled like a predator, carved from all things violent and fast-quick-go-move-fast.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“How long have you been here?”

Abram slows his steps on his way back to his starting marker, not ignorant to the way Wymack had stood and watched for a moment to allow him the time to finish off that particular suicide sprint. He doesn’t startle, but he feigns it anyway, jumping into the twin-skin of Neil Josten.

“Not long,” he lied.

Wymack lifted a heavy brow and folded his arms over each other, a motion Neil had learned not to stare at if he didn’t want Wymack treating him with delicate little kid gloves. “Right, and the cameras will back that up I’m sure.”

They would if he wanted them to, looped into the feed of all the campus cameras the way he was. Neil only shrugged.

The situation was this: Abram didn’t really sleep the way he was meant to.

He was a furious creature of paranoia and terror, kept awake by creeping thoughts and a heartbeat that hadn’t known a resting rate since he came screaming and crying into the world. He worked, and he ran, and he burned away at the awful energy that fueled him, dulled the edge so he wouldn’t bleed himself on it.

The situation was that for the past few weeks, Abram had dragged himself to the court long before it opened, run himself ragged until the coach showed up, took off for a while, and came back forty-seven seconds late to meet Kevin Day.

And Wymack was about to call him out on it.

Neil could see it in the way he readied himself. Wymack’s arms shifted against each other, the furrow in his brow deepening and smoothing out again.

“Why piss off and come back?” he asked, looking constipated enough Neil knew he’d chosen his words with an unprecedented level of thought. “It’s easier to just stay, keeps Kevin off your ass.”

Neil shrugged. “I have things to do,” he offered. And it was a truth for all that it was a blatant lie. He had more things to do than he’d ever be able to get done.

Wymack barked a laugh. “Pissing off Kevin doesn’t count.”

Neil’s eyes sparked a shade lighter with twisted mirth and he flashed a sharp-toothed grin for a pregnant moment of static cracking tension. “Oh Coach, you know it does.”

Wymack ignored him, mostly at least, Neil wasn’t blind to the unwilling twitching of lips hidden behind the exaggerated exhaustion of a tired hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

“It’s…” Neil trailed off, falling into a paper history scrawled in loose handwriting through various sheets torn free from scattered notebooks. “Hard,” he settled.

“How’s that?” Wymack pressed, brows raised and expression open enough to be inviting. It was an invitation Neil knew he shouldn’t be taking and an invitation he had to take all the same. Trust had been extended to him a few sleepless nights ago, and it was his turn to pass the branch back over. 

He wasn’t sure how much that trust mattered when he could only speak in truths that were halfway rooted in lies and offer up information crafted and carved from a bloodied history. 

Neil was Abram when he was at his best, polished and pristine and a few shades less fucked in the head. Neil gave up truths that were Abram’s but nudged just a few inches to the left. Talked about traumas he’d endured under another name but trimmed around the edges so they weren’t half so violent or gruesome as they had been to survive. 

All the same, it was his turn to speak.

Neil made a clicking noise that drifted into a hum, consideration and dismissal in the same second. “I’m not a people person.”

Wymack snorted. “That much is obvious.”

There was a huff of a laugh willing to be given, one that passed over the threshold of his tongue and tasted less like a lie than he was comfortable with. “Really?” he teased. “Thought I’d done a good job being all friendly.”

“Sure,” Wymack agreed. “We can call antagonising half the team friendly.”

“Is there another way to do it?” Neil asked, curious enough he saw Wymack falter for a heartbeat moment.

Instead, the old coach lifted his eyebrows again, calling him out silently on how obviously he was trying to avoid the question. 

Neil offered up a helpless little shrug, shoulders crying out a little ‘sorry’ that he didn’t mean. “My brothers think I’m no good at letting people in.”

Abram remembered late-night conversations twisted into early morning arguments. Pleas for him to just talk to them, just let them help. Desperation whispered over the phone when Abram’s breaths were brittle-bone sharp and cut off at the end. Knocks on his door that echoed through the blur of back-to-back nightmares and more caffeine than was healthy to consume. 

“They’re right I guess,” he continued. “But I’m here now, and they’re not.” He shrugged again, falling silent and heavy with it.

“It’s daunting,” Wymack offered, the sort of gleam in his expression that said I see you and I understand, and even if Neil knew it wasn’t true he could pretend for a moment that it was. 

“Yeah,” Neil agreed, quiet and reserved in an intimate way. Vulnerable in his honesty, even if he was accepting an answer that could never really be true for him. “I know how to pick a fight, it’s… comfortable. I can keep people at a distance and it’s a little less overwhelming that way. I know it’s not… great, for team building or whatever but… yeah.”

It was a lame ending to a lame explanation pulled straight from a heaping pile of bullshit. Neil wasn’t the sort to be daunted or made uncomfortable by unfamiliar situations and Abram even less so. It wasn’t for his comfort that he held people at arm's length, it was for safety. To keep his cover and his walls sky high but stand far enough away they didn’t look so bad. He wasn’t here for friendship and family, he’d found that. He was here for a job and so long as he was the outcast and the antagonist on this team he’d be forgettable and his eventual disappearance would be forgivable. He only needed them to trust him to pull his weight and have their backs on the court. 

This wasn’t going to be like Russia. 

Abram wasn’t going to go and get himself attached. It was a mistake he refused to make a second time. It was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make a second time. 

The Foxes could not be people to him. They could not be real and living and innocent. They had to be names on a page, factors to a problem he was working to solve. They could exist outside of his values, but they had to remain two-dimensional and empty. Pawns on a chessboard. He needed to be able to play with them, move them the way he needed them moved, leave them behind when the risk outweighed the reward. 

This would not be like Russia again. 

It was already getting dangerously similar. He’d felt the sharp cut of betrayal when Day broke that promise. He’d spent hours sympathising with Andrew Minyard, raged at how poorly he’d been treated and all the ways he’d been misunderstood. 

He’d called his brother, spoken to Ichirou about the barest bones of what he felt. Reached out for once in his life to get the exact advice he’d already given himself.

Don’t get attached, Ram. Nothing good will come out of getting your emotions tangled up in all of this.

Like Abram didn’t already know that it was complicated enough. Like he didn’t already know that it was a bad thing to care. Like he didn’t already know how dangerous it was. 

But sure. He could pretend it made Neil Josten uncomfortable. That he just wasn’t a people person and he was overwhelmed. So long as Wymack bought it—and he did, so stupidly trusting and good—it was good enough.

It wouldn’t be like Russia. Abram wouldn’t let it.

“Catch?” Neil offered.

The coach shook his head for a baffled moment before flipping a racquet up into his hands.

They played a version of a catch that was more fetch than anything else, but Neil, Abram, whoever he was in between footsteps and the beats of his heart, couldn’t find a single part of him that minded. He raced around the court like the wild thing he was, turned on a dime when Wymack shouted for him to go left only to snap a grin and throw right. He laughed when it was asked for and felt the closest he ever had to genuine, returned Wymack’s biting comments with barbed quips of his own and understood it was all in good fun when he passed by the coach and had a gentle shoulder shoved against his.

It was, he knew with a desperately sore mark of longing, the closest he felt to being known since he’d gone and left his brothers scattered between New York and the Nest. And the sadder truth behind it, was that it was blurred behind lies. Abram’s honesty gagged and bound underneath the paper-thin skin of another name. Neil Josten the open and exposed wound of his broken past with the mafia removed.

He felt most himself in this moment, playing a role so tangled up in the truth of who he thought he was. He felt most a stranger, understanding that a name that wasn’t his felt more like home than his own did.

Their game came to an end before ten, the way it always did, and while Neil peeled off to the showers so he could stow his things away and disappear for an hour or so before coming right back to annoy a certain striker, Wymack slunk into his office with a few disappointed murmurs about paperwork and scheduling logistics. It was the sort of filing that always gave Abram grief, but the sort of work that Neil laughed harshly at, teasing a ‘sucks to be you’ towards the coach and dodging the half-hearted swing he was too much an act to be afraid of.

The shower ran scalding and short, a scar of a boy scrubbing at scarred skin under liquid flames until he felt them tearing loose underneath. He snapped the water off, towelled himself dry roughly enough to feel it hours later when his skin was still raw, and dressed himself in clothes the way one might dress themselves in armour.

Running was a sort of freedom to him, yes, but it was important to remember there was still a war to fight outside of it. Still a bastard second son standing with one foot on his brother's back and bearing down on the innocent. Still a godless monster of a father with a shadow looming heavy over his son’s shattering shoulders.

There was so much and too much.

A goalie on drugs that made him even less sane than he was sober. A striker with a broken hand to match a broken spirit. A defensive line held together by shared contracts and the desire to be better than everyone expected them to be. A group of girls bonded by the systemic effects of a patriarchal world.

That wasn’t even mentioning Riko’s half-baked plan to come and bring a war to Palmetto’s front step. Wasn’t even mentioning the promise Abram had made to keep Day safe from it all and to turn him into an investment worth protecting. Wasn’t even mentioning the quiet investigation into a court case that never should have happened. Wasn’t even mentioning a family overseas that claimed him as an outsider every moment he wasn’t doing exactly what it was they asked of him. Wasn’t even mentioning the reanimated corpses of Russian nightmares digging bleeding nails into the skin of his memory.

But it was alright.

It was fine.

So long as Abram could wake up and run himself into the ground. So long as Abram could wake up and chisel away at problems until they were prim and proper little statues. So long as he could cut away at the shape of each task, so the garden looked well-maintained even when it was overrun with weeds.

He would do his job, and run until he couldn’t feel his legs, and do more still.

If he relaxed his body he might fall apart, but he’d always lived like that. Stitches pulling where his skin couldn’t bridge the gap itself. It was the only way he thought he knew how to live, plate full and hands full and his body bursting open at seams that had already split. If he relaxed for a second, he’d never find his way back together. He’d go to pieces and the pieces would be blown away. He’d be a scattered mess of what used to be and what would never be again.

So, he didn’t relax. Just kept going like he was meant to; like he’d been designed for. Like a horse meant only to run, but never to run too far or too fast. He’d been sprinting his whole life because he’d never known how to stop. There wasn’t any slowing down now, wasn’t even the thought of it. He would keep on going and going until something stopped him or he stopped himself.

He could never stop.

It was fine.

Abram was fine.

If only because someone had to be.

  It said something, he thought, that the seat he was in now, pulled right up to the tiny little bar counter next to the baked goods display, was decidedly his seat.

The first few times he’d visited The Split Bean the seat hadn’t even been there. The bar counter was used mostly as a place to set out the plants Emery’s little brother insisted they kept buying even when they kept dying. They used it for other things too, setting out little decorations or if there were any flyers they’d been asked to hand out.

Emery had explained that it made them feel a little uncomfortable to have someone that close to her while they worked. They and their young female cousins had experienced their fair share of creepy men lingering and asking too many questions to entertain the idea of inviting someone to sit that closely.

He’d asked, after spending most every minute of his visits just standing up there signing with Emery while his coffee cooled and they supplied him with various samples of whatever she baked, if it bothered them that he lingered.

Neil, so he’d been told, made for a great creepy old man deterrent. His assumption was that it had something to do with his general demeanour. He’d often been told he had something of a resting… well, Mia said it was somehow worse than a resting bitch face and Charlie argued it was something like a resting homicide face. Regardless, he was well aware that his general person said ‘fuck-off or get fucked’. It was a strange thing that Emery and their family seemed to gravitate to him as easily as they did.

Emery said it was less his general disposition and more a specific look he got when someone he didn’t like entered his space.

Like a feral cat, she’d signed to him, distracted by the latte art they’d been in the middle of trying to perfect. Your eyes get all hissy and sharp, they don’t linger once they see that.

The next day the chair had migrated its way over.

By that of course, he meant that he’d walked in one morning to see the chair pulled up to the counter with a little paper sign on the back that quite literally said Neil’s Chair in lazily curled handwriting.

He’d lifted a single brow and Emery had stared him down until he’d sat it in.

That had been that.

The sign was, frustratingly enough, still on the back of the chair. He’d tried for about a week and a half to take it off and toss it out on his way to wherever the hell he’d needed to go, but there was always a new one up the next morning. For every time he took it down, it got a little more elaborate, until the letters were detailed by little hand-drawn graphics of baked goods, steaming coffees and fox paws.

It was yet another battle he’d surrendered when Emery made it clear they weren’t planning on giving in, and it was one—he could admit—that he wasn’t half so upset about losing.

They were over at the register now, fielding the rather ignorant requests of an older gentleman and answering out loud with a heavy tongue. Their words were thick with the accent of someone who’d never really been able to hear the way things were meant to sound, and the asshole ordering wasn’t doing much to help the situation apart from repeating himself increasingly louder and with increasingly exaggerated mouth movements.

It was a painful ten minutes of back and forth, Emery trying to explain that they didn’t have cashew milk, and would almond milk or oat milk be an alright substitute? And Asshat Six-because somehow there had already been five others over the course of the week for all that it was freshly Tuesday-insisting that no, he didn’t ask for almond milk he asked for cashew milk, did Emery need him to write it down or could she just read his fucking lips?

Neil held his tongue when Emery had glared at him as he’d twitched to get up and interrupt the whole mess, but he’d spent the entire time staring. It wasn’t enough to really do anything, but if the way Asshat Six looked his way every so often meant anything he was at least making the bastard uncomfortable.

He could settle for that.

Fucking prick, they sighed, slumping over the countertop in front of Neil once Asshat Six had gotten his sub-almond milk atrocity of a latte and left the little café.

Neil shrugged. Should have let me say something.

And have to apologise for twenty minutes so he wouldn’t call the cops on you? Emery answered, frustrated amusement in the cut of her hands around the words. I didn’t particularly enjoy that the first time around, I’ll pass on a round two.

Neil scoffed. She wasn’t actually going to call the cops.

Emery only stared up at him with dead-tired eyes until he rolled his own with half a laugh.

It was a few moments later, after their eyes had slipped closed, that they were rocking back up and dashing to the back with the signed demand that he stay fucking put. Neil waited, the way he would have regardless of the silent order, and then there was a phone being thrust into his face with the softest picture of a puppy he thought he’d ever seen.

His puppy, to be precise.

“Oh,” he said, forgetting for half a moment to use his hands. Adorable, he signed, send me that.

Emery grinned and his phone was buzzing not two seconds later.

He’s almost ready to go, Emery signed, pausing briefly to toss a rag over her shoulder in a manner that had Neil pressing his lips together so as to not make some snarky comment they wouldn’t be able to hear. I think Jaida said you could pick up next week or the one after.

One after, he signed back one-handed, the other occupied sending out a quick thanks and reiterating the same information to Jaida directly. I have to get shit ready still and the team’s moving back in tomorrow. Too much shit going on right now.

Emery made that strange humming sound they did when they didn’t realise they were making a noise at all and placed another croissant in front of Neil.

You’ll have to socialise, they teased. Emery’s lips were tugged up into a smirk and Neil tore free the corner of the croissant to throw it in their face. She swatted it away and scowled at him. Don’t go wasting food.

Neil just rolled his eyes.

It was lucky, he assumed then, that Emery was called back over to the register to serve a few more customers. He stole the moment to pull up another text string. It was, he thought, about time Ichirou knew he was going to be an uncle.

Abram:

i’m getting a dog

Fancy Suit Man:

xcuse me?

i herd u wrng

wut?

Abram:

a dog

Fancy Suit Man:

dog

i follw yes

Abram:

i’m getting one

Fancy Suit Man:

y?

Abram:

ask e

Fancy Suit Man:

right

Abram what?

Abram:

what?

it’s not on me

i said no

i said no a lot actually

at least nine times

Fancy Suit Man:

y not 10

9 wsnt enuf

Abram:

image.jpg.puupy-eyes_cute

Fancy Suit Man:

oh

Abram:

yeah

fuckin oh

Fancy Suit Man:

when?

Abram:

i can pick him up in 2 weeks

his name is Albert